Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

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 Western 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 Western

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

the 20th century was an era, at least the

middle part of it, of the most literate readers in the history

of the Western world. The

readers, readers in general of the mid 20th

century were reading, absorbing and of

course thinking about ideas that existed

at the high water mark of print

culture. Many books, essays,

magazine articles and news reports were written during the 20th century to

prove many points and to advance many, many

ideas. The mid 20th century was also the start

of the West's obsession with an endlessly

unfolding visual culture, including

a fascination with an obsession with the power of

screens, both television and

movies. The mid 20th century was also the

logical high water mark and at the same time marked the

decline in fall of the Enlightenment project that had begun

300 years earlier in the late

17th century. These two

monumental moments, the high watermark of print culture and the

beginning of the fall of the Enlightenment project

collided in the writing and in the reportage

of journalists, poets, prose and narrative

writers, and of course inevitably

political writers. With these

talents colliding at that dynamic mid century mark,

pessimistic and cynical views of human nature dominated, along

with the ever growing desire, the ever growing lust, such as it

were, for institutional power, institutional control

and dominance of the individual. A totalizing

dominance of the individual.

The main way for an increasingly intellectual and literate reading public

to understand and to get these

views delivered to them. And of course the opinions

about human nature delivered to them was of course

the novel. Today on

the podcast we will be introducing the author and

talking about some of the dominant themes and talking

about some of the thoughts that I have on one of the seminal

dystopian novels of the 20th century,

George Orwell's

leaders. Some books are so frozen in time

that anyone can graft any idea onto them at any time

after publication, then can successfully leverage

that grafting to move masses of people

to action. And this,

this is one of those.

Books,

Sam.

So as usual in this episode of the show, we're going to

cover, we're going to talk about some of the

areas that are around 1984.

Now one of the interesting things is that 1984 is of course a copyrighted

work. It is not in the public domain. Therefore

we will not be reading excerpts from the book on the

show, which I don't know if that would make Orwell happy or not.

I do find it to be somewhat ironic that his

estate viciously protects the

Orwellian machine, such as it were,

that continues to print cash based off of this

dystopian novel. But

the fact of the matter is these works are

copyrighted and so we will not be reading them from the show. But I would

encourage you to go out and pick up your own copy of 1984.

Today we're going to talk about the

literary life of George Orwell and we're going to begin to lay down the

foundation of some of the themes that are explored in

1984. Some of those themes, you know, but. There'S a couple

of themes that I want to explore that I want to talk about that are

in essence, for lack of a better term, minority reports.

Yet another dystopian term that came

from the mind of someone influenced by George

Orwell. When we think about George

Orwell, we have to think about who he was as

a writer and as a creator. And

so lets start with this. Eric Arthur Blair was

born June 25, 1903 and died January

21, 1950. He was born in Matahari,

Bengal Presidency in British India,

into what he described later on as a lower upper

middle class family. Eric Arthur Blair was an

English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who

wrote under the pen name of of course, George Orwell.

Orwell stood as probably the most famous post

colonialist or post colonial British

polemicist of the late 20th of the mid to late 20th century

and wrote essays on politics, literature, language

and culture. And in these essays Orwell focused

primarily on social criticism. He was vehemently

opposed to all totalitarianism, but both

authoritarian communism and fascism. And

he wrote in support of, in rabid support of

democratic socialism.

Orwell's most popular and accessible writing came in the form

of two novels published towards the end of his Life, the

aforementioned 1984, of course, and Animal Farm, which was

published in 1945.

Now, Orwell came out of a very specific

colonialist and Victorian perspective. In

England, he went to what we would consider to

be private school, but in, in England that

is considered to be public school. And his family was not a family of

means. He was separated from his father for many

years and raised by his mother and his

and his sisters. His sister, sorry

Orwell did not have any biological children. In

fact, he adopted a son who continues to preserve

his legacy. And his second

wife was the woman who eventually

became owner of the copyright of all of his books,

all of his publications, and all of his writings, an

interesting woman named Sonia Brownwell

Brownell, sorry Orwell, who died in

the 1970s. There's never been an

official autobiography really of George

Orwell, or at least not one that has been

gotten the, the thumbprint of approval from the,

from the family or from the estate of George Orwell.

