My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the Leadership
Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode
number 152.
The 20th century was an era, at least the middle part of it, of
some of the most literate readers in the history of the
world. The readers of the mid 20th century were reading,
absorbing and thinking about ideas that sat at the high,
the high watermark of print culture.
Many books, essays, magazine articles and news reports are written during the 20th century
designed to prove many different points and advance many, many different
ideas. The mid 20th century was also the start
of the Western world's obsession with an
endlessly expanding visual culture, a culture that
included and began to shift in
the direction of the power of screens, both television and movie
screens, and really began to examine their power to shape and
deliver messages and even to deliver culture.
The mid 20th century was also the end result,
the logical high water mark of all of those utopian
Enlightenment ideas about man as an individual
and man in relation to institutions and
governments. At the same time, the mid 20th century marked the beginning of
the decline and ultimate fall of the Enlightenment project that had begun
400 years earlier. In the 17th century, these
two seemingly paradoxical and disparate events collided
and were reported on through the writing and the
reportage of various journalists, poets, prose and narrative
writers, and of course political writers like the
author we are going to be talking about here today.
Talented writers and hack writers alike both penned their letter
and shaped the culture of the west at this dynamic mid century mark,
while increasingly pessimistic and cynical views of human nature
dominated the very zeitgeist alongside the ever growing lust for
institutional power, institutional control and institutional
dominance. Now the main way for an
increasingly intellectual and literate reading public to understand, contemplate and even access
these views and opinions about human nature, of about government and
even the future was of course the novel, the technology
of the novel. And today we will work through
the dominant themes of one of the seminal
dystopian novels of the mid 20th
century. A novel whose author's
last name has become an adjective for almost every
form of totalitarianism under the Sun,
George Orwell's 1984
and I'm going to hold up the book for those of you who are watching
on the video. The copy that I have is a Signet Classics version with the
white cover and the blue eyeball
leaders. Some books, even not well written
ones, can lodge their ideas so deeply into the public's imagination
that it requires a metaphorical crowbar and even sometimes
metaphorical dynamite to extract them. And that
is some of what we are going to be doing today on the podcast with
a fine panel of folks. You're going to hear three voices today if you're
listening to the audio version, and of course, if you're watching on video, you're going
to see three faces joining me today.
So we're going to start by introducing our folks. So
Claire Chandler is the author of Growth On Purpose and the
founder of Talent Boost. She also joined us on episode number
63 to discuss the Myth of Sisyphus and the most
difficult podcast episode I've done so far to date.
This is her. This is her. This is the, the crowning achievement of Claire
Chandler on the show. Episode number 121, where we covered
Lolita. Again, I want to be very clear, a book I
did not pick, but I read it anyway
and we had a vibrant discussion. I recommend going back and listening to,
listening to us talk about that. We're also going to be joined
today by David Baumrucker. He's a licensed professional clinical counselor and founder
of Momentum Life Counseling. He joined us for episode
number six because he's been supporting the show for quite some time now where
we talked about Milan Kundera's the Unbearable Lightness of Being and episode
number 15 where Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and
Punishment, part one. David, we have to go back and do part two of
that book and like cycle back around to that maybe in this new format
we'll be be able to, we'll be able to do that. And of course,
today we joined in our conversation by our usual
partner in crime on this show, the,
the aforementioned, well, not aforementioned, but the now mentioned
Tom Libby, who just came on and talked with
us about Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Hello, everyone. How are we doing today? Hey there. Doing great,
doing good. Fantastic as always.
It's always love and life. Isan love and life.
I complain about much. I try. I tried. People don't listen, so I stop.
I would tell a whole story about something that happened to me this morning, but
Tom's very tired of hearing about it and Claire heard about it before we came
on. And David, you and I will have a session and we'll, we'll work through,
we'll work, we'll work through the various things. We'll do it off the air.
Avian Challenge. We're going to write into a novel called Hasan's Avian
Challenge. Book One.
Book one. Book one. It is, it is the
second time in my life clear that. That has happened to me. I
don't know what that means. Anyway,
David has no idea what we're talking about right now and neither does anybody else.
So it's just. It's just gonna be. It's just gonna be one of these things
that just sort of pops up in the episode. I have no idea what any
of that means. I just, I just, I just nod and.
And then he gets. And he gets paid like 200 for like a 15 minute
hour. And it's fine. It's just. I mean. There you go. Yeah, the bill will
be in the mail. Wait, you're getting paid for this?
Oh, man. Secret is out.
He just made it awkward. This is group therapy.
Welcome. Welcome
to our session. Today we're going to be discussing totalitarianism. Journey
should be good. It should be good for everybody. Oh my. All
right, well, we are reading, like I said, we are looking at the
themes and the larger. The larger ideas in
George Orwell's 1984. And as I mentioned in my
intro, my longer intro episode, which you should go back and listen to
before this episode number one, 151,
where we talked about the literary life of George Orwell, which we're not going to
talk too deeply about that today. We did talk about a little bit of the
content of the book and some of the challenges that I had reading it.
One of the dynamics that I will mention on this episode as well is because
this is copyrighted material, we will be referencing pieces in the book rather
than reading directly from it. Because George
Orwell's estate viciously
protects George Orwell's copyright,
which I find to be very, very fascinating and
also very ironic anyway.
And which align. It also aligns with everything else that you know about or
that we learned about George Orwell. And I wonder how much
he would actually be in favor of that if he were. Even. If you
were even still alive. It would be.
Yeah, I don't think Tom. I don't think he. I don't think he would be.
I think he would probably have a problem with, with some, some of the things
that his heirs have done in his name,
including that the, the. The. Was it the second wife that he married
who was the one who was most. The most vicious
protector of his estate up until her death in the 1970s.
Sonia Brownwell Orwell. She was the one who
sort of set up what we now know as
sort of the. For lack of a better term, although we're going to use it
a lot today, the Orwellian myth structure that
exists around both this book and Animal Farm,
which we're also going to cover later on. Later on this month.
So the book itself is structured in
a three book form. And so in the first book, we are introduced to the
character of Winston. Winston lives in
a totalizing one Party state,
Oceania, which is at war with East Asia or
Eurasia, depending upon which day of the week, is working for whatever
propaganda goal it is that Oceania wants to. Wants to put
forth. And Winston has a job as a
member of the Outer Party. So there's the Inner Party, there's the Outer Party, and
then there are the proles or the proletariat. The proletariat are what
we would call in the United States probably the working class or the poor.
The Outer Party are folks who would be probably like a lot of us on
this recording today. Probably a lot of us listening would be considered middle class, for
lack of a better term. And then the Inner Party folks
are the upper class, right? The folks who know
the game is all a game and yet also are the
loudest proponents of the game. They are
the folks that later on, Alexander Solzhenitsyn would write in the
Gulag Archipelago. They're the same people who,
when they were sent to the Gulag, shouted the loudest in
favor of Communism. Solzhenitsyn documents this
in his book. And that is what is documented here in the first part
of 1984. We also get the beginnings
of Newspeak, the removal of. And the
changing of the language in the first part here of
1984. And some of the philosophies that the Party
has around history. There is no past because the past can be
erased and manipulated and changed. There is no future,
because if there were a future, folks would actually be working towards something that would
be outside the Party. There is merely always the ever expanding
now, the ever expanding present. And
that sets up some of the things that we
see and can think about as dominant
themes that Orwell was trying to push throughout his entire life as an author,
particularly as a political writer and quite frankly, a polemicist,
we cover. Tom and I covered his essay on the
English language a few episodes back. I would recommend going
listening to that. And while Orwell did have a lot of good things to say
about the nature of language and the understanding of
language when he was putting together 1984, I want to read you a direct quote
from him. And he said this. What it is really meant to do is
to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into, quote, unquote, zones of
influence. I thought of it in 1944 as a result of the
Tehran conference and in addition to indicate by
parodying them the intellectual implications of
totalitarianism, and that's really the point of 1984 at a
large level is what are the intellectual implications of totalitarianism
and how do we think about that? If you go and look at
Orwell's Wikipedia page
and you know just a little bit about human nature and a little bit about
personality, Orwell, like any good artist, was a
persnickety, difficult and probably deeply, personally unpleasant.
Ma' am. He did not impress me after reading his Wikipedia page, did
not impress me as a guy. And I did some other research. It wasn't just
Wikipedia. When I did some other digging around on the, on this great sampling tool
we have called the Internet, which again I think Orwell would have been blown away
by that, but went into some digging around and found out
that yes indeed he was a deeply difficult individual. People did not like
him. His, his classmates at Eton
did not like him. He suffered, well, not suffered, but
he, he had the, he had the
psychological, the psychology of being
uncomfortable with being middle class in,
in England and also having to serve in
the military in, in, in India and tried to, and we'll talk
a little bit about this later on, try to make, trying
to make hay with the Spanish Civil War. And that didn't really work out. As
a matter of fact, the writer Henry James told him that all the things you're
going to go to fight for in Spain are all just a bunch of clap
trap. You don't actually really believe that. Which as an upper crust, you
know, British gentleman, I'm sure in that, in a very Doug Murray
lilt, he rejected that feedback
from Mr. Henry James, as the British often do.
But he was fascinated by systems, he was fascinated by institutions and he was
fascinated by how things all click together. And that is
one of the. You gotta sometimes give the author,
not sometimes you have to give the author's due. That is what has I think
driven this book directly into the zeitgeist of
particularly the progressive left imagination in the United
States, but increasingly a globalized imagination
of what totalitarianism actually is. And I have some thoughts on that today which we
can discuss. But I've rambled on long enough and I've introduced the book.
So I'm going to go around the horn. We're going to start with,
with Tom and then we'll go to David and we'll go to Claire.
What are your thoughts or impressions of
1984 I know it's been a little while, Tom, but go
ahead. I, I mean, I remember
again as we were kind of joking about this a few minutes ago, but
yeah, I read it almost 30 years ago, so it's been a while. But
I do remember it being kind of impactful at the time.
And if you think about like, you know, back in the 80s,
I mean, I read it probably 88,
89. So it was like. So we were like,
we were confused, like, oh, is this the book written a couple of years ago?
Or. And then like, of course, your teacher standing in front of the class going,
no, this book was written in 1940, whatever it was. And I was like, then
how do they know what's happening in 1984? Like, we were very confused why we're
reading this book in the first place. But I do remember it was, it was
kind of impactful. It was impactful to the point where people are,
you know, the idea or concept.
If we had a such a strong
political party that could actually do this, like, what would
be the pros and cons of it? And we had a lot of classroom discussion
around the what ifs. Right. Like, we're a
pretty strong two political party country. We've tried several times to have
a third party. It doesn't usually last long. It doesn't usually. And it doesn't usually
make a lot of impact. So we've been a strong two political
party almost from the beginning of our country. So
when we think of one of them falling off and just one of them taking
power and it becoming. What's the difference between a political party
holding all the cards versus a dictator holding all the cards or
a monarchy holding. It's essentially the same thing.
It's government by committee, sure, but it's still one ideology. It's
one direction, one unilateral thought process that
kind of dictates who you are, what you do, what you think and how you
act. So it was, it was pretty impactful to me when I was three.
