Giddy up. Alright. Leadership lessons from the great books
podcast, episode number
129 in chronological order
with Brian Bagley, the adventures
of Huckleberry Finn in 3,
2, 1.
Hello. My name is Hason Sorrells, and this is
the leadership lessons from the great books podcast episode
number 129. The book that we're going to be covering
today, comes out of a very specific
place. But before we get into that, I'd like to bring up a
point here. There is a comedy award that's
given out every year at the Kennedy center in New York city,
since 1998. This award is designed to
honor, quote, a controversial social commentator and
his, quote, uncompromising perspective of social injustice
and personal folly. The mission of the prize
that's given out at the Kennedy Center in New York City is to, quote,
honor the greatest contributors to American comedy of our time,
close quote, which matches the type of
literary comedy on offer from our author,
today. Now leadership and comedy aren't
often thought to overlap, but on this podcast, we've already
discussed in previous episodes, particularly those focused around totalitarianism,
discussed the necessity of having the court jester on
your team as a leader and the importance of risk taking evident
in thinking about the world through the lens of comedy.
I think often of how the comedian,
and game show host Steve Harvey once quipped that, quote,
every time a disaster happens in the world, every comedian you know
already has a joke crafted about it 5 minutes after the event
happens. But we can't tell that joke 5 minutes
after that tragedy happens.
For Shakespeare, all the way to the author of our book
today, in the West, the incisive value of adopting a
comedic approach to the tragedies of life is of great
value to the leaders of the world and to the leaders of their teams.
Taking your position seriously might be great wisdom, but taking
circumstances, other people, or even yourself unseriously
might not be the worst thing in the world. And by the way, being
humorous and seeing humor in serious situations makes a
leader more authentic, not less.
And we're going to talk about the crisis of authenticity that we have today, which
walks parallel with the crisis of incompetence, which we've also talked
extensively about on this podcast.
And we're going to do that today in light of
the book we will be reading today. And I'm going to, of course, as I
usually do hold up my copy here that I've got, we're going to
be pulling leadership lessons from
the adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark
Twain. And we're going to be joined
on our journey through the adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
with my co host today, my co guest host today,
who has been on the show before. You've heard his voice before,
talking about the old testament, talking about leadership, talking
about putting Caesar back in the box in a variety of different other
topics, Brian Bagley. How How are you doing today,
Brian? Man, I'm doing great, Thanks for having
me. So, the
challenge of Huckleberry Finn well, there's several challenges to Huckleberry
Finn, and, this is a book that,
well, it presents several challenges, and we're going to jump right into them.
And we're gonna start right in chapter 1,
discover Moses and the Bullrushers.
And I quote, you don't know about me without you have read a
book by the name of the adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter.
That book was made by mister Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There
was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing
I've never seen anybody, but lied one time or another without it. It was aunt
Polly or the widow or maybe Mary on poly Tom's on poly. She is
in Mary and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is
mostly a true book with some stretchers. As I said before,
Now the way to look at that book winds up is this. Tom
and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made
us rich. We got $6,000 a piece, all gold. It
was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, judge Thatcher, he
took it and put it out of interest, and it fetched us a dollar a
day apiece all year round, more than a body could tell what to do with.
The widow Douglas, she took me in for her son and allowed she would civilize
me. But it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal,
regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways. So when I couldn't stand
it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar
hogs head again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer, he
hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers and
I might join if I would, go back to the widow and
he be respectable. So I went back
the widow. She cried over me and called me or lost lamb and called me
a lot of other names too, but she never meant no harm by it. She
put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat, sweat,
and feel all cramped up. Well, then the old thing commenced again.
The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come on time. When
you got to the table, you couldn't go right to eat. You had to wait
for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victors,
though there weren't really anything the matter with them. That is nothing. Only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel odds and ends is different. Things get mixed
up, and the juice kinda swaps around, and things go better. After
supper, she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bullrushes, and
I was in a sweat to find out all about him. But by and by,
she left it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time, so then
I didn't care no more about him because I don't take no stock in dead
people. Pretty soon, I wanted to
smoke and asked the widow to let me, but she wouldn't. She said it was
a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it anymore.
That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when
they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, where there's
no kin to her and no use to anybody being gone, you see. You find
it a power fault in me for doing a thing that has some good in
it. And she took stuff too. Of course, that was alright because, you
know, she done it herself. Her sister, miss
Watson, tolerable, slim old maid with goggles on and just come to live with her
and took a set at me now with a spelling book. She worked me midland
hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't
stand it much longer. Then for an hour, it was deadly dull, and I was
fidgety. Miss Watson would say, don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry, and don't scrunch
up like that, Huckleberry. Sit up straight. And pretty soon she would say, don't gap
and stretch like that, Huckleberry. Why don't you try to behave? And she told me
all about the bad place, and I said, I wish I was there. She got
mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewhere.
All I wanted was to change. I wasn't particular. She said it was a wicked
thing to say when I said it, and and she said she wouldn't say it
for the whole world. She was going to live so as to go to the
good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage of going where she was
going, so I made up my mind. I wouldn't try for it. But I never
said so because it would only make trouble. It wouldn't do
no good.
So begins the opening of the adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.
Now we've covered a couple of books. I'll cover to lose 1 book by
Mark Twain on this podcast before. We we've talked about roughing
it. His
memoir about going down the Mississippi as a young
man on the paddle boats and on the river
boats, that went up and down the
Mississippi during the pre civil war era
of the United States. And, Mark Twain, of
course, is the pen name for Samuel
Langhorne Clemens. Now we've covered a lot of his background on another podcast, but
just to refresh you, he was born November 30th, 18 35
in Florida, Missouri. And his life story and background
is probably the most well known of any man of letters born
and active during the entirety of 19th century. And he was up against
some pretty strong, some pretty strong competition, everybody
from Edgar Allen Poe, all the way to, to
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and even Rudyard
Kipling. Clemens was a writer,
humorist, essayist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.
William Faulkner called him quote unquote the father of all
American literature.
Clemens like the aforementioned Edgar Allen Poe is a person whose avatar
has transcended American literature and he has appeared and
I'm sure he'd be. He would find it absolutely
strange that this has happened, but he has appeared in television shows like
star Trek, and has been portrayed by live events by
actors like Val Kilmer in Branson, Missouri. I think that
one really threw him for a loop, actually.
Curiously enough, Samuel Langer Clemens was born shortly after an appearance of
Halley's comet, and he even predicted that his own death in 1910
would accompany it, coming back. And
he did indeed die a day after the comment was at its
closest to earth. There's
a lot that can be said about Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a lot that can
be said about Mark Twain. And I could say a lot about it on this
podcast today, but that's why we have Brian here. He's going to say some things.
So I'm gonna kick it over to him and start off with this question.
Brian Bagley, in looking at the adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and looking at it from the perspective of 2024,
well over a 100 and probably almost, what, 50
years now since its publication,
Why have we lost the ability to be funny?
Wow. Well, I think there are people who
can be funny. And they
just can't be funny in, approved
channel, just so to speak. And,
so there's there's definitely those that know how to be funny. It's just
where can you be funny and what can you be funny about?
And I think we'll I think we're gonna get into some of the taboo things
here in a little bit, so I won't get into that so much now. But
but I I think one of the one of the big challenges, that's
kind of faces leaders
is, well, you you, I think maybe I read this somewhere.
You may have mentioned it, Hassan, is so much
of, when we talk about authenticity,
authenticity is sort of,
a life that is that is, up
against a well crafted image.
Okay? And so, so whether it's politics
or religion, kind of the, the old
guard really, really wanted to
present it was very important to present a well
crafted image. And so, you know, you think
about, you know, all the great some of the great political
scandals or religious scandals of the 19
eighties, you know, sort of that unraveling period,
of the of the last century, you know, where you had the
the famous the the, the Baker family, the religious
family that had that big television empire
and, of course, you know, his public scandals and Tammy Faye Baker and
all that. But then he also had,
there was a a Democratic candidate for
president, from Colorado. He's a senator from Colorado.
I believe it was 80 or 84. I cannot remember the guy's name off the
top of my head. It'll come to me here in a minute. But
he had he he was a very prominent
senator, was was definitely on his way to getting the
nomination for the Democratic presidential committee. And then it came out some
photos of him on a yacht with a very young woman.
