1984 by George Orwell – Part One w/David Baumrucker, Claire Chandler, Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

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My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the Leadership

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Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

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number 152.

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The 20th century was an era, at least the middle part of it, of

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some of the most literate readers in the history of the

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world. The readers of the mid 20th century were reading,

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absorbing and thinking about ideas that sat at the high,

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the high watermark of print culture.

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Many books, essays, magazine articles and news reports are written during the 20th century

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designed to prove many different points and advance many, many different

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ideas. The mid 20th century was also the start

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of the Western world’s obsession with an

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endlessly expanding visual culture, a culture that

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included and began to shift in

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the direction of the power of screens, both television and movie

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screens, and really began to examine their power to shape and

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deliver messages and even to deliver culture.

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The mid 20th century was also the end result,

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the logical high water mark of all of those utopian

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Enlightenment ideas about man as an individual

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and man in relation to institutions and

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governments. At the same time, the mid 20th century marked the beginning of

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the decline and ultimate fall of the Enlightenment project that had begun

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400 years earlier. In the 17th century, these

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two seemingly paradoxical and disparate events collided

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and were reported on through the writing and the

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reportage of various journalists, poets, prose and narrative

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writers, and of course political writers like the

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author we are going to be talking about here today.

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Talented writers and hack writers alike both penned their letter

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and shaped the culture of the west at this dynamic mid century mark,

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while increasingly pessimistic and cynical views of human nature

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dominated the very zeitgeist alongside the ever growing lust for

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institutional power, institutional control and institutional

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dominance. Now the main way for an

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increasingly intellectual and literate reading public to understand, contemplate and even access

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these views and opinions about human nature, of about government and

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even the future was of course the novel, the technology

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of the novel. And today we will work through

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the dominant themes of one of the seminal

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dystopian novels of the mid 20th

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century. A novel whose author’s

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last name has become an adjective for almost every

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form of totalitarianism under the Sun,

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George Orwell’s 1984

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and I’m going to hold up the book for those of you who are watching

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on the video. The copy that I have is a Signet Classics version with the

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white cover and the blue eyeball

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leaders. Some books, even not well written

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ones, can lodge their ideas so deeply into the public’s imagination

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that it requires a metaphorical crowbar and even sometimes

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metaphorical dynamite to extract them. And that

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is some of what we are going to be doing today on the podcast with

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a fine panel of folks. You’re going to hear three voices today if you’re

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listening to the audio version, and of course, if you’re watching on video, you’re going

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to see three faces joining me today.

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So we’re going to start by introducing our folks. So

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Claire Chandler is the author of Growth On Purpose and the

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founder of Talent Boost. She also joined us on episode number

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63 to discuss the Myth of Sisyphus and the most

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difficult podcast episode I’ve done so far to date.

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This is her. This is her. This is the, the crowning achievement of Claire

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Chandler on the show. Episode number 121, where we covered

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Lolita. Again, I want to be very clear, a book I

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did not pick, but I read it anyway

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and we had a vibrant discussion. I recommend going back and listening to,

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listening to us talk about that. We’re also going to be joined

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today by David Baumrucker. He’s a licensed professional clinical counselor and founder

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of Momentum Life Counseling. He joined us for episode

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number six because he’s been supporting the show for quite some time now where

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we talked about Milan Kundera’s the Unbearable Lightness of Being and episode

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number 15 where Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and

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Punishment, part one. David, we have to go back and do part two of

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that book and like cycle back around to that maybe in this new format

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we’ll be be able to, we’ll be able to do that. And of course,

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today we joined in our conversation by our usual

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partner in crime on this show, the,

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the aforementioned, well, not aforementioned, but the now mentioned

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Tom Libby, who just came on and talked with

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us about Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Hello, everyone. How are we doing today? Hey there. Doing great,

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doing good. Fantastic as always.

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It’s always love and life. Isan love and life.

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I complain about much. I try. I tried. People don’t listen, so I stop.

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I would tell a whole story about something that happened to me this morning, but

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Tom’s very tired of hearing about it and Claire heard about it before we came

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on. And David, you and I will have a session and we’ll, we’ll work through,

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we’ll work, we’ll work through the various things. We’ll do it off the air.

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Avian Challenge. We’re going to write into a novel called Hasan’s Avian

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Challenge. Book One.

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Book one. Book one. It is, it is the

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second time in my life clear that. That has happened to me. I

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don’t know what that means. Anyway,

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David has no idea what we’re talking about right now and neither does anybody else.

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So it’s just. It’s just gonna be. It’s just gonna be one of these things

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that just sort of pops up in the episode. I have no idea what any

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of that means. I just, I just, I just nod and.

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And then he gets. And he gets paid like 200 for like a 15 minute

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hour. And it’s fine. It’s just. I mean. There you go. Yeah, the bill will

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be in the mail. Wait, you’re getting paid for this?

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Oh, man. Secret is out.

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He just made it awkward. This is group therapy.

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Welcome. Welcome

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to our session. Today we’re going to be discussing totalitarianism. Journey

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should be good. It should be good for everybody. Oh my. All

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right, well, we are reading, like I said, we are looking at the

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themes and the larger. The larger ideas in

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George Orwell’s 1984. And as I mentioned in my

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intro, my longer intro episode, which you should go back and listen to

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before this episode number one, 151,

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where we talked about the literary life of George Orwell, which we’re not going to

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talk too deeply about that today. We did talk about a little bit of the

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content of the book and some of the challenges that I had reading it.

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One of the dynamics that I will mention on this episode as well is because

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this is copyrighted material, we will be referencing pieces in the book rather

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than reading directly from it. Because George

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Orwell’s estate viciously

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protects George Orwell’s copyright,

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which I find to be very, very fascinating and

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also very ironic anyway.

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And which align. It also aligns with everything else that you know about or

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that we learned about George Orwell. And I wonder how much

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he would actually be in favor of that if he were. Even. If you

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were even still alive. It would be.

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Yeah, I don’t think Tom. I don’t think he. I don’t think he would be.

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I think he would probably have a problem with, with some, some of the things

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that his heirs have done in his name,

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including that the, the. The. Was it the second wife that he married

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who was the one who was most. The most vicious

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protector of his estate up until her death in the 1970s.

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Sonia Brownwell Orwell. She was the one who

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sort of set up what we now know as

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sort of the. For lack of a better term, although we’re going to use it

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a lot today, the Orwellian myth structure that

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exists around both this book and Animal Farm,

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which we’re also going to cover later on. Later on this month.

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So the book itself is structured in

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a three book form. And so in the first book, we are introduced to the

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character of Winston. Winston lives in

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a totalizing one Party state,

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Oceania, which is at war with East Asia or

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Eurasia, depending upon which day of the week, is working for whatever

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propaganda goal it is that Oceania wants to. Wants to put

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forth. And Winston has a job as a

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member of the Outer Party. So there’s the Inner Party, there’s the Outer Party, and

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then there are the proles or the proletariat. The proletariat are what

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we would call in the United States probably the working class or the poor.

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The Outer Party are folks who would be probably like a lot of us on

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this recording today. Probably a lot of us listening would be considered middle class, for

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lack of a better term. And then the Inner Party folks

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are the upper class, right? The folks who know

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the game is all a game and yet also are the

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loudest proponents of the game. They are

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the folks that later on, Alexander Solzhenitsyn would write in the

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Gulag Archipelago. They’re the same people who,

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when they were sent to the Gulag, shouted the loudest in

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favor of Communism. Solzhenitsyn documents this

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in his book. And that is what is documented here in the first part

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of 1984. We also get the beginnings

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of Newspeak, the removal of. And the

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changing of the language in the first part here of

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1984. And some of the philosophies that the Party

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has around history. There is no past because the past can be

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erased and manipulated and changed. There is no future,

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because if there were a future, folks would actually be working towards something that would

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be outside the Party. There is merely always the ever expanding

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now, the ever expanding present. And

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that sets up some of the things that we

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see and can think about as dominant

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themes that Orwell was trying to push throughout his entire life as an author,

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particularly as a political writer and quite frankly, a polemicist,

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we cover. Tom and I covered his essay on the

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English language a few episodes back. I would recommend going

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listening to that. And while Orwell did have a lot of good things to say

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about the nature of language and the understanding of

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language when he was putting together 1984, I want to read you a direct quote

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from him. And he said this. What it is really meant to do is

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to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into, quote, unquote, zones of

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influence. I thought of it in 1944 as a result of the

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Tehran conference and in addition to indicate by

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parodying them the intellectual implications of

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totalitarianism, and that’s really the point of 1984 at a

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large level is what are the intellectual implications of totalitarianism

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and how do we think about that? If you go and look at

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Orwell’s Wikipedia page

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and you know just a little bit about human nature and a little bit about

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personality, Orwell, like any good artist, was a

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persnickety, difficult and probably deeply, personally unpleasant.

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Ma’ am. He did not impress me after reading his Wikipedia page, did

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not impress me as a guy. And I did some other research. It wasn’t just

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Wikipedia. When I did some other digging around on the, on this great sampling tool

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we have called the Internet, which again I think Orwell would have been blown away

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by that, but went into some digging around and found out

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that yes indeed he was a deeply difficult individual. People did not like

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him. His, his classmates at Eton

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did not like him. He suffered, well, not suffered, but

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he, he had the, he had the

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psychological, the psychology of being

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uncomfortable with being middle class in,

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in England and also having to serve in

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the military in, in, in India and tried to, and we’ll talk

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a little bit about this later on, try to make, trying

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to make hay with the Spanish Civil War. And that didn’t really work out. As

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a matter of fact, the writer Henry James told him that all the things you’re

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going to go to fight for in Spain are all just a bunch of clap

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trap. You don’t actually really believe that. Which as an upper crust, you

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know, British gentleman, I’m sure in that, in a very Doug Murray

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lilt, he rejected that feedback

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from Mr. Henry James, as the British often do.

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But he was fascinated by systems, he was fascinated by institutions and he was

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fascinated by how things all click together. And that is

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one of the. You gotta sometimes give the author,

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not sometimes you have to give the author’s due. That is what has I think

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driven this book directly into the zeitgeist of

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particularly the progressive left imagination in the United

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States, but increasingly a globalized imagination

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of what totalitarianism actually is. And I have some thoughts on that today which we

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can discuss. But I’ve rambled on long enough and I’ve introduced the book.

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So I’m going to go around the horn. We’re going to start with,

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with Tom and then we’ll go to David and we’ll go to Claire.

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What are your thoughts or impressions of

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1984 I know it’s been a little while, Tom, but go

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ahead. I, I mean, I remember

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again as we were kind of joking about this a few minutes ago, but

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yeah, I read it almost 30 years ago, so it’s been a while. But

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I do remember it being kind of impactful at the time.

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And if you think about like, you know, back in the 80s,

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I mean, I read it probably 88,

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89. So it was like. So we were like,

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we were confused, like, oh, is this the book written a couple of years ago?

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Or. And then like, of course, your teacher standing in front of the class going,

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no, this book was written in 1940, whatever it was. And I was like, then

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how do they know what’s happening in 1984? Like, we were very confused why we’re

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reading this book in the first place. But I do remember it was, it was

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kind of impactful. It was impactful to the point where people are,

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you know, the idea or concept.

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If we had a such a strong

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political party that could actually do this, like, what would

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be the pros and cons of it? And we had a lot of classroom discussion

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around the what ifs. Right. Like, we’re a

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pretty strong two political party country. We’ve tried several times to have

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a third party. It doesn’t usually last long. It doesn’t usually. And it doesn’t usually

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make a lot of impact. So we’ve been a strong two political

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party almost from the beginning of our country. So

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when we think of one of them falling off and just one of them taking

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power and it becoming. What’s the difference between a political party

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holding all the cards versus a dictator holding all the cards or

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a monarchy holding. It’s essentially the same thing.

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It’s government by committee, sure, but it’s still one ideology. It’s

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one direction, one unilateral thought process that

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kind of dictates who you are, what you do, what you think and how you

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act. So it was, it was pretty impactful to me when I was three.

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So I’ve been, I’ve been a huge, huge, huge

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advocate for trying for us to get a third party that actually sticks

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it. Obviously I’m not successful at it, so I’m not

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suggesting that it’s going to happen. But I’ve always felt like we’ve

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needed, you know, you always have, like when people tell you there’s always three sides

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to every story, right? His, hers and the truth. So I figured if we had

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three political parties, we could kind of figure out like,

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right, wrong and indifferent, like, and then be able to kind of select between the,

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the three, you know, the three things that you want to do that you, that

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you feel you should be focused towards. So

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I feel like this book kind of talks your, you

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into some of that stuff, I guess, is what my point was. Like you start

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thinking about that stuff as you’re reading it, essentially. Right, right. Well. And

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you read it at a depressionable age, which a lot of people do read 1984

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in high school. That’s the first time they’re, they touch on these ideas and

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just like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, it’s one of those

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books that, and Catcher in the Rye and the Great

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Gatsby, you know, is. Yeah,

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Brave New World. Right. Huxley. Right. The Big Five. Right. That sort of just

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embed on you at a very. Or imprint on you at a very impressionable age

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and then sort of set the tone for your thinking

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in the, in the future. Dave, what were your thoughts on this

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book? I, I think the book’s, it’s unique and

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I think that it’s honest. My opinion is a better book than Brave New World.

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But I, I, why I like this book is because it is very linear.

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Like, you walk through this book and I think Orwell’s

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perspective was that he cared less about characters and more about, like,

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this activism through his art. And it seems like he is very dedicated

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to world building and shaping a perspective and shaping

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a message. And I like this book in that term because I think the

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ambiguity. Again, we can make the argument that Winston isn’t

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developed enough. Right. We come into the book like, was Winston always like

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this? What happened to Winston? How do we, we, we meet him somewhere in this

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weird middle ground. And I remember when I first read

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it, I was kind of frustrated with that. And I, as time goes on, I

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went back and I looked at things with this and I was like, well, but

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that offers us a very unique perspective, though,

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because there is less character development. I think it makes it

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easier for us as a reader to almost insert ourselves in that. And I think,

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I don’t know, but that was a feeling I kept on getting when I went

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back to this is going. Maybe that’s what his intention was, that I’m not going

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to put a lot of focus on the nuanced character pieces, but I’m going to

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let the characters be almost like the, the pong

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paddles, right? Like bouncing this idea or this interaction between, like, power

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and totality and propaganda. It’s like the characters seem

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to be these interplacing people like pieces that we

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would just kind of walk with them along this and go, oh, this is the

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introduction to that theme in the book. And then we’d seen somebody else. And this

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is our introduction to that theme in the book. And for that, I really liked

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it. Going back, Tom, what you said, I think that it.

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When I first read it, too, it was impactful. I had no idea why it

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00:18:47.810 –> 00:18:51.010
was impactful. Like, I just knew that when I was reading something in high school

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going, there’s something to this. And you have to. Obviously, I had to get a

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little bit older and to spend some time actually reflecting. And I think the last

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15, 20 years have been really, really interesting because we think about the word

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Orwellian, right? And the beautiful thing is both the right and the left can use

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it because double speak. And isn’t that a fun thing we have to bear witness

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to now? So, again, it’s a very.

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I would agree it’s impactful. And I think that only

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getting ready for this episode and going back and looking at it again, just, I

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guess, with a new set of eyes for myself, I was like, oh, there are

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some things of this I didn’t really realize the first time I watched. I was

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trying to. I was focusing on the characters. I was focusing on

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Winston. I was focusing on just the interaction, especially at the end with

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the romance and the lack thereof. And then there was

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some interesting pieces I focused on in the beginning. And then I went back. I’m

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like, I don’t think that this is the whole. I don’t think this is what

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the perspective of this is about characters at all. I think that the characters

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are secondary to the storyline.

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Okay. I might be. I might

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be. I’m out to push back on you a little bit, Dave, because I was

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not. Maybe. And maybe I’m reading too many literary novels. That might be

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it. I might be. I might be, too. I’ll grant you that. I might be

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too down that road. Right. Things.

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And I. I am. More. Well, we’ll get to James Baldwin and

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00:20:10.570 –> 00:20:14.290
everyone’s protest novel in a minute. Claire, you are.

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You were very excited to read 1984. This is one of the books that I

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initially sent out. My request of, like, hey, who wants to join me on this

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00:20:20.330 –> 00:20:24.050
podcast episode? Like, I do at the end of every year. You’re like, yeah,

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that one. And I did not, by the way. Normally I try to, like, pick

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people, like, who I think is going to do what. And I did not

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anticipate this one coming from you, so. So why are you excited about

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00:20:33.490 –> 00:20:36.990
1984. First and foremost, because I had to rehabil my

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00:20:36.990 –> 00:20:39.870
reputation with your audience after selecting Lolita.

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I. I did pick Lolita for its controversy

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because I had never read it, and I wanted to see one.

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What all the fuss was about because I knew that we would have a. An

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exceptionally interesting conversation, which we did, you know,

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so. So this was in part to sort of counteract that, but it was

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also an opportunity to not revisit

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high school, but to reread

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something that I first read as an idealistic

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high school student who was naive, who had not

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experienced much grit in

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the world. Right. So it’s interesting when I.

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When I remember and Tom and David, you. You touched upon

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it already, sort of your memories of your first introduction

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to the book was far different from revisiting it now.

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And now having gone through some grit, some

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decades of realism,

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some decades of true polarization. And I know we will get into,

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you know, is it. Is it still dystopian when it’s really mirroring

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kind of current political life? I don’t know. I think we might need

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00:21:52.320 –> 00:21:56.080
to come up with a different description of it. But I also chuckle,

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Hasan, when you. When you described Mr. Orwell as

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persnickety, because it’s one of my favorite

359
00:22:03.350 –> 00:22:06.870
English vocab words, I used it the other day in

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reference to. I think zoom was being persnickety at the. At the time,

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you know, so if even fiction is in some

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way autobiographical, you know, I. I

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00:22:18.390 –> 00:22:21.990
think you do see a little bit of the persnicketiness of Mr. Orwell

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and David. It’s interesting your observation about the fact that these characters were not

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00:22:26.470 –> 00:22:29.830
terribly well developed, and maybe you didn’t notice that the first go around.

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00:22:31.550 –> 00:22:35.350
I didn’t really either, and I couldn’t put my finger on what was different

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this time until you said that. And I think it also,

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for you, it made it easier to insert yourself into the

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novel. For me, it made it easier to care less about the fate

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00:22:46.430 –> 00:22:49.910
of the characters, because it wasn’t really about the characters

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00:22:49.910 –> 00:22:53.310
themselves. It was about the what if? And it was about

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the, you know, a particular character named

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Winston that we don’t care that much about, because to your. To your point, we

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00:23:00.740 –> 00:23:03.380
don’t really know his backstory. We don’t know how he got to where he is,

375
00:23:05.140 –> 00:23:08.580
but at the end, when he made the decision to choose

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00:23:08.580 –> 00:23:11.140
conformity over love because that was the easier path,

377
00:23:13.380 –> 00:23:16.540
you know, do we really care that he never really figured it out? I don’t.

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00:23:16.540 –> 00:23:20.220
I don’t know. I’m kind of undecided about that. So a lot, a lot to

379
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unpack, certainly. But reading it again as an adult,

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at least in the, in the guise of an adult versus my

381
00:23:27.300 –> 00:23:30.980
idealistic high school years, very different

382
00:23:30.980 –> 00:23:34.740
book indeed. The first time I read this

383
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book was when I was about 15, 16 maybe. And

384
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interestingly enough, I did read it, along with Brave New World and

385
00:23:41.980 –> 00:23:45.780
Brave New World, which you’ll also cover on the podcast coming up here in a

386
00:23:45.780 –> 00:23:48.980
little bit. Brave New World stuck with me more than

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1984, even at like the age of like 15,

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partially because to the point that

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David has already brought up. Aldous Huxley is just a more

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00:24:00.900 –> 00:24:04.580
literary writer, right? He’s, he’s just, he’s writing into more of

391
00:24:04.580 –> 00:24:08.100
a developed space. The characters are more developed, their

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00:24:08.100 –> 00:24:11.940
motivations are more clear, I

393
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guess at a, at a, at an authorial level, or

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00:24:15.740 –> 00:24:18.500
maybe not an authority level. Maybe that’s what I want to say. They’re clearer at

395
00:24:18.500 –> 00:24:22.220
a character development level. Right. And I was also reading this book

396
00:24:22.220 –> 00:24:25.020
during a period of time when I was beginning to explore and really get into

397
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movies. So I was being very much influenced by. This is why I brought up

398
00:24:28.710 –> 00:24:32.550
screens in the introduction. I was very much being influenced by screens and

399
00:24:32.550 –> 00:24:36.350
visual culture. You know, it was a summer. I mean, my. The summer of the

400
00:24:36.350 –> 00:24:40.150
year I turned 16. I watched probably a hundred movies

401
00:24:40.150 –> 00:24:43.990
in that summer. So I had my first interaction. Well, this was

402
00:24:43.990 –> 00:24:47.750
the heady days of the end of the collapse of Blockbuster Video, the heady

403
00:24:47.750 –> 00:24:51.530
days of the collapse of Blockbuster Video when you could walk into Blockbuster and

404
00:24:51.530 –> 00:24:55.370
you could walk out with like packs of videos. They were bundling DVDs together because

405
00:24:55.370 –> 00:24:58.850
they couldn’t figure out how to compete with anything. And they would just give them

406
00:24:58.850 –> 00:25:02.050
to you walking out the door. They walk out with like $20 worth of movies.

