A Conflict of Visions: The Hidden Origins of Ideological Conflict by Thomas Sowell w/Jesan Sorrells & Ryan J. Stout

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Hello, uh, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons, uh, from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 180.

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That’s right, we’re only 20 episodes away from our big

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200th episode. Uh, you’re going to want to pay

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attention, uh, to that. And so from our

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book today, we are going to start as we have been Um,

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every single episode starting this season,

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um, rather than starting with a long soliloquy, soliloquy, we’re going to start

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off with— we’re going to start off with a basic

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introduction, right, to the content. Now, um, the

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book that we are going to be talking about today with our guest, um, in

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the very first chapter addresses, uh,

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the, the, the, the root causes, the seed

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of many of the problems that we see today in our

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societies and in our cultures, not just in America,

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but everywhere else where you might be happening to be listening

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to the sound of my voice. This seed

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is binary at its root, and it

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is— once you see it, and my guests and I are going to

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talk about this today— once you see this seed and you see its fruit,

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you will never— you’ll never again mistake the fruit for the actual seed.

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You will be able to go to the root causes. And that was part of

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the point of the author that we are talking about today writing this

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book. So as a matter of fact, we open up with

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this line from the very first chapter entitled The Role

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of Visions. And I quote, one of the

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curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line

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up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues

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themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range

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from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy or education.

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Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides

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of the political fence again and again. It happens too

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often to be a coincidence, and it’s too uncontrolled to be a plot.

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Or as I would say, just to pause a second, a conspiracy.

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A closer look— back to the book— a closer look at the arguments on both

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sides often shows that they are reasoning from

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fundamentally different premises. These different

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premises, often implicit, are what provides the

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consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on

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numerous unrelated issues. They have different

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visions of how the world

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works, and we’re going to talk about

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those visions today as we explore,

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well, the visions, uh, and the conflict

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that exists between those two visions in our book, A

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Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political

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Struggle by the great Thomas

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Sowell. Now, in

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thinking about this book, I want you to take a couple of things into consideration

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before I introduce my guests. Just some things to whet your whistle, some

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ideas that I’ve got here. The fact is that

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we, meaning you and me and every other human being, you know,

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we don’t all share the same worldview. Now, we know this

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when we’re lined up, as Sowell wrote, on

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opposite sides of—, um, political issue

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or a cultural issue or a social issue or a monetary

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issue. And due to the vagaries of genetics, environment, choices, and even

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the kinds of messages we take in and reject, our worldviews are shaped

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in fundamentally different ways. This molding, of course, leads to

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different outcomes for different peoples. Some outcomes are

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great. Some outcomes are poor, as I was talking about with my guest before we

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hit the record button today. And some

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outcomes are shockingly average.

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Sure, marketers, propagandists, politicians, and others seek to

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manipulate worldviews and their inputs to accomplish the goals that

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they seek to achieve. But even they don’t realize that even they

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have worldviews that leak out of the bucket of their mouths and

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reveal their own motives and desires. They’re

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not fooling anyone. And actually, my guest today would

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really appreciate this. In reality, no one is

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fooling anyone. Some people have just decided to go

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along, uh, for the ride. At the bottom— and

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we’re going to talk about all this today— when we strip away all the fluff

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and the nonsense, the reality is that, as Sowell

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has mentioned in his book in Chapter 1, there are

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two competing visions of human nature. These two visions

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are incompatible with each other and are fundamentally

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irreconcilable. They are both zero-sum. And to make matters even

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worse, or even more complicated, most people can’t even

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recognize, identify, and critically examine either of the two visions

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that undergird their own individualized and previously

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held worldviews. And I would assert, preciously held

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worldviews. These two visions locked in negotiation, which sometimes

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escalates into open conflict, uh, are fun— the fundamental reasons

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we don’t perceive the world in the same

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way. Leaders, we don’t enjoy acknowledging

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in our leadership, but two visions are locked in a zero-sum

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battle, not only within individuals, but within organizations and

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even cultures. And I don’t think we’re going to come to

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a solution to this today

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because as a partisan for one vision over another. I do not

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think there is a

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solution, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise. And thus I want to

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bring in my, my guests today. So back for

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this episode is a person who I didn’t have on

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my bingo card for this year to select for this book to talk

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about. The most unlikely person I would’ve ever thought would’ve come onto this show

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to talk about this book, but he has his own reasons. And we’re gonna

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explore what all those were. Our good friend

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and, uh, raconteur, as I always say in Man About

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Town, Ryan J. Stout. How you

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doing, Ryan? Could not be better, my friend. Thank you kindly.

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Always a joy and, uh, honor to be back and, uh,

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having these conversations, keeping me engaged

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in, uh, literature and,

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um, and, and leadership and conflict resolution,

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as, uh, said prior to the show, as, as, as

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a ballast,

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personal, personal sort of like ethos, or working towards

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that. The other day, I, um,

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you know, I have a history, as I’m sure some

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and— we’re all due of, uh, kind of being

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reactionary. But, uh, and as we mentioned previously, the kind of like the

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COVID years, um, that kind of brought the maybe worst out of me.

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And, and, uh, I had a— when I started reading this book and I was

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thinking about you, and I— and what popped into my

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head was, why would I

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not seek conflict resolution in

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all interactions. Why would— why would I not try

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to resolve whatever is in front of me? And, um,

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it’s been— it’s been something that’s, uh, been part of like the morning meditation for

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the last few weeks. So, so in addition to all the

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aforementioned, you know, uh, much appreciated. I’m glad to talk about

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it today. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And as a person who

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sort of is not, you know, is not afraid of conflict or

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doesn’t avoid conflict, I don’t seek it out, but I’m not afraid of it

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when it shows up as, as many people are in

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our era. Um, you’re right. It’s one thing to

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sort of navigate conflict effectively. It’s quite another to know

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what the underpinnings are of conflict. Um,

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and to engage with them, engage with those underpinnings. Like, one of the things I

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always tell folks that when I work with them in organizations is,

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uh, leaders, teams, all of that, it’s actually one of the big tips for today.

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You have to know subtext in order to effectively negotiate

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over context. And the deepest subtext that you can ever know, you can

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ever critically examine, is the visions that

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are undergirding people’s actions, right? Right. Um, and we confuse

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a vision for a worldview. We’ll talk about that today, but

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visions inform worldviews. So what we see informs what

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we— what we actually believe. And then what we believe influences

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how we vote, how we eat, um, even how we walk

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down the street, the social media platforms we go to or don’t

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go to, even the kinds of people we choose to hang out with and have

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conversations with, and the kinds of people that we choose to yell at online and

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call you know, all kinds of dirty names to. All of this is

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influenced by our vision, right? Our grand vision of the world. And, and

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most visions unfortunately are

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unexamined. And Sowell talks about all of this in his

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great book. Speaking of Sowell, let’s, let’s jump into

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that. So, um, Thomas Sowell, let’s talk about him.

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Thomas Sowell, um, was— well, not was, is— he’s,

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he’s still alive. Um, he has

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written over— oh gosh, well, over 60, I think it’s approaching

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60 books now, um, on economics and social theory as

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well as cultural theory and philosophy. Um, and he has served as a

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fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University for many,

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many years. Um, in commenting on many issues of the day,

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he stands alongside Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams,

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and other quite frankly, because we’re doing this in February, Black conservatives

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who spring directly— whose, whose ideas spring directly from

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the influence of Booker T. Washington. And I’ve talked about this on the

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show before, and Ryan may not know this, but I’ve talked about this on the

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show before. There are two strains of thought inside of Black culture,

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two, two rails, such as it were, two, two visions, honestly, huh,

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in Black American culture. Um, one rail is defined by

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Booker T. Washington. And if you follow that rail down

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the road, you wind up like— you wind up at the feet of writers like,

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um, like, well, like Thomas Sowell, um, but also Albert Murray,

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um, who probably would identify himself more as a centrist. Um, but then

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Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, and ultimately I think, uh, the

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young guy who we, who we already covered, um, last episode,

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um, in, um, Arguments for a Colorblind America.

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Um, Coleman Hughes. Yes. So we, we talked about his book, uh, Coleman Hughes.

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You could trace a direct line from Booker T. Washington to Coleman Hughes, but you

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can also— there’s another rail, um, in,

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in, in African American thought and culture where the

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root of it, or the, the beginning of that rail starts in the theories

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and the thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois. Um, you know, The

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Souls of Black Folk. From W.E.B. Du Bois, you can get

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to Marcus Garvey. Um, you get directly to Marcus Garvey,

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you get to, um, uh, Malcolm X, you get

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to Eldridge Cleaver, um, and finally you wash up on the shores

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of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibrāhīm

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X. Kendi. And those are the two rails that African

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Americans in America have been riding on for the last, I

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would say, 150

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years intellectually. Culturally, and even ultimately politically. By the way, the day

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that we’re recording this, uh, Jesse Jackson, uh, passed away

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at the age of 84 years old.

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And while politically and based on his premise

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and his worldview, I disagreed with Jesse

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Jackson, we cannot disagree with the impact that

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he had. Without Jesse Jackson, you don’t get Barack Obama and

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even Thomas Sowell. Would

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say that. Um, Sowell’s ideas— now this is where I want to switch to— Sowell’s

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ideas are so succinct and sharp that their provenance cannot

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be argued against, just discussed, even by those

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who vehemently disagree. So Sowell has the

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unique sort of, um, the unique

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sort of, uh, notoriety

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where You know, that opposite line, that W.E.B. Du Bois to

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Ibram X. Kendi line. They know who he is,

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but he was born in 1930, right? Um, he, he

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came of age before the civil rights movement. He thought the folks in the civil

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rights movement were knuckleheads, and he was already writing, writing and arguing in the

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public as a public intellectual, public African American intellectual, prominently

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before those guys even came to prominence. And so they

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can’t. They can’t say that, well, he didn’t do the thing or he

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didn’t understand the pain. And he grew up in the— he was a

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high school dropout, grew up in the segregated South, all of the things, right? He

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checks, he checks all the boxes, and yet he came to radically different

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conclusions than all of them did. And so his arguments

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are argued against, but never the place where he

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came from. And his arguments are so watertight that even his enemies

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have to admit that they are worth

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arguing against. This book that we’re going to cover today, A Conflict of Visions,

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represents, along with The Vision of the Anointed, which we haven’t read on the show,

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and A Kliquest for Cosmic Justice, which I read, gosh,

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probably 15 years ago, and that book blew me away.

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Um, they are an informal trilogy of works designed to

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examine and clarify the two competing visions in the world that influence

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everything from economics to race relations.

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This book specifically lays out the implications of both

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visions and examines the logic behind each vision to

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fully understand and to fully logic out—

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while giving credit where credit is due— what people mean when they say

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the words justice, equality, or even power,

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all of which have become buzzwords in

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our current American

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cultural moment. By the way, we’re gonna reference George Orwell in the English language here

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a little bit later on. But Saul is a person

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who is so disciplined with his language and so disciplined

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with his ideas, uh, that you could tell he is not a

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lazy thinker by any stretch of the imagination

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and very powerful. So as I said, I hadn’t

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necessarily thought that Ryan was gonna be the person to pick up this book and

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say, hey, I wanna do this one. Um, I thought maybe Tom Libby might

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want to, might want to pick that up, or, or maybe Libby Unger, or

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maybe David Baumrucker, or maybe another guest who had been on our show. Um, because

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Ryan and I tend to talk about Jack Kerouac, right? We tend to

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talk about, uh, Charles Bukowski. Eventually we’re going to hit on Bukowski in here, and

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we’re gonna— I’m gonna— he’s gonna be the first person that I tap on the

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shoulder for that. Or myself and Brian Bagley, we talk about

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theology books, right? Anything by Doug Wilson or

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Thomas Aquinas or, uh, Richard,

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um, Richard, uh, or, uh, uh, Ronald, um,

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Niebuhr, Ronald, Ronald Niebuhr. Like we’re, we’ll talk about theology books, right? In

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theology context. Or if I’m gonna talk with Dave, I’m gonna talk with

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him about Dostoyevsky or, or

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Nietzsche, right? We’re gonna talk about those kinds of areas. And so each one of

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my guests is not necessarily pigeonholed, but they do have books they

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like. And I give them plenty of space to pick the books they like. I

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had not anticipated Ryan picking this book, and so I want to talk with him

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a little bit about that today. And so this is my question for him to

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start off: what do you know about Sowell? I sort of laid out some things

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that are publicly available about him, but what do you know about Sowell? And had

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you ever read any of his work or his writing before this? And sort of

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why did you figure this was the book that you were going to— you’re going

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to sort of cut your eye teeth on? Today. So

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thank you so much for the introduction, appreciate it

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as always. The first time— very much so,

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in preparation for this, outside of reading

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the book, um, watched several interviews

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Thomas Sowell, uh, also other people talking about

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Thomas Sowell. And you mentioned Coleman Hughes earlier, and

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I watched a, and, and Coleman Hughes said

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that this was a transformational book for him as well,

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to see things, uh,

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in a deeper— uh, to get to the kind of the root cause or the

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bottom of things. And so he said he, he kept hearing

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this guy Thomas Sowell. You hear this guy’s name again over

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and over, and he’s like, all right, let me see how crazy this guy is,

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or something along those lines. And then he read had read this book, and it

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was like, oh, it was kind of like one of those aha moments. But prior

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to that, it’s like, how have I, uh, heard of Thomas? Really,

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the first time I, I knew the name, I knew

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he was, uh, important in a

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lot of socioeconomic areas and theory and that sort of thing, but I really had

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no idea like who he was or why. You know, you just kind of hear

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people’s names and, you know, that’s persons of importance, but I really don’t know much

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about them. So that is

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what motivated to um, to, to take the opportunity to, to

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read this book. What really, um,

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kind of the diving board into learning about

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Thomas Sowell was the George Floyd

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era, because during that time, I mean, I remember, I remember speaking

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with you like the week it happened. I was in

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Asheville, North Carolina, and, um, something you

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said. There was something that my— so it was interesting.

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So my cousin David, who’s a 60-year-old white dude

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who’s been working, uh, for Chrysler for the last 40 years— he started when he

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was 20 years old, okay? He recently

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retired. But, uh, he said something almost identical in

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a text message to me as what you said to me over

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the phone. And I was like, all right, so let me— what am I not

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seeing here? Because this very much so almost outlines the constraint versus the

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constrained, the vision versus like the preconceived notions of, well, I wouldn’t think that

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these two people have a very similar response

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to, to this event. And so that

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really launched into, um, Coleman Hughes, and I, I came

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across Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter, and their

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And I kind of got hooked on them for probably 6

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months. Yeah. And started to see

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00:19:07.430 –> 00:19:10.150
in a much sort of deeper— and in,

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in the way, as you said, uh, Soul

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chooses his words wisely, you know,

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these are gentlemen here. I think that— I think the title of one of the

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podcasts or the YouTube channels, it was like the, the something, the Black

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intelligentsia. And it was by Lowry and John McWhorter. And you

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got it. And who— and John McWhorter

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is someone who willfully admits that he used

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the benefit of what was called— what it was, it’s, it’s now DEI,

314
00:19:42.940 –> 00:19:46.660
but what was the old affirmative action, affirmative action?

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He said, yeah, I wouldn’t have, you know, probably gone to the education— I wouldn’t

316
00:19:50.340 –> 00:19:54.110
have had the job opportunities. He’s like, I’m grateful. And and

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00:19:54.110 –> 00:19:57.670
he admittedly so is like it, but he doesn’t necessarily agree with it. So then

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00:19:57.670 –> 00:20:00.910
we see also see the constrained versus the

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00:20:01.150 –> 00:20:04.910
unconstrained vision within his perception of his own life and how it benefited him

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even though he does not agree with it. And also

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coming across these cases, like these court cases where say it’s, uh, Clarence

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Thomas or another judge where they say, I

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agree with the argument, but that But I’m

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not here to agree or disagree with an

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argument. I’m here for the law, for the law. Yeah. And

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to stick true to the law. And

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so that is just some of like the

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unraveling of how complicated, complex a lot

329
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of these situations

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can be. And interestingly enough,

331
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I think a lot of people, if they were

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to read this, would, you know, it

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kind of reveals, you know, on some level, a lot of us are not who

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we think we are.

335
00:21:01.330 –> 00:21:05.170
Mm-hmm. And so reading about kind of like the constrained versus

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unconstrained, and we were just talking about, you know, if you’re not a Democrat when

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you’re younger, and then a Republican when you’re older, and that sort of thing.

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And it’s like, A lot of these

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00:21:17.970 –> 00:21:21.730
things can be masked as one another. Mm-hmm.

340
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Well, what’s interesting is, just to play off

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of that, so Ryan knows me fairly well, folks. I

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think other than, other than a couple of other people, and Derulo Nixon, who comes

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on the show all the time,

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he knows me probably best out of all, all the, all the guests. Ryan’s

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known me for Gosh, what is it, like 20 years now? Something like that. It’s

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been a minute. It’s been a minute. Let’s just say it’s been a minute. 25

347
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years. It’s 25 years. Okay. I wasn’t gonna put the 5 in there. Why do

348
00:21:49.560 –> 00:21:51.400
you gotta do that to me? Why you gotta, why you gotta curse at

349
00:21:54.120 –> 00:21:57.400
me like that? Um, but I

350
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am the most unlikely person

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to go to a school

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for art. I’m the, I’m the most unlikely person to do that. And yet I

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did. I went to— I, I pursued my undergraduate degree in art, got my

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00:22:12.070 –> 00:22:15.750
undergraduate degree in art, um, looked at beautiful

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paintings, attempted to draw beautiful things, attempted to create beauty, attempted

356
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to inject something beautiful into the world, got an artistic

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and an aesthetic sense and understanding that has,

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uh, stood me well, um, during the course of, uh, during the

359
00:22:30.630 –> 00:22:34.270
course of my career and has helped me quite

360
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frankly in business., and in other places where you wouldn’t think

361
00:22:38.480 –> 00:22:42.200
an artistic sensibility would matter,

362
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right? But that is an example of

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00:22:46.080 –> 00:22:49.920
what Ryan’s talking about, looking at someone, assuming they have

364
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one vision, and then it sort of squirts out in

365
00:22:53.880 –> 00:22:57.120
another direction, right? And this is where I think the brilliance of

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00:22:57.680 –> 00:23:01.280
Soul’s book really lies, is that the, the dividing line between

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the two visions, the, the irreconcilable dividing line

368
00:23:05.120 –> 00:23:08.880
between the two visions lies not in our institutions, um,

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or even in our culture, but I think it lies

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00:23:12.560 –> 00:23:16.240
in our— in ourselves, right? So the ways in which Ryan has lived

371
00:23:17.280 –> 00:23:20.480
his life— I mean, Ryan has lived, in comparison to myself, a fairly— and we

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00:23:20.480 –> 00:23:24.280
don’t need to go into all your history— but a fairly unconstrained life up to

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00:23:24.280 –> 00:23:26.880
probably about 10 minutes ago. No, no, up

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00:23:30.170 –> 00:23:31.770
to about 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even then, even then, Even then,

375
00:23:32.010 –> 00:23:35.690
but yes, please continue. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but even then, to your

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00:23:35.690 –> 00:23:39.290
point, even then there were places and you and I have talked

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00:23:39.450 –> 00:23:43.130
about this privately and in other conversations, there

378
00:23:43.130 –> 00:23:46.850
were places where the constraints showed up where you went, ah, that’s

379
00:23:46.850 –> 00:23:49.770
the line, but no further. Right. And you see this, by the way, in people,

380
00:23:49.770 –> 00:23:53.570
I’m going to use a public example. You see this in people

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00:23:53.570 –> 00:23:57.070
who, who lived a life of an unconstrained vision, like a

382
00:23:57.070 –> 00:24:00.470
Bill Maher. Who are now sort

383
00:24:00.870 –> 00:24:04.150
of going, oh wait, oh wait,

384
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my vision’s changed. And the ironic thing

385
00:24:08.070 –> 00:24:11.750
is when a— not ironic, but the interesting thing is when a

386
00:24:11.750 –> 00:24:15.550
person’s vision changes, we say their mind changed and, or, or, or we, we

387
00:24:15.550 –> 00:24:19.390
want to toss them out of the quote unquote tribe, whatever tribe we happen to

388
00:24:19.390 –> 00:24:22.630
be in, whether that’s the constrained tribe or the unconstrained tribe. And don’t worry, we’ll

389
00:24:22.790 –> 00:24:26.630
talk about these diff— these distinctions in just a, a moment

390
00:24:26.630 –> 00:24:30.190
here. We tend to wanna throw them out of the tribe.

391
00:24:30.190 –> 00:24:33.510
But the reality is that on a

392
00:24:34.710 –> 00:24:38.390
case-by-case basis, we are all doing this. We’re all making these

393
00:24:38.390 –> 00:24:42.030
kinds of decisions, even when I’ll make it very small.