Probably could have been his daughter. I mean, in terms of how old she was.
And, and his presidential bid was over oh, it was
overnight, and it was over. Same thing with, John Edwards in 2008. He's
challenging Barack Obama. He had scandal came out. Boom. So you
had this this well crafted,
image, and the media was the same way. The media you had
3 channels, ABC, NBC, CBS. They were crafting
and curating certain forms of news.
Johnny Carson curated a certain form of comedy.
All somewhere along the way, all of that
curation became canned, inauthentic,
because people just knew that's just not real. That's not right.
It's not genuine. And,
and so, yeah, you had other forms
of of comedy, news, politics,
some very unconventional things have have sort of percolated in its wake. I I
think that kinda gets to the point you're making. Yeah.
Well and the guy you're talking about, the senator, was Gary Hart. Just a
little bit. Thank you. That's right. Yes. Who
interestingly enough is still alive. He's 87 years old. So there you go.
Yeah. So Gary Hart, John Edwards,
you mentioned Tammy Faye Baker. And, you know,
in in Huckleberry Finn, Ms. Watson
and the entire culture that's not on the river stands in. I
think, I think the, the theologian Doug Wilson would make this point
stands in for all of that.
All of the ways in which Huck Finn is bound down. Right. And I'm not
gonna get too philosophical about this because it is humorous, but it's all the, you
can even see it in the first part there that I just read, which is
in the first chapter. Right. You know, Twain
effectively skewers religion, societal pieties,
the good people who and, of course, women who are
responsible for holding down
boisterous, adventurous young men Right. And
civilizing them. I I mean, that's literally what, you know right. She's gonna
civilize me. Right? Miss Watson's gonna civilize me. And Huck
doesn't wanna be civilized, and humor doesn't want to be
civilized. It it it's it's like that line in Jurassic
Park. Right? It breaks through. It it it it creates new
forms. It has to go outside its own boundaries. Right?
That's right. That's right. I have to be able to make a joke about Gary
Hart being on a boat with a woman that everybody's
thinking of to go back to that Steve Harvey, you know, idea
that I brought up, everybody's thinking this, but the comedian, the
court jester, these are the people that actually open their mouths and
say it. And this is why I'm a
big fan of free speech because without free speech, you stifle all of
that, and then there's no it's not just the stifling of humor that's a
problem underneath an anti free speech regime or cancel culture. It's not
just that. But that's the canary in the coal mine to not solving
a whole bunch of other problems. But there's a sub idea in
here that I want you to flesh out a little bit more. And it's this
idea that and I think
it's been coming for a while, and you mentioned the unraveling. Right? And and we
talk a lot because the other the other book that we cover was the 4th
turning, a book you recommended, and we talked about it on this podcast. And
you and I firmly believe that, we are in the well,
I think we're at the end of the 4th turning. I I think we're close
to the end of of the period of chaos, but there's always 4 turnings.
Right? So, you know, there's a there's a springtime high.
There's a summer, that's sort of, you know,
kind of a summer of love, such as it were, to use a term
from the most recent past. Then there's a fall that that basically is a
societal unraveling. Think of everything that happened in the United States between the
19 seventies and the end of the 19 nineties. And then you have a winter
of chaos. Think about everything that's happened ever since 2001 all the
way to, all the way and and September 11th, all the way to now. Okay.
So those are your 4 cycles of history. And you and I both believe that
we're we're we're walking out these cycles, and they sort
of happened without our permission. Right? Well,
during a time of unraveling, when that authenticity is being
questioned, what do you think happens? No. Not what do you
think happens? Why do leaders who are incumbents? Why do they struggle so
much during that time of unraveling? Why do they because this is something that's even
a little bit this is a little bit deeper in in in the adventures of
Huckleberry Finn because when this book was written, or when this book was
published, and was first published in
18/84. Right? And it was
published during a time after a period of chaos. Right? This
is 20 years after the civil war. Right?
Clemens finally felt like he could, you know, put this out there because there had
been enough time that had passed between that chaotic period and
and when the book was published, and the slavery question had been
solved. So he was writing to a culture where maybe you're not
gonna sell that many books of the south, but they lost the war.
So, you know, reconstruction is going on. We need to have something, you know,
that sort of builds the people up. And the dynamic that was happening in
the United States at that time was there weren't 4 generations. 1 generation had
completely died in the, in the, on the fields of the battle of the civil
war. And so you had an older generation that had driven a
younger generation basically to slaughter, and then a generation that was coming up after
that who were kids when all that was going on, who would literally have
no, as Huck Finn would say, no truck
with anything going on in the past. So Twain is writing this in a very
specific period of time. And so, again, my question is, why do leaders
struggle with times of of unraveling? Not the chaos part.
I understand why that, but why do they struggle in times of unraveling?
Well, the I I think that, when when you're in a period of
unraveling, though, you don't know what
direction the unraveling is going to take. So Right.
To stay ahead of that is is certainly a
challenge. One of the things I think we
we tend to be really hard on in in
and what I encourage a lot of when I talk to leaders,
especially younger guys, that I've mentored through through church
or, maybe on the job, and I
just encourage them, to you
know, anytime that you reflect on history, it's good to
approach history with a good dose of humility
because you don't know how
people are going to judge your actions and your
social mores in a 150 years. And so
we don't know what we're doing today that we think is just
top of the top. I mean, we're we're doing our best, and we're trying to
be as, as moral as we possibly can. And
in a 150 years, what we think is is, is the
very best that we could be doing. You know, our
great great grandkids are just gonna be so offended that we even thought
that that might even be a good deal, a good way to think about things.
And so, so just right off the bat, just whenever
you approach history, or or a a
period of time that wasn't part of your own, it's just
important to understand that that, you know, it we
don't we don't know everything, and we certainly can't know what was going on
in their hearts, in their souls when they were making
decisions or making judgment calls. But to get to your point, why why does
a leader struggle, I think, in a in a period of unraveling to be authentic?
I think there is there's a desire. Every leader there's a
conservative nature in every leader, even progressive leaders. They
have there's something that they have to be holding on to,
in order to have a fixed point of reference that they're
moving everybody toward or or or or past
maybe. And and so there's there's some
level of, conservativeness
that every leader needs to possess in order
to to be,
presentable, I guess, is the right word, and to have gravitas.
And and so, like and and so as the leader is is navigating
through a period of unraveling, There's there's this
struggle to be, to try to maintain this
curated image, I think, of what things were in the
past and try to hold the ship together. Meanwhile, the ship
could just be falling apart. And, and it's just it's
just a really tough thing to to navigate through.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. One last question. I
kinda skipped this one, but I wanna go back to it now.
So what did you like about Huck Finn? Like, I know why I
like the book, but why did you like the book? What what tickled you about
this book? I just I love the,
I I love the characters of everything. I love how
he he was not afraid to,
portray, like, even even the institution of slavery was a caricature
of itself. And the way that, you know, we
they you know, the way that Jim was kinda handled,
throughout the course of the adventure. And, you know,
at one point, we were, you know, he was
running around on the boat with the other guys, you know, butt naked. You know,
they're, you know, sitting on it. And then, oh, well, what what what we gotta
make sure we we you know, we need need him to be tied up during
the day because we're you know, he's he's part of the he's part of the
show, if you will. Right? He's just another character in the play
is what's going on. And so we just Jim, we just need you
to play your part. Okay? That's that's that's sort of the the
vibe of this whole thing. And and I I
I love that caricature because, you know,
so much of reality is,
it's just perception. It's the perception of what is,
what is real and and and the perception of what is right and wrong.
And and, so I I just really
appreciated his, 20th approach
to, to all of those American institutions
that were in the process of changing. I mean, like you
said, the American Civil War shattered a lot of
societal paradigms, particularly in the South, but
certainly in the North too. I mean, there were a lot of
I mean, politics was upended. Religion was religion was definitely
upended, particularly in the north, a lot more in the north than it
was in the south. And so,
so I I feel like he did a good job
of of, drawing on
some funnier things and some funnier,
making it, making that change a little
bit easier to swallow and deal with, if that makes sense.
Mhmm. Well and they didn't have TV, obviously. Yeah.