So I've been, I've been a huge, huge, huge
advocate for trying for us to get a third party that actually sticks
it. Obviously I'm not successful at it, so I'm not
suggesting that it's going to happen. But I've always felt like we've
needed, you know, you always have, like when people tell you there's always three sides
to every story, right? His, hers and the truth. So I figured if we had
three political parties, we could kind of figure out like,
right, wrong and indifferent, like, and then be able to kind of select between the,
the three, you know, the three things that you want to do that you, that
you feel you should be focused towards. So
I feel like this book kind of talks your, you
into some of that stuff, I guess, is what my point was. Like you start
thinking about that stuff as you're reading it, essentially. Right, right. Well. And
you read it at a depressionable age, which a lot of people do read 1984
in high school. That's the first time they're, they touch on these ideas and
just like Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, it's one of those
books that, and Catcher in the Rye and the Great
Gatsby, you know, is. Yeah,
Brave New World. Right. Huxley. Right. The Big Five. Right. That sort of just
embed on you at a very. Or imprint on you at a very impressionable age
and then sort of set the tone for your thinking
in the, in the future. Dave, what were your thoughts on this
book? I, I think the book's, it's unique and
I think that it's honest. My opinion is a better book than Brave New World.
But I, I, why I like this book is because it is very linear.
Like, you walk through this book and I think Orwell's
perspective was that he cared less about characters and more about, like,
this activism through his art. And it seems like he is very dedicated
to world building and shaping a perspective and shaping
a message. And I like this book in that term because I think the
ambiguity. Again, we can make the argument that Winston isn't
developed enough. Right. We come into the book like, was Winston always like
this? What happened to Winston? How do we, we, we meet him somewhere in this
weird middle ground. And I remember when I first read
it, I was kind of frustrated with that. And I, as time goes on, I
went back and I looked at things with this and I was like, well, but
that offers us a very unique perspective, though,
because there is less character development. I think it makes it
easier for us as a reader to almost insert ourselves in that. And I think,
I don't know, but that was a feeling I kept on getting when I went
back to this is going. Maybe that's what his intention was, that I'm not going
to put a lot of focus on the nuanced character pieces, but I'm going to
let the characters be almost like the, the pong
paddles, right? Like bouncing this idea or this interaction between, like, power
and totality and propaganda. It's like the characters seem
to be these interplacing people like pieces that we
would just kind of walk with them along this and go, oh, this is the
introduction to that theme in the book. And then we'd seen somebody else. And this
is our introduction to that theme in the book. And for that, I really liked
it. Going back, Tom, what you said, I think that it.
When I first read it, too, it was impactful. I had no idea why it
was impactful. Like, I just knew that when I was reading something in high school
going, there's something to this. And you have to. Obviously, I had to get a
little bit older and to spend some time actually reflecting. And I think the last
15, 20 years have been really, really interesting because we think about the word
Orwellian, right? And the beautiful thing is both the right and the left can use
it because double speak. And isn't that a fun thing we have to bear witness
to now? So, again, it's a very.
I would agree it's impactful. And I think that only
getting ready for this episode and going back and looking at it again, just, I
guess, with a new set of eyes for myself, I was like, oh, there are
some things of this I didn't really realize the first time I watched. I was
trying to. I was focusing on the characters. I was focusing on
Winston. I was focusing on just the interaction, especially at the end with
the romance and the lack thereof. And then there was
some interesting pieces I focused on in the beginning. And then I went back. I'm
like, I don't think that this is the whole. I don't think this is what
the perspective of this is about characters at all. I think that the characters
are secondary to the storyline.
Okay. I might be. I might
be. I'm out to push back on you a little bit, Dave, because I was
not. Maybe. And maybe I'm reading too many literary novels. That might be
it. I might be. I might be, too. I'll grant you that. I might be
too down that road. Right. Things.
And I. I am. More. Well, we'll get to James Baldwin and
everyone's protest novel in a minute. Claire, you are.
You were very excited to read 1984. This is one of the books that I
initially sent out. My request of, like, hey, who wants to join me on this
podcast episode? Like, I do at the end of every year. You're like, yeah,
that one. And I did not, by the way. Normally I try to, like, pick
people, like, who I think is going to do what. And I did not
anticipate this one coming from you, so. So why are you excited about
1984. First and foremost, because I had to rehabil my
reputation with your audience after selecting Lolita.
I. I did pick Lolita for its controversy
because I had never read it, and I wanted to see one.
What all the fuss was about because I knew that we would have a. An
exceptionally interesting conversation, which we did, you know,
so. So this was in part to sort of counteract that, but it was
also an opportunity to not revisit
high school, but to reread
something that I first read as an idealistic
high school student who was naive, who had not
experienced much grit in
the world. Right. So it's interesting when I.
When I remember and Tom and David, you. You touched upon
it already, sort of your memories of your first introduction
to the book was far different from revisiting it now.
And now having gone through some grit, some
decades of realism,
some decades of true polarization. And I know we will get into,
you know, is it. Is it still dystopian when it's really mirroring
kind of current political life? I don't know. I think we might need
to come up with a different description of it. But I also chuckle,
Hasan, when you. When you described Mr. Orwell as
persnickety, because it's one of my favorite
English vocab words, I used it the other day in
reference to. I think zoom was being persnickety at the. At the time,
you know, so if even fiction is in some
way autobiographical, you know, I. I
think you do see a little bit of the persnicketiness of Mr. Orwell
and David. It's interesting your observation about the fact that these characters were not
terribly well developed, and maybe you didn't notice that the first go around.
I didn't really either, and I couldn't put my finger on what was different
this time until you said that. And I think it also,
for you, it made it easier to insert yourself into the
novel. For me, it made it easier to care less about the fate
of the characters, because it wasn't really about the characters
themselves. It was about the what if? And it was about
the, you know, a particular character named
Winston that we don't care that much about, because to your. To your point, we
don't really know his backstory. We don't know how he got to where he is,
but at the end, when he made the decision to choose
conformity over love because that was the easier path,
you know, do we really care that he never really figured it out? I don't.
I don't know. I'm kind of undecided about that. So a lot, a lot to
unpack, certainly. But reading it again as an adult,
at least in the, in the guise of an adult versus my
idealistic high school years, very different
book indeed. The first time I read this
book was when I was about 15, 16 maybe. And
interestingly enough, I did read it, along with Brave New World and
Brave New World, which you'll also cover on the podcast coming up here in a
little bit. Brave New World stuck with me more than
1984, even at like the age of like 15,
partially because to the point that
David has already brought up. Aldous Huxley is just a more
literary writer, right? He's, he's just, he's writing into more of
a developed space. The characters are more developed, their
motivations are more clear, I
guess at a, at a, at an authorial level, or
maybe not an authority level. Maybe that's what I want to say. They're clearer at
a character development level. Right. And I was also reading this book
during a period of time when I was beginning to explore and really get into
movies. So I was being very much influenced by. This is why I brought up
screens in the introduction. I was very much being influenced by screens and
visual culture. You know, it was a summer. I mean, my. The summer of the
year I turned 16. I watched probably a hundred movies
in that summer. So I had my first interaction. Well, this was
the heady days of the end of the collapse of Blockbuster Video, the heady
days of the collapse of Blockbuster Video when you could walk into Blockbuster and
you could walk out with like packs of videos. They were bundling DVDs together because
they couldn't figure out how to compete with anything. And they would just give them
to you walking out the door. They walk out with like $20 worth of movies.
It was insane. And
so, you know, I would go from watching, you know, Shawshank Redemption to,
you know, Braveheart to Goodfellas to
Apocalypse now to, you know, she Wore a Yellow
Ribbon. And also at the same time, I'm reading, you know, I'm reading these,
reading these books. So all those, all these things were kind of merging together in
my head, which made for a heady stew. Yeah, Tom?
Oh, I was just gonna. I was just kind of chuckling inside that
watching Apocalypse. I can only imagine a 16 year old watching Apocalypse now
route while reading A Brave new world in
1984. What I could only imagine the
turmoil inside. That's my grandma told me when she. So
my grandma, who was, Who Is fan of Oprah. Oprah came on at 4 o'
clock where I lived when I was in high school. She, she, she, this was
the deal. She said you could watch any movies that you want between like noon
and 4. But when 4 o' clock comes, you're done. Oprah's
coming on, you're done. And like, you're done. That's it. Like, I don't care if
you're in the middle of the movie. I don't care if the guy's screaming. I
don't care what's happening. Like, you're out. Go outside. Like, do something else.
And so I knew I had that little, that little spot
where I would be able to, to consume. And I did. I did. It was
a, it was a big summer. Okay? So several. I've taken
notes while everybody's been talking. Several things that jump out to me. The keyword that
everybody uses is. And even I've used is impactful. Right? So follow
up question.
Oh, actually, before I even do the follow up question, reading it again,
right In. In light of me be their 30 years have now passed. I
got to admit, I was gonna save this for later, but what the hell, I'll
go with it now. I kind of.
This is gonna be terrible, but I'm gonna be the terrible person. I
laughed at the book. I laughed at it. I did.
I chuckled and I, I thought, oh, you sweet summer child.
Right? Like the last 30 years that we've lived through. Not
in the Soviet Russia, which is dead and gone as of, as of the
1980s. Pachay, Vladimir Putin. The
greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, according to him. Not my
words, his. But we don't need like the
Stasi and like children reporting on their parents.
We've got cell phones for that and everybody has them in their pocket by the
way. We're feeding all of our data into them. We don't need
screens on this that are on all the time that watch us and that we
watch. We already have those. They're brought to us by Apple. We don't need them.
We have them. We have them. They're brought to us by Apple and by Android.
Right. They're brought to us by Goog Google. We have the greatest behavioral
tracking system ever created in the history of
the world. It's called the Internet. And so
I read these things and then we just all
went through Covid together and we're all gonna have different opinions about what happened with
COVID But we did all go through Covid together and we can all sort of
see with our eyes exactly what happened. Whatever the reasons are or
justifications don't matter. Like, these are the things that happen, right?
And I need an explanation. And I put
this, I did put this in my, in my book or in my script. We
could talk about this today. I need an explanation. If that's not Orwellian, if those
things aren't Orwellian, then I need an explanation for what happened in the last 30
years. I need a better explanation other than maybe just governmental
incompetency or just foolish people who are pursuing power.
Now. Keep that in the back of your head. Because that was sort of the,
the framework that I came to and I. Did I crack? I sort of cracked
up laughing. I did. Like, I was like, okay,
like, this is definitely written from a mid 20th century
perspective when the horrors of this
seemed to be more horrible. And now we've wound up in, we've
wound up in a different spot. So follow up question, which I was
originally going to go back to. How young a person do you think should read
this book? Who would
you throw, what's the minimum age? You would throw this at somebody?
So my, my first reaction to that is it sort of, it, it sort of
triggers for me and I, and I, I laugh at
myself when I look at the high school students of today, my
nephew being one of them, and the thought of him reading what I
read at his age, I, I feel. Not specific to
1984, but a lot of the books that we've already mentioned, I think
he's not ready for those. First of all, he's not, he's not a big reader.
