Robert Tracinski - What Drives History?

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us. Scott Schiff, hosting the Atlas society fellow Rob Tru. Zinsky on what drives history. I've gotta admit, I'm very curious about your take on this. Um, please raise your hand everyone. If you'd like to be part of the conversation, Rob, thanks for, uh, doing one for the history buffs and doing a history episode. My favorite subject these days. So, uh, what drives history? Speaker 1 00:00:28 All right, well, so what I'm doing here is it's, uh, Scott just put up a link that I sent him, uh, to a new book of mine that just went up. Uh it's what went right? And an objective theory of history. Now I notice the word, an objective theory of history. This isn't the objective theory of history. This is my own theory of history, a development or modification on the objectives theory, but one that I think is consistent with objectiveism. So we'll talk about that in a bit, but I wanted to start by talking about, so what is, um, the objectiveness did the usual Iran's theory of history. Now what have even by theory of history in, in, from a philosophical perspective, what we're looking for in a theory of history is some larger explanation of what causes historical events. What is that drives things? Speaker 1 00:01:17 What causes the rise and fall of civilization? Is there some underlying cause we can find here? And so, you know, you have examples of various different ideas people have put forward. There's one philosopher. I think it may have been Toby who's, who or historian who put forward the idea of a talent and response that there was. And every era, there was a great challenge that would arise. Some problem that needed to be solved. And then there would be a leader who would rise to offer the response or not rise to the challenge of offering the response and then things would go badly. Uh, there's the great band theory of history, the great leader theory of history and the probably the most common, uh, most notorious version of that is the Hial theory, where there is a great man who rises up, who, who embodies the spirit of the age and who as a great leader does amazing, you know, takes control and, uh, causes things to happen. Speaker 1 00:02:12 And this is usually meant to be, oh, Napoleon is the man who, uh, uh, is the great man who, who represents the spirit of the age or the great man is an all Hitler. And you can see what goes wrong with that view of history. Um, and it's interesting cause I was reading Albert Spear's, uh, memoirs, the Albert Spears, the Nazi Nazi leader, the architect who became a, lacky basically a Hitler. And he talks about how this idea that they were looking or everybody was waiting for a great man who would rise up, who would represent the spirit of the age and solve all the problems. This idea was around it. People were looking for it before Hitler ever came along. So this is a, one of the theories that hit one of the views of what drives history. A more recent one is there's a book that came out a number of years, a couple decades ago called guns, germs and steel. Speaker 1 00:03:01 And it, it purported to explain the rise of the west, the rise of Europe, the, the tremendous leap forward in progress in Europe over the last, uh, you know, five to 700 years tried to explain it by reference to, well, we had guns and we developed steel making to a higher level and well germ, we had lots of germs and lots of diseases that came through and that toughened us up and, and gave us lots of resistance to diseases. And those were these material factors. So the, the philosophical pH behind that is history's driven by material factors. And if you get lucky and somehow, you know, and there's no cause for how it is, you happen to get guns and, and steel, but if you somehow get these material factors on your side, then you're gonna leap forward and make all these great gains. Uh, now that's probably a cruder version that the author of that book intended, but that's sort of how it comes down. Speaker 1 00:03:55 And it's a, it's a widespread view of history is how it comes down into the popular imagination. All right. So what is the objective theory of history? The objective theory is that ideas move history that in each era, people are working out, uh, they're they, if they have some basic ideas that they have adopted some basic philosophical ideas about what is the nature of man, uh, how do we gain knowledge? What is the ideal kind of society? They have these basic ideas and they're trying to work out the consequences and then experiencing the results of those ideas, right? So the ideas of every era determine what it is that people take as their actions. What, what policies do they put into effect, and then whether those ideas are true or not determines the results. Right. So give a couple examples. So in ancient Greece, ancient Greece is characterized. Speaker 1 00:04:46 The rise of ancient Greece is characterized essentially by the discovery of reason and the application of reason to a whole bunch of, uh, different issues in fields. And what it leads to is it leads to a golden age. It leads to this flourishing of classical civilization. It leads to, um, uh, uh, the invention essentially of practically every basic field of, of knowledge that we have, you know, drama science, uh, history itself. Uh, the first, uh, real scientific historian was, was probably vicinities. There are several other options people put forward for that, but, you know, it was among the Greeks that history became not just telling legends and stories. It became something scientific. So this huge outpouring of, uh, of, of accomplishment and of discovery and, uh, and knowledge and the results of that in practice, uh, or the United States, you know, you had enlightenment ideas. Speaker 1 00:05:46 Every one of the founding fathers was deeply influenced by the ideas of the English, enlightenment, uh, the ideas of John Locke and this, you know, the pro reason pro individual pro individual rights, uh, philosophy that they adopted. And then they implemented that in the constitution, in the declaration of independence, in creating a nation based on those enlightenment ideas. And the result was, you know, this, this, this colonial back water that within 150 years became the greatest power on earth, uh, and the tremendous economic growth and the, the, uh, uh, all the achievements that followed from that, as opposed to in the 20th century. I just mentioned that, you know, in, in, uh, you had these Hial, these Kaan regalian ideas in Germany where people were saying, no, what we really need is a great man who will embody the spirit of the age and tell everybody what to do and become a dictator. Speaker 1 00:06:39 And along comes Adolf Hitler. And he does that. And you have the Nazi version. You, you also have the Soviet version, the idea that they adopted thorough going consistently collectivist ideas, the Marxist, you know, they took another German philosopher. Carl Marks from that same content at Hial school at other philosopher, Karl marks, they took his ideas that while really all power is in the collective and what we really need to have as a, a, uh, a society that's built around the sacrifice of the individual to the collective. And you got the Soviet union. And in the 20th century, we had these two, you know, uh, uh, totalitarian ideologies that were based on the main philosophical trends of, of the, of