Nurture Your Soul

[@cyranodanconia]

The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin by Jan Stocklassa (though I have not read it; just bought the kindle on sale because it sounded very interesting)

[@cyranodanconia]

Though I love watching thrillers. Among the best I’ve seen is the Argentine Oscar winner El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes), which is indeed based on a novel by a Eduardo Sacheri.

[@luketerry2006]

Awesome stuff. I know the biggest hang up my wife and other mom's I know have with getting interested in objectivism is the lack of discussion around motherhood. She sees the dichotomy (I think incorrectly) between motherhood and selfishness and also sees there's a lack of content on how to properly approach that dynamic of values and so she tunes out.

[@albionicamerican8806]

Rand is openly hostile towards motherhood in her novels. Oh, she writes that the girlfriend character in _Anthem_ is pregnant at the end of the novel. But it would be in character for a Randian Heroine to let the baby die of exposure if she couldn't have gotten an abortion. Though in mythology, of course, abandoning babies to die of exposure usually backfires: Sargon, Moses, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, etc.

[@luketerry2006]

@@albionicamerican8806 I disagree

[@cyranodanconia]

This seems like a good question. Can you give a definition for “thriller”? I have read very few in my life.

[@KelsieRose]

Hey Don, who was that intellectual you mentioned around 17 minutes in, who has that theory you explain? The one that you can find the same kind of value in your life as in art? Any links to publications of his?

[@lucasmisaelcuadra2066]

Hey there Don, did you remember who wrote the book about music you mentioned in 18:09?

[@DonWatkinsLive]

M. Zachary Johnson. "Emotion in Life & Music: A New Science"

[@lucasmisaelcuadra2066]

@@DonWatkinsLive yesss, I hoped it was that one. I translated it to Spanish, and we'll publish it soon. I hope you get into it, it's really the best book ever written on the subject.

[@Duciorci]

What does the self-made manifesto add that hasn't been said in Bernstein's objectivism in one lesson?

[@DonWatkinsLive]

Quality.

[@Duciorci]

🔥🔥🔥

[@albionicamerican8806]

The fact that Frank Herbert's novel _Dune_ has been adapted to film or television three times in the last 40 years, while the only attempt to turn _Atlas Shrugged_ into a movie was a disaster, says a lot about man's real nature. _Dune_ shows a space-faring civilization in the remote future where man lives in the pre-Enlightenment's social model characterized by religions, tribes, aristocracies, patriarchy, monarchy, tradition and so forth. Our fantasy lives tell us what we really want, and the fact that many if not most normal people still derive spiritual fuel from stories based on pre-Enlightenment assumptions about society shows that Rand's Opposite World model of man's nature simply isn't workable.

[@albionicamerican8806]

Man does need spiritual fuel, but Rand's version is contaminated. She has absolutely nothing good to say about motherhood, family life and children in her novels - notice the way she portrays Millie Bush in _Atlas Shrugged_ , for example. Yet normal people derive spiritual fuel from positive portrayals of family life, because man flourishes as an organism which lives in families, extended families and tribes. Look at a gathering of Indian immigrants at a wedding, as I have, to see how man's nature really works. These people live in the United States, and many of them are entrepreneurs who own and run hotels, or else they hold Men of the Mind jobs in STEM fields; yet they are not living anything at all like Rand's fantasy of the atomized secular individual. Instead they are flourishing as members of tribes, including the fact that they usually maintain their people's spiritual traditions in this country as well. This is empirical evidence that Rand's model about man's nature is just WRONG, period.