I always had a book in my hand. My last day of school,
I made a beeline to the library. I was that kid, right?
So he's, he's, he's got different interests, but I also feel
I'm laughing at myself because I'm finally at the point where I go, kids today,
but kids today don't read, you know, to the level that,
that we did. Or at least that's my, my accusation of that.
How early should someone read this book? Among the others that we
mentioned, today's kids of, of today's
era. I, because kids, to me, the, my, my,
my initial reaction to that is it depends on the era. If we're talking about
today's kids, I think they could read it, but I think they're going to
read it, discard it and go, oh, yeah, Big Brother, isn't that a reality TV
show on cbs? And then
they'll move On. So, you know, this is the TV and
tablet generation.
I think, I think the same age group, I
think that, you know, middle, high school. Middle, high school, meaning like
sophomore, junior would probably make sense.
I'm kind of with Claire here in a, in a sense,
not exactly, but in a sense, but because I do think today's
kids, I, I definitely don't think they read as much as, as we were.
And I don't, I also don't think the curriculum is forcing them to read as
much as we had to as well. But I do think that
they're, I think they're, they are more advanced than we were.
I think they think differently. I think they think through problems differently. I
think they, they see things differently than we did because they've had so much
exposure to it such, in such early way earlier than we did.
Our only exposure was the evening news. They're exposed to it 24 7.
They can see whatever they want. So I don't, I don't think the age
much matters. I think, I think that that middle high school age would be great
for them to read it. But I think their reaction to it might be a
little bit different than what you were thinking, Claire. I think their reaction to it
is going to be not so much is like, you know,
oh, isn't Big, Big Brother a show? But kind of what
Hasan was alluding to a few minutes ago. They're going to read the book and
it's not going to be as impactful because they're already seeing some of it,
right? Like so, so they're already seeing that the government can see everything that
they do. The government, Big data is the, the government
at this point. Like I think they're already seeing all that. So it's not
gonna shock them. It's not gonna, it's not gonna be as in like when we
looked at that, we were like, oh, wait, what, oh my God, what if a
government actually did that? And my kids, my kids are looking
at it going, what are you talking about, dad? The government is already doing that.
We're just falling into their trap, so to speak. And it doesn't matter if they're
a Democrat or Republican, they're both doing it. So to, to
my kids, that single source of Big Brother
that was, is, is represented in 1984 as one political
party in my kids views. It's just the government
is the government. They, they think that, that regardless of the
parties that, that they represent, they would represent that whole thing. And
I, I think that, I think they would read that book and go
and yeah, like I think, I don't think, I don't think it would be like,
like I said, we've all said it was impactful to us. I don't think it
would be impactful to them the same way because I think that they, they would
feel like they're already living it. What, what might surprise them and what
I, what I think what I would love to hear or see is if
any one of them could, could wrap a bow around the fact
that this book was written 80 years ago like that. That
I think I would like to see what that association would be. But I don't
think the content of the book would, would surprise them as much as it did
us. Yeah,
I, I think I, I think probably 10th grade
is what I think just development stage
wise. That's when we're trying to find where we're trying to find our tribe. Right.
We really want to isolate. I think political activism has started in 9th
grade now. So I think we have to start recognizing the fact that children are
more political today than they ever were. I just
think the big difference is that at least. So I read this
in I think 2000.
For me it was we, we the students were the
ones asking the questions. I think we're a post question
asking educational system. I think we're in a prompt
delivery education system. So I think that we have to get.
It'd be fascinating to listen to see them do it.
Tom, to your point, I think, I do think that
there are some radical advantages that kids today have
that we don't have just in terms of awareness.
I think that they're hyper aware and maybe that's what all the mental health stuff
is about. But I think it'd be interesting because when I'm,
when I have my experience working with people under the age of 23, I'm very
prompt driven. I have to present a series of secular
prompts in sequence and out of that
just a wonderful array of different ideas come out of it. But they're not
self driving those questions. They're not self invoking. Like
I'm thinking about this because I would love what I would the prompt again to
what I would love to ask them is going is if this was
the vision 80 years ago. Use your minds guys. What is your
vision? Right? What is the multiplier
effect that you kids can see going 80 years into the
future? Because I think that that would also be a fascinating thing to watch them
because yeah, I think that's a really good question. I don't know the
answer. I just think that 9th and 10th grade and maybe you
have to put the book on audio and maybe you have to kind of watch,
kind of prompt them through listening to pieces by pieces of it.
But I don't think the material is above their head. I think that they're definitely
ready for it. I think I, I think I
read it my junior year, so 11th grade, but I'm fine. Like I said, I'm
fine. 10 or 11 is fine with me. Either one of those I think would
be fine. I'm fascinated by the idea of
prompt of prompt, a prompt delivery based
system versus a post question asking
system or maybe not possible pre question
asking system. I'm going to get back to that because there's a fundamental difference.
I'm doing a lot of work, interestingly enough, in some other work that I'm doing
with other clients out of my leadership consultancy.
I'm currently doing a lot of work with the four major LLMs.
So I'm working with Perplexity, I'm working with Copilot, I'm working with Claude,
and I'm working with ChatGPT. And the way,
David, to your point, the way that you think in
relation to those systems is a fundamentally different way of
thinking than search based thinking which
comes out of Google and which is what we're all all sort of very
familiar with. So it is a different way of thinking. It's interesting that you, that
you brought that up. Okay, let's turn the corner here
and talk a little bit about some of my personal problems with this book
and then I'll use this to jump off to other folks with this.
So yes, I did kind of chuckle at it. I tried to take the
book seriously, I did on its own merits and I failed miserably at
probably at doing that. And the biggest reason, I think I failed miserably at it.
And by the way, this really began to happen to me when we, when we,
as we got more into the book and as Orwell began to develop more of
the ideas that Winston was beginning to
articulate. Right. So right around the middle of
book one and going into book two, Winston
begins to. And it's almost as if
weirdly enough, from a literary perspective, it's almost as if Orwell
didn't have enough for two more sections in this book.
And so he had to come up with the woman foil because
anyway, he had to come up with the woman foil. And so he creates the
character Julia and she is a about as one
dimensional character as I've ever seen. In literature.
And, and. And there is one line in here when. When
she first, you know, sort of engages with him
and Winston is. Is growing and is thinking and
is. And is moving, but he
thinks about her in a particular way. And one of the things. A
couple things he says. He says, number one, that her. Her.
Her sexuality and her. Yeah, here we go. With
Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. The sex impulse
was dangerous to the party. And because the sex impulse was dangerous to the party,
every act of sexual engagement that they had in the book
was a act of protest and an act of
rejection of the party. Which, by the way, I will
say this as a person who's been married a long, long time.
I've never. Even when I was single, I never met a person. And then immediately,
like, boom. Like, just went to the thing. I don't know how it works now,
apparently I hear that that happens a lot now. It did not happen for me
that way. There was some sort of seduction there. And I presumed that even more
in the 1940s there would be some form of seduction. But then I went back
and read, read, read and looked a little bit at Orwell, and I think Orwell
struggled with women. So there you go. I don't think he knew
how to write that. So Winston literally meets Julia. She drops a note in
his hand, and then, like, they're off to the races. It's.
It's weird. It's the 1940s version of, like,
OnlyFans or
Tinder. Yeah, it's the 1940s version of
Tinder. Hand to hand Tinder.
So. So. So he's got these ideas, right, wrapped around this
one dimensional character of Julia, and
it becomes more and more clear as he, you
know, starts to set up. Try to set up a relationship with her, and he's
trying to find a place to meet her that's away from the telescreens. And then
he meets this guy, Mr. Charrington, who eventually turns out to be something else. But
we'll leave that aside for just a moment. It becomes more and more clear to
me, or became more and more clear to me as I was reading the book,
that what Orwell was writing was protest
literature. It was protest literature against the Stalinist
regiment. It was also protest literature against capitalism. Because some of the
things he says in the book about capitalism, I'm like, that's not. That's. I don't
think that that is what you think it means. But he's coming. Well, he's
coming at it, and I have to give forgiveness so one of the principles that
I have, whenever I read something that's from the mid century of the United States
or of the west, going all the way back into like the
1890s or 1880s, I give those people grace
because they didn't know about gulag
there in. The idea of a concentration camp where you would put your political enemies
was not a reality for them.
When. When Communism was first pitched by Lenin
and the Marxist ideals were first pitched by Lenin,
and Stalin wasn't running anything yet and Trotsky was still
alive, everybody thought this could work. Everybody thought
this was absolutely a new way of creating a new man. They weren't saying it
in an ironical, cynical, nihilistic way. That all came after World War
II. We actually talked a little bit about this with Tinder Is the Night, because
this kind of popped up with Tender Is the Night. You also had the. The
old ending of the Victorian colonialism, right?
And so historically, you have this brew. And then the shock of World War I
came, and then people finally were like, oh, my God, like, wait, the institutions
failed. Holy crap, what are we going to do? And so there's this holy
crap moment that happens between the end of World War I and the beginning of
World War II, where all the idealism and everything else is just sort of up
in the air. And this is what Orwell came out of. So Orwell's writing a
protest novel with all of that underneath him. And I did find myself agreeing
with James Baldwin's idea, which he writes in his
book Notes of a Native Son, where he wrote a critique called
Everyone's Protest Novel about Uncle Tom's Cabin. And one of the
points that he made is that in that novel or in that
essay is that protest literature
is not actually literature. It's just pamphleteering.
And pamphleteering is fine, but we shouldn't treat it as literature. We
shouldn't treat it as a novel. We shouldn't treat it as if it's some erudite
intellectual thing. And James Baldwin, of course, is writing
in the context of, again, Uncle Tom's Cabin. He's writing the context of
civil rights. He's writing in the context of slavery. But
the critique applies here because Orwell was writing protest
literature. He was protesting against Stalinism. He was protesting against
gulags. He was protesting against what he saw as
the.
The. The lack of purity. It's interesting,
in political parties in America, we talk about politics, we talk about purity tests, the
lack of purity in Marxism and the lack of purity in
democratic socialism. He was protesting against that, and
I thought you always get the impression when someone's writing
a protest literature, like, Alice Walker did this with the Color Purple. That was also
protest literature. You always get the impression that they want you to do something
with, with their protests. They want you to take action. It's interesting that David
said that political activism is now replaced, you
know, reading and as a form of identity format, not reading, but as a
method of identity formation. Now, in the ninth grade, that's
insane to me. Like, that's absolutely insane. You don't know anything about anything. When you're
in ninth grade, you're gonna tell me you have some political opinion about
capital gains taxes or something. Like, you don't, you don't
work, you have no money. What
are you getting active about? What are we doing? Active about
what? So that's, I would love to explore that later. Maybe not on the
show. We'll talk about that later. But my point is,
when you're writing, when a writer writes a polemic like this,
he wants you to do something. And so I guess the question is,
what did Orwell want us to do? Totally different question
to what I wrote down, but we're going a totally different direction, which is fine.
So I'm going to start with David, and then we'll move to Claire and then
Tom. David, what does Orwell want us to do with his.
