 Today, I want to talk about one aspect of taking life seriously. And one aspect, important aspect, crucial aspect, life or death aspect of taking your life seriously, is to live by principles, to hold principles, to live by them consistently, uncompromisingly by those principles. And here in particular, we're talking about ethical principles, moral principles, principles of action, principles of behavior. You know, we can also talk about, and certainly this applies to political principles, foreign policy principles, lots of other principles. Have them. Have rational principles and live by them. Why? Why the hell do you need principles? Now, let me start by saying, nothing you're going to hear today is original. This is my pro attempt to kind of repeat for you, introduce you to this idea, this idea that I learned from Lenin Picoff, like many of my ideas, but you know, a lot of it's I ran, but in this case, it's directly from Lenin Picoff, I encourage you all, as a matter of life or death, to listen to two talks by Lenin Picoff. All you have to do is put into YouTube Lenin Picoff principle, just Lenin Picoff principle, two talks more come up, but two talks come up that are relevant here. One is, one is more about morality, moral principles, which is part of his course on objectivism state of the art, of course, I heard live in 1987. And the other one is a photo forum lecture that he gave, I'm not sure what year, but probably 88, 89, would be my guess. And why we should act on principles. So why we should act on principle, thank you. James, that's actually the name, that's the second one. Those two are the talks, two brilliant talks on principles. So that's the source material, you should definitely go to that material. You know, hopefully I will motivate you to go to that material, that my talk is just motivation, not the end run. So take principle seriously, why? Why the answer for that is that life is complex. It's complicated. There is a ton going on, things that are related to the particular decision you have to make, things that are unrelated to the decision you have to make. It's just a lot of concrete stuff, a lot of things to consider in the world. And whereas animals, all animals accept human beings, you know, basically programmed to deal with all this, to know what the right response is, how to act, what to do. This survival is not contingent on them, it's already there, it's already programmed. They might fail, they might not survive, but everything is automatic. What they do, what they don't do, it's determined. Human beings don't have that. We actually have to analyze the information and make a decision about our action. What are we going to do? What is the right thing to do? What will lead us towards a better life? We talked about this that, you know, take your life seriously in pursuit of your happiness, in pursuit of your values. So you have to make those kind of decisions, you have to make choices, you have to decide what to do and what not to do. It's up to you. Now how do you make any sense of all the information being thrown at you? You don't have an automatic means by which to make that decision. Well, the human consciousness has this amazing capacity. It's called thinking, reason. It's our conceptual ability. We can take all that information that comes in and we can generalize from it. We can create categories for it. And we can then derive rules, fundamental generalizations, principles that will guide our life, that would guide, in this case, our decision making, the decisions that we have to make. So I don't know, should you cheat in the exam? How many questions? What do you guys think, you know, Michael, you're gonna get very short answers at $5 a pop. Look at the number of questions. God, I'm not like a questioning answering machine. Friday night, thank you best Fed Hank. That's very generous. So should you cheat in an exam? Should you cheat plain, right? You can write all the answers in your hand. Well, imagine if every time you faced a decision like that, you had to take all the concrete. Well, what do I know about the possibility of being caught? How many people have been caught? When were they caught? What happened to the people who weren't caught? Okay, that's one line of reasoning, and you would have to take all that information and absorb it and think about it and analyze it and decide. All right, what is the value of this knowledge? What is the value of the knowledge to me? You know, by cheating, what does this say about my knowledge of the knowledge is the knowledge important to me? In what ways is it important to me? You can go along all kinds of paths in terms of, you know, should I cheat here? And you'd have to take all of that information integrated with the getting caught information and try to make. And then there's the, what does cheating say about me, my ability? What does it say about what effect will this have on my self-esteem or does it have an effect on self-esteem? How would I know it has an effect on self-esteem? Let me go look at all the concrete examples of cheating people with self-esteem. But let me also think about the mind. The mind is kind of an integrating machine, machine quotes. If cheating here, do you think will that affect other things? Would it affect my honesty elsewhere? Will it encourage me to cheat elsewhere? What do I know about psychology? What do I know about the mind? What do I know about all these things? And imagine every time you face the situation where you could cheat an exam or on anything else. What is my relationship to the professor? What is this course? What do I need to, you