407
00:25:02.050 –> 00:25:05.730
It was insane. And

408
00:25:06.130 –> 00:25:09.890
so, you know, I would go from watching, you know, Shawshank Redemption to,

409
00:25:09.890 –> 00:25:13.730
you know, Braveheart to Goodfellas to

410
00:25:15.010 –> 00:25:18.710
Apocalypse now to, you know, she Wore a Yellow

411
00:25:18.710 –> 00:25:22.350
Ribbon. And also at the same time, I’m reading, you know, I’m reading these,

412
00:25:22.510 –> 00:25:25.630
reading these books. So all those, all these things were kind of merging together in

413
00:25:25.630 –> 00:25:29.070
my head, which made for a heady stew. Yeah, Tom?

414
00:25:29.230 –> 00:25:32.110
Oh, I was just gonna. I was just kind of chuckling inside that

415
00:25:32.830 –> 00:25:36.590
watching Apocalypse. I can only imagine a 16 year old watching Apocalypse now

416
00:25:36.590 –> 00:25:39.310
route while reading A Brave new world in

417
00:25:39.550 –> 00:25:43.230
1984. What I could only imagine the

418
00:25:43.230 –> 00:25:46.950
turmoil inside. That’s my grandma told me when she. So

419
00:25:46.950 –> 00:25:50.770
my grandma, who was, Who Is fan of Oprah. Oprah came on at 4 o’

420
00:25:50.770 –> 00:25:54.370
clock where I lived when I was in high school. She, she, she, this was

421
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the deal. She said you could watch any movies that you want between like noon

422
00:25:58.130 –> 00:26:01.970
and 4. But when 4 o’ clock comes, you’re done. Oprah’s

423
00:26:01.970 –> 00:26:05.290
coming on, you’re done. And like, you’re done. That’s it. Like, I don’t care if

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00:26:05.290 –> 00:26:08.090
you’re in the middle of the movie. I don’t care if the guy’s screaming. I

425
00:26:08.090 –> 00:26:11.930
don’t care what’s happening. Like, you’re out. Go outside. Like, do something else.

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And so I knew I had that little, that little spot

427
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where I would be able to, to consume. And I did. I did. It was

428
00:26:19.520 –> 00:26:23.320
a, it was a big summer. Okay? So several. I’ve taken

429
00:26:23.320 –> 00:26:27.160
notes while everybody’s been talking. Several things that jump out to me. The keyword that

430
00:26:27.160 –> 00:26:30.840
everybody uses is. And even I’ve used is impactful. Right? So follow

431
00:26:30.840 –> 00:26:31.360
up question.

432
00:26:34.960 –> 00:26:38.400
Oh, actually, before I even do the follow up question, reading it again,

433
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right In. In light of me be their 30 years have now passed. I

434
00:26:42.440 –> 00:26:45.680
got to admit, I was gonna save this for later, but what the hell, I’ll

435
00:26:45.680 –> 00:26:49.040
go with it now. I kind of.

436
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This is gonna be terrible, but I’m gonna be the terrible person. I

437
00:26:53.080 –> 00:26:56.920
laughed at the book. I laughed at it. I did.

438
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I chuckled and I, I thought, oh, you sweet summer child.

439
00:27:01.040 –> 00:27:04.840
Right? Like the last 30 years that we’ve lived through. Not

440
00:27:04.840 –> 00:27:08.680
in the Soviet Russia, which is dead and gone as of, as of the

441
00:27:08.680 –> 00:27:12.450
1980s. Pachay, Vladimir Putin. The

442
00:27:12.450 –> 00:27:16.250
greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, according to him. Not my

443
00:27:16.250 –> 00:27:19.610
words, his. But we don’t need like the

444
00:27:19.610 –> 00:27:23.170
Stasi and like children reporting on their parents.

445
00:27:23.170 –> 00:27:26.290
We’ve got cell phones for that and everybody has them in their pocket by the

446
00:27:26.290 –> 00:27:30.050
way. We’re feeding all of our data into them. We don’t need

447
00:27:30.050 –> 00:27:33.810
screens on this that are on all the time that watch us and that we

448
00:27:33.810 –> 00:27:37.290
watch. We already have those. They’re brought to us by Apple. We don’t need them.

449
00:27:37.290 –> 00:27:40.410
We have them. We have them. They’re brought to us by Apple and by Android.

450
00:27:40.410 –> 00:27:44.230
Right. They’re brought to us by Goog Google. We have the greatest behavioral

451
00:27:44.230 –> 00:27:47.950
tracking system ever created in the history of

452
00:27:47.950 –> 00:27:51.030
the world. It’s called the Internet. And so

453
00:27:51.750 –> 00:27:55.470
I read these things and then we just all

454
00:27:55.470 –> 00:27:59.230
went through Covid together and we’re all gonna have different opinions about what happened with

455
00:27:59.230 –> 00:28:02.350
COVID But we did all go through Covid together and we can all sort of

456
00:28:02.350 –> 00:28:06.150
see with our eyes exactly what happened. Whatever the reasons are or

457
00:28:06.150 –> 00:28:09.310
justifications don’t matter. Like, these are the things that happen, right?

458
00:28:11.870 –> 00:28:15.590
And I need an explanation. And I put

459
00:28:15.590 –> 00:28:18.270
this, I did put this in my, in my book or in my script. We

460
00:28:18.270 –> 00:28:21.270
could talk about this today. I need an explanation. If that’s not Orwellian, if those

461
00:28:21.270 –> 00:28:23.870
things aren’t Orwellian, then I need an explanation for what happened in the last 30

462
00:28:23.870 –> 00:28:27.470
years. I need a better explanation other than maybe just governmental

463
00:28:27.470 –> 00:28:30.590
incompetency or just foolish people who are pursuing power.

464
00:28:32.110 –> 00:28:35.510
Now. Keep that in the back of your head. Because that was sort of the,

465
00:28:35.510 –> 00:28:38.590
the framework that I came to and I. Did I crack? I sort of cracked

466
00:28:38.590 –> 00:28:41.930
up laughing. I did. Like, I was like, okay,

467
00:28:42.410 –> 00:28:45.770
like, this is definitely written from a mid 20th century

468
00:28:45.770 –> 00:28:48.890
perspective when the horrors of this

469
00:28:49.450 –> 00:28:53.250
seemed to be more horrible. And now we’ve wound up in, we’ve

470
00:28:53.250 –> 00:28:57.050
wound up in a different spot. So follow up question, which I was

471
00:28:57.050 –> 00:29:00.810
originally going to go back to. How young a person do you think should read

472
00:29:00.810 –> 00:29:04.650
this book? Who would

473
00:29:04.650 –> 00:29:07.230
you throw, what’s the minimum age? You would throw this at somebody?

474
00:29:10.980 –> 00:29:13.900
So my, my first reaction to that is it sort of, it, it sort of

475
00:29:13.900 –> 00:29:17.300
triggers for me and I, and I, I laugh at

476
00:29:17.300 –> 00:29:21.020
myself when I look at the high school students of today, my

477
00:29:21.020 –> 00:29:24.700
nephew being one of them, and the thought of him reading what I

478
00:29:24.700 –> 00:29:28.540
read at his age, I, I feel. Not specific to

479
00:29:28.540 –> 00:29:32.260
1984, but a lot of the books that we’ve already mentioned, I think

480
00:29:32.420 –> 00:29:36.140
he’s not ready for those. First of all, he’s not, he’s not a big reader.

481
00:29:36.140 –> 00:29:39.780
I always had a book in my hand. My last day of school,

482
00:29:39.780 –> 00:29:43.220
I made a beeline to the library. I was that kid, right?

483
00:29:44.820 –> 00:29:48.260
So he’s, he’s, he’s got different interests, but I also feel

484
00:29:48.500 –> 00:29:51.780
I’m laughing at myself because I’m finally at the point where I go, kids today,

485
00:29:52.020 –> 00:29:55.620
but kids today don’t read, you know, to the level that,

486
00:29:55.620 –> 00:29:59.140
that we did. Or at least that’s my, my accusation of that.

487
00:30:00.670 –> 00:30:04.390
How early should someone read this book? Among the others that we

488
00:30:04.390 –> 00:30:08.230
mentioned, today’s kids of, of today’s

489
00:30:08.230 –> 00:30:11.790
era. I, because kids, to me, the, my, my,

490
00:30:11.790 –> 00:30:15.349
my initial reaction to that is it depends on the era. If we’re talking about

491
00:30:15.349 –> 00:30:18.990
today’s kids, I think they could read it, but I think they’re going to

492
00:30:18.990 –> 00:30:22.510
read it, discard it and go, oh, yeah, Big Brother, isn’t that a reality TV

493
00:30:22.510 –> 00:30:26.360
show on cbs? And then

494
00:30:26.360 –> 00:30:29.240
they’ll move On. So, you know, this is the TV and

495
00:30:31.720 –> 00:30:32.840
tablet generation.

496
00:30:38.040 –> 00:30:41.800
I think, I think the same age group, I

497
00:30:41.880 –> 00:30:45.520
think that, you know, middle, high school. Middle, high school, meaning like

498
00:30:45.520 –> 00:30:47.960
sophomore, junior would probably make sense.

499
00:30:49.480 –> 00:30:53.260
I’m kind of with Claire here in a, in a sense,

500
00:30:53.340 –> 00:30:57.180
not exactly, but in a sense, but because I do think today’s

501
00:30:57.180 –> 00:31:00.900
kids, I, I definitely don’t think they read as much as, as we were.

502
00:31:00.900 –> 00:31:03.940
And I don’t, I also don’t think the curriculum is forcing them to read as

503
00:31:03.940 –> 00:31:07.660
much as we had to as well. But I do think that

504
00:31:07.660 –> 00:31:11.500
they’re, I think they’re, they are more advanced than we were.

505
00:31:11.660 –> 00:31:15.460
I think they think differently. I think they think through problems differently. I

506
00:31:15.460 –> 00:31:19.230
think they, they see things differently than we did because they’ve had so much

507
00:31:19.230 –> 00:31:22.790
exposure to it such, in such early way earlier than we did.

508
00:31:22.790 –> 00:31:26.630
Our only exposure was the evening news. They’re exposed to it 24 7.

509
00:31:26.630 –> 00:31:30.390
They can see whatever they want. So I don’t, I don’t think the age

510
00:31:30.790 –> 00:31:34.350
much matters. I think, I think that that middle high school age would be great

511
00:31:34.350 –> 00:31:37.590
for them to read it. But I think their reaction to it might be a

512
00:31:37.590 –> 00:31:41.270
little bit different than what you were thinking, Claire. I think their reaction to it

513
00:31:41.270 –> 00:31:45.070
is going to be not so much is like, you know,

514
00:31:45.070 –> 00:31:48.570
oh, isn’t Big, Big Brother a show? But kind of what

515
00:31:48.570 –> 00:31:51.690
Hasan was alluding to a few minutes ago. They’re going to read the book and

516
00:31:51.690 –> 00:31:55.410
it’s not going to be as impactful because they’re already seeing some of it,

517
00:31:55.730 –> 00:31:59.410
right? Like so, so they’re already seeing that the government can see everything that

518
00:31:59.410 –> 00:32:03.090
they do. The government, Big data is the, the government

519
00:32:03.090 –> 00:32:06.650
at this point. Like I think they’re already seeing all that. So it’s not

520
00:32:06.650 –> 00:32:09.850
gonna shock them. It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna be as in like when we

521
00:32:09.850 –> 00:32:13.170
looked at that, we were like, oh, wait, what, oh my God, what if a

522
00:32:13.170 –> 00:32:16.960
government actually did that? And my kids, my kids are looking

523
00:32:16.960 –> 00:32:19.480
at it going, what are you talking about, dad? The government is already doing that.

524
00:32:19.560 –> 00:32:23.280
We’re just falling into their trap, so to speak. And it doesn’t matter if they’re

525
00:32:23.280 –> 00:32:27.040
a Democrat or Republican, they’re both doing it. So to, to

526
00:32:27.040 –> 00:32:30.679
my kids, that single source of Big Brother

527
00:32:30.679 –> 00:32:34.280
that was, is, is represented in 1984 as one political

528
00:32:34.440 –> 00:32:38.040
party in my kids views. It’s just the government

529
00:32:38.040 –> 00:32:41.710
is the government. They, they think that, that regardless of the

530
00:32:41.710 –> 00:32:45.430
parties that, that they represent, they would represent that whole thing. And

531
00:32:45.430 –> 00:32:48.750
I, I think that, I think they would read that book and go

532
00:32:49.550 –> 00:32:53.310
and yeah, like I think, I don’t think, I don’t think it would be like,

533
00:32:53.310 –> 00:32:56.270
like I said, we’ve all said it was impactful to us. I don’t think it

534
00:32:56.270 –> 00:32:59.710
would be impactful to them the same way because I think that they, they would

535
00:32:59.710 –> 00:33:03.350
feel like they’re already living it. What, what might surprise them and what

536
00:33:03.350 –> 00:33:07.050
I, what I think what I would love to hear or see is if

537
00:33:07.370 –> 00:33:11.130
any one of them could, could wrap a bow around the fact

538
00:33:11.130 –> 00:33:14.890
that this book was written 80 years ago like that. That

539
00:33:14.890 –> 00:33:18.410
I think I would like to see what that association would be. But I don’t

540
00:33:18.410 –> 00:33:21.370
think the content of the book would, would surprise them as much as it did

541
00:33:21.370 –> 00:33:25.210
us. Yeah,

542
00:33:25.210 –> 00:33:28.970
I, I think I, I think probably 10th grade

543
00:33:28.970 –> 00:33:32.730
is what I think just development stage

544
00:33:33.050 –> 00:33:36.290
wise. That’s when we’re trying to find where we’re trying to find our tribe. Right.

545
00:33:36.290 –> 00:33:39.930
We really want to isolate. I think political activism has started in 9th

546
00:33:39.930 –> 00:33:43.410
grade now. So I think we have to start recognizing the fact that children are

547
00:33:43.410 –> 00:33:47.250
more political today than they ever were. I just

548
00:33:47.250 –> 00:33:50.850
think the big difference is that at least. So I read this

549
00:33:50.850 –> 00:33:52.650
in I think 2000.

550
00:33:54.970 –> 00:33:58.690
For me it was we, we the students were the

551
00:33:58.690 –> 00:34:01.930
ones asking the questions. I think we’re a post question

552
00:34:02.090 –> 00:34:05.830
asking educational system. I think we’re in a prompt

553
00:34:05.830 –> 00:34:08.870
delivery education system. So I think that we have to get.

554
00:34:09.350 –> 00:34:12.550
It’d be fascinating to listen to see them do it.

555
00:34:13.750 –> 00:34:17.430
Tom, to your point, I think, I do think that

556
00:34:17.430 –> 00:34:21.110
there are some radical advantages that kids today have

557
00:34:21.110 –> 00:34:24.310
that we don’t have just in terms of awareness.

558
00:34:24.790 –> 00:34:28.070
I think that they’re hyper aware and maybe that’s what all the mental health stuff

559
00:34:28.070 –> 00:34:31.730
is about. But I think it’d be interesting because when I’m,

560
00:34:31.810 –> 00:34:35.370
when I have my experience working with people under the age of 23, I’m very

561
00:34:35.370 –> 00:34:39.010
prompt driven. I have to present a series of secular

562
00:34:39.250 –> 00:34:41.330
prompts in sequence and out of that

563
00:34:43.010 –> 00:34:46.610
just a wonderful array of different ideas come out of it. But they’re not

564
00:34:47.010 –> 00:34:50.610
self driving those questions. They’re not self invoking. Like

565
00:34:50.690 –> 00:34:53.970
I’m thinking about this because I would love what I would the prompt again to

566
00:34:53.970 –> 00:34:57.679
what I would love to ask them is going is if this was

567
00:34:57.679 –> 00:35:01.279
the vision 80 years ago. Use your minds guys. What is your

568
00:35:01.279 –> 00:35:04.959
vision? Right? What is the multiplier

569
00:35:04.959 –> 00:35:08.719
effect that you kids can see going 80 years into the

570
00:35:08.719 –> 00:35:12.079
future? Because I think that that would also be a fascinating thing to watch them

571
00:35:12.079 –> 00:35:15.799
because yeah, I think that’s a really good question. I don’t know the

572
00:35:15.799 –> 00:35:19.599
answer. I just think that 9th and 10th grade and maybe you

573
00:35:19.599 –> 00:35:22.519
have to put the book on audio and maybe you have to kind of watch,

574
00:35:22.839 –> 00:35:25.799
kind of prompt them through listening to pieces by pieces of it.

575
00:35:26.530 –> 00:35:30.290
But I don’t think the material is above their head. I think that they’re definitely

576
00:35:30.290 –> 00:35:34.090
ready for it. I think I, I think I

577
00:35:34.090 –> 00:35:37.450
read it my junior year, so 11th grade, but I’m fine. Like I said, I’m

578
00:35:37.450 –> 00:35:39.930
fine. 10 or 11 is fine with me. Either one of those I think would

579
00:35:39.930 –> 00:35:43.490
be fine. I’m fascinated by the idea of

580
00:35:43.490 –> 00:35:47.010
prompt of prompt, a prompt delivery based

581
00:35:47.090 –> 00:35:50.810
system versus a post question asking

582
00:35:50.810 –> 00:35:54.540
system or maybe not possible pre question

583
00:35:54.540 –> 00:35:58.340
asking system. I’m going to get back to that because there’s a fundamental difference.

584
00:35:58.340 –> 00:36:01.060
I’m doing a lot of work, interestingly enough, in some other work that I’m doing

585
00:36:01.060 –> 00:36:04.620
with other clients out of my leadership consultancy.

586
00:36:05.260 –> 00:36:09.020
I’m currently doing a lot of work with the four major LLMs.

587
00:36:09.900 –> 00:36:13.420
So I’m working with Perplexity, I’m working with Copilot, I’m working with Claude,

588
00:36:13.500 –> 00:36:17.180
and I’m working with ChatGPT. And the way,

589
00:36:17.600 –> 00:36:21.200
David, to your point, the way that you think in

590
00:36:21.200 –> 00:36:24.960
relation to those systems is a fundamentally different way of

591
00:36:24.960 –> 00:36:28.800
thinking than search based thinking which

592
00:36:28.880 –> 00:36:31.920
comes out of Google and which is what we’re all all sort of very

593
00:36:32.240 –> 00:36:35.800
familiar with. So it is a different way of thinking. It’s interesting that you, that

594
00:36:35.800 –> 00:36:39.600
you brought that up. Okay, let’s turn the corner here

595
00:36:39.600 –> 00:36:43.040
and talk a little bit about some of my personal problems with this book

596
00:36:43.740 –> 00:36:47.260
and then I’ll use this to jump off to other folks with this.

597
00:36:47.260 –> 00:36:51.100
So yes, I did kind of chuckle at it. I tried to take the

598
00:36:51.100 –> 00:36:54.940
book seriously, I did on its own merits and I failed miserably at

599
00:36:54.940 –> 00:36:58.460
probably at doing that. And the biggest reason, I think I failed miserably at it.

600
00:36:58.460 –> 00:37:02.140
And by the way, this really began to happen to me when we, when we,

601
00:37:02.140 –> 00:37:05.620
as we got more into the book and as Orwell began to develop more of

602
00:37:05.620 –> 00:37:09.460
the ideas that Winston was beginning to

603
00:37:09.460 –> 00:37:12.860
articulate. Right. So right around the middle of

604
00:37:12.940 –> 00:37:16.440
book one and going into book two, Winston

605
00:37:16.600 –> 00:37:20.200
begins to. And it’s almost as if

606
00:37:20.200 –> 00:37:24.000
weirdly enough, from a literary perspective, it’s almost as if Orwell

607
00:37:24.000 –> 00:37:27.320
didn’t have enough for two more sections in this book.

608
00:37:27.640 –> 00:37:31.000
And so he had to come up with the woman foil because

609
00:37:32.280 –> 00:37:35.600
anyway, he had to come up with the woman foil. And so he creates the

610
00:37:35.600 –> 00:37:39.080
character Julia and she is a about as one

611
00:37:39.080 –> 00:37:41.080
dimensional character as I’ve ever seen. In literature.

612
00:37:43.000 –> 00:37:46.760
And, and. And there is one line in here when. When

613
00:37:46.760 –> 00:37:49.560
she first, you know, sort of engages with him

614
00:37:50.680 –> 00:37:54.520
and Winston is. Is growing and is thinking and

615
00:37:54.520 –> 00:37:58.120
is. And is moving, but he

616
00:37:58.120 –> 00:38:01.880
thinks about her in a particular way. And one of the things. A

617
00:38:01.880 –> 00:38:05.080
couple things he says. He says, number one, that her. Her.