What I think is his protest literature? And you can disagree with that, that framing,
that's fine. But what does he want us to do? What action does he want
us to take? Because I can't tell. Great
question. I, I, My takeaway from all this is I think that Orwell wants us
to choose living naturally. Meaning that I think that Julia is
not a person, but she's the personification of the wild,
untamed nature. That's why he can be a grotesque man
and she still falls for him. Because it's more of a,
it's more of an encounter with this representation.
And at the end, when he get, when he, when he betrays her, he
betrays what? He betrays his own nature, he betrays his own humanity.
I take away from this book that Orwell is asking us
to choose us to always, like, define
maybe a higher order, meaning that there's no reference to a spiritual
north in this book anywhere. And I think that there's an undertone
that if we had a high, like a higher order or a guiding principle within
us, we would, we wouldn't sabotage ourselves. We wouldn't. We
wouldn't for lack of better. I mean, we wouldn't, we wouldn't just
undercut ourselves in these pieces because he. It
feels like all of these encounters. And I think the whole idea of doublespeak
is that because we are not standing for us, we are
not making a declaration that we need to stand for something or we stand for
nothing. It felt like this whole entire book was just
this projection of this lost soul in society
that you don't, you know, you're not, you're not, you don't have allegiance with anything.
Right? So you. And so he is attracted to,
like, the women he finds on the screen, even though he's disgusted
by her. It's like it's because you're rejecting your own nature. At least that was
my takeaway, that every single person in the book is more
of a placeholder of some form, of a deeper thing that
we need to connect with within ourself. Whether it's friendship,
companionship, whether it's sex, whether it's love,
whether it's just loyalty, it seems like all these people are
parts of it. And I think that that's why when he's going back and he's
changing words, he's like, the new speak. He's having this
crazy introspective moment where he's like, what am I doing? Like, what.
What in the world am I? And yet he continues to do it. And it
feels like all of this, this entire book is just herself reflection for me.
So I think that that's what he's asking us to do is just be, Be
introspective.
Claire, what is Orwell asking us to do?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a little bit trite by now, right? But
to say, because we hear it every day, you know, the, the one party that's
not in power tells the other party, think for yourself. Right?
Don't just, don't just take what they tell you on the news because it's not
really news anymore. It's really just an entertainment channel and it's spunning your
own narrative. So I think it's that. But I,
but I think at its core it is also. And David, I think this
is, is in alignment with what you're saying as well.
It's be, be the first one who
does not sort of revert
back to, I'm going to go the path of least resistance. I
peaked my head up out of, you know, out of the foxhole. I got
threatened with rats, didn't like that so much. And therefore I, you know, I, I
gave up the one woman who finally might have loved me because
did I mention the rats? And. Right. And then he just sort
of at the end of it goes, yeah, I just, I, I love Big
Brother and I, and I. So I think if there, if there is
a call to action and we could even debate. Is that really true?
But if there is a call to action, I think it is something around that
it's to say there has to be a first
person character, what have you, that goes into the breach who
doesn't say, well, I tried a little bit. It got uncomfortable.
Yes. So much about love. But you know, do you know the divorce rate? That
wasn't going to work out anyway with Julia. And so. Right. So I think,
I think if there is a call to action, it's that be, be the first
one, because there has to be a first one who is going to
rise above. And you could probably make the same argument about the
Color Purple, about a lot of the other protest type
narratives that they're saying. We, we can't. There, there
always has to be one who breaks the barrier.
Look, I think he's not, not to jump on
the bandwagon here, but I mean, it seems like a pretty easy question to
answer. Right. Like, I just. The way you put it, Clara, I think the two
of you guys are kind of saying the same thing, just different ways. And I'm
going to say a third way. I think he's giving us a
roadmap on how to lose our individualities. Right. Like, I think that's what
one of the things that he. That's like an underlying tone of the book. Like
you are not an individual anymore. You're just going to conform. And you know, Claire
used the, the term conform and you know, David, you used.
Used it a little differently, but it's, it's essentially he's giving us the roadmap and
I think it's a warning to your point. It's like, it's like a warning sign.
Like, hey, don't. Don't allow this to happen. Like, you have to, you have
to fight the power. We've been talking about fighting the man. I don't even
forever. Right. He's just adding. He's just, he's just giving it to you in a
kind of, in a way that he thinks is going to, to like really hit
and resonate with you is like two plus two equals five.
Right. Like, that's the whole, the whole thing. Like, because they said so.
And you just can't fight that. You're just gonna. To your point, you're going to
conform to that. And I, I think
that there's more to it than, than just someone has
to fight back. I think the whole point of it is that he's showing you
that we all have to, all of us have to fight back. He can't be
an individual like you. You can't just say, like,
listen, I, I've seen enough post apocalyptic movies and read
enough of these books. If you get that one person that just raised the hand
and goes, hey, this is wrong, boom. They shoot that person and nobody else wants
to say anything. So, you know, like, it's, it can't be. The problem
solves itself. Yeah. See, it, it
can't be. It's basically like, you know, one of those things where,
you know, the sum of the parts have to
be greater than the, than the, the parts themselves. Right. Like, I forget, I,
I always forget how to, how that phrase goes. I always mess it up. But,
but the reality of it is it can't just be one person
sitting in a, in a room rewriting history. As, as you may mentioned,
David, you can't just be that one person. Go, hey, this is wrong.
I shouldn't be doing this. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go start a riot. I'm
gonna go start a revolt. I'm gonna start a revolution.
Has to like you, There has to be something to fight the machine.
You have to, you need a machine to fight the machine. You can't, like, you
know, that's like, it's like going into a, you know, into a. What was
that the movie Real Steel with the robot fighters.
That's like going in the ring with the robot fighter. I'm not, I'm gonna lose
that fight. Well, I think
that's, but I think that's a common. Claire, you use the term trite.
Yeah, we use the term trope. That's a common trope, right?
Of these, of science fiction novels. I mean, heck, even Isaac Asimov,
the link that I sent out to everybody, Isaac Asimov's critique of 1984,
which was a really well written critique by a guy who wrote a lot of
science fiction. And even he, he was like,
really like, what are we, what are we doing here? Like, I'm a professional
writer. This is not, this is not the thing.
So I, I, I look at the trope and
I look at, I was
born in the late 70s. I came of age after all this was over. Like,
it's, it's sort of like I came of age after the rebel, after Big Brother
was Already installed. The rev. Already over. Like, what am I revolting against?
Right? Like sometimes the black community,
depending upon, like, what the ages of the black folks have to be sitting around
the room together, eventually somebody will bring up Malcolm and Martin,
and eventually then somebody else will bring up crack cocaine, and then that ends the
conversation. Like, this is because, like, it's over. Like, the revolution's over.
And, you know, I take from that, as an. As a person in the African.
As an African American person, the person who lives in that community
are. And engages with that community sometimes I take from that. That
weirdly enough, kind of like Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter,
I take from that you've won the freedom
to go off and to Tom's point, be an individual. You've run. You've won
the freedom to go off and do that. You don't need a revolution anymore. Now.
What you need is. I've been saying this word a lot more often lately. You
need a reformation of systems, a reformation of
institutions, because the. The unique things that
created the environment for a revolution are over.
Like those.
Like, you know, those. Those dynamics are done.
And by the way, if you don't believe me. If you don't believe me,
say what you want about blm, they tried to start a revolution.
And where are we at today? Where's the revolution?
If I think. Or even going back. Or even going back one second, David. Even
going back further. Occupy Wall Street. I remember. I'm old enough
to remember when Occupy Wall street of the Bernie Bros. Were out there, I walked
past some of those in campus because I was living and working in New York.
Well, not living, but working in New York City. I talked to some of those
people. Revolution is over. Broke the Tea Party people. The
revolution is over, bro. You lost. To paraphrase
for the Big Lebowski, do what your parents did, sir. Go get a job.
So, like, what are we? What. I get it. That Orwell
is passionate. This is Baldwin's critique, also with African American novelists
specifically. This is his. Was his specific critique even in the
50s, particularly with Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.
We are at a point where the mode for
revolution has shifted,
and we need a different word, I think. But the only words that were
offered in 1984, to everybody's point here, are words that would
inspire revolution. So what are we? I'm. You know, I. I don't know what to
do with that. Go ahead, David. Sorry, I didn't mean. I did not mean to
cut you off. No, no, it's fine.
So my My job is very unique because when people come and they're talking to
me about meaning making, I don't ask people what they're living for. I
ask what they're willing to die for. And I think that that's a fundamental
piece that is missing. And I think that that's almost like the comparison between
1984 and like the Matrix idea is that
Neo was willing to die for something. He's no longer standing. I want
to live for this. And I think that when we think about blm, my only
criticism about that is no one was willing to die for. For blm. I
think everyone was living for a world that BLM could create. But I
don't think that people were willing to die for that. And I think that's a
massive, just shift. And there's a. Almost like this invisible
wall there, because if you go to like the World War II generation,
right, there's a very staunch difference in attitude
and. Or how they look at America, right,
Versus every generation that's come because there was an existential threat like, I'm
willing to die for this. And I think that a lot of the generations have
compoundingly been focusing on what am I living for? It seems
nuanced, but I think it's everything. And I think when we think about
meaning making and we think about the book, and I think that maybe that's. I
was. Claire, when you were talking, it kind of struck me like
maybe that's an underlying message here. Is that.
Is Orwell Is. Is. Was Winston even willing to die
for change? Or was he just trying to find a reason to live?
Right, because finding a reason to live is different than something findings like, I'm willing
to die for this cause. And so, I don't know. There's an idea that was
coming to my head when you were talking because, I mean, no one gets to
the answers in psychotherapy going, what are you living
for? Nobody answers the question.
But if I ask people, what are you willing to die for?
Amazingly, three or four themes come out of everybody, and all of a sudden you
start having a very different conversation. Well, and
you. So I. I love that. And I don't think that's a. That's a small
distinction. I think it's huge. I think one of, one of the.
So first of all, the short answer to your question, no, I don't think Winston
was. Was willing to die because again, did we mention the rats?
Right? So he's willing to forego the idea of maybe some.
Some torture light for, you know, to, to
in the balance of true love. I think what makes for me
1984 deeply unsatisfying is there's no,
there's no triumph at the end. Winston, you know,
the hero didn't win. Well, the hero didn't win because
Winston didn't win and Winston wasn't a hero. I mean, coming back to
your, you know, your earlier observation about this isn't really deeply
developed characters. Hasan, you
had mentioned my all time favorite movie earlier when you said the
Shawshank Redemption. One of the things that makes that
movie so powerful is it's deeply unfair throughout the
entire movie treatment of our protagonist, the
hero, etc. But there's a, in the title of the
movie, there's a redemption. You know, it started out as a Stephen King short story
and it became this massively just powerful movie to
me because there was a, there was a triumph at the end. There was a,
there was a hero and he got his redemption. We don't see that in 1984.
So for me, the ending is deeply unsatisfying because it's like he
did think he was going to be part of a revolt and a, and a
rebellion, but he wasn't willing to lead it from the front. He was
just willing to follow somebody different from who he was told to follow.
