Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Hello, uh, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

is the Leadership Lessons, uh, from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 180.

That's right, we're only 20 episodes away from our big

200th episode. Uh, you're going to want to pay

attention, uh, to that. And so from our

book today, we are going to start as we have been Um,

every single episode starting this season,

um, rather than starting with a long soliloquy, soliloquy, we're going to start

off with— we're going to start off with a basic

introduction, right, to the content. Now, um, the

book that we are going to be talking about today with our guest, um, in

the very first chapter addresses, uh,

the, the, the, the root causes, the seed

of many of the problems that we see today in our

societies and in our cultures, not just in America,

but everywhere else where you might be happening to be listening

to the sound of my voice. This seed

is binary at its root, and it

is— once you see it, and my guests and I are going to

talk about this today— once you see this seed and you see its fruit,

you will never— you'll never again mistake the fruit for the actual seed.

You will be able to go to the root causes. And that was part of

the point of the author that we are talking about today writing this

book. So as a matter of fact, we open up with

this line from the very first chapter entitled The Role

of Visions. And I quote, one of the

curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line

up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues

themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range

from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy or education.

Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides

of the political fence again and again. It happens too

often to be a coincidence, and it's too uncontrolled to be a plot.

Or as I would say, just to pause a second, a conspiracy.

A closer look— back to the book— a closer look at the arguments on both

sides often shows that they are reasoning from

fundamentally different premises. These different

premises, often implicit, are what provides the

consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on

numerous unrelated issues. They have different

visions of how the world

works, and we're going to talk about

those visions today as we explore,

well, the visions, uh, and the conflict

that exists between those two visions in our book, A

Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political

Struggle by the great Thomas

Sowell. Now, in

thinking about this book, I want you to take a couple of things into consideration

before I introduce my guests. Just some things to whet your whistle, some

ideas that I've got here. The fact is that

we, meaning you and me and every other human being, you know,

we don't all share the same worldview. Now, we know this

when we're lined up, as Sowell wrote, on

opposite sides of—, um, political issue

or a cultural issue or a social issue or a monetary

issue. And due to the vagaries of genetics, environment, choices, and even

the kinds of messages we take in and reject, our worldviews are shaped

in fundamentally different ways. This molding, of course, leads to

different outcomes for different peoples. Some outcomes are

great. Some outcomes are poor, as I was talking about with my guest before we

hit the record button today. And some

outcomes are shockingly average.

Sure, marketers, propagandists, politicians, and others seek to

manipulate worldviews and their inputs to accomplish the goals that

they seek to achieve. But even they don't realize that even they

have worldviews that leak out of the bucket of their mouths and

reveal their own motives and desires. They're

not fooling anyone. And actually, my guest today would

really appreciate this. In reality, no one is

fooling anyone. Some people have just decided to go

along, uh, for the ride. At the bottom— and

we're going to talk about all this today— when we strip away all the fluff

and the nonsense, the reality is that, as Sowell

has mentioned in his book in Chapter 1, there are

two competing visions of human nature. These two visions

are incompatible with each other and are fundamentally

irreconcilable. They are both zero-sum. And to make matters even

worse, or even more complicated, most people can't even

recognize, identify, and critically examine either of the two visions

that undergird their own individualized and previously

held worldviews. And I would assert, preciously held

worldviews. These two visions locked in negotiation, which sometimes

escalates into open conflict, uh, are fun— the fundamental reasons

we don't perceive the world in the same

way. Leaders, we don't enjoy acknowledging

in our leadership, but two visions are locked in a zero-sum

battle, not only within individuals, but within organizations and

even cultures. And I don't think we're going to come to

a solution to this today

because as a partisan for one vision over another. I do not

think there is a

solution, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise. And thus I want to

bring in my, my guests today. So back for

this episode is a person who I didn't have on

my bingo card for this year to select for this book to talk

about. The most unlikely person I would've ever thought would've come onto this show

to talk about this book, but he has his own reasons. And we're gonna

explore what all those were. Our good friend

and, uh, raconteur, as I always say in Man About

Town, Ryan J. Stout. How you

doing, Ryan? Could not be better, my friend. Thank you kindly.

Always a joy and, uh, honor to be back and, uh,

having these conversations, keeping me engaged

in, uh, literature and,

um, and, and leadership and conflict resolution,

as, uh, said prior to the show, as, as, as

a ballast,

personal, personal sort of like ethos, or working towards

that. The other day, I, um,

you know, I have a history, as I'm sure some

and— we're all due of, uh, kind of being

reactionary. But, uh, and as we mentioned previously, the kind of like the

COVID years, um, that kind of brought the maybe worst out of me.

And, and, uh, I had a— when I started reading this book and I was

thinking about you, and I— and what popped into my

head was, why would I

not seek conflict resolution in

all interactions. Why would— why would I not try

to resolve whatever is in front of me? And, um,

it's been— it's been something that's, uh, been part of like the morning meditation for

the last few weeks. So, so in addition to all the

aforementioned, you know, uh, much appreciated. I'm glad to talk about

it today. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And as a person who

sort of is not, you know, is not afraid of conflict or

doesn't avoid conflict, I don't seek it out, but I'm not afraid of it

when it shows up as, as many people are in

our era. Um, you're right. It's one thing to

sort of navigate conflict effectively. It's quite another to know

what the underpinnings are of conflict. Um,

and to engage with them, engage with those underpinnings. Like, one of the things I

always tell folks that when I work with them in organizations is,

uh, leaders, teams, all of that, it's actually one of the big tips for today.

You have to know subtext in order to effectively negotiate

over context. And the deepest subtext that you can ever know, you can

ever critically examine, is the visions that

are undergirding people's actions, right? Right. Um, and we confuse

a vision for a worldview. We'll talk about that today, but

visions inform worldviews. So what we see informs what

we— what we actually believe. And then what we believe influences

how we vote, how we eat, um, even how we walk

down the street, the social media platforms we go to or don't

go to, even the kinds of people we choose to hang out with and have

conversations with, and the kinds of people that we choose to yell at online and

call you know, all kinds of dirty names to. All of this is

influenced by our vision, right? Our grand vision of the world. And, and

most visions unfortunately are

unexamined. And Sowell talks about all of this in his

great book. Speaking of Sowell, let's, let's jump into

that. So, um, Thomas Sowell, let's talk about him.

Thomas Sowell, um, was— well, not was, is— he's,

he's still alive. Um, he has

written over— oh gosh, well, over 60, I think it's approaching

60 books now, um, on economics and social theory as

well as cultural theory and philosophy. Um, and he has served as a

fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University for many,

many years. Um, in commenting on many issues of the day,

he stands alongside Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams,

and other quite frankly, because we're doing this in February, Black conservatives

who spring directly— whose, whose ideas spring directly from

the influence of Booker T. Washington. And I've talked about this on the

show before, and Ryan may not know this, but I've talked about this on the

show before. There are two strains of thought inside of Black culture,

two, two rails, such as it were, two, two visions, honestly, huh,

in Black American culture. Um, one rail is defined by

Booker T. Washington. And if you follow that rail down

the road, you wind up like— you wind up at the feet of writers like,

um, like, well, like Thomas Sowell, um, but also Albert Murray,

um, who probably would identify himself more as a centrist. Um, but then

Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, and ultimately I think, uh, the

young guy who we, who we already covered, um, last episode,

um, in, um, Arguments for a Colorblind America.

Um, Coleman Hughes. Yes. So we, we talked about his book, uh, Coleman Hughes.

You could trace a direct line from Booker T. Washington to Coleman Hughes, but you

can also— there's another rail, um, in,

in, in African American thought and culture where the

root of it, or the, the beginning of that rail starts in the theories

and the thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois. Um, you know, The

Souls of Black Folk. From W.E.B. Du Bois, you can get

to Marcus Garvey. Um, you get directly to Marcus Garvey,

you get to, um, uh, Malcolm X, you get

to Eldridge Cleaver, um, and finally you wash up on the shores

of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibrāhīm

X. Kendi. And those are the two rails that African

Americans in America have been riding on for the last, I

would say, 150

years intellectually. Culturally, and even ultimately politically. By the way, the day

that we're recording this, uh, Jesse Jackson, uh, passed away

at the age of 84 years old.

And while politically and based on his premise

and his worldview, I disagreed with Jesse

Jackson, we cannot disagree with the impact that

he had. Without Jesse Jackson, you don't get Barack Obama and

even Thomas Sowell. Would

say that. Um, Sowell's ideas— now this is where I want to switch to— Sowell's

ideas are so succinct and sharp that their provenance cannot

be argued against, just discussed, even by those

who vehemently disagree. So Sowell has the

unique sort of, um, the unique

sort of, uh, notoriety

where You know, that opposite line, that W.E.B. Du Bois to

Ibram X. Kendi line. They know who he is,

but he was born in 1930, right? Um, he, he

came of age before the civil rights movement. He thought the folks in the civil

rights movement were knuckleheads, and he was already writing, writing and arguing in the

public as a public intellectual, public African American intellectual, prominently

before those guys even came to prominence. And so they

can't. They can't say that, well, he didn't do the thing or he

didn't understand the pain. And he grew up in the— he was a

high school dropout, grew up in the segregated South, all of the things, right? He

checks, he checks all the boxes, and yet he came to radically different

conclusions than all of them did. And so his arguments

are argued against, but never the place where he

came from. And his arguments are so watertight that even his enemies

have to admit that they are worth

arguing against. This book that we're going to cover today, A Conflict of Visions,

represents, along with The Vision of the Anointed, which we haven't read on the show,

and A Kliquest for Cosmic Justice, which I read, gosh,

probably 15 years ago, and that book blew me away.

Um, they are an informal trilogy of works designed to

examine and clarify the two competing visions in the world that influence

everything from economics to race relations.

