VOLUME 1 | EDITION 3

April 2026

Index

1 - Founder’s Message

2 - Atlantis & Membership

3 - Intellectual Content

4 - Upcoming Events

1 - Founder’s Message

March saw the Australian Centre for Objectivism grow though new partnerships and the dedicated efforts of our team.

Across Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra, our March discussions on Reason and Emotion regularly ran past their scheduled time, with groups continuing informally afterwards.

Our Atlantis meeting, led by Jennifer Minjarez, focused on the integration of reason and emotion, with discussion extending into questions of moral psychology and practical decision-making. Alongside this, I published an article addressing the same issue in a more systematic form, aiming to clarify how emotions relate to cognition, evaluation, and action.

We also released a podcast with Nikos Sotirakopoulos on the contemporary far right. The discussion examined the underlying ideas, their historical roots, and their current political expression.

At ANU, two events significantly expanded our reach. A public lecture on Is Capitalism Moral?, hosted by student societies, and a debate against socialist speakers both drew strong attendance and extended discussion afterwards. Clips filmed with the Phoenix Society from these events have since circulated widely, contributing to a marked increase in our audience, particularly on Instagram.

This growth has been reflected in our membership. We welcomed a new group of Atlantis members this month, bringing us closer to a stable base of ongoing support for our events and content.

Our team is also expanding. Humairaa is actively expanding our social media team. Meanwhile, Harrison Borough, an ANU Honours student in medical science, and student of Objectivism, has joined ACO to contribute to our intellectual output. His focus will be on developing written and podcast-related material to complement our discussions and events.

Several longer-term projects are also progressing in parallel. The restored film adaptation of We the Living continues to move through the Australian film festival submission process. This remains an important step toward securing a public premiere and broader distribution.

Looking ahead, our next Atlantis meeting will feature Nick Rosado. After graduating summa cum laude from Clemson University and its Lyceum Fellows program, he trained and worked as a Montessori educator before becoming a literature apprentice at VanDamme Academy. He now teaches courses on the epic tradition, focusing on Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, and is currently working on his own epic poem. These sessions are reserved for Atlantis members.

The program now consists of weekly and monthly city discussions, monthly Atlantis meetings, a growing body of published and recorded content, and an expanding audience across multiple platforms.

Thank you to everyone contributing to it.

Maxim Bishev
Founder | Australian Centre for Objectivism

2 - Atlantis Members’ Meeting

Expert Guest: Nick Rosado

Our next Atlantis members meeting will take place on:

Sunday, 19 April 2026 – 10:00AM-11:30AM (AEST)

After graduating summa cum laude from Clemson University and its Lyceum Fellows program, Nick worked as a Montessori elementary educator for three years.

Following his Montessori training and teaching, he became Lisa VanDamme’s literature apprentice at VanDamme Academy in Aliso Viejo, California. He currently works for the Ayn Rand Institute and teaches courses on the epic poetry tradition, focusing specifically on Homer, Virgil, Dante Alighieri, and John Milton.

In his spare time, Nick works on his fiction, particularly his own epic poem.

These meetings are exclusive to Atlantis members.

To participate, you can become a member here:
https://objectivism.au/support

3 - Intellectual Content

March’s intellectual output features an answer to a question about the normative relationship between reason and emotion, a podcast on the far right movement with Dr. Nikos Sotirakopoulos and a talk on capitalism delivered by Maxim Bishev at the Australian National University, hosted by Students for Liberty and the Phoenix Society.

Is Capitalism Moral? | Speech and Q&A at ANU by Maxim Bishev

You can order medicine to your door, communicate instantly with anyone in the world, and access more knowledge than entire generations before you. Life, by almost any measurable standard, has improved dramatically. Yet many people still believe the system behind these advances, capitalism, is unfair or even immoral.

In this ANU talk, Maxim Bishev starts from that simple tension and works outward. He explains, in clear terms, how capitalism functions: a system where people are free to produce, trade, and keep what they earn, so long as they do not use force against others. From there, he addresses common concerns such as inequality, exploitation, and the role of government, asking whether wealth is created or taken, and whether people should be free to live for their own sake or expected to serve others.

The talk is designed to be accessible to anyone, regardless of background, while still offering a principled defence of capitalism as both a practical and a moral system.

“The Proper Function of Reason & Emotion” by Maxim Bishev

The role of emotion is derivative but not dispensable. Emotions serve, first, as indicators of one’s implicit value-judgements. Properly understood, they provide indispensable data about what one in fact values, as distinct from what one claims to value. This makes them psychologically significant, though not epistemologically authoritative. Emotions constitute part of the reward of living.

Podcast: The Far Right, Fascism, Aesthetics & Nationalism

Anti-abortion. Anti-immigration. Pro-religion. What do these have in common?

In this conversation Dr. Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Maxim Bishev unpack the pattern behind the right’s positions: a desire to preserve an inherited moral and cultural order, a deep suspicion of individual choice when it disrupts that order, and a tendency to see society as something to be held together by shared norms rather than freely chosen values. Across issues that seem unrelated, the same structure appears again and again. The result is a worldview that feels coherent on the surface, but rests on a very specific set of philosophical commitments about tradition, authority, and the role of the individual.

If you want to understand the right on its own terms, rather than as a list of disconnected policies, this will sharpen the picture.

4 - Upcoming Events

Topic: Reason & Emotion

This discussion examines the relationship between reason and emotions, rejecting both emotionalism and emotional repression. The aim is to clarify what emotions are, what they are not, and how to be rational about one’s own emotional states.

Melbourne: Monday | April 13, Hawthorn

Glenferrie Hotel | 6pm - 8pm

Save Melbourne Calendar

Sydney: Thursday | May 21, CBD

Babylon Rooftop and Garden Bar | 6pm - 9pm

Save Sydney Calendar

Canberra: Friday | April 24, ANU

Rex Espresso, Australian National University | 10am - 11:30am

Save Canberra Calendar

Contributors Wanted
Future contributors to all topics are encouraged to email info@objectivism.au with their submissions.