You know That's right. The the the the biggest
mass media that was available
to people in the 19th century,
was newspapers. And most newspapers,
people forget this. I mean, we think social media is
bad, but most newspapers were driven
by what we would call these days,
libel and yellow journalism.
Literal libel. Literal, like, this I
saw this person kill a woman in the street,
and, like, you know, it was it was
a level of free speech radicalism that I don't think we no,
I won't say, I don't think, I think we, we, what we have happening
on various social media platforms,
pales in comparison to what was
going on there when all of that psychic
energy was going to just one medium
rather than being diffused across multiple medias,
and multiple media tools. Right? And I do think
that with the explosion of technology that we had, particularly in the
later part of 20th century, that diffusion
actually has had some societal benefit. But back
in the late 19th century, I mean, you had you had journals.
Those are for the highly read academic folks you had, you
had newspapers, and newspapers, like I said, were mostly
yellow journalism. Yes. There was some reporting, but still it was,
it was a lot of free for all there. And then the last medium that
you had that was the entertainment medium, other than plays and theater,
was books. I mean, people read books out
loud. Books are read were designed to be read in the in the the
form of the novel, while not a new form. Novels have been
around, good Lord, since, like, the Middle Ages at least. A proto novel began
then. But the form of the novel with,
with mass and with the beginning of industrialization really began to come into
the form that we know it in the later part of the 20 we now
know it, in the later part of 20th century. And artists, we've talked about
this on a podcast we did talking about,
Edgar Allan Poe, talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
now with Mark Twain. Those writers in the
19th century got after each other like nobody's
business. They had zero problem
notorious episode. We talked about this on the the fall of the house of the
Usher episode. Edgar Allan Poe wrote critiques of other
artists and other writers' writings that
caused some of those writers to want to shoot him in a duel.
Because this because this was how people solved problems
back then. If you ran your mouth, you're gonna get clapped.
And if you ran your mouth very much verbal it was very much verbal dueling
very much. Well, if you right. If you ran your mouth in print, like there
was no like, oh, it was just some anonymous troll on
Twitter. Yes. It was, oh, no, no, no.
That's Bob across the street. I'm going to go fix that problem, Bob.
And, and by the way, everybody knew what the rules were. Like everybody knew
what the rules were. Everybody knew what the consequences were.
Everybody sort of participated. And as, of course, as you move further west
out of the east, it became even more a space
of even after the civil war, you would think after all that bloodletting,
people would stop shooting each other. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's
still matters of, of, of pride and matters of
name. And, and if you're going to caricature
me, if you're going to turn me into an absurdity, you better
be really clever with that to such a way that I laugh at my own
absurdity, and I don't wanna shoot you. And I always think Mark Twain. I whenever
I read adventures of Huckleberry, fan adventures of Tom Sawyer, I always think that Mark
Twain was sort of walking that line all of the time.
Yeah. He was. He really was. And, I
you know, one of the things I really appreciate about
Mark Twain is, you know, it it takes a
lot of courage to do good comedy, I
think. Yeah. Because good comedy it good comedy should cut
both ways. And, I'll I think
one of the big critiques that in in my mind of sort of this comedy
right now is, you know, if if
you're if you're watching late night comedy,
it's generally
left wing. The right has its has
its, comedic influences. You know,
anytime you have a a comedian like,
Dave Chappelle like, Dave is all you know, Dave says some stuff that
irritates both sides, but I find, you know, whenever whenever,
Dave is on Saturday Night Live, I mean, he'll say something. He did this
spiel. I'm sure you saw it on Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. It
was just beautiful. I mean, spot
on. And, it was really, really good comedy.
So, you know, I I don't know. I think, I think
comedy good comedy takes courage and, can get you
in a lot of trouble. Well, Bill Burr, after the most recent,
United States presidential election, you know, comes
on Saturday night live and got you know, he does a whole he
softens it a little bit at the beginning, which is which is not typical for
Bill. Usually, he just goes right into it. He softens it a little bit because
he knows his crowd. He's like, okay. Well, I'm gonna talk what you all I'm
gonna talk about what you all want me to say here today. And he goes
right I mean, he aims right at talk about courage. He aims right at, and
he says, well, ladies, you're down 02 to the orange man.
And to the crowd's credit, New York City
crowd, they laughed. That's right. That's
right. Yeah. And he just makes it easier for them to deal with
reality. You know? Like, it
And then, you know, he goes into a whole bit about pantsuits, and you all
know how to get an extra drink. And, you know, and there's a whole and
you can go YouTube this this this bit. And and it is one of
those where, to your point about courage,
you have to be of a certain and Bilber and
Dave Chappelle are both of that certain
ilk, where
if you're going to come for them, you
better be ready. If you're gonna verbally spar with them, you better be ready to
lose. Like, I watched a whole entire episode of, of, Bill Maher's
podcast club random that had Bill Burr on it, and he spent the entire
time just skewering Bill Maher. Just he just roasted him
the entire interview and then claimed that Bill Maher
couldn't handle it because, like, you know, oh, you're so smart. You just can't handle
it. And that really got under Mars' skin. Like, you could but what was he
gonna do? Like, it's his show. Like, is he gonna walk off his own show?
So he's stuck, and he's squirming, and Bill Burr is loving it. And he
just keeps just driving. And Bill Maher should have expected this as a
fellow comedian. He should have expected it as a fellow comedian. You're right. And he
did not. He did because he's he's Bill Maher. Like, you know,
uh-huh. And he and Bill Barr is just like, I don't who?
And that's and that, of course, is is the whole point of, like I will
tell my kids this. If I wanna dismiss someone or
if I wanna be dismissive of somebody in a funny way
Yeah. I will. I'll say in a very high pitched way. So who? I don't
know who you are. Who are you? What? Go away.
What is that? Dismissedness of this is, it is a sign of comedy. It's a
dismissiveness of status, and I think that's what people really struggle with.
Well and I think to take another comedian who's probably not as political, but
Nate Barguetzky. Oh, yeah. What makes Nate
so funny is his self
deprecating authenticity. Right. Like, he's just
the everyday schmo, who comes home at 5
o'clock, and he gives you every detail about his boring
life, and you laugh hysterically. Okay? There you go.
Between his his him and his relationship with his wife or the way he travels
to an airport, and it's just everybody's been there, and it's
funny. Everybody's been there. Alright. So back to the book. We're gonna pick up,
we're gonna pick up a little later in Huckleberry Finn. But, back to the
book, back to the adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
By the way, this book is open source. You can check it out,
get yourself a free copy. I'm looking at or I'm reading the Bantam classic version,
but it's the same version. You could find open source, everywhere where you download books
on the Internet.
Alright. So we're gonna go directly into chapter 10. We're gonna leapfrog
over a couple of different things because if you know the story or the underpinnings
of Huckleberry Finn, you don't need me to read the whole book. So,
Huck escapes the the
bounds of society, and he goes out on the river, which is the
only place he can be free. By the way, when I first read this book,
I was probably 9 or 10 years old, and I really resonated with that
idea of, you know, going out on the river and just floating
down the river on a raft. It was only as I got older that
I began to resonate with other aspects of, of this story.
But he's on the raft. The escaped slave,
Jim, is is with him. And, well,
he's gonna wind up since he's gonna wind up in some, with a streak of
bad luck here from, from handling, from
handling snake skin. So
what comes from handling snake skin? Chapter 10.
After breakfast, I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess how he came
to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad
luck. And besides, he said he might come at Hans. And he said a man
that weren't buried was more likely to go a hunting around than when it was
planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't say no more, but I
couldn't keep him studied over and wishing I'd known him shot the man and what
they'd done it for. We bummers the clothes we got and found
$8 in silver, sold him in the line of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said
he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat because if they had to
know the money was there, they would've left it. I said I reckon they killed
him too, but Jim didn't wanna talk about that. I says, now you think it's
bad luck, but what did you say when I fetched the snake skin that I
found on top of the bridge the day before yesterday? You said it was the
worst bad luck in the world to touch the snake skin with my hands. Well,
here's your bad luck. We've raked in with all this truck and $8 besides. I
wish you could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim. Never you
mind, honey. Never you mind. Don't you get too pert. It's a comin'. Mind I
tell you what's comin'? It did come too. It was a
Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday, we was laying around
on the grass at the upper end of the bridge and out of tobacco. I
went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed
him and curled him up in the foot of Jim's blanket. It was so natural.
