 Family Minute with Mark Merrill helping families love well This is pure Opelka with Michael Pellka only on the blaze radio network All right, you're listening to your own book filling in from Michael Pellka Mike will be back tomorrow tomorrow. I've enjoyed this gig Maybe maybe he'll let me fill in again. We'll see. All right We're talking about good stuff. We're talking about the positives. We're talking about positive stories airline prices declining lots more options Traveling all over the world going to unknown places unknowable places just a few Years ago, maybe a few decades ago. We're talking about the decline in crime the increase in life expectancy We haven't even talked about technology right 1990. There's no internet. I remember in 1990 just starting to use email Right in within the university system. You had email Can you imagine life without email and texting and and Google and Amazon? How do we how did we buy stuff? Without Amazon. I don't know. I have no idea Technology's just blown this world up. It's just amazing how much good stuff we have today because of technology The access we have that the supercomputers we have in our pockets our iPhones of samsung's or whatever you happen to use You know the fact that I can do the show On the internet Anybody in the world can listen Anytime it can be stored online at a cost of basically zero and People can access it globally anywhere in the world at a cost of Zero I mean The internet is a revolution that puts the shame the printing press in terms of its potential to change the world And it's all happened Recently, right the first browser was what 1994 or six. I always get those two mixed up Right. I remember using Netscape having to pay 75 bucks to use it now. Not only do we have all the stuff? Most of it's free. It's it's you know, it's pretty amazing. You could have the blaze radio the blaze TV Even 10 years ago You know, you couldn't do it And yet today you've got the blaze and then you've got all the competition Anybody can start at a relatively low cost relatively low cost It's it's amazing the options that we have the possibilities we have think of now Netflix you can sit today on your sofa Watch almost every movie ever made not quite but a lot of movies more movies that you haven't you existed You don't have to go out on your sofa with click of a few buttons You don't even have to get up and change channels on your television. How many of you remember that? Very few huh only a few as old as I am changing channels with your hand having to get up every time you want to change a channel I mean whoa Life is much better Now with remote control Every piece of music if you have music streaming service at a very low cost You can access pretty much every piece of music that has ever been produced from Your So for in your living room It's amazing. I mean the advancements with technologies are stunning and And we're getting to the point where a lot of this technology is gonna play into health care If we have the necessary conditions get a plan to health care They're gonna be able to do gene splicing. They're gonna be able to eradicate many of the genetic diseases that we have maybe even You know before we're born But suddenly the treatments are gonna improve a life expectancy should go through the roof in the next few decades If we have the right conditions for it. I mean whoa We should be celebrating how good life is right now There's this technology gene splicing technology called crisp. Don't ask me what it actually does But it's amazing. They can change genes. They can they can they can go into your genetic code and change it. That is so cool so cool and and by the way more proof of Evolution right The whole way in which these genes work is is confirmation of what Darwin believed in That is so cool. It's just science is so cool and we were discovering so much more particularly in biology about You know about ourselves and about How to make our lives even better? You know, so it's there's a lot of good stuff in the world a lot of good stuff in the world and You know think about how much time you spent today online now some people think that's bad But I mean the amount of information you have access and your phone and your computer pretty much to all of human knowledge from Pretty much the beginning of time again, who would have thunk Pretty amazing pretty amazing life is pretty amazing life is to be Celebrated and to be enjoyed and the good stuff should be the headline Because that is what is dominant we live good lives. There's a lot of bad stuff and the good lives are being threatened but It's the good that's important in the world and if we emphasize the positive if we emphasize the good and Most importantly if we learn the cause of the good Then we can better fight for it. Then we can better assure that the future is even better than the present Is even better than the present. I mean it really is hard. How many of us thought? 