Candide by Francois Voltaire w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

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

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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

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number 176,

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opening up a little bit differently than maybe you are

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normally used to from our book today.

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In Westphalia, in the castle of my lord, The Baron of

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Thunder 10tr, there was a young man whom nature had endowed with the

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gentlest of characters. His face bespoke his soul. His

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judgment was rather sound in his mind of the simplest. This is the reason, I

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think, why he was named Tandeed.

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The old servants of the house suspected that he was the son of my lord,

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the baron’s sister, and of a good and honorable gentleman of the neighborhood, whom

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that lady never would marry, because he could prove only

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71/4 and the rest of his genealogical tree had been

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lost by the injuries of time. My lord,

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the baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle

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had a door and windows. His great hall was even adorned with a

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piece of tapestry. All the dogs of his stable yards formed a pack of

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hounds when necessary. His grooms were his huntsmen. The village vicar was

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his grand almanor. They all called him my lord and they

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laughed at the stories he told my lady.

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The baroness, who weighed about 350 pounds, attracted very great

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consideration by that fact and did the honors of the house with dignity that made

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her even more respectable. Her daughter,

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Gunde, age 17, was rosy complexioned, fresh

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plump, appetizing. The baron’s son appeared

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in all respects worthy of his father. The tutor Panglos was the

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oracle of the house, and little Candide listened to his lessons with all the

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candor of his age and character.

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Pangloss taught metaphysico, theologio,

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cosmologo, nigolology. He proved

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admirably that there was no effect without a cause,

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and that in this the best of all possible worlds.

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My lord, the baron’s castle was the finest of castles, and my lady, the best

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of all possible baronesses. It is demonstrated, he

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said, that things cannot be otherwise. For everything being made for an end, everything is

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necessarily for the best end. Note that noses were made to wear

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spectacles. So we have spectacles. Legs are visibly instituted to be

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breached, and we have breaches. Stones were formed to be cut to

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make it into castles. So my lord has a very handsome castle. The greatest baron

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in the province should be the best house. And pigs being made to be eaten.

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We eat pork all year round. Consequently, those who have

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asserted that all is well have said a foolish thing. They should have said that

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all is for the best.

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Candide listened attentively and believed innocently, for he thought

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Mademoiselle Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never made

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bold to tell her so. He concluded that after the happiness of

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being born Baron of Thunder 10 truck, the second degree of happiness was

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to be Mademoiselle Tonagande, the third to see her

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every day, and the fourth to listen to Dr. Panglos, the greatest

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philosopher in the province and consequently in the whole

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world. One day, Cunegonde, walking to the castle in

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the little wood they called the park, saw in the bushes Dr. Panglos giving a

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lesson in experimental physics to her mother’s chambermaid, a very pretty and very

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docile little brunette. Since Mademoiselle Cunegonde had much

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inclination for the sciences, she observed breathlessly the repeated experiments of

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which she was a witness. She clearly saw the doctor’s sufficient reason, the

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effects and the causes, and returned home all agitated, all pensive,

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all filled with a desire to be learned. Thinking that she might well

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be the sufficient reason of young Candide, who might equally well

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be hers, she met Candide on the way back to

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the castle and blushed. Candide blushed too. She said good morning to him

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in a faltering voice, and Candide spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

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The next day, after dinner, as everyone was leaving the table, Cunegonde and Candide found

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themselves behind a screen dropped her handkerchief.

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Candide picked it up. She innocently took his hand. The young man innocently

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kissed the young lady’s hand with a very special vivacity, sensibility

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and grace. Their lips met, their eyes glowed,

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their knees trembled, their hands wandered. My lord, the Baron of

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Thunder Ten Troch passed near the screen, and seeing this cause and this

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effect, expelled Candide from the castle with great

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kicks. In the behind, Ginogande swooned. She was

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slapped in the face by my lady, the Baroness, as soon as she had come

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to herself and all was in consternation in the

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finest, most agreeable of all

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possible castles,

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Absurdity and existential dread, and

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the vagaries of life in institutional systems, the perils of knowledge.

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These are all themes that leap forth from the short

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pages of the deeply influential book we

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opened Season five with just now,

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a book that, despite its lack of length, more

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than makes up for in deceptive depth,

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proving that writing from the perspective of assuming that your audience is intelligent

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enough to get the joke has always been in the wheelhouse of the

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satirist, the jokester and the comic,

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and, of course, those willing to wear the literary clothes

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of those same folks kicking off

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the Fifth season of our show, we are going to dissect

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ideas and themes and solutions that for leaders that

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may lead to the restoration not only of

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leadership, but maybe even of, dare I say, the entirety of

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Western civilization itself. From a book

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listed as one of the 100 most influential books ever

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written by the poet Martin Seymour Smith and literary

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critic. And he of course

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was also a biographer, so he knew a little bit about this fellow.

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We are going to be reading

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from Candide by Voltaire.

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Leaders, we are past being fooled by the

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promises of the Enlightenment project. We are weighed

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down now in our time with ironic

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detachment which is preventing us from leading with

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sincerity in this not the best

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possible world, but I don’t think that.

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But it’s the only world we’ve got.

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And of course, back for this new season

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of chicanery and shenanigans and tomfoolery

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along with great books is our co host,

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Tom Libby, who is by the way, closing in on

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being with us for 50 episodes. I just told him that before we hit record

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on this. He was not aware of that. So this is episode number 44 for

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Tom where he has joined us as co host. So how you doing, Tom?

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How’s your new year going? I am living my best life,

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as. You mentioned that last year. Yeah,

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I, I, I, I always, I gotta come up with a new one, right? Because

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I, I used to use, I used to use living the dream. And then I’d

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say I also have to remind people that nightmares are dreams too.

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And then I changed it to I’m living my best life because I can’t live

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somebody else’s. I’ve got to find a new one. There’s got to be another version

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of this somewhere that I can, that I could make up or pick up somewhere

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along the lines. But overall I’m doing pretty good. Hey, son. Thank you for asking.

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You should tell people that you’re living in the best of all possible worlds. I

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was just gonna say because that were you. What do you said? The best of

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both of all possible worlds. But there’s only one. We only have one to

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live in. We’re. Which kind of made me chuckle when you were reading the excerpt

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here because I’m sitting there thinking to myself, experimental

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physics in 1750. What was that? Holding up an apple and letting it go

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to see what gravity does. Like what exactly

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experimental physics are happening in 1750? Like,

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anyway, for those of you are who are science

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buffs, I’m not making that statement as a true question. I’m

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sure there were plenty of actual science things. Science was happening. I’m

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not. Science was happening. It just made me funny. It just made me laugh that

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somebody like Voltaire would write that in, in the book. Well, and the

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thing is, like, experimental physics, even in our own time, in 2026,

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some what, what like 300 and some odd years later,

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hasn’t really advanced. Advanced much beyond that,

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except now we just use mathematical models with better computers. That’s all

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that. Exactly, exactly. I mean, you had, you know, everybody was trying

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to. Back at that time, everybody was trying to. To

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copy off of. Of Isaac Newton’s,

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you know, sort of massive influence. And then you also had.

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Which people don’t understand, and this is not to make this serious, you made a

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joke. It’s a good one. And people

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back in that time in, in the 1750s were just

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beginning to sort of figure out, not that the world was round. We already

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knew that Columbus had, you know, ran across the New

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World, you know, by that point, but. Or what

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was called the New World by that point, the North American continent. But,

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but they were, they were trying to figure out at a

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practical level. So there was practical. There was practical physics, there’s practical mathematics, and

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then there was everything else that was like, not practical. Right. And that’s where

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experimental physics sort of, sort of winds up at. So practical mathematics is

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like, how do you get around the globe and find like the Northwest Passage, which

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they still believed was a thing. Right. You know, or how do you find like

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the city of El Dorado, which they talk about actually in, in here.

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Right. Which they also still believe was a thing. There was enough of the

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unexplored world still around the experimental physics. Sounded really

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cool when you said it out loud. Yeah.

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And it made girls like Cunegonde, you know, made their

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bosoms heave, you know, and all those, you know, 17th century dresses.

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I don’t know. I don’t think about that. But I’m married.

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I don’t know anything about that. And nor do I need to know anything about

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that because I am also spoken for.

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In the best of all possible worlds.

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So we, we covered a lot

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of information about the literary life of Francois Marie

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Arouette, AKA Voltaire. In our shorts

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episode that precedes this episode, which you should go back and

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listen to, has the title of it, I believe,

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why do. Why do business leaders read Voltaire?

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Or why should they read Voltaire instead of Harvard Business Review? So I would encourage

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you to go back and listen to that. And so we covered a lot of

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basic information about Him. And so we’re not going to go over that right now.

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But what I will say is this. And it

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was also one of the points that I made in that episode. I’d like to

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get some of Tom’s thoughts on this. Much has been written and talked about Voltaire,

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particularly during his raucous life and through his death and way

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past, from misappropriating quotes from his works out of

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context, all the way to mangled malproisms in

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the popular culture of the 20th century. I’m thinking of. There’s a whole

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scene in the movie Swingers where

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Vince Vaugh and Jon Favro are ordering food at the breakfast

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table in the casino. And Jean

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Favreau, my buddy actually showed me this because I had forgotten about this. My buddy

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actually showed this to me because he saw that I was reading the book.

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And the, the Jon Favro orders

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something off of the, off of the menu. It’s like pancakes of the age of

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enlightenment. And he says, he says to the waitress, I’d

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like pancakes in the age of enlightenment. And then she’s like, okay,

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whatever. And then she takes Vince Vaughn’s order and then they walk away,

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right? And this is Swingers. So, like, Jon Favreau’s like, in his 20s, Vince

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Vaughn is in his 20s. They’re all young and thin and, like, still sexy

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looking. You’re so money, you don’t even know it. And, and,

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you know, the waitress walks away. And then John Favreau goes, trying to pick up

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this waitress. And like, how’s she going to know a

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Voltera reference? Why would I assume that a waitress would know a Volter reference? Why

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did I say age of enlightenment? That’s so stupid. This is also the guy who

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later on in the movie has the whole scene with the, with the answering machine

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where he’s like recalling all the time and trying to fix the answering machine

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message because he’s nervous or whatever. He

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doesn’t have his whole thing. And, and,

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and I don’t know. And, and then of course, Vince Vaughn is there to like,

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sort of calm him down. And Vince Vaughn goes, you know, man, don’t even worry

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about it. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. Whatever. Like, whatever. And.

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And then the waitress walks past and he tries to like, change his order or

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whatever to say something different. And she goes, your pancakes will come out in a

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minute. Voltaire.

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Or something like that, right? Like, Voltaire would love that.

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He would have loved that. Yeah, absolutely. And

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the way this guy was wired,

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his influence over the last, I would say

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30 or 40 years has sort of begun to fade from,

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fade from the, the, at least the, the dominant conscience of,

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of, of the Western public. Maybe, maybe not

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like his. So it’s the direct link.

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Maybe. But I think his work in his

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personality and his thought processes were referenced so

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frequently that we forget that the reference is his.

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I think it’s not so much that, that it’s not being referenced

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anymore. I just think we’re forgetting the source of the reference because

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as we were joking when, before we, before we hit the record button

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and I had mentioned that this particular book candidate.

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It’s basically a third of the movies ever written. Like. Oh yeah, oh

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yeah. If you actually go back and read this and think of it in the

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context of today, you could think of at least a dozen movies

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right off the top of your head. They’d be like it’s the same story as

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X or same story as Y or same story as Z. And I think what’s

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happening is that we’re referencing those movie references or the books

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rewritten or the books written by today’s authors or more recent

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authors that are still using his work as, as the focal point

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or the thought. So I, to your point, I think we’re losing touch with

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the fact that, that he is being quoted or referenced or whatever.

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Yes, but I don’t think we’re, I don’t think we’re losing

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his references. If I said that, if I’m saying that right.

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Yeah. And that gets to my, my other idea that he was such a rare

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world bending historical talent that

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you. To your point, and I think this is absolutely valid,

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we, we now have reached a point where, because

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look, we’re going to go into a lot more of this, but

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I don’t know which. How many posts. We are past modernism at

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this point. We’re no longer postmodern. I don’t know if we’re post post modern

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or post post post modern. Like, I don’t know when that, that clicks in. Can

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somebody just come up with another term, please, please, come on now. But we

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are way the hell past modernity, which came directly out of the

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enlightenment. And the entire. And we’ll talk a little bit about this

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too, but the entire Enlightenment project was built on the idea that

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human reason could figure out the world.

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That was a very simple way human reason, free inquiry,

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could figure out the world. We actually had the brains to be able to do

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that. And of course that came out of the

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Reformation, which was a direct rebellion against the power of The Catholic Church

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and the way that the medieval. The medieval, and of course the Renaissance,

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those two, those two streams combined together to create the

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Enlightenment. Right. Well, we’ve gotten a lot out of the

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Enlightenment. And I always admit to this, like, particularly religious people

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like myself, who, who, you know, have had to

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struggle through the Enlightenment for the last 400 years to justify

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the presence of religion.

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I have to make this point to them. We’ve gotten a lot out of the

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Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought you, like, this podcast. That’s what the

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Enlightenment brought you. Free inquiry and the ability of human

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reason to figure out the world. I mean, we were joking about experimental physics, but

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really, like, without free inquiry, you don’t get the atomic bomb.

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Like, you don’t get. You don’t get the Internet. Without free inquiry, you don’t

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get the cell phones and this podcast mic and the video that we’re shooting on

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you. You don’t get any of that. Now there are things

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that are lost in that. And

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Voltaire, interestingly enough, just like Shakespeare or

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the Apostle Paul or Socrates or the Founding

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Fathers, is a victim of his own. Is

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a victim of the Enlightenment. Success. Right? To your point, the copy of the copy

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of the copy of the copy. Right? Like, we, we don’t even remember the

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original source code anymore. We’re just, We.

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It was just too successful. Like, it just worked too well. And now we’re in

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this weird position where. And this is part of what I’m going to talk about

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this year on the podcast a lot. We’re in this weird position where

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deconstructionism, which

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also you see in movies, where you’re able to take apart everything.

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Okay, that’s cool. But now we’re at this weird middle ground where we have to

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start putting things back together and we don’t know how. We’ve lost the ability to

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figure out how to put things back together that have meaning. And you and I

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have talked about this even when we’re talking about, you know, sort of the Native

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American narratives or we talk about

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political ideas or theological ideas on this show. How do we

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know how to pull the ideas apart, but we don’t know how to restore them

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and put them back together? And the Enlightenment was the, was the root

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source code of pulling things apart with human reason, but it

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wasn’t. There was no thing in there because they didn’t think they needed

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it because there were so many things that were together already. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I think also Candide remains popular to your point

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because of its, Its, its, its brevity. And

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its wit and its satirism. Right. So like the first time I ran

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across this book, I was 10 years old, maybe 11. And I banged through it

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because I was like, each chapter is only like four pages.

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And I remember like I was reading it, you know, over the last

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couple of weeks, and I remembered. I, I sort of flashback to when I was

299
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a kid and I remember I laughed through this. I laughed at

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certain parts of this. Just the absurdity of, of certain things that were

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happening. But now is a. I’m gonna be

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50 in like four years now is a, you know,

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mid-40s. I know, right? Mid-40s year old man. I’m looking at this

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and I’m not laughing like there’s humor in it. I can see the humor in

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it, but I’m not laughing at it because we’re way

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past the absurdity. Like illustrating absurdity by being absurd, which we’ll

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talk about in a little bit. But like, we’re on the other side of that.

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And I don’t know, like, we live in a meme driven world. I don’t

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know how we do. How we do satire anymore. Maybe that’s a good question to

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like sort of kick us off with. I was going to ask you, what do

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you know about Voltaire and Candy? But you sort of, sort of covered that ground

312
00:19:35,640 –> 00:19:38,720
a little bit. The, the, the

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satirical elements of it and the absurdist elements of it are,

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I think, what makes it

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consistently popular among high school students. Because you first read it in high school,

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00:19:50,880 –> 00:19:54,720
right? Yeah, I was like, I think the first time I set eyes

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on it, I was maybe 15. So for me, that was a long time ago,

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00:19:58,190 –> 00:20:01,950
people. Libby ain’t telling you how old

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00:20:01,950 –> 00:20:02,350
he is.

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Let’s, let’s just say it was be.

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No, never mind. I won’t even get. It was a long time ago.

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He was, he was there when the deep magic was laid at the beginning. Of

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the Internet, folks, actually, I remember the day they

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announced the AT sign and what it was supposed to be for. So, you

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know, you’re put, you know,

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00:20:26,430 –> 00:20:30,190
h.email.com. yeah, they. They were

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telling us that this new symbol was. So you get this new thing called email.

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I remember that. That news. That news.

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That news episode like very clearly like, like it was

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yesterday.

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So yeah, my kids laugh. You know, my kids laugh

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because they feel at someday I will be the same

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00:20:54,640 –> 00:20:57,760
joke equivalent to did you know, And

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God rest her soul, but Betty White died five years ago. And

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But Betty White, at the time of her. When she. Just before she died, the

336
00:21:05,800 –> 00:21:08,400
joke Was that Betty White was older than sliced bread.

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So she was born before the mass produced sliced bread was actually.

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So my kids joke that that’s going to be me about the Internet. So. But

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when I’m older, holding gray to my grandkids and great

340
00:21:20,430 –> 00:21:24,070
grandkids, they’ll be like, hey, he was alive before the Internet. And they’re gonna go,

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no way. So anyway, all right, sorry, we can move on. I

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00:21:28,750 –> 00:21:31,830
apologize. No, it’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be great again. You’ll be able to

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tell your kids. You’ll be like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. You could have

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like the beard and everything. Like, you know, and you can be like, listen,

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00:21:38,630 –> 00:21:42,110
I was there when the deep magic was laid all the way. When the kid,

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when the grandkids walk in the house and I demand a hug and I’ll be

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saying, you shall not pass, you shall

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not give grandpa a hug.

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Okay, so let’s, let’s bring this back on the rails a little bit.

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Do you think? Okay, so thinking about Voltaire, think about who he was

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as, as a writer, as a raconteur, as a

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man about town. Internationally. He had a

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hell of a biography which again, we’ve covered in our shorts episode.

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But do you think he would have been

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shocked or disappointed at the long term impact of his words

356
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and of his writing? Because he wrote, he wrote a lot of books. I mean,

357
00:22:29,740 –> 00:22:33,380
he had a big impact in his own time. Do you think he would have

358
00:22:33,380 –> 00:22:37,060
been surprised that it, it lasted? That’s a really good question. You know what, I

359
00:22:37,380 –> 00:22:40,580
think he might have been pleasantly surprised, but still

360
00:22:42,530 –> 00:22:46,090
not as surprised as I think. I, I think if I. Again,

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00:22:46,090 –> 00:22:49,410
you. We were joking a little bit before we hit the record button on the

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podcast as well about how I felt this book was essentially an

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00:22:53,050 –> 00:22:56,690
autobiography. Like if you look at his actual life in the book,

364
00:22:56,690 –> 00:23:00,290
there’s a lot of mirroring that happens. So he’s, I think one of the reasons

365
00:23:00,290 –> 00:23:04,130
he wrote so well is because he wrote about things he really did know about.

366
00:23:04,130 –> 00:23:07,850
Right. Like things that, you know, that, that really, that

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00:23:07,850 –> 00:23:11,010
he could speak to from a, from an experimental

368
00:23:11,250 –> 00:23:15,010
experiential perspective. Right. Like he experiment, he experienced

369
00:23:15,010 –> 00:23:18,130
these things. So I, I think from,

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00:23:18,770 –> 00:23:22,450
if he, if he looked back from his point historically,

371
00:23:23,090 –> 00:23:25,810
were there people to your point, you, you mentioned a couple

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00:23:26,770 –> 00:23:29,090
Aripostles, Socrates, etc.