This book specifically lays out the implications of both

visions and examines the logic behind each vision to

fully understand and to fully logic out—

while giving credit where credit is due— what people mean when they say

the words justice, equality, or even power,

all of which have become buzzwords in

our current American

cultural moment. By the way, we're gonna reference George Orwell in the English language here

a little bit later on. But Saul is a person

who is so disciplined with his language and so disciplined

with his ideas, uh, that you could tell he is not a

lazy thinker by any stretch of the imagination

and very powerful. So as I said, I hadn't

necessarily thought that Ryan was gonna be the person to pick up this book and

say, hey, I wanna do this one. Um, I thought maybe Tom Libby might

want to, might want to pick that up, or, or maybe Libby Unger, or

maybe David Baumrucker, or maybe another guest who had been on our show. Um, because

Ryan and I tend to talk about Jack Kerouac, right? We tend to

talk about, uh, Charles Bukowski. Eventually we're going to hit on Bukowski in here, and

we're gonna— I'm gonna— he's gonna be the first person that I tap on the

shoulder for that. Or myself and Brian Bagley, we talk about

theology books, right? Anything by Doug Wilson or

Thomas Aquinas or, uh, Richard,

um, Richard, uh, or, uh, uh, Ronald, um,

Niebuhr, Ronald, Ronald Niebuhr. Like we're, we'll talk about theology books, right? In

theology context. Or if I'm gonna talk with Dave, I'm gonna talk with

him about Dostoyevsky or, or

Nietzsche, right? We're gonna talk about those kinds of areas. And so each one of

my guests is not necessarily pigeonholed, but they do have books they

like. And I give them plenty of space to pick the books they like. I

had not anticipated Ryan picking this book, and so I want to talk with him

a little bit about that today. And so this is my question for him to

start off: what do you know about Sowell? I sort of laid out some things

that are publicly available about him, but what do you know about Sowell? And had

you ever read any of his work or his writing before this? And sort of

why did you figure this was the book that you were going to— you're going

to sort of cut your eye teeth on? Today. So

thank you so much for the introduction, appreciate it

as always. The first time— very much so,

in preparation for this, outside of reading

the book, um, watched several interviews

Thomas Sowell, uh, also other people talking about

Thomas Sowell. And you mentioned Coleman Hughes earlier, and

I watched a, and, and Coleman Hughes said

that this was a transformational book for him as well,

to see things, uh,

in a deeper— uh, to get to the kind of the root cause or the

bottom of things. And so he said he, he kept hearing

this guy Thomas Sowell. You hear this guy's name again over

and over, and he's like, all right, let me see how crazy this guy is,

or something along those lines. And then he read had read this book, and it

was like, oh, it was kind of like one of those aha moments. But prior

to that, it's like, how have I, uh, heard of Thomas? Really,

the first time I, I knew the name, I knew

he was, uh, important in a

lot of socioeconomic areas and theory and that sort of thing, but I really had

no idea like who he was or why. You know, you just kind of hear

people's names and, you know, that's persons of importance, but I really don't know much

about them. So that is

what motivated to um, to, to take the opportunity to, to

read this book. What really, um,

kind of the diving board into learning about

Thomas Sowell was the George Floyd

era, because during that time, I mean, I remember, I remember speaking

with you like the week it happened. I was in

Asheville, North Carolina, and, um, something you

said. There was something that my— so it was interesting.

So my cousin David, who's a 60-year-old white dude

who's been working, uh, for Chrysler for the last 40 years— he started when he

was 20 years old, okay? He recently

retired. But, uh, he said something almost identical in

a text message to me as what you said to me over

the phone. And I was like, all right, so let me— what am I not

seeing here? Because this very much so almost outlines the constraint versus the

constrained, the vision versus like the preconceived notions of, well, I wouldn't think that

these two people have a very similar response

to, to this event. And so that

really launched into, um, Coleman Hughes, and I, I came

across Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter, and their

And I kind of got hooked on them for probably 6

months. Yeah. And started to see

in a much sort of deeper— and in,

in the way, as you said, uh, Soul

chooses his words wisely, you know,

these are gentlemen here. I think that— I think the title of one of the

podcasts or the YouTube channels, it was like the, the something, the Black

intelligentsia. And it was by Lowry and John McWhorter. And you

got it. And who— and John McWhorter

is someone who willfully admits that he used

the benefit of what was called— what it was, it's, it's now DEI,

but what was the old affirmative action, affirmative action?

He said, yeah, I wouldn't have, you know, probably gone to the education— I wouldn't

have had the job opportunities. He's like, I'm grateful. And and

he admittedly so is like it, but he doesn't necessarily agree with it. So then

we see also see the constrained versus the

unconstrained vision within his perception of his own life and how it benefited him

even though he does not agree with it. And also

coming across these cases, like these court cases where say it's, uh, Clarence

Thomas or another judge where they say, I

agree with the argument, but that But I'm

not here to agree or disagree with an

argument. I'm here for the law, for the law. Yeah. And

to stick true to the law. And

so that is just some of like the

unraveling of how complicated, complex a lot

of these situations

can be. And interestingly enough,

I think a lot of people, if they were

to read this, would, you know, it

kind of reveals, you know, on some level, a lot of us are not who

we think we are.

Mm-hmm. And so reading about kind of like the constrained versus

unconstrained, and we were just talking about, you know, if you're not a Democrat when

you're younger, and then a Republican when you're older, and that sort of thing.

And it's like, A lot of these

things can be masked as one another. Mm-hmm.

Well, what's interesting is, just to play off

of that, so Ryan knows me fairly well, folks. I

think other than, other than a couple of other people, and Derulo Nixon, who comes

on the show all the time,

he knows me probably best out of all, all the, all the guests. Ryan's

known me for Gosh, what is it, like 20 years now? Something like that. It's

been a minute. It's been a minute. Let's just say it's been a minute. 25

years. It's 25 years. Okay. I wasn't gonna put the 5 in there. Why do

you gotta do that to me? Why you gotta, why you gotta curse at

me like that? Um, but I

am the most unlikely person

to go to a school

for art. I'm the, I'm the most unlikely person to do that. And yet I

did. I went to— I, I pursued my undergraduate degree in art, got my

undergraduate degree in art, um, looked at beautiful

paintings, attempted to draw beautiful things, attempted to create beauty, attempted

to inject something beautiful into the world, got an artistic

and an aesthetic sense and understanding that has,

uh, stood me well, um, during the course of, uh, during the

course of my career and has helped me quite

frankly in business., and in other places where you wouldn't think

an artistic sensibility would matter,

right? But that is an example of

what Ryan's talking about, looking at someone, assuming they have

one vision, and then it sort of squirts out in

another direction, right? And this is where I think the brilliance of

Soul's book really lies, is that the, the dividing line between

the two visions, the, the irreconcilable dividing line

between the two visions lies not in our institutions, um,

or even in our culture, but I think it lies

in our— in ourselves, right? So the ways in which Ryan has lived

his life— I mean, Ryan has lived, in comparison to myself, a fairly— and we

don't need to go into all your history— but a fairly unconstrained life up to

probably about 10 minutes ago. No, no, up

to about 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even then, even then, Even then,

but yes, please continue. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but even then, to your

point, even then there were places and you and I have talked

about this privately and in other conversations, there

were places where the constraints showed up where you went, ah, that's

the line, but no further. Right. And you see this, by the way, in people,

I'm going to use a public example. You see this in people

who, who lived a life of an unconstrained vision, like a

Bill Maher. Who are now sort

of going, oh wait, oh wait,

my vision's changed. And the ironic thing

is when a— not ironic, but the interesting thing is when a

person's vision changes, we say their mind changed and, or, or, or we, we

want to toss them out of the quote unquote tribe, whatever tribe we happen to

be in, whether that's the constrained tribe or the unconstrained tribe. And don't worry, we'll

talk about these diff— these distinctions in just a, a moment

here. We tend to wanna throw them out of the tribe.

But the reality is that on a

case-by-case basis, we are all doing this. We're all making these

kinds of decisions, even when I'll make it very small.

When I discipline my kids, I, I'm not always disciplining my

kids from a constrained vision. I have to balance that. It

can't all be constrained, 'cause otherwise I'm gonna give 'em a complex. You

know, but it also can't be all unconstrained. Otherwise, I'm a

gentle parent and they don't learn anything. And then, and then eventually, eventually they're

going to have to go to timeout for adults,

which is called jail. And so we don't need more of that. We actually

need less of that. Right.

So I think people, what, what Sol has hit on and what

Hugh's picked up on is this line that runs

through the human heart and he put it to words. He, he gave it, he

gave it, he gave it language, right? And

not, not religious language, not mythical language. He

gave it hard, practical, solid, and even to your point on the critique of the

book, and I'd like you to talk a little bit about what you thought of

the book here, but repetitious language, right? I mean, he, you

mentioned it yourself, so go ahead. Yeah. Talk a little

bit about that. Yeah. Getting to breaking

down things such as— the

first— okay,

articulated versus systemic rationality. Mm-hmm.

And one of the videos I was watching earlier

was talking about language. And so

when, when, when the unconstrained vision

uses the word equity for equality, it's

more reference to the equality of outcome, right? And

so in the constrained vision, it's the

equality of process, right? And so just make sure that we're following

the same laws, and it's up to the individual who

is flawed and not perfectible, to carry it out to the

best of their ability. And whatever the outcome is, is

the outcome that they essentially

have, uh, earned. Whereas, uh, the unconstrained vision and the

equality of outcome is, let's make sure that everyone, you

know, has a trophy. And

much like

the disciplining of, of 'Asan's

children.' Uh, there's, there's a time and a place for it. And

I think what gets

confusing is where one philosophy or one idea or

one vision starts

to overtake the other, depending on

who is administering the consequence, so to speak. So for instance, yes,

so if you're the constrained— so the constraint, you're— do

you want to make your child

a better, more successful human being, uh,

provide lessons for them and have

them understand the consequences so they

can feel better later? You may not feel great about it because you're seeing,

you know, uh, your child and loved one suffer for a little period of

time, but you understand through your own experience, which

is much different than the articulated words, with your own experience,

that it will be long-term beneficial.

And the unconstrained, where it's like, okay, well, I

want to feel good right now,

essentially, and I don't want to punish my child. I don't want to see them

in pain, and that makes me feel good.

So there is this, uh, in— to borrow the constrained vision—

there's the trade-off. That's right. Do I want to feel good now, or do I

want to feel good later? And, and, and yeah, and how do you want to,

you know, how do you want

to accept responsibility in, um, in the outcome of, of, of the person that you're

responsible for his life? Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, that was just— yeah, go ahead. Well, no,

well, it's interesting that you brought

up consequences, right? So, um, I was raised and

I've, I've, I've, I've integrated into my worldview, kind of

like Jung integrating the shadow, right? I've

integrated into my worldview the idea of consequences, right? And

I'm trying to get that across to to, to

my kids now, right? Um, one of the most outrageously revolutionary

things that the most constrained woman I've ever met in my life, my

mother, said to me— who, by the way, started off unconstrained and then gradually became

more constrained as she got older, which was

interesting. Um, but, but, um, by the time I met her, she was like halfway

through that journey towards becoming— towards, towards an object more

of a constrained vision. Um, but, um, One of the most consequential things she said

to me at 9 years old was, hey

son, you can do whatever it is

you want. Now here comes the, here comes the

comma or the semicolon, but, which normally

negates anything you said before, right? But you

have to accept the

consequences of your decision. And for 9-year-old Hasan, that was like fireworks

going off in my brain. My neural— my neurology, I— and this

is why it, it stuck with me for so long. My, my, my,

my neurons started sparking off, right?

