The Omni-Americans by Albert L. Murray w/Tom Libby

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‘1. Hello.

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My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books podcast episode number one forty.

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The history of The United States is complicated

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and multifaceted, and it’s not all

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negative and terrible. Over the last few decades,

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though, the wounds of the people of The United States have been opened and explored

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again by some for the purposes of writing

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polemics and protest nonfiction.

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And others in The United States have opted not to explore any of

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this at all. Your point of interest in exploration depends

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and will depend very greatly on your starting point,

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and everyone starts at a different point on the map.

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But this is not a new exploration in the long cultural history of

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the American Republic. As a matter of fact, once

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every twenty years or so, right on time like clockwork, an ethnic generation of

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Americans, an entire generation of Americans is

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suddenly mugged by the reality of life with other ethnic

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groups on the same continental spread.

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Occasionally, though, you will get writing clear eyed entrenched analysis from

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people who lived through the previous great, quote, unquote, yawp twenty

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years previous and may provide wisdom, anchoring, and explanation

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that is appreciated by critics, ignored by activists,

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and exploited by political opportunists, all of whom invariably and

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blindly miss the point.

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The author we’re reading today, whose seminal essays and books

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about race, culture, and class in The United States, were written from the viewpoint

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of someone who had been through all of the younger generation’s outrage before in

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his own time and was promptly ignored in his own

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time, much like contemporaries Thomas Sowell and Shelby

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Steele were ignored, and Glenn Loury was ignored about

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ten years later. And now in our own time, folks like Adam

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b Coleman and Coleman Hughes are ignored.

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Today on the show, we will be pulling leadership lessons. We’ll be

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calling leadership lessons from a long

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essay that’s actually a book, and it reads part of

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a longer argument for the Americanness, and I’m

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making up a word there, that lies deeply

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embedded in all of us trapped by

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geography together on this continent, whether we like it or

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not. Today, we will be reading

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from the Library of American version,

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Albert Murray’s The Omni Americans.

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Peters, the transference of racial and cultural wisdom based

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on life experience and book knowledge across generations continues

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to be a challenge for which there seems to be no

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immediate solution. And, of

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course, today on our podcast Yeah. We were just talking about

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this before we hit the record button. We are

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joined by our co host, Tom

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Libby. How you doing, Tom? I am

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living my best life, Hasan. Loving it.

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Awesome. Well, normally, Tom does not join

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us on Black History Month, not because Tom doesn’t have anything to say about

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black history, but because, normally, we have DeRollo Nixon

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joining us. But, unfortunately, DeRollo was taken away by other

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obligations, for the remainder of the month. And so I reached out to

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Tom and asked him if he would like to show up today,

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while we cover Murray here. Again, an individual

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that, which should not surprise any of our regular listeners, an

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individual who he had not heard of before this episode

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today, nor who had he read any of his work. But

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that’s okay. Hey. Listen. I I

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spent I spent a little of a I spent a little time doing some

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research on this guy. I will tell you from all of the

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I I I must have one thing I I let me just back up for

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a second. One thing I love about this episode that we’re doing right now is

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this gentleman was alive in this century.

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He’d passed away in 2013, which which

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was interesting for me because I the first picture I

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saw of him when I looked him up, I was like, I know this dude.

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Like, I was like, I I I don’t know why. Because, again, as you

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anybody who’s listened to this podcast will know, it’s not like I’m a screaming

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literary expert. Like, I’m not like you know? But for some reason,

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I knew who he was, and I was like, I know this dude. Like, what

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is why do I know him? And it took me forever to realize it was

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his ties to music that I realized that that that’s where I knew him from

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because he was a really, very well written,

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critic of blues and jazz and things like that. And so

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I that was like, I knew I knew his face, and I was like, that’s

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where I know him from. So, anyway, I act I ended up watching a bunch

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of interviews from him over the weekend. So, I’m

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he’s he’s going on my list of people I would love to have lunch with

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if I were to be pick somebody from history. I just like listening to him

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talk. I I really enjoyed listening to his interviews and stuff like that.

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So, anyway, I just thought I’d throw that in there. Yeah. No. He was,

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he was known for and and it really isn’t this essay that we’re going

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to read today, the Omni Americans. He made his he made his argument

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really first that, jazz

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and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about this today. But the jazz is the

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is the fundamental unique

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representation of America. Yeah. It’s the art of the The art

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of the that America created. Yeah. Exactly. And that the

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Europeans couldn’t have done it. Africans couldn’t have done it.

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Asians couldn’t have done it. We’re the only ones that could

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have put that together on this continent by

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virtue of how we think about ourselves. And

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that’s an interesting perspective to explore,

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particularly in light of jazz critics like Stanley

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Crouch, who would come later on, and even jazz players who eventually

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became critics like Wynton Marcellus, who

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maybe took a little bit of a different approach to,

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to thinking about, the jazz medium.

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The other dynamic is I’m a big fan of jazz music, and so I knew

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about this guy a while ago, but I hadn’t had a

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chance to really fully explore, all of his, all of his writing

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and all of his work. And so for this podcast, you know, I did a

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deep dive into him as, as well. And in addition to reading his, his

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essay, the omnimemergans, which we’re gonna cover today, I also,

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looked at, his other book, which I really do enjoy,

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south to a very old place, which I love that title. It’s very

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Faulkner ish. I love that title. He references

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Faulkner a lot in his interviews too. He does. And, you know, the

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interview link that I sent you from the interview that he did in

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1996, it’s

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interesting sort of how the interviewer is trying to pull him

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into something, you know, with the questions, and he just refuses to go there. Doesn’t

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like yeah. I saw that too. I I I

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I realized that as well. It was interesting. I love that.

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It it it means it it well, what it indicates to me is that he

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was he was he knew exactly well,

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and we’ll talk about his literary life here, but he knew exactly who he

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was, and he knew exactly what he was, what he was about.

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Yeah. Very sharp too. Very sharp.

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Yep. Absolutely. Alright. Let’s go

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ahead and, jump in

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to the Omni Americans. We’re gonna pick up in the section

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labeled, pale face fables, brown

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skin people. And I quote,

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the self conception in terms of which most Negroes have actually lived and moved

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and had their personal being for all these years, however, has always been, as

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they say, something else again. Perhaps self indulgence

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causes white people to public outcry against the fact that a

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document whose statistics are at times clearly ridiculous and whose central assumptions

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and embarrassingly sloppy conclusions make a travesty of scientific methodology

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is by way of becoming a veritable handbook of race relations in some parts

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of the country. Now pause. He was talking about and writing a response to the

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Moynihan report, which was released in the nineteen sixties,

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and which described the decline of,

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yeah, the decline of inner

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city black families, in Chicago, Detroit, and and up

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north, and then was tying this into larger challenges of

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segregation, in America. And by the way, that report was made

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by, a a gentleman, who at the time, I believe, was a senator

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or would later become a senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. So when he says the

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report, that’s what he’s talking about. Okay. Back to this.

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But then not very many Negro social science technicians have come

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forth to even take issue with dark ghetto either. Not even those

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ever so prideful black nationalistic spokesman who otherwise display so much

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suspicion about becoming victims of brainwashing whitewashing and who

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express so much militant concern about improving, quote, unquote, the blacks’ the black

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man’s image in America, seem in the least aware of the fact

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that almost every chapter of dark ghetto not only supports the stereotype that

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Negroes have always been extremely sensitive about, but also provides a quasi

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scientific refutation of the very elements of Negro American history upon which

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contemporary Negro leaders must build. Dardhetto, which

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is a strong which is strong on political indictment, but as we’ll be seeing weak

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on psychological insight, are reasons Negroes as substandard human beings

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who insist in a sick community, who subsist in a sick community.

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Its image of Harlem is, in effect,

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that of an urban pit writhing with derelicts.

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According to the impression the author creates, even if his figures do not,

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black despair has driven most of his inhabitants either to crime, narcotics,

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addiction, prostitution, and the like, or to obsessive imitations of something which

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he calls, quote, unquote, the white man’s society. See you, if any

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Negroes, he goes so far as to claim, ever lose that

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sense of shame being dark skinned in self hatred. The obsession with whiteness, he adds,

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continues past childhood and into adulthood. It stays with the Negro all his

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life. It’s extremely difficult to believe, Italics

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added. It is extremely difficult to believe that the evidence that Dartigano represents

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presents in support of such sweeping generalization would meet the scientific

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standards of, say, Talcott Parsons, who cannot fail to note the Clark’s

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overestimation of white well-being is almost worshipful.

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I’m gonna go back a little bit and read this.

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The nature of Negro moral outcry polemics, it should also be remembered,

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is now such that the most glibly self confident and even the most smugly chauvinistic

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black spokesman and leaders readily and frequently refer to themselves as being fear

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ridden, emasculated, and without self respect. No wonder white Americans continue

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to be so shocked and disoriented by the intensification of the civil rights struggle.

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Instead of relying on what is now known about the nature of social uprisings, white

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Americans keep allowing themselves to expect the theoretical Sambo promised as it were by

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Stanley m Elkins in slavery, a problem in America,

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institutional and intellectual life, implicitly confirmed by the pronouncements of

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Kenneth Clark in our ghetto and conceded by so much self deprecating rhetoric.

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But what these same white Americans keep running up against is such a bewildering,

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outrageous, and to some of them terrifying behavior as the intransigent determination of

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leaders like Charles Evers in Mississippi, the mockery and high camp of media

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types like H. Rap Brown on all networks, and people like those in Watts,

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Newark, and Detroit who respond to the murders hysteria of white

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police and national guardsmen with a defiance that is often as derisive

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as it is deep seated. The compulsions

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nourished by the folklore of white supremacy seem to

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be that such that white Americans are as yet unable to

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realize that they themselves are obviously far more impressed by their own show of brute

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force than black insurgents ever seem to be. They still do

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not seem to realize that what they actually see on television during all of the

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demonstrations, and as the saying goes, civil disruptions, is not a herd

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of walleye black natives cringing before white authority. What

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they see are heavily armed, outraged, and slaughter prone white policemen and

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soldiers smoldering with rage and itching to perpetrate a massacre, confronting

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Negroes who are behaving not only as if the whole situation were a farce

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and a carnival, but also who have time to grant television interviews

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in which there is as much snap course social science jargon as

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street corner hip talk. Like, it’s either upward mobility or

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burn baby burn. As one character in For Whom the

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Bell Tolls, shaking his head, kept saying of the Spanish during the civil

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war, quote, what a people, unquote.

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Indeed, as Negroes are forever saying in delighted puzzlement of each

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other, my people, my people, ain’t nothing like them. Man, when you’re

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talking about us, you’re talking about something

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else.

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And this is where we begin with Albert

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Murray and the Omni Americans.

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Now as usual on this show, we’re going to do a little bit

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of a dive into Albert Murray and into his,

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literary life. We’re going to sort of explore a

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little bit about well, we’re gonna explore a little bit,

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about who he was and where he came from.

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So Albert L. Murray, born 05/12/1916, died

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08/18/2013, was an American literary and music

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critic, novelist, essayist, and biographer. His books include The Omni

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Americans, which we’re reading today, South to a Very Real Place, and Stomping the

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Blues. By the way, I’d recommend picking up Stomping the Blues if you’re a fan

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of blues music as well. He

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attended Tuskegee Institute on scholarship and received a BS in education in

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1939. One of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison, who would later write the

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novel Invisible Man, published in 1952, who we

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covered on the podcast last year. Go find that episode.

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In 1941, he married Mozelle Manefi. They had a daughter,

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Michelle. While based at Tuskegee, he completed additional graduate work at

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Northwestern University in 1941 and, interestingly enough, at

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the University of Paris in 1951.

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After briefly returning to his position at Tuskegee, he became a member of the

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active guard reserve in 1951. Over the next decade,

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Murray was stationed in a number of locales ranging from Morocco to California to

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Massachusetts and taught a geopolitics course in the Tuskegee

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ROTC program. In 1962, after doctor’s exam

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revealed signs of heart disease, he retired from the United States Air Force as

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a major. Murray did not publish

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his first book until 1970. The

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Omni Americans, which, again, we’re reading today, contained a series of essays and reviews

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on such topics as protest literature in the Moynihan report on black poverty.

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In the introduction, he wrote that quote, I love this quote, and this is what

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encouraged me to pick this book up today. The United States is in actuality not

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a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of

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multicolored people.

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I love that. Tom,

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what can leaders glean from the life and times of Albert

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l Murray?

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What that’s a question to start with. Yeah. Well

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Well, let me let me just say first things first. Right? Like, I I

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think if you think about the think about the time

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frame that he actually lived through and what that man saw in

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his life. Like, if we can’t learn from him,

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like, what are we doing here, people? Like, seriously. Like, think about, like,

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again, like, from Jim

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Crow to the the, like, the the,

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the the civil rights movement to

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like like, he he’s seen so much. It

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just even if he wasn’t a great writer, just a person who’s lived through

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all of that, again, whether it was black, white, red, brown, whatever.

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Like Mhmm. Just think of the the sheer amount that we could

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learn from those people and whether or not we choose to do so

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or not is actually the bigger question to me.

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Like, why would we not? But yet we Right. Constantly discount,

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discredit, or push aside people who are in that

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that age group. And and, again, today, we’re probably not seeing

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anybody that was born in, you know, in 1916

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anymore. And now it’s like we’re we’re pushed twenty years past that. So

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now it’s people in the you know, born in the thirties. But but,

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again, it’s the but I think we

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can learn a lot from him. I mean, they one thing that that I know

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I I don’t remember if we had hit the record button on on the

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podcast yet or not, but one of the things that you and I were talking

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about on the fact that this man knew who he was. Mhmm. He didn’t

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deviate from his principles. He had a moral compass

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that was clear to him, and he never allowed anybody

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to, you know, to to overshadow or

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to skew his visibility of that moral compass.

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If you can’t, as a leader, take just from that

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alone, then you shouldn’t be a leader. Mhmm. So

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Yeah. So, I mean, again, even from the simplicity of it, and I’m

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00:26:00,810 –> 00:26:04,650
again, not not even to go into into deep conversation about the

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type of person he was and the interactions he had with the people around him.

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And and, you know, you mentioned you took a deep dive into

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I I I ended up watching

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I ended up watching at minimum three speeches that were

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given about him from people that he impacted their lives.

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There was two, two black gentlemen and a white and a white

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gentleman, all three of which referred to him as their grandfather.

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Right. Because that’s the kind of person he was. If if you

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were in if you were in with him, you were in with him. It wasn’t

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like he didn’t keep from what I gathered from him, there

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was basically two people on this earth, people in his inner circle and people

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who weren’t, and that was it. Like, I don’t think he really had

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that. So to answer your question, to go back to, like, what can we learn

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from him as a leader, I think that’s very compelling. Like, he

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was overly trusting of the people in his inner circle. He

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he valued them beyond belief. He looked

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00:27:05,220 –> 00:27:09,044
he looked to teach them and to learn from them. He looked to like, there

305
00:27:09,044 –> 00:27:12,885
was a lot there was a lot with him. And there was one person

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00:27:12,885 –> 00:27:16,725
in particular this this gentleman was talking about. He couldn’t find a

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babysitter for his four year old son, and he had to bring him to,

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mister Mori’s house. And he went, like, he sat his son down,

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like, for this long conversation saying, don’t touch anything. Don’t look at anything. Don’t do

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it. Like, this this person, like, is not used to having little kids in

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this house. And at the end of the visit with with,

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Maury, the little boy tugged his father’s jacket and

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said, you said to treat this house like grandpa’s house. Like, what do I how

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00:27:42,805 –> 00:27:45,525
do I say goodbye? Like, do I shake his hand? Do I say do I

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00:27:45,525 –> 00:27:49,330
just wave? And when he turned and told Albert

316
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Mori that conversation that the little boy had to him, Albert Mori

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00:27:52,930 –> 00:27:55,990
literally opened his arms and just grabbed the little boy and hugged him. Like,

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00:27:56,930 –> 00:27:59,410
it’s the first time he ever met the kid, and he treated him like a

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grandson, like, right out the gate. Like and it’s not that he

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didn’t see. And and and I say I I

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00:28:06,905 –> 00:28:10,105
gotta be careful how I word this because, like I said, a couple of the

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00:28:10,105 –> 00:28:13,545
people that that he that I want, like, some were black, some were white. Like,

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it it and it’s not that he didn’t see color. He

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00:28:17,385 –> 00:28:21,090
saw the difference in their color, but he just didn’t care. Like, it was that

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00:28:21,090 –> 00:28:24,710
the color it’s not that the the color wasn’t important or that

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00:28:24,770 –> 00:28:28,530
it didn’t matter. It was more about the color

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00:28:28,530 –> 00:28:32,130
not being the reason Right. Or

328
00:28:32,130 –> 00:28:35,965
whichever for whatever. Right? Like, the reason for good, the reason for bad, the reason

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00:28:35,965 –> 00:28:39,745
for what he just didn’t allow the color to be the reason. Right.

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But he appreciated all of it. Like, I just I found him fascinating.

