"Question & Answer Session 1" by Leonard Peikoff

Good morning. This is an exception to the normal policy in the sports world. The pitchers in the World Series never do two consecutive days. Consequently, we're doing only one hour today because my arm will not take a second. I want, if possible, to favor the people who are leaving after today, since this is their last crack at me. So since the normal procedure is to raise one hand if you are leaving after today and you have a question that you want answered, raise both hands and I will favor the two hands over the one for today because the rest of you people get a two hour question period next week. Okay, I'm ready to start. And that couldn't possibly have intimidated you. About what's essential to get into a movie version of Alice? Oh, sure. I just have to. Could I talk about what's essential to a movie version of Atlas Shrugged? I was really bringing up that topic yesterday in conjunction with the principle and essences are contextual, which I never got to discuss yesterday. I know that you know that in regard to definitional theory, what the definition in one context won't necessarily distinguish the thing in a new context, and fundamental in one context may itself be explained in another context. I'm sure you both understand that in general, epistemological theory essences are contextual, but they are so in general, even in the broader sense of essence, we're using it. I'm going to give as an example. I have the responsibility given to me by Ms. Grand to see that a movie or television miniseries without a shrug is made, and I to decide in my own mind. I'll tell you at the end what she told me to do, but I have to decide in my own mind what prerogatives to give away and what controls to keep. When you sell a property, you have to say by contract that you will have control over abc. That is veto power, and they are free to do def. And so I thought it would be a good thinking exercise to say if you have property like this and you could make a deal with Hollywood on whatever terms you wanted, assuming you could, what in different contexts would be essential for you to preserve your integrity and the integrity of the movie? Now I start with the idea. Let us imagine that we are making this movie in Atlantis, and again, you still own the property and you have to deal with the Atlantis equivalent of Hollywood, which is something of a contradiction in this context. Presumably all of the ingredients and people necessary to turn out superlative work theoretically can be found so you can find a great director, a great writer, fabulous actor, etc. Etc. Etc. So you have to define what your goal is in a situation with that potentiality. I would say it would be a crime to try for anything other than a great work of art, one that would embody the essence of the novel, the sense of life, of the novel, be completely stylized and be in effect to the screen what the novel is to literature. Now, by this standard, you would want control over everything, because you know that a non integrated work, any one element, can sabotage all the rest if they're not. If everything isn't right, you've got marvelous casting, a terrible script, or vice versa. Now this, this is essentially what Ayn Rand tried to accomplish in her lifetime. And she demanded control over everything. Basically, she went so far as to put in the contracts that there could be no facial hair on the heroes, no beards or mustaches, that she had to approve of the incidental music, it couldn't be atonal, that there couldn't be these jump cuts, you know, where the voice starts from the next scene before the last one is over. She had every single thing spelled out in detail with the idea that she would either write the script or rewrite it so that it would be exactly what she wanted. Now, she never got anywhere with that. Primarily, Hollywood was tremendously resistant to giving total control. And also they just couldn't find the directors and the producers, et cetera, that saw eye to eye with her to be able to do this. Now, at that point, basically, after many attempts of that sort, where it seemed hopeful, I entered the picture. Now, I made the judgment that this kind of. That we were not in Atlantis, not that Ms. Grant thought we were, but she thought there was enough elements left to still aim for a work of art. And I decided that the basis of my experience, on the basis of her experience, really, that I have lived through with her, no proper movie is possible. And therefore, if I'm going to carry out the mandate to make this movie or tell miniseries, I've got to accept many forms of imperfection. So it can no longer be essential that everything that counts toward the stylization is going to be within my control. Because it decided in this context, it's impossible. That's tantamount to saying there is no movie, and yet I don't want to debase the property. So I have to define what is the purpose of this movie being made imperfectly, and what is essential then to control within the limits of this, of this contest. And the question that first presented itself was with regard to casting. Now, one of the producers was friendly with the manager Of a lady that's quite well known as an actress in one of the soaps as Lady's mentioning her name. But she's too old for Daggery. And she has not gotten the image of Daggy. Quite the contradictions of abc. So you could probably credential the rest from that. But her agent was interested, and she would be a big draw in terms of box office. Now, to show you where I drew the line. I was prepared to accept this lady for Dagger. Because it wasn't as though she was either a midget or 90 years old or, you know, Bud Abbott, Lucasfil. She was female, and she was within a couple one or two decades of the right age. She was moderately acceptable to look at. And I was told she was a good actress. It could cover up her actual character in acting. Even though the spiritual type was completely all wrong. So then I had to agonize over this. Is it essential or not that Dagny be cast as somebody that I think looks the part? And at this point, I decided it was not that there was no way of getting it made if I tried to include things like cast and director and so on. Because they just don't exist. And. Or if any given one exists, it doesn't have the commercial viability that we can't end up together. That a producer or financier will back. So I said that in my mind at this stage. The purpose, in this context. What my purpose is going to be essentially advertising. That is, I'm giving up the attempt to create a work of art. With a stylized, you know, view of the world in a sense of life and so on. As literally being impossible to achieve and decide. Instead, what I want