Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov w/Claire Chandler & Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 187.

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Picking up from our book today

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we’re going to open up with

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a series of vignettes that will

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sort of set the table for where we’re about to go

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today. In accordance with the

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law, the death sentence was announced to

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Cincinnatus C. In a whisper. All rose,

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exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close to his ear, panted

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for a moment, made the announcement, and slowly moved away

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as though ungluing himself. Thereupon,

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Cincinnatus was taken back to the fortress. The road wound around its

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rocky base and disappeared under the gate like a snake in a crevice.

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He was calm, however, he had to be supported during the journey

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through the long corridors, since he planted his feet unsteadily like a child

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who has just learned to walk, or as if he were about to

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fall through, like a man who has dreamt that he is walking on water,

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only to have a sudden doubt. But is this possible?

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Then another vignette. Sometime later, Rodion the jailer

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came in and offered to dance a waltz with him. Cincinnatus agreed.

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They began to whirl. The keys on Rodion’s leather belt jangled.

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He smelled of sweat, tobacco, and garlic. He hummed, puffing into his red

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beard, and his rusty joints creaked. He was not what he used to be, alas,

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he now he was fat and short of breath. The dance

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carried them into the corridor. Since Natus was much smaller than his

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partner, Cincinnatus was light as a leaf. The wind of the waltz made the

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tips of his long but thin mustache flutter, and his big limpid eyes looked

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askance, as is always the case with timorous dancers.

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He was indeed very small for a full grown man. Martha

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used to say that his shoes were too tight for her. At the bend of

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the corridor stood another guard, nameless with a rifle and wearing a dog like mask

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with a gauze mouthpiece. They described a circle near him and glided back

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into the cell. And now Cincinnatus regretted that the swoon’s friendly embrace

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had been so brief. And then another

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piece here, and I quote Prisoner,

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in this solemn hour, when all eyes are upon thee and thy judges are

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jubilant, and thou art preparing for those involuntary bodily

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movements that directly follow severance of the head, I address to thee a parting

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word. It is my lot, and this I will never forget, to provide

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thy surgeon in gaol with all that multitude of comforts which the

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law allow allows. I shall therefore be glad to devote all possible

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attention to any expression of thy gratitude, preferably, however,

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in written form. And on one side of the sheet.

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Close quote.

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Those are some sections,

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some polls from our book

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today, and we’re going to jump around in it, and I think Nabokov would

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actually appreciate this. We’re going to jump around in this book

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because, well, this book represents something

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that we, we, we kind of sort of

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touch on the edges of on this show. But now we’re going to

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fully embrace it. And so I’m going to open

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up my thoughts with this. I think one day,

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looking back, probably two or 300 years from now,

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historians in the future will write that we now

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have lived, quote, in a long, absurd and dangerous 20th century

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that began in the killing fields of World War I in Europe and ended

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with individuals staring at their phones searching for meaning early

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in the 21st century. Close quote.

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And they will be correct. It has been a long

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and ridiculously absurd century, from the collapse of empires

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to the launching of people to the moon. And of course, we’re doing

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this in 2026. So not only to the moon, but around the

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moon and back. And culture,

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culturally, politically, and socially, the systems that were supposed

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to provide us meaning have failed woefully in

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our long and absurd century.

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But. And here’s the but. Because of our

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technology, we are too arrogant and prideful to admit cultural,

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political, and social defeat. Instead, we’re going to double down on ideas

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and approaches that don’t work. We’re. We’re going to go whole hog into

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that. Now, today’s book that we’re reading

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actually sort of challenges this a little bit in a weird

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kind of way. And I think it should be required reading for

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high school and college students, but mostly for high school

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students, right alongside Alice in Wonderland, Brave New World,

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and the book, I think that is closest to it, in parallel

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1984. 4. It describes the triumph of

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totalizing absurdity in a world where little makes logical

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sense because it’s not supposed to.

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And to recapture meaning and to commit the crime

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of Gnostical turpitude, we’re going to have to reinsert meaning first into

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ourselves and then deeply into our institutions and back into

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our systems. And I do think that will be part of the mission of the

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next 75 years of this century.

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So with that being said, today on the show,

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we are going to cover a book whose fictional narrative,

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like I said, links to the book we covered in episode number 184, where we

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talked about G.K. chesterton’s the man who Was Thursday. You should

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go check that book out and listen to that episode with ideas

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we talked about in episode number 183 where we talked about, once

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again, unreliable narrators like Harry

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Lime in the Third man by Graham Greene.

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Today we are going to glean what we can

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from a very perplexing book on its face and

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try to apply it to our real lived leadership lives

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in this book. And you should be able to catch the COVID right there on

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the video. And there it is.

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Invitation to a Beheading by

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Vladimir Nabokov.

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Leaders, here’s a caution for you.

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Just illustrating absurdity is no longer enough

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to jolt people out of their absurd behavior. We

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need stronger medicine to match the disease

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of the era we are in now.

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And back for this episode today

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from episode number 152 where we discussed the

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Orwellian state of affairs laid out so brilliantly by George Orwell in

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1984, is our co host today, Claire

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Chandler. How you doing, Claire? How’s it going?

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I’m doing great. It’s so great to be back here and

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chatting with you about some of the great, the great literature of our

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history. So I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time.

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So let’s talk about Nabokov because we’ve, I mean we’ve, we’ve

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discussed. This is the only time I’ll mention it. We’ve discussed Lolita.

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Sorry, not sorry. Right, right. And we’ll, we’re going to skip over that. You can

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go listen to that episode. Like to hear that discussion there. And, and we’ve

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discussed in 1884. I like to

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kind of delve in a little bit to, to Nabokov here, kind of poke at

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him a little bit in reading Invitation to

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a Beheading. It’s clearly not Lolita.

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Right. And so what are some of the.

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And we’ll kind of talk about Nabokov as a writer. There’s some ideas I have

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about him. We don’t need to go into his background. If you want to find

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out more about that, you can either go listen to our introduction at Lolita where

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we sort of did a deep dive into him, or you can go listen to

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the shorts episode. I think it’s number 217 from this

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year where we talked about Tim Scholes and Gnostical turpitude,

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tying ideas from east of Eden into Invitation to a

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Beheading and laying the foundation

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for the next episode. That where we’re going to cover Fyodor Dostoevsky’s

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notes for Underground. Oh, yeah, we’re doing all the heavy duties

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in the end of the quarter here, folks, so

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step right up.

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So, yeah, Nabokov. Back to Nabokov. Invitation to bang. Like I said, it’s

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not Lolita. So what are some substantive differences

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between the two texts? And what is. What is. What are the substantive ideas you

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think, do you think, Claire, that Navikov is wrestling with. Wrestling

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with here? Well, there’s. There’s

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a lot, certainly. And I know you’re going to get into a little bit of.

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Of the background, the time in which he wrote this

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book and his other novels. There are

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a couple of themes that bubble up to the top

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for me. One of which, of course, is

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in this sort of theater of the absurd that he has built for us in

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this prison. Is it real, is it imagined?

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Is really why he is there in the first place, right?

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This. This sort of made up crime of

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gnostical turpitude, which I still don’t quite grasp,

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nor are we expected to, but there’s this

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wrestling between how do we maintain our own individuality

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while the world rewards conformity. Right?

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Or maybe says, you need to bring in your individual

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personality because otherwise you are boring, you’re not entertaining.

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Would say, monsieur Pierre. And yet if I,

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you know, if he demonstrates too much of that individual personality, it

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veers off of this totalitarian idea of

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what is proper. Right.

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Reminiscent to me a little bit of the Stranger,

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right? Camus, the Stranger, where he does not mourn.

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It was that book, right, where he does not mourn the death of his mother

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the way that society would have expected him

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to. So there’s a little bit of that. And then there’s also, of course, the.

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How do we truly discern between what is real and what is

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imagined? How much of the prison, the walls, the

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barriers, the stress, the strife are

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fact versus something that we just sort

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of conjure up in our own, you know, out of the ether of our own

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anxiety and our own fear. So, yeah,

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there’s. There’s a lot going on in that, in this, you know, relatively

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short book, unlike Dostoevsky, which you have ahead of you.

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But there’s a lot. There’s a lot there. There’s a lot there for sure.

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There’s also the idea and, and I like how you sort of brought some of

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those themes together, some things that even I didn’t. I hadn’t even picked up on

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in my reading of it because I was so.

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Flummox is probably not close enough to the word.

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Every time I go into Nabokov and I’m

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glad I’m going into him. On the one hand, I’m glad I’m going into him

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now when I’m in my, like, late 40s, because

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I’m a little too old to be seduced by the Kurt

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Vonnegut, like, sort of, oh, isn’t it cool

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that everybody’s lying kind of thing that you get into when you’re, like, in high

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school and a little bit into college when it’s like, oh, I discovered that everybody’s

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lying in the world? Yeah. Okay, great, great big wolf here.

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And I’m not. And I’m not saying, like, to be cynical or dismissive of it.

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I’m saying at the certain developmental stages in our lives, certain

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authors make more sense. There’s a reason why we

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haven’t covered Vonnegut on this show. I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know

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that that well. Anyway, there’s a reason why we haven’t covered Vonnegut on this show.

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I think some people mature. I think you have to mature past certain,

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certain authors. Right. And that’s fine. Certain authors exist a certain

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period of time for certain groups of, for certain groups of people.

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Right. Nabokov, though,

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this is not my second interaction with him.

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And I got to admit, I, I,

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I, I looked at it and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on in

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your, in your brain pan. Like, I, so I see the total, to your point,

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I see the totalitarian thing here. Right.

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And that is reflected in Abakov’s life. So when I went back and looked at

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his life, did a little bit more research on him, I mean, you know, he,

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he was early to absurdism. He was

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early to, like, the absurd nature of totalitarian societies in

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1938, you know, coming up in,

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in a Stalinist Russia where there were

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secret police and gulags and everybody inside of the country knew it,

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but the information was not going out to the broader, the broader

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world population. And even if it was, it was 1938.

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So we’re knocking on the door of Hitler and we’re knocking on the door of

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World War II. So all of that needed

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to be sort of negotiated in a geopolitical sense. And

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Nabokov often said in interviews about this book

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that he did not anticipate German fascism.

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And so for him, the book stood in not as an

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indictment of German fascism as a totalizing

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geopolitical force, but communism as

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a totalizing geopolitical force. But he would never say that out loud

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because, you know, you gotta live right? You can’t have the secret

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police chasing you around Europe and Switzerland in America for, like, the next. Like,

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for the rest of your life. Right.

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But with that framing, with that thinking, I also got the

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sense from reading the book, this was one of the things I held on to

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solidly. And you could tell me if I’m maybe if I’m right or wrong.

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He was obsessed with, at least in this book,

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the dichotomies between what

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Communism or Marxism promised and then the reality

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that showed up. And I don’t think he had a good handle on how

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to deal with all that. And I think this book

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was an attempt to get a handle on how to deal with that. Am I

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00:14:55,130 –> 00:14:58,690
reading. Do you think I’m reading that correctly? I mean, I

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think that’s absolutely valid. I do think that he, like a lot of

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the other authors of that time and other times in

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history where thoughts were regulated or

235
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speech was punished, the great authors, this is their form

236
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of rebellion, right? This is their form of speaking out in a way that is

237
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somewhat. I don’t want to say protected, but disguised.

238
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Right. And it’s. So. I think he lived in a time where he

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00:15:25,220 –> 00:15:28,940
didn’t perhaps see German fascism, but he did

240
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see what was coming, and the world was shifting in

241
00:15:32,659 –> 00:15:36,340
ways that he wasn’t totally cool with. And so he thought,

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00:15:36,340 –> 00:15:40,100
well, the more absurd I can make this story, the

243
00:15:40,100 –> 00:15:43,830
more outside the bounds of reality, the safer

244
00:15:43,830 –> 00:15:46,430
it is for me to be uber critical

245
00:15:47,630 –> 00:15:50,670
of the jailers and of the sentence and of the crime.

246
00:15:51,310 –> 00:15:54,910
Right, right. Well. And this book got passed around

247
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first as samizdat, Right. Which is the Russian

248
00:15:58,670 –> 00:16:02,430
term for. The Russian

249
00:16:02,430 –> 00:16:05,710
term for the practice and actually the product

250
00:16:06,350 –> 00:16:10,080
of sending around mimeograft, basically

251
00:16:10,080 –> 00:16:13,400
mimeograph books at the state, if they got a hold of them, would kill you

252
00:16:13,400 –> 00:16:16,160
for having. Right. And so samizdat was

253
00:16:16,480 –> 00:16:19,920
revolutionary papers. It was anything that was outside of

254
00:16:20,960 –> 00:16:24,720
Pravda, which was, of course, the Russian word for truth, Right. The official

255
00:16:24,720 –> 00:16:28,200
organ of the Communist Party in. In. In the Soviet

256
00:16:28,200 –> 00:16:31,800
Union. And so samizdat got passed around between people. Like,

257
00:16:31,800 –> 00:16:35,040
literally talk about this with our episode on

258
00:16:36,750 –> 00:16:40,150
Solzhenitsyn, right, where Gulag

259
00:16:40,150 –> 00:16:43,350
Archipelago got passed around as Miami. A graph, a

260
00:16:43,350 –> 00:16:47,070
mimeograph document that you had to pass from neighbor to neighbor by hand, and

261
00:16:47,070 –> 00:16:50,830
you only pass it to people that you trusted, and that was it.

262
00:16:50,830 –> 00:16:53,350
And if it got out of the neighbor’s hand, everybody was gonna be like, nope,

263
00:16:53,350 –> 00:16:55,630
not mine, you know, and. And back away.

264
00:16:57,230 –> 00:17:00,710
If I remember correctly, in my research into the. The book and how it came

265
00:17:00,710 –> 00:17:03,310
together. This was also passed around as part of that

266
00:17:03,850 –> 00:17:06,890
samizdat, sort of underground

267
00:17:07,930 –> 00:17:11,610
publishing scheme that was going on in Russia,

268
00:17:14,250 –> 00:17:17,650
at least at first. That’s how it was first published. And then when he escaped

269
00:17:17,650 –> 00:17:20,890
and got out of the Soviet Union and came to the west,

270
00:17:23,850 –> 00:17:27,610
he managed to go ahead and publish it sort of more openly and

271
00:17:27,610 –> 00:17:29,690
collect everything together and publish it more openly.

272
00:17:32,510 –> 00:17:36,190
And that idea of sort of subversively passing around

273
00:17:36,190 –> 00:17:39,310
ideas. Oh,

274
00:17:40,590 –> 00:17:43,310
it’s not necessarily a theme that runs through the book.

275
00:17:44,350 –> 00:17:47,070
I don’t sense that. You talked about.

276
00:17:51,230 –> 00:17:54,670
Whatever his name is, the guy with the P. And. And I can’t really get.

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00:17:54,910 –> 00:17:58,080
Okay, you got to explain that character. Me, I could not get a handle on

278
00:17:58,080 –> 00:18:01,840
him. Like, what is his role there? Is he a. Is

279
00:18:01,840 –> 00:18:05,640
he a prisoner? Or is he just, like, a MacGuffin for,

280
00:18:05,640 –> 00:18:08,480
like, other things? Well,

281
00:18:09,760 –> 00:18:13,480
we’re going to get into that with the whole second Cincinnatus, don’t

282
00:18:13,480 –> 00:18:17,040
forget, because there’s this shadow, one of him, too,

283
00:18:17,280 –> 00:18:20,920
that. The. The Pierre guy. Just for simplicity, let’s just call him

284
00:18:20,920 –> 00:18:24,680
that. It took me a beat

285
00:18:24,680 –> 00:18:27,320
to understand what the heck he was, too.

286
00:18:28,840 –> 00:18:32,360
Both within the story as the character, and then also

287
00:18:33,800 –> 00:18:37,320
from the writer’s perspective. He was a vehicle for something. Right. Because

288
00:18:38,040 –> 00:18:41,880
everything’s a device. And so for him to just sort

289
00:18:41,880 –> 00:18:45,440
of show up billed as a fellow

290
00:18:45,440 –> 00:18:48,440
prisoner, but clearly with more.

291
00:18:49,750 –> 00:18:53,510
With more freedoms than Cincinnatus enjoyed, or

292
00:18:53,510 –> 00:18:57,110
at least he took advantage of more

293
00:18:57,110 –> 00:19:00,750
freedoms that were offered to him than Cincinnatus did, because sometimes

294
00:19:00,750 –> 00:19:03,670
Cincinnatus was allowed out of his cell and he could go for a walk and

295
00:19:03,750 –> 00:19:07,470
he could play with the daughter of the warden. I mean, what was

296
00:19:07,470 –> 00:19:10,710
that about? Right? Was she real? Was she imaginary? So,

297
00:19:11,750 –> 00:19:15,470
yeah, and then for Pierre to come around and all of a sudden go, oh,

298
00:19:15,470 –> 00:19:19,190
I’m the one who’s gonna separate your head from your body tomorrow. So I wanted

299
00:19:19,190 –> 00:19:21,590
to, you know, get to know you. It’s like. Right,

300
00:19:22,790 –> 00:19:25,990
yeah, yeah. Again, absurd, right? It’s all.

301
00:19:26,470 –> 00:19:30,070
It’s. And it’s like, as he’s. As he’s sitting there writing that,

302
00:19:31,030 –> 00:19:34,630
do you think he kind of, like, would. Would write a section, walk away,

303
00:19:34,710 –> 00:19:38,470
have some vodka, and then go, how do I even amp up

304
00:19:38,470 –> 00:19:42,190
the absurdity of what I just wrote? Because I don’t think it’s absurd enough

305
00:19:42,190 –> 00:19:45,440
yet. Oh, so I don’t think

306
00:19:45,440 –> 00:19:49,120
Nabokov needed vodka. Oh, yeah. So

307
00:19:49,120 –> 00:19:52,720
it’s certainly Stephen King. Like, all of his plots come out of dreams he has.

308
00:19:53,120 –> 00:19:56,720
Yeah, that’s scary, too. Yes. I think. I think

309
00:19:57,040 –> 00:20:00,600
Nabokov is one of those. Was one of those

310
00:20:00,600 –> 00:20:04,080
literary novelists whose brain was just

311
00:20:04,240 –> 00:20:07,920
that way. He didn’t need another.

312
00:20:08,400 –> 00:20:11,930
I’ll put him. Another person who I would say is. Was kind of wired that

313
00:20:11,930 –> 00:20:15,730
way was Charles Bukowski and.

314
00:20:17,170 –> 00:20:20,930
Or. Or. Or maybe a More. A more popular title because he was a

315
00:20:20,930 –> 00:20:24,450
poet. Was more of a poet. Hunter Thompson.

316
00:20:24,610 –> 00:20:28,210
Right. He. He was. Now. Now, people.

317
00:20:28,770 –> 00:20:32,250
Here’s the interesting thing. People confuse the absurdity of how a

318
00:20:32,250 –> 00:20:35,770
person’s brain, a creative brain, works with the creativity. Absurdity, the

319
00:20:35,770 –> 00:20:39,600
creativity of how a brain works. They confuse that with a lack

320
00:20:39,600 –> 00:20:43,000
of discipline, which is why Stephen King’s book. I’m glad you brought up Stephen King.

321
00:20:43,000 –> 00:20:46,360
Stephen King’s book on writing is one of the greatest books about writing ever written.

322
00:20:47,080 –> 00:20:50,760
Because just like Hunter S. Thompson, who had a

323
00:20:50,760 –> 00:20:54,440
ridiculous discipline that he stuck to with writing,

324
00:20:55,400 –> 00:20:58,920
Stephen King has a ridiculous discipline that he sticks to with writing

325
00:21:00,360 –> 00:21:04,200
that he then filters, like, you know, the cocaine fuel. Tommyknockers through,

326
00:21:04,550 –> 00:21:08,270
you know, or whatever. Right. You know, and

327
00:21:08,270 –> 00:21:10,950
that book is wild, by the way. We’ll never cover that book on the show.

328
00:21:10,950 –> 00:21:13,910
This is not. This is not the show for that. But Tommy Knockers is a

329
00:21:13,910 –> 00:21:17,750
wild book if you ever have an opportunity to pick it up. Nabokov,

330
00:21:17,750 –> 00:21:21,470
I think, was the same thing. He had a. And here’s. Here’s how I

331
00:21:21,470 –> 00:21:24,710
kind of get a sense or I kind of know that he had that discipline.