618
00:38:06.280 –> 00:38:10.020
Her sexuality and her. Yeah, here we go. With

619
00:38:10.020 –> 00:38:13.820
Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. The sex impulse

620
00:38:13.820 –> 00:38:17.660
was dangerous to the party. And because the sex impulse was dangerous to the party,

621
00:38:18.700 –> 00:38:22.540
every act of sexual engagement that they had in the book

622
00:38:23.260 –> 00:38:26.620
was a act of protest and an act of

623
00:38:26.620 –> 00:38:30.300
rejection of the party. Which, by the way, I will

624
00:38:30.300 –> 00:38:32.940
say this as a person who’s been married a long, long time.

625
00:38:34.540 –> 00:38:38.310
I’ve never. Even when I was single, I never met a person. And then immediately,

626
00:38:38.310 –> 00:38:40.790
like, boom. Like, just went to the thing. I don’t know how it works now,

627
00:38:41.190 –> 00:38:44.270
apparently I hear that that happens a lot now. It did not happen for me

628
00:38:44.270 –> 00:38:48.030
that way. There was some sort of seduction there. And I presumed that even more

629
00:38:48.030 –> 00:38:51.190
in the 1940s there would be some form of seduction. But then I went back

630
00:38:51.190 –> 00:38:54.270
and read, read, read and looked a little bit at Orwell, and I think Orwell

631
00:38:54.270 –> 00:38:58.030
struggled with women. So there you go. I don’t think he knew

632
00:38:58.030 –> 00:39:01.790
how to write that. So Winston literally meets Julia. She drops a note in

633
00:39:01.790 –> 00:39:04.890
his hand, and then, like, they’re off to the races. It’s.

634
00:39:05.530 –> 00:39:08.330
It’s weird. It’s the 1940s version of, like,

635
00:39:08.970 –> 00:39:10.090
OnlyFans or

636
00:39:12.810 –> 00:39:16.370
Tinder. Yeah, it’s the 1940s version of

637
00:39:16.370 –> 00:39:18.650
Tinder. Hand to hand Tinder.

638
00:39:20.250 –> 00:39:23.970
So. So. So he’s got these ideas, right, wrapped around this

639
00:39:23.970 –> 00:39:26.570
one dimensional character of Julia, and

640
00:39:28.790 –> 00:39:32.510
it becomes more and more clear as he, you

641
00:39:32.510 –> 00:39:35.350
know, starts to set up. Try to set up a relationship with her, and he’s

642
00:39:35.350 –> 00:39:38.310
trying to find a place to meet her that’s away from the telescreens. And then

643
00:39:38.310 –> 00:39:42.110
he meets this guy, Mr. Charrington, who eventually turns out to be something else. But

644
00:39:42.110 –> 00:39:45.390
we’ll leave that aside for just a moment. It becomes more and more clear to

645
00:39:45.390 –> 00:39:47.590
me, or became more and more clear to me as I was reading the book,

646
00:39:47.590 –> 00:39:50.950
that what Orwell was writing was protest

647
00:39:50.950 –> 00:39:54.390
literature. It was protest literature against the Stalinist

648
00:39:54.390 –> 00:39:58.210
regiment. It was also protest literature against capitalism. Because some of the

649
00:39:58.210 –> 00:40:01.410
things he says in the book about capitalism, I’m like, that’s not. That’s. I don’t

650
00:40:01.410 –> 00:40:05.210
think that that is what you think it means. But he’s coming. Well, he’s

651
00:40:05.210 –> 00:40:08.690
coming at it, and I have to give forgiveness so one of the principles that

652
00:40:08.690 –> 00:40:12.050
I have, whenever I read something that’s from the mid century of the United States

653
00:40:12.050 –> 00:40:15.410
or of the west, going all the way back into like the

654
00:40:15.410 –> 00:40:18.370
1890s or 1880s, I give those people grace

655
00:40:19.010 –> 00:40:21.010
because they didn’t know about gulag

656
00:40:23.000 –> 00:40:26.560
there in. The idea of a concentration camp where you would put your political enemies

657
00:40:26.560 –> 00:40:29.560
was not a reality for them.

658
00:40:30.120 –> 00:40:33.480
When. When Communism was first pitched by Lenin

659
00:40:35.240 –> 00:40:39.080
and the Marxist ideals were first pitched by Lenin,

660
00:40:39.640 –> 00:40:43.120
and Stalin wasn’t running anything yet and Trotsky was still

661
00:40:43.120 –> 00:40:46.920
alive, everybody thought this could work. Everybody thought

662
00:40:46.920 –> 00:40:49.760
this was absolutely a new way of creating a new man. They weren’t saying it

663
00:40:49.760 –> 00:40:53.510
in an ironical, cynical, nihilistic way. That all came after World War

664
00:40:53.510 –> 00:40:56.590
II. We actually talked a little bit about this with Tinder Is the Night, because

665
00:40:56.590 –> 00:40:59.950
this kind of popped up with Tender Is the Night. You also had the. The

666
00:40:59.950 –> 00:41:02.790
old ending of the Victorian colonialism, right?

667
00:41:04.230 –> 00:41:07.950
And so historically, you have this brew. And then the shock of World War I

668
00:41:07.950 –> 00:41:11.750
came, and then people finally were like, oh, my God, like, wait, the institutions

669
00:41:11.750 –> 00:41:15.590
failed. Holy crap, what are we going to do? And so there’s this holy

670
00:41:15.590 –> 00:41:18.350
crap moment that happens between the end of World War I and the beginning of

671
00:41:18.350 –> 00:41:22.040
World War II, where all the idealism and everything else is just sort of up

672
00:41:22.040 –> 00:41:25.520
in the air. And this is what Orwell came out of. So Orwell’s writing a

673
00:41:25.520 –> 00:41:29.360
protest novel with all of that underneath him. And I did find myself agreeing

674
00:41:29.360 –> 00:41:33.080
with James Baldwin’s idea, which he writes in his

675
00:41:33.080 –> 00:41:36.800
book Notes of a Native Son, where he wrote a critique called

676
00:41:36.800 –> 00:41:40.480
Everyone’s Protest Novel about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And one of the

677
00:41:40.480 –> 00:41:43.880
points that he made is that in that novel or in that

678
00:41:43.880 –> 00:41:46.930
essay is that protest literature

679
00:41:47.650 –> 00:41:51.490
is not actually literature. It’s just pamphleteering.

680
00:41:52.290 –> 00:41:56.090
And pamphleteering is fine, but we shouldn’t treat it as literature. We

681
00:41:56.090 –> 00:41:59.610
shouldn’t treat it as a novel. We shouldn’t treat it as if it’s some erudite

682
00:41:59.610 –> 00:42:03.450
intellectual thing. And James Baldwin, of course, is writing

683
00:42:03.450 –> 00:42:07.170
in the context of, again, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He’s writing the context of

684
00:42:07.170 –> 00:42:10.960
civil rights. He’s writing in the context of slavery. But

685
00:42:10.960 –> 00:42:14.480
the critique applies here because Orwell was writing protest

686
00:42:14.480 –> 00:42:18.080
literature. He was protesting against Stalinism. He was protesting against

687
00:42:18.080 –> 00:42:21.640
gulags. He was protesting against what he saw as

688
00:42:21.960 –> 00:42:22.360
the.

689
00:42:25.480 –> 00:42:29.200
The. The lack of purity. It’s interesting,

690
00:42:29.200 –> 00:42:32.760
in political parties in America, we talk about politics, we talk about purity tests, the

691
00:42:32.760 –> 00:42:36.560
lack of purity in Marxism and the lack of purity in

692
00:42:36.560 –> 00:42:40.360
democratic socialism. He was protesting against that, and

693
00:42:43.160 –> 00:42:46.760
I thought you always get the impression when someone’s writing

694
00:42:47.240 –> 00:42:50.920
a protest literature, like, Alice Walker did this with the Color Purple. That was also

695
00:42:50.920 –> 00:42:54.760
protest literature. You always get the impression that they want you to do something

696
00:42:55.640 –> 00:42:59.480
with, with their protests. They want you to take action. It’s interesting that David

697
00:42:59.480 –> 00:43:03.200
said that political activism is now replaced, you

698
00:43:03.200 –> 00:43:06.840
know, reading and as a form of identity format, not reading, but as a

699
00:43:06.840 –> 00:43:10.350
method of identity formation. Now, in the ninth grade, that’s

700
00:43:10.350 –> 00:43:14.030
insane to me. Like, that’s absolutely insane. You don’t know anything about anything. When you’re

701
00:43:14.030 –> 00:43:17.150
in ninth grade, you’re gonna tell me you have some political opinion about

702
00:43:18.750 –> 00:43:22.350
capital gains taxes or something. Like, you don’t, you don’t

703
00:43:22.350 –> 00:43:25.790
work, you have no money. What

704
00:43:26.270 –> 00:43:30.030
are you getting active about? What are we doing? Active about

705
00:43:30.030 –> 00:43:33.870
what? So that’s, I would love to explore that later. Maybe not on the

706
00:43:33.870 –> 00:43:36.390
show. We’ll talk about that later. But my point is,

707
00:43:38.150 –> 00:43:41.990
when you’re writing, when a writer writes a polemic like this,

708
00:43:42.470 –> 00:43:45.270
he wants you to do something. And so I guess the question is,

709
00:43:46.390 –> 00:43:50.150
what did Orwell want us to do? Totally different question

710
00:43:50.150 –> 00:43:53.190
to what I wrote down, but we’re going a totally different direction, which is fine.

711
00:43:53.430 –> 00:43:56.190
So I’m going to start with David, and then we’ll move to Claire and then

712
00:43:56.190 –> 00:43:59.830
Tom. David, what does Orwell want us to do with his.

713
00:44:00.150 –> 00:44:03.590
What I think is his protest literature? And you can disagree with that, that framing,

714
00:44:03.590 –> 00:44:07.070
that’s fine. But what does he want us to do? What action does he want

715
00:44:07.070 –> 00:44:10.910
us to take? Because I can’t tell. Great

716
00:44:10.910 –> 00:44:14.310
question. I, I, My takeaway from all this is I think that Orwell wants us

717
00:44:14.310 –> 00:44:18.070
to choose living naturally. Meaning that I think that Julia is

718
00:44:18.070 –> 00:44:21.230
not a person, but she’s the personification of the wild,

719
00:44:21.390 –> 00:44:24.950
untamed nature. That’s why he can be a grotesque man

720
00:44:24.950 –> 00:44:28.270
and she still falls for him. Because it’s more of a,

721
00:44:28.650 –> 00:44:32.170
it’s more of an encounter with this representation.

722
00:44:32.490 –> 00:44:36.010
And at the end, when he get, when he, when he betrays her, he

723
00:44:36.010 –> 00:44:39.850
betrays what? He betrays his own nature, he betrays his own humanity.

724
00:44:40.330 –> 00:44:43.450
I take away from this book that Orwell is asking us

725
00:44:43.930 –> 00:44:47.650
to choose us to always, like, define

726
00:44:47.650 –> 00:44:51.250
maybe a higher order, meaning that there’s no reference to a spiritual

727
00:44:51.250 –> 00:44:54.890
north in this book anywhere. And I think that there’s an undertone

728
00:44:55.200 –> 00:44:58.560
that if we had a high, like a higher order or a guiding principle within

729
00:44:58.560 –> 00:45:02.280
us, we would, we wouldn’t sabotage ourselves. We wouldn’t. We

730
00:45:02.280 –> 00:45:06.040
wouldn’t for lack of better. I mean, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t just

731
00:45:06.040 –> 00:45:09.760
undercut ourselves in these pieces because he. It

732
00:45:09.760 –> 00:45:13.440
feels like all of these encounters. And I think the whole idea of doublespeak

733
00:45:13.440 –> 00:45:17.240
is that because we are not standing for us, we are

734
00:45:17.240 –> 00:45:21.080
not making a declaration that we need to stand for something or we stand for

735
00:45:21.080 –> 00:45:24.710
nothing. It felt like this whole entire book was just

736
00:45:24.710 –> 00:45:28.470
this projection of this lost soul in society

737
00:45:28.710 –> 00:45:31.910
that you don’t, you know, you’re not, you’re not, you don’t have allegiance with anything.

738
00:45:32.230 –> 00:45:35.830
Right? So you. And so he is attracted to,

739
00:45:35.830 –> 00:45:39.630
like, the women he finds on the screen, even though he’s disgusted

740
00:45:39.630 –> 00:45:42.990
by her. It’s like it’s because you’re rejecting your own nature. At least that was

741
00:45:42.990 –> 00:45:46.630
my takeaway, that every single person in the book is more

742
00:45:46.630 –> 00:45:50.480
of a placeholder of some form, of a deeper thing that

743
00:45:50.480 –> 00:45:53.520
we need to connect with within ourself. Whether it’s friendship,

744
00:45:53.520 –> 00:45:57.280
companionship, whether it’s sex, whether it’s love,

745
00:45:57.680 –> 00:46:00.880
whether it’s just loyalty, it seems like all these people are

746
00:46:01.520 –> 00:46:04.200
parts of it. And I think that that’s why when he’s going back and he’s

747
00:46:04.200 –> 00:46:07.680
changing words, he’s like, the new speak. He’s having this

748
00:46:07.840 –> 00:46:11.560
crazy introspective moment where he’s like, what am I doing? Like, what.

749
00:46:11.560 –> 00:46:14.040
What in the world am I? And yet he continues to do it. And it

750
00:46:14.040 –> 00:46:17.780
feels like all of this, this entire book is just herself reflection for me.

751
00:46:17.780 –> 00:46:20.700
So I think that that’s what he’s asking us to do is just be, Be

752
00:46:20.700 –> 00:46:21.460
introspective.

753
00:46:24.100 –> 00:46:27.060
Claire, what is Orwell asking us to do?

754
00:46:28.100 –> 00:46:31.780
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a little bit trite by now, right? But

755
00:46:31.780 –> 00:46:35.060
to say, because we hear it every day, you know, the, the one party that’s

756
00:46:35.060 –> 00:46:38.180
not in power tells the other party, think for yourself. Right?

757
00:46:38.820 –> 00:46:41.900
Don’t just, don’t just take what they tell you on the news because it’s not

758
00:46:41.900 –> 00:46:45.700
really news anymore. It’s really just an entertainment channel and it’s spunning your

759
00:46:45.700 –> 00:46:49.460
own narrative. So I think it’s that. But I,

760
00:46:49.460 –> 00:46:53.140
but I think at its core it is also. And David, I think this

761
00:46:53.140 –> 00:46:56.260
is, is in alignment with what you’re saying as well.

762
00:46:56.820 –> 00:47:00.580
It’s be, be the first one who

763
00:47:00.580 –> 00:47:04.100
does not sort of revert

764
00:47:04.100 –> 00:47:07.820
back to, I’m going to go the path of least resistance. I

765
00:47:07.820 –> 00:47:11.670
peaked my head up out of, you know, out of the foxhole. I got

766
00:47:11.670 –> 00:47:15.430
threatened with rats, didn’t like that so much. And therefore I, you know, I, I

767
00:47:15.430 –> 00:47:19.230
gave up the one woman who finally might have loved me because

768
00:47:19.230 –> 00:47:22.990
did I mention the rats? And. Right. And then he just sort

769
00:47:22.990 –> 00:47:26.510
of at the end of it goes, yeah, I just, I, I love Big

770
00:47:26.510 –> 00:47:30.310
Brother and I, and I. So I think if there, if there is

771
00:47:30.310 –> 00:47:33.390
a call to action and we could even debate. Is that really true?

772
00:47:33.950 –> 00:47:37.510
But if there is a call to action, I think it is something around that

773
00:47:37.510 –> 00:47:39.630
it’s to say there has to be a first

774
00:47:41.240 –> 00:47:45.040
person character, what have you, that goes into the breach who

775
00:47:45.040 –> 00:47:48.440
doesn’t say, well, I tried a little bit. It got uncomfortable.

776
00:47:48.680 –> 00:47:51.920
Yes. So much about love. But you know, do you know the divorce rate? That

777
00:47:51.920 –> 00:47:55.160
wasn’t going to work out anyway with Julia. And so. Right. So I think,

778
00:47:55.720 –> 00:47:58.560
I think if there is a call to action, it’s that be, be the first

779
00:47:58.560 –> 00:48:02.040
one, because there has to be a first one who is going to

780
00:48:02.520 –> 00:48:06.060
rise above. And you could probably make the same argument about the

781
00:48:06.060 –> 00:48:09.780
Color Purple, about a lot of the other protest type

782
00:48:09.780 –> 00:48:13.380
narratives that they’re saying. We, we can’t. There, there

783
00:48:13.380 –> 00:48:15.300
always has to be one who breaks the barrier.

784
00:48:21.380 –> 00:48:25.180
Look, I think he’s not, not to jump on

785
00:48:25.180 –> 00:48:28.940
the bandwagon here, but I mean, it seems like a pretty easy question to

786
00:48:28.940 –> 00:48:32.780
answer. Right. Like, I just. The way you put it, Clara, I think the two

787
00:48:32.780 –> 00:48:36.440
of you guys are kind of saying the same thing, just different ways. And I’m

788
00:48:36.440 –> 00:48:40.120
going to say a third way. I think he’s giving us a

789
00:48:40.120 –> 00:48:43.920
roadmap on how to lose our individualities. Right. Like, I think that’s what

790
00:48:43.920 –> 00:48:47.760
one of the things that he. That’s like an underlying tone of the book. Like

791
00:48:47.760 –> 00:48:51.560
you are not an individual anymore. You’re just going to conform. And you know, Claire

792
00:48:51.560 –> 00:48:55.360
used the, the term conform and you know, David, you used.

793
00:48:56.080 –> 00:48:59.680
Used it a little differently, but it’s, it’s essentially he’s giving us the roadmap and

794
00:48:59.680 –> 00:49:02.720
I think it’s a warning to your point. It’s like, it’s like a warning sign.

795
00:49:02.720 –> 00:49:06.480
Like, hey, don’t. Don’t allow this to happen. Like, you have to, you have

796
00:49:06.480 –> 00:49:10.080
to fight the power. We’ve been talking about fighting the man. I don’t even

797
00:49:10.400 –> 00:49:14.080
forever. Right. He’s just adding. He’s just, he’s just giving it to you in a

798
00:49:14.320 –> 00:49:17.800
kind of, in a way that he thinks is going to, to like really hit

799
00:49:17.800 –> 00:49:21.520
and resonate with you is like two plus two equals five.

800
00:49:21.520 –> 00:49:25.240
Right. Like, that’s the whole, the whole thing. Like, because they said so.

801
00:49:25.240 –> 00:49:28.280
And you just can’t fight that. You’re just gonna. To your point, you’re going to

802
00:49:28.280 –> 00:49:32.120
conform to that. And I, I think

803
00:49:32.120 –> 00:49:35.960
that there’s more to it than, than just someone has

804
00:49:35.960 –> 00:49:39.320
to fight back. I think the whole point of it is that he’s showing you

805
00:49:39.320 –> 00:49:42.920
that we all have to, all of us have to fight back. He can’t be

806
00:49:42.920 –> 00:49:45.680
an individual like you. You can’t just say, like,

807
00:49:46.400 –> 00:49:50.160
listen, I, I’ve seen enough post apocalyptic movies and read

808
00:49:50.160 –> 00:49:53.280
enough of these books. If you get that one person that just raised the hand

809
00:49:53.280 –> 00:49:57.120
and goes, hey, this is wrong, boom. They shoot that person and nobody else wants

810
00:49:57.120 –> 00:50:00.840
to say anything. So, you know, like, it’s, it can’t be. The problem

811
00:50:00.840 –> 00:50:04.440
solves itself. Yeah. See, it, it

812
00:50:04.440 –> 00:50:07.880
can’t be. It’s basically like, you know, one of those things where,

813
00:50:08.280 –> 00:50:12.040
you know, the sum of the parts have to

814
00:50:12.040 –> 00:50:15.560
be greater than the, than the, the parts themselves. Right. Like, I forget, I,

815
00:50:15.640 –> 00:50:19.400
I always forget how to, how that phrase goes. I always mess it up. But,

816
00:50:19.800 –> 00:50:23.240
but the reality of it is it can’t just be one person

817
00:50:23.920 –> 00:50:27.760
sitting in a, in a room rewriting history. As, as you may mentioned,

818
00:50:27.760 –> 00:50:31.480
David, you can’t just be that one person. Go, hey, this is wrong.

819
00:50:31.480 –> 00:50:34.800
I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go start a riot. I’m

820
00:50:34.800 –> 00:50:37.200
gonna go start a revolt. I’m gonna start a revolution.

821
00:50:39.600 –> 00:50:43.360
Has to like you, There has to be something to fight the machine.

822
00:50:43.360 –> 00:50:46.920
You have to, you need a machine to fight the machine. You can’t, like, you

823
00:50:46.920 –> 00:50:50.610
know, that’s like, it’s like going into a, you know, into a. What was

824
00:50:50.610 –> 00:50:54.250
that the movie Real Steel with the robot fighters.

825
00:50:54.490 –> 00:50:57.610
That’s like going in the ring with the robot fighter. I’m not, I’m gonna lose

826
00:50:57.610 –> 00:51:01.250
that fight. Well, I think

827
00:51:01.250 –> 00:51:04.970
that’s, but I think that’s a common. Claire, you use the term trite.

828
00:51:05.290 –> 00:51:08.650
Yeah, we use the term trope. That’s a common trope, right?