know, there's a million concrete. And the standard you've accepted, let's say you've accepted the standard. The standard is my life. I want to live. Right? This is morality. So this is cheating on this exam. This particular exam, is it pro-life or anti-life? I mean, the number of concrete you would now have to integrate, it would be overwhelming. And now you have to do it every single time the possibility of cheating comes up. And of course, if the possibility of cheating is open, why not lie? And every time you talk to somebody, there's a possibility of lying. What about lying to myself? Is that bad? Well, how do I know? Let me get off. Imagine doing that every single time the possibility of cheating or lying came up. You would be paralyzed. You couldn't do anything. You wouldn't have the time or the effectiveness to do it. But imagine doing it once. In the context of building up immorality, immoral code built on life. Imagine doing it once in the context of trying to understand the role of reason and rationality in your life. And then coming to the conclusion, after having analyzed all different aspects and how they all integrate with this idea of life and the idea of reason as man's basic means of survival. Once you integrate all these things, you come to the conclusion, lying is anti-reason. It's anti-therefor life. And yeah, most lies ultimately get caught, or most lies require many, many other lies in order to cover up the first lie. And they make life super complicated and obnoxious. I look around my life and what I see are the people who lie are the people who are failures in life. All right, lying doesn't make sense. I am going to be honest, honest. Now honesty in objectivism is not just about lying, but I'm not going to cheat. I have a principle now. I don't cheat. I don't cheat. Why? Because I've already integrated the fact that cheating is anti-reason. It's anti-life and therefore bad for me. But in this particular case, well, no, I don't need to redo it every time. I figure this out. Look, we have principles. You don't have to redo gravity every single time. There's the law of gravity, the principle, the scientific principles. You don't re-prove them every single time in order to build on them. Honesty is done, or not cheating is done. I figure that out. I know it's bad for me. I'm just not going to consider it again. And then you just, you just don't cheat. Now note that this isn't like a commandment. This isn't like some dogma, and this is why it has to be rational. You have to have integrated it. You have to have proven it to yourself in the context of establishing your morality. So it's not that I carry around a dogma, thou shalt not cheat. Don't cheat, don't cheat, don't cheat, shouldn't cheat. No, I am proven to myself that in the context of living, in the context of pursuing life, which is the only goal one has. Being because it's anti-reason, it's anti-self, it's anti-my life. Now that I've proven it to myself, only now that I've proven it to myself, it becomes a principle. Objectivism should never be held, should never be held, principles of morality should never be held as commandments, as duties. It has to be principles you understand, you understand foundation, you understand what they're built on. And it has to build on reason and rationality. It has to be built on the facts of reality. And cheating is not just an issue of honesty, it's an issue of potentially private property because you could cheat in business, cheating in school, cheating in business. You say, I can lead you in that path, again, if you understand the role of reason as this integrating function, what does this do to your consciousness? What does it do to you? It destroys you. So build up moral principles and then live by them consistently. There's no deviation, there's no compromise. But Troy asks, but do they always apply? So here's some examples he has. He says, what I'm confused about is the concept of principles and how we are to react when those principles are interfered with by a higher power that may have an undue influence on our lives. I guess I have some examples, here's some examples. A student at school or college under the influence of leftist thinkers, teachers is told to write a paper on CRT and the topic is to show support for this too. At her core, this makes her very angry. But the advice to her would be, don't threaten your grades over this issue, write the piece, get the grades required, hold close your own opinion, but don't jeopardize your schooling by alienating a teacher who right now has influence over your process. Is that the guidance, right? And if so, is that a violation of the principle of honesty? Well, first I would say, I don't know if that's the guidance. It would depend. You would have to analyze the situation. You would have to, you would have to know something about the teacher. Is the teacher rational? Is the teacher open to debate? Is the teacher really going to penalize you for having an opinion different than the teacher? If the teacher's open to ideas, she might be angry with you. She might not agree with you. She might debate you, but she's not going to penalize you. She's not going to lower all your grades as a consequence. She's basically generally mistaken, but generally rational. Then I would say write the essay about why it makes you angry. Write an honest essay. And yeah, she won't like you for a little while, but so what? However, if the teacher is truly a teacher who will penalize you, who is irrational, then the principle now does not apply. Your values are being threatened by irrationality. You're in an irrational