Lessons from Don Quixote & The Fountainhead: Navigating Idealism and Reality

*Talk given at Third Thursday in Austin.

In this in-depth lecture, we examine the timeless wisdom in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Learn how literary heroes—and antiheroes—can help us stay grounded while pursuing lofty ambitions. We’ll discuss Peter Keating, Howard Roark, and Don Quixote as models for introspection, exploring how to balance big dreams with real-world constraints.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:17:19
Unknown
I'm curious if I'm asking this to the wrong crowd. But everybody know the show. The TV show Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Has anybody seen that? Never heard of. Okay, I'm asking the wrong crowd. Well, there's a moment I thought I was like, all right, very. I have it. So there's a moment, when he's.

00:00:18:00 - 00:00:40:21
Unknown
It's in the bloopers, which is funnier than the actual show, I think when he's talking to David Letterman and it's a it's like a satire show about late night shows, basically is what, between two, ferns is And he says, Zach Galifianakis. He asks David Letterman, like, what did you do? Do you know, read a book last night and came here all eager to talk about it to young people, and they start laughing.

00:00:40:21 - 00:01:10:23
Unknown
And and that's exactly what I did. Like, I read a book last night and I'm just excited to talk about it. My hope for you is, some of the insights that I've had about literature over 20 plus years studying and and understanding it are how to get squeeze out some real practical value for your life, where really reading literature is not just, entertainment value, which is good to have entertainment, but how can we actually get something out of it?

00:01:10:23 - 00:01:36:17
Unknown
Okay, so I assume how many here have read Fountainhead by and Rand okay. Almost everybody. The Fountainhead by onramp. Now when many of us. I'm going to make this about myself so I don't offend anybody. But when many of us reading Rand in The Fountainhead for the first time, especially when we're young, I think the tendency is to automatically associate ourselves with Roark.

00:01:36:19 - 00:02:14:20
Unknown
I'm Roark, I'm more like a Roark than the first handed idealist, achieving all his dreams, through struggle in this murky, complicated, second hand compromised world. But I'm the first hand, living in that murky world. But I think we're actually a lot of times we may be more like Peter Keating than we want to admit. And, you know, the second handed person who gets his vision and dreams from other people and his ideas through other people, and why I want to bring that up is I don't want to insult anybody.

00:02:14:22 - 00:02:50:16
Unknown
That's not my my goal here. But in listening to Objectivist lectures for since 2008, really 15 years, one thing I noticed they don't really talk about much is the real purpose of art is not to judge other people. That's one thing that happens. Sure, I have a model of Peter Keating, and I've heard this all over and over and over, even from great philosophers that I love, and it lets you look at other people in the world to be like, there's a Peter Keating, there's a Peter, okay, that's not the chief role.

00:02:50:16 - 00:02:57:19
Unknown
And the, the, the, the value that you can get from literature, in my opinion, art broadly,

00:02:57:19 - 00:03:19:06
Unknown
it's actually about judging yourself. It's about going inward. Introspecting thinking about when am I like Peter Keating? When am I like Howard Roark? How can I be more like the first handed person and less like the second handed person? Let me ask you this question.

00:03:19:08 - 00:03:37:18
Unknown
You know, so just as an example, am I acting from my own vision? That's my vision, my dream, my goals, or is it somebody else's? And I'm just kind of leeching off of it or something. Now, if you you could start ignoring me for the rest of the talk after this one bit. So this is all I really care.

00:03:37:20 - 00:03:48:03
Unknown
And like everything else, I'm going to talk about Cervantes and all these things and I hope you get some joy out of that. But this is an insight to me that I really found profound, and I hope maybe you will too.

00:03:48:03 - 00:03:57:08
Unknown
When do your dreams become yours? Well, so if you think about The Fountainhead,

00:03:57:08 - 00:04:06:17
Unknown
Peter Keating, you know, one of the thoughts is that this guy's an architect because his mother told him to be an architect in a sense.

00:04:06:17 - 00:04:23:02
Unknown
Right. That's how he kind of. That's how I held it. Like that's how a lot of us hold it. But what's wrong with that? You know, being an architect versus a painter probably is a good idea. You don't want to be a starving artist. What's wrong with and doing that? And then Ayn Rand, of course, does not talk about Howard Roarks

00:04:23:02 - 00:04:49:09
Unknown
Upbringing. So imagine a scene later on in the novel is maybe getting some success, and he gets a letter from a long lost relative from his youth, and the letter says something like, something the best laid plans with sound, right? The letter says something like. Good to see you took my advice and something like that.