394
00:24:42.030 –> 00:24:45.670
When I discipline my kids, I, I’m not always disciplining my

395
00:24:45.670 –> 00:24:49.350
kids from a constrained vision. I have to balance that. It

396
00:24:49.350 –> 00:24:52.930
can’t all be constrained, ’cause otherwise I’m gonna give ’em a complex. You

397
00:24:52.930 –> 00:24:56.730
know, but it also can’t be all unconstrained. Otherwise, I’m a

398
00:24:56.730 –> 00:25:00.530
gentle parent and they don’t learn anything. And then, and then eventually, eventually they’re

399
00:25:00.530 –> 00:25:03.050
going to have to go to timeout for adults,

400
00:25:04.410 –> 00:25:07.930
which is called jail. And so we don’t need more of that. We actually

401
00:25:08.090 –> 00:25:10.570
need less of that. Right.

402
00:25:11.770 –> 00:25:15.530
So I think people, what, what Sol has hit on and what

403
00:25:16.170 –> 00:25:19.880
Hugh’s picked up on is this line that runs

404
00:25:20.920 –> 00:25:24.360
through the human heart and he put it to words. He, he gave it, he

405
00:25:24.360 –> 00:25:28.040
gave it, he gave it language, right? And

406
00:25:28.360 –> 00:25:32.200
not, not religious language, not mythical language. He

407
00:25:33.239 –> 00:25:36.200
gave it hard, practical, solid, and even to your point on the critique of the

408
00:25:36.200 –> 00:25:38.560
book, and I’d like you to talk a little bit about what you thought of

409
00:25:38.560 –> 00:25:42.320
the book here, but repetitious language, right? I mean, he, you

410
00:25:42.320 –> 00:25:45.840
mentioned it yourself, so go ahead. Yeah. Talk a little

411
00:25:46.640 –> 00:25:49.920
bit about that. Yeah. Getting to breaking

412
00:25:53.480 –> 00:25:56.640
down things such as— the

413
00:25:57.120 –> 00:25:58.560
first— okay,

414
00:26:01.910 –> 00:26:05.480
articulated versus systemic rationality. Mm-hmm.

415
00:26:05.480 –> 00:26:09.330
And one of the videos I was watching earlier

416
00:26:09.330 –> 00:26:12.850
was talking about language. And so

417
00:26:12.850 –> 00:26:16.650
when, when, when the unconstrained vision

418
00:26:16.970 –> 00:26:20.770
uses the word equity for equality, it’s

419
00:26:20.770 –> 00:26:24.330
more reference to the equality of outcome, right? And

420
00:26:24.330 –> 00:26:27.370
so in the constrained vision, it’s the

421
00:26:27.850 –> 00:26:31.450
equality of process, right? And so just make sure that we’re following

422
00:26:31.690 –> 00:26:35.420
the same laws, and it’s up to the individual who

423
00:26:35.420 –> 00:26:39.140
is flawed and not perfectible, to carry it out to the

424
00:26:39.220 –> 00:26:42.180
best of their ability. And whatever the outcome is, is

425
00:26:42.740 –> 00:26:46.020
the outcome that they essentially

426
00:26:47.380 –> 00:26:50.820
have, uh, earned. Whereas, uh, the unconstrained vision and the

427
00:26:51.300 –> 00:26:55.140
equality of outcome is, let’s make sure that everyone, you

428
00:26:56.900 –> 00:27:00.500
know, has a trophy. And

429
00:27:00.500 –> 00:27:04.060
much like

430
00:27:04.060 –> 00:27:07.900
the disciplining of, of ‘Asan’s

431
00:27:07.900 –> 00:27:11.060
children.’ Uh, there’s, there’s a time and a place for it. And

432
00:27:11.060 –> 00:27:14.380
I think what gets

433
00:27:15.420 –> 00:27:18.980
confusing is where one philosophy or one idea or

434
00:27:18.980 –> 00:27:20.220
one vision starts

435
00:27:22.940 –> 00:27:26.540
to overtake the other, depending on

436
00:27:27.430 –> 00:27:30.870
who is administering the consequence, so to speak. So for instance, yes,

437
00:27:30.870 –> 00:27:34.630
so if you’re the constrained— so the constraint, you’re— do

438
00:27:35.270 –> 00:27:38.710
you want to make your child

439
00:27:39.350 –> 00:27:43.110
a better, more successful human being, uh,

440
00:27:43.910 –> 00:27:47.670
provide lessons for them and have

441
00:27:48.630 –> 00:27:51.430
them understand the consequences so they

442
00:27:53.000 –> 00:27:56.840
can feel better later? You may not feel great about it because you’re seeing,

443
00:27:56.840 –> 00:28:00.360
you know, uh, your child and loved one suffer for a little period of

444
00:28:00.520 –> 00:28:04.240
time, but you understand through your own experience, which

445
00:28:04.240 –> 00:28:08.040
is much different than the articulated words, with your own experience,

446
00:28:08.040 –> 00:28:11.760
that it will be long-term beneficial.

447
00:28:11.760 –> 00:28:15.240
And the unconstrained, where it’s like, okay, well, I

448
00:28:15.320 –> 00:28:19.060
want to feel good right now,

449
00:28:19.060 –> 00:28:22.580
essentially, and I don’t want to punish my child. I don’t want to see them

450
00:28:22.580 –> 00:28:26.260
in pain, and that makes me feel good.

451
00:28:27.140 –> 00:28:29.860
So there is this, uh, in— to borrow the constrained vision—

452
00:28:30.820 –> 00:28:33.660
there’s the trade-off. That’s right. Do I want to feel good now, or do I

453
00:28:33.660 –> 00:28:37.500
want to feel good later? And, and, and yeah, and how do you want to,

454
00:28:37.500 –> 00:28:40.020
you know, how do you want

455
00:28:42.100 –> 00:28:45.701
to accept responsibility in, um, in the outcome of, of, of the person that you’re

456
00:28:49.030 –> 00:28:52.362
responsible for his life? Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, that was just— yeah, go ahead. Well, no,

457
00:28:52.362 –> 00:28:54.320
well, it’s interesting that you brought

458
00:28:56.400 –> 00:29:00.240
up consequences, right? So, um, I was raised and

459
00:29:00.240 –> 00:29:04.000
I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve integrated into my worldview, kind of

460
00:29:04.000 –> 00:29:07.520
like Jung integrating the shadow, right? I’ve

461
00:29:08.640 –> 00:29:12.440
integrated into my worldview the idea of consequences, right? And

462
00:29:12.440 –> 00:29:15.660
I’m trying to get that across to to, to

463
00:29:16.700 –> 00:29:20.540
my kids now, right? Um, one of the most outrageously revolutionary

464
00:29:20.540 –> 00:29:23.420
things that the most constrained woman I’ve ever met in my life, my

465
00:29:24.380 –> 00:29:27.540
mother, said to me— who, by the way, started off unconstrained and then gradually became

466
00:29:27.540 –> 00:29:31.180
more constrained as she got older, which was

467
00:29:31.420 –> 00:29:34.180
interesting. Um, but, but, um, by the time I met her, she was like halfway

468
00:29:34.180 –> 00:29:36.940
through that journey towards becoming— towards, towards an object more

469
00:29:37.980 –> 00:29:41.710
of a constrained vision. Um, but, um, One of the most consequential things she said

470
00:29:41.710 –> 00:29:45.430
to me at 9 years old was, hey

471
00:29:45.430 –> 00:29:49.270
son, you can do whatever it is

472
00:29:49.270 –> 00:29:52.390
you want. Now here comes the, here comes the

473
00:29:53.270 –> 00:29:57.110
comma or the semicolon, but, which normally

474
00:29:57.110 –> 00:30:00.270
negates anything you said before, right? But you

475
00:30:00.270 –> 00:30:03.110
have to accept the

476
00:30:05.280 –> 00:30:08.920
consequences of your decision. And for 9-year-old Hasan, that was like fireworks

477
00:30:08.920 –> 00:30:12.760
going off in my brain. My neural— my neurology, I— and this

478
00:30:12.760 –> 00:30:16.361
is why it, it stuck with me for so long. My, my, my,

479
00:30:16.361 –> 00:30:19.920
my neurons started sparking off, right?

480
00:30:20.239 –> 00:30:23.680
Because rather than hearing the, the but on that end first, right? Or what came

481
00:30:23.680 –> 00:30:26.560
on the other side of the but, I heard you could

482
00:30:28.000 –> 00:30:30.160
do whatever you want. And then after

483
00:30:33.130 –> 00:30:36.770
my neurons calmed down, the consequences for the actions part really started to like,

484
00:30:36.770 –> 00:30:40.410
really started to like kick in. Like there will, if I decide, I’ve told

485
00:30:40.410 –> 00:30:44.090
this story to my kids, if I decide I’m going to climb the ladder,

486
00:30:44.090 –> 00:30:47.050
which my father has left by the side of the

487
00:30:47.850 –> 00:30:51.570
house, God bless him. Um, God rest his soul and God bless him.

488
00:30:51.570 –> 00:30:55.170
If I decide to climb that, that ladder

489
00:30:55.170 –> 00:30:58.960
and decide recklessly to jump from the roof of my house to the roof of

490
00:30:58.960 –> 00:31:02.720
my dog house. Which looked like an easy jump. I mean, it did. It was

491
00:31:02.720 –> 00:31:05.840
only like, looked like it was only 12 feet. It was probably more like 50,

492
00:31:05.920 –> 00:31:09.440
but like, I’m gonna make this jump, right? If I decide

493
00:31:09.440 –> 00:31:13.120
to engage in reckless behavior, there is a consequence behind that. So I

494
00:31:13.120 –> 00:31:15.920
can climb the ladder. Here’s the consequence. I’m gonna be at the

495
00:31:17.200 –> 00:31:20.400
top of the roof. I can even back up and start and, and think about

496
00:31:20.400 –> 00:31:23.440
starting to run, but there’s gonna be a consequence. I might slip on the gravel.

497
00:31:23.440 –> 00:31:26.840
It was, it was a roof. In New Mexico, there’s gravel on the roof. They

498
00:31:26.840 –> 00:31:30.040
didn’t put tar on it till much later, whatever. It was a whole thing. I

499
00:31:30.040 –> 00:31:33.760
might slip on the gravel, go through the roof, but there’s

500
00:31:33.760 –> 00:31:37.560
all kinds of consequences that are going to happen. And as long as I’m

501
00:31:37.560 –> 00:31:40.560
willing to checkmark the box on each one of those consequences, I can

502
00:31:42.160 –> 00:31:45.840
do whatever I want. That idea, the

503
00:31:46.240 –> 00:31:50.000
power of that idea, which is based in the transition of going

504
00:31:50.000 –> 00:31:53.700
from a constrained vision or from an unconstrained vision to a constrained vision.

505
00:31:53.700 –> 00:31:56.380
And giving that idea to a

506
00:31:57.980 –> 00:32:01.660
child, particularly this child, probably led to more—

507
00:32:01.820 –> 00:32:05.420
it led to shenanigans, but it also led to, um,

508
00:32:05.420 –> 00:32:09.100
it also led to fewer— also led to fewer problems

509
00:32:09.100 –> 00:32:12.060
over the course of, over the course of many, many years. And this is what

510
00:32:12.060 –> 00:32:15.740
I think we have to give to our children. We have

511
00:32:15.740 –> 00:32:19.180
to give them both visions, but we have

512
00:32:19.180 –> 00:32:23.020
to present them in equal fashion, right? We have to present

513
00:32:23.420 –> 00:32:27.100
them as either process, right, to your point, um,

514
00:32:27.100 –> 00:32:30.020
or outcomes and say, you know, which one, which one do you want? And at

515
00:32:30.020 –> 00:32:33.060
a certain point, of course, we also have to say, no, you know what, just

516
00:32:33.060 –> 00:32:36.900
based off of life experience, I just know more because

517
00:32:36.900 –> 00:32:39.900
there’s just things you have, you just, you just don’t know.

518
00:32:40.780 –> 00:32:44.630
You just don’t know. Like, that’s just the way it goes. One

519
00:32:44.630 –> 00:32:48.230
of the interviews, uh, Thomas Sowell is, is asked a question,

520
00:32:49.190 –> 00:32:52.790
and the interviewer says, uh, well,

521
00:32:52.790 –> 00:32:55.430
don’t you think, um, the

522
00:32:57.430 –> 00:33:01.150
university system, educational system, uh, would be able to suss out—

523
00:33:01.150 –> 00:33:04.910
and he was talking about, uh, just the general population,

524
00:33:04.910 –> 00:33:08.710
American population— suss out that nonsense? And he said, yes,

525
00:33:08.710 –> 00:33:12.430
it very much did so, until nonsense

526
00:33:12.430 –> 00:33:15.890
became a large part

527
00:33:15.890 –> 00:33:16.290
of

528
00:33:19.970 –> 00:33:20.370
the

529
00:33:24.210 –> 00:33:26.770
curriculum. And so when it— I look at, I mean,

530
00:33:27.250 –> 00:33:30.930
how is it not understood at this point of really

531
00:33:30.930 –> 00:33:34.370
all you need on some levels, like money and

532
00:33:34.370 –> 00:33:38.010
power, to kind of navigate and, and not get in trouble for anything? Do

533
00:33:38.010 –> 00:33:41.640
we not have enough evidence that that there’s— I

534
00:33:41.640 –> 00:33:45.400
mean, the 2008 financial crisis, how many people went to—

535
00:33:45.400 –> 00:33:49.161
one guy. Oh, one guy, maybe, or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

536
00:33:49.161 –> 00:33:52.440
Everybody else got bailed out. Yeah. And so,

537
00:33:53.240 –> 00:33:56.040
I mean, it’s when, when the body

538
00:33:57.240 –> 00:34:00.280
that is supposed to, uh, govern, or the body

539
00:34:00.600 –> 00:34:04.200
that does govern, cannot adhere or follow

540
00:34:05.330 –> 00:34:08.450
their own laws and the individuals

541
00:34:09.090 –> 00:34:12.850
they’re elected to represent

542
00:34:12.850 –> 00:34:15.810
are, uh, the fated— of this sort of

543
00:34:16.850 –> 00:34:19.970
unintentional consequence lays on the individuals who, who

544
00:34:20.690 –> 00:34:23.730
are doing the electing, then

545
00:34:25.010 –> 00:34:28.330
that, that’s the— that’s, uh, I said before, I know there’s a diagram, it’s

546
00:34:28.330 –> 00:34:31.900
somewhere between like an ouroboros and a Venn diagram, kind of like

547
00:34:32.060 –> 00:34:35.580
mixed And I know, uh, Eric Weinstein has— there’s

548
00:34:35.580 –> 00:34:39.260
this, uh, like the infinite energy diagram thing, and it’s, it’s kind of— oh

549
00:34:39.260 –> 00:34:42.940
yeah, it’s like a Möbius strip inside of a thing. But that’s what it

550
00:34:43.820 –> 00:34:47.060
kind of— it’s, it’s— and how these things are on a continuum,

551
00:34:47.060 –> 00:34:50.660
and it’s not just necessarily like—

552
00:34:50.660 –> 00:34:54.460
what this also showed was, was there’s not necessarily

553
00:34:55.260 –> 00:34:58.750
a good and bad. So there’s— it’s It’s more like

554
00:34:58.750 –> 00:35:02.470
kind of on this continuous spectrum, more of like, you know, you

555
00:35:02.470 –> 00:35:05.950
would see, um, kind of like, uh, the political— the political

556
00:35:05.950 –> 00:35:09.670
outlines or the political diagrams, uh, going too far one way

557
00:35:09.670 –> 00:35:12.830
or too far the other way. Too far the other way. And some—

558
00:35:13.150 –> 00:35:16.910
and like you said, with the raising of your children, and, uh, just talking to

559
00:35:16.910 –> 00:35:19.630
a friend of mine the other day who was a lieutenant in

560
00:35:20.670 –> 00:35:24.330
the police in Edison, and, uh, you know, he said, uh, And he

561
00:35:24.330 –> 00:35:27.250
said, you know, he said, I stopped on,

562
00:35:28.210 –> 00:35:31.090
uh, so much weed letting people off, you know. He’s

563
00:35:31.810 –> 00:35:35.610
like, because I understand. He’s like, I read the situation. And so this is, this

564
00:35:35.610 –> 00:35:39.329
is— you think police officer trained, blah blah blah. He said, but

565
00:35:39.329 –> 00:35:43.170
I understand that, you know, I could— I read the situation and

566
00:35:43.570 –> 00:35:46.290
I read the person and I understand

567
00:35:47.570 –> 00:35:51.020
that like I could, I could have such a negative influence on how

568
00:35:51.020 –> 00:35:54.460
the rest of this person’s life turns out

569
00:35:55.020 –> 00:35:58.220
through this one action. And he had to use sort of

570
00:36:00.460 –> 00:36:04.060
like better judgment or, um, something in the sense that, that,

571
00:36:04.060 –> 00:36:07.780
that he could live with. And so,

572
00:36:07.780 –> 00:36:11.580
yeah, I— yeah, it

573
00:36:11.580 –> 00:36:14.780
just, it, um, it, it just kind of made me rethink and think

574
00:36:15.430 –> 00:36:18.390
about a lot of, um, We’re going to get to the question, but a

575
00:36:18.710 –> 00:36:22.470
lot of what influenced decisions in the past as

576
00:36:22.470 –> 00:36:25.990
well. And, and whereas necessarily, like you say, you know, you see

577
00:36:26.470 –> 00:36:30.270
a police officer, he’s, you know, he’s iron to the knives, he has

578
00:36:30.270 –> 00:36:34.110
a hat, this and that, and that’s who he was. And to, to, to, to

579
00:36:34.110 –> 00:36:36.470
someone getting pulled over by that, you think the

580
00:36:38.230 –> 00:36:41.860
absolute worst possible outcome. Yeah. So those things aren’t necessarily, but what he

581
00:36:41.860 –> 00:36:44.660
said was you, you absolutely need

582
00:36:46.100 –> 00:36:49.940
both sides because without, you know, you, you

583
00:36:49.940 –> 00:36:53.660
raise, you know, the one or the other. One or the other. Yeah. Yeah.

584
00:36:53.660 –> 00:36:56.540
You raise the very, you raise the very tiger that’s going to turn on you

585
00:36:56.540 –> 00:37:00.340
and eat you, you know? Um, so you could either raise

586
00:37:00.340 –> 00:37:03.860
a tamed tiger that will, that you can, that you can ride, right?

587
00:37:03.860 –> 00:37:07.580
And that you can guide and that eventually you can release out and it’ll go

588
00:37:07.580 –> 00:37:11.030
do the tiger things that it’s supposed to go do. Or you’ll raise a tiger

589
00:37:11.030 –> 00:37:14.830
that’ll turn on you and eat you. Um, and it always—

590
00:37:15.710 –> 00:37:17.470
the tiger always turns on the

591
00:37:20.030 –> 00:37:23.830
tamer who raised it. Um, and then he jumps into some ideas that

592
00:37:23.830 –> 00:37:26.190
I think we, we don’t actually look at the bottoms

593
00:37:28.270 –> 00:37:30.790
of. He starts with, um, uh, a guy named— who I never heard of before

594
00:37:30.790 –> 00:37:34.190
I read this book, and I had to go look him up. Um, a

595
00:37:35.000 –> 00:37:38.840
gentleman named William Godwin., who wrote a book

596
00:37:38.840 –> 00:37:41.560
in 1793 called, um,

597
00:37:42.600 –> 00:37:45.960
Inquiry Concerning Political Justice. And

598
00:37:46.360 –> 00:37:49.760
this individual, Godwin, proposed basically what is an unconstrained

599
00:37:49.760 –> 00:37:53.360
vision of human nature in opposition to many

600
00:37:53.360 –> 00:37:57.160
of the writers of the Federalist

601
00:37:57.160 –> 00:38:00.840
Papers. Um, and, you know, there were a lot of

602
00:38:00.840 –> 00:38:04.560
folks in the late 18th century and early 19th

603
00:38:04.560 –> 00:38:08.200
century who were trying to suss out what these two visions

604
00:38:08.520 –> 00:38:12.200
of human nature could be in a political

605
00:38:12.360 –> 00:38:15.400
context, right? So he traces in this chapter

606
00:38:17.000 –> 00:38:20.800
both of those visions and he, he names, of course, the proponent, the,

607
00:38:21.320 –> 00:38:24.400
the, the grandfather, the great-grandfather of the proponent

608
00:38:24.920 –> 00:38:28.680
of the unconstrained vision, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, right? Um, and

609
00:38:28.680 –> 00:38:32.180
the Rousseauian vision that eventually would lead into a Marxian vision which

610
00:38:32.180 –> 00:38:35.900
would eventually lead into a Stalinist vision, which would

611
00:38:35.900 –> 00:38:39.700
eventually lead into the current vision of human flourishing that we have

612
00:38:39.700 –> 00:38:43.260
in the great nation state of

613
00:38:43.500 –> 00:38:47.340
China. On the other side, he proposes that we have more

614
00:38:47.340 –> 00:38:50.900
of the representatives, or that there are the representatives of a constrained

615
00:38:50.900 –> 00:38:54.580
vision, uh, folks that started with Hobbes and Locke and

616
00:38:54.580 –> 00:38:57.900
then eventually wound up through the Founding Fathers and

617
00:38:58.400 –> 00:39:02.080
came down to, to today. In what we see not in necessarily

618
00:39:02.080 –> 00:39:05.520
the dregs of 20th century progressivism, but more in

619
00:39:05.520 –> 00:39:08.960
the dregs of 20th century conservatism.

