Live from Porto: 𝙋𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙮—𝘼𝙨 𝙖 𝙒𝙚𝙖𝙥𝙤𝙣 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 w/Tim Vieira, Mário Amorim Lopes, Yaron Brook

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (03:48):
Thank you so much for being here today. It means
a lot for us. Basically, i'm media ol the I'm
part of the Objectivism Portunal Group. In conjunction with the
Atlas Campus, we are organizing these conferences, this one in
Porto today and the one in Lisbon on Thursday. The
sponsor of this event is the iron Rand Institute. For

(04:12):
those of you who don't know, iron Rand was a
novelist and a philosopher, and she was the author of
The fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged, the masterpiece that was
the first time in writing that she stated all the
ideas about objectivism. And the idea for this conference itself

(04:33):
here at Porto is to distress philosophy as a weapon
for success. We want to answer the question how can
the principled men achieve personal and professional success whilst being happy?
And for that we're going to count with the help
of Rann Brooke, chairman of the iron Ran Institute, is

(04:54):
the author of Equalism, Fair, a Free Market Revolution and
The Pursuit of In Pursuit of Wealth, and he hosts
a podcast himself, You Are and Brout Show, So if
you like what you hear today, you can listen to
his show more often, so thank you very much for
being here. Then we have Team Vieta. Thank you so

(05:18):
much as well for being here. He's a highly successful businessman.
Now he's very invested in focused on the Brave Generation
Academy with the goal of this of this project is
to educate children all around the glow. I think that's amazing.
So thank you very much for being here. Thanks for
your time. Oh yeah, for sure, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
The longest amen.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
And then we have Mariam Milus Marium loves you all
know him as well, for sure, is a member of
the Parliament for any Evil Liberal, has a pH d
and economics apply to healthcare. He has had companies or
maybe has companies still. And he has his own podcast

(06:11):
as well called the Ventans, so you can check it
out if you if you subscribe.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Maybe future presidential candidate. Yeah, we want the announcement.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
I thought we were friends.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
And to moderate this conference, we have Madi Infancisels. She
has a master's in law. She is the vice president
of said JAVA and she's a parliament assistant at European Parliament.
So thank you very much for being here with us
as well.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
And the four is yours.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Maria.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
I have mine, so.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
Let's get it started. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to
our debate philosophy as a weapon for success. It's a
pleasure to have you all here this afternoon for what
I believe will be a very inspiring and interesting conversation
about how philosophy can shape our views on the world

(07:12):
and our lives. Our speakers come from very different and
interesting backgrounds from business, politics, and philosophy, which I'm sure
will make this exchange even more engaging for everyone. And
with that, I would like to start with Jaron, and
let's start with the basics I believe. So what is

(07:34):
philosophy and why should anyone care about it for their lives?

Speaker 3 (07:41):
So philosophy is really the study is in the volume
seems high. Philosophy is the is the fundamental, the study
of the fundamental aspects of life. It studies questions like,
you know, what is reality? How do we know what
reality is? And what are we? What is mankind? What

(08:04):
kind of an animal are we? And what is our
purpose in life? What should be our purpose in life?
So it's descriptive in its metaphysics and epistemology about what
is out there, how we know? And then it's prescriptive
in a sense of, well, what kind of life should
you lead, what kind of values, and what kind of
virtues should you engage in? And of course that leads

(08:27):
to kind of political philosophy, which then tells us, well,
what kind of political systems are good, what kind of
political systems are bad, what's good, what's evil in terms
of politics, not just in terms of human behavior. And
it even addresses kind of the human need for esthetics,
for arts. And there's a whole field in philosophy that
deals with aesthetics, which we probably won't talk about today,

(08:50):
And it's important because at the end of the day,
it shapes everything. Even people who've never read philosophy and
don't know anything about philosophy and would deny they've be
exposed to any philosophy are guided by a philosophy implicitly.
They absorb it from their parents, from their teachers, from
their professors. They if you ask them what is reality,

(09:14):
they have an answer. They might have never thought about it,
they've just absorbed it. If you ask them, how do
you know, they've got an answer. Again, they might not
have thought about it, but they've got an answer because
they've absorbed it. From the culture around them, and suddenly
we know everybody out there has opinions about politics, and
how many of them really thought it through and really

(09:36):
established their foundations and thought about what are their foundations
in political philosophy and why they hold those foundations. And
this is the kind of system of government. And therefore,
you know, we should have socialized health care, we should
have private health care. But they have reasons. Most people
don't have reasons because they've never thought about it. So
philosophy is that system of thought behind it all the

(09:58):
shapes every every aspect of human behavior. Everything that we
do is ultimately shape by a philosophy. And one of
the things that I think is really important in life,
and I think that this, hopefully this panel will help,
is the more we make philosophy explicit, the more we
identify a philosophical premise, the more it can become a

(10:19):
tool for us to live a better life. The more
we know about ourselves, we know about why we do
and why we think what we think, and the more
we can then shape our lives to be consistent with
the fundamental ideas that we have. The more to mishmash
and just in the background, you know, the more, we're
being pulled by forces that we are not in control of.

Speaker 5 (10:44):
Before moving on to team, I would like to just
make a little follow up question based on what you
just told us. Would you say that philosophy can work
like as a practical guide to our lives and moving
through the world.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
I mean, philosophy should, and I think philosophers who present
their philosophy intended to be a practical guide for people
to live by. Even philosophies that I think are bad,
their intention is for people to take them seriously and
to live or die if they're really bad philosophies based

(11:20):
on them, Philosophy is a practical guide to living in
a good Philosophy is a practical guide to successful living.
It's a practical guide to happiness, to prosperity, to flourishing
as a human being. That's the purpose of philosophy to
teach us. Look, living is hard, it's complicated. There's a
lot of going on, right, and most of us are
focused on making a living, raising our kids. There's so

(11:44):
much going on, and what philosophy and learning basic philosophy
gives us a tools principles by which we can live
shortcuts so we can achieve happiness and flourishing without having
to invent our own lastophy, ourselves, or I think every
little aspect through. That is the job of philosopher's and intellectuals.

(12:06):
It's to convey these ideas and the hobbits use the
ideas in our daily lives.

Speaker 5 (12:12):
Thank you, Thank you so much so moving on to Tim, Tim,
you have often said that success is about trying, failing
and then trying again. And with that said, I would
like to ask you, for you personally, what does success means?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, so that's way. It's difficult because I got presented
as a successful businessman and I can tell you I've
had many more in successes, many more failures than I
have successes. But without those successes or failures, there would
be very few successes. Because you need this experience. You
need to go through all the failures. You need to

(12:52):
learn how to get back up, how to rebuild a team,
how to take responsibility and say yeah, my fault, move on,
let's go. So I think you know in the way,
our success in the end is us working on things
that give us purpose with people we love or enjoy
or can tolerate.

Speaker 6 (13:11):
And if you force to work with people, you don't
like on projects that you don't like, well, that's very unsuccessful,
even if you're making a lot of money, because.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
In the end, I've understood that successful, so it doesn't
come with money. There's a lot of people making money
that's super unsuccessful, not that happy. And you know, like
everything I do in life, I look at it almost
and keep it simple. So if you're doing things and
it's making you happy and you're in a good space
working with people you really enjoy, I think that's that's

(13:42):
what makes me happiest.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
You know.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
So I get to wake up every day, I don't
have a day's set and don't exactly know what's going
to happen. I get to go to bed super late
and wake up super early because I've got this purpose
and I'm working with people that I believe in. So
that's success for me.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
That's a very good answer, actually, and it makes life
a lot easier while working for sure. So still on
this success topic, I would like to move on to Mariu,
and I would like to ask if you think that
success can be collective like shared by a company or
a nation, or if success always has to be an

(14:24):
individual achievement.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Okay, So.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
First of all, let me start with but the bottom
line of my message, which is that philosophy is not
a means to an end, be it achieving personal success,
professional success, whatever. It is an end in itself, so
it serves its own purpose. Having said this, philosophy is

(14:49):
also an important tool. And by the way, I'm no philosopher.
I'm just a layman that uses philosophy to improve his
life and the way I see life. I think that
is the most important point. And philosophy, therefore, having said
that it isn't in itself, can be a very useful

(15:11):
tool for understanding the world and thinking about the world.
Let me give you an example. So, picking up on
what Yarns said, which I completely agreed, we are influenced
by philosophers all the time, not only philosophers. It was
Canes that used to say that everybody is influenced by
defunct economists, whether you like it or not, whether you

(15:32):
agree to it or not, we are influenced by that.
The same with philosophy. With philosophy, so if that is
the case, we need to decide whether we want to
do it consciously or unconsciously, because either way we'll get
influenced by it, so it's better we know the tools,
We know the tools of the trade, and we know
the most basics, so that help us with our own life.

(15:55):
And let me give you one good example of how
philosophy can help us with ethical issues and with moral dilemmas.
Most of us will have an opinion on what I
have to show you in a quick sect just waiting
for the display turn on. So everybody will have a hunch,

(16:15):
will have an instinct on how it would behave if
confronted with what I'll be showing you next. But the
real question is can you do it from a rational standpoint?
Can you decide? Knowing everything that is at stake and
the different ethical perspectives you can take. So well, it's

(16:38):
sparring up. But while it's powering up, I can explain
in words the moral dilemmas. So it's basically some of
you haveverted in the past. It's called the trolley dilemma.
It's basically a railway. Right, you have a railway and
then you have a bridge on top on the railway.
Still turning on on the railway, you see a couple

(16:59):
of people that is tied to the railway. Right, we
don't know who those are. We don't know if they're innocent,
if they're guilty of anything. See there you go. So
there's the bridge, there's the railway, and then there's some
people there right, they're tied to the railway and there's
a train incoming, and there's nothing you can do. I mean,

(17:20):
if the train just steps over them, they will be
of course, be that, that's for sure. Now on top
of the bridge, there's a very fat guy and there
are some wonders there and they are discussing between each
other what they should do about it, whether they should
throw the fat guy off the bridge. And in this

(17:41):
moral dilemma he can stop the train. He dies, but
the others survive, while others are saying, no, I mean,
he's an innocent guy, why should we do that, While
the others are saying, well, we can save more people.
Now you may think this is kind of an abstract
academic example.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
It is not.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
These are the kind of decisions that one needs to
do on well, in the particular case of physicians, for instance,
that they need to make on a daily basis. Now,
if I ask the audience what your decision would be,
usually it's split half and half. Some would say well,
we could save more people. We call that utilitarianism. I'll