Because rather than hearing the, the but on that end first, right? Or what came

on the other side of the but, I heard you could

do whatever you want. And then after

my neurons calmed down, the consequences for the actions part really started to like,

really started to like kick in. Like there will, if I decide, I've told

this story to my kids, if I decide I'm going to climb the ladder,

which my father has left by the side of the

house, God bless him. Um, God rest his soul and God bless him.

If I decide to climb that, that ladder

and decide recklessly to jump from the roof of my house to the roof of

my dog house. Which looked like an easy jump. I mean, it did. It was

only like, looked like it was only 12 feet. It was probably more like 50,

but like, I'm gonna make this jump, right? If I decide

to engage in reckless behavior, there is a consequence behind that. So I

can climb the ladder. Here's the consequence. I'm gonna be at the

top of the roof. I can even back up and start and, and think about

starting to run, but there's gonna be a consequence. I might slip on the gravel.

It was, it was a roof. In New Mexico, there's gravel on the roof. They

didn't put tar on it till much later, whatever. It was a whole thing. I

might slip on the gravel, go through the roof, but there's

all kinds of consequences that are going to happen. And as long as I'm

willing to checkmark the box on each one of those consequences, I can

do whatever I want. That idea, the

power of that idea, which is based in the transition of going

from a constrained vision or from an unconstrained vision to a constrained vision.

And giving that idea to a

child, particularly this child, probably led to more—

it led to shenanigans, but it also led to, um,

it also led to fewer— also led to fewer problems

over the course of, over the course of many, many years. And this is what

I think we have to give to our children. We have

to give them both visions, but we have

to present them in equal fashion, right? We have to present

them as either process, right, to your point, um,

or outcomes and say, you know, which one, which one do you want? And at

a certain point, of course, we also have to say, no, you know what, just

based off of life experience, I just know more because

there's just things you have, you just, you just don't know.

You just don't know. Like, that's just the way it goes. One

of the interviews, uh, Thomas Sowell is, is asked a question,

and the interviewer says, uh, well,

don't you think, um, the

university system, educational system, uh, would be able to suss out—

and he was talking about, uh, just the general population,

American population— suss out that nonsense? And he said, yes,

it very much did so, until nonsense

became a large part

of

the

curriculum. And so when it— I look at, I mean,

how is it not understood at this point of really

all you need on some levels, like money and

power, to kind of navigate and, and not get in trouble for anything? Do

we not have enough evidence that that there's— I

mean, the 2008 financial crisis, how many people went to—

one guy. Oh, one guy, maybe, or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everybody else got bailed out. Yeah. And so,

I mean, it's when, when the body

that is supposed to, uh, govern, or the body

that does govern, cannot adhere or follow

their own laws and the individuals

they're elected to represent

are, uh, the fated— of this sort of

unintentional consequence lays on the individuals who, who

are doing the electing, then

that, that's the— that's, uh, I said before, I know there's a diagram, it's

somewhere between like an ouroboros and a Venn diagram, kind of like

mixed And I know, uh, Eric Weinstein has— there's

this, uh, like the infinite energy diagram thing, and it's, it's kind of— oh

yeah, it's like a Möbius strip inside of a thing. But that's what it

kind of— it's, it's— and how these things are on a continuum,

and it's not just necessarily like—

what this also showed was, was there's not necessarily

a good and bad. So there's— it's It's more like

kind of on this continuous spectrum, more of like, you know, you

would see, um, kind of like, uh, the political— the political

outlines or the political diagrams, uh, going too far one way

or too far the other way. Too far the other way. And some—

and like you said, with the raising of your children, and, uh, just talking to

a friend of mine the other day who was a lieutenant in

the police in Edison, and, uh, you know, he said, uh, And he

said, you know, he said, I stopped on,

uh, so much weed letting people off, you know. He's

like, because I understand. He's like, I read the situation. And so this is, this

is— you think police officer trained, blah blah blah. He said, but

I understand that, you know, I could— I read the situation and

I read the person and I understand

that like I could, I could have such a negative influence on how

the rest of this person's life turns out

through this one action. And he had to use sort of

like better judgment or, um, something in the sense that, that,

that he could live with. And so,

yeah, I— yeah, it

just, it, um, it, it just kind of made me rethink and think

about a lot of, um, We're going to get to the question, but a

lot of what influenced decisions in the past as

well. And, and whereas necessarily, like you say, you know, you see

a police officer, he's, you know, he's iron to the knives, he has

a hat, this and that, and that's who he was. And to, to, to, to

someone getting pulled over by that, you think the

absolute worst possible outcome. Yeah. So those things aren't necessarily, but what he

said was you, you absolutely need

both sides because without, you know, you, you

raise, you know, the one or the other. One or the other. Yeah. Yeah.

You raise the very, you raise the very tiger that's going to turn on you

and eat you, you know? Um, so you could either raise

a tamed tiger that will, that you can, that you can ride, right?

And that you can guide and that eventually you can release out and it'll go

do the tiger things that it's supposed to go do. Or you'll raise a tiger

that'll turn on you and eat you. Um, and it always—

the tiger always turns on the

tamer who raised it. Um, and then he jumps into some ideas that

I think we, we don't actually look at the bottoms

of. He starts with, um, uh, a guy named— who I never heard of before

I read this book, and I had to go look him up. Um, a

gentleman named William Godwin., who wrote a book

in 1793 called, um,

Inquiry Concerning Political Justice. And

this individual, Godwin, proposed basically what is an unconstrained

vision of human nature in opposition to many

of the writers of the Federalist

Papers. Um, and, you know, there were a lot of

folks in the late 18th century and early 19th

century who were trying to suss out what these two visions

of human nature could be in a political

context, right? So he traces in this chapter

both of those visions and he, he names, of course, the proponent, the,

the, the grandfather, the great-grandfather of the proponent

of the unconstrained vision, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, right? Um, and

the Rousseauian vision that eventually would lead into a Marxian vision which

would eventually lead into a Stalinist vision, which would

eventually lead into the current vision of human flourishing that we have

in the great nation state of

China. On the other side, he proposes that we have more

of the representatives, or that there are the representatives of a constrained

vision, uh, folks that started with Hobbes and Locke and

then eventually wound up through the Founding Fathers and

came down to, to today. In what we see not in necessarily

the dregs of 20th century progressivism, but more in

the dregs of 20th century conservatism.

Um, Ronald Reagan, or even, dare

I say, George W. Bush. Now, we put

political figures to these visions, and we do so because

many of us, to, to Ryan's point, aren't exactly— particularly in

the last 80 years in our country— aren't exactly educated.

In how politics is a lagging indicator of where,

where a society is going culturally and philosophically. Or as I often

point out to my children and to anybody else who'll listen to

me, um, the politicians and the government— you could frame it all in that kind

of way if you want— they're always the last drunk person

coming to the party at 4:30 AM, and everybody else has

already moved down the street. We're already on something else, and they show up

last and they want to create all

of the legislation. These two visions, as Sowell points

out, really are surrounded by and really are consumed with

the basic conceptions, as he says in his very first line in

Chapter 2, um, their basic conceptions of the nature

of man. So in a constrained vision, the moral

limitations— I'm going to quote directly from this— in a constrained vision, the moral

limitations of man in general and his egocentricity

in particular were neither lamented by Adam Smith, who he quotes, uh, right at

the beginning of, of that piece of the chapter, nor regarded

as things to be changed. They were treated as inherent facts

of life, the basic constraint in his

vision. The fundamental moral and social challenge was to make the best of

the possibilities which existed within that constraint rather

than dissipate energies in an attempt to change human nature.

An attempt that Smith treated

as both vain and pointless. Folks with a constrained vision tend to believe that the

constraints that we have on ourselves at an individual level, that scaled

up to a societal and cultural level, are tragedies of

human nature that can only be

ameliorated or negotiated through what sometimes seem

as though are brutal trade-offs. On the other side, the other rail, you have the

unconstrained vision, and this is where he brings up

William Godwin's work, Inquiry Concerning, uh, Political

Justice. It was an immediate success upon its publication in

England in 1793, and of course it was later on popularly

associated with the French Revolution. And when Britain saw what was happening with

France, where heads were rolling literally everywhere, Godwin

was immediately shuddered to the

back. Pache rose, Rosa Parks immediately shuddered to the

back of the bus. However, Godwin lays out the

unconstrained vision of human nature in this way, and

I quote directly from Sowell: Wherein Adam Smith's

moral and socially beneficial behavior could be evoked from

man only by incentives, in William Godwin's man's under—

in William Godwin, man's understanding and disposition were

capable of intentionally creating social

benefits. Godwin regarded the intention to benefit others as

being, quote unquote, of the ess— essence of

virtue, and virtue in turn as being

the road to human happiness. Unintentional social benefits were

treated by Godwin as scarcely worthy of notice. His

was the unconstrained vision of human nature in which man

was capable of directly feeling other people's needs as more important than

his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially even when

his own interests or those of his family were

involved. This was not meant as an empirical generalization about the way most

people currently behaved. It was meant as a statement of the

underlying nature of

human potential. Now, that idea has echoed down

to our time through every révolutionnaire that's

ever walked the planet since the French Revolution. All

the way down to, well, all the way down to Mr.