373
00:23:30,450 –> 00:23:34,250
I think he would have thought because they wrote similarly

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from, from their experiences and their, you know, from the

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00:23:37,980 –> 00:23:41,780
heart, so to speak. Let’s just say it that way, that. And they, they had

376
00:23:41,780 –> 00:23:45,460
Some lasting. Some. Some, you know, some

377
00:23:45,460 –> 00:23:49,260
la. Lasting terms to that. Could he do the same thing?

378
00:23:49,420 –> 00:23:53,220
I think he questioned it for himself. And I think he. I think he thought

379
00:23:53,220 –> 00:23:56,180
about it. I really do. I think he thought about, like, what would I have

380
00:23:56,180 –> 00:23:59,620
to do to be the next Socrates or to be the next whatever, and how

381
00:23:59,620 –> 00:24:03,170
do I need to write? And can I write from that experiential

382
00:24:03,170 –> 00:24:06,450
version that will give me the same stickiness. Right.

383
00:24:06,770 –> 00:24:10,410
Maybe didn’t use those words at that time, but I. I do think he thought

384
00:24:10,410 –> 00:24:13,490
about it. And again, I think that’s one of the reasons why this book in

385
00:24:13,490 –> 00:24:17,330
particular, I find a lot of mirroring to his biography. If you look about

386
00:24:17,330 –> 00:24:20,890
being stuck in being exiled to

387
00:24:20,890 –> 00:24:24,650
England, like being in Prussia, being in like all these things,

388
00:24:24,650 –> 00:24:28,210
like, where he. He was kind of forced into some of those

389
00:24:28,210 –> 00:24:31,420
things, but once he got there, he made the best of it. He’s like, screw

390
00:24:31,420 –> 00:24:34,620
it, I’m. I’m here. I’m gonna go kiss. I’m gonna go kiss the Tsar’s daughter

391
00:24:34,620 –> 00:24:37,780
and you can go fry. Like. And then when he wrote the book about the

392
00:24:37,780 –> 00:24:41,540
kissing the Barrett, like getting involved with the baroness’s. With the Baron’s daughter,

393
00:24:41,540 –> 00:24:44,779
and, And I’m like, it’s the same thing he wrote. He knew what he was

394
00:24:44,779 –> 00:24:48,620
writing, like, so anyway. But I think

395
00:24:48,620 –> 00:24:51,260
he thought about it. I think he hoped for it. I don’t know if he

396
00:24:51,260 –> 00:24:55,110
believed it was gonna happen. I. Obviously we can’t speak to what his. What

397
00:24:55,110 –> 00:24:58,470
his. What was inside is his brain. But based on the

398
00:24:58,470 –> 00:25:02,310
writings and all of the. Right. I think he had an idea that if

399
00:25:02,310 –> 00:25:06,070
I write this volume, if I write the. If I write this in volume

400
00:25:06,070 –> 00:25:09,790
and I write enough, something’s gonna stick. Yeah. So I do think.

401
00:25:09,950 –> 00:25:13,710
I do think he had some sort of preconceived notion that. And again,

402
00:25:13,710 –> 00:25:16,830
look at Socrates writing and Aristotle’s right.

403
00:25:17,150 –> 00:25:19,550
There’s a lot of volume there.

404
00:25:20,750 –> 00:25:23,550
I think he did have the concept, mentally, that

405
00:25:24,330 –> 00:25:27,530
volume equals stickiness, volume

406
00:25:28,010 –> 00:25:31,810
longevity. So we, We. We sort of. Because we’re.

407
00:25:31,810 –> 00:25:35,650
We’re now in the backwash of. I mean, what are we. How many

408
00:25:35,650 –> 00:25:39,048
years into the Internet are we now? 40, 40,

409
00:25:39,158 –> 00:25:42,770
50 years into the commercial Internet. And the level of social

410
00:25:42,770 –> 00:25:46,370
disruption that the commercial Internet has created in

411
00:25:46,370 –> 00:25:49,770
comparison to what was before is unbelievable to us living now.

412
00:25:51,500 –> 00:25:55,340
Can’t. Voltaire was born

413
00:25:55,340 –> 00:25:58,660
in 1694. Yeah,

414
00:25:58,660 –> 00:26:02,420
1694. 1694. So he was born because

415
00:26:02,420 –> 00:26:06,019
the. The printing press officially started churning.

416
00:26:06,019 –> 00:26:08,540
Gutenberg started officially churning out bibles in like

417
00:26:08,940 –> 00:26:12,540
1430 or something. 1450 somewhere in there.

418
00:26:13,260 –> 00:26:17,110
So he was born 200 and some odd years

419
00:26:17,110 –> 00:26:20,790
after the printing press and he started

420
00:26:20,870 –> 00:26:24,710
writing another probably 25 years after that. So

421
00:26:26,870 –> 00:26:30,070
imagine what kind of people we will have

422
00:26:31,590 –> 00:26:35,350
200 years from now on the Internet. Good point.

423
00:26:36,310 –> 00:26:39,990
That’s sort of where my brain goes with it because I think I do,

424
00:26:39,990 –> 00:26:43,560
I hold to, and I want to say this on this episode early, I do

425
00:26:43,560 –> 00:26:46,320
hold to the idea that there have been probably

426
00:26:48,240 –> 00:26:51,920
two or three world bending, world

427
00:26:52,080 –> 00:26:54,160
changing human innovations

428
00:26:56,480 –> 00:27:00,280
just in the area of science and technology. And the first one is the

429
00:27:00,280 –> 00:27:04,120
book, it’s the printing press. I mean Gutenberg kind

430
00:27:04,120 –> 00:27:07,640
of suspected he had something that revolutionary, but he wasn’t quite

431
00:27:07,640 –> 00:27:11,340
sure. But without the printing press, you don’t

432
00:27:11,340 –> 00:27:15,020
get the Protestant Reformation, you don’t get the Renaissance, you don’t get

433
00:27:15,020 –> 00:27:18,420
Vasari’s lives of the artists. Like you don’t get people knowing about who the hell

434
00:27:18,420 –> 00:27:20,740
Michelangelo is, who aren’t, who don’t live in Italy.

435
00:27:22,260 –> 00:27:26,020
You don’t get for good or ill,

436
00:27:26,420 –> 00:27:30,260
you don’t get Columbus coming to North America. You just don’t get that

437
00:27:30,340 –> 00:27:33,940
because there’s no curiosity then. Yeah, okay,

438
00:27:34,540 –> 00:27:37,580
they wanted to compete with the Chinese, but it would have taken a. But you

439
00:27:37,580 –> 00:27:40,300
could have added another 100 years onto that process which would have pushed back a

440
00:27:40,300 –> 00:27:44,140
whole bunch of other things. Without the printing press, you don’t get the French

441
00:27:44,140 –> 00:27:47,900
Revolution for sure. You

442
00:27:47,900 –> 00:27:51,500
also don’t get the American Revolution without the printing press,

443
00:27:51,500 –> 00:27:55,260
you don’t get the British revolution which was the Industrial Revolution.

444
00:27:55,260 –> 00:27:58,700
The printing press was a world bending technology.

445
00:28:00,950 –> 00:28:04,510
So is the Internet. Not social media, not the

446
00:28:04,510 –> 00:28:08,350
nonsense we build on top of it, not marketing ruining everything.

447
00:28:08,350 –> 00:28:12,070
Which marketing marketers ruined the printing press too. They did. Marketers

448
00:28:12,070 –> 00:28:15,869
ruin everything. This is what we do. I’m talking about

449
00:28:15,869 –> 00:28:19,670
the core technology of being able to connect globally

450
00:28:20,070 –> 00:28:23,910
with everybody if you want to and everyone

451
00:28:24,070 –> 00:28:27,500
having the opportunity to have a voice. And then you could argue the Internet plus

452
00:28:27,500 –> 00:28:30,460
cell phones, but that the core technology of the Internet itself,

453
00:28:32,780 –> 00:28:36,460
that’s one of two just like human innovations that cannot be beat.

454
00:28:37,180 –> 00:28:40,940
And so I wonder to your point,

455
00:28:41,260 –> 00:28:45,100
like I think Voltaire did have an idea that things were

456
00:28:45,100 –> 00:28:48,260
going to be sticky. I agree with you about that. But I don’t know if

457
00:28:48,260 –> 00:28:50,620
he thought they were going to be sticky across time.

458
00:28:53,430 –> 00:28:57,190
No, that, no, that’s, that’s the, the argument I’m making. I think he, I think

459
00:28:57,190 –> 00:29:01,030
he at least had the foresight of it. He. It had to

460
00:29:01,030 –> 00:29:03,150
have been, it had to be in, it had to be bouncing in his brain

461
00:29:03,150 –> 00:29:06,990
around there somewhere. Just the sheer volume that he wrote. Yeah. Right.

462
00:29:06,990 –> 00:29:09,270
Because you know when you write at that volume,

463
00:29:10,310 –> 00:29:13,990
something’s gonna stick. Right. Like that’s the whole like the. Into your point

464
00:29:13,990 –> 00:29:17,510
about like the Internet today. Think about, think about

465
00:29:17,750 –> 00:29:21,540
a guy like Joe Rogan, right? Yeah. How many podcast episodes has that

466
00:29:21,540 –> 00:29:25,140
guy recorded? Right. When, when the Inter. 100 years from

467
00:29:25,140 –> 00:29:28,860
now, when Joe Rogan’s long gone, are people still going to be

468
00:29:28,860 –> 00:29:32,500
list going back and listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast? Possibly.

469
00:29:32,500 –> 00:29:35,940
Just the sheer volume of it makes people think there’s some value

470
00:29:36,020 –> 00:29:39,860
there. Right. Like, so there. That’s what I’m getting at. Like, and I, and I

471
00:29:39,860 –> 00:29:43,700
think that today we think about legacy differently because of that,

472
00:29:43,940 –> 00:29:47,590
because we know it’s a lot easier in Voltaire’s

473
00:29:47,590 –> 00:29:51,270
time. You had to have something published for it to be to

474
00:29:51,270 –> 00:29:55,070
that. To get to what I’m talking about being like, he wrote

475
00:29:55,070 –> 00:29:58,710
so much so often, so the volume that he wrote, someone still had to publish

476
00:29:58,710 –> 00:30:02,550
it. And that, that costs money. Today’s world in the Internet, you don’t

477
00:30:02,550 –> 00:30:06,270
need that kind of money to get your stuff out on the Internet. You can

478
00:30:06,270 –> 00:30:09,910
own that. You can own some sort of domain. What is

479
00:30:09,910 –> 00:30:13,550
it? Hostling or bleepaddy? Whatever. You can go get a.

480
00:30:13,840 –> 00:30:16,920
For eight bucks a year or whatever, and you own that domain. You can put

481
00:30:16,920 –> 00:30:20,240
whatever you want on it. If you just start pumping it full of content and

482
00:30:20,400 –> 00:30:23,040
catches wind of it 100 years from now, like, oh my God, look at the

483
00:30:23,040 –> 00:30:26,880
volume of this up. And they re. Something’s gonna. Something in there will stick to

484
00:30:26,880 –> 00:30:30,680
something. Like you just. It’s just inevitable at this point. So it’s interesting that

485
00:30:30,680 –> 00:30:34,360
you brought up Joe Rogan as the Voltaire of our time. I didn’t

486
00:30:34,360 –> 00:30:36,080
call him that. Hold on, timeout,

487
00:30:37,680 –> 00:30:41,500
timeout. I did not call him that. I was just using

488
00:30:41,500 –> 00:30:44,980
his, his. The, the, the relation

489
00:30:44,980 –> 00:30:48,500
to. The relation to volume, that’s all. Yeah, yeah, the relationship.

490
00:30:48,580 –> 00:30:52,380
I understand the, the volume. The person putting on the

491
00:30:52,380 –> 00:30:55,820
volume of our time. Yeah. So I did, I looked up the AI, looked it

492
00:30:55,820 –> 00:30:59,460
up on Google and the Google AI overview says, and I quote,

493
00:30:59,940 –> 00:31:02,460
as of early January 2026, there are over

494
00:31:02,460 –> 00:31:05,780
2,690 episodes of the Joe Rogan experience.

495
00:31:06,740 –> 00:31:10,180
There you go. Then there’s a bunch of other gobbledygook after that which we don’t

496
00:31:10,180 –> 00:31:12,740
care about. And he’s going to be recording it for the next 20 years. So

497
00:31:12,740 –> 00:31:15,940
God only knows where he’s going to land. Right. God only knows where he’s Going

498
00:31:15,940 –> 00:31:19,620
to land. That’s all. That’s all I was getting at. He might crack 5,000 episodes.

499
00:31:19,940 –> 00:31:23,660
He may. I

500
00:31:23,660 –> 00:31:27,500
would not be surprised if he did. So again, that’s my

501
00:31:27,500 –> 00:31:30,820
point. Right? So 100 years from now, somebody’s going to be looking up content,

502
00:31:31,610 –> 00:31:34,930
content creators from the early 20s, you know, the early

503
00:31:34,930 –> 00:31:38,730
2000s. Joe Rogan’s name is going to pop up because of the volume.

504
00:31:39,370 –> 00:31:43,210
Like, who’s going to beat that volume at this point? It’s, it’s going to

505
00:31:43,210 –> 00:31:47,050
be insanity. But that’s what I was. Okay, but. Oh,

506
00:31:47,050 –> 00:31:50,290
we’ll get to that. Okay, so this now, this now gets into like the core

507
00:31:50,290 –> 00:31:54,050
ideas of Candide, which are illustrating absurdity. Sure. Because

508
00:31:54,050 –> 00:31:56,970
this is. It’s absurd to think that the guy

509
00:32:00,090 –> 00:32:03,370
who was on Just Shoot. Not Just Shoot me. No. News Radio,

510
00:32:04,490 –> 00:32:08,330
who took shots to the face on news radio and hosted Fear Factor.

511
00:32:10,490 –> 00:32:13,529
Okay, we’ll have enough, well produced enough volume of

512
00:32:13,529 –> 00:32:17,130
podcasts on this revolutionary technology called the Internet

513
00:32:17,530 –> 00:32:20,970
to be referenced 150 years from now

514
00:32:21,290 –> 00:32:22,650
as the avatar

515
00:32:25,570 –> 00:32:29,130
of the public voice of people in the

516
00:32:29,130 –> 00:32:32,930
early 21st century. See, and this is again, what

517
00:32:32,930 –> 00:32:35,730
you’re talking. Voltaire would love the, the absurdity to this.

518
00:32:37,090 –> 00:32:40,530
I think, I think he would love the conversation right now. Like, he would be

519
00:32:40,530 –> 00:32:44,170
like, yes, I think that this is just. This

520
00:32:44,170 –> 00:32:47,250
is, this might just be absurd enough to happen.

521
00:32:50,060 –> 00:32:53,900
Back to the book, back to Candide

522
00:32:54,700 –> 00:32:58,540
by Voltaire. We’re going to pick up with chapter two here. Again. Remember, they’re short

523
00:32:58,540 –> 00:33:02,300
chapters, so, like, you can like, they’re literally like four pages, maybe even

524
00:33:02,300 –> 00:33:06,140
three. Like, literally, like bang through it in like 10 minutes. This is

525
00:33:06,140 –> 00:33:09,900
an afternoon read, so let’s find out what happened to Candide

526
00:33:09,900 –> 00:33:13,700
after he got kicked out of the the best of all possible castles in

527
00:33:13,700 –> 00:33:17,200
the best of all possible worlds. Chapter 2. What became of

528
00:33:17,200 –> 00:33:21,000
Candide among the Bulgarians? Candide, expelled

529
00:33:21,000 –> 00:33:24,120
from the earthly paradise, walked for a long time without knowing where,

530
00:33:24,440 –> 00:33:28,160
weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often towards

531
00:33:28,160 –> 00:33:31,920
the finest of castles which enclose the beautiful future. Baroness. He

532
00:33:31,920 –> 00:33:35,400
lay down to sleep without supper in the midst of the fields between two furrows.

533
00:33:35,400 –> 00:33:39,000
The snow was falling in fat flakes. The next day, Candide,

534
00:33:39,000 –> 00:33:42,440
frozen, dragged himself toward the neighboring town which was named

535
00:33:43,190 –> 00:33:46,470
Valder Berghoff Trach Nickdorf. With no money,

536
00:33:47,430 –> 00:33:50,990
dying of hunger and fatigue, he stopped sadly at the door of an inn. Two

537
00:33:50,990 –> 00:33:54,550
men dressed in blue noticed him. Comrade. Oh,

538
00:33:54,950 –> 00:33:58,710
said one, there’s a very well built young man and he’s of the

539
00:33:58,710 –> 00:34:02,430
right height. They advanced toward Candide and very civilly invited him

540
00:34:02,430 –> 00:34:05,670
to dinner. Gentlemen, said Candide, with charming

541
00:34:05,670 –> 00:34:09,190
modesty, you do me great honor, but I haven’t the money to pay my bill.

542
00:34:09,810 –> 00:34:13,010
Ah, sir, said one of the men in blue, persons of your figure and merit

543
00:34:13,010 –> 00:34:16,450
never pay for anything. Aren’t you 5ft 5? Yes,

544
00:34:16,450 –> 00:34:20,210
gentlemen, that is my height, he said with a bow. Ah, sir, sit down to

545
00:34:20,210 –> 00:34:23,010
the table. Not only will we pay your expenses, but we will never allow a

546
00:34:23,010 –> 00:34:26,850
man like you to lack money. Men are made only to help one another.

547
00:34:27,970 –> 00:34:31,730
You are right, said Candide. That is what Monsieur Panglos always told

548
00:34:31,730 –> 00:34:34,770
me, and I clearly see that all this is for the best.

549
00:34:35,949 –> 00:34:39,109
They urge him to accept a few crowns. He takes them and wants to make

550
00:34:39,109 –> 00:34:42,669
on a promissory note. They want none. They all sit down to his table.

551
00:34:43,629 –> 00:34:47,229
Don’t you love tenderly? Oh, yes, he replied, I love

552
00:34:47,229 –> 00:34:50,989
Mademoiselle Cunegonde tenderly. No,

553
00:34:51,389 –> 00:34:55,229
said one of the gentlemen, we are asking you whether you do not tenderly love

554
00:34:55,229 –> 00:34:59,029
the King of the Bulgarians. Not at all, he said,

555
00:34:59,029 –> 00:35:02,720
for I have never seen him what? He is the most charming

556
00:35:02,720 –> 00:35:06,480
of kings. And you must drink to his health. Oh, most gladly,

557
00:35:06,480 –> 00:35:10,160
gentlemen. And he drinks. That is sufficient. They say to him,

558
00:35:10,160 –> 00:35:13,360
you are now the prop, the support, the defender, the hero of the

559
00:35:13,360 –> 00:35:17,000
Bulgarians. Your fortune is made and your glory is assured.

560
00:35:17,880 –> 00:35:21,000
They immediately put irons on his legs, and they take him to the regiment.

561
00:35:22,600 –> 00:35:26,360
They make him turn right. Turn left. Raise the ramrod. Return the ramrod.

562
00:35:26,360 –> 00:35:30,200
Take aim. Fire. March on double. And they

563
00:35:30,200 –> 00:35:33,480
give him 30 strokes with a stick. The next day he drills a little less

564
00:35:33,480 –> 00:35:37,040
badly, and he gets only 20 strokes. The day after they give him only 10.

565
00:35:37,120 –> 00:35:39,840
And he is regarded as a prodigy by his comrades.