(18:22):
discuss that in detail. You'd save more people, while others say, well,
the ends the means. Sorry, the ends do not justify
the means. So even if we save more people, I
don't want to sacrifice an innocent We could call that
a gontological approach, a can'tyon approach. Either way, you will

(18:44):
have this answer instinctively, right, you haven't thought about it,
but you'll take one of these sides.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
If you have to decide, you'll take one of these sides. Now,
it's interesting because when I asked this, and I did
ask this in the past to an audience of physicians
or people working in the healthcare sector, way more people
would go for the utilitarian ethical decision than the deontological.
And there's a good reason for that, because health professionals

(19:14):
have a strong pressure to save as many people as possible, right,
that's their duty. They need to do that, So they
are lean towards doing that, saving as many people as possible,
while others will say or will take a different approach.
In my particular case, I'll definitely take a deontological approach.
I don't think the ends justify all means. Actually, this

(19:36):
idea of it's called consequentialism is the path to totalitarianism.
So there's there's some philosophical roots to to the idea
of an oppressive state that will liberate us all. And
therefore some eggs need to be broken, like leninset. There's

(19:56):
a philosophical route in this, in this thought, and so
these things actually happened to affect us in our daily decisions.
And so there's no right or wrong to this moral dilemma.
There's no right answer. Those who say that I would
rather say if more people they are not wrong, and
those who'd say that, well, let's have it as it

(20:18):
is and let's not sacrifice the guy, and then more
people will eventually die. Now, where this dilemma gets trickier
is when you start changing it. And for those who say, well,
I wouldn't sacrifice the fat guy on the bridge, and
then you change the dilemma a bit and say the following,
what if instead of those individuals that we don't know

(20:42):
who they are, it was there your family. Most of
you would probably change your answer. And that's one of
the reasons why we're not good judges. When we're judging
for our own cause. That's pre precisely because of that,
because we wouldn't be impartial, it would be too much
at stake. We wouldn't sacrifice our face family. Well I
wouldn't for sure, And so again this has a big

(21:04):
impact on us. So this is just a small illustration
of our philosophy can have a big impact on how
we reason about the problems we face in our life
and the principles we want to follow. And for someone
like me, with as most of you probably know, very
liberal and staunch liberal, I like my positions of principle

(21:28):
to be grounded in something or in values that are
really important to me. And therefore that's why I take
this theontological approach or can't an approach, because it derives
from the moral imperative of Manuel Kant that the means
they're not at the end does not justify all the means.

(21:49):
And you wouldn't do andto others what you wouldn't want
them to do to yourself, so you wouldn't sacrifice an
innocent And that somehow gives me some and just to
wrap up that, somehow gives me some peace of mind
in the sense that I don't know if the answer
is right over or wrong. But I'm okay with what

(22:11):
the way I decided. So I haven't answered exactly our
philosophy helps with success and how to measure success, but
I think this was the one of the angles I
wanted to share.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
Having heard Mario, I would like to make a little
follow up question to Jaron, knowing your views on can
success be collective or is it necessarily individual?

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Which he didn't answer.

Speaker 4 (22:39):
I'll get back to it later.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, I forgot. Can I comment on what he did
say though before we get to yes, of course, because
I think I mean has an interesting perspective on the
trolley question. This is a standard issue that is taught
in all ethics classes, you know, a variety of different

(23:01):
ways it's presented. I've never seen this caricature.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
It's from the economists.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Okay, but that that that that's kind of a you know,
pushing the fat guy and he's fat, you know, so
I don't know if that weighs into the decision bit.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
Well, actually, sir, to interrupt you, but some physicians said, well,
that guy is very likely to live, not as long
as others I thought of it, you know, healthy people.
So eventually, yeah, that bad. So yeah, I had someone
saying that.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
So we very much viewed this as the kind of
as a as a if you will, a marginal issue
in ethics, so very different than then, I say what
you usually talked in ethics classes. She she she thought
this was the ethics of emergencies, right, that that sometimes
you're faced with these really you know, impossible dilemmas and yeah,

(23:51):
there's no real good answer, there's no real right answer.
And what she argued is is that unfortunately, this is
what almost all of ethics in our modern time boils
down to. It's about emergencies. And her argument is, no,
ethics is about every single decision, important decision you make

(24:12):
in your daily life. It's how do I decide what
career to pursue. Do I listen to my mother and
do something I hate because it pleases her, or do
I do what I'm passionate about. That's an ethical decision.
Am I placing the interest? Are my mother a head
of mine? Or am I placing my interest first?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
You know?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
So you know, every single day we engage in ethical decisions.
Every time we decide I'm gonna really think about this
problem or am I going to go buy my emotions. Right,
those are two different philosophical schools, emotionalism versus reason. So
ethics is something that I think guides every one of
our decisions, and yes it you know, you're sometimes faced

(24:55):
in an emergency room in the hospital with these impossible situations.
Do I treat these people? Do I treat those people?
How do I decide? And for doctors maybe that's a reality.
But for most of us, we're never going to be
in a trolley. Most of us, though, have to make
decisions every single day about how to use our mind,
how to use our life, how to use our time,
how to make decisions, And a good, useful ethical system

(25:19):
is one that gives us guidance on how to make
those decisions in a way that leads to success and happiness. Now,
the question is the question was about individual versus collective
happiness success. So there's a sense in which you know,
only individuals act in the world. You know groups act,

(25:41):
but groups are just collections of individuals. But you can
attribute the success of a group of people to the group. Certainly,
companies can be successful, and you can also say that
countries are successful.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
But you have to then break it down.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
What makes a country successful the success of its individual people.
I mean, this is part of the problem with authoritarians, right,
they want the country to be successful somehow they imagine
it can be successful, while no, none of the individuals
are successful. They're all all the same. They're all, you know,
mindless drones doing you know, like the in the kind

(26:19):
of communist caricature. So a group success is dependent on
individual success. But certainly I mean sports teams, right, I mean,
I don't know any football teams in Portugal, I'm sorry,
but like Real Madrid, Real Madrid is successful. It's a team. Now,
it can only be successful to the extent individuals is

(26:39):
successful and that they work together as a team. But
you can't not say that the group is successful. So yes,
groups can be successful.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
Okay, that's very interesting. Moving on to team and still
on this success topic, but connecting it to happiness. The
question is how can we connect happiness to success? And
is it possible that you are a very successful person

(27:10):
and that you can still be unhappy even though you
have reached all your goals.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (27:18):
I think, you know. I think happiness is actually a
lot more simple than we think, and it's not as
complex as we all think. And not being a philosopher.
I'll try to be very simple thinking, and I've just
learned that, you know, giving gratitude traveling and seeing what

(27:41):
could be if I wasn't if I didn't have the
opportunities I did have, makes me super happy. Having a
cause makes me super happy, even if I'm losing, you know,
but I've got the cause, so I feel like I'm
doing my part, making the right decision when it's maybe
not the easy decision or the expected decision or the

(28:02):
allowed decision. You know. I looked at you know, you
look at Nelson Mandela. Was he happy in jail? Probably
not happy in jail per se physically, but mentally spiritually,
he was probably very happy because he was fighting for
a vote that he believed in, and he had a cause,
you know. So I'll look at that and I'll say,

(28:23):
if we think of it in that way, I'd rather
have those causes and have a war to fight than
that I believe in. Then being comfortable living a long
life and not having achieved anything or fought for anything.
You don't become an example, you don't become a mentor,
you don't become anything, you know, And I think that's

(28:45):
a lot sadder than.

Speaker 5 (28:47):
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Being grateful for what you've got because you've got it
doesn't mean it's easy. It actually it's actually not nice
if it's easy. I've actually felt that I've the wars
I've had and the battles that I've fought that have
made me the strongest.

Speaker 7 (29:01):
You know.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
I always tell my kids, you know, what doesn't kill
you make you stronger, and I really believe that, you know,
and then it also works on everything. It gives you
more faith and more hope, you know, those things that
if you believe in God, and you don't believe in God,
but if you've got them, it does give you a
lot of strength. And this I might have been out
totally off the philosophers and all that, but it is
what it is for me, you know, and that's it.

(29:24):
So I would say, is identifying the little things, being
grateful for little things, and fighting something that is worth
fighting for that makes you be happy.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
You know.

Speaker 5 (29:36):
This view that you just shared with us is actually
very important because soon we will also move on to
the values and the role of religion that I believe
is actually very connected to what you have shared. But
before that, I would like to ask Mario, if our
happiness depends on the choices we make, does that mean

(29:58):
that we should all be doing similar choices and maybe
aiming for similar goals.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Well, before I try answering that, let me just go
back to your question which I didn't answer about prolific
success is individual or collective, because there is a much
broader question beyond that, which is whether it's the eternal
dilemmit of agency and structure. It's more sociological question than

(30:26):
a philosophical question, which is basically what matters the most
is the agency of the individuals or is it the
structure in this case the structure of society that somehow
will limit the potential of the benefit of the individual,
or the other way around, will boost the potential of
the individual. And this has strong implications also for political philosophy.

(30:49):
When we think about one of the intellectual fathers of
the election of the left, Jean Jacques Cusso, used to
say that individuals by nature were good beings. However, society
would degrade us right, so it was structure affecting the individuals.

(31:11):
Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, used to say that
we are savages if we are left to our natural
state where savages, and therefore we need a strong state
called the Leviata. You called it the Levanta, so that
it could tame us, it could somehow limit our state
of savage. And so this has important implications for our

(31:34):
day to day decisions and also for a collective decisions.
So it's hard to say, I mean, it's of course
pragmatic answer. It's of course a mix of things. You
by yourself, your agency is not enough to accomplish everything
you'd like. Think about Einstein. If Einstein were born not
in Switzerland, and we're born somewhere in Africa, right in

(31:59):
Subsarean Africa, which doesn't have the resources, they don't even
have the enough food, you'll probably be be dead. When
he was like ten or fifteen. He never become the Einstein,
the physician, the physics we know, right, because he wouldn't
have the opportunities he had when he moved to the US. So,
of course structure matters. We also benefit from the interactions

(32:22):
we have to society. Now, the important point being we
want those interactions to be forced or voluntary. Now a libertarian,
a liberal would say, of course voluntary. We are individuals,
but we're not hermits. We don't live isolated from society.
We like society. We like to cooperate with each other.

