Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and
understand yet another business book, on the Leadership Lessons from the Great
Books podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the
great books of the Writers canon. You know those
books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in
between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high
school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the
entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn't have the time
to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from
literature to execute leadership best practices in
the confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now
inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Writers civilization
at the intersection of literature and leadership.
Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast.
Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode
number 100 and n.
With our book today, a book that is widely considered
to be one of the cornerstones of
Podcast literature. It describes in lyrical
detail, as Man's Search for Turning by Viktor Frankl did, which we
covered on episode number 68 with Richard Messing, the
ways in which individuals, are gradually and
imperceptibly robbed of their humanity by
the state. During this month, we've
addressed on the podcast the idea of where a leader's moral
compass emanates from. And this book answers to other
questions, which actually probably come before that
question, and they are of equal importance.
What does a leader do to preserve his or her moral compass when
morality and character are effectively placed on the back
burner? And number 2, how can a leader rebuild a
destroyed moral center? The hard
earned lessons from the apocalyptic wars of the 20th century
that ended with atomic finality at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki seem to be losing their power to emotionally
scare us now in the early 21st century.
From Russia invading the Ukraine to China, saber rattling in the Writers
Pacific, the drums are beating gradually for an escalation
to worldwide warfare again, the, quote,
unquote, health of the state, according to the progressive socialist author
Randolph Fourth back in the day. The people,
the policymakers, pundits, politicians, and even the public tastemakers
pounding these war drums seem inured to the lessons laid
out so clearly in this book that we are going to cover today.
They are historically and generationally removed far enough from the visceral
nature of the horrors of the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking,
and the Ukrainian oligomer. Their
insistence that humanity stroll yet
again down the well worn path that leads eventually to
the clearing where these horrors lie. In light of this
book, reads like naive ignorance at best
and craven self serving manipulation at
worst. And this is why we need books like this and
conversations like the one we're going to have today in order to pull
all this apart and put it in its appropriate context.
Today, we will be exploring the clearing at the end of the
path, the weakness of a nihilistic worldview when
genuine totalizing evil manifests itself in the world, and the
utter banality of evil as we
cover night by Eli
Liesel. Leaders, beware of
tyrants. Unlike most people you know, they tend
to ruthlessly heap their promises.
And today in this journey, we will
be joined by 2 folks. You're going to hear 2 voices on the
podcast today. And of course, if you're watching the video, you're going to
see 2 folks on the video. And it'll be kind of a little bit of
a panel discussion today. So we're joined by,
our previous guest cohosts, Libby Unger
and Ryan j Stout. How are you doing
Ryan and Libby? How's it going? Great. Best day of my
life.
Best day of your life to be talking about a truly
How are you, Jesan? Impactful book. How am I? Well,
it's it's, it's the merry month of June. Right? So we're
gonna we're gonna get into, we're gonna get into tonight. We're gonna get into Eli
Weisel. I had not read this book. I don't know
how I had, like, missed it, in all my time.
But it's one of those books that fourth of like your vegetables. Everybody tells you
that it's good to read or that you should read it. And of course it's
part of a much larger biography of Eli and his experiences in
the concentration camps, during world war 2 but it was a
book that I had not up until this point read and the version that I
have has an orper winfrey quote on the cover of it, and I try to
take usually, I take the Jonathan Franzen approach to an Oprah Winfrey quote on the
cover of her book, and I I run away from it.
But this book,
just like, east of Eden, will be
fine with or without Oprah. You know? Doesn't need Oprah to make
it any better. So
so yeah, it was, it was a very impactful book for me, and I hope
that it will be impactful for us today as we, as
we talk about it and pull it apart. And I'm gonna find out from you
all what you all thought of it as well.
So we're gonna open from night,
and we're gonna read directly from the book today. I don't think Eli would actually
object to us reading directly from the book. Book matter of fact, think you would
probably want us to. So we're gonna start early in
night here
and talk about Moishe the Beatle.
One day as I was about to enter the synagogue, I saw Moshe the
Beatle sitting on a beach on a bench near the entrance.
He told me what had happened to him and his companions. The train with
the deportees had crossed the Hungarian border. And once in Polish
territory had been taken over by the Gestapo, The train had
stopped. The Jews were ordered to get off and onto the waiting trucks. The trucks
headed toward a forest. There, everybody was ordered to
get out. They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished
their work, the men from the gestapo began theirs.
Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the
trench 1 by 1 and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the
air and used as targets for the machine guns. This took place in the
Galician fourth near Kolemy. How had he,
Moishe the beetle, been able to escape? By a miracle.
He was wounded in the leg and left for dead.
Day after day, night after night, he went from one Jewish house to the next
telling his story and that of Malka, the young girl who lay dying for 3
essays, and that of Toby, the tailor who begged to die before his sons were
killed. Moshe was not the same. The joy in
his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either
god or Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen.
But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to
listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity that he
was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone
mad. As for Moisha, he wept and pleaded,
Jews, listen to me that's all I ask of you no money, no Libby, just
listen to me. He kept shouting in synagogue between the prayer at dusk
and the evening prayer. Even I did not
believe him. I often sat with him, after services and listened to his
tales, turning Tom understand his grief, but all I felt was pity.
They think I'm mad, he whispered, and tears like drops of wax flowed from his
eyes. Once I asked him the question, why do you
want people to believe you so much? In your place I would not care whether
they believed me or not. He closed his eyes as if
to escape time. You don't understand, he said in despair.
You cannot understand. I was saved miraculously. I succeeded in coming
back. Where did I get my strength? I wanted to return
to Sighet to describe to you my death, so that you might ready yourselves while
there were still time life. I no longer care to live. I
am alone. But I wanted to come back to warn you.
Only no one is listening to me.
This was towards the end of 1942.
Thereafter, life seemed normal again. London radio, which we Jesan to every
evening, announced encouraging news, the daily bombing of Germany and
Stalingrad, the operation of the Jesan front. And so we, the Jews of
Cygnet, waited for better days that were surely soon to come.
I continue to devote myself to my studies, Tom turning the day, and kabbalah
at night. My father took care of his business and the community. My grandfather came
to spend Rosh Hashanah with us so as to attend the services of the celebrated
Rebbe of borscht. My mother was beginning to think it was high time to
find an appropriate match for Hilda thus past
the year 1943.
Eleazar Eli Weisel, born September 30, 1928,
died July 2nd 2016, was a Romanian
born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate,
and podcast survivor.
Wiesel's father, Shlomo, instilled a strong sense of humanism in his
son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his
mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Vaisel said his father
represented reason, while his mother Sarah promoted faith.
Vaisel had 3 siblings, older sisters, Beatrice and Hilda, and a younger
sister, Zipporah. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war and reunited
with Weisel at a French orphanage.
Weisel was 15 and he with his family, along with the
rest of the town's Jewish population was placed in 1 of 2 confinement
ghettos set up in Szeged, the town where he had been born and
raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian
authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish
community to the Auschwitz concentration camp where up to
90% of people were murdered on arrival.
It's interesting that I'm reading this book now. I'm also reading another book, which you
will cover on the podcast a little bit later on this month or
perhaps maybe later on this year, Hannah
Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, a report on the banality
of evil. And when you read that book
about Adolf Eichmann's, trial in
Jerusalem in the 1960s, what you begin to realize is that the
Hungarians were the last out of all the European
countries to actually start solving the Jewish
problem. And, yes, they did it under German
pressure. They were unwilling to go as far as the
Germans wanted them to go. But the second
that the Germans told them that this was the direction that they were going to
be going in, the Hungarian authorities were all too
eager to start shipping their Jews to concentration
camps.
One other note about this book. Eli Weisel,
as an author, wrote a much longer version
of this. It's divided into 3 parts. So, night, day,
and then I believe the other part is dawn. And it's a much
larger book. And it took him, gosh, probably
about 10 to 12 years after he was
released fourth the concentration camps, to actually be able to
put some of the things in words that he had experienced
directly as a 15, 16, Jesan 17 year old.
His mother and his oldest sister or sorry, not his mother
and his youngest sister did not survive the concentration camps,
neither did his father, Shlomo. And the father's death
is described in brutal detail in night. And there's a
lot of details in here that are turning. And so we're going to cover some
of them today. So this is fair warning right at the beginning, that we're going
to get into some we're going to get into some stuff here.
But I want to put forth the first question to both Ryan and Libby, and
we can kind of bounce this question back and forth. I don't care who goes
first today. It doesn't really matter. Let's
talk a little bit about the literary life of Eli Weisel, the impact of Knight,
what you know about this book, what you heard about this book. Let's talk a
little bit about that just to sort of open here.
And any either one can either one can begin. At this point, you
know, I am fairly I I
travel around a lot. I'm just, you know, bitter. And
so books just show up in my book.
Book. It's, like, kinda has, like, a magnifying. Just like one day, I have no
idea how God their night was there. Just kind of in my collection of
books. And I moved to Cincinnati about two and a half years ago, and I
was like, this is probably a book I should read. And it's kind of like
what your opening statement was. I was like, you know, I I read the, you
know, the the I didn't really know much about it, fourth writer. And,
that's the book I read when I first moved in. And, I
yeah. As far as the, I love
how I love when writers can writers
so poignantly and so powerfully. Camu does that really well.
And and using the simple language and describing those, like,
grotesque scenes and almost allowing the the reader to kinda plug
in information as well. He's just providing us the the the specifics
of the the details Tom, you know, to give us, I believe, a necessary
insight into the capabilities
of, you know, humankind
Mhmm. On both ends of that. You know? So it's it's
you know? Yeah. I had not
read it. I, I am a Oprah
Winfrey fan.
My favorite book, the untethered soul, came from her,
and it started my own journey,
you know, to a whole another level. I think I'm on Libby
11.0or12.0 at this point, and she got me at,
like, 3.0. But I
think I avoided it because there was already so
much that we knew about the Podcast, and it was
just too much to take in. Mhmm.
And actually reading the book, it was very it was very
difficult. It brought me to tears, Tom many
times just thinking about what humans could
do to each other,
the honesty that he had as well, you know, as he
moved through the, you know, the camps.
You know, when you're in Maslov's pyramid of needs and you're all the
way at the bottom, all of us can
lose it's just about getting food.
Mhmm. Yeah. I I think they say after 3 days with no water, all of
us could turn to ferocity and that we're not
that far away from being feral ourselves.
But it was, yeah, incredibly
moving. It also was really hard to read in light of what
we've just experienced for the last 4 years.
And, you know, and not knowing knowing
knowing things weren't right, but not knowing
what truths to believe. Mhmm. And when
he wasn't believing beat you know, beetle,
and he was warning, you know, how many of those those
warnings do we get as well that, you
know, are false and we over index on believing are
true fourth are true and, you know, and we
don't and we don't believe. So it's kinda it's very
poignant for a lot of reasons fourth the last, you know, 4 years and
then, you know, in the last 6 months.
You know, what folks were warning about,
you know, kind of emerged and not from where you expected it to.
So it's, it's really inter it was very
interesting. I read the version that his wife,
translated, and so it was
it was, I don't know, like, 20 years 20 or 30 years after he wrote
it. And I I like that
the the, the description that he gave is as I
understand English better now, and so I can give
a little more flavor. Those are my words. Flavor to what
happened. But, it's powerful. I don't wanna read it again.
I think everyone should. I don't know why this book
touched me much more than any war books when you've or
movies. I am someone who covers my eyes in war movies.