Momdami in New York City, or, or even down to the

local level in your own town of a person

who has a vision that is unconstrained for maybe, I don't know,

putting in something as banal and uninteresting as a wastewater

treatment plant versus people who would rather not have that thing in their

backyard and have a more constrained vision

of where that should go. When we think about these

visions, visions seed worldviews, and worldviews grow like trees, and

they produce the fruit of identities. I would assert that in our

era, we actually have it backward. We think that identity comes first

and then worldview comes second. Actually, no, I think we have it

deeply backward. Vision comes first, worldview comes second, and then we

decide what our identity is. Identities then produce passions,

fuel interests, and encourage or discourage

the growth of skills. Visions also provide groups— and this is where it's important for

leaders to understand the difference between a constrained and an

unconstrained vision— vision provide groups with goals to accomplish

and benchmarks to attain. Visions are hard to articulate because they

rely on leaders understanding themselves as

well as understanding their followers. Now, once a vision is

articulated, it is almost impossible to destroy it. This

is why Rousseau and also the founding fathers continue to be the

people whose visions we argue over even now, and in

disparate places that have nothing to do

with either America or France. But

this is also why marketers, propagandists, and

quote unquote influencers really like manipulation,

deceit, and tricks of language to hide

what their visions really are. So this leads to my

next question for Ryan, next formalized question, and we're gonna kind of

kick off a conversation here. Um, Ryan, where have you experienced the outcomes? Because we

can actually see this in practical ways. You and I were talking about this before

we even got started. Where can you see the practical ways that a,

an unconstrained or a constrained vision has shown

up in your own life? So, uh, before

we get there, just seemingly, uh, the elected official or the savior

sort of from the unconstrained, it, it, it

has tapped into like the emotion

of, of, of individuals and tapping into

that emotion. Utilizing sort of charisma and language and

all the information, uh, to get—

to, to somehow like commodify natural

rights. Yes. And think that you're being done a

favor. And it's this big— it's— there's a, there's a, you

know, there's a line from, uh, my big

factory planning The mother is, is kind of like trying to train the—

or at least school the, the wife-to-be for the

husband-to-be. And it was like how she deals with her husband, the, the patriarch,

the old patriarch of the family. She said, well, I

just manipulate him in a way to— so he

thinks that it's his idea, and then he's

all proud, and then they end up doing

whatever she wants. And so it's interesting to see, like,

there's, there's so much like, you know, sort of dichotomous discourse in

how these things kind of pop in

and get applied into our contemporary times. So how it's for me, so

as you know, a few

years ago, I, I started it, I applied to

be a substitute teacher in a in Ohio, living in Cincinnati,

in the Mariemont School District,

hired me. And, um, I said, I like the school so much, if you have

a full-time position as a sub, I would love it. And they said, well,

we think you're pretty great too. So I, I

reported there every single day for that

entire school year. And they, uh, they liked and appreciated so

much of what I did that, uh, the

principal met with the school board and, uh, of the town,

of the council, however they, you know, whatever bureaucracy determines this

within. And at that point they said, uh, we think

you're so great that we, we created a position

that did not exist before for you to work

with this population, which was,

um, special needs, uh, And, um, and I was like, wow, that's incredible, that's

wonderful. I felt very honored. And when it came— then when it came

to kind of like a

salary, it ended up being pretty like, I don't know, about $100, $150

less a week than if when I was

a substitute teacher. And so when I brought to their attention— and

so this is a lot, it's As I was teasing

through this the last, like, 24

hours, it is, uh, in, in, uh, in bipolar is something called a mixed episode.

And so that's like mania and depression,

you know, butting heads. That's a, that's a gross simplification.

However, for this conversation, I think it'll work.

So between these two things, and this is— I'm quoting the principle

in, in when I say this,

Mr. Stout, there is no doubt—

I believe there's no doubt that— I, I think there's no doubt

that you can teach any class

in this building. And I was like, oh wow, that sounds

like I'm gonna have some sort of value that's, that's gonna be

commensurate with pay, or vice versa. And it, and it,

and it wasn't. And then when

I presented, kind of like just restated his words back

to him, it was just like a, well, this is just

the way it is. And so it

was a lot of mixed

messaging, um, whereas I think

there was a lot of, uh, I think there was a lot of,

uh, constrained vision and unconstrained vision in,

in that entire process, which seemed to drag out for probably about

a 2-week period, and

which ultimately, uh, resulted in me, uh,

not accepting the position because I would have had to get a

full-time job to keep

that job. So that's insane. So it's saying I couldn't I couldn't wrap

my head around that reality,

right? And so it— that was also contributed to, you know, me moving back

to New Jersey and being like, I don't even

understand anything anymore, right? Nothing, nothing really

makes sense anymore. Um, and I mean, I even

had like some educational components, uh, and it's like— and this is,

this is where, you know, so So I

was hired largely due to experience and

having working with those populations. Uh, but I didn't have a piece of paper

saying that I did so. And there was lots of— there was several people there

who did have the, the piece of paper saying they did so, but were

not good at their job because they had no experience

with working with that population. And I was, generally

speaking, a few years older Uh, and I think that has in

some cases some inherent value. And so we're bouncing back between the

constrained and the unconstrained vision here. And it got, you

know, I, I think it— regardless of

how much you articulate, the

system can get mucked up. In

those two sort of

like, uh, irreconcilable— I think— please go. Yeah, yeah, no, I think as I was,

I was making a note while you were talking. So one of the things I

would note from that story, and that's great, um, I,

I would think

that experience is the, um— and I, and I think Saul would agree with this—

is Experience is the field of— that's

the field of the constrained vision, right?

Because by experience, you understand what the trade-offs are in

a way that's not theoretical. You understand

them in terms of brutal truth, right? In terms of the,

the brute force of reality. Uh, at the close of the show today, I'm gonna

talk a little bit about ceilings. Right? Because our, our, our skills

hit a ceiling, right? Our passions hit a ceiling. Our

interests hit a ceiling, right? Um, in my own life, I've

started projects, I've ended projects. Um, I've, I've gained money and I've lost money and

I've done all these kinds of things, right? Those all go

into the bucket of experience, but there's no way

to measure that other than to look at it in terms of

trade-offs and dealing with the world as

it is.

That's experience. But credentialing— credentialing uncoupled from experience— let me be

very clear about this— credentialing uncoupled

from experience is the provenance, or is the province,

such as it were, of the unconstrained vision. And even

Sowell brings this up in his chapter when he talks

about social processes, right? So social

processes exist to create outcomes. Well, who better to lead on those outcomes

than people with a theoretical vision of, of man's nature? And

where do we go for a theoretical vision of man's nature?

Where do we go to really reinforce our

shoulds rather than what actually is? Well, we

go to credentialing. We go

to licensing. We go to— academic

education. We don't go to the plumber on the street who's

actually plumbed for 30 years and say, hey, you know how

to plumb for 30 years, come over here. No, no, no,

no, no. Instead, we go get the

person who has come to plumbing with

all this theory, and we say, come over here and plumb for us.

And then he costs 4 times as much as the person who's plumbing— never picked

up a wrench in his life, right? And no understands the

theory of plumbing, but not exactly the practice. One of the great, one of the

great, one of the great movies in the last couple years that I actually bothered

to go to the theater about and go to the bath— go, or go to

the theater to see was, um, Oppenheimer, right? Directed by Christopher

Nolan. And there's a great line that Robert

Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, Um, has in that, um, in that, uh,

in that movie, um, he says to one of his fellow physicists, I believe it

was in when, when they finally got to New Mexico, um, in like the middle

of the second act or something, he says, at a certain point you have

to move from theory to

practice. At a certain point you have to move

from the credentialed unconstrained vision to the experience

and the constraints that experience will put upon you. Because of the ceilings

of reality. And this is exactly what I think you're talking

about. Yeah, it was

really brutal. Like, I never— it's—

there's, there's nothing, um, more

sobering than thinking you'd had, uh, you know, in some sense

kind of arrived at

a greater purpose contributing to, society in a

very immediate, well, way with, with working with children. And they love

me, I love them. It was a, it was a, it

was a very

symbiotic relationship in that regard. Symbiotically

mutual. And only to be told by someone who

was initially— this was, this was through other

teachers telling me Yeah, that guy was a teacher, but he sucked as a teacher,

so they moved him to here, and he sucked at that position, and then they

moved to— so this one guy was in the school district, this was his fourth

job, and they had to like create a job just to keep—

because he had all these credentials, he had all these degrees saying that he

was X, Y, and Z, but he couldn't perform any of

those jobs to the level of

decent. And so not being a serviceable person, they'd rather

hang on to the credentials than— and, you know, um, in addition to

that, one of my favorite lines— my favorite

line in The King's Speech, when the

wife of, uh, um, the wife says, I thought you were

a doctor, I thought you were a language specialist, you know, he goes, no, I

never said I was any of those things. Well, she was like, well,

if you're not a doctor, then you

can't possibly help him. And so,

yeah, well, and, well, and, and, and tipping my hand here a little bit, I

think one of the, one of the, one of

the challenges— so Ryan asked me, um, before we, we hit record, I want to

sort of answer this question now sort of a little bit more publicly, but he

asked me, um, you know, do I

think the pendulum is swinging back from the

excesses of the 2010s, huh, and the first part of the

2020s politically in this country and culturally in America right

now and in the West overall.

And, and, um, the way that I would like to answer

this question is this: the pendulum always

swings away from an unconstrained vision when the unconstrained

vision and the proponents of— the proponents of that

vision hit upon the ceiling of reality,

and, and, and reality is undefeated. It just is. So to

your point about the gentleman who's moved through 4 different roles

and has been terrible and suboptimal and— and,

you know, and incompetent at all of them—

he may survive the pendulum swing. In his role,

for sure, he might survive the pendulum swing. And, and, and he's rolling the dice,

right? He's rolling the dice that he'll be able to survive the pendulum swing, batten

down the hatches. And this is

what bureaucracy does. Individuals in bureaucracies, um, batten down the hatches and then they, they

try to ride out the storm, right? Um, it's this idea that,

uh, you know, pendulum swings are temporary, but

I'm permanent. Okay. Except the problem is, or the,

or the, the challenge there is if the pendulum swings

back too far, not too far, but swings back

further than what, you know, initially maybe a credentialed vision

that comes from an uncon— or credentialed outcome that comes

from an unconstrained vision, um, would appreciate. Eventually what

winds up happening is house is cleaned

and, and, and doge is the Elon Musk's doge is the, is the example to

which I will point as the lived example, um, that

may be coming to a bureaucrat near

you, right? And when we see these things happening

at the local level, not at merely the national level where they can be kind

of ignored because it's over there, right? At the local level, then

we can say with some certainty that

yeah, the pendulum is indeed moving Towards a more constrained

vision. Now, the question we can argue, and folks with an unconstrained vision are going

to argue about this with me, I can already hear them, and they're going

to say, well, is this a good— well, we have to

define what we mean by good. And

so in a, in a constrained vision, good is

just which trade-offs are better or worse, right? Which are going to

come, come to a better or worse outcome, or Or in the case of not

better or not worse, optimal or suboptimal. Let's just frame it

that way, right? Whereas in an

unconstrained vision, good means literally a moral cosmic good.

And the problem is we can't get to a moral cosmic good on this

side of heaven. That is unattainable. Even through revolution, that

is unattainable because what all the revolutionaries eventually find

out is that the people who are selling you an

unconstrained vision eventually

wind up constraining you, usually

physically. There's no lack of evidence. Yeah, but, but, okay, but, but Soul, Soul

brings up— Soul brings up an excellent point when he talks

about visions of, um, I think it's in the next chapter, visions of social processes,

or it might be in— hold on a second, let me pull it here. Um,

because he talks about— obviously he talks about the social

processes, time, freedom of justice, right? And you have the same— I think you have

the same edition that I do. So he talks about it here. I mean, we've

already mentioned this before. It's on

page 63, Youth and Age, right? So with experience

and articulated— just to quote from Sowell, right? With

experience and articulated rationality having such vast differing weights in the

two visions, it is virtually inevitable that the young and the old

should be seen in correspondingly different terms. In the

constrained vision, which depends upon, quote, the least fallible guide of

human experience, close quote. The young cannot be compared to the old in a

word we throw around a

lot on this show— wisdom. Adam Smith considered it unbecoming for the

young to have the same confidence as the old.

