Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number
160
in the year of our Lord 2025. We are
in the midst of a social and cultural dynamic in the United States
of America where smothering conformity
to political positions, particularly smothering
cultural conformity to certain political positions, has
replaced the smothering conformity
previous in the mid part of the 20th century
to religious traditions. There is much
going back and forth between various political, social
and cultural factions in the United States about whether
this transition, which began in the mid-1960s
and has only increased in stride and see for the last 60 to 80
years, is an overall net positive or
if it is an overall net negative.
If we had a time machine or a hammer,
whether it was H.G. Welles time machine or Dr.
Emmett Brown's time machine, it doesn't really matter. And we could go
back to when the writer we are going to be talking about today was
writing the book we are going to be talking about today and we could tell
him of all the wondrous social changes, all of the
wondrous replacements that have occurred and reach their
apotheosis in the early 21st century.
Well, I think like many of the writers we talk about on this show,
particularly the writers of the mid 20th century, he'd
be shocked and somewhat amazed
and perhaps may be a little disappointed because
here's the problem. Con men,
hypocrisy and venal appetites that rest
deep in the hearts and in the behaviors of human beings don't
just disappear when we culturally
exchange one stifling system of conformity and belief
for another equally stifling system of conformity
and belief. It turns out that human
nature is persistent and will have its
way. Today on
this episode of the podcast, we will be introducing
and discussing four of the multiple
themes from our book
Stranger in a Strange Land by
Robert Heinlein. Leaders, we
are in the midst of yet another transformational social
and cultural dynamic. But I guarantee you, smothering
conformity lies at
the clearing, or lies in the clearing, as it were,
at the end of this path as
well. So we are going to have
an incredibly short, I think, introductory episode today because
the book that we are covering, Stranger in a Strange Land by
Robert Heinlein, is still under vicious copyright.
And so we will be summarizing some of
the main themes and the main ideas from each one of the chapters and
talking about Heinlein's impact as an
author. And then we'll go into sort of what I think
about all of this short introductory
episode today. So we open up the book Stranger in a Strange Land.
And the copy that I have was published by Penguin Random House
back in the day, and the copyright is owned by the
Robert and Virginia Heinlein Trust.
When you open up the book, you see that the book is divided into five
parts, five different chapters. And the book
is. The book's title comes from
the story in the book of Exodus in the
Torah, or what is called by some the Old Testament. And
it comes from this line in Exodus 2:21
22, and I quote, Moses agreed to stay with the man
who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses
named him Gershom, saying, I have become a
foreigner in a foreign land.
Or in some translations, I have become a stranger in a strange
land. When you open up Stranger in a Strange
Land, what you see, of course, is the. The various parts. And
so part one is about the origins of
the man from Mars, a gentleman named Val Valentine
Michael Smith. Now,
this is a curious idea because the man
from Mars was part of an expedition,
or was the result not part of. Was the result of an expedition that
initially went to Mars and failed,
actually. But in that failure, a child was produced, a
child was born, has almost biblical
connotations, particularly New Testament biblical connotations. And that child
was raised not by human beings, but was.
Was a human baby raised by the Martian,
the Martian environment, the Martian old gods.
There's very much a tinge in the beginning part of
Stranger to Strange Land, in what is entitled
His Immaculate Origin, a play on
the idea of the immaculate origin of
Jesus. There's very much an idea that this is a. This is
a man come to Earth, a man come from the sky, a savior
come down to save us. A second expedition
goes up many years later, following a war
and some other strife, and the second
expedition finds the man from Mars and brings him
what brings him back to Earth. And from there we begin
to fall into Heinlein's view
of history. Now, one of the things that you're going to want
to note also about the structure of this book is that each
part translates or it
moves. It moves Valentin Michael
Smith through the process, not of necessarily
becoming more human, although that is a popular idea,
particularly when you look at the typical critical
interpretations of this book and its content. But it actually
moves Valentin Michael Smith through the process of changing other human
beings, which is a core idea that we will
talk about a little bit later on in the
show. Robert Anson
Heinlein was born July 7,
1907, left this world to go
where all individuals wind up going
on May 8, 1988.
He had a long life that spanned almost all of
the 20th century. He was an
American science fiction author, an aeronautical engineer, and a
naval officer in the United States Navy.