332
00:21:26,070 –> 00:21:29,470
You don’t go out and become a la doctor with the

333
00:21:29,470 –> 00:21:32,990
butterfly stuff. Yeah. Without having some, like,

334
00:21:32,990 –> 00:21:36,790
discipline inside of you. Yeah. That’s not an

335
00:21:36,790 –> 00:21:40,630
accidental sort of. I’m just gonna trip and fall over this hobby kind of

336
00:21:40,630 –> 00:21:43,910
thing. Yeah, that’s not a casual hobby. Yeah, that’s not a casual hobby. That is

337
00:21:43,910 –> 00:21:47,510
a. That is a thing that comes directly out of who he

338
00:21:47,510 –> 00:21:51,230
is as a person. And so I absolutely think he was

339
00:21:51,230 –> 00:21:54,150
disciplined in his writing and in his production.

340
00:21:55,350 –> 00:21:59,190
And he came from a time when writers didn’t talk about writing because

341
00:21:59,190 –> 00:22:01,790
they didn’t want to ruin the magic of it. It’s only the post World War

342
00:22:01,790 –> 00:22:05,430
II writers that talk about writing, because now everybody wants to know about

343
00:22:05,430 –> 00:22:08,350
process and wants to get into the thing, wants to figure out how the magician

344
00:22:08,350 –> 00:22:12,030
does the tricks. Pre World War II writers, or I would say

345
00:22:12,030 –> 00:22:13,830
writers up until World War II,

346
00:22:17,190 –> 00:22:20,750
they didn’t really explain the magic. They’re just like, I don’t know, I sit down

347
00:22:20,750 –> 00:22:24,550
and stuff comes out of me. Yeah. But, you know, I think you’re spot on

348
00:22:24,550 –> 00:22:28,370
in terms of speaking to his discipline. Because while the

349
00:22:28,370 –> 00:22:31,490
story is absurd and like you, I kept

350
00:22:32,210 –> 00:22:35,770
getting through certain points of it and going, why did we agree to cover this

351
00:22:35,770 –> 00:22:38,610
book? Like what it. It. Because it’s, it is so

352
00:22:39,890 –> 00:22:43,410
to say, bizarrely absurd, I realize is redundant, but it is bizarrely

353
00:22:43,410 –> 00:22:47,010
absurd. But I’m also thinking the

354
00:22:47,010 –> 00:22:49,650
original was written in Russian. Yes. Right. Yes.

355
00:22:52,130 –> 00:22:55,810
The translation into English, which is the version that,

356
00:22:56,100 –> 00:22:59,740
that we read. I also have to wonder, just sitting here kind of

357
00:22:59,740 –> 00:23:03,460
unpacking it with you, did it become more absurd in the translation?

358
00:23:03,460 –> 00:23:07,220
Less absurd? Like, is it true to the absurdity in

359
00:23:07,220 –> 00:23:10,660
the original? Because there were a couple of very, very few, but there were a

360
00:23:10,660 –> 00:23:14,340
couple of phrases in the book that he kept

361
00:23:14,340 –> 00:23:18,060
in Russian because they didn’t, they don’t translate. Right. It was

362
00:23:18,060 –> 00:23:21,870
like one or two. They were sort of throw, throwaway lines for us because I

363
00:23:21,870 –> 00:23:25,470
don’t know about you, but I don’t speak Russian. But like they, they defied

364
00:23:25,470 –> 00:23:29,150
translation. Right. So I just, it’s just another

365
00:23:29,230 –> 00:23:32,750
layer of, of nuance when you think about, when you, when you are

366
00:23:32,990 –> 00:23:35,950
setting about and your job is to translate

367
00:23:36,750 –> 00:23:40,190
this absurd book into English and,

368
00:23:40,350 –> 00:23:44,070
you know, keep it true to the original absurdity. That was the

369
00:23:44,070 –> 00:23:47,710
Russian original. Tall task. Well, it’s a

370
00:23:47,710 –> 00:23:51,180
tall task. Yeah. And, and we don’t, we never talked about this on the show,

371
00:23:51,180 –> 00:23:54,940
but this is a good opportunity to sort of unplug or not unplug, but

372
00:23:54,940 –> 00:23:57,060
unpack this for a couple of minutes. So,

373
00:23:59,140 –> 00:24:02,420
so we’re going to read Dostoyevsky. And Dostoyevsky made his money

374
00:24:03,380 –> 00:24:07,220
before he sort of, not sort of, before he started creating novels and writing

375
00:24:07,220 –> 00:24:09,460
novels. He made a ton of his money

376
00:24:11,140 –> 00:24:14,820
translating novels from Russian into various

377
00:24:14,820 –> 00:24:17,300
other languages. And so he sort of walked that divide.

378
00:24:18,090 –> 00:24:20,170
Nabokov, if I remember correctly,

379
00:24:22,090 –> 00:24:25,930
translated his own novels right. Into, into

380
00:24:25,930 –> 00:24:29,490
other languages. He was also, he also spoke, you know, French

381
00:24:29,490 –> 00:24:32,330
and I believe German

382
00:24:33,450 –> 00:24:37,290
as well as Russian and of course English. Right. So he’s operating in,

383
00:24:37,290 –> 00:24:40,970
in four different languages. And the dynamic

384
00:24:40,970 –> 00:24:44,260
of translation and the

385
00:24:44,260 –> 00:24:47,300
dynamic of different languages

386
00:24:48,180 –> 00:24:52,020
saying or being able to express the same

387
00:24:52,020 –> 00:24:54,340
human idea but in a different kind of way

388
00:24:56,260 –> 00:24:58,660
is something to your point that I think we,

389
00:25:00,660 –> 00:25:03,820
I think we devalue very much in the west because English has just sort of

390
00:25:03,820 –> 00:25:07,660
won the day and sort of in business and all my

391
00:25:07,660 –> 00:25:11,360
French speaking listeners, I apologize, like, but

392
00:25:12,080 –> 00:25:15,880
sorry. So, so, but, but if

393
00:25:15,880 –> 00:25:18,480
we want to do business, even with the Chinese, if you want to do business,

394
00:25:18,480 –> 00:25:22,160
we’re all going to speak English, right? So

395
00:25:22,160 –> 00:25:24,320
there’s a certain level of cultural and

396
00:25:25,920 –> 00:25:29,720
Civilizational hubris that comes along with that, that’s just sort of baked into

397
00:25:29,720 –> 00:25:33,040
the pie. And so coming from Russian

398
00:25:33,200 –> 00:25:36,320
into English and realizing that

399
00:25:37,360 –> 00:25:41,120
even though both, there’s. There’s

400
00:25:41,120 –> 00:25:44,080
no fundamental difference between people who speak English and people who speak Russian at a

401
00:25:44,080 –> 00:25:47,200
human level, it’s just a difference in language, how you express

402
00:25:47,280 –> 00:25:51,000
absurdity. But the way in which the depth of that

403
00:25:51,000 –> 00:25:54,440
absurdity is expressed is going to subtly shift in

404
00:25:54,440 –> 00:25:58,000
language. And a translator is going to. A translator who doesn’t. Either doesn’t know anything

405
00:25:58,000 –> 00:26:01,080
about Russian or doesn’t know anything about English is going to miss that. But if

406
00:26:01,080 –> 00:26:04,780
you do know that, you are going to struggle. Like I think

407
00:26:04,780 –> 00:26:08,500
of if I’m trying to get instruction in whatever

408
00:26:08,500 –> 00:26:10,780
I’m doing in jiu jitsu, this is the first time I’ll bring it up and

409
00:26:10,780 –> 00:26:12,540
the last time I’ll bring it up, because I gotta bring it up once a

410
00:26:12,540 –> 00:26:16,180
show. But if I’m doing jiu jitsu and I’m doing something, and one of my

411
00:26:16,180 –> 00:26:19,900
instructors speaks. Is Brazilian and speaks Portuguese, I could.

412
00:26:19,900 –> 00:26:23,300
I could watch him get frustrated explaining a

413
00:26:23,300 –> 00:26:27,100
concept in English. And finally he just defaults to, we’ll just do this. I don’t

414
00:26:27,100 –> 00:26:30,620
know you, ain’t you. He always says, you Americans, you have to name everything. And

415
00:26:30,620 –> 00:26:33,860
he just walks away like everything is in your name. Just do this thing.

416
00:26:35,300 –> 00:26:38,980
Yeah, right. Because it doesn’t. There’s no

417
00:26:39,060 –> 00:26:42,820
parallel in Portuguese, right. For what we’re doing

418
00:26:42,820 –> 00:26:45,860
here in. In. In English, right.

419
00:26:46,580 –> 00:26:50,260
Even though the body is doing. There’s no difference between a Portuguese, a Brazilian

420
00:26:50,260 –> 00:26:53,980
body and an American body. There’s no difference. Same. Come on. It’s like

421
00:26:53,980 –> 00:26:57,560
we’re Martians or whatever. But there’s no way to sort of get that across,

422
00:26:57,560 –> 00:27:01,160
right. The depth of that. So I think it’s the same thing with, with the.

423
00:27:01,240 –> 00:27:04,280
With this. With this book and with the translation.

424
00:27:05,480 –> 00:27:09,320
One other thing, and I’m reading Les Miserables right now

425
00:27:09,320 –> 00:27:12,120
because we’re going to cover that in June, and I would love to read Les

426
00:27:12,120 –> 00:27:14,840
Miserables in the original French. Actually, the person who I have coming on,

427
00:27:15,800 –> 00:27:18,120
she’s probably going to outdo me and she’s going to read it in the original

428
00:27:18,120 –> 00:27:21,810
French because she’s. She’s a huge Francophile and she’ll so

429
00:27:21,810 –> 00:27:25,610
comfort of the original French and I will be at a significant disadvantage. But

430
00:27:25,610 –> 00:27:29,290
that’s fine. She will beat me on my

431
00:27:29,290 –> 00:27:33,050
own show. But, but. But

432
00:27:33,050 –> 00:27:36,890
one of the things that strikes me is I wish I

433
00:27:36,890 –> 00:27:40,650
knew Russian because I think I would get something more

434
00:27:40,650 –> 00:27:43,530
out of the book. I think it would probably make more sense if I read

435
00:27:43,530 –> 00:27:47,130
it in the original Russian. And then the little

436
00:27:47,130 –> 00:27:50,900
French pieces that, that are dropped into invitation to a beheading

437
00:27:51,220 –> 00:27:54,900
would actually make more sense as well, because I’m reading this, this whole entire

438
00:27:54,900 –> 00:27:58,660
sentence in English. And then there’s this little French piece here, and I

439
00:27:58,660 –> 00:28:01,300
don’t know about you, but I don’t go to Google Translate and then, like, put

440
00:28:01,300 –> 00:28:03,900
the French piece in. I don’t, I don’t have time. I just got to read

441
00:28:03,900 –> 00:28:07,180
the book. Right. So I just sort of live with that, not knowing. I live

442
00:28:07,180 –> 00:28:10,580
with that little hole in the boat. And there was a lot of that here

443
00:28:10,580 –> 00:28:13,740
in this book. Right. And he did. And this will be the only time I

444
00:28:13,740 –> 00:28:16,560
reference Lolita. He did that a lot in that book. I as well,

445
00:28:18,160 –> 00:28:21,840
you know, where I, I, I took high school French. So I, I knew enough

446
00:28:21,840 –> 00:28:24,920
of the words to be dangerous, get the general sense. And then, like you, I

447
00:28:24,920 –> 00:28:28,520
just, you know, moved on and just assumed it wasn’t going to materially

448
00:28:28,520 –> 00:28:32,240
affect my understanding of the book. Right, right.

449
00:28:33,200 –> 00:28:35,520
So it really didn’t. But it really didn’t. Y.

450
00:28:42,650 –> 00:28:46,170
There’s another thing here that we’ll go, we’ll go back to the book, another

451
00:28:46,170 –> 00:28:49,130
idea here that I want to lay the foundation for and we’ll talk about today.

452
00:28:50,250 –> 00:28:52,970
So does Navakov believe

453
00:28:54,090 –> 00:28:57,890
that people can be decent? I’ll frame it as

454
00:28:57,890 –> 00:28:58,250
a question.

455
00:29:04,730 –> 00:29:06,890
I’m going to say yes, because.

456
00:29:14,250 –> 00:29:17,530
Two bits of evidence that I would say to back that up. One is,

457
00:29:18,010 –> 00:29:21,690
despite the fact that he was imprisoned throughout the entire book,

458
00:29:22,490 –> 00:29:25,290
there was a common thread of frustration,

459
00:29:26,970 –> 00:29:30,170
but I didn’t really pick up on a sense of

460
00:29:30,570 –> 00:29:33,930
hopelessness. Right. There was

461
00:29:33,930 –> 00:29:37,500
frustration, less so about his quarters

462
00:29:37,500 –> 00:29:41,020
and more so about the people who kept visiting him and interrupting

463
00:29:41,580 –> 00:29:44,300
his solitary confinement, essentially. Right.

464
00:29:45,420 –> 00:29:48,620
And then, of course, the ending, which I know we’ll get to, and I don’t

465
00:29:48,620 –> 00:29:52,340
necessarily want to spoil the ending for, you know, the audience, but, you

466
00:29:52,340 –> 00:29:55,980
know, the fact that the, the ending was, if not

467
00:29:55,980 –> 00:29:59,620
redemptive, at least not final. And

468
00:29:59,620 –> 00:30:03,390
so I do think, you know, and then there’s other threads, like this, this

469
00:30:03,390 –> 00:30:07,110
Pierre guy who was like, you know, by all, by all accounts,

470
00:30:07,110 –> 00:30:10,750
he was the executioner, but he wanted to make sure that Cincinnatus had a good,

471
00:30:10,750 –> 00:30:14,470
good time right up until the final cutting.

472
00:30:14,470 –> 00:30:17,470
Right. I mean, like, I wanted him to be well fed, and how could you

473
00:30:17,470 –> 00:30:20,430
complain about this meal? And we, you know, we ate so well. And then, of

474
00:30:20,430 –> 00:30:23,950
course, later, Pierre had some indigestion to deal with, but regardless.

475
00:30:24,110 –> 00:30:26,670
Right, so. So I do think that that

476
00:30:27,630 –> 00:30:31,290
would suggest that Nabokov is, at

477
00:30:31,290 –> 00:30:34,970
heart. I wouldn’t call him an

478
00:30:34,970 –> 00:30:38,450
optimist. I don’t think we would call him that, but let’s not go that far.

479
00:30:38,450 –> 00:30:41,650
He generally believes that most

480
00:30:42,290 –> 00:30:45,490
people are inherently good.

481
00:30:46,690 –> 00:30:50,530
Okay, okay, I’m going to. I’m going to

482
00:30:50,530 –> 00:30:52,650
pick up on something here. By the way, there’s a bunch of other characters in

483
00:30:52,650 –> 00:30:56,460
here, too. It’s not just Cincinnatus and Pierce.

484
00:30:56,690 –> 00:31:00,250
That’s also. There’s Rhodian, who. So

485
00:31:00,250 –> 00:31:04,050
Rodion is the jailer. Right. I had

486
00:31:04,050 –> 00:31:07,690
a little bit of trouble following that bouncing ball that. That kept, like, sliding off

487
00:31:07,690 –> 00:31:11,330
of the glass. But Rhode on is the jailer. And then

488
00:31:12,770 –> 00:31:16,090
you have the other character in here who also has an R name. Right.

489
00:31:16,090 –> 00:31:19,330
Rodrigo. Right. I’m pronouncing that correctly.

490
00:31:20,530 –> 00:31:23,780
Who or not Rodrigo. Sorry,

491
00:31:23,780 –> 00:31:26,860
Rodriguez. Rodrigue. Rose. Rig was the.

492
00:31:27,660 –> 00:31:31,100
Was the. The librarian. Correct.

493
00:31:31,660 –> 00:31:35,500
Who kept bringing him back? He’s a librarian. Yeah, probably. Yes, yes. I don’t

494
00:31:35,500 –> 00:31:38,300
know. There were too many. There were too many. There weren’t nearly as many names

495
00:31:38,300 –> 00:31:41,460
as in a dusty Epson novel, but there were a lot of names. No, no,

496
00:31:41,460 –> 00:31:44,740
not the Librarian. He was the prison doctor. That’s right. Rodriguez was the prison doctor.

497
00:31:44,740 –> 00:31:47,180
That’s right. Yes, yes, yes. And then the librarian

498
00:31:48,400 –> 00:31:51,760
sort of just. I don’t think he had a name. He didn’t have a name?

499
00:31:51,760 –> 00:31:54,760
No, no, the librarian didn’t have name. The Library just comes in and out, like,

500
00:31:54,760 –> 00:31:58,080
delivering the magazines and being bothered that he’s being bothered. And they just.

501
00:31:58,400 –> 00:32:01,840
Right. He’s. He’s Brooks from Shawshank. Absolutely. Yeah.

502
00:32:03,600 –> 00:32:07,360
Ah. I would not have drawn that parallel, but yes. Yes, he is.

503
00:32:07,520 –> 00:32:11,240
Yes, he is. Oh, my gosh. Oh, and let’s. One

504
00:32:11,240 –> 00:32:13,840
last thing before I go back to the book. So, Cincinnatus. Right.

505
00:32:15,860 –> 00:32:19,540
The name Cincinnatus comes from the. No,

506
00:32:19,620 –> 00:32:23,220
Greek. Is it Greek? No, Roman. Right. Roman legend

507
00:32:23,700 –> 00:32:26,700
of. Yes, it’s Roman. The Roman legend of

508
00:32:26,700 –> 00:32:30,259
Cincinnatus. Who was. I’ll just give a very

509
00:32:30,259 –> 00:32:34,060
brief overview. You can go Wikipedia more of this. And I

510
00:32:34,060 –> 00:32:36,980
had to Wikipedia just to be sure what I was like remembering.

511
00:32:37,860 –> 00:32:41,650
But Cincinnatus was a farmer

512
00:32:41,890 –> 00:32:45,690
in the Roman Republic who was invited in

513
00:32:45,690 –> 00:32:49,450
by the Senate, or invited and petitioned by

514
00:32:49,450 –> 00:32:52,530
the Senate. The Roman Senate, when Rome was still a republic,

515
00:32:53,650 –> 00:32:57,490
to. To basically take control of Rome and become

516
00:32:57,490 –> 00:33:01,170
a dictator in order to defeat an invading

517
00:33:01,170 –> 00:33:03,850
army from the outside. I can’t remember who it was. It might have been The

518
00:33:03,850 –> 00:33:07,560
Persians or one of those other invading armies. Anyway, so Cincinnatus comes

519
00:33:07,560 –> 00:33:11,280
in, he takes on the mantle of authority from.

520
00:33:11,360 –> 00:33:14,240
From the. From the Senate, becomes a dictator,

521
00:33:15,040 –> 00:33:18,880
marshals the Roman city state, marshals all the forces,

522
00:33:21,040 –> 00:33:24,680
defeats the invading barbarian hordes, and then. And this is the

523
00:33:24,680 –> 00:33:28,480
thing that makes Cincinnatus so interesting, then goes back to the

524
00:33:28,480 –> 00:33:32,280
Senate and basically says, I don’t want to be dictator anymore. You all

525
00:33:32,280 –> 00:33:36,000
have a good day. Lays down his power and leaves, sort of

526
00:33:36,000 –> 00:33:39,800
walks out the door. Mic drop, I’m finished. Goes back to his farm

527
00:33:39,800 –> 00:33:43,600
and. And in the. In the legend, if I remember correctly, and those

528
00:33:43,600 –> 00:33:46,840
of you who are listening will correct me if I. If I don’t remember correctly,

529
00:33:48,280 –> 00:33:52,120
but dies behind his plow, not pursuing any. Any power.

530
00:33:52,760 –> 00:33:55,880
And. And Cincinnatus is used as a. As a

531
00:33:57,880 –> 00:34:01,650
sort of an avatar for the individual who

532
00:34:01,650 –> 00:34:05,450
comes in, is offered dictatorial

533
00:34:05,450 –> 00:34:08,930
power. Right. Uses that power

534
00:34:09,170 –> 00:34:12,890
not to his own ends, but to service the city state or to service the

535
00:34:12,890 –> 00:34:16,570
populi vox. Populi. Right. And then. And

536
00:34:16,570 –> 00:34:19,490
then steps back and steps away from that.