566
00:35:41,120 –> 00:35:44,920
Indeed, completely stupefied, could not yet understand too

567
00:35:44,920 –> 00:35:48,440
well how he was a hero. He took it into his head one fine spring

568
00:35:48,440 –> 00:35:51,320
day to go for a stroll, walking straight ahead, believing that it was the privilege

569
00:35:51,320 –> 00:35:54,560
of the race of humans, as of the race of animals, to use their legs

570
00:35:54,560 –> 00:35:58,260
as they please. He had not gone two

571
00:35:58,260 –> 00:36:01,780
leagues when up came four other heroes, six feet tall.

572
00:36:01,940 –> 00:36:04,740
They overtake him, they bind him, and they put him in a dungeon.

573
00:36:05,540 –> 00:36:09,300
He was asked juridictiously, which he liked better,

574
00:36:09,300 –> 00:36:12,900
to be beaten 36 times by the whole regiment, or to receive 12 lead bullets

575
00:36:12,900 –> 00:36:16,740
at once in his brain. In vain he told them that the will is

576
00:36:16,740 –> 00:36:20,340
free and that he wanted neither of these. He had to make a choice.

577
00:36:21,870 –> 00:36:25,270
By virtue of the gift of God, that is called liberty. He decided to run

578
00:36:25,270 –> 00:36:28,110
the gauntlet 36 times. He did it twice.

579
00:36:29,230 –> 00:36:32,670
The regiment was made up of 2,000 men that gave him

580
00:36:32,670 –> 00:36:36,150
4,000 strokes of the ramrod which laid open his muscles and nerves from the nape

581
00:36:36,150 –> 00:36:39,550
of his neck to his rump. As they were about to proceed to the third

582
00:36:39,550 –> 00:36:43,030
run, Candide, at the end of his rope, asked him as a favor to be

583
00:36:43,030 –> 00:36:46,610
kind enough to smash into his head. He obtained this favorite.

584
00:36:46,840 –> 00:36:50,280
They bandage his eyes, they make him kneel. At that moment the king of the

585
00:36:50,280 –> 00:36:53,920
Bulgarians passes, inquires about the victim’s crimes. And since this king was a man of

586
00:36:53,920 –> 00:36:57,760
great genius, he understood from all he learned about Candide that this was

587
00:36:57,760 –> 00:37:01,600
a young metaphysician, very ignorant of the ways of this world. And he

588
00:37:01,600 –> 00:37:05,080
granted him his pardon with a clemency that will be praised in all

589
00:37:05,080 –> 00:37:08,880
newspapers and in all ages. A worthy surgeon cured

590
00:37:08,880 –> 00:37:11,960
Candide in three weeks with the emollients prescribed by

591
00:37:12,270 –> 00:37:16,070
disor or disorides. There it is. He already

592
00:37:16,070 –> 00:37:19,190
had a little bit of skin and could walk when the king of the Bulgarians

593
00:37:19,190 –> 00:37:21,630
gave battle to the king of the Albarians,

594
00:37:22,990 –> 00:37:26,710
close quote. So

595
00:37:26,710 –> 00:37:30,110
Candide was in the army now. Not behind a plow.

596
00:37:30,830 –> 00:37:34,550
You dig in a ditch. Son of a. You’re in the

597
00:37:34,550 –> 00:37:35,150
army now.

598
00:37:39,160 –> 00:37:42,680
This is, this is a prime example. This is why I picked chapter two

599
00:37:44,040 –> 00:37:47,600
of illustrating Absurdity by being Absurd. So to

600
00:37:47,600 –> 00:37:51,320
Tom’s point about Voltaire’s biography, Voltaire did run across the

601
00:37:51,320 –> 00:37:54,960
King of Prussia. And at that time in Europe, Prussia was its

602
00:37:54,960 –> 00:37:58,680
own independent nation state. Prussia had not run across.

603
00:37:58,840 –> 00:38:02,520
Well, they hadn’t yet gotten to the point

604
00:38:02,680 –> 00:38:06,360
where they were willing to wage wars against everybody

605
00:38:06,360 –> 00:38:10,160
else on the continent in order to unite Germany into one,

606
00:38:10,160 –> 00:38:13,840
into one nation state. Although Frederick the Great was sort of

607
00:38:13,840 –> 00:38:17,440
the precursor to some things that were going to

608
00:38:17,440 –> 00:38:20,680
happen later on in the very

609
00:38:21,000 –> 00:38:24,280
war torn early 19th century.

610
00:38:26,200 –> 00:38:29,880
Voltaire saw all this coming. And of course he was witness

611
00:38:29,880 –> 00:38:33,680
to the marching, the turning, the lifting of the ramrod,

612
00:38:33,680 –> 00:38:37,260
the lowering of the ramrod, and wondered, of course, where all of this would

613
00:38:37,260 –> 00:38:41,060
lead. He understood that the best way to skewer the

614
00:38:41,060 –> 00:38:44,900
present was to demonstrate the massive gap between what was idealized

615
00:38:44,900 –> 00:38:48,700
and what was reality. And all of the characters in

616
00:38:48,700 –> 00:38:52,180
this book, from Candide to Mademoiselle

617
00:38:52,180 –> 00:38:55,940
Cunegonde, there’s going to be a blind old maid that you’re going to

618
00:38:55,940 –> 00:38:59,780
meet in a minute. Maybe we won’t get there today, but all

619
00:38:59,780 –> 00:39:02,890
these characters in the book, even the characters in El

620
00:39:02,890 –> 00:39:06,650
Dorado, lived through absurd situations that Voltaire

621
00:39:06,650 –> 00:39:10,250
saw in real life. They experienced war, social strife,

622
00:39:10,250 –> 00:39:13,930
Natural disasters. This book was published right around the

623
00:39:13,930 –> 00:39:17,330
time when an earthquake occurred in

624
00:39:17,330 –> 00:39:20,210
lisbon, Portugal, in 1750.

625
00:39:23,170 –> 00:39:26,970
And in Lisbon, apparently this was like one of the biggest earthquakes that had

626
00:39:26,970 –> 00:39:30,380
ever occurred on the European continent and killed a whole bunch of people. I think

627
00:39:30,380 –> 00:39:33,020
it’s something like. I’m gonna have to check the number, but I think it was

628
00:39:33,020 –> 00:39:36,700
somewhere between like 30 and 50,000 people died in this earthquake. And

629
00:39:36,700 –> 00:39:40,260
Voltaire was, was. Was taken aback by

630
00:39:40,260 –> 00:39:43,940
this, right, because there were many people

631
00:39:44,020 –> 00:39:47,700
talk about philosophy and the Enlightenment. There were many people who were exploring

632
00:39:47,700 –> 00:39:51,540
all kinds of philosophical ideas during the Enlightenment

633
00:39:51,940 –> 00:39:55,500
that were attempting to, of course, get away from the religious wars that were also

634
00:39:55,500 –> 00:39:59,200
ravaging Europe at that point. And. And one of

635
00:39:59,200 –> 00:40:02,480
the ideas was this idea of optimism,

636
00:40:02,800 –> 00:40:06,600
this idea that we are living in the best possible world. And of course, Voltaire

637
00:40:06,600 –> 00:40:09,640
thought that was absurd. He said, if we’re living in the best possible world, how

638
00:40:09,640 –> 00:40:12,640
is it that all these people died in this earthquake in Lisbon? Or if we’re

639
00:40:12,640 –> 00:40:16,440
living in the best possible world, how is it that people are forced into marching

640
00:40:16,440 –> 00:40:20,240
in regiment to serve a king? That might be crazy. If we’re living in

641
00:40:20,240 –> 00:40:23,970
the best possible world, how is it that we

642
00:40:23,970 –> 00:40:27,770
still have social strife and we still have. We still

643
00:40:27,770 –> 00:40:31,130
have rulers who are tyrants, right? And by the way,

644
00:40:31,210 –> 00:40:33,530
Voltaire was a monarchist.

645
00:40:35,850 –> 00:40:39,130
He was a monarchist. So what that means is,

646
00:40:39,690 –> 00:40:43,490
by the way, as a monarchist, he saw the divisions in French

647
00:40:43,490 –> 00:40:46,810
society as being examples of absurdity and then of

648
00:40:46,810 –> 00:40:50,410
themselves. So French society was. Was divided into three

649
00:40:50,410 –> 00:40:53,720
parts. There were folks who supported the monarchy and supported the

650
00:40:53,720 –> 00:40:57,520
aristocracy. Louis the 15th and all those folks and all

651
00:40:57,520 –> 00:41:01,280
of his precursors, Louis XIV, Louis the 13th, you know,

652
00:41:01,280 –> 00:41:04,480
what’s her name? With. Let the. Let there. Let there be cake, all that, Right?

653
00:41:04,560 –> 00:41:07,360
Okay. Then you had

654
00:41:08,240 –> 00:41:11,840
the noble class, right? And the noble class

655
00:41:11,920 –> 00:41:15,680
included landowners and included intellectuals

656
00:41:15,680 –> 00:41:18,630
like Voltaire, Rousseau

657
00:41:19,510 –> 00:41:23,190
and Diderot and all those other guys who would wind

658
00:41:23,190 –> 00:41:26,870
up later on. And. And Voltaire did know some of those folks would

659
00:41:26,870 –> 00:41:30,630
later on wind up laying the foundations of the French Revolution. So

660
00:41:30,630 –> 00:41:34,390
you had your. Your nobles and your intellectuals, right, Your landowners. And then the

661
00:41:34,390 –> 00:41:38,150
third area of society that you had was what

662
00:41:38,150 –> 00:41:41,990
was. What was. Well, the third area of society was the church. And so the

663
00:41:41,990 –> 00:41:45,410
church owned property. We often forget in our modern times, because

664
00:41:45,410 –> 00:41:48,530
France is so secular

665
00:41:49,490 –> 00:41:53,210
after being. After having the religion smacked out of it during two world

666
00:41:53,210 –> 00:41:56,970
wars, that France was once a

667
00:41:56,970 –> 00:42:00,610
heavily Catholic country and the

668
00:42:00,610 –> 00:42:04,050
Catholic church owned a lot of property in France.

669
00:42:04,690 –> 00:42:08,130
They fought a forward movement

670
00:42:08,210 –> 00:42:11,320
against the Protestant Reformation that was kind of coming out of

671
00:42:11,640 –> 00:42:15,160
Germany and specifically Prussia, interestingly enough,

672
00:42:15,720 –> 00:42:19,120
Lutheranism, Calvinism, all of that was coming out of Germany and

673
00:42:19,120 –> 00:42:22,360
Switzerland, the area that would later on become Germany and

674
00:42:22,520 –> 00:42:26,040
Switzerland. They were fighting a, a front,

675
00:42:26,200 –> 00:42:29,600
a front robust, you know,

676
00:42:29,600 –> 00:42:33,280
crusade level action against all of that. And of course, this was an era

677
00:42:33,280 –> 00:42:36,970
where popes out of Italy had, well, they had

678
00:42:36,970 –> 00:42:40,650
armies and they used them. So this is the historical

679
00:42:40,650 –> 00:42:43,370
context that Voltaire is in. And he’s looking at all this and he’s saying, this

680
00:42:43,370 –> 00:42:46,970
is absurd. If this is the best possible world, what the hell are we

681
00:42:46,970 –> 00:42:50,050
doing? And he writes Candide from that perspective.

682
00:42:51,010 –> 00:42:54,530
Voltaire believed that we had to be cynical about the absurdity of the world around

683
00:42:54,530 –> 00:42:58,370
us if we would ever find the moral courage to confront it and change it.

684
00:42:59,330 –> 00:43:02,690
This is why it’s worthwhile as a reader,

685
00:43:03,430 –> 00:43:07,230
as a leader to read Voltaire rather than Harvard Business Review,

686
00:43:07,230 –> 00:43:10,790
because think about the world that we are in today. The world that we are

687
00:43:10,790 –> 00:43:12,790
in is equally as absurd,

688
00:43:14,550 –> 00:43:18,350
perhaps more at scale, I think Voltaire would say, than

689
00:43:18,350 –> 00:43:21,310
it was during the, during the time that between

690
00:43:21,310 –> 00:43:24,710
1694 and the publishing of Candeep. And Voltaire was walking around

691
00:43:24,870 –> 00:43:28,510
observing things. And it begs the question. No, not

692
00:43:28,510 –> 00:43:31,295
begs the question, but it opens up the question which we were going to talk

693
00:43:31,295 –> 00:43:34,990
about Tom, about here. How

694
00:43:34,990 –> 00:43:36,350
can leaders, right,

695
00:43:38,990 –> 00:43:41,630
expose and face the absurdity

696
00:43:42,990 –> 00:43:46,510
just of the day to day ways they have to lead? And we’ve never actually

697
00:43:46,510 –> 00:43:50,110
talked about this on this podcast. I was realizing that when I was reading Candide.

698
00:43:50,110 –> 00:43:53,350
Like we’ve never actually talked in real terms about the

699
00:43:53,350 –> 00:43:56,990
absurdities of leadership. We’ve kind of talked about dichotomies,

700
00:43:57,270 –> 00:44:00,910
but there are some literal absurdities that are in leadership. An

701
00:44:00,910 –> 00:44:04,750
easy one to think about is we have these HR policies and procedures that

702
00:44:04,750 –> 00:44:08,150
we’ve created. Maybe the founder of the company has created them, or maybe the executive

703
00:44:08,310 –> 00:44:11,670
board has come up with them or whatever. And

704
00:44:12,150 –> 00:44:14,950
then there’s this thing that happens that’s outside of the

705
00:44:17,270 –> 00:44:20,910
boundaries that are set by those policies. But it’s

706
00:44:20,910 –> 00:44:24,730
not unethical, it’s not immoral, and it’s not illegal. Just

707
00:44:24,730 –> 00:44:28,530
outside the boundaries. And if we were in any other

708
00:44:28,530 –> 00:44:32,130
possible circumstance, we would just kind of ignore this and leave it alone.

709
00:44:32,290 –> 00:44:35,890
But we can’t because it’s in our business and we

710
00:44:35,890 –> 00:44:39,330
haven’t. We. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that, that, that situation, those kinds

711
00:44:39,330 –> 00:44:43,050
of situations. And so how do leaders, what can leaders take from Candide in order

712
00:44:43,050 –> 00:44:46,650
to handle that? I

713
00:44:46,650 –> 00:44:50,410
think So I don’t know it, it’s so funny that

714
00:44:50,410 –> 00:44:54,070
you, you word it like that because I was, I had, I, as I

715
00:44:54,070 –> 00:44:57,310
was thinking of the excerpt you read and some of the commentary that you had.

716
00:44:57,310 –> 00:45:00,710
And I already had some things in my brain that now don’t apply. So I’m

717
00:45:00,710 –> 00:45:02,990
not sure I’m, when I’m gonna say that or if I’m going to say any

718
00:45:02,990 –> 00:45:06,670
of that stuff. But, but, but

719
00:45:06,670 –> 00:45:09,350
I, I think to your point, right, like

720
00:45:10,550 –> 00:45:13,670
I don’t think there’s anybody when, when leaders are

721
00:45:14,230 –> 00:45:17,710
true leaders, when they are faced with a problem, they try to solve it. So

722
00:45:17,710 –> 00:45:21,390
to your point about you’ve got all these policies and things that, that you

723
00:45:21,390 –> 00:45:24,670
deem as your HR playbook or your HR

724
00:45:26,030 –> 00:45:29,590
employee handbook or whatever, and if you’ve come across something that

725
00:45:29,590 –> 00:45:33,350
doesn’t get addressed in there, how do you like, to

726
00:45:33,350 –> 00:45:36,870
your point, do you ignore it? Do you just let it go? Leaders are not

727
00:45:36,870 –> 00:45:39,950
going to just let it go. That’s just not, it’s not in their DNA, right?

728
00:45:39,950 –> 00:45:43,390
So they’re going, they’re going to try to find

729
00:45:43,790 –> 00:45:47,390
a place in their employee handbook that they can slightly

730
00:45:47,390 –> 00:45:50,470
modify to include it so they can address it, so they can handle it and

731
00:45:50,470 –> 00:45:54,150
so they can move on, or they’re just going to add a

732
00:45:54,150 –> 00:45:57,310
chapter in their handbook to address it. Now

733
00:45:57,950 –> 00:46:01,510
that being said, that’s the, that’s the practicality of it. That’s, that’s the way,

734
00:46:01,510 –> 00:46:05,110
right? That’s the way leaders are, are built, right? They’re gonna, they’re

735
00:46:05,110 –> 00:46:07,950
problem solvers. They’re going to look at a problem, they’re going to solve it. This,

736
00:46:08,270 –> 00:46:12,070
this thing is not in our employee handbook, but we need to address

737
00:46:12,070 –> 00:46:15,370
it. And even if somebody says but do we have to address it? It’s not

738
00:46:15,370 –> 00:46:18,970
in the employee handbook. And they’re going to go, if it, if it, if it

739
00:46:18,970 –> 00:46:22,170
happens in the confines of our company, it needs to be in the employee handbook,

740
00:46:22,650 –> 00:46:26,290
right? Like so the fact that it happened, and I think it goes back

741
00:46:26,290 –> 00:46:29,770
to Voltaire’s thinking, which is

742
00:46:30,650 –> 00:46:34,050
think in provability, in fact, in

743
00:46:34,050 –> 00:46:37,130
factualities. Don’t think in ideals and ideas,

744
00:46:38,760 –> 00:46:42,120
right? That, like, that’s one of the foundations of his writing, which is like

745
00:46:42,520 –> 00:46:46,160
you should be judging something based on what you can see, feel, touch, hear,

746
00:46:46,160 –> 00:46:50,000
smell, whatever, not on ideas. An idea is

747
00:46:50,000 –> 00:46:53,840
not, is not something that you should throw all of your whimsic,

748
00:46:53,840 –> 00:46:57,560
your whim into, right? Like so, same, same

749
00:46:57,720 –> 00:47:01,160
scenario here. So if leaders think like that, that they’re thinking

750
00:47:01,160 –> 00:47:05,010
practic from a Practical standpoint. And they want to see provability.

751
00:47:05,090 –> 00:47:08,370
Things that can be, you know, things that can be

752
00:47:08,370 –> 00:47:12,130
touched, smelled, saw, heard. What I like you can

753
00:47:12,130 –> 00:47:15,850
prove that it exists. Right. Then they’re going to fix

754
00:47:15,850 –> 00:47:19,450
it. They’re gonna. They’re gonna. They’re gonna. They’re gonna inevitably rewrite the

755
00:47:19,450 –> 00:47:23,090
employee handbook. So. So we are. Yes, they are going to rewrite the

756
00:47:23,090 –> 00:47:26,930
employee handbook. And, and you’re talking about. So Voltaire.

757
00:47:27,330 –> 00:47:30,930
Voltaire loved divisions and classes in

758
00:47:30,930 –> 00:47:34,440
society. He was a classicist in a way that we can’t understand. Right.

759
00:47:34,920 –> 00:47:37,240
So he, he believed in.

760
00:47:40,040 –> 00:47:43,720
Yes. He believed that, like, all human beings were

761
00:47:43,880 –> 00:47:47,719
equal in sort of the John Lockean way of thinking about freedom that the

762
00:47:47,719 –> 00:47:51,280
Founding Fathers would eventually codify and like the Constitution and the

763
00:47:51,280 –> 00:47:54,560
Declaration of it. He believed in all that. He would have. He would have clapped

764
00:47:54,560 –> 00:47:58,150
for all of that. Right? He would have seen America as like the

765
00:47:58,150 –> 00:48:01,910
pinnacle end of the Enlightenment project. That’s how he

766
00:48:01,910 –> 00:48:04,950
would have viewed the American founding. If he’d been alive long enough to. To sort

767
00:48:04,950 –> 00:48:07,590
of see. Because he died in 17.