Sometimes called the quote, unquote, dean of science fiction writers.
He, along with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac
Asimov, really emphasized getting the science correct
in his novels and in his short story
writing. Speaking of the great
science fiction writers of the 20th, the mid 20th
century, Heinlein was 30 years. Thirteen, not 30,
13 years older than both Ray Bradbury and
Isaac asimov, and was 10 years older than
the great Arthur C. Clark, the person
who, who wrote oh
Gosh, was it 2001 A Space Odyssey and
consulted on the. The movie that was directed by Stanley
Kubrick. A truly odd film if you ever have the opportunity to watch it,
and the sequel books, although not
necessarily the sequel films. And
as one of the deans of science fiction who was
really interested in getting the science right, Heinlein was one of the
first American science fiction writers to make science
fiction great again, such as it were. He was
one of the first ones to break into mainstream magazines in
the 40s and 50s, such as the Saturday Evening Post,
Reader's Digest and others. A lot of people
were exposed to Heinlein's view of
science fiction, his view of science, and his view of
the world via the Shine. The science fiction genre that before
that had really been resorted to
pulpy fanfic. Pulpy, pulpy fan fiction, like what we would call
fan fiction, like publications these days,
dime store novels that really appealed to, really were meant to appeal
to children or that were
considered to be. Or science fiction was considered to be a genre
that was a vehicle for other
kinds of allegory or political
statements, such as the science fiction written by
H.G. wells. Heinlein, however,
used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political
ideas. And you can especially see that in Stranger in
a Strange Land, but also in a number of other
books that he. That he authored, including
my favorite story from. From Heinlein,
Starship Troopers. Okay. And he
wanted to use his science fiction to speculate on how
progress in science and engineering might shape the future of plan,
politics, race, religion, and of course,
the third rail topic, sex.
By the way, Heinlein came out of a time being born in
1907. That was the beginning of the
political progressive movement in the United States, which
really began its proto development at the end
of the Civil War and reached its height in
the 1920s, at least it's height
culturally in the 1920s, before
political progressivism began to, to crash to
the ground in the, in the 19, in the
1950s, right with the coming of Dwight Eisenhower.
So during the time that, that Heinlein
was a young man and moving into his
middle age, political progressivism was a
driving force in American politics, American
culture, and it was a driving force that was
counter to the forces of conformity
that were that that Heinlein and Bradbury and even
Isaac Asimov were using science
to battle against. In
January 1924, speaking of the 1920s,
a 16 year old Heinlein lied about his age to enlist in company
C, the 110th Engineer Regiment of the Missouri National Guard
in Kansas City. His family could not afford to send Heinlein to college, so
he sought an appointment to a military academy. And this appointment to the
military academy, of course, led him to service in the United States Navy,
in particular service during World War II. So there were
two, there were two rails that Heinlein
really ran his fiction down. The rail of political
progressivism and utilizing science and
technology to get to a technocratic political
progressive end. And then the rail of
discipline that comes about from being
forced to walk a parade ground and PT
and scrub a toilet too. So there you go.
By the way, these two rails were
not seen as being mutually exclusive as they are in our time. In
the first quarter, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, because
of our historical perspective,
you have to remember most of the people that were running the naval academies
at the time, in between World War I and World War II
were men who had served in World War I
and had seen what World War could actually do and were
desperately, desperately seeking
peace. Heinlein was an individual who was
desperately seeking progressivism through technology
and through science and used the military to discipline
himself, himself to order his
thoughts. So back to the book, back to
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
So we pick up in part two of Stranger in a
Strange Land. Once again, we're summarizing each one of the parts of
the book and seeking to pull main themes from those
summaries. Because we cannot read the book on the podcast
today, would encourage you to go pick up a copy of it. If you are
a leader who is fascinated by science fiction.
It'll be a good addition to your library. So we pick up a part
two of Stranger in a Strange Land. And in that
second part, which is Called his preposterous heritage.
We run across a man
named Jubal Harshaw. And Jubal
Harshaw is the. Is the central character, not Valentine Michael
Smith, in the second part of
A Stranger in a Strange Land. The reason why
it's subtitled, the second part is subtitled. His preposterous heritage
is because this is when Valentine Michael Smith begins
to interact with the larger power structures,
the larger governmental structures, the larger civil, social,
and even religious structures that human beings have constructed
in this brave new world that he is
now an alien to. Right?