Thinking there'd be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night, I forgot
all about the snake. And when Jim flung himself down the blanket while I struck
a light, the snake's bait was there, and it bit him. He jumped up
yelling, and the first thing the light showed was a varmint curled up hooray for
another spring. I laid about in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed Pap's
whiskey jug and began to pour it down. He was barefoot, and the snake bit
him right on the heel. That all comes out of people such a fool as
to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake, its mate always comes there
and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw
it away, and then skin to body roast a piece of it. I'd
done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made
me take off the rattles and tie them around his waist too. He said that
would help. Then I slid out quiet and throw the snake
clear away amongst the bushes for I won't go let Jim find out it was
all my fault, not if I could help it. Jim sucked and sucked at the
jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and
yelled. But every time he come to himself when I was sucking at the jug
again, his foot swelled over pretty big, and so did his leg. By and
by, the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was alright. But I'd
rather been bit with a snake than paps whiskey.
Jim was laid up for 4 days nights, then the swelling was all gone, and
he was all around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a
hold of snakeskin again with my hands now that I see what had come of
it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time, and he said the
handling of snakeskin was such an awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to
the end of it yet. He said he'd rather see the new moon over his
left shadow shoulder as much as a 1000 times to take up a snake skin
in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always
reckoned that looking out the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the
carelessness and the foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it
once and bragged about it, and in less than 2 years, got himself drunk and
fell off a shot tower and spread himself out so he was just kind of
a lair, as you may say. And they slid him edgeways between 2 hard doors
for a coffin and buried him, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap
told me. But, anyway, it all come a lookin' at the moon that way like
a fool. Well, the days went long, and the river went down between
its banks again. And about the first thing we done was to bait one of
them big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it to catch catfish. It was
as big as a man, Being 6 foot 2 inches long and weighing over £200.
We couldn't handle, of course. He would have flung us into the Illinois. We just
sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned. We
found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, lots of other rubbish.
We split the ball open with a hatchet, and there was a spool in
it. Jim said he had it there a long time to coat it over, so
make a ball out of it. It was as big fish he was ever catching
in Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he couldn't even see a bigger one. He would
have been worth a good deal over at the village. They pet a lot of
such a fish that by the pound in the market house. Everybody buys
some of them. His meat is white as snow. It makes a good fry.
Next morning, I said it was starting to get slow and dull, and I wanted
to get stirring up some anyway. I said I reckon I was slip over the
river and find out what was going on. Jim liked the notion, but he said
I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and
said, couldn't I put on some of them old things that dress up like a
girl? That was a good notion too. So we shortened up one of those calico
gowns. I turned up my trouser legs and went to my legs and and and
got into it. Jim hitched you behind with the hooks, and it was a fair
fit. I put on a sunbonnet, a tie knot to my chin, and then for
a body to look in and see my face, it was like looking down the
joint of a stovepipe. Yeah. Jim said nobody would know me
even in daytime. Hardly. I practice around all day to get the hang of things,
and by and by, I could do pretty well on it by then. Only Jim
said I didn't walk like a girl, and he said I must quit pulling up
my gown to get in my britches pockets. I took notice, and I'd done better.
I started up the Illinois shore in a canoe just after
dark. And then from there,
things get even worse.
What are the challenges that people have with the adventures of
Huckleberry Finn along with the broken
speech patterns, the broken English usage,
the what Zora Neale Hurst would later call the vernacular of
the time, the malapropisms, some of
which we read in that little section there,
and the quote unquote in jokes that have not
stood the test of time because we're just not culturally, contextually aware
of all the tiny things that were going on around this book.
All of these things gather together, but they are dwarfed by the
use 219 times of and I'm
going to say it here. So everybody block your ears if you're worth
listening with your kids. I've give I have yeah. Block
yours if you're in in the in the car with your kids. I'm about to
say the word the use of the
word nigger. 219
times in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn has driven
people in our increasingly sensitive age.
Crazy. This really started back in the
1960s with the civil rights movement and has
continued with increasing sharpness into our own
era. But
here's the thing, people did use that word on the
regular, and people did use the word to refer to
themselves and others. And, yes, word uses has changed
over time. I'm a big fan of linguistics, and the work of
the writer John McWhorter and others in the linguistic space.
And, yes, words do change. They do drop out of
usage, and they come into usage. The words change meaning over the
course of time. And yes, that word,
the in word, such as it were, has
moved and migrated over time and
has changed in meaning as society and context has
shifted around. For many postmodern
readers with delicate sensibilities and political leanings, this
word makes people feel as though they do not want
to touch the book with a 10 foot pole. As a matter of
fact, African American legislatures legislators in New Jersey,
a couple, presented a nonbinding resolution in
the state assembly a couple years ago proposing to remove
Twain's novel from the state curriculum, declaring
that, quote, the novel's use of a racial slur and its
depictions of racist attitudes can cause students to feel
upset, marginalized, or humiliated and can create an
uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom, close quote.
The inability of postmodern culture to contextualize the past appropriately
and teach the past without emotion sets up a dichotomy where people of
all races miss the essentialism of remembering the grimy
parts of the past that don't fit with our
conception of how the past should work for us right now.
Author Todd Coats, a man who I share
almost no opinion in common with,
except for this one that I was able to find, wrote
in his essay, a nation of cowards that quote
censoring Twain's work was a shocking act of disrespect toward the
writer executed by people who claim to hold up his
legacy because we can't handle the story of who we were and
evidently who we are Twain must be summoned up from the
dead and all against himself submitted before the
edits of amateurs. This is our system of
fast food education laid bare. Let us all live in a
world of warm snuglies. Let the air conditioned anesthesia
sprawl free. May the flowers of happiness
multiply out. May Mark Twain's ghost
haunt us all. Close quote.
I find myself agreeing with mister Coats. Weirdly
enough. We're strange bedfellows on this one, but
bedfellows nonetheless.
So let's talk about the n word.
Let's talk about the grimy parts of
Huck Finn. Brian,
you're a white guy from Texas.
I'm a black guy, not from Texas.
One of the objections that I read to this from one of the legislatures
was or an educator from back in 2019,
was that, they didn't want to have to explain
to their daughter why this word had to be used
219 times in this novel. So it would just be easier to not have
her read it. And I just
thought what a failure of parenting
along with a failure of education.
I've had my kids read this book,
all of them, except for my 7 year old for whom it is not appropriate
yet, just like most things aren't appropriate for a 7 year old.
But my 14 year old has read it. My 19 year old's read
it, and my 27 year old read a long time
ago. We don't
make the grimy parts less grimy by just
ignoring them, but Twain didn't think it was
grimy. So how do we
position this book for our current sensibilities?
Yeah. That's a that's a good question. I think, it's
I think it says less about Twain, and it says more about our
sensibilities, as misguided as I think they
are. And,
you know, there is a,
and I I kind of alluded to this earlier when I was talking about,
you know, when anytime you approach history, you gotta approach it
with some level of, respect
for for the good and the bad. You know, every
period of human history and every person for that matter
is a mixed bag. Okay? Like like, every
single person without exception is a mixed bag. And
just because and and I would say
if if you were looking at Mark
Twain in his context, he would definitely be a
man on the progressive side of things, I
think. And yet, you know, he
he wasn't Antifa. Okay? No. No.
Farland. You know, he was now he might you know, who
knows? Maybe inwardly, he was a fan of of, the
abolitionist, you know, the hardcore John Brown or
somebody. I don't know that, you know. But, but he was
more self aware for sure. And,
and he definitely had his his leanings and his opinions on
things. But but I think, you know,
when when it comes to navigating our
sensibilities, especially for the next generation I mean, so you
brought up this this, these people past trying to pass a law that they were
trying to protect kids, quote, unquote. The one thing that a
parent has to do is, the
parents have to help their kids understand the difference between beliefs and
convictions. And, a belief is something you're
willing to argue over. A conviction is something you're willing to die over.
Mhmm. And and so, like, kids are
gonna pick up beliefs and convictions. Like, that's gonna happen.
The question is from who?