829
00:51:08.970 –> 00:51:12.730
Of these, of science fiction novels. I mean, heck, even Isaac Asimov,

830
00:51:12.730 –> 00:51:16.330
the link that I sent out to everybody, Isaac Asimov’s critique of 1984,

831
00:51:17.320 –> 00:51:19.640
which was a really well written critique by a guy who wrote a lot of

832
00:51:19.640 –> 00:51:23.480
science fiction. And even he, he was like,

833
00:51:25.400 –> 00:51:29.000
really like, what are we, what are we doing here? Like, I’m a professional

834
00:51:29.000 –> 00:51:31.080
writer. This is not, this is not the thing.

835
00:51:32.760 –> 00:51:36.600
So I, I, I look at the trope and

836
00:51:36.600 –> 00:51:40.360
I look at, I was

837
00:51:40.360 –> 00:51:44.040
born in the late 70s. I came of age after all this was over. Like,

838
00:51:44.040 –> 00:51:46.880
it’s, it’s sort of like I came of age after the rebel, after Big Brother

839
00:51:46.880 –> 00:51:50.500
was Already installed. The rev. Already over. Like, what am I revolting against?

840
00:51:50.580 –> 00:51:53.300
Right? Like sometimes the black community,

841
00:51:54.100 –> 00:51:57.780
depending upon, like, what the ages of the black folks have to be sitting around

842
00:51:57.780 –> 00:52:01.460
the room together, eventually somebody will bring up Malcolm and Martin,

843
00:52:01.460 –> 00:52:04.820
and eventually then somebody else will bring up crack cocaine, and then that ends the

844
00:52:04.820 –> 00:52:08.500
conversation. Like, this is because, like, it’s over. Like, the revolution’s over.

845
00:52:09.060 –> 00:52:12.580
And, you know, I take from that, as an. As a person in the African.

846
00:52:12.580 –> 00:52:15.870
As an African American person, the person who lives in that community

847
00:52:16.270 –> 00:52:19.790
are. And engages with that community sometimes I take from that. That

848
00:52:22.350 –> 00:52:25.950
weirdly enough, kind of like Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter,

849
00:52:26.030 –> 00:52:29.550
I take from that you’ve won the freedom

850
00:52:30.670 –> 00:52:34.510
to go off and to Tom’s point, be an individual. You’ve run. You’ve won

851
00:52:34.510 –> 00:52:38.070
the freedom to go off and do that. You don’t need a revolution anymore. Now.

852
00:52:38.070 –> 00:52:41.690
What you need is. I’ve been saying this word a lot more often lately. You

853
00:52:41.690 –> 00:52:45.490
need a reformation of systems, a reformation of

854
00:52:45.490 –> 00:52:49.130
institutions, because the. The unique things that

855
00:52:49.130 –> 00:52:52.530
created the environment for a revolution are over.

856
00:52:53.010 –> 00:52:53.650
Like those.

857
00:52:57.410 –> 00:53:01.010
Like, you know, those. Those dynamics are done.

858
00:53:01.810 –> 00:53:04.050
And by the way, if you don’t believe me. If you don’t believe me,

859
00:53:05.650 –> 00:53:08.840
say what you want about blm, they tried to start a revolution.

860
00:53:10.120 –> 00:53:13.560
And where are we at today? Where’s the revolution?

861
00:53:14.280 –> 00:53:18.080
If I think. Or even going back. Or even going back one second, David. Even

862
00:53:18.080 –> 00:53:21.840
going back further. Occupy Wall Street. I remember. I’m old enough

863
00:53:21.840 –> 00:53:25.320
to remember when Occupy Wall street of the Bernie Bros. Were out there, I walked

864
00:53:25.320 –> 00:53:27.800
past some of those in campus because I was living and working in New York.

865
00:53:27.800 –> 00:53:30.640
Well, not living, but working in New York City. I talked to some of those

866
00:53:30.640 –> 00:53:34.080
people. Revolution is over. Broke the Tea Party people. The

867
00:53:34.080 –> 00:53:37.880
revolution is over, bro. You lost. To paraphrase

868
00:53:37.880 –> 00:53:41.520
for the Big Lebowski, do what your parents did, sir. Go get a job.

869
00:53:42.960 –> 00:53:46.800
So, like, what are we? What. I get it. That Orwell

870
00:53:46.800 –> 00:53:50.360
is passionate. This is Baldwin’s critique, also with African American novelists

871
00:53:50.360 –> 00:53:53.880
specifically. This is his. Was his specific critique even in the

872
00:53:53.880 –> 00:53:56.560
50s, particularly with Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.

873
00:53:59.610 –> 00:54:02.970
We are at a point where the mode for

874
00:54:02.970 –> 00:54:06.490
revolution has shifted,

875
00:54:07.290 –> 00:54:11.050
and we need a different word, I think. But the only words that were

876
00:54:11.050 –> 00:54:14.530
offered in 1984, to everybody’s point here, are words that would

877
00:54:14.530 –> 00:54:18.090
inspire revolution. So what are we? I’m. You know, I. I don’t know what to

878
00:54:18.090 –> 00:54:20.250
do with that. Go ahead, David. Sorry, I didn’t mean. I did not mean to

879
00:54:20.250 –> 00:54:21.770
cut you off. No, no, it’s fine.

880
00:54:24.420 –> 00:54:27.820
So my My job is very unique because when people come and they’re talking to

881
00:54:27.820 –> 00:54:31.540
me about meaning making, I don’t ask people what they’re living for. I

882
00:54:31.540 –> 00:54:35.380
ask what they’re willing to die for. And I think that that’s a fundamental

883
00:54:35.380 –> 00:54:39.220
piece that is missing. And I think that that’s almost like the comparison between

884
00:54:39.220 –> 00:54:42.500
1984 and like the Matrix idea is that

885
00:54:42.900 –> 00:54:46.700
Neo was willing to die for something. He’s no longer standing. I want

886
00:54:46.700 –> 00:54:50.340
to live for this. And I think that when we think about blm, my only

887
00:54:50.340 –> 00:54:54.090
criticism about that is no one was willing to die for. For blm. I

888
00:54:54.090 –> 00:54:57.850
think everyone was living for a world that BLM could create. But I

889
00:54:57.850 –> 00:55:01.090
don’t think that people were willing to die for that. And I think that’s a

890
00:55:01.090 –> 00:55:04.770
massive, just shift. And there’s a. Almost like this invisible

891
00:55:04.770 –> 00:55:07.890
wall there, because if you go to like the World War II generation,

892
00:55:08.690 –> 00:55:12.130
right, there’s a very staunch difference in attitude

893
00:55:12.610 –> 00:55:15.970
and. Or how they look at America, right,

894
00:55:15.970 –> 00:55:19.810
Versus every generation that’s come because there was an existential threat like, I’m

895
00:55:19.810 –> 00:55:23.190
willing to die for this. And I think that a lot of the generations have

896
00:55:23.190 –> 00:55:26.710
compoundingly been focusing on what am I living for? It seems

897
00:55:26.710 –> 00:55:29.550
nuanced, but I think it’s everything. And I think when we think about

898
00:55:30.510 –> 00:55:33.950
meaning making and we think about the book, and I think that maybe that’s. I

899
00:55:33.950 –> 00:55:36.910
was. Claire, when you were talking, it kind of struck me like

900
00:55:37.870 –> 00:55:40.670
maybe that’s an underlying message here. Is that.

901
00:55:42.910 –> 00:55:46.270
Is Orwell Is. Is. Was Winston even willing to die

902
00:55:46.650 –> 00:55:50.010
for change? Or was he just trying to find a reason to live?

903
00:55:50.490 –> 00:55:53.930
Right, because finding a reason to live is different than something findings like, I’m willing

904
00:55:53.930 –> 00:55:57.650
to die for this cause. And so, I don’t know. There’s an idea that was

905
00:55:57.650 –> 00:56:01.410
coming to my head when you were talking because, I mean, no one gets to

906
00:56:01.410 –> 00:56:05.250
the answers in psychotherapy going, what are you living

907
00:56:05.250 –> 00:56:08.970
for? Nobody answers the question.

908
00:56:09.290 –> 00:56:12.410
But if I ask people, what are you willing to die for?

909
00:56:12.490 –> 00:56:16.310
Amazingly, three or four themes come out of everybody, and all of a sudden you

910
00:56:16.310 –> 00:56:20.030
start having a very different conversation. Well, and

911
00:56:20.030 –> 00:56:23.830
you. So I. I love that. And I don’t think that’s a. That’s a small

912
00:56:23.830 –> 00:56:26.630
distinction. I think it’s huge. I think one of, one of the.

913
00:56:27.830 –> 00:56:30.430
So first of all, the short answer to your question, no, I don’t think Winston

914
00:56:30.430 –> 00:56:33.830
was. Was willing to die because again, did we mention the rats?

915
00:56:33.910 –> 00:56:37.550
Right? So he’s willing to forego the idea of maybe some.

916
00:56:37.550 –> 00:56:40.230
Some torture light for, you know, to, to

917
00:56:41.600 –> 00:56:44.560
in the balance of true love. I think what makes for me

918
00:56:44.640 –> 00:56:47.840
1984 deeply unsatisfying is there’s no,

919
00:56:48.400 –> 00:56:52.120
there’s no triumph at the end. Winston, you know,

920
00:56:52.120 –> 00:56:55.640
the hero didn’t win. Well, the hero didn’t win because

921
00:56:55.640 –> 00:56:59.360
Winston didn’t win and Winston wasn’t a hero. I mean, coming back to

922
00:56:59.360 –> 00:57:02.680
your, you know, your earlier observation about this isn’t really deeply

923
00:57:02.680 –> 00:57:06.480
developed characters. Hasan, you

924
00:57:06.480 –> 00:57:10.200
had mentioned my all time favorite movie earlier when you said the

925
00:57:10.200 –> 00:57:13.960
Shawshank Redemption. One of the things that makes that

926
00:57:13.960 –> 00:57:17.800
movie so powerful is it’s deeply unfair throughout the

927
00:57:17.800 –> 00:57:21.640
entire movie treatment of our protagonist, the

928
00:57:21.640 –> 00:57:25.280
hero, etc. But there’s a, in the title of the

929
00:57:25.280 –> 00:57:28.480
movie, there’s a redemption. You know, it started out as a Stephen King short story

930
00:57:28.480 –> 00:57:32.320
and it became this massively just powerful movie to

931
00:57:32.320 –> 00:57:35.540
me because there was a, there was a triumph at the end. There was a,

932
00:57:35.540 –> 00:57:39.220
there was a hero and he got his redemption. We don’t see that in 1984.

933
00:57:39.220 –> 00:57:43.060
So for me, the ending is deeply unsatisfying because it’s like he

934
00:57:43.060 –> 00:57:46.020
did think he was going to be part of a revolt and a, and a

935
00:57:46.020 –> 00:57:49.740
rebellion, but he wasn’t willing to lead it from the front. He was

936
00:57:49.740 –> 00:57:53.140
just willing to follow somebody different from who he was told to follow.

937
00:57:54.340 –> 00:57:58.100
And at the end it didn’t matter and he just went back to conforming

938
00:57:58.180 –> 00:58:01.950
more completely. Tom,

939
00:58:02.030 –> 00:58:04.430
you had a thought when David was talking. I saw across your face.

940
00:58:05.870 –> 00:58:08.750
Well, I, my, I, I, it’s,

941
00:58:09.390 –> 00:58:12.430
it’s hard. It’s right. I, I think, I think to say

942
00:58:13.630 –> 00:58:17.470
that, you know, movements that die because. No, that people aren’t willing

943
00:58:17.470 –> 00:58:20.550
to die for that. I, I think that I, I’m not sure how I feel

944
00:58:20.550 –> 00:58:24.390
about that because specifically about the BLM movement, which is really where I, where I

945
00:58:24.390 –> 00:58:27.640
kind of hit me. I was like, people did die for that. They just died

946
00:58:27.880 –> 00:58:31.720
prior to the movement starting. But they were the catalyst, right? Like, so they, they,

947
00:58:31.720 –> 00:58:35.000
people were dying for BLM before they knew it was blm,

948
00:58:35.320 –> 00:58:38.760
right? Like, so there have been people to stand on the side of

949
00:58:38.760 –> 00:58:42.520
principle for the black community and die over it. We just didn’t label

950
00:58:42.520 –> 00:58:46.080
it as BLM until somebody put a label on it after the fact. Now, I

951
00:58:46.080 –> 00:58:49.920
do agree, once you started the BLM movement, it kind of died off for probably

952
00:58:49.920 –> 00:58:53.560
that reason. I’m not, I’m not going to argue that. But to say

953
00:58:53.560 –> 00:58:56.600
nobody died for BLM is probably a slight

954
00:58:56.600 –> 00:59:00.360
miscalculation of words. Back, back to the book part of

955
00:59:00.360 –> 00:59:04.120
it though, you know, it’s Weird. And I don’t know how this relates to the

956
00:59:04.120 –> 00:59:07.960
book at all. It just sparked into my brain because my daughter and I had

957
00:59:07.960 –> 00:59:11.160
a conversation a couple of weeks ago that I think kind of to your point,

958
00:59:11.160 –> 00:59:15.000
David, about like the generations of. And what they’re fighting for or what they

959
00:59:15.000 –> 00:59:18.200
would die for and so on and so forth. And my daughter and I got

960
00:59:18.200 –> 00:59:21.600
into a conversation about the difference, the differences in the

961
00:59:21.600 –> 00:59:25.160
generations themselves and where there was a, a

962
00:59:25.160 –> 00:59:28.920
really, a big drop off in, in her brain. In her

963
00:59:28.920 –> 00:59:32.560
brain, in the, the mannerisms and the ways in

964
00:59:32.560 –> 00:59:36.320
which we interact with each other from Gen X to the

965
00:59:36.320 –> 00:59:40.160
millennials. Like so there’s, there’s this huge gap of, of the

966
00:59:40.160 –> 00:59:43.000
way that, and quite honestly, I don’t think

967
00:59:43.640 –> 00:59:47.260
the, the, the views of Gen X to the, to

968
00:59:47.260 –> 00:59:51.060
the Greatest generation are as far away as people think

969
00:59:51.060 –> 00:59:54.700
they are as compared to the Gen X and the Millennials. I think that is

970
00:59:54.780 –> 00:59:58.380
leaps and bounds away from the idealisms and the way that we think.

971
00:59:58.700 –> 01:00:02.340
And then the millennials to the Gen Zs are even

972
01:00:02.340 –> 01:00:05.620
more. I think the, I think that the, it’s like, it’s like

973
01:00:05.620 –> 01:00:09.300
compounding the problem, right? Like we’re, and when we were talking about

974
01:00:09.300 –> 01:00:13.100
this, I had said, yeah, because there’s nothing that has happened in the generations,

975
01:00:13.260 –> 01:00:16.880
lives that have mattered. If you think about it, every generation before

976
01:00:16.880 –> 01:00:20.680
them had some impactful event that happened to them. World

977
01:00:20.680 –> 01:00:24.372
War II, Vietnam, etc. Etc. Ours was 9

978
01:00:24.428 –> 01:00:28.040
11. When 911 hit, there was a dramatic

979
01:00:28.040 –> 01:00:31.880
change in what you would die for in this country. People were becoming, they went

980
01:00:31.880 –> 01:00:35.480
back to patriotism. They wanted to go join the military and die for the country

981
01:00:35.480 –> 01:00:38.680
because they, they just couldn’t fathom what just happened on US soil.

982
01:00:39.400 –> 01:00:43.170
That was only 22 years ago. 24, 24 years ago. That

983
01:00:43.170 –> 01:00:46.770
was, that was not that long ago. But the two generations that I’ve mentioned

984
01:00:46.770 –> 01:00:50.610
were way too young to live through it and have it impact them. Right? So

985
01:00:50.610 –> 01:00:54.210
I think, I think there’s, I think there’s a lot of,

986
01:00:55.090 –> 01:00:58.370
a lot of unknowns when you ask that question to a Gen

987
01:00:58.370 –> 01:01:02.130
Xer or older. They probably can answer that question a lot

988
01:01:02.130 –> 01:01:05.650
easier and faster than millennials and younger. So

989
01:01:06.940 –> 01:01:10.660
spinning this back to the book at least a little bit, I think is I,

990
01:01:10.660 –> 01:01:14.180
I think that’s part of the problem, right, that people, when they read this book

991
01:01:14.180 –> 01:01:17.980
and you’re. I think you’re right, David. Where there’s nothing in this book

992
01:01:17.980 –> 01:01:21.780
that says that I would die to protect that or die to, to

993
01:01:21.780 –> 01:01:25.620
eradicate that. There’s no, either way, there’s nothing

994
01:01:25.620 –> 01:01:29.300
clear that says, this is so bad, somebody should do something about

995
01:01:29.300 –> 01:01:32.860
it, or it’s so positive that we should all fight for it.

996
01:01:33.180 –> 01:01:36.300
There’s no impactful thing that happens in 1984 that

997
01:01:37.020 –> 01:01:40.820
clearly defines who the protagonist really is. Because to your point, Claire, I

998
01:01:40.820 –> 01:01:44.100
think it’s dead on. You can’t get behind Winston as a

999
01:01:44.100 –> 01:01:47.580
protagonist. He’s just not that right. He’s not. He’s not a

1000
01:01:47.580 –> 01:01:51.380
hero. But that’s. I think that’s the underlying problem with the

1001
01:01:51.380 –> 01:01:54.780
book. In that critique that you were talking about, Islam was like,

1002
01:01:54.940 –> 01:01:58.540
that’s what it is. There’s no. There’s no impact. There’s no

1003
01:01:58.540 –> 01:02:02.390
singular impactful event that makes you think yay or nay

1004
01:02:02.390 –> 01:02:06.230
on whether this book is right or wrong or. There’s no moral compass. There’s no.

1005
01:02:06.230 –> 01:02:09.870
Like, there’s no. Although us reading it, we have

1006
01:02:09.870 –> 01:02:13.670
moral compasses. So when we read the book, we feel a certain way and

1007
01:02:13.670 –> 01:02:17.270
we read it and know that we wish or don’t. Like, we want it to

1008
01:02:17.270 –> 01:02:20.550
go this way or that way. And the fact is, it just doesn’t. It just

1009
01:02:20.550 –> 01:02:24.190
kind of ends. Right. Like. It does. Yeah, it just sort of

1010
01:02:24.190 –> 01:02:27.980
stops. Right. Like, just sort of in the. But

1011
01:02:27.980 –> 01:02:31.460
anyway. Anyway. Right. It sort of stops, like, in the middle of a sentence or.

1012
01:02:31.460 –> 01:02:35.020
Like, it’s very clear. It’s very French. It’s a very French

1013
01:02:35.020 –> 01:02:38.540
book. Wait, didn’t we use that same phrase for

1014
01:02:38.540 –> 01:02:41.820
Tenders? We did. We did use it, actually. We did.

1015
01:02:42.140 –> 01:02:45.340
Well, there’s something. So there’s something interestingly inherent in

1016
01:02:45.660 –> 01:02:49.500
writers who write in a British. More British

1017
01:02:49.500 –> 01:02:53.290
mode than writers who write in a more American mode. So if you’re

1018
01:02:53.290 –> 01:02:56.650
writing more in an American mode, like, even a writer, like.

1019
01:02:57.210 –> 01:03:01.010
What’s his name? Cormac McCarthy, right. In blood

1020
01:03:01.010 –> 01:03:04.690
Meridian or the Road or no country for Old Men or

1021
01:03:04.690 –> 01:03:08.290
whatever. Like, even the most sort of. For lack of a better

1022
01:03:08.290 –> 01:03:11.930
term. And I like Clint Eastwood, too, as a director. I put Clint Eastwood of

1023
01:03:11.930 –> 01:03:15.690
Cormac McCarthy in the same box in my head, because they’re just saddle bastards. Like,

1024
01:03:15.690 –> 01:03:19.330
I watched Gran Torino a few. Few weeks ago. They just write. They just write

1025
01:03:19.330 –> 01:03:22.970
saddle bastard books and they write sad. They reduce saddle bastard movies. Like, they’re just

1026
01:03:22.970 –> 01:03:26.730
sad at the end. And. But, But. But there’s a. There’s a

1027
01:03:26.730 –> 01:03:30.370
redemption arc that’s built into that because they’re still Americans, fundamentally.

1028
01:03:30.370 –> 01:03:34.130
Right. But people writing

1029
01:03:34.130 –> 01:03:37.930
in a British mode, even if they’re Americans, they adopt that British mode. Please. The

1030
01:03:37.930 –> 01:03:40.690
British are very much influenced by the French. They don’t want to admit it, but

1031
01:03:40.690 –> 01:03:43.410
the French are okay with an open ending sort of, ah,

1032
01:03:44.450 –> 01:03:47.970
let me go over here and have some wine and baguettes, you know, and then

1033
01:03:47.970 –> 01:03:51.720
we’re done, you know, or, or, you know, or we’re all going to

1034
01:03:51.720 –> 01:03:54.600
be nihilists, but we’re going to have good food at the end.