00:04:49:11 - 00:05:07:16
Unknown
You know, good to see you. An architect like I suggested when you were a child. Something like that. Would that mean that his dream for being an architect isn't his dream? So the question is, when does a dream become your own? Because we're born in this world with all these things in the world, all we have aspirations for the world.

00:05:07:21 - 00:05:31:06
Unknown
So you're all it's every dream you have does not come from you. It originates outside of you. So the that I just want you to think about when a dream comes to you and what I'm going to start talking a little bit about is how I think dreams can go wrong. What we can learn from this, this character, 400 years ago, Don Quixote, that this can go wrong and right and why that's important for us.

00:05:31:06 - 00:05:59:08
Unknown
Anybody has anybody read Don Quixote by Cervantes to all you read Don Quixote to do. Okay. So just a little bit. Oh, okay. Here we go. All right. You read Don Quixote in Hebrew. The whole thing, Don Quichotte. Well, yeah. So that's interesting. It's been translated all you two as well. But I saw the news. The very man of La mancha.

00:05:59:10 - 00:06:42:17
Unknown
Yeah. Man of la mancha. Read the Classics Illustrated. Very cool. Okay, so revealing the ubiquitous ness of this novel. This is a novel that I am going to contend has shaped the world we live in. Like. And our world views in many, many ways. There's an old quote from, I think it might be G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis or something like that, and he says, there's a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza in all of us that is, there's that tall, emaciated, skinny idealist dreaming after grand dreams, and the little fat man who's asking what's for dinner.

00:06:42:19 - 00:07:10:16
Unknown
So the Don Quixote is a wannabe knight. He's living in the 1605 Spain, traveling around as a knight errant, doing good deeds as he sees it, but is living in an era where there are no more knights. Knights don't exist anymore, and he's become obsessed with these chivalric ideals, you know, always reaching for this grand dream, even though it's not really gelling with reality.

00:07:10:18 - 00:07:29:02
Unknown
So as an example, not a famous, not as famous as the windmill example, but, one of the examples is he sees a flock of sheep, two flocks of sheep. They're kind of going at it and he's like, it's two armies, and I'm going to go save them. And then he goes in after them, he starts charging. And I was like, what is that?

00:07:29:02 - 00:07:51:10
Unknown
Those are sheep, dude, what are you talking about? He goes in and then the sheep herder, the sheep shepherds get mad at him, and they fling rocks at him and knock his teeth out, knock them off the horse and everything. So that, by the way, is the standard model of a don quixote of a Quixotian misadventure. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza see something?

00:07:51:10 - 00:08:17:02
Unknown
Windmills, sheep, an inn they identify it differently. It's just an it's just an n. It's a castle. Don Quixote charges after it to take knightly action to normally dreadful consequences, and then importantly, they talk about it. And that's where it becomes very interesting. If it was just a little they and the it's in the talking that you get these philosophical things often.

00:08:17:04 - 00:08:42:14
Unknown
You know more than that. This is a 940 page book. It's more than just those little adventures. It's it's, you know, as as you're saying, there's a lot of meta narratives that we could talk about to. So my my point and what I hope you guys are taking away a little bit is that in the Objectivist movement, we get a lot of abstract ideas thrown at us, often very brilliantly and wonderfully parsed out with examples.

00:08:42:16 - 00:09:06:01
Unknown
If you're like me, I need models of characters to hold what those are. I I'm not going to remember. And in fact, there's a person named Ayn Rand who wrote a book called The Romantic Manifesto, where she said the exact same thing, that you need the models to hold these abstract in these metaphysical ideas. Otherwise it's too broad and it's just going to slip out.

00:09:06:02 - 00:09:24:07
Unknown
You're not going to really grasp it. So it's that you can think of it as like an outline. Right. And what is rationalism versus empiricism? You can have an outline and you have great lectures that are brilliant and life changing. It's just, you know, you can kind of hold it as Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and those are two ways.

00:09:24:07 - 00:09:34:05
Unknown
And then you can kind of hold it and think it through, which is what she was trying to do with Keating. Roark writes two versions of selfishness rather than just writing a treatise on ethics,

00:09:34:05 - 00:09:44:11
Unknown
So when I say Quixote, you probably know a word quixotic tilting at windmills, right? As everybody heard that word before.

00:09:44:12 - 00:10:01:04
Unknown
So what does that mean to you? What do you think of when you think of the word like he's quixotic. Sorry, joe didn't mean to point you out. I just met you. I don't know if you're actually quixotic, but if someone's quixotic guy is a, you know, he's quixotic or he's tilting at windmills, what does that mean to you?