And if you're a parent and you feel strongly about
something, I don't know why you would shy away from
having to explain anything to your children, especially in a world
that is gonna tell them all kinds of
nonsense. Some some good, some bad, but,
but I I certainly wouldn't leave it up to chance. So it's just, you know,
regard just set aside the argument, of
whether or not the the legislation was a good or a bad thing. I think
it's just profoundly,
shortsighted to take that approach, just to even take that approach.
Well, it's the it's the ultimate example of we live in a fallen world,
but our technology has progressed on a j curve up
into the right. So so human beings should change as fast as
our iPhones. And because they don't, let's pass this piece of legislation.
Yeah. Right. That's sort of the ultimate, like,
you know, let's use government power to
remake society. I mean, it's it's the argue it's
the argument that the conservatives have against progressives. Why are you using government power
for social engineering? And progressives could ever explain that with going and by
the way, they don't feel they need to. Going back to Woodrow Wilson,
interestingly enough, who was a child during the civil war and
was the last president born during the civil war and who was a
scientific progressive, his words, not mine,
and believed we could use science to remake the world because we were
better than people in the past. Because we had Darwin, so we knew
more stuff. Yeah. And,
I I hope Darwin is on his way to the dustbin of
history. I have my doubts. But, I definitely
have a lot of
disagreements with Darwin's understanding of,
of well, his the application of his understanding to the,
anthropology of of the human race.
That's just not the way that a Christian can think
about, you know, the the nature of man and
and how evil entered the world and how it will be
addressed. So Well, one of the things
that I think Twain really got on to not to interrupt
you, but I think one of the things that Twain that Twain really got on
to was this idea that no. Not this idea. That the
scientific materialist progressives miss all the way from Woodrow
Wilson to Richard Dawkins. Here's what they miss.
And I listened to Dawkins' most recent interview with Jordan Peterson,
where he got really frustrated with doctor
Peterson. And his critique of the
entire conversation, which I later read, was that
Peterson is drunk on ideas, and ideas
don't matter to Dawkins. All that matters to Dawkins is material
fact of the material fact of being able to put a rocket on
the moon. That's the only thing that matters to him. Everything else is
kids stories and superstition. Didn't care about any of that. Here's
what the material fact. He cares about the things that lead to that material fact
to be able to put a rocket on the moon. Except what Dawkins misses is
the reason, the meaning behind putting that rocket on
the moon is not scientific materially based. And this is
what Twain got. You need to have a reason,
a story, a story that drives
Huck out of civilization into the river. You have to have
a story that causes Huck to have genuine
torn feelings about whether to work for Jim's
escape as a slave or to engage in
continuing the societal process during his time
of selling this guy as flesh to people,
as a tool. There's there's a story there, and
the scientific materialistic people miss the story
all the time. And it's kind of amazing because,
again, they have little interest, as they seem, this is my critique, They seem to
have little interest in understanding the nature of
man. They claim very much to understand the nature of man, Marxist
progressives, Darwinists, all claim to understand the nature of man better than
conservatives do. And yet they seem to have very little interest in
individual well, they seem to have very little interest in individual humans.
Yeah. Yeah. We we like to say, in our house that
the world is not just stuff. The the world is
also composed of nonmaterial things,
ideas, even nonmaterial
beings, that we can't see, don't have access
to, but very much exist and influence
our world in very profound ways.
And so, you know, if you're coming if if that
whole line of possibilities is off limits to
you, then you're gonna come to very different conclusions
about the reality of the world in which we exist. So,
yeah, I I I think
for for Mark Twain's part,
you know, he, I think at one point, he talks
about the, the angel that, you know, the the good the good
angel and the bad angel that can get a hold of a man and, causes,
you know, cause him to pick right or wrong. He's
he's, while this book is a caricature,
you know, he's he's not, he's not wrong about
that. Mhmm. K? And
and so that's, that that that's very much part
of part of the the reality. And even when Jim is
talking about some of the, you know, the hairball and some of
the the witchcraft type things that that he's been exposed
to, again, that's an illusion to, other
forces outside of the material world that are influencing
what's happening in the on the book. So
anyway. Well, I think leaders
like, I'm sure the legislators who proposed
the banning of the book in New Jersey.
And and and saying this from my location in Texas abuses me for
a whole variety of reasons. But
the legislators that were
proposing banning Twain's book in New Jersey, in the
New Jersey school system, for very self serving
reasons seem to not
understand caricature because they don't understand human
nature. And
I just think people who are more,
temperamentally oriented towards conservativism,
just understand human nature better.
They just, they just do they're they de complicate human
nature and they don't live
in, I won't say they don't live. They can't live in their own ivory towers.
I won't, I won't make that claim, but they D yeah,
they de complicate human nature. And I think
and this is sort of my last idea. Maybe I'll bounce this off you. So
I think not, I think I know Mark Twain has changed over the
course of time. Again, he would be shocked at how much
his, his image maybe
has changed and probably become a caricature of who he actually was.
Mhmm. And he might find that he might he may I think he
would probably find I think he would probably find that to be ironic, actually.
I think the irony of that would would strike him as humorous.
Do we need a Mark Twain for our
time? I'm not meeting somebody who steps in, like, in the Kennedy Center Honors and
gets a prize. That's not what I'm talking about. Kevin Hart most recently
received, the Kennedy prize, the Mark Twain prize. Right? Most recently,
Bill Cosby had his prize stripped from him.
Richard Pryor got one even though Bill Cosby wouldn't show up and give it to
him because he said Richard Pryor cursed too much.
You know? So, I mean, Jerry Seinfeld's never received one, which I find to be
incredibly interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
and very very interesting. Very funny Jewish man. Very funny Jewish
man, who has not received one even though another
very funny Jewish man. What's his name?
Did history of the world part 1. Oh, you know who
I'm talking? Mel Brooks. Yeah. Mel Brooks. Yeah. Mel Brooks. Mel
Brooks turned down the award. He was offered it.
Robin Williams turned down the award. Didn't want it. Right?
So this award is very interesting. It's malleable.
Do we need a Mark Twain?
Not do we need. Are we going to be able to mold successfully a
Mark Twain for the time on the
other side of the well, in the spring high that we're
coming into as a society, or will Mark Twain be one of those folks that
will just sort of fade to the background until the next unraveling
shows up, like, 60 years from now? Well, I hope
so. I mean, I think it would it it would be helpful to
have someone like that. I I I do think that
that person is gonna have to come from the right. I I mean, I could
be wrong about that. I'm they do left. But but I do
think based on, you know, I because I do agree with you. I I
think about, you know, like,
you you were talking about just having a the right perspective on
human history and, being more comfortable
with things. You know, I was I got to thinking about the obsession
in our culture over the last few years over
justice, You know? Mhmm. Justice justice just you know, Black
Lives Matter, all this other. And and I was
thinking about, you know, as, you know, as a
person on the right, it's not that you know, and I
don't I can't speak for everybody, but I I think I can speak in general
terms and certainly for myself. It's you know, it's not it's not that
I think conservatives are against justice at
all. It's an understanding though that
ultimate justice cannot be achieved in
a fallen world. In other
words, it doesn't matter if someone
the whole point of forgiveness of the concept
of forgiveness. Okay? As a as a
pastor, I preached extensively on forgiveness
for a long time, in a lot of different context, whether
it's counseling or marriage ministry or recovery
ministry. The the purpose of
of forgiveness is the person you're
forgiving is not competent to
pay back what they took from you. Completely
incompetent. They can't do it. They cannot rewind the clock. They can't
take back the words. Even if they say I'm sorry, the words were still said.
The action was still taken. The you know, and they and they
can't rewind history and take all that back. So so there is
no undoing. It's not going to be undone.
And and so even if they paid a paid a price, like
what? Like, you know, go to jail or something else,
whatever that is, it's still not going to make up for what happened
because that can't be undone. And so we
believe, you know, as a as a Christian, you know, I believe that there will
be a day when all wrongs are made right. There will be a
day of ultimate justice. It just won't be in this life.
And so with that as a context, right, and as
I as I live out my Christian faith,
as I impart forgiveness to someone,
I do it in the way in the in the context of how would I
would I want to receive forgiveness. So Jesus says,
or in the model prayer, you know, forgive us our debt as we forgive others.