But as he begins to interact with people
all the way from the nurse Jill to the journalist Ben Caxton
to the lawyer Jubal Harshaw, all the way to Senator
Douglas and even the. The head of
the Church of the Foster Right Brotherhood, as he
begins to interact with these folks and begins to learn more about how human
beings either commit to each other or don't
commit to each other. How they communicate, how they don't communicate. As
he begins to learn about ideologies and he begins to learn about
ideas. What Heinlein does so cleverly
in this part two is he structures certain
arguments that he really wanted to have with people
of his time and of his era. You begin to see
Heinlein's progressivism that I referenced in in just
previously. You begin to see it begin to come out. And
it's a subtle thing. It's not anything that you're hit over the head with directly.
But if you know how to. If you know how to look for it and
you know what to look for and you know what the tells are, you'll definitely
see it. However, there is a strain in here
also of rebellion, right. And of questioning in
particular. When you think about the character Jubal Harshaw, a lawyer, a
doctor, but also a raconteur and a
man about town who, who has three
buxom secretaries living in his
palatial estate in the Poconos in Pennsylvania,
there's a way to read chapter two that is
not progressive in our time. There's a way to read it
through a feminist lens. But when we talk about the
character of Valentine Michael Smith and when we talk about his
heritage, we talk about where he came from and where he is going,
the ideas in part two begin to lay the foundation for
frank, further ideas and further developments that are going to occur in parts
four and five, after Valentin Michael Smith
goes away from Jubbal Harshaw, in
essence escapes the the cradle and begins
to walk around in the world in all kinds of different ways
and eventually comes to an idea that
he will have to build a system, he will have to build
a distance discipline, he'll have to build an organization
in order to understand human beings and attract human
beings of his own.
So as we read Stranger in a Strange Land and as we read
Parts One and Part Two, one of the things that jumps out
to me about this book and its leadership
applications is that this is a logical conclusion.
Conclusion to some ideas that were being explored by. Or
Heinlein presents a logical conclusion to some ideas and some theories that were being
explored by another famous author of
his era, Ray Bradbury. By the way,
one little tidbit about this book. Heinlein actually said later
on that he wrote Stranger in a Strange
Land in the early 1950s, late 1950s, 40s until the
1950s, because he had this idea for it, and then he let it sit for
10 years before he published it in the 1960s, because he
was waiting for society to change significantly so that the
ideas basically wouldn't get him tarred and feathered and thrown out of polite
society. During the time that he was, of
course, basting on these ideas or maybe letting the
manuscript sit, Ray Bradbury published the Martian Chronicles. And in
the Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury postulates a very
outrageous idea. The idea that he
postulates is that,
is that going from Earth to
Mars changes human beings
to become more like Martians, rather than the
dominant idea of the time, which was a dominant idea coming out
of World War II, where a country was confident and had
cultural confidence, the United States had cultural confidence. And of course,
Bradbury was publishing as an American author in an American context.
He was looking at all this cultural confidence and saying,
if you go to another, another planet and you are a
human being, how does that planet change you? Not how do
you change the planet? And so Heinlein
plays with the inverse of this. A human being born on Mars,
who, technically speaking, should behave like a human,
wouldn't behave like a human, they would behave like a Martian. And
then bringing that Martian who looks like a human to
Earth, how does that change things? How does that
mold not just the Martian, but also humanity?
That makes Stranger in a Strange Land the logical
sequel, or the logical end
argument of Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles.
The reality is that Mars as a planet fascinates us still. I mean,
SpaceX and Elon Musk still
want to get there. I mean, Elon walks around with a shirt that says Occupy
Mars for God's sakes. And because it
fascinates us and, and has for some time Many hundreds
of years before Elon or H.G. wells
or NASA came along because it fascinates us.
