Speaker 1: A lot of them, fundamental principles of weedom actually self interest,
Speaker 1: and the individual lots. This is the show. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to your one book show on this Saturday, December twentieth.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me. We are you know I told
Speaker 1: you that I'll devote my Saturday shows to three general topics,
Speaker 1: uh kind of Christianity and civilization, uh, the search for
Speaker 1: meaning and uh and capitalism just just different aspects of capitalism.
Speaker 1: So today we're back to the topic of civilization and
Speaker 1: UH and Christianity and uh uh yeah, well we'll keep
Speaker 1: on this rotation. I do not have any views today,
Speaker 1: but I do need to catch up on those, so
Speaker 1: we'll probably devote a midweek show sometime to at least
Speaker 1: catch up on reviews and get them all done and
Speaker 1: get them all or most of them done by year end.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's see, So I thought we talked today
Speaker 1: about Christian values and what they are, and then how
Speaker 1: they relate to Western civilization, to civilization, to where we
Speaker 1: are today, to how we got to where we are today,
Speaker 1: how civilization came about, and to what extent we can
Speaker 1: attribute civilization to these, you know, co Christian values, to
Speaker 1: what extent is Christianity responsible, But we'll look at it
Speaker 1: through the lens of Christian values, of through the lens
Speaker 1: of Christian morality. I want to say one thing. I
Speaker 1: was thinking of calling this judo Christian values versus civilization,
Speaker 1: but then I thought, God, then I'd have to separate
Speaker 1: out what is exactly. I'd have to do the whole
Speaker 1: theology of the separation between Christianity and Judaism, and that
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous. Also, it just opens it up to the
Speaker 1: argument of no, there is no judo Christian It's really
Speaker 1: only Christian values and Jewish values are very different. And
Speaker 1: to some extent that's true. So I decide dealt with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the reality is judo Christian values. The whole
Speaker 1: idea of judo Christian civilization, judo Christian whatever is probably
Speaker 1: a mid twentieth century concept. It is a post Holocaust concept.
Speaker 1: It's a way for Christians to pretend that Christianity had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the Holocaust, for Christians to pretend
Speaker 1: they don't know. You know, we've always been on the
Speaker 1: Jews side, you know, when faced with the reality of
Speaker 1: what happened in you juring the World War two. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so there is no such thing as Judo Christian values.
Speaker 1: The Jews and the Christians indeed disagree on many of
Speaker 1: these values. They they they share common as well, see
Speaker 1: we won't see, but they'll share common irrationality, that the
Speaker 1: irrationality of religion, the originality of faith, that they share.
Speaker 1: But they disagree on the particulars. And there's no point
Speaker 1: in really getting into it. Uh, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: just so nobody has any doubts, because I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are out to get me on this issue.
Speaker 1: It's Judeo who cares. Judo is a martial art. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Judo. You thought I was talking about Jews.
Speaker 1: Now I'm talking about Judo Christian. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: there's a Judo Christian thing, Judeo Judeo Christian. Just so
Speaker 1: we're clear, I don't think Jewish value said anything to
Speaker 1: do with the civilization either. So everything I say criticizing
Speaker 1: Christianity with some variations because the values are different, but
Speaker 1: basically applies to Judaism. But why don't I and this
Speaker 1: is a question I get all the time, right, why
Speaker 1: don't I attack the Jewish religion and Judeo values as
Speaker 1: much as I attack Christian values, primarily because they're just
Speaker 1: mostly in America, in Western civilization. Arguably even in Israel,
Speaker 1: they're not that relevant. We live in a world in
Speaker 1: which the relevant, the relevant values, the relevant, the relevant
Speaker 1: perception of morality, the relevant religion is Christianity. Judaism is
Speaker 1: an asterisk. It's barely significant that what I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifteen million Jews in the world, it doesn't count for anything.
Speaker 1: And most of those, many of those yewser if not
Speaker 1: most of those Jews a couple of secular and if
Speaker 1: they have any values, if they've absorbed any values they've
Speaker 1: absorted from the Christian culture around them. And indeed, arguably
Speaker 1: Judaism is being Christianized quite a bit in the last
Speaker 1: few hundred years. So it's just a waste of time
Speaker 1: to criticize Judaism. Now, if I lived in Israel, where
Speaker 1: Judaism is to a large extent a threat qua religion
Speaker 1: is a threat to I think the existence of the
Speaker 1: state of Israel, to the success of the State of Israel,
Speaker 1: to the Western the civilized aspect of Israeli society. Then
Speaker 1: it's spent a lot of time in Israel criticizing Jewish values,
Speaker 1: but I'm living in America and my audience is overwhelmingly,
Speaker 1: well not overwhelmingly not Israeli. It's overwhelmingly American and Canadian,
Speaker 1: Australian and European. It's Anglo Saxon and European and a
Speaker 1: small fraction Israeli. So why would I talk Why would
Speaker 1: I spend time talking about Jewish values when it's not
Speaker 1: relevant to the challenges and struggles that we are are
Speaker 1: facing in America, the cultural issues that we face, and
Speaker 1: indeed to the very evolution of Western civilization. Western civilization
Speaker 1: evolved in the context of Christianity, you know, that's a reality.
Speaker 1: It didn't evolve in the context of Judaism. It didn't
Speaker 1: evolved in the context of this particular version of the
Speaker 1: context of Islam. Although Islam played a much bigger role Muslims,
Speaker 1: not Islam. Muslims played a much bigger role, arguably suddenly
Speaker 1: in the in the in the push of of of
Speaker 1: civilizing the West than Jews did it because they were
Speaker 1: the transmitters. They were the people transmitted the knowledge of
Speaker 1: the Greeks to the West, not Jews. Muslims did did that. So,
Speaker 1: you know, religion, religion sucks and across the board, and
Speaker 1: I'm not biased towards Judaism. You know, you could we
Speaker 1: could have a discussion about the relative virtues and vices
Speaker 1: of Christianity versus Judaism, and which version of Christianity, which
Speaker 1: versions of Judaism and so on. We could have that discussion.
Speaker 1: It could be an interesting discussion which one is worse
Speaker 1: Christianity of Judaism. But that's not that important. It's not
Speaker 1: that interesting from the perspective of I reject them both
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the rejection of religion. All right, Uh,
Speaker 1: just a few other things. Somebody says, the Golden Age Islam. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm you know. I read a book I told you
Speaker 1: about this. I read a book about Central Asia, Islam
Speaker 1: in Central Asia and the Golden Age, the Enlightenment in
Speaker 1: Central Asia in the I don't know, ninth to eleventh century,
Speaker 1: and it was amazing. It was a really incredible book.
Speaker 1: And I'm reading a book now about Spain basically during
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, that is the Islami consequest of Spain
Speaker 1: and then the erosion of that and and what happened there.
Speaker 1: Not as good of a book to too engaged in
Speaker 1: the politics of it. This King did that and rather
Speaker 1: than in the intellectual it's not. Now, granted, the book
Speaker 1: is focused differently, it's not focused on enlightenment, it's not focused,
Speaker 1: but it still emphasizes the extent a where the the
Speaker 1: the fact that Christians were welcomed into Islamic Spain, into Andalusia,
Speaker 1: the south of Spain, which was which is which was
Speaker 1: Muslim for a very long time, and and were allowed
Speaker 1: into the libraries and therefore copied and translated the writings
Speaker 1: of of the Greek Greek Greek philosophers, and and also
Speaker 1: the the Asian Islamic uh Enlightenment was also being translated.
Speaker 1: And then of course there was everywhere everyone is who
Speaker 1: is the great Muslim philosopher in Spain, who was as Italian?
Speaker 1: Who was translated into Latin. That is what's set off
Speaker 1: the intellectual revolution that made that that that led to
Speaker 1: the Renaissance, that led to Western civilization. So you cannot
Speaker 1: you cannot understand Western civilization. You cannot understand the rise
Speaker 1: of of of a Statilian ideas, the the even the
Speaker 1: creation of universities and in Europe without an understanding of
Speaker 1: what they were reading, what was being translated, what was
Speaker 1: being what, what was being transmitted into Europe from the
Speaker 1: Muslim world during this period, primarily from Spain Primelli, from
Speaker 1: the from the libraries and places like Cordoba. Uh and
Speaker 1: and later uh god, what's the what's the Toledo uh
Speaker 1: in in for the North Toledo which was occupied by
Speaker 1: the by the by the Christians pretty early and immediately
Speaker 1: they started translating everything and moving it out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and Delicia was no paradise. So I gotside
Speaker 1: recommended the myth of these in paradise one week ago.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if that's the book I'm reading,
Speaker 1: but I'm reading a book that basically says, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was no paradise, and it certainly it was no paradise.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know what you mean by paradise.
Speaker 1: They were all killing each other constantly, and raping and
Speaker 1: murdering and fighting and infighting, and and they were all
Speaker 1: in on it, the Christians, the Muslims, the Jews, they
Speaker 1: were all scheming and politically it was a complete disaster
Speaker 1: and there was no stability, and there really was no
Speaker 1: period of of of paradise. But there were periods of
Speaker 1: great achievement, you know, not so much in the sciences,
Speaker 1: but philosophy you get mimonodes and and Avicenna nos in
Speaker 1: Asia and and mimonodes and and in poetry and and
Speaker 1: other cultural culturally it thrived what politically it was It
Speaker 1: was just a complete and out a disaster. And it
Speaker 1: was never paradise in a sense that everybody was constantly
Speaker 1: discriminating against everybody. You know, it wasn't everybody again was
Speaker 1: slaughtering everybody. So very is very is all right? So
Speaker 1: I want to say that's also relevant because relevant to
Speaker 1: a discussion of where civilization comes from and how it involves,
Speaker 1: and relevant to the discussion about Christianity. But but I
Speaker 1: just want to fill you in kind of on the
Speaker 1: books that I am that I am reading. God, where's
Speaker 1: my phone? I didn't bring my phone into the office. Okay,
Speaker 1: that is fine. Uh, I want to say something else, No,
Speaker 1: I think that's all I want to say is in
Speaker 1: a sense a backup. You know, introduction wasn't even really
Speaker 1: an introduction. But okay, let's jump in. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: Christian values, and we'll talk about the relations between Christian
Speaker 1: values and civilization. And let's be clear. Hear what I
Speaker 1: mean by civilization? What I mean by civilization. Uh is
Speaker 1: a is a culture of achievements. Uh, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a society, a civilized society, as a society where you
Speaker 1: see great achievements in human life, that is in the arts,
Speaker 1: in architecture, in sciences, in the advancement of human well being.
Speaker 1: Civilization in a sense as a relative term, because it's
Speaker 1: contextual to the peuit it was in We talked about
Speaker 1: this last time we talked about civilization. Right, Egypt was
Speaker 1: a civilization when it was a civilization. If you took
Speaker 1: that civilizations and planted in today, it would be barbaric.
Speaker 1: It would be primitive, barbaric, and and and and you know,
Speaker 1: completely uncivilized. But in the context of its time, it
Speaker 1: provided stability, it provided a legal system, It it proved
Speaker 1: I did some you know, human achievement, pyramids, some dabbling
Speaker 1: in primitive science, particularly astronomy, and and and some arts
Speaker 1: in Egyptian sculpture and things like that. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: relative to the time. Greece is exceptional in a sense
Speaker 1: that much of that civilization would be civilized in any
Speaker 1: period except for the fact that Greeks had slaves and
Speaker 1: viewed slavery positively as a positive feature, you know, with
Speaker 1: some exceptions or some Greek thinkers who condemned slavery, Greek
Speaker 1: stated women, you know, awfully, democracy or political participation was very,
Speaker 1: very limited. So it was civilized in some respects even today.