is to get this novel in some form or another before the masses, either on movies or tv, with enough in it. So that while it won't give them a literary or emotional or aesthetic experience. It'll pique their curiosity enough that they'll go to the bookstore to find out what it's about. So I define that as primarily an advertising purpose. So then it becomes the question, if your purpose is advertising as distinct from art, what is essential? Well, then the casting becomes inessential. Because anybody who will deliver the lines will give enough of the idea. But what becomes the bare essential? If you want to get enough of interest across to get people to go to the bookstore, you got to tell something of the story. In other words, the script becomes the bare minimum that becomes the essential. And you look at casting and the direction and the incidental music and the photography and the jump cuts and all of that go, if only you say, I've got to approve the script, so then I know at least it's the same story. And we're communicating the idea of the strike and the type of character and so on. However, in however botched a fashion you still can hold. And that was the position of my trump for many years. And that made it easier to get a movie made in the sense that Hollywood would just run from the idea that the author or the author's representative would have complete control over everything. They simply wouldn't invest the tens of millions of dollars that are required on to them the unknown desire of an author or an heir, you see, and therefore that was out of the question. But when you put it down to all I want is script control. Scripts just cost about half a million to develop in the first phase. So that's, you know, that's lunch money from their point of view. However, I found from my experience that that is not possible as I had that deal with several different people, several different writers. And I was very clear that my goal was not to do any of the writing of the scriptures. I had no time or capacity to do, but simply I had veto power. You know, Dagny came out for the Communist Manifesto or whichever. I could cut that part open. I found that it was impossible because it was never so easy and clear cut as that. She came up with a Communist Manifesto. She would speak in ways that were not in character and that were confusing and that the script writer had tried to digest the material in his own terms, but he got her Abraham Lincoln confused at one point. It kept on being a series of continuous confrontations. Well, if you don't like this, what would you say? And of course, you couldn't change one line of context. And it soon became clear to me that there was absolutely no alternative but either to give away the script altogether or to write the entire script myself. There was absolutely no way to collaborate with anyone other than Ayn Rand. And collaborating with her would basically mean taking note. So I gave up it control and I still had the goal of advertising. But I now had to reach the bottom context, which is, it's not essential that I control anything. If I can find one sympathetic professional. That is exactly actually what Ms. Rand herself told me before she died. She said, don't try to take keep controls over the production because they won't give it to you as an outsider and you'll find it impossible to work with them anyway. She said, find somebody professional. She was very intended to Be a professional with a large number of screen credits, not some young objectivist, however dedicated, but who is not expert in all the techniques of making a movie. And someone, she said, who is sympathetic. He doesn't have to agree, but he has to be at least sympathetic enough so that you have a hope that he's going to follow the main drift of the novel. It could be a big star who has that kind of clout, or more hopefully a director or producer, ideally a director who's a professional, who's going to love clout and who is sympathetic and likes the novel. And then she said, just turn it over and that's it. You've done your job. And that's what I have am now in process of trying to arrange. Of course, in a way it's easier because that's no controls, but then I have to, before I sign, find somebody that I think is really sympathetic, that has had a lot of professional experience, a director. And I'm in process. I think I, through the help of other people, have found such a person. And we're in the negotiations now at this stage of the case, if my essential in the first context was total control, and in the second context was stint control, I have only one essential left. After I passed the thing off, which has been put into a contract, a huge disclaimer on the screen at the beginning of the movie which says, this movie is made by the permission of, but without the participation of the estate of Ayn Rand or any of her executors or heirs. So that, you know, once it comes on the screen, people know this is their movie, this is not my movie. Now, I think that, I guess I've gotten to that story a little much in too detail, but I think that gives you an example of the way in which, in different contexts, your purpose has to change. And therefore what's essential, what's required to meet that purpose, has to change. And I think it also illustrates the agonizing nature of deciding essentials in various contexts. You have to decide what's possible, what you know, what is really necessary, and what you can let go. So it's not always as easy as it was when I was analyzing, you know, Dominic or whichever. The classroom exercises are fine as a start, but when you do torture situations, like, you get to a point, really, where you feel guilty no matter what you do. And then the thought, you shouldn't make a movie at all. Why not just drop it? And then the thought also comes back, they're going to do it. When the public domain Takes over. So why not try to give it some start in life with somebody that you know is professional and sympathetic, rather than wait for total enemies to take over and make hash out of it. So you go back and forth and back and forth. It's not an easy task by any means, but that perhaps I'll tell you where the Aftershock project is right now. Anyway, so I've answered that question. I can't release any names at this point. Yes. What about asking them if you could have the power to have a disclaimer that really said something, the essence of which this movie is totally antithetical. No, we discussed that. It's improper for me even to ask them to demean their own work within their work. It's one thing to say factually he had nothing to do with it. It's another thing to start the movie with the representatives of my land think this is garbage. You can't ask someone to put