 The question I want to ask is like Why you think about the news? Why think about current events? Why you think about the current cultural issues? You might think okay. I've got it. It's collectivism all over the place a pox on everyone's house is I don't need to follow this stuff. And of course not everyone needs to follow within the same amount of depth, but Is it enough just to reject everything? Why is there a a real value to? Following the trends following the news having some people on that beat and all of us may be having some Reasons for it knowing what's going on in the world If the major factions in the culture wars are both bad or wrong Can't we just accept that and write it all off and you know focus on other aspects of our careers or our personal lives So first I have to admit that I definitely have the tendency to think that way to hell with them You know there's life is too interesting and too much fun and there's too much going on and there's too much Things I'd love to do other than that. That's weird because the amount of Cultural commentary in the much of the culture. I actually do do but I you know, I remember as a young objectivist Here in Austin years and years ago saying publicly in a forum saying forget about the news You know live your life. Just focus on living your life First of all, it's the best way to change the world in a sense because you'll be a model for the people and secondly You've only got one life and why bother with with all this really Bad stuff that is constantly going on and it's so much negativity and it's gonna have an impact on your sense of life It's gonna it and it's hard not for it not to have an impact on so I am tempted by that view And I think I think any egoist would be I think if you really selfish then your initial tendency should be I don't care Just want to live my life. I've got a career. I've got I've got I want to find a somebody to love I want to have your family or whatever it is. That's plenty. What do I need to worry about all this stuff? But of course the the the two part there are few problems with that and one is that You might want to ignore politics, but politics doesn't want to ignore you That is that the world out there the culture and the world out there Is in your life whether you want it or not whether you identify directly it or not, but they are Imposing their force Directly or indirectly on you and every aspect of your life really every aspect of your life Whether it's through the culture and we live. I mean, this is one of the things I Don't think we talk about enough, but we live in a pretty bleak culture I don't think we know that because we don't know what the alternative is Like Rand used to talk about the pre-World War and the post-World War culture and how if he didn't Experience pre-World War one if you didn't experience 19th century culture You have no clue and she was and I don't think there's an accident She was born 1905 and many so many geniuses were born in the late 19th century early 20th century I mean geniuses that we cannot that that have to found it back that the great artists were born back then There's something in the in the culture that was so positive and our culture sucks a lot of it's the arts But it's people's sense of life She spoke about she spoke about us having a cultural value deprivation and yes Analog guys did to being in a like the sensory deprivation chamber. Yes It's definitely sensory deprivation if you think about if you think about how the streets and Athens were and They were lined with with art and there were sculptures everywhere and all that and it's interesting If you go in UT with University of Texas here and there are sculptures, but they're all old They were all put up decades ago And there's a beautiful I think a magnificent fountain here that nobody looks at because they're not used to looking at art They're not used to paying attention, but there's a beautiful fountain right here in front of enough off in the building They were sitting in that if you look at the figures there there's some magnificent figures in the fountain Nobody looks at it And it was built the artist again was born in I think the early part of the century lived in San Antonio and and and but it was Put up there a long long time ago. That is the the orientation today is not To surround yourself with beauty and to round yourself with inspiration It's if anything they surround yourself with ugliness that that's the kind of quote art that they that they put around us, but so There's the culture that you know you you Want to be involved in partially because you want to identify the better parts of it So you can embrace those partially because you want to change it and you want to have better people around you and you want to have More beauty around you and you want to have you want to live in an environment that is better and more beautiful And then of course there's a politics which is which is all intrusive all the time And is the things going on are terrifying and are heading in a very wrong direction a very bad direction No matter who you know wins any particular election in that sense It doesn't really matter it might matter to the speed with the direction doesn't change and One needs to have an impact and one needs to understand it and look It's it's almost it's also getting to the point where one wants to be involved One wants to know what's going on in the world partially because one wants to know where to live you know It used to be easy to know where to live and and it's not so much because the real differences The real differences between states the real difference between countries the world is between regions or projector project trees in terms of the future You want to try to have an influence to the extent that you can and you want to you want to be aware because Just as a survival mechanism because they're out there to get you and you want to be able to protect yourself in Some capacity or another on the other hand one else has to be very very careful And I have to be very careful even as a as somebody who does this professionalism not to overdo it and and as people are not Professionals you shouldn't do a lot of politics and a lot of stuff I mean it's I talk about this a lot on the show life's too important to spend too much time worrying about this stuff because you We want to have some impact but the impact is small To really have an impact you'd have to spend a lot of your time doing it and even then it's a very uncertain And there are other more interesting things life is finite The world will probably not end in our lifetime. So it matters. Well live it to the fullest all the way to the end and if you completely let the state of the world a particularly state of politics Dominate you you'd be very very depressed. It's very very depressing and and life's too short for that There's too many good things in the world And it's it's really crucial and important to focus on those as well to focus on those as a primary and to let you know I think this is what people value in my show It's a large extent is that I I can I can give them a quick snapshot of what's