So, you know, but I'm not brought to
tears, and this one brought me to tears thinking about what humans could do to
humans. And maybe it's because it's so close to our
history, and we know people touch I know so many people touched by
it. Mhmm.
It is written in a very clear, to Ryan's
point, a very clear, deceptively
simplistic language. There's not a lot of flowery
description, in this
in this narrative at all. Obviously,
autobiographical, obviously being driven by what he
directly experienced. Ryan, you're a writer
and you've done a fair bit of writing yourself. How hard
is it to like strip away and,
strip away. Sort of the
meaningless fluff. Right. And Olivia and I talked about those a little bit with
the sun also rises and with Henry's Hemingway, comfort Hemingway. But I'd
like to get your thoughts on this because as a writer, how do
you look at what Weisel has done here?
Stuff. Epic. Because I
a and I think it was 70 I've writers you a 75 word
sentence. Mhmm. And so being
direct is not really the strong suit of a writer
such as myself. I think that's where, like, maybe songs or
poetry comes in, something like that. But you can even twist words around
even more so. It's because it's just an abstraction and an abstraction and an
abstraction. It becomes this, you know, sort of, like,
flowery thing. Like, the the the kid, Halal, I was talking
about, earlier. He
had used to cry when he was younger uncontrollably.
And so it was, like, a really big deal when he's in school, roughly. He
can just cry and cry and cry. And so and he would talk about it
and I saw a video on his iPad and it was
him as, like, a 7 year old or 6 year old And he's like,
and now and he's getting his, like, crying under control. And he's like, and
now I'm gonna give you a tear. And he
closes his eyes and a tear runs down his face.
And I'm like, bro, I'm a pallet. You can't show that to me, dude.
So are you kidding? You're gonna give me a tier? Oh my goodness gracious.
So from that end of things, yes. It has. And that's just one simple
turning. And I feel like the writing too made it so visceral. It's like you
just hear this one thing that's so connected to you
know? And it's also so far away from what most
people can relate to is affecting our lives immediately. So it's it
is such a a horrible, horrible thing to to
even imagine and consider. Another thing that I thought
Yeah. I mean, it was really matter of fact. You
know, and he didn't he didn't over
it's what you would observe if you were just in it. Right?
Like, you wouldn't have time to be flowery either or think
about how you feel about it. You'd just be observing it,
and I think that was, you know, why it was so poignant.
You know, it didn't over it he didn't explain anything.
He just told you how he saw yeah. Really saw
it. The one of the other things I wanna we
talked about voice of the beetle.
I I was thinking of, like, kind of the sagacious Jesan. It's the
essays of the of the play, you know. It's the the fourth you know, it's
the the turning. And, and it was just and
then when we were talking Olivia, you brought up, like, what to sort of believe
and and tease and tether out. It's like
so it is difficult. You have this kind of clairvoyant saying, hey. This is
scumming. And it's like, yeah. That's a crazy person. How often do we just say
that's a crazy person and dismiss them, because
it's so kind of unrelatable, or just
fantastical at a particular moment. And and I made me think about how
animals are never, you never see, like, graveyards of
animals from natural disasters. There's this is clearly, like, the
holocaust is there's a spiritual malady turning, and I think that's
the, kind of the the
maybe the through line of what's happening currently,
this kind of the spiritual brokenness. And
and turning to be plugged into that
is is, I think, kind of a I think like,
so many of us could not imagine it. So if it's not in your heart
or your head to even imagine that
a human has that capacity, you would think that
they're crazy. Right? Like,
it I mean, I have bad thoughts, but I could never
they they would never fall in the the realm of what
he saw and experienced, like, what they did to babies and, you know, and
turning like, it's I can't even say it because it doesn't it
it I can't even fathom it. But that's why I
think people don't believe is because they, yeah, they can't believe
what they can't imagine. You know?
And then we have movies that just, you know, have you so far
detached from it being real that it just seems fantastical, and they
don't they didn't have movies fourth meaningful movies back then. But I
think if you can't imagine it, I also
think the reason he could have hope on the
other side is because he also saw true
goodness in humanity. Right? Even
with the evil, he saw the you know, he saw goodness, and so
there was enough from a goodness perspective to keep him moving
forward. Well, one of the things that we're
going to talk about today is and and, Libby, you kind of touched
on it. Ryan, you touched a little bit on it. And we are going to
address it. I mean, it is it is in our notes today to talk about
the resurgence of, antisemitism in our time,
which is disturbing to me, at a
at Tom multiple levels. And I
don't well anyway, we'll talk about that coming up here because there's no
possible way you could talk about this book without talking about antisemitism.
But I I like I said fourth, I'm also reading
Hannah Arendt's, you know, Eichmann in Jerusalem, writers, her
reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. I'm reading this parallel at the
same time that I'm reading Knight. And one of
the challenges and, Jordan
Peterson talks about this sometimes, and it is a
it is a good point. He essays, if you can't imagine
yourself doing some of these things, then you
probably don't know though fourth own capacity for
evil. And he's a person
who came to social prominence
through psychologically wanting to solve the problem of
evil. And the Podcast, even
more so than Stalin's gulags, which killed far more people, by
the way. And Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about this in the Gulag Archipelago
when I you know, we've covered that book on this podcast. But
the Holocaust strikes us at so much more of a visceral level,
even though Stalin stacked up way more bodies than Hitler. And
I'm not being facetious about that. Just this is just a issue. Tom.
Right. Just Mao right. Oh my gosh. Mao. Writers? Top 3
mass murderers of the 20th century. Right? And
and yet we are stunned into
silence by the Podcast in the West
anyway. Now in other places of the world,
specifically,
what the heck? I'm gonna go ahead and go for it. Specifically in the
in the more Muslim or Islamic parts of the world, no one is
stunned into silence by the Podcast. It's either
dismissed fourth shrugged off fourth it's called a myth or it's called a
and we'll talk about this again coming up here in a little bit, a Zionist
conspiracy. And,
none of those dogs hunt for me, and I don't think they hunt for
any rational human being.
Weisel got to something in the human heart, which is a larger
thing that we're gonna talk about coming up here Tom, I think. Or not. I
know we're gonna talk about coming up here. He got to something that exists in
the human heart. And it starts with that. I
think that that lack of belief in the Cassandra, the prophet
that's going to tell you the future. Ryan, you called it clairvoyant. I
I prefer the, you know, the the the old Greek idea of a Cassandra,
or a canary in a coal mine. Moishe was a canary in a coal mine.
Right? And, you
know, I think one of the reasons why we're so
viscerally why people got so visceral over COVID in this country
was because we don't want to be fooled again.
We have this narrative in our head. And one of the things that disturbs me
greatly and concerns me greatly
have that seem to have that thing in their head. Right.
And I don't know if that's a failure of the education system. I don't know
if that's a failure parenting in a family. I don't know if it's a failure
of not reading these books. You know, I went to
Half Price Books to pick up my copy of Knight with
this specific cover, and there were, like, 50 copies
there. It's not like you can't get the information. It's not like you
can't read it. So I guess my question is,
how do we get more people to be touched by this? I mean,
I'm doing my part talking about it right now, but how do we get more
people to be touched by this?
You know, I feel it has to be sort of woven
somehow into the, like, current narrative of,
social importance and kind of probably abstracted in a
way. So it may enter as, you
know, as something about
the podcast, but it may be extracted into something else that doesn't even
be sort of alright. So do you know how the the the Proud Books started?
Mm-mm. It was a joke. It was a joke.
It was it was a, Gavin McGinnis is working at
this, studio, and, one of
their tech guys was this, like, 19 or 20 year old Jewish kid, and he
was he went to, like, op
Nope.
We've been having trouble with Ryan's audio coming in and out. I know.
We'll see if he, we'll see if he comes back. Go
ahead, Libby. Yeah. I don't know this. I don't know the story of the Proud
Boys either. I don't. I don't either. Or how prominent
they are. That's the question that I also have.
You know, get oh, are you there? Oh,
good. Yeah. I'm gonna here. I'm gonna,
go.
There we go. And so
this song came on and it was, like, the big encore song of the play
and it was you're a proud boy and and Gavin Gavin
McGinnis was just kinda teasing this dude, and we should start a club called the
Proud Boys. And so they would, like, go to bars and drink and just do,
like, dude stuff. And that was kind of that was it. And then Gavin McGinnis
would go on speaking engagements, Antifa would be there, and then, like,
he'd asked the Proud Boys to come and then it turning into what it turned
into, and he's been out of it for for a long time. So it started
off as a complete joke, and
it it spiraled into and so when we talk
about kind of, like, what to believe and this does not get fooled again, and
and if it's so pervasive that it could spawn something
something can spawn out of something so so tiny.
I actually think that speaks to something bigger about the abuse of
institutions. You know? So those who
tend to want power are those who should have it.
And, you know, so, I, again, I don't
wanna touch on the Proud Boys too much because I don't know enough about it.
But the idea being that it got popular based off
of one turning, and then like, kind of like BLM got
infiltrated too, with the Marxists.
You know? So, you know, does Proud Boys get infiltrated and then, you
know, taken somewhere it doesn't you know, that the original folks
didn't want it to go? You know? I have friends whose
kids are at Harvard, and, you know,
they, you know, they'll, you know, their
the different groups also got kind of hijacked. Mhmm.
And when you're that young, you don't know how to fight it,
or the import of it, you know, because you're still
in that I need to belong. I'm I'm fortunate that I've
always been allergic to tribalism since the age of
yeah. Since 3rd grade. But,
a lot of folks don't know how like, belonging
is so important to them, especially on the female side,
unfortunately. You know, they
they they get caught up in something, and they don't know how to get
out because their identity is so tied up
with, you know, what it previously was.
And they have friends now that are
promoting things they didn't believe in, but they don't wanna know not belong because
they may be the only outsider. You know? So you have so many different
human dynamics that are at play, but we do see
how a lot of positive institutions, like
Congress,
you know, got taken over by those who you want to
use power for their own means. You know? And it sounds like
that was yeah. We know that happened with BLM. Yeah. We know that happens
with a lot. Yeah. We that happened probably with Proud Boys. You know,
so one of the ways to counter that is always trying to
localize things and keep things decentralized.
Well and one of the things and it's interesting you've mentioned, you mentioned Proud Books.
It's not necessarily what I would have gone, but it's interesting. I I actually just
listened to an interview with Gavin McGinnis.
I can't remember who interviewed him. It was a podcast interview with him because I
didn't know anything about him. Literally
nothing. Like, that's part of the world that I'm blind to.
And He's like the first hipster. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. And and I listened to it, and I
thought
not to be dismissive because, you know, ideas have
consequences. Right? And that's why we read we read the book.
And this ties into the conversation that we'll have a little bit later around antisemitism
as well. I want to be very clear I'm not being dismissive of the ideas
behind these kinds of thinkers, writers, and these kinds of people who are
putting themselves forth in the public era. And
2 things can be true at one Tom. And.
It's like looking at a bad copy of a bad Tom, Right. Like
the level of I don't want to say commitment. That's not it.
The level of. Trolling. Let me
let me yeah. That's the word I'm looking for. Trolling, gaslighting, that
that's evident in some of these of these actors' behavior,
Tom Libby, to your point, when they're trying to capture institutions for their own
for their own use. They're not serious about it.
Himmler was serious.
You know, Rudolf Hess was serious.