universe. You're in a place where rationality does not apply. And no, it would be suicidal. To provide the teacher with a rope by which to hang you. Remember, the standard ultimately is always your life. Take your life seriously. Move your life forward. Advance your life. Improve your life. Achieve happiness. If you know this is anti-your life, if you know this is destructive to your happiness and to your ability to live, if you know that this goes against everything you believe in, then lying is appropriate. But you need to know all that to exclude the principle. And here, the principle is it's not a conflict of principle. It's just that the principle of honesty applies or not cheating in this case. Appliance in a context of rationality, in a context where somebody can't impose through force, in a sense, their will on you. It applies not in a world in which, I don't know, if the rapist asks you where your wife is, you're not obliged to tell them the truth, the contrary. It is immoral to tell them the truth. Your responsibility is to your values. That's the fundamental. And when being honest to an irrational person, when being honest in a context where somebody has power over you, unjustifiable power over you, then no, you are not. The principle does not hold under those circumstances. Now, ideally, you get out of that school because you don't want to live in a world where you cannot apply your principles. And you see that. You see that in places like Venezuela. I respect private property rights. I don't take any money from the government. I don't know. I treat my employees with respect. If that all is going to result in you being destroyed, how can you live? Those circumstances, circumstances in which irrational people have power over you, you need, to the extent that you can, divorce yourself from those circumstances. Get out of there. Change schools. Homeschool. But if your child is being forced to write a paper on CRT, get her out of that school. Get her out of that context. Now, sometimes you can. Sometimes you can. But in the face of force, as I mentioned, when a gun is pointed at you, morality is out the window. Morality doesn't apply when force is in the equation. Here's another example. A nurse is told to vaccinate or lose her job. She has no real issue with getting the jab, but detests that the government is stepping in to trample on her individual rights. The advice would be to save your job as employment prospects out in the COVID world right now may seem dire. But be self-interested to protect that income, your livelihood. Still rail against government influence in your lives, but at least in the short run, look after you and your family. I don't know if that's the advice. It depends. Now, if she doesn't have any real issue with getting the jab, then why not get the jab? She detests the government stepping on her individual rights. Absolutely, we all detest that. But I detest the government taking my taxes, and I will need to go to jail so that they stop? No. Again, force is being used against me. I will speak up against it, but I'm going to pay my taxes. I'm going to minimize how much I pay, but I'm going to pay my taxes. Ragnar, thank you. Really appreciate that. What's the principle here? The principle is stand up for what you believe, but what do you believe? If you don't really have an issue with getting the jab, then get the jab, get your job, and speak up against the mandates. So that doesn't seem like a compromise here, right? So doing what the government is forcing you to do, the government forces us to do lots of things. File forms, apply for stuff, pay all kinds of taxes, abide by regulations that are just as bad as vaccine mandates. And we do them. And then we speak up against them. So again, I'm not sure what the principle here is. What the principle that she's violating is, I don't want to get, I want to be free to make my own decisions about vaccines. Yes, about anything. The principle would be not about vaccines. That wouldn't be a principle. I should make decisions about my own health. Absolutely. Absolutely. But given that the jab is not something she's opposed to, and given that her not getting the jab or losing your job is not going to change anything with the government, again, I don't think once force has entered the picture, I don't think the principle here holds. A business suffers a downturn in profits due to COVID. The government offers financial support. The business owner detests government handout, has always believed in the survival of the fittest. Well, I don't believe in the survival of fittest. I don't think that's ever a good way to articulate what capitalism does. Capitalism is not the survival of the fittest because that seems like implying that the unfit all die. It's not exactly what happens in capitalism, right? Failure is not non-survival. Now, as a business, maybe, but it strikes on too much what's used to be called social Darwinism. Beware of that because we're not social Darwinists. And so let me just copy over this super chat question. So, but COVID and the government who renders handling of the pandemic has exacerbated its economic downturn and to stay afloat he accepts the support. What is the principle here? I will never accept the government handout. I don't think that's a very good principle. In a mixed economy, why wouldn't you? Your productive human being, you've given the government a huge amount of money, is that person not gonna accept your security or they're not gonna accept Medicare? How they gonna get healthcare when, for example, I don't support Medicare, I wanna abolish Medicare. But