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The more and like I said, it didn’t matter whether people were white, black,

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brown, whether people were male or female. Every person that

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I heard, in the interviews that I listened to over the weekend and now, like

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I said, there was quite a few. I listened to, because I listened to them

335
00:28:58,179 –> 00:28:59,925
on 1.75, by the way.

336
00:29:01,845 –> 00:29:05,685
I I was able to get through literally, like, a dozen, like, a dozen

337
00:29:05,685 –> 00:29:09,045
interviews with him over the weekend. And Yeah. Or not interviews with him.

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00:29:09,045 –> 00:29:12,485
Sorry. I listened to the interview that you sent me, but I also was listening

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to people give speeches on his behalf, whether it was

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accolades or introductions to an award that he won or

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whatever. Mhmm. Mhmm. It just seemed like

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00:29:24,210 –> 00:29:27,895
and, again, like I said to you earlier, I’m putting him on my

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00:29:27,895 –> 00:29:30,695
list of people. Like, when you when you say, like, if you can talk to

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00:29:30,695 –> 00:29:34,215
anybody in history, like, you know, whatever note any time

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00:29:34,215 –> 00:29:37,495
frame, I would love to talk to him. I think he would be fascinating to

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00:29:37,495 –> 00:29:41,090
just sit and have a conversation with. I I was,

347
00:29:42,350 –> 00:29:45,790
exposed to him because I’m a fan of jazz music. Right? And

348
00:29:45,790 –> 00:29:49,630
so, I haven’t really talked about this on the podcast in a long time, but,

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my wife and I cofounded a jazz festival in, in our

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local, our local town, because we’re fans of jazz music.

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We’re fans of jazz musicians. We like hanging out

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with them, and talking with them. We even bring our kids around them

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00:30:04,585 –> 00:30:08,184
because they tend to be because of the nature of jazz

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00:30:08,184 –> 00:30:11,540
music, and and Albert Marie would agree with this. Because of the nature of jazz

355
00:30:11,540 –> 00:30:15,300
music, there’s no room for at least

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00:30:15,300 –> 00:30:18,500
not in my time. There’s no room for prejudice or discrimination. There’s just not. Like,

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you’re either good or you’re not. Right? And it doesn’t matter if you’re

358
00:30:22,425 –> 00:30:26,265
it doesn’t matter if you’re an Asian cat. It doesn’t matter if you’re, you know,

359
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if you’re black. It doesn’t matter if you’re white. It doesn’t matter if you’re Native

360
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American. It doesn’t does not can you blow? Can you

361
00:30:32,825 –> 00:30:36,540
play the drums? Can you bump on the cello?

362
00:30:36,920 –> 00:30:40,760
Can you do the thing that needs to be done in an

363
00:30:40,760 –> 00:30:44,220
improvizational sort of environment? Right?

364
00:30:45,160 –> 00:30:48,600
And what I loved about Murray was he took that

365
00:30:48,600 –> 00:30:52,285
concept, and I don’t know whether it came first or came second. And

366
00:30:52,285 –> 00:30:55,965
when I studied his life, one of the interesting things that

367
00:30:55,965 –> 00:30:59,804
I noted was he didn’t stay in America. He went

368
00:30:59,804 –> 00:31:02,945
other places, and so he brought in his geopolitical,

369
00:31:04,100 –> 00:31:07,080
his geopolitical, worldview and frame

370
00:31:08,100 –> 00:31:11,560
to include folks from other places. Right? And,

371
00:31:12,020 –> 00:31:15,480
you know, I think just like with a lot of people

372
00:31:15,780 –> 00:31:19,485
who struggle, right, to

373
00:31:19,485 –> 00:31:23,184
to navigate the racial and ethnic waters in America,

374
00:31:23,644 –> 00:31:27,024
you don’t really realize, black or white or whatever,

375
00:31:27,404 –> 00:31:31,245
you don’t really realize how unique America is until you have

376
00:31:31,245 –> 00:31:35,059
to go someplace else. Yeah. And going from, you know, Morocco

377
00:31:35,059 –> 00:31:38,820
to Massachusetts, is going to give you that kind of education.

378
00:31:38,820 –> 00:31:42,440
You’re going to see that. You’re going to see how Arabs treat other Arabs.

379
00:31:42,500 –> 00:31:46,179
Right? You’re going to see how, Germans treat other

380
00:31:46,179 –> 00:31:49,815
Germans. You’re going to see how Russians treat other Russians.

381
00:31:50,274 –> 00:31:53,095
And you’re gonna be able to put that into a context, I think,

382
00:31:54,115 –> 00:31:57,955
that is going to influence, or not influence,

383
00:31:57,955 –> 00:32:00,434
but it’s gonna you’re gonna put it in context. It’s gonna change how you think

384
00:32:00,434 –> 00:32:04,159
about being an American. And then the improvisational pieces from

385
00:32:04,159 –> 00:32:08,000
jazz come over because and this is the we

386
00:32:08,000 –> 00:32:11,679
talk about this every year, in July when we talk about declaration of independence and

387
00:32:11,679 –> 00:32:14,179
the constitution. So I’m gonna repeat it here because it’s worth repeating.

388
00:32:15,679 –> 00:32:19,304
The the thing that unites all of us as

389
00:32:19,304 –> 00:32:22,825
Americans, the thing that brings us all

390
00:32:22,825 –> 00:32:26,665
together, regardless of our skin color or ethnicity or

391
00:32:26,665 –> 00:32:30,125
even religion, is a common creed. And

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00:32:30,265 –> 00:32:34,100
Murray talks about this in the Omni Americans. We

393
00:32:34,640 –> 00:32:38,320
consistently are asking as people

394
00:32:38,320 –> 00:32:42,080
in America. We are asking America to live up to the words of its

395
00:32:42,080 –> 00:32:45,760
founding, and we are constantly pushing the words of its

396
00:32:45,760 –> 00:32:49,265
founding and and constantly

397
00:32:49,645 –> 00:32:52,785
critiquing and poking and

398
00:32:54,045 –> 00:32:57,405
improvising, around those words. And so And

399
00:32:57,405 –> 00:33:01,245
interpreting. And interpreting those words.

400
00:33:01,245 –> 00:33:04,830
And interpreting those words. Correct. Right. Well, that goes along with the improvisation.

401
00:33:04,830 –> 00:33:08,450
That’s that’s all part of jazz is that interpretation. And so,

402
00:33:09,150 –> 00:33:12,930
you know, I found it interesting that one of his fellow students was Ralph Ellison.

403
00:33:14,270 –> 00:33:17,710
You know, the two giant black literary figures of the nineteen

404
00:33:17,710 –> 00:33:20,345
fifties were Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright.

405
00:33:21,445 –> 00:33:24,965
And those two guys, I won’t say they were big fans of each

406
00:33:24,965 –> 00:33:28,745
other, but they operated in they operated in two different spheres,

407
00:33:29,365 –> 00:33:32,965
kinda like Booker t Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. And we talked a

408
00:33:32,965 –> 00:33:36,730
little bit about that on this podcast as well. But Murray

409
00:33:37,270 –> 00:33:40,570
was seeking to, I think, make a broader

410
00:33:40,710 –> 00:33:44,090
argument about the nature of what it means to be American

411
00:33:44,870 –> 00:33:48,135
while avoiding the easy trap of,

412
00:33:48,915 –> 00:33:52,355
well, it’s just this race or it’s just that race or it’s just this era,

413
00:33:52,355 –> 00:33:55,795
just avoiding the easy traps. And so he he’s intellectually challenging to

414
00:33:55,795 –> 00:33:59,490
read because you can see him improvising as he’s writing,

415
00:33:59,490 –> 00:34:01,830
and you can see it in, in the Omni Americans.

416
00:34:04,770 –> 00:34:08,290
Okay. One other We just talked about too. Like, isn’t it

417
00:34:08,530 –> 00:34:12,370
it was, like, amazingly fascinating to me that to to find out

418
00:34:12,370 –> 00:34:15,995
that when he taught at Tuskegee Mhmm. That he taught the

419
00:34:15,995 –> 00:34:19,675
Tuskegee Airmen. Oh, yeah. I was like, that just blew my

420
00:34:19,675 –> 00:34:23,275
mind. I was like, wait. What? Like, this guy, he was their

421
00:34:23,275 –> 00:34:26,395
professor. He was their teacher. I was like, that was that that was just crazy

422
00:34:26,395 –> 00:34:30,130
to me. That’s that’s You know, he was he was with that he

423
00:34:30,130 –> 00:34:33,890
was in that generational intergenerum between World War one and World

424
00:34:33,890 –> 00:34:37,350
War two. Right? He was born in that period. Yeah. And

425
00:34:37,810 –> 00:34:40,929
that’s the period. And most people in America don’t really think about this, black or

426
00:34:40,929 –> 00:34:44,364
white. But that was the period of black people

427
00:34:44,824 –> 00:34:47,244
experiencing black excellence,

428
00:34:48,585 –> 00:34:52,264
at the at the sort of the post civil war height, right, of

429
00:34:52,264 –> 00:34:54,685
black excellence. There’s the Harlem Renaissance. Right?

430
00:34:55,969 –> 00:34:59,809
Seeing black people from from jazz players, speaking of jazz players, from jazz

431
00:34:59,809 –> 00:35:03,329
players to football players. Right? Or not football. Sorry. Baseball or basketball

432
00:35:03,329 –> 00:35:06,470
players. From from boxers to drug dealers. Right?

433
00:35:07,089 –> 00:35:10,069
You know, everybody was seeking to be excellent,

434
00:35:12,224 –> 00:35:16,065
not in opposition to white people, but in

435
00:35:16,065 –> 00:35:19,905
in in but encased in their own identity. Right? We don’t

436
00:35:19,905 –> 00:35:23,750
need to define ourselves in opposition because we just are. By the

437
00:35:23,750 –> 00:35:27,589
way, Zora Neale Hurston came out of that milieu too, in her

438
00:35:27,589 –> 00:35:30,170
writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Right.

439
00:35:35,345 –> 00:35:37,904
Okay. Let’s let me ask you this question because this is gonna lead into what

440
00:35:37,904 –> 00:35:40,785
does it mean to be an American because I wanna wanna talk about this because

441
00:35:40,785 –> 00:35:44,464
this is this is fundamentally the question that Murray really pokes

442
00:35:44,464 –> 00:35:48,300
at. In the introduction

443
00:35:48,300 –> 00:35:51,840
to the Omni Americans, as I already mentioned, Murray stated,

444
00:35:52,140 –> 00:35:55,340
quote, The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white

445
00:35:55,340 –> 00:35:58,860
people. It is a nation of multicolored people. What do you think about

446
00:35:58,860 –> 00:36:02,555
that? Well, it’s funny it’s funny that because

447
00:36:02,555 –> 00:36:05,855
I I I read that quote as well, and I I found it fascinating

448
00:36:06,075 –> 00:36:09,915
because and and those of you who’ve listened to this podcast before

449
00:36:09,915 –> 00:36:13,730
have probably known that I I’ve done a I’ve done a lot of lectures

450
00:36:13,869 –> 00:36:17,630
at the local colleges and universities here mostly on, you know, Native

451
00:36:17,630 –> 00:36:21,330
American history and and, and culture.

452
00:36:21,950 –> 00:36:25,710
And I tell the audience all the time, if your family has been in The

453
00:36:25,710 –> 00:36:29,505
United States for more than five generations, you’re probably

454
00:36:29,565 –> 00:36:33,165
multicultural at this point. Whether you know it or not or whether you buy into

455
00:36:33,165 –> 00:36:36,705
it or not or not buy into it, but, like, live it. Meaning, like,

456
00:36:38,125 –> 00:36:41,185
it it’s it’s almost impossible for,

457
00:36:41,870 –> 00:36:45,710
let’s say, Irish or Italian families to come over here for

458
00:36:45,710 –> 00:36:49,390
five whole generations and continue to marry into their own

459
00:36:49,390 –> 00:36:53,150
race. It’s almost impossible. Right? So, like, so if you’ve been here

460
00:36:53,230 –> 00:36:56,805
now think about it. Like, so my my family has been here since

461
00:36:56,805 –> 00:37:00,165
the sixteen hundreds. Like, you know, the my the the white the white side of

462
00:37:00,165 –> 00:37:03,845
my family. You’re telling me from 1600 till now, we didn’t

463
00:37:03,845 –> 00:37:07,204
intermarry with anybody else, but people from there’s no

464
00:37:07,204 –> 00:37:10,980
way. So I’m assuming that if you take my my 23

465
00:37:10,980 –> 00:37:14,260
and me is probably gonna look like like a like a like one of the

466
00:37:14,340 –> 00:37:17,560
like a like a cylinder, like a colander with all the holes in it. Like,

467
00:37:17,780 –> 00:37:21,080
I I couldn’t even imagine the the the the how

468
00:37:21,380 –> 00:37:25,225
wide of the variety of races and cultures would be in

469
00:37:25,225 –> 00:37:28,125
my history if I were to look at it that intently.

470
00:37:28,665 –> 00:37:32,425
Right. So to your question, I found

471
00:37:32,425 –> 00:37:35,865
this fascinating because I think it in my

472
00:37:35,865 –> 00:37:39,599
brain, it it it kind of it speaks directly to

473
00:37:39,599 –> 00:37:43,200
my own narrative. Right? Like, the whole idea of, like, the

474
00:37:43,200 –> 00:37:47,040
color of your skin does not dictate who you are. The

475
00:37:47,040 –> 00:37:50,560
history of your family dictates more of it than anything.

476
00:37:50,560 –> 00:37:54,345
So, again, for all I know, I could have black relatives back in the

477
00:37:54,345 –> 00:37:57,945
day, like, at some point back. Not that I identify as black, and I wouldn’t

478
00:37:57,945 –> 00:38:00,045
do that as as a as a matter of,

479
00:38:01,865 –> 00:38:04,425
as a matter of my own identity, but it

480
00:38:05,465 –> 00:38:08,970
it’s and and I certainly wouldn’t say because let’s just say I don’t know. Let’s

481
00:38:08,970 –> 00:38:11,930
say it’s seven generations back that there was a a a, you know, a black

482
00:38:11,930 –> 00:38:15,690
person in there somewhere. I would never in a million years say that I understood

483
00:38:15,690 –> 00:38:19,210
the plight of the black person because seven generations ago, I had

484
00:38:19,210 –> 00:38:22,945
somebody married into a black I mean, that’s ridiculous. That doesn’t that doesn’t

485
00:38:22,945 –> 00:38:26,704
have but but to his point and to and to what I was try

486
00:38:26,785 –> 00:38:29,525
like, the way I’m trying to wrap this into my brain is

487
00:38:31,905 –> 00:38:35,605
but I can still look at that ancestor seven generations

488
00:38:35,665 –> 00:38:39,320
back regardless, black, white, red, brown, and still say they were

489
00:38:39,320 –> 00:38:43,000
American. I know they were because they that’s how long my family has been

490
00:38:43,000 –> 00:38:46,680
here. So I could look at my own genetic makeup and

491
00:38:46,680 –> 00:38:50,440
and see exactly what he’s talking about because I don’t I I

492
00:38:50,440 –> 00:38:53,535
could eat very easily. I and, again, those of you who know me and if

493
00:38:53,535 –> 00:38:57,375
you’re looking at this video, I could very easily discount

494
00:38:57,375 –> 00:39:01,135
and discredit my entire native heritage and just say that I’m white. It’d

495
00:39:01,135 –> 00:39:04,974
be very easy for me to do. I don’t think that serves

496
00:39:04,974 –> 00:39:08,790
me anything, but I could. And I think I think that’s

497
00:39:08,790 –> 00:39:12,150
kinda what he was talking about. At least, again, when when I’m looking at it,

498
00:39:12,150 –> 00:39:15,830
if you think of the black people in The United States today, regardless of the

499
00:39:15,830 –> 00:39:19,590
actual color of their skin, if their history goes back to the slave days,

500
00:39:19,590 –> 00:39:23,325
then, you know, or or back before. And and they Mhmm.

501
00:39:23,405 –> 00:39:26,925
Again, seven generations, whatever. You you’re just

502
00:39:26,925 –> 00:39:30,765
American now. Like like Right. I I like, if

503
00:39:30,765 –> 00:39:34,065
you’re if you consider yourself Irish American or Italian

504
00:39:34,125 –> 00:39:37,829
American, both of your parents are probably Italian. Both of

505
00:39:37,829 –> 00:39:41,670
your parents are probably Irish. They both either your grandparents came over on

506
00:39:41,670 –> 00:39:45,270
the boat or like, sure. I get that. But if you

507
00:39:45,270 –> 00:39:49,109
say you’re Irish American or Italian American, your family’s been here

508
00:39:49,109 –> 00:39:52,955
since eighteen o two, Come on. You’re not Irish American anymore. You’re just

509
00:39:52,955 –> 00:39:56,555
American. Let’s just be realistic about this. Like Well

510
00:39:56,875 –> 00:40:00,555
So Yeah. Let’s be realistic about this. Let’s hear what Murray has to say about

511
00:40:00,555 –> 00:40:04,235
this because he he hits this right early. He does. He hits this right

512
00:40:04,235 –> 00:40:07,400
early in the Omni Americans. So let me pick up here.

