The Ethics of Living Forever Debate (Part II)

[0:34:02-0:36:58] Now they delve into a discussion of exactly what AI is and means. I do think artificial intelligence will force us into asking more questions about ourselves, but that does not mean these series of 0s and 1s are the same as the organic creatures we are. It is already apparent that AI assists us in so many ways today, from the computers in our pockets to the surgeries completed with robots. There is no doubt that these machines will help us learn more so much faster and efficiently than ever before. However, I do not think this will change fundamental human nature or replace us in any meaningful way like so many people seem to fear.

[0:36:58-0:39:37] Alright, so Tucker then says, “If the Industrial Revolution, the steam-powered loom in England gave rise to Marxism in the first and second world wars and Vietnam and Korea and every other conflict for a hundred years, the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. You know, technological change causes displacement, the fall of religions, the fall of empires, the murder of millions. So what will AI do?” Wow. This sounds like a Marxist professor talking about how awful the Industrial Revolution was for all of humanity rather than focusing on how many millions of lives new technology and innovation saved. To hear this sentiment coming from someone “on the right” is doubly astonishing. Truly, there is not much difference between the religious right and the atheist left when a morality of death is at the center of each. And then Tucker jumps to autonomy and AI somehow taking free will away from humans. That is quite the jump, in my opinion, since nothing can stop a man from using his own mind and, therefore, his free will to make decisions.

[0:39:37-0:43:47] “I don’t really have any reasons for saying no, other than my animal sense tells me, ‘No.’ […] That was my ‘instinct’ speaking, which I regard as a kind of coequal with my rational sense.” Ayn Rand sums up perfectly that

An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An “instinct” is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic . . . Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 121)

So, another thing that separates us from any other animals is our need to learn what will allow us to survive. It is not automatic. If you are having a “gut feeling” about something, it means that your subconscious has some kind of answer that you are not yet consciously aware of yet or your emotions are sending out signals of danger but that is not knowledge. And Bryan’s admittance of his own depression taking over his life means that he lacked the desire to live and was making decisions counter to life. That has nothing to do with his own mind being wrong or untrustworthy but everything to do with how he was interpreting his situation. It made sense to him at the moment to go for that brownie to bring momentary pleasure in the face of the utter sense of hopelessness he felt. That is not irrational per se, but it is not the best way to live or find genuine happiness and he learned to overcome that hole he put himself in.

[0:43:47-0:44:35] Amazing. Tucker says, “And it does strike me, if you’re looking back into history that this is the only period, post-war, post-World War II where you’ve had a society at scale that assumes that there’s nothing beyond itself. […] Why did every previous generation assume that there was a God, but we don’t?”

First of all, not all people have believed in religion, and many were forced into whatever religion controlled their region for the majority of human history. You’d be killed if you thought otherwise. And while it’s true that there is a growing number of atheists in this world, Christianity and Islam still reign supreme. We are seeing this atrophying in religion because of all the newest science and technology that has been created. There are many answers we now have that we simply did not have before. Creation myths were the best way for homo sapiens to explain how things happened and that is why religion was the first stepping stone toward philosophy in explaining our world and how it works. The more we care to learn about things like our appendixes, the more we understand that everything can be explained in this world and not in some divine, unknowable realm.

To which Bryan replies that it doesn’t really matter whether we believe in god or not, “we already agree on don’t die—all of us do.” Now, I have explained in a previous video that this is simply not true. Those depressed or terminally ill people out there no longer believe in “don’t die.” It is a choice people have to make daily. I just think Bryan Johnson’s premise is wrong, and Tucker sniffs this out with him by continuing to bring back the idea of self-harm.

[0:44:35-0:46:54] This is yet another idea that I have discussed before, and it boggles my mind every time I come across it. Tucker says, “There’s no meaning without a power beyond ourself, is there? I mean there is only this sort of, like, shallow, silly, or sense meaning that we attach to various things, like sex or living longer or feeling good or whatever, but there’s no meaning beyond our physical, momentary experience. Whereas a person who acknowledges a power beyond himself attaches ultimate moral meaning to events. […] No God, no meaning.” I simply cannot fathom a person who does not look at their spouse for who they are and love them for their values and physical form. How could you feel anything higher than what is right in front of you? I plan on worshipping, yes, worshipping my baby when she arrives because of the potential she has and the perfection that she already is. To me, that does feel spiritual, but it does not need to ascend to some higher plane to be real and intense. It almost feels like Christians live with this foggy window between them and reality, unable to feel spiritually for the things that are the here and now. Even an insect who lives for a day has no clue that his life is tiny, momentary, fleeting; he survives by his instincts and lives with every fiber of his being for that brief time, as if he would live forever in such a manner. Humans do not live like bugs, though; we produce and make marks all over the future of our race. We leave ripples in our wake and our names can be carried on past our lives. Why do you need anything more?

And, of course, Bryan Johnson comes back with the biological “squirtings” idea that that’s where our meaning comes from, rather than understanding that human beings get meaning from the values they achieve throughout their lives. It is a process that requires action, not just chemical integrations, though we do rewire our brains with every experience we have. And it is true that we do live and experience in a particular body where mind and body are inextricably intertwined. But the body without the mind is nonexistent; we are more than those chemical processes our body goes through. We must use our rational minds to survive, which is why we need a code of morality in the first place. In my opinion, you cannot “engineer” meaning for an individual human being. They must figure out what that is for themselves through their own personal experiences and physical nature in space.

[0:46:54-0:50:18] Rightly, Tucker points out that we still need a code of morality to Bryan. But then he goes and says something silly: “If I feel like killing you because it pleases me, how can we oppose that?” As Dostoyevsky believed (and as I’ve addressed before), he thought that people without religion would murder each other left and right. I, among many others out there, are “good without god.” We are living our lives in peace as atheists. How is that possible? Because there is such a thing as a secular moral code to live by. Let me shout again, “Objectivism!” Reality is the only thing I “follow” to come up with my code. Would killing another person make me feel good? No. Would I end up in prison for life for it? Yes. Would it lead to my rational happiness to be trapped in a cage for the rest of my life or be haunted by the flashbacks of committing such a heinous crime? No. So why do it? If Tucker took one psychology class, then he would, hopefully, understand that people do seemingly “crazy” things for typically obvious reasons. There are all kinds of reality-based reasons that people harm each other; they don’t require a mysterious demon on their back to harm themselves or another for money, fame, revenge, justice, you name it—there’s almost always a reason for the action taken.

And then Tucker dares to say that we can’t say murder is “wrong” without god and Bryan Johnson just goes along with it. Ayn Rand discusses crime in particular as:

A crime is a violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud). It is only the initiation of physical force against others—i.e., the recourse to violence—that can be classified as a crime in a free society (as distinguished from a civil wrong). Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime—and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime. (Ayn Rand, “Political Crimes,” Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 176)

So it is wrong to kill someone because they have a right to their own life. Though, this can be teetering on the brink of a trolley problem if the killing is given without the proper context. I don’t have the space to look at the law in depth here, but that is why we have a court system in the first place—to determine if a killing (or any other crime) was in self-defense or not. Killing in self-defense to protect your own life is not morally wrong; it’s what becomes necessary for your own survival, so it can neither be right nor wrong. Ayn Rand has always said that “morality ends where a gun begins” (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 133). A moral system can only be followed when a man has a choice; that choice is simply robbed from him whenever another threatens to kill him and vice versa.

Unfortunately, both men lack the clear answer that Ayn Rand has provided, and which Tucker believes remains “unsolved.”