Right? So so at just the way I forgive other people, god, that's
how I want you to treat me. And so so it
with with my own sinfulness, with my own brokenness, my own
patterns of of of,
unhealth and sin in my life, you know, just the the the level
of forgiveness that I want for that, that's the level that I
wanna try to present to other people. So, again, that's not to say we don't
want justice. We don't you know, criminals don't go to jail. People don't aren't tried
for crimes. None of that. But just but just knowing that
a society that says ultimate
justice must be achieved is a society that can't
function, because there is there is no
way to achieve ultimate justice without, without someone paying
the ultimate price, by dying, really, at the end of the
day. So that's why you see a lot of violence in a
lot of these social justice causes because in
order to achieve ultimate justice, somebody does have to die. They really do.
With that, we're gonna go back to the book, back to Huckleberry Finn.
We're gonna pick up in chapter 16,
following up with the rattlesnake skin. The rattlesnake
skin does its work.
We slept most all day and started out at night, a little ways behind a
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.
She had 4 long sweeps at each end. So we judge, she carried as many
as 30 men likely. She had 5 big wigwams aboard wide apart and an
open campfire in the middle, the tall flagpole. Each end,
there was a power of style about her. It amounted to something
being a raft man on such a craft is that we
were drifting down into a big bend and the night clouded up and got hot.
The river was very wide and it was wall with solid timber on both sides.
So you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or light. We talked
about Cairo and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I
said likely we wouldn't because I heard say there weren't, but about a
dozen houses there. And even if they did happen to have them lit up, how
was it gonna know who was passing the town? Jim said if the 2
big rivers joined together there, that would show. I said, maybe we might think we
was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again.
That disturbed Jim and me too. So the question was what to
do. I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed and tell them Pat
was behind, come along with the trading scout and was a green hand at the
business. He wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was
a good idea. So we took a smoke on it and waited.
There's nothing to do now, but to look out sharp for the town, not pass
by without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it because he'd
be a free man the minute he seen it. But if he missed it, he'd
be in a slave country again, and no more show for freedom.
Every little while, he jumps up and says, dash he is. What a worm. He
was jack o'-lantern as a lightning bug, so he sit down again and went to
watch the same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembling and feverish
to be so close to freedom. Well, I could tell you it made me all
over trembling and feverish too to hear him because I began to get it through
my head that he was most free and who to blame for it.
Why me? I couldn't get that out of my conscience. No how, Norway.
It got to trouble with me so I couldn't rest. I couldn't stay still in
one place. I had never come home to me before, what this thing was that
I was doing. But now it didn't. It stayed with me. It scorched
me more and more. I tried to make my make out to myself I weren't
a plane because I didn't run Jibar from his rifle owner. There were no use.
Conscience up and says every time. But you know that he was run away for
his freedom, and you could have paddled a short and told somebody. That was so.
I couldn't get around that no way. That was where it pinched. The conscience says
to me, what a poor miss Watson done to you that you could never see
her nigga go off right underneath your eyes and never say one single word? What
did that poor woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why
she tried to learn your book, and she tried to learn your manners, and she
tried good to you every way she know and how. That's what she's done.
I got to feel it so mean and so miserable. I almost wish I was
dead. I fidgeted it up and down the raft, musing myself to myself, and Jim
was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still.
Every time he danced around, it says, Dave's Cairo. It went through me like a
shot, and I thought if it was Cairo, I reckon I would die of miserableness.
Jim talked out loud the whole time I was talking to myself. He was saying
how the first thing he would do when he got up to a free state,
he would go to save up money and never spend a single cent. And when
he got enough, he would buy his wife, which is owned on a farm close
to where miss Watson lived. And then they would both work to buy 2 children.
And and if their master wouldn't sell them, they get a abolitionist to go and
steal them. Most froze me to hear such talk.
He would never dare to talk like such talk in his life before. Just see
what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about to
be free. Was according to the old saying saying,
give a nigger an inch and he'll take an l. Thinks I this
is what comes with my not thinking. Here was this nigga, which I had just
as good as helped to run away, come right out flat footed, saying he would
steal his children. Children that belong to a man I didn't even know. A man
that that had never done me no harm. I was sorry
to hear Jim say that it was such a low run of him. My conscience
got to stirring up me hotter than ever then until last I says to it,
let me up on it. It ain't too late yet. I'll paddle ashore at the
first light and tell. I felt easy and happy and light as a feather
right off. All my troubles was gone. I went out to look for a
sharp for a light, sort of singing to myself. I am
by 1 showed. Jim sings out, we safe. Fuck. We safe.
Don't ever crack your heels. That's good o'chiro at last. I just knows
it. I says, I'll take a canoe and go see Jim. It mightn't be. You
know? He jumped up and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in
the bottom for me to sit on and give me the paddle, and I shoved
off. And he says, pretty soon, I'll be shot for joy. And I say it's
all accounts of old Huck. I was a free man, and I could have ever
been freer than I had been for Huck. Huck done it. Jim won't ever forget
you, Huck. You've been the best friend Jim's ever had, as you was the only
friend Jim's got now. I was
paddling off all in a sweat to tell on him. But when he says
this, it sounded it seemed to kinda take the
tuck all out of me.
That's what you teach to kids in
school. That right there.
That's what you teach to your kid in your house.
That right there. Yeah. That's the conversation you
have with your child, white or Hispanic
or black or Asian or I don't
care. That's native American. One of our co hosts on
the show, Tom Libby, he's a part, native
American, very proud of his native American heritage. And we've read
hard books on this podcast, bury my heart at wounded
knee, and, the story of, the
Native American tribes and the and the things that happened to them in the
course of westward expansion. And you know what? Tom
talks openly about all of that stuff. And do you know where he first started
talking about all of that history with when he found out about it when he
was a kid? He started with his children to
rebuild his culture. Yeah.
Tom doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. Why would he?
Doesn't have any meaning for him, but he's not going out
advocating that other people don't celebrate Thanksgiving. He's just saying,
don't do it for me. I'm not doing it in my house. And
my kids will go do something else because I read the book and I
taught it to my kids. This is what I, I
am stunned by people's failure and inability
to think that critically about a
book that quite frankly forces you
to engage with the dichotomies of living in a fallen world.
Yeah. It also
engages with you at a level of authenticity that I
think puts us in our time close to the
bone. The challenge of our
time is that courage, which has always been in short supply, is
now no longer connected to critical thinking and analysis of best practices, which
I think we've already mentioned that. When original thinking is on life
support, leaders should encourage courage.
Making other people uncomfortable in the pursuit of being authentic used to be looked
at as an iconoclastic act because so many people seem to
be just going along with the flow. What our time has shown is that
people still follow the crowd. It's just that the size of the crowds has gotten
smaller and narrower in the social media driven ghettos
full of all these right thinking people. By the way, I'm looking at
all of you who are running to Blue Sky from Twitter right about now.
Leaders pursue authenticity above all else while also being aware of what
social they need to preserve. Like in that piece that
I read there, they need to ignore, like in that piece I just read
there, and they need to break, like in that piece I just read there.
And they have clear, intentional, and well rationalized reasons
for their authentic responses. So this is going to
be something that we are gonna wrap up with as we close today.
Brian, the writer Ted Goya, I put a link in the
script that I sent you, to the, to the article. He wrote
a, an article that I found to be very interesting about a
crisis of authenticity in our era. And
Ted makes the point, and he's, he writes a substat called the honest
broker. He's a tech guy from way back in the day.
And, and, he makes a point
in this article that Susan Sontag, back
in the 19 nineties, the, feminist and cultural critic,
she believed that seriousness is a function of art and
entertainment and culture had collapsed in the west in the mid
19 nineties. And Ted
asserts that after 30 years after this collapse, we're no
closer to authenticity now than we were in the mid 19
nineties. And he asserts
also that these platforms that we
exist on allow us to be fake entertainers,
putting out avatars of ourselves that protect
us from having to really deal with real things in a
real way. And we
are we are rewarded for behaving
and thinking correctly, but not critically.