1035
01:03:57.160 –> 01:04:00.840
If you eat terrible food over there. Yeah, well, the British

1036
01:04:00.840 –> 01:04:04.360
aren’t on board with the food thing, but they are on board with the,

1037
01:04:04.600 –> 01:04:08.280
with the sort of, for lack of a better term,

1038
01:04:08.280 –> 01:04:11.440
cynicism and disillusionment and just sort of saying that this is just the thing. That

1039
01:04:11.440 –> 01:04:14.520
as it is, there is no happy ending here. And I don’t know if that’s

1040
01:04:15.040 –> 01:04:18.600
the knock on effect from the end of colonialism and from the

1041
01:04:18.600 –> 01:04:22.240
decline of the Victorian empire or

1042
01:04:22.240 –> 01:04:26.080
if that comes specifically out of the

1043
01:04:26.080 –> 01:04:29.720
British experiences that happened during World War I, which are still impacting the

1044
01:04:29.720 –> 01:04:33.400
continent and still impacting this globally today. Something

1045
01:04:33.400 –> 01:04:37.160
that everybody has talked about here. This is my next point and then we’ll move

1046
01:04:37.160 –> 01:04:40.600
on. But something that everybody’s talked about here and I think we have to touch

1047
01:04:40.600 –> 01:04:44.300
on this. And David kind of kicked it off, but

1048
01:04:44.300 –> 01:04:47.660
Claire, you also picked it up and then Tom, you didn’t, you didn’t mention it

1049
01:04:47.660 –> 01:04:51.180
at all. Probably because we don’t actually usually talk about this on the show. So

1050
01:04:51.180 –> 01:04:53.740
it’s not something that we’ve, we’ve sort of touched on earlier. But

1051
01:04:56.140 –> 01:04:59.420
the, the main critique that I probably had against

1052
01:04:59.740 –> 01:05:03.420
Orwell even before, or not Orwell, but against 1984, even before

1053
01:05:04.460 –> 01:05:08.060
reading it and then reading it, it sort of jumped out to me even before

1054
01:05:08.060 –> 01:05:11.650
the Baldwin critique was the lack of a transcendent

1055
01:05:11.650 –> 01:05:15.170
belief system. So we

1056
01:05:15.170 –> 01:05:18.370
know in Communist Russia,

1057
01:05:19.170 –> 01:05:22.530
we know this for a fact, Stalinist Russia

1058
01:05:23.410 –> 01:05:26.370
that Orwell was, was actively writing against

1059
01:05:27.010 –> 01:05:30.690
Orthodox Christianity was strong. We

1060
01:05:30.690 –> 01:05:34.290
know this. We have clear historical evidence for this. People prayed,

1061
01:05:34.450 –> 01:05:38.120
people did vigils, people prayed in the Gulags. Again,

1062
01:05:38.120 –> 01:05:41.640
Solzhenitsyn brings this up. He even mentions that there were people in the

1063
01:05:41.640 –> 01:05:45.200
Gulag who came in atheists and walked out Orthodox Christians

1064
01:05:45.840 –> 01:05:49.120
and there were people who came in Orthodox Christians and walked out atheists.

1065
01:05:50.480 –> 01:05:54.080
That is the transcendent piece. I don’t know how Orwell missed that,

1066
01:05:54.480 –> 01:05:58.200
but that’s the transcendent piece in here. And when

1067
01:05:58.200 –> 01:06:01.680
you talk about what will people, what are you willing to die for

1068
01:06:02.320 –> 01:06:06.130
in our own time? Everybody who follows Islam

1069
01:06:06.130 –> 01:06:09.890
in a radical fashion knows exactly the answer to that question.

1070
01:06:13.730 –> 01:06:17.330
They know it. And by the way their main critique against the West. Let me,

1071
01:06:17.330 –> 01:06:21.010
let me, let me restate radical Islam’s main critique against the West.

1072
01:06:21.170 –> 01:06:24.850
You’re not willing to die for anything. We are. We beat you. We

1073
01:06:24.850 –> 01:06:25.890
eat your culture.

1074
01:06:28.530 –> 01:06:32.290
Convert or die. And I’m simplifying,

1075
01:06:32.290 –> 01:06:36.090
but that’s the message. That’s the message. That’s the message. They’ve been

1076
01:06:36.090 –> 01:06:37.490
screaming at us for 50 years.

1077
01:06:39.810 –> 01:06:43.290
They know what they’re willing to die for. They’re willing to die for a transcendent

1078
01:06:43.290 –> 01:06:47.050
idea. I would assert that politicians don’t understand this,

1079
01:06:47.050 –> 01:06:50.850
particularly Western politicians don’t understand this. And thus they say that the language,

1080
01:06:51.650 –> 01:06:54.730
that language that comes from a state of transcendence or from an understanding of the

1081
01:06:54.730 –> 01:06:58.550
transcendence, it’s just naive people and just, if we give them enough

1082
01:06:58.550 –> 01:07:01.790
factories and like Netflix, they’ll turn into

1083
01:07:01.790 –> 01:07:05.550
Westerners. And I don’t, I don’t think that’s,

1084
01:07:05.630 –> 01:07:09.150
I don’t think that’s the truth. I think that’s fundamentally missing something about

1085
01:07:09.230 –> 01:07:12.630
transcendence. And I can speak to this a little bit as a

1086
01:07:12.630 –> 01:07:15.950
Christian who tries to live out and walk out Christian principles

1087
01:07:16.270 –> 01:07:19.630
and believes that there is a soul and there is a God and I will

1088
01:07:19.630 –> 01:07:23.190
have to answer to, to him when I show up there and there is

1089
01:07:23.190 –> 01:07:26.270
someplace I am going that has nothing to do with evolution or biology.

1090
01:07:28.260 –> 01:07:32.020
Okay. When you speak out of that language, you write

1091
01:07:32.020 –> 01:07:35.700
out that language, your narrative becomes different. Orwell didn’t have any of that. Orwell

1092
01:07:35.700 –> 01:07:38.860
believed that religion was the opiate of the masses. He, he really did believe that

1093
01:07:38.860 –> 01:07:42.219
whole Marxist thing. He never wrote anything about religion. I don’t think he fundamentally understood

1094
01:07:42.219 –> 01:07:46.020
it. It’s missing from 1984. So the question

1095
01:07:46.020 –> 01:07:49.740
here is, if Winston had had a

1096
01:07:49.740 –> 01:07:53.470
religion, would Winston have been more of a hero?

1097
01:07:54.110 –> 01:07:57.950
Would the protagonist actually have been a hero? Tom, I’m going

1098
01:07:57.950 –> 01:08:00.190
to start with you. I’m going to go all the way around. Tom. David. And

1099
01:08:00.190 –> 01:08:03.710
then, Claire, you’ll have the final word on this. I,

1100
01:08:03.790 –> 01:08:07.590
I don’t know. I, I don’t know if I would, I’m not sure I would

1101
01:08:07.590 –> 01:08:11.310
classify it the way that you just classified it. Well, okay,

1102
01:08:12.430 –> 01:08:16.270
how would you, how would you classify it, then? Well, I’m just saying, like, I

1103
01:08:16.270 –> 01:08:19.799
don’t know if I don’t. I, I mean, I understand,

1104
01:08:19.879 –> 01:08:23.399
like, what you’re saying, you know, radical Islam, I get all that. And then,

1105
01:08:23.399 –> 01:08:27.239
yeah, whether, whether it’s Christian values or any other,

1106
01:08:27.879 –> 01:08:30.519
you know, religious belief system. I’m not sure.

1107
01:08:33.719 –> 01:08:37.559
How do I word this? I, I, I mean, maybe if you want to, if

1108
01:08:37.559 –> 01:08:40.079
you want to say, like, if you’re trying to, if you’re trying to lean toward

1109
01:08:40.079 –> 01:08:43.399
a yes or a no, I would probably have to say yes. Just because it

1110
01:08:43.399 –> 01:08:46.030
would give. What we were talking about a few minutes ago, it would at least

1111
01:08:46.030 –> 01:08:49.430
give him that moral compass. Right. Like, again, because

1112
01:08:50.230 –> 01:08:53.750
to, to David’s point when he mentioned, like, there’s no,

1113
01:08:53.750 –> 01:08:57.430
there’s no North Star here. There’s no, you know, religious or moral compass,

1114
01:08:57.430 –> 01:09:01.190
North Star, there’s nothing for him. So. And again,

1115
01:09:01.270 –> 01:09:05.030
even if going with the, the. I was gonna say

1116
01:09:05.030 –> 01:09:07.590
the Brotherhood, because I was just thinking of a different book, by the way. Oh,

1117
01:09:07.590 –> 01:09:10.980
yeah, yeah, yeah. If I was. He was going with, with,

1118
01:09:11.220 –> 01:09:14.420
you know, with the, you know, Big Brother, Y,

1119
01:09:16.180 –> 01:09:19.740
at least he would still be considered a hero because he went with his moral

1120
01:09:19.740 –> 01:09:22.540
compass. Right. Even if that for him, if that was the right way to go.

1121
01:09:22.540 –> 01:09:25.860
But like I said before, there was no to him. There was no right or

1122
01:09:25.860 –> 01:09:29.500
wrong in making that decision. It didn’t feel to me like he had to make

1123
01:09:29.500 –> 01:09:33.060
a right or wrong decision. And if he did have some sort of religious

1124
01:09:33.700 –> 01:09:37.380
in instinct or a religious teaching or background, then

1125
01:09:38.110 –> 01:09:41.870
you could lean on that moral compass for whichever way he’s selected and

1126
01:09:41.870 –> 01:09:45.590
call him the hero. To your point, you know, when

1127
01:09:45.590 –> 01:09:49.310
you’re on your statement, like, we can’t call him a hero at this point, but

1128
01:09:49.310 –> 01:09:53.110
maybe you can if he’s standing on something of some

1129
01:09:53.110 –> 01:09:56.550
sort of principle. But. So I, If I had to say yes or no, then

1130
01:09:56.550 –> 01:09:59.510
yes. I mean, I think it would be. You’d have no choice but to call

1131
01:09:59.510 –> 01:10:03.260
him. But to, but to say he was the hero. He was the hero. Okay.

1132
01:10:06.290 –> 01:10:09.730
I. I think it really depends. Does Winston

1133
01:10:09.890 –> 01:10:13.570
honor his belief? Right? Does it, does he. Does he honor it? Or is

1134
01:10:13.570 –> 01:10:16.690
like, is he a fair weather believer in whatever he believes in?

1135
01:10:17.410 –> 01:10:20.610
Right. I mean, so if we take the premise that

1136
01:10:21.250 –> 01:10:24.930
Winston believes in something, whether it’s religious, whether it’s secular,

1137
01:10:25.090 –> 01:10:27.810
but he believes in something and that’s. Something

1138
01:10:29.020 –> 01:10:32.820
pushes him to, again, be that singularity, be that person. Like

1139
01:10:32.820 –> 01:10:36.420
you were saying, the one person says, no, I don’t care. I have

1140
01:10:36.420 –> 01:10:39.660
integrity with my belief and I’m. If I’m the only one in the room

1141
01:10:40.060 –> 01:10:43.420
and that. Then fine, I’m going to be that only person in the room. I

1142
01:10:43.420 –> 01:10:46.100
think if there was a splash of that, I think the book would read entirely

1143
01:10:46.100 –> 01:10:49.820
differently and I think that that would have a very, very different

1144
01:10:49.980 –> 01:10:53.700
feel to it. I don’t necessarily need a book to have a happy

1145
01:10:53.700 –> 01:10:57.420
Ending or have this kind of, like this. This kind of wonderful

1146
01:10:57.420 –> 01:11:00.060
resolution at the end of it. I think there’s a lot of stories in history

1147
01:11:00.060 –> 01:11:03.580
that don’t, but I think what those tragic stories lead to,

1148
01:11:03.580 –> 01:11:07.300
if there’s this presence of, I was standing for this, I was fighting

1149
01:11:07.300 –> 01:11:11.140
for this. I was. I was holding some kind of moral

1150
01:11:11.140 –> 01:11:14.900
ground for myself or others. I think the tragedy in

1151
01:11:14.900 –> 01:11:18.580
that person’s story becomes like the fuel that fires that kind of

1152
01:11:18.580 –> 01:11:22.100
burns someone else’s fire. It becomes like we learned that that person

1153
01:11:22.100 –> 01:11:25.530
died doing this or fighting for this. And then we hear that,

1154
01:11:25.770 –> 01:11:29.370
and that becomes this very powerful thing for the next people. Right?

1155
01:11:29.370 –> 01:11:33.090
Become a next generation, next whoever hears the story. I mean, think

1156
01:11:33.090 –> 01:11:36.770
about, like, the whole idea of, like, you know, Leonidas, the Spartans, the whole idea

1157
01:11:36.770 –> 01:11:40.210
behind that. Just as one eye just off the top, like, he

1158
01:11:40.210 –> 01:11:44.010
died at the same time. The way he died made all the difference.

1159
01:11:44.410 –> 01:11:47.970
Right. And so I think that. That, to answer your question, I think it

1160
01:11:47.970 –> 01:11:51.640
depends on, does he, like, does

1161
01:11:51.640 –> 01:11:54.800
he. Does he stay true to this? And is he willing to kind of dig

1162
01:11:54.800 –> 01:11:58.520
his heels in to go, this is who I am. Good, better and different versus

1163
01:11:58.520 –> 01:12:01.840
him going, this is what I believe, and it’s not convenient, so I’m not going

1164
01:12:01.840 –> 01:12:02.360
to do it.

1165
01:12:05.400 –> 01:12:08.920
Claire? Yeah, my. My

1166
01:12:08.920 –> 01:12:12.760
thought on that, I think, Tom, you. You already

1167
01:12:12.920 –> 01:12:16.360
said it. I think very well in terms of, you know, the lack of a.

1168
01:12:16.360 –> 01:12:19.610
And you were echoing David’s comment about the North Star.

1169
01:12:21.690 –> 01:12:25.450
If we. If we get hung up on, if he were a religious

1170
01:12:25.450 –> 01:12:29.170
person, would this have been a different spin? If we change that to,

1171
01:12:29.170 –> 01:12:32.930
if he were a moral person, would there be a different spin? And

1172
01:12:32.930 –> 01:12:36.650
I do think the answer is yes. I think

1173
01:12:37.130 –> 01:12:40.810
what we’re struggling with with Winston is

1174
01:12:40.890 –> 01:12:44.700
not his lack of religion, it’s his lack of morality. He

1175
01:12:44.700 –> 01:12:48.060
did not make decisions in the book based on a belief

1176
01:12:48.380 –> 01:12:52.140
that something was right or wrong. It was based on an avoidance of pain.

1177
01:12:52.940 –> 01:12:56.620
Right. So you could say, if you really want to boil it

1178
01:12:56.620 –> 01:13:00.339
down, was he a coward? And therefore that’s why

1179
01:13:00.339 –> 01:13:04.100
we could never contemplate him being a hero. Yeah, I

1180
01:13:04.100 –> 01:13:07.820
could probably. I could probably live with that as being a

1181
01:13:08.220 –> 01:13:11.690
statement on. On, you know, the character or the lack

1182
01:13:11.690 –> 01:13:15.450
thereof of Winston. But I do. I do think it comes down to he

1183
01:13:15.450 –> 01:13:18.970
lacks. Tom, you said it. He lacks a moral compass. There,

1184
01:13:18.970 –> 01:13:22.530
there. So he was amoral. He wasn’t immoral. He was amoral.

1185
01:13:22.850 –> 01:13:26.530
And he made his choices not based on a moral code, but based on

1186
01:13:26.530 –> 01:13:27.570
avoidance of pain.

1187
01:13:29.970 –> 01:13:33.770
Okay. Okay. I don’t Know

1188
01:13:33.770 –> 01:13:35.850
what to think about. I don’t know what to think about all the, all y’

1189
01:13:35.850 –> 01:13:39.690
all with on this. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna. Well, you

1190
01:13:39.690 –> 01:13:42.170
know what? This is, this is why I talk to people who were kind of

1191
01:13:42.170 –> 01:13:44.570
all over the map, all over the place for me. I don’t. I’m not living

1192
01:13:44.570 –> 01:13:48.410
in an echo chamber here. Right. Hey, son. Not to interrupt. Do

1193
01:13:48.410 –> 01:13:52.250
you, do you, do you need. Are you thinking that

1194
01:13:52.250 –> 01:13:55.450
it’s his lack of like its lack of

1195
01:13:55.770 –> 01:13:59.530
belief or religiosity or that that is the reason

1196
01:13:59.530 –> 01:14:03.210
why he lacks that moral compass? Because I think that

1197
01:14:03.210 –> 01:14:06.950
the three of us are maybe taking it from saying that’s one possibility, but

1198
01:14:06.950 –> 01:14:10.230
I think it’s the other side of the coin that’s equally opportune to think about

1199
01:14:10.230 –> 01:14:13.630
as saying that morality can exist self derived

1200
01:14:13.710 –> 01:14:17.150
as a reflection of the society. Right.

1201
01:14:17.710 –> 01:14:20.750
I guess that’s my question for you is how are you determining

1202
01:14:21.470 –> 01:14:25.190
morality? Right. So that. Well, yeah, that’s a good

1203
01:14:25.190 –> 01:14:28.350
question. So I fundamentally believe that everyone

1204
01:14:28.750 –> 01:14:32.470
comes with a world view and a worldview comes from somewhere. I find

1205
01:14:32.470 –> 01:14:35.590
I do fundamental. That’s like sort of my fundamental, like things. Right.

1206
01:14:36.150 –> 01:14:39.910
And we, we don’t often

1207
01:14:40.150 –> 01:14:43.990
articulate our worldview because we don’t actually know the concrete foundation

1208
01:14:43.990 –> 01:14:47.270
that it sits on. And most people haven’t done the hard work,

1209
01:14:47.909 –> 01:14:51.630
the introspective work, such as it were, or even the critical thinking work to

1210
01:14:51.630 –> 01:14:55.350
determine where that worldview came from. Who laid the concrete,

1211
01:14:55.990 –> 01:14:59.480
should it be all dug up? This is why you have a job, David. Like

1212
01:14:59.480 –> 01:15:03.240
people don’t do that work and then they build things on top of it and

1213
01:15:03.240 –> 01:15:07.000
it struggles and falls apart and collapses. Right. Usually around my

1214
01:15:07.000 –> 01:15:10.800
age, like in the mid-40s. So to answer your question, I

1215
01:15:10.800 –> 01:15:13.840
do think that religion has to inform

1216
01:15:14.560 –> 01:15:18.360
morality. I think we’ve done a really interesting job in the secular

1217
01:15:18.360 –> 01:15:22.080
west of trying to separate both of those two. And

1218
01:15:22.160 –> 01:15:25.240
when you separate both of those two, I think you might. I think the clearing

1219
01:15:25.240 –> 01:15:27.950
at the end of the path is the meaning crisis recurring currently in.

1220
01:15:28.910 –> 01:15:32.350
Because if my morals are separated from a religious foundation,

1221
01:15:33.070 –> 01:15:36.350
and that’s why I brought up Islam on purpose, I didn’t bring up Christianity

1222
01:15:37.230 –> 01:15:40.510
because let’s face the moral, let’s base it on Islam. That’s fine. The way we

1223
01:15:40.510 –> 01:15:43.150
could talk about the Quran and it doesn’t come weighted with all the stuff that

1224
01:15:43.150 –> 01:15:46.790
the Bible comes weighted with. Okay, fine. If we’re going to base it on the

1225
01:15:46.790 –> 01:15:50.510
Quran. Cool. You separate the Quran from morality.

1226
01:15:51.390 –> 01:15:55.080
Now you have people who are living or making decisions in a place of

1227
01:15:55.080 –> 01:15:57.120
moral laxity. Right.

1228
01:15:59.600 –> 01:16:03.360
And that then influences how, and I think Orwell would agree with this

1229
01:16:03.360 –> 01:16:07.160
part, it influences how people use language, which we’re going to talk about

1230
01:16:07.160 –> 01:16:09.800
here in just a minute, because I think that that’s actually the core of his

1231
01:16:09.800 –> 01:16:12.800
idea. It influences how people talk about ideas,

1232
01:16:13.280 –> 01:16:17.120
influences how people build institutions. And fundamentally, which is of

1233
01:16:17.120 –> 01:16:19.680
course the point of all this in the podcast, which of course we’re going to

1234
01:16:19.680 –> 01:16:22.900
get, we’re going to wrap up with. It influences how leaders lead.

1235
01:16:23.540 –> 01:16:27.300
And I think we are naive to the point

1236
01:16:27.300 –> 01:16:30.100
almost of danger to.

1237
01:16:30.980 –> 01:16:33.820
And I would even assert we’re sometimes past the point. We’re somewhere past the point

1238
01:16:33.820 –> 01:16:37.580
of danger. Actually. We’re well into the wild of not understanding

1239
01:16:37.580 –> 01:16:41.340
the link between religion and morality or saying that it

1240
01:16:41.340 –> 01:16:45.140
does not exist. Which is why I said, okay, let me

1241
01:16:45.140 –> 01:16:47.300
think about that some more because I’m willing to,

1242
01:16:48.970 –> 01:16:52.650
to consider a majority point

1243
01:16:52.650 –> 01:16:56.250
of view and I’m willing to have my point of view be the minority report.

