The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and @Amazon.com. Say, what do you let those boys push you around like that for? Well,

they're bigger than me. Stand tall

boy. Have some respect for yourself.

Don't you know, if you let people walk over you now, they'll be walking over you for the rest of your life?

And that is from Back to the Future Part One. I should have had you guess that Back To The Future Part One, if you let people walk over you now, they'll be walking over you for the rest of your life, and that's true in our personal lives, and that is also true on the political level. This is from an article written by Ayn Rand. What can one do in the book Philosophy? Who Needs It? Quote, if a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell, but time is on our side because we have an indestructible weapon and an invincible ally if we learn how to use them: reason and reality, unquote. And with me to discuss how to speak up for yourself, how to fight for your freedom, which means your happiness, is Lynn Zinser. She is the vice president at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, which is the division of the Ayn Rand Institute, and she knows how to fight for values. And she went from a person who didn't know how to fight for her values to a person who is an expert at that now. Welcome, Lynn.

Thanks. I'm glad to be here. Ellen, this

is great. You've spoken out. What are some key strategies that you could give me to speak out? I want to speak out more. I don't want to remain silent and see whether it's within my own family or at work or in the culture at large, in the political scene. I don't want to be a silent person. But it's not easy. Well, a couple of

things. One is that a lot of people feel intimidated because they don't know a subject really well, and I think it's important that you do know what it is you're talking about. That gives you that confidence to be able to speak up. But you don't necessarily have to know all of the economic arguments or all of the political arguments. What is much more effective is to be able to articulate the moral argument. Is to be able to say this is wrong, and here is why this is wrong, or this is the way we should go. We should advocate for freedom, and here's why freedom is important; that is far more effective. A lot of people will. We hear people say all of the time, well, I understand that capitalism may be the best economic system, but it's not moral, right?

So if I were to play devil's advocate here, I don't believe this point of view, but if I should be playing the part here, if I say, Listen, capitalism is not a friendly system. You need to be your brother's keeper. You need to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves, and you want to be a benevolent person, how would you get to the moral argument there?

I would say capitalism is the only moral system. Capitalism is the system that allows people to act in pursuit of their happiness. It is the system that but

it's not benevolent. It's everybody taking advantage of everyone else.

That is not what capitalism is. Capitalism is the system that allows people to act for their rational values. So

it basically with capitalism. It's a people see it as an "I win, you lose." You know, I'm Ellen, I win, you lose, Lynn. And that's exactly wrong. It's that type of misinformation that's perpetrated through even my university, Brown University, the one I went to, that is killing freedom, and instead, capitalism is really a win-win situation. I give you a nice massage. Lynn, you give me a nice massage. We trade. It's an equal trade. We both walk away happy, and the people who want to massage and don't want to pay for it, yeah, they suffer under capitalism, and the people who can't do for themselves can't get the massages. Well, capitalists tend to be very benevolent people, and they might be generous at a time they don't have to be, but give a back rub, right?

So it's—and go ahead.

Exactly. And if I don't know how to give you a massage, I can take you pay

for the right. So it's a win-win system. And if you don't get to the moral issue, then you're bound to be able to say, well, I know capitalism has its drawbacks. The drawbacks are basically misinformation that people have been given. And if people want more information on this, they can read Ayn Rand's book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Atlas Shrugged.

Oh yeah, man, how could I forget that one? My all-time favorite book, the book that took me from being a very shy person, very shy, sitting home knitting socks on circular needles to going back and getting my PhD and talking to you now. Lynn, so that is an amazing book for anybody who. It's a happier life. So can you give us a few pointers on how to engage in effective intellectual activism for anyone that wants to do that?

Yes, I think one of the things is to learn,

hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back. Romance.

Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at SelfishRomance.com and buy it @Amazon.com: The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting. Can

you give us a few pointers on how to engage in effective intellectual activism for anyone that wants to do that?

Yes, I think one of the things is to learn to attend meetings, to go to public meetings and speak up. Sometimes most public forums have an opportunity for people to speak up in just one or two minutes and agree or disagree. That is an effective way of speaking up and saying, I disagree, or this is the program that we should be following. I think you can also attend Toastmasters or writing workshops if you want to learn how to write letters to the editor. There are lots of things you can do to learn how to be an effective intellectual activist,

and the feeling that you get if you write just a letter to the editor in a local paper, maybe a small little paper, and it gets published. Man, that's fuel. That's psychological fuel. Of, I can do it. It has that type of a feel in it, absolutely. And if you have setbacks, what if you get cold feet at the last minute and you don't speak up, you go to raise your hand and you pull it back down again.

You learn from your mistakes. You think about why you got cold feet? What is it that you could have said? And the next time that you are in that, put yourself back into a situation where you can speak up again, and this time you speak up.

So the worst thing that can happen in that moment is if you conclude, oh, what's the use? Why bother? I knew I shouldn't have said anything. I did more harm than good, and I better just keep my mouth shut, right? Bad, bad, bad attitude, right?

Seldom. I can't even imagine a situation where you only have one chance to ever speak up, yeah, at least in our society, where you only have one chance to speak up, and if you blow it, you've blown it for all of your life. I mean, that's just not going to happen, right? There are multiple opportunities, and all that happens is that you don't do it as well as you could have, and the next time you do it better if you learn from your mistake, and

even if you bungle it, even if—I don't know if that's a word—but even if you're totally not effective, you didn't go as well as you had hoped, and you still spoke up, and you can go back and rework it without beating up on yourself. You know, give yourself a pat on the shoulder for having spoken up. A woman that is actually working in the Tea Party movement told me that what speaking out gives her is an enormous positive view of life and the people around her. She said to me, you're not afraid anymore, people. You see the world differently. It's empowering. You value your life and the culture around you when you're acting for change, which, in our context, is rational principles. I'm assuming you would underscore that.

Absolutely, in fact, that's one of the things that is amazing to me is that you do have this much more benevolent attitude towards other people and you love even people that you oppose, yeah,

and you're less afraid. This is Lynn Zinser. She is the vice president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, which is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute. And you can get information on Ayn Rand and her books at AynRand.com or AynRand.org. I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner. Thanks for joining us, Lynn.

Thank you. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this. Now, here's

an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner:

A mood is an enduring emotional state. A chronically sullen, anxious, or hostile partner is unromantic, not very lovable. Sometimes moods may be partly or wholly out of your control, for instance, those caused by hormones, a thyroid problem, or by an adverse medication reaction. Most bad moods, however, are caused by your subconscious ideas. You can introspect to understand and regulate them. Your bad moods may sometimes be the cause of your partner's bad mood. For example, you may hate your job and come home to your partner in a cranky, sarcastic mood every night, which puts your partner in an equally negative mood. Once you clarify the cause of your mood and explain it to your partner, you can come up with a better strategy to deal with the work problem.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book @Amazon.com.