Reinhard Heidrick was serious. It goes without
saying that Hitler was serious. You know, these were grown
ups who had been through the First World War and had
you know, you can I was I was talking to my kid about the history
of the 1st World War, my my youngest daughter? And I said,
you know, you can you can say a lot about Hitler and you should, but
you cannot take away fourth the fact that he did something that was incredibly hard
in world war one. He was a runner and not all those people made it.
It was like 80, 90% death rate for readers.
And yet he didn't die, which is
weird. Writers. It's almost as if to the
spiritual piece that there were
some other things that had to happen in the world with that guy.
Writers. And this does not justify him Sorrells it, nor does
it dismiss anything that he, he, he did, But he was
a grown up. I listened to that interview with Mr.
McGinnis and I don't get the sense that he's a grown up. You're not behaving
like a mature individual. You're not behaving like you actually
understand that your words carry weight and meaning.
And by the way, the this is the problem I had with BLM too. You're
not behaving like you're a grown up. Like none of you could
carry Malcolm X's briefcase.
And yet you want to go around and scream about black nationalism, get the
hell out of town. You haven't earned it. You really
have it. You haven't earned it.
So that is the part to me that I kind of
struggle with a little bit in these types of conversations.
And so I think what gives weight and seriousness, what gives
maturity, gravitas, I guess, is the word that I'm looking
for to some of these ideas is exploring exactly
where these ideas go, which is the value of reading books like
this.
I'm gonna jump back into the book. Ryan's gotta go do something. So
he's gonna log off for just a second. Well, not log. He's gonna mute mute
himself, and then he's gonna go do the thing he needs to do. And Olivia
and I are gonna keep talking here. Back to the book, back
to 9th by Eli
Weisel. There was a woman among us, a
certain missus Shachter. She was in her
fifties, and her 10 year old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her
husband and 2 older sons had been deported with the first transport by
mistake. The separation had totally shattered her.
I knew her well. A quiet, tense woman with piercing eyes, she had
been a frequent guest in our house. Her husband was a pious man who spent
most of his days and nights in the house of study. It was she who
supported to the family. Missus Schacter lost
her mind. On the 1st day of the journey, she had already begun to
moan. She kept asking why she had been separated from her family.
Later her sobs and screamers became hysterical. On the
3rd night, as we were sleeping, some of us sitting huddled against each other, some
of standing, a piercing cry broke the silence. Fire. I see a fire. I
see fire. There's a moment of panic. Who had screamed? It
was missus Schachter Standing in the middle of the car and the faint light filtering
through the window, she looked like a withered tree in a field of wheat. She
was howling, pointing at the window. Look. Look at this fire, this terrible
fire. Have mercy on me. So I pressed against the bars to
see there was nothing, only the darkness of the night. It took
a long time, to recover from this harsh awakening. We were still trembling.
And with every screech of the wheels, we felt the abyss open being beneath us.
Unable to steal our anguish, we tried to reassure each other. She is
mad, poor woman. Someone placed a damp rag
on her forehead, but she nevertheless continued to scream, fire, I see a fire.
Her little boy was crying, clinging to her skirt, trying to hold her hand. It's
nothing, mother. There's nothing there. Please sit down. He pained me
even more than did his mother's cries. Some of the women
tried to calm her. You'll see you'll find your husbands and sons again in a
few days. She continued to scream and sob fitfully. Jews, listen to me,
she cried. I see a fire. I see flames, huge flames. It was as though
she was possessed by some evil spirit.
We tried to reason with her fourth to calm ourselves, to catch our breath,
and to soothe her. She is hallucinating because she is thirsty, poor woman. That's why
she speaks of flames devouring her. But it was all in vain.
Our terror could no longer be contained. Our nerves had
reached breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had
infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced
her to sit down then bound and gagged her.
Silence fell again. The small Libby sat next to his mother crying. I started to
breathe normally again as I listened to the rhythmic pounding of the wheels and the
tracks of the train racing through the night. We could begin to doze again to
rest, to dream. And so an hour or 2 passed,
another scream jolted us. The woman had broken free of her bonds and was shouting
louder than before. Look at the fire. Look at the flames. Flames everywhere.
Once again, the young man bound and gagged her. When they actually struck her, people
shouted their approval. You were quiet. Make that mad woman shut up. She's
not the only one here. She received several blows to the
head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately
to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying.
The night seemed endless. By daybreak, missus Schacter had settled down,
crouching in her corner, her blank gaze fixed on some faraway place she no
longer saw us. She remained like that all day,
mute, absent, alone in the midst of us.
Toward evening, she began to shout again, the fire over there.
She was squinting somewhere in the distance, always the same place. No one felt like
beating her anymore. The heat, the thirst, the stench, the lack of air were
suffocating us. Yet all that was nothing compared to her screams, which tore
us apart a few more days, and all of us would have started to
scream. But we were pulling
into a station. Someone near a window read to
us, Auschwitz.
Nobody had ever heard that name.
When you read the stories of folks who have who survived the
holocaust, one of the things that
jumps out at you actually, there's 2 things, 2 big things that jump out at
you. I'm gonna talk a little bit about this idea with Libby and Ryan.
And we are gonna pull leadership lessons from Eli Weisel and
from Knight because there are lessons for leaders from this book.
One of the big ones I actually we actually just covered, which I
think is you have to know history and be mature
and be responsible for your ideas where they go,
clearing at the end of the path where they might lie.
I think another lesson for leaders is that
you're going to have 2 responses to things that happen to
you, 2 reactions. And,
they could be summed up, these 2 reactions can be summed up in a couple
of quotes. One that comes directly from Knight, another one that comes from,
Yitzhak Zuckerman. He was a Jewish resistance fighter and a
survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
And it's a quote that stuck with me for many years, and I thought about
it when I was reading this book. He said, If you could lick
my heart it would poison you. The amount of
bitterness that he carried from the things that he saw happen to
him and the things that he saw happen to people that he loved. The
Warsaw ghetto uprising occurred in Warsaw, Poland,
And that was the one Tom, and it's actually talked about
in Eichmann in Jerusalem, that was one of very rare number
of times when the Jewish leaders did not
cooperate with the National Socialists in their own
destruction. One of the dis fourth disturbing things that you read about in
Eichmann in Jerusalem is just how easy it was for the Nazis,
the Germans, to get Jewish leaders to save
Jews that were of a certain social class and allow other
Jews to just go to Auschwitz.
In night, the second idea is there,
which is
expressed by a concentration camp member, that
Liesel was in a hospital bed next to in Buna
because he was transported around as many Jews were to several different
concentration camps. And at Buna he had to go into the hospital
until he was put in the hospital, and he was there next to, a fellow
concentration camp member. And, this
guy essays to him, I have more faith in Hitler than anyone
else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises
Tom the Jewish people.
You're going to have one of 2 reactions, right? You're either
going to drink from the cup of bitterness, and it's going
to be like consuming poison and hoping that the other person will die,
or you're going to be clear eyed, right,
about what you're actually going through and what's actually happening to you,
and you're going to figure out a way to navigate around it.
Right? There's challenges in our
time with genuine no. Not genuine. There's
challenges in our time of recognizing the difference between genuine
genuinely tyrannical acts, and commitments
and just political things, right, that are just happening in the moment.
How do we and this is the this is the question for Olivia and Ryan.
This is a heavy question. How do we
use a book like this to separate out
things, to to to slice and dice and
separate political rhetoric from genuine tyrannical commitments.
How do we use this text to raise our awareness?
There's a lot of talk about raising awareness, or at least there was a few
years ago. Okay. Everybody wants their awareness raised. All
right. That's not a sexy act because once your
awareness is raised and you're responsible for what you do with that awareness,
which we don't often talk about that part.
So how do we how do we and
I think Waisel was worried about this too. How do we how do we avoid
the cup of bitterness, And then how do we separate
momentary political rhetoric from a genuine tyrannical commitment?
From where I I feel like the Oh, go ahead.
Feel like a a political rhetoric is
to serve some other
ulterior motive or or be, I don't know, almost
like, you know, like the the propaganda of of spreading an
idea or something like that. Mhmm. In order to enact,
you know, the tyrannical,
hoped outcome. But, Libby, you were
saying? I was just gonna say, like, life is too short to
live with, you know, hate and bitterness. You know? I kinda
just reject that in my in my body. Mhmm.
You can be cautious. You can be vigilant, but
you don't have to hate
and or be bitter.
It, you know, I was really moved by
the fire premonition Mhmm. A lot.
And it actually takes me back to earlier in our
conversation when you were kind of alluding to a
spiritual awareness. Mhmm. Is that I think we yeah.
Animals feel it. We know it. You know,
I can feel darkness when I walk by it or drive by
it. You know, I think my dogs can
Tom, and it doesn't have a rhyme or reason
to it. I can just feel it. Mhmm.
But the ability,
to distinguish rhetoric from a true a
true tyrant. If for me,
again, the last 4 years, you can't have open
conversations and debate, and you can't
have arguments on the merits. You know?
That Tom me you know, those who are refusing
to allow that are the tyrants. Mhmm.
Right? If you're not allowing,
you know, debate on the merits and even
ugly ideas to be out there,
then you can never actually see the light as well. And those
who, shut down conversation
are the ones who are afraid most afraid of
losing control over their ideas and their way of
living. And to me, they're the ones who, you know, pose the
greatest threat. What is it? So
it's, you know, kind of like engaging spirituality as an active
way to to remedy all the informations.
And my sister said something to me one time
when I was applying for fourth job and I want an interview.
It's kinda, like, kinda gave it a lowdown on what was the exchange of ideas
that we had. And she's like, well and this is where,
having some sort of, like, spiritual practice comes in in
handy because if you have a series of Jesan that you live
by or a series of, like, moral compass, then the
decisions that I'm making are based through that filter and not through
anywhere else. It it it simplifies the
playing field and can, if, you know, if
applied,
accurately or effectively can, you know, can can really kinda
streamline in in, the decision making process. And
it's through, like, this this spiritual practice. And and I think it's
it is interesting. I was watching, watching
a physicist. Then he he said he was
talking about something being in 2 places at the same time.
Mhmm. Something that and so, yeah, you tell people that. And
even if you show them a picture, they're like, oh,
cool. But it's that idea that you were saying earlier,
Libby. It's like you can't wrap your head around. So I know that's the same
thing. It's not a that's not 2 different things. It's the
same thing on the it it's 2 places at one Tom,
and you kinda just go, okay. Because it's so far out aside of,
like, what most people can grasp in reality. And so that
plays into the fact of, like, the atrocities
of what humankind can do to each other. Mhmm.
I think the rhetoric also, when you
the othering and division, you know, like, living from a
spiritual place, there's love for all. Like, I
don't care, you know, what religion you have. I
don't care, where you grew up. You know, this this is
one of the reasons as a young child I was I just had the
instinct of not, liking organized religion.
