The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Sunday night. It's night here in Puerto Rico. I see somebody, at least one person from Europe. We've got somebody from the Netherlands who's joined us. Must be very late where you are. Thank you for joining us. And I'm looking forward to seeing you at the conference in Amsterdam in just a few weeks. Just a reminder, those of you who would like to do my public speaking workshop, it's the day after the conference in the Netherlands. So those of you in the Netherlands right there, it'll be in Amsterdam right across the street from the hotel, 10 AM to 5 PM, something like that, public speaking workshop. You can sign up by emailing me at iranbrookshow.com. All right, today we're going to talk about ambition, what it is, why it's important, how to channel it, what to do about it. So we'll talk about that. And kind of part of the Iran Rules for Life general series, the idea was here to just talk about application of objectivism.  So I will be reviewing those songs. I've got a lot of them. So we'll see how many of them we get through. There also are a few that I haven't got to yet. So those will have to wait. There are about six songs I still need to listen to and review and integrate and all of that. So that'll be next time. But I do want to get through all these music reviews. And then we've got two movies still to do. I still owe you guys Brazil and Sent of a Woman. And then there's a painting. Solange Alma Tadeima is painting the discourse, which I will review as well. But today we're going to do a bunch of songs.  Yes, I've definitely got NF Hope. All right, so Richard did not do the seventh song series. I can't remember who did, who to associate them with. Anyway, ambition is where we are going to start. Ambition is a strong wish, a desire to achieve something, a strong wish to be successful, and to be an achiever, a strong desire for success, achievement, power, wealth. These are all from the Cambridge dictionary, the Cambridge. A strong wish to achieve a particular thing, a strong wish to be successful. So you get the idea. It's an achievement. It's you want to achieve. Now, it is true that the achievement could be good or bad. There's a sense in which ambition is neutral. Ambition in and of itself is not moral or not. It depends on what it is you want to achieve. But I will be talking here about the achievement of life-promoting values. So we're going to talk about it in the context of positive goals, life-affirming goals, in the context of success at living. We're not going to talk about it, the ambition to be all-powerful and rule over mankind, the ambition of becoming presidents so that one can have power over it, or the ambition for money, for the sake of money, so that everybody will admire you because you're so rich. So we're not talking about second-handed ambition or ambition for the irrational, the unearned. I want to talk about ambition as ambition to achieve success that is consistent with human life, that is consistent with happiness, flourishing, human well-being. That's the kind of ambition we're going to be talking about. And Inland had a little bit to say about ambition, but not a lot. She talks about ambition means a systematic pursuit of achievement and of constant improvement in respect to one's goals. I like that much better than the Cambridge definition. Ambition means the systematic. I like this idea of it's systematic. It's not just, yeah, I want it. And it's not just notice that the Cambridge dictionary just uses wish. I wish I had a Ferrari, so I wish I was successful. No, this is for Rand. Rand is so careful in the way she defines terms. This, by the way, is from the Inland Lexicon, which is available for free online. You can look up all kinds of terms. It's a great, great, great resource, ironandlexicon.com. It's a systematic pursuit of achievement, not just the wanting of achievement, not dreaming of achievement, not wishing from achievement, not even a desire for an achievement. It's the pursuit, the action. Remember, Inland defines values in terms of that which one acts to gain or keep. Action is so important. It's about pursuing. It's not just about having a dream. It's not just about wanting something. It's not just about the fantasy. It's not just about the desire. It's not just about the emotion.  It is about the pursuit. So ambition means the systematic, not just any pursuit. But it's systematic. It's not just one day I do this and one day I do that. Ambition needs to be focused. It needs to be systematic. And of constant improvement in respect to one's goals. It's a systematic, constant improvement, systematic pursuit of, sorry, systematic pursuit of achievement and systematic pursuit of constant improvement in respect to one's goals, of one's values, of achieving that which one is in pursuit of.  This left no concept to designate the pursuit of actual values. But ambition as such is a neutral concept. The evaluation of a given ambition as moral or immoral depends on the nature of the goal. A great scientist or a great artist is the most passionately ambitious of men, we'll get to talk about why. A demagogue seeking political power is ambitious. So is a social climber seeking prestige. So is a modest laborer who works conscientiously to acquire a home of his own. The common denominator is the drive to improve the conditions of one's existence. However, broadly or narrowly conceived. And she says improvement is a moral term and depends on one's standard of values. And ambition guided does not, in fact, lead to improvement but to self-destruction. All right, so ambition is a systematic pursuit of achievement, the constant improvement in respect to one's goals. We remember that kind of when we have covered, we got video, I'm getting problems on my end. So do we have video on you guys then? Yeah, is having technical difficulties. On my end, I just see the download is stuck but the upload seems to be fine. Let's see. Okay, that seems perfect. Accenture first for second. All right, I think we're back. I think it stopped buffering. I think we're good. All right, good, cool. All right. We talked about, when I talked about the rules for life, one of the things I talked about, the context for all the rules for life and certainly the context for ambition. The context is always, and you have to always hold this and this is hard for you to hold. It's hard for anybody to hold because in the society in which we live, morality is so geared against self-interest, against selfishness. So any concept that we talk about, any idea, any pursuit, any value, any goal, always the standard is your life, your success at living. And in that sense, you could say, you know, that selfishness is, requires ambition. Ambition towards what? Towards life. Towards the achievement of success in life. Not a particular goal, but the broadest of all, the broadest of all values, the fundamental value, the basic value, which is your life. Ambition to live, ambition to be successful at living, which means the ambition to be happy. So fundamental to being self-interested, fundamental to valuing life is that it's not, it's a pursuit. Life is not a static thing. It's something you're constantly pursuing and you need to constantly get better at doing it and particularly in a culture where you haven't learned to be selfish, you've learned the opposite. You've learned to be unselfish, to be altruistic, to think about this first, to sacrifice. That is what is rewarded. That is what is cheered. That is what is, you know, morally appraised. There's a lot of ambition that has to come in. If you wanna be self-interested, if you wanna be selfish, I think one of the problems that we have attracting people to objectivism is that people, because of altruism, because altruism is taught to them so young, because it's so inculcated into the system, people are just not ambitious. They don't wanna live. It's not that they have an argument against Iron Man's metaethics. It's not that they have an argument against the argument that life necessitates values, necessitates what chooses values and what you pursue, one's own life, one's own values. It's that the pursuit is something that requires ambition and they just don't have it. It's being sucked out of them. Think about what altruism tells you. You wanna be successful at math. You wanna be successful at anything other than sports. Sports, okay, to be successful at. Who are you? What about people who are not doing quite as well as you? And hey, you seem to have, you seem to be privileged and privileged is supposed to undermine your ambition. It's supposed to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The only reason you're successful is not because of choices you make. It's not because of your ambition. It's not because of your fulfillment of your dreams. It's because you're somehow determined to do so. I mean, the whole area of determinism, the whole idea that we don't have free will, the whole idea that we don't have choices, the whole idea that you're determined to be what you're going to be no matter what, undermines ambition, undermines selfishness, undermines the ability to choose values and pursue them systematically, which requires ambition. So, objectivism as a philosophy, as a way of living requires you to value your life and to be ambitious about achieving it, about succeeding with it, about the kind of life you want to live. I mean, so many people in the culture around us are quite happy with just being alive and doing their 95 job and just cruising through life. I don't know, marrying somebody, maybe having affairs on the side, having a job, but they can't wait for it to finish so they can go home and do whatever, watch TV, drink a bunch of beer, watch football. And this is the American life, right? This is the ideal with no ambition, no real goals, no real achievements. You know, maybe they want to buy a house, they want to live the American dream. You know, two kids, a dog and a house with a SUV, but that's so unambitious, that's so mediocre. That's the opposite of ambition.  Everybody has the ability to achieve within their own capabilities. Everybody has the ability to constantly improve with respect to one's goals. Everybody has the ability to live moral lives. We'll get to moral ambition in a few minutes, but. So, your own rule around ambition is don't be mediocre, don't settle, don't just accept the way things are.   Don't do what everybody else does. Make your life interesting. Make it meaningful to you, not meaningful in the sense of Jordan Peterson, find meaning out there and go sacrifice through that meaning. No, make it meaningful to you. Figure out what your values are, figure out what interests you, figure out what really excites you and make sure they're all consistent with life, make it consistent, make sure they're all rational. But once you have those, go and live fully. Pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. And again, even the pursuit, people say, follow your passions. Yeah, but do it rationally, thoughtfully, or in Iron Man's word here, systematically. Figure out what needs to be done. Figure out how to achieve it and go and do it. Go and put in motion the things that are necessary that are necessary in order to achieve your goals. And once you achieve a goal, people complain about this constantly, right? They say, oh, well, you achieve one value and then there's another value, another one. You climb one mountain, then you got to climb another mountain, even taller. Yes, that's what life is. It's the pursuit of values. And the values, every time you achieve one, there's another one waiting for you to be captured, waiting for you to be to gain. And you should always, you know, take the time to appreciate your success, to appreciate what you've achieved, to appreciate that you've hit a certain mountain peak. You want to enjoy, you want to celebrate that, you want to refuel, then go climb the next mountain. Here's a quote from my new hand relevant to this.  