[0:50:18-0:54:31] This was another doozy when Tucker asks, “Without God, how can we say, and why would we say, that life is better than death? I mean, the religious person, the Christian, says life is better than death because God creates life.” At no point did I grow up thinking that death was better than life. I am baffled that a Christian honestly wonders why life is better than death. Only if you truly believe in this blissful afterlife that you have no proof exists could you see death as anything other than horrifying and an enemy to mankind. Life is much more exciting, first of all, than oblivion and more than what I imagine would be a dull place after the high wears off in the afterlife. You can only feel the highest of highs on earth and develop a greater understanding when you have lost a value and felt the lowest of the lows. Death is simply a negation of life, the absence of life. I do not want to be a void; I want to live. And the world is beautiful to me on its face, not because someone divine created it. Nature creates its own wondrous patterns, and it excites me to learn about them, and as humans have learned, every species has evolved with these attributes due to some advantage for their survival. We have this beautiful and still very mysterious mind, and I gaze in spiritual wonder at its beauty with no need to have a sole creator of the entire world. Yet, I believe that I go to that same spiritual realm of emotion that a Christian does but completely devoid of god.

[0:54:31-1:00:34] Oh, boy, Tucker says, “You would not disagree if I said, ‘Here’s what we know: We know that AI is likely to spawn some improvements, also certain to kill millions of people.’ Millions will die because of this, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it—the chaos alone, right, will cause that.” Why not just blow it all up essentially? Wow, his answer is like a mix of utilitarianism and nihilism and a Luddite mentality. First of all, the lawsuits brought against Elon Musk and his “self-driving” Teslas, as far as I am aware, are all due to user error and not because of the algorithm itself. People are the ones still harming themselves when they don’t use their brains or follow directions. AI is much safer and helps to keep us safer than we’ve ever been before. There is no guarantee, as Bryan is saying, that artificial intelligence will kill millions. There already has been no such apocalyptic scenario as he fears. If anything, more people have survived a surgery that a doctor’s shaking hand would have botched years ago that a robot did without a single error. Heck, I had LASIK done with the help of AI and lasers to fix my nearsightedness, and that was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a miracle.

Bryan Johnson is able to make somewhat of an argument similar to mine to Tucker that humans are more fallible than AI is, which does seem to be the case thus far. And I’m thankful that at least Bryan was able to say that he does not “accept the premise” of AI killing millions in the future.

[1:00:34-1:07:40] “We don’t have any idea what we’re talking about, and we can’t anticipate the future. We’re limited in our foresight, in our knowledge, and particularly in our wisdom.” And then he comes up with this example of no robot ever being able to tell him why his wife is mad at him and Bryan Johnson says that we can use AI to tell us that answer. To which Tucker says that this is too “mechanistic,” and ignores “the most important universe, which is the spiritual universe.” I shouted here, “Objectivism!” Tucker claims again that we are controlled morally by “spiritual forces, unseen forces” and that he doesn’t see any “evidence” in what Bryan is saying. And Bryan Johnson agrees that this is a very spiritual moment for all of us on this planet and that AI is “neutral” and that we give it meaning, which I agree with. Bryan says he wants to eliminate “the causes of death.” To which Tucker retorts, “But until we can account for why we do it to ourselves, we’re probably not gonna change it. And I think the most obvious explanation is we’re being acted on by demons, whose—and this is how every religion that I’m aware of has described it, correctly, in my opinion—acted on by demons, whose goal is to destroy and kill people and they’re a counterbalance? by God. But, if you don’t agree with that, then you need to substitute another explanation in its place in order to proceed in the hope that we can change.” One more time, I scream: “Objectivism!” There is a battle between “good and evil” as Tucker mentions, but it is not in an unseen realm, it is between individual human beings. It is happening every second of every day, and that is why civilization has emerged to manage those fights through our military, courts, and police, aka our government on a global scale, and with the help of philosophy and psychology and other sciences on an individual scale.

Finally, Bryan Johnson says, “I’m with you; what I heard you say is there’s more to reality than we can see, there’s forces which we can’t identify, and we should address those. We’re on the same page, after the same thing.” Neither man can seem to prove what “forces” are acting on us to determine our actions or our code of morality. Objectivism would say that human beings with free will are driven by their minds to survive, to live, to be happy. That’s it. There is nothing more than that as a species. To live “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” as John Clarke and more famously Benjamin Franklin said, is to live happily on this earth. That should be our only goal, our only mission in life.

***

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4E0jEjQMM; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/universe.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/history.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/existence.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/instinct.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/crime.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79rXk4NQlc&list=PLqsoWxJ-qmMvgfp2mg-AAFnCROvtu9NVR&index=2; https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087; https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145; https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952; https://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

The Ethics of Living Forever Debate (Part I)

A friend brought this interview between Tucker Carlson and Bryan Johnson to my attention, and once the two gentlemen started delving into the “ethics of living forever,” I found myself shouting at the screen, “Objectivism!” I could not help myself, and I needed an outlet to vent. So seeing as I have an audience on the internet who is willing to listen to me, I am going to share the interview, along with my commentary scattered throughout. I will list the time stamps for the Carlson interview in the description box below if you are curious about rewatching certain parts of the interview. This is the first time I’ve made content like this, so let me know down in the comments section if you liked it.

Alright, time to get this interview started! The first ten minutes or so consist of just some background on who Bryan Johnson is, in case you have never heard of him or his work before. Tucker Carlson, of course, is the famous former FOX News host, who now has his own video podcast show called The Tucker Carlson Encounter.

[0:00:00-0:09:21] “By the way, I’m not endorsing any of this.” Carlson will repeat this phrase because he does not agree with Bryan’s anti-aging methods. Hold this in mind as we get deeper into the interview.

[0:09:21-0:09:59] Tucker begins by attacking Project Blueprint with the skepticism one would find among Democrats who distrust “rich people.” He says the rich feed off the blood of children and that clearly does alarm Tucker, even though he is a millionaire himself. You may feel like this is an obvious concern people have brought up, but later on in the video, it will become more apparent that this method really rubs Tucker the wrong way.

[0:09:59-0:11:14] So, Bryan Johnson says, “You are the product” and to someone who is as religious as you will see Tucker is, this freaks him out. So his response is so telling: “I never asked what the appendix is. […] I really made an effort to not focus on those things because it seems like a lot of self-focus, and it seems like a short trip from there to, say, narcissism, which is, obviously, death.” Wow. You know, as I was listening to this interview, I learned a lot more about how Christians view this world that I could not have even fathomed before, having left my Protestant upbringing by eleven. It seems impossible for me to believe that people would avoid asking what is wrong when their body malfunctions. I spend all day reading and writing and consuming videos to discover the truth of things, to understand my body and this world, all day long. So to outright reject thinking about your own appendix because that seems selfish to a Christian is downright medieval thinking. It’s frightening to hear, honestly. Throughout this interview, pay attention to how concerned and brainwashed Tucker Carlson is in his faith and its utter obsession with their notion of selfishness. He is constantly equating what should be the “virtue of selfishness” as Rand calls it, or the ego and the self-esteem that follows, with narcissism, death, and the devil. Okay, let’s move on.

[0:11:14-0:12:28] Now, Bryan Johnson reveals his upbringing in Mormonism (which he didn’t actually leave until his thirties). And now, much like Descartes, he lost his trust in everything, most unfortunately, the trust in his mind. This is just as corrupt as thinking that god is in control of your life, by believing that only the chemical “squirtings” in your body are in control of your life and not your rational mind. He also places death as the centerpiece of his newfound philosophical system. The enemy is death, and it must be defeated. Now, I must say here that I also feel that my greatest enemy here on earth is death, but the philosophy of Objectivism is not based on that premise, rather one of happiness as the end goal. Objectivists are moving toward a positive and not focused with fear on constantly running away from a negative.