that era, uh, and put those ideas into practice and got the horrific and disastrous results, uh, that I think we're still dealing with right now. Speaker 1 00:07:29 All right. So that's just sort of a very broad brush overview of the objectives, view of history, ideas, move history, the, uh, people take in it in every year, they take a philosophical idea. That's widespread, that's widely accepted. They put it into practice in their institutions, in their actions and their arch in every aspect of life. And then they experience the, the consequences, the results of that either good or bad. All right. So that's the view that ideas move history. And I think there's a huge amount of truth to this, right? That this is, this is essentially a true description. It's way better than, you know, the guns germs and seal thing, cuz it actually helps explain, well, how did we get guns and how do we get steel? How did we have these technological advances in the west? Well, you could go back to, well, people, you know, it was because people were studying the science and technology because they had, uh, certain ideas that led them to be open to studying science and technology and, and capable of understanding it. Speaker 1 00:08:28 Right. So it gives you a much deeper understanding of, of where the other things that drive history, where they, where those came from or the challenge and response theory. Well, it gives you an idea of, well, how is it that they come up with the right response? People come up with the right response to the challenges that they face in their particular era. Well, you know, the ideas that they have will help explain, it's not just, you happen to be lucky to have one guy it's that you had certain ideas that made it possible for there to be a leader who would, who would understand those ideas and be able to implement them. All right. So that's I think is essentially that's the I that's iron rands booth that the, what tri history I think is essentially correct. However, okay. So here's where my book comes in. Speaker 1 00:09:10 My recent book comes in, which is the ideas move history, but how, how exactly do they move history? And I think there's a lot of additional things to say there. Now this book, what went right? An objective theory of history is this basically based, it's built around the series of essays that you could say got me kicked out of objectiveism, uh, or out of the mainstream sort of Ari wing of objectiveism. Uh, although I would say I didn't really get kicked outta I self deported, uh, to use a phrase, uh, <laugh> this, this series of essays, if she didn't get me kicked out, it was, it was the result of my self deporting myself and basically moving my career in such a way that I wasn't, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't get kicked out of anything cuz I'd already sort of moved out into a different area and moved into a more mainstream audience. Speaker 1 00:10:00 And because of that, I felt like for Esri, okay, I couldn't publish all these and let the chips fall where they made. Uh, so the basic premise of these, uh, essays is that I observed that the traditional version of this objective theory of history, that ideas move history, the traditional way that this is explained, can't explain what went, right. Hence the title, right? So, um, there's a long history and objectiveism, and, and especially when the issue of theory of history comes up and the, and what causes events in history, there's a long history of catastrophism. I mean, you know, Atlas shrugged itself, you know, uh, portrays, conveys this idea of, well, what if, uh, in the couple decades after, uh, the 15 years or so after its publication in 1957, what if the O the whole world basically goes into becomes overrun by communist people, states and the United States economy collapses into, um, stagnation and economic dictatorship. Speaker 1 00:11:02 It it's a very dystopian kind of projection of the future. Now that was her idea for the novel. It wasn't necessarily her idea of what was necessarily going to happen in the real world, but that became sort of a pattern that there's a sense in objectives circles of, well, you know, given the current philosophical trends, everything has to go downhill. We have to be heading, heading toward over a cliff, going to disaster. This has to be just like the fall of Rome. Um, and the reason I think that they, that, that catastrophism was so commonplace is because the traditional objectives explanation of this view of history is very top down. It's the idea that ideas only move from the philosopher from the ivory tower philosopher down to everybody else. Now, I think iron Rand actually had a much more varied view of this in at least in implicitly in her writing. Speaker 1 00:12:01 So for example, in her, in her novels, where do philosophical ideas come from, they don't come from the Ivy tower. They come from a, um, where do, where do the big philosophical ideas that, that drive the, the events of her novels come from. They come from an architect in the fountain head, or they come from an engineer working on a, a scientist, working a physicist, working on an engineering problem in, in Atlas SHR, right? So it's not, everything's coming down from the ivory tower in, in implicitly in how she portrays it in her own work. And certainly where did I Rand's ideas come from? Right? They came from a former Hollywood script writer who became a bestselling novelist, not somebody who was in the ivory tower. Right. But there's a couple things I, Rand said wrote has a one passage in for the new intellectual. Speaker 1 00:12:47 And I gotta sort of paraphrase it here to give it a short version where she says the intellectuals are an army whose commander in chief is the philosopher, right? And this is the analogy that I think really stuck with a lot of people. And it stuck too hard. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a very problematic analogy and it's, it's more problematic. The more literally you take it. Um, but it's this idea that, okay, the philosopher comes up with the ideas and they all get transmitted. And she, she also used the, the metaphor of a, of a transmission belt, a conveyor belt. They all get transmitted down from the Iver tower to everybody else. And that's the only direction things go. And the person who took this most literally and most seriously was Leonard Peko, who I think really took that. Uh, he he's been quoted as saying some years ago that, you know, he is asked, what, what would you see as the, you know, what would cause the triumph of objectiveism and the culture? Speaker 1 00:13:41 And he said, well, classes and philosophy, uh, classes and objectiveism at Harvard. Cause it's after that, you know, we get in at Harvard and the philosophy department at Harvard. And after that, it's just watching all the results in, uh, basically come out, uh, watching all the results of that manifest themselves in art and in journalism and in economics and all these other fields. So it's very much a sort of trickle down theory of the influence of philosophy, right? That it, it starts at the I, the Harvard, uh, faculty club lounge is the epicenter and everything radiates out, everything trickles down from there and lets point it out. The problem with this is that this could only predict disaster. And I, it struck me a lot when I was at one point, uh, the 25th anniversary of the intellectual activist. I was publishing it at