Think about that. Your ambition should be unlimited. Since a rational man's ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process and the higher the values, the harder the struggle. He needs a moment, an hour or so, period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. See, you need that respite. You need that recognition. You need that, yeah, I did this. Wow, this is cool. Look at the view from up here. Look how amazing it is. And I did it. That's a way of boosting your self-esteem is recognizing your own value, recognizing your own achievement. When you don't do that, when you don't recognize your own achievement, you know all the people that say, yeah, it wasn't me. I didn't do, I didn't work that hard. No, somebody else, they all contributed. I didn't build that, they built that. Even if you did build it, even if you did achieve it, you won't give yourself credit for it. You will not gain self-esteem that comes from achievement. Because you're not letting yourself take the credit for what you're achieving. So ambition requires that you're constantly setting new goals, you're constantly pushing the envelope. You're constantly trying to do better. And look, this is true in every aspect of our lives. Don't settle in life. Don't just get into a pattern and a habits and think about what's the next exciting thing you wanna do. You know, obviously, ambition is often associated with career. You reach a certain point in your career, but there's something more. There's something more to be gained. There's something more to understand. There's something more to know. There's something more to achieve. But it very well could be that you reach a certain point in your career where, all right, I'm done. I've achieved everything I wanted to achieve. Well, then the question is, okay, what's the next career? What's the next thing I can do where I can push the envelope and do something new and do something exciting and really challenge my mind and challenge my abilities and achieve something new, something different. Don't settle in that sense. Don't retire. And granted, your abilities might change over time.  So figure out an alternative. You'll pursue a productive career. You don't need any more. You've made enough money. You don't need any more money.  Find something else. Some people find golf and they obsess about it and they become very ambitious about it and they really, they take it up almost like a career. Other people find other hobbies, but find something, some next step that is gonna challenge you, that is gonna push you where you can express your ambition for living, where you can have goals once you stop having goals. Once the time it means I'm just gonna sit around, read books, watch TV. I'm not really interested in very much. You're not gonna live for very long.  You wanna keep pushing. You wanna keep moving forward. So, you know, career is the obvious one and too many people, even their career, they settle. They reach a point and they go, oh, this is comfortable. I don't need more money. I am doing what I know. I'm doing what I understand. I'm good at what I do. That's when you get that sense, exactly when you get that sense is when you should say to yourself, okay, what's next? How do I push myself? How do I get to the next level? How do I improve? How do I challenge myself? How do I switch career and do something completely different if that's what is necessary?  And this is true in every aspect of your life. You don't wanna take your spouse for granted. You wanna have shared goals. You wanna have goals about the relationship. You don't wanna take any aspect of your life for granted.  You know, you should be ambitious about art, for example. We'll talk about songs in a minute. I often say this about art, right?  There's some posters I like. There's some music I heard on the radio as I was growing up, I really, really like. There's a painting here that I saw and a painting there that I saw that I like and so on. And yeah, I'm pretty good. I'm good. There's so much, for example, that aesthetics has to offer you. There's so much potential for joy and appreciation. Be ambitious. You don't know that much about music. Go listen to a wide array. Experiment. Try different things out. You've heard somebody say, maybe Iran has said classical music really, you know, has a lot of value to gain. Well, try it out. But try it out, seriously. What did I even call it? Systematic pursuit. Systematic pursuit. Go to museums. Check out what's on the walls. You might discover that what you like right now, maybe it's not that great. Maybe there's some stuff that really moves you much more deeply and much more meaningfully once you understand its language, once you figure out systematically what it's all about. So don't just accept your current state of knowledge or your current state of appreciation. Push the envelope. You know, we've talked about this on Iran Rules for Life. Take on risks. You cannot be ambitious if you're not willing to take risks, career-wise, relationship-wise, art-wise, you know, in every aspect of your life. Take risks. Push yourself. It's easier to set goals that are easy to achieve. Set goals that are hard to achieve. The harder to achieve, the more ambitious the goal, the more reward you get at the end. So take your life seriously.  And then keep pushing, keep stretching, keep making it harder, keep making it harder. And hard is hard, hard is risky. Hard means you'll fail sometimes. Sometimes you won't achieve what you set out to achieve. Ambition does not guarantee success. Having values does not guarantee that you'll achieve them. It just means you'll pursue them. Ambition just means pursuit. But you're certainly not gonna achieve them if you don't pursue them. Now, the most important values we all have, the values that shape, in a sense, all the other values are our moral values, our ethical values. And even here, ambition has, well, being morally ambitious is what the virtue of pride means. The virtue of pride means take morality seriously. Be ambitious when it comes to morality. Go out there and seek to be perfect morally, to achieve the moral virtues, to achieve the moral values, reason, purpose, self-esteem, and the moral virtues of God, I have to count them on my fingers so I don't miss any, right? Rationality, productiveness, honesty, integrity, justice, what am I missing? Productiveness, or did I say productiveness, and pride, right? I have a feeling I miss someone. Anyway, right? So, the most important, I said pride, the most important part of ambition really, because it affects everything else, is this moral ambition, is the pursuit of moral values. It's the pursuit, which means the, I said integrity, I said honesty, integrity, is the achievement of these virtues, virtues, actions, the actual engagement with these virtues. Again, pride, the meaning of pride, is moral ambition. Hector says, the greatest sin in life is to be boring. I mean, it's not the greatest sin, but it certainly is a sin, and it's not to be boring. The real sin is to be bored. That's the sin. To be boring places your responsibility for virtue or sin towards other people. I don't care about other people. Don't be bored. If you're bored, shake your life up. If you're bored, get up and leave. If you're bored, walk away. If you're bored, change channels. There you go, William Anthony. The real sin is to be bored. Of course, the real sin is to evade, but suddenly to be bored is a sin, and it's a sin you control, you completely control.  Whether it's interesting or not is in your hands. But you see, to understand that, to know that, to understand what it means to say it's in your hands, what you need to do is to be fully conscious and fully aware of what your values actually are, to make your values real, so that you know what makes you bored and you know what doesn't. So the things that make you bored are things to be avoided. But what are your interests? What are you like? What do you care about? What stimulates you? What gets you excited? What is interesting? That should be pursued, and none of that is obvious.  How do you discover your passion? A lot of that requires real introspection. It requires work. It also requires, I think, for most of us, those of us who don't know exactly, it requires experimentation. It requires trying different things out. This is where being willing to take on risk is really, really important. You wanna try out different values. You might discover some things, yeah, I like some things you don't. Some things don't work for you. The world is unbelievably rich with opportunities, unbelievably rich with potential values, but what is a value for you is something you need to discover. And what values are healthy for you that is consistent with your life, you need to discover. And this, again, is I like Imran's definition in the sense of systematic, systematic pursuit of achievement, that is you've gotta be systematic about it. You've gotta really think it through. You've gotta lay it out. You've gotta work through it and think about it. So it's, again, you're not gonna be successful in life unless you strive towards success. So you're not gonna be successful in life unless you're ambitious. Ambition comes as every aspect of your life in everything in your life. You should want to achieve. You should pursue achievement. You should pursue constant improvement in every part of your life, in every element. You should have a rich array of values that you want to achieve and that you're constantly working towards. Don't settle. Don't just accept. Don't just say this is the way it is, just because.  What now? Where do I go from here? I'm not gonna accept defeat. I'm not gonna accept losing. What do I do with my life now? What value should I pursue now? That's what life is about. That's what good life is about. This is the kind of ways in which you want to push yourself and keep striving. You know, if you don't have ambition, some people don't have ambition, then start with something simple like, what do you like? What do you get excited about? What are your wishes? Start with the emotion and try to dig and find, make lists of what the things you like and what you're passionate about, what you wish, and try to categorize them and see if they're common themes and then try to introspect about, well, what does it mean that I desire this? And if, do I really desire it? And how much do I desire it? If I really want it, what am I willing to do to get it? And start walking through, how do I get the things that I want? We all want stuff. All of us want something. I mean, the first step evaluation is it rational, right? You might want stuff. This is not rational. It's just not either not attainable or just bad. It could be some psychological issue you have and therefore you're desiring bad stuff. But if you think about, okay, what are the things I really want? Which ones of them are rational and then what am I willing to do to get them? How much do I want them? And then find the ones that you want the most. Again, check to make sure they're rational. Check to make sure they make sense.  