And that's because I think, think Eric

Arthur Blair or George Orwell, at the

root was a difficult, persnickety, and personally

unpleasant man. And he understood very

little about how actual individual human behavior

worked in relationships between people. He struggled

from the time he was a child in understanding and relating to other

folks. As a matter of fact, there are many stories if you go look at

his Wikipedia biography, about him being

ill adjusted at school with his

mates and his friends, and then later on being ill

adjusted when he was in the military and

serving in an outpost, and then much later on when he

served, not notably in the Spanish

Civil War. He was

intensely interested, however, as most people are who don't really understand

human nature, he was intensely interested in dictating in, in

an almost unironically totalizing way,

what people should do in relation to systems and

institutions. And you can see that in some

of his writing and his essays. Actually in a lot of his writing and in

his essays, including the essay that we covered,

and we'll, we'll take a look at some pieces of it or quote some pieces

of it on the show today. The essay Politics and the

English Language, which we covered on the podcast last

year. Go back and check out that episode.

So Orwell, a funny, smelly little man,

was consumed with thinking

and examining and pulling apart smelly little

orthodoxies, wound up writing one

of the seminal dystopian novels of the

20th century. SA

SAM.

So one of the things that leaps out to you

when you read 1984, and I'm about,

oh, three quarters of the way through it in preparation

for our next episode where we'll go into a deeper dive

into some of the themes of the book. One of the things that jumps out

to you is that this book is written in

a fashion that is designed to be a punch in the

mouth. It's designed to be a

rhetorical swing right. Orwell

was attempting to work out the problems and

the issues and the challenges that he was having with

not only the fascism of Nazi Germany

at post World War II Nazi Germany Fascism, but he was

also working out his

problems that he had with the

hangover from Stalinism that was occurring

in the worldwide left and particularly in the British political

left in the 1940s

and all the way through World War

II. Orwell wrote 1984,

even more so than Animal Farm as protest

literature. He wrote it as a pamphlet.

Now, most protest literature, whether written by

minority activists or female activists, is really just

glorified pamphleteering. And we made this point before

with the Color Purple by Alice Walker. We also made this

point when we discussed James Baldwin's Everyone's

Protest everyone's protest novel. And we'll reference James

Baldwin again here in just a minute. And we also made this point where we

talked about Joan Didion slouching towards Bethlehem. The

protest novel as glorified pamphlet

was a form of reportage. It was very popular in the

20th century, but particularly popular

for writers of a more leftist political

bent. Protest literature written by

English socialists about the failures of communism social served

as a critique, weirdly enough, from the political right of the

political left. And this Critique,

particularly in 1984, comes off as confused

and bitter and not particularly in spite of

Orwell's probable

objections or protestations to the contrary.

Not well, not well written.

Pamphleteering has always been a poor substitute

for masculine action, and it is indeed

the natural outcome of the industrialized system of interaction between human

beings that seeks to overlook, deny and evade

man's fundamental complexities. In

the case of Orwell, remember I mentioned earlier, he said, served

somewhat ignobly in the Spanish Civil War.

And I'm going to give you this quote directly from his Wikipedia article.

Quote, Orwell set out for Spain on or about December

23, 1936, dining with Henry Miller in

Paris. On the way, Miller told Orwell that going

to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was,

quote, unquote, sheer stupidity. And that the

Englishman's ideas, quote, about combating fascism,

defending democracy, etc. Etc. Were all, quote, unquote,

baloney. And that's really one of the things that comes

through in 1984.

Yes, it is a totalizing critique of both

communism and fascism. It is a

totalizing critique of totalitarianism. And yet.

And yet there are many, many ideas

in it that can be grafted onto other ideas.

Which means it might not exactly be

the most nutritious ideas you could eat out on.

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Now back to the show.

All right, so remember how I said we were to going going to revisit

something that we talked about earlier on an earlier

episode of the show? Well, on episode 85

of the Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast back in

2023, we had discussed with our guest co

host Tom Libby George Orwell's Politics

and the English Language. Now

Politics in the English Language is an essay that he he wrote rendered

and in the essay he talks about the nature

of the decline of English,

the use of the English language and how people can

bring it back and how people can use that

that attempt those attempts to restore or refurbish

the language in order to

take conscious action in order to affect

conscious action over the debasement of the

language. That's number one. But also number two to

get control of their their thoughts and

get control of, well, get control of the decadence

of English society in a mid war

period. Just a couple of quotes

by the way, from Politics and the English Language.