00:10:01:06 - 00:10:24:06
Unknown
Yeah. All right. It means they're passionate about a goal. But from my point of view, it doesn't look like you'll ever reach it. Or maybe it's not even real. Yeah, but he's highly motivated. He's highly motivated. Absolutely. To to go after this. Anybody else? That's a good one. Yeah. Idealistic and foolish. Idealistic and foolish. I like that. And the others attempts.

00:10:24:07 - 00:10:48:12
Unknown
Seems quixotic, Bob. Unrealistic. Unrealistic. Yeah. It's just not not, you know, being realistic. And I think you could even, you know, sometimes I think, there's some high level AI people who are being a little quixotic, perhaps, about AGI and its abilities. But maybe I'm wrong and they'll prove me wrong. I don't know, but that's it. You know, like, how does it apply in the real world?

00:10:48:14 - 00:11:07:15
Unknown
I don't know, maybe there, but, you know, one definition. It's it's when you become so enamored by a lofty ideal or dream that you lose sight of the world as it is. So I think of this as, like, falling into a pit of delusion. And that is the great danger. And that is the lesson that I'm learning.

00:11:07:15 - 00:11:24:17
Unknown
And Don Quixote is it's not, as you know, it's not merely cynical. Look at ideals, which is one thing I've heard Objectivist say. There's a there's that in there, but it's really a warning about falling into this pit of ideals. And falling of love at the expense of reality.

00:11:24:17 - 00:11:49:07
Unknown
So just as an example, I think this happens all the time in our, in our lives that again, I'm going to speak from my experience, I think it happens to me. Maybe it happens to you, but there's a there's a story, a moment in Don Quixote where Don Quixote is going on. He meets a bunch of mule drivers, and he wants to, he tells them, like the knight errants that he read about in chivalric tales.

00:11:49:09 - 00:12:04:19
Unknown
That's that's why he's doing what he's doing is he reads lots of chivalric tales, of, you know, King Arthur type people. And he goes out and does that. And one of the things they do is they have to have a lady love, and they have to fight and prove that their lady love is the most beautiful of all, the lady love.

00:12:04:19 - 00:12:25:04
Unknown
So he comes up to the skinny, you know, the skinny old man, he's on his horse that's wobbling and he sees these mule drivers and it's. He shouts at them, you must say and profess that Dulcinea is the most beautiful princess in the world. And these male drivers. What do you think they might say? Like, Right.

00:12:25:04 - 00:12:44:00
Unknown
Like she. Can you describe her? What does she look like? I he's like, if I have to show you that I'm not fighting for any. You can't really. He's just like, I'm just you just have to say it because I say so. And then one of them says something like, well, they ask a question. There's like, they give a little bit of doubt to his ideals.

00:12:44:02 - 00:13:06:19
Unknown
Right. And what does he do? He charges. But what happens, of course, bad consequences. So he's not actually able to to make that kind of fight work. So he actually rocinante until his horse falls over before he gets there, he stumbles and the mule drivers beat him almost to death. Now it's there's always an edge in don quixote.

00:13:06:19 - 00:13:27:16
Unknown
It's like, is this funny? Or is this, like, scary? Like it's an interesting it is 1605, to be fair, but I, I'd see that in myself, in the way that I've talked to people in the past about big ideas I've had, about Objectivism and my views of them and things like that. I do see that kind of thing on myself, and I've seen that as an observer of the movement for a long time.

00:13:27:16 - 00:14:09:09
Unknown
As you know, you can hold a beautiful ideal, but if you shut out facts and proof, you'll end up like Don Quixote. That's that's kind of the message. And here's my, you know, ramming this home for a second for Objectivist who, like me, have been in this movement and listening for a long time, is I really think that being a part and, of a movement that expresses itself as the right philosophy and a philosophy for living on Earth, you're more susceptible to this pit of delusion because you can easily think, well, I got the right path.

00:14:09:09 - 00:14:25:04
Unknown
I'm good because I have the right ideas, right? I, I studied the peikoff and I studied these intellectuals and I've read and I'm good. So I got it. And reality is going to punch you in the face. As you know, some of us who are getting older might realize the real challenges of that.

00:14:25:04 - 00:14:27:07
Unknown
I mean, I can just give you a quick example of this in my own.