that money and do the work and wipe their face in the dirt before the movie is even seen. Okay, let's leave that topic now and go on more broadly. That's all I have prepared as a long song and dance. Yes, there's two hands at the back end. You mentioned before what your favorite chapter, your second favorite chapter, Anonymous Parallels, was. I'm curious what your favorite chapter was. My favorite chapter, the ominous parallels, just in terms of writing, was the concentration camp chapter. That was the first assignment I had where I was consciously focused on the nature rather than just the philosophic point, how you got it across. And I learned a great deal in writing that chapter from Ms. Rand. She made me cut out quite a number of the horrors that I had. I thought you just pile on to make real to people how awful it was, just pile on some detailed horrors. And she said that the horrors were so horrible that they defeat the purpose of the chapter. Because she said any reader's reaction, including hers, was, who cares about philosophy or anything in the face of this? It's just too awful to take in. And it just turns off the power of thought. She said, plus you will associate that book of people's mind forever after with those horrors. So instead of them thinking of philosophy and its role, you see, so she said, just give a touch of it now and then, just enough for a chilling second to make real what you're talking about and then go back to the analysis. And I found that very interesting to try to carry out that assignment. And that was the hardest chapter in the sense of uniting philosophy and practical reality, because Here it's not as though in most of the chapters I give the philosophy and then I show people in practical reality saying the same philosophy. But here it was in what they were saying, but in what they were literally doing, how they had to make the bed and so on, that you had to bring out the metaphysics and epistemology. So it was the most demanding chapter from many points of view, and it was therefore my favorite. And the Weimar culture was the second. Those are the two I liked in that book. Yes. Dr. Picof, could you try to give us the essence of Ayn Rand's personality or her life that you did with your own? The essence of Ayn Rand's personality. I think you gave the essence of you. Oh, I haven't worked that out. Well, I think you tried it easy if you wanted me to do it. On the analogy of what I did to me, I took one of her characters and adapted it to me. And you've got her personality and all of her characters are ready. In certain specific characters, her personality is dagg. That is the only woman that she wrote that is entirely herself as an adult. She was never. She described Dominique as herself in a bad mood and Kira was her as a girl. But Kira was not yet Ayn Rand because she was very strong on what she called man worship. And when she was writing Kira, she was still in a heroine oriented mode of writing. She didn't feel ready yet to present the ideal man, nor therefore the eye yellow of his reaction. It was suggested in her attitude to Leo, in Kira's attitude. And Leo was drawn from a real person with whom Ayn Rand was in love in Russia. So there was some element of her in Kira, but as a full form personality, she would be Dagny, with only a professional or career difference. That is, instead of being an engineer, she wanted to apply philosophy and ideas in the realm of fiction. So I would say she's dagging with a dash of Hugh Axton and the mind of Aristotle, but in terms of character, you don't need me to do it because it's right there. She just has introspect. Yes, yes. Ayn Rand's article with women president article. And I'm glad that you said it was her opinion, because that article about what confused me, you included it in the book the Voice of Reason. I'm wondering why you did. Well, that's a good question. Yeah, you're slightly misquoting me. I think inadvertently. I didn't say it was her opinion. I said I do not regard that as part of Objectivism. But the reason being that that rests on a certain view of femininity and masculinity, which I do not regard as inherently philosophical questions. I don't think they're questions that can be answered by the science of philosophy. Philosophy, remember, has to be universal. It has to tell you the essence of man and the rules that apply to all human behavior. Sexuality, as I even said in my book, I asked Mr. Anwans, what does philosophy have to say about sex? And she said that it's good. But as far as the proper practices that would depend and the proper attitudes within carrying out that filter, what once but one sex should feel toward the other? That is something that would have to fall upon a psychological study. What are the attributes, the character or personality or whatever attributes are correlated or that are naturally associated with one kind of anatomy versus another? And is there some such tie? Does is anatomy have a significant in a sexual relationship than it doesn't in a philosophic relationship? Obviously it does. But then you have to have a theory of what is it, how is it relevant? Sex is a strong convictions along with very passionate emotions and a strong physical element involved. So you have to have what amounts to not only of you a man, but if you have the male and the female, and why their respective psychology should operate a certain way. And that would rest on a philosophy, but no more than physics would rest on a philosophy. Now, Ayn Rand, as you know, being a novelist, had a very definite view of what is masculinity and what is femininity. And if she were around, you know perfectly well that she would defend that in impassioned terms. But she, in my view, she was there defending her view of sexuality, which was really essential to her, because you can't write characters or write fiction without that kind of view. In other words, writing a novel is not enough to have a philosophy. You also have to have some psychological views of mankind to be able to create devils and heroes and sex relationships, et cetera. And from that point of view, this was certainly an essential of her ideas, and that's why I included it, because I don't want to censor her. But on the other hand, I make a strong line in my own mind which of her ideas were purely philosophical and which were ideas that she would defend to the death. But qua psychologist or whatever, I do not think she would say that you could deduce her views on sexuality from philosophy, not at least as I possess it in my book on the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I put everything in that I considered true philosophy, and you see that I left out masculinity and femininity. I wouldn't come near it. And in fact, I