the time and I did this over overview of the 25th, 25 years of, of coverage. Speaker 1 00:14:35 And I realized that the implicit theme of all objectives, commentary on current events, the implicit theme of it was because objectiveism, hasn't been widely accepted, everything's going downhill. So here are all the disasters that happen because people haven't accepted objectiveism, but there was a tendency to not follow up on anything that didn't become a disaster. So there were long articles about the energy crisis or long articles about inflation or long articles about the Soviets, uh, the, the cold war contest with the Soviet union and then little or nothing about, well, what happened to inflation? Why didn't, how did we tame inflation for, well, up until now, how did we tame inflation? Uh, how is it that crime, uh, that, how is it the crime wave ended? How is it that the Soviet union fell there was like one article on the fall of the Soviet union. Speaker 1 00:15:25 And that was it. That was a whole, anybody had to say about it. There was this tendency to when something was going downhill, it fit this idea that because people haven't, you know, our culture has not embraced objectives, ideas, therefore we're headed towards disaster. And so we wrote as objectives tended to write only about the things that were a disaster and never about anything that was going right. Even though there were these incredible turnarounds, I in a, in a number of different fields economically, uh, in terms of, uh, uh, you know, crime and, and, uh, inflation and all these different. And the, the big one, I think is the fall of this Soviet union, these big things that went right. And we didn't really have that much to say about it. So my view was to look at well, what if there are things coming from the bottom up, not just from the top down that are explaining why things have not, why basically civilization continues not to collapse for another year. Speaker 1 00:16:21 Um, and there's always, by the way, there's always good reason to think things are going bad. We're about to collapse because there's always something going wrong. But after, you know, it's been, we're coming up on, I think, uh, let's see for Atlas shrugged, we're coming up on 60, 70, 65 years or something like that since Atlas shrugged was published. Um, so, you know, we should have been sliding farther downhill by now if the absence of the widespread acceptance of, of a, if, if people not accepting objectives, ideas was going to lead to the collapse of civilization. We should have slid much farther downhill. Now we should be much closer to the world of Atlas shrugged, and we're still not there. So the question is what's going right. And it has to be something that's coming from the bottom up. So that's what I talk about in this book. Speaker 1 00:17:08 And the idea that I offer here, uh, the basic answers to that are a couple of things. One is, uh, the, the first one I deal with is the fact that it's not just philosoph ideas coming down and spreading out into other fields. It's also that people doing work in other fields are themselves by virtue of if an honest person doing good work in the field of economics or psychology or, uh, science will come up with valid ideas that are, that, you know, that are moving forward, the sum of human knowledge. So I have a long section where I talk about, uh, uh, uh, one of the people I take as an example is Julian Simon, who was the great, uh, uh, econom late 20th century economist. Uh, he's the guy who developed the idea of the ultimate resource. This is one of his answers to environmentalists, to anti-immigration people, to a whole variety of different fallacies. Speaker 1 00:18:03 He came up with this idea that the human mind is the ultimate resource that everything that we have is because we're able to discover and understand how to, how to extract these resources, how to put them, uh, to use, to make our lives better. So the idea of that, of that thinking and that, um, uh, our ability to understand the world and use science and technology to transform it is the driver of all human progress. Now, this is you recognize this as essentially identical to the theme of ATLA shrug. The idea that the mind is the central factor in human life, the central source of all values. So it's essentially similar to the, the same thing as the theme of ATLA shrug, but as a discovery in economics. And my point is that it's not that he read ATLA shrugged and said, oh, I have to apply this economics is that he came up with this out of his own ideas that he was working on in economics. Speaker 1 00:18:55 And he has, he actually has a description of how we came up with the idea, uh, as, as an insight of his own. So my point is one of the things that's going, right, that's coming from the bottom up is honest people doing good work in their own fields and discovering ideas that are important and that have impact, and that have philosophical implications, but which are coming, not from the ivory tower down, but from other fields up into philosophy. The second thing, one of the other things, major things I look at in this book is, uh, uh, what I is the idea of that there are certain institutions in the world that have spread out, uh, not just from, and, and I think talking about the west, the rise of the west is actually kind of obsolete, cuz these are things that have spread and become global that are institutions that are impart products of the enlightenment and products of enlightenment civilization, but which are also things that spread the influence of that civilization and help to preserve it and, um, promote it from the bottom up. And the, the main things I I list are, uh, scientific and technological education. Uh, and hold on me, it big for the, the exact phrasing I use here. Spoiler alert. Speaker 1 00:20:15 Well, I just wanna give a short summary and people could read, you know, go through, there's a lot more detail on this, but it's the idea that scientific and technological education, um, representative government, that representative government itself is a, uh, is something that help perpetuate the ideas that are required, uh, to, uh, to, to support, uh, uh, political freedom. And then the last thing is global capitalism. So these are three factors, cap global, a trade scientific technological education and representative government that are three institutions that have spread rapidly throughout the world that help to support and to train and to introduce into people's minds and reinforce in people's minds, the ideas that make that, that support civilization and keep it from collapsing. So there are another big example of what went right in, in history and what went right, coming from the bottom up rather than from the philosophy departments on down. Speaker 1 00:21:19 So I integrate that together eventually by saying, uh, that philosophy is as I put it the summit and the foundation. So I talk about how philosophy itself is not a first cause because you know, some, if you say philosophy causes history, you have to ask, well, what causes philosophy? Where did the philosophy come from? So if you say, well, people, the Greeks, the Greeks embrace reason, and therefore that led to all these, all these, uh, all these, uh, consequences in the great achievements of Greek civilization. One of the things I point out is that that doesn't really track with what happened in ancient Greece. What happened is that they