00:14:27:07 - 00:14:53:16
Unknown
So I, I, started in the movement. I entered it in 2008. Before that, I had read Rand, but I was, mostly just arguing with libertarians online. Right. And the movement was like, an actual objective, like a people. And there's courses and going to OCONs That started in 2008 when I went to college. Now, a mantra that I heard a lot.

00:14:53:22 - 00:15:18:21
Unknown
And I'm curious if you guys have heard this too, or if this is just my my, you know, misinterpreting. But you guys tell me is something like this. I heard this over and over and over again. We will win. I can't predict win, but we're going to win. We will win because we have the right ideas, the real truth.

00:15:18:23 - 00:15:41:00
Unknown
Ours is a philosophy for living on earth right now, by the way. I agree with them in a sense, but I found it interesting and looking back at this that, you know, you, you ask them like, well, what does winning look like? And there's not really an answer. So it's like, well, how do you know you've won?

00:15:41:00 - 00:16:02:00
Unknown
What do you now, I do think I've seen signs where maybe this is getting better and they're not doing that as much. But you know, it's still it's been there and I think part of this is a kind of top down approach that has happened in the movement for a long time. For those of us who've been, I know we have big ideas and trying to get down to people who aren't as, you know, academic philosophers.

00:16:02:02 - 00:16:31:04
Unknown
And the way that this comes out in Objectivism as a movement is a big study of rationalism versus empiricism. And, you know, peikoff and Onkar, they make it almost a, mission in their life to, rat out, rationalism, which I think is good. But what I'm saying to you now is I think it's difficult to hold the model of these philosophies, rationalism, as are these methods of thinking as rationalism versus empiricism.

00:16:31:06 - 00:16:42:03
Unknown
I'm trying to encourage you to get literary, artistic examples. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that I think will be more practical way to understand and hold these ideas.

00:16:42:03 - 00:17:01:14
Unknown
I mean, some of this is probably obvious, but I'm just going to say this real quick. So some practical insights about this of things that my observations for a long time I've seen don't happen as much as I want to, you know, people interested in politics. All that really means is they're interested in getting angry at things that they hear and see.

00:17:01:14 - 00:17:20:03
Unknown
And either yelling at each other or agreeing with each other, yelling up stuff, or just not doing anything and being a hermit. The real thing, if you are interested in politics, are making changes to do what Ryan Puzycki, attend rallies, listen to people right? Like listen to where they're coming from. Why are they interested in this idea?

00:17:20:03 - 00:17:46:11
Unknown
Why is this important to them? You have to be in it before you can make any kind of change. And it's easy to be at the top and just kind of, you know, argue about things or, you know, I, I've heard a lot of people who wanted to be filmmakers, artist novels, things like that. And, you know, you have to live in a filmmaking hub for like ten years, in my opinion, just just being dirt at the dirt poor at the very beginning and turning.

00:17:46:11 - 00:18:06:21
Unknown
And before you can even have opinions and thoughts and dreams of your own, in a sense other than I want to do this because you need to live in the stuff for a long time before you, you really can build something, even something like friendship. Like I hear a lot of people like I'm lonely. I'm not. Well, okay, join a social club.

00:18:06:22 - 00:18:27:11
Unknown
Go to it every time. Even when you don't want to. You know, commit yourself to that because the the long range goal the like a lot of times I think we hold these things like friendship in a vague way, and we just kind of expect it to happen rather than doing the work in reality to, you know, go forth, dating.

00:18:27:11 - 00:18:46:08
Unknown
You have to kiss a whole bunch of frogs or toads before, you know, and that means that, you know, the people that aren't immediately your most beautiful person or whatever, and not to be insulting to your lover or whatever, but. So we can't just read more books and repeat. Although I'm not going to say anything against books, I'm telling you to read a book now and, you know, repeat these.

00:18:46:08 - 00:19:10:18
Unknown
We will win mantras. We must become doers. And I think I looking at this court in particular, there are a lot of doers in the crowd, some. Okay. So I do want to say some things about Cervantes in his life. I'm finding him fascinating. Personally, I find him to be a really interesting person. I've been learning a lot about him, and part of my motivation.

00:19:10:18 - 00:19:32:22
Unknown
And, you know, when I read Cervantes, when I was like 27 and I was really enmeshed in the Objectivist world, I think I was like in my fourth year of OAC, the objective was academic center or something. And the only thing I ever heard Objectivist say, and these are intellectuals, people I still respect a lot, was that it's just a cynical book about, you know, attacking ideas.