768
00:48:09,270 –> 00:48:10,630
When did he die? He died in

769
00:48:10,630 –> 00:48:14,390
1778. So

770
00:48:14,390 –> 00:48:17,350
he died, what, two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

771
00:48:18,950 –> 00:48:22,310
And so he didn’t get to see the like, the like

772
00:48:22,310 –> 00:48:25,300
fulfillment of that, but he would have clapped for that. Okay,

773
00:48:28,260 –> 00:48:31,860
but he was also a monarchist and he believed in kings

774
00:48:32,820 –> 00:48:36,500
and he believed in classes. He’s. He’s quoted as saying, I. I

775
00:48:36,500 –> 00:48:40,060
do. Did see this in his Wikipedia biography, and I reconfirmed it in other places,

776
00:48:40,060 –> 00:48:43,820
but he did believe that the masses. Democracy couldn’t

777
00:48:43,820 –> 00:48:46,180
work because the masses were idiots, basically.

778
00:48:47,620 –> 00:48:51,420
Our forefathers felt the same way. That’s why they invented the electoral college. I’m just

779
00:48:51,420 –> 00:48:54,050
saying. I’m just saying. I’m just saying, like, there’s is. This is the thing. Right?

780
00:48:54,130 –> 00:48:57,970
And so. So he believed in a class system. Right.

781
00:48:59,010 –> 00:49:02,850
Now you’re talking about

782
00:49:03,250 –> 00:49:06,530
a distinction between, at a class level, between

783
00:49:07,090 –> 00:49:09,090
what is practical and pragmatic

784
00:49:10,610 –> 00:49:14,450
versus what

785
00:49:14,450 –> 00:49:18,210
we see and idealize in business.

786
00:49:19,030 –> 00:49:22,790
Right. And so there’s. There’s a dis. And by the way, we’re on the other

787
00:49:22,790 –> 00:49:26,070
side of, like, existential dread. So we’re on the other side of, like, Camus, who

788
00:49:26,070 –> 00:49:29,510
we’ve covered on this podcast. We’re on the other side of deconstructionism. We’re just going

789
00:49:29,510 –> 00:49:33,270
to tear everything down. And Durinian deconstructionism. We’re on the other

790
00:49:33,270 –> 00:49:36,910
side of moral relativism. Well, you know, if it feels like it’s Your truth, Do

791
00:49:36,910 –> 00:49:39,990
it. It’s fine. By the way, Voltaire would have rejected all that crap.

792
00:49:40,790 –> 00:49:43,910
He would have said, if it feels good. What does that even mean? I have

793
00:49:43,910 –> 00:49:47,250
no idea. Yeah, he would have yelled it. He would have yelled at Jacques

794
00:49:47,250 –> 00:49:50,890
Derrida in French and told him he was a moron, you know, and then like,

795
00:49:50,890 –> 00:49:54,530
run away. Actually, he might not have run

796
00:49:54,530 –> 00:49:57,450
away. Those old boys, they actually knew how to duel. He would have challenged him

797
00:49:57,450 –> 00:50:01,090
to a duel. Like, he did challenge somebody to a duel. I

798
00:50:01,090 –> 00:50:04,850
believe he did, if I remember correctly. I. I’m trying

799
00:50:04,850 –> 00:50:07,450
to remember who it was now. It was like, it was when he was in

800
00:50:07,450 –> 00:50:10,890
Prussia. It had something to do with the Prussian king’s daughter.

801
00:50:11,300 –> 00:50:14,900
Yes. And the way that I can’t remember now who he.

802
00:50:15,060 –> 00:50:18,660
It doesn’t matter. But to your point, he wasn’t backing down for people because

803
00:50:18,740 –> 00:50:21,860
principal met. Your name meant something at that point in history,

804
00:50:22,340 –> 00:50:25,860
Right. You were not going to do anything to muddy your name. And if it

805
00:50:25,860 –> 00:50:28,500
meant to defend yourself against, it didn’t matter who.

806
00:50:30,500 –> 00:50:34,340
Didn’t matter. So. So we’re, we’re past all that, right?

807
00:50:34,420 –> 00:50:38,100
Our names don’t mean anything. One of the great lines in, like, Pulp Fiction,

808
00:50:38,310 –> 00:50:41,710
when Bruce Willis is getting on the, getting on the bike and the girl is

809
00:50:41,710 –> 00:50:45,510
behind him and she’s like. Or not the girl. Like, it’s not that scene. There’s

810
00:50:45,510 –> 00:50:47,830
one other scene in there where she’s like, what’s your name? And he’s like, my

811
00:50:47,830 –> 00:50:50,470
name is blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And she’s like, what does that mean?

812
00:50:50,470 –> 00:50:54,229
He goes, we’re Americans, baby. Our names don’t mean anything. Yeah, there

813
00:50:54,229 –> 00:50:57,190
you go. It’s. Yeah, like Voltaire would be

814
00:50:57,590 –> 00:51:01,310
stunned to the point of disgusted at that, that entire, like,

815
00:51:01,310 –> 00:51:04,070
worldview, right? Because it did mean something.

816
00:51:05,410 –> 00:51:08,530
So my question is, my clarifying question with all that there is.

817
00:51:10,770 –> 00:51:14,450
If we have the pragmatism, which I don’t disagree with you, I think, I

818
00:51:14,450 –> 00:51:18,210
think leaders are pragmatic, but I also think leaders are, like,

819
00:51:18,210 –> 00:51:21,330
trapped in this environment of absurdity where.

820
00:51:22,290 –> 00:51:25,930
So for instance, I once had an employee, and this was long

821
00:51:25,930 –> 00:51:29,650
before COVID and George Floyd

822
00:51:29,650 –> 00:51:33,450
and any of that. I once had an employee who shall remain nameless

823
00:51:33,450 –> 00:51:36,850
if he’s listening to this, to this podcast, but he’ll know who he is. When

824
00:51:36,850 –> 00:51:40,530
I mentioned this, this incident, who wanted to go and protest

825
00:51:40,850 –> 00:51:44,450
in like, some anti racism rally, okay?

826
00:51:44,530 –> 00:51:47,850
And this was way back. This is before anything happened with COVID This is years

827
00:51:47,850 –> 00:51:51,250
ago, like 2017, 2018, back then.

828
00:51:52,050 –> 00:51:55,650
And I sat him down. Because there’s nothing in that. In my

829
00:51:55,650 –> 00:51:59,250
employee manual about any of that. Because I couldn’t have. I couldn’t.

830
00:52:00,530 –> 00:52:03,970
It was only after I developed a relationship with him that I understood where his

831
00:52:04,850 –> 00:52:08,690
political leanings were. And so it made sense

832
00:52:08,690 –> 00:52:12,530
to me that he would go in that direction. Right. And I literally

833
00:52:12,530 –> 00:52:15,650
had to sit him down and I had to say, listen,

834
00:52:16,210 –> 00:52:19,570
there’s nothing about this in our handbook.

835
00:52:21,090 –> 00:52:24,450
So I’m going to. This seems very idealistic to me.

836
00:52:25,850 –> 00:52:29,450
And you want to change the world. Actually, I think it was 2016.

837
00:52:29,610 –> 00:52:33,450
That’s right. Because he was a Bernie bro. That’s right. That’s right.

838
00:52:33,530 –> 00:52:36,610
He was a Bernie bro. That’s right. And he wanted to go to, like, a

839
00:52:36,610 –> 00:52:40,170
rally that was going to turn into some shenanigans in Portland

840
00:52:40,170 –> 00:52:43,770
at the time. That’s what it was. I remember now. And I literally looked at

841
00:52:43,770 –> 00:52:45,450
him and I said, I don’t care about your politics.

842
00:52:47,370 –> 00:52:50,740
That has absolutely nothing to do with the work that you do here. I don’t

843
00:52:50,740 –> 00:52:54,420
care that you go protest. That’s your freedom of speech. That has nothing to do

844
00:52:54,420 –> 00:52:57,940
with what you do here. However, I do care

845
00:52:58,100 –> 00:53:01,940
because it was a small team. I mean, we were under 25 people. I do

846
00:53:01,940 –> 00:53:05,300
care that if you get in trouble and you call me,

847
00:53:05,540 –> 00:53:09,260
I can’t come bail you out. Like, I’m

848
00:53:09,260 –> 00:53:13,060
not doing that. That’s a step too far. And

849
00:53:13,060 –> 00:53:16,500
when you come here, if you have been in jail,

850
00:53:19,670 –> 00:53:23,470
that’s a problem. You. You don’t work here. You don’t work

851
00:53:23,470 –> 00:53:24,870
here anymore. Yeah,

852
00:53:28,230 –> 00:53:31,030
that’s an absurd. To me, that was an absurd situation.

853
00:53:32,949 –> 00:53:36,710
That was a candid level of absurdity because I couldn’t

854
00:53:36,710 –> 00:53:39,990
under. Number one, I couldn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish. But because I

855
00:53:39,990 –> 00:53:42,880
thought the fix was in already, which it turned out I was right. But.

856
00:53:43,680 –> 00:53:45,520
But. But

857
00:53:47,680 –> 00:53:51,440
because I’m just older and I just seen more. Right. But.

858
00:53:52,400 –> 00:53:55,120
But it illustrated to me

859
00:53:56,000 –> 00:53:58,880
the absurdity of dealing with things that are outside of the

860
00:53:59,120 –> 00:54:02,160
boundaries. Right. That you might be faced with as a leader.

861
00:54:02,960 –> 00:54:06,760
And I literally had to sit there. I couldn’t laugh at him because

862
00:54:06,760 –> 00:54:10,100
I really did. I wanted to crack up and be like, this is so obvious.

863
00:54:10,100 –> 00:54:13,740
How can you. How could you not figure this out? And the absurdity

864
00:54:13,740 –> 00:54:16,460
was in that he was idealistically

865
00:54:17,180 –> 00:54:20,980
oriented in this direction so genuinely that he couldn’t

866
00:54:20,980 –> 00:54:24,700
see the absurdity himself. And that’s what I think leaders struggle with.

867
00:54:28,140 –> 00:54:31,100
Even more so now on the other side of 2020, because there’s all kinds of

868
00:54:31,100 –> 00:54:33,940
things that have occurred on the other side of 2020 that I, I couldn’t even

869
00:54:33,940 –> 00:54:37,630
imagine in 2016. Oh my God. If you had told me like back in

870
00:54:37,630 –> 00:54:41,430
2016 that we would have like all of

871
00:54:41,430 –> 00:54:44,710
the things we had post George Floyd and post Covet and all of the kinds

872
00:54:44,710 –> 00:54:48,390
of absurdities that have, that have just, we’ve just sort of like shrugged our shoulders

873
00:54:48,390 –> 00:54:51,270
10 years later and just sort of been like, yeah, okay, that’s reality now.

874
00:54:52,150 –> 00:54:55,670
I’d have been like, what? Yeah, I would not have believed you either, honestly.

875
00:54:55,990 –> 00:54:59,830
And that’s the absurdity part that I think Voltaire is pointing out with Candy.

876
00:54:59,830 –> 00:55:03,640
That’s why I think saturation works. That’s why

877
00:55:03,640 –> 00:55:07,360
memes work across the Internet. And what’s amazing to me is people can’t figure

878
00:55:07,360 –> 00:55:11,080
out why memes work le. And I’m not just talking

879
00:55:11,080 –> 00:55:14,520
about like regular people, like people who, we have titles

880
00:55:14,840 –> 00:55:18,240
and we call them politicians and policymakers are

881
00:55:18,240 –> 00:55:21,320
absolutely flummoxed by meme culture on the Internet.

882
00:55:23,080 –> 00:55:26,920
Well, until the 20 something, until the 20 somethings are running for Congress,

883
00:55:28,280 –> 00:55:31,960
it won’t like we will. None of the next generation after the,

884
00:55:31,960 –> 00:55:35,390
the, the, the politicians that are in power, right, the next

885
00:55:35,390 –> 00:55:38,910
generation behind them are still not going to have an idea behind that. They’re not

886
00:55:38,910 –> 00:55:42,150
going to have a clue either. It’s going to be, it’s going to be two

887
00:55:42,150 –> 00:55:45,710
generations, three generations away when we start, when you start seeing

888
00:55:45,710 –> 00:55:49,390
politicians leverage that stuff. Yeah, the absurdity will

889
00:55:49,390 –> 00:55:52,950
disappear, right? Like that’s, that’s really what it gets to

890
00:55:52,950 –> 00:55:56,630
Voltaire’s point, right? The absurdity won’t disappear. The absurdity will go to a higher

891
00:55:56,630 –> 00:56:00,430
level because I don’t think the absurdity can disappear. Okay,

892
00:56:00,430 –> 00:56:03,870
so it might not, but the absurdity that you and I are thinking of right

893
00:56:03,870 –> 00:56:07,560
now will disappear. It’ll be something else is my point. It’ll be

894
00:56:07,560 –> 00:56:11,240
more, it’ll be less, it’ll be different, whatever, but it’ll, it’ll, it’ll morph into something

895
00:56:11,240 –> 00:56:14,520
else is I guess, my point. But

896
00:56:14,840 –> 00:56:18,600
as we have said on this podcast a thousand times at this

897
00:56:18,600 –> 00:56:22,360
point. That the more 44 times, the more. Things change, the more things

898
00:56:22,360 –> 00:56:25,720
stay the same. Right? So this is this what I don’t think

899
00:56:25,720 –> 00:56:29,440
Voltaire would think this is anything new. Like everything like what

900
00:56:29,440 –> 00:56:32,520
you’re talking about and how he approached the world, the thought about the world, how

901
00:56:32,760 –> 00:56:36,280
he was, he was even, even self contradicting at some points with the,

902
00:56:36,440 –> 00:56:39,960
the way that he viewed the, the world versus his

903
00:56:39,960 –> 00:56:43,560
thoughts on monarchies and, and, and classism and stuff like that.

904
00:56:43,640 –> 00:56:47,480
And some of, some of his writings would, would literally talk about

905
00:56:47,480 –> 00:56:50,840
how that was absurd even as to one. One

906
00:56:51,000 –> 00:56:54,640
human being to rule. Overall, he thought that was absurd, but

907
00:56:54,640 –> 00:56:58,200
yet supported it. So like. So I think, I think he would.

908
00:56:58,950 –> 00:57:02,510
I, I do think they’re, they’re. If he were alive today, I think there would

909
00:57:02,510 –> 00:57:06,070
be things that he would look at us and go, no duh. Like

910
00:57:07,510 –> 00:57:09,990
that’s the five year old Voltaire. No duh.

911
00:57:11,350 –> 00:57:14,270
How do you guys not see that this is normal? Like this is a, this

912
00:57:14,270 –> 00:57:17,670
is exactly what you should have expected. Like so well,

913
00:57:17,910 –> 00:57:21,750
and maybe that’s the part of the continuing strength of him because he,

914
00:57:21,750 –> 00:57:25,440
he hits on something that so, so you know, in the list

915
00:57:25,440 –> 00:57:29,080
of notables that I mentioned along with Voltaire, which he would object to

916
00:57:29,080 –> 00:57:31,920
being placed next to the person that I placed him with. But

917
00:57:32,960 –> 00:57:34,720
I’m alive and Voltaire is dead. So,

918
00:57:36,560 –> 00:57:40,159
so, so you know, Voltaire, the apostle Paul,

919
00:57:41,200 –> 00:57:44,640
Shakespeare, Plato,

920
00:57:45,200 –> 00:57:48,920
um, St. Augustine, the people that even people

921
00:57:48,920 –> 00:57:51,760
that we’ve read on this show, I mean we’ve read all those guys on this

922
00:57:51,760 –> 00:57:54,350
show. Show, right. They all

923
00:57:56,030 –> 00:57:59,150
touched on or were able to grasp

924
00:58:01,310 –> 00:58:04,910
something about a corner of reality that

925
00:58:05,790 –> 00:58:09,630
to your point, the masses say no duh

926
00:58:09,710 –> 00:58:12,670
or whatever and sort of move past,

927
00:58:14,270 –> 00:58:17,230
but they focused in on that and said no,

928
00:58:17,990 –> 00:58:21,830
you need to pay attention to this. And that’s the power of Voltaire.

929
00:58:21,830 –> 00:58:25,590
That’s why Voltaire has lasted across time along with all those other folks. And

930
00:58:25,590 –> 00:58:28,230
just like those other folks, he will continue to

931
00:58:29,110 –> 00:58:32,470
either be referenced. I don’t know about being read, I’m still not convinced on that.

932
00:58:32,470 –> 00:58:36,270
But he’ll be referenced forever and ever. And not forever,

933
00:58:36,270 –> 00:58:39,350
but for a long, long time. I think it’s gonna take a long time for

934
00:58:39,350 –> 00:58:41,990
the water to go out on guys like that.

935
00:58:43,900 –> 00:58:47,340
And where that relates to leaders and leadership I think is

936
00:58:47,420 –> 00:58:51,060
in that leaders have to

937
00:58:51,060 –> 00:58:54,860
understand that. I think they’re playing on a longer timeline than

938
00:58:54,860 –> 00:58:58,580
just. And we haven’t really talked about this either, but maybe

939
00:58:58,580 –> 00:59:02,100
this year we will more. They have to play on a longer timeline than just

940
00:59:02,100 –> 00:59:03,340
the quarterly timeline.

941
00:59:05,820 –> 00:59:09,630
So I go back to my, my, my story with, you

942
00:59:09,630 –> 00:59:13,190
know, my former employee. Like that

943
00:59:13,190 –> 00:59:17,030
person I had, I had a lot

944
00:59:17,030 –> 00:59:20,710
of impact in that person’s life. And

945
00:59:21,030 –> 00:59:24,710
that person looked up to me and, and

946
00:59:24,710 –> 00:59:28,470
admired me. Right. And looked at me as a figure to be admired.

947
00:59:28,470 –> 00:59:32,270
Right. How much impact I had across that person’s lifetime,

948
00:59:32,270 –> 00:59:36,000
I have no idea. But I do know that for, you know, a very

949
00:59:36,000 –> 00:59:37,600
specific narrow window of about.

950
00:59:40,080 –> 00:59:43,800
Yeah. Five to six years. Like, that person was like, hey,

951
00:59:43,800 –> 00:59:47,520
hey, son. What do you think? You know? And I think it goes back

952
00:59:47,520 –> 00:59:51,240
to that idea of being able to treat his

953
00:59:51,240 –> 00:59:55,080
absurdity as serious rather than as something to be laughed at or something to

954
00:59:55,080 –> 00:59:58,440
be satirized. It’s become content now. It’s,

955
00:59:58,440 –> 01:00:00,640
congratulations, it’s podcast content now. But, like.

956
01:00:02,850 –> 01:00:06,650
That’S how you know you’ve made it. See, before you had to be

957
01:00:06,650 –> 01:00:10,410
quoted in a book. Now you become podcast fodder, and you’ve made

958
01:00:10,410 –> 01:00:13,810
it. More absurdity.

959
01:00:16,130 –> 01:00:19,010
So instead of saying the more things change, the more things stay the same, we’re

960
01:00:19,010 –> 01:00:22,130
gonna have to come up with another phrase that we can honor Voltaire with. Like,

961
01:00:22,370 –> 01:00:26,050
the more absurd. The more absurd something seems, the more likely it

962
01:00:26,050 –> 01:00:29,650
makes sense. Sense, or the more likely it is more

963
01:00:29,650 –> 01:00:32,730
likely. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it

964
01:00:32,730 –> 01:00:35,210
out. Well, this is why. This is why this is the first book we’re covering

965
01:00:35,450 –> 01:00:38,890
in the first episode of this year, because this lays the foundation for where we’re

966
01:00:38,890 –> 01:00:42,689
gonna go. Exactly. All right. By the way, I did

967
01:00:42,689 –> 01:00:46,170
look up the. The Lisbon earthquake. So

968
01:00:46,650 –> 01:00:50,170
I want to kind of grab this information, and we’re going to be doing a

969
01:00:50,170 –> 01:00:53,170
little bit more of this this year also, since I do have my. I do

970
01:00:53,170 –> 01:00:55,810
have my phone attached to the Internet. Wait, we’re gonna. We’re gonna fact check on.