made a series of discoveries primarily in fields, other than philosophy first that summed up into the discovery of the, the concept of reason. And so I point out that, you know, you had, uh, virtually every major, uh, development in the golden age of Greece happened before Aristotle came along. Speaker 1 00:22:15 So it wasn't Aristotle came along and he came up with, you know, defined the rules of logic. And then you had this great, uh, outpouring of creativity. It's actually the other way around. You had this huge of outpouring of creativity in medicine, in, uh, history, in, uh, uh, in science, in, in, uh, mathematics and geometry and a whole bunch of different fields where these Greeks were coming up with interesting new ideas and those thumbed up into, and, and created the, found the groundwork for the discovery of reason. So that's why I say philosophy is the summit. It is the product of good ideas coming up from the bottom up into, from other fields into philosophy. And at the same time, philosophy is a foundation cuz once you've reached that summit of new knowledge, a philosophical understanding of those, the big ideas that you get from the philosophers help to sum up and put into a more permanent form, those previous achievements, those previous advances in knowledge, and that provides a foundation for future achievement. Speaker 1 00:23:25 So that's my general view. That's my refined version, my own refinement of this idea that philosophy moves history, ideas, move history is that yes, it happens from the top down, but first it happens from the bottom up and it's always happening from both the top down and the bottom up. There's a reciprocal relationship where new ideas are being discovered in the sciences, in economics, by artists, by, by uh, former Hollywood screenwriters, turn novelists, et cetera. And those new ideas are getting summed up into new philosophical discoveries that then help us to rise to a higher level of achievement. That's the kernel of the theory. There's a whole lot more detail. Um, so, but I'm, I've sort of, I wrote this series of essays about 15 years ago, I eventually decided, okay, I finally have to get this, you know, it, it was on the web and that on websites that have gone down and been changed and revised since then. So I said, I really want to get this out in a final sort of in black and white on paper kind of form, uh, so that it can be, you know, more usable as something that people can refer to and, and hopefully, uh, put to use to help their own under vicinity of history. Speaker 0 00:24:37 Wow. That's uh, great stuff. I, I could pep you with questions. We have a bunch of people I just wanna ask, uh, quickly, you know, isn't it possible that some things can be getting better in a society while other things are getting worse? Speaker 1 00:24:53 Yeah. It's not just possible. It's also, it's normal. <laugh> this is the normal condition of, of, of, of, of life in every, in any era is that some things are getting worse while other things are getting better or, or things are getting really things are getting better over in one place, but they're getting worse some other place. Right. So, and that's, you always have to deal with cuz whenever you have, you know, I, I like to say I wasn't into progress before it was cool that I was talking about 20 years ago saying, Hey look, the world's in much better shape than we think with this, all this catastrophism since then Johnny come lately is like, uh, like Stephen Pinker have come along. I've written whole books about, you know, progress. Um, and there's this new field of progress studies. Uh, but yeah, anybody who's, who's making that argument from Stephen Piger to me, to anybody else. Speaker 1 00:25:40 The, the main thing you're gonna hap is gonna happen is maybe you say, look at all the amazing progress we've made, if somebody will come well, what about my cousin? Who's addicted to methamphetamines and, or I guess it's, it's fentanyl now what about my cousin? Who's on fentanyl. Can't get a job in Appalachia. How can you say things are going well when there are people out there suffering and the answer is always the same. The world is not a monolith. <laugh>, uh, there's always a lot of different things going on all at the same time in any one period. So you could have a general trend of enormous progress within which there are certain aspects of life that are getting worse. There are certain areas and certain people who are, are not benefiting from that or feel like they're falling behind. So you always have to acknowledge that, but then, you know, you have to judge this on what is the, the larger pattern, you know, and not just the anecdotes of, you know, my cousin who's on fentanyl and can't get a job in Appalachia. Speaker 0 00:26:36 <laugh> that's fair. Uh, Phil, thank you for joining us. If you can unmute, if you have a question for Rob. All right, well, uh, why don't we jump over to Roger while Phil is figuring out his mute button? Speaker 2 00:26:56 Hey, Rob. Um, great stuff. It's actually very timely. I've been thinking a lot about this stuff, uh, recently. Um, it, it, there's, there's a lot of varying groups with slightly different philosophies that want to, um, emphasize the importance of things such as individual rights and, uh, the importance of free markets. And what, what I think is problematic is that all of these various groups want to gate keep, uh, the way that you do it. The, the, there there's, there seems to be a gate keeping effect, uh, you know, in academia. Uh, and, and I, I love how you, you, um, prefaced, uh, peacock, because I think that he's, he's primarily guilty of it in the objectives circles. Um, I'm a member of the libertarian party. We've got people that do that within the political sphere as well. Yes. And, and, and my, my hope and, uh, you know, it's a wild idea, but I think that if you got people together that can say, well, what are the big ideas? Speaker 2 00:28:02 And, and this is why I love the Atlas society, uh, so much is that you guys seem to be understanding that, uh, you know, with a, a, a more open philosophy, you have the ability to deal with modern problems and to look at, you know, well, well, what are the solutions? And it doesn't weaken the messaging at all. It's just, let's expand upon how do we get there? And, uh, what I would love to see is cooperation and less gate keeping between these groups to be able to say, here's the big ideas that are on the table. Let's move forward with this. I mean, when we look at the enlightenment thinkers, there's plenty of room for a John lock and a John Stewart mill and all of the others. Uh, and, and, and you don't need one voice or one specific philosophy. The idea of objectiveism, it resonates with me on so many levels, but I do think that there's a gate keeping nature to some people within the objective movement. That seems very familiar to me, cuz I see it within libertarianism and uh, and all of these other offshoots classical liberals do it as well. You have, uh, Liberty leaning Republicans. And my question for you would be, do you think that it's possible to get people to swallow their pride and their own specific agendas to get together, to talk about the big ideas and work towards doing something meaningful? Or are we gonna spend the next 50 years saying, boy, we sure got the best ideas, but nobody will listen. Speaker 1 00:29:33 <laugh> well, I, I think it's possible now. So I wanna talk