Mhmm. You know? And I know this is writers and over said, but I had
the intuition at a very young age. You know, God would not
want us to kill other, you know, others
who didn't think like us. You know? And so,
Chris Cuomo has a really strong saying that I really like that
it's you know, when you feel positioning over principles or
dogma over principles, then you know that you have
the you're in the hands of some folks who may not have the
most positive intentions. And they may not be
aware of it, but you never know how far they'll go
to retain, you know, the position of being right or
in power. Yeah. So principles yeah. That's,
yeah, that's what I always gravitate to principles. Like, I belong to lots of
different groups, but I'm not dogmatic about any of them. And it's when,
you know, with the the principles of,
you know, love and empowerment and wanting Tom, yeah, Wanting
everyone to be become the best version of themselves, but empowering them to do
that on their own. Mhmm. You know? You know, for me,
it's, you know, always about the Sorrells. And, you know,
as long as you're not pushing folks out who aren't
completely dogmatic, that's a place that
feels like a a a a true spiritual
place. Or, but if you're pushing
people out who don't think like you, then you're in
a cultish and tyrannical you have you have that
ability to become tyrannical when
you're pushed too far. You know? And I the
escalation of words and the use of words, I think, is one of the problems
we're having right now. Yeah. Is that we've escalated
the point of all of our words actually have no meaning anymore. So
we we actually it's hard to determine rhetoric from reality.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Because everyone's Hitler. Right? Yeah, I was kidding. So it
says I'm tired. Snooze. Just put me on snooze. I don't wanna
hear about Hitler anymore. You know? I I
do. I mean, I I have been known to say in the past that,
you know, it's it's become
almost and and and it probably started happening probably about 20 or 30
years ago. It became real easy just to kick Hitler,
and that was just a stand in for all evil everywhere all of the time.
I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I think you underestimate
the Marxists. Yes. Yes. Never
right? Like, you used Hitler. You never were talking about those
who killed a 100,000,000. Right. You know, Mao and Solomon.
Right. And this is the this is why we're gonna talk
about antisemitism here in a minute. This is why I think the antisemitism
on the left in light of the
October 7th, intifada from the Palestinians
in Israel, has struck such folks
politically on the left by surprise.
I also think that I don't I don't wanna get back
to this idea of religion here in a moment because Weisel's
very interesting on this point. I also think
that Tom Ryan's point, 2 things can't be true at
the same Tom, and that tension between those two
things is what we're seeking to use language to
negotiate. And we're gonna do it badly. We're gonna do it
terribly, and that's why freedom of speech matters. You know, you need to have to
your point, you need to have bad ideas, you know,
vetted.
Right? At a certain point, though and I and, you know, I've I've thought this
and I've never said it on this podcast before, but I'll say
it now. If you make
an idol of freedom of speech, your idol always eventually ends up judging
you and judges you judges you harshly. So you gotta
be careful what you put in that at the top of that hierarchy,
or what you worship or or what you what you allow to push your
religious observance. Speaking of religion,
Wiesel, you know, when he when night opens,
he says, you know, he's talking about beating Moisha the beetle. He
says, I was almost 13 and deeply observant. By day,
I studied the Talmud, and by night, I would run to the synagogue to weep
over the destruction of the temple.
One day, I asked my father to find me a master who'd guide me in
my studies of kabbalah or kabbalah. Sorry. You are too
young for that. Maimonides tells us that one must be 30
before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. 1st,
you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend.
And it's interesting to watch how Weisel, who was deeply
observant, a deeply observant religious person,
How going through the concentration camp and the holocaust
process, And, again, I'm not minimizing
it, but going through that experience.
I won't say I I don't think it denuded him of religion,
but I think the organizational parts of it. I mean, he talks
about, you know, in the bet in the back end of the book, he talks
about how in the in the concentration camp, they,
believe it was Auschwitz, but it might have been Buna.
They celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And he
thought Tom what end? Why are we doing this? What book at
what we're in. God isn't hearing us. God isn't
god isn't talking here. There's no there's
no, there's no judging deity here.
You know? And that is one of the challenges.
I mean, one of the other books that I'm reading this month as well is
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, leaders from prison. And Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was the Lutheran pastor, in
Nazi Germany who was probably the
most vociferous voice against Hitler,
coming out of, coming out of Lutheranism and coming out
Christianity. Then a lot of the Christian church, and this is a huge
black eye on the Christian church, not just the Catholic
church, the Christian church in Germany,
the Protestant church in Germany.
Did a lot to help Hitler out. Not a lot of folks stood up
and opposed what Hitler was doing. And Bonhoeffer was one of
those, all the way to the point where, I
believe, if I remember correctly, he was hanged,
in April of 1945. The Nazis executed him
in a concentration camp, and that was
probably, what, like 3 or 4 months before the concentration camp was, was
liberated by the Russians. And so
you know he took his principles all the way to the end.
We don't really talk about religion on this podcast. We'll talk about we talk about
theological stuff. We don't talk about the construct of religion very much, like,
at
all. Liza was a religiously observant Jew. I think we can't take that
away from him before the before the
holocaust came along and sort of restructured how he looked at that.
Orga's religion in our time in America
is well, has been
restructured. And I
and one of the one of the challenges for particularly churches in
America in our time is how to speak to culture
and how to stop things from happening. So
I mean, at a very practical level. Right? If you're a pastor reading,
you know, Knight, what would you
recommend? Either Olivia or Ryan, what would you recommend
that they take from this?
The the the when I think of this book, the what I the
image that I think of is him writers,
running in the crowd and falling asleep
and being asleep and running. Mhmm. And
talking about everyone is is
kinda communicating and shouting out if if people are kinda, like, lagging
behind. But also in the same sense, if
if someone fell, you have to keep going because if you stopped, fourth done too.
Mhmm. So that's,
you know, it's it that's that that age old thought experiment. So the
the train and the tracks and the 5 people to 1 and that sort of
turning. It's like you know but then it essays, you
know, it's just like the
the parachute on the plane. It's like, take care of yourself before,
you know, you need to be whole before you can take care of anyone
else. Mhmm. So, you know, kind of like
that at such a young age to to
keep going, like, in those
moments and not necessarily because he's he's debating,
you know, is he gonna sit there and debate in his head like, okay. This
is happening and kinda, like, look at from the outer space and look what's happening
on and and and kind of, like, strategically. Yeah.
Just the perseverance of of the it's kind of unconscionable
situations. Mhmm.
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Now back to the show.
For me, it's about the will to survive, you know, and how,
you know, innate innate and resilient, you know,
we are. You know, when you
have time for when you have time and safety, you can
intellectualize anything. But when you're
at that base, you know, the base of the pyramid of needs,
you know, your your desire to live
is just, you know, is dominant.
And I actually find something really,
inspiring about that. Mhmm.
You know, and, you know,
and there's no judgment to those who yeah. I don't have
judgment for those who can't move forward. Like, I don't know
how yeah. They they might have been pushing themselves
as much as they could, and for factors beyond their own, they you know, their
body couldn't move on or, you know, or whatever. But we are
incredibly resilient, and, you know, good will survive
and, you know, and evil will too. But
I choose to live on the good and
continue to express the words of the good.
Mhmm. But it's the power. It's just
how how strong that will is to survive for many people,
that you'll just just keep going. I just continue to think of him
underneath the bodies and trying to just breathe.
You know? And we have no idea
what we would do in a situation, like, if hearing your father crying
and wanting to be near you at his last breath,
but not wanting Tom yeah, but not wanting to call
out because you know that it's also your death Right? Like,
what would you do? I remember, was it in MASH,
you know, when the mother ended up suffocating her child Mhmm.
Because this child was crying Yep. And was gonna
give up everyone else. You know? We live in
a world right now that feel that
feels very safe and is intellectually dishonest
because they do not they're just well, they're into they're
playing intellectual games. No one knows what they would do,
you know, if push comes to shove, you know,
and, you know, where they where they that line is drawn
around, you know, how to
a to a situation. It's
situation specific. But it's just the resilience and that desire to
live and move on and not want to live in hate. You know, one
thing I've never understood is people who can celebrate someone else's death.
It doesn't matter how evil that person is. Like,
I don't choose I can't play God. I may want to put
them in prison. I may want to get them out of,
out of a position of creating power, but not celebrating
anyone's death. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when
I know. I I What are the well, what are the is awful, but I
don't celebrate his death. I blacked out of power. No. No. No.
No. No. No. That's not that's yes. I agree there. No.
No. No. What I'm where I'm going is, we live
in a comfortable and I'm not the first person to say this. We live
in a comfortable time. Right? For all the chaos,
psychological mostly, but even
financial, material I mean,
you know, you can go online anywhere, and you can read
about how young men and young women aren't getting married,
and the the marriage, dating family
dynamic is all screwed up for people under the age of, you know, 35.
Like you can read that everywhere. There's all these, hyperventilating thought
pieces about all the chaos that's going on down there in the dating market.
There are hyperventilating thought pieces written about artificial intelligence and large
language models and how they're gonna, you know, create
deep fakes and, you know, you fake the president and does this
and then do that. There's arguments online about
how and in real life about how,
well, the personal is political. Right? Our identity. I mean, we're
in the month of June, right? So, you know, we're going to, we're going to
make our identity a political act, whether it's a racial identity, a class
identity, a sexual orientation or sexual or sexual
identification identity. We're going to make that a political act.
And and the fundamental nature of books like
this, along with the Gulag Archipelago, and
a few others, is that it forces us to take
it forces us to move from things that are not
serious or, or fundamentally unserious to things that
are serious.
Writers.
And that idea of just keeping going
that idea of persistence, but also
persistence in an actual position based on principle.
Right? So you talked about Chris Cuomo. Chris Cuomo was interesting
cat to me because he
he doesn't think that he did anything incorrect with
COVID. Right? He was the yeah. And and that's
fine. You're you're welcome to your cognitive dissonance. Right?
It's cognitive dissonance. Right? Yeah. You're you're welcome to your thought process. That's fine,
Chris. Mister Cuomo,
if I may. But I'm
also okay to not forget. I could
forgive, but I'm not going to forget. I'm not going to forget
what you and the other talking, chattering class
heads sit on CNN during that time. I'm not gonna forget the
caterwauling that was on MSNBC. I'm not even gonna forget the
things that were said on Fox. I'm not ignorant. The Internet is
forever. Well, fourth it's the closest thing to forever that we've got. Right? Yeah. You
know, that we've got currently. And so, you
know, words look. Should words
have consequences? Absolutely. That's the side
of a mature individual is you realize your words have consequences.
And if you're speaking for a place of principles
rather than a space of generating clicks, which by the way is
comfortable, then you're going to actually say things that are meaningful and that
matter. Otherwise, you're just gonna say stuff for
clickbait and you're adding to the unseriousness.
And so when something serious does come along that does need to be dealt with,
you won't have the language or the tools to be able to deal with it.
And that's what drives me crazy about the current moment we're in now. Like, materially,
we're the most comfortable people on the planet ever to
freaking exist in human history, and yet we are
unwinding spiritually.
And we don't have the words to describe why the unwinding is happening.
We've robbed ourselves of our own language. Just say I mean,
technology is just basically made it so you don't have to
move. And so how do you, you know,
how do you how do you, that's, you know, it's it's
how do you, you know, convince the rat that to take the next hit of
cocaine fourth the mouse. You know, you just it's it's
all it's all it's all it's all brain chemistry at this point. Neurotransmitters
writers just getting that hit and hit and hit and the positive
reinforcement of that or the negative reinforcement of that.
I mean, it's I don't know. Take it
turn it into an app. Trick people into,
like, take the lessons in
like, I just I can't help but think of I remember when
OxyContin really hit on the scene, and I forget
the politician's name, but it was in Massachusetts.
And it was really big, in the
country to to figure out laws
and the criminality of it and that fourth of turning. And so this
guy was like, hey. It was like a it was a, like, a no strikes
policy. You know? Go directly to jail, you know, pass
go, blah blah blah. And then,
6 weeks later, something like that, his son overdosed on It
was like, this is the greatest tragedy that the
world has ever seen. We have to change the laws and
change these are sick people. They so until it affected him
personally, he really didn't care. Right. And so,
you know, people and and I mean, people, it's not like
yeah. Tom I guess, to your point, yeah, how do you take your tragedy
seriously? How do you take the the the the thing that happened to
you that should've killed you or could've killed you and turn that into
the most, I don't know, the best thing that's ever happened to you?
