The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury – Introduction w/ Jesan Sorrells

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Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand

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yet another business book on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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Podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting and analyzing the great

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books of the Western canon. You know, those

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books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

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between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in

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high school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

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entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn’t have the time

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to read, dissect, analyze and leverage insights from

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literature to execute leadership best practices in

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the confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

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inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western

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Civilization at the intersection of literature

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and leadership. Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books Podcast. Hello, my name is

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Hasan Sorrells and this is the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books podcast. Episode number

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162

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one of the responses, or one of the reactions

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to the perception of unrealistic expectations around social

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conformity is to adopt a pose,

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adopt a posture of existential cynicism.

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Cynicism and existential cynicism in particular,

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influenced by French philosophical thought at the end of their national

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cultural experience In World War II, is a

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philosophy that proposes, quote individuals create their

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own meaning and purpose in a fundamentally meaningless universe

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and asserts that existence precedes

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essence. As the 1950s

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wore on, many intellects and elites in the west, led

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around by the nose by writers like Albert Camus, Jean

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Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, gradually began

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infecting popular culture with a

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disease that began with a clinical, cynical posture

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towards stifling religious conformity and that would end

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with the deconstruction of almost every form of meaning down to

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identity. At the end of the 20th century,

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our book, today a science fiction fix up novel,

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opens in a way that initially seems hopeful but then gradually descends

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into an existential confirmation of indeed a

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fundamentally meaningless universe. It also stands

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as a critique of militarism, the use of science, technology

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and post war prosperity, as well as a sidelong

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blow against the specter of the potential

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for mid 20th century global thermonuclear

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warfare. It is a book, a collection of

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stories such as it were, that desperately wants the reader to

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care enough about the fate of the earth and indeed places other than the

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earth to save it, but also cynically

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presumes that selfishness, greed, vanity and

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existential dread leading to desperate failing action may be the

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last best outcome for humanity in the

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end. Today, on this episode of

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the podcast, we will be introducing and discussing multiple themes

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from the second book by this Author that we have covered on this

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show, Ray Bradbury’s the Martian

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Chronicles leaders. The

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era, the time for adopting a cynical

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pose of carefully cultivated disinterest

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and carefully cultivated insincerity has passed

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here at the end of the fourth turning. The people,

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the teams, the organizations, even the families and communities

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you are leading are hungry

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desperately so for you to actually

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care.

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And so we open today with

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overview of the Martian Chronicles. So when you pick up this book,

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the copy we have is of course published by Simon and Schuster. And

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so because it is published by Simon and Schuster and the copyright is owned by

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them, we will not be reading very much directly from,

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from the book today. However, when you pick up this copy,

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I have the unabridged version. You will see,

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you will note that the way this book is set up

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is written in a chronological form, starting in

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at least the version I have, starting in January 1999 and going

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to October 2026. And

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Ray Bradbury is very clever in this. He opens the. The

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book by framing the

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exploration, the. The act of going

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out into the stars. He begins to frame it as

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a. As a philosophical act going along

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with this idea of existential dread that we opened with. He

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frames the scientific act of engaging with the

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technology of rockets and of fuel and of men

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and of machine, not as a scientific act, but as

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a philosophical one. And you can see that in the

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quote that opens up the Martian Chronicles.

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It is good to renew one’s wonder, said the philosopher. Space

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travel has again made children of us all.

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But of course, there’s a cynical, dark tone underlying all of that. Now,

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the book opens in October, sorry not to remember January of

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1999 with the idea of

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a quote unquote rocket summer.

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As you go through the years in the stories, some of them are

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longer, some of them are shorter, some of them are written from the third

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person, some of them are written from the second person. But what you

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begin to see is that Bradbury is building an idea

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of a world. He’s building the idea of

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a post war world where

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conformity and hope run into, at least in

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the first part of the book, run directly into

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the. The exegesis of going to

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another planet. A different, if we’re

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going to frame this in religious terms, a different eschatology,

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a new heaven, as one of the characters says in the book,

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leaving an old Earth. But of course, in going

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to that new heaven, we take with

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ourselves all of our old tendencies from

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Earth and we seek to create a new Earth

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that’s remarkably like the old Earth in a

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new or on a new heavenly body. Now, there are

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some challenges with this in the first third, maybe, or not even the first

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third first quarter of the Martian Chronicles,

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Bradbury Dwell delves into an idea that is compelling, I

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think, and we talked a little bit about it on the Stranger in the Strange

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land episode, both 160 and

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161. You should go back and listen to those episodes. The

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introduction episode was 160 and then 161 is my

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my long conversation, 2 hours and 45 minutes, almost 3 hours

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with with John Hill, aka Small Mountain.

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Recommend listening to that. But in going

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through Stranger to Strange Land,

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Robert Heinlein picks up on the idea that Ray

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Bradbury proposes initially in Martian Chronicles. And

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I’ll talk about the publication schedule of these stories in a moment here

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after the first bump. But here he talks about or he picks

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up the idea that Bradbury initially proposes in these stories. And

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the idea is this. It is the core idea in the first quarter of the

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book. Mars is not uninhabited.

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Mars is not a dead planet. There were

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or there are civilizations on Mars in

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Bradbury’s conception, and those civilizations contain,

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for better or worse, what we would call entities. And these

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entities have their own conception of time. They have their

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own conception of space. They have their own conception of reality

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and value. And of course, just as

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when Europeans journeyed across

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the Atlantic Ocean transcontinentally and

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showed up on the shores of the New World all the way

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back now, 600 years ago almost,

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and encountered Native Americans for the first time,

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the same encountering, the same sort of cycle of

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exploration, discovery, encountering

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something that is foreign and new happens when,

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when humans, specifically Americans, but

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humans, climb in their rockets and jet

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off to Mars, they discover that there is

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a whole advanced society there, a whole advanced

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society of folks that are watching

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and waiting for them to land on their rockets,

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climb out of their rockets and go,

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well, go tromping around in their cities,

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in their culture, and even,

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even in their Martian canals.