about that gate keeping effect, cuz I mentioned earlier that quote from mine, Rand about the, uh, the intellectuals of the army and the commander in chief is the philosopher. Well, like I said, some people took that really literally and they had this idea that, okay, well then you're gonna have to have a philosopher. Who's going to be the commander in chief. And when he gives the orders, everybody else should salute smartly and go follow those orders. And that I think, and that has really led to a lot of the gatekeeping. The idea that, well, if ideas move history and the right philosophical ideas, move history, if people have even the slight, slightest wrong philosophical ideas, it's all going to, it's all going to fail. And so therefore we have to make sure everybody has only the exact right philosophical ideas. Speaker 1 00:30:22 And we have to have this commander in chief who's gate keeping and making sure that we're only pro uh, uh, um, we're only spreading or, or, or propagating these exact right version of these ideas. And, and yeah, you said that's, it's a common thing in every field and objectiveism succumb to it as well, but it's succumb to it in part because of this top down view of, you know, philosophy coming out of the Harvard faculty club lounge or out of the iron Rand Institute. Um, and this one central top down thing, I would say, this is my, my view also beyond that is more of an all hands on deck view of culture, which is that everybody who's doing something in the culture is advancing, uh, progress. And if every honest person who's doing good work in the culture, whether you're writing novels or, uh, doing comic books or I should be graphic novels, uh, or, uh, you know, uh, working in, you don't have to be working in, in academia, in the Harvard faculty club, you don't have to be working in this one particular field to be having an impact. Speaker 1 00:31:31 Anything you do in art, in science, in economics, in, uh, people's understanding of, uh, of, of the market or the culture. It, you can be a journal. You can be a instaed wretch like me, a journalist, and you can have be doing valuable things to, to promote good ideas in the culture that it doesn't all just have to come top down, you know, from out of the ivory tower. So it's a very much an all hands on deck, everything somebody's doing that that adds some new thing to the sum of knowledge I is, is pushing things forward. Speaker 0 00:32:03 Good stuff. Thank you, Phil. Are you able to unmute? All right. You may need to leave and come back. If you find yourself unable to that happens sometimes just to reset it, but let's go to JP in the meantime, JP. Welcome. Speaker 3 00:32:22 Thank you, Scott and Robert. Um, I have to say that I find your, your book, uh, serendipitous, certainly almost, uh, it's like I find this deja voice in some way, because it's, it's it, you, you, you hit it right in the nail of what I have been feeling, uh, for a long time in reading Iran and in philosophy who needs it. I think that she lays out the, the, um, the proposition, maybe that the, or at least that's the way that I understood it, that there's a philosophy philosophy in everyone in, in each and every one of us, uh, that the mind as being man's means of survival and volition in exercising, the art, the, the ability of thinking makes everyone a philosopher. And I recall a, a, an interview, I think it was with Mike Wallace or, uh, one of those stock show host host that interviewed her. Speaker 3 00:33:32 And, and, and when, when she was asked, uh, how, because when she's asked, uh, how did you come up with your philosophy? And she says, uh, I did it all by myself and, and, and, oh, so, so this is something that anyone could, yes, and anybody can do this. And, and so these, these statements have resonated with me for a long time. And I, I myself have found instances in which I, I, I, you know, something comes up to me and I, and I think, and I, when I compare it to, to the big ideas of, of philosophy, I say, okay, this is mine. This is, I came up with this <laugh>. And, and so I, I tend to agree with you. I wouldn't order these things on, on, on a forum, like in, in the presence of, of, of you guys, but, but, but it's something that I toy with and I, and I keep, uh, and someday I may rate. Speaker 3 00:34:32 Right. But, but the thing is, I, I totally agree with you in the sense that I think that ideas are there's no, there's no hierarchy or any special training that anybody has to, to go through through any, any a academy. I mean, once you master a, a bit of logic and, and, and, and, and, and do your own thinking, then you, you, you, you, you are an art chair philosopher, which is the way that I define myself, but, uh, yeah, it's, it was, it's so enlightening. And, uh, I thank you for, for confirming some of stuff that I had been toying with. Speaker 1 00:35:15 Right. I, I, yeah, I absolutely agree. Everybody is a philosopher. I like, I like that. Um, every, and everybody has to be a philosopher. One of the things that, you know, so these, these metaphors about how well there've ideas that brings ideas from the common man, it implies a kind of outsourcing of your thinking and outsourcing of your ideas. And on the big philosophical issues are so important. They're so personal. They have such a big impact on your actual, on, on, on your, on the substance, the, the detailed substance of your life, that you can't outsource them. Everybody has to be a philosopher on whatever level that, you know, they're capable of doing, uh, whatever level they have, the time for that, uh, flush to the ivory tower and people, when people do that, usually they outsource it to the wrong people and, and you get terrible ideas. Speaker 1 00:36:05 I actually think that the top down view of philosophy is accurate when describing what goes wrong in the periods where it goes that, uh, oftentimes you do have this phenomenon where you have these people doggedly pushing down on everybody, these ideas out of the ivory tower that they, they think everybody has to accept. And, you know, you are, it sort of pushed down onto you, uh, regardless of whether it makes sense or regardless of whether it has any basis in reality. My, my favorite, my go-to example of that is always, um, Frankenstein now. So the original story, the original Frankenstein story written by Mary Shelley, it was a bunch of these intellectuals, the by Lord Byron in his circle, these, these romantic, uh, uh, the guys from the romantic movement in English literature. And this is the beginning, you know, this is right after the, enlightment this beginning of this, uh, technological and industrial age that was about to transform human life immensely for the better. Speaker 1 00:37:07 But here were these guys who were committed to, they were very much into that was called Gothic fiction, Gothic of the sense of meaning medieval. They wanted to go back to medieval culture and medieval values and medieval ideas, including mysticism. And so they challenged themselves to write stories that were in that vein. And so Mary Shelley writes the story at basically about how sciences technology are a dangerous madness. That's going to lead to disaster, you know, right at the point where science and technology is about to totally transform human life for the better. So it's this example of this sort of dogged, you know, the intellectuals clinging to ideas that, that don't match what's going on in the world