(32:42):
What we don't like is the state, the state telling
us with whom we should cooperate on what we should do. So,
I mean bottom line answer would be, it's a mix
of both, right. I mean, there's a lot that depends
on your effort, on what you do on you know,
all the trouble, all the effort you put into it.
But then there are other factors that you don't control

(33:05):
that are pretty much related to the to the environment,
to the context you're in, to the society you live.
So I'd say it's a mix of both. And in
the meanwhile, I completely forgot the new questions.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
You ask, if happiness depends on our choices, should we
all be aiming for the same the same goals, making
the same choices, same path.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
I mean, I'd call myself a hedonist. So I mean,
do whatever works to make you happy, that's it, right,
I mean, each one of us has to find its recipe.
There's no universal recipe for happiness. For some people it's
going to be work. Their aurs is off. Sorry for
the language. I mean work a lot achieve a lot
in terms of, you know, professionally, build a big successful company,

(33:53):
make a lot of money. That's probably what will make
them happy for that. For others will be raise a family,
see your kids grow, get old with them, or travel
a lot. I mean, each one of us, I would say,
needs to find their own way, their own path to happiness.
But the way we think about it, I think it
helps finding that way if we don't put too much

(34:15):
pressure on it, if we just accept it as it
is that we need to, you know, walk the path,
find our way, and eventually will uncover what truly makes
us happy. I think it will be much easier to
take that path than if we just try to doing
it blindfolded, without knowing where we want to go.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
But I do think by making decisions different to other people,
we get happier.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Different different we don't follow individuals.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I think you do many times doing the something different
to others, you actually become happier, you know. And the
other thing is, I do think you have more fun
when you're with others, when I sometimes think you have
a lot more fun when you were with others, Like
I've never you know, I've had a lot of fun

(35:06):
with others.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah, so the fun and happiness is not the same.
A lot of fun that makes you very unhappy, but in.

Speaker 7 (35:13):
The wake up the next morning, but in the but
in the end it produces joy, you know, like my daughter,
my son, it's okay, And I learned that joy would
have never come into my life.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
I hope you're listening, but you know, i'd say everybody
has their own path, there's no question, and everybody must
choose their own way. But there are certain principles that
lead you to happiness and certain principles that lead you
to unhappiness. I mean, there's a whole lot of unhappy
people in the world, and we have to have an
answer to why there's so many unhappy people. Not you know,

(35:45):
they've they've made choices, they followed paths that don't lead anywhere.
So there's a mythodology to happiness. There is a there
was a framework that leads to happiness, even if the
specific individual choices that one makes are going to be different.
Because we're gonna do different careers and marry different people, hopefully,
and and you know, we like different cause and we

(36:07):
like different arts, and we like different things. They all
have to be life affirming values. We can choose different values,
but they all have to have one thing in common.
If you choose life destroying values, which unfortunately many people
do their life destroying and you're not gonna be happy
you can, you're gonna you're gonna commit spiritual suicide.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
That's a very objectivist point of view.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
I strive towards that.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yes, moving on to.

Speaker 5 (36:36):
A topic that is, like I said before, connected to religion.
If you don't mind, I would switch up a bit
the order of the questions because I know the three
of you have a very different view on this. So
I would like to start with Tim. You showed us
with your prior answers that you are very much guided

(37:00):
and connected to faith, and so I would like to
ask you how does Christian Christian principles shape our happiness,
our sense of happiness?

Speaker 2 (37:16):
I think you know Christian values keep you maybe doing
the right choices in many ways, because you know, like
for me, being God fearing helps me. I'm not embarrassed
to say it. I've been in dark positions and maybe
my faith was the light that kept me going and
maybe keep me believing that it will come out of that.

(37:37):
You understand and I've got friends and people I know
that don't have that faith. And when it's dark, it's dark,
and it can't even get dark and stay dark for
a very long time. I think hope comes from faith
and if you don't have hope, and when you know,
the saddest place that I've seen in the world has
been East Vancouver. When I walked through the Roads of

(37:59):
eas vancous, I was shocked because it was like there
was no hope. You know, the guards that were stuck
on drugs and all that on the side of the road.
There was no hope. And I go to Africa and
you know, Congos and wherever I go, and there's still hope.
There's always hope, and they're happier because there's hope. So
for me, it's a simple thing. I don't have to

(38:20):
be a philosopher to understand that it helps me. So
maybe you know, I'm being selfish saying that it works
for me. That's the way I'll think about it. And
sometimes when someone's trying to convince me not it doesn't.
Really I don't have to be convinced. I'll move on
and I don't think too much about it. You know,
in that picture that was there. Maybe I would tell them,
you know, you've got to pray about it. Whatever happens

(38:42):
to the train happens, and it's my mom, you know.
It's what I'm trying to say is that I'm realistic,
but I also know what strengthens me, what gives me strength.
And I think, you know, we are in a world
that there's a lot more mental wellness issues. There's a
lot more people of the ethics and values, et cetera.

(39:03):
And I think the whole world was blossoming and many
countries were blossoming when there was Geodism and Christian values.
Let's call it just the values. Don't even worry about
all the rest. And it gets a bit more complicated
when they're not there. And we do like influence our neighbor,

(39:23):
and we do do you know, we believe we know
everything about it when you know there's a few rules
there that were good. So that's the way I see it.

Speaker 5 (39:32):
You know, before you have talked about having a cause,
having a purpose, and how it moves you. Do you
think that that is because of altruism. Is altruism what
moves you and also gives you a sense of happiness,
Does altruism have a part on this.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know, Like if I was sitting when I was forty,
it would be different to today. Now that I've got
gray and all that, you start thinking about what do
I give back? What makes me happy now is yes,
looking at do I leave the place a better place?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
You know?

Speaker 2 (40:06):
And that's what I work for. It doesn't make me
much happier now getting a new Ferrari. It doesn't change
anything in my life. I don't have to prove any
of that anymore. It actually makes me feel probably worse
now if I did that. It's crazy. But when I
was younger, it was a good thing and it motivated me.
And you know, I always say you go through three
phases in life. You go through the need and you

(40:27):
need some stuff. You need food, you need accommodation, you
need a job. And then you go through greed, where
you think you need a lot more than you really need,
you know, and you get and get and get and
you compete with everybody and that's how you see yourself successful.
And then if you're lucky enough and some people get there,
it's freed where you actually understand less is more. You're

(40:49):
not competing with anyone, do what you can, you know,
like if you've got the financial freedom, you can do
what you like and live a life. You know, that's
your path, understand So I think we forget that, you
know that sometimes in life we also hitting different places,
and we want everyone to be the same as us.
When they twenty thirty forty May they won't be, you know,

(41:11):
they still go in through it and some people will
maybe stay greed until eighty five or ninety one hundred.
Doesn't there's nothing you're going to do about it. But
for me, I think I do stuff now to you know,
like leave this place better. I think that's it. I
want to be an example for my kids. You know.
I always tell them, like, if you google me and
there's shitty news, I'm going to really be said. I'm

(41:33):
going to talk about it not you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (41:37):
Thank you, And moving on to Mariu. You've also mentioned
before the importance that religious values have in our society,
and so I would like to ask you not today
that yes, I would like to ask you what role
do you think these values play on champing Western ethics?

Speaker 4 (42:00):
A lot, that's the straight answer.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
A lot.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
I mean, that's another example of something that deeply influences us,
whether we like it or not, because the Western society,
like it or not, is built on Jewish Christian values.
That's the way it is. We may not agree with
all those values, but it's definitely built on top of that,
and so whether you accept it or not, it will influence.

(42:27):
It's a structure that exists that it will influence what
you are, what you achieve, and the way you think
about it. Right, which doesn't mean you cannot renounce from
those values. A lot of people do so on purpose,
right then they want to, you know, somehow cut the tize,
cut any bonds that exist with all the heritage, the

(42:48):
philosophical heritage, the religious heritage that we have in the
Western society. It's interesting because the people that usually do that,
they tend to praise other societies that are way more
religious than we are. It's a paradox, but they are
the ones that need to respond to respond to that.
Having said this, in my particular case, I think I've
never shared this in public, but I'm an agnostic. I'm

(43:12):
not a religious person right now. I used to be.
I was raised a Catholic. I used to go to
the church by myself, a lot of times alone by myself,
and I read the whole Bible. And then I started
parting ways with Catholicism and the idea that there's an
entity a here on earth, the Church, that knows how

(43:35):
to interpret God. That kind of repulsed me. And when
I lived in the US, I took the chance of
visiting some Protestant churches. So I would visit all the
Protestant churches from Methodists to pretense, I went to a
couple of them because there's a more direct link between
in this particular case, Jesus and the person. Then through Catholicism, right,

(43:57):
which is like an entity that stands there in the mids,
which has the authority to interpret what is the will
of God. And I did so, and I was closer
to Christianity than Catholicism. But still there was still too
many people in the middle, too many humans trying to
interpret whatever God meant us to be. And so I
mean again, I.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Can't wait, you can't pray directly.

Speaker 4 (44:20):
No, I know, I know, I know, But the thing is,
in the end, I don't know whether God exists or not. Right,
I just somehow cut the middleman. The idea of churches
I still don't know. I'm not an atheist because an
atheist is a very zealid and religious person. It's someone
that strongly believes that God does not exist, and I
cannot say that with such certainty. But as an agnostic,

(44:44):
I can say I don't know, I don't know, we
don't know, and so I honestly don't know whether God
exists or not. I do understand those who need God
in their lives. I think it is somehow a very
very important support in someone's lives. I can understand that,

(45:05):
especially those who have to go through harsh times through grief,
it can be really I mean, you know, somehow a
big support someone's life. I understand. I totally understand that.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Somehow.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
I wouldn't mind having a clearer vision that it exists.
But so far that's the way it is. But again,
I do acknowledge that our old society is based on
those Christian values, so we owe a lot to that.
Of course, it was not all good things. A lot
of bad things happened in the past, but due to

(45:43):
religion as well, which is another reason why I parted
ways with religion and with the human interpretation of what
would be the will of an existing God, of a deity.
So yeah, that's basically this is a.