And at the end it didn't matter and he just went back to conforming
more completely. Tom,
you had a thought when David was talking. I saw across your face.
Well, I, my, I, I, it's,
it's hard. It's right. I, I think, I think to say
that, you know, movements that die because. No, that people aren't willing
to die for that. I, I think that I, I'm not sure how I feel
about that because specifically about the BLM movement, which is really where I, where I
kind of hit me. I was like, people did die for that. They just died
prior to the movement starting. But they were the catalyst, right? Like, so they, they,
people were dying for BLM before they knew it was blm,
right? Like, so there have been people to stand on the side of
principle for the black community and die over it. We just didn't label
it as BLM until somebody put a label on it after the fact. Now, I
do agree, once you started the BLM movement, it kind of died off for probably
that reason. I'm not, I'm not going to argue that. But to say
nobody died for BLM is probably a slight
miscalculation of words. Back, back to the book part of
it though, you know, it's Weird. And I don't know how this relates to the
book at all. It just sparked into my brain because my daughter and I had
a conversation a couple of weeks ago that I think kind of to your point,
David, about like the generations of. And what they're fighting for or what they
would die for and so on and so forth. And my daughter and I got
into a conversation about the difference, the differences in the
generations themselves and where there was a, a
really, a big drop off in, in her brain. In her
brain, in the, the mannerisms and the ways in
which we interact with each other from Gen X to the
millennials. Like so there's, there's this huge gap of, of the
way that, and quite honestly, I don't think
the, the, the views of Gen X to the, to
the Greatest generation are as far away as people think
they are as compared to the Gen X and the Millennials. I think that is
leaps and bounds away from the idealisms and the way that we think.
And then the millennials to the Gen Zs are even
more. I think the, I think that the, it's like, it's like
compounding the problem, right? Like we're, and when we were talking about
this, I had said, yeah, because there's nothing that has happened in the generations,
lives that have mattered. If you think about it, every generation before
them had some impactful event that happened to them. World
War II, Vietnam, etc. Etc. Ours was 9
11. When 911 hit, there was a dramatic
change in what you would die for in this country. People were becoming, they went
back to patriotism. They wanted to go join the military and die for the country
because they, they just couldn't fathom what just happened on US soil.
That was only 22 years ago. 24, 24 years ago. That
was, that was not that long ago. But the two generations that I've mentioned
were way too young to live through it and have it impact them. Right? So
I think, I think there's, I think there's a lot of,
a lot of unknowns when you ask that question to a Gen
Xer or older. They probably can answer that question a lot
easier and faster than millennials and younger. So
spinning this back to the book at least a little bit, I think is I,
I think that's part of the problem, right, that people, when they read this book
and you're. I think you're right, David. Where there's nothing in this book
that says that I would die to protect that or die to, to
eradicate that. There's no, either way, there's nothing
clear that says, this is so bad, somebody should do something about
it, or it's so positive that we should all fight for it.
There's no impactful thing that happens in 1984 that
clearly defines who the protagonist really is. Because to your point, Claire, I
think it's dead on. You can't get behind Winston as a
protagonist. He's just not that right. He's not. He's not a
hero. But that's. I think that's the underlying problem with the
book. In that critique that you were talking about, Islam was like,
that's what it is. There's no. There's no impact. There's no
singular impactful event that makes you think yay or nay
on whether this book is right or wrong or. There's no moral compass. There's no.
Like, there's no. Although us reading it, we have
moral compasses. So when we read the book, we feel a certain way and
we read it and know that we wish or don't. Like, we want it to
go this way or that way. And the fact is, it just doesn't. It just
kind of ends. Right. Like. It does. Yeah, it just sort of
stops. Right. Like, just sort of in the. But
anyway. Anyway. Right. It sort of stops, like, in the middle of a sentence or.
Like, it's very clear. It's very French. It's a very French
book. Wait, didn't we use that same phrase for
Tenders? We did. We did use it, actually. We did.
Well, there's something. So there's something interestingly inherent in
writers who write in a British. More British
mode than writers who write in a more American mode. So if you're
writing more in an American mode, like, even a writer, like.
What's his name? Cormac McCarthy, right. In blood
Meridian or the Road or no country for Old Men or
whatever. Like, even the most sort of. For lack of a better
term. And I like Clint Eastwood, too, as a director. I put Clint Eastwood of
Cormac McCarthy in the same box in my head, because they're just saddle bastards. Like,
I watched Gran Torino a few. Few weeks ago. They just write. They just write
saddle bastard books and they write sad. They reduce saddle bastard movies. Like, they're just
sad at the end. And. But, But. But there's a. There's a
redemption arc that's built into that because they're still Americans, fundamentally.
Right. But people writing
in a British mode, even if they're Americans, they adopt that British mode. Please. The
British are very much influenced by the French. They don't want to admit it, but
the French are okay with an open ending sort of, ah,
let me go over here and have some wine and baguettes, you know, and then
we're done, you know, or, or, you know, or we're all going to
be nihilists, but we're going to have good food at the end.
If you eat terrible food over there. Yeah, well, the British
aren't on board with the food thing, but they are on board with the,
with the sort of, for lack of a better term,
cynicism and disillusionment and just sort of saying that this is just the thing. That
as it is, there is no happy ending here. And I don't know if that's
the knock on effect from the end of colonialism and from the
decline of the Victorian empire or
if that comes specifically out of the
British experiences that happened during World War I, which are still impacting the
continent and still impacting this globally today. Something
that everybody has talked about here. This is my next point and then we'll move
on. But something that everybody's talked about here and I think we have to touch
on this. And David kind of kicked it off, but
Claire, you also picked it up and then Tom, you didn't, you didn't mention it
at all. Probably because we don't actually usually talk about this on the show. So
it's not something that we've, we've sort of touched on earlier. But
the, the main critique that I probably had against
Orwell even before, or not Orwell, but against 1984, even before
reading it and then reading it, it sort of jumped out to me even before
the Baldwin critique was the lack of a transcendent
belief system. So we
know in Communist Russia,
we know this for a fact, Stalinist Russia
that Orwell was, was actively writing against
Orthodox Christianity was strong. We
know this. We have clear historical evidence for this. People prayed,
people did vigils, people prayed in the Gulags. Again,
Solzhenitsyn brings this up. He even mentions that there were people in the
Gulag who came in atheists and walked out Orthodox Christians
and there were people who came in Orthodox Christians and walked out atheists.
That is the transcendent piece. I don't know how Orwell missed that,
but that's the transcendent piece in here. And when
you talk about what will people, what are you willing to die for
in our own time? Everybody who follows Islam
in a radical fashion knows exactly the answer to that question.
They know it. And by the way their main critique against the West. Let me,
let me, let me restate radical Islam's main critique against the West.
You're not willing to die for anything. We are. We beat you. We
eat your culture.
Convert or die. And I'm simplifying,
but that's the message. That's the message. That's the message. They've been
screaming at us for 50 years.
They know what they're willing to die for. They're willing to die for a transcendent
idea. I would assert that politicians don't understand this,
particularly Western politicians don't understand this. And thus they say that the language,
that language that comes from a state of transcendence or from an understanding of the
transcendence, it's just naive people and just, if we give them enough
factories and like Netflix, they'll turn into
Westerners. And I don't, I don't think that's,
I don't think that's the truth. I think that's fundamentally missing something about
transcendence. And I can speak to this a little bit as a
Christian who tries to live out and walk out Christian principles
and believes that there is a soul and there is a God and I will
have to answer to, to him when I show up there and there is
someplace I am going that has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
Okay. When you speak out of that language, you write
out that language, your narrative becomes different. Orwell didn't have any of that. Orwell
believed that religion was the opiate of the masses. He, he really did believe that
whole Marxist thing. He never wrote anything about religion. I don't think he fundamentally understood
it. It's missing from 1984. So the question
here is, if Winston had had a
religion, would Winston have been more of a hero?
Would the protagonist actually have been a hero? Tom, I'm going
to start with you. I'm going to go all the way around. Tom. David. And
then, Claire, you'll have the final word on this. I,
I don't know. I, I don't know if I would, I'm not sure I would
classify it the way that you just classified it. Well, okay,
how would you, how would you classify it, then? Well, I'm just saying, like, I
don't know if I don't. I, I mean, I understand,
like, what you're saying, you know, radical Islam, I get all that. And then,
yeah, whether, whether it's Christian values or any other,
you know, religious belief system. I'm not sure.
How do I word this? I, I, I mean, maybe if you want to, if
you want to say, like, if you're trying to, if you're trying to lean toward
a yes or a no, I would probably have to say yes. Just because it
would give. What we were talking about a few minutes ago, it would at least
give him that moral compass. Right. Like, again, because
to, to David's point when he mentioned, like, there's no,
there's no North Star here. There's no, you know, religious or moral compass,
North Star, there's nothing for him. So. And again,
even if going with the, the. I was gonna say
the Brotherhood, because I was just thinking of a different book, by the way. Oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah. If I was. He was going with, with,
you know, with the, you know, Big Brother, Y,
at least he would still be considered a hero because he went with his moral
compass. Right. Even if that for him, if that was the right way to go.
But like I said before, there was no to him. There was no right or
wrong in making that decision. It didn't feel to me like he had to make
a right or wrong decision. And if he did have some sort of religious
in instinct or a religious teaching or background, then
you could lean on that moral compass for whichever way he's selected and
call him the hero. To your point, you know, when
you're on your statement, like, we can't call him a hero at this point, but
maybe you can if he's standing on something of some
sort of principle. But. So I, If I had to say yes or no, then
yes. I mean, I think it would be. You'd have no choice but to call
him. But to, but to say he was the hero. He was the hero. Okay.
I. I think it really depends. Does Winston
honor his belief? Right? Does it, does he. Does he honor it? Or is
like, is he a fair weather believer in whatever he believes in?
Right. I mean, so if we take the premise that
Winston believes in something, whether it's religious, whether it's secular,
but he believes in something and that's. Something
pushes him to, again, be that singularity, be that person. Like
you were saying, the one person says, no, I don't care. I have
integrity with my belief and I'm. If I'm the only one in the room
and that. Then fine, I'm going to be that only person in the room. I
think if there was a splash of that, I think the book would read entirely
differently and I think that that would have a very, very different
feel to it. I don't necessarily need a book to have a happy
Ending or have this kind of, like this. This kind of wonderful
resolution at the end of it. I think there's a lot of stories in history
that don't, but I think what those tragic stories lead to,
if there's this presence of, I was standing for this, I was fighting
for this. I was. I was holding some kind of moral
ground for myself or others. I think the tragedy in
that person's story becomes like the fuel that fires that kind of
burns someone else's fire. It becomes like we learned that that person
died doing this or fighting for this. And then we hear that,
and that becomes this very powerful thing for the next people. Right?
Become a next generation, next whoever hears the story. I mean, think
about, like, the whole idea of, like, you know, Leonidas, the Spartans, the whole idea
behind that. Just as one eye just off the top, like, he
died at the same time. The way he died made all the difference.