And you'll build, in a sense, the ambition muscle by doing that. Okay, what do I want to achieve? Okay, I'm gonna pursue that. Here's how I'm gonna pursue it. I'm gonna do it. And it's the doing you'll learn about the drive. I think you'll gain the drive. All right, I'm interested in questions around this topic. So any questions, comments, stuff like that on this topic, you know, the super chat is there. You can use the super chat feature. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look through the questions and find questions that relate to this issue, right? You know, Maximus says, I have ambition but I don't have potential. I don't believe that's true. What does it mean to say I don't have potential? You don't have ability? Well, what ability do you have? What is the level of your ability? You're not a complete zero. So what is the level of your ability? And why not calibrate your ambition to fit your level of ability? And start achieving things. And then maybe as you achieve things, you will reset your calibration of your ability. You'll reset what you think is possible. And then you can increase the things that you're trying to achieve. You can make them harder and harder over time. Again, part of this is in a sense practice, it's learning that you can do it. It's learning that you can be ambitious, you can achieve your goals and there's more yet to achieve. If it comes easy, there's a sense in which you're not pushing yourself enough. You're not being ambitious enough. All right, again, questions about anything about ambition, comments, suggestions, I'm open to that. I'm gonna look quickly through this. All right, that's not it, that's not it. Here's Jennifer has good lyrics around this. Dreams need to have motion to keep their spark alive. Obsession has to have action. Pride turns on the drive. Given that it's from Jennifer, of course, the quote is from Neil Peart. Not that she can't quote other people, but she on this show almost always quotes Peart. So this is actually quite beautiful, right? Dreams need to have motion to keep their spark alive. Obsession has to have action. Pride turns on the drive. And that drive is ambition. Thank you, Jennifer, for sharing that. That's not related, that's not related. Yeah, Baker says, please discuss ambition in relationships. They need to go beyond contentment and strive for constant improvement, both in terms of improving the ones you have and seeking for better ones where appropriate.  Your goal is not to start with your perfect woman. Your goal is not to find the love of your life. Your goal, the initial goal, the goal is not to find the woman you're gonna spend the rest of your life with. Your goal is to find somebody who you share some values with and you have a good time with and whose company you enjoy, who you get to admire aspects of them and ultimately you enjoy having sex with them. And through the process of having those relationships, of dating, of having sex, you learn about you. You learn about what you like. You learn about what you attract and what is attractive to you. And then over time, you gain ambition. You might start out by accepting a partner who ultimately when you look back, you go, yeah, she was just okay. Now I know what really great is and you build. It's rare that the first time you ever meet a person of the other sex, I don't know, in your teen years, that's it. It's all over. You're done.  And part of the problem of this idea of tying sex to marriage and encouraging people to marry early and rejecting the idea of experimentation and risk taking when it comes to relationship is that you get stuck with people you don't wanna be with. And people go through life with people that they should have never gotten together with for a long-term relationship, maybe a short-term one, but a long-term one. And as a consequence, they resent it, they reject it and ultimately they get divorced and have to start over again. And it's not an issue of early or late. It's an issue of not settling. It's an issue of looking for somebody you really like. Jennifer says, play the field a little. Yeah, play the field a little. Don't feel obligated to, there's a certain sense I think even among young objectivists, oh, yeah, I can't date her. She's not Dagny Taggart. Well, you're not John Galt either. And you're not gonna be John Galt at 18. And nobody really can be John Galt at 18 other than in a novel, right? Or with rare exceptions maybe. But one of the ways you'll get to know yourself is by having relationships with other people. And one of the ways you'll get to know what you want in relationships by having. So be ambitious. But don't be ambitious in, again, systemic pursuit, step by step system. What am I looking for? What am I looking for? What do I know now? What will I know tomorrow? What will I know? And as your knowledge expands, your ambition can expand and your sense of achievement can expand. And then part of it is self-knowledge. And what are the boundaries of what you can achieve? You might not be John Galt, you might not be able to get Dagny Taggart. Maybe it's completely unrealistic, completely nuts for you to get Dagny Taggart. It doesn't mean you can't be ambitious for whatever level you are. We're not all the same. We all know that. What else? I'd say the same thing as about friendships. You know, you're constantly in the lookout for great people. You're constantly in the lookout for people that you wanna have a relationship with, a friendship with. And you will find that you outgrow a lot of your friends. You'll find that, you know, I don't know that it's that great to have childhood friends when you're an adult. You might be growing in completely different directions, your values might be different. You might have very little in common. So again, be ambitious in terms of your friendships. Try to find the best for now. The best for where you are at this point in time in your life. Too many people feel commitment to past friendships that are really passé and you've grown beyond them and now you should be looking at something else. Change, risk-taking, getting out of your comfort zone, pushing a little bit, pushing the envelope in every aspect of your life again is something you should be doing. All right, Baker, hopefully that answers the question. Yeah, Justin says, after a long list of entrepreneurial failures, my ambition is significantly throttled.  Can you have ambition without self-esteem? Not in a healthy way.  And in your case, that's gonna have to require you to figure out what went wrong. Why did the entrepreneurial ventures fail? Your fault, somebody else's fault. If it is your fault, can you do it differently next time? Is it avoidable? Is it something inherent? Did you try to do something that was beyond your ability? Did you do something that... I mean, where did you make the mistakes? What kind of mistakes were there? And so always consider, consider what you know about yourself and set maybe if you're feeling down right now, maybe set simpler goals. Maybe start with something still ambitious so you're pushing yourself, but maybe not quite as ambitious as starting your own business or maybe a kind of business that is not quite as ambitious as the ones you failed at. So recalibrate, start over. And again, if you are willing to think through what went wrong and willing to take action to correct it and willing to recognize and acknowledge the problems that led to whatever failure you encountered, then your self-esteem should come out of that exercise intact. You've got to be ruthlessly honest with the only person that counts and that is you, ruthlessly honest with yourself. Hopefully that's helpful just then, but feel free to ask a follow-up if one comes to mind. Cassandra says, I tend to be too ambitious. Should I be concerned by my abandoned goals?  If you've got a lot of them and they're important and they're big ones, they're important values that you're not achieving, then you want to rethink the, I wouldn't say too ambitious, but you want to rethink maybe the kind of goals, the level of goals, the process. It's similar to the previous question is, if you're abandoning them, why? What went wrong? You know, is it just not attainable? It is just not attainable by you. Did you make mistakes in pursuing them? What kind of mistakes? How can they can be corrected? Again, I think the important thing here, and this is the important thing about failure, and success, but the important thing about life is the introspect. It's really to think through, evaluate, judge, and correct course if necessary, and constantly be doing that. Not just to accept, well, I can't do it. Or, you know, I'm too ambitious. Maybe you're not, maybe the process by which you're trying to achieve the goals is flawed. Maybe the goals are fine, but the process is flawed. So this is where a lot of introspection, ruthless introspection is required, and judgment of yourself and of the world out there. Maybe it's other people's fault. Other people play a role in whether we achieve our goals or not, and that's also needs to be recognized. I generally think it's better to be too ambitious than not ambitious enough. It goes back to the Tennyson quote, see, I remember it's Tennyson, I used to say with Shakespeare. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It's better to try, and even to get to a point of abandoning than never to have tried. So it's better to be over ambitious. Thank you, Cassandra. Let's see. Liam says, everything you need is already inside you. Don't wait for others to light your fire. You have your own matches. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Not necessarily everything is already inside you. You have to make it available inside of you. You have to figure it out. You have to create it. I mean, this is the sense in which I meant, said you create your own soul. That means you create your insights. And you create your insights by thinking through, you know, choosing values, identifying, introspecting your own processes, and putting it all into the context of life, the conceptual being, life appropriate to conceptual being, and into a moral framework of, you know, you're getting more values from the outside, from Iron Man. You're learning them. Now you have to integrate them. You have to internalize them. So not everything you need is already inside you. For 99% of you, it's not inside of you. That's why you should read. That's why you should study philosophy, particularly Iron Man's ethics. That's why you should experience art, because art is an immense fuel to feed what's inside of us, and to provide us with more concretes, more examples, more, you know, more ideas about what is possible. I mean, the beauty of art is it, good art, romantic art in particular, illustrates what is possible, what can be achieved. So those are all inputs.  But first you have to do the work, bringing the material, bringing the knowledge of the world into you. You are born to a large extent, in terms of ideas, you're born Tableau-Rassa. You weren't without any ideas.  