Speaker 5 (45:59):
Very small revision. But for what is worth, the fact
that you actually don't know if God exists or not
is actually part of faith because faith has to live
like and in the end with that always you can
never be sure, and that's why you believe and you
keep going and you hope for the best.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
But it's also faith. Sorry, it's also faith to have
a dogma without being it rational. But it's the dogma
that God exists. It's going beyond the reason and accepting
that it exists. Right, that's also faith, I think.

Speaker 5 (46:29):
No, it is definitely. So yeah, I know you defend
something very different from what we have just discussed. And
with that being said, can you tell us about rational
egoism and your beliefs on this?

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Sure? I mean so I agree that just on the
on the faith issues, I agree that Western civilization is
very much influenced by the Judo tradition, if we want
to call it that. I'm just not sure it's influenced
for the better by that tradition. I suspect it's influenced
for the worst and not for the better. I think

(47:11):
a lot of the eels that we have in our
societies today are products of that. And if I can
pick up with something Tim said, which I get upset
every time I hear it, there's lots of you know, absolutely,
you're a very successful business. Right, You've done very well.
And I don't know much about you, but I suspect

(47:34):
you did it by creating stuff, by building companies, by
by building products, by serving your customers, by doing all this.
You never took anything. Why do you say you want
to give back? Right? Giving back assumes in the language
that you took something, But you didn't take anything.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
You've created.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
You've created jobs, You've created wealth for people. You've provided
people with immense products and values, and and and and
good things. I'm not saying don't do good. You know,
I think your business did good good. I think by
very every business mind I know somehow feels guilty for
the fact that they did a business and they want

(48:13):
to give back. But you shouldn't feel guilty. Your hero
for being a businessman, your model for being a businessman.
You created something, you built, something, you added to the world.
The world is a better place for you being in it,
even if you don't quote give back anything, So I
think it's I think it's tragic. I think I think
this idea that we have in our Judo Christian tradition,

(48:36):
and I think it's very much from there that somehow,
if I benefit from making the world a better place,
that's tainted. Profit is tainted, making money is tainted, and
if I have to, I have to repent in some
way later in life. Maybe. And I think that attitude
is completely wrong.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
But I can reassure you that it's totally selfish with
me giving back because it makes me feel it's giving
mine exactly like it's my It's my selfish of giving
makes me feel amazing. Do you understand what? It's back
to my selfishness. And at the same time, it's it's

(49:16):
like I've enjoyed more giving than getting. It's weird. It's
actually weird, like give getting back it felt like work.
Giving feels like pleasure.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
But didn't you enjoy it? I enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
It was a different time of my life. But if
I had to do it all over again, I'm enjoying
the giving a lot more and and again. And I
get to choose who I give it to and who
deserves it, and who I don't think deserves it, and
and all those kinds of things. So it's it's it's
selfish again, you know, in a way, but it's for me.
It's an amazing thing. I wouldn't think of it the

(49:50):
other way. I told my kids when I started giving
in with Brave Generation Academy, I told them, listen, do
you want me to leave you in inheritance or can
I fun?

Speaker 4 (50:02):
And that they have gone with everything's gone fun.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
They might have made a mistake, but you know what
I called him, it's probably going to help you because
you'll probably not get the wrong friends. You're probably going
to marry a bit of person. You're probably gonna enjoy building,
like you said, and getting all that back. And I'm
not going to take that away from you because You're
going to need to do it. So in the end,
to do it it is, it is fun, That's what

(50:25):
I'm saying. It's different times, you know, different strikes.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
So so you asked about rational egoism or rational self interest.
So rans view of morality is that it should be
a guide to living a good life for yourself. That
you know, the purpose of morality is not to learn
how to sacrifice. It's not to learn how to you know,
uh place other people's while being above your own. It's

(50:50):
to figure out how to live the best life that
you can live for you and you know the conclusions
she comes to this.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
If you want to do that in.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Order to live the best life for yourself, reason and
rationality are the tool you're going to use. And the
reason for that is it's it's how we get all
our values. I mean, at the end of the day,
you know, we have to think. You have to use
your mind. You have to figure it out to solve

(51:21):
problems and to figure out what works and what doesn't.
You know, trial and error, but you have to learn
from you know, I know people who fail and never
succeed right because they don't learn from their errors. You
have to constantly think, You have to constantly learn, You
have to constantly study, and you should approach your own
life that way. That is, you should constantly think about,
you know, how can I make myself better? How can

(51:43):
I make my character better? How can I attain you know,
values that that will lead to greater flourishing and greater success,
and that all requires reason. At the end of the day,
man is a rational animal. That's how Aristotle defined it,
and I think he was absolutely right. We we survive
by using our reason, by using our rationality, and that

(52:04):
is what's required in order to survive. And her morality
is a morality built around this concept of each one
of us should strive to make our life the best
life that it can be. It doesn't mean treating other
people badly, quite the country. It doesn't mean exploiting other people. No,
I mean that doesn't mean like cheating, is stealing, all
of that actually lead to a worst life. A good

(52:26):
life is about being rational, which means being honest, which
means being productive, which means building and creating and making stuff.

Speaker 6 (52:34):
Uh, and.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
You know it's very counter I think too. Again, a
traditional Judo Christian morality which is about sacrifice, which of
us placing the interests of other people above your own,
which is about if you feel good about helping somebody,
maybe you're not doing it for the right reason and
maybe it's not moral right, which is something cont would say.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Or No religion is bringing that to a lot other
religion and that's why when you're talking about the Catholicism
and all that it brings on, that you have to sacrifice.
But in the Bible, it actually says use your talents,
and God got upset when you didn't make money with
the talents he gave you. Do you understand what I'm saying.
So it's not about he wants you to be poor,
doesn't want you to use your talents. Except but religion

(53:17):
changes a lot, you know, we have religion in Christianity.
There's three thousand ways of seeing it. That's why for me,
I don't need the three thousand ways. I see it
my way. I see it directly. I don't need to
speak via a whole lot of people or pray to
a lot of people. Yeah, I can go direct It's okay.
It's good, and it keeps my values good. It gives

(53:38):
me answer it. Also, I saw it in my kids.
I saw it in my kids and that when I
knew there's got to be a God when they were born,
and I saw that and some of the stuff they
do and all that, I don't have the question anymore.
There's got to be something, But I'm not yet to
convert anyway. But for me, it works so good, you know.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
So I became an atheist when I was sex and
literally when I was six, going to a very religious
day school where they were teaching the Bible and teaching
all this stuff, and I came to conclusion none of
it made any sense. It was all a nice story,
just like we tell stories. And they could prove none
of it, and they could show me no evidence of

(54:17):
its existence. And I've had kids, I've gone through that
process and it's never shaken my my atheism and atheism.
I don't think it's a dogma. It's something doesn't exist,
that's all. But that's it's not a positive, it's a negative.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
And that's what's good about Christianity.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
It's your choice.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Like we don't force it on you, and we don't
text you more, we don't.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Make questions, don't force it on you.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Well, I'm talking about study the history, but look on
in the Bible, it's your choice. No one's going to
force its religion, not force it on but not not
in the Bible.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
It's your choice.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Different to other books where it's not your choice. If
you don't do it, you get text or if you
don't do it, you get killed.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
And your choice.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
You know, I hope you in heaven, but if not,
it was your choice.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Probably not either way, Probably not either way.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
That actually reminded me of one of the they became.
They were friends in the beginning, but then they somehow
parted the ways Rothbard and I ran right. She had
some kerfuffles with him, but in one of his books.
He has amazing books about economic thought in history. And
the first experience of communist experience that is known, at

(55:37):
least that we have some evidence about, was done by
a Protestant faction, the Ana Baptist absolutely in the north
of Germany. They I think it was in the north
of what we now call Germany. And it was kind
of a commune, right, and had the same that this
was way before Marx, right, and it had the same

(55:59):
lodge that you know, you wanted to get rid of
the idea of a family, and so the children would
be brought by the entire community everything, yeah, like kibutz
in Israel. So everything would be shared. There would be
no private property, open rooms, right, And as you can imagine,
it went really well. But it's interesting because the foundation

(56:23):
for that idea this had a religious route, right, in
this case a Christian Protestant.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
Goes even earlier. It's actually you see the first communes
under Catholicism in very early on in Christian history you
see the existence of communes. So yes, the idea of
socialism and communism has roots. And one of the things
about the Bible is you can pretty much read what
you want into it. It's written in such a way that,

(56:53):
you know, I know socialists who read the Bible and
swear that it's all, you know, summon an amount, it's
pure communism and socialism. And I know capitalists, you know
Christians who read the same passages and say, no, see,
this is all capitalists. And I think, I think to
a large extent. You know, we we used to study
the Old Testament in school, and we used to study

(57:17):
a few sentences, right, a few passages, and then fifty
rabbi is commenting on those, and all fifty rabbis disagreed
with one another about what the passage meant. And you
know it's it takes.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
That's the reading. You can never read a verse. You've
got to read a few verses, but then you have
to read. It's the same as now with Trump, whatever
it says, they didn't take it away and bring the other.
But at the end you've got to listen to the
whole thing.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
And actually that reminds me sorry that I do have
some socialist friends that are Catholic and they swear by
God that Jesus was socialist, absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 5 (57:55):
Before we get lost into politics as well, I would
like to ask you free the same question that guides
us to our last topic today, that is about the
principal man. And the three of the three of you
have shared your perspectives on happiness, success, ethics, even religion,

(58:15):
and I would like to ask you for your perspective
on the following question. Can a man without principles be
ever truly happy or successful? From your point of view?
And we can start.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
No, I don't think you can be happy without principles.
I think you've got to live by something, to live
minute by minute and change your mind and go in
different directions and without guidance, without clear guidance. Now you
have to have the right principles. There's the wrong principles.
It's going to lead you down a bad road. And
they've been monsters in history who are very principled, but

(58:56):
they were monsters and therefore they lived gble lives. But
I think that the people who don't have principles, people
who are constantly shifting and you know, and they lie
one day and they tell the truth another day. Because
there's no principle of tell the truth. Cannot be happy,
they cannot really be successful.