620
00:39:09.120 –> 00:39:11.520
Um, Ronald Reagan, or even, dare

621
00:39:12.720 –> 00:39:16.080
I say, George W. Bush. Now, we put

622
00:39:16.560 –> 00:39:20.180
political figures to these visions, and we do so because

623
00:39:20.180 –> 00:39:23.960
many of us, to, to Ryan’s point, aren’t exactly— particularly in

624
00:39:23.960 –> 00:39:27.390
the last 80 years in our country— aren’t exactly educated.

625
00:39:27.390 –> 00:39:31.070
In how politics is a lagging indicator of where,

626
00:39:31.070 –> 00:39:34.870
where a society is going culturally and philosophically. Or as I often

627
00:39:34.870 –> 00:39:38.670
point out to my children and to anybody else who’ll listen to

628
00:39:38.670 –> 00:39:41.670
me, um, the politicians and the government— you could frame it all in that kind

629
00:39:41.989 –> 00:39:45.030
of way if you want— they’re always the last drunk person

630
00:39:45.030 –> 00:39:48.390
coming to the party at 4:30 AM, and everybody else has

631
00:39:48.550 –> 00:39:52.390
already moved down the street. We’re already on something else, and they show up

632
00:39:52.390 –> 00:39:55.850
last and they want to create all

633
00:39:55.850 –> 00:39:59.530
of the legislation. These two visions, as Sowell points

634
00:39:59.530 –> 00:40:03.330
out, really are surrounded by and really are consumed with

635
00:40:03.330 –> 00:40:06.850
the basic conceptions, as he says in his very first line in

636
00:40:06.850 –> 00:40:10.650
Chapter 2, um, their basic conceptions of the nature

637
00:40:10.650 –> 00:40:14.450
of man. So in a constrained vision, the moral

638
00:40:14.450 –> 00:40:18.290
limitations— I’m going to quote directly from this— in a constrained vision, the moral

639
00:40:18.290 –> 00:40:22.110
limitations of man in general and his egocentricity

640
00:40:22.110 –> 00:40:25.910
in particular were neither lamented by Adam Smith, who he quotes, uh, right at

641
00:40:25.910 –> 00:40:29.310
the beginning of, of that piece of the chapter, nor regarded

642
00:40:29.710 –> 00:40:33.430
as things to be changed. They were treated as inherent facts

643
00:40:33.430 –> 00:40:37.069
of life, the basic constraint in his

644
00:40:37.069 –> 00:40:40.710
vision. The fundamental moral and social challenge was to make the best of

645
00:40:40.710 –> 00:40:44.470
the possibilities which existed within that constraint rather

646
00:40:44.470 –> 00:40:48.120
than dissipate energies in an attempt to change human nature.

647
00:40:48.120 –> 00:40:50.760
An attempt that Smith treated

648
00:40:52.120 –> 00:40:55.720
as both vain and pointless. Folks with a constrained vision tend to believe that the

649
00:40:55.720 –> 00:40:59.360
constraints that we have on ourselves at an individual level, that scaled

650
00:40:59.360 –> 00:41:03.040
up to a societal and cultural level, are tragedies of

651
00:41:03.040 –> 00:41:06.720
human nature that can only be

652
00:41:06.720 –> 00:41:09.200
ameliorated or negotiated through what sometimes seem

653
00:41:11.720 –> 00:41:15.280
as though are brutal trade-offs. On the other side, the other rail, you have the

654
00:41:15.280 –> 00:41:18.460
unconstrained vision, and this is where he brings up

655
00:41:18.460 –> 00:41:21.980
William Godwin’s work, Inquiry Concerning, uh, Political

656
00:41:21.980 –> 00:41:25.740
Justice. It was an immediate success upon its publication in

657
00:41:25.740 –> 00:41:29.220
England in 1793, and of course it was later on popularly

658
00:41:29.940 –> 00:41:33.460
associated with the French Revolution. And when Britain saw what was happening with

659
00:41:33.620 –> 00:41:37.340
France, where heads were rolling literally everywhere, Godwin

660
00:41:37.340 –> 00:41:41.140
was immediately shuddered to the

661
00:41:41.140 –> 00:41:44.160
back. Pache rose, Rosa Parks immediately shuddered to the

662
00:41:44.560 –> 00:41:48.240
back of the bus. However, Godwin lays out the

663
00:41:48.720 –> 00:41:51.360
unconstrained vision of human nature in this way, and

664
00:41:52.480 –> 00:41:56.200
I quote directly from Sowell: Wherein Adam Smith’s

665
00:41:56.200 –> 00:41:59.720
moral and socially beneficial behavior could be evoked from

666
00:41:59.720 –> 00:42:03.440
man only by incentives, in William Godwin’s man’s under—

667
00:42:03.440 –> 00:42:07.040
in William Godwin, man’s understanding and disposition were

668
00:42:07.120 –> 00:42:10.640
capable of intentionally creating social

669
00:42:10.800 –> 00:42:14.550
benefits. Godwin regarded the intention to benefit others as

670
00:42:14.550 –> 00:42:17.750
being, quote unquote, of the ess— essence of

671
00:42:18.150 –> 00:42:20.630
virtue, and virtue in turn as being

672
00:42:21.270 –> 00:42:24.790
the road to human happiness. Unintentional social benefits were

673
00:42:24.790 –> 00:42:28.510
treated by Godwin as scarcely worthy of notice. His

674
00:42:28.510 –> 00:42:32.230
was the unconstrained vision of human nature in which man

675
00:42:32.230 –> 00:42:35.790
was capable of directly feeling other people’s needs as more important than

676
00:42:35.790 –> 00:42:39.600
his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially even when

677
00:42:39.600 –> 00:42:43.440
his own interests or those of his family were

678
00:42:43.440 –> 00:42:47.280
involved. This was not meant as an empirical generalization about the way most

679
00:42:47.280 –> 00:42:50.600
people currently behaved. It was meant as a statement of the

680
00:42:53.080 –> 00:42:56.040
underlying nature of

681
00:42:56.680 –> 00:43:00.200
human potential. Now, that idea has echoed down

682
00:43:00.520 –> 00:43:04.240
to our time through every révolutionnaire that’s

683
00:43:04.240 –> 00:43:07.940
ever walked the planet since the French Revolution. All

684
00:43:08.100 –> 00:43:11.860
the way down to, well, all the way down to Mr.

685
00:43:12.340 –> 00:43:16.020
Momdami in New York City, or, or even down to the

686
00:43:16.020 –> 00:43:19.740
local level in your own town of a person

687
00:43:19.740 –> 00:43:23.580
who has a vision that is unconstrained for maybe, I don’t know,

688
00:43:23.580 –> 00:43:27.340
putting in something as banal and uninteresting as a wastewater

689
00:43:27.340 –> 00:43:30.900
treatment plant versus people who would rather not have that thing in their

690
00:43:31.240 –> 00:43:33.400
backyard and have a more constrained vision

691
00:43:35.480 –> 00:43:39.240
of where that should go. When we think about these

692
00:43:39.960 –> 00:43:43.320
visions, visions seed worldviews, and worldviews grow like trees, and

693
00:43:43.320 –> 00:43:46.880
they produce the fruit of identities. I would assert that in our

694
00:43:46.880 –> 00:43:50.200
era, we actually have it backward. We think that identity comes first

695
00:43:50.920 –> 00:43:54.760
and then worldview comes second. Actually, no, I think we have it

696
00:43:55.080 –> 00:43:58.280
deeply backward. Vision comes first, worldview comes second, and then we

697
00:43:59.090 –> 00:44:02.930
decide what our identity is. Identities then produce passions,

698
00:44:02.930 –> 00:44:06.530
fuel interests, and encourage or discourage

699
00:44:06.530 –> 00:44:10.210
the growth of skills. Visions also provide groups— and this is where it’s important for

700
00:44:10.210 –> 00:44:13.890
leaders to understand the difference between a constrained and an

701
00:44:13.890 –> 00:44:17.730
unconstrained vision— vision provide groups with goals to accomplish

702
00:44:17.730 –> 00:44:21.330
and benchmarks to attain. Visions are hard to articulate because they

703
00:44:23.250 –> 00:44:25.090
rely on leaders understanding themselves as

704
00:44:26.880 –> 00:44:30.720
well as understanding their followers. Now, once a vision is

705
00:44:30.720 –> 00:44:34.440
articulated, it is almost impossible to destroy it. This

706
00:44:34.440 –> 00:44:38.120
is why Rousseau and also the founding fathers continue to be the

707
00:44:38.120 –> 00:44:41.840
people whose visions we argue over even now, and in

708
00:44:41.840 –> 00:44:44.400
disparate places that have nothing to do

709
00:44:45.760 –> 00:44:49.560
with either America or France. But

710
00:44:49.560 –> 00:44:53.190
this is also why marketers, propagandists, and

711
00:44:53.190 –> 00:44:56.470
quote unquote influencers really like manipulation,

712
00:44:56.710 –> 00:45:00.070
deceit, and tricks of language to hide

713
00:45:02.150 –> 00:45:05.470
what their visions really are. So this leads to my

714
00:45:05.470 –> 00:45:08.950
next question for Ryan, next formalized question, and we’re gonna kind of

715
00:45:11.750 –> 00:45:15.310
kick off a conversation here. Um, Ryan, where have you experienced the outcomes? Because we

716
00:45:15.310 –> 00:45:18.770
can actually see this in practical ways. You and I were talking about this before

717
00:45:18.770 –> 00:45:22.610
we even got started. Where can you see the practical ways that a,

718
00:45:22.610 –> 00:45:24.210
an unconstrained or a constrained vision has shown

719
00:45:26.450 –> 00:45:30.290
up in your own life? So, uh, before

720
00:45:31.170 –> 00:45:34.690
we get there, just seemingly, uh, the elected official or the savior

721
00:45:35.410 –> 00:45:38.810
sort of from the unconstrained, it, it, it

722
00:45:38.810 –> 00:45:42.610
has tapped into like the emotion

723
00:45:42.610 –> 00:45:46.380
of, of, of individuals and tapping into

724
00:45:46.380 –> 00:45:50.100
that emotion. Utilizing sort of charisma and language and

725
00:45:53.300 –> 00:45:57.140
all the information, uh, to get—

726
00:45:57.140 –> 00:46:00.100
to, to somehow like commodify natural

727
00:46:00.740 –> 00:46:04.100
rights. Yes. And think that you’re being done a

728
00:46:04.340 –> 00:46:08.020
favor. And it’s this big— it’s— there’s a, there’s a, you

729
00:46:08.740 –> 00:46:11.980
know, there’s a line from, uh, my big

730
00:46:12.460 –> 00:46:15.900
factory planning The mother is, is kind of like trying to train the—

731
00:46:16.220 –> 00:46:19.900
or at least school the, the wife-to-be for the

732
00:46:20.060 –> 00:46:23.700
husband-to-be. And it was like how she deals with her husband, the, the patriarch,

733
00:46:23.700 –> 00:46:27.340
the old patriarch of the family. She said, well, I

734
00:46:27.340 –> 00:46:30.860
just manipulate him in a way to— so he

735
00:46:31.900 –> 00:46:35.620
thinks that it’s his idea, and then he’s

736
00:46:35.620 –> 00:46:39.060
all proud, and then they end up doing

737
00:46:40.500 –> 00:46:43.620
whatever she wants. And so it’s interesting to see, like,

738
00:46:45.140 –> 00:46:48.340
there’s, there’s so much like, you know, sort of dichotomous discourse in

739
00:46:48.660 –> 00:46:52.020
how these things kind of pop in

740
00:46:53.140 –> 00:46:56.900
and get applied into our contemporary times. So how it’s for me, so

741
00:46:56.900 –> 00:47:00.580
as you know, a few

742
00:47:00.580 –> 00:47:04.100
years ago, I, I started it, I applied to

743
00:47:04.260 –> 00:47:07.270
be a substitute teacher in a in Ohio, living in Cincinnati,

744
00:47:07.830 –> 00:47:11.670
in the Mariemont School District,

745
00:47:11.670 –> 00:47:15.390
hired me. And, um, I said, I like the school so much, if you have

746
00:47:15.390 –> 00:47:18.950
a full-time position as a sub, I would love it. And they said, well,

747
00:47:18.950 –> 00:47:22.710
we think you’re pretty great too. So I, I

748
00:47:22.710 –> 00:47:25.350
reported there every single day for that

749
00:47:26.310 –> 00:47:29.670
entire school year. And they, uh, they liked and appreciated so

750
00:47:31.360 –> 00:47:35.040
much of what I did that, uh, the

751
00:47:35.040 –> 00:47:38.840
principal met with the school board and, uh, of the town,

752
00:47:38.840 –> 00:47:42.680
of the council, however they, you know, whatever bureaucracy determines this

753
00:47:42.680 –> 00:47:46.000
within. And at that point they said, uh, we think

754
00:47:46.480 –> 00:47:48.880
you’re so great that we, we created a position

755
00:47:50.080 –> 00:47:53.520
that did not exist before for you to work

756
00:47:54.960 –> 00:47:57.920
with this population, which was,

757
00:47:58.880 –> 00:48:02.720
um, special needs, uh, And, um, and I was like, wow, that’s incredible, that’s

758
00:48:02.960 –> 00:48:06.800
wonderful. I felt very honored. And when it came— then when it came

759
00:48:06.880 –> 00:48:09.440
to kind of like a

760
00:48:10.640 –> 00:48:14.480
salary, it ended up being pretty like, I don’t know, about $100, $150

761
00:48:14.480 –> 00:48:18.000
less a week than if when I was

762
00:48:18.080 –> 00:48:21.680
a substitute teacher. And so when I brought to their attention— and

763
00:48:21.680 –> 00:48:25.090
so this is a lot, it’s As I was teasing

764
00:48:25.330 –> 00:48:28.530
through this the last, like, 24

765
00:48:30.050 –> 00:48:33.770
hours, it is, uh, in, in, uh, in bipolar is something called a mixed episode.

766
00:48:33.770 –> 00:48:37.370
And so that’s like mania and depression,

767
00:48:37.370 –> 00:48:41.170
you know, butting heads. That’s a, that’s a gross simplification.

768
00:48:41.170 –> 00:48:44.370
However, for this conversation, I think it’ll work.

769
00:48:44.770 –> 00:48:48.510
So between these two things, and this is— I’m quoting the principle

770
00:48:48.510 –> 00:48:51.830
in, in when I say this,

771
00:48:51.830 –> 00:48:55.590
Mr. Stout, there is no doubt—

772
00:48:55.590 –> 00:48:58.790
I believe there’s no doubt that— I, I think there’s no doubt

773
00:48:59.110 –> 00:49:02.870
that you can teach any class

774
00:49:02.870 –> 00:49:06.710
in this building. And I was like, oh wow, that sounds

775
00:49:06.710 –> 00:49:10.070
like I’m gonna have some sort of value that’s, that’s gonna be

776
00:49:10.070 –> 00:49:13.910
commensurate with pay, or vice versa. And it, and it,

777
00:49:13.910 –> 00:49:16.860
and it wasn’t. And then when

778
00:49:17.580 –> 00:49:21.300
I presented, kind of like just restated his words back

779
00:49:21.300 –> 00:49:25.100
to him, it was just like a, well, this is just

780
00:49:25.180 –> 00:49:28.940
the way it is. And so it

781
00:49:28.940 –> 00:49:32.740
was a lot of mixed

782
00:49:32.740 –> 00:49:34.220
messaging, um, whereas I think

783
00:49:39.260 –> 00:49:43.010
there was a lot of, uh, I think there was a lot of,

784
00:49:43.010 –> 00:49:46.810
uh, constrained vision and unconstrained vision in,

785
00:49:46.810 –> 00:49:50.490
in that entire process, which seemed to drag out for probably about

786
00:49:50.490 –> 00:49:54.290
a 2-week period, and

787
00:49:54.450 –> 00:49:58.170
which ultimately, uh, resulted in me, uh,

788
00:49:58.170 –> 00:50:01.930
not accepting the position because I would have had to get a

789
00:50:01.930 –> 00:50:05.250
full-time job to keep

790
00:50:06.290 –> 00:50:09.640
that job. So that’s insane. So it’s saying I couldn’t I couldn’t wrap

791
00:50:09.960 –> 00:50:13.760
my head around that reality,

792
00:50:13.760 –> 00:50:17.520
right? And so it— that was also contributed to, you know, me moving back

793
00:50:17.520 –> 00:50:21.080
to New Jersey and being like, I don’t even

794
00:50:21.080 –> 00:50:24.680
understand anything anymore, right? Nothing, nothing really

795
00:50:24.680 –> 00:50:27.480
makes sense anymore. Um, and I mean, I even

796
00:50:28.280 –> 00:50:32.120
had like some educational components, uh, and it’s like— and this is,

797
00:50:32.120 –> 00:50:35.810
this is where, you know, so So I

798
00:50:35.810 –> 00:50:38.690
was hired largely due to experience and

799
00:50:39.970 –> 00:50:42.850
having working with those populations. Uh, but I didn’t have a piece of paper

800
00:50:44.370 –> 00:50:47.430
saying that I did so. And there was lots of— there was several people there

801
00:50:47.430 –> 00:50:51.130
who did have the, the piece of paper saying they did so, but were

802
00:50:51.130 –> 00:50:54.850
not good at their job because they had no experience

803
00:50:55.410 –> 00:50:58.370
with working with that population. And I was, generally

804
00:50:59.430 –> 00:51:03.190
speaking, a few years older Uh, and I think that has in

805
00:51:03.510 –> 00:51:07.350
some cases some inherent value. And so we’re bouncing back between the

806
00:51:07.350 –> 00:51:10.310
constrained and the unconstrained vision here. And it got, you

807
00:51:14.870 –> 00:51:18.670
know, I, I think it— regardless of

808
00:51:18.670 –> 00:51:21.670
how much you articulate, the

809
00:51:24.720 –> 00:51:26.080
system can get mucked up. In

810
00:51:28.240 –> 00:51:32.000
those two sort of

811
00:51:33.600 –> 00:51:36.240
like, uh, irreconcilable— I think— please go. Yeah, yeah, no, I think as I was,

812
00:51:36.240 –> 00:51:39.840
I was making a note while you were talking. So one of the things I

813
00:51:39.919 –> 00:51:43.440
would note from that story, and that’s great, um, I,

814
00:51:44.240 –> 00:51:47.960
I would think

815
00:51:47.960 –> 00:51:51.590
that experience is the, um— and I, and I think Saul would agree with this—

816
00:51:51.750 –> 00:51:55.150
is Experience is the field of— that’s

817
00:51:55.150 –> 00:51:58.950
the field of the constrained vision, right?

818
00:51:59.270 –> 00:52:03.030
Because by experience, you understand what the trade-offs are in

819
00:52:03.270 –> 00:52:06.750
a way that’s not theoretical. You understand

820
00:52:06.750 –> 00:52:10.070
them in terms of brutal truth, right? In terms of the,

821
00:52:11.270 –> 00:52:14.470
the brute force of reality. Uh, at the close of the show today, I’m gonna

822
00:52:14.710 –> 00:52:18.550
talk a little bit about ceilings. Right? Because our, our, our skills

823
00:52:18.550 –> 00:52:22.350
hit a ceiling, right? Our passions hit a ceiling. Our

824
00:52:23.630 –> 00:52:26.510
interests hit a ceiling, right? Um, in my own life, I’ve

825
00:52:28.350 –> 00:52:31.270
started projects, I’ve ended projects. Um, I’ve, I’ve gained money and I’ve lost money and

826
00:52:31.270 –> 00:52:34.910
I’ve done all these kinds of things, right? Those all go

827
00:52:37.070 –> 00:52:40.750
into the bucket of experience, but there’s no way

828
00:52:41.430 –> 00:52:45.150
to measure that other than to look at it in terms of

829
00:52:45.150 –> 00:52:48.430
trade-offs and dealing with the world as

830
00:52:48.430 –> 00:52:52.070
it is.

831
00:52:52.070 –> 00:52:55.630
That’s experience. But credentialing— credentialing uncoupled from experience— let me be

832
00:52:55.630 –> 00:52:59.270
very clear about this— credentialing uncoupled

833
00:52:59.670 –> 00:53:03.350
from experience is the provenance, or is the province,

834
00:53:03.990 –> 00:53:07.790
such as it were, of the unconstrained vision. And even

835
00:53:07.790 –> 00:53:11.290
Sowell brings this up in his chapter when he talks

836
00:53:11.290 –> 00:53:14.650
about social processes, right? So social

837
00:53:14.890 –> 00:53:18.490
processes exist to create outcomes. Well, who better to lead on those outcomes

838
00:53:18.490 –> 00:53:22.210
than people with a theoretical vision of, of man’s nature? And

839
00:53:22.210 –> 00:53:25.610
where do we go for a theoretical vision of man’s nature?