You've got to experience reality, and you've got to learn from your own experience and from others' experiences. Hopefully that makes sense, Liam. Let's see, ta, ta, ta, la, la, la, la. People are satisfied. All right, I think we're done with relevant questions. Richard says, if the moral base for production, ambition, is a necessity to live, once that need is met, why is it still moral and necessary to continue? Because life means growth, life means action, it means movement, it means change. So it's never met in a sense of a static quantity and you're done. Every moment of your life at the bottom of things, you're either moving towards life or moving towards death. You're never static, stagnation is movement towards death. Life is about growth, it's about more. A tree just grows and grows and grows until it dies. It's a dynamic process, as one of Freeman says. So you constantly are growing and we're a particular type of being. We're not a tree that just automatically grows. So what does it mean for human beings to grow biologically? I'm not growing anymore. Although I can still grow a few muscles, right? But so what does it mean for human beings to grow? It means spiritually, conceptually, it means consciousness, it means rationally, it means growing your knowledge, growing your abilities, growing your interests, growing your values. So for a human being, since we live and die by reasons, since reason is our means of survival, since we are conceptual being, we must live as conceptual beings and therefore we must constantly grow our conceptual faculty, we must constantly learn, we must constantly think, we must constantly value and pursue values, we must be ambitious. All right, let's take a break here. We're gonna talk about some songs and then we'll go back to the super chats. We're back to the super chats. So think of questions you wanna ask. We've still got a lot of room for questions within the scope of our goal, our goal for the evening shows and we still got plenty of time. All right, let's try to do these songs. We've got a lot of them. All right, John, John DeLew, I think I'm announcing that name, right? John asked me to review an album. It's the 2011 album, Join Us by They Might Be Giants. And so I listened to the whole album but I really only listened carefully to like five songs which is consistent with what he requested and hear my impressions. Again, let me be very clear, I'm not an expert in music, I'm not an expert in songwriting. This is not my aesthetic strength necessarily. But you keep asking me so I will tell you and hopefully you get some value out of this because otherwise you wouldn't continue to ask. So this is the album, 2011 album, Join Us by The Mighty. They Might Be Giants. I think I've reviewed another They Might Be Giants song for John. And look, They Might Be Giants produce a very pleasant sound, music that is pretty simple. It's rock and roll, it's got almost all of it has kind of a rock rhythm and it's a beat, it tends to be a beat. It is not heavy, it is not dark, it is almost all light and kind of fairly cheerful for rock. The tunes are nice, the lyrics are generally, They Might Be Giants, pretty simple. Looked at a song like You Can't Keep Johnny Down. It's a beat and it's got funny lyrics, a lot of They Might Be Giants lyrics are kind of fun and silly and funny, sometimes funny. And they can't keep Johnny down, they haven't yet built the man that'll keep old Johnny down and they don't know what I've seen. They can't know what's in here and they can't keep Johnny down.   They can't know what's in here and they can't keep Johnny down. It's kind of flippant, it's kind of funny, it's kind of silly and lyrics are always tricky but I think that's generally my impression of They Might Be Giants, what was the other one? Let's see, this is Old Pine Box. I don't even know what this is about. I couldn't quite even figure what it's about but again, catchy, quick rhythm. It's about cephalophores.  So it's a headless person carrying their own head in their hand. And the song is about, where is it? Oh, that's the other one, probably got a lot. It's a song about cephalophores and it's just bizarre and strange and crazy and a little funny and it doesn't make any sense and it's a little weird but that's what it is, right? Although there are millions of cephalophores that wander through this world, you've got something extra going on, I think you probably know. You probably get a lot.  So bizarre, weird, funny here's one, when will you die?     When are you going to die? Look me in the eye, tell me, when you'll die. Wonderful. And then finally, all right, what's this one? You don't like me and it's all a song about the fact that you don't like me, right? And it's got again, funny lyrics about this idea of you not liking me, right? So anyway, this is, they might be giants, this I think is typical of their songs. They are silly, fun, funny, ridiculous, but fun, you know, and fun is there.   So it's, it could be twice then, but it's, the musically, it's very repetitive. It's not that interesting. And particularly if you listen to a whole album of it, you know, one song in a while, it's kind of fun, it's kind of silly.  I can't sustain, I can't sustain the focus. I can't do it all in one sitting. It doesn't work for me. All right, Fender Hoppe asked me to review the song, Shock, by Yuko Undu. This is a song that comes at the end of an anime. And like a lot of anime music, very melodic, very romantic sounding, the beautiful melody, a beautiful voice, Yuko Undu has a beautiful voice. Got a little bit of an old style progressive rock feel to it with the woman singer who can reach really high notes and has a gorgeous voice, really pretty melodies. I like the music for anime. I think it's quite emotional and emotion evoking. And some of it is quite interesting in a sense of it's not just obvious what's coming. It has some shifts and motion and changes that make it interesting. I think that's true of Shock. The parts of the middle of the song, I don't like that much. They become less interesting, less melodic. Other voices come in. I like the sections where Yuko Undu is singing by herself. But generally, I'd say there's some really, and I think Fender Hoppe, you've been the one to try to get me to listen to some of the music in anime. The music is always quite beautiful and very dramatic and romantic. And I actually like it, I actually like it. Again, I don't know that I'd sit and just listen to it, but I like it particularly as accompanying film. And I think the Japanese are very good at this. And I think the Koreans are very good at this. If you've watched Mr. Sunshine, my favorite TV show, I think of all time, the music there is fantastic. It's fantastic. It's orchestral and it's beautiful and it's romantic and it fits the action and the scenery and everything else. And I think generally the best music written today, the best music written over the last 50, 60 years, better than anything I think even in rock and pop, is film schools, is film music. It's just the best. That's where artists who have a romantic streak can actually make a living. Yeah, definitely Mr. Sunshine. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't seen my review of it, which is on my channel here, check it out. I think best TV show of all time. And interesting and well done and in every respect, in every respect, maybe not the best acting of all time, but everything else is the best of all time. And even there, the acting of the Korean actors is excellent. It's just there's some English speaking actors that are not very good. All right, that was Fendt Hopper, shock. Quite beautiful. Shazbot. Shazbot asked me to review the song Zombie. Zombie by, oh by the way, shock is sung in Japanese. I find listening to music whose words I don't understand is something I enjoy quite a bit.  So if you don't understand them, it doesn't detract from the music. You can focus on the music and the sentiment. You can get the emotion of the song without it really reaching cognition, if you will. You can just enjoy the music. And mostly, you know, I don't miss the lyrics. There are very few lyrics out there that really add, right? So opera, I don't mind not understanding the words. I can listen to opera, a whole opera, without understanding a word. I enjoyed more if I can read because there's a story. Then you've got, you've got, I love Bossa Nova, which is a Brazilian form of jazz. And I love, I love their songs. There's nothing smoother, more soothing, romantic, just beautiful than Bossa Nova. And I don't understand the words. And that's fine because the music is so beautiful. And the way they sing it, you kind of get what they're singing. You kind of get what they're singing. Anyway, so the fact that these Japanese songs I don't understand doesn't bother me at all. Zombie, I do understand the words. And zombie has some pretty powerful lyrics. It's clearly an anti-war song. I think this is, it's a song by the Cranberries. The Irish, I think this was a song written during the, a lot of the Irish terrorist attacks and a lot of the Irish kind of civil killing each other, a lot of violence. So it's a very much an anti-war song. You know, it's about, it's about, you know, it's about the fighting and it's about the zombies that kind of the brainless ness, if you win, the mindless ness of the fight of the war. I like the music. It's, it is, you know, it's a rock, it's dark, but of course the theme is dark, so the music should be dark, it fits. You know, the singing is very quiet. The music is definitely at a higher volume than the singing. The singing is in the background. It is distance, beautiful voice, beautiful melody with a real defiance to it, but really, really pretty and defiant. We'll get to a different interpretation of the song, which is not pretty. So pretty and defiant, which is a really interesting and I think really effective combination musically to create that contrast, a pretty and defiant. The lyrics are interesting. The, you know, there's a really good integration of lyrics with the, with the music. So you get this real angst about war. You get this real anger, you get the frustration. You get, I've had enough of this, right? You know, it's, it's, it's just one passage.    What's in your head? In your head, zombie, zombie. So it's, I mean, the whole zombie notion is living dad. It's brain dad. It's unthinking. And that's what initiating war is. And it's, it's, it's horrible, horrible to be in war. So, so this is an interpretation by the Cranberries, which is very beautiful, nice voice, very melodic and this contrast of the beauty of the voice and the beauty of the melody with a defiance in the music. There's another interpretation of this, same song written by, I think by the, by the Cranberries, but sung by Bad Wolf. Now, Bad Wolf, I think, does this. He takes these songs and he gives them very different interpretations. And he's got a rough voice. He's got a voice that projects anger and darkness and bitterness and even violence in his voice, right? In his voice. And Bad Wolf's version of zombie is rough, angry, powerful, dark. The orchestration is a lot darker. You've lost the beautiful voice. You've lost the contrast between the defiance and the voice and the beauty. Here you have all defiance. Now, I prefer the zombies interpretation because I like that contrast. It creates more interest. This is just, I'm fed up. This is wrong. This is, and he just says it. He just expresses it. It's completely out there. It's less subtle. It's less interesting. It's less, it's less interesting. I find it and certainly less beautiful, right? The advantage of the first song, of the Cranberry interpretation is there's beauty to it. There's an intriguing melody and intriguing beauty to the thing. I find that just somebody being angry to the microphone while singing, I don't find that anywhere near as effective as this contrast, because the contrast creates the notion of what life could be, of what is possible. Whereas the lyrics and the music in the background are telling you what it is, that's horrible. So that would be the two versions of zombie. All right, Liam asked about, by the way, I'm reviewing songs, so if you're not interested in me reviewing songs, I completely understand. I'll finish these. I've got one, two, four more songs, four more songs and then we're gonna get back to the super chat. Also, and so you can ask questions in the meantime and I'll get to the super chat later. Also, I would note that you can ask me to review a song. $500 TV show episode 250, let's see, and a movie 500. Somebody, I do have a short story I still have to review that is on my list, folks in the road is on my list. I apologize, but I just have not gotten to it, but that is coming up, that is in a few weeks. As I clear out, I've got a backlog of movies and all this stuff, I'll get to it. It took me a long time to get to Marybeth's short story. I will get to folk in the road as well. But somebody asked me if I would review a TV series two seasons for $5,000 and I said yes, if it's not too painful and he never got back to me again, I guess he thought it would be too painful, but I would do it for $5,000 and I'd do the entire Seinfeld series for 100K because I don't really like Seinfeld that much, so it would take a lot of money. All right, let's do these. Let's get the last four done. Liam asked me to review Need a Favor by Jelly Roll. He said, I think it's a good insight on Middle America and it's a well done song. Oh God, I really didn't like this song and the lyrics are horrible, I mean really, really horrible and it's a super religious song. Here's the lyrics, I only talk to God when I need a favor. I only pray when I ain't got a prayer.   