Yeah. Everyone has a different, you know, red pill or
yeah. I'll call it just yeah. I'll be provocative or not.
But, you know, you have your own bottom. Right? And, you know,
everyone well, those in recovery have different
bottoms. We are in a
dopamine right now. Everyone is
kids are filled with dopamine. You know? All they do
is touch a button and food comes to them. And to your point,
yeah, the rat's not gonna stop asking for the Coke
until there's a moment that gets it out of its feedback
loop and and allows it to see something else Tom, you know,
to go chase. You know? And so what are
is that moment that's gonna break the pattern
that people are in so they can wake up? You know? For many,
it was October, you know, October 7th.
But what's that next kind of it's not
enough. What's that next moment? And
can we can we reset before we hit too
far of a bottom? Right. Can can and and
by the way, that's the job of leaders. The job of leaders is to be
fundamentally the people that say,
this is the line. This is what we're what we're
doing. You don't get to go any further than this. Oh, well, we wanna go
further. No. No. Well, we'll throw you over and find a leader
who can take us further. Okay. That's fine.
That's fine. One day, you know, you're you're you're Winston Churchill,
and you're on the back bench, and nobody wants to hear what you've got to
say about Hitler. And the next day, you're talking about the Battle of Britain,
and you're rallying the people. And then guess where Hitler or not. Sorry. Not Hitler.
Guess where Churchill wound up back at, the back bench where no one wanted to
listen to him. This is this is this is this
is this is this is this is the this is the price of leadership. Right?
The price of leadership isn't that you win a championship. It's not that you're Michael
Jordan. Very often, you get to be you you get to be the
leader. Writers? You get to be the leader. You get to be and then you're
you're back into obscurity. And we don't it's
not glory seeking. And I and that's probably the part that's driving me most
or easy Yeah. Is is in the example you're talking about with the with
Ryan, you know, the example you're talking about with the with the politician
with OxyContin. He's and I'm not saying that he wasn't tragically
impacted by his son's death. I think fourth sure he probably was.
That's the best solution he could could think of because that's the
only when everything well, you know, the only thing you got is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail. Got it. I understand. That's my bugaboo. Right?
I've I've got this podcast, and it's it's the hammer I use.
Right? I'm as guilty of it as anybody else. I am.
Right? And leadership fundamentally
is the act of going through that cycle and
ignoring the glory. If it comes, great.
But more likely than not, you're you're gonna wind up in obscurity on the back
bench, and people are gonna be like, I didn't like what you did. That's okay.
We held the line.
That's okay. Yeah. For me fourth me, I'm thinking about,
like, that will to survive, you know, of, you know, of
Eli's or even Beatles, Moisha,
it's, you know, it's that drive to
to tell the story too so it doesn't happen
again. Or so people are, what, are awake
and, you know, prepared so that it doesn't happen to them.
Like, that can be a significant enough draw as to help others
Yeah. With the message. You know, to the point
that, you know, our leaders, we have, you
know, the me generation being, you
know, our my parents' generation.
Yeah. They're still the me generation. It's like they're not you know, they
just wanna be liked, and our congress and our government is led by
me's, and they just want to be liked. And
we need folks who are okay. This is a theme that we've
had in all of our podcasts, hey, Son, is that you need to
be willing to make tough decisions. I don't wanna be liked. I wanna
be respected, and the person I wanna be respected by is myself.
Mhmm. Right? And did I make the right tough decision?
And too many people care about what others think.
And it's not that I don't care, but it's a tough love.
And we have too many spoiled children leading the you
know, leading all levels of society right now who have never
been said no. And they don't understand the consequences
or care about the consequences of their actions, and that's why the whole West Coast
is imploding. It was one of the my the friends
remember the 1st week or 2 being in school is like, oh my god. We
ruined these kids. I was like, oh my Jesus. Book. Everyone's,
like, just, like, pounding Jolly
Ranchers and hitting a computer, and it's just, like,
it's pretty wild. It but in all Tom take it okay. This is
gonna take a history. I think remaining open, like like, I had an
old sponsor in AA who's the district attorney. He said, I go
to every court case, giving 2%
to the other person because I don't ever wanna be in a situation where I
think I know everything, you know.
And about that the events, it it
runs it's kind of the end scene Tom feel the dreams I'm
always reminded of in these situations where you like, something's
there and and it's like you I
don't reframe certainty in such complex
writers. I would say it's probably, so the, you know,
the the guy in Field of Dreams, they're playing the game. They're playing the game
on the field with all the old timers that are ghost and invisible. And he's
been fighting with, you know, Kevin Costner the
whole movie to sell the the thing because the field, because of the farm and
blah blah blah. And then he finally sees the leaders. He's like, oh, you
can't sell this farm. This is a this is a magical place,
and it's been here the entire time. So
that. That. That. Well and
and and we'll go back to the book here because we gotta turn
the corner here. We gotta talk about a couple of other things, that are pressing,
upon this narrative. I will say this.
I one of the reasons why I do the podcast in
the way that I do it is because and I invite the people on who
I wanna, who I wanna talk Tom, is because
adults in the room are the thing that's missing. And and
we use that phraseology to talk about politicians who maybe
have reached a certain level of of chronological
maturity, or biological
maturity, but that doesn't mean that you're actually
the adult. You know? I know but I I know I I
I currently, the place I live in, average age is
55 to 75. I know a lot of I I I
then the very first weekend that we moved here, my wife and I went out
and, watched a 60 couple of 60 year
old men get tossed out of a bar for behaving like 19 year olds and
getting into a bar fight. Right. So chronological and
biological age is no indicator of being an adult. So
indicator of behaving in a mature and mature fashion.
Right. And I think the thing that we're missing when
we say we're missing adults in the room is we're missing that sense of gravitas.
We're missing that sense of position and and responsibility. We're missing that sense of, to
Libby's point being and doing and saying, and leaders on the
unpopular turning. So that a greater good can
occur on the other side of it. Speaking of
which let's go back to the book. I'm going to read
some pieces from this. It's a long section,
about well, about the camp. So back to the
book, back to night by Eli Weisel.
The camp looked as though it had been through an epidemic, empty and dead.
This is Buna. They had just arrived at Buna. It was a new concentration
camp, new for them anyway. Only a few, quote
unquote, well dressed inmates are wandering between the blocks. Of course, we first had to
pass through the showers. The head of the camp joined us there. He was a
stocky man with big shoulders, the neck of a bull, thick lips, and curly hair.
He gave an impression of kindness. From time to time, a smile would linger in
his gray blue eyes. Our convoy included a few 10
12 year olds. The officer took an interest in them and gave them
orders and gave orders to bring them food. We were given new clothing and
settled in 2 tents. We were to wait there until we could be
incorporated into work commandos and we would be assigned to a book.
In the evening, the commandos returned from work yards roll call. We began looking for
people. We knew asking the veterans, which work commandos were the best and which
block one should try to enter. All the inmates agreed.
Buna is a very good camp. One can hold one's own here. The most important
thing is to not be assigned to the construction commando. As if we
had a choice. Our tent leader was a German, an
assassin's face, fleshy lips, hands resembling wolf's paws. The camp's food had agreed with
him. He could hardly move. He was so fat. Like the head of the camp,
he liked children. Immediately after our arrival,
he had bread brought for them some soup and margarine. In fact
this affection was not entirely altruistic. There existed here a
veritable traffic of children among homosexuals I learned later.
He told us, you will stay with me for 3 days in
quarantine. Afterward, you will go to work tomorrow, medical checkup. 1 of
his aides, a tough looking boy with shifty eyes, came over to me. Would you
like to get into a good commando? Of fourth. But on one condition, I want
to stay with my father. Alright. He said I could arrange it for a
pittance, your shoes. I'll give you another pair.
I refused to give him my shoes. They were all I had left. I'll
also give you a ration of bread with some margarine. He liked
my shoes. I would not let him have them. Later, they were taken from
me anyway in exchange for nothing that time.
The medical checkup took place outside early in the morning before 3 doctors seated
on a bench. The first hardly examined me. He just asked, are you in good
health? Who would have dared to admit the opposite?
On the other hand, the dentist seemed more conscientious. He asked me to open my
mouth wide. In fact, he was not looking for decay, but for gold teeth.
Those who had gold in their mouths were listed by their number. I did have
a gold crown. The first 3 days went by quickly. On the 4th
day, as we stood in front of our tent, the kapos appeared. Each one
began to choose the many he liked. You, you, you. They pointed their fingers the
way one might choose cattle or merchandise. We followed our
kapo, a young man. He made us halt to the door of the first block
near the entrance to the camp. This is the orchestra's block. He motioned us
inside. We were surprised. What had we to do with music?
The orchestra was playing a military march, always the same. Dozens of commandos
were marching off in step to the work yards. The capitals were beating the time
left, right, left, right. SS officers, pen in hand, recorded the number
capoe Tom fallen. We fell into ranks of 5, and The capo yet
fall in. We fell into ranks of 5 with the musicians. We
left the camp without music, but in step, we still had the march in our
readers. Left, right, left, right. We struck up a
conversation with our neighbors and musicians. Almost all of them were Jews. Julie
Acapol with glasses and a cynical smile and a pale face.
Louis, a native of alland Holland, a well known violinist. He
complained that they would not let him play Beethoven. Jews were not allowed to
play German music. Hans, the young man from Berlin, was full of
wit. The former was a Pole, frantic, a former student in Warsaw.
Julie Eck explained to me, we work at a warehouse of electrical materials not far
from here. The work is neither difficult nor dangerous. Only IDEC, the capo,
occasionally has fists of madness, and then you better stay out of his way.
You are lucky, little fellows, at Hans smiling. You fell into a good commando.
Then they go I'm going to move ahead a little bit they, they
move through the warehouse, and they talk about
having a, a Jewish person as their leader,
named Alfonso. And then this, one day when
we had just returned for the warehouse, I was summoned by the block secretary.
A 7713. That's me.
After your meal, you'll go to see the dentist, but I don't have a toothache.
After your meal, Without fail. I
went to the infirmary books, and 20 prisoners are waiting in line at the entrance.
It didn't take long to learn the reason for our summons. Our gold teeth were
to be extracted. The dentist, a Jew from Czechoslovakia,
had a face not unlike a death mask. When he opened his mouth, I had
one had a ghastly vision of yellow, rotten teeth. Seated in the chair, I
asked weekly, what are you going to do, sir? I shall remove your gold
crown. That's all, he said, clearly indifferent. I thought of pretending to be
sick. Couldn't you wait a few days, sir? I don't feel well. I have a
fever. He wrinkled his eyes, wrinkled
his brow thought for a moment and then took my pulse. All right, son, come
back and see me when you feel better, but don't wait for me to call
you. I went back to see him a week later with the same excuse. I
still was not feeling better. He did not seem surprised and I don't know whether
he believed me yet. He was most likely was pleased that I had
come back on my own. As I had promised, he granted me a further delay.