513
00:40:08,500 –> 00:40:10,920
And he says this, and I quote,

514
00:40:12,260 –> 00:40:15,700
thus, though recognizing that the depths, which after all are bottomless, have

515
00:40:15,700 –> 00:40:19,385
not yet actually been plumbed. There is no truly urgent reason to

516
00:40:19,385 –> 00:40:22,905
trace the origin of US Negro style and manner any farther back in time than

517
00:40:22,905 –> 00:40:26,025
the arrival of a Dutch ship of war in Virginia with a cargo of 20

518
00:40:26,025 –> 00:40:29,865
black captives for sale in 1619, if indeed that far. By the

519
00:40:29,865 –> 00:40:33,200
way, that’s where the 1619 project comes in.

520
00:40:34,140 –> 00:40:37,820
Negroes definitely were reluctant immigrants to the new world, but in view of the life

521
00:40:37,820 –> 00:40:40,619
they had experienced in the land of their origin, they could hardly have regarded it

522
00:40:40,619 –> 00:40:44,460
as a stronghold of individual freedom and limitless opportunity, nor could they have

523
00:40:44,460 –> 00:40:47,895
been unmindful of the obvious fact that Africans, quote, unquote, back home, whereas

524
00:40:47,975 –> 00:40:51,515
actively engaged in the slave trade as were the Europeans and Americans.

525
00:40:52,695 –> 00:40:55,915
By the way, we have to point that out. Many contemporary

526
00:40:56,135 –> 00:40:59,895
Americans, both black and white, obviously assume that the slave runners simply

527
00:40:59,895 –> 00:41:03,670
landed their ships and overpowered the helpless natives at will. Such

528
00:41:03,670 –> 00:41:07,350
was not the usual case at all. For the most part, such entrepreneurs bartered for,

529
00:41:07,350 –> 00:41:10,810
quote, unquote, black ivory, much as the same for elephant tusks.

530
00:41:11,110 –> 00:41:14,790
The whites, Negro historian Benjamin Quarles points out, did not go

531
00:41:14,790 –> 00:41:18,330
into the interior to procure slaves. This they left to the Africans themselves.

532
00:41:18,765 –> 00:41:22,605
Spurred on by the desire for European goods, one tribe raided another, seized

533
00:41:22,605 –> 00:41:26,285
whatever captives it could, and marched them in coffles with the leather thongs around their

534
00:41:26,285 –> 00:41:30,045
necks to coastal trading centers. It is all

535
00:41:30,045 –> 00:41:33,885
too true that Negroes, unlike the Yankee and the backwoodsmen, were slaves whose legal status

536
00:41:33,885 –> 00:41:37,350
was that of property. But it is also true, as things have turned

537
00:41:37,350 –> 00:41:41,190
out even more significant, that they were slaves, and this is what

538
00:41:41,190 –> 00:41:44,869
he italicizes, who were living in the presence of more human

539
00:41:44,869 –> 00:41:48,550
freedom and individual opportunity than they or anybody else had ever seen

540
00:41:48,550 –> 00:41:52,325
before. That the conception of being a free

541
00:41:52,325 –> 00:41:56,005
man in America was infinitely richer than any notion of individuality in the

542
00:41:56,005 –> 00:41:59,845
Africa of that period goes without saying. That’s a

543
00:41:59,845 –> 00:42:03,519
bombshell, by the way, of a statement right there. Yeah. Really

544
00:42:03,519 –> 00:42:06,880
is. That’s a bombshell of a statement. Like, when he when he when he when

545
00:42:06,880 –> 00:42:10,720
I read that, I went, oh, oh, oh, and I

546
00:42:10,720 –> 00:42:14,480
highlighted that because that’s a bombshell of a statement

547
00:42:14,480 –> 00:42:18,315
that most people don’t think about. Back

548
00:42:18,315 –> 00:42:21,915
to the book, that this conception was perceived by the black slaves as shown by

549
00:42:21,915 –> 00:42:25,435
their history as Americans. And now he’s going to back up his statement. The fugitive

550
00:42:25,435 –> 00:42:29,275
slave, for instance, was culturally speaking, certainly an American and a magnificent one

551
00:42:29,275 –> 00:42:32,890
at that. His basic urge to escape was, of course, only human, as was his

552
00:42:32,890 –> 00:42:36,410
willingness to risk the odds. But the tactics he employed as well as the objectives

553
00:42:36,410 –> 00:42:40,010
he was seeking were American, not African. In his

554
00:42:40,010 –> 00:42:43,770
objectives, he certainly does not seem to have been motivated by any overwhelming nostalgia

555
00:42:43,770 –> 00:42:47,315
for tribal life. The slaves who absconded to the fight for the British during

556
00:42:47,315 –> 00:42:51,075
revolutionary war were no less inspired by American ideas than those who fought for the

557
00:42:51,075 –> 00:42:54,595
colonies. The liberation that the white people wanted from the

558
00:42:54,595 –> 00:42:58,195
British, the black people wanted from white people. By the

559
00:42:58,195 –> 00:43:01,850
way, I laughed when I read that. As

560
00:43:01,850 –> 00:43:05,450
for as for the tactics of the fugitive slaves, the underground

561
00:43:05,450 –> 00:43:08,970
railroad was not only an innovation, it was also an extension of the

562
00:43:08,970 –> 00:43:12,750
American quest for democracy brought to its highest level of epic heroism.

563
00:43:13,850 –> 00:43:15,630
Nobody tried to sabotage the Mayflower.

564
00:43:17,454 –> 00:43:21,055
Just pointing that out. There was no bounty on the heads of its captain, crew,

565
00:43:21,055 –> 00:43:24,895
or voyagers as was the case of with all conductors, station masters, and passengers on

566
00:43:24,895 –> 00:43:28,734
the northbound freedom train. Given the differences in circumstances, equipment, and above

567
00:43:28,734 –> 00:43:32,115
all motives, the legendary exploits of white US backwoodsmen,

568
00:43:32,550 –> 00:43:35,990
keelboatmen, and prairie schoolmen, for example, became

569
00:43:35,990 –> 00:43:39,430
relatively safe when one sets them beside the

570
00:43:39,430 –> 00:43:43,210
breathtaking escapes of the fugitive slave beating his way South to Florida,

571
00:43:43,510 –> 00:43:47,085
west to the Indians, and North to faraway Canada through swamp and town

572
00:43:47,085 –> 00:43:50,545
alike seeking freedom. Nobody was chasing

573
00:43:51,005 –> 00:43:54,845
Daniel Boone. Or to take another area

574
00:43:54,845 –> 00:43:58,630
of American experience, the pioneer spirit of American womanhood

575
00:43:58,770 –> 00:44:02,130
is widely eulogized. But at no time in the history of the republic has such

576
00:44:02,130 –> 00:44:05,970
womanhood ever attained a higher level of excellence than the indomitable heroism of runaway

577
00:44:05,970 –> 00:44:09,650
slave named Harriet Tubman, who kidnapped over the 300 of her

578
00:44:09,650 –> 00:44:13,405
fellow men out of bondage and of whom William h Seward once said, quote,

579
00:44:13,545 –> 00:44:17,385
a noble or higher spirit or a truer seldom dwells in human form,

580
00:44:17,385 –> 00:44:20,685
close quote. Harriet Tubman was, like Sojourner

581
00:44:20,745 –> 00:44:24,300
Truth, already alleged in her time. Ralph Waldo Emerson,

582
00:44:24,300 –> 00:44:27,980
Bronson Alcott, by the way, Bronson Alcott, I believe, was the father of

583
00:44:27,980 –> 00:44:31,580
Louise May Alcott, the author of Little Women, and

584
00:44:31,580 –> 00:44:35,100
Horace Mann, among numerous others of that golden era of national

585
00:44:35,100 –> 00:44:38,885
synthesis, immediately and eagerly acknowledge what the dynamics of racial one

586
00:44:38,885 –> 00:44:42,425
upsmanship have obscured for so many succeeding students of American civilization.

587
00:44:43,365 –> 00:44:47,045
Tubman was not only an American legend, she also added a

588
00:44:47,045 –> 00:44:49,545
necessary even if still misapprehended

589
00:44:50,430 –> 00:44:54,190
dimension to the national mythology. Another

590
00:44:54,190 –> 00:44:57,890
example in such an ethical figure as that of the mulatto fugitive abolitionist

591
00:44:58,030 –> 00:45:01,869
and statesman named Frederick Douglass, contemporary American Negroes can find

592
00:45:01,869 –> 00:45:05,325
all the fundamental reassurances as to their identity and mission as

593
00:45:05,325 –> 00:45:09,085
Americans that the Joseph of Thomas Mann found in the man from

594
00:45:09,085 –> 00:45:12,765
Ir Khashdim. Indeed, not even such justly canonized founding

595
00:45:12,765 –> 00:45:16,605
fathers as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson represent a more splendid image and pattern for

596
00:45:16,605 –> 00:45:20,130
the contemporary American citizenship of anyone. On balance,

597
00:45:20,350 –> 00:45:24,050
not even Abraham Lincoln was a more heroic embodiment of the American

598
00:45:24,190 –> 00:45:27,790
as self made man. After all, Lincoln, like

599
00:45:27,790 –> 00:45:30,609
Franklin and Jefferson, was born

600
00:45:31,710 –> 00:45:32,210
free.

601
00:45:37,685 –> 00:45:41,465
I am reading this book, and I wanna fully acknowledge this,

602
00:45:41,925 –> 00:45:45,365
as we are in the middle

603
00:45:45,365 –> 00:45:49,190
of what the writers on sub Substack and the

604
00:45:49,190 –> 00:45:51,130
folks on Twitter call a vibe shift,

605
00:45:53,750 –> 00:45:56,810
but I think it’s more like the ending of a political realignment.

606
00:45:57,910 –> 00:46:01,290
And, by the way, our political parties go through this once every eighty years.

607
00:46:02,275 –> 00:46:05,955
Eighty years ago, Democrats were, quite frankly,

608
00:46:05,955 –> 00:46:09,715
not that great, and Republicans were, quite frankly,

609
00:46:09,715 –> 00:46:13,395
on the side of civil rights. And there was a shift that

610
00:46:13,395 –> 00:46:17,130
occurred, and Democrats became very much

611
00:46:17,130 –> 00:46:20,510
in favor of civil rights, and Republicans backburned that

612
00:46:20,890 –> 00:46:24,569
as a secondary consideration to making money. And

613
00:46:24,569 –> 00:46:28,410
now we are having another shift eighty years later where eighty

614
00:46:28,410 –> 00:46:31,244
years long from the civil rights movement where Republicans

615
00:46:32,025 –> 00:46:35,785
have captured, if not almost all as

616
00:46:35,785 –> 00:46:39,625
a party, a lot of the territory of civil

617
00:46:39,625 –> 00:46:42,925
rights action. And if you don’t believe me, if you’re looking for actual

618
00:46:42,984 –> 00:46:45,085
lived evidence of this,

619
00:46:47,760 –> 00:46:51,200
Both the forty fifth president of The United States and the forty seventh president of

620
00:46:51,200 –> 00:46:54,800
The United States increased funding for historical black

621
00:46:54,800 –> 00:46:58,180
colleges and universities by the stroke of an executive pen

622
00:46:58,755 –> 00:47:02,275
and did it without any fanfare. The Democratic president in

623
00:47:02,275 –> 00:47:05,875
between just kinda passed on it when it was

624
00:47:05,875 –> 00:47:09,095
offered to him. There has been a shift

625
00:47:09,555 –> 00:47:13,095
in politics, but it takes a while for it to show up.

626
00:47:13,800 –> 00:47:17,240
And when political realignments happen in

627
00:47:17,240 –> 00:47:20,940
chaotic turnings like the one we’re at the end of,

628
00:47:21,480 –> 00:47:25,080
we always, as a people, ask the question that we’ve all been

629
00:47:25,080 –> 00:47:28,605
asking for the last twenty years of chaos. What does it really

630
00:47:28,605 –> 00:47:31,505
mean to be a, quote, unquote, American?

631
00:47:32,445 –> 00:47:36,045
Now I might have gonna have a position on this, and Tom is gonna have

632
00:47:36,045 –> 00:47:39,805
a position on this based on, as I said in my opening, where you stand

633
00:47:39,805 –> 00:47:43,300
on the map, right, where you’re starting from with the territory.

634
00:47:45,040 –> 00:47:48,660
But we also ask this question when activists upheaval from populations

635
00:47:49,360 –> 00:47:53,040
demanding that America as a political entity live up to the promises of

636
00:47:53,040 –> 00:47:56,744
its founding. And when those calls begin to spread as

637
00:47:56,744 –> 00:48:00,585
they were doing when Albert Murray was in his forties and fifties

638
00:48:00,585 –> 00:48:04,045
from a younger generation of African American activists,

639
00:48:05,305 –> 00:48:08,960
when those questions begin to spread, we also

640
00:48:08,960 –> 00:48:11,780
get political upheavals and realignments.

641
00:48:14,880 –> 00:48:18,640
But Murray figured out something that I think most of us have to

642
00:48:18,640 –> 00:48:22,400
reremember, and I think we will reremember it as we come out of this

643
00:48:22,400 –> 00:48:24,765
chaos and move along the other side of it by

644
00:48:25,545 –> 00:48:29,145
2028 or so. The very people of The United

645
00:48:29,145 –> 00:48:32,905
States live in tension. This is what, Murray

646
00:48:32,905 –> 00:48:36,265
meant by we’re not a nation of black people or white people. We’re a nation

647
00:48:36,265 –> 00:48:39,565
of multicolored people. That’s how he framed the tension.

648
00:48:40,740 –> 00:48:44,580
And we don’t wanna look at the hard truth. And the hard truth is

649
00:48:44,580 –> 00:48:48,100
this. All of us humans on this continent within this political and cultural

650
00:48:48,100 –> 00:48:51,860
entity known as The United States, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or

651
00:48:51,860 –> 00:48:55,485
even religion, demand that we be treated as amorphous

652
00:48:55,625 –> 00:48:58,845
and undefinable and,

653
00:48:59,705 –> 00:49:03,325
specifically, that species human known as

654
00:49:04,025 –> 00:49:07,700
American. We can’t define it, but we

655
00:49:07,700 –> 00:49:10,359
want to be treated that way.

656
00:49:11,300 –> 00:49:15,140
Even to Tom’s point in Tom’s background, even the

657
00:49:15,140 –> 00:49:18,760
folks who were here when all of us showed up on ships

658
00:49:22,175 –> 00:49:25,315
and started doing what people do when they show up to new lands,

659
00:49:26,735 –> 00:49:29,315
just walking around, making trouble, and spreading around.

660
00:49:32,815 –> 00:49:36,390
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s I mean,

661
00:49:38,290 –> 00:49:41,430
Albert Murray has hit on some has hit on a truth there. Right?

662
00:49:41,810 –> 00:49:45,410
Like, we’re I always ask this question whenever an

663
00:49:45,410 –> 00:49:48,494
activist yells at me, and they do all the time. They’re gonna we’re gonna do

664
00:49:48,494 –> 00:49:51,135
the color purple here coming up. They’re gonna yell at me because of my take

665
00:49:51,135 –> 00:49:52,115
on that. It’s fine.

666
00:49:54,974 –> 00:49:58,815
Where are we gonna go? Like, to your

667
00:49:58,815 –> 00:50:02,450
point about Irish, Italian, whatever. Like, they’re not no part nobody

668
00:50:02,450 –> 00:50:05,890
who claims to be an Irish descent is going back to

669
00:50:05,890 –> 00:50:09,190
Ireland for any reason whatsoever. Let’s visit.

670
00:50:10,369 –> 00:50:13,890
Right. Maybe have a Guinness and kiss the bloodstone. It’s a You gotta kiss the

671
00:50:13,890 –> 00:50:17,585
bloodstone and come right back. Or, like, they may go

672
00:50:17,585 –> 00:50:20,885
to Italy to, like, have some some good pasta

673
00:50:21,345 –> 00:50:23,864
and maybe look at the David, which, by the way, I wanna go to Italy

674
00:50:23,864 –> 00:50:27,664
and look at David, and look at the Sistine Chapel, maybe go say hello to

675
00:50:27,664 –> 00:50:31,240
the pope, and then go home. Tony

676
00:50:31,240 –> 00:50:34,940
Soprano went to Italy to do more criminal stuff.

677
00:50:35,000 –> 00:50:38,059
Like, he didn’t go to Italy because he felt Italian.