going on They don't have to you know, spend a huge amount of time Studying themselves the extent that they trust me they can they can get the key points and and live their life and And not so there's the vision of labor, which I think is really very important But people I find so many people obsessing about politics Which again, I even have to protect myself on because if I spent all my time doing this I'd be depressed. It is really it's depressing. So You you know, this is why I do you know I talk about so on you so with beauty and focusing on your life and things like that because I think it's really really crucial that you Not obsess about these things. I have a few thoughts just like to add about the what I see is the value of this kind of work and the place in life of it We are affected by the culture One way or another and when people try to isolate themselves too much from thinking about what's going on They're still affected by it their taxes go up crime goes one way or another in the country the political landscape changes whatever happens and They're affected by it. They tend to feel resentment about it and rightfully so But they often don't know where or how to direct it. They feel a little bit confused and powerless about it. I think It's important to Living your life into functioning to have a sense of where you are and what's happening and you have to have that in kind of Essentialized terms not, you know, every little detail. This is the mayor and that's the third congressman and this guy just won this election or whatever But like what politically what culturally kind of world are you in? And to have it in a way that updates over time. What's changing? What Happenings are big deals versus small deals. How do they affect the total? Is there something you can do now with your vote in this election? It's just one, you know where the candidates are so similar It doesn't make any difference or is this one that matters and you're never gonna get maybe the ideal candidate But maybe one of them is enough better that it's worth going out to vote or encouraging them To not feel hopeless and senseless and confused and bewildered by the world You have to have a sense of at least at the high headline levels What's happening? What kind of a society you're in what you can do about it? how it impacts your other values and to have it conceptualized from values that are true and make sense and and you that's hard to find and It's hard to find in a world where the dominant values and dominant ideas are Irrational incoherent wrong and so I think it's important for Holders of radical values holders of true value holders of true ideas and objectivists in particular to Be thinking about these things to have a good source of news and analysis from that perspective I think that's why it was so important to ran herself to do this kind of work and it's why it's Important to me that it's going on now and your show is important to me I also think yes one of the thing that for people who are or philosophers In particular, which is only a small subset of the group. There's a way in which you can get to The ideas can become floating abstractions if you're not applying them to the world around you and I remember I don't know if you'll remember this interaction, but Years and years ago when I was working on doing my graduate work writing on very esoteric Issues in Plato and Aristotle about epistemology. I was would occasionally pop on to HPL The Harry Binswanger email list run by a friend of ours Harry and I was in a thread arguing about Something about Iraq policy why we'd already lost the war and you sent me an email saying like it's good to see you Philosophers, you know dealing with these current events from time to time But I think because of the issue of like it's not all detached and in the forms, you know Yeah, and I think that's that that is true the philosophers but if for everybody it's it's it's true because It's so hard. It's it's important for people to take the Objectivism and to see it in the world and to see also the negative predictions that it makes Applied to it's important to see that evil is Notifications and and and you get that when you watch the world They you get a lot of it because there's a lot of evil and a lot of non-efficaceous stuff going on And it's good to see When people are rational and when something is done, well that it's successful and for that I think it's good for Non-philosophers non-intellectual stuff read some history to know what's going on in the world So if you live an integrated life, which is at the end of the day What flourishing life requires is that is that you really integrate it You know ideas are integrated with the way you live and and and your knowledge is constantly growing and it helps you integrate further your ideas Then you can't take a part of the world and say I'm not gonna look over there Because then you're negating integration. So even if it's painful to look you've got to look and Then the question is how long do I look and how do you buy go and so on? That you know, that's an evaluation we have to make but but that's the I think what people get out of the show Again is of somebody like me is is I make it a little easier for them to look over there when they when they Don't want to look but you you have to integrate all the knowledge that's going on everything It's going on into everything in your life. They in the end. It's all connected and I think I think one of my strengths has always been The ability to integrate so this are going back to how do you how do you sift through the news? It's to see connections between stories and to see that it's not okay This is going on over here and that's going up here in it completely two different stories But to see that it's all part of a particular trend of part of particular movement to see in terms of the world in which We live in the why is the all right? Connected to identity politics right of the of the left right to see the two that are not they're not just two Phenomenos, but they're two phenomena of the same thing and and one is Breeding off of each other and one is in reinforcing the other to see that the 9-11 and the Christian nature of The bush and and the people surrounding bush and the Christian morality to see connection between all that that I think is the is The advantage we as objectors have in approaching these things is we know it's all connected That they're not disparate separate things Maybe one integration to then seeing the positive to this that I can bring out and then let's if anybody again from the room Wants to talk or raise an issue with you have a few so please come to the mic and then we'll go to the Mainly for you because I used to ask you me questions. All right. Well, we can riff on them together But there's a scene in Atlas shrug. That's really Significant to me that I think about sometimes when I'm down and call other people's attention to Dachne Taggart sat one of her lowest ebbs her project the on the rail line that she's proudest of has Finally been totally destroyed she's breaking down and Francisco Dan Conia shows up and takes her out