 So let's, so how do you view ambition? What, let's say, what is it? What does it mean to be ambitious? And how does it fit into the ethics of objectivism? Yeah, and I mean, part of why I've been thinking a lot about this is, A, it comes up a lot whenever you're setting goals. And then B, and that's one of the things we do with the people we work with at Ironman University is help them set and pursue goals. And, you know, we're also now, what, a little over a week away from New Year's when a lot of people are thinking about their goals for the oncoming year. So I think it's a very ripe topic. Now, Ayn Rand, and it's interesting where she most explicitly talks about ambition is in, do you happen to know offhand? No. You would never, tax credits for education. Of course. That's what she talks about, the ambitious poor. I don't remember offhand. There's another essay I think she talks about the ambitious poor as the victims of the welfare state and the victims of statism. But that's where she gives her definition where it's something like the systematic pursuit of achievement is a way of life. And all those pieces are important, but the whole idea is that you're continually setting out to improve in a given area. And what she stresses, she's stressing there is that it's actually a morally neutral concept in the sense of, but that she thinks it's been treated the same way selfishness has for the same reasons it has been quated with evil. Though she thinks selfishness is actually a moral concept, whereas she thinks ambition is actually neutral. Like you can be an ambitious killer and ambitious thief and you can be ambitious in all kinds of bad ways, but that being ambitious for values, being ambitious for positives, seeking the best possible, that is part of what it means to be virtuous. That is you can't really be a value or if you're not ambitious, if you're not relentlessly seeking the best. And if you think about in my favorite paragraph and anything she's ever written is her part and galt speech on pride. And part of what she talks about is that pride is crucial as self-esteem and that the root of self-esteem she says is something like that radiant selfishness of soul that desires the best in all things, material and spiritual. And it's like that is ambition. It's I want the best in all things. And so if you think about her definitions of being the systematic pursuit of achievement, it's that this is something across life. Like there's plenty of people who are kind of passive, but man, I really want the best baseball card collection, right? And you'll have one area where, oh man, I'll get revved up, but no, you want to be this way across your life. You want to be seeking out the best. And the, so in that sense, it's something we should all strive to cultivate, but you have to be careful because you can, I think ambition can go wrong in various ways. I think there's ways that you can be under ambitious, but one of the things I see most among young objectivists is that they go wrong. It's not that they want to be too ambitious. I think that's not the right way to think about it. I personally call it rationalistic ambition, which maybe isn't the best phrase, but it's something like this. Well, I have to do work that's important. I have to work 18 hours a day. I have to care about nothing more than my work. And it becomes very duty bound. And if you just think about something like working 18 hours a day, work should be at the center of your life, but it's at the center of your life. And aside from maybe some people who that's all they care about or certain periods of your life where you may have to go all in on work, there's a whole range of values that comprise a human life and to be ambitious is to attend to all of them. So if you're working 18 hours a day and you don't ever get to establish a romantic relationship or friendships or have any time for art rejuvenation, for most people, I'd say you're missing out on something. And certainly if you think that's what your philosophy is demanding of you, you've gone really off the rails. And so I think part of what you should be thinking is I want to be ambitious for values, not as a duty, not, and let me take that one case of, I want to choose work that's important. So I worked with a student who was struggling to think of a career and said, well, I want to do work that's important. And I ran, you know, she says the most important thing is to be an intellectual. Now, you're on, you have to understand my job is to recruit intellectuals. And so you think like, all right, I've got one on the hook right here, but like my blood ran cold at that. I can imagine, I can imagine. Because, and this is literally what I said. I said, well, work's not an intellectual and I ran seems to think he's pretty good. Dagnan, ridden. Yeah. Yeah. And, but you can see how a person can kind of go down that route. Whereas the right perspective is it's work that's important to you, to you personally. And I'm sure if you asked Roark, what's more important for human flourishing as a total? Is it intellectuals or is it builder, you know, architects? He would concede, yeah, well, probably overall, like it's more, you need an intellectual, so you have a free society and then he'd shrug and he'd go back to building. Yeah. Right? But his personal mission was to make the world beautiful, which for him was the buildings that, you know, created the landscapes and habitations for human beings. That's what had the most meaning to him. And that's really what I think the respect in which you want to be ambitious is what's most meaningful to me. And so it's being able to think about your values in an ambitious way, but not as in, you know, the God of Objectivism is saying thou shalt pick, you know, the most admirable, greatest works. You know, what do I care about and how do I get the most out of my life? Yeah. So in terms of the, how you view ambition, do you view ambition as primarily focused on one's career, one's central purpose or is ambition more general than that? Is one ambitious with regard to love? Is one ambitious with regard to other values that are important? I mean, it's definitely most pronounced with career, right? Cause that's what's giving the direction to your life. And so you can see somebody rising from achievement to achievement whereas it's less visible in other areas. But I definitely think, I mean, if you think about personal relationships, a lot of people, it's okay, you kind of date, you try to impress them, you get married and then that just kind of gets taken for granted and falls into the background whereas if you're ambitious for values, it's how am I going to get the most out of this? The most pleasure, the most joy, make sure you get the most out of it. And it's the constant seeking of the best in every area that I think is important. Or here, one that I think a lot about because this is an area where I think I've been underambitious in the past is in art. That the way I grew up, my mom would take us to movies all the time and we would watch them and we'd walk out of the theater and then one of me or my brother, she would say, what'd you think? And then we'd all say, that was pretty good or it wasn't that good. And that was the conversation. And to get that, no, you can actually like think about these things in deeper and deeper ways and it makes it more enjoyable and you connect it more to your life. And then you can do it with more demanding art, right? It's not just going to the movies and getting more joy out of it. It's sinking your teeth into Hugo or even, God forbid, somebody like Tolstoy or you know, Turgenev or somebody like, you can put in the work and get more and more out of it. I think that every aspect of life can be like that. And I find it actually more sometimes, like I was naturally ambitious with work. Like that just, that came kind of pre-installed. I was always driven to do, you know, push myself really, really hard to grow fast to achieve things that I thought were new, interesting, exciting. But to be ambitious in more kind of small grainways about like, is my working environment like the best one I could possibly create? Do I walk into my office and just feel like, yeah, this is my universe. I'm excited to be creative. Every aspect of life just seeking out the best for me. I find, I found that really helpful and it's rewarding, particularly, you know, if you think the more ambitious you are with something like work, that means the longer range goals you're pursuing, the harder you're pushing yourself. And if you can have these little, you know, ambition-laden pleasures throughout your day-to-day existence, it really helps with that larger enterprise and pursuit I've found. Yes, no, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, looking at your bare walls behind you, you need to listen to my show on surrounding yourself with beauty. This apartment, I've been in for exactly one week. So, we are to be forgiven. People are already commenting, we're already commenting right from the back. What a bare walls. They're not used to that on the Iran book show. So surround yourself with beauty, guys. Don't listen to Don. No, don't look at Don, listen to Don. Well, I just got us a painting for here that is really glorious Steve Hanks painting. We'll have to put it back here. Come on, which Steve Hanks? It has the thinker, Rodin's the thinker, but then it has a little kid posed in thinking. And the interesting thing is Marianne Surrey's wrote an amazing piece called Metaphysics and Marble About Sculpture. And she slams Rodin properly about being anti-human being. But whereas Rodin is, the thinker is scrunched over and, you know, uncomfortable, it's not really an aspirational portrait of the mind. The child is not. The child is a wreck, deeply thoughtful and like has this kind of excitement and, you know, wonder about the world. It's a really glorious painting. Yeah, I really enjoy Steve Hanks's work. 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 iranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on 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 an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.