around them, and then pushing those ideas down onto everybody, uh, and, and trying to get them to accept them in defiance of the actual evidence of their, of, of what's going on in the world and of even of their day to day lives. Speaker 1 00:37:58 So, um, yeah, I, I think the idea we need to, I think it's very liberating, the idea that everybody, as a philosopher, and even though I think, you know, in iron Rand's version of her theory of history, there's this equivocal thing where on the one hand, she says, the philosopher is the commander in chief, there's this conveyor belt that goes from the ivory tower down to the common man, this very top down stuff, but you're right. You know, in things like for the intellectual, she's the great salesman of philosophy, the great person, you know, sort of liberating the common man to say, you can think about, can you have to think about these ideas, you have to understand them firsthand in your own mind. And so she's also the person telling you that everyone is a philosopher. So I think that, that, you know, it's, it's equivocal in her, in her writing of this. And that's one of the things I'm trying to pull out in this book is, is I'd separate those two elements. Speaker 0 00:38:48 I, uh, happen to have been criticizing Mary Shelley in the earlier session at 4:00 PM today for, uh, turning the quest for immortality into a horror story. Yep. Uh, did you have anything you wanted to add real quick, JP before we move on? Uh, no. No, thank you, Scott. That's um, that's it. All right. Great, Phil, I looks like you're unmuted. Glad you were able to. Speaker 4 00:39:15 Okay, good. Um, uh, Rob, I, I really like what you're saying, and I think it has enormous implications for strategy and tactics for spreading our ideas. Uh, and of course, Ari is doing it wrong in many ways, but let me leave that aside. Um, it seems to me that there, there have in fact been errors and ran drew on them when top down the major philosophers had a tremendous impact and, and they were listened to, and it was sort of top down. Maybe that's less, less competition from other sources of ideas, but, um, that is not the time we live in now. And I once raised a following example with Leonard Poff decades ago, Aristotle, why is it that Aristotle when we had him at full power and we haven't lost three quarters of his work and his dialogues, which apparently were brilliant. And that was in the Greek world into the Hellenistic world. Speaker 4 00:40:12 And people just ignored his ideas, but then we get to the dark ages when people are not literate. And, um, they, they were, and, and very, very religious. And yet he was taken up enormously and peak off said, I don't really know why maybe it was because it was like water in a desert. And I think that pock is right, because it depends on the cultural context. It depends on what you've got going on around you. And also, uh, there's some factors, for example, if you have censorship or you have canceled culture, or what have you, you can have the best top down ideas in the world like rands, and they won't let you be heard of those smear you or call you a fascist or what have you. So you have to take other channels. And so I, I completely agree with what you're saying. And I think the implication for our movement is what you said earlier, whenever you're doing any kind of positive work, whether it be in psychology or economics or sociology, or you're writing great poetry, you know, you can have as much impact as you know, who, how many people are majoring in philosophy these days, they think it's nonsense. And a lot of the modern philosophy is so the top down philosophy stuff, or it's too abstract, they don't understand it. So it's not working. That's all. Speaker 1 00:41:30 Yeah. So I actually have a couple, the end of the book, it has a couple chapters, uh, it's more on movement and the organization of the objectives movement. And one of the points I make in here is that, uh, the, the, the spread of ideas and the, the, the popularization of philosophy is something that by its nature, can't be done top down. It has to be done done by people who really go want by, by someone. It can't be done by philosopher, but then decides to write a work at fiction in order to, in order to, uh, uh, to, to promote to those ideas. It has to be to miss somebody who really wants to write, who really wants to be a screenwriter, somebody who really wants to be a poet, et cetera. Uh, I think what we need is more emphasis on people going out and doing things that iron red didn't do, right. Speaker 1 00:42:26 Uh, I think we sort of coasted to some extent, uh, it, it, by default, the movement ended up coasting on the impact of iron Rand's ideas and her novels. And I submit that they've had the impact they're gonna have on their own, you know, they they've, they, they didn't lack for an audience. They have millions of readers, they've whatever impact they're going to have on the, on their own. They've had, it's really for us to then go out and create new things that will have our own impact, that that's going to be, what, what, what spreads these ideas and has them, uh, and, and causes it to have an impact. And, you know, what I, I would to give my first guess, and I, I don't know, I haven't, I don't have AFI answer to this, myself to get my first guess as to why we didn't get more juices as it were out of Aristotle, is that we didn't have enough people coming after Aristotle who were, you know, doing something similar to him. Speaker 1 00:43:18 It's something that happened a lot in the, especially in the classical world. Uh, so for example, uh, Galen, the great, uh, physician, the great Roman physician wrote this, treat us on, on medicine. And the treat us was so comprehensive and so brilliant. And so far beyond anything else that its its immediate impact was that everybody else stopped writing. Right? Cause it had already all been done. <laugh> uh, uh, Galen had said everything. So we can't, you know, nobody can add anything to it. And then what happens is the field sort of ground rather than being this being the, the, the, uh, the groundwork for a takeoff in the study of medicine, it actually ground the study of medicine to a halt. And I think it was because there was this authoritarian, authoritarian attitude towards ideas that comes from a religious background, right? So this idea that once you have the great man who produces the great work, the, the comprehensive, definitive work, everybody should then Revere that and copy it and repeat it rather than saying, everybody should go out and create even more stuff on that basis. Speaker 1 00:44:19 And I think that, you know, on our own small scale way, not anywhere near as bad as, as the ancient world and our own small scale way, I think we've sort of done that too, uh, that, you know, there is this a bit of an attitude of, oh, the ideas are all here, iron Redd's created all the ideas and therefore we should just be out promoting her, uh, rather than the idea that we should be out using this as the basis to create all sorts of new ideas that are interesting. And, uh, and that will, that will, that people will find valuable. And then that will have an impact on the world. Speaker 0 00:44:50 That's good stuff. Uh, yeah, it, uh, sounds GA post Galen. It was like closed medicine, maybe <laugh> um, Allison, Speaker 5 00:45:01 Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Um, yeah, I can't wait to