once I'm 65, shit, that's soon. Once I'm 65, there is no other source of healthcare. If you live in some countries where healthcare socialized, you're not gonna use the healthcare system because you refuse to accept government support. So first of all, I would view government support in a context like that as getting my money back. But you have to think what is the principle? I will never take money from the government is not a good principle because it ignores an entire context of where we live under what circumstances we live. So you have to think about what your principles are. What your principles are and what context were they derived? I don't want the government. A principle would be with the God of government support. What would a principle be? I will never ask for the government to support me. I will never try to manipulate the government. I will never lobby the government to provide me with financial support. But if the government's offering it to you and in particular if the government created the problem that you're suffering from, which in COVID case, there's no principle that says you shouldn't take the money. Okay, so what is common to all these? It's a combination of two things. One is you have to form the principle properly. The principle has to take into account the context in which it is going to be used. Again, you can't have a context that says I will never allow myself to be forced to do things by the government that I don't want to do. I mean, that's just not realistic. And it's not a good principle because you're not even going to lose your life very quickly. Now, you might have a principle about there's certain things you won't force the government to do. But again, once force has introduced the equation, I don't know what the right answer is. If the government forces you as they did in Nazi Germany to choose which of your children should be shot, is there a principle to guide that? No, there's no principle. It's a horrible, disgusting, immoral, horrific choice. I'd probably rather commit suicide than make the choice. There's no principle there. So one thing here is there are no principles in the face of force. You're not even survival because sometimes in the face of force, the best thing is to die. In the name of living and taking your life seriously. If you accept money from the government, are you not going to accept any social security? Are you not going to accept Medicare? I mean, that's a bad principle in a world in which the government is in every aspect of our life and taxes you to death. And then you get a little bit of it back afterwards. Why wouldn't you? It's your money. Now, if you're a leech, you shouldn't get it, but they're the ones who jump and get it first. So there's no principle that says business shouldn't take money from the government. Again, the principle has to be derived from the requirements of your life. And it has to take into account the consequence in which you live. Sorry, the context in which you live. It can't be context free. It can't be floating. This is why principles are not commandments. And but even deriving the principle, you can say I'll never ask for favors. But if the government's handing out dollars and everybody else is taking them, why would I not? And of course, again, when we give teachers power, when they're, instead of educating, they are indoctrinating our kids and they penalize them for having alternative positions. Then again, that is the equivalent in this context of force against you. Don't allow yourself to be penalized for your virtues. So you always want to be principled, but you always also have to acknowledge or recognize when principles don't apply. And this is, this is the great tragedy, a force. What force does is it limits our thinking. It restricts our options. It destroys our principles. It makes principled thinking, i.e., thinking impossible. It's why objectivism is so anti-force. Not like libertarians who are just anti-force because I don't know, everybody should know, force is bad. We know why force is bad. Force is bad because in order to live, you have to think. To think means to think in principles. And force eviscerates those principles. Force makes thinking impossible. That's why we're against it. Bands, basic means of survival, man's means of achieving anything in life is his reason. Force incapacitated reason, it makes it impotent, futile, impossible, and that's why we're against it. Because we value the human mind and we value principles. So one of the reasons we're so pro-capitalist, one of the reasons was anti-force. Not one of the reasons, it's the reason. The reason we're pro-capitalist and anti-force is because we're pro-principles, we're pro-morality, we're pro-life, we're pro-reason. So, and one of the reasons you want to deal with rational people is because teachers like this teacher you describe, Troy, are destructive to our morality. Destructive to our ability to be honest, to live a good life because now we have to, we can't use those principles. Principles becoming relevant because we're facing force irrationality. In facing irrationality, you have to just survive. But you want to minimize facing irrationality. Therefore you want to minimize the mixed economy. You want to minimize the existence of teachers like this. You want to minimize public education. You want to get yourself out of that world in which you expose. You want to create a world in which you never have to think about does the principle apply? Where the principle applies? Because you're living in a rational world. The principle applies because you're not dealing with force, you're