left out certain things which I think are actually wrong, like homosexuality, but which I think cannot be argued against purely on philosophic good. I put in as improper sex practices only those things which, on the face of it, violated the virtues, like some dishonesty or, you know, Satanism, that type of thing where you could reduce it back to a virtue. But I tried to stay away from dogmatizing about sex, even if I have very strong convictions and even if I think they're correct, because that is not philosophy. If I learn anything, it's that you bring philosophy into disrepute if you just take any question at random and say, oh, this is the answer. This is my philosophy. It is a science. It's got a definite method. But that method only works for a definite kind of question. And when you get that specific into anatomy and so on, that is. There's nothing, nobody, no philosopher has a means of spinning the answer to that. Now, I'll show you both sides. It's not just her opinion, but I don't regard it as an essential objective. Yes. Would you reduce the concept of honor? And perhaps the evolution differs from what I hear? No, I don't want to give a definition of honor. The question is, would I reduce the concept of honor and give a definition? No, I wouldn't do that because there would be no more reason to answer that question than 500 other questions. There's all kinds of fascinating words. If I did that, why shouldn't I do? Courage and confidence and, you know, every other virtue, moderation and temperance and wisdom and etc. I am not a walking dictionary, nor a walking reducer for that. In order to do friends, it took me about two weeks and some conferences with Ayn Rand. So you cannot, without any context, just toss me a word and say, here it is. You know, I have an approximate idea what I mean, but I don't use honor very often, so I could get along the rest of my life without that word. But the answer to that and any similar question is, no, I couldn't do it. I mean, I could do it if I needed to and if I wanted to, and if I was motivated to. If you paid by the syllable, maybe I would do it. Okay, next. I'm looking at the back, but I can't see any hands at the back. Yes. Could you give an example of a horizontal integration as opposed to hierarchical? Yeah, sure. A hierarchical. Oh, sorry, yeah, keep reminding. Could I give an example of a horizontal as against a hierarchical reduction type of integration? Well, suppose you're an economist and you, within the framework of economics come out from the profit motive and you can show how the profit motive will lead to the maximization of wealth and greatest possible economy. And you can show step by step proof that a interference will necessarily have this consequence which will lead to that or that etc. Which will end up being negative. So you have economically given a proof within the framework of economics that the profit motive is essential. At that point you completed the hierarchical reduction, but you have not looked at the rest of your knowledge. So now you want to know how does advocacy of the profit motive, that is the idea that people should pursue their own selfish material gain, relate to the other things? I think. And the first and most obvious thing, now you'd be going horizontally. The first and most obvious thing would be, well, for instance, you go to religion, you say, I go to church, and they tell you you should be unselfish. Now how do I reconcile those two? Maybe being unselfish means you should be selfish in material things, but not in spiritual things. By one exact is that. And why do they want us to be selfish? How can I be selfish? And material things when they say lay not up for yourself treasures upon Earth, etc. So you find you're in some real contradiction here. There's something different in what you're preaching in church and what you're preaching in economics. And then you go to a psychology class and the psychology teacher tells you everybody is selfish by nature, everybody. Everything they do, they do for themselves. Therefore it's ridiculous. To advocate selfishness is just like advocating gravity. It takes care of itself. Well, if that's true, that makes nonsense out of your economic theory, because why spend your life urging people to follow the problem motive if they have to do it? So now you have to go back and say, well, is there really this universal motivation or do people have free choice? You see, one by one, each time you go to some other field, you're going to have to tie the prophet motive into God and into free will and into every other thing. Finally, and if you have made a mistake, it's going to show up by clashing with something else. And then you're going to have to say, well, I have to change my mind about this or change my mind about that. At the point where you literally cannot think of any more areas to tie it to. You can say within this context, that's it. That's 100%. And if and when you later find a contradiction, there's no problem. But that would be just an example, a simple example. Okay, at the back, I was wondering if you could comment on judging people when you don't have access to medical innovations. All I got is if I could comment on judging people. Right, when you don't have access to their motivations. Can I comment on judging people when you don't have access to their motivations? Well, wherever possible, don't do it. Because the motivation of a person is the motive power. If you're talking on that level, that's an essential to knowing what you're dealing with. And if you don't know their motivation, now, it depends on what level you're talking about not knowing their motivation. If it's a total stranger and he comes to you to apply for a job, you know anything about it, then the obvious thing to do is ask, why do you want this job? What are you looking for? And if he gives you, you know, a reason, try to integrate it with the rest that you know about. He says, oh, because I've been working in electronics for 10 years and I just love it. And you've got this opening and you can verify all that. On the face of it, that's okay. If he gives something dubious, like he was service to mankind, and he picked this out of the Yellow Pages as the most likely place to serve, on its face you could doubt, but you have to basically find out the motivation if you're going to judge. And that is down to even the lowest thing. If Professor Buechner stood up right now, turned around, walked out in a hump, and I don't know why it is, the question goes up in my mind, if I notice this is happening, why did he do that? And if I find out later and ask him, and he tells me, you hit the sore point for me, and I can't stand to hear this objectivism stuff anymore. It makes me feel too