Oh, if I only talk to God when I need a favor, but God, I need a favor and his daughter's in the hospital, so this is the music video, his daughter's in the hospital. So the song is a country song. I like some country songs. I can appreciate country music. I think country music, it is the best when it's talking about lost love, you know, broken hearts or anger, but whatever it gets to this, it's like, it's just too religious in terms of the lyrics. I don't find the music that interesting. Yeah, it's got the regular kind of country stick, whatever it is that, you know, the tang and the type of music, it's very country. You can't, but it's very repetitious. I only talk to God when I need a favor, happens one, two, three, four times in a short song. It's just too much. There's no content here. There's not, he's not really saying anything. It's, there's no sophistication in the lyrics. The lyrics are clever in a juvenile kind of way. I just, and yeah, I mean, this is middle America. Oh, this is lower America, maybe. I get it. This people listen to this, but I don't think most Americans, this is not American. This has got a caricature of religious Americans, you know, but it is making fun of them. You know, I never go to church, but when I really need something, I pray for it. It's, you know, there's a, there's an ID here. There's something here. I just find the execution kind of in your face, not very subtle. I mean, country music is not very subtle, right? Country music is in your face, it just is. It just says what it wants to say right there. It has no, it's not poetry. Like we'll get to some of these songs. Some of these leagues of poetry and half the time, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. This, you know, exactly what he's saying. There's no question about it. But this, it just is not that interesting. Not that interesting, I found. And as country music goes, I don't think that sophisticated in terms of, in terms of the music or the lyrics. I think there's other country music that is a lot better than, I think a lot better than this. All right, that was country music. Now I've got rap. Richard Moncada asked me to do this song called, what is it, Hope by NF. I never heard of NF, don't know who NF is. Never heard of the song. So I listened to it and I don't, I mean parts of it are rap, parts of it are more, I don't know, more R&B style. I thought it was quite interesting. The lyrics, some of the lyrics are excellent. I mean, some of the lyrics are really inspiring. And generally I think the goal of the lyrics here, the goal of this song called Hope is really, really good. I don't particularly like it. It's annoying because the rap parts of it are just, there's no melody, there's no musicality to it. It's just repetitive and boring and it just, but here's some lyrics, I think this is great. What's my definition of success? Listening to what your heart says, standing up for what you know is, sorry, standing up for what you know is right while everyone else is tucking their tails between their legs. What's my definition of success? Creating something no one else can't, being brave enough to dream big, grinding when you're told to just quit, giving more when you've got nothing left. It's a person they'll take a chance on, something they were told could never happen. It's a person that can see the bright side through the dark times when there ain't one, it's when someone who ain't never had nothing ain't afraid to walk away from more profit because they'd rather do something that they really love and take the pay cut. It's a person that would never waver or change who they are just to try and gain some credibility so they could feel accepted by a stranger. It's a person that can take the failures in their life and turn them into motivation. It's believing in yourself when no one else does. It's amazing. Now those are great lyrics. And this is not Ben Shapiro. These are great lyrics. These are, they're individualistic. They are, it's about ambition. It's about what we talked about earlier. It's about ambition. It's about going forward, doing it, even when it's hard, achieving, and not doing what other people want you to do, not being accepted by other people. It's firsthanded. And it goes on. I mean, there's a lot of good lyrics here, let's see. Growing pains and necessary evil, difficult to go through, yes, but beneficial. Some would say having a mental breakdown is a negative thing. Which on one hand I agree with, on the other hand, it was the push I needed to get help and start the healing process. See if I have never hit rock bottom, would I be the person that I am today? I don't believe so. Yeah, I'm a prime example of what happens when you choose to not accept defeat and face your demons. It took me 30 years to realize that if you want to get the opportunity to be the greatest version of yourself, sometimes you gotta be someone you're not to hear the voice. Sometimes you've got to be someone you're not to hear the voice of reason. Having kids will make you really take a step back and look into the mirror. At least for me, that's what it did. Wake up every day and pick my son up, hold him in my arms and let him know he's loved. Standing by the window questioning if dad is ever going to show up. Isn't something he's going to have to worry about. Don't get it twisted. That wasn't a shot. All right, this is, yeah, I mean there's some really good stuff in the lyrics of this. Who knew? Not what I would have expected. Not what I would have expected. So while I'm not filled with the music, I don't particularly like the rap form. I find the rap form pretty boring and repetitive and not interesting musically. The lyrics here, yeah, I mean, this guy, if he hasn't read Ryan Wren, somebody should send him a copy of Alice Shrugged. He needs Alice Shrugged. And he might even respond really, really positively to Alice Shrugged. Yeah, this is good. I mean, this reminds me of Kipling, right? Standing up for what you know is right while everyone else is tucking their tails between their legs. That almost sounds like Kipling. If, the song if. All right, let's see, what else do I have? So yeah, I wish there was more melody. I wish there was more singing. I wish there was more music rather than the repetitive wrappiness of it. But it's a great song about ambition. It's great. It should be called ambition, not hope. All right, John asked me to look at Hook by Blues Traveler. Blues Traveler. I enjoyed this song. This is a song with a really nice melody, great voices. There's a real frustration to the song. Again, it's about getting hooked on bad stuff. It's about trying to break free and getting hooked. The hook brings you back. But the voices convey that frustration, convey that anger. I found the music both, you know, pretty or nice, but also interesting. So yeah, I mean, this one I really enjoyed. It's definitely got a bluesy kind of feel to it. And it's got that anger, dissatisfaction, ambition in it. You know, this was nice, the lyrics are good. They're, I mean, you have to think to try to figure out what they mean. They're not obvious, but it's not so obtuse that you can't figure out what the hell is going on here. It is about being drawn into a mold, a culture, something that's just, you know, everybody else is following, being hooked into that and resisting it, trying to resist it. The final verses, the hook brings you back.  The hook on that, you can rely. And that hook is the hook of the popular, of the culture, of the not that good. Not that good. Okay, let's see. All right, last one. This will be quick. Last one is Invincible by Tool, which is DWNLogix, one of his favorite songs. And it's 12 minutes long.  I mean, it's like that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Very, very short, very bite size. Everything's bite size. I, you know, I thought I would like this song at the beginning more than I ended up liking it. It's not the most, you know, heavy metal type tool song. It's a little bit more livin' and, you know, it has parts that are quite dynamic. It's, but I find the music just too repetitive.  I mean, it's hard to tell what the song exactly is about. It's probably about old age. It's probably about, you know, the one final battle, you know, the warrior struggling to remain consequential.  And now it's harder. It starts out long in the tooth and soul, longing for another win, lurch into the fray, weapon out and belly in, belly in, tuck in that belly because, you know, you're getting old and you got a belly. Warrior struggling to remain consequential, bellow out loud, bellow out loud, bold and proud of where I've been, but here I am. And can I still win, right? Beating chest and drums, beating tired bones again, age old battle, mine, weapon out and belly in. So, you know, basically good lyrics, pushing it, right? Pushing it in terms of an interesting theme, an interesting idea. I just don't like the music. It's just too repetitive. It's not interesting enough. And they've got 12 minutes. In 12 minutes, you better develop, you better do something with the music and make it matter. You've got a lot of time to really evoke my emotions, to really take me somewhere musically. And I didn't find the song actually did that. It, you know, in that sense, I think, I don't think it succeeded. It didn't take me, it didn't take me on that emotional journey. All right, I still have six songs left. I'll do that another time. I have the movie, Basil, the movie, Cent of a Woman. I have Lance, Amitadeva's painting, and I have Forks in the Road. So all of those are still on my list. You can add to that list, $100 song, 250 TV episode, 500 a movie, and, you know, you can go on from there. Short story, another 500 and so on. All right, Richard, who's, this is about one of the songs that I did. Richard says, NF Hope, what did you think of the classical score used? Did you watch the video? Thanks for the review. I knew you'd hate it because of the rap, but loved the assessment of the lyrics. You know, the classical score is okay. It just doesn't add up because it's mixed in with this bluesy sound or R&B sound and it's mixed in with the rap and it doesn't integrate, it doesn't come together. And in that sense, I think the lyrics are wasted because you don't get the full power and full impact of the lyrics because of the disjointed music and the music is not supporting the lyrics.  