678
00:50:41,319 –> 00:50:44,779
What does it mean for leaders

679
00:50:47,655 –> 00:50:51,335
to be Americans? First off, Tom, what does it mean to be an American? What

680
00:50:51,335 –> 00:50:54,135
does that mean? Yeah. Go ahead. I’m gonna ask you the hard question. What does

681
00:50:54,135 –> 00:50:57,895
it mean to be an American? I mean, you know, have

682
00:50:57,895 –> 00:51:01,400
you ever seen I I think you and I might have talked about this briefly

683
00:51:01,460 –> 00:51:05,220
at one point, but there’s a scene in, was it the newsroom, I

684
00:51:05,220 –> 00:51:09,060
think it was, where Yes. Daniel was sitting on stage, and there’s a

685
00:51:09,060 –> 00:51:12,820
a young a college girl that says, you know, why is America the best

686
00:51:12,820 –> 00:51:16,625
country in the world or whatever? And the two it was like a panel discussion

687
00:51:16,625 –> 00:51:20,224
and Yeah. Just goes off. And if you

688
00:51:20,224 –> 00:51:22,965
actually sit there and listen to him,

689
00:51:23,905 –> 00:51:27,505
it’s like like, that that’s that speech really

690
00:51:27,505 –> 00:51:30,869
resonated with me. Right? Because to your point, and

691
00:51:32,369 –> 00:51:36,130
and there’s there’s a lot of there there’s another part to this too that it’s

692
00:51:36,130 –> 00:51:39,970
gonna sound like a little bit of double talk here, but there’s

693
00:51:39,970 –> 00:51:43,810
a there’s a there’s a lot of Americans that don’t feel like America needs

694
00:51:43,810 –> 00:51:46,964
to be the police of the world. Right? Like, we don’t need to be the

695
00:51:46,964 –> 00:51:50,665
big brother of the world. You know? We don’t need to be uncle

696
00:51:50,885 –> 00:51:53,704
Sam to every country across the world. So why is it

697
00:51:54,405 –> 00:51:58,230
always our responsibility to go in there and either help negotiate

698
00:51:58,290 –> 00:52:02,050
peace, support one of the, you know, support one of the

699
00:52:02,050 –> 00:52:05,330
one of the fighting sides that are we feel are on the side of good

700
00:52:05,330 –> 00:52:08,690
versus evil, whatever. But, like but inevitably, we

701
00:52:08,690 –> 00:52:12,085
do. And part of it and if you go back to the the the

702
00:52:12,085 –> 00:52:15,525
the, reference that I was making with the newsroom with Jeff Daniels

703
00:52:15,525 –> 00:52:19,365
is because it’s not about being the

704
00:52:19,365 –> 00:52:22,170
richest country in the world or the high or the best

705
00:52:22,730 –> 00:52:25,930
economics of the world, the land of the free home of the brave. Like, it’s

706
00:52:25,930 –> 00:52:29,690
it’s not about your your rights and civil liberties that a lot of other

707
00:52:29,690 –> 00:52:32,890
countries have today. The United States is not the only country in the world anymore

708
00:52:32,890 –> 00:52:36,490
that is democracy. More than half the countries in the world right now are democracy.

709
00:52:36,490 –> 00:52:40,085
They’re considered a democracy. So Mhmm. They have a voice.

710
00:52:40,085 –> 00:52:43,765
Their their population has a voice a voice. They can vote. They can get their,

711
00:52:43,765 –> 00:52:46,345
you know, new leadership in there. All that stuff exists.

712
00:52:47,765 –> 00:52:51,205
So when when you but but go now, again, like I said, it’s gonna sound

713
00:52:51,205 –> 00:52:54,260
a little bit like double talk because when you go back to what it means

714
00:52:54,260 –> 00:52:58,100
to be an American, it’s because at one point, we stood up for something that

715
00:52:58,100 –> 00:53:01,619
was bigger than ourselves. Right. It’s we stood up we

716
00:53:01,619 –> 00:53:04,980
stood in the way of injustices as a

717
00:53:04,980 –> 00:53:08,705
nation even though there were injustices happening within our

718
00:53:08,705 –> 00:53:11,925
own borders Mhmm. It was still

719
00:53:12,785 –> 00:53:16,385
something that we felt like like, yes,

720
00:53:16,385 –> 00:53:19,505
there are injustices. Yes, there are things in our within our country that we don’t

721
00:53:19,505 –> 00:53:23,260
think are perfect, but we can work on them them internally. What we don’t

722
00:53:23,260 –> 00:53:26,700
wanna see is all of the things that are happening inside The US that are

723
00:53:26,700 –> 00:53:30,160
injustices become plagues on the outside.

724
00:53:30,540 –> 00:53:33,980
Like, they become, like, things that run the world into the ground on the other

725
00:53:33,980 –> 00:53:37,335
side. So The United States stands on principle. And that well, let me rephrase

726
00:53:37,895 –> 00:53:41,575
this. We used to stand on principle. Like I think I I

727
00:53:41,575 –> 00:53:45,335
I think we still do. I think we still do stand on principle, but

728
00:53:45,335 –> 00:53:48,795
I don’t necessarily think that it is,

729
00:53:49,815 –> 00:53:53,230
always our leaders that stand on principle. I think the average

730
00:53:53,230 –> 00:53:56,990
American person on the street I do. I fundamentally believe this

731
00:53:56,990 –> 00:54:00,270
because of the places I’ve been and the people that I’ve talked to. Yeah. You

732
00:54:00,270 –> 00:54:04,109
know, any group of multicolored people in America, you get them in

733
00:54:04,109 –> 00:54:07,805
a room together, and I’m not talking about the elites with the status. Forget those

734
00:54:07,805 –> 00:54:11,164
people. They’re out of the they’re out of the conversation. They’re playing different games in

735
00:54:11,164 –> 00:54:14,924
a different sort of arena. But people who are making, you know, a hundred

736
00:54:14,924 –> 00:54:18,704
thousand dollars or $50,000, which is the vast majority of people in The United States,

737
00:54:18,765 –> 00:54:22,510
those people still have the American principle. They’re they’re matter of fact matter of

738
00:54:22,510 –> 00:54:26,270
fact, they don’t understand why the elites can’t get to get

739
00:54:26,270 –> 00:54:29,910
on board with the principle. But, I mean

740
00:54:30,030 –> 00:54:32,670
but to your point, but I I think that’s I think that’s what it is.

741
00:54:32,670 –> 00:54:35,890
Like, I think that we it’s almost like

742
00:54:37,685 –> 00:54:41,365
it’s almost like we we sit we sit on a high horse viewing

743
00:54:41,365 –> 00:54:44,885
everybody else beneath us as Americans, but yet we

744
00:54:44,885 –> 00:54:48,725
don’t recognize that we sit on the high horse. Right. Yeah.

745
00:54:48,725 –> 00:54:51,890
No. I I think that that’s really what it is. Right? Like, we we’re gonna

746
00:54:51,890 –> 00:54:55,570
we’re gonna have some sort of moral high ground. We’re gonna stand on that

747
00:54:55,570 –> 00:54:59,170
moral high ground, and we’re gonna shout from the rooftops that we

748
00:54:59,170 –> 00:55:02,950
are standing on the moral high ground even even when

749
00:55:03,545 –> 00:55:07,305
the moral high ground is not so high. Right? Like, it like, we’re we’re not

750
00:55:07,465 –> 00:55:11,225
Well well, what is it? We stand collectively on this moral high ground.

751
00:55:11,225 –> 00:55:14,665
Now, again, if you go back to, like, we’re not always on the same page.

752
00:55:14,665 –> 00:55:18,045
Sure. But when we’re not on the same page, we, generally

753
00:55:18,105 –> 00:55:21,690
speaking, are still trying to do the right thing. That’s, like, that’s the

754
00:55:21,690 –> 00:55:25,530
principle of it. Like, we feel like we stand on the on the right

755
00:55:25,530 –> 00:55:28,190
side of, of of the thought process.

756
00:55:29,610 –> 00:55:33,210
And we just want we want to make sure that nobody else feels like

757
00:55:33,210 –> 00:55:36,674
they’re they’re getting suppressed like that in other

758
00:55:36,914 –> 00:55:40,515
which is why we we still feel now we can complain all we want about

759
00:55:40,515 –> 00:55:43,234
maybe we spend a little bit too much money. Maybe we spend a little bit

760
00:55:43,234 –> 00:55:46,914
too much time or resources policing the rest of the world. Sure. You

761
00:55:46,914 –> 00:55:50,410
wanna you wanna cut that budget down, I I’m okay with that, but that doesn’t

762
00:55:50,410 –> 00:55:54,010
mean that we just don’t do it anymore. Pre pre World War two or pre

763
00:55:54,010 –> 00:55:57,770
World War one, when if you think about pre World War one, the United

764
00:55:57,770 –> 00:56:01,610
States had a a a federal a a national, essentially,

765
00:56:01,610 –> 00:56:05,185
a national, not motto, but it was

766
00:56:05,185 –> 00:56:08,805
basically a a rule of thumb where we just didn’t get involved in international politics.

767
00:56:09,025 –> 00:56:12,625
We stayed to ourself. We wanted, like, we wanted to control what we could

768
00:56:12,625 –> 00:56:16,145
control and let the rest of the world fall to shit. Sorry. Excuse my

769
00:56:16,145 –> 00:56:19,710
language. But post World War one, when we were forced to get

770
00:56:19,710 –> 00:56:23,490
involved in that war, that just went out the window.

771
00:56:23,630 –> 00:56:27,310
So now, like and there’s some shift now that people are like, well, we should

772
00:56:27,310 –> 00:56:31,005
probably get back to at least a little semblance of that in which,

773
00:56:31,305 –> 00:56:34,525
again, would be cutting funding to, you know, underprivileged

774
00:56:34,984 –> 00:56:38,345
third world countries, you know, cutting funding for, you know, our

775
00:56:38,345 –> 00:56:42,105
military allies. Like, you know, like, sure. If you wanna cut some but we

776
00:56:42,105 –> 00:56:45,770
can’t just be nonexistent anymore. That that those days are gone. Right. So

777
00:56:46,000 –> 00:56:49,681
Well, well, they also But but we do feel, to your point, as Americans, what

778
00:56:49,681 –> 00:56:53,132
makes us Americans is that we do feel like we are on the moral high

779
00:56:53,132 –> 00:56:56,583
ground throughout the rest of the world. Right. Well, and and an inch above when

780
00:56:56,583 –> 00:57:00,103
you’re standing on a platform, an inch above somebody else, you are high. I mean,

781
00:57:00,103 –> 00:57:03,690
you are technically speaking higher than them, which is an inch, but

782
00:57:03,690 –> 00:57:07,277
it’s high. Or you’re just high. Or you’re just high. Right? Yeah.

783
00:57:07,277 –> 00:57:10,864
Exactly. Now I think, you know, I think what you said

784
00:57:10,864 –> 00:57:14,540
there is very important. I would also add

785
00:57:14,540 –> 00:57:18,300
that the we used to have leaders. This is a leadership podcast,

786
00:57:18,300 –> 00:57:22,060
and this is one of my bugaboos for many years. We used to

787
00:57:22,060 –> 00:57:24,880
have leaders that explained to people

788
00:57:25,635 –> 00:57:29,235
what the hell they were getting into. So Roosevelt explained to

789
00:57:29,235 –> 00:57:32,915
people what the hell they were getting into. Even

790
00:57:32,915 –> 00:57:36,435
even Truman and Eisenhower explained to

791
00:57:36,435 –> 00:57:39,940
people what they were getting into. And it’s

792
00:57:39,940 –> 00:57:43,540
that lack of explanation, I think, that’s frustrating people in

793
00:57:43,540 –> 00:57:47,300
addition to bureaucratic opaque

794
00:57:47,300 –> 00:57:50,840
systems where no one seems to have any accountability. Meanwhile,

795
00:57:50,980 –> 00:57:54,120
I’m walking around the world, and I’ve got accountability left and right.

796
00:57:54,965 –> 00:57:58,645
And if I screw up, my kids don’t eat. If I screw up,

797
00:57:58,645 –> 00:58:02,005
I get fired. If I right. You know? So so there’s this

798
00:58:02,005 –> 00:58:05,145
disconnect. Right? So we have an opaque bureaucratic system

799
00:58:05,605 –> 00:58:09,369
where no one or where very few leaders are bothering,

800
00:58:09,430 –> 00:58:13,130
and I’m looking congress, I’m looking at you directly. You should be doing this.

801
00:58:13,430 –> 00:58:17,269
But very few people explain to the population what they’re

802
00:58:17,269 –> 00:58:20,250
doing. Instead, you have activist talk or,

803
00:58:21,005 –> 00:58:24,545
you know, getting money from donors, from people, you

804
00:58:24,845 –> 00:58:28,685
know, that $5,000 a plate deals, you know, and not engaging in

805
00:58:28,685 –> 00:58:31,585
leadership. People,

806
00:58:32,285 –> 00:58:35,980
every person across the world wants leadership.

807
00:58:36,200 –> 00:58:38,920
This is a failure. Most of our problems in the last twenty years have been

808
00:58:38,920 –> 00:58:42,599
failures of leadership. By the way, both Republican and Democrat, I’m

809
00:58:42,599 –> 00:58:46,380
paying you both with the same brush. You you failed leadership. Okay?

810
00:58:47,160 –> 00:58:50,700
Lofty rhetoric or just telling me to go shopping is not leadership.

811
00:58:52,085 –> 00:58:55,924
It’s it’s dame that ain’t it. Then the other dynamic that I

812
00:58:55,924 –> 00:58:59,305
think exists inside of there is

813
00:59:00,484 –> 00:59:04,130
and I think this is very important. We’ve

814
00:59:04,130 –> 00:59:07,890
always had and you see this in when you study the the history of the

815
00:59:07,890 –> 00:59:11,570
constitution. So one of the interesting things that came out when I

816
00:59:11,570 –> 00:59:15,330
was studying the history of the Federalist Papers was that Patrick Henry, mister

817
00:59:15,330 –> 00:59:19,125
give me liberty or give me death, right, who was a great polemicist and

818
00:59:19,125 –> 00:59:22,965
narrator and or not narrator, sorry, orator and, had

819
00:59:22,965 –> 00:59:26,585
great oratory skills. Right? He was supposed to go to

820
00:59:26,725 –> 00:59:30,565
the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, at the end of

821
00:59:30,565 –> 00:59:34,349
the revolutionary war. Thomas Jefferson actually told him

822
00:59:34,349 –> 00:59:38,190
to go as a representative of Virginia and Kentucky at the

823
00:59:38,190 –> 00:59:42,030
time. And Patrick Henry and this

824
00:59:42,030 –> 00:59:45,805
is this is what I’m talking about. Patrick Henry turned

825
00:59:45,805 –> 00:59:49,485
Thomas Jefferson down. Because back then, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t

826
00:59:49,485 –> 00:59:53,265
Thomas Jefferson. He’s just some dude. Right? Which I think is great.

827
00:59:53,805 –> 00:59:57,325
And Patrick Henry was like, no. I’m not gonna go. And the letter that the

828
00:59:57,325 –> 01:00:00,630
line he has in the letter is, that he writes, and you can find this

829
01:00:00,630 –> 01:00:04,089
in the anti federalist papers, I think. He basically says,

830
01:00:04,310 –> 01:00:08,010
I smell a rat. I want the articles of confederation left

831
01:00:08,150 –> 01:00:11,109
where they the way they are. I don’t wanna be united with the rest of

832
01:00:11,109 –> 01:00:14,265
these people. Leave me alone. And that

833
01:00:14,805 –> 01:00:18,645
streak and and

834
01:00:18,645 –> 01:00:21,625
Murray references this with the Yankee backs back woodsmen.

835
01:00:23,525 –> 01:00:27,090
There is a streak of people that came over here on boats, and now

836
01:00:27,090 –> 01:00:30,930
it’s it’s it’s in the DNA of the culture who who

837
01:00:30,930 –> 01:00:34,390
don’t want government

838
01:00:35,330 –> 01:00:39,010
of any kind telling them what to do. They want to be their own kings,

839
01:00:39,010 –> 01:00:42,734
and this is the place as far as they’re concerned, this is the

840
01:00:42,734 –> 01:00:46,494
place where they can be their own kings. And so just leave them alone. Dorel

841
01:00:46,494 –> 01:00:48,895
and I were talking about this when we were talking about the Federalist Papers and

842
01:00:48,895 –> 01:00:52,655
the Anti Federalist Papers a couple years ago on the show. And Dorel made

843
01:00:52,655 –> 01:00:55,640
this good point. He said, leave them alone and let them go up into the

844
01:00:55,640 –> 01:00:58,599
hills. Just leave them alone. Let those people go up in the hills. Because, like,

845
01:00:58,599 –> 01:01:01,579
if you go up in the hills and you try to, like if the FBI

846
01:01:01,880 –> 01:01:04,619
FBI does not go into the hills of, like,

847
01:01:05,720 –> 01:01:09,565
North Carolina Yeah. Appalachian. Right. Just leave those people alone.