00:19:32:22 - 00:19:55:18
Unknown
And it's not pro ideas. And I'm sure they can have more to say, but that is the extent of what I got out of them. And I don't think that's even close to what's going on. Yes, there's definitely some cynicism, but I'm going to show you some things about his life that, you know, he's living in a pre Randian pre industrial revolution.

00:19:55:18 - 00:20:22:06
Unknown
Interesting time that the ideals that he grew up with, he probably should be a little cynical about those ideals. So who's the superpower in the world today would you say China for you. Who else. Now I'd say it's probably naval power. Let's just let's, you know, cross the globe before America. What was it? Britain before that? Spain.

00:20:22:08 - 00:20:44:12
Unknown
So that's when Cervantes is living. Is in the 1500s, 1547 he's born. This is at almost the tippy top of the Spanish Armada and power. And it's actually going to be on its way down during his lifetime. He's going to maybe even feel it. He probably won't really notice it or anything, but it's it's technically, I think, on its way down at that point.

00:20:44:12 - 00:21:07:13
Unknown
Now it's a, it's a very different culture than what he's reading about in these chivalric tales. But so he's raised on these chivalric tales, these tales of getting farther. You wanted to come up here and it's cooler up here. He's raised on these tales. He'd he actually, as far as I understand, does not have strong aspirations to be a writer, a literary artistic writer.

00:21:07:19 - 00:21:44:07
Unknown
He wants to be a man of action. So, so he's, you know, in his society, in order to rise up in the ranks, you have to do that through martial prowess and showing valor and fighting for the the Catholicism and for Spain, which he does. And he's, I think, early 20s when he joins the Navy, which is the Armada, the Spanish Armada at this time and at 24 years old in 1971, he fights in the Battle of Lepanto, which is one of the famous battles of Spain and the powers of the papacy, papacy or whatever against the Turkish.

00:21:44:11 - 00:22:04:11
Unknown
So I would say that if you said 1971. Thank you. 1571 did I say 1971? Okay. Well, maybe it's, you know, imagine. All right. So yeah. Now again, he's living by these models of chivalry that he's reading about. So one example is during the battle,

00:22:04:11 - 00:22:09:18
Unknown
he's sick with the flu, and he's he could barely move get him and his captain to stay down there.

00:22:09:18 - 00:22:27:15
Unknown
The battle is getting thick, but Cervantes says, no, I'm going to go up. And he goes up and despite the captain saying, stay down, he goes up on the prow, which is the most dangerous part of the battle, because at this time it was a matter of putting their ships together and jumping over based on basically at the prowl.

00:22:27:20 - 00:22:47:00
Unknown
So he's at the front and he's shooting. He gets shot three times and he loses the, use of his left hand, and he he has a quip. I lost the use of my left hand for the greater glory of my right, which to me, when I heard that first, I really thought of the tis but a flesh wound.

00:22:47:06 - 00:22:59:05
Unknown
It's like such a machismo chivalric thing to say. Right now. On his way home, he's captured, by Berber pirates. He spends five years in Algiers

00:22:59:05 - 00:23:09:19
Unknown
and he tries to escape multiple times. He's often tortured because he never gets a 15, eight, 15, 80. He finally gets home to Spain, now does he? Is he coming home to knightly?

00:23:09:19 - 00:23:38:15
Unknown
Honors and accolades and wealth and privilege and status. What do you think? Does he come home? That's. What do you think? I fight for my country, I come home, I'm going to get accolades. What does he get? Poverty, disease, being ignored. Going to jail for debt in Spain. So that's what he's looking at. That's what this man is looking I now he does achieve a minor amount of, literary fame at the time.

00:23:38:15 - 00:24:01:03
Unknown
He writes plays and some novellas, but nothing until 1605. And towards the end of his life, he dies 1616. Nothing until Don Quixote. Now, what I want to say is what you get with Don Quixote. And I hope I'm kind of enticing you to go read this book. It's worth it. And the audiobook is actually really good now.

00:24:01:03 - 00:24:30:13
Unknown
It's a big book, you know, but I think it's worth doing. So there's this reality and, idealism clashing in a way that hasn't really happened in history that's happening in his life, where there's these values that are happening that are being built or have been built in a kind of feudal world where the Lord would actually come out and fight in armor against the other Lord.

00:24:30:13 - 00:24:57:12
Unknown
That would actually happen in medieval times. That does not happen in Spain. The lords are all in their castles. They're in bureaucracies. That's essential. It's a massive centralized government, you know, spanning, multiple continents. It's very different than the little feudal lordship, but those they're still acting like that. And that, you know, Cervantes is some of the first people really figuring this out about the clash between these two things.