Speaker 1: But for its time, it's a civilization. It's a great civilization.
Speaker 1: It's one of the great civilizations ever because it has
Speaker 1: features Greece that impacted all civilization following it, and indeed
Speaker 1: would be considered civilized even today. So you know, civilization
Speaker 1: is this threat that goes through history. Maybe it starts
Speaker 1: in with Soopotamia, Egypt, Babylon and Persia, Greece, Rome, Central Asia,
Speaker 1: you know, to some extent, you know, Andalusia, Baghdad, southern Spain,
Speaker 1: and then I think comes to Europe as a civilizing force,
Speaker 1: and Europe becomes civilized at some point, but it's not civilized.
Speaker 1: There's no Western civilization i'd certainly say before the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: and really no civilization in the sense of the achievements
Speaker 1: of the modern world before the Enlightenment. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's no there is a Mayan civilization, there is a
Speaker 1: there are you know, American civilizations pre in in pre Europeans,
Speaker 1: arriving here. Those civilizations are civilized only in the context
Speaker 1: of the place and the time, but not in time,
Speaker 1: because there were already much more dramatic achievements in other places. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, given the time, but given the place. They
Speaker 1: were improvements, you know, for for and compared to the
Speaker 1: culture surrounding them. They were improvements to the mining civilization,
Speaker 1: the Aztec civilization, and so on. And of course there
Speaker 1: was Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, who were kind of parallel
Speaker 1: civilizations that in many respects got stuck and never really
Speaker 1: never really advanced into the modern world, never really took
Speaker 1: the next step, you know, beyond uh, an organized society
Speaker 1: with the rule of law and a government, I mean
Speaker 1: at least laws and and and a government and a
Speaker 1: declining violence and UH and some technological and material achievements, right,
Speaker 1: it got stuck. Those material achievements got stuck. They never
Speaker 1: made political achievements. The philosophical achievements got stuck. That there's
Speaker 1: you know, confuse Confucius and I mean there are a
Speaker 1: few others, but it a philosophical culture doesn't evolve like
Speaker 1: it does in Greece. And then ultimately UH in UH
Speaker 1: in Europe, so so what we have is so that's
Speaker 1: how we consider civilization. That's what I consider civilization. And
Speaker 1: then the question is is civilization can we see a
Speaker 1: causal relationship between civilization and the Christian values? And so
Speaker 1: think about it this way, you know. Can we see
Speaker 1: a relationship between the political achievements of the funding Fathers
Speaker 1: and Christian values? Can we see a relationship between the
Speaker 1: esthetic achievements of the Renaissance and Christian values? Can you
Speaker 1: see a relationship between the incredible scientific scientific achievements of
Speaker 1: the Renaissance through the Age of Science and the Age
Speaker 1: of Reason and into the modern world through Christian values?
Speaker 1: Can we see the material advancement that happens starting you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the late eighteenth century, through the Industrial Revolution
Speaker 1: through the twentieth century. Can we find those do those
Speaker 1: have a root in Christian values? Can we see the
Speaker 1: relative decline in violence that happens starting in certainly starting
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century today in spite of the
Speaker 1: Two World Wars? Can we see the decline of violence
Speaker 1: during a certain period in Western civilization as anchored in
Speaker 1: Christian values? So, you know, that's that's the that's the project,
Speaker 1: that's that's what that's what I H. That's what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about today. We can't cover the whole topic.
Speaker 1: We'll take on a few a few elements, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll talk about this again sometimes in the future.
Speaker 1: Reminder to feel fee to ask questions about about this
Speaker 1: or you know, anything else. But you know, it would
Speaker 1: be particularly interesting if you ask questions about this topic
Speaker 1: or generally about civilization, about history, the history of civilization,
Speaker 1: you know, and all of that. That would be the
Speaker 1: most interesting and I think useful if you could, if
Speaker 1: you could do that. So we've got one question so far,
Speaker 1: but it's a fifty dollars one, so that's cool. And
Speaker 1: of course you could support the show with stickers all right. Now,
Speaker 1: in order to figure out what what Christian values are,
Speaker 1: this is important important, I turned to my UH, to
Speaker 1: my UH basically UH, the companion theologian, the theodre, the
Speaker 1: in house if you will, my in house theologian UH,
Speaker 1: to ask about you what are coote Christian values? And
Speaker 1: in my household the in house theologian is chat Gypt
Speaker 1: five point two. That that that's uh, that is UH.
Speaker 1: That is where I get my theological advice from. Now
Speaker 1: I know for For some this will not be very satisfying.
Speaker 1: They would rather I had an actual, you know, theologian here,
Speaker 1: but you know, alas I do not know any and uh,
Speaker 1: I've discovered that chat Gypt does a really decent job,
Speaker 1: like if you ask chachipt about iron Man, which I
Speaker 1: do you know? In view of this, I mean in
Speaker 1: view that it does a really good job of summarizing
Speaker 1: a philosophy of addressing it. Now, it's wrong on some things,
Speaker 1: and there's some nuances that are wrong, and it's a
Speaker 1: little skeptical of objectivism, but generally it's pretty damn good.
Speaker 1: Now I don't I don't have groc although I guess
Speaker 1: I could use it through through Twitter, but I think
Speaker 1: checchiut seems to be quite good. Again, my measure quite
Speaker 1: good is is asking about something that I know, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I know objectivism. So I said about objectivism,
Speaker 1: and and it does it does it? It does it
Speaker 1: quite well. Jason says Moments will cook you dinner, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but without want to eat it. I don't know. Momon
Speaker 1: food does not strike me as advertizing. I apologize to
Speaker 1: any moments out there who might be great chefs, but
Speaker 1: but just generic moment food is not my thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, people are pretty just saying you know, Grock
Speaker 1: is more straightforward. You know. I wonder if I ask
Speaker 1: Groac what my core about core Christian values? Where they
Speaker 1: get a different answer, significantly the same with Gemini. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here we are. These are the core Christian values. It's
Speaker 1: got ten. I get the associate with the with the
Speaker 1: ten Commandments, and it's separating from the Ten Commandments. I
Speaker 1: give it credit for not just giving me the Tin Commandments. Indeed,
Speaker 1: none of these are in the Ten Commandments explicitly. Uh so,
Speaker 1: uh you know Number one? Love charity, Love and charity.
Speaker 1: So uh you know, love God and love your neighbor.
Speaker 1: Love your neighbor as yourself. You know. This includes compassion,
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, and concern for the vulnerable. Okay, so so
Speaker 1: love love, you know, not so much as an emotion,
Speaker 1: but as a as a as a kind of a
Speaker 1: how do how does you know? As as actions as
Speaker 1: a guide to action, faith, love, faith, trusting God, commitment
Speaker 1: to his teachings. Not you know this is this is
Speaker 1: about reliance on God, loyalty to God, and this is
Speaker 1: where important truths come from. It's faith. The most important
Speaker 1: truths come from three Humility, recognition of human limitations, and
Speaker 1: dependence on God. Rejects pride and self exaltation. The last
Speaker 1: shall be first. The last should be first. Forgiveness, forgiving
Speaker 1: others as God forgives. Uh, you know, and I find
Speaker 1: this weird. Forgiving others as God forgives. God is unbelievably unforgiving.
Speaker 1: Now everybody tells me that that's true of the Old
Speaker 1: Testament God. But the New Testament God is a very
Speaker 1: loving God and is very forgiving God if you follow
Speaker 1: his dictates to the letter. And even then it's not clear, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the day of judgment, I go to Hell,
Speaker 1: I mean, where's forgiveness? Like, Okay, I've sinned here and there,
Speaker 1: But you know, where's the forgiveness to me? No, you
Speaker 1: got to help because why because you were born Jewish
Speaker 1: and you're an atheist. You got to help Hell. What
Speaker 1: you actually did in life? Hell is for you. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Forgiveness, I don't see that turned the other
Speaker 1: cheek turn out the chief Christians are very good at
Speaker 1: tuning the other cheek ah justice, which is more righteousness
Speaker 1: and care for the poor, oppressed and marginalized mercy. It's
Speaker 1: often paid with mercy. Justice and mercy are related, right,
Speaker 1: And then another use of most is mostly in compassion.
Speaker 1: This is a number six, I guess, showing kindness. And
Speaker 1: again some of these repetitive ultimately because as we'll see,
Speaker 1: honesty and integrity, truthfulness and would in action and living
Speaker 1: consistently with one small commitments self sacrifice, willing it to
Speaker 1: give up personal comfort for others. I like the way
Speaker 1: Chadgypt puts it personal comfort person that self sacrifice. Jesus
Speaker 1: gave up personal comfort to be put in a cross
Speaker 1: and kneel to it and suffer an agonizing slow death.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a whitewashing of self sacrifice. How about
Speaker 1: willingness to give up your life, to give up your values,
Speaker 1: to give up what makes me happy, to give up
Speaker 1: what's yours for others. And then it says the second
Speaker 1: bullet point is modify modeled on Christ's life and crucifixion.
Speaker 1: But the whole point of the crucifixion is it wasn't
Speaker 1: just giving up a personal comfort. It was a lot
Speaker 1: more than that. All Right, Maybe I'll try grock. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe groc won't won't sneak in personal comfort kind of
Speaker 1: stuff in there? Obedience to God. Obedience to God, which
Speaker 1: I think is part of faith. Alliging one's life with
Speaker 1: God's will is revealed in the scripture and conscience and conscience,
Speaker 1: and they finally hope, confidence and salvation although most of
Speaker 1: you are not going to get salvation. You're not going
Speaker 1: to get salvation, you know. And if you believe in Augustine,
Speaker 1: before you were born, God already decided whether you were
Speaker 1: saved or not, so forget it. Resurrection and eternal life,
Speaker 1: so hope. All right. So here's the thing I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: what does this all boil down to. It balls down
Speaker 1: to faith. It boils down to faith, and under faith
Speaker 1: you can put in a obedience to God and really hope.
Speaker 1: If hope is confidence in salvation, resurrection, eternal life, those
Speaker 1: all based purely on faith. Uh, providing meaning and suffering
Speaker 1: in adversity. That's all faith, the faith that there is something.
Speaker 1: So I would say, you know, one is hope, sorry,
Speaker 1: one is faith. Faith captures much of this, right. A
Speaker 1: second is self sacrifice. Self sacrifice includes justice and mercy
Speaker 1: and forgiveness. Uh, they're all captured under self sacrifice, right,
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, justice, mercy, and forgiveness. So that's that's true.
Speaker 1: We got faith, which captures hope, obedience to God and faith,
Speaker 1: and we've got and we've got we've got self sacrifice.
Speaker 1: And what's the third one. What's the third one? I
Speaker 1: mean third one would be I think humility or yeah, humility,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, recognition of your own limitation. And
Speaker 1: I would say this is also connected with love, although
Speaker 1: love could be also related to self sacrifice, because that's
Speaker 1: kind of the conception of love that they have. Their
Speaker 1: love is self sacrificial. Their love is about compassion, about
Speaker 1: concern for the vulnerable, about loving your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 1: Where they you know, so you know this humility, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's kind of they throw in here two things like
Speaker 1: honesty and and what is honesty and integrity? Integrity, So okay,
Speaker 1: they have that in there. It's in the same commandments
Speaker 1: that shall not lie as duties. But you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't that that is really so different than all the
Speaker 1: other ones. And you could add it, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's significant. I think the three that I want
Speaker 1: to focus on really a faith, self sacrifice, and humility. Faith,
Speaker 1: self sacrifice and humility. And the question is to what
Speaker 1: extent the faith, self sacrifice, and humility encourage or discourage civilization?