guilty. That would be one motivation. If there was a fire in the hall and he was rushing to put it out, that's an entirely different motivation. And I don't know any way to find out. But to ask. The more narrow the answer you're looking for, the easier it is to come by. The more fundamental the motivation you're looking for, the harder it is to come by, because the person himself may not know what the motivation is. And then you have to just try to put together the pieces of the puzzle. You have to try to infer from their actions from their attitudes across time. Not just in any one moment, but across time, but what they do, what they say, what is the basic thing governing them and the depth to which you have to have that knowledge depends on what you want to do with the person. If you want to let him into your class as a student, you have to find out a few simple things. Is he really interested and does he have the capacity to restrain himself, you know, rather than go berserk in class and can he pay? If you want to marry somebody, presumably you have to know substantially more than that. And I can tell you very frankly, it's very hard to get to know anybody as well as you should get to know anybody. At least I never found out a magic secret to it. And it's just slog ahead and hope for the best. Another tip is never trust anybody under 40. I say that as a joke, but simply because it might experience. If people are motivated by youthful idealism in coming into objectivism by 40, it's worn off. So they either go on and they really care or they're into something else and they've forgotten about it altogether. So somebody is still here at 40. I sort of regard that not as definitive, but as a good song. Now I don't want a lot of questions about judging people because I don't know how to. To do it. Yes. Yes. Did Ayn Rand say anything about athletics? Not personal exercise? She didn't write. Did Ayn Rand say anything about athletics? She didn't write anything about it. But all I remember her and she was not involved with any sport that she watched. The only sport that I know she ever liked was mountain climbing. And that's when she was young in Switzerland. She used to be fearless as a teenager with mountain climbing in Switzerland, but she never engaged in any sport. The only thing that I remember her saying or basic attitude was that athletics gave people the spectacle of competence and justice. Just reward for competence in a world where they were perishing for that in any other field. That in this, in the athletic game you had to have the skill. It was obviously had to be a self made, self trained skill. And then if you beat the other team, there was no points for mercy to the other team. You didn't have to have a graduated income tax equivalent where you lose three baskets because their toxide feels bad. It's completely ruthless objectivist ethics. You have to have the talent, you have to earn it and then you get paid for exactly what you do. Not for your intention, not for your need, but for your Abilities. People are starved for this and that this would probably be of value in any society, but particularly in a society where you can't find it anywhere else. People read the sports pages for moral inspiration and I think there's a lot to it. They also bet. But that's a different. Yes. In one of your state lectures, objectively state of the art, at one point you made a comment about children. It seems to indicate that you thought it was a good idea for children, for parents not to make it so their children avoid hardships. I don't remember your exact words, but that you thought it was one of the good things children could learn was how to go through difficult periods. And young children, babies. Well, I'm. I wanted to ask you a distinction between, especially with, say, infants and toddlers, the difference between wants and needs. Oh, absolutely. The way you maybe come across a Scrooge there, I'll repeat, she said that in one of my lectures on education, I said it was good for children to go through hardship. And don't I make a distinction, especially for babies and toddlers, between wants and needs. Now, I would hate to be quoted as saying children should go through hardship as just a flat out of context absolute. Only thing I recall having said that would remotely be in that category was that it is wrong to gratify every desire of a child simply because they have the desire you're able to to gratify it because they have to get the experience of frustration early enough to start building the idea that they have to do something to get their desires fulfilled, that it's not just an automatic world where everything is poured on them by virtue of the fact that they want it. If they get the idea that their desire is omnipotent, that will cripple and stunt their development because why should they learn to think, practice any skills or make any effort in the world? They're going to get what they want anyway. And it's in that sense, you can spoil a child out of love or overindulge, but that has nothing to do with hardship. They can still have a comfortable mattress and a steak, trip to Disneyland. None of that makes any difference. The question is, within the context of that child, does he get whatever he wants just because he wants it? Or does he start to learn, not when he's an infant, obviously, but from the time of toddlerhood, that there are certain things you have to earn, you know, on the primitive terms that are appropriate to him. If it's a need, obviously he doesn't have to earn it because that would be tantamount to say, I'm not going to give him food because he hasn't earned it today. You, as a parent, are morally obligated to satisfy his needs and to satisfy them abundantly if you have the capacity to do so. But it's the desires, the extracurricular things, you know, TV or the movies or sleeping over at somebody else's house or that kind of thing, or a special new toy or, you know, that kind of thing. Sometimes it can be just given, you know, in the spirit of love and friendship or Christmas or whatever, but if you do too much of that, you inculcate a passive child. And even worse than that is a child who develops the attitude everything is coming to him, the world owes him a living. And that is very bad. You know, the necessity is the mother of invention. Frustration is the mother of motivation. You have to want something that you don't get, and then you become motivated to try to figure out how to get it, what to do to earn it, etc. Now, I hope you don't apply this to 2 years old, because that's not what I'm talking about, but at an appropriate age, within the context. Of their development. Now, for instance, when my daughter was born, I was wanting to get very clear, how