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Sam

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so let’s talk a little bit about the Martian Chronicles, a little

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more about the Martian Chronicles. Let’s explore a little bit more about that. So

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this book was published in multiple parts and at different times.

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It is what is known, according to Wikipedia, as a fix

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up novel. From the Wikipedia article about the Martian

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Chronicles, I quote, a fix up or fix up

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dash or no dash is the way you write that term

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is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not

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have been initially related or previously published.

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The stories may be edited for consistency and sometimes New connecting material,

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such as a frame story or other interstitial narration

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is written for the new work. Close quote.

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So how did Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit

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451, which we’ve covered on the show, as I previously mentioned, the

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author of Something Wicked this Way, Comes the Illustrated man,

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and a number of other. A number of other classic

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science fiction and. And fantasy writings in the mid

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20th century. How did Bradbury come up with the Martian Chronicles?

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Well, according to what we were able to research, he was inspired

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by the work of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio,

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which is a book about a collection of stories about a man who

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returns to Widesburg, Ohio.

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The stories in the Martian Chronicles appeared in various formats throughout the

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1940s and, and on into the 1960s.

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Several of these stories that were included in this

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compiled book, this compiled edition,

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eventually wound up showing up on as radio

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shows, and eventually, I believe, a couple of them even

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wound up on the Ray Bradbury Theater,

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which premiered in the 1980s. Even

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from Wikipedia, one more time, and I quote, the Martian Chronicles was written

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as a chronicle. Each story presented as a chapter within an overall

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chronological ordering of the plot. Overall, it can be viewed

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as three extended episodes or parts punctuated by two

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apocalyptic events. Events in the book’s original

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edition range from 1999 to 2026.

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As 1999 approached in real life, the dates were advanced by

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31 years in the 1997 edition.

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Close quote. And that’s the addition that we have on our show. On

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our show today, we have the 1997 edition

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where the dates be began in January 1999 with

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Rocket Summer and end with October

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2026 and the million Year Picnic.

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Interestingly enough, we are recording this in 2025.

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So I suspect that future editions of the Martian

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Chronicles will start us off maybe in

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January 2030 and push us out

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into December or October

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of 2055. And maybe by then

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in real life, maybe by then Elon or

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whoever will actually have figured out how the

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heck to get us to those Martian

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canals.

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So let’s go back to the book, back to the Martian Chronicles. So I. I

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want to pick up in June 2001. And the moon

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be still as bright

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in this one. In this story, in the first piece of the

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Martian Chronicles, we begin to explore

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the idea, the core idea that I’m going to talk about today for leaders,

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which is this idea of the impact of

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or the nature of the philosophy

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of existentialism. In the story, we meet a

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crew of folks who, who rocket off to Mars

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from, from Earth. And inside this crew are Captain

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Wilder and Cherokee and Hathaway and Sam Parkhill

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and a man, a man named Spender

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and Spender specifically. Jeff Spender

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is a man who, well, who’s a man

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who is out of place. He is out of place with his crew. Matter of

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fact, if we, if we looked at him through the lens of the social

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socio sexual hierarchy, that is, that is

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a term created by the gentleman

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Vox Day, who writes on Substack, we would say that Jeff

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Spender is a classic Gamma in his crew. He’s

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not an Alpha, he’s definitely not a Sigma and he’s surely

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not an obedient Delta or a Bravo.

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He is a. He is a guy who likes walls of text.

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He’s a guy who is a king in his own mind. He’s a guy

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who likes to be in control. And

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how is this replicated? How do we see this in the story?

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Well, Jeff Spender winds up wandering away from the Remain,

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from the, the larger group after they, after they set a fire

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and begin to begin to sort of explore the Martian

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territory. A Martian territory that to them

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seems empty, where they can run around and

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christen things and they can, they can run around and drink

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and, and carouse and have a good time.

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Of course Spender doesn’t want to carouse. Spender is falling

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in love with the Martian landscape. Matter of fact, he loves the Martian

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landscape more than he loves human beings.

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And he looks at their partying, views their partying as a

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sign of disrespect and disingenuousness.

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Spender goes away for a week after

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threatening people and then

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returns and begins shooting

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the folks that are in the astronauts party.

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Of course, because he

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winds up shooting the humans. They

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then of course wind up hunting him through the

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Martian landscape and up a Martian mountain

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and, and the Captain towards the back end of

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the story has a, has a conversation

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with him. And it starts off like this at the top

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of the mountain. Spender says,

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because I’ve seen what these Martians had, was just as good as anything we’ll ever

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hope to have. They stopped where we should have stopped a hundred years ago.

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I’ve walked in their cities and I know these people and I’ll be glad to

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call them my ancestors. They have a beautiful city there. The Captain

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nodded at one of several places. It’s not that alone. Yes, their

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cities are good. They knew how to blend art into their living.

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It’s always been a thing apart for Americans. Art was something you

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kept in the crazy son’s room upstairs. Art was something you

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took in Sunday doses mixed with religion, perhaps. Well,

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these Martians have art and religion and everything.

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You think they knew what it was all about, do you? For my money. And

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for that reason you started shooting people? When I was a kid, my folks took

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me to visit Mexico City. I’ll always remember the way my father acted loud and

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big. And my mother didn’t like the people because they were dark and didn’t wash

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enough. And my sister wouldn’t talk to most of them. I was the only one,

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really. I was the only one who really liked it. And I could see my

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mother and father coming to Mars and acting the same way here.