Right. And so I think that. That, to answer your question, I think it
depends on, does he, like, does
he. Does he stay true to this? And is he willing to kind of dig
his heels in to go, this is who I am. Good, better and different versus
him going, this is what I believe, and it's not convenient, so I'm not going
to do it.
Claire? Yeah, my. My
thought on that, I think, Tom, you. You already
said it. I think very well in terms of, you know, the lack of a.
And you were echoing David's comment about the North Star.
If we. If we get hung up on, if he were a religious
person, would this have been a different spin? If we change that to,
if he were a moral person, would there be a different spin? And
I do think the answer is yes. I think
what we're struggling with with Winston is
not his lack of religion, it's his lack of morality. He
did not make decisions in the book based on a belief
that something was right or wrong. It was based on an avoidance of pain.
Right. So you could say, if you really want to boil it
down, was he a coward? And therefore that's why
we could never contemplate him being a hero. Yeah, I
could probably. I could probably live with that as being a
statement on. On, you know, the character or the lack
thereof of Winston. But I do. I do think it comes down to he
lacks. Tom, you said it. He lacks a moral compass. There,
there. So he was amoral. He wasn't immoral. He was amoral.
And he made his choices not based on a moral code, but based on
avoidance of pain.
Okay. Okay. I don't Know
what to think about. I don't know what to think about all the, all y'
all with on this. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Well, you
know what? This is, this is why I talk to people who were kind of
all over the map, all over the place for me. I don't. I'm not living
in an echo chamber here. Right. Hey, son. Not to interrupt. Do
you, do you, do you need. Are you thinking that
it's his lack of like its lack of
belief or religiosity or that that is the reason
why he lacks that moral compass? Because I think that
the three of us are maybe taking it from saying that's one possibility, but
I think it's the other side of the coin that's equally opportune to think about
as saying that morality can exist self derived
as a reflection of the society. Right.
I guess that's my question for you is how are you determining
morality? Right. So that. Well, yeah, that's a good
question. So I fundamentally believe that everyone
comes with a world view and a worldview comes from somewhere. I find
I do fundamental. That's like sort of my fundamental, like things. Right.
And we, we don't often
articulate our worldview because we don't actually know the concrete foundation
that it sits on. And most people haven't done the hard work,
the introspective work, such as it were, or even the critical thinking work to
determine where that worldview came from. Who laid the concrete,
should it be all dug up? This is why you have a job, David. Like
people don't do that work and then they build things on top of it and
it struggles and falls apart and collapses. Right. Usually around my
age, like in the mid-40s. So to answer your question, I
do think that religion has to inform
morality. I think we've done a really interesting job in the secular
west of trying to separate both of those two. And
when you separate both of those two, I think you might. I think the clearing
at the end of the path is the meaning crisis recurring currently in.
Because if my morals are separated from a religious foundation,
and that's why I brought up Islam on purpose, I didn't bring up Christianity
because let's face the moral, let's base it on Islam. That's fine. The way we
could talk about the Quran and it doesn't come weighted with all the stuff that
the Bible comes weighted with. Okay, fine. If we're going to base it on the
Quran. Cool. You separate the Quran from morality.
Now you have people who are living or making decisions in a place of
moral laxity. Right.
And that then influences how, and I think Orwell would agree with this
part, it influences how people use language, which we're going to talk about
here in just a minute, because I think that that's actually the core of his
idea. It influences how people talk about ideas,
influences how people build institutions. And fundamentally, which is of
course the point of all this in the podcast, which of course we're going to
get, we're going to wrap up with. It influences how leaders lead.
And I think we are naive to the point
almost of danger to.
And I would even assert we're sometimes past the point. We're somewhere past the point
of danger. Actually. We're well into the wild of not understanding
the link between religion and morality or saying that it
does not exist. Which is why I said, okay, let me
think about that some more because I'm willing to,
to consider a majority point
of view and I'm willing to have my point of view be the minority report.
That's fine. But let's just. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Let's see where we wind up at. At the end of the, at the end
of the road. Right. And I think one of the
things that, so Orwell wasn't going to write anything that he didn't
understand or know about this is why Julia is
a one dimensional character. He didn't really
understand women. Wasn't, wasn't there something. What's, I read something
somewhere that said Julia was loosely based on his, his second
wife. Like the, the. Yeah, so. Yeah, so.
So it's not that she, it's not that he viewed it as he was writing
it, that she was an empty character. It was just his experience with his
wife. Is that, that's what we're led to believe at this. Yes,
yes. And I mean, marriage is hard.
Relationships are hard. You know,
and that's all I'll say about that because we all, we all know what I
mean here. Like, you know, relationships are hard. Marriage is hard. None of this
is easy. And if you're already a person who
just personality wise, again, looking at Orwell's Wikipedia
write up and some other things. If you're already a person who's sort of struggling
with what your status is and then you're, you're, you're
marrying somebody and then you're expecting to build a life with them,
but they're also struggling with that, that's going to come out in your writing and
there's going to Be clearly things that you are going to be blind to. So
I think he was blind to. To women as a
three dimensional character. As a three dimensional character in his. In his book. I also
think he was blind to, you know, religion because
Marxist ideas about religion impediments have influenced his
thinking. And I think that that blindness leads you
to create certain characters and situations in
1984, that when you're asking me to do something as
protest literature, there's a piece of this puzzle that is missing.
And the piece of that puzzle that's missing is what we've been talking about here.
What are you willing to die for?
So that's sort of my twisted
windy hook. David, answer to your question. I don't know if that got
where you were looking for, but close enough.
Close enough. Okay, that's fine. Cool. I almost hit the target. All right,
it's good. All right,
so we do. Let's turn the corner here. Let's turn the corner because we've talked
about the two main themes of the book. We've talked about. Well, one of the
main things, we talked about Orwell as a writer and we've talked about the meaning
of 1984. What we should take from it. I guess we should. Let's touch on
totalitarianism and dystopia. So
Orwell says, and this is for politics in the English language. I love, I do
actually love this quote from him. I think this is dead on from him. He
says our civilization is decadent and our language, so the argument runs,
must inevitably share in the general collapse.
The same thing is happening to the English language, he says later on in the
same essay. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts
are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier
for us to have foolish thoughts. Sort of a chicken and an
egg idea, by the way. Later on in
40 years later, the critic Harold Bloom would bring up this critique as
well when he would talk about, Interestingly enough, the
1980s, when some of us on this call were in high school
or in middle school, would talk about how
the. The American mind was shifting and there was a lack of
critical thinking that was going on, right? So Orwell was consumed. This was his big
bugaboo. And I'll grant him this, his big bugaboo was the English language. What are
we doing with the English language? Is the English language tight? Is the English language
actually expressing our thoughts in a clear, and I've taken to
talking about this way, serious manner?
1984 didn't become a dystopic novel until
after Orwell's death. And
it kind of irks me because I think, I think of it in terms
of. Just like he does with the English language and the foolish thoughts. I think
of it in terms of chicken and egg. Which came first, 1984 or
totalitarianism? Did one inform the other?
Did we already have these tendencies in our government and in our institutions
and 1984 just laid them out for us where we could all see them? Or
now let me go all conspiracy minded here. Did the Council on Foreign Relations
and the Trilateral Commission utilize George Orwell in order
to get these ideas out there to soften up the public so they could do
them all later? Because they operate on a 500 year long timeline
versus the rest of us who barely operate on a 10 minute timeline. Right.
And they relied on all of us to forget was George
Orwell a CIA plant? You know, these are the
things in my conspiratorial mind that begin to work
with 1984. Right.
I do think we live in times where the
dystopic elements of 1984 are evidence around
us. This is, I would agree with, with the younger generations here. We do already
have things watching us. So I mentioned this before. We do already have social
control. We do already have bad food and speech codes. The only
thing we are missing is like the one world uniform. That's the only thing we're
missing, like where we all get to wear the jumpers like together because we're
all on one team. I remember a comedian years ago made a joke about how
like if the aliens ever come down, we all don't have a uniform. We need
the Earth uniform that says we're from Earth, like this is the jumper,
you know, because apparently in the future everybody dresses in just one
uniform. You just eliminate the probable clothes like just right
there. We do have digital
gulags. We do have cancel codes, we do have
cancel culture. We do have social norming of speech.
Now we can argue that technology has just, and this is an argument I'm willing
to listen to, technology has just taken our tendencies that we already had to their
logical conclusions. But I think that I
saw something today like 87% of Facebook's revenue comes from
advertising on the platform. Platform. And they're just going to use AI to make
that advertising better. Better for
who? I'm not quite sure. Won't be better for the human
beings who are being advertised too, but it'll be better for somebody.
Whoever's paying. It's gonna be whoever writes the check is going to be better
for them. It's gonna be better for the shareholders of Facebook. That's who's gonna be.
So everybody. Ultimately, yes. Go by shareholders. Go by stock
and Facebook, if you can. I believe it. Today. It's at
$673.94 a share. I believe is what it is at
now.
Oh, I. I think we. I think we got the dystopia
we dreamed about in our fever dreams in the mid 20th century. We got it.
Except the only thing we're missing is replicants and bad uniforms. That's the only thing
we're missing. Like, we got our Blade Runner future. Right? And we also have
slovenly language. Some of the things I've seen
and always. And this is going to be. Claire, you're going to love this. This
is going to be my old man. Get off my porch yelling. You know, about
the language, but, like, the things I see in texting and the
things I see people talking about online, like, is that even English? Like, what are
we talking about here? Like, I don't know what a skibidi toilet is. I have
no idea. I don't want to know. Don't anybody tell me. I don't care.
It doesn't matter. I'm too old to care. And
Tom's laughing because he probably knows what it is better than I do. And I
don't care. I'm just laughing because I. Like, we have rules in my house. My.
All of my kids are adults and we have rules in my house. Like, if
you're not going to use the real word, don't say it like you. If you
say that's sus to me, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna
smack you and you're gonna leave the room. Suspect. That's very
suspect, dad. Like. Like, I
like. Although my nephews yesterday used a
word that I think is so spot on for this generation. They call themselves
screen agers because all they do is walk around on their
phones looking at their screens. I think creating new words like that
are is fine. I have no problem with that. That's more like a pop culture
thing. I'm okay with that. I'm less okay with the
shorthand butchering the actual word. Like, you know, again, let's.
I'm gonna be the man of principle on this conversation. I'm gonna say no to
all of it. I'm gonna be the main principle. This is the line. There has
to be a line. He's got the red line. Gotta draw the line.
I'm gonna be picard in Star Trek, every time we draw
a line, we fall back, and then we draw another line and then we fall
back. No, no, no, it ends here. This
thing is stopping right now. And yes, I have raised three
teenagers. I'm soon to be raising a fourth. I know exactly what I'm talking about.
I've been in the war for a while, so
I know all about lines. I'm all done. Are all gone.
Your war's done. You're. And I got one. I got one on you, by the
way, so. Yeah, you do. You got five.
Tom's revolution is over also. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's. He's well into his
reformation years now. He's ready to be for the
Renaissance.