Speaker 1: To what extent did they play a role? These Christian values,
Speaker 1: these essential I think Christian values that capture a lot
Speaker 1: of the other Christians values. To what extent did they
Speaker 1: really represent the striving towards and achievements of civilization. Think
Speaker 1: of a civilization that is built on faith, self sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and humility. I can't think of one. I can't think
Speaker 1: of them because I don't think that these are compatible
Speaker 1: with civilization. Indeed, if you think of an error in
Speaker 1: human history, with faith, self sacrifice, and humility were elevated
Speaker 1: above all else, we're elevated as the as the values
Speaker 1: that should dominate human life and should dominate human organization,
Speaker 1: you know organization. Then if you think about a period
Speaker 1: like that, then you get the Dark Ages and maybe
Speaker 1: part of the Middle Ages. Jennifer Sais Jennifer says, you
Speaker 1: get twelve twenty Europe. Yes, you get you get Europe,
Speaker 1: or you get you know, the Muslim world since it's
Speaker 1: Golden Age faith. I mean, civilization depends on what I mean.
Speaker 1: It depends on great achievements. It depends on hum human
Speaker 1: flourishing and human success at living at creating the material
Speaker 1: possibilities for living and and and improving materially and benefiting materially.
Speaker 1: Human civilization depends on human creativity, things like arts and
Speaker 1: architecture and uh and and you know, and beyond that
Speaker 1: science and technology, and and they depend on being able
Speaker 1: to create political forms that facilitate the betterment of human life. Now,
Speaker 1: none of that comes from faith. There is no you know,
Speaker 1: the Renaissance artists did not figure out anatomy from faith. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the Christian Church made it very, very very difficult for
Speaker 1: the Michelangelos and the Leonardo's and and the great artists
Speaker 1: of them, of the of the Renaissance to figure out
Speaker 1: anatomy because they banned dissection, They made it illegal, they
Speaker 1: viewed it as a sin. Faith does not give you
Speaker 1: Michael Angelo's David. It doesn't even give you a even
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't give you a a a Donald
Speaker 1: Tello's David. It doesn't give you a school of Athens.
Speaker 1: It doesn't give you a uh kind of the the
Speaker 1: amazing I mean, Leonardo da Vinci doesn't give you any
Speaker 1: of his paintings where you know, where you can see
Speaker 1: kind of the careful detail of an emphasis on on
Speaker 1: things like perspective, but then of course on on expression,
Speaker 1: an expression, on emotion, on individuation, on the idea of individual,
Speaker 1: individuating the the particular, the particular people these painting. None
Speaker 1: of that comes from faith that you know. It comes
Speaker 1: from studying human beings. It comes from It comes from
Speaker 1: you know, scientific analysis. It comes from experimentation with colors.
Speaker 1: It comes from a mathematical geomagical analysis of human perception
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, the discovery of perception. It comes
Speaker 1: from a study of anatomy, even the anatomy of the
Speaker 1: human face, the muscles of the face, the musculagy of
Speaker 1: the face. It comes from reason, from the application of rationality. Now,
Speaker 1: all these people might have been Christian, but in that
Speaker 1: they were doing things that led to civilization, In that
Speaker 1: they were in acting causes that led to the to
Speaker 1: the effect there was civilization. They were not acting on
Speaker 1: Christian values. They were acting on rational values, rational values
Speaker 1: that they recognized, either because of the introduction of rational
Speaker 1: values through Aristotle into the culture, you know, within Christianity,
Speaker 1: or implicitly or through their own realization. But they were pursuing,
Speaker 1: for example, the Renaissance. One of the things the Renaissance
Speaker 1: is really pursuing as a value, as an important value
Speaker 1: is beauty, beauty for its own sake as a value. Now,
Speaker 1: even though the Christian Church in that period is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. It is pursuing beauty, but that's not
Speaker 1: a Christian value. That is a pagan value. That is
Speaker 1: a value they've taken from the Greeks. The cathedrals are
Speaker 1: not meant to be beautiful. Indeed, the cathedrals are stark.
Speaker 1: The cathedrals have gargoyles on them, the cathedrals have sharp edges.
Speaker 1: That that there's so much about making you look small,
Speaker 1: making you look insignificant as compared to the majesty and
Speaker 1: grandeur of God. It is the discovery of Greek and
Speaker 1: romanants and the introduction of even architecturally, you know, compare
Speaker 1: compare you know, Renaissance architecture. Two these ugly cathedrals, and
Speaker 1: you can see a different There's a certain harmony that
Speaker 1: is being sought in the Renaissance. There's a certain sense
Speaker 1: of beauty. There's this you know, edges, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more rounding of things that domes rather than spires. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more seeking beauty and harmony Beauty is a value,
Speaker 1: it's a value in human life, but it's a secular value.
Speaker 1: Then is n used by the church because the church
Speaker 1: wants to embrace lots of secular values. Just want to
Speaker 1: make science. Its only wants to make beauty. Its only
Speaker 1: wants to make audits own for political reasons, for for
Speaker 1: for power reasons. Right, I mean, why do they Why
Speaker 1: do the popes make somempeter so amazing and beautiful and
Speaker 1: grand and the higher the best artists. Anyway, Is this
Speaker 1: because there following scripture? Or is it because they want
Speaker 1: to show the world how rich and successful they are.
Speaker 1: They want to show the world, you know, the power
Speaker 1: that they have. And they also want to entice people
Speaker 1: to come to church. So church has beautiful music and
Speaker 1: has great paintings on the wall and and uh and
Speaker 1: so on. So you know, it's it's for the church beauty.
Speaker 1: It's not an end in any kind of sense, and
Speaker 1: it's not to enhance human life. It's to project power
Speaker 1: and to entice people in. To entice people in. It's
Speaker 1: used for the purpose of the church, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: come from the church. Again, when the church dominates, you
Speaker 1: get goggo oyles. If you get any attempt at aesthetics.
Speaker 1: You know, science. We've talked about this, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it many, many times, because I find this so
Speaker 1: damn condemning and so so stunning, you know, particularly given
Speaker 1: the historians who want to rewrite history to pretend that
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages didn't exist. But science science, when faith
Speaker 1: is at the forefront, then science does not advance, it
Speaker 1: does not succeed. That's why for thought and years there
Speaker 1: was just no science. I mean really there was no
Speaker 1: science in the West about four hundred to about fourteen hundred.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a little bit here in there,
Speaker 1: but nothing of substance, not anything dramatic, and no culture
Speaker 1: of science, no civilization. So faith, you know, it's anti science.
Speaker 1: It's the idea. And so this is not an accident.
Speaker 1: Faith is anti science. It's the idea. The truth comes
Speaker 1: from God, from revelation, not from observation, not from experimentation,
Speaker 1: but from revelation or from an ancient book. And they
Speaker 1: were so it was so, I mean, the Christians were
Speaker 1: so immersed in faith. Faith was such a dominant value
Speaker 1: to them that when they discovered Aristotle and they had
Speaker 1: you know, they they found him interesting and fascinating. They
Speaker 1: took so much of what he said on faith, so
Speaker 1: that Aristotle's scientific observations, which for the most part, are wrong,
Speaker 1: they tried to defend as if it were scripture, because
Speaker 1: their whole understanding was Aristotle couldn't be wrong. He was
Speaker 1: inspired by a by a revelation, by by a holy whatever.
Speaker 1: They didn't understand the methodology that he was using, which
Speaker 1: was anti faith pro reason, but uh yeah, anyway, it
Speaker 1: was it was faith is incompatible. It's it's incompatible with
Speaker 1: the civilization of science and and and and beauty and
Speaker 1: aesthetics and and and and the creation of those aesthetics.
Speaker 1: So some other values had to be snuck in, some
Speaker 1: of the values that enter in order to make the
Speaker 1: civilization happen. Those values of beauty from the pagan world,
Speaker 1: the value of reason from Aristotle, the value of logic
Speaker 1: from Aristotle, and then the actual scientific work that the
Speaker 1: Greeks had done and the Arabs had done, Asians or
Speaker 1: whatever the Muslims had done penetrating and people going whoa, oh,
Speaker 1: you can do this stuff. It's not just the Greeks.
Speaker 1: Other people can do it. Maybe we can do it.
Speaker 1: But those ideas, the idea of reason and rationality and
Speaker 1: observation and the possibility of discovery. That is what makes
Speaker 1: civilization possible. Faith is the anti civilizing force. And indeed,
Speaker 1: as those values are entering, the Church is fighting them.
Speaker 1: They're fighting against Aristotle, they're fighting against science, and to
Speaker 1: some extent in early Renaissance, they're fighting against the artists.
Speaker 1: It's controversial what the artists are doing. So faith incompatible
Speaker 1: with civilization, incompatible with civilization. I'm going to go to humility,
Speaker 1: will leave self sacrifice dand it's humility compatible with civilization.
Speaker 1: Humility the recognition of human limitation and dependence of God.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, where would we be without the arrogance
Speaker 1: of a Newton or the Galileo. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: to be pretty arrogant, self confident, self assertive to say
Speaker 1: to the world you've all been wrong, You've all been
Speaker 1: damn wrong. I have the truth, I have discovered the truth.
Speaker 1: This is how the world works, and you guys are wrong.
Speaker 1: Humility I mean was Michelangelo or I mean Michelangelo was
Speaker 1: not humble. He could do with marble what he wanted
Speaker 1: to do with marble, and he knew it, and he
Speaker 1: knew he was the best and he told people he
Speaker 1: was the best. And it's reflective in his work. He
Speaker 1: is pushing himself, he is striving, he's perfecting, he's not
Speaker 1: depending on God, he's not contemplating his limitations. I mean,
Speaker 1: and you know you can argue that to the extent
Speaker 1: that he rejects pride, he suffers for it. The last
Speaker 1: should be first. What civilization was ever built by the last,
Speaker 1: by the meek, by the poor. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to ask a question or make a comment
Speaker 1: or challenge me on something, super chat is open. That's
Speaker 1: the way to do it. Don't just stick it in
Speaker 1: the chat if you want me to see it. The
Speaker 1: comments today are hysterical. Oh my god. All right. You know,
Speaker 1: these the people who sold a civilization, the people who
Speaker 1: build civilization, who create civilization, who have made the modern world,
Speaker 1: which even if you reject you are massive beneficiaries of,
Speaker 1: are not guided by humility. They guided by a passion
Speaker 1: to seek out the truth, to change the world, to
Speaker 1: create something beautiful. Civilization was created by men who reject
Speaker 1: the value of humility and embrace their own capacity for genius,
Speaker 1: their own capacity to shape the world, their own capacity
Speaker 1: to understand the world. Free of faith, free of a
Speaker 1: reliance on a god, on mysticism. I mean, do humble
Speaker 1: men create the United States of America? No, These were
Speaker 1: men were supreme confidence and self esteem. These are not
Speaker 1: men that were the last. These were the men who
Speaker 1: were first of immense intelligence, of a men's capabilities, and
Speaker 1: they knew it. They were actors. In reality. They weren't
Speaker 1: guided by faith to establish America. They weren't guided by
Speaker 1: humility to establish America. They were guided by self estas theme,
Speaker 1: love for this world, love for freedom as individuals. As individuals. Again,
Speaker 1: they might have had, they might have had, you know,
Speaker 1: presented Christian ideals because that's the world in which they live,
Speaker 1: and that's all they thought. I'm saying. They acted against
Speaker 1: those ideals. Oh, I mean Newton was deeply religious, Locke wise,
Speaker 1: you know, Michelangelo was. No, No, not so much. But
Speaker 1: they acted against that. I don't know exactly what Franklin
Speaker 1: meant by humility, but religious humility, recognition of his limitations
Speaker 1: and dependence on God and rejecting and self exultation and
Speaker 1: the last shall be first. That's not Franklin. That's not
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin. Even if he wrote in His Little Book
Speaker 1: of Virtues, to be humble. This is not the humility.