1244
01:16:56.330 –> 01:17:00.170
That’s fine. But let’s just. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

1245
01:17:00.170 –> 01:17:02.570
Let’s see where we wind up at. At the end of the, at the end

1246
01:17:02.570 –> 01:17:06.410
of the road. Right. And I think one of the

1247
01:17:06.410 –> 01:17:10.090
things that, so Orwell wasn’t going to write anything that he didn’t

1248
01:17:10.090 –> 01:17:13.890
understand or know about this is why Julia is

1249
01:17:13.890 –> 01:17:17.720
a one dimensional character. He didn’t really

1250
01:17:17.720 –> 01:17:21.360
understand women. Wasn’t, wasn’t there something. What’s, I read something

1251
01:17:21.360 –> 01:17:25.160
somewhere that said Julia was loosely based on his, his second

1252
01:17:25.160 –> 01:17:28.840
wife. Like the, the. Yeah, so. Yeah, so.

1253
01:17:29.240 –> 01:17:32.600
So it’s not that she, it’s not that he viewed it as he was writing

1254
01:17:32.600 –> 01:17:36.280
it, that she was an empty character. It was just his experience with his

1255
01:17:36.280 –> 01:17:40.120
wife. Is that, that’s what we’re led to believe at this. Yes,

1256
01:17:40.360 –> 01:17:43.440
yes. And I mean, marriage is hard.

1257
01:17:43.520 –> 01:17:46.480
Relationships are hard. You know,

1258
01:17:47.920 –> 01:17:50.240
and that’s all I’ll say about that because we all, we all know what I

1259
01:17:50.240 –> 01:17:53.960
mean here. Like, you know, relationships are hard. Marriage is hard. None of this

1260
01:17:53.960 –> 01:17:57.520
is easy. And if you’re already a person who

1261
01:17:58.080 –> 01:18:01.040
just personality wise, again, looking at Orwell’s Wikipedia

1262
01:18:02.080 –> 01:18:05.800
write up and some other things. If you’re already a person who’s sort of struggling

1263
01:18:05.800 –> 01:18:09.400
with what your status is and then you’re, you’re, you’re

1264
01:18:09.400 –> 01:18:12.720
marrying somebody and then you’re expecting to build a life with them,

1265
01:18:13.360 –> 01:18:16.920
but they’re also struggling with that, that’s going to come out in your writing and

1266
01:18:16.920 –> 01:18:20.160
there’s going to Be clearly things that you are going to be blind to. So

1267
01:18:20.160 –> 01:18:23.920
I think he was blind to. To women as a

1268
01:18:23.920 –> 01:18:27.560
three dimensional character. As a three dimensional character in his. In his book. I also

1269
01:18:27.560 –> 01:18:31.040
think he was blind to, you know, religion because

1270
01:18:31.120 –> 01:18:34.700
Marxist ideas about religion impediments have influenced his

1271
01:18:34.700 –> 01:18:38.500
thinking. And I think that that blindness leads you

1272
01:18:38.500 –> 01:18:41.780
to create certain characters and situations in

1273
01:18:41.780 –> 01:18:45.580
1984, that when you’re asking me to do something as

1274
01:18:45.580 –> 01:18:49.340
protest literature, there’s a piece of this puzzle that is missing.

1275
01:18:50.220 –> 01:18:53.180
And the piece of that puzzle that’s missing is what we’ve been talking about here.

1276
01:18:53.180 –> 01:18:54.620
What are you willing to die for?

1277
01:18:57.020 –> 01:18:59.100
So that’s sort of my twisted

1278
01:19:00.580 –> 01:19:04.180
windy hook. David, answer to your question. I don’t know if that got

1279
01:19:04.180 –> 01:19:07.140
where you were looking for, but close enough.

1280
01:19:07.940 –> 01:19:10.580
Close enough. Okay, that’s fine. Cool. I almost hit the target. All right,

1281
01:19:11.620 –> 01:19:12.820
it’s good. All right,

1282
01:19:16.340 –> 01:19:19.500
so we do. Let’s turn the corner here. Let’s turn the corner because we’ve talked

1283
01:19:19.500 –> 01:19:23.180
about the two main themes of the book. We’ve talked about. Well, one of the

1284
01:19:23.180 –> 01:19:25.980
main things, we talked about Orwell as a writer and we’ve talked about the meaning

1285
01:19:25.980 –> 01:19:29.490
of 1984. What we should take from it. I guess we should. Let’s touch on

1286
01:19:29.490 –> 01:19:31.890
totalitarianism and dystopia. So

1287
01:19:34.130 –> 01:19:37.290
Orwell says, and this is for politics in the English language. I love, I do

1288
01:19:37.290 –> 01:19:40.570
actually love this quote from him. I think this is dead on from him. He

1289
01:19:40.570 –> 01:19:44.290
says our civilization is decadent and our language, so the argument runs,

1290
01:19:44.450 –> 01:19:47.570
must inevitably share in the general collapse.

1291
01:19:48.850 –> 01:19:51.970
The same thing is happening to the English language, he says later on in the

1292
01:19:51.970 –> 01:19:55.690
same essay. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts

1293
01:19:55.690 –> 01:19:59.480
are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier

1294
01:19:59.480 –> 01:20:03.040
for us to have foolish thoughts. Sort of a chicken and an

1295
01:20:03.040 –> 01:20:06.360
egg idea, by the way. Later on in

1296
01:20:06.840 –> 01:20:10.600
40 years later, the critic Harold Bloom would bring up this critique as

1297
01:20:10.600 –> 01:20:13.880
well when he would talk about, Interestingly enough, the

1298
01:20:13.880 –> 01:20:17.720
1980s, when some of us on this call were in high school

1299
01:20:18.280 –> 01:20:21.720
or in middle school, would talk about how

1300
01:20:23.810 –> 01:20:27.450
the. The American mind was shifting and there was a lack of

1301
01:20:27.450 –> 01:20:31.290
critical thinking that was going on, right? So Orwell was consumed. This was his big

1302
01:20:31.290 –> 01:20:35.010
bugaboo. And I’ll grant him this, his big bugaboo was the English language. What are

1303
01:20:35.010 –> 01:20:38.730
we doing with the English language? Is the English language tight? Is the English language

1304
01:20:38.730 –> 01:20:42.490
actually expressing our thoughts in a clear, and I’ve taken to

1305
01:20:42.490 –> 01:20:45.250
talking about this way, serious manner?

1306
01:20:49.340 –> 01:20:52.940
1984 didn’t become a dystopic novel until

1307
01:20:53.020 –> 01:20:55.820
after Orwell’s death. And

1308
01:20:57.100 –> 01:21:00.900
it kind of irks me because I think, I think of it in terms

1309
01:21:00.900 –> 01:21:03.940
of. Just like he does with the English language and the foolish thoughts. I think

1310
01:21:03.940 –> 01:21:07.700
of it in terms of chicken and egg. Which came first, 1984 or

1311
01:21:07.700 –> 01:21:10.780
totalitarianism? Did one inform the other?

1312
01:21:11.820 –> 01:21:15.540
Did we already have these tendencies in our government and in our institutions

1313
01:21:15.540 –> 01:21:19.230
and 1984 just laid them out for us where we could all see them? Or

1314
01:21:19.630 –> 01:21:23.310
now let me go all conspiracy minded here. Did the Council on Foreign Relations

1315
01:21:23.310 –> 01:21:27.110
and the Trilateral Commission utilize George Orwell in order

1316
01:21:27.110 –> 01:21:29.990
to get these ideas out there to soften up the public so they could do

1317
01:21:29.990 –> 01:21:33.310
them all later? Because they operate on a 500 year long timeline

1318
01:21:33.470 –> 01:21:37.310
versus the rest of us who barely operate on a 10 minute timeline. Right.

1319
01:21:37.470 –> 01:21:40.990
And they relied on all of us to forget was George

1320
01:21:40.990 –> 01:21:44.520
Orwell a CIA plant? You know, these are the

1321
01:21:44.600 –> 01:21:48.440
things in my conspiratorial mind that begin to work

1322
01:21:48.840 –> 01:21:50.760
with 1984. Right.

1323
01:21:52.600 –> 01:21:56.040
I do think we live in times where the

1324
01:21:56.040 –> 01:21:59.720
dystopic elements of 1984 are evidence around

1325
01:21:59.720 –> 01:22:03.440
us. This is, I would agree with, with the younger generations here. We do already

1326
01:22:03.440 –> 01:22:07.080
have things watching us. So I mentioned this before. We do already have social

1327
01:22:07.080 –> 01:22:10.830
control. We do already have bad food and speech codes. The only

1328
01:22:10.830 –> 01:22:14.430
thing we are missing is like the one world uniform. That’s the only thing we’re

1329
01:22:14.430 –> 01:22:18.230
missing, like where we all get to wear the jumpers like together because we’re

1330
01:22:18.230 –> 01:22:21.550
all on one team. I remember a comedian years ago made a joke about how

1331
01:22:21.550 –> 01:22:25.310
like if the aliens ever come down, we all don’t have a uniform. We need

1332
01:22:25.310 –> 01:22:28.870
the Earth uniform that says we’re from Earth, like this is the jumper,

1333
01:22:28.870 –> 01:22:32.390
you know, because apparently in the future everybody dresses in just one

1334
01:22:32.390 –> 01:22:36.030
uniform. You just eliminate the probable clothes like just right

1335
01:22:36.030 –> 01:22:39.300
there. We do have digital

1336
01:22:39.300 –> 01:22:42.940
gulags. We do have cancel codes, we do have

1337
01:22:42.940 –> 01:22:46.180
cancel culture. We do have social norming of speech.

1338
01:22:46.900 –> 01:22:50.580
Now we can argue that technology has just, and this is an argument I’m willing

1339
01:22:50.580 –> 01:22:53.660
to listen to, technology has just taken our tendencies that we already had to their

1340
01:22:53.660 –> 01:22:57.500
logical conclusions. But I think that I

1341
01:22:57.500 –> 01:23:01.060
saw something today like 87% of Facebook’s revenue comes from

1342
01:23:01.060 –> 01:23:04.730
advertising on the platform. Platform. And they’re just going to use AI to make

1343
01:23:04.730 –> 01:23:08.410
that advertising better. Better for

1344
01:23:08.410 –> 01:23:11.930
who? I’m not quite sure. Won’t be better for the human

1345
01:23:11.930 –> 01:23:15.490
beings who are being advertised too, but it’ll be better for somebody.

1346
01:23:15.570 –> 01:23:19.290
Whoever’s paying. It’s gonna be whoever writes the check is going to be better

1347
01:23:19.290 –> 01:23:22.730
for them. It’s gonna be better for the shareholders of Facebook. That’s who’s gonna be.

1348
01:23:22.730 –> 01:23:26.490
So everybody. Ultimately, yes. Go by shareholders. Go by stock

1349
01:23:26.490 –> 01:23:29.470
and Facebook, if you can. I believe it. Today. It’s at

1350
01:23:29.470 –> 01:23:33.230
$673.94 a share. I believe is what it is at

1351
01:23:33.230 –> 01:23:33.510
now.

1352
01:23:37.670 –> 01:23:41.310
Oh, I. I think we. I think we got the dystopia

1353
01:23:41.310 –> 01:23:45.030
we dreamed about in our fever dreams in the mid 20th century. We got it.

1354
01:23:45.430 –> 01:23:48.710
Except the only thing we’re missing is replicants and bad uniforms. That’s the only thing

1355
01:23:48.710 –> 01:23:52.430
we’re missing. Like, we got our Blade Runner future. Right? And we also have

1356
01:23:52.430 –> 01:23:56.080
slovenly language. Some of the things I’ve seen

1357
01:23:56.480 –> 01:23:58.840
and always. And this is going to be. Claire, you’re going to love this. This

1358
01:23:58.840 –> 01:24:02.040
is going to be my old man. Get off my porch yelling. You know, about

1359
01:24:02.040 –> 01:24:05.880
the language, but, like, the things I see in texting and the

1360
01:24:05.880 –> 01:24:09.280
things I see people talking about online, like, is that even English? Like, what are

1361
01:24:09.280 –> 01:24:11.920
we talking about here? Like, I don’t know what a skibidi toilet is. I have

1362
01:24:11.920 –> 01:24:15.200
no idea. I don’t want to know. Don’t anybody tell me. I don’t care.

1363
01:24:15.600 –> 01:24:19.440
It doesn’t matter. I’m too old to care. And

1364
01:24:19.440 –> 01:24:22.560
Tom’s laughing because he probably knows what it is better than I do. And I

1365
01:24:22.560 –> 01:24:25.740
don’t care. I’m just laughing because I. Like, we have rules in my house. My.

1366
01:24:25.740 –> 01:24:28.660
All of my kids are adults and we have rules in my house. Like, if

1367
01:24:28.660 –> 01:24:32.420
you’re not going to use the real word, don’t say it like you. If you

1368
01:24:32.420 –> 01:24:36.180
say that’s sus to me, I’m gonna. I’m just gonna

1369
01:24:36.180 –> 01:24:39.740
smack you and you’re gonna leave the room. Suspect. That’s very

1370
01:24:39.740 –> 01:24:43.540
suspect, dad. Like. Like, I

1371
01:24:43.780 –> 01:24:47.340
like. Although my nephews yesterday used a

1372
01:24:47.340 –> 01:24:50.820
word that I think is so spot on for this generation. They call themselves

1373
01:24:51.230 –> 01:24:54.590
screen agers because all they do is walk around on their

1374
01:24:54.990 –> 01:24:58.790
phones looking at their screens. I think creating new words like that

1375
01:24:58.790 –> 01:25:02.470
are is fine. I have no problem with that. That’s more like a pop culture

1376
01:25:02.470 –> 01:25:06.070
thing. I’m okay with that. I’m less okay with the

1377
01:25:06.070 –> 01:25:09.870
shorthand butchering the actual word. Like, you know, again, let’s.

1378
01:25:10.030 –> 01:25:13.070
I’m gonna be the man of principle on this conversation. I’m gonna say no to

1379
01:25:13.070 –> 01:25:15.910
all of it. I’m gonna be the main principle. This is the line. There has

1380
01:25:15.910 –> 01:25:19.510
to be a line. He’s got the red line. Gotta draw the line.

1381
01:25:19.910 –> 01:25:23.670
I’m gonna be picard in Star Trek, every time we draw

1382
01:25:23.670 –> 01:25:25.950
a line, we fall back, and then we draw another line and then we fall

1383
01:25:25.950 –> 01:25:29.750
back. No, no, no, it ends here. This

1384
01:25:29.750 –> 01:25:33.149
thing is stopping right now. And yes, I have raised three

1385
01:25:33.149 –> 01:25:36.590
teenagers. I’m soon to be raising a fourth. I know exactly what I’m talking about.

1386
01:25:36.590 –> 01:25:38.630
I’ve been in the war for a while, so

1387
01:25:40.310 –> 01:25:43.670
I know all about lines. I’m all done. Are all gone.

1388
01:25:44.740 –> 01:25:47.820
Your war’s done. You’re. And I got one. I got one on you, by the

1389
01:25:47.820 –> 01:25:51.140
way, so. Yeah, you do. You got five.

1390
01:25:51.380 –> 01:25:54.980
Tom’s revolution is over also. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s. He’s well into his

1391
01:25:54.980 –> 01:25:58.500
reformation years now. He’s ready to be for the

1392
01:25:58.500 –> 01:25:58.980
Renaissance.

1393
01:26:02.820 –> 01:26:04.340
I guess the question is,

1394
01:26:06.420 –> 01:26:09.420
if we take the premise. If we take my premise that we’re well into the

1395
01:26:09.420 –> 01:26:12.330
dystopia, just with, like, better lighting and better food

1396
01:26:14.570 –> 01:26:16.810
and. Maybe you don’t have to take my premise. Maybe you can tell me that

1397
01:26:16.810 –> 01:26:20.410
my premise is nonsense, which is fine. How do we

1398
01:26:20.650 –> 01:26:23.290
create? Well,

1399
01:26:24.890 –> 01:26:27.490
say what you want about Donald Trump. He’s been running around saying that we’re about

1400
01:26:27.490 –> 01:26:30.010
to live in a golden age or that we’re moving towards a golden age. That

1401
01:26:30.010 –> 01:26:33.810
actually. Which is his sort of the Trump version of Ronald

1402
01:26:33.810 –> 01:26:37.530
Reagan’s Morning in America kind of thing. And I’m not going to

1403
01:26:37.530 –> 01:26:40.930
argue about the politics of that. That’s not the point of this. I’m merely saying

1404
01:26:41.010 –> 01:26:44.850
it’s been a long time, a long time since I have

1405
01:26:44.850 –> 01:26:48.650
heard a national politician of any stripe talk about how

1406
01:26:48.650 –> 01:26:50.370
the future might actually be better.

1407
01:26:52.690 –> 01:26:56.330
This is the reason, I think, at a pop culture level, why all of our

1408
01:26:56.330 –> 01:27:00.050
dystopias, even like the Hunger Games and things like that, are just recycled

1409
01:27:00.130 –> 01:27:03.970
tropes from the mid 20th century, because we

1410
01:27:03.970 –> 01:27:07.720
got the things we wanted in our fever dreams. We got the

1411
01:27:07.720 –> 01:27:11.240
terrors as well. And now we don’t know how to move from the

1412
01:27:11.240 –> 01:27:14.480
terror to the utopia. We just know we want it, but we don’t know how

1413
01:27:14.480 –> 01:27:17.880
to move there. By the way, Peter Thiel wrote that in his book Zero to

1414
01:27:17.880 –> 01:27:21.640
One as well. He said that we’re deeply pessimistic culture. This is why we’re

1415
01:27:21.640 –> 01:27:25.360
not innovating correctly. He said, if you look at the Chinese,

1416
01:27:25.600 –> 01:27:29.440
they’re pessimistic, but they make plans. We’re pessimistic, and we make no

1417
01:27:29.440 –> 01:27:33.190
plans. Like, that’s. That’s the only way. That’s the

1418
01:27:33.190 –> 01:27:37.030
comparison between the two cultures. Right. And I think he’s onto something. I

1419
01:27:37.030 –> 01:27:40.670
think he’s dead. Onto something. And so Donald Trump runs around, talks about

1420
01:27:40.670 –> 01:27:43.990
how we. We could live in a golden age in the future, and everybody laughs

1421
01:27:43.990 –> 01:27:47.590
at him because that’s the pessimism, right? They think he’s just a foolish old boomer.

1422
01:27:47.670 –> 01:27:51.030
Everybody goes, okay, Boomer, whatever, and, like, moves on.

1423
01:27:53.510 –> 01:27:56.630
But I think we have to change our language. I think we have to change

1424
01:27:56.870 –> 01:28:00.440
our idea structure. I think we have to break with the mid

1425
01:28:00.440 –> 01:28:04.200
20th century. I think we need to build and not

1426
01:28:04.200 –> 01:28:07.920
deconstruct. So I guess the larger question that I have here, and we could

1427
01:28:07.920 –> 01:28:11.160
break it down into all these other tiny areas if we want, is how can

1428
01:28:11.160 –> 01:28:14.799
leaders lead people to a golden age if they don’t collectively or

1429
01:28:14.799 –> 01:28:18.600
individually even believe in something like that anymore? To my point, when I

1430
01:28:18.600 –> 01:28:21.640
was answering David’s question, if they don’t even underground, if they don’t even under.

1431
01:28:22.200 –> 01:28:25.520
Understand the substrate of what lives underneath their cynicism and their

1432
01:28:25.520 –> 01:28:28.840
nihilism, and they don’t even know that it’s cynicism and nihilism because they’re just living

1433
01:28:28.840 –> 01:28:32.360
their lives. Like, how can they build towards

1434
01:28:32.360 –> 01:28:36.120
anything golden ever? How can that. How do we

1435
01:28:36.120 –> 01:28:38.440
not just wind up just staying in the same spot?

1436
01:28:41.480 –> 01:28:45.000
How do we fix this problem? This is the. This is the end of the

1437
01:28:45.000 –> 01:28:47.960
show. How do we fix this problem? Let’s out with this. How do we fix

1438
01:28:47.960 –> 01:28:51.720
this? How do we use 1984 to fix this? Because I

1439
01:28:51.720 –> 01:28:54.850
don’t know how. This is why I’m asking. I have no idea.

1440
01:28:55.250 –> 01:28:59.010
Claire, go ahead. I’m gonna dump this on you, and then. David. Yeah? Thanks.

1441
01:28:59.010 –> 01:29:02.730
Thanks. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Well, you’re. That. You’re the English major. You. Yeah,

1442
01:29:02.730 –> 01:29:05.210
you got the word. Got the fancy words. I know. I was hoping we were

1443
01:29:05.210 –> 01:29:08.210
just gonna dive into language, which I have some thoughts on as well, but, you

1444
01:29:08.210 –> 01:29:11.450
know. I think I dive into language. No, no, no. Let me. Let me. I’ll.

