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Nov. 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:20
What Ayn Rand Got Wrong!
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All right.
Question from a subscriber on freedom.locals.com.
While reading Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, I came across a passage where Rand says that epistemology is the highest goal of philosophy, since it's what integrates not only all of the knowledge in a man's individual mind, but also the sum of all human knowledge and all disciplines.
In past shows, you said that moral philosophy is the primary goal of philosophy.
Instead, could you clarify that point and also get into why you disagree with Rand's argument?
I can't remember the exact quote, but I can attach it and reply to this message when I get home.
Thank you for the effort you put into explaining philosophy in an easily understandable way.
Adding the quote, this is from Rand.
Who then is to keep order in the organization of man's conceptual vocabulary, suggest the changes or expansions of definitions, formulate the principles of cognition and the criteria of science, protect the objectivity of methods and the communications within and among the special sciences, and provide the guidelines for the integration of man's knowledge?
The answer is philosophy.
These precisely are the tasks of epistemology.
The highest responsibility, our philosophers, is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge.
Philosophy is the foundation of science.
Epistemology is the foundation of philosophy.
It is with a new approach to epistemology that the rebirth of philosophy has to begin.
Ah, she's so good.
Yeah, we love the rant.
Okay, so, Ms. Rosenbaum.
So, great, great question.
I will lay out my case and hopefully it will make good sense.
And hopefully, well, hopefully, I'll be, you know, hopefully I will be right.
It's always a reasonable or decent goal.
So, to understand what was going on with Ayn Rand, and why she would say that, is she believed that she had solved the problem of human ethics.
Because with the virtue of selfishness, she said, basically, the argument is, the moral argument, is that virtue is that which is best for the survival and flourishing of mankind.
This is the sort of syllogism.
So, virtue is that which is best for the survival and flourishing of mankind.
Reason is best for the survival and flourishing of mankind.
And therefore, reason is virtue.
The problem is you can disagree with that and disbelieve in that while still remaining in the paradigm.
So, rather than think it's funny because she's an individualist, right?
She's an individual.
And I would think it has something to do with her own personal corruption in terms of sleeping with students and all other kinds of stuff, or not students, but sleeping with people who are followers and the affair that she had with Nathaniel Brandon.
So there was a certain amount of selfishness that she herself had.
And that, you know, did not help, I think, these arguments.
So the problem with that formulation is you can disagree with it.
And what are the results?
If you say, listen, I'm a guy without much conscience.
I'm a guy, you could say, who is a good liar.
I'm a guy who's a good manipulator.
So for me, not being rational gets me the most resources, right?
And then she would have to say, ah, yes, but that's negative for society as a whole, right?
But then, of course, you can easily say, but you're not a collectivist.
So if anti-rationality is better for an individual, then he's selfish that way, and he lies and cheats and is a con man.
And it's way easier for him to get resources.
Now then, of course, the argument is, ah, yes, but you see, there's all this psychological damage that you incur and you can't be loved and this, that, and the other.
And it's like, well, but the primary purpose of human evolution and human life is the acquisition of resources.
So just saying, well, you'll be unhappy if you're immoral.
Well, the problem is that people who are immoral spread their genes.
Right?
A guy who sleeps his way through a bunch of women, evolutionarily speaking, like he's really charming, he's really sexy, and he sleeps his way through a bunch of women, he leaves a whole bunch of his genes behind.
And the purpose of genes is not to be happy, but to reproduce.
She may not have understood much about evolutionary biology.
She never really talked about it, to my knowledge.
And maybe she said she didn't understand human psychology and she didn't understand.
I mean, maybe this is one of the things, right?
So the purpose of genes is to reproduce.
And a man who lies to women and sleeps around spreads his seed more than a man who is very, very honest.
And I mean, we've all seen this, right?
That there's just the women who like the bad boys and the bad boys are liars and but they're tall, dark, handsome, sexy, motorcycle riding, whatever, right?
So to take this cliche, right?
So women are drawn.
A lot of women are drawn to that sort of stuff.