Speaker 4 (59:14):
Now they can be.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
There's one and I apologize in advance for this. There's
one profession in which you get rewarded for being unprincipled,
only one. You can't do it in business you get
washed out. And that one profession is politics. And and
you know, the prime example of that is in the

(59:35):
White House. Right now, you've got You've got somebody who's
completely unprincipled, who has achieved a pinnacle of success in politics.
So that is the one area in life where it
gains you success. I don't think happiness. I don't think
he's happy, but I think it gains you success. But
that's the only really realm in life where it works

(59:58):
that way.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
I agree. I think you won't and I think even
having strong principles, even when they against the current, at
least people know what you are and they will start
to respect it. But if you swap and change, it's
actually the worst spondless person. And in business, I prefer

(01:00:20):
not to deal with with that. I prefer to know
what you're dealing with what they stand by. And that's
what makes me sad. Nowadays, you know, the handshake used
to mean something and you knew the principles and whose
hand you were shaking. You know, now it means you know,
it's what contract this, what that? And how do we
get out of it? Et cetera. And I think going forward,
we're going to need a world with principles. I think

(01:00:41):
those are going to be the most advanche advantageous assets
you will get will be if you've got ethics and
values and principles and we don't teach that. You know that,
we don't talk about it. And before we were lucky
because we had parents who would give us experiences and
try to do that. We grandparents would give us values
and ethics and tell us stories about what happened. If

(01:01:02):
you did lie, the wolf wouldn't you know, no one
would help you if the wolf came. All those kinds
of things. And we're losing all those things. When we
had community that we also if we were a liar,
you'd stop getting credit or you would stop you know,
you you would get out of that community and you'd
be sad. Now you know, it's it's more important our

(01:01:24):
comments on social media. It's how do we get onto
the bandwagon? That's right, and it's gonna that's got less
people that oppose it because they don't want to say anything,
because it's just going to be like they don't want
to be attacked. They're too busy, they're working. Do you understand?
So I think it is like you've got to have principles,
I think, and that's going to become a value, that's

(01:01:44):
going to become currency.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
My turn, well, I think we need to define our
terms so we can answer that. What is happiness? I
would say that and correct me if I'm wrong here.
From a rand's perspective and yours as well, happiness is
a rational achievement, right. It is not an emotional achievement.
It's not a chemical chemistry happening in our body releasing

(01:02:10):
hormones that make us happy. Now, from that point of view,
I fully agree that you need to stand principle and
believe according to what or actually live your life according
to what you truly believe. As a way to achieve this,
I wouldn't say exactly happiness perhaps accomplishment, right that you
want to your life to be meaningful, you want to

(01:02:32):
make sure that you lived according to your principles, and
you lived for the sake of yourself and not for
anyone else's sake, as it is written in Atlas Shrug
and in many other pieces of fine rent. So if
you define happiness this way, I think it makes perfect sense.
I see happiness also, not that I discard this view.

(01:02:54):
I think it makes sense. But from another perspective, as
well as a more ethonist perspective, includes emotions. It also
includes all the chemical reactions that happened in our body,
and so you can without you know, significant achievements in
your life, actually be happy. You don't need much to
be happy. I learned that through my own experience when

(01:03:16):
I was traveling around the world for a year with
only my backpack, so I didn't have much money on
my own, and I don't know, I lost account of
how many times I ate spaghetti with the tuna fish.
So I was living on a budget. It didn't have
much time, and I was really really happy. Why because
of all the chances and opportunities right of stumbling upon

(01:03:39):
really interesting people. When I lived in Brazil, I mean,
my days were on the beach and didn't have much
more than that, and I was truly happy, emotionally happy.
I was achieving a lot professionally, no doubt, not at all.
But I do remember that when I was coming back
on the plane and I thought, well, if this fall,

(01:04:00):
that's it. I'm good. I did a lot of things.
I'm happy. I'll die happy. Of course, by then I
didn't have my children, my offspring, So now in retrospective,
there were still a lot of things that I wanted
to do. But back then I knew that I was
truly happy. So again, if happiness, if you see it
from a different angle from what makes you, I mean good,

(01:04:24):
feel good, what makes you feel good? I think that
it goes beyond leaving according to your principles. But I
think that's truly important as well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
So I just want to make clear that I wouldn't
negate the fact that it's emotions involved. Right, Happiness is
something you feel, and emotions are important. She would just
say that emotions are not arbitrary. Right, Emotions come from somewhere.
They come from your values, they come from your conclusions,
they come from decisions you've already made. They're not random,

(01:04:57):
and look, some people do have random chemical stuff going
on in their minds that make it impossible for them
to be happy. They could be, you know, clinically depressed
or schizophrenic or something like that. I don't think I
randnize all of that. She would say that that rational
achievement is consistent with emotions. That is, that your emotions

(01:05:18):
respond to the higherarchy of values that you have created.
And as we said, in different ages, in different periods
of our lives, we have a different hierarchy of values.
We choose different things. I don't think. I mean, I'm
guessing that if you went, you know, backpacking right now,
you might not be as happy as you were when
you were eighteen or something. Yeah, you've got kids, you've

(01:05:41):
experienced a Korea, Well, yeah, escape from them. So it's
I don't think they're in conflict. In other words, I
think they serve the same purpose. It's also true that Aristotle,
you know, said that you can only know you're really
happy you live the happy life the moment before you die,

(01:06:01):
because it's it's a cumulative thing. Right now, I don't
think that's quite true, but it is. It's happiness is
not joy or fun, although they contribute, Happiness is accumulative,
you know, sense of the life that you're having. It's
a it's a state of being, you know, are you
in a state of being that's happy? And I think

(01:06:22):
that's something that you have to accumulate, some experience and
some life in order to be able to say, yeah,
I really am happy.

Speaker 5 (01:06:30):
Thank you so much. I think that one thing is
clear from hearing all of your perspectives that whether through
reason or faith, our principles and our values end up
shaping pretty much who we become and the way we
go and move through life. Before moving on to the

(01:06:53):
questions from the audience, I would like to call Migel
for a little announcement.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
We have a little announcement. So on your seats you
have some flyers with a QR code, So that QR
code leads you to a link for the iron RAN
conference we're going to host in Porto next year in
April from the seventeenth, seventeenth to the nineteenth and you

(01:07:21):
can sign up or apply for a scholarship and intend
it for free.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Okay, so that's possible as well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
And I would like everyone to congratulate Marko R. So
basically there was an essay contest and he wanted so
at the end just come to the front and we'll
leave you the prize, okay. So and outside we have
on a table as well some booklets about what is

(01:07:49):
capitalism and about some ideas of objectivism, and you can
grab them and take them with you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
So that's that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
So now without further ado.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
We have questions.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
So if you guys want to ask questions to the panel, uh,
just raise your hand and I'll go with you and
hand you the mic.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (01:08:15):
Good.

Speaker 8 (01:08:17):
Hey, So my name's Philip. Hello.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
I'd like to pick up on the topic about.

Speaker 8 (01:08:29):
Religion because I went through kind of the same experience
as Yahn, not at six years old, a bit later,
you know, but I was raised the Catholic.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
I went to.

Speaker 8 (01:08:45):
What do we call it a non school uh for
ten years something, and at the end of that it
all turned into not.

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
But I have a question.

Speaker 8 (01:08:56):
The team said that hope comes from faith, and even
if there's outside circumstances that can make us not very happy,
if we have hope, we can still be happy. So
what if someone doesn't have faith, That's my question.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
I'd say you can have rational hope, that is, there
can be reasons in the world out there to believe
that that good things are coming, that it's not right now.
I think irrational hope is irrational and can be very destructive.
I think a lot of the problems in the world
of people being passive and hoping, hoping things happen to them,

(01:09:40):
rather than going and doing stuff to change their circumstances,
to change the world in which you have. See, you
can be rationally hopeful based on evidence that good things
can happen and good things will happen, or you can
be irrational hopeful, which makes you very passive and can
be very self destructive.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
And you know, it's exactly true. Like because you have
faith doesn't mean that I don't have rationality, you know,
Like I always tell my learners that, you know, their
parents are always telling them the world's about to end
because there's going to be a third World war and
it's this, and it's that. And sometimes when I'm speaking
to them, I'm wondering, why should they be studying, because

(01:10:22):
the way their parents are telling them, you know that
it's going to be the this is going to do that,
and we're going to end. And I always tell them,
you know, rationally, you've got to think of this rationally
like in my day when I was your age, there
was conflicts in the Middle East, there was the Cold War.
We had you know, this ozone layer that was like

(01:10:42):
going to give us all cancer. My mom was putting
cream and stuff on me, like I couldn't just relax.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
We had Y two K problem, you know, so that
was going on. I had a friend who bought a
BMW the day before Y two K because he said
he wouldn't pay it the next day if they'll have
to pay it the rationality, and he says, and if
the world ends, I'm inside of BMW. But it didn't end,
and he paid for it. You know. So you look
at those things, and you know, rationale gives me hope

(01:11:11):
that because of those things there. And then my son
actually said something that gave me a lot of hope
when we were going on about all the you know,
global warming and all that. You know, definitely there's climate change,
like you're not going to fight against climate change. But
he also told me that I don't believe I think
we've been very arrogant, that we think we changing everything,
because he did. In that time when we saw a

(01:11:32):
Brave Generation academy, we didn't have a curriculum, and that
was the best when we didn't have a curriculum and
he got to just do things that were interesting. And
he did an extinction and he came back and he
says that there's been six extinctions and we weren't yet,
and we weren't yet. Man wasn't yet. But things happened.
You understand what I'm saying. So it gave me again
rational hope that you know, we will whatever happens happens.

(01:11:56):
You know what my faith and all that does for
me is that maybe if I you know, I want
to believe that in times when I don't have rational offers,
I've got that to lean on. You Undertand I'm saying
I was lucky I didn't go to a Catholic school
because it seems like it's a tough thing.

Speaker 6 (01:12:14):
This I know, but all these religious ones seems really tough.
So it's also about balance in life. It's sick I libriu, like,
you've got to have balance.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
You can't be this, you can't be that. Also, if
you do become something, you become so pushed on that
that you know it's no good. You're actually going to
draft people away. You know what I'm saying, you need balance,
you need to think. And that's the problem. We're not
made to think. We're not. In today's world, everything is
about you know, I keep telling our learners you've got

(01:12:45):
to think for yourself. Please don't fall into other things.
You've got to think. You got to think, find be
controversial and on thinking and then come up with it.
We're now doing these conlundrums like which is similar to this,
Like we'll say, you know, there's a rocket that free
pass or or not a rocky by a comet, and
who gets to name it? The little glal who saw

(01:13:05):
it in a room, the guy in the space station
who gets and then you change it because you think,
you start to think and you discuss it, and that's
going to that should be education going forward. It's like
discussions that we're.