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Anything that’s strange is no good to the average American if it doesn’t have Chicago

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plumbing. It’s nonsense. The thought of that. Oh God, the thought of

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that. And then. Then the war. You heard the Congressional

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speeches before we left. If things work out, they hope to establish three atomic research

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and atom bomb depots on Mars. That means Mars is finished. All this

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wonderful stuff is gone. How would you feel if a Martian vomited stale liquor on

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the White House floor? The captain said nothing, but

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listened. Spender continued, and then the other power

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interests coming up, the mineral men and the travel men. Do you remember what happened

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00:21:46,140 –> 00:21:49,850
to Mexico when Cortez and his very fine good friends arrived from Spain? Spain.

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A whole civilization destroyed by greedy righteous bigots.

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History will never forgive Cortez.

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You haven’t acted ethically yourself today, observed the captain.

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What could I do argue with you? It’s simply me against the whole

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crooked, grinding, greedy setup on Earth. They’ll be flopping their

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00:22:08,970 –> 00:22:12,650
filthy atom bombs up here fighting for bases to have wars. Isn’t it enough they’ve

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00:22:12,650 –> 00:22:16,010
ruined one planet without ruining another? Do they have to foul someone else’s manger?

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The simple minded windbags. When I got up here I felt I was not only

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free of their so called culture, I felt like I was free of their ethics

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and their customs. I’m out of their frame of reference. I thought. All I have

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to do is kill all you off and live my own life.

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Close quote. By the way, that’s a classic gamma rant

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king in his own mind. But

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it’s also the rant of someone who

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has fully and completely imbibed the

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00:22:45,430 –> 00:22:48,790
horrors of mid 20th century

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00:22:49,750 –> 00:22:51,030
existentialism.

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00:24:13,570 –> 00:24:17,170
One of the things you have to understand if you actually want to

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00:24:17,170 –> 00:24:20,810
lead is you have to understand how to

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00:24:20,810 –> 00:24:24,410
take complicated ideas and make them very,

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00:24:24,410 –> 00:24:27,650
very simple for folks. And

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00:24:28,940 –> 00:24:32,460
you have to understand a complicated thing. Well Enough

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00:24:32,860 –> 00:24:36,620
to simplify it for people who can’t follow the

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00:24:36,620 –> 00:24:40,300
bouncing ball. So I’m going to try to make this

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00:24:40,300 –> 00:24:43,180
as simple as I possibly can, because

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00:24:44,220 –> 00:24:47,660
this is incredibly important. The Martian

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00:24:47,660 –> 00:24:51,420
Chronicles is not just a science fiction fix

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00:24:51,420 –> 00:24:54,780
up novel. It’s not just a collection of disparate stories

315
00:24:55,740 –> 00:24:59,020
barely hanging on together, bound together

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00:24:59,420 –> 00:25:03,100
by two apocalyptic narrative threads. It’s not just that.

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00:25:04,060 –> 00:25:07,020
It’s Ray Bradbury working out and

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00:25:07,900 –> 00:25:11,620
talking about and introducing quite frankly to a conformist

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00:25:11,620 –> 00:25:14,620
19, mid 19, mid

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00:25:14,700 –> 00:25:18,060
1950s and mid 20th century American public.

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00:25:18,300 –> 00:25:21,820
He’s introducing ideas that would eventually wind up

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00:25:22,380 –> 00:25:25,820
leading to the situation culturally

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00:25:26,620 –> 00:25:30,060
and intellectually that we have now in the United States.

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00:25:31,340 –> 00:25:35,100
Now, Bradbury couldn’t see that back then because at the time his

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00:25:35,100 –> 00:25:38,540
biggest battle was the battle against what he

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00:25:38,540 –> 00:25:42,300
perceived as religious stifling conformity. Matter

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00:25:42,300 –> 00:25:45,660
of fact, the voice of Spender in that last piece that I read is the

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00:25:45,660 –> 00:25:49,120
voice, I believe, of Ray Bradbury. The frustration

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00:25:49,280 –> 00:25:52,480
with the suffocation of a conformist culture.

330
00:25:53,280 –> 00:25:56,280
A conformist culture that was about to borrow blow up in the

331
00:25:56,280 –> 00:25:59,280
1960s and 1970s.

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00:26:02,240 –> 00:26:06,000
And we could see this in the Martian Chronicles because it is a book

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00:26:06,000 –> 00:26:08,640
without. It’s a book without a happy ending,

334
00:26:11,680 –> 00:26:15,310
similar to books that

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00:26:15,310 –> 00:26:18,710
we’ve covered from the 20th century. On this podcast before.

336
00:26:19,830 –> 00:26:23,110
Ray Bradbury’s the Martian Chronicles is similar

337
00:26:23,510 –> 00:26:26,230
in style and approach to

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00:26:27,510 –> 00:26:31,150
or Or. It’s the book example of the rant by the

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00:26:31,150 –> 00:26:34,590
great Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicholas Cage in the movie

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00:26:34,590 –> 00:26:38,390
adaptation. And in that

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00:26:38,390 –> 00:26:42,180
movie, Charlie Kaufman, again played by Nicholas Cage,

342
00:26:42,180 –> 00:26:45,900
goes to a screenwriting seminar held by

343
00:26:45,900 –> 00:26:49,460
the great Robert McKee, played by the

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00:26:49,460 –> 00:26:52,980
inimitable who never mails it in, Brian Cox.

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00:26:53,860 –> 00:26:57,460
And Brian Cox stands on a stage and starts talking about how to, you know,

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00:26:57,620 –> 00:27:00,980
write a screenplay, how to write a script, how to write anything, basically.