30 years ago 40 years ago About the possibilities of the internet I didn't I don't know about you guys and I was Programming 30 years ago. I was in the computer world, right? I was I was doing some programming. I took some computer science Courses and so I was somewhat dabbling in that world You could say I couldn't have predicted any of the stuff I have today any of it And that was only 30 years ago Imagine what is possible 30 years from now that we're not predicting And I even talked about uber, right uber. I mean soon we're not many of us young people today don't even have cars They just uber everywhere. I mean that's so cool and cheap and efficient Right and who would have imagined uber? I mean I remember when ebay first came out I said you got to be crazy. Nobody's gonna make money on that. Nobody's gonna use ebay That was I wrong I've been so wrong when it comes to the internet It's pretty amazing It's pretty amazing So just imagine imagine It's hard hard to imagine what it's going to be like in 30 years from now or what it's going to be like 100 years from now If we sustain the conditions that allow For that kind of growth If we can sustain them So, um Things are good And what I want to do what I want to do is after after this break, we're going to take a break in a few seconds I want to shift to talk about why What is it that makes good stuff possible? What is it that makes Progress possible? What is it that has brought people out of poverty? What is it that's created this technology? What is it that makes all these good things? Possible and if we can understand that and if we can know that and then start fighting for that I think we have a bit of chance of winning and sustaining The improvement sustaining the growth sustaining You know the quality and the improved quality of life that we have. All right Uh, you're listening to your own book. I'm uh Here filling in for michael pelka at least until tomorrow and um We're gonna take a short break now and we'll be right back after this Pure apelka with michael pelka All right, uh, so we'll be talking about How good things are All about the good news and and haven't even touched the surface really there's so much more And hey, if you want to if you want in on the discussion about good stuff 888-900-3393 we'd love to hear examples from your life Or examples that you know about about how life has improved dramatically even over the last 30 years We're we're if you read books if you read articles if you read everything Everybody tells you uh things are just awful things are just depressing if you watch the news if you if you look Anyway, it just looks like the world is falling apart and everything is just Is just horrible Well, we're gonna be contrarians here. So if you want in you want to let me know how your life has been better 888-900-3393 Um, but the real question is why? Why are things improving? Uh, why have things improved and and the largest improvement in human war being Occurred during the 19th century the largest improvement of human war being Occurred during the industrial revolution where we went from being You know basically life expectancy of in the 30s dirt poor subsistence farmers eating Everything we consumed or sorry eating everything we produced Having no surplus no vacations No time off No recreation Nothing that was the 18th century and before Three dollars a day somewhere around that was was incoming today's dollars was income of Almost everybody on the planet Everybody living in poverty everybody on the planet 90 plus percent of all people in the planet living in poverty To by the end of the industrial revolution in western europe and the united states Basically most people being rich in comparison to what it existed before electricity running water the beginnings the beginnings of airflight Technology all these things are starting that that's the biggest jump In human war being the biggest leap now we've seen a huge leap over the last 30 years Because places like asia have benefited from all the knowledge and all the success of the of the west and have implemented very very quickly Um and and the results are astounding astounding over there. You have to go to china to appreciate Just how astounding the progress has been just how unbelievably Good Uh life is there in comparison you go to rural china where they're still very very poor and you go to a place like that Shanghai and it just blows your mind Uh and again the question is What makes all that possible? And i think the best way To look at this you can look at it historically And and and you'll get a kind of a political answer and a political answer is important But there's a more fundamental answer in that and uh answer and that's To look at your own life Look at your own life and ask the question What makes my life better What improves my life When the things get better when the things get worse What are the principles by which I can evaluate just from introspecting over my life Even if you're young you can do this What can I do introspecting to my own life to tell Whether things You know what causes things to improve and what causes things to decline What causes things to to for me to be able to get a better job to make more money To live a better life just broadly what things do I do as an individual That impact my life one way or the other and and can I Generate any principles from this and the answer is yes you can and the best way to learn about the world Is to look at lots of examples and integrate that and and and figure out the principle behind them And and if you look at your own life If you introspect about again the good stuff and the bad stuff what you discover is that You know, well, I'll ask you What leads to good stuff when do you succeed? And when do you fail is there a principle to all the times where you succeeded And to all the times when he failed well, let's start with the failure What leads to individual failure