00:24:57:17 - 00:25:20:05
Unknown
And that's what he does and creating this, what he does. And I'll, make a final point in just a minute, but I'll just end with this point. What do you really does that is so unique, and why Don Quixote is such a powerful, enduring book is he takes all of these pastoral romances, the chivalric romances, and he makes them alive.

00:25:20:07 - 00:25:48:23
Unknown
He gives them multiple perspectivism. So just one example. There's a famous story of Marcello. So, anybody heard of this one that you guys remember those who read it? The story of Marcella. So in at this time and for hundreds of years, there's something called pastoral romances, which is basically just shepherds and shephardesses who are really noble. But they ran away to be separated, living in this idyllic, perfect environment, away from the city, you know, the perfect country, countryside.

00:25:49:01 - 00:26:12:05
Unknown
And they fall in love. And there's all this, you know, angst and things like that. And that's it. That's very like, you know, cardboard cutout characters enacting love and things like that. And great romances are some good stuff in there. I think what he does is he has Don Quixote approach a shepherd who's killed himself and his friends are there lamenting and being sad about this.

00:26:12:07 - 00:26:31:06
Unknown
And then they ask what's going on with this? And they tell the story of him, the shepherd falling in love with this beautiful woman named Marcello's, who's a noble woman who comes into town and she, you know, comes into the shepherding world as this beautiful woman and all the shepherds fall in love with her, including this guy.

00:26:31:08 - 00:26:59:12
Unknown
And because he she says, no, I won't be with you. He can't take it. So he kills himself, which is something that happens in pastoral romances. Sometimes we'll see. What Don Quixote does is he makes her a real person. She comes out, pops out of the page. She's it's almost like she's standing on a hillside and she basically gives a speech talking about how she feels, why this is ridiculous, why you're loving me doesn't give any obligations to you.

00:26:59:12 - 00:27:19:13
Unknown
If I were ugly and you were a good looking and I wanted to be with you, would that obligate you to, you know, marry me? And she she gives this whole speech is all this, you know, richness to who she is as a character. So he's taking these things and he's binding it with reality, and he's the first one really who does this.

00:27:19:15 - 00:27:42:01
Unknown
And that is why he's that's one of the reasons why he's so famous. And and he does it really well. I think he's one of the better ones who do does this. And it's very, you know, pivotal moments in time. Okay. So I wanted to kind of end there. I'll say I think we all harbor lofty dreams and ideals.

00:27:42:01 - 00:28:07:13
Unknown
I hope you do. I hope you don't take this as don't dream. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying let's let's look at these models artistically to kind of help us move, forward. And, you know, whether you're, you know, think of yourself as a Howard Roark. Sometimes you are, but sometimes also you might be a little Don Quixote or a little Peter Keating.

00:28:07:15 - 00:28:30:15
Unknown
And you don't you want to, you know, work on using these models to help guide you to introspect. And that's basically the moral of my story is don't give up on dreams, but instead learn and read from these as well as philosophy. I'm not trying to bash them philosophy, but I find the reading of literature as a superior guide to consciousness.

00:28:30:15 - 00:28:50:14
Unknown
And this is something that Ayn Rand talked about in the Romantic Manifesto, that art is the training of consciousness, not abstract ideals. That's not that that's important, but the training of consciousness, I think, is. Is that so? That's all I got for you today. Thank you so much. And if you have any questions, I do have, a mic.

00:28:50:17 - 00:28:53:09
Unknown
We can talk about it. Otherwise we can get back to eating.

00:28:53:09 - 00:29:15:23
Unknown
So, you mentioned something earlier about wanting to immerse yourself for ten years or something and, maybe filmmaking or something, so I'm not going to go do that, but, sometimes I find myself being judgmental and critical of, you know, maybe the new versions of Star Trek that they're building. Right? And like, why do they do it this way?

00:29:15:23 - 00:29:22:16
Unknown
Or why are they focusing on these kinds of ideas versus others? Or why is there more fighting and less talking, like, is,

00:29:22:16 - 00:29:35:05
Unknown
what would you I guess your recommendation on like, it takes a lot of work to put on a 50 minute show and have it, you know, make money, I assume Paramount is not just doing this for fun.

00:29:35:07 - 00:29:59:03
Unknown
So what's would be, I guess, a smart way to look at those kinds of properties that remind me of something in the past, but they're doing something new, and I'm not someone who actually makes that kind of stuff. I'm just enjoying it. Yeah, no thank you. That's so I definitely, when I'm giving that example, I'm giving an example for the purposes of guiding your life, not necessarily judging art.