I guess the question is,
if we take the premise. If we take my premise that we're well into the
dystopia, just with, like, better lighting and better food
and. Maybe you don't have to take my premise. Maybe you can tell me that
my premise is nonsense, which is fine. How do we
create? Well,
say what you want about Donald Trump. He's been running around saying that we're about
to live in a golden age or that we're moving towards a golden age. That
actually. Which is his sort of the Trump version of Ronald
Reagan's Morning in America kind of thing. And I'm not going to
argue about the politics of that. That's not the point of this. I'm merely saying
it's been a long time, a long time since I have
heard a national politician of any stripe talk about how
the future might actually be better.
This is the reason, I think, at a pop culture level, why all of our
dystopias, even like the Hunger Games and things like that, are just recycled
tropes from the mid 20th century, because we
got the things we wanted in our fever dreams. We got the
terrors as well. And now we don't know how to move from the
terror to the utopia. We just know we want it, but we don't know how
to move there. By the way, Peter Thiel wrote that in his book Zero to
One as well. He said that we're deeply pessimistic culture. This is why we're
not innovating correctly. He said, if you look at the Chinese,
they're pessimistic, but they make plans. We're pessimistic, and we make no
plans. Like, that's. That's the only way. That's the
comparison between the two cultures. Right. And I think he's onto something. I
think he's dead. Onto something. And so Donald Trump runs around, talks about
how we. We could live in a golden age in the future, and everybody laughs
at him because that's the pessimism, right? They think he's just a foolish old boomer.
Everybody goes, okay, Boomer, whatever, and, like, moves on.
But I think we have to change our language. I think we have to change
our idea structure. I think we have to break with the mid
20th century. I think we need to build and not
deconstruct. So I guess the larger question that I have here, and we could
break it down into all these other tiny areas if we want, is how can
leaders lead people to a golden age if they don't collectively or
individually even believe in something like that anymore? To my point, when I
was answering David's question, if they don't even underground, if they don't even under.
Understand the substrate of what lives underneath their cynicism and their
nihilism, and they don't even know that it's cynicism and nihilism because they're just living
their lives. Like, how can they build towards
anything golden ever? How can that. How do we
not just wind up just staying in the same spot?
How do we fix this problem? This is the. This is the end of the
show. How do we fix this problem? Let's out with this. How do we fix
this? How do we use 1984 to fix this? Because I
don't know how. This is why I'm asking. I have no idea.
Claire, go ahead. I'm gonna dump this on you, and then. David. Yeah? Thanks.
Thanks. You're welcome. You're welcome. Well, you're. That. You're the English major. You. Yeah,
you got the word. Got the fancy words. I know. I was hoping we were
just gonna dive into language, which I have some thoughts on as well, but, you
know. I think I dive into language. No, no, no. Let me. Let me. I'll.
I'll. I'll speak to the other. Because I do, you know, I do think
it is incredibly hard
to. To attach personal meaning to
this idea of come along and be part of this
golden age when it is said in the same
breath, and, And Donald Trump is saying it now, but he's not the first one
to try to usher it in. Right. It's just that
happens to be the. The current version, but when it is
also said in the same
conversation as these are all the things you should
be fearful of, I think that's what keeps
stunting our ability to actually put our own shoulders to
the wheel. And be willing to die for doing what it takes to
usher in a true golden age. Because it is
built upon a foundation of. This is why
those are other. This is why you need to be part of,
you know, what's. What's better.
And so as long as those things are said in the same breath
as part of the same strategy, we can't get out of the
starting gate.
I like that. I would. I mean, yeah,
the language of today is really, really complex and is really, really frustrating. I. I
think, you know, we have to realize that words are the actual building blocks of
reality. What we speak does become reality. And every historian
and what would say that if you look at every world leader, it's through their
language that they form and shape up the world as it played out.
Nothing happens because we're quiet. Everything happens because people are talking.
And I think when we think about how do we fix the problem?
Again, I always talk to people about building trust. And trust is
an equation. It's predictability plus consistency. We
don't have either one of those things with our leaders. We either get
predictable, but we don't get consistent, or we get consistent, but they're not predictable.
And so there's always these nuanced differences in what we have. And so we're
left always clear to your point going, can we. Can
I believe you? Like, I want to believe you? I want to walk forward to
it. You know, I think how we fix the problem
is, is that it seems to me just all I
do is talk with people. And it's very unique. Talking with people in
two different parts of the country at the same time. That's wild to see the
perspective of that happen. Has the one thing that's
universal is that it's, It's. It needs to be a
grassroots up, not top down. I think that's how you change
everything, is that we have got to get out of this megaphone
leadership style that we've had in every single culture that I can remember.
You know, I think, yeah, messaging is great, right? The slogan's great. Make
America. Make America great Again, Great slogan. I
can't knock him for the slogan, but I think that the jury is still out
for me and going, okay, that's just words. And we need to show we need
to see this. And I think it comes down to, again, how are we.
If we're going to go to a golden age as people, then it starts in
the communities. It starts in our neighborhoods. It starts in our. Like, how do
we frame our local. Like, how do the States become great. Like, how
does each individual state kind of come together and do that? I think if
we're going to become great again or if we're going to pull ourselves out.
To your point earlier, Hassan, I don't think we're in the dystopian future at all.
In fact, I think that we are at a very interesting schism. I think that
we're just at this very interesting crossroads in our society where we have
been kind of like Prometheus playing with all of
these tools, and we've kind of. Some things are wonderful and some things are
extremely volatile, but I don't think we've crossed into that threshold yet.
I think that there's still a lot of potential for good and a lot of
potential for positivity. But I think we're reading reaching
this very unique fork in the road as a society and as a world population.
We're going to have to come together and choose, like, which path we're going
to go. Ben, that's above my pay grade to know what we're going to do
with that. But I think when it comes down to how do we fix it.
Yeah, it's when we start focusing on what we do. Tom, I like when you
said, like, we have house rules with we say the full word. I think that's
a phenomenal example of what I'm talking about. It starts there. Well,
then if that steps into local community activities and schools
and we say we have to get rid of this, we have to have some
kind of, again, holding the line idea that you were talking about. If we have
to have some form of a grassroots starting point
that pulses out and then that starts to become.
The thing that I think will change everything about our society is that
we just have to reverse. The messaging has to come from
the other, the exit point of the megaphone. It has to go towards the cone
versus the other way around.
Tom, the podcast. Podcast audience is not like dead air. Go ahead.
It's not like what? It's not like dead air. Oh.
Look, I think, I think this, this question is
a moot point. And let me, let me explain why. First of all,
this is all definition, right? It's like, so who's going to decide
what the golden age is and what it isn't? Who's going to make that determination?
Is it going to be. Is it going to be our president? Is it going
to be the president of some other country? Is it going to be some
world global committee that somebody gets together and who's to
say that that Committee is going to define something that I consider my golden
age. Like, I, I, I think that, I think that what we're,
like I said, I, I made a comment earlier about, about 1984, giving
us the road map to a lack of individuality. And I think this
kind of question is the exact same thing, because
I think the golden age is going to be determined by us individually. Like, my,
what I think is whether I agree with you or not, whether we're in the,
this, this dystopian c set of circumstances already or
not, or it's coming or it's past, or I
think how things impact you individually is way
more valuable to
you as a leader. If you're, Again, we're trying to. The way you
phrase, the question is how do leaders bring this
into, into a golden age? And I think it's, we find
our own people, right? If I'm a leader of a company, I'm hiring the people
that are going to be, that are gonna want to believe in what I believe
in, and I don't care whether it's religious or moral or
immoral. You could be the worst person on the planet. If
some, if you get a group of people to follow you and they think you're
the greatest thing since sliced bread, then who the hell is going to tell you
that you're the worst person on the planet, right? Like, you have a whole
faction of people that are following you, telling you you're great. Like,
and I'm not suggesting that we follow terrible people, by the way. I'm just, I
mean, all I'm saying is I think, I think that this
idea of how can leaders bring us
to this golden age? I'm not following
a leader that has already decided that there's a
golden age. If I don't believe in what that golden age looks like, I'm not
following that leader. So whether Trump is or isn't or
whomever, whatever president you mentioned, like,
it's not up to them. It's up to you. It's up to me. It's
like, so if I want to follow that president, great, then I'm believing in
their, their golden age. I'm going to believe in what they're, whatever
nonsense they're spewing or. Well,
I, if I'm following them, I don't think it's nonsense. But you might, you might
think it's nonsense, right?
I think as leaders, I think it's important, important for us to, and
I've said this on the podcast several times, Hsan, I, I think as leaders,
it's important for us to find our moral compass,
to lead by example through that moral compass. The people who want to follow us
will follow us. They're going to go to that gold, whatever. They're going to go
to our definition of a golden age with us and, and we're going to be
h. Now. So does that mean that the world goes to hell in a hand
basket? But my little set, my little world is going to be perfectly
fine. I, I don't know. I don't know that I, I don't. I don't have
a crystal ball. I can't read the future. But I can tell you that
I'm always at a point of. I'm really not happy
with where we're going. I'm really not happy with where we were. But nobody
has a solution that I want to follow to the next part, to the next
point in history. Like I have, I have yet. And again,
whether it was Biden, Obama, Trump, name a president,
I still have yet to have one that I thought was so good that I
would follow him. I'll take your. David. I have not had a president
I would die for. I'll just tell you that right now. I've. I've not had
a single president in my lifetime that I would take a bullet for. It just
doesn't. Hasn't happened yet for me. So, like, I don't know. I, I
think, I think as. And I think
your guys's kind of views and vantages and how language
impacts this, I think is really valuable. I actually do,
I think because language is the definition
of what that golden age looks like, right? You have to be able to verbalize
it, you have to be able to express it, explain it, detail it. And if
you can't, then you're useless to me. Right? So
all these changes in language and all this stuff, I totally agree with you
guys that language is important. But. But what I think we're failing on and kind
of leaning a bit more toward what you were talking about, Claire, with
the, like, what are we fearful
of really? Like, if, if we're really shooting for a golden
age, then to your point, Claire, these roadblocks shouldn't even be in our, in our
purview. We shouldn't be even looking at them. We shouldn't even be worried about them.
Just go for the gold and drive, right? Just drive to it.
If you think about and, and if you come down to almost
a little microcosm and I know I'm, I'm going a little bit over in time
that you guys had here. But, but if you go down to a little micro,
like a little, this microcosm of the, of a, of this
think of like a, think of a, like a,
a gold, a gold medal athlete,
right? You don't think they've had challenges in their lives. You don't think they've had
negatives, you don't think they have roadblocks, things that could have shot, shut them down.
Every one of them have stories like that, but they just ignored
it or moved past it or persevered through it. And we can't
come up collectively as a society as how to do that. That's also
a problem. Like, I just think, I think we just,
I, I think that everybody defines these things differently. I don't think we're ever
going to get all on the same page on what that golden age definition is.