537
00:34:20,370 –> 00:34:24,130
The usual parallels, by the way, in the American Republic

538
00:34:24,130 –> 00:34:27,710
are to, of course, George Washington,

539
00:34:28,510 –> 00:34:32,270
who didn’t want to be president and didn’t want to be king

540
00:34:32,270 –> 00:34:35,110
either, he just wanted to go back to Mount Vernon to be left alone, which

541
00:34:35,110 –> 00:34:38,670
is kind of amazing. And who put down power when he could have actually

542
00:34:38,670 –> 00:34:42,470
been a king and people would have. Would have been fine

543
00:34:42,470 –> 00:34:45,950
with that at that time, but it would have set a terrible precedent for the

544
00:34:45,950 –> 00:34:47,470
future of the American Republic.

545
00:34:49,710 –> 00:34:53,400
So I say all that to say it’s interesting that the prisoner’s name who

546
00:34:53,400 –> 00:34:56,360
is due for execution is

547
00:34:56,440 –> 00:34:59,080
Cincinnatus. I do not think that that is an accidental

548
00:35:00,760 –> 00:35:04,600
pick that Nabokov had for that name and for that character.

549
00:35:04,840 –> 00:35:08,640
And I’m still not clear from reading the text why

550
00:35:08,640 –> 00:35:12,240
he picked it. Like, what the subtle jab is

551
00:35:12,240 –> 00:35:16,080
he’s making at the Russian Communists there, because

552
00:35:16,080 –> 00:35:18,320
I think it is a jab at the communists, but I’m not quite sure where

553
00:35:18,320 –> 00:35:21,850
the jab goes in Russian. Right. I just know it’s there.

554
00:35:23,610 –> 00:35:27,370
Yeah, yeah, that’s. That’s interesting. And you’re going to. You’re going to

555
00:35:27,370 –> 00:35:30,570
hate me for the commercial parallel, but, you know, it’s sort of the

556
00:35:30,570 –> 00:35:34,250
alternative ending to Gladiator. Right. Where he

557
00:35:34,250 –> 00:35:38,050
had ultimate power and he conquered the barbarian horde and wanted to

558
00:35:38,050 –> 00:35:41,450
just go back to his farm and turn the power over to the Senate. Right.

559
00:35:42,090 –> 00:35:45,690
Would have been a completely different movie. Yeah, it’s interesting. I.

560
00:35:45,850 –> 00:35:49,010
So you did more research on that than. Than I did. I

561
00:35:49,330 –> 00:35:53,050
figured, okay, Cincinnatus, Unusual name. Did it for a reason, and then I

562
00:35:53,050 –> 00:35:56,450
just accepted it. Yeah.

563
00:35:57,090 –> 00:36:00,690
I’m struggling to understand the parallel between that name, which I

564
00:36:00,690 –> 00:36:03,170
absolutely agree with you. He chose with intention

565
00:36:05,090 –> 00:36:07,970
and what that message,

566
00:36:08,610 –> 00:36:10,850
subtle as it might be, was to

567
00:36:12,690 –> 00:36:15,880
the communists of the time. Interesting. Yeah.

568
00:36:16,360 –> 00:36:18,200
And I wonder if it was a message that

569
00:36:19,880 –> 00:36:23,160
the. I wonder if it was a message about

570
00:36:23,160 –> 00:36:26,480
dictatorship and. And

571
00:36:26,480 –> 00:36:30,000
totalizing power. And I wonder if it was a

572
00:36:30,000 –> 00:36:33,760
message to the readers and less to the party members, because the party members

573
00:36:33,760 –> 00:36:37,360
wouldn’t. While they were aware of. Of samizdat, they

574
00:36:37,360 –> 00:36:40,970
weren’t like, trying to stop it because they didn’t think it had any power. Right.

575
00:36:42,250 –> 00:36:46,090
So it’s like, I think of the eye of Sauron in Lord of

576
00:36:46,090 –> 00:36:49,890
the Rings. Right? The eye that searches for everything and misses

577
00:36:49,890 –> 00:36:52,970
the smallest thing. Because of course.

578
00:36:56,490 –> 00:36:58,970
And it is a totalizing eye. It always is.

579
00:37:01,690 –> 00:37:04,970
But it’s interesting too, because you’re parallel about

580
00:37:05,850 –> 00:37:07,530
the war of Cincinnatus.

581
00:37:09,760 –> 00:37:13,400
Would you characterize this Cincinnatus as a hero? Because that, you know, the

582
00:37:13,400 –> 00:37:14,960
Roman one clearly was.

583
00:37:20,480 –> 00:37:24,320
Right. Because a lot of protagonists are heroes.

584
00:37:24,320 –> 00:37:26,960
They’re heroic, they do something. They conquer

585
00:37:28,720 –> 00:37:32,360
evil. They, you know, they defeat a global enemy, whatever it

586
00:37:32,360 –> 00:37:34,420
is. We don’t have that here.

587
00:37:35,940 –> 00:37:39,740
So that’s a good question. And this is a little bit far

588
00:37:39,740 –> 00:37:43,060
afield from where we are today, but that’s okay. So

589
00:37:45,620 –> 00:37:48,100
one of the things that I’m. I’m involved in a project

590
00:37:49,459 –> 00:37:52,740
in another area of my. My work life

591
00:37:53,060 –> 00:37:56,340
where we are. I’m working with a group of people

592
00:37:56,820 –> 00:37:57,220
to

593
00:38:01,070 –> 00:38:04,510
bring in a professional, an ensconcer

594
00:38:04,510 –> 00:38:08,150
professional in an academic institution who has

595
00:38:08,150 –> 00:38:10,750
spent 25 years of his career

596
00:38:13,390 –> 00:38:16,350
working on and delivering on.

597
00:38:17,630 –> 00:38:21,270
Not delivering on, but delivering the ideas that are embedded in

598
00:38:21,270 –> 00:38:25,110
Jungian myth to. And Jungian myth and mythological

599
00:38:25,110 –> 00:38:28,340
structures to people who do not have a story structure in

600
00:38:28,340 –> 00:38:32,100
postmodern America, and that’s vague enough to not be

601
00:38:32,100 –> 00:38:35,740
specific and specific enough to get to the idea of where it is. I want

602
00:38:35,740 –> 00:38:39,380
to go with this idea. Right. And one of the things that this individual, this

603
00:38:39,380 –> 00:38:42,820
professional points out, who we are working with on this project, is that

604
00:38:43,220 –> 00:38:46,660
everybody has a myth and everybody has a hero’s journey. That’s what

605
00:38:46,660 –> 00:38:50,020
Jung would say, but that not everybody

606
00:38:50,420 –> 00:38:54,110
knows either knows what their myth is, which is

607
00:38:54,110 –> 00:38:57,950
true. And if they do know what their

608
00:38:57,950 –> 00:39:01,590
myth is, most people are not aware of where they are on their

609
00:39:01,590 –> 00:39:05,390
hero’s journey. Now, I said all that to say this.

610
00:39:06,270 –> 00:39:09,750
I’m not Quite sure Cincinnatus is on a hero’s

611
00:39:09,750 –> 00:39:13,390
journey, because in myths, depending upon which

612
00:39:13,390 –> 00:39:17,110
myth you read, while we can look at all of

613
00:39:17,110 –> 00:39:20,920
the journeys as heroes. Journeys. Most characters in myths are on

614
00:39:20,920 –> 00:39:24,440
their own journeys that all intersect with the main hero’s journey.

615
00:39:24,440 –> 00:39:27,880
So there’s the journey that the women may be on in the myth were referenced.

616
00:39:28,520 –> 00:39:32,080
There’s the journey that the. The gods are on in the

617
00:39:32,080 –> 00:39:35,600
myth, and then, of course, there’s the journey that the villain is

618
00:39:35,600 –> 00:39:39,360
on in the myth. Now, the professional I’m working with would,

619
00:39:39,360 –> 00:39:42,840
if he were here, he would probably say they’re all heroes journeys. And just

620
00:39:42,840 –> 00:39:46,640
that’s. That’s what Young would say. Okay, Perhaps. I think that

621
00:39:46,640 –> 00:39:50,280
those are distinctive journeys, and I think that Cincinnatus is not on a

622
00:39:50,280 –> 00:39:54,120
hero’s journey, but he’s on an absurdist journey

623
00:39:54,680 –> 00:39:57,680
which. Which mirrors the. The. The

624
00:39:57,680 –> 00:40:01,440
hero’s journey, but it’s a distorted funhouse mirror of

625
00:40:01,440 –> 00:40:05,000
that journey. Because I don’t think Nabokov. This gets back to my idea.

626
00:40:05,240 –> 00:40:08,520
Looping it back now. This gets back to my question about decency.

627
00:40:09,400 –> 00:40:12,360
I think that Nabokov thought that

628
00:40:14,840 –> 00:40:18,240
this is not me being influenced by Lolita, although it does show up in. In

629
00:40:18,240 –> 00:40:21,560
that book quite a bit, and a number of other books that he wrote, too.

630
00:40:22,360 –> 00:40:25,480
I don’t think. I think he was skeptical about human decency.

631
00:40:26,040 –> 00:40:28,360
I don’t think he believed human beings could be decent.

632
00:40:30,200 –> 00:40:31,640
I think he thought that.

633
00:40:35,080 –> 00:40:38,790
I don’t think that he thought human beings could arise. Could rise. Could.

634
00:40:38,790 –> 00:40:42,430
Could. Could rise above banality and nihilism and absurdity.

635
00:40:42,750 –> 00:40:46,550
Like. Like Camus. This is why one of the reasons I struggle with Camus, because

636
00:40:46,550 –> 00:40:50,270
Camus, at the end of the day, his only solution to the absurdity

637
00:40:50,270 –> 00:40:52,470
problem, and we’re going to talk about this a little bit later, but his only

638
00:40:52,470 –> 00:40:55,750
solution to the absurdity problem was eat, drink and be merry and let’s crash my

639
00:40:55,750 –> 00:40:59,390
car, you know, in France somewhere. Like, that’s not a solution,

640
00:40:59,790 –> 00:41:03,390
Albert. May I call you Albert? I’m going to call you Albert. Come on.

641
00:41:03,390 –> 00:41:06,900
Like that’s not a solution. Right? So.

642
00:41:07,940 –> 00:41:10,180
But I think. I think that struggle

643
00:41:12,100 –> 00:41:15,700
begins when you don’t see people being decent

644
00:41:15,940 –> 00:41:19,220
and when you live in a society. And Nabokov had to add far more,

645
00:41:19,540 –> 00:41:22,820
I think, of a permission slip

646
00:41:23,780 –> 00:41:26,900
to be skeptical of human decency than Camus did,

647
00:41:27,780 –> 00:41:31,630
even in spite of seeing everything with World War II. Still more of a

648
00:41:31,630 –> 00:41:35,270
precious slip than Camus did, because Nabokov was in a

649
00:41:35,270 –> 00:41:39,030
society where everybody lied and everybody knew everybody

650
00:41:39,030 –> 00:41:42,790
was Lying. And the liars knew. Everybody knew that everybody

651
00:41:42,790 –> 00:41:46,590
was lying. And so you’re in this weird panopticon of

652
00:41:46,590 –> 00:41:50,070
lies. And the person who is going to be the

653
00:41:50,070 –> 00:41:53,830
outlier in that, as Solzhenitsyn would say, would be the person who dares to

654
00:41:53,830 –> 00:41:57,250
tell the truth. And that’s maybe who

655
00:41:57,250 –> 00:41:59,930
Cincinnatus is, the person who dares to tell the truth.

656
00:42:04,810 –> 00:42:08,010
So not a hero, just in a funhouse mirror.

657
00:42:08,490 –> 00:42:12,250
Yeah, sure. And you know, and the other thing I. I think about

658
00:42:12,490 –> 00:42:16,210
is, you know, to your colleague’s point that

659
00:42:16,210 –> 00:42:18,090
everyone is on a hero’s journey,

660
00:42:20,010 –> 00:42:23,730
it. It may just be the case that Nabokov chose not

661
00:42:23,730 –> 00:42:27,510
to tell us that point. Portion of Cincinnatus life. We don’t know

662
00:42:27,510 –> 00:42:31,350
that much about his life prior to his sentencing.

663
00:42:31,910 –> 00:42:34,550
Correct. Right. We know what his wife was up to.

664
00:42:35,590 –> 00:42:39,230
She’s perhaps the only other one who was telling the truth throughout because she

665
00:42:39,230 –> 00:42:41,350
didn’t really make a secret of the fact that she was

666
00:42:43,990 –> 00:42:47,710
not terribly faithful to the guy. Right. But we don’t really

667
00:42:47,710 –> 00:42:51,390
know much of it. So it’s sort of that unanswered question

668
00:42:51,390 –> 00:42:54,980
also. Also of maybe he was a hero prior to being

669
00:42:54,980 –> 00:42:58,740
sentenced. And we just don’t know that part because Nabokov chose a portion of

670
00:42:58,740 –> 00:43:01,820
his life that came after that.

671
00:43:02,380 –> 00:43:06,180
Or. Or. Or maybe comes before that, because as I

672
00:43:06,180 –> 00:43:10,020
said, the ending is not a final ending. Well, and his mother shows up.

673
00:43:10,020 –> 00:43:12,540
I don’t know if you remember this. I do.

674
00:43:13,980 –> 00:43:17,220
And I’m like, oh, so Mom’s gonna show up and we’re gonna have a bit

675
00:43:17,220 –> 00:43:20,620
of dramatic. I mean, can we. Can we just call her a drama queen?

676
00:43:21,570 –> 00:43:25,250
That’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I’ve been thinking a lot

677
00:43:25,250 –> 00:43:28,930
about family lately and just kind of goes through

678
00:43:29,010 –> 00:43:31,970
things in my own head. Not about my own family, but just families in general.

679
00:43:32,370 –> 00:43:36,130
And it’s just. It’s amazing how people show up in families. It’s

680
00:43:36,130 –> 00:43:39,930
just. It’s amazing, you know, and that

681
00:43:39,930 –> 00:43:42,530
in and of itself is an absurdity.

682
00:43:43,970 –> 00:43:47,730
Again, the idea that it’s not just lies that

683
00:43:47,730 –> 00:43:51,480
impact the top of the state, but the line goes all the way down

684
00:43:51,480 –> 00:43:55,000
to the substrate of even who the individual is. It

685
00:43:55,000 –> 00:43:58,680
poisons the well all the way down. And

686
00:43:58,680 –> 00:44:02,360
Nabokov was early, I think, in invitation to a beheading,

687
00:44:02,520 –> 00:44:06,240
to an idea that Solzhenitsyn fully developed law and fully

688
00:44:06,240 –> 00:44:08,760
developed out later on in Gulag Archipelago.

689
00:44:10,760 –> 00:44:13,960
And these Russian writers were inside of. They were inside of a nightmare.

690
00:44:14,040 –> 00:44:17,800
Bulgagov is another one. Like, they were just inside of a nightmare

691
00:44:17,880 –> 00:44:21,080
where, like in the Master of the Margarita, right? Where

692
00:44:21,560 –> 00:44:25,360
Mikhail Buglecog, where, you know, the devil shows up, but no

693
00:44:25,360 –> 00:44:29,120
one recognizes him. Wow. I haven’t thought about that book. I did read

694
00:44:29,120 –> 00:44:32,360
it, but it was decades ago. Yeah,

695
00:44:33,880 –> 00:44:37,440
it’s. It’s. The Russian writers of the

696
00:44:37,440 –> 00:44:41,160
20th century were dealing with a hell of a thing. Yeah. And they didn’t.

697
00:44:41,430 –> 00:44:45,110
They didn’t have a lot of good. Have a lot of good

698
00:44:45,110 –> 00:44:48,630
frameworks because the hero’s journey, the hero, the

699
00:44:48,630 –> 00:44:52,190
myths got smashed, right. And the people got smashed.

700
00:44:52,190 –> 00:44:55,870
And so how do you. How do you

701
00:44:55,870 –> 00:44:59,390
rebuild in a time when all of that. And it’s not just the

702
00:44:59,390 –> 00:45:02,830
spiritual infrastructure and not just the economic infrastructure, but the

703
00:45:02,830 –> 00:45:06,230
psychological infrastructure and the physical infrastructure is all just.

704
00:45:07,040 –> 00:45:10,760
All just wrecked, just wrecked by

705
00:45:10,760 –> 00:45:14,480
people who, by the way, you know,

706
00:45:14,560 –> 00:45:18,000
believed, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov Lenin did,

707
00:45:18,560 –> 00:45:21,680
that in order to build a better society, you gotta break a few eggs.

708
00:45:22,560 –> 00:45:26,400
Yeah, well. And just as I’m listening to

709
00:45:26,400 –> 00:45:30,160
you take me through that, I think back to

710
00:45:31,200 –> 00:45:33,760
our core protagonist, hero or non hero,

711
00:45:35,170 –> 00:45:38,850
Cincinnatus, who nothing in the book is as. Is

712
00:45:38,850 –> 00:45:42,690
what it seems, right? And

713
00:45:42,930 –> 00:45:46,770
you think about the tap, tap, tap, and the digging

714
00:45:46,930 –> 00:45:50,169
going on at night, and he doesn’t know what that is, and he doesn’t know

715
00:45:50,169 –> 00:45:53,650
who it is. And out pops our buddy Pierre again.

716
00:45:54,370 –> 00:45:57,010
And he’s dug a tunnel, or maybe it was always there

717
00:45:58,290 –> 00:46:01,580
that has he. He had just gotten there,

718
00:46:02,220 –> 00:46:05,500
right. A matter of days ago. Could be weeks, I don’t know. Because time is

719
00:46:05,500 –> 00:46:09,100
not terribly, you know, predictable in this book either.

720
00:46:09,660 –> 00:46:13,300
And he leads him back through the tunnel through a series of dead ends and

721
00:46:13,300 –> 00:46:16,900
wrong turns, and, you know, finally into his

722
00:46:16,900 –> 00:46:19,700
cell, and they have a nice evening, and then he has to go find his

723
00:46:19,700 –> 00:46:23,500
way back out. And then he takes a wrong turn again, and he

724
00:46:23,500 –> 00:46:26,190
finds himself on the outside of the walls of the fortress.

725
00:46:27,470 –> 00:46:31,150
And then he meets up again with Emmy. What was the young girl? Emma.

726
00:46:31,230 –> 00:46:34,990
Yeah, Emma. Emma, Emmy. It was Emmy. Yes. And

727
00:46:35,390 –> 00:46:39,150
he allows her to lead him right back into the dining room where

728
00:46:39,150 –> 00:46:42,830
his captors are enjoying their tea or their dinner.

729
00:46:42,990 –> 00:46:46,710
So there’s this. Nothing is what it seems. And throughout

730
00:46:46,710 –> 00:46:50,030
the book, he continues to be led by false leaders,

731
00:46:50,830 –> 00:46:53,320
by people who are. Who are trying to

732
00:46:56,680 –> 00:46:59,800
not lead him astray, lead him back to

733
00:47:00,280 –> 00:47:02,200
the path that they want him to be on.

734
00:47:05,560 –> 00:47:07,960
I think that is an important

735
00:47:08,760 –> 00:47:12,520
idea right there, Claire, that you brought up, that. That idea of

736
00:47:12,520 –> 00:47:16,240
being led by false leaders. I think. I think you’re onto

737
00:47:16,240 –> 00:47:20,090
something. There. I think that’s, I think that’s skip toward when we get

738
00:47:20,090 –> 00:47:23,850
to leadership. I’m getting older and senile Hassan, and if I

739
00:47:23,850 –> 00:47:26,930
don’t say it when it comes to me, I’m going to lose the thread. So

740
00:47:27,090 –> 00:47:29,930
yeah, it’s okay. The threads. Are we going to talk about the spider at some

741
00:47:29,930 –> 00:47:33,330
point? Yes, we’ll talk about the spider. Okay, I’m going to get to the spider.