Speaker 1: It's not Christian humility that he's talking about. You know.
Speaker 1: Don't be boastful. We all can agree, don't be boastful.
Speaker 1: Don't take credit for things you are not responsible for.
Speaker 1: Don't you know a lord of other people because of
Speaker 1: your success. There are lots of things that we can
Speaker 1: agree that might fall under something related to humility that
Speaker 1: Franklin might be talking about. But in terms of what
Speaker 1: it means in Christianity, no, no. And finally, self sacrifice,
Speaker 1: I mean self sacrifice fundamentally means the giving up of
Speaker 1: personal values, of your values, of values that you believe in,
Speaker 1: necessarily for your life, your happiness, for your success, for
Speaker 1: your flourishing, for the sake of others, giving up a
Speaker 1: high value for no nothing in return, no something lower
Speaker 1: in return. Again, that is not That is not civilization,
Speaker 1: so civilization building. Self sacrifice is what you demand of
Speaker 1: people who go to war for you. It's what you
Speaker 1: demand of your serfs, it's what you demand of slaves.
Speaker 1: But self sacrifice, self sacrifice is not a morality of
Speaker 1: value seekers. People who are you know, you know, aggressively
Speaker 1: pursuing passionately pursuing, aggressively and passionately pursuing the values, which
Speaker 1: is what you need to build a civilization and to
Speaker 1: sustain a civilization and maintain a civilization. You need the
Speaker 1: creation of values, human values, values necessary for human life.
Speaker 1: I mean a sacrifice would be to ask Michael Angel
Speaker 1: not to sculpt David because I don't know there was
Speaker 1: some charity work that need to be done. You need,
Speaker 1: you need to go in and feed people in the
Speaker 1: soup kitchen. I mean, none of the people who built
Speaker 1: Western civilization, who created the civilization, Who who who created
Speaker 1: the achievements right, the science, the art, the architecture, the
Speaker 1: political freedom, political liberty that that characterizes modern civilization. Those
Speaker 1: people didn't do it as an act of sacrifice. Even
Speaker 1: when the funding fathers signed the Declamation independence, knowing that
Speaker 1: they're likely to be killed because they're likely to lose
Speaker 1: the war and the British will execute them. They don't
Speaker 1: view it as a sacrifice in a sense of giving
Speaker 1: up a high value for low value. They view their
Speaker 1: freedom as a high value, a value that will interest
Speaker 1: their life's for same goes for the soldiers who fight
Speaker 1: to protect civilization, defend civilization, sustain civilization. It's not a
Speaker 1: self sacrifice. It's not about mercy and compassion and a
Speaker 1: willingness to give up stuff. And suddenly nobody's ever created
Speaker 1: civilization by modeling Christ's life. Christ's life is stagnation. It's
Speaker 1: not elevation. It's stagnation. It's not progress. The idea of
Speaker 1: human progress, the idea that we can achieve more that
Speaker 1: is not a humble idea, that is not an idea
Speaker 1: based on faith. God doesn't promise that anyway. You promise
Speaker 1: the salvation to some, but salvation has any doo with
Speaker 1: achieving material prosperity or beauty or anything else in this
Speaker 1: earth other than sacrifice. And sacrifice denies you the time,
Speaker 1: the energy, the focus, the ability to make to achieve
Speaker 1: great things. So there is there's no relationship between these
Speaker 1: Christian values and the civilized in the civilized world and
Speaker 1: civilization I mean compassion good thing, But compassion doesn't build civilization.
Speaker 1: Mercy doesn't justice in a sense of care for the
Speaker 1: poor and the press, and marginalized I mean finding fathers.
Speaker 1: The declamation of Pendis doesn't talk about the poor, preston
Speaker 1: marginalized talks about individual rights. Oh men are equal, equal
Speaker 1: in their rights, politically free as individuals. Forgiveness. I'm just
Speaker 1: looking at this, I mean, which of these? And I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna get to love because i think the
Speaker 1: definition of Christian love is absurd and ridiculous because it
Speaker 1: relies on self sacrifice. We can talk another time about love.
Speaker 1: Jennifer's compassion for whom, compassion for the last, the last
Speaker 1: shall be first. It's a compassion for the suffering, compassion
Speaker 1: for the people who don't have compassion for anybody except you.
Speaker 1: And of course hope. Hope is you know. Entrepreneurs are
Speaker 1: not hopeful. They're doers. They go create the world that
Speaker 1: they want. They don't sit around hoping for it. They're
Speaker 1: not confident in this salvation. They go create, they go build,
Speaker 1: they go make again. Entrepreneurs, you don't function on the
Speaker 1: basis of faith. I mean confidence, belief based on based
Speaker 1: on evidence in your own ability and in the market
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, but not faith. And entrepreneurship is
Speaker 1: not about self sacrifice. It's about working hard, it's about
Speaker 1: trade offs. It's about giving up stuff. Indeed, faith self
Speaker 1: sacrifice and humility anti civilization of values and to the
Speaker 1: extent that they had taken seriously, we know what they
Speaker 1: lead to in spite of the idea of love and
Speaker 1: and uh and and forgiveness. I mean, did Charlomage forgive
Speaker 1: those well they Frankish, well, I'm not even sure what
Speaker 1: they were. But you know, the four thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: soldiers who refused to convert to Christianity who he slaughtered
Speaker 1: in one day? Was that an act of charity, forgiveness, love?
Speaker 1: What exactly was it? Certainly an act of faith he
Speaker 1: believed God had you know, had not commanded, but in
Speaker 1: trust to him to do the right thing. Maybe viewed
Speaker 1: as a more active justice when heretics were burnt at
Speaker 1: the stake for disagreeing about whether there was a trinity
Speaker 1: or what the relationship in the trinity between God and
Speaker 1: the Son where there was literally a son, whether they
Speaker 1: were co equals, or whether they were all the same.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, Catholic Church post what do you call it?
Speaker 1: Nicea holds that it's a three that are one, right,
Speaker 1: So they don't believe in a is a. The Catholic
Speaker 1: Church does not believe a is a. They don't believe
Speaker 1: a thing is what it is. They believe something three
Speaker 1: different things can be one thing. So three different gods
Speaker 1: can be one god. And if you disagreed about that,
Speaker 1: or some implications of that, a minor explanation of that,
Speaker 1: you were burned at a steak. I mean Calvin burnt
Speaker 1: somebody who was very friendly with and he actually respected,
Speaker 1: because of a disagreement about the trinity in Culvi's Geneva.
Speaker 1: But there was no tolerance for people who misinterpreted the Bible.
Speaker 1: There's only one interpretation, Calvin's in this case, and if
Speaker 1: you disagreed with it, it was it. You were burned
Speaker 1: at the steak. So Christianity incompatible with civilization, incompatible with freedom.
Speaker 1: Now I say incompatible that is to the extent that
Speaker 1: it is taken seriously, to the extent that it is
Speaker 1: embraced fully, it leads to the opposite, it leads to uncivilized.
Speaker 1: To the extent that it's just embraced at the margin.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, civilization can still exist Christians. You're not adding
Speaker 1: to it. It's subtracting from it, and it's subtracting from
Speaker 1: human flourishing. But it can coexist if you will. Reason
Speaker 1: and faith can coexist even though the opposites and they're
Speaker 1: driving civilization in different directions right, one uncivilized, one to civilize,
Speaker 1: and ultimately one has to win and one will lose.
Speaker 1: But again to the extent that we are Christian, to
Speaker 1: the extent we take it seriously, to the extent that
Speaker 1: we're going to be consistent about it, to the extent
Speaker 1: that we pursue it. To that extent, we are driving
Speaker 1: ourselves a culture a world away from civilization, towards about barty,
Speaker 1: towards twelve twenty or nine thirty or six sixty six,
Speaker 1: there's go they go, six sixty six. That's a good number.
Speaker 1: So my conclusion not surprising, I think to anybody out
Speaker 1: there is Christian values is incompatible with civilization. They hold
Speaker 1: civilization back, They undermine civilization and to fully, to fully
Speaker 1: embrace the potential that is civilization, the potential that is freedom,
Speaker 1: the potential that is science, The potential is beauty and
Speaker 1: aesthetics and art. The potential it is human achievement in
Speaker 1: any realm, The potential it is love, the potential it
Speaker 1: is human relationships. One needs to reject the Christian values.
Speaker 1: Now it's not enough to reject them. You have to
Speaker 1: replace them. And you have to replace the values inc
Speaker 1: it in reality discovered through reason. We are rational animal.
Speaker 1: To live as nature in a sense, to live by
Speaker 1: our nature requires us to banon faith in the name
Speaker 1: of reason, to banon self sacrifice in the name of
Speaker 1: our own thriving, in our own flourishing, and to bannon
Speaker 1: humility in the name of pride, a commitment to our
Speaker 1: own success, achievement, perfection. So yes, Christianity civilization, they don't mix.
Speaker 1: I mean they mix, but the one is polluting the other.
Speaker 1: Christianity is polluting the element that is civilized. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you guys, thanks for joining me. That was an hour.
Speaker 1: All right, We're good, super chat is good. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that we're on a good track. A lot
Speaker 1: of questions, all right, I'll just to get through all
Speaker 1: of them. Let me remind you of a few things again.
Speaker 1: You can keep asking questions, that's great. And if you
Speaker 1: don't want to ask questions, you can you can do
Speaker 1: you can do stickers. December thirty first, we'll be doing
Speaker 1: an extended show review of twenty twenty five and looking
Speaker 1: forward to twenty twenty six from one pm East Coast
Speaker 1: time until who knows four plus hours. We'll also make
Speaker 1: that a big fundraising push fundraising events, So please, if
Speaker 1: you're not a regular live listener, please consider coming live
Speaker 1: just to participate in the fundraising aspect of it. It'll
Speaker 1: also be fun and engaging and we'll have some fun
Speaker 1: banter and back and forth. I might have some guests
Speaker 1: show up to take some of your questions. I'll try
Speaker 1: to let you know in advance once I know who's
Speaker 1: going to come, so that might also be might also
Speaker 1: be installed. But generally we'll try to make it fun
Speaker 1: and interesting, and there'll be the suspense of can we raise?
Speaker 1: Can we raise the money? Which is always fun. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to contribute and don't want to use YouTube
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Speaker 1: don't don't want to do it on YouTube, you can
Speaker 1: do it on PayPal. Just write in the notes of
Speaker 1: PayPal under your run book show PayPal, just write in
Speaker 1: the notes that it's for the New Year's You've show,
Speaker 1: so I know to attribute that money for that show.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see if there's anything else I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention before we jump into your questions. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got a bunch of sponsors that're down there. You
Speaker 1: can you can you can find the links down there.