First quote, our civilization is decadent and our language, so the argument

runs, must inevitably share in the general collapse.

Also from Orwell. This is the second quote the Same thing is happening in the

English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our

thoughts are foolish. But the slovenliness of pit

language makes it easier for us to have foolish

thoughts. Close quote

the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for

us to have foolish thoughts.

If one gets rid of these habits, one will think more clearly. And

of course, to think clearly is the necessary first step towards political

regeneration, so that the fight against bad English is

not frivolous and it is not the exclusive concern of

professional writers. Orwell makes this point

in his essay and the

There are some leadership lessons to be gained there about the

efficacy of having clear thinking and engaging in clear thinking,

but also the efficacy of engaging in clear speech.

But then you turn and you look at the writing of 1984

and and Orwell, as a political

polemicist who was also a glorified English

pamphleteer, was a bad novel writer. Nobody really wants

to say this out loud because he's entered into

or become part of the Mount Rushmore of British of

post war British literature. But the fact of the matter is

his talents were best confided or. Or best

confined at least to political reportage and

documenting the nature and depth his obsessions

in a political fashion. His

two most famous novels, an allegory and a blank

dystopia upon which any regime can write

anything, have been read by high school students for decades,

which of course indicates their lack of literary

depth. And by the way, this is not to knock high school students, this

is actually knocking Orwell. If he had written something that was

denser, it probably would not have sold as much, nor would it have

entered into the larger Western cultural zeitgeist

as a warning against the very things he

was railing against. But but

because it was written so simply, anything and

anyone could write or graft anything onto

the face of 1984 and call it by

a name that he picked up as a pen

name, but that has now become an adjective for

totalitarianism. Orwellian.

SA.

So let's mark where we're at in

2025 upon a reading

of 1984 by George Orwell.

Book bans words that change their meanings in real time.

No freedom or lack of freedom of association,

technological monitoring, one world government

lack of or a curbs or a curb on free

speech Social and cultural totalitarianism,

social control speech codes cancel culture

rampant and rampaging poor pornography for both men

and women bread and circuses and

sports ball thought police monitoring

your every click and making sure your social

credit score is high Gulags

concentration Camps digital, of course, at first,

but we always know what the cul de sac at the end of

that road is. Illegal arrests, bad

food, and of course, ubiquitous

and ill fitting uniforms.

We are living well past that dystopia

that Orwell predicted in his book and that he

laid out in such

minimizing language. And for those of you who aren't convinced of that,

well, I propose to you this. We're

going to need an alternative explanation of the institutional and governmental

behaviors of governments in the supposed Liberal west

since September 11, 2001, all the way to

the breaking of those same institutions and

governments by the showing up of one man on

November 5, 2024. You need to provide

me an explanation for the last 25 years of

chaos because the only explanation that

works is that we're currently in a really well managed

dystopia. We do not have,

by the way, a the imagination to

project forward an appropriate dystopia for

the future of our own time, partially because we have achieved in

reality all the dystopic terrors that we made up in a post

World War II fever dreams successfully articulated

through our books, our films and our television

shows. We also,

because of the corruption of the language and the decadence of the language, and I

think Orwell would agree with this, we also don't have the ability to

imagine a better world. We actually can't imagine

a utopia anymore because we have imbibed

fully at an individual level all, all the way down to the bottom,

all the cynicism and pessimism inherent that goes

along with, and comes part and parcel with fantasizing what

a dystopia would actually be like? Which means our

fantasies are now all our terrors.

Our golden age is actually a nightmare.

And how could a person, a culture, or even a leader imagine a

quote unquote golden age if that same person, that same

culture or that same leader can't shake off the

psychological overcoat that shrouds them from seeing possibilities

we don't believe are actually there.

Or to frame it in another way, if you read 1984

and then you realize that we're living in 1984, how can you

have hope about anything or, or build anything on the other

side of 1984?

Oh, brave new world that we live in and what

people are in it. But here's the

problem. Those people are going to have children

and those children aren't going to know anything about

the roots of the terrors that we have imagined and brought to

fruition. If in our dystopic present.

And so we must come up with a better idea

for a golden future. We must have the courage to

imagine something that is not pessimistic or cynical

and then actually have the courage to start building it

with our hands. And by the way, that's something

that Orwell, a bitter and unpleasant little man,

can't possibly lay out for us. And

well, that's it for me.

Sam.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast today.

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that's it for me.