A few days after my visit, the dentist office was shut down. He had been
thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. It appeared he had been dealing
in prisoners' gold teeth for his own benefit. I felt no pity for
him. In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him. My gold crown
was safe. It could be useful to me one day to buy something, some
bread, or even time to live. At that moment in time, all that
mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of
sale bread. The bread, the soup, those are my entire
life. I was nothing but a body, perhaps
even less a famished stomach. The stomach alone
was measuring time.
We're gonna turning corner here and talk about
one of the scourges of our day, an old,
old disease
An old, old disease that has now
come back For barely
educated Ivy League college students on the political left claiming that Israel is a
colonizing nation state and Zionism is, quote, unquote, racism.
The barely qualified Patriot Front shills on substacks squawking about
quote unquote Zionist conspiracies control the world.
Antisemitism has yet again reared its ugly old head
this time in America. The
idea, and this is my fundamental problem with both the right and the left
on this, but the idea that the Jewish people are simultaneously pulling all the
strings in the world, as well as victimizing populations in the Middle East
without cause while also claiming to be victims themselves
is a canard older than the protocols of Zion and
just as false.
Now
I have a visceral response to antisemitism. It actually
makes my gut turning over. And I
think that's a sign that I'm still human. I still have a moral
core.
I believe fundamentally leaders Christians, we are called
to protect Jewish people. Does that mean that we are called to advance
Jewish ideas or advance Jewish thoughts or
whatever? No. But there's a fine line between
critiquing and falling into everybody's ruling
the world everywhere nonsense. And
unfortunately, because we don't have a maturity of thought, like we just talked about in
our last section, And because we lack adults in the
room, we don't know where the line is. We don't know how to have these
conversations anymore. And this seems to have surprised
people on the political left in the United States fourth so than anybody else. I
mean, people on the political right are always getting lambasted,
from the Ku Klux Klan, where
the Ku Klux Klan to, you know, whatever is Ryan was talking
about, whatever, you know, the proud boys are doing all the way to the Patriot
front, you know, fleets, the right in America has
always been, been whacked with antisemitism, but the left.
Jesan, time, which seems to flummox them,
is when do you know if when the left has gone too far?
It seems to fundamentally flummox them. And partially, this is because
there's never enough Marxist revolution. Partially,
it's also they are ill educated on the fact of Stalin and
Mao and and the gulags
and Pol Pot
and the reeducation camps in China and
all this and and North Korea. My god, North Korea.
I mean, an entire nation state devoted to the actual logical
end of Marxism.
Stalin's gulags killed millions of Jews along with many, many other
people, And the political left has
never repudiated that. But they've also never
allowed that to be laid at their feet. Now they'll claim that they've repudiated
it, but yet and still you keep talking
about Marxist ideas. So if you
genuinely repudiated it, you'd probably not be talking about Marxist
collectivism. But I think there's something that we're we're missing here.
Yeah. Go ahead. What are we missing? Maybe maybe this Tom, it might
work. Right, the
old Kennard. We're smarter. You're
right. This is different. This is different. Yeah. We're better
people because we've got dopamine inducing
devices in our hands. We have to be better people. Right?
What do we do with this? Why is the shadow of antisemitism going along in
our culture? And what do we do to push back on this? How do we
punch this in the mouth? Like, every year, people talk about, oh, punch punch Hitler.
Like, people on the left were talking about that a few years ago. And I
was just like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Of course,
maybe, maybe this is, this is a, what do you call it, a
nemesis showing up to the political left? And a nemesis is always
sort of an equal and opposite reaction fourth something that happens for something that you
do when you go too far, when you go into an excess.
I don't know, but there's always a spiritual element to
antisemitism as we've been talking about also on this podcast as well as an intellectual
and fundamentally, of course, from reading night, a physical element.
There's a clearing at the end of the path with that with that crap.
So how do we push back against this? What what is what's our best practices
here? I know Libby likes best practices.
But I I like I like I I mean, I really appreciate,
this how how it is influenced the expression of art literature.
I mean, Vonnegut has a book on mother night
Mhmm. That's that's
that is, influencing and and and and,
it's kind of about the World War 2 in in in Nazi Germany.
I found this on the street walking by a
meter, like one of those kiosks that, park parking lot
meter Mhmm. And started. Oh,
mouse. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. There
is a better Yes. I love that. Yeah. That's, that's a great,
that's a great graphic novel. And and,
you know, the fourth of the
parables can be in any way, shape, or form. Mhmm.
And so our literature kind of always been her music is just can be my
been my go Tom. Or just being kind.
Going out of my way Tom be kind. Like, be being proactive
in in in our, you know, community.
I mean, how often you know, it's funny some comedians talk about, like, yeah, when
you're, you know, your kids, somebody would knock on the door, you'd have company.
You'd have, you know, you have guests. You your mom would get, like, the Entenmann's
or whatever. Mhmm. Take some coffee and hang out and talk.
Like, a Tuesday night, you're just having, like, friends, your fourth parents are
over and hanging out. And now it's like somebody knocks on the
fourth, everyone jumps in a closet, and it's like, who's
turning to who's, like, who's knocking at the door? Like,
suspicious suspicious. So So we we
we push back by building community is what you're saying Mhmm. And and
using art and literature. For sure. Building
community, we realize how much more similar we are than different.
Right? You know, unfortunately,
with this, you know, maternalism that's out
there right now, you know, if someone feels uncomfortable,
you know, we we wanna remove them from a situation as
opposed Tom, do you understand how your primitive brain that's been
wired for 1000000000 of years works, it
you know, if something's new, it automatically is on alert.
It doesn't mean that new is bad. You know? So
push through and live with curiosity
about your fellow humans, and you may you'll be pleasantly surprised.
I think I mean,
I I actually think humanity is really great. If,
you know, I've lived in all, yeah, all all
types of communities, you know, rural, urban, suburban,
you're rich, poor, you know, diverse, not diverse. And I
find, you know, humans actually are really
decent. It's our leaders who will tell us that
they're not. And I remember the first time I went to Europe in
1994, I went to France, and I've been told that the French
were awful. And I was like, oh my god. They're awesome. Like, they're just like
you and me, and we're not our government. And we need to, 1, remember, we're
not our government. You know? I think we're
too many countries and people like Israel.
The government is not necessarily representative of the people. We need to be
cognizant of that. I also
all all of my cultural references, you know, Bill Maher had a
guest on on Friday night that was saying yeah. That was,
the woman from The View is like, we just need people to be more educated.
And, yeah, and the guy, yeah, the guy,
was saying, well, how many movies and books can you have,
you know, about, like, the holocaust? Like, I
mean, it you we've had tons, and I think
what's wrong what's missing is the real root
cause is not being addressed. It's the Marxist you know, when
I listen to a lot of my friends on the left talk about it,
they try to send it back to the right,
or, you know, or or they
divert to another conversation. They can't Mhmm.
Fathom that they're
that, you know, that traditional
liberals, which are great, has been infiltrated by these,
yeah, by Marxist extremes. And the reason that we're
seeing, you know, the antisemitism,
it's that, yeah, that
because I can't the haves versus the have
nots. Mhmm. You know? So because they're in
positions of power, you know, and because of
the communities that they have, because, you know, they tend to support their
families, value education, value hard work, you know,
instead of copying them
and essays, these are the the things that are necessary to be
successful, we want to bring the oppressors, yep,
the the successful down. Yeah. The oppressor versus
the oppressor. Yeah. The oppressor versus the oppressed. Yeah.
And that's the Marxist ideology. And the fact that no one's
talked about, you know, Stalin and
Mao for decades. They only talk about Hitler has
been you can't underestimate the
power of rhetoric and the intentionality of it.
You know, look over here, not here. You know? Because
we're here. You know? And so
actually understanding a lot of the root cause and pushing that out
just like the right pushes out the the lunatics on
the far right. But if you don't understand some of the root
cause, and that you've been infiltrated
Mhmm. And willing to fight against you
know, fight your own. Like, the right voice fights its own. The
left rarely does. And you need to fight,
you know, to push the toxins out. But
So is is okay. So something occurs to me, Libby. I'm gonna
ask you this question here. I'm gonna direct this directly to you. Jeff.
One second. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. I'll hold on to my questions then.
So so the, it sounds like peer
review. And so what I'm listening to in this there's okay.
Okay. And there's who's the teacher in Portland State that just
did the fake paper? And then What's his name? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It is just like peer review. It is. But
and so we see what happened with peer review. So what is the intervention to
put in place for the thing that was the safeguard?
I don't know. It's the same, like, you know, FDA, people, yeah, people just
quit who weren't aligned with what yeah. With, yeah, the vaccine
mandated. You know,
corporate, you know, many of the reasons a lot of us opt out
of senior positions in corporate is because it's
just group think. You know? It's not about learning and creating and
building. It's about, you know, maintaining
maintaining status, maintaining, maintaining income.
It's not about building or creating. And
if you are a change agent, you will be ejected.
Right? You know? So the question is, how do
you change it? And I another theme,
you gotta build it from the outside in. You like, turning the
like, changing the institutions is just is
incredibly challenging. You have to do it outside in with
different different models. So
the question that occurs Like, 3rd parties. 3rd party. Yeah. Well, you well, you
okay. So you so you Or small businesses. It you know,
local community development. Alternative media landscapes,
like all of these all these kinds of Yeah. Going out on the long tail,
which, you know, we've knocked the Internet a couple of times here today,
rightly so, And we've knocked social media, rightly so,
but the benefits or the, the, the, the upside
of those tools and they are tools. And we'll talk about tools here in just
a moment when we turn the corner. But the upside of utilizing
using those tools is you are able to create an alternative landscape and
literature. Alternative media culture, or
even an alternative, an alternative
production culture. You talk about antisemitism
being this thing on the left, and this is directed to
Libby is I think you probably heard of this concept and even Ryan sort of
tapped into it with the idea of peer review. Peer review,
status, income, These are all
things that are, quite frankly, to borrow from Rob
Henderson, luxury beliefs. Right. And it's
not to say that people who are in the middle class or the working class
or poor, poor folks don't have these systems too. They're just set up
differently. Okay. Antisemitism has always
been hot among the academic elite, particularly the
academic writers. The academic elite that run Princeton Princeton and Harvard. I
mean, initially, those elite Ivy League universities were designed to keep
Jews out. And it was only after World War 2 that Jewish people
were allowed in. So the idea that there's this Zionist conspiracy
in the Ivy League that's spreading out Tom. Like, let's just
stop it. Okay? Because those
systems were designed by WASPs,
white Anglo Saxon protestants Tom keep Jews out.
Okay? Specifically, Jews and and and blacks and women. Those are the 3
big categories. And then Catholic, if you wanted a 4th category thrown in there just
for good measure. Okay. I know the history. I've actually read
the books. Okay.
History doesn't repeat itself but it does it does,
echo or rhyme. And so are we
just now at a space where this is now being taken
up now? This antisemitism, this new strain is just being
taken up as just another luxury belief by the elites, by
the people who run things.
Because it's not you'd I don't see people protesting
the Israelis doing whatever it is they're doing in
Gaza. I don't see some middle class
kid from, you know, some state
school protesting this. This is not the people who I hear yelling about
this. I'm instead hearing about this from some
undergraduate whose parents spent $250,000 on them to go to Columbia.