long is it safe for a child to cry before it has physically harmful effect? Because there were certain things I didn't want to give in on the manual wife, but I didn't want to be medically threatened. And the doctor said there's no case in history of a child having been harmed by protracting crying, as long as it's not a reason that the safety pin is caught or something hungry or dirty or something like that. And so when we put her to bed at the beginning, she would cry, and at times she'd cry, I think eight minutes the first time, which was agony. My idea was she's just got to learn at some stage, and this is a good place to start. And then it was seven and six. And now, at least until recently, she would go right off to sleep without any problem. So it's in that sense of hardship. Yes. I've read that when the novel was first published, you were among the most optimistic about Atlas Shrug's ability to change the culture and that you thought this would happen immediately. I'm wondering over the past years, since it's been published, what your own personal feelings about the change in the culture and whether you're optimistic since 57. Yeah. Whether you're optimistic or pessimistic. More so now than you were when you were younger. Well, I'm certainly more so now of whatever you're asking. It's true. In 1957, I was young. I had no idea of how the world worked. I thought that Adam Strahd, which I read in manuscript, was so convincing that it was impossible for anyone to read it and not be immediately converted. And I thought that that was a shame because the battle for the world was over and I hadn't even started. So I liked and drink long. The reviews of the book left me in shock for about two years, and they didn't relate to even the book I had read. You never saw those original reviews? I'm sure it came out in 57, but I've never seen. I wouldn't even say distortions, bald big lies of so naked a kind. One of these magazines, I think it was Harper, said that she openly advocated poisoning. Well, to get rid of the infuriate. And then we just presented that as a fact. And Newsweek declared that she was against the use of the sentences because she had something against the perceptual level mentality you shouldn't use. I mean, it was such gross corruption that it quickly cured my optimism. If you want to ask me in a general way, am I more optimistic or more pessimistic about the future. Well, I've had it strongly drilled into me by a lot of top Objectivists that I should not talk about being pessimistic because it doesn't accomplish anything. And it just is a downer for people who can't give in to pessimism because none of us can. You have to keep trying no matter what. So I think on the grounds of. Of the Fifth Amendment, I just won't answer that question. Do you have any recommendations on techniques to keep a dual focus in, let's say, philosophy graduate school in terms of being able to put out analytic criticism to satisfy a course requirement and still be able to hold objectivism. From a graduate student, I guess he wants to know any techniques for keeping this dual accounting where you keep track of what they think and what you have to give them back on papers and orals, et cetera, versus what you think. First of all, it's an excruciating process, and I don't believe it can be done with anything approaching real success because of the fact that automatization is inherent. And this goes back to lecture one. You know, I said the only way to break a context is to say no every time it comes up. Well, the converse of that is every time you say yes to it, even if you say in parentheses I don't really mean it. But then you go on and write a paper or take part in a debate and so on, you are entrenching that context by the sheer fact of making it automatic. And consequently you can say to your I don't accept all this, but you nevertheless are making your mind doing it, do it and count on being fed connections from that viewpoint. And you must keep the objectivist context suppressed at that point, otherwise you'll be peril. It's like you're trying to speak, you know, Latin and English is in your way, so you have to push it out. Now you can go home and try to translate. But my experience is has been that it is so difficult to do the double entry bookkeeping that you cannot continuously watch what you're accepting. I used to make a point I'm going to doubt anything this guy says. As I was taking note, anything. But, you know, you can't literally, if he says it's a nice day today, you can't say, all right, it isn't. So what it amounts is you try to doubt anything that sounds the least bit controversial. And I found that as a regular rule there were five to 10 major errors a week that, alert as I was, went by me completely. I couldn't see anything wrong with him because I was hooked into that context enough to understand what he was saying, you see. And the only way I ever came out of that was every week in the early years had a session with Ms. Random and I would tell her, you know, casually, the things I learned. And she couldn't imagine that they were teaching such depravity. And I couldn't even figure out what was wrong because I was only telling you the good things. And so basically this went on for years. I don't think there is a solution to it. I don't know of any solution to it. The best thing to do is not to probably. In other words, if you can possibly cram all your courses into two years by going, you know, from morning to night and killing yourself and get involved in that context completely forget objective visit. And then when it's over, you have to then go through, you know, a whole process of delousing gradually it'll take a year or so to pull it all up. But it's better to do get the mortal ball and then have it stitched up and drag it out over year after year after year when you think you're repairing the damage as it happens, when you can so I would say crash PhD programs and then protracted recovery in a hospital. Rand said that Objectivism is a dangerous philosophy that most angels have been taken in a decade, taken harsh. She said it's more dangerous than any other form. Well, in this article that he's quoting, Mr. Objectivism is a dangerous philosophy if you accept it partially. He wants to know is that more dangerous than other philosophies? And she would say yes, because she would say other philosophies at least most other philosophers leave you internal inconsistencies so you can take part of what they say and you're still free on the contradiction to go wherever you want with it. They have some loophole for whim or faith or objectivism or, you know, majority opinion or God or whatever it happens to be. But her argument wasn't Objectivism is a complete system