[0:12:28-0:15:07] Tucker says, “You grew up in a world—a Mormon world—that believed and taught you that it had already solved the question of death through Jesus.” This was probably the biggest shock to me while watching this video podcast. I suppose having left the religion so early that Christians, in general, believe that the resurrection of Jesus was actually him “conquering” death (the devil) and allowing us all to have eternal life in heaven. I just have never believed that anyone had “solved death” before. It certainly does not feel solved when you are watching your own mother die so young from the horrible jaws of cancer. That feels like a “devilish act” that she should have been saved from, no? At least Bryan Johnson has the guts to tell Tucker Carlson that he would like evidence of such a thing existing and that the speed at which artificial intelligence is growing may be our single way out of dying. I agree that the idea of “age escape velocity” is much more plausible at this point than the idea of there being any sort of afterlife. Tucker says that what Bryan Johnson is doing “to that extent” is “virtuous.” But just wait.

[0:15:07-0:15:34] “I just wonder if—as someone who grew up in a religious community—if part of you, maybe deep inside, fears that when you start to say things like, ‘We can defeat death,’ that you won’t be smoked down by the God of the universe.” Again, wow. Tucker Carlson truly lives his life in fear, like a child worried about getting coal on Christmas from Santa Claus. It boggles my mind that adults can still carry this same childlike mentality into their middle and old age. Bryan’s reply of “not in the least bit” was refreshing to hear but not the Harris-like cackle from Tucker. This man thinks that Bryan is a fool, and it does not come from a good place in his soul as he responds with, “Well, you’re either very brave or very foolish.”

[0:15:34-0:16:56] Take note that Tucker Carlson will increasingly howl in laughter more, like Harris, when he gets uncomfortable. Tucker then asks, “Aren’t you saying I’m God?” To which Bryan responds with an odd response of, “I’m saying that the universe speaks in irony.” What? Here is where I started shouting, “Objectivism!” The universe, as Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s intellectual heir, says, is

the total of that which exists—not merely the earth or the stars or the galaxies, but everything. Obviously then there can be no such thing as the “cause” of the universe…

Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then, you ask, is outside of the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase “outside of the universe” has no referent. The universe is everything. “Outside the universe” stands for “that which is where everything isn’t.” There is no such place. There isn’t even nothing “out there”: there is no “out there.” (Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 2)

So “the universe” does not have a consciousness like me or you. It is simply everything in existence. Therefore, it cannot be “ironic” since that is a man-made term. It just is. There is a process to the natural world, but that is also not ironic. So, if Bryan Johnson or Tucker Carlson had cared to ever read more than some smatterings of Ayn Rand’s fiction, then they would have better answers than from a Christian or a hippie perspective, as revealed throughout this interview.

[0:16:56-0:17:35] This is shocking. “You know, many people though history have reached similar conclusions but not with similar technology to affect those conclusions, right? […] But, you know, history laughs at those people, and the story of history is men addled with hubris being humiliated. [Notice the slight, cynical smile here]. And so, I mean, I would say that there is a great deal of evidence that you will be crushed and humiliated for saying that.” Wow, wow, wow. This is a medieval mind telling you and me to just watch your loved one suffer and die with a pitiful clasp of the hands and the sigh of resignation that it must have been their time. If I love my mother, then I will fight death for her. I will understand the kind of cancer she got and how she could have avoided such outcomes, if any. I would feel an anger in my soul that I could not save her. I would advocate for the scientists of today (since I will admit my strengths lie more in the arts than the sciences) to find the cure for all diseases. I will never give up the control I have in my power to fight death. History is created by the intellectual minority.

Just as a man’s actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society’s existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period. The nineteenth century—with its political freedom, science, industry, business, trade, all the necessary conditions of material progress—was the result and the last achievement of the intellectual power released by the Renaissance. The men engaged in those activities were still riding on the remnants of an Aristotelian influence in philosophy, particularly on an Aristotelian epistemology (more implicitly than explicitly). (Ayn Rand, “For the New Intellectual,” For the New Intellectual, 28)

Would you rather, Tucker, have men of the mind engage in experiments that are not always successful or would you like to live like the isolated African tribes that still exist today, dying from things that we have been preventing for hundreds of years at this point? Would you rather cheer on the scholar and the businessman, like Bryan Johnson, who take these ideas from the realm of ideas to reality? I thought you advocated for capitalism, but you sound more and more like the anti-colonial left here.

[0:17:35-0:19:22] Poor Bryan starts to allow the naysayers to get to him by saying, “I think it’s likely inevitable that I will die the most ironic death.” And there goes the Tucker cackle with such joy. He says, “Yes, that is so true. By the way, that’s the message of the New Testament; I mean that’s the Sermon on the Mount. It’s the irony book.” At this point, I’m fuming. I have seen so many comments under Bryan Johnson’s own videos saying such nihilistic things as “Well, it would be hilariously ironic if you got hit by a truck right now.” As if people want to “trolley problem” their own existence when they make comments like this. But who bases their values, their moral system on accidents? What about the choices you make on a daily basis that may have put you in those situations in the first place? I think it is cruel and a sign of depression to think this way. That it is not worth trying to stay alive because accidents happen, not to mention that most accidents are not fatal. We have all fallen off our bike while learning to ride one, and how many children out of that were run over by a truck? I mean, really, this is, to me, a nihilistic and liberal mindset at its core. If Bryan Johnson knew about Ayn Rand, then he would never kowtow before these ridiculous premises. “Okay, now I like you a lot. I think that’s just a wonderful thing to say. That is wisdom.” What?! I am so sick to my stomach hearing this in 2024 and not 1424.

[0:19:22-0:22:33] “This is when homo sapiens realized that they reached a technological threshold, where the only objective of existence was to continue to exist at the basic level. So this is “Don’t Die.” Again, in this Descartes way of viewing the world, the objective of existence does not really make sense. Ayn Rand says that “existence exists.” It is here metaphysical and the first pillar of Objectivism (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 124). It is just reality itself. So the question naturally becomes, Well, the objective of existence for whom? Bryan says, “homo sapiens.” But we require so much more than existing, that’s not living. A depressed person, as Tucker points out, who is simply existing is not going to wish to live long and has the ability to consciously off themselves, unlike any other species. We want to be happy, and that can only be achieved by living according to the laws of nature, reality. I think Tucker, being as religious as he is, realizes that there is something hollow about just not dying when he believes we have souls and, apparently, demons too.

[0:22:33-0:22:53] Bryan Johnson does not have any answers as to why people harm themselves without Ayn Rand’s help. Instead, he says that “The solution that I’ve come up with is I endeavor to build an algorithm that could take better care of me than I can myself.” Which completely negates human free will and a need for any sort of moral code in that case. I do not think an algorithm can make men happy. Again, working from Descartes-like premises, Bryan Johnson does not trust anything around him, including his mind. He thinks people act “insane,” even though we know from a legal perspective that proving actual insanity, a total divorce from reality, at the time of committing a crime, is extremely rare. Just like the trolley problems, we cannot base the actions of humanity off rare states of psychosis. People make decisions every day to eat poorly or not exercise. They must learn about what they are doing to their bodies and then use their willpower to fight against the temptations, just as Bryan Johnson has done himself, without acknowledging all that his mind has actually done toward the betterment of his life. I think this utter blindness he is experiencing in his middle age comes back to his long journey with Mormonism. He simply has not read enough outside of the religion that shaped his thinking and neither has Tucker Carlson as they run around like headless chickens without an answer as to why people still harm themselves. Again, allow me to yell, “Read Ayn Rand!”

[0:22:53-0:24:23] Tucker just said, “I think there clearly are demonic forces, I think there are evil spirits that are doing this to people.” Again, I never thought that Christians actually believed that demons were still picking on humans in today’s modern world. But, apparently, Tucker Carlson has shown me that evil spirits are still very much guiding people’s moral compasses. I feel like I am a medieval monk copying out scripture right after the Black Death has struck all of Europe listening to this interview.