840
00:53:26.010 –> 00:53:29.770
Where do we go to really reinforce our

841
00:53:29.770 –> 00:53:33.410
shoulds rather than what actually is? Well, we

842
00:53:33.410 –> 00:53:35.290
go to credentialing. We go

843
00:53:37.460 –> 00:53:41.060
to licensing. We go to— academic

844
00:53:41.460 –> 00:53:44.660
education. We don’t go to the plumber on the street who’s

845
00:53:45.700 –> 00:53:48.980
actually plumbed for 30 years and say, hey, you know how

846
00:53:49.460 –> 00:53:53.060
to plumb for 30 years, come over here. No, no, no,

847
00:53:53.060 –> 00:53:56.540
no, no. Instead, we go get the

848
00:53:56.540 –> 00:54:00.380
person who has come to plumbing with

849
00:54:00.380 –> 00:54:04.130
all this theory, and we say, come over here and plumb for us.

850
00:54:04.130 –> 00:54:07.970
And then he costs 4 times as much as the person who’s plumbing— never picked

851
00:54:07.970 –> 00:54:11.810
up a wrench in his life, right? And no understands the

852
00:54:11.810 –> 00:54:14.770
theory of plumbing, but not exactly the practice. One of the great, one of the

853
00:54:14.770 –> 00:54:18.610
great, one of the great movies in the last couple years that I actually bothered

854
00:54:18.610 –> 00:54:22.010
to go to the theater about and go to the bath— go, or go to

855
00:54:22.090 –> 00:54:25.690
the theater to see was, um, Oppenheimer, right? Directed by Christopher

856
00:54:25.690 –> 00:54:29.130
Nolan. And there’s a great line that Robert

857
00:54:29.960 –> 00:54:33.680
Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, Um, has in that, um, in that, uh,

858
00:54:33.680 –> 00:54:36.800
in that movie, um, he says to one of his fellow physicists, I believe it

859
00:54:36.800 –> 00:54:40.640
was in when, when they finally got to New Mexico, um, in like the middle

860
00:54:40.640 –> 00:54:44.160
of the second act or something, he says, at a certain point you have

861
00:54:44.160 –> 00:54:47.880
to move from theory to

862
00:54:47.880 –> 00:54:51.560
practice. At a certain point you have to move

863
00:54:52.440 –> 00:54:55.880
from the credentialed unconstrained vision to the experience

864
00:54:56.040 –> 00:54:59.830
and the constraints that experience will put upon you. Because of the ceilings

865
00:54:59.830 –> 00:55:03.430
of reality. And this is exactly what I think you’re talking

866
00:55:03.430 –> 00:55:07.070
about. Yeah, it was

867
00:55:07.070 –> 00:55:10.550
really brutal. Like, I never— it’s—

868
00:55:10.550 –> 00:55:14.230
there’s, there’s nothing, um, more

869
00:55:16.310 –> 00:55:19.830
sobering than thinking you’d had, uh, you know, in some sense

870
00:55:20.070 –> 00:55:22.230
kind of arrived at

871
00:55:26.080 –> 00:55:29.680
a greater purpose contributing to, society in a

872
00:55:29.920 –> 00:55:33.600
very immediate, well, way with, with working with children. And they love

873
00:55:33.600 –> 00:55:37.320
me, I love them. It was a, it was a, it

874
00:55:37.320 –> 00:55:40.880
was a very

875
00:55:40.880 –> 00:55:44.080
symbiotic relationship in that regard. Symbiotically

876
00:55:44.800 –> 00:55:48.440
mutual. And only to be told by someone who

877
00:55:48.440 –> 00:55:52.200
was initially— this was, this was through other

878
00:55:52.200 –> 00:55:55.440
teachers telling me Yeah, that guy was a teacher, but he sucked as a teacher,

879
00:55:55.440 –> 00:55:59.040
so they moved him to here, and he sucked at that position, and then they

880
00:55:59.040 –> 00:56:02.840
moved to— so this one guy was in the school district, this was his fourth

881
00:56:02.840 –> 00:56:06.280
job, and they had to like create a job just to keep—

882
00:56:07.240 –> 00:56:11.040
because he had all these credentials, he had all these degrees saying that he

883
00:56:11.040 –> 00:56:14.760
was X, Y, and Z, but he couldn’t perform any of

884
00:56:14.760 –> 00:56:18.490
those jobs to the level of

885
00:56:18.490 –> 00:56:22.250
decent. And so not being a serviceable person, they’d rather

886
00:56:23.210 –> 00:56:27.010
hang on to the credentials than— and, you know, um, in addition to

887
00:56:27.010 –> 00:56:30.610
that, one of my favorite lines— my favorite

888
00:56:30.610 –> 00:56:34.250
line in The King’s Speech, when the

889
00:56:34.250 –> 00:56:37.930
wife of, uh, um, the wife says, I thought you were

890
00:56:37.930 –> 00:56:41.450
a doctor, I thought you were a language specialist, you know, he goes, no, I

891
00:56:41.450 –> 00:56:45.140
never said I was any of those things. Well, she was like, well,

892
00:56:45.140 –> 00:56:48.260
if you’re not a doctor, then you

893
00:56:49.460 –> 00:56:53.300
can’t possibly help him. And so,

894
00:56:53.300 –> 00:56:56.860
yeah, well, and, well, and, and, and tipping my hand here a little bit, I

895
00:56:56.860 –> 00:57:00.100
think one of the, one of the, one of

896
00:57:01.460 –> 00:57:04.260
the challenges— so Ryan asked me, um, before we, we hit record, I want to

897
00:57:04.260 –> 00:57:07.900
sort of answer this question now sort of a little bit more publicly, but he

898
00:57:07.900 –> 00:57:11.740
asked me, um, you know, do I

899
00:57:11.740 –> 00:57:15.420
think the pendulum is swinging back from the

900
00:57:15.500 –> 00:57:18.860
excesses of the 2010s, huh, and the first part of the

901
00:57:18.860 –> 00:57:22.220
2020s politically in this country and culturally in America right

902
00:57:23.180 –> 00:57:26.981
now and in the West overall.

903
00:57:26.981 –> 00:57:30.780
And, and, um, the way that I would like to answer

904
00:57:30.780 –> 00:57:33.740
this question is this: the pendulum always

905
00:57:34.460 –> 00:57:38.150
swings away from an unconstrained vision when the unconstrained

906
00:57:38.150 –> 00:57:41.510
vision and the proponents of— the proponents of that

907
00:57:41.510 –> 00:57:45.311
vision hit upon the ceiling of reality,

908
00:57:45.870 –> 00:57:49.430
and, and, and reality is undefeated. It just is. So to

909
00:57:49.430 –> 00:57:53.270
your point about the gentleman who’s moved through 4 different roles

910
00:57:53.270 –> 00:57:57.110
and has been terrible and suboptimal and— and,

911
00:57:57.110 –> 00:58:00.510
you know, and incompetent at all of them—

912
00:58:02.360 –> 00:58:05.960
he may survive the pendulum swing. In his role,

913
00:58:05.960 –> 00:58:09.800
for sure, he might survive the pendulum swing. And, and, and he’s rolling the dice,

914
00:58:09.800 –> 00:58:13.400
right? He’s rolling the dice that he’ll be able to survive the pendulum swing, batten

915
00:58:13.400 –> 00:58:16.040
down the hatches. And this is

916
00:58:17.320 –> 00:58:20.960
what bureaucracy does. Individuals in bureaucracies, um, batten down the hatches and then they, they

917
00:58:20.960 –> 00:58:24.640
try to ride out the storm, right? Um, it’s this idea that,

918
00:58:24.640 –> 00:58:28.370
uh, you know, pendulum swings are temporary, but

919
00:58:28.370 –> 00:58:31.170
I’m permanent. Okay. Except the problem is, or the,

920
00:58:32.130 –> 00:58:35.770
or the, the challenge there is if the pendulum swings

921
00:58:35.770 –> 00:58:39.330
back too far, not too far, but swings back

922
00:58:39.330 –> 00:58:42.770
further than what, you know, initially maybe a credentialed vision

923
00:58:42.770 –> 00:58:46.130
that comes from an uncon— or credentialed outcome that comes

924
00:58:46.130 –> 00:58:49.730
from an unconstrained vision, um, would appreciate. Eventually what

925
00:58:49.730 –> 00:58:53.330
winds up happening is house is cleaned

926
00:58:54.040 –> 00:58:57.840
and, and, and doge is the Elon Musk’s doge is the, is the example to

927
00:58:57.840 –> 00:59:01.480
which I will point as the lived example, um, that

928
00:59:01.480 –> 00:59:05.200
may be coming to a bureaucrat near

929
00:59:05.200 –> 00:59:08.760
you, right? And when we see these things happening

930
00:59:08.760 –> 00:59:12.200
at the local level, not at merely the national level where they can be kind

931
00:59:12.280 –> 00:59:16.080
of ignored because it’s over there, right? At the local level, then

932
00:59:16.080 –> 00:59:19.400
we can say with some certainty that

933
00:59:20.440 –> 00:59:24.080
yeah, the pendulum is indeed moving Towards a more constrained

934
00:59:24.080 –> 00:59:27.160
vision. Now, the question we can argue, and folks with an unconstrained vision are going

935
00:59:27.160 –> 00:59:30.760
to argue about this with me, I can already hear them, and they’re going

936
00:59:30.760 –> 00:59:33.800
to say, well, is this a good— well, we have to

937
00:59:34.840 –> 00:59:38.200
define what we mean by good. And

938
00:59:38.200 –> 00:59:41.760
so in a, in a constrained vision, good is

939
00:59:41.760 –> 00:59:45.480
just which trade-offs are better or worse, right? Which are going to

940
00:59:45.480 –> 00:59:49.110
come, come to a better or worse outcome, or Or in the case of not

941
00:59:49.110 –> 00:59:52.710
better or not worse, optimal or suboptimal. Let’s just frame it

942
00:59:52.710 –> 00:59:56.510
that way, right? Whereas in an

943
00:59:56.510 –> 01:00:00.350
unconstrained vision, good means literally a moral cosmic good.

944
01:00:00.350 –> 01:00:04.190
And the problem is we can’t get to a moral cosmic good on this

945
01:00:04.270 –> 01:00:07.830
side of heaven. That is unattainable. Even through revolution, that

946
01:00:07.830 –> 01:00:11.590
is unattainable because what all the revolutionaries eventually find

947
01:00:11.590 –> 01:00:15.330
out is that the people who are selling you an

948
01:00:15.330 –> 01:00:17.050
unconstrained vision eventually

949
01:00:20.090 –> 01:00:21.930
wind up constraining you, usually

950
01:00:24.730 –> 01:00:28.530
physically. There’s no lack of evidence. Yeah, but, but, okay, but, but Soul, Soul

951
01:00:28.530 –> 01:00:32.370
brings up— Soul brings up an excellent point when he talks

952
01:00:32.370 –> 01:00:35.570
about visions of, um, I think it’s in the next chapter, visions of social processes,

953
01:00:35.570 –> 01:00:39.330
or it might be in— hold on a second, let me pull it here. Um,

954
01:00:39.330 –> 01:00:42.410
because he talks about— obviously he talks about the social

955
01:00:43.170 –> 01:00:45.570
processes, time, freedom of justice, right? And you have the same— I think you have

956
01:00:46.050 –> 01:00:49.410
the same edition that I do. So he talks about it here. I mean, we’ve

957
01:00:49.410 –> 01:00:51.410
already mentioned this before. It’s on

958
01:00:53.330 –> 01:00:57.010
page 63, Youth and Age, right? So with experience

959
01:00:57.010 –> 01:01:00.690
and articulated— just to quote from Sowell, right? With

960
01:01:00.690 –> 01:01:04.490
experience and articulated rationality having such vast differing weights in the

961
01:01:04.490 –> 01:01:07.970
two visions, it is virtually inevitable that the young and the old

962
01:01:07.970 –> 01:01:11.790
should be seen in correspondingly different terms. In the

963
01:01:11.790 –> 01:01:15.350
constrained vision, which depends upon, quote, the least fallible guide of

964
01:01:15.350 –> 01:01:19.150
human experience, close quote. The young cannot be compared to the old in a

965
01:01:19.150 –> 01:01:22.790
word we throw around a

966
01:01:22.790 –> 01:01:26.430
lot on this show— wisdom. Adam Smith considered it unbecoming for the

967
01:01:26.430 –> 01:01:29.030
young to have the same confidence as the old.

968
01:01:30.710 –> 01:01:34.150
Wow. Can we bring that back? Ha ha ha. The wisest and the

969
01:01:34.150 –> 01:01:37.410
most experienced are generally the least credulous, he

970
01:01:37.410 –> 01:01:41.250
said., and this depended crucially on time.

971
01:01:41.570 –> 01:01:45.250
Quote, it is acquired wisdom and experience only that

972
01:01:45.250 –> 01:01:47.650
teach incredulity, and they

973
01:01:48.930 –> 01:01:52.450
very seldom teach it enough. Close quote. By contrast,

974
01:01:52.450 –> 01:01:55.890
when knowledge and reason are

975
01:01:56.290 –> 01:01:59.690
conceived as articulated rationality— that’s credentialism, folks— as in

976
01:01:59.690 –> 01:02:02.460
the unconstrained vision,

977
01:02:03.340 –> 01:02:06.380
the young have considerable advantages. Uh, Condorcet, uh,

978
01:02:07.420 –> 01:02:10.980
French theoretician, wrote in the 18th century, quote, a

979
01:02:10.980 –> 01:02:14.620
young man now leaving school possesses more real knowledge

980
01:02:14.940 –> 01:02:18.740
than the greatest geniuses, not of antiquity, but even of

981
01:02:18.740 –> 01:02:22.380
the 17th century, could have acquired

982
01:02:22.380 –> 01:02:25.180
after long study, close quote. Now

983
01:02:26.790 –> 01:02:30.470
we laugh, but we’re not any better. Back to soul in an unconstrained vision where

984
01:02:30.470 –> 01:02:33.990
much of the malaise of the world is due

985
01:02:33.990 –> 01:02:37.630
to existing institutions and existing beliefs. Those least

986
01:02:37.630 –> 01:02:41.110
habituated to those institutions and beliefs are readily seen

987
01:02:41.110 –> 01:02:44.390
as especially valuable for making needed social

988
01:02:44.390 –> 01:02:48.190
changes. According to William Godwin from

989
01:02:48.190 –> 01:02:51.870
his 1793 book, quote, the next generation will not have so

990
01:02:51.870 –> 01:02:54.820
many prejudices to subdue. Suppose a despotic nation —by

991
01:02:55.940 –> 01:02:59.340
some revolution in its affairs—possessed of freedom. Um, the children of the present race will

992
01:02:59.340 –> 01:03:02.980
be bred in more firm and independent habits of thinking.

993
01:03:02.980 –> 01:03:06.580
The suppleness, the timidity, and the vicious dexterity of their

994
01:03:06.580 –> 01:03:09.700
fathers will give place to an

995
01:03:10.100 –> 01:03:12.420
erect mien and

996
01:03:14.260 –> 01:03:18.060
a clear and decisive judgment. Close quote. Every

997
01:03:18.060 –> 01:03:21.690
swing towards an unconstrained vision relies on the children and the youth to lead it.

998
01:03:21.690 –> 01:03:25.410
And this is what we are seeing in our culture right now. I just saw

999
01:03:25.410 –> 01:03:28.530
a video the other day of high school

1000
01:03:29.010 –> 01:03:32.370
students fighting ICE folks and their

1001
01:03:32.370 –> 01:03:36.050
local, like, cops, right, to, like, stop ICE from going

1002
01:03:36.050 –> 01:03:38.690
into schools and taking

1003
01:03:39.570 –> 01:03:43.250
out illegal immigrant kids. And

1004
01:03:43.250 –> 01:03:45.650
I’m like, who— why are we using

1005
01:03:46.620 –> 01:03:49.420
children as shock troops to

1006
01:03:51.020 –> 01:03:54.700
fight adult battles in America in 2026. Why are we doing that? But that’s

1007
01:03:55.900 –> 01:03:59.180
the ultimate expression of an unconstrained pigeon. And I would venture

1008
01:03:59.180 –> 01:04:02.940
to say, it’s

1009
01:04:02.940 –> 01:04:06.780
part of my French, uh, if I didn’t have a brother,

1010
01:04:06.780 –> 01:04:10.540
my brother didn’t have me, and this was— we were

1011
01:04:10.540 –> 01:04:13.480
living in— if we didn’t kick the absolute shit out of

1012
01:04:16.440 –> 01:04:20.280
each each other on a daily basis. We may have

1013
01:04:20.280 –> 01:04:24.080
been fighting those people too, but you understand and learn

1014
01:04:24.080 –> 01:04:27.800
something as a child. This is what animals— this is what puppies learn.

1015
01:04:27.800 –> 01:04:31.560
This is what animals in the wild learn when siblings— when

1016
01:04:31.560 –> 01:04:34.600
bear cubs fight, when little bears fight, when

1017
01:04:35.960 –> 01:04:39.730
you fight, you rough and tumble with, uh, what could be your

1018
01:04:40.450 –> 01:04:43.170
sort of equal. And you understand that, uh, you

1019
01:04:43.970 –> 01:04:46.930
start to understand what the limitations are, that it’s probably not going to work out

1020
01:04:46.930 –> 01:04:50.770
for you if you walk up to somebody and pull their gun

1021
01:04:50.770 –> 01:04:54.451
out of the holster and then you get smacked upside the head.

1022
01:04:54.451 –> 01:04:57.970
Oh, and you’re going to say that you were violated somehow.

1023
01:04:58.130 –> 01:05:01.650
And listen, take all the political— take all of

1024
01:05:01.650 –> 01:05:05.120
that out of it. Just in an

1025
01:05:05.280 –> 01:05:06.800
incident, just in an

1026
01:05:09.120 –> 01:05:10.880
isolated incident of someone doing that

1027
01:05:12.320 –> 01:05:14.880
behavior. You’re not the victim if

1028
01:05:17.440 –> 01:05:20.560
you’re provoking the man with the

1029
01:05:21.120 –> 01:05:24.480
gun. I have not commented on the death of

1030
01:05:24.480 –> 01:05:28.320
the two individuals who were protesting ICE activities

1031
01:05:28.320 –> 01:05:32.150
in Minneapolis, Minnesota on this show because that’s very much current events. And I

1032
01:05:32.150 –> 01:05:35.990
have— where this is not a show about current events, this is a show about

1033
01:05:35.990 –> 01:05:39.510
necessarily being timeless, such as it were, right?

1034
01:05:40.950 –> 01:05:44.630
Because our human problems are indeed timeless. With that

1035
01:05:46.069 –> 01:05:48.710
being said, let me comment very briefly. If

1036
01:05:50.390 –> 01:05:53.990
you’re a grown adult, man or woman, and

1037
01:05:53.990 –> 01:05:57.600
you do not have an understanding, to Ryan’s point,

1038
01:05:59.360 –> 01:06:03.200
that another grown adult with a gun and

1039
01:06:03.200 –> 01:06:06.880
a badge who has been granted

1040
01:06:06.880 –> 01:06:10.320
power by the state— if you don’t understand that,

1041
01:06:11.280 –> 01:06:14.000
that individual, if you muck with

1042
01:06:15.120 –> 01:06:18.880
them, the rules of engagement suddenly shift. Then if you’re just mucking

1043
01:06:19.680 –> 01:06:23.390
with someone who doesn’t have a badge and doesn’t have a gun

1044
01:06:23.390 –> 01:06:27.190
And has it been imbued by the power of the state?

1045
01:06:27.190 –> 01:06:30.990
And again, to Ryan’s point, take out all of the political implications

1046
01:06:30.990 –> 01:06:34.830
out of it, take out all

1047
01:06:34.830 –> 01:06:38.310
the sociocultural whatever out of it. If you don’t understand the

1048
01:06:38.310 –> 01:06:42.030
fundamental difference between interacting with, with those

1049
01:06:42.030 –> 01:06:45.710
people in two different manners,

1050
01:06:45.710 –> 01:06:49.250
then you are behaving quite frankly, not any better.