848
01:01:09,565 –> 01:01:12,765
Just leave them alone. Why would you follow them there? That’s why why do you

849
01:01:12,765 –> 01:01:15,964
think the Cherokee went there in the Trail Of Tears? They left they just they

850
01:01:15,964 –> 01:01:19,805
weren’t following them there. The the there was a a certain number of people from

851
01:01:19,805 –> 01:01:23,650
the Cherokee Nation that went up in the North Carolina Hills. And,

852
01:01:23,650 –> 01:01:27,410
technically, the federal didn’t follow them. They just they took everybody else. They just went,

853
01:01:27,410 –> 01:01:31,170
just leave me alone. I don’t wanna be part of your

854
01:01:31,170 –> 01:01:34,150
game. I don’t wanna play. And so that streak,

855
01:01:35,645 –> 01:01:39,484
which is a counter tension to the streak of we need to

856
01:01:39,484 –> 01:01:43,165
go out and help other people in the world, that’s a massive tension in

857
01:01:43,165 –> 01:01:46,925
America. And it gets exposed when we have chaotic times. When we

858
01:01:46,925 –> 01:01:50,305
don’t know what’s going on when when we have failures of, failures of leadership.

859
01:01:52,140 –> 01:01:55,900
Okay. So how do leaders define themselves then in in The

860
01:01:55,900 –> 01:01:58,380
United States Of America? I always sort of define what it means to be an

861
01:01:58,380 –> 01:02:01,900
American full attention and all of that. How do

862
01:02:01,900 –> 01:02:05,625
leaders define themselves, their teams, and their cultures in

863
01:02:05,625 –> 01:02:06,924
The United States Of America?

864
01:02:09,545 –> 01:02:12,904
If I’m start because if I’m starting a company and I have more than one

865
01:02:12,904 –> 01:02:15,865
person or, actually, not even more than one. I got one person. Congratulations. I’m a

866
01:02:15,865 –> 01:02:19,600
leader. And that person more likely than not is an American. More likely than

867
01:02:19,600 –> 01:02:23,359
not. So, what how do they

868
01:02:23,359 –> 01:02:26,800
define themselves? And, I’m not sure I’m not sure I understand the

869
01:02:26,800 –> 01:02:30,480
question. Like Well Do they, like We haven’t we’ve

870
01:02:30,480 –> 01:02:32,900
never really talked about this on the show, but

871
01:02:35,295 –> 01:02:38,835
should let me frame it let me frame it this way. Should leaders

872
01:02:39,615 –> 01:02:41,315
allow all of that

873
01:02:43,455 –> 01:02:47,295
external stuff that doesn’t seem to matter to the mission to come

874
01:02:47,295 –> 01:02:50,990
in to how they’re running their their thing, running

875
01:02:50,990 –> 01:02:54,750
their team, or running their culture. Because, like, I’m just thinking of a conversation I

876
01:02:54,750 –> 01:02:58,030
just had with somebody who’s leading me, right, on a project that I’m working on.

877
01:02:58,030 –> 01:03:01,570
I literally just had it before I came here, on the before we hit record.

878
01:03:01,950 –> 01:03:04,815
And that person’s perspective

879
01:03:05,675 –> 01:03:08,415
is uniquely American even though

880
01:03:09,435 –> 01:03:12,975
their skin color is closer in pigmentation to mine.

881
01:03:14,395 –> 01:03:18,070
They’re still an American. Like, there’s things that come out of their mouth that

882
01:03:18,070 –> 01:03:21,910
that you wouldn’t you wouldn’t hear come out of there’s just assumptions,

883
01:03:21,910 –> 01:03:25,510
not even things come out of their mouth. There’s assumptions that are built into how

884
01:03:25,510 –> 01:03:29,190
they view the world, which is what Murray talks about, an assumption of freedom and

885
01:03:29,190 –> 01:03:32,995
assumption of individual agency. And I love it when he makes

886
01:03:32,995 –> 01:03:36,615
the point in, in that section in the only Americans that we just read.

887
01:03:37,955 –> 01:03:41,795
You know, Harriet Tubman wasn’t trying to get folks on the underground railroad

888
01:03:41,795 –> 01:03:45,635
back to Africa. Yeah. Wasn’t what it wasn’t what she was

889
01:03:45,635 –> 01:03:47,095
trying to do. You know?

890
01:03:49,490 –> 01:03:53,190
Yeah. You know, the funny thing that you just so there’s,

891
01:03:53,250 –> 01:03:56,950
I mean, there’s also I think

892
01:03:57,090 –> 01:04:00,369
I think it comes down there there’s a lot there’s a lot to unpack there,

893
01:04:00,369 –> 01:04:03,285
by the way. Oh, yeah. Because There’s a lot Like, you think about, like like,

894
01:04:03,285 –> 01:04:07,125
from a leadership perspective, like, what is the culture of your company?

895
01:04:07,125 –> 01:04:10,585
What is the because I remember growing you know, coming into the

896
01:04:10,965 –> 01:04:14,105
professional workforce. So, you know, when I was outside of my,

897
01:04:15,690 –> 01:04:18,890
you know, my my high school days and the the little side jobs that you

898
01:04:18,890 –> 01:04:22,430
do in high school. But when you start hitting the professional thing, your professional

899
01:04:22,650 –> 01:04:26,170
landscape, and they’re like there’s, like, these

900
01:04:26,170 –> 01:04:29,770
unwritten rules, right, that your that leadership kind of can talk,

901
01:04:29,770 –> 01:04:33,585
like, shouldn’t be talking politics in the office. You shouldn’t,

902
01:04:33,645 –> 01:04:36,765
like, you know, don’t talk about religion in the office because

903
01:04:37,404 –> 01:04:41,184
well, they just they because they’re not they’re not equipped

904
01:04:41,325 –> 01:04:44,845
to handle that kind of conflict resolution. Right? Like, if

905
01:04:45,005 –> 01:04:48,589
Mhmm. If if you have two employees that just one’s a Democrat, one’s a

906
01:04:48,589 –> 01:04:52,430
Republican, and they just hate each other beyond belief, and you can’t make

907
01:04:52,430 –> 01:04:55,789
them work with each other, like, how does that just translates that you’re a bad

908
01:04:55,789 –> 01:04:59,475
leader? Whereas if you just kinda don’t

909
01:04:59,475 –> 01:05:02,755
allow the conversations to happen in the first place and you don’t know what your

910
01:05:02,755 –> 01:05:06,275
political views are or their their political view they don’t know what your political views

911
01:05:06,275 –> 01:05:10,115
are, but you guys can coordinate to to get this project done just

912
01:05:10,115 –> 01:05:13,475
fine. Like, I I don’t know. There there’s a there’s a there’s a there’s a

913
01:05:13,475 –> 01:05:17,190
lot of weird oddities there, right, that you just gonna have to decide

914
01:05:18,450 –> 01:05:22,130
what kind of now there’s another there’s on the flip side to this. There

915
01:05:22,370 –> 01:05:26,210
you can say that I’m the kind of leader that stands for this, that

916
01:05:26,210 –> 01:05:29,945
wants this, that wants my team to react like this. And if you

917
01:05:29,945 –> 01:05:33,385
can’t get on board with that, then you shouldn’t be here. So it’s not it’s

918
01:05:33,385 –> 01:05:36,985
not about democrat and republican. It’s not about Catholic and and

919
01:05:36,985 –> 01:05:40,445
Judaism, or it’s not, like, it’s not a religious thing. It’s not it’s about

920
01:05:40,880 –> 01:05:44,560
it’s about principles and morals and and and, like, we’re going to do this.

921
01:05:44,560 –> 01:05:48,400
Now you can sit there and say, well, I’m a Democrat, you’re a

922
01:05:48,400 –> 01:05:52,080
Republican, or you’re I’m a Republican, you’re a Democrat, and we don’t see eye to

923
01:05:52,080 –> 01:05:55,700
eye on anything. But if you don’t know what your political stands are

924
01:05:56,495 –> 01:06:00,275
or stances are, but yet your company culture

925
01:06:00,415 –> 01:06:03,935
dictates this, this, this, and this, and you can stand behind that, does it

926
01:06:03,935 –> 01:06:07,615
really matter? Mhmm. You know, like, the the the Mhmm. Does your

927
01:06:07,615 –> 01:06:10,980
political view really matter? I I I love our current

928
01:06:10,980 –> 01:06:14,740
administration. I hate our current administration. I don’t care about our current administration

929
01:06:14,740 –> 01:06:18,340
because they’re gonna be gone in a couple years. Like Right. You know, does any

930
01:06:18,340 –> 01:06:21,060
of that really matter if you have a project in front of you that needs

931
01:06:21,060 –> 01:06:24,795
all of your attention and that you can actually get something done? Like,

932
01:06:24,795 –> 01:06:28,015
stop talking about it. Like, you know, we don’t talk about Bruno.

933
01:06:28,714 –> 01:06:32,395
Right. You know? Like, it’s now, again, is

934
01:06:32,395 –> 01:06:35,994
that fair? No. Is is it is it is it, like, is it fair

935
01:06:35,994 –> 01:06:39,540
to to to say that when you’re in your work place that you’re that certain

936
01:06:39,540 –> 01:06:43,080
topics are off limits, that you shouldn’t be able to express yourself?

937
01:06:43,780 –> 01:06:47,300
I mean, maybe not. I don’t know. Like, again, it goes back to, like, think

938
01:06:47,300 –> 01:06:50,180
about a couple years ago in the NFL when they were a lot of these

939
01:06:50,180 –> 01:06:54,015
players were kneeling down, and and there was a lot of debate on who gets

940
01:06:54,015 –> 01:06:57,855
to control that. And then we found out we found out by by

941
01:06:57,855 –> 01:07:01,234
the way. And for those of you who don’t know this

942
01:07:02,095 –> 01:07:05,260
Go ahead. It can be controlled. This is an employer

943
01:07:05,880 –> 01:07:09,560
employee conversation. Turns out Turns out all

944
01:07:09,560 –> 01:07:12,540
those billionaires work for somebody. Right. These

945
01:07:13,240 –> 01:07:16,780
people can be told don’t do that or you’re fired. Like,

946
01:07:17,000 –> 01:07:20,065
I was I was even baffled by this. I was like, wait. What? This is

947
01:07:20,305 –> 01:07:24,145
I think that’s a first amendment kind of violation. And

948
01:07:24,145 –> 01:07:27,985
I guess it’s not if it’s an yeah. Your employer dictates

949
01:07:27,985 –> 01:07:31,745
how you act when you’re being employed. So and I was like, holy

950
01:07:31,745 –> 01:07:35,550
crap. Amendment if you’re getting a paycheck. Right. Exactly.

951
01:07:36,570 –> 01:07:40,410
So, anyway, so so when you’re asking, like like, what, like, what

952
01:07:40,410 –> 01:07:43,630
are leaders supposed to how do they define themselves? I

953
01:07:44,250 –> 01:07:47,950
I I think I think that you’ve you’ve got you’ve got a handful of

954
01:07:48,265 –> 01:07:51,944
things that that you have to be very selective about. Right. You

955
01:07:51,944 –> 01:07:55,785
have you have principles. You have, like, guiding principles that

956
01:07:55,785 –> 01:07:59,465
that tell you or dictate to you that in order for me to

957
01:07:59,465 –> 01:08:03,000
make money, satisfy

958
01:08:03,000 –> 01:08:06,760
these this moral compass or these principles that I stand

959
01:08:06,760 –> 01:08:10,560
on. And if I can’t stand on these principles and make that money, then

960
01:08:10,560 –> 01:08:14,040
I don’t take that money. And I think that’s a very powerful thing for

961
01:08:14,040 –> 01:08:17,865
employees to see because then you can decide what kind

962
01:08:17,865 –> 01:08:20,825
of company you wanna work for, what kind of leader do you wanna work for,

963
01:08:20,825 –> 01:08:24,045
and it’s relatively clear and transparent that this company

964
01:08:24,665 –> 01:08:28,265
like, we talk about, in in another project that you and I

965
01:08:28,265 –> 01:08:32,000
are are are partnering in. We talk about being public benefit

966
01:08:32,059 –> 01:08:35,659
corporations, companies like Patagonia, where their, like, their

967
01:08:35,659 –> 01:08:39,260
mission is to save the environment in one jacket at a time or

968
01:08:39,260 –> 01:08:42,219
whatever, however they word it. I I I’m not a marketing person for them, so

969
01:08:42,219 –> 01:08:44,460
I have no idea how they word it. But and I don’t buy their a

970
01:08:44,460 –> 01:08:47,564
lot of their products just because they’re expensive, but not had not no other reason

971
01:08:47,564 –> 01:08:51,345
than that. But but if you wanna go work for Patagonia

972
01:08:51,645 –> 01:08:55,325
and you say, alright. I I know if I go to work for these companies,

973
01:08:55,325 –> 01:08:59,085
I will never have to bend on this principle, and that’s why I

974
01:08:59,085 –> 01:09:02,590
wanna go work for them, that’s great. If you can define yourself on

975
01:09:02,590 –> 01:09:06,029
principle, you can define yourself on moral compass. You what you

976
01:09:06,430 –> 01:09:10,029
in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, what you just can’t

977
01:09:10,029 –> 01:09:13,505
define yourself was on profit margin. Like, when you tell

978
01:09:13,505 –> 01:09:16,145
people I’m gonna be the kind of leader that just makes us all a lot

979
01:09:16,145 –> 01:09:19,984
of money, that seems to be the weakest link in

980
01:09:19,984 –> 01:09:22,005
that chain of how I can define myself.

981
01:09:23,665 –> 01:09:27,489
Yeah. Well, it it it only really works, and then we’ll go

982
01:09:27,489 –> 01:09:31,170
back to the book. I just wanna I wanna say something about that because I

983
01:09:31,170 –> 01:09:34,529
think you’ve hit on something there as well. Profit margin only really

984
01:09:34,529 –> 01:09:38,130
works when everyone is getting

985
01:09:38,130 –> 01:09:41,444
rich together. Yeah. And almost

986
01:09:41,825 –> 01:09:45,345
at almost no time is 100% everyone getting rich together.

987
01:09:45,345 –> 01:09:49,024
Like, it’s just, you know, that’s just sort of react not sort of that’s

988
01:09:49,024 –> 01:09:52,560
just reality. So there’s gonna be stratifications. There’s

989
01:09:52,720 –> 01:09:55,520
gonna be people in the middle, there’s gonna be people at the bottom, there’s gonna

990
01:09:55,520 –> 01:09:57,700
be people at the top. And

991
01:10:03,680 –> 01:10:06,740
we are we are so historically and culturally,

992
01:10:08,095 –> 01:10:11,135
and I can see it when I read books from authors like Albert Murray who

993
01:10:11,135 –> 01:10:14,095
were writing in the sixties and seventies or Eldridge Cleaver who we just covered on

994
01:10:14,095 –> 01:10:17,615
the podcast for the Soul on Ice. Right? Or

995
01:10:17,615 –> 01:10:20,915
Malcolm x. Right? We are hidebound.

996
01:10:21,870 –> 01:10:25,010
Regardless of political party. We are hidebound to a

997
01:10:25,870 –> 01:10:29,550
phantasmagoric vision of the middle of the twentieth century that

998
01:10:29,550 –> 01:10:31,090
probably wasn’t the truth.

999
01:10:33,310 –> 01:10:37,155
And that vision of the middle twentieth century was a

1000
01:10:37,155 –> 01:10:40,835
vision of, if you’re a Democrat, you know, top tax

1001
01:10:40,835 –> 01:10:44,614
rate was, you know, 65%. You know,

1002
01:10:44,835 –> 01:10:48,610
Franklin Delmar Roosevelt, there’ll be no wartime millionaires, and then we’re gonna, you

1003
01:10:48,610 –> 01:10:52,370
know, we’re gonna reduce that to, we’re gonna reduce that

1004
01:10:52,370 –> 01:10:56,210
to, to, to 40%, and it’s gonna stay that way until Kennedy. And

1005
01:10:56,210 –> 01:10:58,930
he’s only gonna bring it on, like, 30%, and then Reagan only really brought it

1006
01:10:58,930 –> 01:11:02,565
down to, like, 20% or something like that. And we’re

1007
01:11:02,565 –> 01:11:06,325
gonna take your we’re gonna take your money. Right? But corporations are gonna respond to

1008
01:11:06,325 –> 01:11:10,085
that by getting in bed with unions, who

1009
01:11:10,085 –> 01:11:13,685
are going to engage in policies by pitting one

1010
01:11:13,685 –> 01:11:17,500
employer against another across the street, and it’s all gonna work out. And that’s if

1011
01:11:17,500 –> 01:11:21,260
you’re on if you’re on the left. If you’re on the right, you know,

1012
01:11:21,260 –> 01:11:24,860
a man can make enough money to be the sole provider, the sole

1013
01:11:24,860 –> 01:11:28,620
breadwinner in his home, and the woman can

1014
01:11:28,620 –> 01:11:32,075
stay home and raise the kids, and there’s social

1015
01:11:32,295 –> 01:11:35,655
norming that comes from the neighborhood. It comes from

1016
01:11:35,655 –> 01:11:39,495
people, knowing who their neighbors are. It comes

1017
01:11:39,495 –> 01:11:42,955
from people understanding, that religion,

1018
01:11:43,175 –> 01:11:46,935
whether you believe in it or not, is an irrelevancy, get you behind church

1019
01:11:46,935 –> 01:11:50,510
heathen. Like like, you know, this and this is from the right, like, the

1020
01:11:50,510 –> 01:11:54,130
cultural things. Right? And so we’re both both the right and the left in America

1021
01:11:54,430 –> 01:11:57,330
are hidebound to this vision of the mid twentieth century.