971
01:00:55,810 –> 01:00:59,630
Right on the podcast. Right on the pod. That’s amazing. A little bit more

972
01:00:59,630 –> 01:01:03,190
of that. Joan, eat your heart out. I’m gonna stop being so lazy.

973
01:01:07,110 –> 01:01:09,910
So the Lisbon earthquake occurred in 1755

974
01:01:11,990 –> 01:01:15,830
and occurred on the morning of Saturday, November 1, the Feast of All Saints,

975
01:01:16,070 –> 01:01:19,910
around 9:40 local time. So that was. That’s a big Catholic. That’s a

976
01:01:19,910 –> 01:01:23,710
big Catholic holiday. And it

977
01:01:23,710 –> 01:01:27,190
was a 8.5 to, um, 9.0

978
01:01:28,110 –> 01:01:30,350
earthquake. So it was a big earthquake,

979
01:01:32,030 –> 01:01:35,870
and it killed 30,000. 30,000 people

980
01:01:36,190 –> 01:01:37,070
and apparently

981
01:01:39,390 –> 01:01:43,070
created a. A tsunami that was

982
01:01:43,070 –> 01:01:45,990
about 20ft high at Lisbon and

983
01:01:45,990 –> 01:01:49,390
65ft high at Cadiz, Spain, which is a little bit more

984
01:01:49,390 –> 01:01:53,230
inland. Modern research indicates that the main

985
01:01:53,230 –> 01:01:56,700
seismic source was faulting of the seafloor along the

986
01:01:56,700 –> 01:02:00,380
tectonic plate boundaries of the mid Atlantic. So, yeah,

987
01:02:01,420 –> 01:02:05,220
and Voltaire said about that. He

988
01:02:05,220 –> 01:02:09,020
lamented the destruction of Lisbon in the earthquake. Again, this is according to

989
01:02:09,020 –> 01:02:12,460
the AI The AI here on. On Google

990
01:02:12,780 –> 01:02:16,380
and criticized the philosophers who thought that, quote, all’s well with the world,

991
01:02:16,700 –> 01:02:19,980
and the religious folks who thought that it was, quote, unquote, God’s will.

992
01:02:22,060 –> 01:02:25,860
So he, he. He hit to the both his left and his right, which was

993
01:02:25,860 –> 01:02:27,180
typical for Voltaire.

994
01:02:30,300 –> 01:02:33,540
Speaking of the Lisbon earthquake, we’re going to go to chapter six in

995
01:02:33,540 –> 01:02:37,340
Candide. Back to the book. This is

996
01:02:37,340 –> 01:02:41,140
going to be real short. It’s literally two pair, two paragraphs. It’s ridiculous how

997
01:02:41,140 –> 01:02:44,820
short chapter six is. This is why I picked it for my

998
01:02:44,820 –> 01:02:47,980
mid. My mid. My mid. Episode transition here. All right.

999
01:02:48,580 –> 01:02:52,340
After the earthquake. So this is chapter six. How they held

1000
01:02:52,340 –> 01:02:55,980
a fine auto defe to prevent earthquake and how Candide was

1001
01:02:55,980 –> 01:02:59,660
flogged after the earthquake which had destroyed three quarters of

1002
01:02:59,660 –> 01:03:03,420
Lisbon. The country’s wise men found no more efficacious means of preventing

1003
01:03:03,420 –> 01:03:06,500
total ruin than to give the people a fine auto da fe.

1004
01:03:07,300 –> 01:03:10,940
It was decided by the University of Coimbra that the spectacle of a few

1005
01:03:10,940 –> 01:03:14,620
persons burned by slow fire in great ceremony is an

1006
01:03:14,620 –> 01:03:18,340
infallible secret for keeping the earth from quaking. That’s

1007
01:03:18,340 –> 01:03:22,020
the absurdity that he was pointing out.

1008
01:03:22,260 –> 01:03:25,580
They had consequently seized a Biscayan, convicted of having married his

1009
01:03:25,580 –> 01:03:28,940
bleepchild’s bleepmother and two

1010
01:03:28,940 –> 01:03:32,420
Portuguese who, when eating a chicken, had taken out the bacon.

1011
01:03:32,580 –> 01:03:36,420
By the way, there’s a note in this. The reason that they picked the two

1012
01:03:36,420 –> 01:03:40,100
Portuguese who, when eating a chicken, had taken out the bacon was because the taking

1013
01:03:40,100 –> 01:03:43,850
out of the bacon thus showed that they were Jews and still

1014
01:03:43,850 –> 01:03:45,530
secretly faithful to Judaism.

1015
01:03:48,730 –> 01:03:52,530
After dinner, back to the book. After dinner they came and bound Dr.

1016
01:03:52,530 –> 01:03:56,290
Panglos and his disciple Candide, the one for having spoken and the other for

1017
01:03:56,290 –> 01:04:00,130
having listened, with an air of approbation. Both were taken

1018
01:04:00,130 –> 01:04:03,730
separately into extremely cool apartments in which one was never bothered by the

1019
01:04:03,730 –> 01:04:06,970
sun. By the way, those are prison cells.

1020
01:04:07,570 –> 01:04:11,290
A week later, they were each clad in a sanbenito and

1021
01:04:11,290 –> 01:04:14,810
their heads were adorned with paper miters. Candide’s miter and San

1022
01:04:14,810 –> 01:04:18,610
Benito were painted with flames upside down, with devils that had neither tails nor

1023
01:04:18,610 –> 01:04:22,370
claws. But Panglos devils wore claws and tails, and his flames were right

1024
01:04:22,370 –> 01:04:26,170
side up. Thus dressed, they marched in procession and heard a very pathetic

1025
01:04:26,170 –> 01:04:29,810
sermon followed by some beautiful music in a droning, plain song.

1026
01:04:31,010 –> 01:04:34,860
Candide was flogged in time to the singing. The Biscayan and the two

1027
01:04:34,860 –> 01:04:38,580
men who wouldn’t eat the bacon were burned and Panglos was hanged, although this

1028
01:04:38,580 –> 01:04:42,100
is not the custom. On the same day, the earthquaked again with a

1029
01:04:42,100 –> 01:04:45,340
fearful crash. Candide, terrified,

1030
01:04:45,340 –> 01:04:48,700
dumbfounded, bewildered, bleeding and quivering all over, said to himself,

1031
01:04:49,260 –> 01:04:52,820
if this is the best of all possible worlds, then what are the others? I

1032
01:04:52,820 –> 01:04:56,260
could let it pass if I had only been Flogged. If only I had been

1033
01:04:56,260 –> 01:04:59,870
flogged. That happened also with the Bulgarians. But, oh, my dear Panglos,

1034
01:04:59,870 –> 01:05:03,670
greatest of all philosophers, was it necessary that I see you hanged without knowing

1035
01:05:03,670 –> 01:05:07,270
why? Oh, my dear Anabaptist, best of all men,

1036
01:05:07,350 –> 01:05:10,790
was it necessary that you be drowned in the port? Oh, Mademoiselle

1037
01:05:10,790 –> 01:05:14,470
Cune, pearl of young ladies, was it necessary that your belly be

1038
01:05:14,470 –> 01:05:18,270
slit open? By the way, that had happened earlier. He

1039
01:05:18,270 –> 01:05:22,070
was going back, barely supporting himself, preached at, flogged, absolved

1040
01:05:22,070 –> 01:05:25,790
and blessed, when an old woman accosted him and said, my

1041
01:05:25,790 –> 01:05:29,030
son, take courage, follow me.

1042
01:05:31,830 –> 01:05:35,310
By the way, there’s one other thing you note. Every time there’s a new character

1043
01:05:35,310 –> 01:05:38,790
introduced, the level of absurdity, the ratchet of absurdity

1044
01:05:39,110 –> 01:05:42,950
goes up higher. So the. The old lady.

1045
01:05:44,870 –> 01:05:48,270
The old lady proves to have a story that I cannot read on air, by

1046
01:05:48,270 –> 01:05:51,750
the way, but it is a story that is quite,

1047
01:05:51,900 –> 01:05:54,860
quite shocking to modern ears.

1048
01:05:56,940 –> 01:05:59,260
Even I was surprised when I read it. I was like, oh, they actually wrote

1049
01:05:59,260 –> 01:06:02,060
this down? Well, I guess all these kinds of things were happening on a regular,

1050
01:06:02,300 –> 01:06:05,980
so it wasn’t a surprise to anyone. Which

1051
01:06:05,980 –> 01:06:09,180
this leads into sort of my. My Act Two

1052
01:06:09,260 –> 01:06:12,140
idea here. So,

1053
01:06:13,580 –> 01:06:15,900
remember I said earlier in the show that.

1054
01:06:17,670 –> 01:06:21,110
That we’ve become enlightened. Right. And we’re at the end. I. I personally believe, and

1055
01:06:21,110 –> 01:06:24,590
I’m not the only person to say this, I personally believe that we’re at the

1056
01:06:24,590 –> 01:06:28,310
end of the Enlightenment project. This doesn’t mean that we’re not discovering new things

1057
01:06:28,310 –> 01:06:31,950
or that we’re. We’re at the end of, like, human

1058
01:06:31,950 –> 01:06:35,550
invention. I don’t. I wouldn’t be so bold as to take that position,

1059
01:06:35,550 –> 01:06:39,390
although Peter Thiel has taken that position. There’s been several people to say

1060
01:06:39,390 –> 01:06:42,390
that the human race has invented what it will invent at this point. Now it’s

1061
01:06:42,390 –> 01:06:46,090
just building a better mouth. Mousetrap. Right, right, right. Several. Several people believe that. Several

1062
01:06:46,090 –> 01:06:49,930
people believe that. And I think that that’s a bunch of

1063
01:06:49,930 –> 01:06:53,690
nonsense. And not just a little

1064
01:06:53,690 –> 01:06:56,370
nonsense, like a lot of nonsense. Actually, there’s a book that we’re going to read,

1065
01:06:56,370 –> 01:07:00,210
our second book this year. We’re going to be reading a book by

1066
01:07:00,210 –> 01:07:04,010
Francis Bacon called the Great Installation. And

1067
01:07:04,970 –> 01:07:08,770
it’s. It’s going to be

1068
01:07:08,770 –> 01:07:12,580
interesting because Bacon believed, and he was

1069
01:07:12,580 –> 01:07:16,220
roughly a. A.

1070
01:07:16,300 –> 01:07:19,460
What do you call it? Not a peer, but he was operating at the same

1071
01:07:19,460 –> 01:07:22,780
time that Voltaire was operating, except in England. And

1072
01:07:22,860 –> 01:07:26,299
Bacon was a person who believed that we actually could

1073
01:07:26,299 –> 01:07:29,900
resuscitate, we could renew the world,

1074
01:07:29,900 –> 01:07:33,660
we could take actual knowledge and scientific

1075
01:07:33,660 –> 01:07:37,200
theory and we could remake the world

1076
01:07:37,200 –> 01:07:40,760
into something else. And he believed, as

1077
01:07:41,000 –> 01:07:44,720
many do who say, that we’ve reached the pinnacle of

1078
01:07:44,720 –> 01:07:48,560
human enlightenment and that we have no further to

1079
01:07:48,560 –> 01:07:52,160
go. He would say to

1080
01:07:52,160 –> 01:07:55,920
those folks that what we’ve reached is the peak

1081
01:07:55,920 –> 01:07:59,400
of mediocrity, actually, and that just by building a better

1082
01:07:59,400 –> 01:08:02,930
mousetrap, we’re just being more and more mediocre. And Peter

1083
01:08:02,930 –> 01:08:05,810
Thiel, by the way, believes some of this, but then sometimes you’ll get him in

1084
01:08:05,810 –> 01:08:09,410
other interviews, he believes other things. Right, so. Or he’ll say other things in

1085
01:08:09,410 –> 01:08:13,010
answer to the interview’s question. So I

1086
01:08:13,010 –> 01:08:16,650
personally don’t hold to that. But I do think that the project of the

1087
01:08:16,650 –> 01:08:20,410
Enlightenment, which was a project that was believed, that was based

1088
01:08:20,410 –> 01:08:24,130
on, again, the principles of free inquiry and

1089
01:08:24,290 –> 01:08:28,130
free human reason, I do think that project is at a close.

1090
01:08:29,680 –> 01:08:33,440
I think we are going to have human innovation, but it’s going to be

1091
01:08:33,440 –> 01:08:37,160
built on different principles. And I think that’s the direction we’re going. And we just

1092
01:08:37,160 –> 01:08:40,400
don’t know what those principles are because no one’s laid them out for us yet,

1093
01:08:41,120 –> 01:08:44,880
because we’re all still trying to go back to the Enlightenment because we’re like, oh,

1094
01:08:44,880 –> 01:08:48,400
human reason, that’s like the best thing for us to use. Well,

1095
01:08:48,560 –> 01:08:52,320
you know, at some point, you do have to look around and realize the

1096
01:08:52,320 –> 01:08:56,129
limits of human reason. And I think

1097
01:08:56,129 –> 01:08:59,889
we have reached that point, particularly in America, where we’re starting to look

1098
01:08:59,889 –> 01:09:03,449
around and go, what are the limits of human reason here? You know, what are

1099
01:09:03,449 –> 01:09:07,289
the limits? Where are the boundaries? And that’s a good question to ask because

1100
01:09:07,529 –> 01:09:11,129
I think that that ultimately opens. Allows you to find a new door

1101
01:09:11,289 –> 01:09:15,009
into a new place that you didn’t. You didn’t know existed. But it takes a

1102
01:09:15,009 –> 01:09:17,849
long time. It’s not something that happens at the speed of a tweet.

1103
01:09:18,649 –> 01:09:20,180
Yeah, you know,

1104
01:09:22,820 –> 01:09:26,460
I think the challenges that are in our era, particularly the challenges for leadership in

1105
01:09:26,460 –> 01:09:29,860
this era that’s also partially circling, looking for that new door,

1106
01:09:30,180 –> 01:09:33,900
are challenges in competence and meaning. But I also think the challenges

1107
01:09:33,900 –> 01:09:37,140
of courage. And then, of course, there’s the tactical areas

1108
01:09:37,620 –> 01:09:40,980
of leadership and succession and mentoring and coaching and

1109
01:09:40,980 –> 01:09:44,820
supervision. We for sure, and I’ve

1110
01:09:44,820 –> 01:09:48,300
already said this, we for sure know more about the world materially and

1111
01:09:48,300 –> 01:09:51,700
scientifically than even people in Voltaire’s time did. However,

1112
01:09:52,020 –> 01:09:55,500
we know a hell of a lot less about people and their motivations than people

1113
01:09:55,500 –> 01:09:59,140
in Voltaire’s time did. And we ignore empirical evidence.

1114
01:09:59,140 –> 01:10:02,780
It’s right in front of our eyes in favor of scientific theories about

1115
01:10:02,780 –> 01:10:06,620
human nature that very often prove to be mere myths. And

1116
01:10:06,620 –> 01:10:09,140
then we get mad when people don’t live out the myths.

1117
01:10:10,580 –> 01:10:13,570
Case in point, every riot you’ve ever seen

1118
01:10:13,810 –> 01:10:16,930
lately about any political act,

1119
01:10:18,450 –> 01:10:20,530
and I’ll just leave that there.

1120
01:10:22,770 –> 01:10:26,530
Technological wizardry has allowed us to hide from facing the hard truths about

1121
01:10:26,530 –> 01:10:30,250
leading people and Candide. This is another reason why you should probably read

1122
01:10:30,250 –> 01:10:33,930
it. Candide is about facing hard truths presented, of course, in a way that

1123
01:10:33,930 –> 01:10:37,650
illustrates the absurdity of those truths, but it cannot tell us how to

1124
01:10:37,940 –> 01:10:41,060
solve that absurdity. He cannot tell us how to resolve it.

1125
01:10:41,700 –> 01:10:45,100
Voltaire merely shrugs his shoulders sort of rhetorically at the end of

1126
01:10:45,100 –> 01:10:48,100
Candide and sort of leaves us to our own devices.

1127
01:10:49,140 –> 01:10:52,900
And as a person who is a religious person and also

1128
01:10:52,900 –> 01:10:56,660
a philosophical person, but also a practical, pragmatic person,

1129
01:10:57,140 –> 01:10:59,460
this will not do for me.

1130
01:11:04,860 –> 01:11:08,020
There are hard problems to solve in leadership. Tom and I mentioned some of them

1131
01:11:08,020 –> 01:11:11,860
already. Competence, meaning courage. Those are hard problems

1132
01:11:11,860 –> 01:11:14,300
to solve because they’re so individualized.

1133
01:11:16,620 –> 01:11:20,340
How can leaders have the courage to actually face those hard problems and

1134
01:11:20,340 –> 01:11:24,140
solve them? Oh, goodness

1135
01:11:24,140 –> 01:11:27,820
gracious. So how. How

1136
01:11:27,820 –> 01:11:31,490
can they get the courage? My,

1137
01:11:31,490 –> 01:11:33,490
my. One of the things that. And I.

1138
01:11:35,170 –> 01:11:38,890
I’ve always had this thing like leaders

1139
01:11:38,890 –> 01:11:41,650
aren’t born, they’re created. Right? So

1140
01:11:42,610 –> 01:11:45,410
if you. If you’re. If you’re not willing

1141
01:11:46,130 –> 01:11:49,730
to face the hardest challenges, if you’re not willing

1142
01:11:49,970 –> 01:11:53,730
to. To make hard decisions, are you really a leader?

1143
01:11:53,970 –> 01:11:57,750
Can you. Should you be considered a leader? Are we missing. Are

1144
01:11:57,750 –> 01:12:01,110
we missing out on a secondary title or a secondary role of

1145
01:12:01,110 –> 01:12:04,830
somebody that we should be calling them instead of the leader, so to speak.

1146
01:12:05,070 –> 01:12:08,750
Because I think that’s. I think that’s where those people fall. Right.

1147
01:12:08,990 –> 01:12:12,429
Maybe they’re. They’re somebody who needs somebody above them to say,

1148
01:12:12,910 –> 01:12:15,950
you know, pat them on the head and say, what you did was, okay, I’ll

1149
01:12:15,950 –> 01:12:19,710
take it from here. Because I really do want to lead people. I really

1150
01:12:19,710 –> 01:12:23,290
do want to help people secure, succeed. I really do want to be the person

1151
01:12:23,290 –> 01:12:26,850
somebody comes to with their challenges. I want people to come to me with their

1152
01:12:26,850 –> 01:12:30,610
problems. You don’t seem to be that person. Right. So

1153
01:12:30,610 –> 01:12:34,370
when you. So can they build up to it? Sure. Because I do still believe

1154
01:12:34,370 –> 01:12:38,090
that leaders are made and not born, so somebody may not be ready for it.