and I hope my book would have illustrated that even further that wherever you start the inexorably goes all the way around and it's not like an eclectic sum of positions or a series of contradictions. So if you accept it, you are going to put yourself in the position that your mind, your intellectual, your logical faculty requires a certain mode of functioning and you have no way out. And you're going to have to evade much more severely, much more intensely than if you had a philosophy that left you a lot more flexibility and a lot more room for conjugation. And it's the intensity of the evasion that it requires because it is so tightly and consistently knit as a system that makes it dangerous because you have to wreak more harm on your mind to do it partially than if you took it. And philosophy that was just a mixture of elements and you basically didn't have much guide. So her argument was you could get the best guidance from Objectivism. It could either be the best thing in your life or the worst if you tried to accept it while contradicting and she felt that was an issue of justice. You know, at the back, I wonder if you could say a few words about what I ran met by man worship or hero worship. Well, I could say a few words about what Ayn Rand meant by man worship or hero worship, but I will always say it in a non sexual context and that would be in a context that it would be an emotion possible to a male or a female. I wrote about that in the introduction to Philosophy who needs it? I think you see man wish if you could define in a more narrow sense as the female's attitude toward the male. According to RM but as I've indicated earlier, I'm not going to talk about that. But in the broader sense she meant holding human beings as a value, as a top value, holding an exalted view of the possibilities of man and then working to actualize it in yourself and to befriended wherever you find it in others. In other words, it's a way of stressing for her the value of man. She was completely man centered. I'm speaking now, not male centered, but man centered. It's the exact opposite of the animal rights idea. You know, where they just. I just saw one where they go up and down a clinic of this man who just got this gorilla and who's still alive and he and his family are ecstatic. And the animal rights people are going back down to say the signs. Animals are not expendable. They want the heart back in the liver given back to the gorilla. Now that is a literal antithesis which is even lower than Christianity. Christianity and Judaism was fairly decent to this extreme extended least. They gave Adam and Eve dominion over the earth and all of its creatures. So God in that sense was a human cholin. But you see they're going now in the oriental direction that the lowest bond is better than man. That's the true man hatred which we haven't seen in Western civilization except in Alaska centuries. Now she is the exact antithesis of that. When she talks about man worship, it does not mean she worships every man. I mean you obviously know that if you read her books or you saw her reactions to people. But it means she had reverence for the highest in man and that she would never consider putting anything above him. Neither the earth, nor outer space, nor God, nor animals, etc. That's the essence of it. Two hands. Yeah. What are the essentials of the Democratic and Republican party? What are the essentials of the Democratic Republican parties? The Democratic Party. I'm not going to give you my method for reaching this answer, but just the answer. The Democratic Party is essential. A moderate socialism disguised as a disappointed liberalism. And the Republican party is nothing disguised as a family oriented conservatism. So in actualist is a moderate socialist against nothing. And then it's just the act that they put on. One talks about. The Democrats now say the age of liberalism is past and it's the Tonga's idea, you know, it can't be anti business even though we're Democrats and even though they have to be therefore. But they say that to get in on the mood. And Republicans are completely bankrupt. They can't think white to come out for us after the family. When I was growing up, anybody that came out from motherhood was laughed off the stage. You know, on the ground that this is too brometic, this is a way of avoiding saying anything. And yet this is what's now the controversial Republican viewpoint. It came out for fatherhood. I mean, this is so fantastic that on that grounds alone, Bush should be defeated. Now, don't ask me by hope. I have a bad question about context and essentials. Were you going to say this is a bad question? Well, you said bad questions should be asked. Oh, I see. Okay. What's the difference between your analysis of essence and context in the movie version of Atlas and the conservatives who defend capitalism on pragmatic grounds like this? Well, that is a bad question. Now, let me see if I get it straight. What is the difference between defending capitalism using essences in context? No. How the conservatives defend capitalism saying, we have a bad world now, so we have to depend it on altruist grounds. They defend capitalism on altruist grounds. And what is it that I do that seems the same? I don't know if it's. I didn't say it was the same, but. But what's the difference between that and what your. Your analysis of the essence of the movie version of Atlas Shrugged changing. Yeah, I'm not accusing you. I think I see what you're saying, but it's. You're mixing together unmixable. It's like putting together oranges and elephant toenails. You have to distinguish, first of all, a theory, a principle, and what you're going to do in a concrete business situation. Principles may guide you, but a variety of principles may be applicable. When we talk about capital or socialism, we're talking in the broadest sense of what principles should govern a social system. And then you have to do that on the basis of a view of what is the nature of man, not what is the predominant majority among men, but what is the nature of man. Because you are trying to institute the system that should be the case, and you are prepared to wait centuries if necessary. But you want to argue in philosophy for that which is right, given what's possible to them. So you then say, even if everybody today is right, I still advocate capitalism because I know man has free will and at some point I'll be able to tie into the new generation. I certainly wouldn't advocate altruism or socialism because people are bad. I say that's what makes them bad, and therefore that's out. Now, you seem to Feel that because I in regard to the movie said everybody in Hollywood is no good. Therefore I'll settle for this business deal