when Do we fail And I would I would suggest this I would propose this that human failure Is always a consequence Failure that is self-generated not failure where somebody else comes and clubs you over the head And your life's a failure because they just basically killed you or maimed you or whatever, but when it's self-inflicted When it's self Failure that sustained sometimes we fail and then we learn from their failure and we grow from the failure But real failure What leads to it And and I think you can see universally you can see in almost every case you can see it across the board Failure is a result of acting on emotion not thought Acting on emotion letting our emotions Dictate truth letting our emotions Dictate action. That's when we fail We fail When we don't Think it through We fail When we don't consider All the aspects all the consequences of a decision and action that we take on Failure almost always is there When reason is absent When rationality is absent or limited Failure is there predominantly when people act on emotion Act on whim act without thinking Failure is there when people evade when people don't consider everything purposefully When they look away because the facts might be uncomfortable That is what leads To failure to disappointment to depression to failure in life What leads to success when you look around the world? Or around your name around your industry Who are the successful people the most successful people now? I know some people are gonna say luck But when you actually examine people's lives, yeah luck plays some role I you know the best example of this is is is the lottery, right? There's this big lottery jackpot 750 million dollars You could win it What happens to most people who win the lottery? It turns out study after study show that they live miserable pathetic lives That they lose a lot of the money that they don't enjoy it That that they land up handing it out to distant relatives Or they just invested badly and they lose it or they keep it But they're just miserable because it turns out that money doesn't buy you happiness not completely Money in and of itself buy zero happiness, you know what buys happiness Making money producing stuff Earning it That's what leads to happiness So if you look at successful people, it's not about luck luck is fleeting Luck doesn't give you the satisfaction Of truly earning And if a luck is not what leads to success again, you can be rich But not successful because success is not about money Success is not about prestige Success is about happiness. It's about fulfillment. It's about flourishing That's what real success at life is It's about living a good life Enjoying it Without conflict without stress, you know stress a healthy stress but without You know this internal constant conflict Iron man called happiness the state Of non-contradictory joy where you're joyous and there's no Conflict within that is oppressing that joy. So it's not the joy of Oh, I won the lottery. Yay It's a joy of I've lived a good life I've made my life good. I've made some money. I've lived well One minute if you look at people who are really successful people who are truly successful What has led to that success what leads to a life of happiness a life of sustained Non-contradictory joy What makes it possible what makes it possible to innovate what makes it possible all the good in the world? Where does it actually actually come from if The negative is true If a lot of the stress a lot of the pain a lot of the failure comes from emotion Where does the success where does the innovation where does progress? Where does the highest standard of living Come from where does the decline 15 come from they all come from the same place. All right You're listening to your own book filling in from Mike Appelka and We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back after these messages. All right. You're listening to your own book filling in from Mike and Um We are talking good news today strange topic to do on the radio strange topic to cover in this era of all negative news and Just talk about the bad stuff and you know, we're gonna we're gonna have some negative stuff to say But I think it's it's important to put perspective on these things and to realize how good life is So you can live it you can live it if you're depressed all the time if things are always Very very negative It's hard to really enjoy life and I'm all for enjoying life. I'm for happiness. I'm a huge proponent of happiness. All right. Um Megan is on the line. She wants to talk about infant mortality. Hey, Megan Hi, you're on. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. Um, I'm a long time listener. It's such a fan Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of you do. I I have some idea of how hard you work I'm grateful I when you were talking about the positives of the world we live in today the first thing I thought about was My the most wonderful one-year-old daughter Of mine and you know when I was when I was about reaching my due date I expressed some nervousness about going into labor and my co-workers said, oh, you know women have been having babies for a long time and Um, sorry for the background noise and I said, yeah, but they mostly died. Yep. It's amazing like even 200 years ago Most childbirth ended in the death of either the mother the child or both. I mean 75 percent of kids You know never saw the age of five And I'm I look