He says, and I quote, I love this quote, lifestyles are increasingly about
pretending. Your real self stays in hiding while your fake self gets
presented on the most in the most spectacular way on social
media and other digital platforms. Now
this ties into something that we've talked about on the podcast too, which is the
crisis of competence, which is where I think we're at, where
the small things are done poorly, the middle thing things are done on average
or done in an average manner, and the large responsibilities are bungling
are bungled entirely.
And Ted, another quote from his article here from The Honest Broker,
is there a crisis of seriousness never before in history has
authenticity been in such short supply? That's so much the case at the
very word authenticity is mocked. I know people who
get angry just from hearing the word authenticity. They
insist it doesn't exist. It never existed and it
can't possibly exist
here at the end of the 4th turning.
How do we ensure authenticity?
Oh, hold on one second. I'm going to kill a wasp. Hold
on one second. Alright. Was there a murder?
Was the murder off screen just now? There was a murder off screen.
I, I slayed that sucker. And now back
to our show.
I really do. I don't I do not like wasps. Oh my gosh. And I
do not know how it got in. That's kind of weird because this is an
interior room. I don't know where it came from. Yeah.
Alright. Well, that's gonna bother me for the next
week. Alright. Alright. So the crisis of authenticity, how do
we deal with this? Yeah.
Well, I think there are
a couple of I mean, I I I think I agree largely with what he
says. I do think though there are some pockets of authenticity
that are starting to emerge, in certain places. I
mean, and and again, probably, are they genuine, like,
100% authentic authentic? I mean, you know, how authentic are they?
I don't really know. But, but I do think that, like,
long form podcasts, I think, are
are are a start, they're a place for that. I mean, when you look at
kind of what what Joe Rogan did I mean, just think about the
last election. What Joe Rogan did in 3 hours or 2 and a half hours
or whatever with Trump and then JD
Vance. I mean, you can't fake I mean,
you can only say so many platitudes. Over the course of 3 hours, you're gonna
cover a lot of ground. There's gonna be a lot that comes out. You're gonna
say things in a certain way. If you're faking it, it is
really hard to fake it for a really long
time. And so I I do think that those
I mean, I think that's why Kamala never went on one of those, you know,
long form podcasts. I think there was she was trying to have a curated
image. And, so I I think
there are pockets. I think there's that. I think there are in some
I've been a part of some churches that
have, made a really big effort
to to try to live an authentic Christian
life, not one that's carefully curated.
And so so I do think there are pockets emerging.
How will it end up? I I don't know. But but
I think, you know, how your your question was how do we how do we
deal with, you know, inauthenticities? I think I think we
just we approach life honestly.
We we we speak candidly
about challenges that we're facing. And, and
I think if if we're able to,
you know, you it's fine to have a conviction, but sometimes, you
know, we talked earlier about beliefs and convictions. Sometimes those things, you think you
have a belief and it it winds up with the conviction.
And then you have a conviction and after some thought and debate and, you know,
you're right. You you come to the conclusion. Maybe that's just a belief, you
know. And so I think there has to be and and in the course of
the this 4th turning, I think there there's a
lot of changing of that. The things that you held as a belief
now have become a conviction and vice versa. And so I think
giving people room to work that out and maybe say
something and then in 6 months realize, oh, I I didn't mean
that actually now that now that I understand a little bit more about
it. I I I think
being the the hard part about cancel culture is it doesn't give
anybody room to make a mistake and then admit they made a
mistake. Like, you're done. It's okay. Right.
So so I think cancel culture exacerbates,
this authenticity authenticity crisis that we have.
So so but I but I think just at the end of the day,
just just being honest, when you have a mistake when you make a mistake,
owning that mistake and and being willing to to acknowledge that
and talk about it openly, I think, goes a really long way with
people. At least that's what that's been my experience.
Well, what do you what do you say? I'd be curious to know what your
what your thoughts are on the idea that Ted
puts forth. And I and I do think it is an idea that is unique
to our time only because we have the So we have people who have grown
up. We now have 2 generations of people getting ready to be 3 who have
grown up inside of, for lack of a better term, the matrix.
They're in there. And you and I are part
of the, the, the tail end of the last generation
to not fully be engaged in matrix. Mhmm.
I think that gives us as leaders a certain
amount of power. It also gives us a certain amount of responsibility,
to preserve authenticity, to preserve competency. And I think, by the
way, those of us who are in the, like,
46 to, like, 52 year old age range, I
think the light went on, earlier this year with a lot
of us, and we finally realized that,
you know, the sort of Gen x Slacker pose
we've all been taking since 1992 is probably
done. It's finally, probably done.
And I don't think that's a bad thing because typically the nomad
generation, if you're looking at turnings, the nomad generation always shows up
late, has to make up, has to make
up for the, the, the, the, the, the
problems and the, mistakes of the older
generation who was thought to be so wise. And then much like
Harry Truman, you know, gets back in their car after they're no
longer president, no secret service or no nothing. I love
this. And just drives back to Missouri and dies in obscurity. Like,
that's that's the that's the clearing at the end of the path for for gen
x. I'm sorry. Like, that's I keep saying this on my security. Like, that's that's
right. And for many of us, that'll be like, that's actually that tracks.
That's okay with that. That's fine. That's fine. That tracks.
We're not a generation that gets a thank you. Right? But we're the generation that
preserves the authenticity because if we don't do it, then the
generations that are coming behind us to Ted Goya's
point ins will insist that it, that authenticity does
not exist. They will insist that it never, that's a huge
word, existed, and they will insist that it can't possibly
exist. Mhmm. How do
you lead people who believe that? Because they're so deep in the
matrix, they wouldn't recognize off not even they wouldn't recognize auth. You see,
that's even that They look at authenticity as being
inauthentic. Like, there's nothing I hate to pick on her, but
I'm going to anyway. There's nothing authentic about Taylor Swift.
Literally nothing. She is not real. She
is a creation of herself and her agents and her
managers and her albums and all of that. She's
a she's a creation who has come into the
media, but there's no knowledge about who the real Taylor
Swift is. Now people would say, particularly 18,
19 year old people would say, oh, yeah. Of course. Like, of course, she's
inauthentic. They just sort of take it as de rigueur. It's it's just
part of the the fabric of their lives.
And, and as I said there in my piece a little bit before, we
used to call people who stepped out of that inauthenticity and showed us something
authentic iconoclasts. Right? But we've lost the use of that
term. We don't even recognize those people if they showed up. So
how can leaders show authenticity to people who
don't even believe it can exist?
Because there's a level of lack of trust there, I think, fundamentally, that we're also
chasing. Yeah. I think when it comes to
leaders, one of the most authentic things
you can do as a leader is to take responsibility.
Take responsibility for, first off, for yourself, but also
for others. So, we you
know, you you talk about the the managerial class and
the, you know, they are professionals
at avoiding responsibility. Right? So there's always some study.
There's always some form to fill out. There's
always some committee. There's always some
peer review article. There's something that you can hide
behind and avoid responsibility,
for whatever the challenges that's being faced. I
think I think leaders who want to demonstrate
authenticity are going to be leaders that are willing to take
responsibility for for things.
Whether or not they're guilty of it or not is beside the point.
That, you know, guilt somebody who's guilty and someone
who's responsible are not necessarily the same things. I mean,
when I was, I was in the military, okay, and
so so, you know, as a as
a commander as a battery commander, I was
responsible for what happened or didn't happen in my in my unit. Now
I may have had a soldier who was guilty of negligence
and got himself or somebody else killed. I'm not guilty of that
negligence, but I'm responsible for it. Right. So I would be held
responsible for something that happened. Right? And as I should be.
And so I think as leaders, you know, if if you
wanna if you wanna be an authentic leader, if you wanna be
someone who is,
listened to with gravitas, some,
a a person, there there used to be an old
commercial. When EF Hutton speaks, people listen. Yep. If
you wanna be that guy, take responsibility.
Take responsibility even if it wasn't your fault. You just you say, hey. I
don't know how I I don't know I don't know what my part was
in the in the guilt hierarchy of things, but I wanna be
responsible to fix it. I wanna take that on. And if you
can be that guy regardless of whether or not you were guilty, but if you
could be that guy or that girl and and say, hey. I'll I'll be
responsible for fixing this. You know, regardless of who caused it,
I'm I'm responsible here. I'll take the I'll take the blame. I'll take the fall.