Speaker 3 (01:13:16):
Spending way too much with young kids on emotion and
not enough. I mean, they're very good at emoting, they
don't need out help with that. And yet and yet
so much of education today is about emotion and socialization
and things like that rather than about thinking.

Speaker 8 (01:13:33):
I have another question, actually, so in regards to values,
some would say that we live in a post modern
society and the construction of value and meaning. So my
question is, would you say that we are experiencing a

(01:13:55):
society that has less values or more extreme values in
a way.

Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
That's a very interesting question. So this would launch us
into a very long discussion about the origins of postmodern modernism.
But one of its philosophical rules roots is the idea
that morals are relative. There's what we call relative moralism.

(01:14:25):
So there are no universal values now, the idea of
universal values and principles of human rights. That's a very
liberal heritage. It's actually it has some It is an
offspring of Kent's idea, and it is something that we
used to accept in a very as part of common sense,

(01:14:50):
that there are universal values that we should strive for.
We may not have achieved them yet, but we're making
our ways. And some philosophers somehow created this idea that
everything is relative, there is no morality. I don't know
if somehow Nietzsche, which has nothing to do with those postmodernists,

(01:15:16):
was somehow responsible for that when he said that we
should go beyond good and evil, beyond morals. Right, it
is about the power and the capacity, the will to
power to do stuff that somehow opened the way or
gave leeway to that kind of of reasoning. But of
course the true responsibles for that were others. For co Althuser,

(01:15:39):
there were other philosophers that somehow created this moral relativism.
And I think that it is our duty to return
to normal and to establish that, yes, there are universal
values that we should strive for. Yes, like John Locke
said when he helped not himself directly he found the

(01:16:00):
United States, but he was the philosophical father of the
United of the United States. And when he said clearly
that we hold these values and these truths to be
self evident, that all individuals have a life, to a right,
a natural right, the god like right to life, property,

(01:16:22):
and the pursuit of happiness. Those are universal values. There
are many other universal values, and I think that it
is our duty to make sure that they somehow are
you know, are kept as an important heritage of of
of our society.

Speaker 3 (01:16:43):
So I think in modern times I agree with that.
I mean, I think there's definitely an abandonment of the
idea of universal values, particularly on on the on the
modern left and those influenced by postmodernism, but also on
the modern right. There's a there's a the idea of
the universal values. All the right replaces them with things
like national values, racial values, tribal values, which is just

(01:17:08):
as bad as what the left is doing, which is
no values. They could completely. So what we're seeing is
the abandonment of universality, the abandonment of searching for those truths.
I wish they were self evident. It turns out they're not,
you know, I think in that sense Luck was wrong
or Jefferson was wrong. But to them there were self

(01:17:30):
evidence because they've done all the thinking. They figured it out.
It was so obvious to them. But most people don't
do that. So I think today we live in a
time of bad values, of wrong values, of evil values,
and even people who claim they don't have any values.
I mean, there's some like that, and that's a nihilism.
You see the nihilism. You see nihilism on the left,

(01:17:50):
annihilism and the right politically today, which is they just
want to see stuff burned. They don't care about anything.
They just want to see stuff destroyed. They want to
tear things down.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
They support the most horrible barbarians in the world. They
hate civilization. That to me is nihilism. That to me
is the negation of all human values. And the response
is unfortunately, you know, tribal and nationalistic and bad as well.
So we're seeing more mo nihilism across the political spectrum.

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
Sorry, Tim, may I just add something else because I
think you open a here, a venue for discussion that's
really interesting, which is basically, I think that we should
all be quite aware that ideas shape the world, and
postmodernism is a good example of that because it also
influenced aesthetics. You were talking and I was thinking about
fountain Head, and I was thinking about the ideological discussions

(01:18:46):
that exist in aesthetics in architecture and the idea that
the idea of beauty was heritage of the bourgeoisie, of
the capitalist society. There is no beauty because there is
no ugly. We are all equal, and the postmodernists currents
of architecture follows precisely that that idea that there is

(01:19:10):
no beauty does not exist. Actually, there was another, not
line of thought, but another current in architecture that would
renounce all of neo classicism, which I ren tend to
appreciate along with article right if I'm not She.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
Rejected neoclassical neoclassical architecture in the modern world.

Speaker 4 (01:19:35):
I mean it was great, yeah back then at its time.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
In the modern world, we have new materials, we have
new techniques, we have new knowledge, we have new engineering,
that the architecture should reflect all the new knowledge that
we have.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
Yeah, But my point was there was a current in
architecture that would reject neo classicism because Itler enjoyed it
a lot, right, So, simply because someone that was terribly
evil enjoyed that kind of architecture and thought to be
an example road model for what beautiful means in terms
of aesthetics, then got rejected. And more importantly, this idea

(01:20:09):
of something being beautiful that would mean that it is
beautiful in comparison to art, in comparison to something else
that is not as beautiful is ugly. But if we
believe in equalitarianism that everything is the same, therefore those
concepts don't even apply and they destroy those concepts. And
so I think this proves the point that ideas definitely

(01:20:29):
shaped the world for the good and for the bad.

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):
And actually, I think in aesthetics is the place where
they first appear. So if you look at postmodernism, it
first appears in painting and sculpture. I mean you get
the complete shadowing of the idea beauty, of the idea
of representation. I've did anything. You get splashes of paint,
and somehow that's odd. That's so postmodernist. It's odd because

(01:20:55):
I feel like it's odd. Right, No skill required, no
attention to detail, nothing projected, no ideas. Just somebody felt
like splashing paint on a canvas hanging on the wall. Yes,
or you and all hanging on the wall, which is
of course famous. And but it was a nihilistic statement.
This was exactly the point of the Uno on the wall.
It's to say anything is odd if we feel like

(01:21:18):
it's odd, anything is ard if we say it's art,
and that empties the concept completely. Right, If you look
at the U and AL on the wall and you
have Michelangelo's David next to it, they're not in the
same category. They're not the same thing. Michelangelo's David is art.
You and AL on the wall is not art. It's
a U and ALU on the wall. That's all it is.

(01:21:38):
But postmoderism shatters that. It says, no, you can't define anything. Anything,
anything goes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
Whatever we feel like.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
And that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
If you don't have values, you'll follow anything, you'll believe
in anything, that's the way you'll go. And if you
do have values, you'll stand for something and you will,
you know, like fight for something. And I think that's that's,
you know what, what makes me happy that I've got values,
because sometimes I don't even understand art. You know, it's

(01:22:08):
so easy to just throw everything out, destroy everything, and
then still say that you came for everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
We have another question.

Speaker 9 (01:22:20):
So, according to objectivism, the process of finding our own values,
so the ultimate answer is that to get the values
that our life affirming seems a bit insufficient to me.
And then also the the process of emotions following the
reasoning conclusions, and then emotions follow from that because we

(01:22:46):
cannot escape human genetics and brain chemistry, so and we're
born with that that biological knowledge that gives us positive
and negative emotions. So I don't agree that emotions follow
the reasoning process, as it seems like ourent to objectives,

(01:23:07):
like maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it's a
blank canvas. And then do a reasoning process and then
kind of define what you want and then everything follows along.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
So.

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
Objectives and holds that. You're not born with ideas. You're
born with inclinations. You're born with certain abilities and you
know at some level certain you know connections in the
brain that are different between human beings. No, I mean
my two kids were born, My two sons were born,
and from second one, from the very moment they came out,

(01:23:41):
you knew they were different, right, So there was something
different about them. But it's on ideas. Ideas come from
integrating factor reality. There's nothing coded into our DNA that
is an idea. Again, there's an inclination, there's potentials, there's
things like that. You can see that emotions a kind,
tequences and conclusions all the time. You fall in love

(01:24:02):
with somebody. I was thinking about that, and you're passionately
in love with this woman in my case, right, passionate
in love with this woman, and then you learn something
about her character she's a liar, and you fall in
Now you might come to the conclusion, oh, she's Alie,
she's not a good person. Your emotions might still be
tugging you towards her. It might take a few days, weeks,

(01:24:25):
months to get over your attraction. Your love to her,
but it will if you've integrated the fact that she's
a liar, she's not good for you. So your emotions
will change based on your conclusion. You know, when I
was little, a dog kind of kind of attacked me.
I think, who knows what he was intending. Maybe we

(01:24:45):
just wanted to be nice, but you know, it created
a fear of dogs and until very late in life,
like I see a dog and it like I'm scared now.
But you can change that. You can think about what
caused it. You know it's cog native therapy or whatever.
You can think about what caused it. You can think about,
no dogs are knife, I can go yeah, I can

(01:25:06):
go play with dogs and everything's fine. And then you
get rid of that emotion, and emotion just goes away.
So your emotions are your emotions are product now. Not
everything that we classify as an emotion is actually an emotion.
You know, do we have the capacity to fear, like
the flight what is it? Flight? Fight? Flight? So yeah,

(01:25:27):
that that exists, But what causes us to be afraid
is a consequence of conclusions that we come. You can
take a baby and you can put it on a
glass thing with just a you know, a steep thing,
and the baby will just crawl right across it. And
at some point they learn they can fall and the

(01:25:48):
falling's not good, and suddenly they get to the edge
and they're afraid because they don't know what will happen. Right,
So they've learned, and based on that learning, fear has
arised and before they don't take suit an action, and
then they can learn, oh there's glass, yet I can
walk on it. They walk on it, it's no problem.
So we constantly emotions are changing based on our conclusions.