read your, read your book. It sounds, uh, fascinating. So, and I love reading about history. Um, I was wondering, what's your take on will Duran's thesis, um, on the kind of influences or impact that natural selection has on, on human history. And do you see that we are kind of outside of that or is, are there still forces that you would appoint to, um, to say that that's still having an effect and then kind of a two part question, if I could, um, do you see that big changes are upheavals in history kind of coincide with communications advances and is that part of, of your first pillar? Speaker 1 00:45:39 Hmm. Uh, communications advances I think are, are a big impact on the one hand, they are both cause and effect, right? How do you get the printing press? Well, you have to have people who are really interested in conveying ideas and people who are really interested in tinkering around with new interventions and taking this, you know, thing used on a very small scale on China and making it much more reliable on much more. So it's, it's that guns terms and seal thing, right? Where on the one hand, it, it is, it is a factor in spreading ideas. On the other hand, it is also a call a result of adoption, previous adoption of good ideas. And I think most of this real stuff really is a, a, a virtuous cycle is the way I would put it that, you know, a good thing happens and that allows more good things to happen, which allows more good things to happen, and everything is feeding back on itself. Speaker 1 00:46:26 Right. Uh, and you get a positive feedback loop. And sometimes, you know, of course that gets reversed and you get a negative, you get a doom loop, uh, a negative feedback loop. Uh, now Esther bolt Durand. I it's been a long time since I've read Walter Duran. So I'm trying to remember exactly what he said in this. I, I won't be able to remember it exactly. So I do think there's a sort of a natural selection effect, insofar as bad ideas tend to fail, right? <laugh> bad ideas tend to lead to collapse, uh, and good ideas tend to lead to success. One example, I, I talked about this in my book is, um, you know, when you ask, where did the Renaissance come from? You could say, oh, it was a rebellion against the middle ages, but it was also continuation of something that started in the middle of the middle ages, uh, that the very, you know, the university of Paris, which ended up being the epicenter of the Renaissance in like the 12th century, uh, or, or the, the beginnings of the Renaissance in the, in the, you know, in the 12th century and, and, and the whole bunch of ideas that led to the Renaissance were developed at the university of Paris, hundreds of years later. Speaker 1 00:47:27 Well, its beginnings were a school for monks started by Charmaine and a wide Charma start school for monks. Well, a couple things. First of all, he realized that there had been this great civilization, that he was the heir to, he, he called it the holy Roman empire, the idea he, he was getting the band back together. He, he was trying to get the Roman empire back together. So I realized there had been this great civilization that a lot of stuff had been lost. So he was trying to say, well, we need to have scholars. He himself, I think was illiterate, but he said, we need to have scholars. So let's get some scholars together. But also one thing that had happened is he had, I think he had married a Byzantine princess and the peop the, these guys from, you know, uh, France circa 1800, sorry, sorry, France circa 800. Speaker 1 00:48:13 A, the depth of the dark had gone to the Byzantine empire. They'd gone to Casa San noble and they'd seen how amazing Byzantine civilization was. And they said, we want some of that. You know, how do we, how do we do that? They started copying their architecture and they started copying their ideas. And it was part of what sort of, sort of jumpstarted the, the, the heart of Western civilization had flatlined. And this sort of started coaxing the first little beats out of it. So she then become the university of Paris, what that would become the Renaissance and then would become the enlightenment. So you have these factors where, uh, the, the failure of some ideas leads to collapse. The success of others leads to, uh, growth and, and vibrancy. And oftentimes you'll have a society that finds the itself saying, wait a minute, we're backward, we're way behind these other people. Speaker 1 00:49:04 Let's try to figure out what they've been doing, right. And figure out what ideas they're using and try to report more of that. I into our society. And that's, I think that's a huge impact. So I wouldn't put it as necessarily natural selection. It, it might be more like, you know, Richard Dawkins talking about mem <laugh>, uh, where, you know, they a good meme propagates and a bad meme, uh, dies out, but I would put it more as human beings are by our nature, always engage in a process of learning. We're trying to figure out the world and how to, how to live and succeed in the world. And so all of history is really this process of trying to test out ideas, find new ideas, put them into action, look at the results, learn from experience, and then come up with other new ideas. So I would say, it's this, it's a process of learning done on this scale, not of individual, but of the, but of all the individuals in a whole culture engaged in a pro. And if they fail at the process of learning, you have a, if they succeed at the process of learning, you have a golden age, you have a period of, of rapid advance. That's how I would characterize it. Speaker 0 00:50:16 Great. Uh, let's uh, go to Carl. Thank you. Speaker 6 00:50:21 Thank you. Uh, Robert, as I understand it, your version of how ideas drive history involves an interplay or interplay plural between the grassroots and the ivory tower and all levels in between. Yep. Uh, now, if you're not weded to the thesis that it's driven top down, I don't know why your view would be particularly, uh, controversial. So there must be other writers with this approach. So, uh, who are other writers who've published this approach to cultural change and philosophy of history, and if not exactly, with this approach who comes closest? Speaker 1 00:50:59 Well, that's a real interesting question. Um, I think it's actually becoming implicit. See, I don't know that there's a Flo somebody who's done this as philosophy of history. So the, the biggest differentiation of philosophy of history out there is there's. I is the idea of the people who believe that there's some kind of material factors that are, are moving history. And this, this has of course had huge impact and influence during the 19th century with the rise of Marxism. Oh, you look at, uh, material factors, uh, that explains all of history. Um, and then of course it gets ized into, or developed into the modern sort of woke version of history, Speaker 1 00:51:51 People that drive his history, uh, that's their own sort of version of, of, of, of the Marxist view of history. I think that's the common one out in the mainstream, but I do think, I mean, Steve, I mentioned Steven Pinker, the people who are trying to study progress, I think there is a growing realization that, uh, you know, a big thesis of fingers is look, you had these ideas and the enlightenment that we tried out, we tried of these enlightenment ideas and look at the results. They're amazing. We should learn from that. Now I Pinker