Wow. Can we bring that back? Ha ha ha. The wisest and the

most experienced are generally the least credulous, he

said., and this depended crucially on time.

Quote, it is acquired wisdom and experience only that

teach incredulity, and they

very seldom teach it enough. Close quote. By contrast,

when knowledge and reason are

conceived as articulated rationality— that's credentialism, folks— as in

the unconstrained vision,

the young have considerable advantages. Uh, Condorcet, uh,

French theoretician, wrote in the 18th century, quote, a

young man now leaving school possesses more real knowledge

than the greatest geniuses, not of antiquity, but even of

the 17th century, could have acquired

after long study, close quote. Now

we laugh, but we're not any better. Back to soul in an unconstrained vision where

much of the malaise of the world is due

to existing institutions and existing beliefs. Those least

habituated to those institutions and beliefs are readily seen

as especially valuable for making needed social

changes. According to William Godwin from

his 1793 book, quote, the next generation will not have so

many prejudices to subdue. Suppose a despotic nation —by

some revolution in its affairs—possessed of freedom. Um, the children of the present race will

be bred in more firm and independent habits of thinking.

The suppleness, the timidity, and the vicious dexterity of their

fathers will give place to an

erect mien and

a clear and decisive judgment. Close quote. Every

swing towards an unconstrained vision relies on the children and the youth to lead it.

And this is what we are seeing in our culture right now. I just saw

a video the other day of high school

students fighting ICE folks and their

local, like, cops, right, to, like, stop ICE from going

into schools and taking

out illegal immigrant kids. And

I'm like, who— why are we using

children as shock troops to

fight adult battles in America in 2026. Why are we doing that? But that's

the ultimate expression of an unconstrained pigeon. And I would venture

to say, it's

part of my French, uh, if I didn't have a brother,

my brother didn't have me, and this was— we were

living in— if we didn't kick the absolute shit out of

each each other on a daily basis. We may have

been fighting those people too, but you understand and learn

something as a child. This is what animals— this is what puppies learn.

This is what animals in the wild learn when siblings— when

bear cubs fight, when little bears fight, when

you fight, you rough and tumble with, uh, what could be your

sort of equal. And you understand that, uh, you

start to understand what the limitations are, that it's probably not going to work out

for you if you walk up to somebody and pull their gun

out of the holster and then you get smacked upside the head.

Oh, and you're going to say that you were violated somehow.

And listen, take all the political— take all of

that out of it. Just in an

incident, just in an

isolated incident of someone doing that

behavior. You're not the victim if

you're provoking the man with the

gun. I have not commented on the death of

the two individuals who were protesting ICE activities

in Minneapolis, Minnesota on this show because that's very much current events. And I

have— where this is not a show about current events, this is a show about

necessarily being timeless, such as it were, right?

Because our human problems are indeed timeless. With that

being said, let me comment very briefly. If

you're a grown adult, man or woman, and

you do not have an understanding, to Ryan's point,

that another grown adult with a gun and

a badge who has been granted

power by the state— if you don't understand that,

that individual, if you muck with

them, the rules of engagement suddenly shift. Then if you're just mucking

with someone who doesn't have a badge and doesn't have a gun

And has it been imbued by the power of the state?

And again, to Ryan's point, take out all of the political implications

out of it, take out all

the sociocultural whatever out of it. If you don't understand the

fundamental difference between interacting with, with those

people in two different manners,

then you are behaving quite frankly, not any better.

Than the children that

are in those videos fighting ICE agents. You're behaving no better

than a 14-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old or a

15-year-old. And you need to go back because

what has happened is you have been

infantilized at a certain point in your

mindset. And this is what Godwin was seeking to— Or this

is what the, the, the purveyors of an unconstrained vision believe, or this is—

these are the people who the purveyors of an unconstrained

vision believe will be the shock troops towards

a glorious, socially changed,

dare I say, even utopian future. And these are the people that a person with

an unconstrained vision looks at and says, they

don't have wisdom. What are we doing? I'll bring up, I'll bring up

a personal example that takes badges and all that out of the

situation. I'm living— sure, it is 1999. I

have a friend who is 6'4", 240 pounds. I played

baseball with him, big dude, carry himself, hold himself. We're walking down the

street in New Brunswick, New Jersey,

and there is, uh, a couple guys, uh, standing

on the corner —on George Street. And one of the guys,

he's like doing karate to no one. He like is fighting the air,

you know, and he's a big dude himself. And he stands, and out of nowhere,

we could see from about a half a block away, and this dude just

jumps up and does a spin kick, right? And Ben, who's

this large person who can handle himself, uh, he crosses the street, and I, I

as we're crossing the street together. I was like, you scared of that guy? He

goes, I'm not scared of anything

on land. However, if I can avoid that by simply crossing

the street, then I'm going to cross the street to avoid it.

There's no need for me to do that. And so to take politics

and take badges and all that shit out of the situation,

it's, it's more of, uh, you know, what are

you willing to risk, right? And understand exactly,

you can do whatever you want Mom, thank you. You can

do whatever you want, hey son, but you're gonna pay for it. You're

gonna pay for it. Well, and the thing, one of the things

that gets you really, really,

if you're unconstrained or if you're constrained in your vision of the

world and in your worldviews and your politics, I would recommend,

this is just sort of a brief recommendation before

we, we switch to another topic

about social processes. I would recommend

taking a good, a good self-defense class. Just take a good self-defense

class, not martial arts. I'm not recommending that. I always talk about jiu-jitsu at least

once on this show. This is gonna be the moment I talk about it. Yes,

I'm in jiu-jitsu. There's nothing that makes you— there's nothing that moves

you from being unconstrained to being constrained like being in a, like being

in a jiu-jitsu engagement with somebody who's like 113 pounds and you think you can

take them and then they just hold you for

5 minutes. And you can't do nothing. There's nothing more— there's nothing

that will move you from an unconstrained vision to an understanding of where

the ceiling is on your skills and interests

and abilities. Even if you are, to

Ryan's point, you know, 6'4" and 240. Okay, cool.

You're 6'4" and 240. Let's grapple. Go ahead and grab me. If I know a

little bit of something and I'm in jiu-jitsu, and I don't even have to know

even that much, like if I'm 2 or 3 years in, I'm still a

white belt. I'm still the beginner, right? Trust me. Go ahead, grab me.

Let's, let's just see how this goes. But there's that

kinds of— those kinds

of experiences, grappling, boxing, combatives, self-defense. Um, I would assert team sports don't do it

as well because most things to your point about crossing the

street are 1v1 and then other people usually, usually come in. We can see

this on videos. You know, of how like things work

in the world and most people have a vision of

themselves. And this is why I like your friend's perspective, cuz I actually have that

perspective as well. They have a vision of themselves

as, uh, I'm going to do this unconstrained thing inside of this fight

and it's just gonna magically work. Right. And I don't have a problem with you

having an unconstrained vision about your physical prowess. Um,

I do have a problem, however, when your unconstrained vision doesn't

work out in the constraints of reality. In comparison to somebody else who,

who may have also had an unconstrained vision, but has earned the right to

have that because they put in the time and they put in

the constraints. So my pro tip is go do, go do some kind of self-defense

something. Go put yourself under some kind of physical pressure. Go

do that. And your

vision will very quickly change

for sure. Yeah, there's nothing like—— to steal a

word from Robert Highland, there's nothing

like grokking powerlessness to understand that you are not the

end-all be-all. There you go. That's right. Well, and, and, and you have to

get that. You have to get that message. As I have

gone on my jiu-jitsu journey, that message continually gets updated. The

OS continues to get updated as you go higher and higher because

you actually— what you realize is how little you actually know

about whatever it is you're actually doing and

where your ceilings actually are. Okay, back to the book, back to

A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins

of Political Struggle. So both, um, by Thomas

Sowell. Both, um, Ryan

and I have the 2007 Basic Books edition, um, and it is a revised edition.

Um, if you could find the original of it, I recommend going and There you

go. I'd recommend going out and getting it. It has this great blue cover. I

love it. It looks— and when you put it on your shelf, you'll look smarter.

So just go out and get it to put it on your shelf. You'll

just look smarter from it. Uh, chapter 4, I'd like to talk a little bit

about this because this is actually very important. So

chapter 4 is about visions of social processes,

right? And we are trapped in the social processes of our time. And

this is why this chapter is very, very

interesting to me. So He covers several different areas. First,

he talks about order and design. He talks about process costs because

he's an economist and he believes in those. Then he talks about

freedom and justice. And finally, he wraps

up the chapter with implications, right, around freedom and

justice and order and, um, and order and design

for both the constrained and the unconstrained vision. He opens his chapter— he

opens up Chapter 4 with this idea. He

says, differences in the visions of human nature are reflected

in differences in the vision of social processes. It is not merely the

social processes are seen as mitigating the shortcomings of human nature in

one vision and as aggravating them in

another. The very ways that social processes function and

malfunction are seen differently by the two different visions, which

differ not only in their view of morality, but also in their

view of— and this

gets back to consequence— causation. Social processes cover an enormous

range from language to warfare, from love to economic systems. Each

of these in turn comes in a great variety of forms. But there

are also some things in common among social processes in

general. Whether viewed within the framework of a constrained

or an unconstrained vision, social processes have

certain characteristics and order, whether or

not intentionally designed. Social processes also, and this is hugely important

to remember, take time and have costs. Each of these

and other aspects of social processes is seen

differently in the constrained and the unconstrained vision.

This is— hugely important for us to understand,

particularly when we look at

on page 91, visions of freedom and justice. So I'm going to make a point

here and then I'm going to go into a little bit of my analysis and

I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask, uh, going to ask Ryan

a question here. The two visions judge social processes by

fundamentally different criteria. This is under freedom and justice.

In the unconstrained vision, where individual intentions and individual

justice are central, it is enormously

important whether individual rewards are

merited or merely reflect privilege and luck. Both individual leaders and social policies ought

to be chosen with a view to their dedication to the goal

of ending privilege and promoting either equality or merit.