1155
01:12:38,090 –> 01:12:41,930
This goes directly to a problem that I was talking to a

1156
01:12:41,930 –> 01:12:45,610
colleague of mine last week about. It wasn’t on this podcast, believe it or not,

1157
01:12:45,610 –> 01:12:49,360
Jeson, what we were talking about. Was the

1158
01:12:49,360 –> 01:12:52,960
fact that, like, the question that was handed to me was,

1159
01:12:54,240 –> 01:12:57,960
did you ever work for someplace that promoted you with

1160
01:12:57,960 –> 01:13:01,600
training behind the promotion? Or were

1161
01:13:01,600 –> 01:13:05,360
you just given the promotion and expected to lead people because

1162
01:13:05,360 –> 01:13:08,200
you knew how to do a job that you were doing? In the current state

1163
01:13:08,200 –> 01:13:12,040
of state of affairs, I think that is the underlying

1164
01:13:12,040 –> 01:13:15,480
problem. We take. I’ll just take my area of expertise. For

1165
01:13:15,480 –> 01:13:19,100
example, we take a salesperson. You’ll

1166
01:13:19,100 –> 01:13:22,780
say you have a group of 10 salespeople. Your

1167
01:13:22,780 –> 01:13:26,580
sales manager leaves, gets fired, quits, whatever. And

1168
01:13:26,580 –> 01:13:30,300
the instinct is to say, let’s take our number one guy or gal

1169
01:13:30,300 –> 01:13:33,980
and make them the sales manager. Because the thought process is they can make

1170
01:13:33,980 –> 01:13:37,380
everybody else as good as them. And that is the furthest from the truth I

1171
01:13:37,380 –> 01:13:41,060
have ever heard in my entire life. Because what makes a

1172
01:13:41,060 –> 01:13:44,880
really good sales leader and what makes a really good salesperson are

1173
01:13:44,880 –> 01:13:48,440
two different things. Are we going to promote that person?

1174
01:13:48,520 –> 01:13:52,160
First of all, we’re going to ask that person. You’re going

1175
01:13:52,160 –> 01:13:55,920
to half the time in those environments where it’s only one team. I’m not talking

1176
01:13:55,920 –> 01:13:59,680
about giant corporations. I’m talking about a small company. One sales

1177
01:13:59,680 –> 01:14:03,440
team they’re going to take. They’re basically going to say, hey, son, you’re our number

1178
01:14:03,440 –> 01:14:06,880
one rep. The sales manager just quit. So you’re the manager now. Have a nice

1179
01:14:06,880 –> 01:14:10,400
day. There’s no conversation or

1180
01:14:10,400 –> 01:14:13,930
interview process or whatever because if they went through an

1181
01:14:13,930 –> 01:14:17,610
interview process of like, say, the top three salespeople, they

1182
01:14:17,610 –> 01:14:21,010
might uncover that the third best salesperson

1183
01:14:21,090 –> 01:14:24,610
is number three because they spend 25% of their time

1184
01:14:24,770 –> 01:14:28,410
helping everybody else, making everybody else on the team

1185
01:14:28,410 –> 01:14:32,210
better, Taking the last, the bottom guy or girl on the sales

1186
01:14:32,210 –> 01:14:35,490
team and trying to coach them up, trying to help them, trying to give them

1187
01:14:35,490 –> 01:14:39,340
some, like some confidence booster or whatever. Now, whether

1188
01:14:39,340 –> 01:14:42,300
they success or fail at that is not their job. But they do it because

1189
01:14:42,300 –> 01:14:45,740
they want other people around them to be successful. Now

1190
01:14:45,980 –> 01:14:49,500
you take that person at number three, make them the sales

1191
01:14:49,500 –> 01:14:52,700
manager. Now guess what happens? Your entire sales team just

1192
01:14:52,700 –> 01:14:56,380
uplifts because they’re going to take the worst sales team, the worst

1193
01:14:56,540 –> 01:15:00,300
salesperson on that team and try to make them better. The number one

1194
01:15:00,300 –> 01:15:03,740
person will not do that. The number one person will be like, well, you suck.

1195
01:15:03,740 –> 01:15:07,400
I’m just going to replace you, right? So again, I, I go back

1196
01:15:07,400 –> 01:15:10,880
to, like, some of the absurdities here are

1197
01:15:11,440 –> 01:15:14,960
companies will promote and have expectations

1198
01:15:15,120 –> 01:15:17,920
without training, without conversation, without.

1199
01:15:18,640 –> 01:15:21,840
They’ll just hope and pray that this person is going to do a good job.

1200
01:15:21,840 –> 01:15:25,360
You know, by the way, I would say 8 out of 10 times that person

1201
01:15:25,360 –> 01:15:28,680
gets fired because they suck as a manager instead of just getting

1202
01:15:28,680 –> 01:15:32,180
demoted and put them back where they belong. So there are, there are salespeople out

1203
01:15:32,180 –> 01:15:35,180
there that never want to be sales managers. They just want to do their job

1204
01:15:35,180 –> 01:15:38,660
and go home because they’re really bleepdamn good at it. You know what?

1205
01:15:38,900 –> 01:15:41,700
If you own that company, let that person do that.

1206
01:15:42,900 –> 01:15:46,500
Why. Why are you going to take your best salesperson out of the field?

1207
01:15:46,819 –> 01:15:50,580
That makes no sense anyway. So go back to what the

1208
01:15:51,060 –> 01:15:54,660
part of this, the courage part comes from the person who

1209
01:15:54,740 –> 01:15:58,280
wants it in the first place. Yeah. Okay. You

1210
01:15:58,280 –> 01:16:01,680
can’t force courage onto people. That doesn’t exist. And you’ve seen that.

1211
01:16:02,160 –> 01:16:05,360
Oh, yeah, sometimes through humanity. But

1212
01:16:05,440 –> 01:16:09,240
courage comes from the most unlikely places at the most unlikely

1213
01:16:09,240 –> 01:16:11,680
times, which is where we get some of the. Most.

1214
01:16:14,240 –> 01:16:17,880
Honorable movies out of World War II, stories out of

1215
01:16:17,880 –> 01:16:21,560
Vietnam. That stuff comes from real courage. If you

1216
01:16:21,560 –> 01:16:25,150
want that person leading your company then,

1217
01:16:25,470 –> 01:16:29,150
or if that person starts a company, they’re going to have the courage

1218
01:16:29,150 –> 01:16:32,910
to face the hard, the hard questions. You don’t have to teach them that. It

1219
01:16:32,910 –> 01:16:36,630
comes, it comes from that experience of, I either do this or

1220
01:16:36,630 –> 01:16:39,270
I die. Which is why, by the way, there’s a lot of companies that will

1221
01:16:39,270 –> 01:16:42,390
go out of their way to hire military veterans. A lot of companies I know

1222
01:16:42,390 –> 01:16:45,510
will go out of their way for that because they know that they’ve been in

1223
01:16:45,510 –> 01:16:48,990
some situations that they’ve had to make hard decisions or

1224
01:16:49,950 –> 01:16:53,630
follow hard orders, but still follow them well. Okay,

1225
01:16:53,630 –> 01:16:57,310
so. But we, we confuse the. We often confuse, I think,

1226
01:16:57,310 –> 01:17:00,950
in. To your point about military. Okay. We covered war by

1227
01:17:00,950 –> 01:17:03,150
Sebastian Younger last year. Right

1228
01:17:04,510 –> 01:17:08,110
in. And, and one of the things that we. That I noted

1229
01:17:08,110 –> 01:17:11,070
when I was talking about that book with, with John Hill,

1230
01:17:11,710 –> 01:17:14,750
AKA Small Mountain, is that

1231
01:17:16,340 –> 01:17:19,580
I always have to put that in. But one of the things I noted with

1232
01:17:19,580 –> 01:17:20,740
that was that

1233
01:17:23,460 –> 01:17:26,780
we always say courage is not the absence of fear. Right. It’s doing what you’re

1234
01:17:26,780 –> 01:17:30,260
afraid of anyway in spite of it. Right.

1235
01:17:30,260 –> 01:17:33,900
Okay, so. But, but we also don’t make a

1236
01:17:33,900 –> 01:17:37,380
distinction. And by the way, Brene Brown says that courage is a heart.

1237
01:17:38,340 –> 01:17:41,540
And I agree. It is in. It is in the emotions, it’s in the feelings.

1238
01:17:41,540 –> 01:17:45,130
It’s not. It’s not a reasoning. I can’t reason your way into courage. Okay. I

1239
01:17:45,130 –> 01:17:47,290
agree with both of those postures. Right.

1240
01:17:48,730 –> 01:17:52,490
I think we still don’t know. We still merge

1241
01:17:52,490 –> 01:17:55,890
together moral courage and physical

1242
01:17:55,890 –> 01:17:58,970
courage. So physical courage

1243
01:17:59,610 –> 01:18:03,410
is. Physical courage always comes last this is

1244
01:18:03,410 –> 01:18:06,890
one of the things that I am an hour and

1245
01:18:06,970 –> 01:18:10,700
15, almost hours, 16 minutes in. Now I’m going to mention jiu jitsu. This is

1246
01:18:10,700 –> 01:18:14,420
something that comes in. I mean, we, we, we offered

1247
01:18:14,420 –> 01:18:16,780
up movies really quick. So we did, you know, it’s fine.

1248
01:18:18,300 –> 01:18:21,340
That’s right. So this is something you learn in jiu jitsu, right? So

1249
01:18:22,060 –> 01:18:25,620
I can have the physical courage to step out on the

1250
01:18:25,620 –> 01:18:29,260
mat. But that only comes to your point about training.

1251
01:18:29,420 –> 01:18:33,020
That only comes with training. During which time in

1252
01:18:33,020 –> 01:18:36,660
training I have had to face my lack of moral

1253
01:18:36,660 –> 01:18:40,430
courage in going and getting a hard role with

1254
01:18:40,430 –> 01:18:43,910
somebody who I may not particularly like or who

1255
01:18:45,030 –> 01:18:48,790
I just don’t like their posture towards the game. Right. It’s not that I

1256
01:18:48,790 –> 01:18:51,990
know that they’re going to submit me or that I’m afraid that I’m going to

1257
01:18:51,990 –> 01:18:54,710
get hit in the face or get choked out. It’s not about any of that.

1258
01:18:54,950 –> 01:18:58,750
It’s about, do I have the moral courage to

1259
01:18:58,750 –> 01:19:02,230
confront before the physical courage even shows up.

1260
01:19:04,000 –> 01:19:07,680
And we confuse those two things together all the time. And so we hire military

1261
01:19:07,680 –> 01:19:11,120
veterans. And I agree, there are certain, I mean, I’m in

1262
01:19:11,120 –> 01:19:14,640
Texas. A lot of firms in Texas chase

1263
01:19:14,640 –> 01:19:18,160
military veterans. Texas is very military veteran friendly.

1264
01:19:18,240 –> 01:19:21,920
Texas employers are very military veteran friendly. They want those

1265
01:19:21,920 –> 01:19:25,680
people because they confuse, I think,

1266
01:19:25,840 –> 01:19:29,360
the physical courage with the moral courage. You go talk to any military

1267
01:19:29,360 –> 01:19:33,100
veteran, man, you know what? They don’t talk about the physical courage

1268
01:19:33,100 –> 01:19:36,180
part. If you ever go talk to any of those guys one on one, you

1269
01:19:36,180 –> 01:19:39,380
know what they talk about? They talk about the moral

1270
01:19:40,580 –> 01:19:44,380
complexity, right? Of what it is they did. How do

1271
01:19:44,380 –> 01:19:48,060
you live with the emotional courage? How do you live with that

1272
01:19:48,060 –> 01:19:50,540
thing that, not only how you live that thing that you did, but how did

1273
01:19:50,540 –> 01:19:54,100
you make that emotional decision to get in there and get after it

1274
01:19:54,420 –> 01:19:57,180
when XYZ thing was happening to your friend?

1275
01:19:58,210 –> 01:20:02,050
That’s a moral act. That’s not a physical act. The physical thing is last.

1276
01:20:02,450 –> 01:20:05,570
And we, we, we, we, we, we reverse the order because we don’t understand

1277
01:20:05,650 –> 01:20:09,410
causality. We don’t understand cause and effect. But I also, but I

1278
01:20:09,410 –> 01:20:12,730
also think, going back to the training part of it, I also think that the

1279
01:20:12,730 –> 01:20:16,530
moral, like what you’re talking about is true, but training helps you prepare

1280
01:20:16,530 –> 01:20:20,210
for that. Yes, the more again, back to your

1281
01:20:20,210 –> 01:20:23,930
jiu jitsu analogy. You get on that mat because

1282
01:20:23,930 –> 01:20:27,630
you have confidence in your training. You are able to face

1283
01:20:27,630 –> 01:20:31,150
those moral judgments and that moral compass of yours because you have

1284
01:20:31,150 –> 01:20:34,750
training and confidence in your training. The same thing could apply to

1285
01:20:34,750 –> 01:20:38,590
Leadership, Right. We expect leaders to just be leaders. How many times have you

1286
01:20:38,590 –> 01:20:41,550
heard, well, just go do it, or just go do it. Like, if you don’t

1287
01:20:41,790 –> 01:20:45,630
have the mental muscle memory to do it, then

1288
01:20:45,630 –> 01:20:49,430
how the hell are you supposed to. We just inherently want a sales manager

1289
01:20:49,430 –> 01:20:52,760
to know how to hire and fire salespeople without ever having to show them how

1290
01:20:52,760 –> 01:20:56,440
to do it. That doesn’t make any sense. There’s. There’s a

1291
01:20:56,440 –> 01:20:59,800
lackluster. There’s a lackluster attempt at

1292
01:21:00,200 –> 01:21:03,960
building leaders, and we don’t do that. We

1293
01:21:03,960 –> 01:21:07,639
don’t build leaders. We, we want leaders to just show

1294
01:21:07,639 –> 01:21:11,480
up. Right. So how can leaders get the courage? Well, if

1295
01:21:11,480 –> 01:21:14,960
you happen to be the leader of a company, then you need an outside

1296
01:21:14,960 –> 01:21:17,800
source. You need to go find somebody who can help you train to be a

1297
01:21:17,800 –> 01:21:20,740
better leader. A coach. Coach, a mentor, something like that.

1298
01:21:21,220 –> 01:21:24,580
Somebody to bounce ideas off of, somebody to run things through. Because if you don’t,

1299
01:21:24,580 –> 01:21:27,900
and you just think you’re going to do it on your own, if you are

1300
01:21:27,900 –> 01:21:31,700
really good at it, God bless you. You are, you’re. You’re.

1301
01:21:31,700 –> 01:21:34,900
You have a gift that most people do not have because most people need to

1302
01:21:34,900 –> 01:21:38,500
be shown the way and how to do those things, including the

1303
01:21:38,500 –> 01:21:41,620
military. Why do you think we have ranks? You are a private before you’re a

1304
01:21:41,620 –> 01:21:45,230
sergeant. You’re a sergeant before you’re a lieutenant. They, There’s a reason for that

1305
01:21:45,310 –> 01:21:49,030
because we need to train you up to get there. Well, and

1306
01:21:49,030 –> 01:21:52,590
we, and we laud the military. But even there, like, they struggle with.

1307
01:21:52,990 –> 01:21:56,630
Depending upon which branch you go into or which branch you

1308
01:21:56,630 –> 01:22:00,110
advance in. Even there, they struggle with

1309
01:22:02,350 –> 01:22:02,750
political

1310
01:22:05,870 –> 01:22:09,590
individuals who have more tactical understanding of how to

1311
01:22:09,590 –> 01:22:13,420
politically advance in a ranking versus moral courage in

1312
01:22:13,420 –> 01:22:17,100
advancing in a rank. Right? Absolutely. So even, even they struggle with

1313
01:22:17,100 –> 01:22:19,860
the training gaps there. Right. So,

1314
01:22:20,980 –> 01:22:23,900
yeah, and then we, we keep. Using the military as an example. But that, that

1315
01:22:23,900 –> 01:22:27,540
example exists in companies too. Like. Oh yeah, think of, think of any big

1316
01:22:27,540 –> 01:22:31,380
company you want. I’ve worked for. I’ve worked for several, and I shouldn’t say several.

1317
01:22:31,460 –> 01:22:35,020
I’ve worked for one Fortune 100 company and, and several Fortune

1318
01:22:35,020 –> 01:22:38,660
500 companies. But even in the Fortune 100 company you go

1319
01:22:38,660 –> 01:22:42,340
from, they hire you at the entry level. They call it entry level for a

1320
01:22:42,340 –> 01:22:45,780
reason. Like you go from here to here to here to here. And then

1321
01:22:46,340 –> 01:22:49,700
this one particular company I work for, which I really enjoyed working for,

1322
01:22:50,340 –> 01:22:54,179
was one of the rare cases where I was a salesperson, got promoted to

1323
01:22:54,179 –> 01:22:57,620
a sales manager. I could not take hold of my Sales team until I went

1324
01:22:57,620 –> 01:23:01,300
through their training program. Right, right. So. So this is a thing

1325
01:23:01,300 –> 01:23:04,660
that I’m a partisan for. I mean, you know me, I’m a partisan for training.

1326
01:23:04,780 –> 01:23:08,300
I believe in training. Sure. We have an entire business

1327
01:23:08,380 –> 01:23:11,940
built around training. You know, you can go check out our

1328
01:23:11,940 –> 01:23:14,900
advisory group, bjdad advisor group.com. you go check out all that. You go check out

1329
01:23:14,900 –> 01:23:18,460
Leadership Toolbox. You can go check out HSCD Publishing. We believe in training.

1330
01:23:18,940 –> 01:23:19,420
Yeah.

1331
01:23:22,700 –> 01:23:25,020
I don’t know. And this is not a question we have to ask now or

1332
01:23:25,020 –> 01:23:28,180
something we have to explore because we want to turn our corner here a little

1333
01:23:28,180 –> 01:23:31,790
bit because we’re getting ready to close. But one of the things that we are

1334
01:23:31,790 –> 01:23:35,510
going to focus on. This is why I listed, you know, succession, mentoring, coaching,

1335
01:23:35,510 –> 01:23:39,110
supervision. This is why I listed these things. Because at a fundamental level,

1336
01:23:40,390 –> 01:23:44,190
if your company isn’t set up. No, not even set up. If

1337
01:23:44,190 –> 01:23:47,670
the, if the idea of training being a nice to have

1338
01:23:49,190 –> 01:23:52,870
is a thing, you will

1339
01:23:52,870 –> 01:23:56,590
consistently fail in promotions. Yeah. Of people. And

1340
01:23:56,590 –> 01:24:00,190
you will consistently set up situations that are going to be

1341
01:24:00,190 –> 01:24:04,030
absurd for ground level managers and

1342
01:24:04,030 –> 01:24:06,710
supervisors. Just straight up absurdity.

1343
01:24:07,510 –> 01:24:11,230
Voltaire level absurdity. Like it’ll be literary, what

1344
01:24:11,230 –> 01:24:14,870
you’ll be setting up. What you’ll be setting up. It’ll be literary worthy.

1345
01:24:15,110 –> 01:24:18,310
Literary worthy, that’s right. You know,

1346
01:24:18,630 –> 01:24:22,110
and, and the thing is the, the ground level, the

1347
01:24:22,110 –> 01:24:25,430
tactical guys and girls, you know, women and men

1348
01:24:25,910 –> 01:24:27,110
in organizations,

1349
01:24:29,350 –> 01:24:32,950
don’t comment on the absurdity because

1350
01:24:32,950 –> 01:24:36,550
it’s become part of the culture. Yeah, right, agree.

1351
01:24:36,710 –> 01:24:40,270
And that’s the, that’s the real, one of the real leadership

1352
01:24:40,270 –> 01:24:43,790
problems. But I think, I think the other thing too. I think the other thing

1353
01:24:43,790 –> 01:24:47,590
too. Some of the areas that you’re talking, like if in my

1354
01:24:47,830 –> 01:24:51,630
brain, you don’t become a Fortune 100 company and have those kinds of problems.