The reality is, and we don't really,
we have no way of confirming this or we will have no way of confirming
this until we actually go there and actually try to plant a flag there. The
reality is that the planet of Mars is probably not supporting anything like
what we think of as intelligent life. Which
means that there will be no Martian invasion. There be, will, will be no War
of the Worlds, right? There will be no Independence Day
style fireworks. Unless we're talking
about an invasion worked out along the lines of what Heinlein gets
to in his novel. And we are itching
to get after that planet, aren't we? I mean, I think by at
the very minimum the end of this century,
we will at the very least have established if not an
outpost on Mars. We will very least have established
regular rocket trips to, to Mars. I
think my, I think my youngest child will be part.
Will be an adult in a generation in a time where it will be
going to Mars will be as a semi regular
an occurrence as, as NASA or the
European Space Agency or India or China putting rockets
up in the sky to launch, launch satellites. I don't know
that civilizations or, or settlements will be established
in our century. I think that'll probably happen in the 22nd century.
But we are going to Mars. It is going to happen.
The question of course is how is it going to change
us? What are we going to turn into? And then the
other question is how are we going to change Mars?
I think something more spiritual or psychological rather than material or
temporal however is putting a current pause
on our appetites and our ambitions.
And I think it's because we haven't quite figured out the answer to the
question that both Bradbury brings up in Martian
Chronicles and that Heinlein so cleverly inverts
in Stranger in a Strange Land.
Back to the book back to Stranger in a Strange
Land by Robert Heinlein. So we pick
up in, in part three of Stranger in a
Strange Land and this is really focused on
the education, right? The eccentric or eccentric
such as it were education of Valentine Michael
Smith Smith or the man from Mars as he is now known.
The chapter of course opens with him being him
escaping or, or leaving the.
The gentlemen strations of Jubal Harshaw being
pushed out into the world to deal with it as he
finds it as he goes out into the world. One of the first
stops, one of the first places where he begins to sort of
understand and, and Begin to put together
some ideas around
belief, around. Around
deception, around illusion. One of the first
places where this begins to manifest is in,
ironically enough, a rural carnival.
Yeah, that's right. The man from Mars becomes a magician
in a rural carnival. His assistant, of course, is.
Is Jill the nurse, who has now become his.
His lover in addition to being his water
brother. And they tour the country
under the guise of this. Of this carnival. And through
becoming a carney, through engaging in.
In the carnival acts of deception and trickery,
figuring out who is a mark and who is not,
who's real and who's fake, who even understands what the game
is and who are cynically manipulating people.
The man from Mars, Valentin Michael Smith in
Stranger in a Strange Land, begins to figure out
how he can incorporate, how he can
include I. Ideas from.
From illusion, ideas from magic, ideas
from being a carnival barker, ideals, from being a
marketer into what eventually will become
his very own church.
By the time I got to this point in the book, by the way, I
said, well, of course he's going to go off and form a church. And one
of the things that jumps out to you about this
eventual development and sort of how it goes through in part in
parts three and then part four and part five,
is not who he draws to himself, not even
who he. Who he develops his acolytes
in a school that's structured along the lines of a church,
not even who he rejects. What
jumped out, to me, at least in this section, most prominently,
was sort of related to the piece that I
opened up with during this podcast today.
I do think that if the man from Mars,
AKA Valentin Michael Smith, had come down from
Mars today and lived in our era, if
Heinlein was writing this fantastical novel now,
Valentin Michael Smith would not start a church
valentine. Michael Smith would instead become Warner
Brothers with Elon Musk and maybe Reid
Hoffman and maybe a few others, and he would
start a political party.
Because the fact of the matter is there is a shift in culture, or there.
Yeah, there is a shift in culture that Heinlein couldn't have
predicted and had no barometer for.
We've shifted away from, as I said in my opening,
we've shifted away from the stifling conformity of religion to the
stifling conformity of political opinion.
In a search for meaning in the west, we have replaced
the search for transcendence with the
discovery that men, men
running political parties and men promoting
ideas have feet of clay.
We have removed religion from its appropriate
place, and we have replaced it. Well. We've
replaced it with something else. And now, interestingly
enough, in the year 2025, the
old strong gods of religion are attempting to
reinsert themselves or reassert themselves
over and above the objections of the new
weak gods in politics
in the West. So what are we to take from
Heinlein? What are we to take from these first
three parts of Stranger in a Strange Land? What is the,
what is the larger message for leaders here? Well, I
think that one of the big ideas or one
of the big beats, right, that's in
Stranger in a Strange Land, at least the one that strikes me the most
prominently is inverting the eschaton
or how one can resist bringing heaven to
earth. The entire history of the
20th century was about man's search for
utopia. Either a scientifically generated one, a
technologically generated one, a socially generated one, or
at the end of our century or the end of the last century, a culturally
generated utopia. And all those
utopian visions, from the ones
tinged by Marx to the ones tinged by Milton Friedman,
all those utopian visions failed miserably and
continue to fail because you can't bring heaven to earth.