for a drink and she I Forget exactly how he puts it, but she's kind of Feeling as though there's no good in the world as though nothing comes to anything as though the people As though the world is made up of the kind of people who are in the meeting that she was just at people who can't Hold firm conviction to that anything people who just suck were irrational and and but worse than that. They're just dreary. Nothing's and He says like look at the skyscrapers Those are there and they're proof that another kind of men exists that those people aren't the bottom line on reality Those people aren't what life's about that there is something better that the irrationality that can overwhelm us when we look at the News or current events or or guard disappointed in people isn't the you know the verdict we should reach on the world and You can see that the other kind of men exist and she asks, you know, where are they and he says and this will become Significant to people who understand the plot of the book when they're wanted you'll be able to find them Or when you really want them, you'll be able to find them but What she's lacking there is a kind of perspective on the world that she'll learn over the course of the novel the perspective Objectivism gives you But it's work what that perspective does is to see there is real greatness good rationality fantastic things in the world all over the place, but it's Deluded inundated mixed up in all kinds of awful junk And if you don't understand what's awful about the awful junk what the alternatives to it is you're not going to be able to see the good that's out there that's being undercut by and you're not going to be able to see how to direct your life towards that good and I Think you need That perspective you need you know You need it at the right level of abstraction and not in all the details all the time But you need to know that it can be done in the details all the time and so That's part of what I think yeah, no, I think that's right and that's part of this part of You have to integrate all this into your life and it has real application that is Let's say you just let's say you did the world out there decides Inspired by Elon Musk that Apple is an evil company right and it's really evil then You might abandon it you might decide not to buy Apple products anymore. I mean, that's a bit To do that you have to know whether they're really evil and you have to be engaged at least to some extent in that Conversation about what it means to be for a company like that to be evil. Are they what's going on? So there's no the real decisions in the world should I boycott everything made in China? Should I travel to ex-country? Should I there are a lot of decisions that these? politically relevant the issues Apply to that affected. Should I go to work for a particular company? And also That relate to there are a lot of issues that come out out of culture and politics that relate to the good So again, I'll pitch my chip chip really did I show because because the thing I enjoyed most about the book I read about the chip was to learn about chips and When you learn about chips this semiconductor chips It's mind-blowing. I mean, I still don't quite get it right they fit I don't know a hundred million transistors into a little silicon What the hell is a hundred million? I mean, can you even contemplate? The size of a hundred million how small they would have to be to fit on this little thing and how do you do that? How do you I mean, it's mind-boggling to me. I don't know how they do it I I say during the show multiple times extreme UV light technology. I have no idea what that means, right? But it's cool because it has this application that changes the world that I do know about because I you know Those chips are going to power all the stuff that I do that they're probably powering Ability to some extent to communicate with you live by video and they will certainly power all the stuff in the future So it's I could raise the iPhone for you. Yes. There you go my effort stuck but it's it's stunning that people can come up with this stuff and it's beyond my comprehension in terms of just what they do and how they do it and and And that it is done I was describing this mirror that the size of the flaw would be the equivalent I think of a millimedia millimedia if the if the mirror was the size of Germany I Mean that's precision and people say there's nothing there's no such thing as perfection, right? I mean that's perfect and That's the kind of mirror you have to have in order to do this extreme UV light and in that kind of perfection So it's it's to discover that people even today with all the ugliness in the world are Creating these beautiful things these amazing things that do have any big and part of what motivates me And I think part of what should motivate everybody is I Don't want to see that destroyed. I don't want to see that go away You know, I you know, I'd rather live in a Mixed world in which we live where this is at least some beauty being produced some amazing things being produced Then the alternative which is which is nothing, right? So and so even maintaining the status quo is a big deal So we know the status quo cannot be maintained. It has to go one way or the other but ultimately Even if I'll never see You know the the perfect state the perfect state of the world the perfect culture an objective is culture You know, I'd rather fight to see a better culture than I would otherwise Because there's so much good that actually exists in the world and also, I mean people are Really down on the present world. Yeah Pining for some ideal that hasn't ever been and when do they wish they had been born? It's not like, you know, our birthright is a perfect society and you got screwed up because you were born this year rather than You know, 10 years ago with everything would have been ideal There was no 10 years ago when everything was everything's always been the bad the default is Irrationality primitiveness savagery every step towards a better society is a real achievement We're not owed it It was achieved by people who came before us and we have to do our best to improve it keep it going To really value something is to be you know We're gonna work for it to appreciate it and to recognize that you can't expect it to be given to you Yes, and part of part of what frustrates is the number of people out there who are angry Because they don't have their perfect objective is world yet, right? It's like Where was it supposed to come from? Yeah, if not from no God Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show if you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation you can do that by going to your own book show comms last support I go to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution On any one of those any one of those channels also if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow Please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get Announcement when we go live and for you those of you who are ready Subscribers and those of you who ready supporters of the show. Thank you. I very much appreciate it