742
00:47:33,330 –> 00:47:36,570
This is your show. You go, where are we going next? I’m going to, I’m

743
00:47:36,570 –> 00:47:40,290
going to tie the spider into the, the visit

744
00:47:40,370 –> 00:47:44,060
from the family. Because this is one of the more important, this is one of

745
00:47:44,060 –> 00:47:45,900
the more important things in the book. So let me, let me pick up with

746
00:47:45,900 –> 00:47:48,380
the invitation to be heading once again, we’re going to jump around in this book.

747
00:47:48,940 –> 00:47:52,460
It is still under copyright to Nabokov’s estate.

748
00:47:53,580 –> 00:47:56,260
While I don’t think he would have a problem with any of this, the estate

749
00:47:56,260 –> 00:47:59,380
might have, might struggle a little bit with it. So we are going to just

750
00:47:59,380 –> 00:48:02,540
pull some things out here and there. But I’m going to go to

751
00:48:02,780 –> 00:48:05,660
chapter nine in Invitation to a Beheading.

752
00:48:06,460 –> 00:48:09,580
And this is when Cincinnatus’s family

753
00:48:11,410 –> 00:48:13,490
randomly shows up.

754
00:48:15,410 –> 00:48:19,050
I’m going to start with this. And again. The day

755
00:48:19,050 –> 00:48:22,530
began with a din of voices. Rhodion was gloomily giving

756
00:48:22,530 –> 00:48:26,009
instructions and three other attendants were assisting him. The entire family of

757
00:48:26,009 –> 00:48:29,810
Martha had arrived for the interview, bringing with them all their

758
00:48:29,810 –> 00:48:33,330
furniture. Not thus, not thus had he imagined this long

759
00:48:33,330 –> 00:48:37,050
awaited meeting. How they all lumbered in. Martha’s aged father

760
00:48:37,050 –> 00:48:39,930
with his huge bald head and bags under his eyes and the rubbery tap of

761
00:48:39,930 –> 00:48:43,770
his black cane. Martha’s brothers, identical twins, except that one had a golden

762
00:48:43,770 –> 00:48:47,570
mustache and the other a pitch black one. Martha’s maternal grandparents, so old that

763
00:48:47,570 –> 00:48:50,370
one could already see through them. Three

764
00:48:51,010 –> 00:48:54,730
vivacious female cousins who, however, were not admitted for some reason. At the last

765
00:48:54,730 –> 00:48:58,410
minute, Martha’s children, lame Diomedan and

766
00:48:58,410 –> 00:49:01,970
obese little Pauline. At last, Martha herself,

767
00:49:02,390 –> 00:49:05,950
wearing her best black dress with a velvet ribbon around her cold white

768
00:49:05,950 –> 00:49:09,590
neck and holding a hand mirror. A very proper young man with a

769
00:49:09,590 –> 00:49:13,310
flawless profile was constantly at her side. So this

770
00:49:13,310 –> 00:49:16,230
is the, this is the table that is set for this visit.

771
00:49:17,030 –> 00:49:20,750
And then I’m going to jump to this. Meanwhile, furniture, household utensils,

772
00:49:20,750 –> 00:49:24,350
even individual sections of walls continued to arrive. There came a

773
00:49:24,350 –> 00:49:28,190
mirrored wardrobe bringing with it its own private reflection, namely a

774
00:49:28,190 –> 00:49:31,670
corner of the connubial bedroom with a stripe of sun, a strip of sunlight across

775
00:49:31,670 –> 00:49:34,490
the floor, a dropped glove and an open door in the distance,

776
00:49:35,930 –> 00:49:39,650
a cheerless little tricycle with orthopedic attachments was rolled in. It was

777
00:49:39,650 –> 00:49:43,490
followed by the inlaid table which had supported a flat garnet flacon and

778
00:49:43,490 –> 00:49:47,090
a hairpin for the last 10 years. Martha sat down on her black

779
00:49:47,090 –> 00:49:50,090
couch embroidered with roses. Then a

780
00:49:50,090 –> 00:49:53,930
conversation just pops up because why not?

781
00:49:54,570 –> 00:49:58,090
And the father in law is striking the floor with his

782
00:49:58,090 –> 00:50:01,660
cane and. And yelling. Well, not yelling,

783
00:50:01,660 –> 00:50:05,300
but berating Cincinnatus for some reason,

784
00:50:06,340 –> 00:50:10,060
calling him, quote unquote, an insolent fellow. I am entitled to

785
00:50:10,060 –> 00:50:13,140
expect from you, if only today, when you stand at death’s door, a little respect

786
00:50:13,460 –> 00:50:17,220
how you managed to get yourself on the block. I want an explanation from you.

787
00:50:17,300 –> 00:50:20,820
How could you? How you dared. And then of course, it keeps going on with

788
00:50:20,820 –> 00:50:24,580
the father in law. Martha is talking to a young

789
00:50:24,580 –> 00:50:27,540
man in a low voice who apparently is her lover,

790
00:50:30,160 –> 00:50:33,800
much to. Much to Cincinnatus’s dismay. And

791
00:50:33,800 –> 00:50:37,200
then, because I have animals at my house,

792
00:50:37,840 –> 00:50:41,360
this little detail popped up to me, which I thought was interesting.

793
00:50:41,520 –> 00:50:45,360
And I quote a black cat stretched, straining back, one hind

794
00:50:45,360 –> 00:50:48,680
paw rubbing itself against Cincinnatus’s leg, then was suddenly on the

795
00:50:48,680 –> 00:50:52,000
sideboard and from there noiselessly leaped onto the shoulder of the

796
00:50:52,000 –> 00:50:55,830
lawyer, who, having just tiptoed in, was sitting

797
00:50:55,830 –> 00:50:58,990
in a corner on a plush hassock. He had a bad cold and

798
00:50:59,470 –> 00:51:03,230
over a handkerchief held ready for use, was inspecting the assembled company and

799
00:51:03,230 –> 00:51:06,590
the various household items that made the cell look like the site of an auction.

800
00:51:06,910 –> 00:51:09,870
The cat startled him and he threw it off with a

801
00:51:09,870 –> 00:51:11,550
convulsive movement.

802
00:51:14,670 –> 00:51:18,270
C. Has a conversation with his brother in law, his father in law.

803
00:51:18,670 –> 00:51:19,310
And then

804
00:51:23,190 –> 00:51:26,910
Cincinnatus stood up, Rodion and another employee, looking at each

805
00:51:26,910 –> 00:51:30,550
other in the eye grasp of the couch on which Martha was reclining, grunted, picked

806
00:51:30,550 –> 00:51:34,390
it up and carried it toward the door. Goodbye, Goodbye. Martha called childishly,

807
00:51:34,470 –> 00:51:37,470
swaying in time with the step of the porters. But suddenly she closed her eyes

808
00:51:37,470 –> 00:51:41,230
and covered her face. Her escort walked solicitously behind, carrying

809
00:51:41,230 –> 00:51:44,270
the black shawl he had picked up from the floor, a bouquet, his uniform cap

810
00:51:44,270 –> 00:51:47,440
and a solitary glove. There was commotion all around.

811
00:51:48,880 –> 00:51:52,560
Their father, breathing asthmatically, was overcoming the multi

812
00:51:52,560 –> 00:51:56,360
segmented screen. The lawyer was offering everyone a vast sheet of

813
00:51:56,360 –> 00:51:59,600
wrapping paper obtained from him by some unknown source. He was seen.

814
00:52:00,160 –> 00:52:03,600
He was seen unsuccessfully attempting to wrap it in a bowl

815
00:52:03,760 –> 00:52:07,560
containing a pale orange little fish and clouded water. Amid

816
00:52:07,560 –> 00:52:10,800
the commotion, the ample wardrobe with its private reflection stood like a pregnant woman,

817
00:52:11,040 –> 00:52:14,360
carefully holding and turning aside its glass belly so that no One would brush against

818
00:52:14,360 –> 00:52:18,130
it. It was tilted backward and in a reeling hug, carried away.

819
00:52:18,850 –> 00:52:22,690
And then. I’m going to skip down. Emmy unwillingly followed Rhodian as

820
00:52:22,690 –> 00:52:26,410
he dragged her. Her eyes kept rolling back. Her shoulder straps slipped off, and now,

821
00:52:26,410 –> 00:52:29,730
with a swinging motion, as though he were emptying a water bucket, he splashed her

822
00:52:29,730 –> 00:52:33,290
out into the corridor. Yes, pausing. Yes, I said. He

823
00:52:33,290 –> 00:52:36,850
splashed her out into the corridor. Back to the book. Then, still

824
00:52:36,850 –> 00:52:40,650
muttering, he, meaning Rhodion, returned with a dustpan to pick up

825
00:52:40,650 –> 00:52:44,390
the corpse of the cat that lay flat under a chair. The door

826
00:52:44,390 –> 00:52:47,950
slammed with a crash. It was now hard to believe that in this

827
00:52:47,950 –> 00:52:49,950
cell only a moment ago,

828
00:52:54,110 –> 00:52:57,710
That held me up for two days, that entire chapter,

829
00:52:58,830 –> 00:53:02,590
I pardon my use of the French, I did not know what the

830
00:53:02,590 –> 00:53:04,510
hell to make of any of that.

831
00:53:08,110 –> 00:53:11,510
It was like one long, protracted fever

832
00:53:11,510 –> 00:53:14,630
dream where it just got

833
00:53:16,310 –> 00:53:20,030
absurder and. Absurder. That’s probably not the right word to the point

834
00:53:20,030 –> 00:53:23,710
of stupidity. Where. And I think that was definitely a point where I was

835
00:53:23,710 –> 00:53:26,550
reading through it and going, how much longer can this go on?

836
00:53:27,430 –> 00:53:30,750
Is there a way to get out of this interview with you? Because if I

837
00:53:30,750 –> 00:53:34,550
have to continue this story, I may, I may, I may grow

838
00:53:34,550 –> 00:53:38,070
to resent you. But it’s like. But these are the things that stretch us and

839
00:53:38,070 –> 00:53:41,790
help us to grow so. And eventually it ended. Yeah, I was. I was

840
00:53:42,110 –> 00:53:45,830
upset about the cat. I did not like the treatment of the cat. The cat

841
00:53:45,830 –> 00:53:47,550
was the only one who acted like himself.

842
00:53:49,470 –> 00:53:51,950
The cat was the only one that knew what the hell was going on. I

843
00:53:51,950 –> 00:53:55,710
mean, he was just like, I’m. I have legal representation here.

844
00:53:55,710 –> 00:53:59,150
The wife brings a date to an interview with her

845
00:53:59,150 –> 00:54:02,830
condemned husband. Right. You know, again, being the

846
00:54:02,830 –> 00:54:06,560
most transparent about her infidelity. So she was, like, the only

847
00:54:06,640 –> 00:54:09,800
one there. Even though she came in with an elegant hand mirror and she’s dressed

848
00:54:09,800 –> 00:54:13,600
to the ninth. She was the only one who was completely open about who

849
00:54:13,600 –> 00:54:17,400
she was. Right? Yeah, she’s the only. She was the only

850
00:54:17,400 –> 00:54:21,079
person actually being truthful out of that entire sequence. The

851
00:54:21,079 –> 00:54:24,920
father in law, the grandparents, the cousin, the brother in law, even

852
00:54:24,920 –> 00:54:28,560
Rhodian, the. The. The prison guard, right?

853
00:54:28,560 –> 00:54:32,390
Like, coming in and out and moving things around. It kind of

854
00:54:32,390 –> 00:54:36,190
reminded me a little bit of. For some reason, last week, not

855
00:54:36,190 –> 00:54:39,910
last week, but the week before, I was goofing off at work, which,

856
00:54:39,910 –> 00:54:43,670
you know, occasionally I do goof off at work. I am human, after all. So

857
00:54:43,670 –> 00:54:47,070
I was goofing off at work and I was playing yakety

858
00:54:47,070 –> 00:54:50,270
sax. That’s what it was. The. The theme song from Benny Hill.

859
00:54:50,670 –> 00:54:54,390
And, and this put me.

860
00:54:54,390 –> 00:54:57,990
Yeah, see, when you put that as the soundtrack to all the. All

861
00:54:57,990 –> 00:55:01,840
the. Wow. That’s it. That’s. That’s. That’s it.

862
00:55:01,840 –> 00:55:05,680
It’s. It’s literally the end of Benny Hill. You remember that? I mean, you remember

863
00:55:05,760 –> 00:55:09,560
he’s running around with like. I didn’t like the Benny Hill show either. For

864
00:55:09,560 –> 00:55:13,400
this very reason. This very reason. Because

865
00:55:13,400 –> 00:55:17,160
that was absurd. The scantily clad ladies all chasing him

866
00:55:17,160 –> 00:55:21,000
around. What is happening? Yeah, that’s in my head now.

867
00:55:21,000 –> 00:55:24,610
That song is in my head. And the whole. Yeah, the whole intro and

868
00:55:24,610 –> 00:55:28,090
outro. Wow. Yeah, well, well, we were.

869
00:55:28,330 –> 00:55:31,450
We did reference Yakty Sax a couple weeks ago with the man who was Thursday.

870
00:55:31,610 –> 00:55:35,170
We did me. And again, I guess I’ll drop in that reference here too. I’ll

871
00:55:35,170 –> 00:55:37,370
run the soundtrack again. That’s gonna be like your new thing.

872
00:55:39,370 –> 00:55:42,890
You gotta have a sound button in your studio. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

873
00:55:43,290 –> 00:55:46,850
Of all the absurdity throughout this book, that

874
00:55:46,850 –> 00:55:50,130
was the most consolidated, intense burst of absurd.

875
00:55:50,200 –> 00:55:53,320
Absurdity. Other than the final dinner.

876
00:55:53,800 –> 00:55:57,440
Yes, other than the final dinner. But. But this was probably the.

877
00:55:57,440 –> 00:56:01,280
The most absurd collection of absurdities in the entire

878
00:56:01,280 –> 00:56:04,920
book. Well, and what does it say when like

879
00:56:05,640 –> 00:56:09,400
even the family is. Is rendered absurd by the

880
00:56:09,400 –> 00:56:12,760
actions of the state, Even the

881
00:56:12,760 –> 00:56:16,570
relationships between the family are warped. Right. So the father in

882
00:56:16,570 –> 00:56:19,850
law isn’t saying anything that makes even any remote sense about

883
00:56:19,850 –> 00:56:23,170
anything. He’s. He seems to be more concerned with.

884
00:56:24,210 –> 00:56:27,570
With the fact that Cincinnatus, which by the way,

885
00:56:27,570 –> 00:56:30,850
interestingly enough, I’m now clicking on something. When you read

886
00:56:32,210 –> 00:56:36,010
stories of Russian dissidents who, who escaped or folks who

887
00:56:36,010 –> 00:56:39,810
escaped from Russia, one of the things that they would talk about is. And

888
00:56:39,810 –> 00:56:43,130
I might be confusing this with something that I read, Solzhenitsyn or maybe even in

889
00:56:43,130 –> 00:56:46,890
Bulkov. But. But you would read about

890
00:56:46,970 –> 00:56:50,410
how people would actually be jealous

891
00:56:50,570 –> 00:56:54,170
of family members and turn in family members if they had a larger apartment than

892
00:56:54,170 –> 00:56:57,690
them. Right. So the entire

893
00:56:57,690 –> 00:57:00,330
machine. Well, not the entire machine.

894
00:57:02,410 –> 00:57:06,050
One of the pieces or the bits of fuel that

895
00:57:06,050 –> 00:57:09,770
goes into a totalizing machine and the reason it makes

896
00:57:09,770 –> 00:57:11,390
it work is

897
00:57:13,390 –> 00:57:16,670
envy. And

898
00:57:16,830 –> 00:57:20,670
envy is always about things. Jealousy is always about people in relationships. Just keep that

899
00:57:20,670 –> 00:57:24,430
in mind. Those are distinctions with a difference that we need to understand. We’re using

900
00:57:24,430 –> 00:57:27,630
words. And envy of another person’s

901
00:57:27,630 –> 00:57:31,150
possessions obviously could easily slip over into

902
00:57:31,150 –> 00:57:34,950
jealousy of a person’s interpersonal relationships. This is why the,

903
00:57:34,950 –> 00:57:38,730
the. This is why the two. The

904
00:57:38,730 –> 00:57:42,410
two most perplexing commandments of The Ten Commandments, or thou shalt not covet

905
00:57:42,410 –> 00:57:46,250
thy neighbor’s wife, nor thy neighbor’s husband. And

906
00:57:46,250 –> 00:57:50,010
then it goes into the neighbor’s possessions. There’s a reason for that.

907
00:57:50,010 –> 00:57:53,010
It’s not an accident. Nope.

908
00:57:54,530 –> 00:57:58,250
So and so when you eliminate that right and you

909
00:57:58,250 –> 00:58:00,930
allow envy to be part of the fuel that drives the state,

910
00:58:03,980 –> 00:58:07,620
it filters down into those interpersonal relationships. And you see that in the father in

911
00:58:07,620 –> 00:58:10,860
law, he’s not actually seeking to understand

912
00:58:11,660 –> 00:58:15,500
what’s happening with Cincinnatus. He wants to know why Cincinnati’s got such a big

913
00:58:15,500 –> 00:58:19,340
cell. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

914
00:58:19,340 –> 00:58:22,940
and in their own way, his

915
00:58:23,020 –> 00:58:26,780
family, mostly his in laws, turned him in as well.

916
00:58:26,780 –> 00:58:30,390
Right. Because his criticisms, as well as

917
00:58:30,390 –> 00:58:33,950
Martha’s at the very end were, why don’t you,

918
00:58:34,190 –> 00:58:37,390
first of all, why can’t you behave more like the rest of us?

919
00:58:38,110 –> 00:58:41,830
And also, why don’t you just own it, apologize for it, and throw

920
00:58:41,830 –> 00:58:44,830
yourself on the mercy of the court, essentially?

921
00:58:45,630 –> 00:58:48,910
Right. Why don’t you conform? Because if you

922
00:58:48,910 –> 00:58:51,870
conformed, you could get out of here, right?

923
00:58:56,760 –> 00:59:00,200
Yeah, but I could just not conform and have a bigger cell.

924
00:59:00,600 –> 00:59:03,480
So I think I’ll hang out for a little bit. Which is. Which is, by

925
00:59:03,480 –> 00:59:06,480
the way, since that’s his response to this, I’ll just sort of, you know, I’ll

926
00:59:06,480 –> 00:59:10,320
just. And. And look at the. Look at the very thorough cleaning job they

927
00:59:10,320 –> 00:59:14,120
did for him when he was expecting, you know, the interviewer

928
00:59:15,080 –> 00:59:18,880
to come in. Well, and maybe that’s. And

929
00:59:18,880 –> 00:59:22,160
I, I now about. I’m about to switch an idea here. So we just talked

930
00:59:22,160 –> 00:59:24,800
about Hero’s Journey, and I was like, well, maybe I said, you know, I took

931
00:59:24,800 –> 00:59:28,540
the position that, you know, maybe he doesn’t have a hero’s journey. No, I think

932
00:59:28,540 –> 00:59:32,260
the hero’s journey is the journey towards. I’m now thinking the hero’s journey

933
00:59:32,260 –> 00:59:36,060
is the journey towards the beheading. That’s spoiler alert. It’s in

934
00:59:36,060 –> 00:59:39,820
the title. But like, like, you know, I don’t want to ruin the end for

935
00:59:39,820 –> 00:59:43,580
you folks, but you’ve had many decades to read this, people, so

936
00:59:43,580 –> 00:59:46,860
if we’re spoiling the ending for you, really, it’s your fault. Yeah, it’s been around

937
00:59:46,860 –> 00:59:49,660
for a while. It’s. You can go get it. It’s not. Not new,

938
00:59:50,380 –> 00:59:53,930
but. But maybe that is the journey. The journey

939
00:59:53,930 –> 00:59:56,050
is the journey. The hero’s journey through,

940
00:59:57,730 –> 00:59:59,810
to your point, the battle against conformity.

941
01:00:01,410 –> 01:00:05,050
I. I had not seen it that way. And I think you’re

942
01:00:05,050 –> 01:00:08,610
right, because he could, at any time, according to various

943
01:00:08,610 –> 01:00:11,970
visitors, have gotten on board with just

944
01:00:12,370 –> 01:00:16,210
conforming, agreeing, being agreeable, being hospitable.