And so the fact that he lies allows him to acquire resources with less effort, right?
The sort of music man, con man thing, right?
It allows him to acquire resources with less effort and it allows him to spread his seed more.
Now, if you're going to say that which is good for man's survival and flourishing, and you say, well, survival and flourishing has to do with genetics, and it's really important.
Like, why do people lie?
Because it works.
Why are people violent?
Because it works.
The people who couldn't beat me in argument got me deplatformed.
It fucking works.
People aren't random.
They're not irrational, right?
If an irrational strategy is very effective, right?
Then it will be reproduced.
We have the ability to lie because lying works.
So let's say that I was such a prominent and powerful intellectual that the welfare state was going to be eliminated, right?
Well, if that's the case, then people who are dependent upon the welfare state would lie about me, would try to kill me, would get me deplatformed, would do just about anything to shut me up and scare people into going back to giving them resources, right?
And again, Ayn Rand can say, yes, but that's to the negative for society as a whole.
And it's like, but you're not a collectivist.
You are an individualist, which means that what matters is the survival of the individual, not the survival of the collective, right?
Why is it that we have a whole bunch of people in the West, in particular, well, men and women, but let's look at the men.
Why is it that we have a bunch of people who don't feel obligated to their society as a whole?
They don't feel obligated to produce, to fight for freedoms.
They don't feel obligated to have children.
Like, why is it?
Because the people who were the most obligated to society, which have some genetic element, got fucking slaughtered in the First and Second World War.
You know, all of the people, oh, I'm going to fight for my country.
I'm going to fight for the good.
I'm going to fight for the West.
And they went and they fought and they got killed.
And the people who were, you know, skeptical and, you know, frankly, kind of weasel in this way and, you know, they survived.
And the loyalists are gone and the amoral survivalists are ruling in that, you know.
So Saying that the rational is what advances and causes human life to flourish, the moral is what causes human life to flourish, and the rational causes human life to flourish, and therefore the rational is the moral.
Well, what if you disagree?
What if you say, no, no, no, listen, I'm a guy with a, you know, you can say, I'm a guy with a very strong ability, a strong language center and a weak body.
So I'm way better off, you know, lying and manipulating people.
You know, maybe I don't have the charisma to be an actor, but I can lie and manipulate people and get resources that way.
Right.
Okay.
So you lie and you get resources that way.
And you get more resources from lying and manipulating than you do from doing hard manual labor.
You're better off.
You win.
Ayn Rand would say, but no.
No, because bad for society as a whole.
Well, that's not how human beings work.
Or to put it another way, the human beings who sacrificed themselves for the good of society as a whole got again fucking slaughtered in the two world wars.
And the people who lied and cried, right?
Because Ayn Rand was writing really, I mean, she died in 1980, right?
So she was writing obviously in the 40s and 50s, was Atlas Shrugged, 53 or something like that.
That's the pride of the welfare state, really.
And the welfare state has taken resources from the responsible and the hardworking and those willing to make sacrifices, and it's transferred those resources through the power of the state to people who are not responsible and who cry and who are aggressive and manipulate and play the victim and all of that, right?
So those genes, those mindset, and whether it's genetic or the mindset doesn't really matter, right?
That mindset is spreading like wildfire.
The responsible are getting punished, the irresponsible are being rewarded.
And so the irresponsibility is spreading and responsibility is diminishing.
Say, ah, yes, but it's not good for society as a whole, but that's not how the world works.
Again, you go to somebody who's just won the lottery, some government lottery, right?
And you say, you shouldn't cash that check because it's bad for society as a whole.
You just won $10 million, higher than $10 million, hundreds of millions in the state sometimes.
So let's just say $10 million.
You've just won $10 million.
You say, ah, you know, but it's government money.
It's going to increase taxes, more money printing, more debt.
And of course, by cashing the lottery ticket and by posing with it and so on, then, you know, what happens is you end up promoting playing the lottery, which is bad for the poor.
And so, you know, he's going to say, no, I'm going to get my $10 million.
Thank you very much.
Ah, but it's not rational.