[0:24:23-0:25:10] This is just rich. I have definitely heard Christians say this before, and I have already made some content on this. But Tucker asks, “Like where’s that moral framework coming from if there’s no God? I don’t get that.” Objectivism! Okay, to further elaborate, the entire point of having a philosophy like Objectivism is to provide that secular moral code for man. It frees us from the notion that morality has to come from god or some higher power that is not truly human. Of course, Ayn Rand believed that we must still have a moral code; otherwise, anarchy or dictatorship would ensue as it did in both world wars and that would not lead to happy lives, only more death and destruction than ever before. What is so sad to see is that neither of these middle-aged men can understand where morality comes from when the answer has been so clearly shared with the world since at least when Atlas Shrugged was initially published in 1957. (By the way, Tucker was born in 1969 and Bryan in 1977, which means that they both were born with the advantage of having her knowledge disseminated out there since birth).

[0:25:10-0:27:08] Bryan then says, “Right now, we play capitalism and make money and earn–” and Tucker cuts him off with, “I’m with you there, that’s obviously a hollow, stupid dead end and it’s not actually even working” and then proceeds to maniacally laugh again. This is the man who is one of the top voices of the Republican Party and he just dismissed capitalism as a “hollow, stupid dead end?” Why doesn’t he just stand up and make out with Marx right now? To this entire answer, I will scream, “Read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal!” Here’s just a taste of the book’s answer:

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. (Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 20)

[0:27:08-0:27:33] Again, they circle back around to spit on the mind. Then Tucker states, “The root of wisdom is knowing not to trust yourself.” I had to think for a while where he even got this premise. It sounds very Eastern, very mystical, though I’m sure Christianity contributes to some of this attitude as well. This debate is a very old one in philosophy between the “mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle.” Ayn Rand addresses this by explaining:

As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter—the enslavement of man’s body, in spirit—the destruction of his mind.

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive—a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society—a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute. The purpose of man’s life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave. His reward, say the mystics of muscle, will be given on earth—to his great-grandchildren.

Selfishness—say both—is man’s evil. Man’s good—say both—is to give up his personal desires, to deny himself, renounce himself, surrender; man’s good is to negate the life he lives. Sacrifice—cry both—is the essence of morality, the highest virtue within man’s reach. (Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 138)

Both men are preaching a “Morality of Death” here and not of life. They are agreeing so much because their premises are the same—selfishness is the ultimate evil.

[0:27:33-0:29:32] Then Tucker drops another revealing sentiment that many Christians seem to share: “I mean the accumulated sadness of life is hard to take.” Look, I grew up with enough childhood trauma for a lifetime, but does that mean that I would rather not exist? No. I have always accepted the anxiety and grief that came with my struggles, but there was still laughter and love in my life to get me through those tough times. There were many times I vowed that I desired to keep feeling than feel nothing at all because the feelings themselves could not kill me. I mean, if everyone living in this place called heaven were to be there in eternal bliss, then they would end up being simply numb to their bliss. Their afterlife would then have no meaning if they just existed up there in this kind of stasis. No, I prefer to live and breathe with the understanding that loss and grief are a part of life but so is laughter and joy.

[0:29:32-0:31:40] “All of life is an invitation to humility. […] that is the root of wisdom and the root of happiness.” What?! Humility is certainly a part of Christianity where a follower of Christ must kneel down and obey and not question the laws of nature. I cannot and will not accept that mentality. Humility, or in another way, the idea of selflessness, is not at the root of happiness or wisdom. Happiness comes from the values you accumulate in your life and feels like this stable state of being because you followed reality and its rules. And wisdom comes from not obeying the laws of the bible but having the courage and pride, the self-esteem, to go searching for truth.

[0:31:40-0:34:02] Okay, then Bryan Johnson offers up this thought experiment to Tucker Carlson, who swiftly rejects it and says, “Of course I would say no, I’m not getting bossed around by a machine. Sorry. And I also don’t think that any philosophy that doesn’t include God can improve my spiritual health, because, like, what does that even mean?” Objectivism! Ahhh, this is so frustrating to be yelling at a screen with no one to hear me. There is a philosophy that does not include god and makes a heck of a lot more sense than any other system of ideas I have ever read about, even after getting my bachelor’s in philosophy. Tucker is so far gone that there is no way of changing this man’s mind at his age, unfortunately. I think that Bryan’s theory is definitely going to be appealing to the younger crowd, even if he needs a better philosophy backing his desire for this “giving birth to superintelligence.”

Well, my dear watchers and listeners, I didn’t realize before just how much I had to interject into this interview. So I have decided to split this into two parts. Please watch out for Part II soon.

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Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4E0jEjQMM; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/universe.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/history.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/existence.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/instinct.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/crime.html; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79rXk4NQlc&list=PLqsoWxJ-qmMvgfp2mg-AAFnCROvtu9NVR&index=2; https://www.amazon.com/New-Intellectual-Philosophy-Rand-Anniversary/dp/0451163087; https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145; https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952; https://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Objectivists Divide Over Trump

As early as middle school and certainly by high school, I noticed I’d have these gut feelings and anger well up inside of me when certain teachers taught. But at that time, I couldn’t always put my finger on why. I’d often overhear Michael Savage’s voice on the radio while my dad was cooking dinner, explaining current events. Then I remember listening attentively to my dad’s interpretation of what my teachers said at the dinner table. Finally, after discovering Ayn Rand and her work, I had answers to all my gut feelings. I found the individual, the “I” that was me, and the liberal ideology that possessed many of my teachers.

Objectivism gave me the oxygen I needed amidst the barrage of confusion, trolley problems, anti-reality, magical, supernatural, illogical thinking washing over me from all sides of my higher education. She showed me that life doesn’t have to be complicated, with one tragedy inevitably following another because man has original sin. She revealed that focusing on reality and the truth will allow me to create the life I want to live, one that increases my happiness.

I truly wish that Ayn Rand was still alive today because I’m having that same gut feeling again without the answers and it is all over: Donald Trump. There is this growing rift between what seems to be the scholars at the Ayn Rand Institute and other outside Objectivists. The scholars seem to hate Trump while the outsiders tend to love him. It’s like watching my parents divorce all over again. Most of my close family and friends love Trump. But every time I listen to another ARI podcast or see a post on X from someone heavily involved in ARI, all I hear are negatives about him and my stomach squirms.

I should note, however, that endorsing a specific political candidate does not make you an Objectivist or not. It is when you agree with her four basic pillars of Objectivism and its overall goal that makes you one, so really this should not give people a reason to drop a philosophical label that they want to carry.

If Ayn Rand was here today, I believe that she would surprise the people at ARI and give a clarifying answer as to why Trump is not Hitler but now an American icon. I say this with the deep conviction that the only person left on this earth to have spent the most time with her when she was alive and named him her intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, stated at the end of a video in 2020 that “I wanna add one sentence: I am voting for Trump. That’s it. Okay. […] I’m not arguing, but I heard somebody say, ‘No Objectivist would vote for Trump.’ And I’m still steaming over that, so I’m tryin’ to publicize the fact that whoever said that is crazy.” Please read the comments to this video that I’ll link below to read who may have been the one to say that if you’re curious. I will not be bringing in any ARI-related people’s names into this video. However, I believe that ARI cut the end of this video section off. Now, I understand that they as a nonprofit cannot and will not endorse a particular candidate, but they could have left Peikoff’s commentary in. To me, it is a huge slap in the face to the creator of the Institute itself. He’s not old and losing his mind, like Biden.