1022
01:11:58,110 –> 01:12:01,630
And because people change and times change even

1023
01:12:01,630 –> 01:12:05,385
though they don’t always change that much. But

1024
01:12:05,385 –> 01:12:09,085
people change, people change, times change, and so we move forward. Right?

1025
01:12:11,385 –> 01:12:14,765
And, again, a failure of leadership. Right? We don’t have leaders.

1026
01:12:15,360 –> 01:12:18,179
And I used to think it would be the elite leaders as I already mentioned,

1027
01:12:18,320 –> 01:12:21,760
but now I think it has to be the guy or the

1028
01:12:21,760 –> 01:12:25,280
woman who’s in that business, who has to be the example of

1029
01:12:25,280 –> 01:12:29,035
leadership. I I I I got on this a couple years ago. I don’t

1030
01:12:29,035 –> 01:12:32,875
think we can rely on the congressman or

1031
01:12:32,875 –> 01:12:35,515
even the mayor of your town, and I won’t even go as high as the

1032
01:12:35,515 –> 01:12:39,055
president. Forget that guy, or even your your national congressman.

1033
01:12:39,675 –> 01:12:43,360
Your local congressman, your local mayor, can’t be the

1034
01:12:43,360 –> 01:12:46,560
leader for you. You’ve gotta be the leader. You’ve gotta be the leader in your

1035
01:12:46,560 –> 01:12:49,920
family. You’ve gotta be the leader in your community. I don’t care whether you’re a

1036
01:12:49,920 –> 01:12:53,360
man or a woman. It doesn’t matter to me. Be the leader. Right? Be the

1037
01:12:53,360 –> 01:12:57,155
person who who who who stands up and does that because that’s the only way

1038
01:12:57,155 –> 01:13:00,935
we’re going to evolve into something else from that hidebound,

1039
01:13:02,355 –> 01:13:06,035
phantasmagoric vision that we all seem to be trapped by. By the way,

1040
01:13:06,035 –> 01:13:09,335
here’s a side note on that. I have I’ve been thinking lately

1041
01:13:10,680 –> 01:13:14,120
that five hundred years from now when they write the history of this era and

1042
01:13:14,120 –> 01:13:17,640
we’re all dead and gone and the podcast is scrubbed from the Internet and it

1043
01:13:17,640 –> 01:13:21,400
won’t matter. It’s gonna be archived, Tae

1044
01:13:21,400 –> 01:13:25,155
san. We’re gonna we’re gonna live we’re gonna live forever. It could be archived.

1045
01:13:25,715 –> 01:13:29,474
Oh god. Please. Please no. Please just scrub me from

1046
01:13:29,474 –> 01:13:33,315
the Internet. It’s fine. But, five hundred years from now when they write the

1047
01:13:33,315 –> 01:13:37,094
history of this era and everybody who lived here is gone,

1048
01:13:38,400 –> 01:13:41,840
I wonder if they will look at the mid twentieth century as being an

1049
01:13:41,840 –> 01:13:45,520
outlier, not the norm, the outlier. You know?

1050
01:13:45,520 –> 01:13:48,580
Because there were certain unique historical

1051
01:13:49,120 –> 01:13:52,725
things that occurred, particularly between 1939 and

1052
01:13:52,725 –> 01:13:56,485
1945, that were linchpinned that everything else

1053
01:13:56,485 –> 01:14:00,245
circled around. And it took people a while to figure out, to Google a

1054
01:14:00,245 –> 01:14:03,605
half century, almost a full century to figure out how to get back to a

1055
01:14:03,605 –> 01:14:07,010
norm. I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit. And that

1056
01:14:07,010 –> 01:14:10,530
has that has implications for leaders. That has implications for leaders in

1057
01:14:10,530 –> 01:14:13,670
communities. That has implications for leaders in towns and cities,

1058
01:14:14,210 –> 01:14:17,270
and even implications for leadership in your family. You know?

1059
01:14:17,969 –> 01:14:21,485
We can’t be hidebound by the past. I mean, think about it this way.

1060
01:14:21,945 –> 01:14:25,145
We have an entire generation of people that’s being born right now, of which my

1061
01:14:25,145 –> 01:14:28,844
youngest son who’s eight is part of that generation, who have

1062
01:14:28,905 –> 01:14:32,364
zero historical memory of the twentieth century at

1063
01:14:32,905 –> 01:14:36,480
all. It will always be a history book thing for

1064
01:14:36,480 –> 01:14:40,160
them. It won’t be something that they were born into. It will be something that

1065
01:14:40,160 –> 01:14:43,140
is way past to them.

1066
01:14:44,240 –> 01:14:46,340
And for many of us, that’s weird to think about.

1067
01:14:50,135 –> 01:14:53,575
Yeah. But that’s happened that’s happened already a few times. Right? Like, if you think

1068
01:14:53,575 –> 01:14:57,095
about it, like, all all the westward expansion, manifest

1069
01:14:57,095 –> 01:15:00,935
destiny, all that stuff up until 1890 Right. You were born in the

1070
01:15:00,935 –> 01:15:04,215
early, you know, like like, Albert Murray here was born in

1071
01:15:04,215 –> 01:15:07,730
’25 1316. Right? Nineteen sixteen.

1072
01:15:08,670 –> 01:15:12,050
To him, that entire thing was a history book. Right.

1073
01:15:12,270 –> 01:15:15,550
Right. Oh, I’m not saying it hasn’t happened before. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying, like

1074
01:15:15,710 –> 01:15:19,550
so we talk about this a lot. And and and and my favorite phrase has

1075
01:15:19,550 –> 01:15:23,145
been on this podcast about a hundred times so far, which is like, the more

1076
01:15:23,145 –> 01:15:26,824
things change, the more things stay the same. Like, we’ve got we

1077
01:15:26,824 –> 01:15:30,125
keep doing the same thing over and over.

1078
01:15:30,985 –> 01:15:34,425
It’s like the human phrase is the definition of insanity. It’s it’s the

1079
01:15:34,425 –> 01:15:37,885
human condition. A a good friend of our a mutual friend of ours,

1080
01:15:38,480 –> 01:15:42,179
would say that in his, in his courses. It’s his ethics courses.

1081
01:15:42,400 –> 01:15:46,160
It’s the human condition. And he’s exactly right. He’s not wrong. It’s the human

1082
01:15:46,160 –> 01:15:49,920
condition. You know? Alright. Back to

1083
01:15:49,920 –> 01:15:53,644
the book. Here’s another piece of the human condition, transferring wisdom. Talk about going

1084
01:15:53,644 –> 01:15:56,465
from generation to generation. How do you do that?

1085
01:15:57,965 –> 01:16:01,405
Alright. Back to the book. Back to the Omni Americans by

1086
01:16:01,405 –> 01:16:04,929
Albert Marie And I

1087
01:16:04,929 –> 01:16:08,770
quote, as an art form, the blues idiom, by its very nature,

1088
01:16:08,770 –> 01:16:12,610
goes beyond the objective of making human existence bearable physically or

1089
01:16:12,610 –> 01:16:16,070
psychologically. The most elementary and hence the least dispensable

1090
01:16:16,210 –> 01:16:19,989
objective of all serious artistic expression, whether Aboriginal or sophisticated,

1091
01:16:20,704 –> 01:16:23,684
is to make human existence meaningful.

1092
01:16:25,425 –> 01:16:29,264
Mayad’s primary concern with life is to make it as significant as possible, and the

1093
01:16:29,264 –> 01:16:32,784
blues are part of this effort. The definitive

1094
01:16:32,784 –> 01:16:35,619
statement of the epistemic the epistemicological

1095
01:16:37,040 –> 01:16:40,719
assumptions that underlie the blues idiom may well be the colloquial title

1096
01:16:40,719 –> 01:16:44,320
and opening declaration of one of Duke Ellington’s best known dance tunes from the mid

1097
01:16:44,320 –> 01:16:47,375
thirties. By the way, I love that sentence. He managed to put in epistemological,

1098
01:16:48,315 –> 01:16:51,614
idiom, and colloquial all in the same sentence. Love this guy.

1099
01:16:52,394 –> 01:16:56,094
Of Duke Ellington’s best known dance tune from the mid thirties,

1100
01:16:56,155 –> 01:16:59,454
quote, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

1101
01:17:01,960 –> 01:17:05,480
In any case, when the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is

1102
01:17:05,480 –> 01:17:08,540
fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines

1103
01:17:09,480 –> 01:17:12,940
the mission of the poet, the priest, and the medicine man. He’s making an affirmative

1104
01:17:13,000 –> 01:17:16,445
and, hence, exemplary and heroic response to that which Andre

1105
01:17:16,445 –> 01:17:20,205
Malraux describes as la conditien humane, the

1106
01:17:20,205 –> 01:17:24,045
human condition. Extemporizing in response to

1107
01:17:24,045 –> 01:17:27,185
the exigencies of the situation in which he finds himself, he is confronted,

1108
01:17:27,480 –> 01:17:31,260
acknowledging, and he is confronting, acknowledging, and contending with the infernal

1109
01:17:31,320 –> 01:17:34,780
absurdities and ever impending frustrations inherent in the nature of all existence

1110
01:17:35,080 –> 01:17:38,840
by playing with the possibilities that are also there. This does

1111
01:17:38,840 –> 01:17:42,625
not mean the player becomes the man. The player become man,

1112
01:17:44,785 –> 01:17:48,625
the stylizer, and by the same token, the humanizer of chaos. And thus

1113
01:17:48,625 –> 01:17:52,145
does play become ritual, ceremony, and art, and thus does

1114
01:17:52,145 –> 01:17:55,825
also the dance beat improvisation of experience in the blues idiom becomes

1115
01:17:55,825 –> 01:17:59,400
survival technique, aesthetic acquire equipment for living, and a central

1116
01:17:59,400 –> 01:18:03,240
element in the dynamics of US Negro lifestyle. When the

1117
01:18:03,240 –> 01:18:06,760
typical Negro dance orchestra plays the blues, it is also playing with the blues. When

1118
01:18:06,760 –> 01:18:10,594
it swings, jumps, hops, stomps, bounces, drags, shuffles, rocks, and so on, its

1119
01:18:10,594 –> 01:18:14,114
manner not only represents a swing of the blues attitude toward the bad news that

1120
01:18:14,114 –> 01:18:17,955
comes with facts of life, it also exemplifies and generates a riffing the blues

1121
01:18:17,955 –> 01:18:21,315
disposition toward the rough times that beset all human

1122
01:18:21,315 –> 01:18:25,030
existence. The blues idiom dancer, like

1123
01:18:25,030 –> 01:18:28,710
the solo instrumentalist, turns disjunctures into continuities. He is

1124
01:18:28,710 –> 01:18:32,470
not disconcerted by intrusions, lapses, shifts in

1125
01:18:32,470 –> 01:18:36,165
rhythm, intensification of tempo, for instance, but is inspired

1126
01:18:36,165 –> 01:18:39,764
by them to higher and richer levels of improvisation. As a matter of fact, and

1127
01:18:39,764 –> 01:18:43,284
as the colloquial sense of the word suggests, the break in the blues idiom

1128
01:18:43,284 –> 01:18:46,804
provides the dancer his greatest opportunity, which at the same

1129
01:18:46,804 –> 01:18:50,420
time is also his most heroic challenge and his moment of

1130
01:18:50,420 –> 01:18:54,260
greatest jeopardy. By the way, that’s that’s an excellent description of what happens

1131
01:18:54,260 –> 01:18:57,080
in a blues in a blues song or even in a jazz song.

1132
01:18:58,580 –> 01:19:02,415
But then impromptu heroism, such as is required of the most agile

1133
01:19:02,495 –> 01:19:06,015
storybook protagonists, is precisely what the blues tradition has evolved to

1134
01:19:06,015 –> 01:19:08,915
condition Negroes to regard as normal procedure.

1135
01:19:09,775 –> 01:19:13,535
Nor is there any other attitude towards experience more appropriate to the

1136
01:19:13,535 –> 01:19:16,910
ever shifting circumstances of all Americans or more consistent with the

1137
01:19:16,910 –> 01:19:20,050
predicament of man in the contemporary world at large.

1138
01:19:20,590 –> 01:19:24,350
Indeed, the blues idiom represents a major American innovation of

1139
01:19:24,350 –> 01:19:28,130
universal significance and potential because it fulfills, among other things,

1140
01:19:28,510 –> 01:19:31,974
precisely that fundamental function that Constance Roark

1141
01:19:32,034 –> 01:19:35,635
ascribes to the comedy, the irreverent wisdom, the sudden changes in

1142
01:19:35,635 –> 01:19:39,395
adroit adaptation she found in the folk genre of the Yankee back woodsman

1143
01:19:39,395 –> 01:19:42,940
Negro of the era of Andrew Jackson. It provides,

1144
01:19:43,160 –> 01:19:46,460
quote, emblems for pioneer people who require

1145
01:19:46,600 –> 01:19:50,380
resilience as a prime trait.

1146
01:19:55,094 –> 01:19:58,715
I like that description of what’s happening in the blues,

1147
01:20:00,135 –> 01:20:03,335
because you can see it on the floor. You can see it when you go

1148
01:20:03,335 –> 01:20:05,914
to a blues club or when you go to a jazz club.

1149
01:20:07,094 –> 01:20:10,460
You can also see it in the struggle

1150
01:20:10,840 –> 01:20:14,519
that people have, and this is why I read that section, the struggle that people

1151
01:20:14,519 –> 01:20:15,340
have in

1152
01:20:18,199 –> 01:20:21,579
distributing through improvisation and idiom,

1153
01:20:22,585 –> 01:20:25,965
not necessarily dance, but this idea that Murray has of style.

1154
01:20:27,385 –> 01:20:30,985
You’re transmitting wisdom. What have you learned from this

1155
01:20:30,985 –> 01:20:33,724
improvisation? What can other people pick up from it?

1156
01:20:34,530 –> 01:20:37,969
And, this is not something new. I mean,

1157
01:20:37,969 –> 01:20:41,809
everybody, has struggled with wisdom transfer. When I was writing

1158
01:20:41,809 –> 01:20:45,650
this script, I thought of, some of the

1159
01:20:45,650 –> 01:20:49,405
sections in bury my heart at wounded knee. Right? When the old men were talking

1160
01:20:49,405 –> 01:20:51,645
to the young men and wanted to go off and fight the white people, wanted

1161
01:20:51,645 –> 01:20:55,485
to kill them all, and let god sort them out. And, well,

1162
01:20:55,485 –> 01:20:59,185
you know, that’s the heisan, translation. And

1163
01:21:00,170 –> 01:21:02,989
and the old the old man the old men were like,

1164
01:21:04,889 –> 01:21:06,190
it might not be a good idea.

1165
01:21:08,570 –> 01:21:12,250
Or you see it in feminist writings when we cover books by Zora

1166
01:21:12,250 –> 01:21:16,030
Neale Hurston or Virginia Woolf, talking about

1167
01:21:17,185 –> 01:21:20,945
and and engaging in opposition to older female writers like,

1168
01:21:21,185 –> 01:21:24,705
Jane Austen or earlier female writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

1169
01:21:24,705 –> 01:21:28,305
Right? You also and African

1170
01:21:28,305 –> 01:21:31,960
American writers, like Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver,

1171
01:21:32,100 –> 01:21:35,940
who were in rank opposition to the wisdom of a

1172
01:21:35,940 –> 01:21:39,700
previous generation. There’s a excellent essay in Eldridge Cleaver’s

1173
01:21:39,700 –> 01:21:43,140
book, Soul on Ice, where he describes being on the prison

1174
01:21:43,140 –> 01:21:46,875
yard, and an older black man basically

1175
01:21:46,875 –> 01:21:50,574
shuts the young bucks up with some wisdom that they don’t want to hear.

1176
01:21:51,275 –> 01:21:54,014
And they don’t have anything to say.

1177
01:21:55,835 –> 01:21:58,175
It is probably his best essay in that book.

1178
01:22:01,570 –> 01:22:05,330
Wisdom. Wisdom

1179
01:22:05,330 –> 01:22:08,930
can come through culture transfer. Right? And in The United States, we do have

1180
01:22:08,930 –> 01:22:12,450
unique pieces of culture. We have blues. We have jazz. We have

1181
01:22:12,450 –> 01:22:16,105
baseball. I threw movies in there and cinema even though we

1182
01:22:16,105 –> 01:22:19,785
ripped that off from the French and then made it better. We’re

1183
01:22:19,785 –> 01:22:23,545
we’re almost the BASF of countries. Oh, we did. Oh,

1184
01:22:23,545 –> 01:22:26,445
we did. That’s I mean, come on. Let’s be real here.