It's coerced money.
It's, you know, whatever, right?
Well, what are you going to say?
I mean, it's good for him to get the $10 million.
Oh, but it's bad for society as all.
He disagrees.
He just, it's $10 million.
It's tax-free in a lot of places, right?
It's $10 million.
It's like saying to people in the business world, well, you shouldn't do business with the government because the government is inefficient and it's just going to raise your taxes and so on.
It's like, well, but I've got to make my payroll and the government's offering me a million dollars for this business, right?
Okay.
What are you going to do?
So Ayn Rand genuinely felt that she had solved the problem of ethics when she had not solved the problem of ethics.
What do you do with people who disagree?
Now, of course, you can say, well, society would pass laws and this and that and the other, but, you know, then, of course, if you're a good thief and society is passing laws, then you just become one of the lawmakers and then you're, you know, you're away to the races.
You're fine, right?
So you say, ah, yes, but what about UPB?
How does UPB solve this problem?
Well, UPP is rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, and you can't disagree with it.
You can't.
And even people who hate the theory, even people who hate me, you know, they think I'm the worst guy, and it's the most terrible theory.
When I run through the theory with them, they cannot disprove it.
They cannot overturn it.
Now, again, I understand that doesn't turn it into a species of physics that people have to obey no matter what.
But it means that they can't disagree with it.
Now, you can disagree with Ayn Rand and say, listen, what's best for me is cashing the lottery ticket, right?
That's what's best for me.
Yeah, well, you know, it's not rational.
It's government money promoting gambling, blah, blah, blah.
I can get $2 million.
It's good for me.
Spreading my seed by lying to women and misleading women or promising that I'll be there forever.
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Promising I'll be with the women forever, blah, blah, blah.
Well, that gets me laid.
That's good for me.
I like it.
Whatever, right?
All the stuff you talk about.
So Ayn Rand thought she had solved the problem of ethics when she had not solved the problem of ethics.
And when you haven't solved the problem of ethics, you have to get progressively more aggressive.
I personally think that Ayn Rand knew that she hadn't solved the problem of ethics.
And because she knew she hadn't solved the problem of ethics, she became increasingly bitter, resentful, and hedonistic.
Because, you know, the last couple of decades of Ayn Rand's life were not an ennobling spectacle, to put it mildly.
And I think it's because she knew that she hadn't.
And of course, if she had solved the problem of ethics and had truly universalized the non-aggression principle, then she would not have written the ending of Atlas Schrut that she had written, which is, well, we just need to fix the Constitution and we'll be fine.
And it's like, nope, nope.
Because people just find ways around it, right?
So in America, there's a freedom of speech.
The government can't compel you to kind of throw you in jail for your freedom of speech and there's no such thing as hate speech.
Oh, yeah, I'll get hold of that.
But government agencies can just, you know, pressure social media companies who aren't covered in that way by the First Amendment to simply deplatform you, right?
Easy peasy.
Easy peasy.
No, but it's in the Constitution.
Like, yeah, well, people just find a way around it, right?
People just find a way around it.
That's what they do.
So she was frustrated, and I understand it, right?
She was frustrated at the fact that she never put it this way, to my knowledge.
This is sort of an original idea of mine, that if you base your morals on God, then you can just disbelieve in God and you're no longer covered by morals.
And so she said this, you know, flourishing of mankind stuff, which is a kind of an odd sort of collectivism, right?
That human beings make moral decisions based upon their individual standards.
Good for me, right?
She says, selfishness is good, but morality should serve that which is best for mankind as a whole.
And it's like, that's a huge contradiction.
But if you've put out and you kind of wed to what you've put out, it's really tough for some people to change their minds, right?
So if Ayn Rand were to say, you know, I haven't solved the problem of morality and I've got to really get back to work on it.
I've got to deal with it.
I've got to fix it.
Then she comes to the universality of the non-aggression principle, absolute property rights.
Then she has to withdraw the ending or rewrite the ending of Atlas Schrutt and say, you know, it was close, but it misses as good as a mile and I've got a better answer.