Not to mention that Peikoff is the very man who wrote the DIM Hypothesis, which sends out the warning call about our country falling into religious totalitarianism and, yet, he does not view Trump as that exact type of threat that the Democrats are pointing to. That should tell Objectivists something. Trump has never seemed that religious, which is precisely why he chose Pence as his vice president back in 2016 in order to win the vote of the evangelical Christians. Now, if this was all about Pence running, who talked about god every time he opened his mouth, then I’d be more worried.

I think that Ayn Rand is much more conservative, at least morally, than many modern-day Objectivist intellectuals are acknowledging. Remember her scenes in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, where the male lead is always sexually dominant over the submissive female? Remember how she said that no woman would even want to be president because she wouldn’t have a man to look up to? Remember how she had a distaste for feminists even back then? Rand certainly has articles or statements about the border and immigration and abortion that are considered anti-conservative stances today, and she makes that known, but to talk about those topics constantly as if those political policies made up the entire system is foolish. The same goes for placing a spotlight on sexism and racism. Ayn Rand wrote one essay on the topic and moved on. She is not like the tribal leftists of today who are making those topics the central theme of their entire lives, a religion. Conservatives do not want the propaganda shoved down their throats anymore.

In a recent ARI podcast, the hosts do not call this a right or left issue but a pro-Enlightenment versus an anti-Enlightenment one. While I believe that is true, I also can see how the right tends to be more pro-reality than the anti-reality liberals in this day and age. As long as the religious right is able to keep their god in the sky and not affect those of us on earth, I see no real threat from that side. Whereas, the liberals are actively attempting to change our language, utterly obscuring it with made-up terms and pulling statistics out of nothing in order to alter what is right in front of them: reality. For example, they refuse to acknowledge that a child with XY chromosomes is a man and XX chromosomes is a woman. They refuse to admit that communism in any form will never work based simply on human nature. They refuse to see that the nuclear family is the best way to raise children. I do not get these ideas from god but from observing other people and animals. Nature guided Darwin just as well back then as today. There are natural laws set in place, and the only way to ever attain true happiness is to adhere to those laws. That’s why we exercise, eat a healthy diet, brush our teeth to avoid decay. Therefore, I see the left as a much larger threat than the right.

Sure, when you just watch the news, you see tribalistic and often idiotic things said from both sides, but they are anchors breaking real time news with very little time to think or a long time to elaborate, that’s how you get sound bites. There has always been this kind of “yellow journalism” or bickering in politics—that’s just the nature of the game. But if you talk to the men and women who are not in the spotlight, they all are bringing more than just “tribalistic views” to the table. I have seen people talking about what our founding fathers wanted for this country and others who still take the time to reread the Declaration of Independence—true patriots are to be found in this country and they hate to see the American culture damaged by anti-reality groups. It is these patriots who are bringing their morals with them to vote for Trump—you will just not hear it on the news. I think many scholars are simplifying the real cultural issues at stake here, perhaps because they are surrounded by an echo chamber of their friends and not out in the middle of the noise like I am. There is a way of life that many Americans feel they must protect. I’ve seen the “trad wives” on social media and the conservative men who just want to live out in the prairie in peace—without any news or politicians in sight. There is a culture of family first still left in America, of parents responsibly shaping the next generation, which is being incessantly chiseled away at by the left. That is the threat. Trump may be their antidote to the “woke virus.”

ARI always points out that we can’t be proponents of a negative, such as atheism. And yet, all I’ve heard are negatives on the state of the world and the people running it from the Institute lately. What happened to that moral spirit that Ayn Rand could conjure up and lighten an entire room with? Unfortunately, one thing that scholars do to language is beat it to death and then suck out every last ounce of emotion left for the reader or listener. It is also very easy to stay morally “pure” as a scholar in their tower while a presidential candidate is meant to represent the voice of an entire nation. Trump must be open to hearing and helping all different kinds of people.

Yes, I think the first election cycle around, he was on the defensive and his method was to resort to childish name-calling. I don’t think his speeches were focused enough and they did sound very pragmatic, as if he had no philosophical stance. However, even an older man can learn. I, along with the world, have watched Trump learn, mature, and grow into the leader we see today. That was proven on July 13, 2024, when the twenty-year-old loner, who probably was just severely depressed and not particularly politically motivated, got up on that roof and took a shot at the former president.

If that were me up on that stage I would have screamed, peed myself, and cried running off with my Secret Service agents (and, yes, I will grant you that I am a woman who is currently pregnant), but still I would have been petrified. Instead, here we see a man raise himself up with a sense of defiance and anger written all over his face. This was not a “marketing moment” as someone (who shall not be named) said about him. This was the face of a man asking openly, “How dare you try to extinguish my life? A life that I have made and poured all my values into it. I will fight, fight, fight for my right to live.” He was a man in those first shocking moments, not just a presidential candidate. And I do believe that Ayn Rand would have seen that heroic picture of the blood on his face and the flag waving proudly behind him with a tear in her eye. I do not believe that she would have skeptically rolled her eyes, called him a narcissist, and yawned about how he is so lost in himself that he knew this would become a historic picture moment for himself. It’s that kind of attempt at character assassination that makes my gut hurt (and, again, not just because I’m pregnant).

In the days following, Trump has not taken the time to even digest what happened, but the look on his face at the Republican National Convention was different. Being directly shot at and nearly killed, and acknowledging that fact, changes a man. You could see it on his face. There is trauma there. But the liberals will call him “weak” and “elderly looking” and “tired.” No, he is a man with growing pains, a man beginning to understand that people believe in him, a man who cannot let them down no matter what.

Trump is coming out as more moderate too these days. Supposedly, he has left abortion out of his conservative party stance. Now, perhaps this, again, shows that he is a pragmatist or “has no ideas,” but he may also just be listening to the middle of his base. Trump wants to unify the American people together, as long as we are all moving in the right direction, toward reality and not away from it. One president is not going to be able to turn all of America into Galt’s Gulch overnight. That’s a fantasy.

Go with me for a moment on a trip to the future. Perhaps borders are still needed right now until we all become one global country, essentially. I see it already happening with all our translation apps and social media since I can easily communicate now with people from all over the world regardless of the language barrier. Foreign nations have been for a while now learning English as their second language, and I foresee that everyone will because it is a mongrel language anyway, with many of its roots coming from other cultures.

The news is international at this point and there will be no stopping it now. The longer we have the Internet, the more integrated everyone will be on this planet. Someday, I think we will all simply become the human race with the individual as truly the smallest minority. Cultures will become a thing that historians study and people engage in just for fun and entertainment. The further along science gets to answering our deepest questions, the more religion will atrophy, and nations will become less and less dissimilar.

A free market working on an international scale would bring all of us up and perhaps Bryan Johnson’s message of “Don’t Die” might finally be the only mission we all have. But until then, there are terrorists and criminals and even cultural differences that still make borders something that every nation desires. Until new generations are raised in similar environments, we cannot have the free-for-all that we in the West, at least, desire. Religion (the kind found on both the right and the left) has, can, and does still kill.

This brings me closer to one of my final points: I think it’s absolutely offensive that people are calling it “an act of god” that Trump survived when a rally attendant was shot to death just behind him and two others severely injured. Was Corey’s life less worthy of living? Would his daughters rather have kept their dad alive or Trump? Did god ignore Corey to shine his light on Trump? No, this was pure luck.

Let’s say I took Pascal’s wager seriously, which allow me to remind my audience is “the argument that it is in one’s own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the possibility of eternal punishment in hell outweighs any advantage in believing otherwise.” Let’s say I was wrong. Then I’d be banished to hell, along with all the other wonderful people who have walked this earth and questioned and maintained their goodness, like Ayn Rand herself and, yes, even Donald Trump.