Because they don't live in the real world. Right. You
know? Yeah. Like, it's the same thing of, you know, why
Weisel, you know, survived the camps. He
just pushed through. He didn't have time Mhmm. To think
he's just surviving. Right? Right. They have time to think about
and over intellectualize. Like, I've lived in these intellectual circles,
and, you know, they think their thoughts are real
book because they thought it, and they can think it quickly, and they can make
correlations. They think it's real. They're so removed from,
you know, working with your hands, working close you
know, it Tom them, it's menial and not meaningful. Like, the intellectual
masturbation is, you know, masturbation is, you know, is what brings
turning. But it's also where all civilizations
find the their deaths, in the othering.
Like, just think of the French revolution, same thing.
Bolsheviks. Why is it in the
intellectual? Because they need to find something to solve for, and they just
I think they're guilt I personally believe, if you're asking me,
I personally believe that
the ease with which people had Tom material gain
leads to a concomitant decline in spiritual appreciation of
that gain. So the more you carry work for it or earn it, and
there's meaning and and that Right. It's the meaning in the
work. Right. Well, you see this in the 1st generation. Okay? So anybody family that's
wealthy in America, the very first generation, you you know this,
Libby. Yeah. And, Ryan, you've seen this. Right. They are Generations.
Right. Short sleeves are short sleeves in 3 generations. Sleeves. That's right.
Yeah. And so that first generation is religious.
Sometimes shockingly evangelist
evangelistic. They're they're they're, you know, they're the people who,
like, they go to church. They make the money. They align everything. Boom. They're ready
to go. Right? Their kids come in, and their
kids are, to my point earlier, about a bad copy of
a copy. They're a bad copy of the original.
Sometimes they keep the thing going. Most times they don't. And
then by the time their kids come around, that 3rd generation,
it's all gone. Right? The money has been spent on wide
women's song. We already mentioned cocaine. Don't have mentioned that again. But it's
already been blown through. Right? And now that 3rd generation is
back Tom, starting from scratch,
right, just to claw up something out of existence. Okay.
The really wealthy families, though, the ones who manage to get
past that 3rd, in some cases, that 4th or 5th generation of wealth
transfer. Right? I think the
reason that those and that's who we're talking about. That's what we mean as elites.
I think the reason why those folks are captured by these luxury ideas is because
and I I I I don't think it's any more complicated than this. Sometimes
Occam's razor is correct, and this is an Occam's razor situation.
I think those people are just bored.
I think they're bored. They're bored, and they lack creativity. They have
no they have no purpose. I mean, I remember at the beginning of the pandemic,
like, you have people not working. I'm like, there's
especially with small businesses being,
killed. It's like there's dignity and work. People don't want,
like, the whole concept of UBI. No. Yeah. People
want there's dignity and work. You know? I
and I'm gonna need something in it. Yeah. With that shirt sleeves to shirt
sleeves, what happens with the Jesan generation is they realize the money
doesn't fill you. It doesn't complete you. Right? Right.
You know, but they don't know, but they're told work isn't
is, like, where's this thing? I also think this is maybe a
Belmar, another cultural reference. But
concept of, like, where did the or maybe it was Vivek. I think it was
Vivek Ramaswami on Sean, Sean Ryan. And he was
talking about the concept of
retirement and how we're told, you know,
that you just need to work until you retire. Right? And but
most up until 21st century, people
didn't retire. They worked their full lives. Right. Like,
when you retire, then what? Like, live on the beach? Yeah.
That's fun for a little while, but there's
dignity in producing. So I do think there's something about the concept of
they're bored. Well and and I also And then they're and then they're
guilty about it and taking it out on you. Right.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They're bored. Fourth actually having meaning in
your life. They're bored. They're full of resentment. They have a weird form
of envy. Like, we've talked about this on the podcast fourth, how
and I actually wrote a post about this recently on, like, my Facebook page
somewhere, about how fathers are responsible for for keeping
the envy machine in their children's hearts turned off. Because once that
is turned on, then anybody can tell them anything. And and the envy
machine gets turned on from social media. You know? It gets turned
on from, getting into the comparison trap with other
people's highlight reels. You know? The best thing you could do if
you're a 5th generation family with wealth is to
get that kid who's got wealth and put him to work
at, like, a lumber yard or something. Like, that's the best thing you could do
for that kid when they're, like, 14. But but and guess what? You
don't get to go to the lumber yard in your Rolls Royce. You get to
go to the lumber yard on your bike, and you're gonna go work. Right?
And I do think there are some families who understand that. I do think there
are some families who get that, but I think that they are in unsexy fields.
And so I think the the less sexy the field is where you make money
like, I met a I met a guy the other day who's, who's a coal
miner. Right? I never actually met a coal miner in real life.
And he's telling me all these great stories about coal mining in the
mountains and all of this. And, you know, he was like, this is really
hard book. And he's he's like, have you ever thought about being a coal miner?
And I said, that is not something that was ever offered to me as an
option on the plate. I mean, I knew people
coal miner? Right. Like, I knew people who did it. I now have met people
who have done it. I met somebody who has done it. But that was not
something and it's probably a little late for me. I'm in my forties now. You
probably don't want me crawling around underground turning to dig out bit Tom much
coal. It's probably not something you Amazing. In 2024, someone
asked that question. That's awesome. It's but right. But it's an awesome
question. Right? And so to overcome those
luxury beliefs, we have to give people, Libby, to your point, I think
material not only material meaning, but we and we don't understand
how material meaning and and and psychological meaning and spiritual meaning all linked together. We
have no clue. We're just beginning to pull apart consciousness. We we really don't understand.
But all those things do link together somehow, and they create the fundamental
structure of reality, the Dyson sphere of reality that we're all trying
to hold together out here. Ryan, any thoughts before
I turn the corner here?
No. I don't think so.
Alright. It's this this this this was this
well, yeah. I do. Now that I looked out of
my notes. Talking talking about talking about
the, the writing, the simple writing. So just just
essays things that are that readers such an
image and are so simple and are really, really beautiful. He describes
someone as having an assassin's face. Mhmm. Now I don't know an
assassin. Do you know any assassins? No. Do you know what that
means? Do you do you know an assassin's face when you
see one, though? You know? Our very
skin was aching. Mhmm. I
can't, like that's a that's a pretty that's pretty
dark if your,
your skin is aching. A face not unlike a death
mask is how he described the
dentist. And there was a weird compassion. And so I wrote down
the human condition also. And
so when there's a he essays, I don't feel well. I don't feel
well. There's something in the dentist that essays,
yeah. You know what? He sees the kid as a kid fourth he sees someone
he may see him for what he is at that moment. Like, someone stuck in
this horrible position with a gold tooth, and he
doesn't feel well. And so you know what? If he says he feels crappy, I
don't wanna make him feel any crappier. Mhmm. And that's
that's kind of like a a ray of light in the in the
darkness. And I'm sure that wasn't the dentist's intention,
but it's almost like like Libby saying, turning about,
like, life's purpose is to continue can city living. That's why you pick
up a board and you'll see, like, a tiny piece of grass growing, and it
hasn't seen light in forever. So, yeah, I that's
just kind of a thing. So that's my, I'd
say, final thoughts. Alright. Well, back
to the book. Podcast little bit here.
Last piece of night here by Eli Weisel. So we're gonna turn the corner.
We're gonna start talking about solutions to problems because on this podcast,
this year and and probably next year too, because we're we're
we're opening up a can of worms on a lot of big problems, not just
on this episode, but on on other episodes. And so we're going to talk
about solutions to problems that Eli
Weisel has postulated to us in night and
that challenge us as leaders. So back to the book.
The summer was coming to an end. The Jewish year was almost over on the
eve of Rosh Hashanah, the last day of that cursed year, the entire
camp was agitated and every one of us felt attention after all this was a
day, unlike all others, the last day of the year. The word last has
an odd ring to it. What if it really were the last day?
The evening meal was distributed and especially thick soup, but nobody touched it. We
waited to we wanted to wait until after prayer.
On the apple plots surrounded by electrified barbed wire, thousands of Jews,
anguish on their faces, gathered in silence. Night was falling
rapidly, and more and more prisoners kept coming from every book, suddenly able to overcome
time and space to will both into submission.
Who what are you, my god? I thought angrily. How do you
compare to the stricken mass gathered to affirm to you their faith, their
anger, their defiance? What does your grandeur mean, master of the
universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do
you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?
Some 10,000 men had come to participate in a solemn service including
the Blocoteste, the kapos, all bureaucrats in the service of
death. Blessed be the Almighty. The voice of
the officiating inmate had just become audible. At first I thought it was the wind.
Blessed be God's name. Thousands of lips repeated the benediction
bent over like trees in a storm. Blessed be God's name?
Why but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled
because he caused thousands of children to burn in his mass graves, because he kept
6 crematoria working day and night including Sabbath and the holy days,
Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death. How could I say to
him blessed be thou almighty master of the universe
who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night Tom watch as
our fathers, our mothers, our brothers ended up in the furnaces? Praised be thy
holy name for having chosen us to be slaughtered in thine out on thine
altar. I listened as the inmate's voice rose. It
was powerful yet broken amid the weeping, the sobbing, the sighing of the entire,
congregation. All the earth and the universes are gods.
He kept pausing as though he lacked the strength to uncover the meaning beneath the
text. The melody was stifled in his throat. And I,
the former mystic, was was thinking, yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam
and Eve deceive you, you chased them from paradise. When you were displeased by
Noah's generations, you brought down the flood. When Sodom lost your favor, you
caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men
whom you have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gas, and burned. What did
they do? They pray before you. They praise your name.
All of creation bears witness to the greatness of God.
In days gone by, Rosh Hashanah had dominated my life. I knew that my sins
grieved the almighty, and so I pleaded for forgiveness. In those days, I fully
believed that the salvation of the world depended on every one of my deeds and
every one of my prayers. But now I no longer
plead for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On
the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the Accused. My
eyes had opened and I was alone, terrible alone to the world without God, without
man, without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt
myself to be stronger than this almighty to whom my life had been bound for
so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an
observer, a stranger. The service ended with
Kaddish, each of us reciting Kaddish for his parents, for his children, and
for himself. We remained
standing in the awful books for a long time, unable to detach ourselves from this
surreal moment. Then came the time to go to sleep, and slowly the inmates returned
to their blocks. I thought I heard them wishing each other a happy
new year. I ran to look for my
father. At the same time, I was afraid of having to wish him a happy
new year in which I no longer believed. He was leaning against the
wall, bent shoulders sagging as if under a heavy load. I went up to him,
took his hand, and kissed it. I felt a tear on my hand. Whose was
it? Mine? His? I said nothing, nor did he. Never before had we
understood each other so clearly. The sound of the
bell brought us back to reality. We had to go to bed. We came back
from very far away. I looked at my father's face, trying
to glimpse a smile or something like it on his stricken face, but there was
nothing. Not the shadow of an expression. Defeat.
Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, should we feast? The question was hotly debated. To
fast could mean a more certain or rapid death. In this place, we were
always fasting. It was Yom Kippur year round. But
there were those who said we should fast precisely because it was dangerous to do
so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable
of singing his praises. I did not
fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do
so. And then there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no
longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed
my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion,
of protest against him. And I nibbled on my crust
of bread. Deep inside me,
I felt a great void opening.
God,
There's a book called Case for Life. Yes. Go ahead, Case for Life. I was
gonna bring that up. Yeah. Go ahead. And
and I was readers, I was working at a coffee shop, and this couple was
sitting outside. Oh, there's 2 dude yeah. There's couple sitting outside. And this guy,
Mike, who helped me buy my car, and he was a devout Christian. You know?
Mhmm. And, he was like, oh, you're reading that book. It wasn't a
couple. It was just him. You're reading that book? I said, yeah. He goes, so
it it proved to exist. And I was like, doesn't matter.