1355
01:24:51,700 –> 01:24:55,300
Problems like I don’t think you can grow that big and

1356
01:24:55,300 –> 01:24:58,940
have that level of gap where your, your ground level

1357
01:24:58,940 –> 01:25:02,500
troops, so to speak, have no support mechanism built, have no

1358
01:25:02,500 –> 01:25:05,540
training built in. You kind of have to. In order to get there. You kind

1359
01:25:05,540 –> 01:25:09,340
of have to. What I’m worried about is the smaller companies that to your point,

1360
01:25:09,340 –> 01:25:13,140
they don’t. Because they, they, they think that they’re gonna, they’re very

1361
01:25:13,140 –> 01:25:16,900
block and tackle. Right. Meaning, like, right, we’re not going to face that problem until

1362
01:25:16,900 –> 01:25:20,530
it’s actually a problem. We’re going to ignore that until it becomes hurtful to our

1363
01:25:20,530 –> 01:25:24,170
company. We’re doing 20 million, we’re doing 50 million and

1364
01:25:24,170 –> 01:25:28,010
we’re okay. But until that becomes a real like in your face kind of problem.

1365
01:25:28,010 –> 01:25:31,210
Which is basically to your question just a few minutes ago, which is how to.

1366
01:25:31,850 –> 01:25:35,250
How do leaders get the courage to face the reality? The. One of the problems

1367
01:25:35,250 –> 01:25:38,490
is we’re talking about those size companies. There’s no

1368
01:25:38,490 –> 01:25:42,130
hierarchy where the actual owner of the leader of the

1369
01:25:42,130 –> 01:25:45,780
company can take a step up, away and say, yeah, I can. Now I can

1370
01:25:45,780 –> 01:25:49,540
view my company from this holistic, this holistic approach to vanity.

1371
01:25:49,860 –> 01:25:53,580
And I can take these pieces and do, do this like piece by

1372
01:25:53,580 –> 01:25:57,340
piece and really judge it. Really take the, Take the bull by the horns and

1373
01:25:57,340 –> 01:26:01,140
have the courage to look inward into my. It doesn’t happen because

1374
01:26:01,140 –> 01:26:04,420
they don’t feel like they can do that. There’s not enough layers for them to

1375
01:26:04,420 –> 01:26:08,140
do that. And you’re to your point about how do you get

1376
01:26:08,140 –> 01:26:11,870
them to do that? You can’t. Like, they have to

1377
01:26:11,870 –> 01:26:15,030
want. There has to be a want and a desire to do that on their

1378
01:26:15,030 –> 01:26:18,830
part to be better. Or more importantly, from a leadership

1379
01:26:18,830 –> 01:26:22,550
perspective, there has to be a desire on their part to want

1380
01:26:22,550 –> 01:26:26,150
to make their employees better. And if all they’re worried about is their

1381
01:26:26,150 –> 01:26:29,390
employees performing a function, it won’t work.

1382
01:26:29,710 –> 01:26:33,470
You have to want your employees, your employees to be better.

1383
01:26:34,760 –> 01:26:38,520
It wasn’t, it was, it was one of the major players. Like,

1384
01:26:38,680 –> 01:26:42,280
it was like a Richard Branson or somebody like somebody like that basically said

1385
01:26:43,400 –> 01:26:47,120
if you treat your employees a certain way, they won’t leave. They won’t want

1386
01:26:47,120 –> 01:26:50,839
to leave. So the idea of continuing to train them should never

1387
01:26:50,839 –> 01:26:54,520
be a problem. Finding opportunities to train them

1388
01:26:54,680 –> 01:26:58,280
and, and find training that they want to do, find ways to make them better,

1389
01:26:58,280 –> 01:27:01,940
find ways to increase their, their value to the company. Because if they

1390
01:27:01,940 –> 01:27:05,780
leave, you’re not going to be sad by the, by them leaving. You’re

1391
01:27:05,780 –> 01:27:08,460
going to be proud that when they walk out, they’re going to be a particular

1392
01:27:08,620 –> 01:27:12,260
kind of employee to the next person. I can’t. I, I was

1393
01:27:12,260 –> 01:27:15,820
somebody. I, it was somebody famous. Mark Cuban, Richard Branson was one, guys.

1394
01:27:15,900 –> 01:27:19,580
But like, the thought behind it makes sense.

1395
01:27:19,900 –> 01:27:21,740
The thought behind it makes sense is my point.

1396
01:27:25,420 –> 01:27:29,110
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think that we are, we’re in a.

1397
01:27:31,110 –> 01:27:33,270
There’s a bunch of different things in there that we’re going to explore over the

1398
01:27:33,270 –> 01:27:36,310
course of the next, over the course of the season. And I agree.

1399
01:27:36,870 –> 01:27:38,470
I think we also have.

1400
01:27:40,310 –> 01:27:44,110
Maybe the question isn’t how do we get them to get the courage to face

1401
01:27:44,110 –> 01:27:47,350
reality. Maybe that isn’t the question. Maybe the question is

1402
01:27:47,830 –> 01:27:51,630
more like how do we prompt those kinds of leaders in

1403
01:27:51,630 –> 01:27:54,970
those 20 to 50 million dollar a year, you know, revenue

1404
01:27:54,970 –> 01:27:58,090
businesses who don’t feel as though they can step away.

1405
01:27:58,570 –> 01:28:02,130
Right. How do we prompt them to step

1406
01:28:02,130 –> 01:28:04,890
away? Because we’re moving in the direction

1407
01:28:06,650 –> 01:28:10,210
and to sort of close around this, this point a little bit before we move

1408
01:28:10,210 –> 01:28:13,770
on. But we’re moving in the direction of, we’re moving

1409
01:28:13,770 –> 01:28:16,730
away from instruction

1410
01:28:17,610 –> 01:28:21,260
delivery based thinking and we’re moving more

1411
01:28:21,260 –> 01:28:24,660
in the direction of prompt based thinking. And

1412
01:28:25,300 –> 01:28:29,060
partially that’s because of AI, but it’s also because of the nature

1413
01:28:29,060 –> 01:28:32,420
of how we engage with our technological

1414
01:28:32,580 –> 01:28:36,260
tools that then, in a virtuous or

1415
01:28:36,260 –> 01:28:39,780
unvirtuous circle, depending upon your perspective, changes our

1416
01:28:39,780 –> 01:28:43,580
brains in how we react with other human beings. And it

1417
01:28:43,580 –> 01:28:47,300
takes the lag time is huge. Right? But it does eventually show

1418
01:28:47,300 –> 01:28:51,020
up. So for instance, we didn’t have as much social

1419
01:28:51,020 –> 01:28:54,540
anxiety in the 1990s when every teenager didn’t have a cell

1420
01:28:54,540 –> 01:28:58,340
phone. Now we’ve got social anxiety up the wazoo and we’ve only

1421
01:28:58,340 –> 01:29:01,700
had cell phones at scale for about the last 20 years.

1422
01:29:02,660 –> 01:29:06,340
It took 20 years for that feedback loop to get

1423
01:29:06,340 –> 01:29:09,860
built. I think we’re at the beginning of building a new

1424
01:29:09,860 –> 01:29:13,520
feedback loop, but I think that feedback loop has to be around prompting.

1425
01:29:13,520 –> 01:29:16,600
Right? How do we prompt leaders? How do we, how do we encourage them? That’s

1426
01:29:16,600 –> 01:29:19,960
part of what this podcast does, but it’s also part of what short form video

1427
01:29:19,960 –> 01:29:23,520
does and other other forms of content delivery that are out there because

1428
01:29:23,520 –> 01:29:27,360
everybody’s trying to experiment with this while they’re not using those terms. Well,

1429
01:29:27,360 –> 01:29:30,960
I hope, I hope part of what this podcast does is

1430
01:29:30,960 –> 01:29:34,720
gives people the ability to think outside the box. Right? Like, think about the, just

1431
01:29:34,720 –> 01:29:38,220
the title of this podcast, Leadership Lessons from the Great Books. Who would have thought

1432
01:29:38,290 –> 01:29:41,850
taught to go read the Great Gatsby or Voltaire’s

1433
01:29:41,850 –> 01:29:45,570
Candy and find actual leadership lessons out of a fictional

1434
01:29:45,570 –> 01:29:49,170
book that somebody wrote 200 years ago. Right? Like this.

1435
01:29:49,410 –> 01:29:52,530
I think you’re, I think, I love, I love being a guest on this podcast

1436
01:29:52,530 –> 01:29:56,290
for that reason. It gives people the freedom, the ability, the

1437
01:29:56,290 –> 01:30:00,050
encouragement to look for these lessons outside of normal

1438
01:30:00,050 –> 01:30:03,810
parameters. Look outside the box. Not everything you

1439
01:30:03,810 –> 01:30:07,050
learn is going to be in this, right?

1440
01:30:07,930 –> 01:30:11,770
Not everything that you, not everything that you want to learn is going to be

1441
01:30:11,770 –> 01:30:15,610
in a technology format like. Right? It’s okay. And I, I said

1442
01:30:15,610 –> 01:30:18,610
the same thing to, I say the same thing to, to small business owners all

1443
01:30:18,610 –> 01:30:22,210
the time. There’s a reason that every athlete on the planet has a coach.

1444
01:30:22,210 –> 01:30:25,930
I Don’t care who you are. LeBron James has a coach. Michael Jordan had a

1445
01:30:25,930 –> 01:30:29,770
coach. Wayne Gretzky had a coach. Tom Brady had a coach. At every level they

1446
01:30:29,770 –> 01:30:33,570
played at, they had a coach. Coach. Yep. If your company

1447
01:30:33,570 –> 01:30:37,010
is at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 million and you want to continue

1448
01:30:37,010 –> 01:30:40,850
to grow and you think you have all the answers, you’re sadly

1449
01:30:40,850 –> 01:30:44,650
mistaken. Yeah, you, you yourself as

1450
01:30:44,650 –> 01:30:48,050
a business. Why do we think business owners that are

1451
01:30:48,290 –> 01:30:52,090
successful at this level don’t need more

1452
01:30:52,090 –> 01:30:55,730
coaching? They don’t need more people to bounce ideas off. They don’t need people

1453
01:30:55,730 –> 01:30:59,330
outside of their organization to talk to through problems.

1454
01:31:00,210 –> 01:31:03,890
We need to encourage that out like, we need to encourage that. Small

1455
01:31:03,890 –> 01:31:07,250
business owners need to know that it’s normal. There’s, it’s not

1456
01:31:07,490 –> 01:31:10,770
audacity, it’s not a flagrant use of money.

1457
01:31:11,010 –> 01:31:14,530
It’s normal to go find and hire a coach, go get somebody. You can pay

1458
01:31:14,530 –> 01:31:18,290
a few hundred thousand, you know, a few hundred. A few thousand dollars a

1459
01:31:18,290 –> 01:31:21,930
month or whatever and, and get some real world experience that’s

1460
01:31:21,930 –> 01:31:25,700
beyond you. Well, it, it has to be, it has to be perceived as

1461
01:31:25,700 –> 01:31:29,420
at a. Unfortunately, because we’ve monetized everything

1462
01:31:29,420 –> 01:31:32,540
out to the nth degree. You know, there has to have an. ROI in the

1463
01:31:32,540 –> 01:31:36,260
business. I get it. You know, and I, I roll my eyes there. You

1464
01:31:36,260 –> 01:31:39,940
folks can’t see that on the audio because I, I do think there are things

1465
01:31:39,940 –> 01:31:43,660
that are outside of the roi, and I understand that,

1466
01:31:43,660 –> 01:31:47,220
that like, we have to be ruthlessly focused on everything inside of the

1467
01:31:47,220 –> 01:31:49,860
roi because if we’re not, we might get distracted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

1468
01:31:49,860 –> 01:31:53,700
blah, blah, blah, blah. But what happens if, what happens if

1469
01:31:53,700 –> 01:31:57,060
spending that $3,000 a month on a business coach just made you a better leader?

1470
01:31:57,060 –> 01:32:00,780
The ROI is not tangible. Like, it’s not. You can’t put your hands on a

1471
01:32:00,780 –> 01:32:03,780
direct impact like. Right. But I will tell you,

1472
01:32:04,420 –> 01:32:08,140
if you’re, if your bottom line goes up year over year and you

1473
01:32:08,140 –> 01:32:11,940
don’t attribute it to having that business coach, there’s something wrong with you. Right,

1474
01:32:12,180 –> 01:32:15,940
right. Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah. No, but you’re, you’re, but you’re, I’m telling you,

1475
01:32:15,940 –> 01:32:19,400
you’re going to, you’re going to attribute it to. Well, our,

1476
01:32:19,480 –> 01:32:23,200
our, our bottom line is up year over year because we

1477
01:32:23,200 –> 01:32:26,920
made changes to this process. We increased the budget to this marketing

1478
01:32:26,920 –> 01:32:29,680
campaign. We did. You’re going to give it a, you’re going to give it a

1479
01:32:29,680 –> 01:32:33,399
value to something that you physically did, but not remember

1480
01:32:33,399 –> 01:32:36,840
that you bounced all those ideas off your business coach and he helped you ideate

1481
01:32:36,840 –> 01:32:39,960
through what all the pros and cons and ups and downs and what could happen.

1482
01:32:40,200 –> 01:32:42,600
You made your decision based on real world information,

1483
01:32:44,050 –> 01:32:47,730
but the physical change in your business is what caused the roi, Right?

1484
01:32:49,570 –> 01:32:52,450
It blows my mind that. And that’s another absurdity.

1485
01:32:53,810 –> 01:32:57,650
Exactly. That’s another absurdity. Okay,

1486
01:32:58,050 –> 01:33:01,410
let’s turn the corner, let’s go into, let’s round the corner here.

1487
01:33:01,650 –> 01:33:05,370
Let’s start our close. Part

1488
01:33:05,370 –> 01:33:09,210
of one thing that also goes along with absurdity is the idea

1489
01:33:09,210 –> 01:33:12,860
of if we can’t solve the problem, right, because maybe the

1490
01:33:12,860 –> 01:33:16,540
problem’s too big. Maybe we don’t have

1491
01:33:16,540 –> 01:33:20,220
access to the owners of those 20 to 30 to 50 million

1492
01:33:20,220 –> 01:33:23,660
dollar a year businesses. Maybe we don’t have the interest in coaching them. Maybe we

1493
01:33:23,660 –> 01:33:26,300
don’t have the skills to coach. Right. Or

1494
01:33:27,020 –> 01:33:30,300
maybe we’re a person who to Tom’s earlier point,

1495
01:33:30,620 –> 01:33:34,020
just wants to be a leader who shows up, does their work and goes home

1496
01:33:34,020 –> 01:33:37,500
and has a title maybe or the status of leader, but doesn’t really have to,

1497
01:33:37,500 –> 01:33:40,290
don’t really have to put in like any of the, any of the, any of

1498
01:33:40,290 –> 01:33:42,290
the, the hard work, any of the elbow grease

1499
01:33:45,090 –> 01:33:48,810
alongside those kinds of phenomena or part of that

1500
01:33:48,810 –> 01:33:52,410
phenomena. And this comes out of World War II actually is the phenomena

1501
01:33:52,410 –> 01:33:55,650
of ironic detachment. And

1502
01:33:56,450 –> 01:33:59,890
we started exploring this idea a little bit towards the end of last year

1503
01:34:00,450 –> 01:34:04,290
with Ernest Hemingway with A Farewell to Arms. We kind of talked

1504
01:34:04,290 –> 01:34:07,990
about this a little bit with Libby Younger, a little bit in War by Sebastian

1505
01:34:07,990 –> 01:34:11,590
Younger, which I already referenced. We kind of talked about a little bit with George

1506
01:34:11,590 –> 01:34:15,070
Orwell in 1984, the Big Panel show that we had.

1507
01:34:17,550 –> 01:34:20,350
I’ve come to this thesis over the course of

1508
01:34:21,950 –> 01:34:25,550
the last couple of years and part of it is a generational

1509
01:34:25,550 –> 01:34:28,590
thesis that’s initially how I started it, but now I think it’s actually something that’s

1510
01:34:28,590 –> 01:34:32,290
a more broader cultural thing. And I want to

1511
01:34:32,290 –> 01:34:35,490
explore a little bit of this with Tom as we close because I think, I

1512
01:34:35,490 –> 01:34:38,370
think Voltaire would have told, would have told us to watch out for this.

1513
01:34:39,730 –> 01:34:43,170
So Voltaire begins Candide with

1514
01:34:43,170 –> 01:34:46,730
hang loss, you know, postulating to Candide the

1515
01:34:46,730 –> 01:34:50,090
philosopher that this is the best of all possible worlds. It’s a species of

1516
01:34:50,090 –> 01:34:53,290
optimism, right? Voltaire never

1517
01:34:53,290 –> 01:34:55,570
dismisses, he satirizes

1518
01:34:57,170 –> 01:35:00,840
that position of optimism and he lampoons it through

1519
01:35:00,840 –> 01:35:04,080
satire, but he doesn’t fail to take it

1520
01:35:04,080 –> 01:35:07,720
seriously, nor does he commit the other

1521
01:35:08,200 –> 01:35:12,000
sin which we have committed in our time. He doesn’t separate from it

1522
01:35:12,000 –> 01:35:15,680
emotionally and just sort of shrug his shoulders and say, to

1523
01:35:15,680 –> 01:35:19,400
paraphrase from the great band of the 1990s, Nirvana. Oh, well, whatever,

1524
01:35:19,400 –> 01:35:23,200
nevermind. He doesn’t say that either. He

1525
01:35:23,200 –> 01:35:26,280
doesn’t allow himself to be ironically

1526
01:35:26,280 –> 01:35:29,140
detached from critiquing that optimism

1527
01:35:29,780 –> 01:35:33,380
because he wants not the optimism to change.

1528
01:35:33,940 –> 01:35:37,300
He doesn’t care about that. He wants the world to change.

1529
01:35:37,540 –> 01:35:41,260
And he actually believes that, that his writing can do something.

1530
01:35:41,260 –> 01:35:44,700
His, his satirical observations, his pointing out an

1531
01:35:44,700 –> 01:35:48,420
illustrated absurdity by being absurd. He actually believes that that can actually

1532
01:35:48,420 –> 01:35:51,500
say, do something. And he believes it

1533
01:35:51,500 –> 01:35:55,150
sincerely. Post World

1534
01:35:55,150 –> 01:35:58,310
War II in the west, we’ve been robbed of our ability to be sincere. And

1535
01:35:58,310 –> 01:36:02,030
it’s become an increasing problem over the course of

1536
01:36:02,110 –> 01:36:05,790
multiple generations, from the boomers all the way down through my

1537
01:36:05,790 –> 01:36:09,150
generation, Gen X, my generation has sharpened

1538
01:36:09,870 –> 01:36:13,710
that sense of ironic detachment to a sharp point. Now,

1539
01:36:13,790 –> 01:36:17,310
part of that is because we’re the generation that was the first

1540
01:36:17,310 –> 01:36:20,560
latchkey kids. We went through divorce, social, social

1541
01:36:20,720 –> 01:36:24,080
strife at like an individual level, not a, not an

1542
01:36:24,080 –> 01:36:27,800
institutional over their level, but like a actual real

1543
01:36:27,800 –> 01:36:31,600
lived level. And ironic detachment is a nice anchor, but it’s also,

1544
01:36:31,920 –> 01:36:35,360
it’s also shield Right, because it protects you. You don’t get emotionally involved.

1545
01:36:35,600 –> 01:36:38,800
Oh, you don’t want to change. Okay, whatever. I’m going to go over here and

1546
01:36:38,800 –> 01:36:41,880
do this thing. You don’t want to listen to me, you don’t want to take

1547
01:36:41,880 –> 01:36:45,490
my, you don’t want to take my coaching advice at $3,000 a month. Okay, whatever.