1445
01:29:11.450 –> 01:29:14.690
I’ll. I’ll speak to the other. Because I do, you know, I do think

1446
01:29:15.650 –> 01:29:17.170
it is incredibly hard

1447
01:29:19.820 –> 01:29:23.380
to. To attach personal meaning to

1448
01:29:23.380 –> 01:29:27.100
this idea of come along and be part of this

1449
01:29:27.100 –> 01:29:30.660
golden age when it is said in the same

1450
01:29:30.660 –> 01:29:33.940
breath, and, And Donald Trump is saying it now, but he’s not the first one

1451
01:29:33.940 –> 01:29:37.740
to try to usher it in. Right. It’s just that

1452
01:29:37.740 –> 01:29:41.460
happens to be the. The current version, but when it is

1453
01:29:41.460 –> 01:29:44.780
also said in the same

1454
01:29:44.780 –> 01:29:48.570
conversation as these are all the things you should

1455
01:29:48.570 –> 01:29:52.210
be fearful of, I think that’s what keeps

1456
01:29:52.290 –> 01:29:56.090
stunting our ability to actually put our own shoulders to

1457
01:29:56.090 –> 01:29:59.770
the wheel. And be willing to die for doing what it takes to

1458
01:29:59.770 –> 01:30:03.610
usher in a true golden age. Because it is

1459
01:30:03.610 –> 01:30:07.450
built upon a foundation of. This is why

1460
01:30:07.450 –> 01:30:11.090
those are other. This is why you need to be part of,

1461
01:30:11.090 –> 01:30:12.770
you know, what’s. What’s better.

1462
01:30:15.450 –> 01:30:19.130
And so as long as those things are said in the same breath

1463
01:30:19.130 –> 01:30:22.890
as part of the same strategy, we can’t get out of the

1464
01:30:22.890 –> 01:30:23.690
starting gate.

1465
01:30:26.810 –> 01:30:30.570
I like that. I would. I mean, yeah,

1466
01:30:30.570 –> 01:30:34.130
the language of today is really, really complex and is really, really frustrating. I. I

1467
01:30:34.130 –> 01:30:37.890
think, you know, we have to realize that words are the actual building blocks of

1468
01:30:37.890 –> 01:30:41.650
reality. What we speak does become reality. And every historian

1469
01:30:41.650 –> 01:30:45.410
and what would say that if you look at every world leader, it’s through their

1470
01:30:45.410 –> 01:30:49.170
language that they form and shape up the world as it played out.

1471
01:30:49.170 –> 01:30:52.850
Nothing happens because we’re quiet. Everything happens because people are talking.

1472
01:30:53.570 –> 01:30:56.530
And I think when we think about how do we fix the problem?

1473
01:30:57.570 –> 01:31:01.290
Again, I always talk to people about building trust. And trust is

1474
01:31:01.290 –> 01:31:05.050
an equation. It’s predictability plus consistency. We

1475
01:31:05.050 –> 01:31:08.290
don’t have either one of those things with our leaders. We either get

1476
01:31:08.290 –> 01:31:12.110
predictable, but we don’t get consistent, or we get consistent, but they’re not predictable.

1477
01:31:12.660 –> 01:31:16.340
And so there’s always these nuanced differences in what we have. And so we’re

1478
01:31:16.340 –> 01:31:20.100
left always clear to your point going, can we. Can

1479
01:31:20.100 –> 01:31:23.340
I believe you? Like, I want to believe you? I want to walk forward to

1480
01:31:23.340 –> 01:31:26.940
it. You know, I think how we fix the problem

1481
01:31:26.940 –> 01:31:30.740
is, is that it seems to me just all I

1482
01:31:30.740 –> 01:31:34.380
do is talk with people. And it’s very unique. Talking with people in

1483
01:31:34.380 –> 01:31:37.660
two different parts of the country at the same time. That’s wild to see the

1484
01:31:37.660 –> 01:31:41.350
perspective of that happen. Has the one thing that’s

1485
01:31:41.350 –> 01:31:44.590
universal is that it’s, It’s. It needs to be a

1486
01:31:44.670 –> 01:31:48.110
grassroots up, not top down. I think that’s how you change

1487
01:31:48.430 –> 01:31:52.230
everything, is that we have got to get out of this megaphone

1488
01:31:52.230 –> 01:31:56.030
leadership style that we’ve had in every single culture that I can remember.

1489
01:31:57.390 –> 01:32:01.150
You know, I think, yeah, messaging is great, right? The slogan’s great. Make

1490
01:32:01.150 –> 01:32:04.890
America. Make America great Again, Great slogan. I

1491
01:32:04.890 –> 01:32:08.250
can’t knock him for the slogan, but I think that the jury is still out

1492
01:32:08.250 –> 01:32:11.770
for me and going, okay, that’s just words. And we need to show we need

1493
01:32:11.770 –> 01:32:15.490
to see this. And I think it comes down to, again, how are we.

1494
01:32:15.650 –> 01:32:18.850
If we’re going to go to a golden age as people, then it starts in

1495
01:32:18.850 –> 01:32:22.650
the communities. It starts in our neighborhoods. It starts in our. Like, how do

1496
01:32:22.650 –> 01:32:26.370
we frame our local. Like, how do the States become great. Like, how

1497
01:32:26.370 –> 01:32:30.090
does each individual state kind of come together and do that? I think if

1498
01:32:30.090 –> 01:32:33.570
we’re going to become great again or if we’re going to pull ourselves out.

1499
01:32:33.730 –> 01:32:36.930
To your point earlier, Hassan, I don’t think we’re in the dystopian future at all.

1500
01:32:37.170 –> 01:32:40.650
In fact, I think that we are at a very interesting schism. I think that

1501
01:32:40.650 –> 01:32:44.330
we’re just at this very interesting crossroads in our society where we have

1502
01:32:44.330 –> 01:32:48.010
been kind of like Prometheus playing with all of

1503
01:32:48.010 –> 01:32:51.610
these tools, and we’ve kind of. Some things are wonderful and some things are

1504
01:32:51.610 –> 01:32:55.290
extremely volatile, but I don’t think we’ve crossed into that threshold yet.

1505
01:32:55.290 –> 01:32:57.890
I think that there’s still a lot of potential for good and a lot of

1506
01:32:57.890 –> 01:33:01.640
potential for positivity. But I think we’re reading reaching

1507
01:33:01.640 –> 01:33:05.360
this very unique fork in the road as a society and as a world population.

1508
01:33:05.440 –> 01:33:09.240
We’re going to have to come together and choose, like, which path we’re going

1509
01:33:09.240 –> 01:33:12.200
to go. Ben, that’s above my pay grade to know what we’re going to do

1510
01:33:12.200 –> 01:33:15.160
with that. But I think when it comes down to how do we fix it.

1511
01:33:15.160 –> 01:33:18.840
Yeah, it’s when we start focusing on what we do. Tom, I like when you

1512
01:33:18.840 –> 01:33:22.160
said, like, we have house rules with we say the full word. I think that’s

1513
01:33:22.160 –> 01:33:25.940
a phenomenal example of what I’m talking about. It starts there. Well,

1514
01:33:25.940 –> 01:33:29.780
then if that steps into local community activities and schools

1515
01:33:29.780 –> 01:33:32.020
and we say we have to get rid of this, we have to have some

1516
01:33:32.020 –> 01:33:35.700
kind of, again, holding the line idea that you were talking about. If we have

1517
01:33:35.700 –> 01:33:39.500
to have some form of a grassroots starting point

1518
01:33:39.500 –> 01:33:43.220
that pulses out and then that starts to become.

1519
01:33:43.220 –> 01:33:47.020
The thing that I think will change everything about our society is that

1520
01:33:47.020 –> 01:33:50.220
we just have to reverse. The messaging has to come from

1521
01:33:50.740 –> 01:33:54.460
the other, the exit point of the megaphone. It has to go towards the cone

1522
01:33:54.460 –> 01:33:55.380
versus the other way around.

1523
01:34:04.660 –> 01:34:07.540
Tom, the podcast. Podcast audience is not like dead air. Go ahead.

1524
01:34:08.740 –> 01:34:11.540
It’s not like what? It’s not like dead air. Oh.

1525
01:34:13.460 –> 01:34:17.060
Look, I think, I think this, this question is

1526
01:34:17.140 –> 01:34:20.980
a moot point. And let me, let me explain why. First of all,

1527
01:34:22.100 –> 01:34:25.860
this is all definition, right? It’s like, so who’s going to decide

1528
01:34:25.860 –> 01:34:29.620
what the golden age is and what it isn’t? Who’s going to make that determination?

1529
01:34:29.780 –> 01:34:33.180
Is it going to be. Is it going to be our president? Is it going

1530
01:34:33.180 –> 01:34:36.740
to be the president of some other country? Is it going to be some

1531
01:34:36.740 –> 01:34:40.500
world global committee that somebody gets together and who’s to

1532
01:34:40.500 –> 01:34:44.210
say that that Committee is going to define something that I consider my golden

1533
01:34:44.210 –> 01:34:47.450
age. Like, I, I, I think that, I think that what we’re,

1534
01:34:48.330 –> 01:34:52.050
like I said, I, I made a comment earlier about, about 1984, giving

1535
01:34:52.050 –> 01:34:55.850
us the road map to a lack of individuality. And I think this

1536
01:34:55.850 –> 01:34:58.330
kind of question is the exact same thing, because

1537
01:34:59.690 –> 01:35:03.370
I think the golden age is going to be determined by us individually. Like, my,

1538
01:35:03.450 –> 01:35:07.010
what I think is whether I agree with you or not, whether we’re in the,

1539
01:35:07.010 –> 01:35:10.850
this, this dystopian c set of circumstances already or

1540
01:35:10.850 –> 01:35:14.560
not, or it’s coming or it’s past, or I

1541
01:35:14.560 –> 01:35:18.240
think how things impact you individually is way

1542
01:35:18.240 –> 01:35:22.000
more valuable to

1543
01:35:22.000 –> 01:35:25.760
you as a leader. If you’re, Again, we’re trying to. The way you

1544
01:35:25.760 –> 01:35:29.520
phrase, the question is how do leaders bring this

1545
01:35:29.520 –> 01:35:33.240
into, into a golden age? And I think it’s, we find

1546
01:35:33.240 –> 01:35:36.760
our own people, right? If I’m a leader of a company, I’m hiring the people

1547
01:35:36.760 –> 01:35:40.240
that are going to be, that are gonna want to believe in what I believe

1548
01:35:40.240 –> 01:35:44.000
in, and I don’t care whether it’s religious or moral or

1549
01:35:44.000 –> 01:35:47.840
immoral. You could be the worst person on the planet. If

1550
01:35:47.840 –> 01:35:50.680
some, if you get a group of people to follow you and they think you’re

1551
01:35:50.680 –> 01:35:54.200
the greatest thing since sliced bread, then who the hell is going to tell you

1552
01:35:54.200 –> 01:35:57.720
that you’re the worst person on the planet, right? Like, you have a whole

1553
01:35:57.720 –> 01:36:00.960
faction of people that are following you, telling you you’re great. Like,

1554
01:36:01.840 –> 01:36:05.140
and I’m not suggesting that we follow terrible people, by the way. I’m just, I

1555
01:36:05.140 –> 01:36:08.940
mean, all I’m saying is I think, I think that this

1556
01:36:08.940 –> 01:36:12.660
idea of how can leaders bring us

1557
01:36:12.660 –> 01:36:16.300
to this golden age? I’m not following

1558
01:36:16.300 –> 01:36:20.020
a leader that has already decided that there’s a

1559
01:36:20.020 –> 01:36:23.860
golden age. If I don’t believe in what that golden age looks like, I’m not

1560
01:36:23.860 –> 01:36:27.660
following that leader. So whether Trump is or isn’t or

1561
01:36:27.900 –> 01:36:30.870
whomever, whatever president you mentioned, like,

1562
01:36:31.910 –> 01:36:35.550
it’s not up to them. It’s up to you. It’s up to me. It’s

1563
01:36:35.550 –> 01:36:39.270
like, so if I want to follow that president, great, then I’m believing in

1564
01:36:39.270 –> 01:36:42.710
their, their golden age. I’m going to believe in what they’re, whatever

1565
01:36:42.710 –> 01:36:46.150
nonsense they’re spewing or. Well,

1566
01:36:46.230 –> 01:36:49.230
I, if I’m following them, I don’t think it’s nonsense. But you might, you might

1567
01:36:49.230 –> 01:36:50.470
think it’s nonsense, right?

1568
01:36:53.990 –> 01:36:57.790
I think as leaders, I think it’s important, important for us to, and

1569
01:36:57.790 –> 01:37:01.630
I’ve said this on the podcast several times, Hsan, I, I think as leaders,

1570
01:37:01.630 –> 01:37:05.350
it’s important for us to find our moral compass,

1571
01:37:05.350 –> 01:37:09.070
to lead by example through that moral compass. The people who want to follow us

1572
01:37:09.070 –> 01:37:12.230
will follow us. They’re going to go to that gold, whatever. They’re going to go

1573
01:37:12.230 –> 01:37:15.550
to our definition of a golden age with us and, and we’re going to be

1574
01:37:15.550 –> 01:37:19.350
h. Now. So does that mean that the world goes to hell in a hand

1575
01:37:19.350 –> 01:37:22.970
basket? But my little set, my little world is going to be perfectly

1576
01:37:22.970 –> 01:37:26.810
fine. I, I don’t know. I don’t know that I, I don’t. I don’t have

1577
01:37:26.810 –> 01:37:29.610
a crystal ball. I can’t read the future. But I can tell you that

1578
01:37:32.090 –> 01:37:35.770
I’m always at a point of. I’m really not happy

1579
01:37:35.770 –> 01:37:39.490
with where we’re going. I’m really not happy with where we were. But nobody

1580
01:37:39.490 –> 01:37:42.450
has a solution that I want to follow to the next part, to the next

1581
01:37:42.450 –> 01:37:45.610
point in history. Like I have, I have yet. And again,

1582
01:37:48.100 –> 01:37:51.940
whether it was Biden, Obama, Trump, name a president,

1583
01:37:52.420 –> 01:37:56.020
I still have yet to have one that I thought was so good that I

1584
01:37:56.020 –> 01:37:59.780
would follow him. I’ll take your. David. I have not had a president

1585
01:37:59.780 –> 01:38:02.900
I would die for. I’ll just tell you that right now. I’ve. I’ve not had

1586
01:38:02.900 –> 01:38:06.460
a single president in my lifetime that I would take a bullet for. It just

1587
01:38:06.460 –> 01:38:10.300
doesn’t. Hasn’t happened yet for me. So, like, I don’t know. I, I

1588
01:38:10.300 –> 01:38:14.110
think, I think as. And I think

1589
01:38:14.430 –> 01:38:17.830
your guys’s kind of views and vantages and how language

1590
01:38:17.830 –> 01:38:21.230
impacts this, I think is really valuable. I actually do,

1591
01:38:21.470 –> 01:38:25.310
I think because language is the definition

1592
01:38:25.310 –> 01:38:28.909
of what that golden age looks like, right? You have to be able to verbalize

1593
01:38:28.909 –> 01:38:32.310
it, you have to be able to express it, explain it, detail it. And if

1594
01:38:32.310 –> 01:38:36.030
you can’t, then you’re useless to me. Right? So

1595
01:38:36.030 –> 01:38:39.750
all these changes in language and all this stuff, I totally agree with you

1596
01:38:39.750 –> 01:38:43.100
guys that language is important. But. But what I think we’re failing on and kind

1597
01:38:43.100 –> 01:38:46.900
of leaning a bit more toward what you were talking about, Claire, with

1598
01:38:46.900 –> 01:38:50.700
the, like, what are we fearful

1599
01:38:50.700 –> 01:38:54.540
of really? Like, if, if we’re really shooting for a golden

1600
01:38:54.540 –> 01:38:58.140
age, then to your point, Claire, these roadblocks shouldn’t even be in our, in our

1601
01:38:58.140 –> 01:39:01.460
purview. We shouldn’t be even looking at them. We shouldn’t even be worried about them.

1602
01:39:01.620 –> 01:39:05.300
Just go for the gold and drive, right? Just drive to it.

1603
01:39:05.460 –> 01:39:09.190
If you think about and, and if you come down to almost

1604
01:39:09.190 –> 01:39:12.190
a little microcosm and I know I’m, I’m going a little bit over in time

1605
01:39:12.190 –> 01:39:14.990
that you guys had here. But, but if you go down to a little micro,

1606
01:39:14.990 –> 01:39:18.270
like a little, this microcosm of the, of a, of this

1607
01:39:18.590 –> 01:39:21.230
think of like a, think of a, like a,

1608
01:39:22.590 –> 01:39:26.230
a gold, a gold medal athlete,

1609
01:39:26.230 –> 01:39:29.350
right? You don’t think they’ve had challenges in their lives. You don’t think they’ve had

1610
01:39:29.350 –> 01:39:32.770
negatives, you don’t think they have roadblocks, things that could have shot, shut them down.

1611
01:39:33.010 –> 01:39:36.770
Every one of them have stories like that, but they just ignored

1612
01:39:36.770 –> 01:39:40.450
it or moved past it or persevered through it. And we can’t

1613
01:39:40.450 –> 01:39:44.090
come up collectively as a society as how to do that. That’s also

1614
01:39:44.090 –> 01:39:47.810
a problem. Like, I just think, I think we just,

1615
01:39:47.969 –> 01:39:51.730
I, I think that everybody defines these things differently. I don’t think we’re ever

1616
01:39:51.730 –> 01:39:55.170
going to get all on the same page on what that golden age definition is.

1617
01:39:55.330 –> 01:39:59.170
So therefore we may not ever hit it. We may not never

1618
01:39:59.170 –> 01:40:02.890
get, we may not ever get there. Or we’re already there and we’re not

1619
01:40:02.890 –> 01:40:06.370
seeing it, but somebody else already found it and nobody’s paying attention to them

1620
01:40:06.610 –> 01:40:08.930
because they don’t know how to, they don’t know how to express it. They don’t

1621
01:40:08.930 –> 01:40:12.650
know how to get the, their version of the language out. So I think there’s

1622
01:40:12.650 –> 01:40:16.370
a lot of things here that, and I think this, what I just said, I’m

1623
01:40:16.370 –> 01:40:20.050
sure can turn into a whole nother podcast episode. Oh, I asked,

1624
01:40:20.050 –> 01:40:23.530
I asked a loaded question. I asked a loaded question here at the end. I,

1625
01:40:23.530 –> 01:40:26.210
I mean, I’m notorious for doing that. I load up the gun at the end

1626
01:40:26.760 –> 01:40:29.880
and then, you know, it just, yeah, I’ve been doing this for a while now.

1627
01:40:29.880 –> 01:40:33.720
He does this to me all the time. All the time. All

1628
01:40:33.720 –> 01:40:34.120
the time.

1629
01:40:37.320 –> 01:40:41.120
Okay, final thoughts. We gotta close, as I

1630
01:40:41.120 –> 01:40:44.720
usually say, right around this moment. Thank you to Claire Chandler. Thank you to

1631
01:40:44.720 –> 01:40:47.960
David Baumrucker. Thank you again to Top Libby for coming on the podcast today.

1632
01:40:48.600 –> 01:40:52.160
Your contributions have been amazing as usual. This is a

1633
01:40:52.160 –> 01:40:55.160
complicated book that opens up a lot of doors. Even though

1634
01:40:56.340 –> 01:40:59.020
I may have trouble with the way that it is written or some of the

1635
01:40:59.020 –> 01:41:02.780
ideas in it, it does engender conversation and I think it is worthwhile for

1636
01:41:02.780 –> 01:41:06.620
leaders to read at the very minimum, at least as a warning. Maybe, maybe a

1637
01:41:06.620 –> 01:41:09.860
warning frozen in time, but a warning nonetheless.

1638
01:41:11.620 –> 01:41:14.820
Claire, David, final thoughts.

1639
01:41:17.540 –> 01:41:20.940
So Tom, I, I, you’re right. Everything you just sort of

1640
01:41:20.940 –> 01:41:24.740
unpacked for us can, can be a, a future episode. And I’m happy to

1641
01:41:24.740 –> 01:41:28.560
go down that rabbit. Hol and Hassan And David,

1642
01:41:30.240 –> 01:41:33.960
what’s interesting to me is I do think, Hasan, to your point, this is,

1643
01:41:33.960 –> 01:41:37.800
this is not the best book ever written. We know that. But in the

1644
01:41:37.800 –> 01:41:40.800
true spirit of being literature, it did open up conversation.

1645
01:41:41.520 –> 01:41:45.240
I suspect that the combination of us can have a conversation about a paper

1646
01:41:45.240 –> 01:41:48.720
bag and make it, you know, interesting for two hours. So

1647
01:41:49.680 –> 01:41:53.120
what’s interesting to me, though, you know, coming back to, I don’t want to

1648
01:41:54.090 –> 01:41:57.730
sort of continue the golden age thing, but

1649
01:41:57.730 –> 01:42:01.050
there’s so much noise in the political sphere

1650
01:42:01.690 –> 01:42:05.530
and really effective leaders. And when I think of leader,

1651
01:42:05.530 –> 01:42:09.130
I don’t immediately go to politics for the very reasons

1652
01:42:09.289 –> 01:42:12.890
all of us have touched upon. There’s so much noise. But the most effective

1653
01:42:12.890 –> 01:42:15.610
leaders of tribes of

1654
01:42:15.850 –> 01:42:18.840
organizations, both for profit and nonprofit,

1655
01:42:19.630 –> 01:42:22.510
figure out a way not to mandate,

1656
01:42:23.230 –> 01:42:26.910
don’t bring in your political speech and don’t lobby, you know, at the work site.