00:29:59:05 - 00:30:28:08
Unknown
So I do think there's definite value in judging the kind of art that you like. I tend to have a slightly different approach to art than I've heard other Objectivist, which I think kind of comes out. And what I'm saying, I think a little bit, which is on some level, if you're going to take on the the like, if you're going to take on the reading or listening or watching of something, you almost have a kind of obligation to try to have the experience that artist is trying to have.

00:30:28:08 - 00:30:47:21
Unknown
You, you know, have, make you have before you have the real judgment about it. So it's the experience and then the judgment. So that's the kind of same thing. It's the reality of it. And then the judgment. Now when you're talking about Paramounts and all these crazy dumb movies and things that come out, I do think there's a lot of ridiculous things that come out.

00:30:47:21 - 00:31:09:01
Unknown
And, I don't you know, I definitely would not disagree with that. And so just don't watch them. But I also think that we live in a wonderful time with, you know, all the art like this that's available like you could have that's a really readable translation of Don Quixote by Edith Grossman. I really recommend I read the John Ormsby and my 20s, and that was pretty good.

00:31:09:06 - 00:31:25:11
Unknown
But it was challenging for a lot of reasons. Well, actually brought it. I could compare the first sentence of each year like, why does thou mayest do this? It's like, why is it talking like it's only 1950? It's so, you know, so what I'm saying is we live in this wonderful time. There's people creating new, waves of art.

00:31:25:11 - 00:31:51:12
Unknown
I think there's new types of things coming out, and the industry and movies in general are changing. And, you know, it's it's going to happen. I'll say that, you know, just also I, the Don Quixote model is Don Quixote. It was also a little fed up with all the kind of repetitive of reruns. Like amidis De Gaulle was one of the most famous, civil tales of his time in Spain.

00:31:51:14 - 00:32:13:17
Unknown
And it was like ominous go one and two and three. And he was like, this is the first one is good. Let's burn the rest. He says that Don Quixote basically. Right. And there's there's all these kind of things that we are living in that time. And I do think there's you know, there's a buildup of desire for something new and hopefully there's new, creators out there writing new things, doing new things, things like that.

00:32:13:21 - 00:32:17:21
Unknown
So, yeah. Thanks. All right. Any other questions?

00:32:17:21 - 00:32:18:21
Unknown
Ron? What you got?

00:32:18:21 - 00:32:35:03
Unknown
Yeah. I just take exception to the generalization you made about or somebody saying, I want to make it because I know I'm right. You alluded to Objectivist and and.

00:32:35:03 - 00:32:39:09
Unknown
I think if done right, I think it's a great attitude.

00:32:39:11 - 00:33:06:04
Unknown
You have to believe in what you doing in order to do it. I started my business. I knew are going to make it. Now. Looking back, I say, wow, I'm glad I did. I could have failed, but probably one reason I made it is because I the failure was not an option. I and I think is nothing wrong in saying yeah, eventually Objectivism will make it because it's a philosophy for life.

00:33:06:04 - 00:33:16:03
Unknown
It's a good philosophy. It's adhering to reality. At the same time, I realize it might not happen in my lifetime. Well, so be it.

00:33:16:03 - 00:33:34:14
Unknown
even if it never happens, having a goal set. Set your direction. Set what you're doing. Set how you live your life. So anyway, no, I. So one of the interesting what sounds like you, you're kind of comparing it to being a don quixote and what I'm.

00:33:34:16 - 00:34:02:23
Unknown
Yeah. No, what I'm comparing it to is, I'm not comparing it to that. I'm showing that there's a warning that you can learn from other people and other writers. So it's not that you know, this, that there's something wrong with ideals, it's that something can go wrong with ideals. And that's, you know, Objectivism as a movement has spent a lot of energy talking about rationalism versus empiricism.

00:34:03:04 - 00:34:26:07
Unknown
And there's a reason for that, because you can go down those routes which are the false processing methodologies for thinking. And that's possible. And, you know, you can take courses and that's helpful and you should. But what I'm saying is these models are very, very helpful. The Don Quixote can can help guide you. And you're 100% correct that you should definitely have ideals.

00:34:26:07 - 00:34:51:07
Unknown
And I'll just say this about that. So, I only picked out one teeny little aspect of this 940 page, but one interesting and great thing that you notice if you read the whole thing, is that toward the end, as it goes on, Sancho starts talking a little bit more like the idealist that is Don Quixote and Don Quixote.