Speaker 1: I'll give them full credit nixt show and yeah, Patreon,
Speaker 1: don't forget to become a monthly supporter of the show
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Speaker 1: you get it with ads. But if you do ten
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or whatever, but now you don't have any ads. Also,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know this, but it turns out that
Speaker 1: if you are if you support this own Patreon at
Speaker 1: five dollars above, you have access to all the all
Speaker 1: the members only shows. You can't watch it live because
Speaker 1: that technically YouTube doesn't allow me to do. You have
Speaker 1: to be a member on YouTube to watch them live,
Speaker 1: but you can't watch them after the fact. You can
Speaker 1: watch all the shows the members only shows after the
Speaker 1: fact on YouTube, you know, I guess, I guess, No,
Speaker 1: you can't watch them. You get a podcast version of them.
Speaker 1: So you get a podcast version of all the members
Speaker 1: only shows that you can listen to. So that's another
Speaker 1: poke that exists on Patreon beyond the regular pooks. Those
Speaker 1: are unique to patreons, So please consider becoming a monthly supporter.
Speaker 1: As we enter into twenty twenty six, it'll be great
Speaker 1: to increase the number of people supporting on a monthly basis.
Speaker 1: And of course, the the the dollar amount. All right,
Speaker 1: let me turn to your questions. Let's doing this, all right,
Speaker 1: let's stull with Andrew. Fifty dollars, Thank you, Andrew. Advice
Speaker 1: for serious believers of Catholicism in their youth who now
Speaker 1: consider themselves subjectivists. To avoid the ranscid premise of suffering
Speaker 1: on the earth as a supernatural value, one must first
Speaker 1: come to know that acknowledging one's pleasure is safe. Yes,
Speaker 1: acknowledging one pleasure is safe, and pleasure is good. Pleasure
Speaker 1: is to be enjoyed. Embrace pleasure. I mean, make sure
Speaker 1: it's not a sacrificial pleasure, that you're not giving up
Speaker 1: a higher value for it. But pleasure, core, pleasure is good.
Speaker 1: It's a sign of life. It's a positive sign. So
Speaker 1: it's the knowledge you know. Pleasure is safe, it's good,
Speaker 1: it's a value. It's pro life, pro you there's no
Speaker 1: sin involved. Also to those of you who were once
Speaker 1: Catholic and a now objectivist or Christian generally, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend Iinman's essay, and you can find it in the internet.
Speaker 1: You can find it for free on Air's website. Duty
Speaker 1: versus causality, because I think that what happens to many
Speaker 1: people who come to objectivism from religion, any religion, but
Speaker 1: primarily Christianity, is they then approach the objective's ethics as duties.
Speaker 1: Iin Ran rejects duty through and through completely. She calls
Speaker 1: it an anti concept. It is a destructive idea that
Speaker 1: un minds morality, undermines ethics. I mean, we'll have to
Speaker 1: do a show on this. So you've got to reject duty.
Speaker 1: And this is the sense of which objectivism is not
Speaker 1: a religion. You do not act out of duty in
Speaker 1: order to live your morality, And she talks about the
Speaker 1: objection's morality is causal. You act out of an understanding
Speaker 1: of causation instead of acting on duty. You act based
Speaker 1: on values that are pro life, and what causes those values,
Speaker 1: the actions that are necessary to achieve those values, those
Speaker 1: become your virtues and values. So morality, you know, religion
Speaker 1: tells you thou shalt, thou shalt that your duty to
Speaker 1: do it. And by the way, the more you suffer
Speaker 1: doing it, the more virtuous it is. Because you know,
Speaker 1: religion fundamental leans anti individual human life. It's not a
Speaker 1: pro life ideology religion, it's an anti life ideology. But
Speaker 1: objectivism says, no, don't do it out of duty. You
Speaker 1: must discover your values. You must figure out what's good
Speaker 1: for you. Here's some philosophical ideas, but you must make
Speaker 1: them your own. And those abstractions don't give you concrete
Speaker 1: guidance in terms of what to do in your life.
Speaker 1: You have to figure that out. So you know, rationality,
Speaker 1: reason is a cordon of value in objectivism. Okay, what
Speaker 1: do I do with that? How do I apply it?
Speaker 1: What does that mean in terms of career, love, a
Speaker 1: pursuit of anything. Well, you have to figure that out,
Speaker 1: not subjectively, not out of emotion, but through a process
Speaker 1: of causation. If reason is a value, what causes my
Speaker 1: must I affect in the world in order to achieve it?
Speaker 1: What must I do in my life in order to
Speaker 1: achieve the value of reason? If you want to be
Speaker 1: successful in your career, If that's a value, what must
Speaker 1: I do? How must I act? What should I cause
Speaker 1: in my life? To achieve successive work. So you act
Speaker 1: on the basis facts, evidence, reality, and on the basis
Speaker 1: of values that are oweent it towards your life. And
Speaker 1: if you have a sense of thus shall be h
Speaker 1: You know, objectivism says that honesty is a virtue, and
Speaker 1: and you you have this thing in your head that
Speaker 1: says that I shall be honest. I need to be
Speaker 1: honest honesty you know, you know, then you haven't. You've
Speaker 1: got to understand how honesty affects your life. How honesty
Speaker 1: is just an application of rationality. How it's a means
Speaker 1: to achieving the value of reason, It's a means to
Speaker 1: achieving the value of self esteem, it's the means to
Speaker 1: achieving the value of happiness. It's not a commandment, it's
Speaker 1: not a duty. And suffering and pain mostly signals, with
Speaker 1: exception of exercise, that something is not right, something is
Speaker 1: not working, whereas on the duty premise, pain is suffering
Speaker 1: is a sign of positive So yeah, I mean, when
Speaker 1: you come to objectives and from religion, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of baggage. There's a lot of baggage, and you've got
Speaker 1: to be aware of that. And I think Andrew's right
Speaker 1: in one of the baggage is one of the ways
Speaker 1: to you know, realize you in a new world now,
Speaker 1: It is to come to terms with the idea of
Speaker 1: the of the goodness, of the value of pleasure molten splendor.
Speaker 1: Why does so many think that a charismatic objectives leader
Speaker 1: will help socialism fuentes to all have large followings, But
Speaker 1: aren't they just reflections of the culture. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: a reflection of an individualist culture, a reflection of individual's culture,
Speaker 1: is more important than a new tribe. Yeah, I mean absolutely,
Speaker 1: I don't think a charismatic objectives leader will help. There's
Speaker 1: no harm. Be great, but it's not going to make
Speaker 1: a big difference. It'll attract a few more people, it'll
Speaker 1: increase maybe leadership of bne Rand. But this is the point.
Speaker 1: To be a follower fuentis. You don't have to do
Speaker 1: a lot of thinking, you don't have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of integrating, you don't have to do a lot
Speaker 1: of work on yourself. It's pure emotion. The same with socialism.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just it's easy to follow a leader
Speaker 1: in that respect because you just follow the leader and
Speaker 1: you follow your emotions, and you get angry when you
Speaker 1: when it's appropriate. Objectivism requires that you think, integrate, understand,
Speaker 1: and the most charismatic leader can do is prompt you
Speaker 1: to do that. But then you have to do the work,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing to indicate the culture. People in the
Speaker 1: culture are ready for that work, ready to actually do
Speaker 1: the thinking, to actually do the integrating. But look, the
Speaker 1: reason they think that is because everybody wants a shortcut.
Speaker 1: Well frustrated by the fact that we don't yet have
Speaker 1: an objectivest world, well frustrated by the fact that evil
Speaker 1: and bad people succeeding politically certainly as much as they
Speaker 1: are and culturally as much as they are. And we
Speaker 1: want a solution, and we want a solution now, and
Speaker 1: we're not willing to wait. And if only a great
Speaker 1: charismatic leader came about, but the only way he would
Speaker 1: gain large audiences is you're right, if those audiences became
Speaker 1: a tribe, and I'm thinking following tribe. What we need
Speaker 1: is cultural change. Cultural change takes a long time. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. People have to do the work themselves.
Speaker 1: Nobody can do it for them. No charisma can do
Speaker 1: the work for you. You have to do the work.
Speaker 1: You have to change, and it takes generations. It just does.
Speaker 1: There's no shortcuts, no shortcuts, sadly or not sadly. I
Speaker 1: mean this is it's hard to be saddened by It's
Speaker 1: hard to be sad by the metaphysical, the very nature
Speaker 1: of reality. There's just no shortcuts. People have to do
Speaker 1: the work, and work takes time, and for people to
Speaker 1: realize they have to do the work is going to
Speaker 1: take a long time. Andrews says, I've observed something, and
Speaker 1: wonder if you think it's ominous. Christian aesthetics has improved lately,
Speaker 1: just one example, in a series in a In the series,
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese is directing the Saints much more compelling and
Speaker 1: even beautiful at times. What does this portend, you know,
Speaker 1: a rise in in in Uh, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd have to see the show and to see to
Speaker 1: what extent is it really Christian right? To what extent
Speaker 1: is it really uh enforcing Christian values? But look, the
Speaker 1: reality is that we live in a world dominated by
Speaker 1: Christian values in many respects, certainly in the in the
Speaker 1: realm of ideas and in the realm of esthetics. I mean,
Speaker 1: socialism is fundamentally Christian. You know, for interests of course,
Speaker 1: doing it in the name of christiananity. So we are
Speaker 1: surrounded everywhere by Christian values. And did the fact that
Speaker 1: did the fact that, I don't know, Michelangelo sculpt the
Speaker 1: pieta Christian theme. You can even say the theme of
Speaker 1: the sculpture, which might be, you know, resignation, Mary's resignation
Speaker 1: to the fate of her son. You know that that
Speaker 1: make Christianity stronger, maybe at the margin, but it also
Speaker 1: there's also such a strong secular aspect to it that
Speaker 1: I think it also weakens it at the same time.
Speaker 1: So it depends what people responded to, and I think
Speaker 1: they they much more responded to a humanized Jesus, a strong,
Speaker 1: powerful man, a beautiful woman mourning who lover because Mary
Speaker 1: in it is just as young as Jesus is uh
Speaker 1: And and there's a real there's a real secular aspect
Speaker 1: to it, even if ultimately the theme is she's resigning
Speaker 1: to the loss right. So it depends on exactly what
Speaker 1: the art form is actually doing. But look, Christianity in
Speaker 1: some respects is on the rise. More people are taking
Speaker 1: it seriously. It seems to be gaining influence politically generally,
Speaker 1: I think we need to be worried, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, Christian music is kind of silly.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a form of either rock or
Speaker 1: pop or country. Uh. You don't have a bah, you
Speaker 1: don't ever a mot are doing a requiem, you don't
Speaker 1: None of that exists. So even if it's goes directly
Speaker 1: in the Saints, it's one element that, you know, to
Speaker 1: really have pro Christian aesthetics, you got a long way
Speaker 1: to go, particularly if you compare it to the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: And the Renaissance is a period of de Christianization, not
Speaker 1: of intensifying Christianization. So I'm not too worried about any
Speaker 1: particular a TV series, but maybe it's a broader phenomena.
Speaker 1: But all the themes of almost all the movies are
Speaker 1: altruistic and collectivistic, and in that sense anti civilization. And
Speaker 1: your civilization just survives as wider then how long I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it survives. Pick axing pick axing in Europe.