I mean, that's sort of head to wait for me.
I mean, to be honest, right?
And it's not easy.
And I've been studying philosophy for 20 years, and I largely accepted with some unease the argument for morality that comes out of objectivism, right?
And what do you do with people who disagree?
Well, you can't disagree with UPP without saying it's logically contradictory to say that rape, theft, assault, and murder can be universally preferable behavior.
That is completely, it is impossible for, say, theft to be universally preferable behavior, right?
So once you've got people on that, then now they can say, no, it's possible for theft to be universally preferable behavior.
You say, yes, but it's self-contradictory.
And they can't resolve that contradiction.
It is self-contradictory to say theft can be universally preferable behavior.
So they have to admit that.
Now, they admit that.
And like, was it John Balfour who called in?
They admit that, and then they say, well, so what?
Right?
It's like, and I said to him, that's kind of a big deal.
We've just done a very big thing.
Rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
So Ayn Rand would have had to withdraw the ending of Atlas Schrut, her magnum opus.
And that's a pretty big thing.
That's a pretty big deal, right?
And she would have been castigated for, oh, so you were certain of Atlas Schruck, now you're not.
Are you certain of this too, right?
I mean, it's tough to withdraw because a lot of petty people will use it against you.
It's tough to withdraw a public conclusion.
I was fortunate that I really haven't had to withdraw too many public pronouncements.
I was too harsh on Christianity for sure.
But I'm still not a Christian.
And the harshness was really Christians acted in many ways more nobly over my deplatforming than atheists did.
And so I got to see some of the positive benefits.
And whether a part is positive benefits, you have to acknowledge that.
It doesn't mean that I'm withdrawing my metaphysics or epistemology or criticisms of religion as a whole, right?
It's just that atheists turned out to be kind of douche-nozzled, to put it mildly.
So if Ayn Rand says, as she did, reason is man's primary tool of survival, that which serves man's survival is the good, therefore reason is the good.
Well, if she accepts that that's the answer, then her primary job is not a theory of ethics, but a validation of reason.
Because she's saying, look, if people accept reason, then they will promote reason as the good.
But people need to accept reason.
Now, for her, once you accept reason, then all the other dominoes of her morals fall into place.
Right.
So what that means is that her primary job was to validate reason.
Because once you validate reason, reason is man's tool of cognition.
Reason is superior to the instincts and to the emotions.
Reason is objective, universal, syllogistical, non-contradictory.
The non-contradictory art of identification was the way she put it.
So given that her morals flow directly from the validation of reason, right?
If reason is man's tool of knowledge, then clearly reason then serves man's flourishing and survival, and therefore reason is the good and the moral problem is solved.
So why did she say the primary job of philosophy or the central cause of philosophy is epistemology?
Because Ayn Rand believed that if you get your epistemology right, reason as virtue follows automatically.
So once you validate reason, morals follow automatically.
So there's no point trying to prove that reason is virtue if people don't accept reason.
Once they do accept reason, then reason becomes virtue.
So her primary job in terms of proving her moral system was to validate reason.
And the validation of reason is the job of epistemology, right?
The study of true and false, the study of knowledge, right?
So that's why.
That's why Ayn Rand had that perspective, that approach.
So the validation of reason does not prove that reason is man's highest virtue and value and that reason serves man's well-being and therefore reason is man's highest standard of value and the ultimate good.
It does not follow.
It does not.
You can accept reason and then you can say, reason is what serves my survival.
There is no collective survival in mankind, right?
No, you can't share.
I mean, you can share a plate of food with people, but you can't share swallowed food with people.
You can't digest for other people, you can't think for other people, you can stimulate thought, but you can't think for them.
So if you validate reason, so reason is man's tool of cognition okay yeah, reason is man's tool of cognition.
And if you say reason serves egoism, reason serves self-interest okay, then there's good reason to lie.
If lying gets you more resources than telling the truth, there's good reason to do it.
If you are a skinny weakling with great language skills, then there's good reason for you to lie.
You get more resources.