1051
01:06:49.250 –> 01:06:52.210
Than the children that

1052
01:06:52.770 –> 01:06:56.570
are in those videos fighting ICE agents. You’re behaving no better

1053
01:06:56.570 –> 01:07:00.130
than a 14-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old or a

1054
01:07:01.090 –> 01:07:04.370
15-year-old. And you need to go back because

1055
01:07:04.370 –> 01:07:07.410
what has happened is you have been

1056
01:07:07.490 –> 01:07:10.890
infantilized at a certain point in your

1057
01:07:10.890 –> 01:07:14.740
mindset. And this is what Godwin was seeking to— Or this

1058
01:07:14.740 –> 01:07:18.580
is what the, the, the purveyors of an unconstrained vision believe, or this is—

1059
01:07:18.580 –> 01:07:22.140
these are the people who the purveyors of an unconstrained

1060
01:07:22.940 –> 01:07:26.540
vision believe will be the shock troops towards

1061
01:07:26.540 –> 01:07:30.260
a glorious, socially changed,

1062
01:07:30.260 –> 01:07:33.900
dare I say, even utopian future. And these are the people that a person with

1063
01:07:34.700 –> 01:07:36.540
an unconstrained vision looks at and says, they

1064
01:07:39.830 –> 01:07:43.550
don’t have wisdom. What are we doing? I’ll bring up, I’ll bring up

1065
01:07:43.550 –> 01:07:47.270
a personal example that takes badges and all that out of the

1066
01:07:47.670 –> 01:07:51.150
situation. I’m living— sure, it is 1999. I

1067
01:07:51.150 –> 01:07:54.950
have a friend who is 6’4″, 240 pounds. I played

1068
01:07:54.950 –> 01:07:58.790
baseball with him, big dude, carry himself, hold himself. We’re walking down the

1069
01:07:58.790 –> 01:08:01.350
street in New Brunswick, New Jersey,

1070
01:08:02.630 –> 01:08:06.380
and there is, uh, a couple guys, uh, standing

1071
01:08:06.700 –> 01:08:09.740
on the corner —on George Street. And one of the guys,

1072
01:08:10.460 –> 01:08:14.180
he’s like doing karate to no one. He like is fighting the air,

1073
01:08:14.180 –> 01:08:17.500
you know, and he’s a big dude himself. And he stands, and out of nowhere,

1074
01:08:17.500 –> 01:08:21.100
we could see from about a half a block away, and this dude just

1075
01:08:21.660 –> 01:08:25.260
jumps up and does a spin kick, right? And Ben, who’s

1076
01:08:27.020 –> 01:08:30.870
this large person who can handle himself, uh, he crosses the street, and I, I

1077
01:08:30.870 –> 01:08:33.190
as we’re crossing the street together. I was like, you scared of that guy? He

1078
01:08:33.190 –> 01:08:36.750
goes, I’m not scared of anything

1079
01:08:36.750 –> 01:08:40.550
on land. However, if I can avoid that by simply crossing

1080
01:08:40.550 –> 01:08:44.350
the street, then I’m going to cross the street to avoid it.

1081
01:08:44.350 –> 01:08:48.150
There’s no need for me to do that. And so to take politics

1082
01:08:48.150 –> 01:08:51.870
and take badges and all that shit out of the situation,

1083
01:08:51.870 –> 01:08:55.350
it’s, it’s more of, uh, you know, what are

1084
01:08:55.590 –> 01:08:59.379
you willing to risk, right? And understand exactly,

1085
01:08:59.699 –> 01:09:02.659
you can do whatever you want Mom, thank you. You can

1086
01:09:03.619 –> 01:09:07.339
do whatever you want, hey son, but you’re gonna pay for it. You’re

1087
01:09:07.339 –> 01:09:10.859
gonna pay for it. Well, and the thing, one of the things

1088
01:09:10.859 –> 01:09:14.419
that gets you really, really,

1089
01:09:14.579 –> 01:09:18.219
if you’re unconstrained or if you’re constrained in your vision of the

1090
01:09:18.219 –> 01:09:21.939
world and in your worldviews and your politics, I would recommend,

1091
01:09:21.939 –> 01:09:25.619
this is just sort of a brief recommendation before

1092
01:09:25.619 –> 01:09:28.690
we, we switch to another topic

1093
01:09:29.490 –> 01:09:32.850
about social processes. I would recommend

1094
01:09:34.130 –> 01:09:37.810
taking a good, a good self-defense class. Just take a good self-defense

1095
01:09:37.810 –> 01:09:40.370
class, not martial arts. I’m not recommending that. I always talk about jiu-jitsu at least

1096
01:09:40.450 –> 01:09:43.530
once on this show. This is gonna be the moment I talk about it. Yes,

1097
01:09:43.530 –> 01:09:46.610
I’m in jiu-jitsu. There’s nothing that makes you— there’s nothing that moves

1098
01:09:47.810 –> 01:09:51.570
you from being unconstrained to being constrained like being in a, like being

1099
01:09:51.570 –> 01:09:55.090
in a jiu-jitsu engagement with somebody who’s like 113 pounds and you think you can

1100
01:09:55.090 –> 01:09:57.530
take them and then they just hold you for

1101
01:09:59.290 –> 01:10:02.770
5 minutes. And you can’t do nothing. There’s nothing more— there’s nothing

1102
01:10:02.770 –> 01:10:06.290
that will move you from an unconstrained vision to an understanding of where

1103
01:10:06.290 –> 01:10:09.890
the ceiling is on your skills and interests

1104
01:10:09.890 –> 01:10:12.090
and abilities. Even if you are, to

1105
01:10:13.210 –> 01:10:17.010
Ryan’s point, you know, 6’4″ and 240. Okay, cool.

1106
01:10:17.010 –> 01:10:20.370
You’re 6’4″ and 240. Let’s grapple. Go ahead and grab me. If I know a

1107
01:10:20.370 –> 01:10:23.650
little bit of something and I’m in jiu-jitsu, and I don’t even have to know

1108
01:10:23.650 –> 01:10:27.100
even that much, like if I’m 2 or 3 years in, I’m still a

1109
01:10:27.340 –> 01:10:30.700
white belt. I’m still the beginner, right? Trust me. Go ahead, grab me.

1110
01:10:32.780 –> 01:10:36.220
Let’s, let’s just see how this goes. But there’s that

1111
01:10:36.460 –> 01:10:39.900
kinds of— those kinds

1112
01:10:41.179 –> 01:10:44.980
of experiences, grappling, boxing, combatives, self-defense. Um, I would assert team sports don’t do it

1113
01:10:44.980 –> 01:10:48.220
as well because most things to your point about crossing the

1114
01:10:48.700 –> 01:10:52.370
street are 1v1 and then other people usually, usually come in. We can see

1115
01:10:52.370 –> 01:10:56.010
this on videos. You know, of how like things work

1116
01:10:56.010 –> 01:10:59.850
in the world and most people have a vision of

1117
01:10:59.850 –> 01:11:03.650
themselves. And this is why I like your friend’s perspective, cuz I actually have that

1118
01:11:03.650 –> 01:11:07.129
perspective as well. They have a vision of themselves

1119
01:11:07.129 –> 01:11:10.730
as, uh, I’m going to do this unconstrained thing inside of this fight

1120
01:11:11.130 –> 01:11:14.170
and it’s just gonna magically work. Right. And I don’t have a problem with you

1121
01:11:14.170 –> 01:11:17.890
having an unconstrained vision about your physical prowess. Um,

1122
01:11:17.890 –> 01:11:21.370
I do have a problem, however, when your unconstrained vision doesn’t

1123
01:11:22.080 –> 01:11:25.720
work out in the constraints of reality. In comparison to somebody else who,

1124
01:11:25.720 –> 01:11:29.400
who may have also had an unconstrained vision, but has earned the right to

1125
01:11:29.400 –> 01:11:33.200
have that because they put in the time and they put in

1126
01:11:35.600 –> 01:11:39.080
the constraints. So my pro tip is go do, go do some kind of self-defense

1127
01:11:39.080 –> 01:11:42.600
something. Go put yourself under some kind of physical pressure. Go

1128
01:11:42.600 –> 01:11:44.880
do that. And your

1129
01:11:46.240 –> 01:11:49.450
vision will very quickly change

1130
01:11:49.850 –> 01:11:53.210
for sure. Yeah, there’s nothing like—— to steal a

1131
01:11:53.690 –> 01:11:57.330
word from Robert Highland, there’s nothing

1132
01:11:57.330 –> 01:12:01.050
like grokking powerlessness to understand that you are not the

1133
01:12:01.050 –> 01:12:04.170
end-all be-all. There you go. That’s right. Well, and, and, and you have to

1134
01:12:05.370 –> 01:12:09.010
get that. You have to get that message. As I have

1135
01:12:09.010 –> 01:12:12.770
gone on my jiu-jitsu journey, that message continually gets updated. The

1136
01:12:12.770 –> 01:12:16.540
OS continues to get updated as you go higher and higher because

1137
01:12:16.540 –> 01:12:20.260
you actually— what you realize is how little you actually know

1138
01:12:20.260 –> 01:12:24.060
about whatever it is you’re actually doing and

1139
01:12:24.060 –> 01:12:27.820
where your ceilings actually are. Okay, back to the book, back to

1140
01:12:27.820 –> 01:12:31.661
A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins

1141
01:12:31.661 –> 01:12:35.420
of Political Struggle. So both, um, by Thomas

1142
01:12:35.660 –> 01:12:38.460
Sowell. Both, um, Ryan

1143
01:12:39.420 –> 01:12:42.580
and I have the 2007 Basic Books edition, um, and it is a revised edition.

1144
01:12:42.580 –> 01:12:45.930
Um, if you could find the original of it, I recommend going and There you

1145
01:12:45.930 –> 01:12:49.210
go. I’d recommend going out and getting it. It has this great blue cover. I

1146
01:12:49.210 –> 01:12:51.730
love it. It looks— and when you put it on your shelf, you’ll look smarter.

1147
01:12:51.730 –> 01:12:55.330
So just go out and get it to put it on your shelf. You’ll

1148
01:12:55.330 –> 01:12:58.130
just look smarter from it. Uh, chapter 4, I’d like to talk a little bit

1149
01:12:58.130 –> 01:13:01.890
about this because this is actually very important. So

1150
01:13:01.890 –> 01:13:05.330
chapter 4 is about visions of social processes,

1151
01:13:05.330 –> 01:13:09.130
right? And we are trapped in the social processes of our time. And

1152
01:13:09.130 –> 01:13:12.710
this is why this chapter is very, very

1153
01:13:12.710 –> 01:13:16.550
interesting to me. So He covers several different areas. First,

1154
01:13:16.550 –> 01:13:20.390
he talks about order and design. He talks about process costs because

1155
01:13:20.790 –> 01:13:24.550
he’s an economist and he believes in those. Then he talks about

1156
01:13:24.550 –> 01:13:28.230
freedom and justice. And finally, he wraps

1157
01:13:28.230 –> 01:13:32.071
up the chapter with implications, right, around freedom and

1158
01:13:32.071 –> 01:13:35.670
justice and order and, um, and order and design

1159
01:13:36.400 –> 01:13:40.000
for both the constrained and the unconstrained vision. He opens his chapter— he

1160
01:13:40.000 –> 01:13:43.840
opens up Chapter 4 with this idea. He

1161
01:13:44.000 –> 01:13:47.520
says, differences in the visions of human nature are reflected

1162
01:13:48.160 –> 01:13:51.920
in differences in the vision of social processes. It is not merely the

1163
01:13:51.920 –> 01:13:55.520
social processes are seen as mitigating the shortcomings of human nature in

1164
01:13:56.320 –> 01:13:59.760
one vision and as aggravating them in

1165
01:14:00.080 –> 01:14:03.440
another. The very ways that social processes function and

1166
01:14:03.440 –> 01:14:07.000
malfunction are seen differently by the two different visions, which

1167
01:14:07.480 –> 01:14:10.760
differ not only in their view of morality, but also in their

1168
01:14:10.840 –> 01:14:14.600
view of— and this

1169
01:14:14.600 –> 01:14:18.360
gets back to consequence— causation. Social processes cover an enormous

1170
01:14:18.360 –> 01:14:22.200
range from language to warfare, from love to economic systems. Each

1171
01:14:22.200 –> 01:14:25.720
of these in turn comes in a great variety of forms. But there

1172
01:14:25.720 –> 01:14:29.250
are also some things in common among social processes in

1173
01:14:29.250 –> 01:14:32.410
general. Whether viewed within the framework of a constrained

1174
01:14:32.410 –> 01:14:36.130
or an unconstrained vision, social processes have

1175
01:14:36.130 –> 01:14:39.850
certain characteristics and order, whether or

1176
01:14:39.850 –> 01:14:43.650
not intentionally designed. Social processes also, and this is hugely important

1177
01:14:43.650 –> 01:14:47.290
to remember, take time and have costs. Each of these

1178
01:14:47.290 –> 01:14:51.010
and other aspects of social processes is seen

1179
01:14:52.610 –> 01:14:56.280
differently in the constrained and the unconstrained vision.

1180
01:14:57.320 –> 01:15:00.440
This is— hugely important for us to understand,

1181
01:15:00.680 –> 01:15:03.560
particularly when we look at

1182
01:15:04.840 –> 01:15:07.960
on page 91, visions of freedom and justice. So I’m going to make a point

1183
01:15:08.600 –> 01:15:11.560
here and then I’m going to go into a little bit of my analysis and

1184
01:15:11.960 –> 01:15:15.480
I’m going to ask, I’m going to ask, uh, going to ask Ryan

1185
01:15:15.480 –> 01:15:18.880
a question here. The two visions judge social processes by

1186
01:15:18.880 –> 01:15:22.610
fundamentally different criteria. This is under freedom and justice.

1187
01:15:22.610 –> 01:15:26.330
In the unconstrained vision, where individual intentions and individual

1188
01:15:26.330 –> 01:15:30.010
justice are central, it is enormously

1189
01:15:30.010 –> 01:15:33.770
important whether individual rewards are

1190
01:15:33.770 –> 01:15:37.450
merited or merely reflect privilege and luck. Both individual leaders and social policies ought

1191
01:15:37.450 –> 01:15:41.170
to be chosen with a view to their dedication to the goal

1192
01:15:41.170 –> 01:15:44.970
of ending privilege and promoting either equality or merit.

1193
01:15:44.970 –> 01:15:48.490
Where have we heard this today? But in the constrained vision,

1194
01:15:48.490 –> 01:15:52.290
Social processes are to be judged by their ability—

1195
01:15:52.290 –> 01:15:55.890
this is important— to extract the most social

1196
01:15:55.970 –> 01:15:59.530
benefit from man’s limited

1197
01:15:59.530 –> 01:16:03.370
potentialities at the lowest cost. This means rewarding scarce and valuable

1198
01:16:03.370 –> 01:16:07.010
abilities, which include abilities which may be mere windfall gains to the

1199
01:16:07.010 –> 01:16:10.770
individual possessing them, being in many cases either natural

1200
01:16:11.170 –> 01:16:13.570
endowments or skills cultivated at prosperous parents’

1201
01:16:14.910 –> 01:16:18.710
expense, but too costly for most people’s means. Sometimes the scarce and valuable traits

1202
01:16:18.710 –> 01:16:22.350
to be rewarded may include skills and orientations

1203
01:16:22.350 –> 01:16:25.630
picked up almost by osmosis

1204
01:16:26.430 –> 01:16:30.029
from being raised in families where they exist. This is

1205
01:16:30.029 –> 01:16:33.230
the core— close quote— this is the core of

1206
01:16:36.190 –> 01:16:40.040
all of our arguments today around

1207
01:16:40.040 –> 01:16:43.880
social justice. When we think about —how this comes about. There is an idea in

1208
01:16:45.240 –> 01:16:49.000
the field of psychology called locus of control. Now, locus of control

1209
01:16:49.000 –> 01:16:52.600
is a very old idea. It’s

1210
01:16:52.600 –> 01:16:56.440
from at least the 1950s. And, um, it basically states that some people believe

1211
01:16:56.440 –> 01:16:59.800
that they are in control of their own lives. And

1212
01:17:00.520 –> 01:17:03.440
people who have a high locus of control, um, don’t really care too much about

1213
01:17:03.440 –> 01:17:06.840
the input of others from the outside world.

1214
01:17:07.140 –> 01:17:10.700
They’re not driven by external factors.

1215
01:17:10.700 –> 01:17:14.500
They’re not driven by social constraints. Okay. Other people who have

1216
01:17:14.500 –> 01:17:18.180
a different locus of control, they have a more of a, more

1217
01:17:18.180 –> 01:17:21.820
of an external locus of control, engage in constant reaction and response to

1218
01:17:21.820 –> 01:17:25.060
the vagaries of inputs on them from the outside world. I

1219
01:17:25.060 –> 01:17:28.460
have people in my family who are like

1220
01:17:28.460 –> 01:17:32.100
this. Locus of control, of course, at a psychological

1221
01:17:32.100 –> 01:17:35.640
level, represents the individual application of the larger societal

1222
01:17:35.640 –> 01:17:39.200
ideas that Soul is addressing. People with an unconstrained

1223
01:17:39.600 –> 01:17:42.400
vision have a high external locus of

1224
01:17:43.520 –> 01:17:47.280
control. They are very much consumed by how

1225
01:17:47.280 –> 01:17:51.080
external processes are impacting their ability to engage in the world.

1226
01:17:51.080 –> 01:17:54.320
Whereas people with a high in— with a constrained

1227
01:17:54.800 –> 01:17:57.840
vision have a high internal locus of control. They are very

1228
01:17:58.560 –> 01:18:02.330
much consumed with what are the skills, abilities, talents, and

1229
01:18:02.330 –> 01:18:04.610
passions and of course interests, and what

1230
01:18:06.370 –> 01:18:09.730
is the personal ceiling that they can

1231
01:18:11.090 –> 01:18:14.890
reach before they, well, get to their goal. The challenge of our time is

1232
01:18:14.890 –> 01:18:18.690
that in our public lives— and this is the core idea

1233
01:18:18.690 –> 01:18:21.970
here, folks— in our public lives, politicians,

1234
01:18:21.970 –> 01:18:25.730
celebrities, marketers, and leaders sell people on an unconstrained vision

1235
01:18:26.870 –> 01:18:30.390
for their lives. They sell audiences on that. But when people look around

1236
01:18:30.390 –> 01:18:33.590
at how they actually live

1237
01:18:34.310 –> 01:18:37.350
with each other, constraints,

1238
01:18:42.310 –> 01:18:46.070
ceilings on their activities bind them brutally everywhere. Ryan, I think

1239
01:18:46.070 –> 01:18:49.590
one of the things we’re missing in our time— this is a, this is an

1240
01:18:49.590 –> 01:18:52.010
idea that I’d like to explore with you. I think one of the

1241
01:18:54.650 –> 01:18:58.330
things we’re missing in our time

1242
01:18:58.330 –> 01:19:02.010
is an arising among elite leaders. So elite leaders sell an unconstrained vision, but if

1243
01:19:02.010 –> 01:19:04.330
you look at their private lives, they live

1244
01:19:05.930 –> 01:19:09.530
very constrained lives, but they don’t sell that. You see

1245
01:19:09.530 –> 01:19:13.250
this in marriage rates, right? So among upper income people, people making what

1246
01:19:13.250 –> 01:19:16.930
we consider to be upper income, which in this society

1247
01:19:16.930 –> 01:19:20.410
now is considered to be $250,000 and or more.

1248
01:19:20.410 –> 01:19:24.250
That’s considered to be upper income.

1249
01:19:26.090 –> 01:19:28.330
Among those people, the rates

1250
01:19:29.610 –> 01:19:33.450
of divorce are single digits. They’re very low. Whereas the ranks—

1251
01:19:33.450 –> 01:19:37.050
the rates of consistent marriage— now, whether those

1252
01:19:37.450 –> 01:19:41.170
marriages are happy, sad, whether there’s cheating, adultery, shenanigans, who knows, right? We’re

1253
01:19:41.170 –> 01:19:44.950
not talking about any of that. Just the two

1254
01:19:44.950 –> 01:19:48.594
people stayed married, it didn’t divorce. The rates of staying married are incredibly high in

1255
01:19:48.692 –> 01:19:52.270
the double digits. I think it’s like 60, 80%,

1256
01:19:52.590 –> 01:19:56.310
90%. It’s up there. But when you

1257
01:19:56.310 –> 01:20:00.030
look at how those people, those celebrities

1258
01:20:00.030 –> 01:20:03.790
particularly, but politicians as well, sell the

1259
01:20:03.790 –> 01:20:07.630
vision of unconstrained

1260
01:20:07.630 –> 01:20:10.430
good, human good, the people below that, uh,

1261
01:20:11.610 –> 01:20:14.730
class rank or class distinction

1262
01:20:16.170 –> 01:20:19.770
or wealth distinction. Their divorce rates are 50%, huh, or more

1263
01:20:19.770 –> 01:20:23.490
in some cases, depending upon which racial, ethnic, socioeconomic group

1264
01:20:23.490 –> 01:20:27.250
you look at that’s below the $250,000 a year

1265
01:20:27.250 –> 01:20:30.890
rate. And their marriage rates are roughly the staying

1266
01:20:30.890 –> 01:20:34.250
marriage rates are roughly the same, roughly

1267
01:20:34.970 –> 01:20:38.560
the same level. So there is a disconnect between

1268
01:20:38.560 –> 01:20:41.960
what the elites and the politicians and

1269
01:20:42.280 –> 01:20:46.120
the marketers sell and how they actually live. And I think the challenge of our

1270
01:20:46.120 –> 01:20:49.560
time and the challenge going forward to the future is

1271
01:20:49.560 –> 01:20:52.920
going to be how do we get more serious elites to actually

1272
01:20:53.320 –> 01:20:54.680
sell the vision of

1273
01:20:57.160 –> 01:21:00.960
the life they live in a serious way so that people

1274
01:21:00.960 –> 01:21:04.200
will switch their behavior over. Because no one’s list— I will say no one, very

1275
01:21:04.660 –> 01:21:07.940
few people are listening to you and I. I mean, people

1276
01:21:08.900 –> 01:21:12.540
are listening, but very few, let’s be honest.