It doesn't really enhance, it doesn't integrate. It doesn't like opera or classical music or classical song where the music and the lyrics are reinforcing one another, integral to one another. And even if it was in a different language, you kind of understand what they're saying, kind of understand in terms of the sentiment. Thank you, Richard. It was interesting because I found the lyrics really interesting. Paul Azuz says, my opinion of Whitney Houston.  I like some of the music. I don't think it's the greatest. It's a little too poppy. It's a little too simple and straightforward. But yeah, I mean, she's got a beautiful voice. She can't deny that voice and her ability to project and the power and the emotion she can bring out is pretty impressive. All right, I think I lost a lot of people doing the music reviews. That is the challenge of these.  So a lot of people joined and said, hey, what's he doing? Reviewing songs now. I'm not interested in that and left. But so be it, right? You paid me to do it. I will do it. Paul Azuz says, Whitney Houston versus classical singers. Oh, no competition. I'll take Maria Callas or Leon Tye Price or any of the classical singers over Whitney Houston any day. I mean, the things that a classical opera singer can do with her voice is just unmatched, the emotion she can evoke. The music that was written for them is so unbelievable, so unbelievable. Because it's so much more deep in terms of the emotional content that it brings out. So yeah, I would take an opera singer over Whitney Houston or any pop singer any day, any day, right? I mean, the music is more beautiful. The songs are deeper and the voice, the control of the voice, the sophistication of what they can do just, yeah. All right, let's jump in here. If anybody out there wants to do like $20 questions, no more, two, five. You can do stickers, stickers, $2 stickers will be great and a few of those will go a long way to getting us to our goal.  If you're here live, the best way to support the show is with a sticker or a super chat. You can ask a super chat question or you can just give through a sticker. We need a few 50s, 20s, 100s, 200s, 500s. We need to try to get to our goal and there's a long way still to go. All right, hop up. I'm a 10-year pessimist, but a 20-year optimist. By the rate of objectivism is growing, I don't think in 20 years M2 can overpower the I. I hope you're right, I don't know if 20 years is enough. And I don't know if M2 won't overpower us before 20 years. So I don't know that we have enough time. I think the longer you can take that out into the future, the more I agree with you. But hard for me to assess 10 versus 20 years. I've been around objectivism for well more than 20 years. I've seen its growth, it's grown and it's great. It better grow a lot faster and a lot more in the next 20 years if we have any hope to succeed. And I think it will, because I think we're training so many new intellectuals, but it has to be massive in order to stop the M2s. All right, Siberian, $50, thank you Siberian. Was it rational for Navalny to return to Russia? He had been poisoned by the secret police just six months before. He knew they were outstanding wants for his arrest, which happened right after the planning. He knew the justice system was rotten. And I have to think, I think it's not rational for him to do it. I think it exposes a certain amount of hubris that he could somehow overcome Putin and overcome the regime. He must have thought that the outcry of the population from his arrest would be dramatically bigger than it actually was. So he overplayed his hand or he miscalculated. But that is either ignorance or... So it doesn't have to be irrational because it could have just been ignorant. But there's a guy who knew Russian culture, understood Russian culture, had been active politically in Russian culture for over 10 years. You'd think he should have known better. He could have fought Putin from outside. Of course, Putin has been known to poison people outside the country as well, killed them outside the country, doesn't he? A lot of people have fallen out of windows by Putin's hand who are not in Russia.  He might as well die fighting in Russia itself. I don't know. So to fully know if it was rational, you'd have to know a lot more about his own thinking and his own estimation and the amount of knowledge he had. I, you know, looking at it from the outside with only partial knowledge, it is suspiciously irrational, right? And a little bit of a kind of Jesus sacrificial, I'm gonna sacrifice for the cause aspect to it. But you'd have to know a lot more about Navalny and what he knew and what he was thinking at the time to give a definitive answer on that. All right, James asks, Thoughts in New York City, Trucker Strike. Sorry, I haven't read about the New York City Trucker Strike. I'll have to look at it. Also, the mayor of Dallas switching to a Republican. What incentives of actions contributed to it? Lastly, have you seen any videos that talk to people about the problems in Chicago? Sure, I don't know the Tucker Strike in New York City. The mayor switching to a Republican. I'm guessing that he was turned off by the crazy left. My estimation is that the left had become too woke, too, you know, too crazy for him, even though he is a Democrat. To stomach, I think a lot of people are switching as a consequence. And, you know, he has been very successful, right? And, you know, right now he is the only Republican mayor of a large city, right? Only Republican mayor in the country of a large city, all other large cities are Democrats. And, of course, he was elected as a Democrat. So his switching is after the fact. Questions, can he be elected as a Republican?  And, you know, basically the reason is the very fact that, you know, Democrats have gone too far to the left, too far to the wonky, nutty part of the left. All right, let's see. You know, he's relatively physically conservative. Yeah, I mean, he seems like basically a good guy. Let's see. What else? Okay. Sorry, James. Oh, and what else did he ask? Oh, Chicago. Chicago is in deep trouble. I mean, I've been in Chicago many times. I know a lot of people in Chicago. I've read about Chicago. Chicago has had a series of mayors who are basically completely irresponsible, you know, leftists who have basically spent like there's no tomorrow have been completely beholden to the teacher's union in spite of the fact that schools in Chicago are awful, particularly the inner city schools. And yet the city has run to a large extent by the teacher's unions. The mayors of Chicago over the last few years have been beholden to BLM. So they have taken up the cause of the radical left. I remember the mayor of Chicago during the riots of BLM talking about the looting of luxury stores. She just said, well, that's just operations. That's just a little bit of redistribution of wealth. In a sense, nothing wrong with that. So really, really corrupt. Now, Chicago used to be in the old days, Democratic, it's always been Democratic, but it used to be corrupt, super, super corrupt. But the corruption always went to, in a sense, making the city work, right? The priority of the mayors, Mayor Daley and his son, they made Chicago work. They got the trains running. They got the streets clean. They got the permits to build, buildings done. They might have pocketed a lot of money on the side, but the city functions. And the momentan Democratic mayors of Chicago are completely utterly incompetent. They can't make the city run, and the city is in shambles. And there used to be cranes everywhere, building. There's no building going on. Taxes are some of the highest in the country, and they're going up. Again, the schools are a disaster, and nobody has a clue how to fix them. Police are leaving because the police force gets no support from the mayor's office. Chicago is really a city that has been in decline for probably about 10 years, at least 10 years, but 10 years of accelerated decline. It is, and I said this during the BLM riots, I don't understand why people live there. I mean, I understand why specific individuals live there, but it's not a city I think you would move to. It's at crime rates. I mean, they're coming down from their peak at 2020, 2021. They're coming down quite a bit. Not, you know, no thanks, I think, to the mayor's office, but they're coming down because of the sociological issues that happened during COVID are gone. But it's still, you know, for a large city, one of the more violent cities in the country. It's not a place you want to be if there's ever any kind of civil unrest. That doodle bunny. Did you see Vivek and Michael Malus discussing Anarchy and abolishing the FDA? No, I did not. Well, I think Vivek is a weasel and an asker, no kidding. It is nice to see a young guy who ran for president being that intellectual philosophical. Yeah, I just, I wish he'd been that intellectual and philosophical when he actually ran for president and brought some of that to it. And I'm curious what he said about Anarchy. I can imagine Vivek supporting it, or at least saying he understands why it's supported, but not realistic or something like that. But, you know, yes, I mean, half of what Vivek said was excellent. He wanted to cut government spending and eliminate departments and get rid of the FDA and do stuff like that. And then at the same time, he wanted to go to war with Mexico to stop the drug cartels.  And of course, he supported Trump, which doesn't believe in any of these things. Any of the good things. Hector, what is it? What is your view on learning languages? I know Mandarin, Spanish, and English. I think knowing different languages can give you different perspective. How much broad understanding of a subject. Cheers. Yeah, I mean, I think languages is great. I mean, learning languages, getting the cultural vibe of a language, of a culture through a language, getting the vibe of a culture through the language, being able to travel around the world and speak a variety of different languages and get along in different places and interact with people in different places. I think it's wonderful. And then, of course, the challenge, the intellectual challenge of keeping track of the different languages, what words in different languages are, seeing connections between languages, seeing the logic of language and how language works.  My wife speaks six languages. Six languages. The four romantic languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. Hebrew and English, right? So she speaks six. I only speak two Hebrew and English. I'm not interested in languages. My wife is really passionate about it. She loves it. She really thrives on learning languages and the challenge of it, on the particularly four romantic languages that are all related but different and how they all evolve from the same language, Latin and seeing the connections. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of interesting stuff in learning a language and being able to speak a language, and then it gives you a huge advantage when you travel around the world. And one of Yuan's rules for life is travel.  Challenge yourself to go to a new country every year. I was in the last few years, I've been in at least 24 countries every single year, 24. I don't think I'm going to make 24 this year. Although who knows? There could be surprises. But I don't think so.  