And And he said, what do you mean? I said,
like, if someone proves that he didn't, I'm not gonna, like, kill
you because now it's you know what I mean? Like
Yeah. So the the
something to relay
any a a positive it's like the intention and the
practice is the intention to distract from
whatever the brain is currently
pressed up against in order to, like, rewire
it in order to, like, safeguard through uncompromisable
situations, essentially.
Well and and Waisel hits on something that, Solzhenitsyn hit
on at the Gulag Archipelago, where he talked about how
there were people who went into the Gulag as rock Libby
Eastern Orthodox Christians in Russia. And they came out
to paraphrase from while not to paraphrase, but to quote from Weisel with a
great void that had opened up inside of them because of the things they had
seen. And then there were people who
I would, I would, I would maybe categorize them as Sam
Harris, atheists, you know, because it's cool and intellectual.
And to be atheistic now, because it's easy and comfortable, it
doesn't cost you anything other than maybe a little bit of social
approbation from certain geographic sectors of the country who you don't care about anyway.
So what the hell do you care? You get all the right claps from all
the right people, so it's easy, but those people went into the Gulag
and some of them were true believers in Marxism. Speaking of that,
and they wound up actually coming out,
believing in God. And so
Weisel is onto something here. Like, there's a journey, right, that he
went on. And I think
I think about this as a person who tries every
day to be the best Christian that I can be. And most days I miss
the mark. Most days I fall into Amartya, which is sin.
I miss the mark. It's an archery term. That's all sin
means. And
just because and this is the point of Jesus.
Just because you fall into sin doesn't mean that god has forgotten you.
It doesn't mean that god has stopped talking. It
just means that the the void or the the the
gap, the chasm between you and him is is
is or you and it if we wanna frame it without being
without gendering it in our era, is
wide. Right? The void is wide between you and being.
And so I read that section right there and it struck me that out of
Libby talks about the book, you know, bringing her to tears. That part right
there, that entire section right there struck me so deeply.
Judaism is a fascinating religion.
And and the the the day of having having days for
atonement. Right? Having days for New Years.
I love that idea, writers? Where there's going to be a
day where you're going to like you're going to talk about all the ways you've
missed the mark. You're gonna ask for forgiveness. And yes,
that can turn into religion. And yes, that can become rote. And yes, that could
become performative. And it and it has for many Jewish
people. They're not immune to that,
but there is value in
that performative act. I don't know where
the value lies because who knows what's in a
man's heart. Right? But there's value in
that even in the midst of, and this is what he was
hitting on here, even in the midst of hell,
even in the midst of hell. We're told
in the new testament that the demons know the name of Jesus.
They know the name. That's that's what we're told.
That is fascinating to me. That is fascinating. They
don't worship Jesus, but they know the name. It is interesting. You know? You
talk about you're talking about, like, rock bottoms earlier. Mhmm. It sounds
like his his, you know, his
spiritual rock bottom. And
something else, we're talking about solutions and and this
because the Internet is and we talk we talked about this, has made
so many people an expert. Mhmm.
It's difficult to remain teachable, and so turning teachable,
we did talk about that earlier, but but still still just remaining teachable in situation,
I think, is so much is so important. It's still kinda, like,
approach something with an open mind and and and how, you know,
how is you know, and then how do we do that?
Yeah. You know? And that so that's that is,
Libby, on your point of, like, starting the outside in. It's
like, well, that happens from how you raise your children.
I'm sure how you raise your children, Hassan.
You value remaining teachable. And
so and you're a great teacher. And so I think with great
teachers, you're you're probably cultivating good students.
And not only students for educational and academia, but students alike because
we all have to get through it. And so,
you know, I think remaining a a book example and, you know, not
wasting a rock bottom Mhmm. Is,
you know, is a is a I don't know what
potential path to solution or a solution. And
it has to come down to the individual because and you gotta heal yourself before
you can go to anybody else. So Yep.
Libby, final thoughts, solutions to problems. I mean, I
I do think, you know, the the analogy that
you were using earlier on or reference
Tom Schulz and Nietzsche and those
intellectuals who went in atheist and came out believing.
I you know, you've seen a resurgence of
yeah. Libby won't say religiosity because that yeah.
That's a movie that counters religion. But
focus on more organized religion or community based religion.
I think we yeah. Many did hit a Tom.
But I think what I can always
speak to myself, you know, when I hit my bottom
and I decide I chose life over death, You know, once you know how
close you are to death and that you're choosing life,
like, you you don't like, I I know there's something
greater than myself. I don't know what it is, but I'm
powered by it. Mhmm. And I don't have certain I
don't have certainty about life. I live with a very curious and
open mind. I think you, I actually,
one of the reasons I went into that dark cauldron
was because I was curious and interested about life, and that
was you know, others tried to shut that out, and have you
only live a certain way or be a certain way, and that wasn't, you know,
true to my essence. And when I think about,
what Weisel was saying, you know, is he was
praying to a god, but what he
really felt was he actually touched the true
essence of spirituality and not the intellectualization of
it. Yep. And once you know, I I can say that, you know,
with, like, Russell Brand, you know Mhmm. And others. It's
like you get to that point where it's not words. You actually
have felt the essence of it, and there is something greater than yourself.
And it actually allows a freedom,
and safety, to love and to be open and to
be curious because you know what the alternative is, and
it's not a place worth living in. Yeah.
It's like a lot of places, I read a quote on a Starbucks cup many
years ago that said there's freedom and commitment.
That's what Tom maybe remind me of is, you know, what
you just said, Libby. Yeah. It is. It's kind of like,
discipline is freedom. Yeah.
Jocko. Jocko. Jocko's showing up here at the end of the podcast.
Good idea. Open through.
Yeah. You know?
The Holocaust is a serious subject, and and Yeah. And Wiesel is
a serious writer about that.
And this is a serious book.
One of the problems that we have to solve or is
how do we get people to take the lessons of history seriously?
And I think it's really hard because we live in a world of
robotics and artificial intelligence and putting people into orbit
and instantaneous communication and reusable rockets. These are all a
thing. And yet with all our stuff,
we are blind to the facts of human nature, Right? We're
blind to jealousy and envy and vanity and pride and lust for
power. And the big one, fourth, is still ruled
a human heart.
There's a great quote that was in the the graphic novel Watchmen
by Alan Moore. He quoted from Albert Einstein. I love this
quote. When I think about the Holocaust, I think about this.
He says, and I quote, the release of atomic power has
changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to
this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I
had known I should have become a watchmaker.
Albert Einstein was correct. By the way. A guy who barely
avoided going to Auschwitz himself.
Then they would they would have. The Nazis would have burned him up in a
crematorium in a second.
The release of any kind of power, whether it's the power
to wield control through laws
and regulations over other men, because you don't like them fourth the
power to make some sort of clickbaity headline.
That kind of power. And the postmodernists are correct on
this. The power relationships do change everything, but they
don't change our way of thinking.
We've never come up with a technological solution for the human
heart and we never will.
I feel fairly I I I can I feel comfortable
in ontological certainty on saying that?
And it's okay if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong on that one. Fine. I'll I'll
accept being wrong on that, but I'll I'll take the ontological
Pepsi challenge on that. I mean, I I just love what you
said, the quote, if you lick my heart, you'd be turning you know, that was
that's another that that quote is so unreal, man. It's unbelievable.
Yeah. It's it's I think about these
things oh, and I think about history and I
think about the cycles of history and I think about how we fail to
appreciate the cyclical nature of history, we get diluted by progress
and we forget that there's all these old energies in the heart.
Right? All these old energies inside of folks.
And I'm really concerned,
that we've abandoned our access, not not abandoned the
language, we've abandoned our access to the language of the
near religious to describe the things that we see and experience.
We try to use psychological language because psychology is a secular
religion, but it's it's it's so thin on the ground. It
doesn't get to the heart of what we actually want to say about the
experience. I I
actually think it it goes deeper than that. I think people aren't in touch with
their own feelings Yeah.
With their own feelings. Yeah. So that, you know, everything is about
external external validation or numbing.
Mhmm. So people don't even have access to really how they truly feel.
Yeah. So Tom have the words to
express it, all they get are the signals of fear
and or numbing.
You know? But I I the
solution for me is just continue to model Yeah.
Healthy living. You know, what does it mean to have a healthy
body, mind, and spirit? A living life, like, you
know, happy, joyful,
curious, and building and creating. You know,
it's easy to destroy and be judgmental.
Yeah. And that can feed your your need to feel
powerful, but, you know, your heart is
feeling empty. And how are you? You know, those who live like that, what are
they doing to numb? Yeah. Because their heart is hollow or
feeling hollow. I would just
continue to just continue to model fourth outside in. I know
there's lots of people who want
what we've what you've got, you know, from a curiosity
and, you know, freedom of expression and,
living an empowered life. You know? There's a lot of people who want that.
They just don't know how to to access it. You know, so
Tom be available to those who want it. But it's gotta be outside
in, decentralized, starting at your local
community. That's
awesome. It makes me think of, like, how Ayahuasca has become
popular in in Hollywood, and and it's like we want the
immediate like, you're searching you you're you're going
you're going through all this trouble to get the thing
that you can do just sitting in your chair.
And, like, the immediacy of that, like, I want my spirituality be spiritually healed right
now. I wanna go Tom South America. I wanna do some ancient thing and drink
some thing and throw up and be like, I talk
to the people, and now I'm better.
Right. Yeah. People can't just sit
still, you know, and actually feel. Right?
Turning off all of the turn off everything. Yeah. Stop
putting stuff in your body, you know, physically and
spiritually, and just you have the answers. You just have to
go within, and that can be uncomfortable.
We don't like being uncomfortable. We don't like being uncomfortable. No. We
don't. But you know but you know what? The the lessons of history I mean,
history is supposed to make us uncomfortable. It's supposed to feel
bad. You know, it's supposed to you're supposed to feel
well, no. Shame and guilt are
signals that at the root,
there is something else going on. And if we get caught
in a shame or guilt spiral, that's a different kind of thing.
But when I read night or when I read, I come in in Jerusalem,
or when I read letters from prison by Dietrich Von Hoffer, or
when I read mouse, right.
Or when I watch,
movies or films Tom your point, the Bill Maher guest, how many more movies or
films do we need? Right? Well,
it's not how many more we need. It's how long is it
gonna take for us watching the ones we've already got to
actually internalize the Jesan? Not so we don't do it
again, but so that we recognize that we have to change.
We, but we need to go on a journey to changing our hearts,
not a journey to make our movies better, not a journey to make our literature
better, not a journey to make our technology better, not a journey, even to make
our leadership better, but a journey to make our hearts better.
People talk about epic journeys, right? Epic hero journeys. That's an epic hero's
journey. And if you can go on that journey
using the path of history and literature and books
and yes, even technology.
Well, maybe maybe we could
avoid maybe we could
avoid or at least ameliorate the next great evil
that's that's gonna come from human hands.
I'd like to thank Libby and Ryan for coming on the podcast today. This
was a hard book to get through, and you'll see it on the video. It's
a hard book to get through, and you'll probably hear it in our voices.
But this is the point of doing these kinds of shows.
So, I hope that you enjoyed listening today to the Leadership
Lessons fourth Great Books podcast. Once again, thank you to Libby and Ryan for coming
on. And with that, well,
we're out. Thank you for
listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast today.
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that's it for me.