1277
01:21:12.540 –> 01:21:15.780
And if Taylor Swift and Travis

1278
01:21:18.420 –> 01:21:21.700
Kelce get married, they’re probably gonna stay married. And all

1279
01:21:22.660 –> 01:21:26.180
of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s fans though, are probably going to

1280
01:21:27.140 –> 01:21:30.920
buy into the unconstrained vision of their lives and get

1281
01:21:30.920 –> 01:21:34.320
divorced chasing and looking for— right. Looking for their own Taylor Swift or their own

1282
01:21:34.320 –> 01:21:37.840
Travis Kelce. How do we fix this disconnect? Because this is, this is the challenge

1283
01:21:37.840 –> 01:21:40.360
of our time on freedom, justice, equality. If we want to fix any of the

1284
01:21:40.360 –> 01:21:44.120
social— like, if we want to fix child poverty, the easiest

1285
01:21:44.120 –> 01:21:47.400
fix for child poverty— Sol has even written on this— the easiest fix for child

1286
01:21:47.400 –> 01:21:51.200
poverty is for two parents to stay married regardless of circumstance.

1287
01:21:51.200 –> 01:21:54.320
That’s the easiest fix for child poverty. That’s how you break this poverty— the

1288
01:21:57.130 –> 01:21:57.690
child

1289
01:22:03.290 –> 01:22:06.250
poverty cycle. That’s how you do it. Thoughts? How do we get people to start

1290
01:22:14.970 –> 01:22:18.690
selling more of a constraint? That’s the question. But, um, it’s funny,

1291
01:22:18.850 –> 01:22:22.660
the, the question that Sol has asked at the beginning, and I either

1292
01:22:22.660 –> 01:22:26.140
referenced it or said it, uh,

1293
01:22:26.380 –> 01:22:30.140
when we started or before the

1294
01:22:30.940 –> 01:22:34.580
podcast, education usually sorted out this nonsense,

1295
01:22:34.580 –> 01:22:38.380
right? But, you know, as he said, uh,

1296
01:22:39.500 –> 01:22:43.100
nonsense became part of the curriculum. So, right, uh,

1297
01:22:43.100 –> 01:22:46.940
and then, so there’s always a quote, John Adams

1298
01:22:46.940 –> 01:22:50.680
quote, that I, I like to reference, uh, when because there’s

1299
01:22:50.680 –> 01:22:54.120
no panacea,

1300
01:22:54.120 –> 01:22:57.880
there’s no overnight, there’s no quick fix, um,

1301
01:22:57.880 –> 01:23:01.120
and both with the constrained and unconstrained mentioned

1302
01:23:01.120 –> 01:23:04.920
the process in the last segment. And John Adams: I

1303
01:23:04.920 –> 01:23:08.520
must study politics and war that my sons

1304
01:23:08.920 –> 01:23:11.960
may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

1305
01:23:11.960 –> 01:23:15.080
My sons ought to

1306
01:23:15.080 –> 01:23:18.400
study mathematics and philosophy,

1307
01:23:18.480 –> 01:23:22.080
geography natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in

1308
01:23:22.080 –> 01:23:25.760
order to give their children

1309
01:23:29.360 –> 01:23:33.120
a right to study painting, poetry,

1310
01:23:33.760 –> 01:23:37.520
music, architecture, stat— statutory

1311
01:23:37.520 –> 01:23:40.840
tapestry and porcelain. Yeah, so, and also what

1312
01:23:42.440 –> 01:23:46.040
we talked about prior to the podcast was the foundation. I

1313
01:23:46.440 –> 01:23:49.240
think it’s solid. And, and this is often, you know, I

1314
01:23:49.960 –> 01:23:53.520
would venture to say that

1315
01:23:53.520 –> 01:23:56.920
people who have, uh, a daily or

1316
01:23:57.400 –> 01:24:01.000
regular regimented, uh, spiritual practice on some level have

1317
01:24:01.640 –> 01:24:05.170
a less, uh, of a divorce

1318
01:24:05.170 –> 01:24:07.970
rate than, than, than otherwise. Uh,

1319
01:24:09.010 –> 01:24:11.810
I know finances contribute to that

1320
01:24:14.370 –> 01:24:18.130
as well, but it has to— I mean, but I know,

1321
01:24:18.130 –> 01:24:21.690
I know poor people who— I know poor people who stayed married, to your point.

1322
01:24:21.690 –> 01:24:25.210
I know poor people who stayed married who had a

1323
01:24:25.210 –> 01:24:28.290
strong— who have, not

1324
01:24:30.220 –> 01:24:33.900
had— who have a strong religious foundation, right? Um, And

1325
01:24:34.380 –> 01:24:38.020
it can be asserted, I think, that among— I, I picked on celebrities and elite

1326
01:24:38.020 –> 01:24:41.420
and elites. I use them all in the same sort of

1327
01:24:42.140 –> 01:24:43.660
bailiwick. I don’t, I don’t

1328
01:24:45.820 –> 01:24:49.660
separate them out, but I would

1329
01:24:50.780 –> 01:24:54.420
assert that they are probably going to sell more of a constrained

1330
01:24:54.420 –> 01:24:55.980
vision if they have religion

1331
01:24:59.900 –> 01:25:03.180
and a spiritual practice versus if they don’t. And

1332
01:25:03.180 –> 01:25:06.900
I think we see this in the, the

1333
01:25:06.900 –> 01:25:10.420
revelations to the normal public— not us who have been involved in

1334
01:25:10.420 –> 01:25:14.020
conspiracy theories since the mid-1990s,

1335
01:25:14.020 –> 01:25:16.620
but to the regular news-watching public— of

1336
01:25:17.580 –> 01:25:20.380
the shenanigans— and I’m not using that

1337
01:25:21.830 –> 01:25:24.710
term, uh, lightly— going on with Jeffrey Epstein. On his island, and we don’t

1338
01:25:28.710 –> 01:25:32.510
need to go into the specifics of that. I

1339
01:25:32.510 –> 01:25:36.150
don’t know how we get— I don’t know if this is a case of the

1340
01:25:36.230 –> 01:25:40.030
elites doing what elites always do, which is, I got mine and I’m going to

1341
01:25:40.030 –> 01:25:43.750
pull up the ladder. But it’s a, it’s a, it’s

1342
01:25:44.150 –> 01:25:47.830
a psychological pulling up or a, or a, or a

1343
01:25:48.220 –> 01:25:50.220
spiritual pulling up or a social pulling up. As

1344
01:25:51.900 –> 01:25:55.500
much as it is a material pulling up. Saul, even in one

1345
01:25:55.500 –> 01:25:58.140
of the interviews, he’s talking about how

1346
01:26:00.380 –> 01:26:02.060
this exact thing on

1347
01:26:04.290 –> 01:26:07.580
how, uh, Obama, who, uh, very successful financially, uh, and on the

1348
01:26:08.540 –> 01:26:12.220
left— and it’s the left versus the right and, and what their capacities

1349
01:26:12.220 –> 01:26:15.950
to sort of like, or what the, the

1350
01:26:15.950 –> 01:26:16.630
data tells

1351
01:26:21.410 –> 01:26:24.990
us of who contributes or donates more to, uh, uh, um, charity. Charity, yeah. And

1352
01:26:24.990 –> 01:26:28.830
so, and he said the greatest example is Obama, who’s doing very well

1353
01:26:28.830 –> 01:26:32.470
for himself, has a brother in Africa

1354
01:26:32.550 –> 01:26:36.350
who’s living in complete destitution, right? And so

1355
01:26:36.350 –> 01:26:39.920
if you— so it’s back to, are you going to practice what you preach?

1356
01:26:40.340 –> 01:26:43.940
Like, and so, and well, so, so here’s I think this is something that kind

1357
01:26:44.460 –> 01:26:47.700
of coincides with the constraint versus the unconstrained is, you

1358
01:26:48.100 –> 01:26:51.860
know, the answer is we’re talking about

1359
01:26:51.860 –> 01:26:55.380
the, uh, internal versus external locus. Okay. Uh, internal locus is probably a great place

1360
01:26:55.380 –> 01:26:58.120
to start because the change has to come from within. If you don’t want to

1361
01:26:58.120 –> 01:27:00.790
change, then it’s not going to— you need to start yourself. You’re not going to

1362
01:27:00.790 –> 01:27:04.420
change— you’re going to change yourself before you’re

1363
01:27:04.500 –> 01:27:08.180
going to change anybody else. And so where the, uh, I think the,

1364
01:27:12.040 –> 01:27:15.810
the hiccup and some of the confusion can come because I

1365
01:27:15.810 –> 01:27:19.130
mean media and what our elites and are

1366
01:27:19.690 –> 01:27:23.210
selling is this one particular thing and it works

1367
01:27:23.210 –> 01:27:26.250
very much so on the

1368
01:27:26.810 –> 01:27:30.170
superficial level of looks and aesthetics. And now

1369
01:27:30.890 –> 01:27:34.650
what they’re selling is a lot of times is,

1370
01:27:34.650 –> 01:27:38.170
is like you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you— like, it’s a

1371
01:27:38.250 –> 01:27:41.690
lot of me, love, self, self, self. And we’re— and it’s

1372
01:27:43.930 –> 01:27:47.650
interesting because the answer is yes, to look

1373
01:27:47.650 –> 01:27:51.410
inward. It’s not to look— and so it’s— there’s a— is

1374
01:27:51.410 –> 01:27:55.050
a confusing message there. It’s like, no, bring all the

1375
01:27:55.050 –> 01:27:58.650
attention to your— to yourself. And like, readings

1376
01:27:58.650 –> 01:28:00.570
like, uh, you know, the epidemic of narcissism

1377
01:28:03.380 –> 01:28:06.580
or whatever you want to throw in the

1378
01:28:06.900 –> 01:28:10.740
Uh, uh, but that’s— don’t stop it— the hat you’re wearing

1379
01:28:10.740 –> 01:28:14.260
or the, or the clothes that are on your back or the

1380
01:28:14.740 –> 01:28:18.540
name brag— name brand that’s on the tag. You know, there has to be

1381
01:28:18.540 –> 01:28:22.260
something like deeper, and that’s where the absence of spirituality and the spiritual

1382
01:28:22.260 –> 01:28:26.060
bankruptcy, you know, America and much of the world

1383
01:28:26.060 –> 01:28:29.550
as well, kind of get, uh, confused and diverted from the things that are, I

1384
01:28:29.550 –> 01:28:33.310
think, healthier is for us to create and contribute

1385
01:28:36.270 –> 01:28:39.470
that solid foundation. And technology has created such, uh,

1386
01:28:39.870 –> 01:28:43.710
demand for immediacy, whether good, bad, or indifferent, that, uh, much

1387
01:28:43.710 –> 01:28:47.430
like I was talking before the show, you know, can

1388
01:28:47.430 –> 01:28:51.230
get pretty confusing out there. And if you don’t have

1389
01:28:53.150 –> 01:28:56.690
some of those, uh, foundations or those, those, uh, um, yeah, those foundations

1390
01:28:56.690 –> 01:29:00.210
in place, then when things get really,

1391
01:29:00.210 –> 01:29:03.650
really rough, you know, you may be drawn towards something that looks

1392
01:29:04.690 –> 01:29:08.290
good on the outside and is shiny. However, you

1393
01:29:09.010 –> 01:29:12.530
know, it just decamps your inside. Yeah, yeah. And, and so, yeah,

1394
01:29:12.530 –> 01:29:16.250
so that’s, you know, I—

1395
01:29:16.250 –> 01:29:17.970
yeah, taking a look inwards, um,

1396
01:29:19.730 –> 01:29:23.540
and the best way that I have found personally for

1397
01:29:23.540 –> 01:29:27.340
those things. There is an educational component. There’s like, what you’re— what you, you know,

1398
01:29:27.340 –> 01:29:29.900
what am I feeding my body? What am I feeding my brain? What am

1399
01:29:31.660 –> 01:29:35.340
I feeding my soul? X, Y, and Z. Uh, but I think

1400
01:29:35.340 –> 01:29:37.580
the closest and

1401
01:29:40.860 –> 01:29:44.620
the most direct and quickest way to regain, uh, um,

1402
01:29:44.620 –> 01:29:48.230
some sort of license over the internal locus of control is,

1403
01:29:48.950 –> 01:29:52.710
is helping being of service in the community.

1404
01:29:52.710 –> 01:29:56.110
And so it does a couple things. You’re not thinking

1405
01:29:56.110 –> 01:29:59.790
about yourself, and yet you’re providing something that otherwise individuals would not be able to

1406
01:29:59.790 –> 01:30:03.510
do for themselves, or you contribute to the

1407
01:30:03.510 –> 01:30:07.270
betterment of others. And by virtue— and not just— not virtue

1408
01:30:07.750 –> 01:30:11.270
in the sense of the unconstrained solving problems, virtue

1409
01:30:12.480 –> 01:30:16.320
in the sense of, uh, let’s call it, uh, self-esteem

1410
01:30:16.320 –> 01:30:19.840
almost, or, or some sort of, uh, like higher

1411
01:30:20.560 –> 01:30:23.680
calling or some sort of, um, reflection of what you would like to see in

1412
01:30:23.680 –> 01:30:26.000
the world. And you’re contributing in that way

1413
01:30:27.200 –> 01:30:30.960
instead of being some sort of

1414
01:30:30.960 –> 01:30:34.160
like vacuous individual who is aspiring to claw their way to the top

1415
01:30:35.040 –> 01:30:37.730
of the mountain because, you know, their favorite, uh, reality TV show is sitting on

1416
01:30:37.730 –> 01:30:41.290
the top of the mountain and that’s where they need to

1417
01:30:41.290 –> 01:30:44.170
be as well. When we think about the solutions to problems, I talked

1418
01:30:45.050 –> 01:30:48.610
about the, the swing of the pendulum, right? I

1419
01:30:48.770 –> 01:30:52.490
have more and more become convinced that, and this is, you know, not

1420
01:30:52.490 –> 01:30:56.210
been recently, but I’ve

1421
01:30:56.210 –> 01:30:59.930
more and more become convinced that our— the solution to all of our

1422
01:31:00.570 –> 01:31:03.910
problems at a leadership level is all local. It’s all

1423
01:31:04.220 –> 01:31:07.740
localized solutions to, to the, to these problems., right? So

1424
01:31:08.060 –> 01:31:11.260
to your point about serving

1425
01:31:14.060 –> 01:31:17.900
in your local community, right? If I want to— if I want to have

1426
01:31:17.900 –> 01:31:21.700
an unconstrained vision, or if I’m the owner or the purveyor

1427
01:31:21.700 –> 01:31:25.260
of an unconstrained vision, the best place

1428
01:31:25.820 –> 01:31:29.580
to work that unconstrained vision out is not at the— to your point, the top

1429
01:31:29.580 –> 01:31:33.130
of the mountain where the reality TV star show lives. That’s not the best place

1430
01:31:33.130 –> 01:31:36.850
to work it out. The best place

1431
01:31:36.930 –> 01:31:40.770
to work out that unconstrained vision is— I’m gonna pull a Jordan Peterson here, but

1432
01:31:41.330 –> 01:31:44.850
inside of my own family, making

1433
01:31:44.850 –> 01:31:48.490
my own bed. And

1434
01:31:48.490 –> 01:31:52.330
that’ll give me— trying to fix my uncle of

1435
01:31:52.330 –> 01:31:55.890
his systemic racism is going to give me all the challenges I could

1436
01:31:56.730 –> 01:31:58.650
ever possibly need for the rest of

1437
01:32:02.170 –> 01:32:05.091
my life. That’s as hyperlocal as it can get. Yeah. And, and, and that’s for

1438
01:32:05.091 –> 01:32:08.090
the, that’s for the unconstrained vision. For the constrained

1439
01:32:09.370 –> 01:32:13.050
vision, the challenge is on the opposite end

1440
01:32:14.490 –> 01:32:17.050
where if I am only constrained to

1441
01:32:18.170 –> 01:32:21.610
the local, I limit my ability to see that while I fixed my

1442
01:32:22.770 –> 01:32:26.610
neighborhood and picked up the trash in my neighborhood. Those neighbors over there

1443
01:32:26.610 –> 01:32:29.970
on the other street are also my neighbors in the,

1444
01:32:30.050 –> 01:32:33.850
in the sort of biblical, who is my neighbor sense,

1445
01:32:33.850 –> 01:32:37.410
right? The New Testament biblical sense. And I probably

1446
01:32:37.410 –> 01:32:40.930
need to take a group of neighbors from my street

1447
01:32:40.930 –> 01:32:44.570
who have cleaned up my street, go one street over. I don’t have to clean

1448
01:32:44.570 –> 01:32:48.090
up the whole town, go one street over, introduce myself to those neighbors and

1449
01:32:48.090 –> 01:32:48.930
go, hey,

1450
01:33:09.140 –> 01:33:12.940
you want to pick up— now the constrained vision. And then I have to,

1451
01:33:12.940 –> 01:33:16.340
um, and then I have to, and then I have to figure out after

1452
01:33:16.770 –> 01:33:20.490
I convince my neighbors to go one neighborhood over Then I have to convince

1453
01:33:20.490 –> 01:33:24.010
those neighbors one neighborhood over that it’s worthwhile to pick up their own trash and

1454
01:33:24.010 –> 01:33:27.570
that we’re going to help them and to convince them that we’re not going

1455
01:33:27.570 –> 01:33:31.410
to fool them. All of the, all of the challenges that

1456
01:33:31.490 –> 01:33:35.050
I’m looking to scale up in an unconstrained

1457
01:33:35.050 –> 01:33:38.810
vision or in a constrained vision

1458
01:33:38.810 –> 01:33:41.250
are present in my local circumstances. And this gets to locus

1459
01:33:43.020 –> 01:33:45.100
of control too, in my mind, where I think So one of the things we

1460
01:33:45.100 –> 01:33:48.540
don’t talk about a lot on the show is self-awareness,

1461
01:33:49.500 –> 01:33:52.540
which we probably should talk about it more, but

1462
01:33:53.020 –> 01:33:56.620
self-awareness is not self-esteem, nor is it navel gazing.

1463
01:33:56.620 –> 01:34:00.260
Self-awareness is the ability to look

1464
01:34:00.260 –> 01:34:03.980
at what you’ve done or not done and say, whether it’s

1465
01:34:03.980 –> 01:34:07.620
in a spiritual practice, a meditative practice, whether it’s driving home in your

1466
01:34:07.620 –> 01:34:11.250
car after work without the radio on, without a distraction.