You may be able to bring the man from Mars back to earth, but you
can't bring heaven to earth. And
Heinlein, Robert Heinlein, in all his cynical, liberal,
humanistic glory, actually understood something about human nature
that we have all forgotten as well. We arc
past the first quarter of the 21st century and it's something that bears
repeating. No one and nothing can
bring heaven to earth today. Not alien, not technology,
not human, not system. But the entire corpus
of the 20th century, as I said, was about the
vain attempts to do so. And
the first quarter of the the 21st
century has been about the hangover as
the consequences of such pursuits are visited
upon us. The challenge of our time,
right, that Stranger in a Strange Land also blew right past is
one that I've already mentioned. Again, for leaders, it bears
repeating. Religion is no longer the primary driver
of meaning in a post Christian America. And whether you believe
it or not, from your own personal perspective,
your own personal thoughts on religion, your own personal geography
on religion, whether that's the American south, the American west, the American Midwest,
the American Northeast, or the American South
East. No matter what your
geographic perspective, no matter if you live in a major metropolitan
area or you live in a rural area, no matter if you live, you live
in a place where there's a lot of broken down churches that still attract a
few old people, or you live in an area where there are vibrant churches
or buildings that call themselves churches, attracting 800
people to 3,000 people a weekend.
It doesn't matter what you're seeing. The
statistics show that religion is on the decline in America
and it's been on the decline for at least the last 25
years. We are in a world that no longer
we are in a West, we are in America. By world I just mean Western
world. We are specifically in the United States of America
in a place now where culturally the cohesion and
conformity that was enforced by religion is now
enforced by politics. And politics does not operate
in the church building. It may visit the church
building occasionally in a sermon, and you may see it show up in the people
who come into the church building. But for the most part,
politics exists in the secular
humanistic world and secular humanism is now the new religion.
And because we live in a post Christian America, because we live in
an America that is now increasingly hostile
to even Christian acts, much, much less
religious ones, pagan drivers and hedonistic fulfillment of base
appetites have ascended the stairs of meaning for many of us.
Heinlein couldn't have predicted that. And by the way, that
includes those who claim the mantle of Christianity. Still, if
you look at statistics, the divorce rate of people who go to church every Sunday
and the divorce rate of people who watch football every Sunday is almost
exactly the same. If the man from
Mars wanted to get after it in 2025America, he
would start a third party, or maybe a fourth
one. What does this say about
how to resist bringing heaven to earth? What does it say to
leaders? Well, it says this. Your utopian visions are for
naught because human nature
at the end of it will win out.
So remember I said this was going to be a short episode.
I would encourage you, if you have the opportunity, as I said before, go to
pick up Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land because you're going to want to
check out parts four and five of that book. The setup is in
the first three parts and then the last two parts are, are
quite spectacular. By the way, Heinlein did
almost a complete rewrite of the first couple of parts of the book
in an effort to meet meet
publishers demands. And so one version, the version
that's the common, I think mass market paperback version
is, is basically one version of Stranger in a Strange Land. But
then there's an extended version that his wife Virginia released
after his death that had additional material
in it. So if you can grab that additional material, you can
probably get the entire vision that Heinlein was pursuing
today on the show. We've read from the mass. Well, read from. We've
analyzed the, the big ideas and the big themes
from the mass market paperback. I doubt that they
really differ that much from the extended
versions, but I would still encourage you to go out and pick it up. It
could sit right on your, on your, on your shelf next to
Emotional Intelligence or whatever it is that Adam
Grant is putting out. Now.
How do we solve problems with Stranger in a Strange Land? How do we solve
problems with, with these ideas, some of which we've, we've talked about?