1185
01:22:27,840 –> 01:22:31,520
I I wasn’t arguing. Pardon pardon my French, you

1186
01:22:31,520 –> 01:22:34,580
know, viewers and listeners when was the last great French film?

1187
01:22:36,239 –> 01:22:40,035
Don’t worry. I’ll I I await with bated breath your emails and

1188
01:22:40,035 –> 01:22:43,715
your tweets. But, you know, when we

1189
01:22:43,715 –> 01:22:46,935
think about the modes of cultural transfer,

1190
01:22:48,195 –> 01:22:51,955
and wisdom transfer, those idiomatic identifiers of class,

1191
01:22:51,955 –> 01:22:55,560
culture, and race also come through, and they also impact that

1192
01:22:55,560 –> 01:22:59,320
wisdom transfer. But eventually, they fall away, right, revealing

1193
01:22:59,320 –> 01:23:02,620
the core elements that need to be reserved over the course of time.

1194
01:23:03,320 –> 01:23:05,980
We have a real struggle in our own era because of technology.

1195
01:23:08,765 –> 01:23:12,145
The writer, that we just covered, on the podcast,

1196
01:23:12,525 –> 01:23:15,905
Walter Benjamin, talked about this in the nineteen thirties, and the storyteller

1197
01:23:16,365 –> 01:23:20,205
talked about how the novel basically destroyed the oral tradition. The

1198
01:23:20,205 –> 01:23:24,050
technology of the novel and the technology of the printing press destroyed the oral

1199
01:23:24,050 –> 01:23:27,190
tradition. And I I am of the opinion

1200
01:23:28,449 –> 01:23:31,969
that cell phones and social media and the Internet in

1201
01:23:31,969 –> 01:23:35,429
general, because cell phones and social media sort of built on top of that.

1202
01:23:35,695 –> 01:23:39,375
But the Internet in general has destroyed wisdom transfer because everything is

1203
01:23:39,375 –> 01:23:42,355
right now. Everything is in the present. Right?

1204
01:23:43,215 –> 01:23:47,055
To your point earlier, you know, about me being scrubbed from the Internet. Yeah.

1205
01:23:47,055 –> 01:23:50,820
I might be archived in the Internet Wayback Machine, but eventually, no one’s

1206
01:23:50,820 –> 01:23:54,260
gonna care. Right? Because I’m in the Internet Wayback

1207
01:23:54,260 –> 01:23:57,940
Machine. I think this is a real challenge for

1208
01:23:57,940 –> 01:24:01,140
leaders, and I think it is one of the core things that we are struggling

1209
01:24:01,140 –> 01:24:04,615
with. And so, Tom, how can we transfer wisdom,

1210
01:24:04,995 –> 01:24:08,435
particularly to the young bucks that don’t wanna hear it from generation to

1211
01:24:08,435 –> 01:24:08,935
generation?

1212
01:24:12,355 –> 01:24:16,170
This this, again, is is probably one of the tougher questions here

1213
01:24:16,170 –> 01:24:19,469
because, again, like, to your point so

1214
01:24:22,170 –> 01:24:26,010
sometimes how well, let me let me rephrase

1215
01:24:26,010 –> 01:24:29,530
your question because I think there’s a there’s a component that’s missing from the

1216
01:24:29,530 –> 01:24:33,315
question. So how do leaders transfer wisdom across generations

1217
01:24:33,375 –> 01:24:36,895
without compromise? That, like Okay. There there’s because

1218
01:24:36,895 –> 01:24:40,335
because the transfer of wisdom with

1219
01:24:40,335 –> 01:24:43,955
compromise is a lot easier, and it’s a lot easier to stomach.

1220
01:24:44,015 –> 01:24:47,640
For example, you know, I’ll just take our own culture, as

1221
01:24:47,640 –> 01:24:50,840
a a very easy or quick example. Right? So

1222
01:24:51,080 –> 01:24:54,920
Mhmm. You’re you’re teaching a a younger kid how to

1223
01:24:55,080 –> 01:24:58,520
a a particular dance. Let’s say, like, a men’s northern fancy dance or something like

1224
01:24:58,520 –> 01:25:01,285
that. Not that any of your listener our listeners are gonna have a clue what

1225
01:25:01,285 –> 01:25:05,045
I’m talking about, but let stay with me for a second. So when

1226
01:25:05,045 –> 01:25:08,885
you’re trying to transfer that wisdom into why the regalia is designed the

1227
01:25:08,885 –> 01:25:12,420
way it is, what it’s supposed to look like, what it means to

1228
01:25:13,219 –> 01:25:17,000
to wear that regalia, and then enter the circle and dance in a particular

1229
01:25:17,060 –> 01:25:20,580
style that’s very traditional and generational. It’s been

1230
01:25:20,580 –> 01:25:24,100
crossing generations for for a long time. And that younger kid

1231
01:25:24,100 –> 01:25:27,815
says, but I don’t my moccasins

1232
01:25:27,955 –> 01:25:31,655
hurt my feet. Can I wear my sneakers? And you compromise

1233
01:25:31,955 –> 01:25:35,395
and say, yeah. It’s just a pair of sneakers. Go ahead. Go wear your

1234
01:25:35,395 –> 01:25:37,815
sneakers. Right?

1235
01:25:39,330 –> 01:25:43,010
Where the like, so as a as a leader, you have to

1236
01:25:43,010 –> 01:25:46,690
decide, is the wisdom of that

1237
01:25:46,690 –> 01:25:50,050
overall dance, regalia style, dance

1238
01:25:50,050 –> 01:25:53,650
style, education behind why it exists, where it exists, and

1239
01:25:53,650 –> 01:25:57,284
for what, is it important enough to compromise this

1240
01:25:57,284 –> 01:26:00,804
one thing that he doesn’t wanna wear moccasins and he wants to wear

1241
01:26:00,804 –> 01:26:04,565
sneakers? And if the answer is yes, then that transfer of

1242
01:26:04,565 –> 01:26:08,250
wisdom from generation to generation is successful. If

1243
01:26:08,250 –> 01:26:12,090
it is not and you try to reinforce why they should be wearing the

1244
01:26:12,090 –> 01:26:15,690
moccasins and it’s lost on them and they don’t wanna dance

1245
01:26:15,690 –> 01:26:19,530
anymore because moccasins hurt their feet, and

1246
01:26:19,530 –> 01:26:21,869
they they’re not gonna dance unless they can wear their sneakers.

1247
01:26:23,784 –> 01:26:27,164
Right? Like so, again, it’s they’re I think I think

1248
01:26:27,864 –> 01:26:31,244
I think generational wisdom transference

1249
01:26:31,864 –> 01:26:35,545
has compromise all over the place, and we just don’t recognize it

1250
01:26:35,545 –> 01:26:39,300
because it’s subtle. Or at least I don’t

1251
01:26:39,300 –> 01:26:42,840
think we we try we we try to view it as

1252
01:26:43,460 –> 01:26:46,980
transfer of knowledge or transfer of wisdom, but there’s always these

1253
01:26:46,980 –> 01:26:50,520
compromises that we are so subtly willing to to give into.

1254
01:26:50,900 –> 01:26:54,554
And I think that for us to stand firm and

1255
01:26:54,554 –> 01:26:58,394
say we’re not giving into these compromises anymore, I think

1256
01:26:58,394 –> 01:27:01,755
that would be devastating. I think the I think that the younger generation would just

1257
01:27:01,755 –> 01:27:05,594
stop listening to us altogether. There’s also

1258
01:27:05,594 –> 01:27:09,180
there’s also there’s a different style of transfer of wisdom

1259
01:27:09,800 –> 01:27:13,400
where you’re not physically preaching and teaching or you’re

1260
01:27:13,400 –> 01:27:17,240
physically not talking, but I’ll give you another another example

1261
01:27:17,240 –> 01:27:20,840
of this. I have five children. My youngest daughter was

1262
01:27:20,840 –> 01:27:24,235
almost never punished. She was almost never in trouble.

1263
01:27:24,615 –> 01:27:28,455
And from an outsider looking in, they go, it’s because she was the

1264
01:27:28,455 –> 01:27:32,135
baby and she was spoiled. No. It’s because she

1265
01:27:32,135 –> 01:27:35,495
watched what her older brothers and sisters got in trouble

1266
01:27:35,495 –> 01:27:38,989
for and didn’t do those things. Didn’t do those things. Yeah.

1267
01:27:39,290 –> 01:27:42,810
She was she was a she was a student. She was a

1268
01:27:42,810 –> 01:27:46,570
student of her environment. She didn’t need anybody to transfer that

1269
01:27:46,570 –> 01:27:50,409
wisdom to her. She did it on her own by watching and observing what

1270
01:27:50,409 –> 01:27:54,195
was happening in our family unit and saying, I’m not

1271
01:27:54,195 –> 01:27:57,955
doing that. So can that happen in the workforce? Absolutely. I did the same

1272
01:27:57,955 –> 01:28:01,655
thing when I was really early in my career, I worked in the restaurant industry,

1273
01:28:01,795 –> 01:28:05,430
and I was trying to move up the the managerial chain, so to

1274
01:28:05,430 –> 01:28:08,950
speak, and become a general manager. And every manager that I

1275
01:28:08,950 –> 01:28:12,710
worked under, if they got in trouble for something, mental note,

1276
01:28:12,710 –> 01:28:16,150
I’m not doing that. Whatever that guy just got in trouble for, got yelled at

1277
01:28:16,150 –> 01:28:19,595
about, or got rid like, I’m not doing that. I’m gonna make a note. I’m

1278
01:28:19,595 –> 01:28:22,475
gonna learn from that on my own. Nobody has to teach me that. Nobody has

1279
01:28:22,475 –> 01:28:25,995
to tell me that. I’m gonna observe it and learn it on my own. I

1280
01:28:25,995 –> 01:28:29,515
think part of what we’re seeing and what you’re talking about, especially from the social

1281
01:28:29,515 –> 01:28:32,735
media components, people aren’t doing that anymore.

1282
01:28:33,200 –> 01:28:36,640
People aren’t observing. Like, people are seeing people get famous on TikTok or

1283
01:28:36,640 –> 01:28:40,480
whatever, not realizing that they’re sacrificing their entire family unit.

1284
01:28:40,480 –> 01:28:44,020
They’re not spending real quality time with their family. They’re they’re suffering

1285
01:28:44,080 –> 01:28:47,905
from loneliness and depression and all this other stuff. But they’re

1286
01:28:47,985 –> 01:28:51,665
what they’re learning is look at the number of likes that they get or number

1287
01:28:51,665 –> 01:28:54,885
of followers they get or number of views they get on their videos. It’s

1288
01:28:55,344 –> 01:28:59,105
it’s the the the the transfer of wisdom

1289
01:28:59,105 –> 01:29:02,650
is still there. Well, let me rephrase this. The transfer of

1290
01:29:02,650 –> 01:29:06,410
information is still there, but is it truly wisdom? Is Yeah. Again, another

1291
01:29:06,410 –> 01:29:10,170
part of the question. Because that’s another thing that you know? And that’s the the

1292
01:29:10,170 –> 01:29:14,010
younger generation, when they’re looking at us and we’re

1293
01:29:14,010 –> 01:29:17,735
trying to explain something or tell, I can’t even tell you, Haysan,

1294
01:29:17,735 –> 01:29:21,515
how many times my youngest son has come to me and said the words,

1295
01:29:22,215 –> 01:29:25,975
dad, you were right. Because I don’t

1296
01:29:25,975 –> 01:29:29,575
force feed it down his throat anymore. I tell him my thoughts. I give him

1297
01:29:29,575 –> 01:29:32,320
my opinions. I tell him what I would do, and then he goes and does

1298
01:29:32,320 –> 01:29:35,360
his own thing. He makes his own mistakes. And then when he comes back and

1299
01:29:35,360 –> 01:29:38,960
says, dad, you were right. I go, okay. Now do you want help

1300
01:29:38,960 –> 01:29:42,685
fixing this? And then the answer is yes, and it’s genuine. He actually wants

1301
01:29:42,685 –> 01:29:46,365
it. If we don’t allow young people to make some of their own mistakes, then

1302
01:29:46,365 –> 01:29:48,465
this transfer of wisdom is not gonna happen either.

1303
01:29:49,725 –> 01:29:52,685
So okay. So you said a bunch of different things there, and I think I

1304
01:29:52,685 –> 01:29:55,165
said a lot of things. Yeah. I said a lot of things there, and they’re

1305
01:29:55,165 –> 01:29:57,570
all valuable. No. I I think

1306
01:29:58,929 –> 01:30:02,070
so. The thing that I land on is the

1307
01:30:05,489 –> 01:30:08,849
the challenge of holding the line. And it’s not really the challenge of holding the

1308
01:30:08,849 –> 01:30:11,349
line. It’s the challenge of knowing where the line is.

1309
01:30:12,795 –> 01:30:13,295
So

1310
01:30:17,435 –> 01:30:18,415
if I

1311
01:30:21,435 –> 01:30:24,255
I’ll pick something obvious. Right? So,

1312
01:30:25,630 –> 01:30:29,470
yeah, I’ll pick an outrageous obvious one. Murderers, murderers, murderers all the

1313
01:30:29,470 –> 01:30:31,890
time. Right? Like, you you okay. Like okay.

1314
01:30:33,950 –> 01:30:36,290
And yet we

1315
01:30:37,685 –> 01:30:41,145
can have conversations, and we do with this society,

1316
01:30:42,005 –> 01:30:45,845
both about abortion and the death penalty, although

1317
01:30:45,845 –> 01:30:49,685
less about the death penalty as of late, of

1318
01:30:49,685 –> 01:30:52,530
the last ten or fifteen years that has sort of faded out of the public

1319
01:30:52,530 –> 01:30:55,889
conversation. But I I think I think that’ll start coming back in in a few

1320
01:30:55,889 –> 01:30:59,030
years here as well as conversations about euthanasia.

1321
01:30:59,570 –> 01:31:03,250
And, you know, remember Jack Kevorkan? Fourteen. Yeah. That’s gonna come

1322
01:31:03,250 –> 01:31:06,690
back. You know? I think. Physician assisted suicide. There you go.

1323
01:31:06,690 –> 01:31:10,515
Yeah. Well, even that even that even that that that acronym

1324
01:31:10,515 –> 01:31:14,115
right there, right? Physician assisted suicide, right? And as a

1325
01:31:14,115 –> 01:31:17,795
person who’s fascinated by language, I am

1326
01:31:17,795 –> 01:31:21,580
convinced more and more every day that

1327
01:31:21,580 –> 01:31:25,260
the battle of reality is a battle of who owns the dictionary, who gets to

1328
01:31:25,260 –> 01:31:28,780
define the words that are in it, and who gets to define what words

1329
01:31:28,780 –> 01:31:32,380
even go in it in the first place. So I guess the

1330
01:31:32,380 –> 01:31:35,824
question out of all of that that comes to me is because I loved your

1331
01:31:35,824 –> 01:31:37,685
example about sneakers versus moccasins.

1332
01:31:40,465 –> 01:31:44,065
What is the line we’re preserving there? Can we

1333
01:31:44,065 –> 01:31:47,824
articulate that? Can we articulate why the

1334
01:31:47,824 –> 01:31:51,620
moccasins are better than the sneakers? And can we do

1335
01:31:51,620 –> 01:31:54,280
it in a way that honors

1336
01:31:55,460 –> 01:31:58,760
the person who wants to wear sneakers,

1337
01:31:59,860 –> 01:32:03,635
but that also honors or or or creates

1338
01:32:03,635 –> 01:32:07,235
a great chain of being going back to the people who

1339
01:32:07,235 –> 01:32:10,375
wore moccasins. And by the way, by the way,

1340
01:32:11,475 –> 01:32:14,915
this is sort of what I think about. I always not always. When

1341
01:32:14,915 –> 01:32:18,289
conversations like this occur and when we’re making points like

1342
01:32:18,289 –> 01:32:21,510
this, I think of my grandma. Right?

1343
01:32:22,530 –> 01:32:26,289
And my grandmother would have ordered groceries off the Internet if she’d had

1344
01:32:26,289 –> 01:32:29,745
it in, like, 1930 whatever, And she woulda

1345
01:32:29,745 –> 01:32:33,505
used that. So it’s not the sneakers maybe. It’s the line.