Where have we heard this today? But in the constrained vision,

Social processes are to be judged by their ability—

this is important— to extract the most social

benefit from man's limited

potentialities at the lowest cost. This means rewarding scarce and valuable

abilities, which include abilities which may be mere windfall gains to the

individual possessing them, being in many cases either natural

endowments or skills cultivated at prosperous parents'

expense, but too costly for most people's means. Sometimes the scarce and valuable traits

to be rewarded may include skills and orientations

picked up almost by osmosis

from being raised in families where they exist. This is

the core— close quote— this is the core of

all of our arguments today around

social justice. When we think about —how this comes about. There is an idea in

the field of psychology called locus of control. Now, locus of control

is a very old idea. It's

from at least the 1950s. And, um, it basically states that some people believe

that they are in control of their own lives. And

people who have a high locus of control, um, don't really care too much about

the input of others from the outside world.

They're not driven by external factors.

They're not driven by social constraints. Okay. Other people who have

a different locus of control, they have a more of a, more

of an external locus of control, engage in constant reaction and response to

the vagaries of inputs on them from the outside world. I

have people in my family who are like

this. Locus of control, of course, at a psychological

level, represents the individual application of the larger societal

ideas that Soul is addressing. People with an unconstrained

vision have a high external locus of

control. They are very much consumed by how

external processes are impacting their ability to engage in the world.

Whereas people with a high in— with a constrained

vision have a high internal locus of control. They are very

much consumed with what are the skills, abilities, talents, and

passions and of course interests, and what

is the personal ceiling that they can

reach before they, well, get to their goal. The challenge of our time is

that in our public lives— and this is the core idea

here, folks— in our public lives, politicians,

celebrities, marketers, and leaders sell people on an unconstrained vision

for their lives. They sell audiences on that. But when people look around

at how they actually live

with each other, constraints,

ceilings on their activities bind them brutally everywhere. Ryan, I think

one of the things we're missing in our time— this is a, this is an

idea that I'd like to explore with you. I think one of the

things we're missing in our time

is an arising among elite leaders. So elite leaders sell an unconstrained vision, but if

you look at their private lives, they live

very constrained lives, but they don't sell that. You see

this in marriage rates, right? So among upper income people, people making what

we consider to be upper income, which in this society

now is considered to be $250,000 and or more.

That's considered to be upper income.

Among those people, the rates

of divorce are single digits. They're very low. Whereas the ranks—

the rates of consistent marriage— now, whether those

marriages are happy, sad, whether there's cheating, adultery, shenanigans, who knows, right? We're

not talking about any of that. Just the two

people stayed married, it didn't divorce. The rates of staying married are incredibly high in

the double digits. I think it's like 60, 80%,

90%. It's up there. But when you

look at how those people, those celebrities

particularly, but politicians as well, sell the

vision of unconstrained

good, human good, the people below that, uh,

class rank or class distinction

or wealth distinction. Their divorce rates are 50%, huh, or more

in some cases, depending upon which racial, ethnic, socioeconomic group

you look at that's below the $250,000 a year

rate. And their marriage rates are roughly the staying

marriage rates are roughly the same, roughly

the same level. So there is a disconnect between

what the elites and the politicians and

the marketers sell and how they actually live. And I think the challenge of our

time and the challenge going forward to the future is

going to be how do we get more serious elites to actually

sell the vision of

the life they live in a serious way so that people

will switch their behavior over. Because no one's list— I will say no one, very

few people are listening to you and I. I mean, people

are listening, but very few, let's be honest.

And if Taylor Swift and Travis

Kelce get married, they're probably gonna stay married. And all

of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's fans though, are probably going to

buy into the unconstrained vision of their lives and get

divorced chasing and looking for— right. Looking for their own Taylor Swift or their own

Travis Kelce. How do we fix this disconnect? Because this is, this is the challenge

of our time on freedom, justice, equality. If we want to fix any of the

social— like, if we want to fix child poverty, the easiest

fix for child poverty— Sol has even written on this— the easiest fix for child

poverty is for two parents to stay married regardless of circumstance.

That's the easiest fix for child poverty. That's how you break this poverty— the

child

poverty cycle. That's how you do it. Thoughts? How do we get people to start

selling more of a constraint? That's the question. But, um, it's funny,

the, the question that Sol has asked at the beginning, and I either

referenced it or said it, uh,

when we started or before the

podcast, education usually sorted out this nonsense,

right? But, you know, as he said, uh,

nonsense became part of the curriculum. So, right, uh,

and then, so there's always a quote, John Adams

quote, that I, I like to reference, uh, when because there's

no panacea,

there's no overnight, there's no quick fix, um,

and both with the constrained and unconstrained mentioned

the process in the last segment. And John Adams: I

must study politics and war that my sons

may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

My sons ought to

study mathematics and philosophy,

geography natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in

order to give their children

a right to study painting, poetry,

music, architecture, stat— statutory

tapestry and porcelain. Yeah, so, and also what

we talked about prior to the podcast was the foundation. I

think it's solid. And, and this is often, you know, I

would venture to say that

people who have, uh, a daily or

regular regimented, uh, spiritual practice on some level have

a less, uh, of a divorce

rate than, than, than otherwise. Uh,

I know finances contribute to that

as well, but it has to— I mean, but I know,

I know poor people who— I know poor people who stayed married, to your point.

I know poor people who stayed married who had a

strong— who have, not

had— who have a strong religious foundation, right? Um, And

it can be asserted, I think, that among— I, I picked on celebrities and elite

and elites. I use them all in the same sort of

bailiwick. I don't, I don't

separate them out, but I would

assert that they are probably going to sell more of a constrained

vision if they have religion

and a spiritual practice versus if they don't. And

I think we see this in the, the

revelations to the normal public— not us who have been involved in

conspiracy theories since the mid-1990s,

but to the regular news-watching public— of

the shenanigans— and I'm not using that

term, uh, lightly— going on with Jeffrey Epstein. On his island, and we don't

need to go into the specifics of that. I

don't know how we get— I don't know if this is a case of the

elites doing what elites always do, which is, I got mine and I'm going to

pull up the ladder. But it's a, it's a, it's

a psychological pulling up or a, or a, or a

spiritual pulling up or a social pulling up. As

much as it is a material pulling up. Saul, even in one

of the interviews, he's talking about how

this exact thing on

how, uh, Obama, who, uh, very successful financially, uh, and on the

left— and it's the left versus the right and, and what their capacities

to sort of like, or what the, the

data tells

us of who contributes or donates more to, uh, uh, um, charity. Charity, yeah. And

so, and he said the greatest example is Obama, who's doing very well

for himself, has a brother in Africa

who's living in complete destitution, right? And so

if you— so it's back to, are you going to practice what you preach?

Like, and so, and well, so, so here's I think this is something that kind

of coincides with the constraint versus the unconstrained is, you

know, the answer is we're talking about

the, uh, internal versus external locus. Okay. Uh, internal locus is probably a great place

to start because the change has to come from within. If you don't want to

change, then it's not going to— you need to start yourself. You're not going to

change— you're going to change yourself before you're

going to change anybody else. And so where the, uh, I think the,

the hiccup and some of the confusion can come because I

mean media and what our elites and are

selling is this one particular thing and it works

very much so on the

superficial level of looks and aesthetics. And now

what they're selling is a lot of times is,

is like you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you— like, it's a

lot of me, love, self, self, self. And we're— and it's

interesting because the answer is yes, to look

inward. It's not to look— and so it's— there's a— is

a confusing message there. It's like, no, bring all the

attention to your— to yourself. And like, readings

like, uh, you know, the epidemic of narcissism

or whatever you want to throw in the

Uh, uh, but that's— don't stop it— the hat you're wearing

or the, or the clothes that are on your back or the

name brag— name brand that's on the tag. You know, there has to be

something like deeper, and that's where the absence of spirituality and the spiritual

bankruptcy, you know, America and much of the world

as well, kind of get, uh, confused and diverted from the things that are, I

think, healthier is for us to create and contribute

that solid foundation. And technology has created such, uh,

demand for immediacy, whether good, bad, or indifferent, that, uh, much

like I was talking before the show, you know, can

get pretty confusing out there. And if you don't have

some of those, uh, foundations or those, those, uh, um, yeah, those foundations

in place, then when things get really,

really rough, you know, you may be drawn towards something that looks

good on the outside and is shiny. However, you

know, it just decamps your inside. Yeah, yeah. And, and so, yeah,

so that's, you know, I—

yeah, taking a look inwards, um,

and the best way that I have found personally for

those things. There is an educational component. There's like, what you're— what you, you know,

what am I feeding my body? What am I feeding my brain? What am

I feeding my soul? X, Y, and Z. Uh, but I think

the closest and

the most direct and quickest way to regain, uh, um,

some sort of license over the internal locus of control is,

is helping being of service in the community.

And so it does a couple things. You're not thinking

about yourself, and yet you're providing something that otherwise individuals would not be able to

do for themselves, or you contribute to the

betterment of others. And by virtue— and not just— not virtue

in the sense of the unconstrained solving problems, virtue

in the sense of, uh, let's call it, uh, self-esteem

almost, or, or some sort of, uh, like higher

calling or some sort of, um, reflection of what you would like to see in

the world. And you're contributing in that way

instead of being some sort of

like vacuous individual who is aspiring to claw their way to the top

of the mountain because, you know, their favorite, uh, reality TV show is sitting on

the top of the mountain and that's where they need to

be as well. When we think about the solutions to problems, I talked

about the, the swing of the pendulum, right? I

have more and more become convinced that, and this is, you know, not

been recently, but I've

more and more become convinced that our— the solution to all of our

problems at a leadership level is all local. It's all

localized solutions to, to the, to these problems., right? So

to your point about serving

in your local community, right? If I want to— if I want to have

an unconstrained vision, or if I'm the owner or the purveyor

of an unconstrained vision, the best place

to work that unconstrained vision out is not at the— to your point, the top

of the mountain where the reality TV star show lives. That's not the best place

to work it out. The best place

to work out that unconstrained vision is— I'm gonna pull a Jordan Peterson here, but

inside of my own family, making

my own bed. And

that'll give me— trying to fix my uncle of

his systemic racism is going to give me all the challenges I could

ever possibly need for the rest of

my life. That's as hyperlocal as it can get. Yeah. And, and, and that's for

the, that's for the unconstrained vision. For the constrained

vision, the challenge is on the opposite end

where if I am only constrained to

the local, I limit my ability to see that while I fixed my

neighborhood and picked up the trash in my neighborhood. Those neighbors over there

on the other street are also my neighbors in the,

in the sort of biblical, who is my neighbor sense,

right? The New Testament biblical sense. And I probably

need to take a group of neighbors from my street

who have cleaned up my street, go one street over. I don't have to clean

up the whole town, go one street over, introduce myself to those neighbors and

go, hey,

you want to pick up— now the constrained vision. And then I have to,

um, and then I have to, and then I have to figure out after

I convince my neighbors to go one neighborhood over Then I have to convince

those neighbors one neighborhood over that it's worthwhile to pick up their own trash and

that we're going to help them and to convince them that we're not going

to fool them. All of the, all of the challenges that

I'm looking to scale up in an unconstrained

vision or in a constrained vision

are present in my local circumstances. And this gets to locus

of control too, in my mind, where I think So one of the things we

don't talk about a lot on the show is self-awareness,

which we probably should talk about it more, but

self-awareness is not self-esteem, nor is it navel gazing.