himself is kind of he's, he's not very, he's not very good at the philosophy part of it. Right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so he tends to have a kind of a vague or super standing of what the philosophical ideas are. And he tries, I think it's partly cuz he's trying to be very ecumenical. Speaker 1 00:52:38 So he'll say, oh, well this idea, you know, K has a version of this and uh, uh, lightness has an version of it. And uh, um, Spinoza has a version of it and this other person and Locke has a version of it and they're really different ideas, but they're kind of similar idea, you know, they're similar to this superficial way. So he tries to lump them all together as all the same idea. But the idea that, that, uh, I think specifically among the people who are studying the causes of progress, the idea that something went right in the enlightenment, that we had certain ideas and ideals that they were trying to achieve, that ended up having this huge benevolent Benent impact. I think there's a lot of people working towards that, but I think that, you know, that could be defined better and understood more deeply. Speaker 1 00:53:26 Uh, now I should say my book though is not really a mass market book. It's more trying to correct what I see version of the objectives theory. So, uh, this is a little bit of inside baseball stuff for the objectives, but I think it has some implication for what these people, what, what the progress studies people are doing, you know, where there are people out there actively trying to say, let's understand what the source of progress is and how we can have more of it. And they've, they've sort of coalesced on the idea that has something to do with the ideas and ideals of the enlightenment. I think they they're the CLO ones that are closest to being on the right track, uh, in terms of understanding it. But I think they need a, a clearer put it this way. Whereas the objectives are too top down and ivory tower focused. Speaker 1 00:54:13 Those people are a little too diffuse and bottom up and, uh, not, Flos not focused enough on understanding and clearly defining the philosophical ideas. So I think what I would hope is some and what I'm gonna be working on is some sort of synthesis of those two things like that. Understanding of the sort of Stephen let's understand the, the progress has occurred, that they're doing good work on this, a guy named Jason Crawford. Um, mm-hmm, <affirmative> a number of other people. So get those people together and then get use that philosophical element of understanding what exactly were the good ideas that, um, what are the, what are the good ideas that flow from and the other and, and the arts and what are exactly defined? What were the idea that health make all this possible? Speaker 6 00:55:05 I wanted to ask you as a follow up, uh, if this would be an example of the kind of interplay, you might not have thought of this instance, but if this might fall into, um, Speaker 0 00:55:15 The last five minutes Speaker 6 00:55:16 Type of causation, so, uh, the free market revolution, uh, at least, um, in academia, uh, Robert Sik opened up a lot of doors, uh, anarchy, state and utopia, I believe was published in 1974, it won awards. Uh, I've heard it said that could not have been published. Had it not been for, uh, John roll's theory of justice, 1971, I believe. And I've heard that that couldn't have been, uh, as well received as it was, uh, at that time. Had it not been, there was so much upset about the Vietnam war. Speaker 0 00:55:50 We didn't, we wanna get Miriam in here. Speaker 1 00:55:53 All right. Yeah, let's get Miriam here one more time. And then we'll ahead MI. That's interesting, but I, I don't have time. I'm very good. Speaker 0 00:56:01 Miriam, are you able to unmute Speaker 8 00:56:03 Yourself? Yes, yes, yes, yes, I am here. And, um, I'm sorry, I came a little late and I actually wondered in a very simple question about dialogue versus <inaudible> because I'm thinking right now, like there's, when we think about political philosophy, the idea of, um, voice is so strong and I'm, and particularly thinking about people like who are using philosophy to kind of sell their, um, you know, uh, ideology like Dugin, for example, putting, uh, putting, uh, philosopher. And I was wondering how, how you, how you, I don't wanna gate keep, keep, I was fascinating segment segment of this discussion, but I was just wondering how, but, but do we sometimes need gates and what those gates would look Speaker 1 00:56:55 Like? Actually, it's a great point. And I, I, I, when I heard idea log and said it an Eastern European accent, I know exactly where you're coming from because <laugh>, uh, you know, the, the, the Soviet influence in Eastern Europe was so much of it gave it's what gave idea ideologue and ideology a bad name, because it basically turned philosophy into a dogma. So what people use when people use ideolog or ideology in a pejorative sense, what they're reacting to is this idea of taking big ideas about the nature of the world and turning them into a dogma that then is just per pounded from the top down, and nobody's allowed to descent from it. And which also tends to have this role of serving the imperatives of power of being the thing. That's, that's that, that's the thing that's pushed down on you from the top down, because it helps justify the rule of whoever the strong man is at the moment and Putin, I Dugin, I, it seems generous to call him a philosopher, but he's kind of a crackpot, but he's what passes for a philosopher in, in Tooton circles. Speaker 1 00:58:00 And he's, that's definitely falling into this sort of this sort of thing. And so one, that's why I think that the importance here of the idea of an interplay from the bottom up of this hop down, that philosophy to be, to be valuable philosophy has to be thoroughly rooted in the facts. It has to be thoroughly rooted in experience. It has to be thoroughly rooted in the discoveries of the sciences. It has to be as I, I put it as a summit of the foundation. It has to be, the philosophy has to be the product of say that this is the problem I have with this top down idea, that the idea that philosophy, you have a cheap of philosophy, and that trickles down into the sciences and the other fields and into politics. Well, a good philosophy has to be a product of all the best state of the art of knowledge and all these other fields, cuz otherwise that philosophy's not in contact with reality, it's not based on the facts and it's going to become an ideology in this pejorative sense of a dogma push on people from the top down. Speaker 0 00:59:01 Well, Rob, this was a great topic. Thank you so much. We gotta get you talking about history more often, Speaker 1 00:59:09 You have a link to the book up here. It can be found in Amazon. What went writes in objective theory of history. It's available as a paperback. Now I'm uploading the ebook in the next day or so if, if you prefer to get it as ebook, Speaker 0 00:59:20 Great, uh, the Atlas society has some more great clubhouse shows this week. Uh, TAs founder, David Kelly will be here Thursday at 4:00 PM. Eastern for ask me anything. And Friday at five 30 Eastern professor Jason Hill will be here discussing a moral defense of elite and meritocracy. Not sure about that part. So that sounds intriguing in the meantime. Thanks again, Rob and everyone who joined will see you Thursday at four. Thanks everyone.