1346
01:32:33,505 –> 01:32:37,185
It’s the chain of being, right, from the moccasins to the

1347
01:32:37,185 –> 01:32:40,945
sneakers. How do we talk with people about that? How do we do

1348
01:32:40,945 –> 01:32:44,385
that in a way that’s compelling for them to even listen to? Because to your

1349
01:32:44,385 –> 01:32:47,180
point, it can just come off as information and

1350
01:32:48,760 –> 01:32:51,340
not actual

1351
01:32:52,920 –> 01:32:56,600
wisdom. Yeah. So I I again, it’s

1352
01:32:56,600 –> 01:33:00,405
it’s I I think I

1353
01:33:00,405 –> 01:33:04,025
think part of it is I think part of it is, is

1354
01:33:06,085 –> 01:33:09,765
principally driven. Right? So so, again, I’ll I’ll give you and and,

1355
01:33:09,765 –> 01:33:13,385
again, to to your point, I’m not gonna sit here and and and

1356
01:33:14,469 –> 01:33:17,989
view or judge the way that somebody teaches their family

1357
01:33:17,989 –> 01:33:21,829
and their compromise, and I’m not gonna judge them based on my

1358
01:33:22,389 –> 01:33:25,929
what I’m willing to compromise and not compromise. Because just for the record,

1359
01:33:26,575 –> 01:33:29,455
all not not a single one of my kids would dare step foot in this

1360
01:33:29,535 –> 01:33:32,975
in one of our ceremonial circles with sneakers on. They were they were in their

1361
01:33:32,975 –> 01:33:36,815
moccasins. If they’re in regalia, they’re in their moccasins. It’s that simple. And I

1362
01:33:36,815 –> 01:33:40,650
think part of it is because I I feel like from

1363
01:33:40,650 –> 01:33:44,250
a family perspective, we put a lot we put a tremendous

1364
01:33:44,250 –> 01:33:48,090
amount of weight on

1365
01:33:48,090 –> 01:33:51,790
if if our if our most recent

1366
01:33:52,330 –> 01:33:55,685
ancestor was alive Mhmm. Would they approve?

1367
01:33:56,145 –> 01:33:58,865
If the answer is to your point and and by the way, there are a

1368
01:33:58,865 –> 01:34:02,705
lot of things, that they would approve on. For

1369
01:34:02,945 –> 01:34:06,785
and for example, like, we my my, my mentor

1370
01:34:06,785 –> 01:34:10,620
and father-in-law and and and teacher, who passed away in

1371
01:34:10,620 –> 01:34:14,160
02/2020, he would say all the time, like,

1372
01:34:14,300 –> 01:34:17,900
why would you not use a hand drill, like a power drill? Our

1373
01:34:17,900 –> 01:34:21,660
ancestors would use that if they had it available. Right? Like, they they would use

1374
01:34:21,660 –> 01:34:25,385
that. Now would our ancestors use sneakers instead of

1375
01:34:25,385 –> 01:34:28,925
moccasins in the circle? Probably

1376
01:34:29,225 –> 01:34:32,825
not. And the reason I say that is because sneakers are not new.

1377
01:34:32,825 –> 01:34:36,340
Sneakers have been around for a hundred years. Mhmm. And

1378
01:34:36,400 –> 01:34:40,080
our ancestors from seventy five years ago did wouldn’t wear

1379
01:34:40,080 –> 01:34:43,840
sneakers in there. Fifty years ago, wouldn’t wear sneakers in there.

1380
01:34:43,840 –> 01:34:47,440
This is a very modern thing that the next generation is

1381
01:34:47,440 –> 01:34:51,215
trying to do. Mhmm. So it’s, you know,

1382
01:34:51,215 –> 01:34:54,094
it’s we don’t have to go back two hundred years. This is not something that

1383
01:34:54,094 –> 01:34:57,614
we’re, like, we’re trying to hold on to for no reason. Like, this is something

1384
01:34:57,614 –> 01:35:01,315
that that now now, again, I go back let me

1385
01:35:01,375 –> 01:35:05,079
switch gears gears here because there’s a completely different and if anybody listens

1386
01:35:05,079 –> 01:35:08,599
to this podcast that happens to be native, I’m gonna make a little bit of

1387
01:35:08,599 –> 01:35:12,119
a distinction here, a distinction with a difference. Mhmm. You’re at a

1388
01:35:12,119 –> 01:35:15,480
powwow that’s a competition powwow versus a powwow that’s a

1389
01:35:15,480 –> 01:35:19,025
ceremonial powwow. It’s different. When you’re at a

1390
01:35:19,025 –> 01:35:22,865
competition powwow, the comfort of your feet are important. You

1391
01:35:22,865 –> 01:35:26,705
also can’t slip and fall. And there’s a lot of things that sneakers

1392
01:35:26,705 –> 01:35:30,305
actually there’s a benefit to versus a ceremonial powwow

1393
01:35:30,305 –> 01:35:33,970
where it’s not about that. It’s not about competition. It’s not

1394
01:35:33,970 –> 01:35:37,730
about winning. It’s not about winning a a a pry piece of, you know, prize

1395
01:35:37,730 –> 01:35:41,270
money or it’s not about that. It’s about paying homage

1396
01:35:41,330 –> 01:35:44,764
to our ancestors. That’s the the point of it.

1397
01:35:44,764 –> 01:35:48,545
So, again, there’s a little bit of a distinction with a difference there. So

1398
01:35:49,885 –> 01:35:53,645
very traditional people who are who

1399
01:35:53,645 –> 01:35:57,410
go to these two different versions of pow wows may have two different pieces

1400
01:35:57,410 –> 01:36:01,170
of wisdom to give to their kids, grandkids, great grand grandkids as they’re

1401
01:36:01,170 –> 01:36:04,550
learning how to interact with this environment. So

1402
01:36:05,330 –> 01:36:09,030
from a leadership perspective in the workforce, maybe there’s a similar

1403
01:36:09,090 –> 01:36:12,825
applications here where it’s, you know, do as

1404
01:36:12,825 –> 01:36:16,585
I say, not as I do in this case, but, you know, not in this

1405
01:36:16,585 –> 01:36:20,265
one. Like, I I’m gonna lead by example in this case, but do as I

1406
01:36:20,265 –> 01:36:24,105
say, not as I do in this case, and it may make sense. But as

1407
01:36:24,105 –> 01:36:27,370
a leader, you have to make it make sense. You can’t just you you can’t

1408
01:36:27,370 –> 01:36:31,150
just say and and call it martial law. Like, it doesn’t work that

1409
01:36:31,370 –> 01:36:35,130
way, especially today’s workforce. Today’s workforce needs to know the why.

1410
01:36:35,130 –> 01:36:38,570
They need to have an understanding of like, you’re asking them to run through a

1411
01:36:38,570 –> 01:36:42,304
brick wall, and I’m willing to do it, but I need to know that my

1412
01:36:42,304 –> 01:36:45,665
willingness to do it is gonna be worth it for both myself, my

1413
01:36:45,905 –> 01:36:49,745
both for you, myself, and my principals. So I I

1414
01:36:49,745 –> 01:36:53,585
think there’s there’s, again, there’s a I think that could be a podcast all by

1415
01:36:53,585 –> 01:36:57,200
itself. Like, these these kinds of this kind of question. Well

1416
01:36:57,320 –> 01:37:00,280
and it’s it’s but it’s it is the you’re right. And it is it is

1417
01:37:00,280 –> 01:37:03,800
the question that we are going to be covering on this podcast for the

1418
01:37:03,800 –> 01:37:07,320
remainder of the year. It’s it’s one of those things that I think is going

1419
01:37:07,320 –> 01:37:10,699
to be key for us as leaders to wrap our arms around,

1420
01:37:11,695 –> 01:37:15,375
particularly as we switch over from being

1421
01:37:15,375 –> 01:37:18,415
in and I and, again, I’m gonna keep saying it. I’m gonna speak it into

1422
01:37:18,415 –> 01:37:21,395
reality. As we switch over from being

1423
01:37:21,775 –> 01:37:25,074
in in chaos, and in chaotic

1424
01:37:25,135 –> 01:37:28,970
times to being in what I do fundamentally believe is

1425
01:37:28,970 –> 01:37:32,810
going to be a cultural high. I do. I I

1426
01:37:32,810 –> 01:37:36,410
I think we’re I think we’re I think we’re poised for that. People are tired

1427
01:37:36,410 –> 01:37:39,815
of the chaos. People are tired of nonsense.

1428
01:37:40,595 –> 01:37:44,355
People do want wisdom. That’s the they they finally come around to this is

1429
01:37:44,355 –> 01:37:47,955
the thing we’re missing. We do need to get back on track. A lot of

1430
01:37:47,955 –> 01:37:51,715
the things that we’ve talked about here today and what does on track mean, what

1431
01:37:51,715 –> 01:37:55,200
does wisdom mean, these are conversations that are worth while to, to

1432
01:37:55,200 –> 01:37:58,900
have, and every generation has them.

1433
01:37:59,920 –> 01:38:03,600
It’s just how are we going to get

1434
01:38:03,600 –> 01:38:07,060
that knowledge across? How are we going to get that wisdom across?

1435
01:38:08,765 –> 01:38:12,445
You know, every generation has to relearn the wisdom of the previous generation just considered

1436
01:38:12,445 –> 01:38:15,565
to be table stakes. Right? I mean, this this is what you show up for,

1437
01:38:15,565 –> 01:38:19,005
and this is what what it is around

1438
01:38:19,005 –> 01:38:22,765
understanding reality and existing in the world and preserving the gift

1439
01:38:22,765 –> 01:38:26,490
of feedback. I also think that

1440
01:38:26,490 –> 01:38:30,110
there’s some technologies, and I’m I’m kind of obsessed with this idea now.

1441
01:38:30,250 –> 01:38:33,930
There’s some technologies that are better for transmitting this wisdom.

1442
01:38:33,930 –> 01:38:37,545
So, you know, I don’t know that I’m

1443
01:38:37,705 –> 01:38:41,165
I’m not down on the novel. Otherwise, why would I be doing this podcast?

1444
01:38:41,705 –> 01:38:45,465
But, I do think that there are

1445
01:38:45,465 –> 01:38:48,125
some inherent challenges in the fragmentation of information,

1446
01:38:49,385 –> 01:38:52,745
that we haven’t really we haven’t really gotten our arms

1447
01:38:52,745 –> 01:38:56,590
around. And and what I worry about, and

1448
01:38:56,590 –> 01:39:00,430
I’ve said this you said this last year on the podcast, I maybe

1449
01:39:00,430 –> 01:39:04,270
not worry. What I caution, right, is that

1450
01:39:04,270 –> 01:39:07,710
people our age who did go through all the chaos and do have genuine

1451
01:39:07,710 –> 01:39:11,555
wisdom, I don’t wanna see us shuffled to the

1452
01:39:11,935 –> 01:39:15,395
side like those pair of moccasins just left in the corner.

1453
01:39:15,455 –> 01:39:18,595
Right? Because

1454
01:39:19,295 –> 01:39:22,975
because the kinds of things we’ve learned from from going through the hard

1455
01:39:22,975 –> 01:39:26,349
chaos of the last twenty years at various

1456
01:39:26,349 –> 01:39:30,190
levels, is valuable. There is a value to that,

1457
01:39:30,190 –> 01:39:33,090
and it does need to be, it does need to be transmitted.

1458
01:39:34,829 –> 01:39:38,530
Alright. Final thoughts on Albert Murray, final thoughts on the Omni Americans

1459
01:39:38,590 –> 01:39:42,045
as we close today. Last word,

1460
01:39:42,045 –> 01:39:42,545
Tom.

1461
01:39:45,965 –> 01:39:49,644
I I, honestly, I think if somebody’s listening to this podcast and it sparks

1462
01:39:49,644 –> 01:39:52,784
their interest even a little bit, googling this guy

1463
01:39:53,164 –> 01:39:56,960
is easy. And there is like I said, I there’s a

1464
01:39:57,020 –> 01:40:00,860
tremendous amount of information about him, not even just

1465
01:40:00,860 –> 01:40:04,620
about, not sorry. Not about not even just him

1466
01:40:04,620 –> 01:40:08,460
himself doing interviews, but the sheer volume of people that

1467
01:40:08,460 –> 01:40:11,955
speak about this guy in in the ways and and

1468
01:40:12,575 –> 01:40:16,035
the the the but it it’s it’s fascinating.

1469
01:40:16,255 –> 01:40:19,935
So the the last word for me would be, if anything on this

1470
01:40:19,935 –> 01:40:23,695
podcast had has struck your attention or really has has resonated with you and you

1471
01:40:23,695 –> 01:40:27,330
wanna learn more about Albert Murray, I would highly recommend

1472
01:40:27,330 –> 01:40:31,010
you go and just Google the guy and start listening to some of the interviews

1473
01:40:31,010 –> 01:40:34,530
with him. I I saw an interview with him, the one you shared with,

1474
01:40:34,770 –> 01:40:37,989
Hamilton, College. I saw an interview with him,

1475
01:40:38,290 –> 01:40:41,864
with Charlie Rose, who was a

1476
01:40:41,864 –> 01:40:44,824
journalist back in the day. Like, either they did a TV show. I forgot what

1477
01:40:44,824 –> 01:40:47,465
the name of the TV show was, but it was a Yes. He did. Charlie

1478
01:40:47,465 –> 01:40:51,304
Rose show. Yeah. And he he interviewed him, and the interview with him was

1479
01:40:51,304 –> 01:40:55,070
was exceptionally well done. There was another, there was

1480
01:40:55,290 –> 01:40:57,449
another thing that was doing it was like believe it or not, it was an

1481
01:40:57,449 –> 01:40:58,270
anti Semitism,

1482
01:41:01,610 –> 01:41:03,790
not convention, but it was an anti Semitism

1483
01:41:05,449 –> 01:41:08,825
The A conference or something? Collective or conference or something like that. Yeah. There

1484
01:41:08,825 –> 01:41:11,725
were several, I mean, several doctoral,

1485
01:41:12,345 –> 01:41:15,945
people talking about him and his works and how he how

1486
01:41:15,945 –> 01:41:19,625
how they interacted with, you know, modern society and why it’s

1487
01:41:19,625 –> 01:41:23,350
important. And the fact that the guy wrote, what, five or six books

1488
01:41:23,350 –> 01:41:26,950
in five years or six years from 1970 to 1976, he

1489
01:41:26,950 –> 01:41:30,710
produced almost all of his literature. He was fast he’s just he’s

1490
01:41:30,710 –> 01:41:34,390
fascinating. He’s fascinating. He was smart. And as you read some of the

1491
01:41:34,390 –> 01:41:38,085
excerpts from the book and you yourself were impressed at some of the word

1492
01:41:38,085 –> 01:41:41,925
combinations that he used in a single sentence, the guy was sharp. And he was

1493
01:41:41,925 –> 01:41:45,605
sharp all the way until the last interview he did, which I believe was the

1494
01:41:45,605 –> 01:41:49,250
early two thousand I think 02/2006 or ‘7, maybe it was 02/2008. But,

1495
01:41:49,650 –> 01:41:52,930
he was sharp as attack. The guy knew his stuff. He knew who he was.

1496
01:41:52,930 –> 01:41:56,690
He was principled. And I I think the other thing that I

1497
01:41:56,690 –> 01:42:00,530
that I, that I thought was interesting about him, I found

1498
01:42:00,530 –> 01:42:03,510
it fascinating that he was able to talk about racial issues

1499
01:42:04,195 –> 01:42:07,495
Mhmm. Not from a position of hate, violence,

1500
01:42:07,875 –> 01:42:11,655
or, or, like, that you need like,

1501
01:42:12,675 –> 01:42:16,435
forced understanding, I guess, is the other part that I was thinking of. He

1502
01:42:16,435 –> 01:42:19,095
always spoke of it from a

1503
01:42:20,180 –> 01:42:23,620
experiential, influential, and

1504
01:42:23,620 –> 01:42:24,760
educational perspective.

1505
01:42:27,700 –> 01:42:30,900
Again, think about the time frame that he grew up in and, you know, black

1506
01:42:30,900 –> 01:42:34,545
people in America and that and almost through most of his life were not

1507
01:42:34,545 –> 01:42:38,165
treated all that crazy. Right. Yet he had no animosity.

1508
01:42:38,545 –> 01:42:42,225
Like, that’s the other thing too. Like, he it wasn’t thinking the world didn’t owe

1509
01:42:42,225 –> 01:42:45,985
him anything. He’s he was able to succeed through it. He would like, all

1510
01:42:45,985 –> 01:42:49,739
the things that he talks about was he’s always positive. So

1511
01:42:50,679 –> 01:42:53,719
to your point about transfer of some wisdom, I think that the world today could

1512
01:42:53,719 –> 01:42:56,679
learn a lot from him. I really do. I think that the world today could

1513
01:42:56,679 –> 01:43:00,360
learn a lot from him. White, black, Asians, native, doesn’t matter. I

1514
01:43:00,360 –> 01:43:04,060
think I think that that all of us could just just listen to him talk.

1515
01:43:04,245 –> 01:43:08,085
It was impressive. So, anyway, that’s that’s my my thoughts on Albert

1516
01:43:08,085 –> 01:43:11,685
Murray. Awesome. Well, thank you, Tom,

1517
01:43:11,685 –> 01:43:15,125
for visiting us today, joining us today on the

1518
01:43:15,125 –> 01:43:18,885
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with that,

1519
01:43:18,885 –> 01:43:21,591
well, we’re out.