I mean, if you look at Uh, Obama or Bush, you know they're just liars.
They're just liars.
And they got lots of power and they got tens of millions of dollars and they got, you know, huge amounts of respect and resources from the various parties or factions for their family.
Their kids are famous.
Their kids will want for nothing, never have to work a day in their life.
And they lied to get all of that.
And are you going to say that lying has not served the Obamas or the Bushes or the Bidens?
Has lying not served them?
Say ah well, but they got material resources, but they're cursed by unhappiness.
It's like what if they don't experience that?
What if they don't experience that?
Putting a curse of unhappiness on people is not an argument.
Saying well, i'm unhappy when I lie.
Therefore, lying makes all people unhappy is a fundamental misunderstanding of human motivations and consciousness, and this is the debate I had on access with the first big debate that I had after I got back.
I don't like to lie, I feel bad about it, but that's not a universal human experience at all at all.
There's tons of people who lie and take delight in lying.
There's tons of people who lie and are really good at it.
You say ah yes well, but they suffer in their relationships.
They're never people aren't close to them, it's like, but in terms of survival and flourishing, gathering massive amounts of resources to And also reproducing, right?
So some guy tells the truth and he gets fired everywhere he goes and he can't afford a family and he dies without passing on his genes.
Another guy lies and this is academia, right?
This is academia.
Another guy lies and gets a promotion and gets a great job and gets money and has the kids and so on.
It's like, okay, well, who's a human flourishing?
Survival, that which is good for man's survival, most times involves lying your ass off.
I mean, we can't, I'm not even willing to debate this post-COVID.
You know, people who lied to the population made absolute fortunes.
They made tens of billions of dollars, lying their asses off to the safe and effective.
They didn't know, right?
Lying their asses off to the public.
Now, you can say, oh, but they're unhappy.
Okay.
I'm just, hey, I'm an empiricist.
I'm open to the theory.
What do unhappy people do?
Well, unhappy people get depressed.
Unhappy people look miserable.
Unhappy people, really unhappy people, can be suicidal.
Okay.
Do you see that?
Do you see the various news anchors who peddled a bunch of lies?
I mean, and if you find COVID too controversial, that's fine.
Okay.
We can go back to the Iraq war, the lead up to the Iraq War, right?
Weapons of mass destruction.
We don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of the mushroom cloud.
We know exactly where his weapons of mass destruction are and so on.
And it was all fucking lies that got hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered.
It was all fucking lies, right?
Okay.
So you say, oh, well, you know, they lied.
And what happened as a result of their lies?
Well, the military industrial complex made hundreds of billions of dollars.
The media made tens of billions of dollars.
People glued to their sets.
They sold advertising at a higher rate and so on, right?
Okay.
So did any news anchors quit in disgust?
Did any news anchors get so depressed that they had pushed a war that turned out to be false?
Did any news anchors get so depressed that they couldn't get out of bed?
I mean, caused the deaths of half a million plus people, not counting all the birth defects, not counting all the injuries, like direct deaths, half a million people.
I mean, Raskolnikov is kind of tortured in crime and punishment by killing the old pawnbroker and Lucietta, her sister.
He's tormented.
Okay.
Was Napoleon tormented?
Whiff of grape shot?
People protesting, he blasted them with cannon, shrapnel.
Was Napoleon miserable?
Was he?
I mean, honestly, saying, well, the flourishing of people, I mean, you see Bill Clinton joking with Elizabeth Holmes back before she went to prison, ha, ha, ha.
Tell them how old you are.
Right.
Is Bill Clinton depressed?
Is Bill Clinton unable to get out of bed in the morning?
Is Bill Clinton miserable?
Oh, but deep down, it's like, but that's just a ghost.
You're just creating a ghost of unhappiness in people.
He seems fine.
Oh, but deep down, I know, it's like, okay, but that's the, where's the evidence, right?
Don't give me this deep down stuff.
Honestly, don't give me this deep, well, deep down, he's really secretly unhappy.
I mean, look who he's married to and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, well, you show me where the crisis of conscience has shown up.