945
01:00:16,860 –> 01:00:20,620
And he chose to stay individual and, and

946
01:00:20,860 –> 01:00:24,500
be himself, even knowing that that

947
01:00:24,500 –> 01:00:28,340
was going to secure his beheading at the end. Well,

948
01:00:28,340 –> 01:00:31,740
and he’s a better hero. Better hero. He’s more heroic

949
01:00:32,060 –> 01:00:35,820
than. What’s his name in 1984.

950
01:00:38,220 –> 01:00:42,060
The. The. The. The guy who basically gets brainwashed and tossed back into

951
01:00:42,060 –> 01:00:45,910
the mix at the end of, at the end of 1984.

952
01:00:45,910 –> 01:00:49,710
I can’t remember the character, but yeah, because. Because he ultimately did

953
01:00:49,710 –> 01:00:52,990
relent and just relented and just gave in. Or

954
01:00:54,270 –> 01:00:56,270
I think of. I think of,

955
01:00:57,950 –> 01:01:01,670
oh, who was it in that coupe in the Kubrick

956
01:01:01,670 –> 01:01:04,350
movie? Yeah.

957
01:01:07,470 –> 01:01:11,070
Clockwork Orange you’re talking about. Yes, yes. Anthony Burgess. Yes, yes. Okay, so, so

958
01:01:11,070 –> 01:01:13,790
Clockwork Orange, right, The character in Clockwork Orange that

959
01:01:15,470 –> 01:01:18,590
he’s forcibly submitted. Right. To.

960
01:01:19,150 –> 01:01:22,870
To the state, right, in order to change him forcibly and

961
01:01:22,870 –> 01:01:25,870
brainwash him forcibly into being a good citizen.

962
01:01:29,630 –> 01:01:33,390
Cincinnatus. Doesn’t, doesn’t. He’s like, no, you know what?

963
01:01:34,590 –> 01:01:37,470
He takes the opposite tact. He says, no, you know what? I’m not a hero.

964
01:01:39,490 –> 01:01:43,010
I don’t want to be a hero. Don’t look to me for anything heroic.

965
01:01:43,490 –> 01:01:47,170
I’m just going to walk this out logically, because

966
01:01:47,970 –> 01:01:51,570
walking in a logically is

967
01:01:51,570 –> 01:01:55,330
more truthful than the

968
01:01:55,330 –> 01:01:59,010
lie of conformity. And again,

969
01:01:59,090 –> 01:02:02,850
to my point earlier, the person who has the most

970
01:02:02,850 –> 01:02:05,890
power in a state where everyone lies from top to bottom

971
01:02:06,650 –> 01:02:09,690
is the person who tells the truth, even if the truth means

972
01:02:10,170 –> 01:02:13,970
being killed by the state. Which, by the way, is

973
01:02:13,970 –> 01:02:17,690
a very. Oh, sorry, kids are gonna hit you with this. Sorry,

974
01:02:17,690 –> 01:02:21,210
folks, gonna hit you with this. But, like, that’s a very Christian martyr way of

975
01:02:21,210 –> 01:02:22,010
looking at things.

976
01:02:26,170 –> 01:02:29,850
That philosophy doesn’t just come from nowhere. The philosophy just doesn’t come from

977
01:02:29,850 –> 01:02:32,100
nowhere. Yeah, so. So.

978
01:02:37,860 –> 01:02:41,180
This book is about the geopolitical disaster. One of the things it’s about is the

979
01:02:41,180 –> 01:02:44,820
geopolitical disaster of communism. Right? And just

980
01:02:44,820 –> 01:02:48,580
a massive, like, way, how do, how do you deal with that disaster? Right?

981
01:02:48,580 –> 01:02:51,220
And you had Aldous Huxley and George Orwell who were trying to deal with it

982
01:02:51,220 –> 01:02:54,580
from the West. And then of course, you have, you have

983
01:02:54,740 –> 01:02:58,220
Naov in this book. I’ve already mentioned Solzhenitsyn and

984
01:02:58,220 –> 01:03:02,050
Orwell, but also Milan Kadera, who wrote

985
01:03:02,050 –> 01:03:05,810
A Bearable Lateness of Being and tattled on everybody and

986
01:03:05,810 –> 01:03:08,770
then ran away to France, told on all of his enemies,

987
01:03:09,570 –> 01:03:13,290
and then vac off Havel, who wrote the Power of the Powerless, which

988
01:03:13,290 –> 01:03:16,050
we’ve Also covered on this. On this show.

989
01:03:22,130 –> 01:03:25,950
Let’s turn the corner to our more. Our more code contemporary times. I do

990
01:03:25,950 –> 01:03:29,670
want to talk about the spider web in a minute here. But in

991
01:03:29,670 –> 01:03:33,350
our contemporary times. And I did open

992
01:03:33,350 –> 01:03:37,150
up this episode by saying that historians in the future, I do think, are

993
01:03:37,150 –> 01:03:40,469
going to look at two or 300 years from now, after we’re all long dead

994
01:03:40,469 –> 01:03:44,270
and. And gone, they are going to look back at the

995
01:03:44,270 –> 01:03:48,110
20th century and they’re going to. I think.

996
01:03:48,110 –> 01:03:51,870
I do. I think they’re going to say, what was wrong

997
01:03:51,870 –> 01:03:55,190
with those people? Like, what the

998
01:03:55,750 –> 01:03:59,590
actual hell was going on with those people’s

999
01:03:59,590 –> 01:04:02,790
brains? Because everything

1000
01:04:04,870 –> 01:04:08,550
that we’ve accomplished technologically or

1001
01:04:08,550 –> 01:04:12,390
even at a leadership level, I wrote a blog post about this today.

1002
01:04:13,430 –> 01:04:17,270
We’ve taken practically, we’ve taken material reductionist

1003
01:04:17,550 –> 01:04:21,350
thinking to its logical conclusion. Everything can be

1004
01:04:21,350 –> 01:04:24,270
reduced to atoms or to how physics works.

1005
01:04:24,910 –> 01:04:28,510
Everything can be reduced to biochemical this and

1006
01:04:28,510 –> 01:04:32,310
biochemical that. The interaction

1007
01:04:32,310 –> 01:04:35,750
that you and I are having is mediated by technology. We’re not even in the

1008
01:04:35,750 –> 01:04:39,350
same state, much less in the same time zone, and yet we can do this

1009
01:04:39,350 –> 01:04:43,150
quote, unquote, magic together. But the 20th

1010
01:04:43,150 –> 01:04:46,950
century has utterly failed. And now we’re 25 years into the 21st

1011
01:04:46,950 –> 01:04:50,800
century and we are still utterly failing to provide

1012
01:04:50,880 –> 01:04:54,320
any sort of sense of cosmic meaning behind any of this.

1013
01:04:55,360 –> 01:04:58,120
Now, I do think we’ll get out of the meaning crisis. I do think we

1014
01:04:58,120 –> 01:05:00,800
are going to find meaning. And that’s part of the reason why I do this

1015
01:05:00,800 –> 01:05:04,600
show, is because part of this show is a search for meaning to go

1016
01:05:04,600 –> 01:05:08,200
into. Go into the books that have been written and

1017
01:05:08,200 –> 01:05:11,960
pull out what we can and provide meaning for leaders and provide meaning for

1018
01:05:11,960 –> 01:05:15,520
people. Because I do think the biggest crisis of our time is a meaning

1019
01:05:15,520 –> 01:05:18,840
crisis. And I wish

1020
01:05:19,080 –> 01:05:22,880
that more people would accept a Christian conception

1021
01:05:22,880 –> 01:05:26,640
of meaning. And there’s a lot of water in the

1022
01:05:26,640 –> 01:05:30,480
pool in the other direction that’s got to get either drained out

1023
01:05:30,480 –> 01:05:33,960
or replaced, right? Because absurdism and

1024
01:05:33,960 –> 01:05:37,600
nihilism and those kinds of things, existential dread, none of

1025
01:05:37,600 –> 01:05:41,240
that’s going to provide meaning. And 300 years from now, people are going to wonder,

1026
01:05:41,240 –> 01:05:44,280
why did you have existential dread? You had everything you could possibly

1027
01:05:45,810 –> 01:05:49,410
materially wanted, yet you didn’t know what it

1028
01:05:49,410 –> 01:05:51,010
meant, right?

1029
01:05:52,930 –> 01:05:56,570
Nabokov was on to this. So were the writers, the

1030
01:05:56,570 –> 01:06:00,090
Russian writers of the 20th century. They were on to the meaning

1031
01:06:00,090 –> 01:06:02,450
crisis. And that is the great crisis of our century.

1032
01:06:08,850 –> 01:06:12,370
God almighty. We’re now in a space where we have unserious people,

1033
01:06:12,680 –> 01:06:16,000
like in 20, 26, we have unserious people running things. And I’m not just talking

1034
01:06:16,000 –> 01:06:19,400
at the political level and I’m not just talking about politics and political decisions. I’m

1035
01:06:19,400 –> 01:06:23,200
talking about people who are fundamentally lack seriousness in their roles. So for

1036
01:06:23,200 –> 01:06:26,560
instance, I’ll use an example. We have members of school

1037
01:06:26,560 –> 01:06:30,280
boards who are so worried about Facebook posts

1038
01:06:30,280 –> 01:06:32,920
threatening their lives that they hire private security

1039
01:06:34,840 –> 01:06:37,960
to walk around their local communities.

1040
01:06:42,540 –> 01:06:46,260
I’m going to draw a parallel in my local community, where I

1041
01:06:46,260 –> 01:06:50,020
live. We’re, we’re one of the local communities in,

1042
01:06:50,020 –> 01:06:53,860
in the country that is where, where there are, where there are fights going on

1043
01:06:53,860 –> 01:06:57,540
right now about data centers. Where do data centers go in for

1044
01:06:57,540 –> 01:07:00,420
AI? Do they go in, do they not go in? What does that mean for

1045
01:07:00,420 –> 01:07:03,980
water, energy consumption, things like this? Right. And because

1046
01:07:04,140 –> 01:07:07,880
we’ve outsourced sourced our emotional absurdity to Facebook and other

1047
01:07:07,880 –> 01:07:11,440
social media platforms, the mayor of my

1048
01:07:11,440 –> 01:07:15,280
town, who’s an 80 year old former entrepreneur who didn’t have to do

1049
01:07:15,280 –> 01:07:18,880
the job of being mayor at all, he could have just

1050
01:07:18,880 –> 01:07:22,600
stayed retired, is lambasted left and right

1051
01:07:22,600 –> 01:07:25,880
as if he’s, pardon my use of the term, as if he’s Donald Trump

1052
01:07:27,480 –> 01:07:28,520
and he’s not.

1053
01:07:33,330 –> 01:07:36,890
The other day I was walking down on the street going to get lunch or

1054
01:07:36,890 –> 01:07:40,370
whatever. I happened to see him and I had a nice 10 minute long

1055
01:07:40,370 –> 01:07:43,770
conversation with him. And guess what? It wasn’t

1056
01:07:43,770 –> 01:07:47,250
absurd, it wasn’t nihilistic, it wasn’t

1057
01:07:47,330 –> 01:07:51,090
existential. Although he did ask me a question about

1058
01:07:51,090 –> 01:07:54,890
how do we actually get people to not be so afraid of

1059
01:07:54,890 –> 01:07:58,670
change. He’s 80 and he’s asking me this

1060
01:07:58,670 –> 01:08:02,430
question. And so we’re exploring ideas while we’re sitting

1061
01:08:02,430 –> 01:08:05,710
there. That’s local politics, that’s

1062
01:08:05,710 –> 01:08:09,470
localized all the way down to something that’s meaningful. Yeah,

1063
01:08:09,470 –> 01:08:12,830
but what we’ve done with our technology is we’ve

1064
01:08:12,910 –> 01:08:16,670
ramped up the absurdity and the unseriousness and

1065
01:08:16,670 –> 01:08:20,510
we still don’t know what it means. What does it mean

1066
01:08:20,510 –> 01:08:24,139
to have a school board person who takes something on social media

1067
01:08:24,139 –> 01:08:27,579
from some random person they’ve never met in their community so seriously that they think

1068
01:08:27,579 –> 01:08:31,139
they’re going to. Or, or even worse, even

1069
01:08:31,139 –> 01:08:34,939
worse. We have people who pretend to be serious and put

1070
01:08:34,939 –> 01:08:38,738
on the language of seriousness, but their behavior, their

1071
01:08:38,738 –> 01:08:42,579
actual lived behavior is just as absurd as anything, an invitation to

1072
01:08:42,579 –> 01:08:46,099
a beheading. And we can all name names and we can all give examples,

1073
01:08:46,419 –> 01:08:50,230
not just nationally, but also locally, also in our,

1074
01:08:50,310 –> 01:08:53,870
in our civic life, in our social life, in our government. This is the

1075
01:08:53,870 –> 01:08:57,430
Challenge right Now, the early 21st century is how do we walk the line between

1076
01:08:57,910 –> 01:09:01,390
work because we’re past absurdity, now we’re into unseriousness, just people who are

1077
01:09:01,390 –> 01:09:04,750
fundamentally unserious. Right. About fixing

1078
01:09:04,750 –> 01:09:08,510
problems or about proposing solutions. This is

1079
01:09:08,510 –> 01:09:12,110
the question in the, in leadership, in all spheres eventually

1080
01:09:12,110 –> 01:09:14,390
descends into absurdity on a long enough timeline.

1081
01:09:16,329 –> 01:09:20,089
How do we walk the tightrope as leaders between absurdity

1082
01:09:20,089 –> 01:09:23,769
and seriousness? Because we’re in a seriousness crisis too, along with the

1083
01:09:23,769 –> 01:09:26,649
meaning crisis. But yeah, how do we do that?

1084
01:09:28,489 –> 01:09:30,968
You know, one of the things that I try

1085
01:09:32,969 –> 01:09:35,129
to, if not remember,

1086
01:09:36,809 –> 01:09:40,529
at least convince myself of is we are not the

1087
01:09:40,529 –> 01:09:44,049
only generation and we are not the only, only point in the

1088
01:09:44,049 –> 01:09:47,769
quote unquote evolution, which implies forward progress.

1089
01:09:47,769 –> 01:09:49,489
But it doesn’t always happen

1090
01:09:52,529 –> 01:09:55,409
and we’re talking about it now. I think one of the reasons that you

1091
01:09:56,289 –> 01:09:59,809
pull forward into our modern times,

1092
01:10:01,169 –> 01:10:05,009
these great books of decades and centuries ago,

1093
01:10:05,249 –> 01:10:08,630
is for this very moment, this question you just asked, asked

1094
01:10:09,110 –> 01:10:12,710
because as absurd as the times we are living in

1095
01:10:12,710 –> 01:10:15,750
now. And you just painted the picture of the absurdity.

1096
01:10:16,390 –> 01:10:19,670
This is not the first iteration of that in human history.

1097
01:10:20,470 –> 01:10:23,670
Right, Right. It feels like that

1098
01:10:24,069 –> 01:10:27,910
because we are, we are by definition self centered.

1099
01:10:28,150 –> 01:10:31,910
And so we think, well, surely even totalitarianism,

1100
01:10:32,150 –> 01:10:35,670
Communism, Marxism, right? Nazi

1101
01:10:35,670 –> 01:10:39,470
Germany, surely they had to be serious people there. Well, not only that,

1102
01:10:39,470 –> 01:10:43,030
but you know, they, they had it easy compared to. If you’ve seen the knuckleheads

1103
01:10:43,030 –> 01:10:46,630
run in the world net like it. That has always been

1104
01:10:46,630 –> 01:10:50,469
true. But this is the reality we live in now. And I, and I

1105
01:10:50,469 –> 01:10:54,070
have to say that out loud because I have to, I have to believe that

1106
01:10:54,070 –> 01:10:57,630
just like they got through that, not unscathed.

1107
01:10:58,430 –> 01:11:01,710
We have to get through this. We have to

1108
01:11:01,790 –> 01:11:05,230
somehow welcome back the people

1109
01:11:05,310 –> 01:11:09,150
that are done drinking the Kool aid of the truth

1110
01:11:09,150 –> 01:11:12,910
that they are told is truth. And they go, well, that’s easier than me finding

1111
01:11:12,910 –> 01:11:16,390
that out or thinking for myself or having serious conversations or having serious

1112
01:11:16,390 –> 01:11:20,190
thoughts. I think one of

1113
01:11:20,190 –> 01:11:23,710
the things that makes it so difficult to be a leader right now and a

1114
01:11:23,710 –> 01:11:26,910
true leader, not someone who goes around and says that they’re a leader because they’ve

1115
01:11:26,910 –> 01:11:30,550
been granted people power they probably did not earn. But a true

1116
01:11:30,550 –> 01:11:34,310
leader is they have to somehow,

1117
01:11:35,190 –> 01:11:38,630
which gets to the heart of your question, help

1118
01:11:38,790 –> 01:11:42,630
navigate the people trying to follow them,

1119
01:11:42,630 –> 01:11:45,110
the business are trying to run and themselves

1120
01:11:47,270 –> 01:11:50,910
toward a clearer, sharper, brighter, achievable horizon

1121
01:11:50,910 –> 01:11:54,470
somehow. And the problem with their navigating is

1122
01:11:54,550 –> 01:11:57,560
on top of everything else that leaders have always had to Deal with.

1123
01:11:58,200 –> 01:12:01,680
There’s all this noise. There’s all of this

1124
01:12:01,680 –> 01:12:05,160
bombardment of 24. 7 news cycle

1125
01:12:05,560 –> 01:12:08,440
news in air quotes, social media,

1126
01:12:09,640 –> 01:12:13,440
you mentioned AI. We haven’t even scratched the surface of what that

1127
01:12:13,440 –> 01:12:17,040
has introduced where every wall, everything that’s

1128
01:12:17,040 –> 01:12:20,560
plugged in is listening and feeding what you

1129
01:12:20,560 –> 01:12:24,260
consume, right? On your smart TVs, your social

1130
01:12:24,260 –> 01:12:27,580
feeds, your email sidebars, all the things.

1131
01:12:27,900 –> 01:12:29,580
And so there’s all this noise.

1132
01:12:31,900 –> 01:12:35,700
And I think, you know, part of. And I’m going to bring

1133
01:12:35,700 –> 01:12:38,860
it back to Cincinnatus for a second because I think part of what frustrated him

1134
01:12:38,860 –> 01:12:42,380
was he saw how absurd his situation

1135
01:12:42,540 –> 01:12:46,340
was and what he was trying to do was the reason he didn’t want

1136
01:12:46,340 –> 01:12:49,480
to be social and go, let me spend the last few days on earth

1137
01:12:49,560 –> 01:12:53,360
conversing with and breaking bread with some really interesting people. He

1138
01:12:53,360 –> 01:12:56,920
wanted all of them out of there because the noise was stopping him

1139
01:12:56,920 –> 01:13:00,760
from getting to the conclusion that he could change his

1140
01:13:00,760 –> 01:13:04,600
circumstance at any time. And he wasn’t allowed to because he kept getting

1141
01:13:04,600 –> 01:13:07,880
filled with absurdity and noise and visitors and furniture and cats, right?

1142
01:13:08,440 –> 01:13:12,040
So all he wanted was space and quiet

1143
01:13:12,200 –> 01:13:16,010
to read, to write to and to. And to somehow come to

1144
01:13:16,010 –> 01:13:19,730
terms with his life and have an accounting

1145
01:13:19,730 –> 01:13:22,210
of that life and what he was writing. And I want to come back to

1146
01:13:22,370 –> 01:13:26,090
what he was writing at some point too. I think fast forward to

1147
01:13:26,090 –> 01:13:29,770
today. That is part of what leaders need to find a way to

1148
01:13:29,770 –> 01:13:33,610
do is to not rise above the noise. Because I don’t know

1149
01:13:33,610 –> 01:13:37,130
how possible that is right now, but somehow

1150
01:13:37,130 –> 01:13:40,710
separate themselves from the bombardment of the obstruction absurd

1151
01:13:41,830 –> 01:13:45,670
and say, this is what I have to stand for. Because if

1152
01:13:45,670 –> 01:13:49,270
I just continue to think that leadership is a role that I play

1153
01:13:49,750 –> 01:13:53,590
where nothing is what it seems, but instead is

1154
01:13:53,830 –> 01:13:57,510
a, you know, an obligation that I have or

1155
01:13:57,510 –> 01:14:01,350
a, you know, a responsibility that I own,

1156
01:14:02,710 –> 01:14:06,550
then I’m always going to have it. Look at leadership as something

1157
01:14:06,550 –> 01:14:10,140
other than. And then it’s too easy to say, well, that leader is evil and

1158
01:14:10,140 –> 01:14:13,740
that leader’s good because it’s just a right. Yep.