347
00:27:01,140 –> 00:27:04,860
And Charlie Kaufman is of course experiencing writer’s block. And

348
00:27:04,860 –> 00:27:08,500
Charlie stands up and he, he has this great line,

349
00:27:08,580 –> 00:27:12,062
right, that he asks Mr. McKee, which of course sets up Mr.

350
00:27:12,138 –> 00:27:15,360
McKee for having a massive rant about

351
00:27:15,760 –> 00:27:19,160
the meaning of writing a rant that’s quite frankly

352
00:27:19,160 –> 00:27:22,720
anti existentialist. The question

353
00:27:22,800 –> 00:27:24,640
that launches this rant is this,

354
00:27:26,400 –> 00:27:29,840
what do you happen? Or what do you. How do you write a story

355
00:27:30,400 –> 00:27:34,160
where the writer is attempting to create something where nothing

356
00:27:34,240 –> 00:27:38,050
much happens, where people don’t change, they don’t have

357
00:27:38,050 –> 00:27:41,770
any epiphanies, they struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved?

358
00:27:42,410 –> 00:27:45,290
More a reflection of, quote, unquote, the real world.

359
00:27:47,290 –> 00:27:51,130
Kaufman asked this question and McKee of course responds

360
00:27:51,690 –> 00:27:55,450
by saying, why would I waste two hours of my precious

361
00:27:55,450 –> 00:27:58,490
time to observe the real world.

362
00:27:58,970 –> 00:28:01,530
I come here to escape the real world.

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00:28:02,990 –> 00:28:06,830
This is the tension that’s evident in the Martian Chronicles. And one of the things

364
00:28:07,470 –> 00:28:11,150
that’s imbued in it from the real world is this,

365
00:28:11,390 –> 00:28:14,670
this existential dread, this, this

366
00:28:15,550 –> 00:28:19,270
sense that there can’t be any

367
00:28:19,270 –> 00:28:22,790
change, there can’t be any epiphany. There is no meaning

368
00:28:22,790 –> 00:28:26,590
and nothing is resolved. The post

369
00:28:26,590 –> 00:28:29,490
war 1950s in America was a time of,

370
00:28:30,520 –> 00:28:34,200
in people’s memory that was inflated in

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00:28:34,200 –> 00:28:37,960
different kinds of ways, both by people who are temperamentally cynical and people

372
00:28:37,960 –> 00:28:41,320
who are also temperamentally naive. The

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00:28:41,400 –> 00:28:44,960
cynics, 80 years later look back at post

374
00:28:44,960 –> 00:28:48,120
war, the post war 1950s in America and

375
00:28:48,760 –> 00:28:52,560
they hold that the mid 20th century was a time of

376
00:28:52,560 –> 00:28:55,880
naive optimism, buoyed by military power

377
00:28:56,470 –> 00:28:59,110
and of course, enforced cultural conformity.

378
00:29:00,150 –> 00:29:03,870
And of course, the naive, for their part, believe that the mid 20th century was

379
00:29:03,870 –> 00:29:07,670
a time, to paraphrase some, Garrison Keeler in that great

380
00:29:07,990 –> 00:29:11,830
NPR show, A Prairie Home Companion quote, where all

381
00:29:11,830 –> 00:29:15,590
the women were strong, all the men were good looking and all the children

382
00:29:15,750 –> 00:29:19,550
were above average. But inside

383
00:29:19,550 –> 00:29:22,870
even A Prairie Home Companion lies existential

384
00:29:23,560 –> 00:29:27,320
dread, lies the idea that even though the women are good

385
00:29:27,320 –> 00:29:30,200
looking and the children are well behaved and above average,

386
00:29:30,920 –> 00:29:34,640
and even though the men are strong, that there’s no

387
00:29:34,640 –> 00:29:38,400
meaning there. What can we get from that?

388
00:29:38,400 –> 00:29:42,040
What. What is the meaning behind that? And this is the

389
00:29:42,040 –> 00:29:45,880
same challenge that Charlie Kaufman is struggling with in Adaptation.

390
00:29:45,960 –> 00:29:49,480
Made. Made in the early 2000s, right,

391
00:29:51,380 –> 00:29:54,180
the seeds of all that were planted in the 1950s by

392
00:29:54,900 –> 00:29:58,620
French existential philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and Simone

393
00:29:58,620 –> 00:30:01,140
de Beauvoir and of course, Albert Camus.

394
00:30:03,060 –> 00:30:06,580
The horror of the success of French existentialist belief

395
00:30:06,580 –> 00:30:10,300
systems that captured elite thought and then drifted down

396
00:30:10,300 –> 00:30:13,700
into the masses in the 60s and 70s was that it

397
00:30:13,700 –> 00:30:17,330
eroded the foundation of spiritual belief in a

398
00:30:17,330 –> 00:30:20,650
transcendent reward in exchange for materialism,

399
00:30:20,650 –> 00:30:24,450
commercialism and individualism in the here and now. And in

400
00:30:24,450 –> 00:30:27,370
that exchange, that exchange, of course led to

401
00:30:27,850 –> 00:30:29,370
nihilism and

402
00:30:31,130 –> 00:30:34,650
atheism. Or if not atheism,

403
00:30:34,810 –> 00:30:38,610
at the very minimum. Maybe not agreeing that God

404
00:30:38,610 –> 00:30:42,410
is dead, but sort of nodding along when the statement is made,

405
00:30:45,440 –> 00:30:48,680
we can’t lay all this at the feet of Ray Bradbury. Of course, it’s too

406
00:30:48,680 –> 00:30:51,840
much weight to put on the Martian Chronicles to carry all this, but it is.