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Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phxhzlWsl0o&ab_channel=AdamSmasher; https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100308948#:~:text=Pascal’s%20wager%20the%20argument%20that,any%20advantage%20in%20believing%20otherwise.; https://www.radiohalloffame.com/michael-savage; https://theobjectivestandard.com/2016/11/ayn-rands-intellectual-development/;
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump/images-videos; https://courses.aynrand.org/people/leonard-peikoff/; https://aynrand.org/novels/; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-ideal-from-the-ayn-rand-institute/id1515023771; https://www.vox.com/culture/360711/trump-fist-pump-photo-explained-expert-media-savvy-politics; https://abc7.com/live-updates/rnc-2024-donald-trump-makes-appearance-on-day-1-of-the-republican-national-convention-in-milwaukee/15060290/; https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1788256385224024236; https://conflictedcollegechristians.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/pascals-wager/

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Religion Versus America

I felt compelled today to read this entire lecture given by Leonard Peikoff in 1986 because the message is still just as relevant, if not more so, today than back then. After hearing talk show hosts, like Ben Shapiro, conservative friends, and right-wing publishing companies tell me over and over again that America was built by our “God-fearing founding fathers” and in order to save America we need to bring back “under God,” I finally had enough.

I wish I could shout this message into a nationwide microphone that there is not only a path between the “atheist Democrats” and the “religious Republicans.” It’s a false dichotomy! What about the citizens of the United States who are pro-freedom, pro-individuality, pro-reason? Aren’t they the only true bastion of morality and spirit left in this country, the ones who kept it afloat for all these years?

Allow me to read Dr. Peikoff’s powerful words to remind everyone how America was founded and truly flourished in spite of the religious influence of the times.

To read the entire lecture, please visit: https://courses.aynrand.org/works/religion-versus-america/.

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Links: https://courses.aynrand.org/people/leonard-peikoff/; https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Reason-Objectivist-Thought-Library/dp/0452010462?tag=aynrandorgcampus-20; https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.58837/

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Victimization Risks, Murder, and How to Morally Judge an Individual

I have said before and will continue to say that the less you focus on reality, the more compounded your problems become. The police are familiar with what is called “victimization risk,” which is when an individual is engaged in lifestyle choices that may lead to a higher likelihood of a crime being committed on that person. For example, when an individual works as a prostitute and walks the street alone at night looking for customers, they are engaging in activities where there is a high victimization risk to them. It is not “blaming the victim” but understanding the reality of that person’s choices. What comes with being aware of reality and surviving another day as a human being is a code of rational ethics. Therefore, that prostitute should lower her risk by going out with a buddy at night or leaving the business entirely in search of a new, less risky line of work. Their chances of surviving another day increase when mitigating and rational actions are taken. An individual who locks their doors at night is engaging in low victimization risk behavior and, therefore, making the rational, moral choice.

We must use this type of moral judgment properly based on a person’s actions. I believe that is what is attracting so many people nowadays to Dr. Grande’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@DrGrande). He is a mental health counselor who has taken an interest in analyzing criminal cases and their outcomes. He looks at each context like a rational juror and tries to make sense of the seemingly senseless violence a person commits. It is not just another true crime channel but one where the “why” that everyone so longs for is answered to the best of his ability.

We should all aspire to understand people in the way Dr. Grande does because we certainly all have the capacity to understand, empathize, and analyze each other’s actions through moral judgment. In fact, I believe that more people could prevent crimes if they only knew how to judge a person’s actions properly because, unfortunately, by the time the law intervenes, they can only look at the actions of a person after their morality has thoroughly disintegrated. I believe it is often too late to change a person once they have committed a serious crime. They needed moral guidance or help long before they thought of committing any kind of wrongdoing.

As a bit of an aside, the writer Dostoyevsky has one of his characters, from The Brothers Karamazov, say that “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” He believed atheists would murder without a second thought, unlike his conscience-stricken Raskolnikov character in Crime and Punishment who “finds God” in the end. But this is entirely false. This abstract thing we call conscience is what keeps us from crossing the line drawn in ethics between good and evil. We would all feel as guilty as Raskolnikov for killing a person with or without god. Our desire to survive and thrive keeps us from murdering each other. A rational morality keeps us from destruction.

It is in this spirit of moral judgment and admiration for Dr. Grande’s work that I am presenting an essay I wrote the day after Elliot Rodger on May 23, 2014, killed six people and injured fourteen others. He shot, stabbed, and ran over with his vehicle as many people as he could find in what would later be named the “2014 Isla Vista killings,” forever labeling him as an infamous mass murderer. He left a YouTube video of his own titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” and a long manifesto called “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” both of which I have seen and read and have linked down in the description section. And so without further ado:

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My Thoughts on the CA Mass Murderer, Elliot Rodger

[Note: This article is not meant to sympathize or place the predator’s life above those of the victims. To all of those involved in this tragedy, I hope that this psychological look into the murderer’s past will prevent instances of this happening again in the future.]

The first thing I dared to watch was Elliot Rodger’s final video. In it, he struck me as just a kid trying to build himself up as a tragic anti-hero. He was lost in a story concocted by his own mind, and that was what made me want to research this horrific tragedy. Since that final video, I have read the 140-page long manifesto and watched the other YouTube videos he had posted before the final one. These were all highly disturbing, and I think that many of my conclusions do not include the fact that he did have Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s syndrome is clear here with his unusual facial expressions, his difficulty socializing, and his apparent lack of empathy. However, that does not excuse his violent outburst on the evening of May 23, 2014.

The philosopher, Hannah Arendt, wrote about the Eichmann trial that occurred in the 1960s. Eichmann was hired by the Nazi Party in Germany, and he was given the task of deporting all of the Jews—he sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths. People called him “evil” and a “villain,” but once Arendt began studying this wrinkled, pathetic old man—she coined the phrase, “banality of evil.” This phrase meant that Eichmann was really just a dumb, dependent, title-obsessive man. He was a cog in the machine, but a deadly one. Eichmann did not think that he was responsible because he truly believed that he was just “following orders.” Arendt believed that this weasel was telling the truth. Therefore, at the time, she did not believe that people were “radically evil”—that they were not born evil.

After researching this case, I have come to the conclusion that this was a broken boy. He lived his life on a “6th grade loop” which continuously played until he went to stop it by force. Even his manifesto is written at about the 6th grade level, albeit with a few “new” vocabulary words included toward the end. But his ideas are especially childish. He was given everything, and when he wasn’t, he would have temper tantrums.

Elliot Rodger was an irrationally selfish, materialistic, dependent child. If any of you have ever read Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, this child was a real Peter Keating. He built up absolutely no self-esteem whatsoever, and therefore, his ego (the “I” part of him) was nonexistent. This set him up for disaster.

He blames his parents for this, and so do I.

Parents are the most influential beings that a person can have—they tend to make or break the future adult. These parents did not give him a set of moral values to live by—and religion does not even need to factor in here. Learning philosophy is invaluable because it makes you question and reassess all of your most basic premises. You think logically and fix any emotionalist responses to rational concepts. This child needed a philosophy lesson badly.

Elliot Rodger emphasizes how much he was “living in the moment” and so thoroughly enjoyed his childhood, that when he was rejected by the outside world—he threw yet another tantrum…this time with tragic consequences. This could have been prevented had he been raised right—not by several nannies and several new houses, regardless of his Asperger’s syndrome.

This behavior was chosen, this is not an issue concerning his Asperger’s (although a symptom can be obsessive behavior, like the one he had toward objects, women, and difficulty socializing). But that cannot cause violence, and his premises were all wrong. The violence stemmed from a lack of knowledge. This is what Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand meant when they both wrote about how “evil” occurs. It happens when people become irreparably broken. It happens when parents neglect their children emotionally and do not teach them about virtue. It happens when they are given everything, up until they hit the “real world” where they have to fight for survival. Capitalism forces men to prove themselves. It is the ultimate “Alpha Male” system which this child could not win—and so he tried to take it away from others.