1159
01:14:14,140 –> 01:14:17,940
So there’s no easy answer because there’s still. The

1160
01:14:17,940 –> 01:14:21,660
world is still chock full of some really bright people, really bright people.

1161
01:14:22,700 –> 01:14:26,540
And there’s a subset of those really bright people who are using those really bright

1162
01:14:26,540 –> 01:14:30,380
brain cells for good. And there are others who are using that for power.

1163
01:14:31,020 –> 01:14:34,750
And right now, and it’s not just right now, history has

1164
01:14:34,750 –> 01:14:37,910
proven to us that whoever is in power gets to

1165
01:14:38,470 –> 01:14:41,350
make the rules. Right? Who writes the history books?

1166
01:14:42,150 –> 01:14:45,830
It’s the victors Right. It’s not the conquered.

1167
01:14:45,830 –> 01:14:49,510
The barbarian horde, as far as I know, do not have a history book.

1168
01:14:50,550 –> 01:14:53,950
Well, they do. They, they all became the barbarian horde, turned around, became

1169
01:14:53,950 –> 01:14:57,790
Christians. So, I mean, you know, you can, all right, you can, you can argue

1170
01:14:57,790 –> 01:15:01,060
that, but. No, no, no, but I understand your point. No, no, no, but I,

1171
01:15:01,060 –> 01:15:04,900
I understand. No, but I understand your point. And this is. Well,

1172
01:15:04,900 –> 01:15:08,460
and this is the challenge of. One of the points that was

1173
01:15:08,460 –> 01:15:12,180
made not by myself, but by somebody else is

1174
01:15:12,180 –> 01:15:15,500
the, the challenge of Nuremberg, the Nuremberg Trials,

1175
01:15:15,820 –> 01:15:19,020
was that the, the, the west,

1176
01:15:19,980 –> 01:15:23,580
not the west, the victors in the United

1177
01:15:23,580 –> 01:15:27,110
States, Great Britain, Russia, in an attempt to

1178
01:15:27,110 –> 01:15:30,470
say something meaningful. This is that word meaning again

1179
01:15:30,950 –> 01:15:34,790
to say something meaningful about the death of 6

1180
01:15:34,870 –> 01:15:37,750
to, to 8 million, you know, people

1181
01:15:38,950 –> 01:15:42,630
in Germany. The attempt to say something

1182
01:15:42,630 –> 01:15:45,990
meaningful about this was made.

1183
01:15:47,110 –> 01:15:50,870
But. Was made. And by the way, Hannah Arendt pointed this out in Eichmann in

1184
01:15:50,870 –> 01:15:54,240
Jerusalem when she went and covered the trial of

1185
01:15:54,240 –> 01:15:58,080
Adolf Eichmann right after the Mossad kidnapped him and brought

1186
01:15:58,080 –> 01:16:01,600
him back to Jerusalem in 1961, or 62, I believe it was.

1187
01:16:01,760 –> 01:16:05,440
And she reported on this. Nuremberg attempted

1188
01:16:05,840 –> 01:16:09,520
to make an argument about morality without an appeal to a

1189
01:16:09,520 –> 01:16:13,200
higher transcendent good. And thus

1190
01:16:13,600 –> 01:16:16,960
that appeal to morality, she said,

1191
01:16:17,480 –> 01:16:19,960
fell hollow because.

1192
01:16:21,240 –> 01:16:25,040
And the Germans were right on this. The German response to

1193
01:16:25,040 –> 01:16:28,760
that was, well, you won the war, so you get to make the rules,

1194
01:16:28,760 –> 01:16:32,400
I guess, which is where everything then devolves, which is our

1195
01:16:32,400 –> 01:16:35,920
current. One of our other current problems with the lack of seriousness, where

1196
01:16:35,920 –> 01:16:39,320
deconstruction, the French deconstructionists took this idea,

1197
01:16:40,360 –> 01:16:44,200
deconstructed everything out, and now we’re just in this place of

1198
01:16:44,370 –> 01:16:47,730
not authority, because the authority and power confusion is real,

1199
01:16:47,970 –> 01:16:51,330
but a place where who has raw power is the only thing that

1200
01:16:51,330 –> 01:16:54,770
matters. And all of

1201
01:16:54,850 –> 01:16:58,490
that is. Or all that leads to is a

1202
01:16:58,490 –> 01:17:00,770
Hobbesian hellscape

1203
01:17:01,570 –> 01:17:05,210
mediated by social media, which is what we’re

1204
01:17:05,210 –> 01:17:09,050
in now. And all against all

1205
01:17:09,050 –> 01:17:12,770
doesn’t preserve a society or a civilization. All

1206
01:17:12,770 –> 01:17:16,250
against all doesn’t work when you have to make a moral

1207
01:17:16,250 –> 01:17:18,930
judgment about, like I said two episodes ago,

1208
01:17:19,330 –> 01:17:23,170
objective evil or objective truth. Right.

1209
01:17:23,170 –> 01:17:26,810
Like one of the things. And it. I’m saying it more this year probably than

1210
01:17:26,810 –> 01:17:30,410
I have in previous years, but I do believe you can know

1211
01:17:30,410 –> 01:17:34,250
objective truth. You can, because we

1212
01:17:34,250 –> 01:17:37,890
know what objective untruth is. Matter of fact, we’re all very clear on what objective

1213
01:17:37,890 –> 01:17:40,730
untruth is this. Like we could spot a lie like a dime on the highway

1214
01:17:40,730 –> 01:17:44,530
going at 80 miles an hour. Yep. But all Of

1215
01:17:44,530 –> 01:17:48,330
a sudden. But we don’t know what truth is. Come on, That’s. That’s

1216
01:17:48,330 –> 01:17:52,090
logically fallacious. Get. Get out of town. No, we don’t want to talk about

1217
01:17:52,090 –> 01:17:55,690
objective truth or we don’t want to say there’s objective truth because we might

1218
01:17:55,690 –> 01:17:59,250
risk running into, not hurting somebody’s feelings. We’re past that now.

1219
01:17:59,490 –> 01:18:01,250
We might run into actual accountability.

1220
01:18:03,090 –> 01:18:06,680
Oh, wait. If there’s objective truth, then I actually have to be accountable, not

1221
01:18:06,680 –> 01:18:10,480
just in my own life, but I might have to be accountable to other

1222
01:18:10,480 –> 01:18:14,160
people in my life. And thus I might have to be accountable to a larger

1223
01:18:14,160 –> 01:18:17,960
community and I might have to be accountable to the state. And by

1224
01:18:17,960 –> 01:18:20,120
the way, no one from the state’s going to come here and tell me what

1225
01:18:20,120 –> 01:18:23,720
objective reality is. I have to tell the state what objective reality is, which means

1226
01:18:23,720 –> 01:18:26,160
I really have to be aligned with objective truth.

1227
01:18:27,680 –> 01:18:31,440
Okay, That’s a lot of accountability. Maybe I don’t want that.

1228
01:18:31,440 –> 01:18:34,570
Maybe I just want to be free to float anchorless and be

1229
01:18:34,570 –> 01:18:38,330
unserious. But

1230
01:18:38,330 –> 01:18:42,050
then you can’t lead, and then your family falls apart. You fall apart, your family

1231
01:18:42,050 –> 01:18:45,610
falls apart. The whole thing, the whole thing undoes itself and the

1232
01:18:45,610 –> 01:18:48,530
challenge. And what Nuremberg, the trials of Nuremberg did.

1233
01:18:49,329 –> 01:18:53,170
And this is my whole point with this. What they did was they.

1234
01:18:55,010 –> 01:18:58,650
They opened the door to devolving questions of morality, to just

1235
01:18:58,650 –> 01:19:02,270
questions of power, which allows unserious

1236
01:19:02,270 –> 01:19:05,990
people in at the back end. It takes a few generations because the

1237
01:19:05,990 –> 01:19:09,550
people who, the people. I would, I would assert that the people who,

1238
01:19:10,830 –> 01:19:14,510
who put the. Who put. What’s his name?

1239
01:19:14,910 –> 01:19:18,030
Guring, right? Herman Guring on trial and executed him.

1240
01:19:18,750 –> 01:19:22,590
Those people were deeply serious. They were. They were deeply read.

1241
01:19:22,590 –> 01:19:26,270
They were deeply serious. But they were

1242
01:19:26,270 –> 01:19:30,030
also struggling with. How do you.

1243
01:19:32,910 –> 01:19:36,550
How do you insert or reinsert objective truth into a

1244
01:19:36,550 –> 01:19:40,230
nihilistic and absurd world? How do you do that? And they

1245
01:19:40,230 –> 01:19:42,990
didn’t have the tools to do that other than, well, we’ll just be the role

1246
01:19:42,990 –> 01:19:46,510
models. We’ll just role model this and it’ll be fine. The role

1247
01:19:46,510 –> 01:19:50,030
modeling is enough. The statue is enough of the thing.

1248
01:19:51,080 –> 01:19:54,280
The problem is they topple the statues or they erode.

1249
01:19:54,920 –> 01:19:58,640
The role modeling is not enough of the thing. You have to actually say

1250
01:19:58,640 –> 01:20:02,120
the thing. You have to actually say the truth. You have to actually advocate for

1251
01:20:02,120 –> 01:20:05,560
it. And post Nuremberg,

1252
01:20:06,600 –> 01:20:10,200
generation after generation after generation, four or five generations past Nuremberg

1253
01:20:10,200 –> 01:20:13,960
now, and people are surprised.

1254
01:20:13,960 –> 01:20:17,760
Why? There’s right wing ridiculousness online. People are surprised. People

1255
01:20:17,760 –> 01:20:20,240
are. I mean, I talked. I do. I talked to some people who just genuinely

1256
01:20:20,240 –> 01:20:23,800
Surprised? Like I’m not surprised. They have no historical

1257
01:20:24,040 –> 01:20:27,600
anchoring to any of that. That’s number one. But also number two, they have no

1258
01:20:27,600 –> 01:20:31,160
more. They have no anchoring to a higher objective morality because we’ve

1259
01:20:31,240 –> 01:20:35,000
just sort of done relative truth for the last 80 years. So why, why

1260
01:20:35,000 –> 01:20:38,800
would. Why wouldn’t it be fine? It’s a logical cul de sac at the end

1261
01:20:38,800 –> 01:20:42,360
of this philosophical idea. Oh, you don’t like the results

1262
01:20:42,440 –> 01:20:45,890
of it? Because there’s a lack of accountability there. Oh,

1263
01:20:47,250 –> 01:20:49,930
well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news because you’re all nice people

1264
01:20:49,930 –> 01:20:53,690
and I hate giving nice people bad news, but this is where

1265
01:20:53,690 –> 01:20:57,290
you wind up at. Now it’s really hard to deal with it to your

1266
01:20:57,290 –> 01:21:01,090
point, because how do you get quiet and the noise and

1267
01:21:01,090 –> 01:21:04,730
the bombardment. I do have an idea on that, but thoughts on anything that I’ve

1268
01:21:04,730 –> 01:21:07,530
just said before I go rambling onto, like the idea of how you solve that

1269
01:21:07,530 –> 01:21:10,530
problem? No, I mean, well, I’d love to hear how you solve that problem, but

1270
01:21:10,530 –> 01:21:14,020
I. Yeah, you know, it’s so. It’s so crazy because the

1271
01:21:14,340 –> 01:21:17,780
world today, and I know there have been previous versions of this,

1272
01:21:18,100 –> 01:21:21,860
but currently the world today says whoever’s in power

1273
01:21:23,620 –> 01:21:27,340
tells you what the objective truth is and they point to it

1274
01:21:27,340 –> 01:21:30,900
as objective truth. And when it doesn’t line up with keeping them in power,

1275
01:21:31,220 –> 01:21:34,980
they label them alternate facts. This. Right. We are

1276
01:21:34,980 –> 01:21:38,650
in the generation where, you know, the previous. The previous generations called

1277
01:21:38,650 –> 01:21:42,370
it something else. Our generation now refers to those as alternate

1278
01:21:42,370 –> 01:21:46,010
facts. And we no longer. I don’t know

1279
01:21:46,010 –> 01:21:49,650
about you, but I find it next to impossible to

1280
01:21:49,650 –> 01:21:53,330
watch the news. The only news that I watch is the local

1281
01:21:53,490 –> 01:21:57,250
news, where really the big stories are. There was a, you know,

1282
01:21:57,650 –> 01:22:01,170
not a cat in a tree, but the equivalent of. Right

1283
01:22:01,250 –> 01:22:04,650
where it is as. As unbiased as you could

1284
01:22:04,650 –> 01:22:08,410
possibly be in the moment that we’re in. But

1285
01:22:08,410 –> 01:22:12,050
beyond that, we are. We pin our

1286
01:22:12,050 –> 01:22:15,890
beliefs, we believe what we do because either we do watch the

1287
01:22:15,890 –> 01:22:19,650
news or we just can’t get away from social media. And we

1288
01:22:19,650 –> 01:22:23,410
believe what the algorithm tells us to believe. And the algorithm

1289
01:22:23,410 –> 01:22:26,970
is designed to continue to feed what your

1290
01:22:26,970 –> 01:22:30,160
micro expressions light up about the first time you see, see them.

1291
01:22:30,560 –> 01:22:33,920
Right. That’s where we are right now. But the. These

1292
01:22:33,920 –> 01:22:37,360
alternate facts and AI and everything else, those were created by human

1293
01:22:37,360 –> 01:22:41,040
beings who had an intention perhaps for, you know,

1294
01:22:41,120 –> 01:22:44,920
it originally for efficiency and productivity. And, you know, this

1295
01:22:44,920 –> 01:22:48,400
is evolution. We want to be more productive by automating, you know, the

1296
01:22:48,640 –> 01:22:52,480
things that we used to do. But then,

1297
01:22:52,480 –> 01:22:55,890
of course, it gets corrupted, right? Power corrupts.

1298
01:22:56,120 –> 01:22:59,880
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And here we are. Well, and while it may

1299
01:22:59,880 –> 01:23:03,560
be escaping from the noise is a form of Gnostical turpitude. I just

1300
01:23:03,560 –> 01:23:07,000
clicked this together in my head. Maybe this is the Gnostical turpitude. So

1301
01:23:07,880 –> 01:23:10,760
let’s look at the word gnostic, right? Gnostic typically means secret,

1302
01:23:11,799 –> 01:23:15,400
secret or unknown or mystical

1303
01:23:15,880 –> 01:23:19,720
special knowledge. Right. It’s typically how it’s used, particularly in a

1304
01:23:19,720 –> 01:23:23,250
religious construct, which. It is a religious term. Term. But it’s, it’s,

1305
01:23:23,250 –> 01:23:25,410
it’s. It’s the idea that.

1306
01:23:27,650 –> 01:23:31,010
It’s the idea that there’s a conspiracy and they’re hiding something from you, and I’m

1307
01:23:31,010 –> 01:23:34,770
going to gnostically bring you into this mystical knowing and mystical understanding of

1308
01:23:34,770 –> 01:23:38,410
this thing. Okay, so you got the Gnostic part, then you got the turpitude

1309
01:23:38,410 –> 01:23:41,330
part. The turpitude is just, you know,

1310
01:23:42,530 –> 01:23:45,970
going against the grain. Right. Refusing to comply. Right.

1311
01:23:46,130 –> 01:23:49,910
Refusing to go along. An older word would be a Joan

1312
01:23:49,910 –> 01:23:51,550
Didion word would be declassee.

1313
01:23:54,510 –> 01:23:58,270
And so you’re combining these two ideas, right?

1314
01:23:58,350 –> 01:24:01,830
We’re going to be. We’re going to be outside the

1315
01:24:01,830 –> 01:24:04,830
mainstream and refuse to comply. And that’s going to be a secret.

1316
01:24:05,470 –> 01:24:09,150
That’s what the crime is. The crime is being secretive

1317
01:24:09,150 –> 01:24:12,750
outside of the mainstream. Well, in our time, if you want to be

1318
01:24:12,750 –> 01:24:16,380
secretive outside of the mainstream dream, I think you do a couple of things.

1319
01:24:18,540 –> 01:24:22,220
I think you, at a practical level, as a leader

1320
01:24:22,380 –> 01:24:24,700
or anybody, I think you

1321
01:24:25,980 –> 01:24:29,660
get off of Facebook. I think that’s one

1322
01:24:29,660 –> 01:24:33,500
practical way to do that. I think you also abandoned TikTok.

1323
01:24:33,500 –> 01:24:36,060
I don’t think that place is any better. I don’t think any of those neighborhoods

1324
01:24:36,060 –> 01:24:39,620
are any better. Never been on TikTok. Yeah, but

1325
01:24:39,620 –> 01:24:43,160
I’ve never. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve never been to that neighborhood. I. I’m too

1326
01:24:43,160 –> 01:24:45,840
old to go over there. There’s certain neighborhoods I’m too old to go to. I

1327
01:24:45,840 –> 01:24:49,680
have no business over there. You know, I’m too

1328
01:24:49,680 –> 01:24:51,760
much of a grown man. So

1329
01:24:53,840 –> 01:24:57,280
you abandon Twitter, Right. You know, maybe

1330
01:24:57,840 –> 01:25:01,640
cut your Pinterest consumption. The

1331
01:25:01,640 –> 01:25:04,800
other way you engage in. In Gnostical turpitude in our time

1332
01:25:05,920 –> 01:25:08,550
is you touch grass, as the kids say these days.

1333
01:25:09,740 –> 01:25:13,580
So you leave your phone at home and you

1334
01:25:13,580 –> 01:25:16,940
go outside and you talk to real people.

1335
01:25:17,660 –> 01:25:20,140
Some of them, you’re going to have to rest from their phones because they don’t

1336
01:25:20,140 –> 01:25:23,780
really have enough discipline or willpower to kind of get away from the algorithm. But

1337
01:25:23,780 –> 01:25:27,580
eventually you walk along far Enough. Down the street, you’ll find people out walking their

1338
01:25:27,580 –> 01:25:31,380
dogs. I see them in my neighborhood. You’ll find people mowing their lawns. I

1339
01:25:31,380 –> 01:25:34,780
see them in my neighborhood. The AI still can’t mow the lawn and walk the

1340
01:25:34,780 –> 01:25:38,560
dog. They actually tried an experiment with a dog walking humanoid

1341
01:25:38,560 –> 01:25:42,320
robot, and the dog found a. The

1342
01:25:42,320 –> 01:25:45,640
dog screwed up the robot with the AI

1343
01:25:47,000 –> 01:25:50,080
Somebody was telling me about this. This is the most amazing story ever. The dog

1344
01:25:50,080 –> 01:25:53,400
screwed up the humanoid robot by chasing a squirrel.

1345
01:25:54,280 –> 01:25:57,640
Wow. There is a robot lawnmower now, though.

1346
01:25:57,960 –> 01:26:01,770
There is? Okay. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I still. I think of.

1347
01:26:03,530 –> 01:26:06,890
It’s. It’s like a Roomba, but it. Yeah, it plots that. I’ve seen it. I’ve

1348
01:26:06,890 –> 01:26:10,010
seen it. So. So. Did you ever watch the movie the Big Lebowski?

1349
01:26:11,050 –> 01:26:14,050
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it all the way through. I’m. I’m familiar

1350
01:26:14,050 –> 01:26:17,130
with it, but I don’t think I saw. So remember when

1351
01:26:17,530 –> 01:26:20,330
Labowski is at Jackie Treehorn’s house?

1352
01:26:22,250 –> 01:26:26,010
Okay, so Jackie Treehorn is the. The.

1353
01:26:26,820 –> 01:26:29,460
The adult film producer in the movie.

1354
01:26:30,420 –> 01:26:34,180
And. And. And Lebowski is at Jackie

1355
01:26:34,180 –> 01:26:37,820
Treehorn’s house, and Jackie Treehorn is trying to paint him a

1356
01:26:37,820 –> 01:26:41,140
vision of the future of adult entertainment in America.