You show me where massive apologies and restitutions and hand-wringing and can't get out of bed and super depressed and the conscience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You tell me where all that's happening among the elites.
I mean, the BBC promoted and paid Jimmy Savile I raped hundreds, worked at a hospital, raped corpses, just a complete fucking monster of a human being.
Where do people go?
Oh my God, I promoted, I gave this guy access, I made him famous.
I, you know, promoted him and, right?
Where are the people at the BBC who are like, oh my God, I'm so depressed.
What the hell's wrong with me?
I got involved in this.
It's so corrupt.
They're fine.
They're fine.
How many people who got me deplatformed, right?
These sort of liars.
How many people who got me deplatformed have had attacks of conscience since?
I mean, hey, I'm just asking for the facts, right?
Not some, well, according to, I'd be unhappy if I lied, therefore, people are unhappy when they lie.
I'd feel bad if I misrepresented things, right?
How many people now that defooing, separating from relentlessly abusive parents, how many people who called me an evil cult leader for years and years and years, how many people on seeing these articles have said, ooh, you know what?
We really did completely torture the reputation and attack the first guy who really talked about this publicly.
And now everyone's talking about it and it's accepted.
We should circle back and apologize.
Like, nope, nothing.
And honestly, I will, if I live for another 30, 40 years, I will go to my grave without a single apology from people who've done me wrong.
They sail on, they do their next thing, they do their new thing, right?
Jeffrey Epstein, did he wake up and he's like, oh my God, I'm just preying upon these poor girls and I'm doing all this terrible stuff and so on.
And did he have a crisis of conscience?
Did he like, no?
I mean, he seemed to enjoy the billionaire Playboy lifestyle.
He seemed to enjoy tormenting and torturing and having all of this horrible, ghastly, illegal sexual activity with these underage girls and like whatever.
I don't know, whatever he was doing, right?
Was he like, oh my God, I'm so unhappy.
Like my conscience is really hitting me, blah, blah, blah.
It doesn't.
The brains are different.
The brains are different.
So what if people disagree with you?
Well, reason is the way you get resources.
Jeffrey Epstein is like, well, no, I mean, crime is how I get billions of dollars.
I mean, nobody really knows how this math teacher made all these billions of dollars, right?
Or, you know, Nancy Pelosi with her, you know, somewhat sketchy trades, right?
Ah, well, but it's, you know, it's insider information.
It's bad.
It's illegal, maybe.
I don't know.
Like, I mean, but I mean, she's, she's, oh, my God, the crisis of conscience.
I feel so bad.
I'm using information not available to the public, right?
So human flourishing.
Human beings flourish from violence and lies.
They do.
They really, really do.
Look at professors versus private podcasters.
They've got job security and they are respected and fated and interviewed and so on, right?
Whereas I'm, you know, I have to wear stab-proof vests to give speeches.
They're not deplatformed.
People aren't deplatformed who lie an entire nation into war.
People aren't deplatformed who promote pedophiles.
People aren't deplatformed for covering up mass child rape across England.
They're not?
No?
They're fine.
They're good.
They're honestly.
And this is, you know, I get it.
You know, the Christians are like, well, they're going to go to hell and so on.
It's like, okay, that's, they don't believe that.
So for Ayn Rand did not puzzle out these.
Honestly, I would say you have to be deeply realistic/slash cynical about human beings in order to understand how difficult it is to prove morality.
Human flourishing, that which is best for man's survival.
Like, I don't know, man, Jeffrey Epstein seemed to have a pretty good time of it.
I didn't see any attacks of conscience.
I don't know.
Of course, he regretted being arrested and all of that.
Okay, yeah, but there's tons of people who aren't arrested.
Do you think George Bush ever woke up or Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney?
Did they ever wake up in the middle of the night with the horror at what they had done?
Do you think Barack Obama is looking at the premiums that people are having to pay to get healthcare?
People who went from a couple of hundred bucks to a couple of thousand dollars a month with massive deductibles.