1467
01:34:11.730 –> 01:34:15.410
With turning off the white noise in your head, looking at what you’ve done,

1468
01:34:16.290 –> 01:34:19.410
looking at what you’ve accomplished and saying, is this absolutely the

1469
01:34:20.370 –> 01:34:23.850
best way for me to have been oriented today? And if the little voice inside

1470
01:34:23.850 –> 01:34:27.570
of you says, no, you could have been oriented differently. And then you

1471
01:34:27.570 –> 01:34:31.410
start talking to that little voice and you start saying,

1472
01:34:31.410 –> 01:34:31.890
hey, how

1473
01:34:34.700 –> 01:34:38.540
could I been oriented differently? Now we’re

1474
01:34:38.540 –> 01:34:42.260
not coming. Pache

1475
01:34:42.260 –> 01:34:45.580
Christianity, we’re not coming from a space of, uh, conviction— or no, I’m sorry, not,

1476
01:34:45.580 –> 01:34:49.380
not conviction. We’re not coming from a space of condemnation. We are

1477
01:34:49.380 –> 01:34:52.780
instead coming from a space of conviction. And I think that voice

1478
01:34:52.780 –> 01:34:56.540
changes from conviction to condemnation because the

1479
01:34:56.540 –> 01:35:00.300
conviction is positive, condemnation is negative. We switch from that, or

1480
01:35:00.300 –> 01:35:02.940
that voice switches internally when we know we haven’t gotten there. And I’ve seen this

1481
01:35:02.940 –> 01:35:06.740
even in my own life, when we know we haven’t gotten there And

1482
01:35:08.900 –> 01:35:12.620
we think that the thing is all on us without bringing other people in

1483
01:35:12.620 –> 01:35:16.340
because we were meant to be in relationship. And to

1484
01:35:16.740 –> 01:35:20.500
your point, education, I would put relationships in there. All of it goes

1485
01:35:21.300 –> 01:35:23.860
in and it makes it a very complicated soup. And at the end of the

1486
01:35:23.860 –> 01:35:27.500
day, you wanna keep that complication as local as possible. So again, if you wanna,

1487
01:35:27.500 –> 01:35:30.990
if you wanna fight systemic racism, start in

1488
01:35:31.390 –> 01:35:34.830
your own family. Seriously. Don’t start with

1489
01:35:35.550 –> 01:35:39.350
like Shopify or Spotify or like the United Way or your, even your

1490
01:35:39.350 –> 01:35:43.150
local government. Don’t start there. Start with your racist Uncle Dan

1491
01:35:43.150 –> 01:35:46.510
or your racist Aunt Bertha. Start

1492
01:35:46.670 –> 01:35:50.270
there. Like, go bother them. Try to change them. This self-awareness piece

1493
01:35:52.430 –> 01:35:55.470
is, you know, we talked about, uh, you know, um, uh, how do you,

1494
01:35:56.370 –> 01:35:59.810
you know, how do you, how do you influence someone to move

1495
01:36:00.050 –> 01:36:01.650
from a

1496
01:36:04.210 –> 01:36:06.930
closed mindset to a growth mindset, right? And, and, um, and, and something I

1497
01:36:08.450 –> 01:36:12.210
brought up in the beginning of the, of the,

1498
01:36:12.210 –> 01:36:15.570
uh, the show, um, and this was really throughout the— I think it’s close to

1499
01:36:15.650 –> 01:36:19.050
26 or 27 years we’ve

1500
01:36:19.050 –> 01:36:21.490
known each other, but whatever, um,

1501
01:36:22.900 –> 01:36:25.620
is, is the idea or in the

1502
01:36:27.380 –> 01:36:31.140
practice of you know, leadership and conflict resolution. So probably

1503
01:36:31.620 –> 01:36:34.500
for the

1504
01:36:35.220 –> 01:36:38.980
longest time, I viewed those things as something out— like, unattainable. And it’s not

1505
01:36:38.980 –> 01:36:42.100
something to attain. It’s more

1506
01:36:42.500 –> 01:36:45.700
of a— I would think of practice. And, and you’re talking about like,

1507
01:36:47.630 –> 01:36:50.910
how do you switch that mindset? And it’s, it’s You know,

1508
01:36:51.390 –> 01:36:55.230
what I’ve really been acutely aware of the last

1509
01:36:55.310 –> 01:36:58.830
6 months is, wow, what, what can

1510
01:36:58.830 –> 01:37:02.430
I contribute to this conflict or

1511
01:37:02.590 –> 01:37:06.110
this, this interaction that

1512
01:37:06.110 –> 01:37:09.710
is, uh, based more on a

1513
01:37:10.270 –> 01:37:14.020
conflict resolution, uh, uh, and, um, community-oriented than self-serving? And as we

1514
01:37:14.020 –> 01:37:17.740
know very much so in the familial context, like if you were

1515
01:37:17.740 –> 01:37:21.420
taking care of your family, you’re also being taken care of. And so

1516
01:37:21.900 –> 01:37:25.660
it’s just that it’s the, the, it’s the process is not

1517
01:37:25.660 –> 01:37:28.700
immediate. And so it’s not, you know, it’s not

1518
01:37:29.340 –> 01:37:33.100
something that’s easily gravitated towards because, you know, as I

1519
01:37:33.100 –> 01:37:36.780
mentioned a few minutes ago, um,

1520
01:37:36.780 –> 01:37:40.510
wanting to see results immediately. Well, and

1521
01:37:40.510 –> 01:37:44.310
I also think, I think we’re the generation The tail end of Gen X,

1522
01:37:44.310 –> 01:37:47.710
man. Like, I’m going back to this— this is one of the themes we’re exploring

1523
01:37:47.710 –> 01:37:51.470
on this show this year is restoration, right? And who’s going to

1524
01:37:51.470 –> 01:37:55.270
be the leaders on restoration? And if

1525
01:37:55.990 –> 01:37:59.190
we want to make it about generations, quite frankly, I think that those of us

1526
01:37:59.190 –> 01:38:03.030
who are on the, the younger end of Gen X, so those

1527
01:38:03.030 –> 01:38:06.670
of us who are in that, that, that 46 to

1528
01:38:06.670 –> 01:38:10.300
52-year-old age bracket, those of us who are floating in there Those

1529
01:38:10.300 –> 01:38:14.060
of us who are young enough to have

1530
01:38:16.060 –> 01:38:19.580
some common cause with older millennials, but are also, um, old enough to look

1531
01:38:19.580 –> 01:38:23.420
at Gen Zers who are in their 20s and 30s

1532
01:38:24.620 –> 01:38:28.220
and kind of go, what are you doing exactly? Those of us who

1533
01:38:28.700 –> 01:38:32.460
are able to sort of walk that tightrope generationally in

1534
01:38:32.460 –> 01:38:36.030
our families first are going to

1535
01:38:36.190 –> 01:38:38.830
be the vanguards of leadership. Um, around this space. And by the

1536
01:38:39.550 –> 01:38:43.390
way, the reason we’re going to

1537
01:38:43.390 –> 01:38:47.230
be the vanguards, partially it’s practical. The boomers, for all

1538
01:38:47.230 –> 01:38:50.910
of the knocks against them and all of the, all

1539
01:38:52.430 –> 01:38:56.230
of the, all of the vitriol spewed against them, are passing into

1540
01:38:56.230 –> 01:39:00.070
history whether we like it or not. They just are. This

1541
01:39:00.070 –> 01:39:03.590
is what’s happening. And over the next 10 to 15 years. It will

1542
01:39:03.590 –> 01:39:07.150
happen at a quickening pace that will be so shocking to

1543
01:39:07.150 –> 01:39:10.070
us younger Gen Xers. It will take us by surprise if we’re not prepared. So

1544
01:39:10.070 –> 01:39:12.950
that’s number one. So I want, I want us to all get prepared. This is

1545
01:39:12.950 –> 01:39:15.230
me talking to me as well as me talking to Ryan as me talking to

1546
01:39:15.230 –> 01:39:19.070
all of you. We need to get prepared. We need to get

1547
01:39:19.790 –> 01:39:23.510
our crap together. It’s time, right? Because

1548
01:39:23.510 –> 01:39:27.280
one day we will be looked to by the Gen Zers and

1549
01:39:27.280 –> 01:39:31.000
by the younger millennials and even by the older millennials, and

1550
01:39:31.000 –> 01:39:34.760
we will be taken to task for what we didn’t do

1551
01:39:34.760 –> 01:39:38.600
as far as leadership in our own families, the opportunities we missed

1552
01:39:38.600 –> 01:39:42.040
inside of our own families, regardless of whether or not where our visions are, we

1553
01:39:42.040 –> 01:39:45.001
are going to be taken to task. And I don’t think we’re ready for— we

1554
01:39:45.001 –> 01:39:48.160
ain’t, we ain’t ready for that reckoning. That’s— we’re not wired for it. So that’s

1555
01:39:48.160 –> 01:39:51.960
going to be interesting, but I want us to avoid that. We’re really good at

1556
01:39:51.960 –> 01:39:54.760
avoiding the reckoning. So Gen Xers, I’m talking to you because you know what I’m

1557
01:39:54.760 –> 01:39:58.030
talking about. We’re really good at avoiding the reckoning and this is how we

1558
01:39:58.510 –> 01:40:01.430
do it. Okay. This is, this is the key, uh, that you hang around your

1559
01:40:01.430 –> 01:40:05.070
neck in case you’re gonna be latchkey. Okay. So I’m giving it

1560
01:40:05.070 –> 01:40:06.990
to you right now. Okay. Um, the, the second

1561
01:40:08.590 –> 01:40:12.030
thing is, the second thought that I

1562
01:40:13.150 –> 01:40:16.310
have is as we turn the corner on the, the, the, the chaos of the

1563
01:40:16.310 –> 01:40:19.990
country that’s we’ve been through in the last 25 years,

1564
01:40:19.990 –> 01:40:23.560
I think the thing that we have

1565
01:40:23.560 –> 01:40:26.560
to set down Uh, and I said this, this before, a couple of

1566
01:40:27.200 –> 01:40:29.800
episodes ago, we were talking about The Great Instauration and a couple of other things,

1567
01:40:29.800 –> 01:40:33.600
a couple of other books that we’ve talked about earlier this year, earlier

1568
01:40:33.600 –> 01:40:37.439
this season. But I think we have to set down irony and

1569
01:40:37.439 –> 01:40:41.280
cynical detachment in order to make this work. And we

1570
01:40:41.280 –> 01:40:44.200
have to be sincere. And that, again, I’m speaking to

1571
01:40:44.840 –> 01:40:48.460
my Gen X folks out here, young and old. I

1572
01:40:48.460 –> 01:40:52.260
understand how hard this is going

1573
01:40:52.260 –> 01:40:56.100
to be. Trust me, I know, but we have to start

1574
01:40:56.100 –> 01:40:59.500
putting it down. And the easiest and safest place

1575
01:40:59.820 –> 01:41:03.419
for us to put down our, our ironic

1576
01:41:03.419 –> 01:41:07.020
detachment and put down our cynicism

1577
01:41:07.100 –> 01:41:10.940
and pick up sincerity and actually lead with sincerity is going to be in our

1578
01:41:10.940 –> 01:41:14.530
families. So that’s my good word. And we have to do it sincerely.

1579
01:41:14.530 –> 01:41:18.090
We cannot do it from another place. Can we joke and be funny and all

1580
01:41:18.090 –> 01:41:21.850
that other kind of stuff on the, on the— absolutely, that’s

1581
01:41:21.850 –> 01:41:25.330
okay. But when we’re leading in our

1582
01:41:25.930 –> 01:41:29.729
families on these things, whether it’s anti-racism or anti-taxism or whatever you

1583
01:41:29.729 –> 01:41:33.490
want to lead on, even just like

1584
01:41:33.490 –> 01:41:37.290
dealing with undealt with trauma, right? And saying, I forgive you and

1585
01:41:37.290 –> 01:41:41.060
I love you and everything will be fine.

1586
01:41:41.060 –> 01:41:44.100
Giving that forgiveness and taking in that forgiveness. We have to do it with sincerity,

1587
01:41:44.100 –> 01:41:47.820
and that’s going to be really hard for us

1588
01:41:48.620 –> 01:41:50.300
as a generational cohort. But just

1589
01:41:52.460 –> 01:41:55.980
like most things, I think we can manage it. I don’t think we have

1590
01:41:57.100 –> 01:41:59.740
a choice, and I think we

1591
01:42:01.900 –> 01:42:05.580
could manage it. And that’s

1592
01:42:05.580 –> 01:42:09.390
so much— I mean, trade-off. Absolutely. Manageability, manageability is

1593
01:42:09.470 –> 01:42:13.150
not a solution. There’s no— there’s no— because it’s—

1594
01:42:13.150 –> 01:42:16.870
so looking at these two, the, the outlines of the, the

1595
01:42:16.870 –> 01:42:19.630
constrained versus the non-constrained and sort of

1596
01:42:21.710 –> 01:42:25.550
like the breakdowns of each one, uh, it just— if you,

1597
01:42:25.550 –> 01:42:28.910
if you look at— go back to antiquity,

1598
01:42:29.710 –> 01:42:33.440
it just, it just seems that we’re talking about, uh, man’s

1599
01:42:33.440 –> 01:42:36.440
nature is flawed, selfish, and and, and

1600
01:42:36.920 –> 01:42:40.200
thick. I mean, we’ve been essentially,

1601
01:42:41.160 –> 01:42:44.680
as a species, we’re dealing

1602
01:42:44.760 –> 01:42:48.520
with the exact same problems with different outfits. Yes.

1603
01:42:48.520 –> 01:42:52.360
For the last 100,000 years. Yes. If not longer, who knows? We don’t

1604
01:42:52.360 –> 01:42:55.960
even get into the hollow

1605
01:42:55.960 –> 01:42:59.770
moon. We’ve got so much to talk about. No, huh? What Martians— but anyway,

1606
01:42:59.770 –> 01:43:03.330
um, Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s the human

1607
01:43:03.810 –> 01:43:07.530
condition. And so the human condition

1608
01:43:07.530 –> 01:43:11.050
hasn’t really changed. No. And so— no, and we use technology to

1609
01:43:11.050 –> 01:43:14.770
gild the lily. And we think that because we’ve, we’ve— I’ve said this before

1610
01:43:14.770 –> 01:43:17.170
on the show, right? We think that

1611
01:43:18.450 –> 01:43:22.250
because we’ve, we’ve achieved a certain

1612
01:43:22.250 –> 01:43:25.330
level of technological expertise, that somehow we’ve, we’ve chipped a great,

1613
01:43:28.260 –> 01:43:31.700
a great piece off of the rock of reality. And, and we haven’t,

1614
01:43:31.700 –> 01:43:35.220
but that’s a, but that’s an unconstrained, that’s a constrained vision, right? So I have

1615
01:43:35.220 –> 01:43:38.460
a constraint. I do. I will admit I have a constraint. If you haven’t, if

1616
01:43:38.460 –> 01:43:41.700
you haven’t already guessed it, I have a constrained vision. I

1617
01:43:42.020 –> 01:43:45.660
mean, that’s the point of this podcast is that, you know, and

1618
01:43:45.660 –> 01:43:48.900
I do frame it and we’re, we’re coming up towards the end of our last,

1619
01:43:48.900 –> 01:43:52.460
last sort of segment here where we talk about solutions

1620
01:43:52.460 –> 01:43:55.960
to problems. I do frame solutions to problems as solutions because That’s what

1621
01:43:56.200 –> 01:43:59.960
people like to hear. They like to hear that, hey, I’m gonna solve

1622
01:44:00.840 –> 01:44:03.720
this and then, you know, it’s gonna be done. And there were— leaders love to

1623
01:44:03.800 –> 01:44:06.600
hear that. I’m gonna solve this problem. It’s gonna be done. Use some of the

1624
01:44:06.600 –> 01:44:10.400
things Hasan and his guests talked about

1625
01:44:10.400 –> 01:44:12.520
and then we’re gonna move on,

1626
01:44:15.720 –> 01:44:19.400
right? Except the reality is, to, to Ryan’s point, we can either be ground

1627
01:44:19.400 –> 01:44:23.190
down by the idea that we’re always gonna be facing this again and again and

1628
01:44:23.190 –> 01:44:25.950
again. And so we can fall into cynicism

1629
01:44:26.270 –> 01:44:29.390
and nihilism. That’s

1630
01:44:29.950 –> 01:44:33.710
very easy. I mean, that’s what Camus and Sartre,

1631
01:44:33.710 –> 01:44:37.550
and before him, before those, those boys, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, that’s what all those

1632
01:44:37.550 –> 01:44:41.310
guys would say, right? Fall into nihilism, fall into existential

1633
01:44:41.310 –> 01:44:44.910
dread. Well, I’m gonna stick up for Camus because

1634
01:44:44.910 –> 01:44:48.700
he was an absurdist above all,

1635
01:44:48.700 –> 01:44:52.520
and his philosophy was if you, uh, essentially

1636
01:44:52.520 –> 01:44:56.120
He’s like, if, uh, you’re not— it’s not, you know, he still talks

1637
01:44:57.080 –> 01:45:00.360
about in, uh, Mythos Sisyphus, you know, the really— suicide or

1638
01:45:01.960 –> 01:45:04.920
not, blah blah blah, right? Yeah, he, he said,

1639
01:45:06.040 –> 01:45:09.320
uh, well, first we must not despair. Number

1640
01:45:09.640 –> 01:45:12.360
two, number two, he said, if

1641
01:45:13.480 –> 01:45:17.090
you’re having such difficulties with life and it is,

1642
01:45:17.090 –> 01:45:20.450
uh, you’re combative with the idea of

1643
01:45:20.930 –> 01:45:24.250
having to live. He said, so, so the absurdist, he

1644
01:45:24.250 –> 01:45:27.810
said, you’re not combating life. He said,

1645
01:45:27.970 –> 01:45:31.610
you are resisting death. And so if you are stuck in that

1646
01:45:31.610 –> 01:45:35.410
place of you don’t want to live and be here because

1647
01:45:35.410 –> 01:45:39.210
X, Y, and Z challenges, and, and, and, and so

1648
01:45:39.210 –> 01:45:42.660
don’t look at it as an obligation to live life.

1649
01:45:42.660 –> 01:45:46.420
It is, it is, it is a resistance, you’re, you’re

1650
01:45:46.420 –> 01:45:50.060
denying death. You’re not letting death have the satisfaction

1651
01:45:50.060 –> 01:45:52.300
of taking you down. Okay, Kevin, I’ll grant

1652
01:45:54.300 –> 01:45:57.460
you Camus might have the minority report on this. I’ll give you that. I’ll give

1653
01:45:57.460 –> 01:46:00.740
you that he might have the minority report on this. And by the way, I

1654
01:46:00.740 –> 01:46:04.380
do agree with half of that. Eh, maybe an eighth of that. Um,

1655
01:46:04.380 –> 01:46:07.980
yes, to despair is a sin, by the way. That’s, that’s even in

1656
01:46:08.260 –> 01:46:11.940
Christian circles. To despair is a sin. It’s

1657
01:46:11.940 –> 01:46:15.540
sinful. Like, because our hope lies not in despair, right?

1658
01:46:16.100 –> 01:46:19.940
It doesn’t lie in, um, looking into the abyss, to

1659
01:46:19.940 –> 01:46:23.540
paraphrase from, from Nietzsche, and seeing the abyss, you

1660
01:46:25.860 –> 01:46:28.980
know, uh, stare back through,

1661
01:46:29.860 –> 01:46:33.300
uh, back through you. And because we

1662
01:46:33.540 –> 01:46:34.340
are human,

1663
01:46:37.740 –> 01:46:41.580
we tend to fall into that abyss very often. However, I don’t think

1664
01:46:41.580 –> 01:46:45.300
that that’s the, that’s the way we, we,

1665
01:46:45.300 –> 01:46:49.140
we do the trade-offs, right? And so solutions are sexy, right? Except of

1666
01:46:49.140 –> 01:46:51.820
course, when we’re just arguing about the problem, which is what we’ve been pretty much

1667
01:46:51.820 –> 01:46:54.860
doing for the last 25 years, right? Argue about the problem, argue about the problem,

1668
01:46:54.860 –> 01:46:57.300
argue about the problem. And I get so sick of arguing about the problem. Done

1669
01:46:57.300 –> 01:47:00.340
arguing about the problem. We know what the problem is. Great. We got the problem.

1670
01:47:00.340 –> 01:47:04.100
And, and actually with this book, what we’ve done is we further refined what

1671
01:47:04.100 –> 01:47:07.150
the problem is. So now we can actually

1672
01:47:08.510 –> 01:47:12.230
have a conversation about What are the potential trade-offs and what

1673
01:47:12.230 –> 01:47:15.390
are the results? What are the outcomes of those trade-offs?

1674
01:47:15.950 –> 01:47:19.310
What is the causality? Another area we don’t understand that leads to

1675
01:47:19.310 –> 01:47:22.870
these kinds of trade-offs. And then what are the consequences, right?

1676
01:47:22.870 –> 01:47:25.670
We can sort of have that discussion rather than burying our heads in the sand

1677
01:47:25.670 –> 01:47:29.510
and just kicking the can down the road, which we’ve been doing for

1678
01:47:29.510 –> 01:47:33.060
the last 25 years in a chaotic culture. You brought up the

1679
01:47:33.220 –> 01:47:36.700
2008, you know,, you know, economic crisis, right? Or I

1680
01:47:36.980 –> 01:47:40.580
bring up to revisit again our current, our

1681
01:47:40.580 –> 01:47:44.220
current contratrompe around illegal immigration. There are simple but not

1682
01:47:44.220 –> 01:47:48.020
easy solutions. And maybe I shouldn’t say solutions. There are

1683
01:47:48.020 –> 01:47:51.700
simple but not easy trade-offs

1684
01:47:52.180 –> 01:47:55.700
for these two kinds of problems. And the issue is the people

1685
01:47:55.700 –> 01:47:58.890
who would have to execute those trade-offs or

1686
01:47:59.730 –> 01:48:03.410
the people whose ox would be gored. Buy those trade-offs, don’t

1687
01:48:03.410 –> 01:48:06.930
want their ox gourd. And if they would just say that, like if the banker

1688
01:48:07.730 –> 01:48:11.410
would just say, I don’t want to go to jail. I did

1689
01:48:11.410 –> 01:48:15.130
what the federal government told me to do.

1690
01:48:15.130 –> 01:48:18.050
Go yell at that guy. The banker

1691
01:48:18.930 –> 01:48:22.770
would save his, his, his head from the noose. Instead, he doesn’t say that.