00:34:51:09 - 00:35:15:02
Unknown
It's a little bit more of the reality now. You know, we it would take a lot of discussion about what's actually happening here. But I think he's cervantes is not living in a time of Ayn Rand objectivism. So he's really contending with the idealism versus practical issue for the, you know, first time, really. He's actually before Descartes.

00:35:15:04 - 00:35:33:02
Unknown
So Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, who's who he is contending with this on a real big philosophical. He's like one of the first people really dealing with the issue of identity and objectivity out there and, and the relationship and all that, like he's doing that and there's other people doing that, but he's the the biggest one, right?

00:35:33:04 - 00:35:54:09
Unknown
But he's doing it first and before Descartes. And so I'm just saying it's a good lesson for all of us to get a visual of. And it's so powerful that it is so powerful and affected. That's why it's become one of the few literary characters who a word right. There's Odyssey, Odysseus, there's quixotic, there's. And that's how powerful this book is.

00:35:54:09 - 00:36:16:10
Unknown
So my only thing and, you know, I make some criticisms of Objectivism because I've been in it for so long, and that's what I've observed. I think there's a lot of great things that that happens. I'm not saying no or nay to that, but I've also seen a lot of going this way. And, you know, I think that reading literature that's not in Rand is helpful.

00:36:16:12 - 00:36:32:09
Unknown
And I, you know, my favorite talk at Third Thursday is I love a lot of talks. And Mike Mazza’s has been my favorite. If you guys ever saw that one. Unfortunately, it wasn't the rocket one. It was the one he did. On why you should read other philosophies and I he made a really good argument in discussion.

00:36:32:09 - 00:37:02:15
Unknown
And I'm saying the same kind of thing in my own way and about literature, because you get when you read literature even more than philosophy, you're in the world. So with philosophy, his argument was, I think, you know, I'm going to butcher his argument, but essentially that you should live in like read a philosophy like Nietzsche as though you would live as a Nietzsche, so you can understand what that's really like, to have the kind of comparison and separation that you need from, objective ism to really evaluate it.

00:37:02:17 - 00:37:16:12
Unknown
And I think with reading literature, it's easier to do that because you actually you immerse yourself in the experience of art. And that's one of the deep values I. Okay. Anything else? We good. One more question.

00:37:16:12 - 00:37:22:20
Unknown
Yeah. No thank you. And we'll end with this question. You know, you can talk to me afterwards if you'd like.

00:37:22:20 - 00:37:38:02
Unknown
So this is one of the projects I would like to take on more full time, maybe even as a career. Is the discovery the disseminate ation in education of a canonical list of books that everyone should read?

00:37:38:04 - 00:38:00:08
Unknown
What are those books and why and why are they helpful? And I think, you know what you're saying about you're talking about you were reading a book like Don Quixote or ran, you know, called it a literary duty to read Tolstoy. I think it was Anna Karenina at all. But maybe War and Peace and, and she hated it, and she didn't want to read it.

00:38:00:13 - 00:38:30:11
Unknown
And we all have that experience, and I can't promise in my telling you to read any of these books that you're going to utterly fall in love with everything about it. But I do think that there are a grouping of books written in the world that the encountering of them, whether you like them or not, are change agents for you, that you will get something different out of it if you do the experience and the work of it.

00:38:30:11 - 00:38:48:15
Unknown
And sometimes it's going to be more work than others. And the problem is, when we expand literature and literature education to the degree that exists, which it doesn't exist anymore, I think that we expand it to like any modern thing that's coming out or, you know, the latest, woke type thing, which is like, if you want to read.

00:38:48:15 - 00:39:06:14
Unknown
I'm not saying no, but what I'm saying is there's a core 10 or 20 books that should that we should encourage and try to get everyone to read once in your life. And I think it is worth getting into and, getting into Don Quixote, even if you have a challenge with it. And I'll just end by saying that this is the value.

00:39:06:15 - 00:39:27:17
Unknown
And the role of teachers of a good teacher is not just to tell you the times and places of the when it was published, and it's to inspire you to get something out of this thing. And then if you don't come back to it, you don't come back to it. But I would be willing to bet that if you could make your way through Don Quixote with a good teacher, you'll come out changed.

00:39:27:22 - 00:39:46:08
Unknown
You'll come out with a new model of the world that you can push up against and agree or disagree with and see in yourself, and you'll be a changed person. You'll be better for it, no matter who you are. That's my belief. And I believe there are these core 1020 books that are like that. So that's what I got to say about that.