not dealing with government. But if you, and so more motivation for fighting for freedom, more motivation for creating an environment around you where you're dealing with rational people, you're dealing with rational education, you're dealing with to the extent that you can. Because the only way human beings can survive and thrive and be successful, the only way we can achieve happiness and we can achieve happiness counter to the other guy who claims to have rules for life, we can actually achieve happiness is by living a principled life, by living a moral life, by living up to our principles and not compromising them. Because what does compromising principles mean? It means to be on the death premise for a little bit. Just when it's inconvenient to be principled. Again, these examples are not examples of inconvenience. These examples are examples of physical force used against you. So what does it mean to lie sometimes? When? So you can, if you have a principle, you can't then say, I'm not gonna apply it when I don't feel like it. Well, that means you don't have a principle. The whole idea of a principle is you do it, you know it's right, that's what you do. And you don't let your emotions dictate it. The whole point of a principle is to give you a shortcut and sometimes to overrule the emotions because the emotions will sometimes tell you, this is uncomfortable to tell the truth. You know, don't look over there, evade it. No, the principle is look, always look, always keep your mind in focus, always reality is your standard. Once you let compromise in a little bit, your whole idea principle is out the window. It doesn't exist. Principles are there to simplify your life, to make it relatively easy, to deal with a multitude of facts, of concretes, of the whole of human knowledge past and present. Do the work, you have to do the work to get to the principles. You can't just read them and I ran and accept them. You have to do the work to make them yours. That is to prove them to yourself. But once you do the work, they're yours. What does a compromise on a principle mean? Let's say we have the principle that I am not gonna cheat. And what does compromising mean? I'm gonna cheat sometimes. Well, then how is it a principle? And if I'm gonna cheat sometimes, when am I gonna cheat? What's the rule to decide when you're gonna cheat and when you're not gonna cheat? Well, the only rule possible is when I feel like it. And now you're placing feeling above cognition and therefore you're undermining your whole ethics, you're undermining your life and the principle becomes irrelevant. You don't not cheat sometimes. You don't cheat, period, forever. Take a foreign policy principle. Cheat a little, what does even cheat a little? So you steal only a little bit of money. You cheat only on three of the test questions, not on 10 of them. Why? Why not 10? Why not five? Why not seven? Why three? Why a little? Why this amount? Why not that amount? What dictates the amount you're gonna cheat by? The only thing that can dictate is emotion. But emotion is not a tool of cognition. Emotion is what gets you in trouble. Emotion is partially why you have principles in order to keep you on the rational track. Well, think about foreign policy, a principle. You do not negotiate, do not negotiate with evil. Do not negotiate with evil. You have nothing to gain from evil. Evil has everything to gain from you. It's simple. And yet nobody acts on it. Everybody negotiates with evil all the time. And that's why we have such a complete, screwed up, messy foreign policy. Now, you could say, well, sometimes I negotiate with evil, but sometimes I don't. When the particular conquests in a particular moment dictate, how do they dictate? So you are just randomly choosing some, what's articulate in what circumstances you should deal with evil and what circumstances you should not. You can negotiate with hostages. I don't think that's a principle. I think Atlanta Peacock answered this question really well. I think in why we should live in principle, he said, you negotiate with the hostage takers. You give them what they want. They release the prisoners and then you hunt them down and you kill every last one of them. That's how I would negotiate with hostage takers. They would never take hostages again. So you deal with a problem right now and then you kill them all. But you don't deal with evil. You don't deal with a Hitler. You don't deal with a Stalin. You don't deal with communists. You don't deal with Mao. You don't deal with any of these guys. And we've got a ton of history to show that dealing with them never actually improves our lot. And yet we still continue to negotiate with evil. And who gains? When is the good ever gained by negotiating with evil? It doesn't. Never has. Never will. There is no deals. Unless you're willing to renege on the deal, like with hostages, give them everything they want, promise not to hurt them as soon as they turn their back, shoot them. I never understood, like I never understood in the westerns why the good guy insisted on a fair fight. Evil doesn't deserve a fair fight. If somebody's truly evil, somebody's a murderer, and you're gonna have to go against them and either you die or they die, then shoot them in the back. That's the manly, just correct thing to do. No, I don't think we should kill all communists. What does that have to do with anything? There's no diplomacy with evil. Nothing comes of it. Ever. It's a principle. Don't negotiate with evil. 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. 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