1692
01:48:22.770 –> 01:48:26.380
He just sort of hides and weasels around and goes and talks to the federal

1693
01:48:26.380 –> 01:48:29.740
government people. And by the way, just as a side note, I think this is

1694
01:48:29.740 –> 01:48:33.420
why people like, for better or worse,

1695
01:48:33.420 –> 01:48:37.140
they like Donald Trump because as Dave Chappelle pointed out years ago, he

1696
01:48:37.140 –> 01:48:39.500
was the first guy who stood

1697
01:48:40.700 –> 01:48:44.220
on a stage in between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And

1698
01:48:44.220 –> 01:48:47.740
when they both accused him of using the system, he turned around and

1699
01:48:48.700 –> 01:48:52.250
said to them, it was a system that you built. I use

1700
01:48:52.250 –> 01:48:55.970
the system you built. And I know you build it

1701
01:48:55.970 –> 01:48:59.730
because your friends come to my place to ask me for more money so you

1702
01:48:59.730 –> 01:49:03.490
can build it more. And all of a sudden Barack Obama

1703
01:49:03.490 –> 01:49:06.530
and Hillary Clinton had nothing to say. And Chappelle goes, and this is the great

1704
01:49:06.530 –> 01:49:10.250
line. He goes, uh, he goes, it’s like a man sitting

1705
01:49:10.810 –> 01:49:14.410
outside a burning building with the people standing there, right? With a can full of

1706
01:49:14.410 –> 01:49:18.070
gas and a handful of matches and going, yeah, the building’s on fire and

1707
01:49:18.070 –> 01:49:21.550
it’s your fault. He’s like, I’ve I’ve never heard— to Chappelle’s point— I’ve never

1708
01:49:22.750 –> 01:49:26.190
heard a white man say that ever in my life. And that’s why

1709
01:49:26.590 –> 01:49:30.190
Donald Trump got elected, if you want to really know,

1710
01:49:31.390 –> 01:49:34.830
because that’s what we want. We want people that actually— now, what they do about

1711
01:49:35.310 –> 01:49:39.030
it afterward, that’s a different thing altogether, but they

1712
01:49:39.030 –> 01:49:42.790
actually say out loud what the trade-off is. And

1713
01:49:42.790 –> 01:49:46.310
that’s where we’re going in this session, or this

1714
01:49:46.310 –> 01:49:48.670
next, this

1715
01:49:51.790 –> 01:49:55.551
final area of our time together, because Ryan has greatly

1716
01:49:55.551 –> 01:49:59.230
glorified us with his presence today and his— from this book. And,

1717
01:49:59.230 –> 01:50:02.030
um, and so we got to go on a restoration project. And I think, I

1718
01:50:02.110 –> 01:50:04.950
think the big project— I’ve been leading up to this— I think the big part

1719
01:50:04.950 –> 01:50:08.350
of our project is not that we don’t perceive the world the same way. I

1720
01:50:08.350 –> 01:50:12.070
don’t think that that’s, that’s really a thing, because to Ryan’s point

1721
01:50:12.070 –> 01:50:15.030
human beings are always going to not see the world the same way. Heck, you’re

1722
01:50:15.510 –> 01:50:18.390
going to have two people born in the same family who are going to— one,

1723
01:50:18.390 –> 01:50:21.750
one’s going to have a constrained vision, one’s going to have an unconstrained vision, even

1724
01:50:21.750 –> 01:50:25.230
if they’re raised by two parents with an unconstrained vision or two

1725
01:50:25.230 –> 01:50:27.990
parents with constrained vision or two parents were kind

1726
01:50:29.110 –> 01:50:32.870
of opposites. This is how it’s going to happen, right? Um, because the

1727
01:50:32.870 –> 01:50:36.720
mix of experience and genetics and all of this is

1728
01:50:38.080 –> 01:50:41.800
just too— it’s just too much. Right? Nature versus nurture. I think instead

1729
01:50:41.800 –> 01:50:45.200
what we should probably be

1730
01:50:46.000 –> 01:50:49.440
pursuing is the creation of trade-offs by serious

1731
01:50:50.000 –> 01:50:53.560
leaders. And American culture has allowed, for

1732
01:50:53.560 –> 01:50:56.240
better or worse, since at least

1733
01:50:57.120 –> 01:51:00.960
the 1970s, unserious and unconstrained manipulators to sell their ideas.

1734
01:51:00.960 –> 01:51:04.640
And that began the unraveling of our society, um, in the decade in which

1735
01:51:05.210 –> 01:51:08.970
both myself and Ryan were born and has just continued. At

1736
01:51:08.970 –> 01:51:12.650
a pace until, you know, right now. And the

1737
01:51:12.650 –> 01:51:16.010
chaotic aftermath of that

1738
01:51:16.090 –> 01:51:19.850
unraveling is also what we’ve experienced because, again, ideas and actions

1739
01:51:19.850 –> 01:51:23.650
have consequences. It’s not just things that occur

1740
01:51:23.650 –> 01:51:27.490
in a vacuum. Now on this show, we’ve read Orwell. We read, um, episode

1741
01:51:27.490 –> 01:51:31.260
number 85, Orwell and the English Language. That’s a great essay. I would go back

1742
01:51:31.260 –> 01:51:34.580
and read that and listen to that episode. Um, and Orwell was consumed with

1743
01:51:34.580 –> 01:51:38.420
the deterioration of our language as far back as the

1744
01:51:38.420 –> 01:51:42.100
1940s. Uh, we read B.H. Liddell Hart on

1745
01:51:42.980 –> 01:51:46.819
failing to learn from history in episode number 167. And when we

1746
01:51:46.820 –> 01:51:50.580
have slovenly language and we fail to learn from history, we

1747
01:51:50.820 –> 01:51:54.580
are constantly surprised whether constrained or unconstrained our visions are.

1748
01:51:54.580 –> 01:51:57.980
We are constantly surprised by the— well,

1749
01:51:58.780 –> 01:52:02.060
to paraphrase from Thomas Sowell, the people lining up consistently time after

1750
01:52:03.180 –> 01:52:05.940
time on the exact same sides of a particular issue. We gotta get ahold of

1751
01:52:05.940 –> 01:52:09.580
our language. We’ve gotta get ahold of our history. We have to learn.

1752
01:52:09.660 –> 01:52:13.420
And even in spite of all that, I still hold that the United States

1753
01:52:13.660 –> 01:52:17.420
is the country best positioned with the people best

1754
01:52:17.420 –> 01:52:19.420
positioned to lead, inspire, and practically tackle the

1755
01:52:22.630 –> 01:52:25.270
restoration project ahead of us in the next 25 years. We can only

1756
01:52:26.390 –> 01:52:29.950
get to this project, however, if we have serious leaders, serious about

1757
01:52:29.950 –> 01:52:33.790
history, serious about language, and most importantly, serious about their

1758
01:52:33.790 –> 01:52:37.390
visions, serious about the tragic nature of reality, serious about the

1759
01:52:37.390 –> 01:52:41.190
honest and hard and brutal trade-offs required to make

1760
01:52:41.190 –> 01:52:45.030
a vision become a reality. Only children, like the ones we

1761
01:52:45.030 –> 01:52:48.230
talked about in a previous segment, and adults with

1762
01:52:48.230 –> 01:52:51.980
childish temperaments believe that adulthood can

1763
01:52:51.980 –> 01:52:55.820
be the realm of unconstrained limits. By the way, some of those

1764
01:52:55.820 –> 01:52:59.300
childish people who are adults and who are behaving in

1765
01:52:59.860 –> 01:53:02.500
a childlike fashion

1766
01:53:03.860 –> 01:53:06.100
also run some of our biggest

1767
01:53:07.860 –> 01:53:11.580
corporations— Google, Amazon, OpenAI— and they’re playing with dangerous

1768
01:53:11.580 –> 01:53:13.860
fuel with an unconstrained vision. By the way, I

1769
01:53:15.230 –> 01:53:18.510
read an article the other day in one of these, uh, newsletters that I follow

1770
01:53:18.590 –> 01:53:22.310
from— because I, I pay attention to the tech bros

1771
01:53:22.310 –> 01:53:26.030
very closely, and somebody stood up— I won’t tell you the name—

1772
01:53:26.110 –> 01:53:29.550
but somebody stood up at MIT

1773
01:53:30.270 –> 01:53:33.150
sometime late last year and claimed that death was immoral and that they were

1774
01:53:37.520 –> 01:53:39.470
going to spend a lot of money

1775
01:53:41.990 –> 01:53:45.670
to defeat death. Is it— oh, okay, the initials PT.

1776
01:53:45.670 –> 01:53:48.470
Do they run

1777
01:53:48.470 –> 01:53:52.310
a— do they run a, uh, surveillance— giant surveillance, uh, business?

1778
01:53:52.310 –> 01:53:54.550
I’m not going to give you the name. I just said I saw the quote.

1779
01:53:54.550 –> 01:53:58.150
I went and looked at the article, and it

1780
01:53:58.310 –> 01:54:01.830
was indeed in

1781
01:54:01.990 –> 01:54:05.590
MIT Technology Review, and I thought, wow, to collapse. Okay, did

1782
01:54:05.590 –> 01:54:09.160
this person also just do

1783
01:54:09.160 –> 01:54:12.720
a 4-part seminar on the Antichrist? It is

1784
01:54:14.560 –> 01:54:18.080
the ultimate unconstrained vision. We are going— death is immoral. Transhumanism. Think about

1785
01:54:18.080 –> 01:54:21.840
where you start with that. Death is immoral. Think about where

1786
01:54:21.840 –> 01:54:25.360
that come— what vision that comes out of. That,

1787
01:54:25.600 –> 01:54:28.720
that statement is downstream from a whole series of

1788
01:54:29.440 –> 01:54:33.130
assumptions that start

1789
01:54:33.130 –> 01:54:36.930
from an unconstrained vision of human potential. Unbelievable.

1790
01:54:36.930 –> 01:54:40.570
Anyway. But also lacking seriousness, I would assert, which is even more

1791
01:54:40.890 –> 01:54:44.570
problematic, to borrow a modern word that

1792
01:54:44.730 –> 01:54:48.210
I don’t like, but more problematic than, than,

1793
01:54:48.210 –> 01:54:51.930
than just talking about the immorality of death. We are drowning in

1794
01:54:51.930 –> 01:54:55.450
a need for serious leadership, not

1795
01:54:55.450 –> 01:54:59.020
leadership that takes itself seriously, but leadership that is

1796
01:54:59.020 –> 01:55:02.500
soberly, practically, and without hype. Laying out what is actually capable

1797
01:55:02.500 –> 01:55:06.340
of being achieved by people with the talent, skills, and passions, the people that we

1798
01:55:06.340 –> 01:55:09.700
are leading, and quite frankly, the people that we are responsible for,

1799
01:55:09.700 –> 01:55:13.420
and at a furthest level, the people that

1800
01:55:13.420 –> 01:55:16.860
we have empathy for really need— whether those people are in

1801
01:55:16.860 –> 01:55:20.620
our family, in our local neighborhood, or even in the organizations that we

1802
01:55:20.620 –> 01:55:24.270
work in. We need serious leaders, and this is

1803
01:55:24.270 –> 01:55:27.870
what we’re crying out for. Now, I do believe we have serious leaders. I

1804
01:55:28.910 –> 01:55:32.590
do believe we have leaders who are mugged by reality. And I do believe that

1805
01:55:32.590 –> 01:55:35.510
these things take a long time. The pendulum takes a long time to swing back.

1806
01:55:35.510 –> 01:55:39.270
And I think we are in the process of beginning that, but it’s going

1807
01:55:39.270 –> 01:55:42.990
to be a long, slow upward slog to paraphrase from Milton or

1808
01:55:44.830 –> 01:55:47.710
Marilyn Manson. It’s going to be a long,

1809
01:55:50.600 –> 01:55:54.440
hard road out of hell and up into

1810
01:55:54.440 –> 01:55:58.080
the light. Ryan, final thoughts on all of this. What do

1811
01:55:58.080 –> 01:56:01.840
you think? Can we— how do we use Thomas Sowell’s

1812
01:56:01.840 –> 01:56:05.440
writing? Why should leaders read this? What can they take from this? Like,

1813
01:56:05.440 –> 01:56:09.200
how will this help them? How will this help the person who,

1814
01:56:09.200 –> 01:56:12.560
like yourself, may not necessarily be in a big

1815
01:56:12.560 –> 01:56:15.000
leadership position with a big title, but is leading

1816
01:56:16.500 –> 01:56:20.180
people nonetheless? How is this

1817
01:56:20.180 –> 01:56:22.900
book going to help them? So I think

1818
01:56:24.580 –> 01:56:28.220
first and foremost, there is no— there’s

1819
01:56:28.220 –> 01:56:31.900
no jargon here. These really,

1820
01:56:31.900 –> 01:56:35.140
like you said, he’s

1821
01:56:35.140 –> 01:56:37.620
succinct, he’s direct,

1822
01:56:38.500 –> 01:56:42.190
and outlines and provides citations

1823
01:56:42.190 –> 01:56:45.710
to other individuals who were serious and direct And carrying— number one,

1824
01:56:46.350 –> 01:56:49.790
I think just by reading the book, uh, and to, uh, I

1825
01:56:49.870 –> 01:56:53.310
think the word osmosis was used earlier, just

1826
01:56:53.470 –> 01:56:57.190
by on some level through osmosis of

1827
01:56:57.190 –> 01:57:01.030
reading the book, something is going to infiltrate. Um,

1828
01:57:01.030 –> 01:57:04.830
and I think just in that regard,

1829
01:57:04.830 –> 01:57:06.990
by proxy, it’s going to, uh,

1830
01:57:08.560 –> 01:57:12.240
hopefully add something to the— at least the

1831
01:57:17.120 –> 01:57:19.840
awareness of an individual’s capacity

1832
01:57:21.440 –> 01:57:25.180
to be a leader. And,

1833
01:57:25.180 –> 01:57:28.840
um, this is digestible. It is of— in the, uh,

1834
01:57:28.840 –> 01:57:32.600
in the concepts that one sort of relates to and can— because you can— it’s,

1835
01:57:32.600 –> 01:57:35.210
it’s— I’d say it’s pretty easy to go through here and

1836
01:57:37.850 –> 01:57:41.570
go, oh yeah, that’s me. ‘Oh, that’s not me.’ So, um, you can be

1837
01:57:41.570 –> 01:57:45.170
made aware of what your deficiencies are and what also

1838
01:57:45.170 –> 01:57:48.170
you excel at, and, and, uh, in a, in a pretty

1839
01:57:50.650 –> 01:57:54.330
easy term because the language is so clear and

1840
01:57:55.130 –> 01:57:58.850
direct. Um, I think— I mean, I don’t think you’re— you know,

1841
01:57:58.850 –> 01:58:02.490
my mother who reads every night, but she doesn’t

1842
01:58:02.570 –> 01:58:06.290
read this sort of material, it wouldn’t you

1843
01:58:06.290 –> 01:58:09.810
know, even, even through, even through her lens,

1844
01:58:09.810 –> 01:58:13.410
it would, I believe, have

1845
01:58:13.410 –> 01:58:17.170
some effect. And so it’s accessible. Um, I

1846
01:58:17.170 –> 01:58:20.730
think if you’re serious about being an active participant

1847
01:58:22.730 –> 01:58:25.770
in your own life, which is probably first and foremost, um, uh, something

1848
01:58:26.680 –> 01:58:30.480
that, that, uh, and even if you’re not there, this I mean, this, you

1849
01:58:30.480 –> 01:58:34.320
know, one of the things that is, is

1850
01:58:34.320 –> 01:58:38.160
pretty common after, uh, being a guest on this

1851
01:58:38.160 –> 01:58:41.040
podcast with you, Hasan, is I, I often have the thought— or every time I

1852
01:58:41.040 –> 01:58:44.680
have the thought— well, I’ve got a

1853
01:58:45.560 –> 01:58:49.280
lot of work

1854
01:58:49.280 –> 01:58:52.960
to do. And if anything, a reminder that, uh, I mean,

1855
01:58:52.960 –> 01:58:56.720
in every episode that I’ve done, it’s clear It

1856
01:58:56.720 –> 01:59:00.480
doesn’t matter if there’s one person watching or 10,000 people

1857
01:59:00.480 –> 01:59:04.240
watching, listening, you’re still touching someone. Like, someone— it’s hitting

1858
01:59:04.240 –> 01:59:07.960
someone’s ears. And, and, and very much like AA, you know,

1859
01:59:08.920 –> 01:59:12.720
in that regard, it’s like, I am responsible. And

1860
01:59:12.720 –> 01:59:16.560
so, and it doesn’t make leadership a

1861
01:59:16.560 –> 01:59:19.200
completely, uh, out of the realm, uh, just concept or idea. You don’t have to

1862
01:59:19.200 –> 01:59:22.650
be a president, you know, like you said,

1863
01:59:23.050 –> 01:59:26.771
you don’t have to be you know, the CEO or some sort of Fortune 500

1864
01:59:26.771 –> 01:59:30.570
company or something like that. It’s, it’s, it can be in your own family,

1865
01:59:30.650 –> 01:59:34.430
it could be at the workplace,

1866
01:59:34.430 –> 01:59:38.250
and it can be as, as simple as, as,

1867
01:59:39.130 –> 01:59:41.770
um, as simple as redirecting a conversation, uh,

1868
01:59:42.810 –> 01:59:46.650
in regards or, or towards more of a conflict resolution. And,

1869
01:59:47.790 –> 01:59:51.430
and, and through, uh, you know, at

1870
01:59:51.430 –> 01:59:54.990
least the

1871
01:59:55.230 –> 01:59:58.511
attempt of, uh, resolving even the most minor conflicts, it’s, it’s, it’s through

1872
01:59:59.150 –> 02:00:02.990
that process you’re assuming some sort of like leadership

1873
02:00:03.230 –> 02:00:07.070
skill. And I think, you know, just

1874
02:00:07.150 –> 02:00:10.510
like anything else, like putting yourself in situations

1875
02:00:10.510 –> 02:00:13.670
to express those things

1876
02:00:15.510 –> 02:00:18.870
as well. And I think through

1877
02:00:19.350 –> 02:00:23.070
practice, um,— and repetition, uh, things become easier. And whereas it

1878
02:00:23.070 –> 02:00:26.190
may have been difficult to have that hard conversation with a family member, but if

1879
02:00:26.190 –> 02:00:29.670
you— and if you, like you said, if you start with

1880
02:00:30.390 –> 02:00:33.110
a family member and you have that hard conversation, and then the next person is

1881
02:00:33.110 –> 02:00:36.390
going to be a little easier, and then a little easier.

1882
02:00:36.390 –> 02:00:40.160
And then, and then what I’ve experienced is like, wow,

1883
02:00:40.160 –> 02:00:43.720
the conversation’s actually not hard. There is, there is,

1884
02:00:43.720 –> 02:00:47.360
there is, there is a perhaps a level

1885
02:00:48.000 –> 02:00:51.680
of fear that is, is, uh, like the subtext of

1886
02:00:51.680 –> 02:00:55.280
why, you know, I didn’t want to, uh,

1887
02:00:55.360 –> 02:00:59.080
be a leader or, or,

1888
02:00:59.080 –> 02:01:02.680
uh, contribute to resolving a conflict or contribute to, uh, something

1889
02:01:02.680 –> 02:01:06.330
that’s going to have a more

1890
02:01:06.330 –> 02:01:10.050
lasting effect and not produce like, uh, some sort of, uh,

1891
02:01:10.050 –> 02:01:13.850
immediate solution. Like, oh wow, I don’t have to be, you know, the—

1892
02:01:13.930 –> 02:01:17.610
like, I can— what if I can be the stepping stool?

1893
02:01:17.690 –> 02:01:21.210
Like, you know, we all don’t have to be, you know, uh, and

1894
02:01:21.210 –> 02:01:24.090
I think probably like Mother Teresa

1895
02:01:25.050 –> 02:01:28.557
is, is, is, is someone in, in contemporary times that is, is, uh, kind of,

1896
02:01:28.557 –> 02:01:31.850
um, kind of jives in that sense. And I just— I mean, from what

1897
02:01:32.240 –> 02:01:35.760
I understand, she, she basically had an

1898
02:01:36.000 –> 02:01:39.280
argument with God whole life. Yeah. And,

1899
02:01:40.000 –> 02:01:42.080
you know, she was sainted and, and

1900
02:01:44.000 –> 02:01:47.720
for her work. And— but that’s not why she

1901
02:01:47.720 –> 02:01:51.400
was doing it. So, yeah,

1902
02:01:51.400 –> 02:01:54.960
I mean, really, really impressed by the book. Impressed by how it— you

1903
02:01:55.920 –> 02:01:59.670
see something like this, and it can be a little

1904
02:01:59.670 –> 02:02:03.470
daunting. Because it’s a lot of it you know, the ideological origins

1905
02:02:03.470 –> 02:02:06.630
of political struggles. Not, not a lot of people

1906
02:02:07.190 –> 02:02:10.950
lining up around the block for that sexy talk. And,

1907
02:02:10.950 –> 02:02:14.310
and, and, uh, when broken down, I mean, you know, often I have to read

1908
02:02:14.310 –> 02:02:17.430
with the dictionary and thesaurus and that sort

1909
02:02:18.870 –> 02:02:22.550
of thing. I mean, this is outlined pretty crystal clear. And,

1910
02:02:22.550 –> 02:02:26.260
um, yeah, I mean, a worthy read for anyone. And

1911
02:02:26.980 –> 02:02:30.100
even if you just type in, uh, in a Google search, title

1912
02:02:30.580 –> 02:02:34.220
this book in Thomas Sowell’s

1913
02:02:34.220 –> 02:02:38.020
name, and just read an article, read something

1914
02:02:38.100 –> 02:02:41.780
that references this book. I think it will have some relevance, at least on

1915
02:02:41.780 –> 02:02:45.220
the very least changing your mind on what these terms mean and

1916
02:02:45.620 –> 02:02:48.260
how they can be applicable

1917
02:02:49.150 –> 02:02:52.950
in, in a, in a semi-regular or

1918
02:02:52.950 –> 02:02:56.430
practiced, you know, way. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you very much, Ryan, for coming

1919
02:02:56.430 –> 02:03:00.110
on our show today. Thank you very much for your time and for taking on

1920
02:03:00.110 –> 02:03:03.960
and tackling this book with us and

1921
02:03:03.960 –> 02:03:04.060
going on the journey. And well, with that, we’re out.