 So what is honesty mean in the culture? What does honesty mean for a altruistic morality? Well, if altruism honestly means don't lie to other people. And why shouldn't you lie to other people? Why shouldn't you lie to other people? What's the reason? Well, altruism, Christianity, every religion, every moral code out there tells you not to lie to other people because it's wrong to hurt other people. It's wrong to deceive other people. You're hurting, you're doing harm, you're doing damage by denying other people the truth. It's all other focused. That is the focus of the virtue of honesty in all other moral codes that I'm familiar with anyway is on others, is on the effect it has on the other. It's on your duty to take care of others, to help others. And they say, you know, it's okay to not tell the truth in order to hurt others. So the focus, the orientation, and the whole way in which we think about the virtue, we think about the concept of this honesty is what is the effect going to be on other people? What is the effect going to be on the person hearing the truth or the lie or whatever it happens to be? Rand's orientation is completely different. Objectivism is not primarily oriented to the other. The only of the virtues that is oriented towards others is justice. And even there, it's oriented towards the value others represent to you. The goodness or badness is in the context of your life, your values, your happiness life. But it is about judging others. Honesty is primarily focused on self. It involves other people because part of honesty has to do with what you communicate to other people. But the main orientation of honesty and objectivism is towards what you do with reality. Honesty is, as a positive, an orientation towards facts, towards reality, towards truth. Honesty means have an act of mind, search, look, always be interested in the truth. Not what your tribe tells you, not even what Ein Mann necessarily said, but what is true. That should be your orientation. What are the facts? Now what's convenient? Now what's nice? Now what's consistent with everything else I believe right now or consistent with my emotions are going to cause me to feel well, feel good, but what is actually true? As objectivists, to me what objectivism actually means, both epistemologically and morally, what objectivism actually means is being a truth seeker. I mean what it means in action for you is to seek the truth and to understand why the truth is so crucial to your life and your happiness. No happiness, no life is possible without the truth, without knowledge, without facts. And that's what honesty highlights and in that sense honesty is very related to rationality, to reason. Because rationality requires honesty. It requires using only the facts. It requires not letting untruth, not letting falsity enter your thinking process. It requires that you focus your mind on reality as it is, not as you wish it to be or not as other people tell you it is. Again, related to independence, seeking the truth is something you have to do for yourself. So honesty means having a, you know, it requires having an active mind. It's about seeking facts. It's about constantly being ready to think and to engage and to pursue new ideas, new thoughts, new facts. It's about being curious. It's about resisting stagnation, stagnation of the mind, stagnation in any aspect of your life. It's about engage, engage, engage, think, think, think, look around, discover new things, figure new stuff out and then integrate. It's about being rational. It's about taking ideas seriously and taking values seriously and understanding the relationship between facts and values. Values come from a certain set of facts. The moral values of objectivism come from what facts? What are the facts that lead necessarily to the objectivist morality? What are the facts that lead necessarily to the objectivist morality? Well, the facts are the requirements of human survival. What specifically, what specifically is required for human beings to survive, to thrive, to achieve happiness? That's a factual question. It's a scientific question. Given the nature of human beings, what kind of activities are going to lead to success? What kind of activities are going to lead to thriving? What kind of activities are going to lead to flourishing? And what to death and destruction? Those that lead to success, values and virtues, those that lead to destruction, we want to avoid them, vices. That's the standard. The standard is reality. The standard is fact. And in everything, every decision, every value that we choose, moral value or otherwise, it has to be based on some fact about you, about reality, and everything needs to be evaluated based on that. Again, this is the application of reason, rationality, to living and honesty, orients us towards only the facts, only the facts. And it reminds us that all values, all our knowledge, must be connected to reality. And if I hold ideas, and I get really passionate about them, but I don't have them anchored to reality, am I being honest with myself? If I'm not convinced really, fully, because they're not fully integrated, because they're not completely connected to reality, how honest am I being when I become this passionate advocate for the ideas? So, to be honest is to be honest primarily with yourself. And to be honest with yourself means in thinking, in valuing. Are my values connected? Are they integrated? Are they connected to the facts of reality? Are my concepts defined? Do I really understand them? When I say capitalism, or when I say egoism, do I know what I really mean? Do I fully have those ideas concretized in reality and integrated into everything else in my life? What do I really know? So, honestly, interestingly enough, honestly requires immense introspection. It requires the ability to think about what do I know, really? And what do I just imagine I know, feel like I know, have a vague understanding of. And when I'm really, really excited and passionate about fill-in-the-blank, voting for Biden, or voting for Trump, or voting for... Have I really thought this through and considered every element and every aspect of what I'm doing, particularly if I'm going to be passionate and become an advocate for this? Do I really understand all the implications? That's what honesty requires of every single one of us. In every single activity we engage in in life. It requires us to be honest with ourselves about what we know and what we don't know. What we really know and what we kind of know. What have I accepted because Ayn Rand wrote it? What have I accepted because Iran said on his show? And what have I accepted because I've really thought it through and understand it? Again, this is independence, and it's honesty, and it's rationality. They're all one in the end. We'll talk about this at the end when we talk about pride. We'll talk about the unity of the virtues. But in a sense, all the virtues are one thing, about you and reality. And your commitment to reality and commitment to your own life. And then when it comes to kind of values, honesty requires that we ask the question, why is this a value to me? Am I sure that it's a value that truly enhances my life, that it should be a value? And then what have I done to achieve it? I say I want to make a lot of money. Or I say I want to be successful in my career. Or I say I want to be fill in the blank. Or that I want to achieve fill in the blank. Or I want to buy one day fill in the blank. What have I actually done? What am I actually doing? Am I living a life that is actually going to get me there? So it requires, it demands that we constantly think, evaluate, and that we don't just accept our lives as it is. That we challenge ourselves. Now, so some definitions. Thank you, Kano Piaz, Kano Piaz. He didn't ask a question, but sent over a couple of dollars. I really appreciate that as a show of gratitude. Thank you, James. I'll get you a question in a little bit. If it's a question, yeah. A couple of definitions, because I think they're interesting. It's just commitment to reality and facts. It's just commitment to reality and facts. But it's interesting that in Opa and Ayn Rand, they almost always define honesty in the negative. The focus of honesty is on the rejection of. So in Opa, the subtitle of the topic of honesty, which again, I always say, if you really, really, really want to understand these ideas, read Opa and listen to Leonard Peacuff's courses, lectures on the virtues. That's where you're going to get the original. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life has been guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. 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