Again, for those of you familiar with Ayn Rand’s character, Peter Keating, Peter quickly worked his way up the career ladder by stealing, looting, robbing other people, and passing their work off as his own. He was labeled a “second-hander” who took from the “first-handers” or else he would throw tantrums, similar to Rodger’s. In the beginning, he is hailed as the best architect in the country, but by the end, he is a miserable, broken, and “evil” man. This is the story of Elliot Rodger, who laughs at “the irony of the world” and feels holier-than-thou without any reasons to back up his premises.

But do not call this child a “madman”—he was a person robbed of morals. A madman is someone who is incomprehensible, someone who cannot go from Point A to Point B. That is a madman. This is someone who grew up in a surprisingly ordinary way (besides having a famous father). He talks about movies that all kids from the 90s have seen and video games that we’ve all played at some point. And even his concerns in middle school were shared by many other lonely kids at the time (myself included). But we saw ourselves as better than those who were considered “popular.” We had our set of values and we strived to achieve success, while the “popular kids” tended to fail. We grew up and moved on—allowing ourselves only to find better, more worthy people to include in our lives. But this child got caught in it, and would not budge until he got his way…

“I wanted to live in a world of fairness”—that is the common creed of the Communists and Socialists of our age, and that is exactly the creed that Elliot Rodger grew up living with. But that does not bring happiness. For material objects are not the ends, they are the products of a person’s labor. Labor is the means to get to happiness or living a good life—(if it is honest work, of course). But this boy was never taught that he had to work for his possessions.

Rodger then goes on and on for 40 pages in his manifesto about video games. This has been a controversial topic in many of these violent tragedies. But video games, in particular, seem to have destroyed many young people. However, I think it is important to note that his feelings began before ever playing a video game, but his situation grew exponentially worse when he was pretty much given free rein with these games during his adolescence. Parents need to watch what their kids are playing, watching, reading, and listening to because there is so much garbage out there today. In fact, in his manifesto, Rodger used video games as a way to fight the reality that he was facing. He used World of Warcraft as inspiration for his ideas of a “War on Women.” Elliot Rodger blurred games with real life because he was never taught the difference.

Elliot frequently uses the words “little,” “obsessed,” “weak,” “worthless,” and “starved” as terms of describing himself and his mental state. The kid never learned how to live on his own. He never was allowed to become self-reliant. He was extremely sheltered. “The more lonely I felt, the more angry I became,” he writes at one point. This is a typical feeling that “evil characters” feel before they lash out at the world. He was living out a fantasy storyline of his own—like when he wrote, “If I can’t have it, I will destroy it.” After that, sex became a negative thing for him and by 17 he wanted to outlaw sex. This means that for 6 years, he had been planning and plotting a way to seek revenge on others. There was no real instance where he “became a madman,” but a slow progression of events that were laid down on a boy without any moral guidance or principles.

On his “forced” plane trip to Morocco, Rodger decided that he wanted to die. That is the moment where he lost hope because he was never allowed to have any control over his life. He did not have any agency—no ego, no self-esteem—and this led him to the radical state that he worked himself up to in his twenties.

Movies and video games surrounded this kid, and he lived in a fantasy realm for most of his life. (And Soumaya, his stepmother, seemed to be the only adult capable of trying to teach Rodger something, albeit in the least effective way). Then, in his mid-teens, he turned to books, instead of thinking about his future and getting a job. These books provided him with the “anti-hero” type of mindset that he had always wanted, and he amateurishly clung to them.

By page 66 of Rodger’s manifesto, he begins using terms like “destiny” and “injustice” to prove that he was made by some “creator” to right all the unfairness that happened to him in the world. The amount of hate that he had for others was very high when he was only 18. He says at one point in his manifesto, “I am an intellectual who is destined for greatness. I would never perform a low-class service job.” But that is exactly the problem. A true intellectual or “great man,” as Aristotle discusses in depth, does not change based on external forces. The “great man” cares for a few things that bring happiness (eudemonia) to his life, and the rest is irrelevant. He has a proportionate amount of self-confidence, and he quietly respects himself for the virtues that he has learned over the years. This sentence is yet another temper tantrum, only in adult form, but it renders him more of a child than anything. Elliot Rodger was not an intellectual, but a bitter fool—a frustrated and miserable Peter Keating archetype due to his parents’ neglect.

Rodger repeatedly asked his mother (and later on several more occasions) to “sacrifice her well-being for the sake of [his] own happiness” by marrying another rich man. Elliot’s hope was only reignited when he thought that some base exterior change could fix all of his moral problems—only to be dismayed once again…and again…and again. This child calls his mother “selfish” for not remarrying into a rich family—when what he really is saying is that she is not “sacrificing” herself for his needs. She is not giving up her life for him. She is not being altruistic because that is a vice (read Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness for more).

And yet, his “selfish” mother continued to support him and told him he had a talent for writing. But his motive from the beginning was to get rich quick off of his “bestseller” books, and then maybe girls would like him. This motivation never works. He didn’t even mention that perhaps some girl would like him for his talent to produce something of his own, proving just how lost he was. Elliot considered himself to be talentless and fervently refused to work or produce anything at all that would have given him some kind of value. Rodger continues to write in his manifesto that he “deserves” things when, in reality, he does not. Rodger did not earn (nor try to earn) a single thing in his life. He was never taught that money could not solve his problems. Money is merely another reward for the productive, creative thoughts that you make, but nothing more. Rodger looked to rewards as ends in themselves: money, girls, fame.

This kid never took the responsibility into his own hands of actually trying to change his life. He would pray to the stars and the universe, but never to himself and his own self-esteem. Rodger did not understand that money cannot replace moral values. Every time that he “actively” tried to change his life, he would never approach a girl or try to communicate with her. He made continual excuses due to his extremely low level of self-esteem. This isolated him further (not to mention looking for those bright and intelligent girls in all the wrong places). He writes at one point, “I was a ghost”—little did he know that he had died morally way before any of this took place.

He blamed society, not himself, for denying him pleasure. What a skewed view of reality is that? Rodger had to try to open himself up to new experiences. If people aren’t worth your time (usually the “popular kids”), then don’t even bat an eyelash at them. Focus on the positives.

Currently, in the media, he is being called racist, sexist, entitled, elitist, spoiled, and these labels are true. He had attacked groups because he lacked an ego of his own. He was shaped by groups himself. He didn’t know what being an individual entails. Rodger may have said to himself that he was special, but he didn’t really know what he was, besides what others said of him. Elliot Rodger was an altruist, a self-loathing looter who lived with an “anti-life” mentality. For by actively rejecting sex, he accepted death.

He could not be fixed after he grew up without any value-based foundations.

By page 87 of the manifesto, Rodger openly declares that he believed he could kill another man. He had prepared himself mentally, and truly felt “worthless” at this point. You see, there was no “snap in his mental state.” Rodger had been boiling over since his temper tantrums at the age of 3. This child never grew up, and could not handle living alone. His parents are to blame, just as much as he himself is to be blamed.

He was so completely self-absorbed without having a real “self.” I have heard people use the term “narcissist,” which may be the correct term because it has such a negative connotation with it. However, “rational selfishness” is not a bad thing, according to Ayn Rand (again, read The Virtue of Selfishness). There is an important distinction to be made between those who do things to promote their own happiness and those who are hurting others in order to obtain some unidentified fantasy.

On page 101 of Elliot’s manifesto, he mentions explicitly that he wanted “revenge.” At the age of 20, Elliot Rodger declared that he was done with hope and expecting things to change. He understood that he was living in a vicious cycle, but he didn’t understand why. It is here that he also begins talking about his “Day of Retribution.” He had been slowly concocting this plan for over a year. This was premeditated mass murder. Someone at any point could have stopped this, especially his parents. Yes, his parents did hire a few psychiatrists toward the end (according to Elliot), but it was already too late. His plan was already in action.