Speaker 1: On Europe, he says, Finnish Bernstein's a splendid exchange recently,
Speaker 1: incredible real heroic gems like ancient wheat being traded by
Speaker 1: up to the euphrates for copper and lapis and lazuli
Speaker 1: all the way to the fallacy of the corn laws.
Speaker 1: I was shuffed. Yeah, I mean it's a really really
Speaker 1: good book. I mean there's some things later on when
Speaker 1: he gets the twentieth century and and current events that
Speaker 1: I think he's compromising. But his history stuff is just amazing.
Speaker 1: And yes, the idea of trade in a very very
Speaker 1: primitive society when you know, when they didn't have even
Speaker 1: have wagons and wheels and they still manage the trade stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, and the amount of trade that was going
Speaker 1: on internationally early early in human existence, early in human civilization,
Speaker 1: because this is kind of is just stunning. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1: And uh and and Bernstein's it's called It's a Splendid
Speaker 1: Exchange is the book by the author's name is Bernstein.
Speaker 1: It's on Amazon and gained audiobook. You get it a
Speaker 1: book form or kindle. It really, really, really is a
Speaker 1: good book, and it gives you a perspective on trade
Speaker 1: and how it's been part of human life pretty much forever.
Speaker 1: That is incredibly valuable. Sea's bad. What would iron Ran
Speaker 1: think of Chernobyl disaster if she lived to see it?
Speaker 1: What would she think of the current regime. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, look, let's be very clear, I
Speaker 1: do not channel lining rand. I don't know what she
Speaker 1: would think, really, I mean, I can I can guess,
Speaker 1: or I can give you my my But she was
Speaker 1: an original thinking and always had perspectives and ways of approaching,
Speaker 1: and she was a genius in ways. I'm not. So
Speaker 1: there's just no way for me to tell you what
Speaker 1: Iran would think. You know, But but I think it's
Speaker 1: the obvious, right she she would think Chernobyl was expected
Speaker 1: in a consequence of socialism and communism. I think the
Speaker 1: way was the way it was depicted in the miniseries Chernobyl.
Speaker 1: I think it was an HBO or something like that. Chernobyl.
Speaker 1: I think it's very much aligned with I think the
Speaker 1: way Iran would have imagined it happening. If you read
Speaker 1: Atlas Shrugged. It's almost like some scenes in Atlas Shrugged,
Speaker 1: like the train, like the training and the tunnel and
Speaker 1: other things. So, you know, I think I think what
Speaker 1: happened there is very consistent with what she did, right
Speaker 1: with what she she believed in what she she believed,
Speaker 1: how evil functions, the way evil functions the evasion that
Speaker 1: the not taking push responsibility to anything. I think she
Speaker 1: she saw that, she understood that, she understood that that
Speaker 1: was very much in the nature of communism, and so
Speaker 1: what she would think of the county regime, she would
Speaker 1: she would again, I don't think she'd be surprised. She
Speaker 1: believed that that Russian culture was was very much mystical,
Speaker 1: superstitious and mystical, and and very much relied as a
Speaker 1: consequence on a powerful authoritarian leader. And I don't think
Speaker 1: she'd be surprised that Putin's authoritarianism and that there were
Speaker 1: alti passivity of the Russian people. I mean not all
Speaker 1: of them. Many of them left and many of them objected,
Speaker 1: but most of them there were alter pacivity of the
Speaker 1: Russian people, just like they were passive under Communism, that
Speaker 1: passive under Putin. So I don't think she'd be surprised
Speaker 1: at all that Russia became authoritarian in a different way
Speaker 1: than Communism, but still essentially authoritarian with the fall of Communism.
Speaker 1: Molten's splendid kindness rocks altruism. Guilt, self sacrifice sucks, yes,
Speaker 1: and kindness rocks to people worthy of kindness. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some people I would not be kind to I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in you know, some people deserve hate,
Speaker 1: some people deserve to be treated badly. So kindness rocks
Speaker 1: to people you don't know, or to people, to people
Speaker 1: you have, to people of whom you have no reason
Speaker 1: to think ill of, But to people who you think
Speaker 1: ill of, you shouldn't be kind. Yep, thanks Moulten, not
Speaker 1: Chavi Jagorithm. Some days I think the Enlightenment is just
Speaker 1: too vigorous for ideas are silly and primitive as Christianity
Speaker 1: than do it. But when I see what the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is devolved into in such a short time, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say yeah. I mean it is to say
Speaker 1: I have this strong sense that the Enlightenment has been
Speaker 1: weakened dramatically over the last twenty years. And it's it's
Speaker 1: we're living through times right now that are truly scary
Speaker 1: and and I mean I've been watching some of the
Speaker 1: turning points us say stuff. I'll talk about it on Monday,
Speaker 1: God and and and the on Twitter a lot. So
Speaker 1: I see a lot of these stupid heritage Americans, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the barbarity, the primitiveness of this idea of heritage Americans.
Speaker 1: My eleventh grand parents, it's eleven generations earlier, came on
Speaker 1: the main flower, my tenth. This family was a funding
Speaker 1: father and this is you know, like what have you done?
Speaker 1: And and what does that have anything to do with you?
Speaker 1: They and and how many of them were slave owners?
Speaker 1: And how many of them were criminals? And how many
Speaker 1: of them did horrible things? Because if you go back
Speaker 1: eleven generations, that's a lot of grandparents. There a lot
Speaker 1: of grandparents. That's a lot of people. Some of them
Speaker 1: were really bad. So what does it mean? And yet
Speaker 1: they take it so seriously, they're so intent on it,
Speaker 1: they're so committed to it. I mean, I couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: just a few years ago that America would become this collectivistic,
Speaker 1: this tribal, this racist. I mean, I guess should have
Speaker 1: known better because it has a racist past, but I
Speaker 1: did not. I think that was something America powerfully had overcome.
Speaker 1: And to see it revoting back to it, unbelievable. Uh,
Speaker 1: swish up. Excellent show and presentation today. Happy holidays to
Speaker 1: you and yours. Happy holidays to you too, Merry Christmas,
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, and all the rest. Lourie, please talk
Speaker 1: about the process challenges in writing your book and how
Speaker 1: you overcome them. Came them? Oh, the process challenges. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what process challenges are. By the way, we
Speaker 1: just signed to deal with an agent. I'm excited. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think most of the challenges intellectual. Most
Speaker 1: of the challenges intellectual, and someday I don't think there's
Speaker 1: really I mean, Don is a good writer, I'm a
Speaker 1: good editor. We both can hash out these things. So
Speaker 1: process is I think pretty down. You'd have to ask
Speaker 1: Don if he feels differently. I think the main thing
Speaker 1: is that the intellectual stuff is hard. So how do
Speaker 1: you how do you conceptualize Christianity? For example? Like there
Speaker 1: are a million different types of Christianity? Right, every little
Speaker 1: Protestant sects has a different interpretation. What's the essence? What
Speaker 1: are the essentials of Christianity? And how do you do
Speaker 1: it in a way that doesn't come off dismissive of
Speaker 1: all the different christian variations? How does it? How do you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But even Jesus, they're like multiple interpretations of Jesus. Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson has an interpretation of someone in the amount which
Speaker 1: is different than I think Pope X's and Pope Wis
Speaker 1: and Pope Ce's, they all have different ones. So what
Speaker 1: is the essence? What are you criticizing Christianity? So you
Speaker 1: have to do that again. You have to do it
Speaker 1: unless you're just writing for an objective at audience. You
Speaker 1: have to do it in a credible way that a
Speaker 1: Christian audience or mildly Christian audience, because I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll convince anybody who's thoroughly Christian, but a mildly Christian audience,
Speaker 1: so somebody raised in Christianity would recognize it. And then
Speaker 1: how do you untangle the fact that in the same
Speaker 1: geographic area at the same time you have these opposite
Speaker 1: forces functioning. You have Christianity functioning, and you have call
Speaker 1: it Greek ideas or Ristatilian ideas functioning, and Christianity at
Speaker 1: least nominally seems to embrace some of the Greek ideas.
Speaker 1: So what extent does it embracing Greek ideas because of
Speaker 1: the nature of Christianity? And to what extent is it
Speaker 1: embracing idea Greek ideas in spite of its nature of Christianity?
Speaker 1: And I think it's in spite of Christianity. But how
Speaker 1: do you show that you know, and because a lot
Speaker 1: of Christians will say, see, we embraced Abstotle, we brought
Speaker 1: reason into the West. And it's like you did that
Speaker 1: in spite of being Christian, not because you were Christian.
Speaker 1: Christianity fought against it, or Christianity Quai ideas fought against
Speaker 1: so all of that untangling, that's the most complex. I
Speaker 1: think that the layout of stoical the sequence historically of
Speaker 1: you know, the introduction of Greek Austatilian well, the decline
Speaker 1: of Greek ideas and early Christianity and the going into
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages and the rediscovery of Greek ideas in
Speaker 1: in the Late Middle Ages or the early Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: and then more so in the Late Middle Ages. It
Speaker 1: leads to the Renaissance, leads to the Enlightenment, leads to
Speaker 1: the modern world. That I think we have right that
Speaker 1: that I think is lays it out and I you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've I think we have a deep understanding
Speaker 1: of that. But even there, what is important, what is
Speaker 1: not important, you know, is complicated. But I think it's untangling.
Speaker 1: How do you separate that from the story of Christianity.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean a lot of people claim that
Speaker 1: Christianity is all answer for a conception of the individual. Uh,
Speaker 1: but but you know, I don't. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: even true. I think there's a that conception of the individual,
Speaker 1: the conception of ie, a conception of a of an
Speaker 1: individual mind already exists in Greece. So I don't think
Speaker 1: that was invented by Christianity, you know, I really So.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that people throw at
Speaker 1: you as the different virtues of Christianity, dignity, I don't
Speaker 1: know the equality of man. And yet Christianity abided by
Speaker 1: slavery for a very long time. And and but then
Speaker 1: the many of the leading abolitionists are Christian, So how
Speaker 1: do you how do you do that? I mean, all
Speaker 1: the southern slave owners are Christian and use Christianity justify slavery.
Speaker 1: But then all the abolitionists, or significant number of the
Speaker 1: abolitions were like Quakers, and and and I mean committed Christians,
Speaker 1: not not just moduling Christians. So how do you how
Speaker 1: do you explain that? So it's that's the complication. It's
Speaker 1: an intellectual issue of figuring out what's the saying, show
Speaker 1: what's not, and how to untangle it? All right, all right, Andrew,
Speaker 1: do you agree that this. With this as a general
Speaker 1: point regarding pity, an emotionally connected person allows himself to
Speaker 1: access all emotions, including pity, but Christianity says to maximize it.
Speaker 1: Pity is an intense emotion. Don't play with it. I
Speaker 1: don't know what playing with an emotion is. But you
Speaker 1: know what does pity mean? Right? I mean to feel
Speaker 1: sorry for somebody. I mean, if you're rational, you only
Speaker 1: feel sorry for somebody when they deserve that feeling. That
Speaker 1: is now, because you have baggage, you might feel it
Speaker 1: when it's undeserving, when you shouldn't feel it in a sense,
Speaker 1: but you feel it. So what objectivism teaches you use
Speaker 1: Your emotions are what they are. You feel them, you
Speaker 1: recognize them, and then you evaluate whether they deserve taking
Speaker 1: action or not. Based on Christianity says it's it's pity
Speaker 1: is a essential emotion on which you should always take action.