that that was in conflict with philosophy and with what I said just now in philosophy. That is not true. Because here I'm trying to say I don't have centuries to wait and it doesn't make any difference to me if people have free will if there's only a few years left and I have to deal with the people that have the power and the money in the industry. It would be ridiculous if you detach the reality to say, well, in the fullness of time, if you keep holding on for a Perfect movie in 2312, it will be made not by me, plus the copyright will have elapsed at that time. So you have a very short time and you have to then discuss in that situation what is possible. Now if you were to decide that that nothing is possible except the bad today, that even on the last scenario that I outlined the chances are so slim then more than you should just put the movie on the shelf and say I'm going to keep it off until it goes in the public domain and there's nothing I can do about it. I haven't reached that stage yet. I very well might. That's the next stage. But I still think there's a some possibility. But do you see that you're completely mixing up philosophy and a concrete. That's the best I can do briefly, yes. Identified sensitive periods in a child's life that we think best pick up concepts. Do you think that there's a crime in child's life, conceptually or developmentally, in which is most appropriate when it gives the concept of objectivism? Do I think there's a time when it's most appropriate that a child's development to introduce objectivism? Yes, it depends in which form you're introducing objectivism. You have to give them only what they are ready to hear and want to know only when they reach a point in their life or in their experience where they have to understand certain things. And partly that's a cultural issue of what are they exposed to around. And then you give them an answer only within the terms they can grasp. So I would always let the child be ahead of me in that respect and only when they in effect either come to you or it becomes obvious when you're watching them that they would need to know X. They don't know how to relate to such and such a person or how to answer such and such. Then you give them an answer within the first framework that they can understand. You do not take a kid, either 7 or 10 or even 15, and say, oh look, the reason you're having trouble with your math teacher is because A is A and he's on the death premise. I mean, he just blow the kid out of the water. That's out of the question. I would never try to sell a philosophy, only certain key ideas and only at the age where it's appropriate. I'm a certain stress on from a very early age. I make a big fuss about lying and explain it. As soon as he's able to lie, he's able to understand that he's trying to put something over on you, that he's trying to get away with murder. He doesn't need a philosophic proof at that point. He needs to know what he's doing and that you actively dislike him, that this is the consequences it's going to lead to. Nobody will try what he says, etc. And so on. If he is disrespectful to the rights of others and breaks their toys, then he has to learn that in practice by being timed out with the idea. If your behavior violates other kids toys, breaks them and so on, you just can't play with other people. The only way people can get along together is if what yours is yours. What says you grab his. You can't. You'll just have to live like a hermit, you know, for 10 minutes or whatever. I wouldn't know. If it doesn't take within 10 or 15 minutes, you've got to try another strategy. But I wouldn't leave him in there for months at a time. Now, for instance, God is going to come up very early, just by the nature of the society. Now if you lived in a different culture, he could live and die and never think of the question. But all of his friends are going to Sunday school or whatever and talking about the spiritual manifestation of Jesus and he's going to come home and ask you, you know, what you think. And what we told Kara, which worked very well, is we explained to her, do you understand that children can make mistakes? She said, oh sure. And we said, well, adults are just the same. They go on making even bigger mistakes when they grow up. And so it's just this happens to be a very big mistake that a lot of people made. She took it just like that. She has no trouble with that. But sometimes she carries. She applies it in ways which are. I'll close on this note. Do we have a minute or so left the Teacher called me to school one day that they were having trouble with the cure and I had to resolve on the problem. And I got there, actually. She called me and my wife and she said, I know that you don't want us to preach religion, but there are certain things we simply have to tell them. And I don't know what to do. And I couldn't imagine what you have to tell them about something about the history of religion. She said, we were teaching them timelines and I put down BC and AD Class asked, what. What is that? And I said, well, this is before Jesus. And after, she said, Kira said, that's not for me and walked away. So I had to talk to her and explain to her. That was a very tricky thing to try to explain the way I finally made a character. Do you believe in this table pointing to one? She said, yes. I said, now suppose people thought this table was a melon that came from another world and they started counting all over again when they got to it. That wouldn't mean they're right. It would mean though that they started counting over again. So if you want to know where their numbering is, you have to start. And that's basically the analogy. But you got to be on your toes for these things. Just to answer your question more broadly, I would not present an organized philosophy to someone who wasn't at least in their mid teens. If they're very precocious, 16, 17 is about the age I recommend starting to read the fountainhead, say maybe 19 or 20 for Atlas. Before that. They don't have enough experience. They don't have enough to integrate into. I think they can read it. They may not understand it entirely, but just as a child experiences Disney World experience, well, yes, they can get something out of it. But the thing that I'm particularly concerned about is that they not feel pressured by their parents. You don't want to activate rebellious syndrome, which is very common among teenagers, so that if they know you're in favor of something by that fact alone, they're asserting their independence to be against it. So I would never, you know, I make the book there, she doesn't want to read it. That's it. Because it's counterproductive. I think we went five minutes over long, so thank you very much.