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
Can I just follow up? Because it's actually the question
very interesting. It also perplexes me when I read through
Rand's books and we have the opportunity to discuss that
on my podcast Subscribe. It was a very product placement.
It was a very interesting discussion. But the point is
you framed the way you framed falling in love right,

(01:26:34):
And you said, basically, you fall in love and then
you find something you don't like, and slowly you start
realizing that perhaps you were wrong, right, that your emotions
don't follow your reasoning and you're not right. But if
you do the exercise the other way around, right, Because
according to Randian's line of thought emotions, fall or reason,

(01:26:55):
And let's try to apply that to falling in love. Right,
you do, like a list of traits that the person
should have. Right, should be that way, it should feel
that or look that way, be intelligent, beautiful, whatever, Right,
and you try to find people that match all the
criteria and imagine you can and still you may be
enabled to love those people that completely abide by those

(01:27:20):
the criteria that you rationally define. And on the other hand,
you may just stumble upon someone that doesn't have half
of the criteria that he previously defined, and then boom,
suddenly there's something going on. Call it chemistry, call it emotions,
but you fall deeply in love with that person. That
totally changes, right. And then eventually you start rationalizing why

(01:27:41):
you fell in love with that person. Right, you start
going through the list and see, oh, she has that trade,
so it's started to make it compatible.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
Yeah, sand had a whole theory of romantic love. So
she had a theory about this. So and she understood this, right,
And the characters in the books fall in love often
very quickly, right time, slowly, but often very quickly. And
her view is, you don't fall in love with a
list of qualities. And to make a list of qualities
and go find somebody is a recipe for failure. You

(01:28:11):
fall in love with somebody is what she called sense
of life. You fall in love with somebody's approach to reality.
You know, the way they handle themselves, the way they
carry themselves, the way they respond to different things. You
can watch somebody look at art and say, yeah, you
know there's something special about that. Autis I think brings
that out in us. Aesthetics brings that out in us.

(01:28:34):
So she she completely understood, doesn't mean and so, so
it is a conclusion, but it's But what happens with
emotions is we don't think usually, huh, this person has this, this,
this is okay, I should fall in love with him.
What happens is you fall in love with him. And
because the emotion is automatic, it's based on your sense

(01:28:57):
of life, it's based on your conclusions that you've come to.
It's based on who you are and your character, and
it's based on how you evaluate other people. But it's quick,
it's automatic. It's not the thinking about this. It's like art.
You don't go up to painting and go okay, I
like it, right, you look at it and go, I
like this painting, and then you analyze why you like it,

(01:29:20):
because the painting is appealing to something in you, your
sense about existence that is based on the conclusions you've
come to in the past. So it's not random, it's
not arbitrary. Your emotions are not arbitrary and random. They're based.
And sometimes we don't even know where our conclusions came from.
And this is the whole point of psychotherapy. Some of

(01:29:41):
you know, Foid is right in the sense that's some
of our conclusions we make when we're very young, and
we can't remember them. We don't know what they are,
and they're already and they're shaping us. So you know,
part of the reasons if that's a problem, part of
the reasons to do therapy is to try to figure
that out. So it's it's emotions are not I think,

(01:30:02):
I feel. That's not how it works. I feel. These
feelings are based on conclusions of the best. Now, sometimes
when you discover something new about somebody, it feeds into
that equation and now you fall out in love. But
it takes time because it has to be integrated into
the system.

Speaker 9 (01:30:19):
It's okay, Can I just yep, okay, he listening. So
so I'm going to give a simple example. We are
born social beings. We can, through a reasoning process, decide
that if I live if I lived alone, I could
be better, I could accomplish more. But then I cannot

(01:30:44):
live alone because my chemistry or it is very difficult
for most people to change their emotions.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
And there I think that's wrong. We've got a number
of one premises. There you you cannot live better living alone.
You know, society is incredible val you. You know, Adam
Smith showed us a division of labor specialization benefits you enormously.
So when you're alone, you miss all those things. The
stand up living is lower, your quality of life is lower.

(01:31:12):
You know, we gain enormously from friendship and love and
human interaction. Rationally, we gain from other people all kinds
of values. So when you live alone, you miss that
and nobody. That's not because it's chemical, it's because in reality,
other people do things that benefit me. And I realize that,
and I don't want to be alone because I want

(01:31:32):
to be with other people and gain their benefit. Indeed,
when when you know in some societies, you go out
there and you find that people are not very nice
and you're not benefiting from them, and it's sad when
you have to be alone because you want to escape them,
because you are not benefiting from all those all those
values that you could gain from other people. So it's
not that we're born social, it's that we're a trading animal.

(01:31:57):
We trade constantly. Right from the beginning of time, we
were treated. And it's not only that we trading material things,
we treated spiritual values constantly. So when I have social being,
we are trading being. Definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
We're constantly learning, yeah, constantly learning and adapting.

Speaker 3 (01:32:15):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
I remember the first time I fell in love. I
thought it was forever. I was, like, you know, twelve
years old. She told me she loved me. I said,
I love you, I love you, I love you, I
love you, and I thought that's it. And then like
three months later she was dating my best friend, and
then you know, the next one came and I've learned
a little bit, and she said I love you, and
I would wait to live it. I love you too.

(01:32:36):
By the third one, when she said I love you,
I made like I didn't hear it, you know, so
I wouldn't have to say I love you and you know,
it took time until I found the right one that
I really loved and said I loved and et cetera.
But it's it's not ticking boxes. It's not it's laugh
it's laughing and you're going to make mistakes, but they're

(01:32:57):
part of the learning curve.

Speaker 10 (01:32:59):
After the thank you, thank you all. Thank you also
Noon and the entire team for this opportunity and greet
our distinguished guests and Maria for this moderation. And I
would like to ask you about going back to the
to the veils and more in this specific way, to
the Christian values. Let's say like this, I would like

(01:33:22):
to give you an example of the past and to
give you a little context. This this is this is
about the the capacity of pressure of the institutions. Like
in this way the church institutions to to to put

(01:33:43):
pressure to conditionate good and positive or negative way in
this world scenario. And for example, when for example, Pope
John Paul the Second, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Toucher have
joined together to to solve between themselves the fight against

(01:34:04):
the Communist the Catholic the Catholic Church had power and
as we say, as we as we know and in
Portuguese in purchased context, the magistrates or of influence to
contribute to this, to this battle. Do you think that
nowadays the problem is right the opposition and let me

(01:34:29):
be more clear, do you do you think that the
absence of the capacity of the Catholic Church and the
Christian values in general to put more pressure to solve
the problems? This is about the crisis of the institutions
of or the crisis of the valleys? Thinking what as
you said, all the questions of the values did in

(01:34:53):
the in the in in conclusions, to be more, to
be more direct, if this is more about a crisis
in general, in crisis of the institutions or the crisis
of the values in general, I thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):
I mean, look, I have a very negative view of
the Catholic Church and its role in history. I think
it's been much more responsible for bad things than it
has been for good things. John Paul the Second and
his opposition to capital communism was one of the better
things that happened. But you know, at the end of

(01:35:31):
the day, but after a long string of very very
very very bad things that the Catholic Church was responsible for,
including maybe even inventing communism, and I think to a
large extent, call Marks really is secularized, secularizers Catholicism to
a loge extent, he gains his values from them. So,
you know, the crisis ultimately is a crisis of values,

(01:35:55):
you know, And as a consequence, you get a crisis
of institutions. And only our institutions have failed. And you
talk about the Catholic Church, I think it's always failed
in a deep sense. But but look at our universities,
look at our political institutions. Uh, you know, institution after
institution after institution, you're seeing us failing today. We've got

(01:36:18):
real crises. You've got a crisis in Brussels. You've got
a crisis with certain elements on the right rising and
certain elements on the left rising. These are all crises
of institutions. But what's the core. When institutions gain their values,
they gain them from the values of individuals. And the
real crisis is a crisis of values. The institutions are

(01:36:39):
just reflecting that back to us. I mean, our university
is are dominated by postmodernism. They have adopted those values
and now they're teaching crap to our you know, to
to students. As a consequence of that, and they're failing us.
They're failing us as citizens, as parents, as individuals, as students.

(01:37:01):
But I think it's across the board. Institutions have gone bad.

Speaker 4 (01:37:07):
Well, if I can, she had something, I think the
dilemma she was fushed. I think we're facing another dilemma because,
as Janin said, our institutions represent our values derived from
our values. The values are building blocks of the institutions.
They should represent those values as faithfully as possible. So

(01:37:32):
when the institutions are failing, it's probably because something much
meaningful is failing before, which is the values. And what
we see right now at the world stage is that
we are seeing a regress from the idea of and
you mentioned that of power through influence. Right, what in

(01:37:53):
the international relations they call the soft power, Right, it's
not hard power. In the past, we would wage war
if we wanted to get our voices heard. We just
invade countries, kill people, and that was it. That's how
things work. The stronger would prevail now since at least
Second World War, things have shifted. The idea of the

(01:38:15):
international liberal order rests on this idea that power can
be exerted in different ways, including through influence, through soft power.
What we are seeing now, at least in the last
couple of years, is we are regressing to this idea
that power is done through capacity, which is a very
nicche idea of the will to power of getting things

(01:38:38):
done through your own way. And so now you have
blocks world blocks that try to gain as much power
as possible. And by power here I mean not only
economic power, but also military might, military power, and use
that to do whatever is in their best interest, because

(01:38:59):
in the end, that's what nations do. They do what
is in their best interest. And so that's what we're
facing right now. And that's not only an issue with
the left wing. That also comes from the right wing.
We have a lot of people on the right wing,
most extreme more to the right, that defend this idea

(01:39:20):
that in the end is the stronger that should rain
somehow and should decide what works and what doesn't. And
of course Trump is also a part of that equation,
is also responsible for this idea. It truly believes in that,
It truly believes that the my year should decide how
things work and the others should a buide. And I

(01:39:40):
think that definitely puts not only our institutions in a
very sensible situation. But it's deepening, it's deeply changing our
values as well, because now we see people agreeing with this,
with the state of affairs, with this idea that yes,

(01:40:00):
should decide whatever works and should prevail, and that's the
way it is just accepted. And that's not definitely it's
not a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:40:12):
Hello.

Speaker 11 (01:40:12):
So my name is Almy and at the start of
this session it was said that we all are influenced
by philosophers, even if we are not aware of texts.
And I will bring a controversial topic, which is the
similarities between nihilism and objectivism, because nihilism was as niche
is unfortunately misquoted presented as the lack of values. However,

(01:40:36):
either in God Is Dead book or but especially in
those spokes, Zaratuska needs explores the importance of values to
face existentialism, even created the famous Govenment superman concept. How
far away can that be from the work of Rant
that comes after Nichs on the eros she created in

(01:40:59):
their book to show the rational men and importance of
velus and exploration of those values.

Speaker 3 (01:41:06):
So ran it it rejects Nietzsche and and you know
she she views as one of the bad guys in
the history of philosophy, because you're right, Nietzsche in the end, uh,
you know, creates a separate category of certain men, right
uber men who who who go beyond right, who are

(01:41:31):
above morale, convention, the morale, and moral moral. But Rand says,
and and for Nietzsche everything is about the will. Nietzsche
has no place for reason. Reason does not play a
big role in in nich And for Rand, of course,
all our values should come from reason.