at my beautiful daughter and I'm so grateful I live in an era where there's all kinds of medication and um and procedures to make sure that she was safe and healthy and Um and thriving Absolutely. I mean the number one cause of death for women was childbirth I mean Many many women or a huge percentage of women didn't survive it And never and of course sometimes the baby did survive. Sometimes the baby didn't survive, but it The progress we've made Is astounding and we and that's great a great example when we look at our children You know, we should say wow Thanks for progress You know, thanks so for medical progress. Thanks for the progress and walk. Go ahead Yeah, historically, um Life insurance for women was was more expensive for women during childbirth bearing years than after Yes Yeah, so so we've come a long way where you might worry a little bit before you go into childbirth But not much because you know that you've got uh, you know, you know, if you do the smart You're in a hospital. You've got nurses. You've got doctors. Uh, you've got uh surgical procedures. You've got all these Uh, the this technology available to you that's going to keep you alive That's going to keep the baby alive. That's going to keep you both healthy not just alive And and that the chances of a child Being born and then dying before the age of 10 are minimal today in the in in america And in in the western world and even in the rest of the world now Uh, really minimal and and you can enjoy your children for a long long time. I mean that that's massive. That's huge That's huge Great. Thanks. Megan. Thanks for calling yet. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for listening It still happens. We there's still still birth. There's still women who die in childbirth and it's tragic every time And fortunately that's much much much less the case now than even 100 years ago Yeah, and and the fact that it still happens in the united states is is I think a travesty and the fact that there's still people Who live in such poverty or get such bad healthcare as as some people do in the united states Is sad and a travesty And and the cause of that in my view is is the degree to which we've socialized medicine In this country if you have private insurance In the us and and if you have a a vibrant competitive insurance market And uh, you're the best healthcare in the world, but unfortunately We have created a healthcare system. There's probably so many people out of the market because of so much government intervention Into our healthcare system. Megan. Thanks for calling It is uh, you know I really appreciate uh, I really appreciate you listening And it makes it easier for me to do what I do when I get positive feedback. Uh, thank you. So thank you All right, we've got uh, let's say we got dave on the line From portland, oregon. Hey dave Dave you there Uh, yes. How are you ron? Can you hear me? Yes, I can Oh, great. Great. Yes, uh, yeah, I wanted to weigh in on the uh, the positive things, uh on the call here and The the two things that I wanted to share are uh, one is I've been studying objectivism since 2014 and You know, I definitely consider myself a work in progress, but but both, you know, personally and professionally It's made a huge difference in my life and um So thank you for that and brilliant the The the second thing is um, I'm a music teacher And something that technologically does made a huge difference is a video conferencing for me. Um, you know as an artist, you know Inspiration, I think is so key. I'm mostly a teacher. I I'm not performing as much these days. I'm mostly teaching Um, but it's afforded me the opportunity to study with like some of the best people in the world Wow, uh by video conference No, absolutely that that's amazing and that's true of every profession we can now We can now take classes from superstar teachers who can actually make money By providing education online Uh, they're not limited to by what universities pay or what schools pay They can actually deliver education to mass audiences or to selective audiences who will need to pay a lot of money Because these teachers are so good So it's it's it's it's an incredibly exciting time When you look at technology and you look at what technology makes possible Yes, as a matter of fact, I was just sending a thank you email looking forward to a coming conference This sunday and I thought man, I've got to give your on a call and We're always good to hear from you Dave. Thanks for listening. Thanks for calling in and and absolutely I mean there's another whole way in which we're using and going to use The internet to educate ourselves to you know, put aside the the benefits of education I could be traveling anywhere in the world Or Megan could be traveling anywhere in the world. My my kids are too big To talk to me while i'm traveling but Megan would be traveling anywhere in the world and she could communicate with her young daughter by uh, you know by the internet by Skype or some other software, right? You know, what do you call the the facetime on on the phone and and and have a real I exchange even if you're 10,000 miles away I mean, how cool is that when I when my kids were little and I traveled I could talk to them on the phone, but the phone is just not the same It's video conferencing particularly with little kids. So yeah, I mean the technology makes our lives So much better and we we take it for granted