So therefore we may not ever hit it. We may not never
get, we may not ever get there. Or we're already there and we're not
seeing it, but somebody else already found it and nobody's paying attention to them
because they don't know how to, they don't know how to express it. They don't
know how to get the, their version of the language out. So I think there's
a lot of things here that, and I think this, what I just said, I'm
sure can turn into a whole nother podcast episode. Oh, I asked,
I asked a loaded question. I asked a loaded question here at the end. I,
I mean, I'm notorious for doing that. I load up the gun at the end
and then, you know, it just, yeah, I've been doing this for a while now.
He does this to me all the time. All the time. All
the time.
Okay, final thoughts. We gotta close, as I
usually say, right around this moment. Thank you to Claire Chandler. Thank you to
David Baumrucker. Thank you again to Top Libby for coming on the podcast today.
Your contributions have been amazing as usual. This is a
complicated book that opens up a lot of doors. Even though
I may have trouble with the way that it is written or some of the
ideas in it, it does engender conversation and I think it is worthwhile for
leaders to read at the very minimum, at least as a warning. Maybe, maybe a
warning frozen in time, but a warning nonetheless.
Claire, David, final thoughts.
So Tom, I, I, you're right. Everything you just sort of
unpacked for us can, can be a, a future episode. And I'm happy to
go down that rabbit. Hol and Hassan And David,
what's interesting to me is I do think, Hasan, to your point, this is,
this is not the best book ever written. We know that. But in the
true spirit of being literature, it did open up conversation.
I suspect that the combination of us can have a conversation about a paper
bag and make it, you know, interesting for two hours. So
what's interesting to me, though, you know, coming back to, I don't want to
sort of continue the golden age thing, but
there's so much noise in the political sphere
and really effective leaders. And when I think of leader,
I don't immediately go to politics for the very reasons
all of us have touched upon. There's so much noise. But the most effective
leaders of tribes of
organizations, both for profit and nonprofit,
figure out a way not to mandate,
don't bring in your political speech and don't lobby, you know, at the work site.
But they, they get their employees
energized and committed to a unifying
idea, a pursuit of something, whether you call it a golden age,
a mission, a purpose, a long term vision. And they make those
connections for those people so that they can then,
because their moral compass is in alignment with that shared mission,
they can put away the distraction of the political morass that surrounds
us every day in 24, seven news cycles
and follow a leader they feel a connection to. And Tom, that was
what you talked about. I also think it is not a coincidence
that the root of the word culture, which I do a lot of my
consulting work based on, is cult.
Right? And I think there is a profound difference
between an authentic leader who understands that they have the most
direct impact on the culture of an organization,
which not coincidentally, again, David, I love your formula for trust,
comes from predictability, consistency, all of the things,
you know, we didn't really dive too much into language. And very briefly,
I just want to get on a soapbox about that because 1984 was all about
the party that ascended into power
controlling and mandating conformity by continuing
to narrow down the language that people were allowed to use and priding
themselves on the fact that every new edition of their dictionary, the Newspeak
Dictionary, got smaller and smaller in
a different way. Leaders in high functioning
organizations try to narrow down language to come up with a
shared vocabulary so that they can get to greater predictability
and consistency in terms of how they think of success,
how they view talent, how they measure and evaluate performance,
and what they deem to be acceptable in terms of behavior and values.
And the best leaders, the one who are well intentioned around that and don't use
that in, in a way that mandates conformity but that actually
inspires conviction are the ones who are going to succeed in
the long game. Yeah, I love. I would agree
with pretty much everything you just said, Claire.
I going off you would mention the word culture. The word
I introduce people to is curiosity. Because the Latin
derivative of that, the origin point is to care. And I think that we've lost
the ability to care in our society. And I think if we're
thinking about how do leaders transform the landscape of today,
we have to reteach people how to be tolerant enough to care. Like are
you willing to sit with someone that you disagree with and care and shift
out of perception and walk into perspective with people because we have a
really, really bad problem with that in our society that we don't understand
that. I guess we have made a
really weird game of in group, out group. Right. And
to the two party system comments we made earlier. I'm
Tom, I'm very much with you. I think that, you know, a stool
with two legs is a very awkward stool. And we wonder why we always fall
over. And I think we have to sit and we have to wonder why
that has been prevented. And I think it's been prevented because this
masquerading that's hidden in 1984 of this weirdly I would say the
uni party of 1984. I don't think it's a one party, I think it's a
uni party. I think that if there's a reflection on
today, I think that's very what we have because our Congress has been
deemed fairly moot at this point. It's very obvious to anyone
who's paying attention that lobbyists and special
interests own this country. And we wonder why change doesn't
happen. And well, again, the unit party won't allow that to happen.
And so when we're thinking about again, how are leaders going
to change or impact society
building off of what both of you said, I think it comes down to this
idea of that we have to slow things
down, we have to get curious, we have to take our
time to not rush in this very, very dopamine driven,
consumer based culture we have because it's almost
as if we have failed this to recognize that because they're
making us make these decisions so fast that they're
removing our ability to contemplate what's actually going on. If
there was a conspiracy, I think that's the one I see just as a behaviorist
and someone who works with just Understanding just how dopamine
works and the structuring of recycling thoughts.
Anybody who is trying to quickly make you change your language, quickly
make you change your. Like, the laws quickly
push things through, I think those are the people we have to be very, very
careful about. And I think that going back to 1984, it seems
like a certain level of complacenc happened with the entire
population that's in 1984, that they're just like,
oh, this is just how it is. And I think that maybe that's.
You know, we made a comment about 9, 11. And I remember. I remember
sitting in 10 in my 10th grade class watching, watching that. And my
mom actually was in. Had flown
Baltimore, and I was like, she has to be in New York. That's wild. Okay.
What interesting reflection, right? Doing that. But when we're thinking
about that, we became. When it, when. When change in the
threat is instant, when we have that instantaneous hit,
boy, that is the number one study thing that
drives monumental change and monumental
adaptations is the velocity that something
hits. I think maybe the hybrid between a brave
new world and this is that maybe the society that we're living in is, what
if that change in the 2020s is not fast, but it's
very, very slow? It's like boiling the frog. It's like that.
We don't recognize how far we have slid down the hill because the
changes are so micronized by day by day, week by week,
party by party, that there's just this kind of subtle like,
Yeah, I guess it's more of the same. I guess that's frustrating again.
And we don't realize that they're playing a game of inches and we're just not
paying attention. And they've moved halfway across this whole game board already.
That's what it feels like to me sometimes. And I think that if we promote
the idea of just going back to what I said earlier about, about caring,
taking the time to be present and to care and to listen to people,
I think there'll be a radical change that would really change politics. I
mean that in Term Limits, but that's a different conversation, Right? But. But if
we were able to have that idea that the people
who are leading us would take the time to sit down and you actually felt
them caring for you. Right. That's a very different thing than
someone showing up, waving their hands. Let me sign an autograph. Okay, I'll see you
at the next stop. I think that that's kind of what our society has done.
And we do it with politics. We do it with our movie stars as we
do it with our sports athletes. There's really, you know, we hail
them for all their charity work, but really there's no person. There's very few. I'll
say there's very few, to my point, or I, maybe I won't speak in absolutes,
but there are very few people that are, that are taking
the time to actually sit down and care and make themselves be seen
that way. And I think we should celebrate those people. But I think we just
have to be mindful that that's not the standard. That's, that's,
that's the exception.
I'm going to close here with one thought
that occurs to me as everybody has spoken. And once again, thank you, Claire, David
and Tom for coming on the show today, talking about, talking about this
book and our thoughts around this book and how it applies, you know, here at
the end for leaders and, and talking about some of the major
themes that are in it
for all the problems we've got in the United States of America. And
we got a lot of problems.
One thing still, at the end of the day, we are
still a republic. And in a
republic, fundamentally, the power
for the government comes from all of us, all four of us. In
this conversation today, everybody listening today. And I'm not just talking
about get out the vote like mtv. This isn't that.
If you want better politicians, if we want better celebrities, to David's point, we
want people who understand the English language. To Claire's point,
we want people who could draw a line in their house. To Tom's point,
it has to start with us in
our families. There are traditionally,
in Christianity is a larger idea here that there are three
main institutions that God or reality set up
when the building blocks of reality were laid way back in the deep, deep,
deep parts of history, whether that's 14 billion years ago or 6,000,
take your pick. I don't care. When those bulky blocks were laid, I
was not around and neither was anybody who's listening to any of this. But those
building blocks were laid. And the three building blocks are this.
The first building block is the block of the family. Then the second
building block is the block of the church or community
with traditions, with
fashions, with, to Claire's point, culture.
And then the final building block is the block of the state.
State always comes last in the form of the government or the
pharaoh or the king, or in our case,
as David mentioned, our unit party, congress,
and some would say our imperial presidency.
Okay, okay.
Three Three. There's three spheres. And
when one sphere becomes overwhelmingly powerful and
overwhelms the other two spheres, it is a responsibility of those other two spheres
to get together and reign that back in. I talked about this on the
podcast a couple years ago. Who's going to tell Caesar he's gone too far?
Who's going to check Caesar? While in a republic,
the people who check Caesar are the people
who are running their households. That's who
checks Caesar in a republic. You want a better
republic, you want better elected politicians, you have to be in it
for the long game. I think all of us would agree on that. That. But
the long game is not a game of 20 years. The long game is a
game of not just your kids, but also your grandkids. I was talking with
somebody about this this weekend, and he's starting to talk to his sons
about who they are going to be married to. They just graduated high school. Who
are they going to be married to and who were. How are they going to
raise their children. And he's been talking with them about this their entire lives. But
now the conversations have become more sharper and more meaningful because they are at the
age where these decisions can actually be to get to have real impact. That's legacy.
We don't think in those terms in America for a whole variety of reasons.
And I don't really care what those are. What I care about
is that we start thinking about those right now.
And part of those legacy thoughts do come in
reading of books, what you do in your house,
the ways you make your people that are. That you have influence over
literate, so that they cannot be fooled by a
politician, whether a politician wants to lead them into a golden
age or not. So they can't be fooled by a leader.
So that they don't place too much weight on the workplace and
instead put the appropriate weight of leadership on the family and on the
community and dare I say, on the larger culture. That's what
we do in a republic. If we were in a
monarchy, or if we were in another governmental system, even a parliament, I would make
a different recommendation. But that is my recommendation to you.
You want to put the republic back together. You want to get a golden age?
You want to what? You. You wonder where our presidents came from.
They weren't like Topsy, as my grandma would say. They didn't just grow.
They came from somewhere and they
came from our families. We have to fix
our families and we have to lead our families before
we can create a better republic,
whatever that may mean to Tom's point which I think is well founded whatever
that may mean in our own individual houses and then our
families and our houses link together which creates communities
and then our communities create workplaces together and then we have traditions
that bind us and now we can move forward on
something thicker even than technology
Technology will not bind us together it does not have that kind of power
it only has the power to Claire used the word earlier polarize and
divide us as we have seen but
families, traditions these are the things that bind us together
these are the things I think that if we if one person listening to my
voice takes advice from this and starts building that
then I think yeah on a long enough
timeline with consistent and persistent curiosity
and caring yeah yeah we'll have our golden age
absolutely As a cynical Gen Xer this is what
I'm betting on I want to thank my
guests for coming on the show once again today and
with that well we're out.