Do you think that Barack Obama wakes up and is like, oh my God, like the things that I did and blah, blah, blah, I'm so bad and so sad.
This is not what I wanted.
Poor people, poor people are going bankrupt for healthcare and I was in jail.
He doesn't.
I guarantee you, he does not.
He does not.
It's a basic fact.
Did Barack Obama flourish from getting into politics?
Of course he did.
Of course he did.
He has no regrets.
He's happy he did it.
And he's fated and praised everywhere he goes.
Do you think about Joe Biden?
Who knows what's going on in that broken hamster wheel of a brain?
But do any of the, and we say always there's people in, do you care?
Do any of the Democrats, or how many of the Democrats look back and say, oh, that's really, really bad.
Boy, I really shouldn't have supported that.
That's terrible and so on, right?
Nope.
They just move on to the next thing, move on to the next thing, move on to the next thing.
They don't process it at all.
And honestly, look in your own life.
And, you know, if I'm wrong about this, obviously I'd love to be corrected.
But look in your own life.
How many people do you know who've had a crisis of conscience, woke up screaming with horror at everything they had done and became catastrophically depressed or maybe even suicidal?
I'm not wishing it on people.
I'm just asking, how many people have you known personally who've had a crisis of conscience that lasts?
Not, you know, oh, I'm such a bad guy.
You know, the drunk, right, who gets drunk.
Oh, I didn't take care of you kids.
And the next day he's just totally back to normal.
It doesn't last, right?
I mean, something that lasts.
Something that lasts.
All the people with a sense of responsibility and a conscience in the West got wiped out in the two world wars.
What's left?
And the women who loved them, the women who loved and supported these men, say, oh, well, why did the sort of white, the awful, right, affluent white liberal female, why did the awful, why did these women, why did they, why did they prefer, like the sort of heat map goes outside.
Why did they prefer foreigners and outsiders to their own men?
Well, because the women who preferred their own men married men who got wiped out in the World Wars.
They're gone.
I mean, those, those, whether it's genetic or it's a combination of genetics, genetics, and environment, right?
It's all gone.
It's all gone.
And it ain't coming back anytime soon.
So you have to wrestle with the fact that very few people at the moment have much of a conscience.
Very few people.
I mean, I've known a number of Christians who do not forgive.
Well, they either forgive the most awful people or they fail to forgive well-meaning people who make mistakes.
I've known them.
I've known them.
People who get things wrong don't admit it.
They just move on to the next thing and never admit fault, right?
That's just the reality.
I mean, that is the reality.
And again, maybe it was different in Ayn Rand's day and so on, but I assume that, of course, she grew up under communism, but then she moved to America, you know, and she was intellectually formed prior to World War II.
And of course, the effects of World War II took a long time to manifest.
And in America, of course, World War I was not nearly as destructive.
And of course, neither was it in America for World War II.
The Europeans, of course, suffered much more losses than the Americans.
But she was around a lot of people with a good deal of integrity and a fair amount of conscience and all this kind of stuff.
And, but I don't know.
Did Ayn Rand ever have a crisis of conscience and say, you know, I haven't really solved the problem of morality.
And also, maybe I shouldn't have slept around on my husband.
And maybe I shouldn't have slept with a student who was much younger than me or had a lot of power over and so on, right?
Maybe, just maybe, right?
But she didn't even either.
She didn't even either.
So.
Yeah, human flourishing.
No, human beings flourish very well in the absence of reason.
Say, ah, but in the long run, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, but that's a collectivist argument.
It doesn't work from an individualistic situation.
You can't say the virtue of selfishness.
And then when people gain a lot more virtues, sorry, they gain a lot more value and resources and material and respect and so on, they get a lot more of that by not being rational.
Well, that's just a fact.
It's a fact of life.
It's a fact of nature.
And so, yeah, Ayn Rand focused on epistemology because she felt if she proved reason, then like dominoes cascading down against their will, if she proved reason, her entire moral system is validated.
But it wasn't.
And that's why the world had to wait for UPP.
All right, thanks, everyone.
Hope you're doing well.
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