and we don't appreciate it And again, I want to turn to the question What makes it possible where does it come from? So we just talked about what What where bad decisions come from Where where the negative in our lives come from I want to turn after this quick break We're going to take to where all the good stuff comes from where progress comes from but we're in our own lives success achievement and ultimately happiness comes from All right, you're listening to your own book Filling in for Michael pelka and we're going to be right back after these messages You're listening to pure opelka with Michael pelka Part of the next generation of talk radio on the blaze radio network Well, you still got another hour so with your own brook filling in for opelka. He'll be back tomorrow and we're talking about Where does all this good stuff come from? How do we get it? But you know, that's kind of on a societal level, but evil isn't even as individuals What is the origin of success now people people say well liberty and freedom and capitalism But where do those come from that's not self-evident How do we get capitalism? What is the thing and capitalism is not responsible for my personal success? I mean the fact that I live in a relatively free country suddenly is but what made it possible for me to succeed in this free country where other people don't Is it just IQ? Is it my genes? As some would have us believe Is it the fact that I grew up in a I don't know in a particular household with particular parents in a particular environment Is that what led to my success Or anybody's success No, if you respect and you think about when you were successful in life and when you fail We talked about what causes failure following emotion evading Not thinking things through what leads to success is the opposite in a sense. It's thinking It's using your mind. It's using your reason It's getting the facts before you make a decision Thinking it through and integrating if you suspect that you need more facts going out and getting them Not evading not evading reality not evading your own emotions not evading who you are not evading who other people are facing reality dealing With reality as it is As compared to dealing with reality as you want it to be as you wish it would be Dealing in reality as the way you would emotionally like it to be. No dealing with reality as it is Challenging yourself intellectually Not i'm not talking about your math problems. I'm talking about day-to-day stuff using your mind and applying them to everything that you do What leads the success in life What leads the progress in technology what leads to reduced Child mortality what leads To more airlines going to more airports in the world what leads to increased in wealth What leads to decline in poverty what leads to success period Is the human mind is the application of human reason to whatever problem you have whatever problem You face or your neighbor's face or humanity's faces its Reason it's thinking it's production and production is what production is Taking your ideas and applying them in reality taking science And trying to use that science to create something that didn't exist before call that technology call that Manufacturing call that industrialization But that's what the industrial revolution did is it came after the scientific revolution, but it required a massive amount of thinking a rational actors free To think and then free to act on their thinking to take those scientific principles and apply them To the problems that they saw all around them and to making life easier and making life better and making life longer Human thought human rationality human reason is what leads to all the good in the world It will leads to good in your life If you stop if you think if you consider if you evaluate if you integrate If you examine Nationally the world around you the problems you face you will do fine You know barring accidents barring things you cannot predict You will do fine If you evade if you are moat if you're a wind worshipper if you just go after stuff For the sake of having stuff You will suffer you will not be successful. You will not Do well in life you will not Achieve happiness, which is the ultimate goal in my view So if we to venerate anything It's we must venerate reason I mean think about All the benefits we have gotten from science all the all the all the All the stuff we have around us that is a product of science and engineering there. It's obvious But think about our relationships with other people Our relationships with other people improve When we think about what we're doing and think about how to do it Or do they improve when we just go by our feelings? In every aspect of our lives Thinking makes one minute better Using reason makes us better reason the human mind a faculty of Observing reality understanding it integrating it into new knowledge Thinking conceptually in in every realm of life That is the way in which we survive As human beings we cannot survive as a species unless we think 30 and that is the way in which our life improves That is the way in which we achieve things both financially and spiritually The thing we have the most important faculty we have the one that makes it possible for us to survive and thrive Is our mind is our reason. All right We're gonna talk more about this in a kind of political environment that you need to create to allow reason to thrive Five come back four