Self-awareness is the ability to look

at what you've done or not done and say, whether it's

in a spiritual practice, a meditative practice, whether it's driving home in your

car after work without the radio on, without a distraction.

With turning off the white noise in your head, looking at what you've done,

looking at what you've accomplished and saying, is this absolutely the

best way for me to have been oriented today? And if the little voice inside

of you says, no, you could have been oriented differently. And then you

start talking to that little voice and you start saying,

hey, how

could I been oriented differently? Now we're

not coming. Pache

Christianity, we're not coming from a space of, uh, conviction— or no, I'm sorry, not,

not conviction. We're not coming from a space of condemnation. We are

instead coming from a space of conviction. And I think that voice

changes from conviction to condemnation because the

conviction is positive, condemnation is negative. We switch from that, or

that voice switches internally when we know we haven't gotten there. And I've seen this

even in my own life, when we know we haven't gotten there And

we think that the thing is all on us without bringing other people in

because we were meant to be in relationship. And to

your point, education, I would put relationships in there. All of it goes

in and it makes it a very complicated soup. And at the end of the

day, you wanna keep that complication as local as possible. So again, if you wanna,

if you wanna fight systemic racism, start in

your own family. Seriously. Don't start with

like Shopify or Spotify or like the United Way or your, even your

local government. Don't start there. Start with your racist Uncle Dan

or your racist Aunt Bertha. Start

there. Like, go bother them. Try to change them. This self-awareness piece

is, you know, we talked about, uh, you know, um, uh, how do you,

you know, how do you, how do you influence someone to move

from a

closed mindset to a growth mindset, right? And, and, um, and, and something I

brought up in the beginning of the, of the,

uh, the show, um, and this was really throughout the— I think it's close to

26 or 27 years we've

known each other, but whatever, um,

is, is the idea or in the

practice of you know, leadership and conflict resolution. So probably

for the

longest time, I viewed those things as something out— like, unattainable. And it's not

something to attain. It's more

of a— I would think of practice. And, and you're talking about like,

how do you switch that mindset? And it's, it's You know,

what I've really been acutely aware of the last

6 months is, wow, what, what can

I contribute to this conflict or

this, this interaction that

is, uh, based more on a

conflict resolution, uh, uh, and, um, community-oriented than self-serving? And as we

know very much so in the familial context, like if you were

taking care of your family, you're also being taken care of. And so

it's just that it's the, the, it's the process is not

immediate. And so it's not, you know, it's not

something that's easily gravitated towards because, you know, as I

mentioned a few minutes ago, um,

wanting to see results immediately. Well, and

I also think, I think we're the generation The tail end of Gen X,

man. Like, I'm going back to this— this is one of the themes we're exploring

on this show this year is restoration, right? And who's going to

be the leaders on restoration? And if

we want to make it about generations, quite frankly, I think that those of us

who are on the, the younger end of Gen X, so those

of us who are in that, that, that 46 to

52-year-old age bracket, those of us who are floating in there Those

of us who are young enough to have

some common cause with older millennials, but are also, um, old enough to look

at Gen Zers who are in their 20s and 30s

and kind of go, what are you doing exactly? Those of us who

are able to sort of walk that tightrope generationally in

our families first are going to

be the vanguards of leadership. Um, around this space. And by the

way, the reason we're going to

be the vanguards, partially it's practical. The boomers, for all

of the knocks against them and all of the, all

of the, all of the vitriol spewed against them, are passing into

history whether we like it or not. They just are. This

is what's happening. And over the next 10 to 15 years. It will

happen at a quickening pace that will be so shocking to

us younger Gen Xers. It will take us by surprise if we're not prepared. So

that's number one. So I want, I want us to all get prepared. This is

me talking to me as well as me talking to Ryan as me talking to

all of you. We need to get prepared. We need to get

our crap together. It's time, right? Because

one day we will be looked to by the Gen Zers and

by the younger millennials and even by the older millennials, and

we will be taken to task for what we didn't do

as far as leadership in our own families, the opportunities we missed

inside of our own families, regardless of whether or not where our visions are, we

are going to be taken to task. And I don't think we're ready for— we

ain't, we ain't ready for that reckoning. That's— we're not wired for it. So that's

going to be interesting, but I want us to avoid that. We're really good at

avoiding the reckoning. So Gen Xers, I'm talking to you because you know what I'm

talking about. We're really good at avoiding the reckoning and this is how we

do it. Okay. This is, this is the key, uh, that you hang around your

neck in case you're gonna be latchkey. Okay. So I'm giving it

to you right now. Okay. Um, the, the second

thing is, the second thought that I

have is as we turn the corner on the, the, the, the chaos of the

country that's we've been through in the last 25 years,

I think the thing that we have

to set down Uh, and I said this, this before, a couple of

episodes ago, we were talking about The Great Instauration and a couple of other things,

a couple of other books that we've talked about earlier this year, earlier

this season. But I think we have to set down irony and

cynical detachment in order to make this work. And we

have to be sincere. And that, again, I'm speaking to

my Gen X folks out here, young and old. I

understand how hard this is going

to be. Trust me, I know, but we have to start

putting it down. And the easiest and safest place

for us to put down our, our ironic

detachment and put down our cynicism

and pick up sincerity and actually lead with sincerity is going to be in our

families. So that's my good word. And we have to do it sincerely.

We cannot do it from another place. Can we joke and be funny and all

that other kind of stuff on the, on the— absolutely, that's

okay. But when we're leading in our

families on these things, whether it's anti-racism or anti-taxism or whatever you

want to lead on, even just like

dealing with undealt with trauma, right? And saying, I forgive you and

I love you and everything will be fine.

Giving that forgiveness and taking in that forgiveness. We have to do it with sincerity,

and that's going to be really hard for us

as a generational cohort. But just

like most things, I think we can manage it. I don't think we have

a choice, and I think we

could manage it. And that's

so much— I mean, trade-off. Absolutely. Manageability, manageability is

not a solution. There's no— there's no— because it's—

so looking at these two, the, the outlines of the, the

constrained versus the non-constrained and sort of

like the breakdowns of each one, uh, it just— if you,

if you look at— go back to antiquity,

it just, it just seems that we're talking about, uh, man's

nature is flawed, selfish, and and, and

thick. I mean, we've been essentially,

as a species, we're dealing

with the exact same problems with different outfits. Yes.

For the last 100,000 years. Yes. If not longer, who knows? We don't

even get into the hollow

moon. We've got so much to talk about. No, huh? What Martians— but anyway,

um, Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's the human

condition. And so the human condition

hasn't really changed. No. And so— no, and we use technology to

gild the lily. And we think that because we've, we've— I've said this before

on the show, right? We think that

because we've, we've achieved a certain

level of technological expertise, that somehow we've, we've chipped a great,

a great piece off of the rock of reality. And, and we haven't,

but that's a, but that's an unconstrained, that's a constrained vision, right? So I have

a constraint. I do. I will admit I have a constraint. If you haven't, if

you haven't already guessed it, I have a constrained vision. I

mean, that's the point of this podcast is that, you know, and

I do frame it and we're, we're coming up towards the end of our last,

last sort of segment here where we talk about solutions

to problems. I do frame solutions to problems as solutions because That's what

people like to hear. They like to hear that, hey, I'm gonna solve

this and then, you know, it's gonna be done. And there were— leaders love to

hear that. I'm gonna solve this problem. It's gonna be done. Use some of the

things Hasan and his guests talked about

and then we're gonna move on,

right? Except the reality is, to, to Ryan's point, we can either be ground

down by the idea that we're always gonna be facing this again and again and

again. And so we can fall into cynicism

and nihilism. That's

very easy. I mean, that's what Camus and Sartre,

and before him, before those, those boys, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, that's what all those

guys would say, right? Fall into nihilism, fall into existential

dread. Well, I'm gonna stick up for Camus because

he was an absurdist above all,

and his philosophy was if you, uh, essentially

He's like, if, uh, you're not— it's not, you know, he still talks

about in, uh, Mythos Sisyphus, you know, the really— suicide or

not, blah blah blah, right? Yeah, he, he said,

uh, well, first we must not despair. Number

two, number two, he said, if

you're having such difficulties with life and it is,

uh, you're combative with the idea of

having to live. He said, so, so the absurdist, he

said, you're not combating life. He said,

you are resisting death. And so if you are stuck in that

place of you don't want to live and be here because

X, Y, and Z challenges, and, and, and, and so

don't look at it as an obligation to live life.

It is, it is, it is a resistance, you're, you're

denying death. You're not letting death have the satisfaction

of taking you down. Okay, Kevin, I'll grant

you Camus might have the minority report on this. I'll give you that. I'll give

you that he might have the minority report on this. And by the way, I

do agree with half of that. Eh, maybe an eighth of that. Um,

yes, to despair is a sin, by the way. That's, that's even in

Christian circles. To despair is a sin. It's

sinful. Like, because our hope lies not in despair, right?

It doesn't lie in, um, looking into the abyss, to

paraphrase from, from Nietzsche, and seeing the abyss, you

know, uh, stare back through,

uh, back through you. And because we

are human,

we tend to fall into that abyss very often. However, I don't think

that that's the, that's the way we, we,

we do the trade-offs, right? And so solutions are sexy, right? Except of

course, when we're just arguing about the problem, which is what we've been pretty much

doing for the last 25 years, right? Argue about the problem, argue about the problem,

argue about the problem. And I get so sick of arguing about the problem. Done

arguing about the problem. We know what the problem is. Great. We got the problem.

And, and actually with this book, what we've done is we further refined what

the problem is. So now we can actually

have a conversation about What are the potential trade-offs and what

are the results? What are the outcomes of those trade-offs?

What is the causality? Another area we don't understand that leads to

these kinds of trade-offs. And then what are the consequences, right?