407
00:30:52,320 –> 00:30:55,680
The book does serve as an

408
00:30:55,680 –> 00:30:59,360
example of what existential dread

409
00:30:59,360 –> 00:31:03,040
can look like wrapped up in technological

410
00:31:03,120 –> 00:31:06,320
sophistication and cultural

411
00:31:07,440 –> 00:31:08,320
barbarity.

412
00:31:11,460 –> 00:31:11,700
SA

413
00:32:29,460 –> 00:32:32,900
Back to the book, back to The Martian Chronicles

414
00:32:33,620 –> 00:32:37,300
by Ray Bradbury. So one of the more

415
00:32:37,300 –> 00:32:41,140
curious episodes or short stories

416
00:32:41,140 –> 00:32:44,900
or short pieces in this fix up novel from Bradbury

417
00:32:45,780 –> 00:32:49,540
that will set up my next point that I think is, is important for leaders

418
00:32:49,540 –> 00:32:52,660
to pay attention to is the story from June

419
00:32:52,900 –> 00:32:56,520
2003 in the, in

420
00:32:56,520 –> 00:33:00,200
this edition, the 1997 edition that I have of the Martian Chronicles.

421
00:33:01,320 –> 00:33:04,680
And it is a story called Way in the Middle of the Air.

422
00:33:06,120 –> 00:33:09,400
And it was sort of one of the more

423
00:33:09,400 –> 00:33:13,000
surprising stories that I ran

424
00:33:13,000 –> 00:33:16,680
across here in the Martian Chronicles as a

425
00:33:16,840 –> 00:33:20,520
reader of science fiction. It is a

426
00:33:20,520 –> 00:33:21,830
story about,

427
00:33:24,230 –> 00:33:28,070
well, it’s a story about all of the black people,

428
00:33:29,590 –> 00:33:32,070
all of the African Americans

429
00:33:33,350 –> 00:33:37,030
getting their money together, getting a rocket,

430
00:33:38,070 –> 00:33:41,110
getting on the rocket and leaving Earth.

431
00:33:43,670 –> 00:33:47,390
Yeah, I kind of didn’t expect this

432
00:33:47,390 –> 00:33:51,180
story dropped in the middle of this collection. And it,

433
00:33:51,180 –> 00:33:54,500
it stands out because number one,

434
00:33:55,380 –> 00:33:58,980
it seems that it’s Ray Bradbury’s attempt to deal

435
00:33:58,980 –> 00:34:02,100
with segregation, deal with

436
00:34:02,500 –> 00:34:06,300
Jim Crow, deal with things

437
00:34:06,300 –> 00:34:10,020
he was reading about that were occurring in the south

438
00:34:10,020 –> 00:34:13,860
in the 1950s, and of course the attempts by,

439
00:34:15,330 –> 00:34:18,890
by folks like Martin Luther King Jr. And other civil rights activists to

440
00:34:18,890 –> 00:34:22,050
desegregate the South. But of course,

441
00:34:22,610 –> 00:34:26,370
it is a story written from a long way

442
00:34:26,370 –> 00:34:30,050
away and written, of course, with the tools that

443
00:34:30,050 –> 00:34:33,650
Bradbury had at hand. Now, Bradbury was not

444
00:34:33,650 –> 00:34:37,250
a political commentator, nor was he a

445
00:34:37,650 –> 00:34:41,339
social commentator, but he could put politics

446
00:34:41,339 –> 00:34:45,099
and social commentary into his writings, as he already has

447
00:34:45,099 –> 00:34:48,699
demonstrated with Spender and with other stories here in this

448
00:34:48,699 –> 00:34:52,539
collection. But it jumps out most notably here

449
00:34:52,939 –> 00:34:56,539
in this story, Way in the Middle of the Air.

450
00:34:58,299 –> 00:35:01,859
What jumps out to you also is the

451
00:35:01,859 –> 00:35:05,419
way in which the white people respond

452
00:35:05,579 –> 00:35:09,080
to or react to the as

453
00:35:09,080 –> 00:35:12,280
it’s framed here, Steady river,

454
00:35:14,200 –> 00:35:17,720
just to quote here from just a second, the river

455
00:35:17,880 –> 00:35:21,640
flowed black between the buildings with a rustling creek and

456
00:35:21,640 –> 00:35:25,280
a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing with a great

457
00:35:25,280 –> 00:35:28,880
certainty to it. No laughter, no wildness, just a

458
00:35:28,880 –> 00:35:31,800
steady decided and ceaseless flow.

459
00:35:34,210 –> 00:35:37,530
Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. If one of em so much

460
00:35:37,530 –> 00:35:41,170
as last, by Christ, I’ll kill him. The men waited.

461
00:35:42,050 –> 00:35:45,890
The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon. Looks like

462
00:35:45,890 –> 00:35:49,730
you’re gonna have to hoe your own turnip, Sam. Grandpa chuckled. I’m

463
00:35:49,730 –> 00:35:53,210
not bad at shootin white folks neither. Tease didn’t look at

464
00:35:53,210 –> 00:35:56,370
Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his

465
00:35:56,370 –> 00:36:00,140
mouth. And of course people,

466
00:36:00,700 –> 00:36:04,020
the people sitting on the porch, the men, the white men sitting on the porch,

467
00:36:04,020 –> 00:36:07,660
do attempt in particular Samuel Tees do

468
00:36:07,660 –> 00:36:10,620
attempt to stop the black people from leaving,

469
00:36:13,020 –> 00:36:16,820
as he says here, all over space jerked out of rockets

470
00:36:16,820 –> 00:36:20,220
like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God. Space full of meters, you

471
00:36:20,220 –> 00:36:23,780
know that sure. Thickest buckshot powy shoot him down.

