Jennifer Burns

because she really tried to create this idea and express the idea that to be truly selfish did not mean trampling on others it meant just being motivated by your own kind of internal measures and metrics and so In her fiction, she tries to show this by showing the false selfishness of some of Peter Keating, who's an architect who kind of steps over everybody to advance his career.

And she says that's not true selfishness because true selfishness would recognize it's false to take others' work and pass it off as your own. Now, the other big piece of objectivism is a very approach that's really inspired by and related to Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of revaluing values or a genealogy of morals.

And she says that's not true selfishness because true selfishness would recognize it's false to take others' work and pass it off as your own. Now, the other big piece of objectivism is a very approach that's really inspired by and related to Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of revaluing values or a genealogy of morals.

And she says that's not true selfishness because true selfishness would recognize it's false to take others' work and pass it off as your own. Now, the other big piece of objectivism is a very approach that's really inspired by and related to Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of revaluing values or a genealogy of morals.

And so she says, what's happened here is Western culture has converged on this idea of altruism as good. Being selfless and altruistic is good. And this has led us to communism. and has led us to devalue the individual in favor of the collective.

And so she says, what's happened here is Western culture has converged on this idea of altruism as good. Being selfless and altruistic is good. And this has led us to communism. and has led us to devalue the individual in favor of the collective.

And so she says, what's happened here is Western culture has converged on this idea of altruism as good. Being selfless and altruistic is good. And this has led us to communism. and has led us to devalue the individual in favor of the collective.

So what we need is a new moral code which elevates selfishness, which elevates the individual, and which takes all the things that we have been told are bad and actually sets their values. This is what she's trying to do with objectivism. I mean, it is about as ambitious of an intellectual project as there can be. And that's what really draws people in.

So what we need is a new moral code which elevates selfishness, which elevates the individual, and which takes all the things that we have been told are bad and actually sets their values. This is what she's trying to do with objectivism. I mean, it is about as ambitious of an intellectual project as there can be. And that's what really draws people in.

So what we need is a new moral code which elevates selfishness, which elevates the individual, and which takes all the things that we have been told are bad and actually sets their values. This is what she's trying to do with objectivism. I mean, it is about as ambitious of an intellectual project as there can be. And that's what really draws people in.

Yet at the same time, she's flying in the face of the way human morals and ethics and societies have evolved. And she's not able to single-handedly recreate them the way she wants them to be.

Yet at the same time, she's flying in the face of the way human morals and ethics and societies have evolved. And she's not able to single-handedly recreate them the way she wants them to be.

Yet at the same time, she's flying in the face of the way human morals and ethics and societies have evolved. And she's not able to single-handedly recreate them the way she wants them to be.

Yeah, I mean, she had a student who ended up being very close to her, Nathaniel Brandon, and he was sort of an advisor. And he said, can you please not use selfishness? Like, just come up with another word. But part of her liked it. Part of her wanted to provoke and unsettle. She didn't want to give that up.

Yeah, I mean, she had a student who ended up being very close to her, Nathaniel Brandon, and he was sort of an advisor. And he said, can you please not use selfishness? Like, just come up with another word. But part of her liked it. Part of her wanted to provoke and unsettle. She didn't want to give that up.

Yeah, I mean, she had a student who ended up being very close to her, Nathaniel Brandon, and he was sort of an advisor. And he said, can you please not use selfishness? Like, just come up with another word. But part of her liked it. Part of her wanted to provoke and unsettle. She didn't want to give that up.

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things I found in researching and writing about her. Like, she's an incredibly unusual human being, you know? And so that was like her strength, right? Because she's so unusual. But it was also her downfall because she looked to herself as a model or to get insight about humanity. And she never quite processed how different she was from other people.

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things I found in researching and writing about her. Like, she's an incredibly unusual human being, you know? And so that was like her strength, right? Because she's so unusual. But it was also her downfall because she looked to herself as a model or to get insight about humanity. And she never quite processed how different she was from other people.

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things I found in researching and writing about her. Like, she's an incredibly unusual human being, you know? And so that was like her strength, right? Because she's so unusual. But it was also her downfall because she looked to herself as a model or to get insight about humanity. And she never quite processed how different she was from other people.

Yeah, I mean, broadly, we could put Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand in some sort of category together, but she has this focus on ethics and rationality and this desire to be revolutionary that's much stronger than Friedman. Friedman wanted to overthrow the economic consensus. You didn't want to overturn the moral basis of Western society. So she's also, she does something.