1548
01:36:45,490 –> 01:36:47,610
I’m going to cash a check and I’m going to go to the next thing,

1549
01:36:48,490 –> 01:36:52,330
you know. You, you don’t want to, you don’t

1550
01:36:52,330 –> 01:36:55,770
want to help me, I don’t know, build houses in Patagonia.

1551
01:36:55,930 –> 01:36:59,450
Okay, whatever. I’m going to go to Patagonia. I’m going to build houses.

1552
01:36:59,530 –> 01:37:03,330
As a generation, we have sharpened this to a fine point. This is almost. We

1553
01:37:03,330 –> 01:37:06,890
don’t even think about it anymore. The

1554
01:37:06,890 –> 01:37:10,170
generations behind us, the millennials and the Gen zers

1555
01:37:10,170 –> 01:37:13,640
specifically, took that to its logical

1556
01:37:13,640 –> 01:37:17,000
conclusion. And now they just want to burn everything down and have chaos.

1557
01:37:18,120 –> 01:37:21,960
Because that’s where ironic detachment gets you. Because if it’s all, well, whatever, then

1558
01:37:22,120 –> 01:37:25,800
leadership can be burned down, culture can be burned down,

1559
01:37:26,280 –> 01:37:30,000
politics can be burned down. All that exists then is

1560
01:37:30,000 –> 01:37:33,760
anarchy and man against man and every man for themselves. Because it

1561
01:37:33,760 –> 01:37:37,600
doesn’t matter. I, I don’t think Gen Z, you know, be careful what you wish

1562
01:37:37,600 –> 01:37:41,200
for, because they are not ready for every man for himself. But you know what

1563
01:37:41,200 –> 01:37:44,240
I think Gen X is our, We Wouldn’t

1564
01:37:44,800 –> 01:37:48,400
be like, bring it. Right, Exactly. Because. Because we’re the

1565
01:37:48,400 –> 01:37:51,920
granddaddies of ironic detachment. Okay, Bring it. Yeah, that’s fine. Let’s. Let’s.

1566
01:37:52,160 –> 01:37:55,720
As I sometimes joke with my kids, that line from Tombstone, that great line where

1567
01:37:55,720 –> 01:37:59,440
Kurt Russell hits a very fat Billy Bob Thornton in the bar,

1568
01:37:59,760 –> 01:38:03,560
right, when he’s beating the horse or whatever, he says, go ahead. You go ahead

1569
01:38:03,560 –> 01:38:05,520
and you pull that smoke wagon and you watch what happens.

1570
01:38:08,470 –> 01:38:12,190
And that’s the position of Gen X, See? Like,

1571
01:38:12,190 –> 01:38:15,670
yeah. So Gen X, we’re the F. We’re the F around and find out, right?

1572
01:38:15,670 –> 01:38:19,430
Like, bingo. Yes. Like, we were the whole command. You know what?

1573
01:38:19,430 –> 01:38:23,150
You want to come at me? I don’t. Whatever. Right? And then Gen

1574
01:38:23,150 –> 01:38:26,750
Z, they want to do that, but when the *bleep* hits the fan, excuse my

1575
01:38:26,750 –> 01:38:30,590
language, they’re like, oh, they. They like.

1576
01:38:30,590 –> 01:38:34,430
They kind of shrink away and move. Like. Whereas we. We go. If we

1577
01:38:34,430 –> 01:38:38,280
make a mistake, we like, okay, here’s a good example. And take

1578
01:38:38,280 –> 01:38:42,000
the. The fighting out of it. No, no, taking fighting

1579
01:38:42,000 –> 01:38:45,080
in back into it. Right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. You’re on the street, you’re in a

1580
01:38:45,080 –> 01:38:47,600
bar. You and your wife are in a bar. Guy says something to her, does

1581
01:38:47,600 –> 01:38:50,720
something to her, whatever. You step to him, he punches you in the mouth, you

1582
01:38:50,720 –> 01:38:54,320
get knocked out. You’re still going home with your wife, by the way. Oh,

1583
01:38:54,320 –> 01:38:58,120
yeah. But your wife has a different level of respect for you because

1584
01:38:58,680 –> 01:39:02,200
you stood up for her, right? Win or lose, win or lose, win, lose

1585
01:39:02,440 –> 01:39:05,880
or draw, your wife is like, I’m. You know, you shouldn’t have done that. You’re

1586
01:39:05,880 –> 01:39:08,280
an idiot. You got knocked out. But I love you because you stood up for

1587
01:39:08,280 –> 01:39:12,120
me. It’s me. And then we’re in the

1588
01:39:12,120 –> 01:39:14,840
back of our minds going, *bleep* damn it, I shouldn’t have done that. Like, we

1589
01:39:14,840 –> 01:39:18,599
always think about it after, right? Like, that guy was twice my size. That guy.

1590
01:39:18,599 –> 01:39:21,480
Like, that guy knew his. Whatever. Gen Z.

1591
01:39:22,520 –> 01:39:26,280
First of all, they’re not stepping to anyone like that. Or if

1592
01:39:26,280 –> 01:39:29,970
they do, they back down real fast. Because I notice even, like, even my

1593
01:39:29,970 –> 01:39:33,730
own son. Now, just for the record here, I am not

1594
01:39:33,730 –> 01:39:37,370
a big dude. My son is 6 foot 3, 300 pounds. He could probably step

1595
01:39:37,370 –> 01:39:41,130
on me really fast and not even think twice about it. But

1596
01:39:41,130 –> 01:39:44,970
if I really sharply come back at him, he’s like, oh,

1597
01:39:45,050 –> 01:39:48,290
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that way. Like, he just backs down right away, right?

1598
01:39:48,290 –> 01:39:51,770
Yeah. And then. And then even if they don’t and they get smacked in the

1599
01:39:51,770 –> 01:39:55,410
mouth or they get put down it was, it’s, it’s still not their fault,

1600
01:39:55,650 –> 01:39:59,450
right? Like, oh, well, that guy shouldn’t have done that. He still shouldn’t.

1601
01:39:59,450 –> 01:40:03,170
He’s still wrong. No, that’s not how that works. You got

1602
01:40:03,170 –> 01:40:06,530
punched in the mouth. You just take your licks and go home. You don’t just

1603
01:40:06,530 –> 01:40:09,730
now, you don’t, you don’t turn around and say, yeah, but,

1604
01:40:10,210 –> 01:40:14,010
yeah, but, yeah, but like, I don’t, I don’t understand it. So that

1605
01:40:14,010 –> 01:40:17,610
thing, that thing that we have as our

1606
01:40:17,610 –> 01:40:20,130
generation has aged and this is again, this is part of the thesis that I

1607
01:40:20,130 –> 01:40:22,210
came to towards the end of next year and we’re going to explore a lot

1608
01:40:22,210 –> 01:40:25,390
of this this year. I came to the conclusion that

1609
01:40:26,830 –> 01:40:30,550
that was really good when we were young and it was

1610
01:40:30,550 –> 01:40:33,550
really useful when we were in our 20s and in our 20s. Yeah, yeah,

1611
01:40:34,190 –> 01:40:37,790
it was really useful. But now we’ve entered

1612
01:40:37,870 –> 01:40:41,630
generationally and societally a place where people

1613
01:40:41,630 –> 01:40:44,910
who are in our age cohort 45 to

1614
01:40:44,910 –> 01:40:48,450
64 or 46 to 65 in that cohort did

1615
01:40:48,600 –> 01:40:52,440
classic Gen Z cohort. We are now in leadership positions. An

1616
01:40:52,440 –> 01:40:56,200
ironic detachment doesn’t work in leadership. Yeah,

1617
01:40:56,200 –> 01:40:59,880
I agree. And the thing that we need, and this is going to

1618
01:40:59,880 –> 01:41:03,680
be really hard for all of us, and this is why

1619
01:41:03,680 –> 01:41:07,160
I kind of stuttered when I said Western civilization. Maybe the podcast could say Western

1620
01:41:07,160 –> 01:41:10,440
civilization. Why I get embarrassed about it because you have to be

1621
01:41:11,800 –> 01:41:15,320
sincere and sincerity requires

1622
01:41:16,340 –> 01:41:20,180
a certain level of emotional connection to the thing.

1623
01:41:20,500 –> 01:41:23,620
Can I just say, like, where you. Can be hurt, by the way, that’s a

1624
01:41:23,620 –> 01:41:27,460
huge thing where you can be hurt. Go ahead. Like, to me, the emotion

1625
01:41:27,460 –> 01:41:30,700
that is most missing, like, it’s not, it’s not even, it’s

1626
01:41:30,700 –> 01:41:34,500
empathy. Right. The ability to be empathetic,

1627
01:41:34,500 –> 01:41:38,140
I think is totally missing in, in a lot of what we’re talking about.

1628
01:41:38,140 –> 01:41:41,910
Right? Like, and I think to your point, our generation, it’s not that

1629
01:41:41,910 –> 01:41:45,470
we don’t, we want to be empathetic, but if we find it

1630
01:41:45,550 –> 01:41:49,270
difficult to be empathetic because it’s like, it’s, it’s

1631
01:41:49,270 –> 01:41:53,110
almost like one of those like, scenarios where again, if you think about our

1632
01:41:53,110 –> 01:41:56,270
generation dealing with Gen Z, that’s like a perfect example because,

1633
01:41:57,229 –> 01:42:01,030
because Gen Z has this and they can go research anything they

1634
01:42:01,030 –> 01:42:04,230
want. They think they know everything. And our generation is looking at them going, you

1635
01:42:04,230 –> 01:42:07,400
haven’t lived through anything yet. How do you think you know that?

1636
01:42:07,960 –> 01:42:11,680
Right? Like that. So it’s hard for us to empathize with a, with

1637
01:42:11,680 –> 01:42:15,520
a 20 something these days. Right? Well, and we have. And

1638
01:42:15,520 –> 01:42:19,080
we have a huge generation in between Gen Z and us, which

1639
01:42:19,480 –> 01:42:22,720
the millennials who shall go nameless for this, for this moment, for the first time

1640
01:42:22,720 –> 01:42:26,360
in their entire existence. Yeah. For the first. The first time. The

1641
01:42:26,360 –> 01:42:30,200
millennials are not the. We’re not vilifying them, leaving them alone. We’re leaving them alone

1642
01:42:30,200 –> 01:42:32,730
for this game. Go ahead. Sorry. Who are also.

1643
01:42:34,730 –> 01:42:38,210
They are what I call. Or what would be called in, if you were looking

1644
01:42:38,210 –> 01:42:41,290
at generational. Generational theory.

1645
01:42:42,010 –> 01:42:45,690
Generational cycle theory, which is where the idea of the fourth attorney

1646
01:42:45,690 –> 01:42:47,850
comes about or the high. Or whatever. Right.

1647
01:42:49,530 –> 01:42:53,330
Strauss and how. Right. All that kind of stuff. They are

1648
01:42:53,330 –> 01:42:56,770
the generation who is the hero generation. They’re the

1649
01:42:56,770 –> 01:42:59,760
generation who, for lack of a better term,

1650
01:43:00,560 –> 01:43:04,200
are sincere and do want to run off and be a hero

1651
01:43:04,200 –> 01:43:07,440
and do want to save the world. Right. These are the people

1652
01:43:08,400 –> 01:43:12,040
between, you know, the oldest, the youngest end is

1653
01:43:12,040 –> 01:43:15,880
like 34, 35 now, you know,

1654
01:43:15,880 –> 01:43:19,280
coming into their mid-40s, who

1655
01:43:19,680 –> 01:43:22,560
have had a little life. Right? They have. They have a little life. I gotta.

1656
01:43:22,560 –> 01:43:25,500
Gotta give that to them as a. As a. Is it a younger Gen Z

1657
01:43:25,500 –> 01:43:27,780
or. I got to give to him. Our younger Gen Xer. Got to give it

1658
01:43:27,780 –> 01:43:31,420
to him. They’ve got a little life. Right. They’ve had a few knocks around. They’re

1659
01:43:31,420 –> 01:43:34,460
a little bit. They got the little bitter sort of patina on them a little

1660
01:43:34,460 –> 01:43:38,060
bit. Yeah. But they still have hope that the

1661
01:43:38,060 –> 01:43:41,860
future will work out. That’s because they haven’t hit their late 40s yet. Yes,

1662
01:43:42,020 –> 01:43:45,660
true. But they. But they also. This ironic

1663
01:43:45,660 –> 01:43:49,460
detachment again. But they also have that genuine. That

1664
01:43:49,460 –> 01:43:51,170
genuine necessary.

1665
01:43:54,130 –> 01:43:57,570
And so we are in a unique position, I think, as leaders. This is something,

1666
01:43:57,570 –> 01:44:01,210
again, that we’re going to explore the podcast as a theme this season through our

1667
01:44:01,210 –> 01:44:04,970
books. We have an opportunity, and I think

1668
01:44:04,970 –> 01:44:08,650
this is going to be really hard for us as. So this is my challenge

1669
01:44:08,650 –> 01:44:10,290
to all my Gen X leaders out there.

1670
01:44:13,090 –> 01:44:16,370
Ironic detachment is an anchor and it’s weighing us down.

1671
01:44:17,720 –> 01:44:21,080
I think the fact is, if we don’t get our crap together, we’re not going

1672
01:44:21,080 –> 01:44:24,920
to experience a Gen X president. Not going to happen. We’re

1673
01:44:24,920 –> 01:44:28,680
going to get skipped right over. We’re going to

1674
01:44:28,680 –> 01:44:32,200
maybe have another boomer, but it’s going to be a boomer. A young

1675
01:44:32,200 –> 01:44:35,680
boomer like Gavin Newsom is a young boomer. It’s going to be like a boomer

1676
01:44:35,680 –> 01:44:39,360
like that versus like a J.D. vance, who’s a millennial through and through. J.D. vance

1677
01:44:39,360 –> 01:44:42,920
is a millennial through and through. And that’s that’s, that’s. Those are two perfect

1678
01:44:42,920 –> 01:44:46,760
examples right now in the political zeitgeist in America. Trump is a boomer.

1679
01:44:46,760 –> 01:44:50,440
Please. That, that’s, that’s, that’s. That. And there are no

1680
01:44:50,440 –> 01:44:53,920
gen Zers right now that are. That are even politically

1681
01:44:53,920 –> 01:44:57,600
savvy at this point. They’re just too young a generation. So we will,

1682
01:44:57,840 –> 01:45:01,440
if we don’t get our crap together and cut away this

1683
01:45:01,440 –> 01:45:05,080
ironic detachment and actually get sincere about something and actually

1684
01:45:05,080 –> 01:45:08,640
care about something. This is where Marco Rubio as a political actor is so

1685
01:45:08,640 –> 01:45:12,360
interesting to me, because on the one hand, he plays the boomer game,

1686
01:45:12,360 –> 01:45:15,760
which we all did, by the way. We’re all. We all did that very well.

1687
01:45:16,000 –> 01:45:19,600
But you can see in moments where he’s not

1688
01:45:19,600 –> 01:45:22,720
thinking the camera is looking at him, where he’s like,

1689
01:45:23,440 –> 01:45:27,160
okay, yeah, yeah, okay. He chose

1690
01:45:27,160 –> 01:45:30,120
the company line. But you can tell every once in a while he’s like, what

1691
01:45:30,120 –> 01:45:33,280
the f. What the. Right, Right. And this is. And this is a guy who

1692
01:45:33,280 –> 01:45:37,000
was called Little Hands. Marco, everybody forgets about this in Trump’s

1693
01:45:37,000 –> 01:45:40,520
first run to the presidency and got blown off the

1694
01:45:40,520 –> 01:45:44,210
stage. I think he genuinely learned. What

1695
01:45:44,210 –> 01:45:47,570
the hell? Tulsi Gabbard’s another example of a Gen Xer.

1696
01:45:48,130 –> 01:45:51,970
Genuinely learned. Like, this is. Okay, okay, fine,

1697
01:45:51,970 –> 01:45:55,410
if Gen X, actually. And also, it’s a basis of numbers, right?

1698
01:45:55,890 –> 01:45:59,170
We’re the smallest generation between the two mountains of the boomers and the

1699
01:45:59,170 –> 01:46:02,290
millennials. So just on a numbers basis, we won’t get one,

1700
01:46:02,770 –> 01:46:06,490
but we really won’t get one if we don’t get our crap

1701
01:46:06,490 –> 01:46:10,340
together. We actually. This is the clarion call. I’m putting

1702
01:46:10,340 –> 01:46:14,180
it out here at the end of this podcast. We were a generation that

1703
01:46:14,180 –> 01:46:18,020
was raised in absurdity, and we’ve become so inured

1704
01:46:18,100 –> 01:46:21,900
to absurdity that through ironic detachment and

1705
01:46:21,900 –> 01:46:25,620
through irony and through cynicism, quite frankly, you saw this a little bit in A

1706
01:46:25,620 –> 01:46:29,380
Farewell to Arms. We’ve sort of sharpened that to a point to protect ourselves

1707
01:46:29,380 –> 01:46:33,140
so we don’t get hurt. In order to be sincere, to your point, we have

1708
01:46:33,140 –> 01:46:36,050
to be empathetic, which means we have to unharden our hearts.

1709
01:46:36,770 –> 01:46:39,010
And I think that’s going to be really hard for us as leaders. But that’s

1710
01:46:39,010 –> 01:46:41,410
a challenge. And the books, the great books can help us do that.

1711
01:46:42,530 –> 01:46:45,210
So. So I know we’re going to. We’re going to wrap this up in a

1712
01:46:45,210 –> 01:46:49,050
second, right? So just for, just for. Just

1713
01:46:49,050 –> 01:46:52,770
for hoots and hollers, I did something because you said that

1714
01:46:52,770 –> 01:46:55,530
this year you’re going to do a little bit more fact checking on the, on

1715
01:46:55,530 –> 01:46:58,850
the, you know, because you, you put up a couple times. So just for fun,

1716
01:46:59,500 –> 01:47:03,300
I pulled up and I asked Gemini to tell

1717
01:47:03,300 –> 01:47:07,020
me what the Leadership Lessons from Candid would be and

1718
01:47:07,020 –> 01:47:09,820
summarize it for me. Right. So I’m not going to read the whole summary, but

1719
01:47:09,820 –> 01:47:12,380
I want to tell you and you, you tell me how many of these we

1720
01:47:12,380 –> 01:47:15,580
actually hit and this will be funny. Okay. One is

1721
01:47:16,060 –> 01:47:19,860
leaders should focus on tangible, productive work they can control rather

1722
01:47:19,860 –> 01:47:23,060
than worry about global unchangeable

1723
01:47:23,060 –> 01:47:26,860
problems, reject blind optimism and dogma,

1724
01:47:27,470 –> 01:47:30,990
adaptability over entitlement, value of experience

1725
01:47:31,390 –> 01:47:34,790
and knowledge and empathy and humanity in

1726
01:47:34,790 –> 01:47:38,550
humanism. So according to Gemini, we hit just about

1727
01:47:38,550 –> 01:47:42,310
all of those. I think that’s pretty

1728
01:47:42,310 –> 01:47:46,070
funny, actually. That’s actually, that’s actually pretty good. So in other

1729
01:47:46,070 –> 01:47:49,710
words, we are the AI Hay, we are. No, I’m just

1730
01:47:49,710 –> 01:47:50,030
kidding.

1731
01:47:54,840 –> 01:47:58,560
We’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna bring our hard. We’re gonna crack

1732
01:47:58,560 –> 01:48:02,360
our hard Gen X shells and let the light

1733
01:48:02,360 –> 01:48:05,080
from our hearts shine out this season.

1734
01:48:05,960 –> 01:48:09,480
Season number five on the Leadership Lessons from the Great

1735
01:48:09,480 –> 01:48:12,360
Books podcast. But with that,

1736
01:48:18,290 –> 01:48:18,530
It.