472
00:36:23,780 –> 00:36:27,190
Tin can rockets like so many ducks. So many clay pipes. Old

473
00:36:27,190 –> 00:36:30,950
sardine cans full of black cod. Banging like a string of lady fingers. Bang, bang,

474
00:36:30,950 –> 00:36:34,590
bang, bang, bang. 10,000 dead here, 10,000 there. Floating

475
00:36:34,590 –> 00:36:38,310
in space, around and around Earth, ever and ever cold and way out.

476
00:36:38,310 –> 00:36:41,830
Lord, you hear that? You hear that? You there. The

477
00:36:41,830 –> 00:36:45,430
rage, right, of the white man being denied

478
00:36:45,910 –> 00:36:49,390
his quote, unquote, niggers who are getting in a

479
00:36:49,390 –> 00:36:53,240
rocket and going away. The river was broad

480
00:36:53,240 –> 00:36:56,800
and continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having

481
00:36:56,800 –> 00:37:00,000
flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the

482
00:37:00,000 –> 00:37:03,400
washboards, the silk bolts and curtain rods on down to some

483
00:37:03,400 –> 00:37:07,080
distant black sea. High tide passed. It was 2 o’.

484
00:37:07,080 –> 00:37:10,680
Clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up. The town was silent. The

485
00:37:10,680 –> 00:37:14,520
dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the

486
00:37:14,520 –> 00:37:18,160
tall hot trees. Silence.

487
00:37:19,860 –> 00:37:23,700
By the way, there’s something also that’s interesting in the story, Way

488
00:37:23,700 –> 00:37:27,300
in the Middle of the Air. It kind of reminds you

489
00:37:27,780 –> 00:37:31,180
in a way that I’m sure Bradbury

490
00:37:31,180 –> 00:37:34,860
intended because he was quite well read. He got all of his

491
00:37:34,860 –> 00:37:38,340
education out of libraries. It reminds you

492
00:37:38,340 –> 00:37:41,820
of the leaving of the

493
00:37:41,820 –> 00:37:45,430
Jews from Egypt and in the book of Exodus,

494
00:37:47,190 –> 00:37:50,630
a similar kind of stream of humanity

495
00:37:51,190 –> 00:37:53,910
leaving oppressors while they

496
00:37:54,710 –> 00:37:58,550
basically pay for

497
00:37:58,870 –> 00:38:02,630
the oppressed to leave. Bradbury

498
00:38:02,630 –> 00:38:05,910
clearly liked this idea. And in this,

499
00:38:07,030 –> 00:38:10,470
in this story it sticks out because,

500
00:38:12,050 –> 00:38:15,730
well, most science fiction tends to,

501
00:38:15,730 –> 00:38:19,170
at least most American science fiction written during the mid 20th century,

502
00:38:19,650 –> 00:38:23,450
tends to ignore race, tends

503
00:38:23,450 –> 00:38:26,530
to set up a world where

504
00:38:27,010 –> 00:38:30,770
racial injustice, and we saw this on television

505
00:38:30,930 –> 00:38:34,210
in Star Trek, where racial injustice has just

506
00:38:34,290 –> 00:38:37,850
somehow faded away without any. Any

507
00:38:37,930 –> 00:38:41,210
details as to how exactly

508
00:38:42,330 –> 00:38:43,290
we got there.

509
00:40:08,040 –> 00:40:11,800
So what are we to take from that little piece from

510
00:40:11,800 –> 00:40:15,120
way in the middle of the air? What are we to take from the river

511
00:40:15,120 –> 00:40:18,520
of black people leaving the south, getting on a rocket,

512
00:40:18,600 –> 00:40:21,480
and much like the Jews in the Exodus story,

513
00:40:22,410 –> 00:40:26,170
going to the promised land of Mars. By the way, there’s another

514
00:40:26,330 –> 00:40:29,290
story, the. The other apocalyptic event that occurs.

515
00:40:29,930 –> 00:40:33,450
A nuclear war. 20 years later, 22 years

516
00:40:33,450 –> 00:40:37,130
actually, after the black people leave the South, a nuclear

517
00:40:37,130 –> 00:40:40,730
war occurs. And Earth sends out a signal,

518
00:40:41,610 –> 00:40:44,330
asking or requesting or

519
00:40:44,730 –> 00:40:48,430
demanding that depending upon your perspective, that

520
00:40:48,430 –> 00:40:52,070
all the humans on Mars return home. And

521
00:40:52,070 –> 00:40:55,670
of course, all the humans on Mars dutifully do return

522
00:40:55,670 –> 00:40:59,350
home, only to die in an Atomic war

523
00:41:00,790 –> 00:41:04,390
again, more existential dread now capped with cynical

524
00:41:04,390 –> 00:41:08,230
irony, of course. In

525
00:41:08,230 –> 00:41:12,030
my estimation. I wondered, did all the

526
00:41:12,030 –> 00:41:14,890
black people get on the rockets to go back

527
00:41:15,770 –> 00:41:17,850
or did they just stay on Mars?

528
00:41:20,250 –> 00:41:23,970
One of those unanswerable questions. But I like to imagine that

529
00:41:23,970 –> 00:41:27,250
they wouldn’t have gotten back on the rockets because why would you want to go

530
00:41:27,250 –> 00:41:30,250
back home after 20 years? What would make you think that it would be better?

531
00:41:30,810 –> 00:41:33,770
Besides, you would have had 20 years to set up a civilization, right? You would

532
00:41:33,770 –> 00:41:37,370
have had 20 years to set up a Liberia on

533
00:41:37,370 –> 00:41:41,140
Mars. I’m sure it all

534
00:41:41,300 –> 00:41:45,060
worked out anyway. That’s that whole,

535
00:41:45,060 –> 00:41:48,860
like, cynical, like, lack of sincerity thing. I should actually say

536
00:41:48,860 –> 00:41:52,020
it probably did work out. I should probably say that

537
00:41:53,140 –> 00:41:56,740
I’m glad that they left. I should probably say

538
00:41:57,140 –> 00:42:00,500
that everything

539
00:42:01,700 –> 00:42:03,860
works out in the end.