People are drawn to that person. They're just drawn to
them. They, it's it's almost like that's
a safe person for me to live out my
calling underneath. Right? Right. And and that's
that's, I think, where things start to heal and kinda
come together is when is when we have leaders who can who
can take responsibility regardless of whether or not they're guilty
of of the current situation. Yeah.
Yeah. There's a great line in, the movie,
oh, directed by Snatch.
Yes. The it's it's Irish boxing.
Brad Pitt plays a bumbling Irish boxer in it.
And there's a character in there named Rick Top. And,
basically, there was a fight that
was supposed to happen in a particular way. It doesn't happen
in that way. Guy Ritchie directed this. It's a British film.
The fight doesn't happen in that particular way. Bricktop is then
confronted by the people because he runs an underground boxing
underground boxing and and and illegal betting. And the people who
bet on, you know, the the fight come to him,
and there are people with more money and more power than him. And they're like,
why didn't the fight go the way that you wanted it to go or that
we wanted it to go. Right? Because we paid for this person, the Brad Pitt
character to take a dive basically. And Brad Pitt doesn't do that.
And, Bricktop gives a great line, which backs up what Brian is saying
here. He says, stand on me. I will make it
right. And then he just walks away. Well, there's some other things that happen
after that. You know, there's an entire sequence because it's all supposed to be a
comedy. So there's an entire sequence of things that happen after that. But
that's the line. Stand on me. Stand on my
shoulders. I will take you to the promised land. Doesn't matter if you can't see
it. Doesn't matter if you are ambivalent about my
ability to do that. Stand on me.
I will take responsibility.
You gotta fire somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're gonna fire
somebody, fire me. It's fine.
There's another idea I wanna run past you, and it does jump out to me
from the Ted Goya piece, and we'll close with this idea. I don't wanna run
past you. I think people
who wanna be authentic have to decline to participate
in unseriousness. Doesn't mean they can't laugh at
themselves. Doesn't mean they can't be humorous. Like we started off. I mean, this book
is a comedy. I mean, come on. It's a, it's a, it's a comedy. It's
a parody. It's absurdity. Rush Limbaugh back in the day
used to say, illustrating absurdity by being absurd, you
know, it's all of those things.
Right. But at the same time,
it doesn't descend into being unserious.
And that's, that's a heck of a tight
rope to walk. But I think leaders, I wanted
I I wanna know what your your thoughts are on that. Do leaders have to
frame this question? Do leaders have to walk that tightrope
between or how do they not do they? How do they walk that tightrope
between being authentic
but not participating in unseriousness?
Like, how do they how do you do that? Because these days, participating in
unseriousness is thought of as being funny. They thought of it as being self
deprecating. And yet
I don't I don't know where the line is. Right? But I do think that
that's part of the I do think that's part of the equation, but I
don't know I don't know how you click those things together.
Yeah. I
think, some of the most effective leaders
that I saw, that I've seen,
were able to just laugh at themselves. They didn't participate
in unseriousness, but they were able to laugh at unserious
they were they were able to laugh at it. And, I'm trying I'm thinking
of, you know,
whether I you know, I've been in military ministry. I've been in,
I've I've worked in oil and gas. And
those leaders who, you know because inevitably,
if you are in charge Mhmm. Okay, people
who are under you are going to make fun of you. Oh, invariably.
Yeah. I mean and so and so you just know that's
part of it. That's just part of being a leader
is that people are gonna make fun of you. And,
and so I think being able to laugh at that
and and to laugh with those people that you
are leading, when
they a, it makes you it makes them,
it's safe for them to criticize you. Okay? Now
it's criticism in a way that,
is you know, it it's, you know, it's it's a it's a fine line in
and of itself. Right? Right. And, and so but if you
can laugh at that, if you can laugh at their
their caricatures, their criticisms of you that right? They're
trying to be funny, make fun of you, poke fun of you. If you can
laugh at that, to me, that makes you more serious. To me, that
as a leader. That means you acknowledge your
shortcomings. You know that they're there. You're not unaware of them.
And you can appreciate the fact that someone else can find humor
in that. Yeah. And so
so I think, but I've also
known leaders, you know, that were, that, you know but
that but that's not to say that she would be the one writing the script
for those things, right, and participate. To me, that would be unserious, I think. If
you're Yeah. If if you're the one that's, like,
you know, somehow trying to curate the the the the
comedy show that's making fun of you, I think that's totally
serious. And so I I I to me, I think that I don't know if
that answers your question. I just I think being able to to laugh at yourself,
to know that you have shortcomings, to laugh with the people that are
making fun of you, I
I just I I I that's that's that's that's not come up with at
the moment. In in popular culture, I think of the, the
show, and you may have seen it or you may not have, Brian,
but, Brooklyn 99, comedy show
from years ago. It's on Netflix now. It's streaming now. That's how I found it.
But it's got a Andre Brauer in it who was a very serious
Shakespearean actor. He was on that show
homicide life on the streets. Very serious Emmy
winning, very serious actor. And he's on this
comedy show with Andy Sandberg from
Saturday night live. And there's a bunch of other characters in on
there. The guy from the old spice commercials, Ted Terry
Cruz and idiocracy is also on the show,
And he plays a police captain,
obviously, in New York City for the 99th precinct. And so he's
surrounded by all these goofballs. It's a serious very serious guy, serious
about his role, serious about who he is as a captain, serious about
what he does, and he's literally surrounded by and this is the only way I
can think to describe it. He's surrounded by morons and people who
are just stumbling all over themselves and, you know, solving
cases by accident and total complete goofballs.
And you could watch over the course of 3 or 4 seasons how they
loosen his character up very gradually, very
gradually. Matter of fact, the last episode that I watched, there was some reference to
the the old tone, loke, song from the 19 nineties, funky cold
Medina. And Andre
Prower, like, deadpanses. And he does. Throughout the year, he he just he
deadpans all of his lines. He's taking it absolutely deadly
seriously as a leader, but you could
tell he cares about his people. Right? And they all make fun of him.
And the Andy Samberg character who's, like, his his his protege or
he adopts as his protege, really looks up to him and
really admires him, but he's trying to constantly try to get him to crack his
serious demeanor. And and then he'll say something totally, literally
out of left field, and you'll be like, oh, wait. He's just as much as
a goofball as the rest of these people are. He's just serious.
And so I'm I've got that thing rattling around in my head head right now,
with your as you're talking. And that's a good and a
comedic level, which kinda goes along with the book that we're reading today.
He declines that that that is. He the Andre Brauer character in there, captain
Holt. He declines to participate in unserious nonsense. Like, he
doesn't do pranks or anything like that, but he will do
the, like, you know, once a year, we're going to
steal the Halloween something or other from somebody or
other. Like, he just outrageous, outlandish stuff that you wouldn't
and he deadpans the whole thing. And, like, this guy's dead serious. He's an
Emmy winning actor surrounded by
these morons with Saturday Night Live. And that's how that show
works. That's how it works.
And I think it's very I think it's a an example of what you're talking
about there where the, the leader
doesn't participate in the clowning of himself or
herself, but they understand to your point that the clowning is
going to happen at some point. And the only job for you as a leader
is to just to tell everybody when it crosses the line.
Yeah. And to be sure to hold that line fairly consistently,
and then let every the the chips fall where they may at that point.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Awesome. Wow. Look at that.
I think we've, we've covered a lot in from the adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. I think you you ought to go out and you ought to get this
book if you have not read it. Or if the last time you read it
was maybe in high school and you've forgotten things about it, you should probably go
back and read it again as a leader. There's a lot of
areas in this book that we did not cover. We just
barely scraped the surface of the challenges between
or the challenges between abolition and slavery,
that that, Mark Twain, looks at quite baldly,
but also the challenges between being on the river and being in civilization and
being in culture, and, of course, the challenges of being
a rebellious young man, in a
world where rebellion is being tampered down,
where the west is being wrestled to the ground
and tamed. All of these themes resonate and are
resonant inside of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written
by Mark Twain. And, I would encourage you to read it yourself,
and don't you dare let a legislator or somebody
else determine who the Twain for your time and
for your understanding can be.
I'd like to thank Brian Bagley for coming on the leadership lessons from the
great books podcast today. And with that, well,
as usual, we're out.