You should go to 24 countries. You should go to new places all the time. You should constantly experience new things. You should engage with new people, experience new places, experience new art, experience new experiences constantly. Fendapa, you probably wouldn't like most music for anime, haha. Did you happen to check out the lyrics? I tried to check out the lyrics for shock. I couldn't understand them. I think they were too tight to whatever the story of the anime is. So no, I didn't really understand what the lyrics were about. Adam says, are you familiar with pre-Rock Israeli and French popular songs of the 1950s? Would you agree that the level of integration, melody, rhyme, voices and instruments never got back to standards of the 50s after rock? I don't know. I certainly think that it was extraordinary pre-1950s, and that's true not only in Hebrew and French, but also in English, you know, the era of corpore, the era of Frank Sinatra. I mean, the beauty, the integration, the melody, the voices, the instrumentation, the connection, the human connection. Yeah, I think there was something really unique in the 30s, 40s and 50s in that sense. And it's a period of, at least in the US, of this great benevolence and the French a little less benevolent. But yeah, I mean, there's, I love the music of that period from France. I love what's the name, DPR and Charles Aznavour and I forget all the names of the singers, but quite beautiful. Israeli popular music was pretty, I think it was less sophisticated than the French or the American. I think it was more inspired by kind of Russian, Polish, Eastern European kind of music less sophisticated. But look, I think there's quite a bit of modern music that is quite beautiful, melody, rhyme, voices, instruments, and quite interesting. It's not as benevolent. It's usually dark. They're really well integrated. More modern music is dark. There's almost no positive, benevolent music that is really, really good written in the post, I don't know, the post late 50s era. But yeah, I actually like Israeli music for when I was growing up, but that's because it's associated with childhood memories. But I love Israeli music from the 70s and early 80s. I love Brazilian music from the 60s and 70s. I love Bossa Nova. If you haven't listened to Bossa Nova, you should try it out with a nice glass of red wine, just relaxed, sitting around relaxed. The other day, my wife and I were walking around all time San Juan and there was a restaurant there which had seating outside. There was a guy sitting outside with a guitar and a microphone. And singing and we got close and I said, oh, that's Bossa Nova. And we went and he was doing an evening of Brazilian Bossa Nova and it was so good. We just sat down a bench and just listened for like half an hour and it was just so beautiful. It's the most calming music. It's super relaxing. It just got this benevolent. Yeah. The Gulf of Ipanema is the most famous of them, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of that music with the same tone. Stringabelle, Ayuran, what advice would you give a Peter Keating to help him find a career that he is passionate about? Also, how much of a book, for a book review?  That is, you cannot, I cannot give advice to somebody who's a Peter Keating other than figure out how to stop being Peter Keating. And if you're young enough, that means completely divorce yourself from what other people think, want, expect. Sit down and really introspect about what your values are. Commit yourself to independence. Take a year off. Take a year off from school, from career choice, from having to make decisions. Become a barista at Starbucks. Or maybe just travel. And just figure out who you are. Spend time really thinking about what your life is going to require. You know, again, moral virtues. Think about the moral virtues. Try to integrate the reason and rationality and productiveness and honesty into your being, into your soul. And go out there into the world and spend a lot of time introspecting and thinking about what do you like? What do you love? Try to put aside what other people would expect. This is why taking a year off do what the unexpected. Do what other, your parents might frown upon. Just so you can recalibrate. And then figure out some things that you love, that you care about, that are rational, that make sense.  And every time you feel that tug of being keating, shut it down. And refocus your energy on a positive. Refocus on the good. Refocus on your work. And if you discover after doing it for a while, no, this isn't really me. I don't really like it. Start the exercise over. Keep going at it. Keep doing it. Until you figure out who you are, what you are, or better, rather than figure out who you are, what you are. Until you make yourself into what you want to be. But that's the work that needs to happen. How much of a book of you, it depends. Is it fiction? Is it nonfiction? Is it on a topic that I would find interesting? If it's fiction, you have to tell me something about it for me to invest the time. But you know, either way, and how long is the book? Is it a thousand pages? Is it a hundred pages? But either way, it's a thousand dollars at least, right? Just given the time. But the more I think it'll be enjoyable, and the more I'd like to do it anyway, the less.  Okay, Hector, ask how my family's doing. My family's fine. Thank you for asking. Everybody is fine. I assume you're asking about Israel. But so far, everybody's doing fine in Israel. Hoppe Campbell, people really do resist reading Ein Rand at their own peril. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. The value you will get from reading Ein Rand is beyond anything I could explain to you or describe to you. I have not yet seen Godzilla. I will let you know. I promise when I do. Clark, it amazes me the number of neurotic, irrational people out there who are barely sane and still able to function. They function because of the sanity and rationality of others. They're basically cruising on the productiveness of other people. James, what fact does contribute to a person's level of logic and rationality? His commitment. His willingness, commitment to doing it. His ambition, if you will, to doing it. That's what contributes, right? It's your will. Do you want to be rational? Do you want to be morally perfect? Are you proud? Are you proud? Pride means moral ambitiousness. That's what we'll determine. That's what we'll determine how rational you are. It's not a matter of IQ or anything like that. It's a matter of focus and choice. Focus and choice. All right. Let's see. Next one. Michael says you can't have revolutions when people are satisfied and happy. You know I mean, it's tricky, right? Because because the founding fathers were pretty satisfied and happy. But then they weren't. And they weren't because of something that happened. But it's not like they needed to be poor and depressed and things falling apart. Things were not falling apart. You know the British were about as good of a colonial governing forces you could have. So I don't think that it is really true. That is really true in terms of if you think of the founders. Let's see. Do you know how many how long the book is? All right. So Stringer Bell wants me to review the art of learning an inner journey to optimal performance. I mean, I have to admit not a book I would read under normal circumstances. Not something I'm looking to read right now. So you're going to have to make me an offer to make it interesting. It's seven. Hours basically of listening to you know, maybe I listen in one and a quarter speed. So maybe it's five hours. Five hours. My rate is 500 bucks an hour. You know, so I don't know. You make me an offer Stringer Bell in that range if it's something you can afford and are interested in doing. Michael says, why are Russian subways so much better than American subways? I don't know that they are. Subway in Moscow. The communists invested a huge amount in it. It was engineered not by Russians. They didn't trust Russian engineers. They brought British engineers in. They later behaved awfully towards them and kicked them out. They spent a huge amount of money they didn't have on it to make it into this thing that they could show off when visitors came. I don't think subways elsewhere in Russia of quality. But it was a thing that the Russians that Russia heavily invested in to be a showcase for Westerners when they visited. And again, it wasn't engineered by Russians. It was engineered by Brits who came in. And they kept it up because it's a showpiece. And American subways are run by the state. Not a showpieces. The government is not willing to tax you to death in order to keep up with the railway system plus they've got other more urgent priorities according to their altruistic standards and therefore they don't spend enough money and if it was privatized of course that would solve the problem. It would be much better but it isn't. How is boom airlines doing? The supersonic flight becoming the norm in your lifetime? I don't know. I keep reading about them that they're progressing slowly. I think one airline is backed out of their contract with them to buy planes but other than that they seem to be, they've got a manufacturer for the engines and supposedly they're going to do their first test flight this year I think. They're building this massive facility in North Carolina. So it looks like they're moving ahead. Will I see the norm? No I don't think I'll see it norm but I do think it will be available. I do expect I will fly in a supersonic flight in my lifetime. Pickaxing says constant pursuit definition sounds correct. In addendum could we argue provided it meets one's fund criteria as posed by David Deutsch? Fund is too subjective. It has to be a pursuit that you want and part of it could be painful, it could be hard, just think about exercise but you gain satisfaction from the pursuit in spite of that, in spite of how hard it is. So fund is not the right word. Fund is too loose and light and emotional. So you'd have to come up with something else but it has to, it has to be something that you know you will benefit from, that you will be satisfied with you will generate happiness for you ultimately. But it might not right now. Richard what's the line between something to be bad and something not being odd? I view Pollock as not odd because there's no intention behind it. Well, there's no selective recreation of reality so there's definition of odd. It's not projecting any values it's just, it's nothing it's zero. So to be odd you have to project some values in some form that is representative of something in reality. Bad odd does that poorly. That's the only issue that it does it poorly. And non-odd doesn't do it. So non-odd doesn't do it bad odd does it poorly. Troy, wow a second time in what two or three days three days, thank you Troy really, really appreciate it. Makes me want to be even more ambitious. Troy just blew us past the target, thank you really appreciate it. I'm glad you enjoy these shows really. Apollo your take on martial arts as an early ambition early ambition. I'm not sure what early has to do with it. Yeah, martial arts can certainly be an ambition to be good at martial arts, to excel at it, to get better at it.  Andrew how does political freedom and able ambition a society? Well it gives it the space, right?  