540
00:42:05,950 –> 00:42:09,710
This is one of the challenges, one of the curses of our time. And I

541
00:42:09,710 –> 00:42:13,310
actually just sort of role modeled it there. I actually just sort of demonstrated it

542
00:42:13,310 –> 00:42:16,910
there in my comments. The major

543
00:42:16,910 –> 00:42:19,950
curse in our time is that we can,

544
00:42:21,070 –> 00:42:24,670
we could spot actually, we’re stunningly good at

545
00:42:24,670 –> 00:42:28,470
spotting hypocrisy in leaders and in institutions and

546
00:42:28,470 –> 00:42:31,910
in ideas. We’re stunningly good at

547
00:42:31,910 –> 00:42:35,240
cynically pointing out that hypocrisy, sometimes even

548
00:42:35,480 –> 00:42:39,120
stunningly good at spotting it and pointing it out in ourselves. But we

549
00:42:39,120 –> 00:42:42,600
are less. We are less good.

550
00:42:43,000 –> 00:42:46,120
We are less able to actually be,

551
00:42:47,400 –> 00:42:51,240
actually exhibit the quality of sincerity.

552
00:42:53,000 –> 00:42:56,720
Sincerity, for better or worse, is linked culturally and socially

553
00:42:56,720 –> 00:42:59,160
in America to the same

554
00:42:59,880 –> 00:43:03,340
cockeyed optimism that led American people

555
00:43:03,500 –> 00:43:07,260
to go west. Right? Go west, young man, go west. Right?

556
00:43:07,660 –> 00:43:11,500
And of course, it is linked to the

557
00:43:11,500 –> 00:43:15,100
cockeyed optimism that allowed people to,

558
00:43:15,660 –> 00:43:18,460
particularly white people, if we’re going to be blunt about it,

559
00:43:20,060 –> 00:43:23,380
to accomplish the tenets of Manifest

560
00:43:23,380 –> 00:43:27,220
Destiny, right? Which in

561
00:43:27,220 –> 00:43:31,050
our benighted time. That’s the second time I’ve used that term on this

562
00:43:31,050 –> 00:43:34,490
podcast today. In our bedided time, we

563
00:43:34,570 –> 00:43:38,410
culturally deride. We deride Manifest Destiny.

564
00:43:38,410 –> 00:43:42,250
We deride cockeyed optimism. We look at that

565
00:43:42,330 –> 00:43:46,090
as a sign of naivete and of being a

566
00:43:46,090 –> 00:43:49,210
sucker. Culturally,

567
00:43:49,450 –> 00:43:53,250
Americans perceive a lack of ulterior motives in people and especially in

568
00:43:53,250 –> 00:43:56,770
leaders, and a lack of guile, a lack of deception seat

569
00:43:57,010 –> 00:44:00,370
as a sign of naive trust in the ability to be,

570
00:44:01,010 –> 00:44:04,370
quote, unquote, taken as if all of life

571
00:44:05,010 –> 00:44:08,730
were a massive confidence game and somehow we

572
00:44:08,730 –> 00:44:10,130
are all the marks.

573
00:44:12,289 –> 00:44:16,090
But I think, and I take

574
00:44:16,090 –> 00:44:18,530
this from the Martian Chronicles, I think Bradbury

575
00:44:19,330 –> 00:44:21,810
desperately wanted to believe.

576
00:44:23,570 –> 00:44:27,090
So did Fox Mulder many years later on that great Horry show from the

577
00:44:27,090 –> 00:44:30,770
1990s, the X Files. And Bradbury wanted to

578
00:44:30,770 –> 00:44:34,530
believe not just in Mars being full of Martians or

579
00:44:34,930 –> 00:44:38,409
in racial animus disappearing in interpersonal relationships in

580
00:44:38,409 –> 00:44:42,130
America. He sincerely wanted to believe

581
00:44:42,530 –> 00:44:45,970
that sincerity, that cockeyed optimism

582
00:44:46,050 –> 00:44:49,240
itself, would somehow be rewarded by, in this

583
00:44:49,240 –> 00:44:52,880
material existence, and

584
00:44:52,880 –> 00:44:55,440
that we could get that reward

585
00:44:56,400 –> 00:44:59,440
without dread, without complication.

586
00:45:00,640 –> 00:45:04,360
And honestly, and this is probably the

587
00:45:04,360 –> 00:45:07,520
1950s thing, without that much cultural effort.

588
00:45:09,200 –> 00:45:12,760
Oh, and of course, that we could get it without religion and without an

589
00:45:12,760 –> 00:45:16,330
appeal to a transcendent or higher

590
00:45:16,410 –> 00:45:17,530
form of meaning.

591
00:45:20,890 –> 00:45:24,490
I think we can get to sincerity. I think we

592
00:45:24,490 –> 00:45:28,170
can achieve cockeyed optimism, but I do not think

593
00:45:28,170 –> 00:45:31,850
we can do that without belief, without

594
00:45:32,010 –> 00:45:34,970
faith in a transcendent God.

595
00:46:54,280 –> 00:46:57,830
So what are we to make of all of this?

596
00:46:57,990 –> 00:47:00,430
I’ve tossed a couple of ideas out at you. I’ve talked a little bit about

597
00:47:00,430 –> 00:47:03,350
existentialism. I’ve talked a little bit about nihilism.