Well, here's, here's maybe, here's maybe a broad
solution or maybe a broad idea. And I don't know, I don't know if this
is going to work for you, but hear me out. What if
the aliens that we are looking for don't
have our best interests in mind? What
if their intents are so far from
being able to be comprehended by human beings that they appear to us
as well, demonic or even
evil in nature? I am
a little bit of a conspiracy theory theorist. Actually I'm a massive conspiracy
theorist, but I sort of low bar it or low ball it because
to say more makes people think you're crazy. Much like Fox
Mulder in that great show in the 1990s, the X Files.
I want to believe, I want to believe that
there's a vast cabal of evil demonic driven
individuals who are seeking to assert elite control
over the populace in order to institute neo feudalism
and Luciferian and Satanic control
in the material here and now. For
me, that whole spectrum of conspiracy
theories is usually
or is the best Occam's Razor explanation for
things and behaviors that I see from people in power that make
absolutely no damn sense. And when I say people in power,
I mean people in power. I mean like the Rothschilds
and the Bilderbergers and the,
and the Royal Family and why they believe things
that they believe and why they pursue the decisions
that they pursue that seem to benefit almost nobody.
Even though like the first, the folks at the World Economic Forum, like the folks
at blackrock, they proclaim very loudly from daycs
and from and from
and from, from, from platforms giving
speeches that they are just out here for all of us.
I don't believe it. I do believe they are
controlled by something else. And I do believe that's,
that's something else may not necessarily have our
best interests at heart. So do I believe in
aliens? Do I believe that there's life on other planets? I for sure
hope There is, because the universe would be lonely without it,
but wouldn't have already
bothered to bother with us. Or maybe it has bothered
to bother with us. And maybe just like whatever happened with Roswell back in the
1940s. Forties, maybe, maybe
someone, somewhere or someone's somewheres have been
hiding it from all of us because they're scared of what
we might do. They're scared of how the system might fail
or might fall apart. And they're scared of how they will be
disintermediated from power. But what
if those beings, what if those aliens that I want to exist
don't have my best interests at heart? What if they aren't on our quote
unquote side and not in a
militaristic Independence Day or War of the World's kind
of not being on my side? What if they're not on my side in a
way where they want to come down and in that great Twilight
Zone episode, get us all to go on ships and go back
to their home planet in order to
serve man? So that's one idea that
I got there, and that's a humdigger of a doozy that you may want to
think about. Here's another idea. Perhaps it is
better not to search for a superman or for a God from the
stars, or for a superman or a God, small G,
to be brought here from Mars via the machinations of the delicate
geniuses at NASA or SpaceX or. And
maybe instead we should be considering what destruction in
alien terms might actually be. What are they actually
offering us? Or what are we actually offering them?
And is there going to be an even exchange of value?
Look, at a practical level, I do not share ground with the fictional
Dana Scully of X Files fame, Sam Altman,
or even the skeptics that currently dominate the public square
known as the Internet. I do want to
believe in that intelligent life, and I do want to believe that that intelligent life
is somewhere in the universe searching to engage with other intelligent life
and of course, finding the universe to be as empty and cold as we have
found it would be excited to engage with us, would be
eager. But
I also know, logically, putting the emotions
of that aside, that the admonitions of caution for our most
ancient human traditions, like the religious ones,
are never really heeded in any kind of way,
ever since the first bulwark or the first
groundwork or the first tile was laid in them. Those admonitions
of those ancient human traditions are never heeded by those human
beings who seek and who desire to
enforce utopia from the anywhere,
whether that be from the stars or from
some half baked political ideology.
I know that we as leaders have to watch out for that. And I know
that skepticism and the desire for belief are
intention. They are not opposing. Well, they are
opposing forces, but they're opposing forces in tension. And
while they are opposing, they are not oppositional. You could be a skeptic and
still want to believe. And you could want to believe. You can have belief
and still be skeptical. Maybe this goes
to what faith actually means, which might be the whole point of
Stranger in a Strange Land, which of course begins
its grounding in Exodus
2:22.
Maybe Robert Heinlein was onto something after all.
I don't think we resolved anything here today. I just think that I've brought up
questions for you that maybe have no answers. And I think that's
kind of the best thing that you can get from a book that seems
simple but upon a closer look is really very complicated.
Complicated. I would encourage you to pick it up as a leader. Read
it and let me know what you think.
And well, that's it for me.