1657
01:42:27.150 –> 01:42:30.190
But they, they get their employees

1658
01:42:31.150 –> 01:42:34.750
energized and committed to a unifying

1659
01:42:34.750 –> 01:42:38.550
idea, a pursuit of something, whether you call it a golden age,

1660
01:42:38.550 –> 01:42:42.310
a mission, a purpose, a long term vision. And they make those

1661
01:42:42.310 –> 01:42:45.630
connections for those people so that they can then,

1662
01:42:45.790 –> 01:42:49.230
because their moral compass is in alignment with that shared mission,

1663
01:42:50.430 –> 01:42:54.190
they can put away the distraction of the political morass that surrounds

1664
01:42:54.190 –> 01:42:56.910
us every day in 24, seven news cycles

1665
01:42:58.270 –> 01:43:02.070
and follow a leader they feel a connection to. And Tom, that was

1666
01:43:02.070 –> 01:43:04.910
what you talked about. I also think it is not a coincidence

1667
01:43:06.030 –> 01:43:09.710
that the root of the word culture, which I do a lot of my

1668
01:43:10.110 –> 01:43:12.670
consulting work based on, is cult.

1669
01:43:14.190 –> 01:43:18.030
Right? And I think there is a profound difference

1670
01:43:18.600 –> 01:43:22.320
between an authentic leader who understands that they have the most

1671
01:43:22.320 –> 01:43:24.600
direct impact on the culture of an organization,

1672
01:43:25.960 –> 01:43:29.800
which not coincidentally, again, David, I love your formula for trust,

1673
01:43:30.520 –> 01:43:34.360
comes from predictability, consistency, all of the things,

1674
01:43:34.520 –> 01:43:38.320
you know, we didn’t really dive too much into language. And very briefly,

1675
01:43:38.320 –> 01:43:42.120
I just want to get on a soapbox about that because 1984 was all about

1676
01:43:43.160 –> 01:43:45.640
the party that ascended into power

1677
01:43:46.840 –> 01:43:50.520
controlling and mandating conformity by continuing

1678
01:43:50.520 –> 01:43:54.160
to narrow down the language that people were allowed to use and priding

1679
01:43:54.160 –> 01:43:57.840
themselves on the fact that every new edition of their dictionary, the Newspeak

1680
01:43:57.840 –> 01:44:01.680
Dictionary, got smaller and smaller in

1681
01:44:01.680 –> 01:44:05.520
a different way. Leaders in high functioning

1682
01:44:05.520 –> 01:44:09.280
organizations try to narrow down language to come up with a

1683
01:44:09.280 –> 01:44:13.040
shared vocabulary so that they can get to greater predictability

1684
01:44:13.040 –> 01:44:16.240
and consistency in terms of how they think of success,

1685
01:44:16.640 –> 01:44:19.680
how they view talent, how they measure and evaluate performance,

1686
01:44:20.240 –> 01:44:24.000
and what they deem to be acceptable in terms of behavior and values.

1687
01:44:25.440 –> 01:44:29.040
And the best leaders, the one who are well intentioned around that and don’t use

1688
01:44:29.040 –> 01:44:32.240
that in, in a way that mandates conformity but that actually

1689
01:44:32.320 –> 01:44:36.120
inspires conviction are the ones who are going to succeed in

1690
01:44:36.120 –> 01:44:39.680
the long game. Yeah, I love. I would agree

1691
01:44:39.680 –> 01:44:41.680
with pretty much everything you just said, Claire.

1692
01:44:43.430 –> 01:44:47.230
I going off you would mention the word culture. The word

1693
01:44:47.230 –> 01:44:50.950
I introduce people to is curiosity. Because the Latin

1694
01:44:50.950 –> 01:44:54.670
derivative of that, the origin point is to care. And I think that we’ve lost

1695
01:44:54.670 –> 01:44:58.349
the ability to care in our society. And I think if we’re

1696
01:44:58.349 –> 01:45:02.070
thinking about how do leaders transform the landscape of today,

1697
01:45:02.070 –> 01:45:05.790
we have to reteach people how to be tolerant enough to care. Like are

1698
01:45:05.790 –> 01:45:09.590
you willing to sit with someone that you disagree with and care and shift

1699
01:45:09.590 –> 01:45:13.420
out of perception and walk into perspective with people because we have a

1700
01:45:13.420 –> 01:45:16.380
really, really bad problem with that in our society that we don’t understand

1701
01:45:16.940 –> 01:45:20.740
that. I guess we have made a

1702
01:45:20.740 –> 01:45:24.500
really weird game of in group, out group. Right. And

1703
01:45:24.500 –> 01:45:27.820
to the two party system comments we made earlier. I’m

1704
01:45:28.300 –> 01:45:32.060
Tom, I’m very much with you. I think that, you know, a stool

1705
01:45:32.060 –> 01:45:35.700
with two legs is a very awkward stool. And we wonder why we always fall

1706
01:45:35.700 –> 01:45:39.300
over. And I think we have to sit and we have to wonder why

1707
01:45:39.300 –> 01:45:43.010
that has been prevented. And I think it’s been prevented because this

1708
01:45:43.090 –> 01:45:46.730
masquerading that’s hidden in 1984 of this weirdly I would say the

1709
01:45:46.730 –> 01:45:50.010
uni party of 1984. I don’t think it’s a one party, I think it’s a

1710
01:45:50.010 –> 01:45:53.690
uni party. I think that if there’s a reflection on

1711
01:45:53.690 –> 01:45:57.090
today, I think that’s very what we have because our Congress has been

1712
01:45:57.169 –> 01:46:00.890
deemed fairly moot at this point. It’s very obvious to anyone

1713
01:46:00.890 –> 01:46:04.410
who’s paying attention that lobbyists and special

1714
01:46:04.410 –> 01:46:08.010
interests own this country. And we wonder why change doesn’t

1715
01:46:08.010 –> 01:46:11.470
happen. And well, again, the unit party won’t allow that to happen.

1716
01:46:12.750 –> 01:46:16.430
And so when we’re thinking about again, how are leaders going

1717
01:46:16.430 –> 01:46:19.230
to change or impact society

1718
01:46:19.950 –> 01:46:22.870
building off of what both of you said, I think it comes down to this

1719
01:46:22.870 –> 01:46:26.510
idea of that we have to slow things

1720
01:46:26.510 –> 01:46:30.230
down, we have to get curious, we have to take our

1721
01:46:30.230 –> 01:46:33.830
time to not rush in this very, very dopamine driven,

1722
01:46:33.830 –> 01:46:37.510
consumer based culture we have because it’s almost

1723
01:46:37.510 –> 01:46:41.230
as if we have failed this to recognize that because they’re

1724
01:46:41.230 –> 01:46:44.590
making us make these decisions so fast that they’re

1725
01:46:44.590 –> 01:46:48.350
removing our ability to contemplate what’s actually going on. If

1726
01:46:48.350 –> 01:46:51.550
there was a conspiracy, I think that’s the one I see just as a behaviorist

1727
01:46:51.550 –> 01:46:55.270
and someone who works with just Understanding just how dopamine

1728
01:46:55.270 –> 01:46:57.510
works and the structuring of recycling thoughts.

1729
01:46:59.190 –> 01:47:03.030
Anybody who is trying to quickly make you change your language, quickly

1730
01:47:03.030 –> 01:47:06.540
make you change your. Like, the laws quickly

1731
01:47:06.540 –> 01:47:09.660
push things through, I think those are the people we have to be very, very

1732
01:47:09.660 –> 01:47:13.380
careful about. And I think that going back to 1984, it seems

1733
01:47:13.380 –> 01:47:16.820
like a certain level of complacenc happened with the entire

1734
01:47:16.820 –> 01:47:20.420
population that’s in 1984, that they’re just like,

1735
01:47:20.420 –> 01:47:23.900
oh, this is just how it is. And I think that maybe that’s.

1736
01:47:24.380 –> 01:47:27.980
You know, we made a comment about 9, 11. And I remember. I remember

1737
01:47:27.980 –> 01:47:31.670
sitting in 10 in my 10th grade class watching, watching that. And my

1738
01:47:31.670 –> 01:47:34.870
mom actually was in. Had flown

1739
01:47:35.030 –> 01:47:38.110
Baltimore, and I was like, she has to be in New York. That’s wild. Okay.

1740
01:47:38.110 –> 01:47:41.710
What interesting reflection, right? Doing that. But when we’re thinking

1741
01:47:41.710 –> 01:47:45.550
about that, we became. When it, when. When change in the

1742
01:47:45.550 –> 01:47:48.710
threat is instant, when we have that instantaneous hit,

1743
01:47:49.190 –> 01:47:52.630
boy, that is the number one study thing that

1744
01:47:52.630 –> 01:47:55.670
drives monumental change and monumental

1745
01:47:55.990 –> 01:47:59.550
adaptations is the velocity that something

1746
01:47:59.550 –> 01:48:03.190
hits. I think maybe the hybrid between a brave

1747
01:48:03.190 –> 01:48:06.630
new world and this is that maybe the society that we’re living in is, what

1748
01:48:06.630 –> 01:48:10.390
if that change in the 2020s is not fast, but it’s

1749
01:48:10.390 –> 01:48:13.510
very, very slow? It’s like boiling the frog. It’s like that.

1750
01:48:13.990 –> 01:48:17.550
We don’t recognize how far we have slid down the hill because the

1751
01:48:17.550 –> 01:48:20.950
changes are so micronized by day by day, week by week,

1752
01:48:21.830 –> 01:48:25.400
party by party, that there’s just this kind of subtle like,

1753
01:48:25.400 –> 01:48:29.040
Yeah, I guess it’s more of the same. I guess that’s frustrating again.

1754
01:48:29.360 –> 01:48:33.040
And we don’t realize that they’re playing a game of inches and we’re just not

1755
01:48:33.040 –> 01:48:36.800
paying attention. And they’ve moved halfway across this whole game board already.

1756
01:48:37.520 –> 01:48:41.080
That’s what it feels like to me sometimes. And I think that if we promote

1757
01:48:41.080 –> 01:48:44.240
the idea of just going back to what I said earlier about, about caring,

1758
01:48:44.720 –> 01:48:48.080
taking the time to be present and to care and to listen to people,

1759
01:48:48.730 –> 01:48:52.370
I think there’ll be a radical change that would really change politics. I

1760
01:48:52.370 –> 01:48:56.130
mean that in Term Limits, but that’s a different conversation, Right? But. But if

1761
01:48:56.130 –> 01:48:59.810
we were able to have that idea that the people

1762
01:48:59.810 –> 01:49:03.490
who are leading us would take the time to sit down and you actually felt

1763
01:49:03.490 –> 01:49:07.210
them caring for you. Right. That’s a very different thing than

1764
01:49:07.210 –> 01:49:10.650
someone showing up, waving their hands. Let me sign an autograph. Okay, I’ll see you

1765
01:49:10.650 –> 01:49:13.850
at the next stop. I think that that’s kind of what our society has done.

1766
01:49:13.850 –> 01:49:16.210
And we do it with politics. We do it with our movie stars as we

1767
01:49:16.210 –> 01:49:19.930
do it with our sports athletes. There’s really, you know, we hail

1768
01:49:19.930 –> 01:49:23.490
them for all their charity work, but really there’s no person. There’s very few. I’ll

1769
01:49:23.490 –> 01:49:27.170
say there’s very few, to my point, or I, maybe I won’t speak in absolutes,

1770
01:49:27.330 –> 01:49:30.930
but there are very few people that are, that are taking

1771
01:49:30.930 –> 01:49:34.730
the time to actually sit down and care and make themselves be seen

1772
01:49:34.730 –> 01:49:37.690
that way. And I think we should celebrate those people. But I think we just

1773
01:49:37.690 –> 01:49:41.090
have to be mindful that that’s not the standard. That’s, that’s,

1774
01:49:41.250 –> 01:49:42.240
that’s the exception.

1775
01:49:46.630 –> 01:49:50.230
I’m going to close here with one thought

1776
01:49:50.390 –> 01:49:54.030
that occurs to me as everybody has spoken. And once again, thank you, Claire, David

1777
01:49:54.030 –> 01:49:57.590
and Tom for coming on the show today, talking about, talking about this

1778
01:49:57.590 –> 01:50:01.350
book and our thoughts around this book and how it applies, you know, here at

1779
01:50:01.350 –> 01:50:05.150
the end for leaders and, and talking about some of the major

1780
01:50:05.150 –> 01:50:06.550
themes that are in it

1781
01:50:09.440 –> 01:50:13.080
for all the problems we’ve got in the United States of America. And

1782
01:50:13.080 –> 01:50:14.480
we got a lot of problems.

1783
01:50:18.240 –> 01:50:21.920
One thing still, at the end of the day, we are

1784
01:50:21.920 –> 01:50:25.160
still a republic. And in a

1785
01:50:25.160 –> 01:50:28.960
republic, fundamentally, the power

1786
01:50:29.440 –> 01:50:33.240
for the government comes from all of us, all four of us. In

1787
01:50:33.240 –> 01:50:36.960
this conversation today, everybody listening today. And I’m not just talking

1788
01:50:36.960 –> 01:50:39.720
about get out the vote like mtv. This isn’t that.

1789
01:50:41.320 –> 01:50:45.120
If you want better politicians, if we want better celebrities, to David’s point, we

1790
01:50:45.120 –> 01:50:48.840
want people who understand the English language. To Claire’s point,

1791
01:50:49.080 –> 01:50:52.120
we want people who could draw a line in their house. To Tom’s point,

1792
01:50:54.280 –> 01:50:57.960
it has to start with us in

1793
01:50:57.960 –> 01:51:01.800
our families. There are traditionally,

1794
01:51:01.800 –> 01:51:05.480
in Christianity is a larger idea here that there are three

1795
01:51:06.230 –> 01:51:09.910
main institutions that God or reality set up

1796
01:51:10.710 –> 01:51:14.230
when the building blocks of reality were laid way back in the deep, deep,

1797
01:51:14.230 –> 01:51:17.910
deep parts of history, whether that’s 14 billion years ago or 6,000,

1798
01:51:17.910 –> 01:51:21.749
take your pick. I don’t care. When those bulky blocks were laid, I

1799
01:51:21.749 –> 01:51:24.830
was not around and neither was anybody who’s listening to any of this. But those

1800
01:51:24.830 –> 01:51:27.910
building blocks were laid. And the three building blocks are this.

1801
01:51:28.870 –> 01:51:32.680
The first building block is the block of the family. Then the second

1802
01:51:32.680 –> 01:51:36.320
building block is the block of the church or community

1803
01:51:36.880 –> 01:51:40.120
with traditions, with

1804
01:51:40.120 –> 01:51:43.120
fashions, with, to Claire’s point, culture.

1805
01:51:43.920 –> 01:51:47.280
And then the final building block is the block of the state.

1806
01:51:48.320 –> 01:51:52.000
State always comes last in the form of the government or the

1807
01:51:52.000 –> 01:51:55.040
pharaoh or the king, or in our case,

1808
01:51:56.000 –> 01:51:59.600
as David mentioned, our unit party, congress,

1809
01:52:00.160 –> 01:52:04.000
and some would say our imperial presidency.

1810
01:52:04.080 –> 01:52:07.440
Okay, okay.

1811
01:52:08.800 –> 01:52:12.600
Three Three. There’s three spheres. And

1812
01:52:12.600 –> 01:52:16.200
when one sphere becomes overwhelmingly powerful and

1813
01:52:16.200 –> 01:52:19.960
overwhelms the other two spheres, it is a responsibility of those other two spheres

1814
01:52:19.960 –> 01:52:23.490
to get together and reign that back in. I talked about this on the

1815
01:52:23.490 –> 01:52:27.130
podcast a couple years ago. Who’s going to tell Caesar he’s gone too far?

1816
01:52:28.010 –> 01:52:31.770
Who’s going to check Caesar? While in a republic,

1817
01:52:31.770 –> 01:52:35.490
the people who check Caesar are the people

1818
01:52:35.490 –> 01:52:39.250
who are running their households. That’s who

1819
01:52:39.250 –> 01:52:42.570
checks Caesar in a republic. You want a better

1820
01:52:42.570 –> 01:52:46.370
republic, you want better elected politicians, you have to be in it

1821
01:52:46.370 –> 01:52:48.900
for the long game. I think all of us would agree on that. That. But

1822
01:52:48.900 –> 01:52:52.420
the long game is not a game of 20 years. The long game is a

1823
01:52:52.420 –> 01:52:56.220
game of not just your kids, but also your grandkids. I was talking with

1824
01:52:56.220 –> 01:52:59.740
somebody about this this weekend, and he’s starting to talk to his sons

1825
01:53:00.060 –> 01:53:03.620
about who they are going to be married to. They just graduated high school. Who

1826
01:53:03.620 –> 01:53:06.220
are they going to be married to and who were. How are they going to

1827
01:53:06.220 –> 01:53:09.220
raise their children. And he’s been talking with them about this their entire lives. But

1828
01:53:09.220 –> 01:53:12.500
now the conversations have become more sharper and more meaningful because they are at the

1829
01:53:12.500 –> 01:53:16.310
age where these decisions can actually be to get to have real impact. That’s legacy.

1830
01:53:16.790 –> 01:53:20.230
We don’t think in those terms in America for a whole variety of reasons.

1831
01:53:20.710 –> 01:53:24.350
And I don’t really care what those are. What I care about

1832
01:53:24.350 –> 01:53:27.270
is that we start thinking about those right now.

1833
01:53:28.470 –> 01:53:31.430
And part of those legacy thoughts do come in

1834
01:53:32.070 –> 01:53:35.510
reading of books, what you do in your house,

1835
01:53:36.390 –> 01:53:40.150
the ways you make your people that are. That you have influence over

1836
01:53:41.900 –> 01:53:45.220
literate, so that they cannot be fooled by a

1837
01:53:45.220 –> 01:53:48.900
politician, whether a politician wants to lead them into a golden

1838
01:53:48.900 –> 01:53:51.980
age or not. So they can’t be fooled by a leader.

1839
01:53:52.780 –> 01:53:56.300
So that they don’t place too much weight on the workplace and

1840
01:53:56.300 –> 01:54:00.100
instead put the appropriate weight of leadership on the family and on the

1841
01:54:00.100 –> 01:54:03.860
community and dare I say, on the larger culture. That’s what

1842
01:54:03.860 –> 01:54:07.430
we do in a republic. If we were in a

1843
01:54:07.430 –> 01:54:11.150
monarchy, or if we were in another governmental system, even a parliament, I would make

1844
01:54:11.150 –> 01:54:14.710
a different recommendation. But that is my recommendation to you.

1845
01:54:15.190 –> 01:54:18.470
You want to put the republic back together. You want to get a golden age?

1846
01:54:19.110 –> 01:54:22.870
You want to what? You. You wonder where our presidents came from.

1847
01:54:22.870 –> 01:54:26.470
They weren’t like Topsy, as my grandma would say. They didn’t just grow.

1848
01:54:26.950 –> 01:54:30.790
They came from somewhere and they

1849
01:54:30.790 –> 01:54:34.560
came from our families. We have to fix

1850
01:54:34.560 –> 01:54:37.720
our families and we have to lead our families before

1851
01:54:38.440 –> 01:54:41.000
we can create a better republic,

1852
01:54:42.280 –> 01:54:46.000
whatever that may mean to Tom’s point which I think is well founded whatever

1853
01:54:46.000 –> 01:54:49.760
that may mean in our own individual houses and then our

1854
01:54:49.760 –> 01:54:53.080
families and our houses link together which creates communities

1855
01:54:53.640 –> 01:54:57.400
and then our communities create workplaces together and then we have traditions

1856
01:54:57.400 –> 01:55:01.210
that bind us and now we can move forward on

1857
01:55:01.210 –> 01:55:04.090
something thicker even than technology

1858
01:55:05.050 –> 01:55:08.490
Technology will not bind us together it does not have that kind of power

1859
01:55:08.890 –> 01:55:12.490
it only has the power to Claire used the word earlier polarize and

1860
01:55:12.490 –> 01:55:16.170
divide us as we have seen but

1861
01:55:16.170 –> 01:55:19.930
families, traditions these are the things that bind us together

1862
01:55:20.250 –> 01:55:23.810
these are the things I think that if we if one person listening to my

1863
01:55:23.810 –> 01:55:27.570
voice takes advice from this and starts building that

1864
01:55:27.730 –> 01:55:31.490
then I think yeah on a long enough

1865
01:55:31.490 –> 01:55:35.250
timeline with consistent and persistent curiosity

1866
01:55:35.730 –> 01:55:38.850
and caring yeah yeah we’ll have our golden age

1867
01:55:39.570 –> 01:55:43.290
absolutely As a cynical Gen Xer this is what

1868
01:55:43.290 –> 01:55:46.970
I’m betting on I want to thank my

1869
01:55:46.970 –> 01:55:50.210
guests for coming on the show once again today and

1870
01:55:51.340 –> 01:55:54.220
with that well we’re out.