Speaker 6 (01:41:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41:51):
And there's nothing nihilistic about Ranch's about building, creating, valuing,
but making sure that their values, the things we are creating,
are based on reason, based on rational, rational thought, that
our values of values that are connected to our life,
to connect it to our our need to thrive in

(01:42:13):
flowries and survive. So while there is a certain esthetic
and emotional similarity between Random and nietzure there is none
when it comes to the basic philosphy. They both reject Christianity,
they both reject God, they both reject the values of
the Christian values. But Iman actually offers something to replace them,

(01:42:38):
something solid, grounded in the nature of man, whereas Nietzsche
fails to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
We have a question from the audience online. Two questions actually,
one for Tim asking if Tim can share how philosophy
helped him achieve his goals be successful in live. You
know he's tried. He said that he tried a lot
a lot of companies and some fails and some others succeeded.

(01:43:07):
So if you can share your experiences and how what's
your way of thinking, your approach, how you deal.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):
With I think what it did it helped me think,
it helped me become more open minded. You know, I'll
post a verse from the Bible like our post rand
I can get the best out of both worlds. You
know how lucky I am. You can't do that, you see,

(01:43:38):
so open mindedness and in this world today, being open
minded is a superpower, okay. And that's the thing. I
get to look and think and take some ideas and
understand what those mean to me, and it's personal, and
you know, I don't push them onto others. That is
what it is. So I think that's what's helped me

(01:43:58):
a lot. You know, Like today, if I get a
LinkedIn message and it's a funny name and all that,
I will look at it. I will think about it.
I'll say, how do I answer it? Because I've come
across so many times that I've answered a funny name
and it's become a friend or or it's been value.
Do you understand what I'm saying? And I've got other
friends who will never answer anything from that side or

(01:44:19):
that side. You know, I've got friends on both sides.
I'm one of the lucky ones, were blessed ones. Okay,
So that's it. I think that's what it does. And
I think, you know, for me when you know Marcus
Aurelius and things like that, because there's value, there's strength,
there's belief. You know what I'm saying, It makes me

(01:44:39):
stronger when I read it. Why not I don't have
to only read the Bible. I can, you know, read
other things that make me strong as well. So I
think that's my answer there, you know. And sometimes I
even like to not read anyone and I just want
to be bored and think, because that's what's underrated, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
Thank you so much for your answer. We have another
question specifically for Mario here. Philosophy and complex ideas are
becoming more and more absent from public discourse, especially in
public policy and exchanged for more purely utilitarian approaches or
very simplified ideological slogans. What do you think is the
impact of this for the long term in our societies?

(01:45:23):
And how can we make ideas great again?

Speaker 4 (01:45:25):
So that's actually a very good question, and I fully
agree in most public policy decisions, the typical approach framework
for deciding the venue the way we should go is
how can we maximize the welfare? That's actually the economical approach, right,
we try to maximize the welfare of the consumers of

(01:45:47):
the producers of the society. That's a very ttilitarian approach.
And actually some liberal thinkings had some responsibility on that,
not only John Stuart Mill but Bentham as well. They
were the one responsible for this idea of utilitarianism. Now,
I think it does have some merits in some circumstances.

(01:46:09):
So we should not throw the baby with the baby,
water with the water. I think that it is a
framework for in certain circumstances you need to allocate a budget, right,
you need to decide where the money goes. That's as
good as any other approach for deciding what to do
in terms of public policy. Now, where I think this

(01:46:30):
does not serve us well is when our positions of
principle are put into questions in other types of decisions
that we need to make. In that case, it can
be utilitarian. Right, let's not do because otherwise that opens
the way for trying to decide the thing that will

(01:46:53):
please most people so that then you can get votes.
So it does have a bad consequence if you then
decide on whatever will most people like, and therefore that
will be good for me because I'm a politician. I
need to get elected so I want people to be happy.
Then we will have a big, big issue because we

(01:47:15):
won't make the right decisions, but the decisions that more
people think are right, and not all the times those
decisions or those positions just to pose right. Sometimes it
is not the collective decision or the majoritory. The decision
is not the best decision, and therefore in those circumstances

(01:47:39):
we should definitely stick to our values, to our positions
of principle, and use that to the side. So I
mean just wrap up out say that I think there's
place for both, but in some important issues we should
definitely stick with positions of principal premium fast see and

(01:48:00):
and avoid utilitarian approaches.

Speaker 3 (01:48:04):
Let me just absolutely, I don't think it's the job
of politicians to make ideas great again. It's not their job.
And and and they are too sensitive to the fact
to the voters, I mean they they need to get elected.
I think it's the responsibility of the intellectuals primarily and

(01:48:24):
the responsibility ultimately of the people uh to make ideas
great again politicians. In the end, we get the politicians
we deserve and we do. You know, the culture moves
in a particular direction and the politicians move with it.
It's rare that a politician leads us into a new frontier.
I don't I don't know that that's ever happened. Maybe

(01:48:47):
Thatcher in England. Maybe. Usually there's a lot of intellectual
groundwork that that goes into a new political figure coming
in and reshaping things. But it's that intellectual groundwork that
each to happen in order to make ideas great again.
You can't expect politicians out of nowhere to suddenly become

(01:49:07):
principled and in our case pro free markets or whatever.
It's not going to happen until the intellectual landscape changes dramatically.

Speaker 2 (01:49:16):
And then should be executing and judged on that. Because
they don't actally there's no kprs. There's no nothing. You
mentioned thatcher. I received a prize where I got this
big painting of thatcher trained to this university and then
I had to come back on the train and I
was carrying thatcher and then I decided I'm going to
carry it that everybody can see. Yeah, there was comments,

(01:49:38):
good and bad, but there were comments, and I was
that was amazing, okay, And I thought that was amazing.
I thought, at least everybody she stood by principles, she
lived by principles. I think she wasn't maybe happy, but
she was joyful in making those things happen more than
you know. So I think it was It was amazing
to see that. And how many people can with say

(01:50:00):
that about today's world?

Speaker 3 (01:50:01):
Very few? True. True.

Speaker 1 (01:50:04):
There's another of emulatee. There's another online question. If happiness
is represented differently for everyone and even varies for each
person throughout life, how can we define the criteria and
is it even possible?

Speaker 3 (01:50:18):
No, I don't think happiness is impossible. I think happiness
is attainable. It is it is a consequence of achieving
your life affirming rational values. When you achieve life affirming
rational values and you achieve them, and you and you
build on that, and you recognize that fact that you've
achieved them, and you're constantly building towards greater and greater

(01:50:39):
life affirming rational values, you will achieve happiness. I think
when you achieve values that are not life affirming, or
when they're not rational, I think that's when you falter
from happiness. But again, this huge optionality, right, we can
you know, all of us are going to have different values,
but in terms of the concrete but they all have

(01:51:02):
to fall into this wider category of rational life affirming.

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):
Yeah. And maybe the word happiness is the wrong wrong word.
I think maybe replace it with content. You know, sometimes
it should be content. Although we had where we are,
where we're going, and happiness it's very short lived.

Speaker 3 (01:51:21):
That's what I actually think. Happiness is long lived and
it's ambitious, and you should be ambitious.

Speaker 2 (01:51:25):
That's what's called the happy ending.

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):
We have time for one more question if anyone wants
to ask our panel.

Speaker 4 (01:51:34):
Yeah, Hi, sim how do you sorry, how do you
approach teaching philosophy at Breath Generation Academy to kids?

Speaker 3 (01:51:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
You know, what we do is we actually teach them
more thinking and then they will start finding things. They
find such amazing books and they start following people. You know,
we can't do it all, you know, but we can
definitely get them onto paths and let them go. And
our path is a weird path, you know, like people
think BJ is like you know, you go like this,
Yeah you don't, you go like this, and if you're

(01:52:06):
hanging there, but then you start finding your path, you understand.
And everybody today wants a road like it's that way,
you understand what I'm saying, And it's not. It's nice.
And because we all want that road, we you know,
unhappy or we're uncontent and we've got issues and then
we you know, the only thing I can say about WJ.
What we try to do is we try not to

(01:52:28):
work so much on the learner, on the young person.
We try to change the system that then allows them
to work for themselves, okay. And that's the problem is
that we focus a lot on people at the moment,
like you unhappy because of this, you unhappy. But sometimes
if you focus on the system, they allsought themselves out,
you know. So that's what we try to do.

Speaker 3 (01:52:46):
And I think most of education should be about thinking,
and you know, philosophy as a topic is I don't
think you can teach it to anybody under sixteen, right,
I mean as a topic because it requires real conceptual thinking,
and that conceptual ability doesn't really develop until you're late teens.

(01:53:07):
So if you teach people how to think properly, then
once they encounter philosophy later in life or you know,
in their late teens or early twenties, then there'll be
much they'll be able to engage with it. The challenges
that our educational institutions don't teach how to think, They
don't teach the skill of thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:53:26):
And we do push them into experiences because experiences make
you think, how do you do this? You meet people, yeah,
your opinions, you know, and we're in a world now
where you actually need to maybe ask questions, not answer them,
you know. But no one's thinking of how to teach
kids how to answer the right question, ask the right questions.

(01:53:47):
We keep telling them and grading them on how they
answer a question that you could on your phone. You
could get everything wrong, but that's what that's how we
say they're clever and they've got a future, you know.
But yeah, and it's hard. It's very hard because there's
this like education at the moment, it's so far beyond
society and beyond our needs. And you know, and it

(01:54:10):
needs everyone to get involved. It needs parents, it needs
the community, it needs businesses, it needs everyone to start asking.
You know that there needs to be a change because
otherwise we're just going to keep getting the same thing.
We get the same thing, we get the same votes,
we get the same votes, we get the government we deserve.
And it's a fuckle you know. So until we start

(01:54:30):
breaking this, it's it should be mission critical. It really
should be mission critical.

Speaker 1 (01:54:37):
Thank you so much everyone for being here. We're gonna
end on this note. Thank you in a very positive note.
Don't forget you have the flyers with a QR code.
You can stand them and apply for a scholarship at
iron Rand Institute. And thank you so much the panel
for being here. Mario team you're on. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:54:57):
Let you decision.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
Thank you figure so level, think think think nothing and
ye

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