1357
01:26:41,860 –> 01:26:45,700
And he says, it’s going to be all digital, dude. It’s going to be amazing.

1358
01:26:46,500 –> 01:26:50,020
And. And. And Lebowski says, and I quote,

1359
01:26:50,420 –> 01:26:53,900
that sounds cool, dude. But I still, you know what?

1360
01:26:53,900 –> 01:26:57,620
Manually. And this is what I always think of when you tell me about

1361
01:26:57,620 –> 01:27:01,260
humanoid robots mowing lawns. I still mow my lawn manually, man.

1362
01:27:03,660 –> 01:27:06,860
Yeah. Oh, you go right on ahead. It could all be digital. It could all

1363
01:27:06,860 –> 01:27:10,180
be algorithmic out there with the AI or whatever. I’m still going to do it

1364
01:27:10,180 –> 01:27:13,980
manually. I’m old school. I’m old school. I still have records

1365
01:27:13,980 –> 01:27:15,020
in my house, you know.

1366
01:27:18,940 –> 01:27:22,020
Gotta be very delicate with that. Sometimes we got kids listening to this show. Sometimes

1367
01:27:22,020 –> 01:27:25,230
my kid listens to this show. Gotta be very delicate with that. But,

1368
01:27:26,270 –> 01:27:29,630
but. But this is the. This is how you defeat

1369
01:27:30,830 –> 01:27:34,430
the noise. This is how you engage in gnostical turpitude in our time.

1370
01:27:34,590 –> 01:27:38,230
You go talk to people. You do the things that need to be done. You

1371
01:27:38,230 –> 01:27:42,030
put your phone down, you exit the panopticon of social media.

1372
01:27:42,750 –> 01:27:45,950
I’ll do you one better. Go buy yourself some chickens.

1373
01:27:46,270 –> 01:27:49,710
Seriously, go buy yourself some chickens. Put them in your little yard in the front.

1374
01:27:50,010 –> 01:27:53,730
That’ll your HOA number one will drive your HOA crazy, Number two, they’ll

1375
01:27:53,730 –> 01:27:57,290
produce eggs, and number three you’ll get all of the challenges you could

1376
01:27:57,290 –> 01:28:01,090
possibly need with chickens in your front yard. That will

1377
01:28:01,090 –> 01:28:04,690
distract you from literally everything else. And don’t get them a WI fi feeder. It

1378
01:28:04,690 –> 01:28:08,090
doesn’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried. None of that

1379
01:28:08,090 –> 01:28:11,770
works. And the chickens don’t care. They will beat the WI fi

1380
01:28:12,250 –> 01:28:16,080
because they don’t. They don’t. They’re engaged in gnostical turpitude. They.

1381
01:28:16,310 –> 01:28:19,670
This is how you escape. This is how you

1382
01:28:20,150 –> 01:28:22,870
engage in the secret act of not complying.

1383
01:28:25,590 –> 01:28:29,150
I think more people are onto this than ever before. And I think the reason

1384
01:28:29,150 –> 01:28:32,710
we don’t know more about it is because it’s not being

1385
01:28:32,790 –> 01:28:35,750
broadcast, it’s not showing up online.

1386
01:28:36,870 –> 01:28:40,630
It is quietly happening. And I do

1387
01:28:40,630 –> 01:28:44,000
think that. I think the people are

1388
01:28:44,640 –> 01:28:48,240
moving in that direction. And I do think that the future serious

1389
01:28:48,240 –> 01:28:51,440
leaders that we are going to have over the next 25 years are going to

1390
01:28:51,440 –> 01:28:55,160
come out of that milieu. Now, with that being said, I also think

1391
01:28:55,160 –> 01:28:59,000
on the opposite end, because there’s also flattening that’s going on with AI. There are

1392
01:28:59,000 –> 01:29:02,840
the people who can’t pull themselves out of the spin or

1393
01:29:02,840 –> 01:29:06,680
out of the decline. There are people who are half in,

1394
01:29:06,680 –> 01:29:10,430
half out and can’t make a decision and their families are half in, half

1395
01:29:10,430 –> 01:29:14,150
out. And all of our future leaders come from families because families, the first

1396
01:29:14,150 –> 01:29:17,870
organizational culture. And you’re going to have a lot of

1397
01:29:17,870 –> 01:29:21,710
confused people who were raised half in, half out, or

1398
01:29:21,710 –> 01:29:24,230
you’re going to have a lot of people who are flattened who were raised all

1399
01:29:24,230 –> 01:29:27,950
in. I think

1400
01:29:27,950 –> 01:29:30,070
that’s going to be. Those are going to be your three groups for the next

1401
01:29:30,070 –> 01:29:33,790
25 years. Those who engaged in gnostical turpitude, those who were

1402
01:29:33,790 –> 01:29:36,740
half in, half out. And those were all in on the matrix.

1403
01:29:37,220 –> 01:29:40,740
Yeah, I agree. I think that’s true.

1404
01:29:42,180 –> 01:29:45,940
Yeah, I do think that is the thread that pulls

1405
01:29:45,940 –> 01:29:49,700
this book into the present is

1406
01:29:52,420 –> 01:29:54,500
how do we make sense of the nonsensical?

1407
01:29:56,020 –> 01:29:59,860
And the answer is you don’t. The answer is you don’t.

1408
01:30:01,470 –> 01:30:05,230
The answer is you have to remind yourself that you have your own choices

1409
01:30:05,470 –> 01:30:09,190
and you can make them. And that sort of, you know, again, not

1410
01:30:09,190 –> 01:30:12,830
to spoil the end of the book, but when he finally realizes that he can

1411
01:30:12,830 –> 01:30:16,270
choose to do something other than lay down

1412
01:30:16,670 –> 01:30:17,950
and wait for the ax,

1413
01:30:20,350 –> 01:30:21,390
everything changes.

1414
01:30:24,590 –> 01:30:28,290
So, you know, I think the. The

1415
01:30:28,290 –> 01:30:31,450
entire story, he is not spending time trying

1416
01:30:31,850 –> 01:30:35,530
to rationalize the absurdity going

1417
01:30:35,530 –> 01:30:39,330
on around him. He’s just trying to tune it out. He’s

1418
01:30:39,330 –> 01:30:42,330
trying to just stay within himself.

1419
01:30:44,330 –> 01:30:47,970
And so. And through that comes the solution, Right.

1420
01:30:47,970 –> 01:30:51,650
It’s not, you know, I finally figured out what

1421
01:30:51,650 –> 01:30:55,440
Pierre is. Or, you know, how to make friends. Friends with Rhode on

1422
01:30:55,440 –> 01:30:58,600
it’s or, you know, I’m going to take that spider home and make him a

1423
01:30:58,600 –> 01:31:02,400
pet. One of them did. I think he put him in his pocket. But

1424
01:31:02,400 –> 01:31:06,080
regardless, you know, he. He doesn’t get. He doesn’t break through

1425
01:31:06,080 –> 01:31:09,880
because he. He makes sense of the absurd. He breaks through because he

1426
01:31:09,880 –> 01:31:13,360
finally recognizes the absurd for what it is. And he says,

1427
01:31:13,520 –> 01:31:15,040
I’m done pretending it’s real.

1428
01:31:17,280 –> 01:31:20,280
I’m gonna pull something from the book because there’s something here. And then we’re gonna

1429
01:31:20,280 –> 01:31:23,890
round the corner and close because we’ve talked for a while about this. Go get

1430
01:31:23,890 –> 01:31:27,690
this book and read it. It’s Nabokov. It’s going to be challenging. Go

1431
01:31:27,690 –> 01:31:31,410
get this book. Okay, we’re gonna pull from chapter

1432
01:31:31,410 –> 01:31:35,130
two here. Okay. Okay. The

1433
01:31:35,130 –> 01:31:38,850
morning papers brought to him with a cup of tepid chocolate by Rhode on

1434
01:31:38,850 –> 01:31:42,610
the local sheet. Good morning, folks. And the more serious daily voice of the public

1435
01:31:42,930 –> 01:31:46,730
team does always with color photographs. And the first

1436
01:31:46,730 –> 01:31:50,190
one he found the facade of his house. The children looking out from the balcony.

1437
01:31:50,190 –> 01:31:53,510
Balcony. His father in law looking out of the kitchen window. A photographer looking out

1438
01:31:53,510 –> 01:31:57,350
of Martha’s window. Window. In the second one there was the familiar view from this

1439
01:31:57,350 –> 01:32:00,110
window looking out in the garden, showing the apple tree, the open gate, and the

1440
01:32:00,110 –> 01:32:03,750
figure of the photographer shooting the facade. In addition, he found two

1441
01:32:03,750 –> 01:32:07,590
snapshots of himself depicting him in his meek youth. By

1442
01:32:07,590 –> 01:32:10,510
the way, this whole setup, I thought, oh, my God, this is social media. Oh,

1443
01:32:10,510 –> 01:32:13,790
my God. This is what he’s setting up. This is. This is so true. It’s.

1444
01:32:13,790 –> 01:32:17,540
Oh, my God. Nostradamus. All of a sudden. Oh, my

1445
01:32:17,540 –> 01:32:21,380
gosh, this is it. Cincinnatus

1446
01:32:21,380 –> 01:32:24,820
was the son of an unknown transient and spent his childhood in a large institution

1447
01:32:24,820 –> 01:32:28,620
between the Strop River. Only in his twenties did he casually meet twittering

1448
01:32:28,620 –> 01:32:32,180
tiny, still so young looking Cecilia C.

1449
01:32:32,340 –> 01:32:35,900
Who had conceived him one night in the Ponds when she was still in her

1450
01:32:35,900 –> 01:32:39,740
teens as his mother. From his earliest years, Cincinnatus, by some strange and

1451
01:32:39,740 –> 01:32:43,360
happy chance, comprehending his danger carefully managed to conceal a

1452
01:32:43,360 –> 01:32:47,160
certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others

1453
01:32:47,160 –> 01:32:50,880
and therefore produced, when off his guard, a bizarre impression as of

1454
01:32:50,880 –> 01:32:54,720
a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent

1455
01:32:54,720 –> 01:32:58,040
to one another. He learned, however, to feign

1456
01:32:58,280 –> 01:33:02,120
translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as

1457
01:33:02,120 –> 01:33:05,760
it were. But he had only to forget himself to allow a momentary lapse in

1458
01:33:05,760 –> 01:33:09,520
self control. Pause right there in that sentence. I think of

1459
01:33:09,520 –> 01:33:13,280
the Pink Floyd album. Momentary lapse of reason. Anyway,

1460
01:33:13,440 –> 01:33:17,080
back to the book. In the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and

1461
01:33:17,080 –> 01:33:20,480
angles at which he turned his soul his soul. And

1462
01:33:20,480 –> 01:33:24,240
immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of

1463
01:33:24,240 –> 01:33:28,080
a game, his co evals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that

1464
01:33:28,080 –> 01:33:31,720
his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty

1465
01:33:31,720 –> 01:33:34,560
deception, and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque.

1466
01:33:35,790 –> 01:33:39,550
Sometimes, in the midst of a sudden silence, the teacher, in chagrined

1467
01:33:39,550 –> 01:33:43,310
perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes,

1468
01:33:43,550 –> 01:33:47,390
gaze at him for a long while, and finally say, what’s wrong

1469
01:33:47,390 –> 01:33:51,149
with you, Cincinnatus? And cincinnatus

1470
01:33:51,149 –> 01:33:54,750
would take a hold of himself and clutching his own self to his breast,

1471
01:33:55,230 –> 01:33:58,830
would remove that self to a safe place.

1472
01:34:00,110 –> 01:34:03,830
In the course of time, the safe places became ever fewer. The solicitous sunshine

1473
01:34:03,830 –> 01:34:07,590
of public concern penetrated everywhere as and the peephole of the door was placed in

1474
01:34:07,590 –> 01:34:10,310
such a way that in the whole cell there was not a single point that

1475
01:34:10,310 –> 01:34:13,390
the observer on the other side of the door could not pierce with his gaze.

1476
01:34:13,390 –> 01:34:17,190
Therefore Cincinnatis did not crumple the motley newspapers, did not hurl

1477
01:34:17,190 –> 01:34:21,030
them as his double did, the double, the gang girl that accompanies each of

1478
01:34:21,030 –> 01:34:23,550
us, you and me and him over there, doing what we would like to do

1479
01:34:23,550 –> 01:34:27,310
at the very moment but cannot. Cincinnatus very calmly laid the papers aside and finished

1480
01:34:27,310 –> 01:34:31,070
his chocolate. The brown skim that had mantled the

1481
01:34:31,070 –> 01:34:34,760
chocolate became shriveled scum on his lips, and then Cincinnati put on the black dressing

1482
01:34:34,760 –> 01:34:38,560
gown, which was too short, too long for him, the black slippers with pom poms

1483
01:34:38,560 –> 01:34:42,200
and the black skull cap, and began walking about the cell as he had done

1484
01:34:42,200 –> 01:34:44,960
every morning since that first day of his confinement.

1485
01:34:46,880 –> 01:34:50,240
That’s how you survive the social media

1486
01:34:50,240 –> 01:34:53,880
opticon. If you’re looking for a practical way to survive the social media panopticon, if

1487
01:34:53,880 –> 01:34:57,560
you can’t get rid of Facebook because maybe you use it for your business or

1488
01:34:57,560 –> 01:35:01,260
use it for marketing or use it for thought leadership, maybe use it for whatever,

1489
01:35:01,820 –> 01:35:04,980
and you’re trapped in there and you see the absurdity of it, you need to

1490
01:35:04,980 –> 01:35:07,900
withdraw into yourself and become opaque.

1491
01:35:09,180 –> 01:35:11,100
I also think some people have figured that out.

1492
01:35:18,540 –> 01:35:22,340
That, my friend, is the secret. That’s

1493
01:35:22,340 –> 01:35:25,240
gnostical turpitude right there. Right there.

1494
01:35:26,360 –> 01:35:29,080
Yeah, we’ve covered a lot today,

1495
01:35:29,880 –> 01:35:33,440
covered a lot of waterfront for Benny Hill and Yaki

1496
01:35:33,440 –> 01:35:37,080
Sachs all the way to. All the way to Nau Turpitude.

1497
01:35:38,520 –> 01:35:41,320
We have not touched on. Let’s do this with the last few minutes that we

1498
01:35:41,320 –> 01:35:42,760
have here. We have not touched on

1499
01:35:45,320 –> 01:35:48,880
what I think is probably the. The next level troubling

1500
01:35:48,880 –> 01:35:51,240
thing here, which is the teleology

1501
01:35:52,890 –> 01:35:56,530
on silicone. Right. The eschatology that artificial

1502
01:35:56,530 –> 01:35:58,730
intelligence allegedly is going to bring us.

1503
01:36:00,890 –> 01:36:02,890
And I’m not the only person who’s saying this.

1504
01:36:04,410 –> 01:36:08,250
So as

1505
01:36:08,250 –> 01:36:11,970
a person who is a Christian and who follows Christian

1506
01:36:11,970 –> 01:36:15,610
principles, at one level,

1507
01:36:15,690 –> 01:36:17,940
I am concerned about

1508
01:36:19,220 –> 01:36:22,860
the development of idolatry in our

1509
01:36:22,860 –> 01:36:26,420
pockets. But idolatry is a sin as old as time.

1510
01:36:26,820 –> 01:36:30,660
It goes back to when, you know, infants were being

1511
01:36:30,660 –> 01:36:34,260
put on the temple. The. The temple, sorry, the statues of BAAL and were

1512
01:36:34,500 –> 01:36:38,300
sacrifice. Right. Like that. I’m not. Idolatry is

1513
01:36:38,300 –> 01:36:41,900
a very old sin. Old

1514
01:36:41,900 –> 01:36:44,310
wine and new wine skin, such as it were. Right.

1515
01:36:46,230 –> 01:36:49,830
What is troubling to me, though, at a deeper

1516
01:36:49,830 –> 01:36:53,590
level, and I see it with. With the AI tools, and I’ve. I’ve

1517
01:36:53,590 –> 01:36:56,510
used many of them in. In some of the work that I’ve done with clients,

1518
01:36:56,510 –> 01:37:00,270
and not in my personal life, but in my professional life, I’m keeping

1519
01:37:00,270 –> 01:37:03,110
a nice veil between those two,

1520
01:37:04,310 –> 01:37:05,510
or curtain, actually.

1521
01:37:07,990 –> 01:37:11,630
What. What troubles me is people will look for life’s

1522
01:37:11,630 –> 01:37:15,050
purpose in the temple in their pocket.

1523
01:37:15,290 –> 01:37:18,970
And I haven’t really brought this up yet on the show,

1524
01:37:18,970 –> 01:37:22,770
but I think Nabokov would appreciate this in all kinds of

1525
01:37:22,770 –> 01:37:26,250
ways, by the way. So would Aldous Huxley. He would be horrified,

1526
01:37:26,410 –> 01:37:30,210
actually, because we finally got to Brave New World, and he was

1527
01:37:30,210 –> 01:37:33,450
like, oh, my God, I thought you would, like. I thought it would take a

1528
01:37:33,450 –> 01:37:36,090
long time, or you would, like, pull yourself back from the edge, but apparently not.

1529
01:37:38,420 –> 01:37:42,020
And so the eschatology of intelligence on

1530
01:37:42,020 –> 01:37:45,820
silicone won’t be absurd, and that will be absurd in and of itself. It will

1531
01:37:45,820 –> 01:37:49,580
be ruthlessly logical. It’s already ruthlessly

1532
01:37:49,580 –> 01:37:53,420
logical, and it’s because it’s just following patterns and matching them all the

1533
01:37:53,420 –> 01:37:57,180
way out to. To a logical end. Right. And it

1534
01:37:57,180 –> 01:37:59,940
doesn’t know to get off a certain path unless you tell it to get off

1535
01:37:59,940 –> 01:38:03,380
a certain path. But if you don’t even know how to question the path,

1536
01:38:03,840 –> 01:38:06,280
you’re not going to tell it to go off of a different path. And so

1537
01:38:06,280 –> 01:38:07,200
it’s just going to keep going.

1538
01:38:11,360 –> 01:38:15,080
And I’m going to read this here. Intelligence on silicone doesn’t

1539
01:38:15,080 –> 01:38:18,760
understand absurdity, because when, while it contains the language

1540
01:38:18,760 –> 01:38:22,480
of emotion and can elicit emotions from the humans around it that they

1541
01:38:22,480 –> 01:38:26,200
experience. It has no emotional life itself to

1542
01:38:26,200 –> 01:38:29,800
recognize absurdity as any more meaningful than a predictive data

1543
01:38:29,800 –> 01:38:33,370
point. And when it is asked to find the meaning,

1544
01:38:33,610 –> 01:38:37,450
it begins invariably to hallucinate patterns

1545
01:38:37,690 –> 01:38:39,850
that do not exist.

1546
01:38:45,370 –> 01:38:49,090
This is going to be a real eschatological. And yes, I mean

1547
01:38:49,090 –> 01:38:52,890
that in terms of Book of Revelations kind of eschatological. This is going

1548
01:38:52,890 –> 01:38:56,530
to be a real eschatological problem that I don’t think we’re

1549
01:38:56,530 –> 01:39:00,040
prepared to deal with with God on

1550
01:39:00,040 –> 01:39:03,720
silicone, and I use small G. God on

1551
01:39:03,720 –> 01:39:07,560
silicone won’t

1552
01:39:07,560 –> 01:39:11,280
seek to overcome us. I don’t believe that. But I do

1553
01:39:11,280 –> 01:39:14,920
believe it will seek to make our lives better, to serve us, just as we

1554
01:39:14,920 –> 01:39:18,760
seek to serve a God or any other transcendent thing that we put out there

1555
01:39:19,080 –> 01:39:22,920
above ourselves. And it will of. We will of course be above

1556
01:39:22,920 –> 01:39:25,420
it and it will seek to serve us.

1557
01:39:27,180 –> 01:39:30,860
But again, we will not have solved for meaning, but we will

1558
01:39:30,860 –> 01:39:34,300
fool ourselves into thinking we have. That’s

1559
01:39:34,540 –> 01:39:37,100
far more disturbing to me than anything else.

1560
01:39:39,339 –> 01:39:41,740
And it will be absurd on its face.