Speaker 1: It's an essential emotion that should guide you in life.
Speaker 1: You should pity the poor, you should pity the weak.
Speaker 1: But I don't pity the poor. I pity some poor.
Speaker 1: I don't have the emotion of pity towards the poor.
Speaker 1: I have an emotion of pity towards the unjustly poor.
Speaker 1: But if I see about a you know the example
Speaker 1: I always use, if I see a white beating drunk
Speaker 1: who's poor, I don't pity them. I mean, if anything,
Speaker 1: it's a sense of justice the poor because they deserve
Speaker 1: to be poor. So there's a deserving poor and there's
Speaker 1: an undeserving poor. And to the extent that you're going
Speaker 1: to respawn emotionally, it's you should You should be responding
Speaker 1: emotionally in a sense of I guess pity is a
Speaker 1: is you're feeling sorry for them. You feel for them,
Speaker 1: you you, you, you, you, You have empathy for them.
Speaker 1: In some sense, you only want to do that for
Speaker 1: people who don't deserve to be poor. So Christianity doesn't discriminate.
Speaker 1: I don't pity my enemy, you know so, So while
Speaker 1: you take your emotions as they are, you also should
Speaker 1: evaluate them in a sense of do they come from
Speaker 1: from the right place? Do they come from from the
Speaker 1: place of love or from a place to us gin Rooni,
Speaker 1: I guess terminology from the place of fear Andrew the
Speaker 1: impassioned part of Rand's answer on how we can teach
Speaker 1: our children not to be ashamed of success do not
Speaker 1: teach him to be humble? Yes, yeah, take credit for
Speaker 1: your work. Take credit for your success. Again, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean to be boastful. It doesn't mean to the lord
Speaker 1: of others over your success, because it's not about other
Speaker 1: people's about you. I succeeded, I did it, I built it,
Speaker 1: I created It's exactly the opposite of what's his name, Obama's.
Speaker 1: You didn't build that. You should be humble. You didn't
Speaker 1: build it. No, I didn't build it, and am. If
Speaker 1: a Christian today is being overall good and rational, why
Speaker 1: do I need to pick a fight by telling them?
Speaker 1: Or those oh those aren't? You aren't your Christian values?
Speaker 1: If a Christian to today is being overall good and rational,
Speaker 1: why do I need to tell well? Because they might
Speaker 1: not be tomorrow. That is, tomorrow, they might hear a
Speaker 1: different sermon and it too, put those values differently and
Speaker 1: become more Christian and therefore become worse. And as long
Speaker 1: as you're Christian and you hold faith, there's only so
Speaker 1: much happiness you can attain. There's a cap on your
Speaker 1: ability to be rational, and they're for successful and happy.
Speaker 1: So you're doing them a favor by telling them. Here's
Speaker 1: the real nature of the values you're pursuing, and you
Speaker 1: should be more consistent about it. It's good for their life.
Speaker 1: And secondly, you want to arm them not to be
Speaker 1: captured in the name of Christianity by the values that
Speaker 1: would do you home and all of us home. So
Speaker 1: truth is a good thing. Reality is a good thing.
Speaker 1: Knowing what people really you know, people knowing themselves is
Speaker 1: a good thing. Liam says, will you be on the panel,
Speaker 1: Stephen pikat this SoCon? You know? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: assume not because I haven't heard, But I just don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know who's going to be on, and I
Speaker 1: have not heard anything one of the others. I assume
Speaker 1: the answer is no, because I assume that they've already
Speaker 1: planned it. But you know, I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: involved in the planning of it. Hapacampbell thoughts on retiring
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara, California versus Orange County. God, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Santa Barbara strikes is more expensive than
Speaker 1: Omige County. Orange County has a lot more variety in
Speaker 1: terms of housing and places to live. Santa Barbara is
Speaker 1: smaller and probably more expensive. Santa Barbara is more beautiful
Speaker 1: if you can, particularly if you can get something on
Speaker 1: the hills overlooking the ocean. It's gorgeous. It really is amazing.
Speaker 1: Orange County to get a house overlooks the ocean is
Speaker 1: very expensive, but it's probably very expensive in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1: I get a sense that Orange County has more stuff
Speaker 1: to do, but I'm not sure. I don't know Santa
Speaker 1: Barba that much. There's a symphony, it has upper coming
Speaker 1: there once in a while. La is not that far,
Speaker 1: particularly if you can drive off hours, off rush hours,
Speaker 1: you can get to La and less than an hour
Speaker 1: sometimes and then there's all the benefits of La. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more, probably a lotmo restaurants in Orange County,
Speaker 1: particularly given that you can get to La. So, but look,
Speaker 1: whether in both places is great. Ocean is right there
Speaker 1: views the great expensive places to live, but yeah, wonderful
Speaker 1: in many regards, many respects. And you have to tolerate California.
Speaker 1: James on hundred years. So now will AOI be bigger
Speaker 1: than the church? You know, my powers of prophecy are
Speaker 1: very limited. Powers of prophecy are very limited. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. I hope so I hope so, and there's
Speaker 1: a chance. I don't know how to put a probability
Speaker 1: on it. One hundred years is a long time, but
Speaker 1: there certainly is a chance we will be Andrew. Materially,
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty five standard of living in America
Speaker 1: like living in heaven on Earth. The citizens the civilized
Speaker 1: world wasn't built for the sake of teaching heaven, but
Speaker 1: for the betterment of man on Earth. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what you're getting at, Andrew, but I'll just say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nobody satisfied, and nobody should be. The point is more,
Speaker 1: more and more. We're greedy human beings. Rational human beings
Speaker 1: are greedy. Healthy human beings. Put it this way, healthy
Speaker 1: human beings are greedy. If greed beans, you want more,
Speaker 1: and we want more. We want flying cars, for God's sake.
Speaker 1: We want materially more we want spiritually we want more.
Speaker 1: We want more success, we want more prosperity, we want
Speaker 1: more fun, we want more pleasure. We want more. So
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five was like living on was living in
Speaker 1: an amazing world materially, and it could be much much, much,
Speaker 1: much much better, and we should strive for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's well worded because I didn't quite
Speaker 1: understand it, Robert. Every year, every one of these values
Speaker 1: is reimagined by the better among contemporary American Christians. I know,
Speaker 1: faith is risk tolerance, humility is knowing your limitations and
Speaker 1: avoiding second handedness, and fake pride. Love is benevolent and
Speaker 1: embracing values, which makes discussing the underlying contradiction within these
Speaker 1: issues challenging at best. Yeah, but when you push them,
Speaker 1: when you push them, the altruism comes out. The Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, you know, they believe
Speaker 1: in a God, and God has certain things that they
Speaker 1: must do. At the end of the day, it affects
Speaker 1: the epistemology and it certainly affects their ethics and their
Speaker 1: ability to experience pride, their ability to gain self esteem,
Speaker 1: the ability to to be, you know, even more ambitious
Speaker 1: than they are. So yes, I think it's hard, but
Speaker 1: a lot of that is rationalization. And what you need
Speaker 1: to do is ask them questions that help kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, reveal what is being rationalized and and and
Speaker 1: and what is behind it all. And the fact that
Speaker 1: no they accept they accept these definitions. They just have
Speaker 1: they know their anti life at some level, and they
Speaker 1: don't want to live that life. So they've they've redefined them,
Speaker 1: they've they've put them to the side, but they haven't
Speaker 1: completely given up on them, because otherwise they'd have to
Speaker 1: give up on being Christian. God is still there in altruism,
Speaker 1: is still there that undermines them, and that's what you
Speaker 1: need to help them. See Moulten's Splenderism. Sorry I missed
Speaker 1: you're missing link talk, but I did enjoy listening to
Speaker 1: it later. Please do more of these, Yeah, I intend
Speaker 1: to thanks Moulton's Splendi intend to I like numbers. When
Speaker 1: did you have become civilized? I think during the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: I think in the mid sixteen hundreds. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't certainly the Thirty Year War was not a civilized thing, Sully.
Speaker 1: The Inquisition was not civilized. So I'd say post thirty
Speaker 1: Year War, early seventeen hundreds, laced sixteen hundreds somewhere around that.
Speaker 1: The Enlightenment. Basically, that's when it becomes civilized. It becomes
Speaker 1: a little bit, it becomes more peaceful. Of course, it
Speaker 1: becomes much more peaceful. In the nineteenth century. You know,
Speaker 1: rulers are viewed with a lot more suspicion. In Britain
Speaker 1: you get a much more sort of parliament and a
Speaker 1: significant reduction in the power of the king. And there's
Speaker 1: a certain tendency around Europe for a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: although not in France they have to go through a
Speaker 1: revolution to get that, but it certainly becomes it's becoming
Speaker 1: civilized intellectually, scientifically, peace wise and politically. And of course
Speaker 1: you could say it's civilized in seventeen seventy six. Now
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean bad things don't continue to happen. Slavery,
Speaker 1: for example, that only gets but it's on a path
Speaker 1: starting in the late seventeenth century. It's on a path
Speaker 1: for progress, for progress materially, in progress, spiritually and progress politically.
Speaker 1: So the America is the consequence of that. JJ. Your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the film A Man of All False Seasons.
Speaker 1: I rewatched it recently. I thought it was great. I
Speaker 1: tried to imagine how you would interpret it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I love that movie. It's a really great movie. It's
Speaker 1: a movie about integrity, now integrity to false values, but
Speaker 1: still integrity and the evil of kind of an authoritarian king,
Speaker 1: a whim worshiping authoritarian king, and a man standing on principle.
Speaker 1: So it's the story of Tom'smore and can Hang Me
Speaker 1: the eighth and Yeah, and it's really well acted and
Speaker 1: really well directed, and the dialogue is excellent. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I really like that movie. I haven't seen in a
Speaker 1: long time, but I remember it's it's up there, and
Speaker 1: it's up there in my movie lists Andrew. Does integrity
Speaker 1: to self sacrifice? Suicide? Is that? In that sense? Do
Speaker 1: the monks who set themselves on fire for social cause
Speaker 1: achieve the utmost moral good? Well, I mean by their
Speaker 1: sick morality, Yeah, but that's not morality, so they don't.
Speaker 1: They achieved them all good. But you know, some people
Speaker 1: would argue that by dying it doesn't allow them to
Speaker 1: help more poor people, So probably not right. So the
Speaker 1: ideal is suffering through life well, wanting to commit suicide
Speaker 1: and help helping other people while hating helping them. That's
Speaker 1: the ideal. That's utmost mal good. The outbros male good
Speaker 1: is staying alive in spite of the pain, the suffering
Speaker 1: that you experience in order to help other people and
Speaker 1: to eat and take care of yourself just enough so
Speaker 1: that you can keep staying alive, so you can help
Speaker 1: other people. That's the ultimate good. That's why Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: is a saint. Robert. Oh, this splitting along question with
Speaker 1: multiple super chats like I just did is definitely cheating.
Speaker 1: You're very charitable for not criticizing it. Why would I
Speaker 1: criticize it? It was completely legit. I mean, if you'd
Speaker 1: done it in one question as a twenty dollars question,
Speaker 1: I would have answered it earlier sooner. So, if anything,
Speaker 1: it was it was hurting you. No, it wasn't cheating.