Rodger notes that, at first, he felt sick at the thought of holding a gun and possibly using it in his plan, which means that he had a conscience. By page 109 of the manifesto, he decided to plan out a “mass murder.” He felt compelled to do it because he was so focused on himself and what his world led him to. Rodger did not care about the world outside of his own narrative (he never mentions 9/11 or the war in Iraq), and that was a major mistake.

Elliot Rodger did not have a “twisted world,” but a “twisted logic.” He thought that Point A (money) would lead him to Point B (girls) which would equal Point C (“peaceful revenge”). If that line of thought did not work out, then he was a worthless outcast, and a loser, which could only equate to violent revenge in his mind.

There is a particularly female-hating passage on page 117 of Elliot’s manifesto, where he “comes up” with this “original” idea that women are like a plague that needs to be controlled and quarantined. This is where many people say that he is a “misogynistic psychopath.” However, he seems to be placing all of his frustrations on females, (even though he seemed to have a pretty good track record with his grandmothers and mother). He was venting his hatred for all of humanity onto a particular group, and once again—just as Hitler did with the Jews—it’s called selecting a scapegoat.

Rodger believed that his act would cause some tremendous change, but it didn’t. Instead, his case was added to the growing pile of an increasing problem concerning mass murderers in this country. He was not philosophically learned or intelligent to any degree, because the first thing that educated people do is think. Rationally. But Elliot Rodger behaved in exactly the same way that he claimed girls were by “behaving irrationally.”

One important idea that should be pointed out is the religious undertone that his manifesto espouses. He wanted to play god, but he also referred to the sex that people had as “heavenly” and that he was living in “hell.” Although he doesn’t seem to be very religious, this Judeo-Christian view of the world was ingrained in his perspective of it.

Elliot claims toward the end of his manifesto that he never lost that last flicker of hope—he thought that in some miraculous way, he could be saved—but it was all too late without him even realizing it.

“Give me, give me, give me” was this child’s war cry. It was just another tantrum…but it hurt so many. Rodger felt entitled, as many people have been stating. He was not “a madman,” but a kid who grew up without any values, and after a series of circular events—he concluded that man is evil. His last straw was in Santa Barbara.

Elliot Rodger professed himself as a “god” and as the “good guy” and wrote that “Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth” as the last line in his manifesto—but the thing is, he never had any worth.

***

Links: https://www.youtube.com/@DrGrande; https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLy1Awig0E&ab_channel=IntoTheFireTrueCrimeStories; https://schoolshooters.info/sites/default/files/rodger_my_twisted_world.pdf; https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YXNM861KJ1O4&keywords=the+virtue+of+selfishness+by+ayn+rand&qid=1700164079&s=books&sprefix=the+virtue+of+sel%2Cstripbooks%2C178&sr=1-1

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

On the Current Cultural Decay

Today’s cultural climate is full of desensitized and inefficacious people who assume that things just “happen” to them. People who are inefficacious disgust me. I have always sympathized with the truly great Men who take action. I love Men who fight against those who try to stop their innovation. They have efficacy and, therefore, my undying respect.

I can still remember, having been raised Protestant, seeing men, specifically, in church kneeling and I cringed, even as a child. I thought, “How lowly and weak they look!” Fast-forward to college and another late night reading session for tomorrow’s class where I have the works of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marlowe’s version of Faust in my hands, further empathizing with the devil and the snake and Man who desires knowledge.

My sense of life became clearer to me when I felt this ferocity rise within at Man who is refused the ability to know and refused to feel proud of knowing. After all, our tool of survival is our mind, our reason! Why must Christianity squash the very thing that makes us capable of living? I find it pure evil.

Perhaps this moment of fierce rebellion in my soul, sitting in my college’s library, is why I always seem to come back to motifs of snakes and birds, heaven and hell, God and Satan, and Adam and Eve in my work. I cannot help but rage against those who tell me not to know when I have spent all my life trying to know everything! I’ve always said that if I could have a chip inserted into my brain with all human knowledge known today, then I would.

My fear is that we can go backwards as a society. Literary fiction and other art dies in a bad or sick culture. Today, all literary fiction is tribalistic and not about morality at all. The Left has thrown morality away since they believe it is incurably tied to religion, while the Right has kept to their small Christian publishing presses to put out more of the same religious morality texts. But where, oh where!, are the secular moralists who are capable of shining through the rubbish? Where are the writers and readers who want to learn how to be better and happier living their ever-longer lives on earth?!

Why are publishers saying no to any books that are not liberal or tribalistic in nature? Why is there outrage over “literary fiction” books even existing anymore? Because our culture is dying.

I can blame liberal ideology and religious ideology to a certain extent, but beyond that I am unsure. All I know is that the worst thing an individual can do is desensitize themselves to life. And, yet, drugs, drinking, hedonism in general, even rushing from one loud event to the next or traveling all over the world without one moment to rest are causing a group of desensitized people to roam around the earth and teach their children the same. When the music dies down and the party leaves, people can no longer stand being with their own thoughts and so they repeat the numbing process over and over again in one endless cycle.

I remember when I was presenting my literary thesis to my professors in undergrad. When I finished, one commented about how they thought it was a theatrical performance because of the way I read it and openly mocked me when I said that the meaning of life was about happiness. My professors were a product, in the most extreme way, of a culture that is dying, if not already dead. They were cynical, could not take their own subject seriously, and believe that “Truth” is outside of reality. My rebellious heart raged that day, and I will never forget it. Yet, again, here is the Left telling me that I cannot know anything, just as much as the religious Right does.

Well, I refuse to believe that I cannot know how to be happy or that it is not a worthy goal. And I would rather feel too much anxiety about every little thing in my life than nothing at all. I would rather feel deep gratitude for what appear to most as “boring” or “inane” things; I would rather feel endless sorrow for a loss in my life than to drown them in drink; I would rather behave as innocently as a child, than as cynically as a manic-depressive professor. Life becomes more bearable when you know madness does not arise “out of the blue” but is built up by hundreds of little acts of transgression over time that you and the others around you never cared to notice. Being in a desensitized state is a killer to human beings; don’t let it get you next.

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

On Gratitude and Attention to Detail Using a Writer’s Microscope

I have been highly sensitive to my surroundings since I can remember and this contributes to my writerly perspective. There has always been this kind of narrative voice inside my head, which comes out whenever I focus my eye on something for a while. As a child, car trips often threw me into a state of contemplation all before sleep won over my heavy lids.

Though being sensitive to everything has contributed to my struggles with anxiety, I do believe that most people could benefit from trying on the writer’s perspective on the world from time to time. I truly believe that savoring moments in life comes from being more sensitive to little, everyday things. After all, I consider that “this is it” so you may as well suck all the pleasure you can get from life’s marrow. Go look outside at each uniquely designed snowflake when it snows in winter, breathe in heavily the cool spring’s morning air, caress new buds blossoming in summer, traipse through the crunchy leaves as they fall in autumn.

I like to think of my writing as using a microscope to look at daily life. Everything I do throughout the day is not just “boring chores” or “simple cooking,” rather it’s being surprised by new spider webs to dust away or being gently warmed by the oven baking some potatoes for dinner. Life is so much richer when you open yourself up to it. Become as vulnerable as a poet or, as the metaphor stands, a priest. Learn gratitude through a writer’s perspective of the world and live more slowly.

Ayn Rand taught me to look at the world benevolently with a sense of life that worships Man. In reality, I find that my sentiments look a whole lot like many of the “slow living” and “cottagecore” and “romanticize autumn” videos out there online, only my work does not end with a biblical quote. For I do not believe that a god creates things, you do.

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.