598
00:47:04,150 –> 00:47:07,510
I’ve talked a little bit about cultural sincerity

599
00:47:08,230 –> 00:47:11,950
at a leadership level. What are we to take from this? How

600
00:47:11,950 –> 00:47:15,590
are we to bring some ideas from the Martian

601
00:47:15,590 –> 00:47:19,270
Chronicles forward and really apply them in our own

602
00:47:19,350 –> 00:47:23,110
lived leadership lives in ways that actually make

603
00:47:23,590 –> 00:47:26,470
sense? How are we to do that

604
00:47:27,670 –> 00:47:31,350
in 2025, one year away

605
00:47:31,990 –> 00:47:35,590
from, you know, the million year silence that,

606
00:47:35,670 –> 00:47:39,389
that Bradbury talks about or the

607
00:47:39,389 –> 00:47:42,830
Million Year Picnic, or one year away from the Million Year Picnic that

608
00:47:42,830 –> 00:47:45,510
Bradbury talks about or addresses in his book?

609
00:47:46,950 –> 00:47:49,830
Well, I think we have to have a return

610
00:47:50,550 –> 00:47:53,190
to the old strong gods.

611
00:47:54,490 –> 00:47:57,330
I’m not talking about the pagan gods, right? I’m not talking about the pagan gods

612
00:47:57,330 –> 00:48:01,050
of Pan or Zeus or Jupiter or Athena or any

613
00:48:01,050 –> 00:48:04,490
of the Viking gods or any of the Hindu gods or any of the other

614
00:48:04,490 –> 00:48:08,330
nonsense. I’m not talking about a return to paganism. I, I think that way,

615
00:48:08,650 –> 00:48:12,490
that way lies more cultural barbarism just at scale

616
00:48:12,490 –> 00:48:14,490
with technological sophistication.

617
00:48:16,170 –> 00:48:19,690
I think we have to have a return to the old strong gods

618
00:48:19,690 –> 00:48:23,380
of sincerity. Sincerity

619
00:48:23,380 –> 00:48:26,820
is the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or

620
00:48:26,820 –> 00:48:30,140
hypocrisy. And in leadership, it is the

621
00:48:30,140 –> 00:48:33,820
antidote to the poison of cultured cynicism and even

622
00:48:33,820 –> 00:48:37,419
worse, deconstructionism that has annihilated the

623
00:48:37,419 –> 00:48:41,180
depth of meaning in America. We

624
00:48:41,180 –> 00:48:44,820
have to rebuild the foundations of meaning. I’m not the first

625
00:48:44,820 –> 00:48:48,430
person to say that we’re in a meaning crisis. Matter of fact, I brought up

626
00:48:48,430 –> 00:48:52,230
that meaning crisis many times on this show. It’s one of the reasons I do

627
00:48:52,230 –> 00:48:55,830
this show. I want to provide people with books

628
00:48:55,990 –> 00:48:58,790
that can point them to meaning.

629
00:49:00,070 –> 00:49:03,750
Or books that can point them to what the forces are

630
00:49:04,310 –> 00:49:07,350
that are destroying or have destroyed meaning.

631
00:49:08,710 –> 00:49:12,430
But we have to rebuild. We have

632
00:49:12,430 –> 00:49:15,430
to stop deconstructing. We’ve deconstructed enough.

633
00:49:16,290 –> 00:49:19,690
We’ve deconstructed cynically and nihilistically and

634
00:49:19,690 –> 00:49:23,410
atheistically. And to what end?

635
00:49:24,130 –> 00:49:26,370
What exactly has it gotten us?

636
00:49:28,050 –> 00:49:31,650
The only thing left to do is to turn back to sincerity.

637
00:49:31,890 –> 00:49:35,410
Sincerity and traditions, sincerity and families,

638
00:49:35,650 –> 00:49:39,370
sincerity and community. Sincerity and interpersonal

639
00:49:39,370 –> 00:49:41,410
relationships between you and your fellow man.

640
00:49:43,650 –> 00:49:47,250
One point that is worthwhile to make

641
00:49:47,970 –> 00:49:51,410
people do get confused on empathy is not the same as

642
00:49:51,410 –> 00:49:54,970
sincerity. Empathy is sold quite a bit in our culture these days.

643
00:49:54,970 –> 00:49:58,690
It’s the gloss that’s put over everything, particularly the

644
00:49:58,690 –> 00:50:02,370
gloss that’s put over, you know, approved positions or

645
00:50:02,690 –> 00:50:06,130
by the professional managerial class or

646
00:50:06,690 –> 00:50:09,990
the normies. Sincerity,

647
00:50:10,550 –> 00:50:14,390
I’m sorry, not sincerity, but empathy. Empathy is marketed to

648
00:50:14,390 –> 00:50:18,110
us, but not sincerity. Empathy, of course,

649
00:50:18,110 –> 00:50:21,950
is weaponized against conscientious people in

650
00:50:21,950 –> 00:50:25,550
order to manipulate those same conscientious people into

651
00:50:25,550 –> 00:50:29,310
supporting things that go against. Go directly against their

652
00:50:29,310 –> 00:50:32,470
best interests. But sincerity,

653
00:50:32,950 –> 00:50:36,230
well, sincerity can only be mocked by the forces of

654
00:50:36,230 –> 00:50:39,560
nihilism or deconstructionism or cynical

655
00:50:39,560 –> 00:50:42,880
disinterest and dismissed. Of course,

656
00:50:44,320 –> 00:50:48,000
both empathy and sincerity are not

657
00:50:48,000 –> 00:50:51,440
the same thing. And we need to understand

658
00:50:51,680 –> 00:50:54,560
and recognize the difference between the two of them.

659
00:50:57,360 –> 00:51:01,120
Sincerity, of course, can’t walk along by itself. It has to

660
00:51:01,120 –> 00:51:03,990
be accompanied by some friends and.