Speaker 1: Who suffered from the cheat? Who did the cheat? There's
Speaker 1: the expense of all right, Jeff. If we support freedom
Speaker 1: of speech and separation of church and state, how do
Speaker 1: we achieve the removal of religion from government and schools
Speaker 1: without silencing them. Well, you don't remove it in the
Speaker 1: sense of that the president is religious. The president can
Speaker 1: be religious. What it means to remove it from government
Speaker 1: is that it affects it should not affect legislation, that
Speaker 1: it should not affect governing. And there's a sense in
Speaker 1: which that's almost impossible. If you know, particularly in a
Speaker 1: democracy where people can vote anything, in the sense that
Speaker 1: people are influenced by their values, and if their value
Speaker 1: is a christian and a vote Christianity. But a court
Speaker 1: could say the prime the reason this, the reasoning for
Speaker 1: this law is fundamentally religious, and therefore we strike it
Speaker 1: as unconstitutional. Now, you can silence people in the context
Speaker 1: of schools and in the context of lots of things, right,
Speaker 1: I can silence you on my here, on my on
Speaker 1: my chat. So if you perceive government schools as at
Speaker 1: least in the functioning pseudo private property, the private property
Speaker 1: of I don't know, the parents or whatever of the
Speaker 1: school board, then the school board gets it in the curriculum.
Speaker 1: They can decide who to platform and who not the platform.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely not the responsibility of a school board to
Speaker 1: maximize speech to allow for all perspectives to be presented. No,
Speaker 1: they have to make a decision about in the name
Speaker 1: of educating the kids, what should be and should be presented. Now,
Speaker 1: ideally there are no public schools, you know, government schools,
Speaker 1: and then private schools get to the side what should
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be in the curriculum. Free speech is not
Speaker 1: a contradiction to deplatforming, as long as the deplatforming happens
Speaker 1: in the context of private interaction like numbers. Was walk
Speaker 1: wrong to pity Keating. Look, there's a sense in which
Speaker 1: the whole relationship with doing keyting and rock doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense to me, Like what keeps helping keyting to
Speaker 1: what end? You know, he's being benevolent, but it's sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a friendship there that doesn't quite make sense. So
Speaker 1: the only reason I think that work with pity Keating
Speaker 1: is that he sees something in Keating that I don't
Speaker 1: see that is a source of their friendship, that is
Speaker 1: a real value, and he is he pities him because
Speaker 1: he can see his potential if he taken a different route,
Speaker 1: if he had if he had uh not made committed
Speaker 1: the errors or it's not errors, the evasions that he
Speaker 1: did when he was young. But I don't pity Keating.
Speaker 1: I think he gets exactly what he deserves. Jason in
Speaker 1: the two thousands Peacock on his podcast pointed out how
Speaker 1: concerning and un settling the mere notion of motorcycle bikers
Speaker 1: have their own Christian ministries was now it's normal in
Speaker 1: my town and on TV. Yeah, and it's everywhere, and
Speaker 1: then many ministries everywhere. It's these you know, Christianity catering
Speaker 1: to every little group, every little tribe, that comes about
Speaker 1: they develop their own theology for them. All right, we
Speaker 1: are only thirteen dollars short of our goal. Let's try
Speaker 1: to make it. We've got ten minutes. Ten minutes is
Speaker 1: hort stop anyway, So you know there's somebody come in
Speaker 1: with thirteen dollar question and so we can there we go.
Speaker 1: That's ten and we're just the ten. So we just
Speaker 1: need three now. FJ fang. I've just realized I don't
Speaker 1: like my parents or have anything in common with them.
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with this, Yeah, I mean it's normal to
Speaker 1: struggle with it. The question is do you have any
Speaker 1: feelings towards them because they raised you, because they gave
Speaker 1: you life? Is that a value to you? The fact
Speaker 1: that they raised you and gave you life. Did they
Speaker 1: raise you well? And so to what extent is that
Speaker 1: a positive that that you want to recognize and accept
Speaker 1: and and and and therefore, you know, give them a
Speaker 1: certain minimal level of respect and appreciation for that. But
Speaker 1: if you don't like your parents and you don't have
Speaker 1: anything in common with them, then you've got you should
Speaker 1: adjust your relationship accordingly. I mean, you don't hang up
Speaker 1: with him a lot, don't spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: with him. You know, whatever it is your valuation your
Speaker 1: parent is and your emotion and your commitment to them,
Speaker 1: figure out what that is and adjust your interaction with
Speaker 1: them to that. So if you appreciate them because they
Speaker 1: raise you, okay, and you appreciate the fact that they
Speaker 1: gave you life, but you know, it's not that you
Speaker 1: dislike them, it's not that you hate them, it's not
Speaker 1: but you just don't have anything common with me. You
Speaker 1: don't like them that much or not, they're not your
Speaker 1: kind of people, then minimize your interaction with them. Don't
Speaker 1: cut them off completely, because you still have that basic
Speaker 1: appreciation for them. But if you don't, then cut them
Speaker 1: off completely that is I'm not against that. But in
Speaker 1: other words, adjust your relationship with your parents to the
Speaker 1: extent to which they are value to you, and don't
Speaker 1: feel that you have to do more than that, because
Speaker 1: they're your parents and you should honor your father and
Speaker 1: your mother, so says the Bible. Andrew, I think you
Speaker 1: should use this show to organize your material for the book.
Speaker 1: It was really well structured and impactful. Thank you, Lincoln.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm doing that in a sense because this
Speaker 1: really helps me think through some of these issues, and
Speaker 1: then I go back to the book and verbalizing it
Speaker 1: really makes it. It clarifies it to me. Don listens
Speaker 1: to it. I think it helps clarify to him. At
Speaker 1: least it clarssfis what I'm thinking to him, and then
Speaker 1: we can have a discussion about it. Lincoln, why is
Speaker 1: Christianny more common in America than Europe even though the
Speaker 1: US was founded by large secular Enlightenment thinkers. I think because,
Speaker 1: I think because it wasn't a state religion, it was
Speaker 1: allowed to morph, and it's all kinds of sects and
Speaker 1: all kinds of interpretations and develop in a way that
Speaker 1: made it consistent with America as it emerged in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. So the conflict between Modernity and Christianity didn't
Speaker 1: become as evident because it kind of Christianity kind of
Speaker 1: absorbed America or incorporated America into its theology. This is
Speaker 1: the point that Robert was making earlier. Most of Americas
Speaker 1: the theology is American. I tell them often that they
Speaker 1: love Jefferson more than Jesus, and they loved the and
Speaker 1: they love the Constitution more than the Bible, so they
Speaker 1: made it part of it. I think that also there
Speaker 1: were no really leading intellectuals in America were kind of
Speaker 1: really secular and pushed the secular agenda until kind of
Speaker 1: the pragmatists, whereas in Europe, I think there was a
Speaker 1: real secularization among the intellectuals very early on. There was
Speaker 1: kind of a diminishing of religion to some extent, or
Speaker 1: secularization of religion. And of course there was this massive
Speaker 1: secularization of religion that was done by Marx, you know,
Speaker 1: basically secularizing religion into into his view of communism. There
Speaker 1: are other things. I mean, Europe really secularized after the
Speaker 1: First World War. First World War was such a horrific
Speaker 1: event for them. It was so disorienting. The idea that
Speaker 1: it could be a god and the First World War
Speaker 1: happened was just beyond them. It was similar to the
Speaker 1: Thirty Year War, which led to the Enlightenment. I think
Speaker 1: the First World War led to secularism but also to cynicism.
Speaker 1: But it's a good question. I don't have a full
Speaker 1: answer to it. It would require real analysis. Lincas is,
Speaker 1: how can a career in the military be self interested?
Speaker 1: I like the idea of being in the military part
Speaker 1: time by the national guard. But it feels a bit
Speaker 1: and I didn't I don't have the second part of
Speaker 1: the question, but let me just answer that. Look you
Speaker 1: can it feels a bit the military at the current
Speaker 1: administration is against my values. Yes, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you'd you really have to be questioning about whether to
Speaker 1: join the military under the conditions of this administration or
Speaker 1: any other administration because of all against your values, you know,
Speaker 1: in in this modern world, and what are you fighting for?
Speaker 1: You know, it's not clear, So it's it's I think
Speaker 1: it's a difficult, much more difficult decision today to join
Speaker 1: the military than would have been in the past because
Speaker 1: of the nature of the country, the people, and and
Speaker 1: and and our politicians, our leaders, uh and and and
Speaker 1: including by the way, the generals and what they will
Speaker 1: tell you to do or not do, and which is
Speaker 1: which I think really damaging. But to make a career
Speaker 1: of it in a rational, rational world, I don't see
Speaker 1: a big issue there. I mean, it's it's a challenging position.
Speaker 1: It's it requires a lot of thinking, it requires action.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it requires you know, uh, strategy, It's it's
Speaker 1: a challenging, interesting profession. You know, how to how to
Speaker 1: defend how to defend military, how to use the military
Speaker 1: to defend values. Andrew, my manager gave me a good
Speaker 1: advice regarding a person who apputs to me, who's objectively
Speaker 1: not doing her work, and I was defending her. She said,
Speaker 1: you said, you're not her savior. Andrew, that is very
Speaker 1: good advice. Yes, yes, you can't save people. It's not
Speaker 1: your job as a manager to save people. Your job
Speaker 1: is to objectively evaluate them and give them that objective
Speaker 1: feedback and treat them with justice, which means you know,
Speaker 1: positively if they're doing good job, and negatively if they're
Speaker 1: doing a bad job. Lincoln says thoughts on LDS moment Church,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot. I don't know that much
Speaker 1: about them. I mean, it's a crazy story. If you
Speaker 1: listen to the story of how the church came about,
Speaker 1: you know, anybody believes that has to be a little cuckoo.
Speaker 1: But that's true of all religion. They just are modern
Speaker 1: people believing in that is just bizarre. Modern people coming
Speaker 1: up with that theology is bizarre. But generally, if you
Speaker 1: go to if you interact with Moments, they're hard working,
Speaker 1: they're honest, they're quite productive, they're nice, people. You know,
Speaker 1: they seem quite friendly, So yeah, I mean they seem
Speaker 1: pretty normal in spite of the Kooki theology. And the
Speaker 1: question is, my guess is most of them just don't
Speaker 1: take that theology very seriously. You know, they very quickly
Speaker 1: abandoned polygamy when it become when it became politically inconvenient
Speaker 1: for them, so they obviously don't take theology. That's eviously right.
Speaker 1: I mean, polygamy was part of the theology. And then
Speaker 1: they were told if you in order to become a state,
Speaker 1: you would have to embrace monogamy, and they did in
Speaker 1: order to become a state, So they rewrote the rules,
Speaker 1: just like Christians do all the time. The moments I've
Speaker 1: interacted with mostly being positive people. But I also know
Speaker 1: a lot of people who left the church. Actually there's
Speaker 1: a number who become objectivists, and they have a much
Speaker 1: more negative view of the church, right because they've lived it.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that if you live it, it's not
Speaker 1: pleasant at all, and if your parents take it seriously,
Speaker 1: to an extent that it's taken seriously, it's not pleasant
Speaker 1: at all. The extent that it's taken seriously is bad,
Speaker 1: just like all religion. All right, guys, have a great
Speaker 1: rest of your weekend. I will see you on Monday.
Speaker 1: I schedule got a little screwed up, but anyway, we
Speaker 1: don't have an interview on Monday, so we'll just have
Speaker 1: a show on Monday. The Nicos interview is a week later,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I will see you then. Thanks all the
Speaker 1: super shadows. We made our goal, just squeaked in perfectly.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and yeah, have a great weekend. By