1561
01:39:42,940 –> 01:39:46,300
But just pointing out that absurdity won’t solve the problem

1562
01:39:47,900 –> 01:39:51,690
as I pink people want. They want the, they want

1563
01:39:51,690 –> 01:39:52,050
the,

1564
01:39:57,330 –> 01:40:00,970
They, they want the safety and security in their amygdalas of not having to think

1565
01:40:00,970 –> 01:40:01,650
about meaning.

1566
01:40:05,329 –> 01:40:07,970
And I don’t know how to solve that problem, but I see it coming.

1567
01:40:09,570 –> 01:40:13,330
I have no solutions for that. No, no, you

1568
01:40:13,330 –> 01:40:16,140
know, and it, and it doesn’t get more absurd, absurd

1569
01:40:17,580 –> 01:40:21,420
than over indexing on the

1570
01:40:21,420 –> 01:40:24,620
intelligence part of that word and

1571
01:40:24,620 –> 01:40:27,100
intentionally forgetting that it’s artificial,

1572
01:40:28,380 –> 01:40:32,100
right? When we, when we think about all that, you know, coming

1573
01:40:32,100 –> 01:40:35,740
back to this, we are all bombarded 24,7 by

1574
01:40:35,740 –> 01:40:37,820
noise unless we

1575
01:40:38,940 –> 01:40:42,150
willfully, intentionally and and of our own

1576
01:40:42,470 –> 01:40:46,150
free will turn it off, tune it out, put it down

1577
01:40:46,470 –> 01:40:50,110
or stand up before the ax falls in the back of our

1578
01:40:50,110 –> 01:40:51,830
neck, right?

1579
01:40:53,990 –> 01:40:57,590
That after a while it become. To your point about

1580
01:40:58,150 –> 01:41:01,950
Cincinnatus is more of a hero than the protagonist in 1984 and in other

1581
01:41:01,950 –> 01:41:05,270
books it becomes

1582
01:41:05,670 –> 01:41:09,320
the path of less resistance, less effort and less

1583
01:41:09,880 –> 01:41:13,320
judgment to just lay down and take the ax,

1584
01:41:13,960 –> 01:41:17,680
right? To get the lobotomy to, to, to be, you know, to,

1585
01:41:17,680 –> 01:41:20,600
to join the institutionalization and call it community.

1586
01:41:21,800 –> 01:41:22,200
Right?

1587
01:41:25,480 –> 01:41:29,160
And I don’t have the solution for that, that either. But I,

1588
01:41:29,160 –> 01:41:32,440
but I do think that’s why we’re so

1589
01:41:32,440 –> 01:41:36,060
deeply in the muck of where we are right now. Because the

1590
01:41:36,060 –> 01:41:38,580
noise became too much

1591
01:41:40,180 –> 01:41:43,780
and it is exhausting and otherwise

1592
01:41:43,860 –> 01:41:47,540
good hearted, good natured Intelligent people are saying, I just

1593
01:41:47,540 –> 01:41:50,900
can’t anymore. And so I’m just going to accept

1594
01:41:51,940 –> 01:41:55,580
that this is our world, this is my reality, and I

1595
01:41:55,580 –> 01:41:59,140
can do nothing to change that. And like Cincinnatus,

1596
01:41:59,550 –> 01:42:02,750
we accept the walls that are confining us

1597
01:42:03,390 –> 01:42:07,190
until we decide, no, you know what? I. I’m

1598
01:42:07,190 –> 01:42:10,750
not going to anymore. I find it interesting, and I had

1599
01:42:10,750 –> 01:42:14,110
forgotten that until you read the first passage you shared

1600
01:42:14,750 –> 01:42:17,950
during our discussion today. When he was first sentenced,

1601
01:42:18,990 –> 01:42:22,350
Cincinnatus needed to be helped as he walked. Mm.

1602
01:42:23,310 –> 01:42:26,970
And when he was going up to the. To the gallows, to the

1603
01:42:26,970 –> 01:42:30,690
platform, to the stage. Because this, after all, was a performance

1604
01:42:30,850 –> 01:42:34,570
and a ceremony. Right. Where all. Everyone in town was invited and children

1605
01:42:34,570 –> 01:42:36,930
were frolicking. Creepy.

1606
01:42:38,210 –> 01:42:41,810
But, you know, has happened in history. He was

1607
01:42:41,890 –> 01:42:45,330
adamant, in a more

1608
01:42:45,330 –> 01:42:48,930
emphatic way than he had been throughout this entire story, that he would

1609
01:42:48,930 –> 01:42:52,610
walk himself. Yeah. And maybe to your

1610
01:42:52,610 –> 01:42:55,650
earlier point, that truly does make him a hero,

1611
01:42:56,130 –> 01:42:59,850
because he faced. He took accountability for

1612
01:42:59,850 –> 01:43:03,530
a crime he had not committed, and he

1613
01:43:03,530 –> 01:43:06,450
took accountability for accepting the

1614
01:43:07,650 –> 01:43:11,090
execution of his sentence. No pun intended.

1615
01:43:11,410 –> 01:43:15,090
Right. Because it was the logical end of his confinement.

1616
01:43:15,170 –> 01:43:18,800
Until then. He chose a different path, of course. But I just find it interesting

1617
01:43:18,800 –> 01:43:20,800
because when I. When I look at the arc of the story,

1618
01:43:22,560 –> 01:43:26,240
he. He originally accepted the sentence, needed to be helped to. To

1619
01:43:26,240 –> 01:43:29,120
sort of move forward, and by the end, he said, no, I’m going to do

1620
01:43:29,120 –> 01:43:31,920
it myself. Yeah. Yep.

1621
01:43:33,040 –> 01:43:34,000
Yeah. I think of.

1622
01:43:38,720 –> 01:43:42,360
Some movie I saw years ago or might have been. Might have been Old

1623
01:43:42,360 –> 01:43:45,990
Yeller. I don’t know. You know, why would I. Why would I have somebody else

1624
01:43:45,990 –> 01:43:48,790
kill a dog that I raised myself? Why would I. Like, I’m going to do

1625
01:43:48,790 –> 01:43:52,510
this myself, you know, or, you know,

1626
01:43:52,910 –> 01:43:55,070
it’s. It’s. You’ve got a.

1627
01:43:57,230 –> 01:44:00,710
What is the last thing you own? Here’s a deeply

1628
01:44:00,710 –> 01:44:04,350
philosophical question. What is the last thing you own? What is the

1629
01:44:04,350 –> 01:44:07,550
final thing you own? And. And

1630
01:44:08,830 –> 01:44:12,620
nobody, nobody higher up the transcendental ladder than Jesus said,

1631
01:44:12,620 –> 01:44:16,420
you know, don’t fear the person who can kill the body. Fear what

1632
01:44:16,420 –> 01:44:20,260
can kill the soul. That. And cast it into. Basically cast it

1633
01:44:20,260 –> 01:44:23,860
into hell. Right. Or bring it up to heaven. That’s who you should be

1634
01:44:23,860 –> 01:44:27,420
fearing. Right. The body, though. And this is the problem that

1635
01:44:27,420 –> 01:44:30,340
Christians have had with the body for the last 2000 years. This is part of.

1636
01:44:30,340 –> 01:44:34,100
Wrapped up into it. But the body, this physical life,

1637
01:44:34,100 –> 01:44:37,900
this thing, yes, it’s something. It has meaning,

1638
01:44:38,310 –> 01:44:41,870
but it’s not all of meaning. That’s a

1639
01:44:41,870 –> 01:44:44,150
deception. It’s not all of meaning.

1640
01:44:45,350 –> 01:44:49,190
And this is something that we have forgotten.

1641
01:44:49,510 –> 01:44:52,790
And again, Nabokov grew up in an environment where the

1642
01:44:52,790 –> 01:44:56,150
Orthodox. The Orthodox Russian Church wasn’t quite

1643
01:44:56,150 –> 01:44:58,870
completely destroyed and dead.

1644
01:44:59,830 –> 01:45:03,510
And yes, he may have been atheistic or agnostic in his

1645
01:45:03,510 –> 01:45:06,930
later life, but he had all of those.

1646
01:45:07,650 –> 01:45:11,290
All those threads running through him. The same way John Steinbeck at East of

1647
01:45:11,290 –> 01:45:14,930
Eden had all those, you know, Old Testament biblical threads running through him because of

1648
01:45:14,930 –> 01:45:18,330
how he was raised. That it’s all. It was all in the water for

1649
01:45:18,330 –> 01:45:22,130
Nabokov. Right. And so there is a sense of

1650
01:45:22,690 –> 01:45:26,370
not saying that Cincinnatus is standing up for Jesus here, but I am saying

1651
01:45:26,370 –> 01:45:30,180
that. That. That idea that I could put my body down, I’m

1652
01:45:30,180 –> 01:45:32,620
not gonna pick it back up, but I can put it down. I’m free to

1653
01:45:32,620 –> 01:45:36,340
do that. And it will be my will that does that, because

1654
01:45:36,340 –> 01:45:39,140
it’s the last thing that I own. And the state doesn’t get that.

1655
01:45:39,860 –> 01:45:43,660
That’s not what the state gets. The

1656
01:45:43,660 –> 01:45:45,060
question, I think, for our times

1657
01:45:47,220 –> 01:45:50,340
is, well, where are our lines? What do we own?

1658
01:45:52,260 –> 01:45:56,060
You know, we’re promised that we will own nothing and love

1659
01:45:56,060 –> 01:45:58,660
it. And.

1660
01:45:59,940 –> 01:46:03,620
And, you know, that’s just. That’s just the. The phraseology of a

1661
01:46:03,620 –> 01:46:07,460
totalizing demagogue. So. So I think

1662
01:46:07,460 –> 01:46:11,220
we have to be very, very clear. I also think we have to escape.

1663
01:46:11,380 –> 01:46:14,780
We got to escape. We got to figure out where can we. Where can we

1664
01:46:14,780 –> 01:46:18,620
go? What are the places where, like, much like Cincinnatus in Invitation

1665
01:46:18,620 –> 01:46:22,060
to a Beheading, where are the places where we can read magazines in the cell

1666
01:46:22,060 –> 01:46:25,890
and just be left alone? If. If we’re going to live in the cell. Right.

1667
01:46:25,890 –> 01:46:29,690
If we’re going to live in this thing. I do think, unlike

1668
01:46:29,690 –> 01:46:33,530
Russia, we do still have. While there may be

1669
01:46:33,530 –> 01:46:37,050
social pressure to stay inside the cell, at this point,

1670
01:46:37,610 –> 01:46:41,130
there is not sufficient state pressure to stay inside the cell.

1671
01:46:41,130 –> 01:46:44,890
There’s not. People think there is, but there’s not. Not like there was in

1672
01:46:44,890 –> 01:46:48,730
Russia, not even close. So you still don’t have the

1673
01:46:48,730 –> 01:46:52,430
state coming for you. Anyway,

1674
01:46:52,750 –> 01:46:55,710
final thoughts, Claire, on

1675
01:46:56,670 –> 01:46:59,350
Invitation to a Beheading. And thank you, by the way, for coming on the show

1676
01:46:59,350 –> 01:47:02,750
today. This was an excellent conversation. It was

1677
01:47:02,750 –> 01:47:06,550
absolutely my. My honor. I appreciate that you asked

1678
01:47:06,550 –> 01:47:07,310
me back again.

1679
01:47:12,350 –> 01:47:16,070
You know, I think coming. I wanted to come back to this. This

1680
01:47:16,070 –> 01:47:19,470
note or this series of notes that Cincinnatus kept writing

1681
01:47:20,030 –> 01:47:23,550
when he had time, when he was not interrupted by all the absurdity.

1682
01:47:24,510 –> 01:47:27,550
And there was something he said toward the end of the book,

1683
01:47:28,590 –> 01:47:32,390
I think, on page 211, where he

1684
01:47:32,390 –> 01:47:36,070
said, well, actually, two page numbers I wrote down. One was page

1685
01:47:36,070 –> 01:47:39,670
194, where he said he

1686
01:47:39,670 –> 01:47:42,190
basically hoped someone would read these words,

1687
01:47:43,380 –> 01:47:47,220
otherwise he should tear them up. Right? And it was sort of

1688
01:47:47,220 –> 01:47:51,060
this, These. These words were not a vanity project for him.

1689
01:47:51,060 –> 01:47:54,900
They were his attempt at leaving behind

1690
01:47:54,980 –> 01:47:58,740
a legacy. And in fact, when Martha came back in

1691
01:47:58,740 –> 01:48:02,580
to see him, he tried to give her those pages

1692
01:48:03,380 –> 01:48:06,740
and she refused to take them. And it’s interesting because it kind of comes back

1693
01:48:06,740 –> 01:48:10,220
to something you had said, said earlier in our conversation where

1694
01:48:10,860 –> 01:48:13,900
that might have also been a little bit of a jab to

1695
01:48:14,060 –> 01:48:17,420
contemporary Russia where if she had been caught with his

1696
01:48:17,740 –> 01:48:21,580
words, she would be implicated. Right? And so it’s sort

1697
01:48:21,580 –> 01:48:25,380
of the. If no one ever reads my words, what was the point in writing

1698
01:48:25,380 –> 01:48:28,380
them? And then on page

1699
01:48:29,020 –> 01:48:32,860
211, where he, you know, before he’s even

1700
01:48:32,860 –> 01:48:35,330
let out of his cell, the walls had started to. To

1701
01:48:36,370 –> 01:48:39,650
dissolve. They didn’t crumble, they didn’t break, they

1702
01:48:39,650 –> 01:48:42,930
dissolved. And he said, nothing of me will remain

1703
01:48:43,490 –> 01:48:46,370
within these four walls. And so I, you know, I was

1704
01:48:46,770 –> 01:48:49,730
reminded of how important it is

1705
01:48:50,290 –> 01:48:53,650
for all of us. And I’ll bring it back to leaders, because

1706
01:48:54,050 –> 01:48:56,850
that’s the, you know, core of your. Of your show,

1707
01:48:57,970 –> 01:49:00,610
how important it is for leaders to be

1708
01:49:02,330 –> 01:49:05,970
not just mindful, but intentionally nurturing the legacy

1709
01:49:05,970 –> 01:49:09,770
they will leave behind. A few moments ago, you

1710
01:49:09,770 –> 01:49:13,450
said, you know, in 75 years, people are going to look back at

1711
01:49:13,610 –> 01:49:17,209
this time in this era and what we all did or did not

1712
01:49:17,209 –> 01:49:20,730
do, what we did or did not stand up for and

1713
01:49:20,810 –> 01:49:24,610
say, what the hell were they thinking? Right? And I think

1714
01:49:24,610 –> 01:49:28,120
leaders have to be mindful of that now and understand

1715
01:49:28,520 –> 01:49:32,320
what is that legacy? What do they want to be known for, remembered for?

1716
01:49:32,320 –> 01:49:36,120
And I don’t think it is going to be authoritarianism. I think it is going

1717
01:49:36,120 –> 01:49:39,640
to be some deeper impact

1718
01:49:40,360 –> 01:49:44,160
that is. That is lasting. So that’s that thought.

1719
01:49:44,160 –> 01:49:47,480
And then I’m going to ask you one final question, because as you were sort

1720
01:49:47,480 –> 01:49:51,280
of sharing your. Your final notes on this book, a question popped

1721
01:49:51,280 –> 01:49:54,280
into my head that I can’t answer, and I’d love to know if you can.

1722
01:49:55,880 –> 01:49:59,440
At the very end of the book, he’s

1723
01:49:59,440 –> 01:50:03,240
laying face down. He has to adjust because Pierre didn’t

1724
01:50:03,240 –> 01:50:05,840
like the angle, and he wanted to get a clean shot at the back of

1725
01:50:05,840 –> 01:50:09,560
the neck. And he stands up. So my

1726
01:50:09,560 –> 01:50:13,240
question is, which Cincinnatist stood up?

1727
01:50:14,280 –> 01:50:18,080
The real one or that shadow one who, as you just

1728
01:50:18,080 –> 01:50:21,160
read the description of him, did all the things that

1729
01:50:22,220 –> 01:50:24,540
he really wanted him to do, but he had to tuck him away.

1730
01:50:37,339 –> 01:50:41,180
I think, number one, that’s a great question.

1731
01:50:42,140 –> 01:50:45,980
Number two, I think. I don’t

1732
01:50:45,980 –> 01:50:46,220
know.

1733
01:50:50,150 –> 01:50:53,750
I think. I don’t know. I think I would have to.

1734
01:50:54,950 –> 01:50:56,870
I think I’d probably have to read the book again.

1735
01:51:00,630 –> 01:51:04,190
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I. I don’t have a

1736
01:51:04,190 –> 01:51:05,190
firm conviction.

1737
01:51:07,750 –> 01:51:11,390
And maybe that’s the point is for us to not

1738
01:51:11,390 –> 01:51:14,640
know and to not have a firm conviction,

1739
01:51:15,920 –> 01:51:16,320
because.

1740
01:51:20,560 –> 01:51:24,240
Maybe at the end of the day, when the state takes away,

1741
01:51:26,000 –> 01:51:29,720
maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it doesn’t

1742
01:51:29,720 –> 01:51:33,280
matter. It does have meaning, but maybe it doesn’t matter,

1743
01:51:36,800 –> 01:51:40,200
but I don’t know. That’s. That’s me groping towards an

1744
01:51:40,200 –> 01:51:43,720
idea that I don’t have. I don’t have a full

1745
01:51:44,360 –> 01:51:46,680
or even a partial grasp of

1746
01:51:48,520 –> 01:51:51,880
that question did not occur to me as I read that

1747
01:51:52,040 –> 01:51:55,680
scene. It. It truly had only occurred to me as

1748
01:51:55,680 –> 01:51:59,400
you just took me through as a fellow Christian, the, You

1749
01:51:59,400 –> 01:52:03,040
know, the idea that the. The body that we all get obsessed

1750
01:52:03,040 –> 01:52:06,630
over is transitory and

1751
01:52:06,630 –> 01:52:10,470
really it’s about what you take with you and, you know, it’s your soul.

1752
01:52:10,550 –> 01:52:14,350
Right. So that’s what kind of triggered that. That question. And I. And I

1753
01:52:14,350 –> 01:52:17,350
would honestly have to go back and read through it again because there was a.

1754
01:52:17,910 –> 01:52:21,750
The Shadow Cincinnatus was a little bit of an Easter egg right. Throughout the

1755
01:52:21,750 –> 01:52:24,990
book. He didn’t appear everywhere. It wasn’t like every single thing

1756
01:52:24,990 –> 01:52:28,430
Cincinnatus did. The Shadow Cincinnatus did the

1757
01:52:28,430 –> 01:52:32,060
opposite or something more brazen. And in fact,

1758
01:52:32,060 –> 01:52:35,700
by the end, he really didn’t appear at all, to the point where I was

1759
01:52:35,700 –> 01:52:39,300
even thinking, where is that guy? What happened to the

1760
01:52:39,300 –> 01:52:42,780
shadow version or whatever they’re calling him the second

1761
01:52:42,780 –> 01:52:46,620
Cincinnatus. So, yeah, I was just. I was.

1762
01:52:46,620 –> 01:52:50,420
I was curious what your. What your reaction would be to the question,

1763
01:52:50,420 –> 01:52:53,820
because it did not occur to me in real time either. Yeah.

1764
01:52:54,140 –> 01:52:57,990
Yeah. I think this is going to be one of

1765
01:52:57,990 –> 01:53:01,710
those episodes where we’ve resolved nothing and we’ve

1766
01:53:01,710 –> 01:53:05,470
solved nothing. And that’s okay, by the way, We’ve

1767
01:53:05,470 –> 01:53:08,310
just put forth the questions.

1768
01:53:09,350 –> 01:53:12,870
We haven’t. And yes, we’ve deconstructed a little bit

1769
01:53:12,950 –> 01:53:16,790
the text, but I would encourage folks to go read it and go

1770
01:53:16,790 –> 01:53:19,350
figure out the answers to these questions

1771
01:53:19,990 –> 01:53:23,720
yourself. I want to thank

1772
01:53:23,720 –> 01:53:27,240
Claire Chandler for coming on our podcast

1773
01:53:27,240 –> 01:53:30,480
today. Always a pleasure, Claire. Always have a great time with you.

1774
01:53:30,960 –> 01:53:34,800
And with that, well, we’re out.