No it's not possible first of all Nikki Haley and John Bolton wouldn't do it they don't agree with the platform of the capitalist party and second I don't think the capitalist party should take them because neither Nikki Haley nor John Bolton agree with the with the program of the capitalist party and then you need a fortune you need hundreds of millions of dollars where you're going to get them I don't think you can raise that kind of money you need to do it now because you have to get registered in all the states and you'd have to create an organization none of that is possible for this election but for any election you need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars the capitalist segment of the American population doesn't have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in this or maybe it does but I'm not sure it's willing to do it introspection versus introspection introspection is looking in learning about what is what you are what your values are what you're thinking processes are introspection is looking out to reality learning from reality you need to do both all the time life is about doing both one is learning about you the other is learning about the world Ryan you mentioned in your travel the world show that it is important to travel while you are young do you have any advice for affording this I've only been able to afford some weekend road trips you can travel pretty cheaply you can get sure you need some money so it's worth looking up and trying to save so that you can travel I just think it's harder to travel with kids but you can travel after kids it's not only when you're young but it's good to travel when you're young because it gives you perspective what you can do is save up money for example save up money and try to go and take a month off to go to Europe Asia or something like that you can do it pretty cheaply particularly in Europe one of these train passes which allows you to take as many trains as you want all over Europe and Europe is a great continent to travel by train you can stay at hostels and flights to Europe and coach can cost quite reasonable particularly if you don't go peak tourist season if you go in early spring or late fall you can get good weather and still get good flights flights within Europe can be super cheap you can fly sometimes 25 bucks from place to place and again you've got the rail system and rail passes save it should be one of the goals for which you save not the only one but one of the goals for which you save and you can get a backpack and you can hike to two hostels you can stay in cheap hotels there are all kinds of hotels in Europe you can stay at the periphery of cities rather than the center and take public transportation in there's all kinds of ways to make it relatively inexpensive Richard, 10 more to support music reviews also The Cave in the Light is a great book, yes it is thanks also to the Center of Peacock's History of Philosophy excellent course one of the greats okay Stringer Bell I mentioned so make me an offer I guess any new book recommendations yeah I'm gonna do a book review on the book I'm reading right now the closing of the western mind is excellent really really really good reminds me of The Cave in the Light the closing of the western mind and then there's the reopening of the western mind which is kind of a volume two and I'm halfway maybe two thirds into the closing of the western mind really fascinating really really fascinating fascinating history of Greece, Rome and the rise of Christianity which is obviously a period I'm really interested in because I've been reading a lot about it I mean Richard as usual speaks without knowing of what he speaks Europe is not sketchy there are incredible opportunities to travel in Europe really cheaply I'm in Europe all the time and I meet young people all the time in Europe students who are traveling constantly in Europe and it is very doable it is it is amazing and Europe is unbelievably safe unbelievably safe I don't spend time in hostels but I know people who do you don't Richard and how often have you been to Europe and where have you been in Europe and how often have you traveled in Europe you know I meet a lot of people traveling around and the students I speak to the students I speak to are all you know often staying in hostels I've done conferences where you know some people have stayed in hotels and the students have stayed in hostels don't believe the scaremongers the people who want to limit you and the scaremongers oh it's Europe it's woke it's dangerous the Muslims BS Europe is much safer than the US in terms of violent crime it's much easier to get around in the US because it has you know as unlikable as it is it has public transportation that is fairly effective and it has and it caters to a lot of travelers who travel with backpacks and go across and stay at hostels and therefore they are cheap hotels and hostels all over Europe and yeah once in a while you're going to get to a shitty place really bad place but I didn't say there were no Muslims in Europe I said you don't have to be afraid you don't have to be afraid people want you to live in some cocoon because of fear of XYZ that's not a life not a life let them be afraid let them live in cocoon oh don't go to London because the Muslims don't go to Europe they're Muslims in Germany Germany's full of Muslims so don't go and see the museum don't go and see the art exhibit because you might encounter a Muslim on the way alright so they're Muslims in Europe they're Muslims in Israel too where I was growing up a lot scarier too so don't be afraid go live go live and you know other places you could travel which are more difficult Asia's more difficult to travel it's cheaply Tokyo's very expensive the language barrier in Asia's much bigger so places like Thailand and India and Cambodia and a place like that are pretty cheap to travel in and to stay in you can get really nice cheap hotels but they're less interesting I think for a young person and although a lot of people disagree and then the other thing is that they are very difficult to manage with English in Europe you can manage with English another place to travel to is South America you can go to South America now South America's not as safe as Europe but it is cheaper than Europe but be careful if you go to South America be careful because it is dangerous whereas Europe is not dangerous at all South America is dangerous and who says is that pride under altruism or is that a contradiction in terms ultimately it's a contradiction in terms pride is about self it's about it's about feeling a making a commitment to yourself to be the best human being you can be to achieve more perfection to be morally ambitious in your life selfish as it gets India has English somebody corrects me and you can get along in Thailand with English but and again if you're going to travel and you're young and you're still learning about the world I would say Europe is the place to go plus America there's a lot to see in America what happened to Concorde Concorde was not economical it it was very expensive to run it didn't have enough seats so they could only sell a small number of tickets they were very expensive they didn't always fill up the plane and then they had technical and technical problems which made it even more expensive so neither British Airways nor Air France both of whom ran the Concorde both of those never made any money on it ultimately part of the reason they couldn't make money but part of the reason was they couldn't fly it in and out of certain cities because of the noise it made and you know noise is legit right I mean if the noise is such that it's really disrupting people's lives that it's legit the new supersonic airplanes have have designed in a way that they would use the sonic boom the sonic boom is very disruptive so you wouldn't fly the airplane from New York to LA you could fly from New York to London, New York to Paris you could fly from LA to Tokyo LA to China and I think that's what boom is counting on boom primarily is not going to be LA to New York it's going to be New York to Europe and LA to Asia another thing that the Concord didn't have is they didn't have the Asian routes today you have very lucrative routes from LA San Francisco, Seattle to Asia where a supersonic jet will be huge and where there's not a problem of sonic boom because you're flying fast only over the ocean and because but the distances are vast so you can save a lot of hours by going much faster so the Pacific routes which the Concord didn't have because nobody wanted to go to China back then and China is a new market and the same with South Korea and Taiwan and in many of these countries so that's a big advantage that the new supersonics will have over the Concord alright two and a quarter hours have you taken on Sam Harris's view of free will I do experience these ideas when meditating since I can't choose the next thought that shows up in that context well yeah because you're meditating meditation by definition is giving up control when you're meditating you're not in control you're giving it up but you're purposefully giving it up and part of the contrast is between when you're meditating or dreaming or on drugs and when you're fully alert conscious engaged in a problem solving a problem or just waking up and the fundamental of free will is there I do have a choice I can focus and again the whole idea of meditating is suppressing that choice going out of focus is getting rid of that focus that keeps you alert and awake and in this world it's about and I'm not against meditating maybe it's a form of rest which can be valuable but it's in a sense the state of meditation in contrast to the state of being alert shows you free will free will fundamentally is the choice to focus it's the choice to think it's the choice to engage your mind meditation is not mind watching it's not mind watching you're not watching your mind to the extent that you are watching your mind is introspection meditation is dissolving your mind it's about repressing your mind it's about passivity it's about taking away the will it's about taking away the focus so introspection is interrogating your subconscious your mind meditation is letting your mind drift it's not about watching your mind so what you observe when you're meditating doesn't really teach you about the world anything because it's not really awareness it's rest it's a form of relaxation it's a form of putting your mind on neutral for a while that's not exactly sleep that allows you to be better engaged after the fact so you can't learn anything about the world and reality for meditating you can't learn anything about the world and reality through drugs you can learn about your mental state under drugs you can learn about your mental state in drift with meditation but it's not you're not watching the subconscious there's no you watching watching is an active thing the whole point of meditation is to do away with the active yeah meditation genes says meditation requires returning your consciousness back to something a mantra your breath or whatever that's exactly the point it's not watching anything it's returning to the breath in order to avoid watching whatever it is you want to watch so it's it's trying to distract your mind from the will and again the contrast between that and actually solving a problem should tell you that when you're solving a problem you're using free will alright guys it's late I am drifting I'm going into a state of not meditation but sleep I think you know what you're aware of is breathing but you know if your focus isn't breathing if your focus is on your fingers you're aware of your fingers but it's just a very narrow awareness alright that's enough I'll see you all tomorrow morning for a news roundup bye everybody thank you thank you all the super chatters in particular thank you Troy really appreciate the support bye guys


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