We can sort of have that discussion rather than burying our heads in the sand

and just kicking the can down the road, which we've been doing for

the last 25 years in a chaotic culture. You brought up the

2008, you know,, you know, economic crisis, right? Or I

bring up to revisit again our current, our

current contratrompe around illegal immigration. There are simple but not

easy solutions. And maybe I shouldn't say solutions. There are

simple but not easy trade-offs

for these two kinds of problems. And the issue is the people

who would have to execute those trade-offs or

the people whose ox would be gored. Buy those trade-offs, don't

want their ox gourd. And if they would just say that, like if the banker

would just say, I don't want to go to jail. I did

what the federal government told me to do.

Go yell at that guy. The banker

would save his, his, his head from the noose. Instead, he doesn't say that.

He just sort of hides and weasels around and goes and talks to the federal

government people. And by the way, just as a side note, I think this is

why people like, for better or worse,

they like Donald Trump because as Dave Chappelle pointed out years ago, he

was the first guy who stood

on a stage in between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And

when they both accused him of using the system, he turned around and

said to them, it was a system that you built. I use

the system you built. And I know you build it

because your friends come to my place to ask me for more money so you

can build it more. And all of a sudden Barack Obama

and Hillary Clinton had nothing to say. And Chappelle goes, and this is the great

line. He goes, uh, he goes, it's like a man sitting

outside a burning building with the people standing there, right? With a can full of

gas and a handful of matches and going, yeah, the building's on fire and

it's your fault. He's like, I've I've never heard— to Chappelle's point— I've never

heard a white man say that ever in my life. And that's why

Donald Trump got elected, if you want to really know,

because that's what we want. We want people that actually— now, what they do about

it afterward, that's a different thing altogether, but they

actually say out loud what the trade-off is. And

that's where we're going in this session, or this

next, this

final area of our time together, because Ryan has greatly

glorified us with his presence today and his— from this book. And,

um, and so we got to go on a restoration project. And I think, I

think the big project— I've been leading up to this— I think the big part

of our project is not that we don't perceive the world the same way. I

don't think that that's, that's really a thing, because to Ryan's point

human beings are always going to not see the world the same way. Heck, you're

going to have two people born in the same family who are going to— one,

one's going to have a constrained vision, one's going to have an unconstrained vision, even

if they're raised by two parents with an unconstrained vision or two

parents with constrained vision or two parents were kind

of opposites. This is how it's going to happen, right? Um, because the

mix of experience and genetics and all of this is

just too— it's just too much. Right? Nature versus nurture. I think instead

what we should probably be

pursuing is the creation of trade-offs by serious

leaders. And American culture has allowed, for

better or worse, since at least

the 1970s, unserious and unconstrained manipulators to sell their ideas.

And that began the unraveling of our society, um, in the decade in which

both myself and Ryan were born and has just continued. At

a pace until, you know, right now. And the

chaotic aftermath of that

unraveling is also what we've experienced because, again, ideas and actions

have consequences. It's not just things that occur

in a vacuum. Now on this show, we've read Orwell. We read, um, episode

number 85, Orwell and the English Language. That's a great essay. I would go back

and read that and listen to that episode. Um, and Orwell was consumed with

the deterioration of our language as far back as the

1940s. Uh, we read B.H. Liddell Hart on

failing to learn from history in episode number 167. And when we

have slovenly language and we fail to learn from history, we

are constantly surprised whether constrained or unconstrained our visions are.

We are constantly surprised by the— well,

to paraphrase from Thomas Sowell, the people lining up consistently time after

time on the exact same sides of a particular issue. We gotta get ahold of

our language. We've gotta get ahold of our history. We have to learn.

And even in spite of all that, I still hold that the United States

is the country best positioned with the people best

positioned to lead, inspire, and practically tackle the

restoration project ahead of us in the next 25 years. We can only

get to this project, however, if we have serious leaders, serious about

history, serious about language, and most importantly, serious about their

visions, serious about the tragic nature of reality, serious about the

honest and hard and brutal trade-offs required to make

a vision become a reality. Only children, like the ones we

talked about in a previous segment, and adults with

childish temperaments believe that adulthood can

be the realm of unconstrained limits. By the way, some of those

childish people who are adults and who are behaving in

a childlike fashion

also run some of our biggest

corporations— Google, Amazon, OpenAI— and they're playing with dangerous

fuel with an unconstrained vision. By the way, I

read an article the other day in one of these, uh, newsletters that I follow

from— because I, I pay attention to the tech bros

very closely, and somebody stood up— I won't tell you the name—

but somebody stood up at MIT

sometime late last year and claimed that death was immoral and that they were

going to spend a lot of money

to defeat death. Is it— oh, okay, the initials PT.

Do they run

a— do they run a, uh, surveillance— giant surveillance, uh, business?

I'm not going to give you the name. I just said I saw the quote.

I went and looked at the article, and it

was indeed in

MIT Technology Review, and I thought, wow, to collapse. Okay, did

this person also just do

a 4-part seminar on the Antichrist? It is

the ultimate unconstrained vision. We are going— death is immoral. Transhumanism. Think about

where you start with that. Death is immoral. Think about where

that come— what vision that comes out of. That,

that statement is downstream from a whole series of

assumptions that start

from an unconstrained vision of human potential. Unbelievable.

Anyway. But also lacking seriousness, I would assert, which is even more

problematic, to borrow a modern word that

I don't like, but more problematic than, than,

than just talking about the immorality of death. We are drowning in

a need for serious leadership, not

leadership that takes itself seriously, but leadership that is

soberly, practically, and without hype. Laying out what is actually capable

of being achieved by people with the talent, skills, and passions, the people that we

are leading, and quite frankly, the people that we are responsible for,

and at a furthest level, the people that

we have empathy for really need— whether those people are in

our family, in our local neighborhood, or even in the organizations that we

work in. We need serious leaders, and this is

what we're crying out for. Now, I do believe we have serious leaders. I

do believe we have leaders who are mugged by reality. And I do believe that

these things take a long time. The pendulum takes a long time to swing back.

And I think we are in the process of beginning that, but it's going

to be a long, slow upward slog to paraphrase from Milton or

Marilyn Manson. It's going to be a long,

hard road out of hell and up into

the light. Ryan, final thoughts on all of this. What do

you think? Can we— how do we use Thomas Sowell's

writing? Why should leaders read this? What can they take from this? Like,

how will this help them? How will this help the person who,

like yourself, may not necessarily be in a big

leadership position with a big title, but is leading

people nonetheless? How is this

book going to help them? So I think

first and foremost, there is no— there's

no jargon here. These really,

like you said, he's

succinct, he's direct,

and outlines and provides citations

to other individuals who were serious and direct And carrying— number one,

I think just by reading the book, uh, and to, uh, I

think the word osmosis was used earlier, just

by on some level through osmosis of

reading the book, something is going to infiltrate. Um,

and I think just in that regard,

by proxy, it's going to, uh,

hopefully add something to the— at least the

awareness of an individual's capacity

to be a leader. And,

um, this is digestible. It is of— in the, uh,

in the concepts that one sort of relates to and can— because you can— it's,

it's— I'd say it's pretty easy to go through here and

go, oh yeah, that's me. 'Oh, that's not me.' So, um, you can be

made aware of what your deficiencies are and what also

you excel at, and, and, uh, in a, in a pretty

easy term because the language is so clear and

direct. Um, I think— I mean, I don't think you're— you know,

my mother who reads every night, but she doesn't

read this sort of material, it wouldn't you

know, even, even through, even through her lens,

it would, I believe, have

some effect. And so it's accessible. Um, I

think if you're serious about being an active participant

in your own life, which is probably first and foremost, um, uh, something

that, that, uh, and even if you're not there, this I mean, this, you

know, one of the things that is, is

pretty common after, uh, being a guest on this

podcast with you, Hasan, is I, I often have the thought— or every time I

have the thought— well, I've got a

lot of work

to do. And if anything, a reminder that, uh, I mean,

in every episode that I've done, it's clear It

doesn't matter if there's one person watching or 10,000 people

watching, listening, you're still touching someone. Like, someone— it's hitting

someone's ears. And, and, and very much like AA, you know,

in that regard, it's like, I am responsible. And

so, and it doesn't make leadership a

completely, uh, out of the realm, uh, just concept or idea. You don't have to

be a president, you know, like you said,

you don't have to be you know, the CEO or some sort of Fortune 500

company or something like that. It's, it's, it can be in your own family,

it could be at the workplace,

and it can be as, as simple as, as,

um, as simple as redirecting a conversation, uh,

in regards or, or towards more of a conflict resolution. And,

and, and through, uh, you know, at

least the

attempt of, uh, resolving even the most minor conflicts, it's, it's, it's through

that process you're assuming some sort of like leadership

skill. And I think, you know, just

like anything else, like putting yourself in situations

to express those things

as well. And I think through

practice, um,— and repetition, uh, things become easier. And whereas it

may have been difficult to have that hard conversation with a family member, but if

you— and if you, like you said, if you start with

a family member and you have that hard conversation, and then the next person is

going to be a little easier, and then a little easier.

And then, and then what I've experienced is like, wow,

the conversation's actually not hard. There is, there is,

there is, there is a perhaps a level

of fear that is, is, uh, like the subtext of

why, you know, I didn't want to, uh,

be a leader or, or,

uh, contribute to resolving a conflict or contribute to, uh, something

that's going to have a more

lasting effect and not produce like, uh, some sort of, uh,

immediate solution. Like, oh wow, I don't have to be, you know, the—

like, I can— what if I can be the stepping stool?

Like, you know, we all don't have to be, you know, uh, and

I think probably like Mother Teresa

is, is, is, is someone in, in contemporary times that is, is, uh, kind of,

um, kind of jives in that sense. And I just— I mean, from what

I understand, she, she basically had an

argument with God whole life. Yeah. And,

you know, she was sainted and, and

for her work. And— but that's not why she

was doing it. So, yeah,

I mean, really, really impressed by the book. Impressed by how it— you

see something like this, and it can be a little

daunting. Because it's a lot of it you know, the ideological origins

of political struggles. Not, not a lot of people

lining up around the block for that sexy talk. And,

and, and, uh, when broken down, I mean, you know, often I have to read

with the dictionary and thesaurus and that sort

of thing. I mean, this is outlined pretty crystal clear. And,

um, yeah, I mean, a worthy read for anyone. And

even if you just type in, uh, in a Google search, title

this book in Thomas Sowell's

name, and just read an article, read something

that references this book. I think it will have some relevance, at least on

the very least changing your mind on what these terms mean and

how they can be applicable

in, in a, in a semi-regular or

practiced, you know, way. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you very much, Ryan, for coming

on our show today. Thank you very much for your time and for taking on

and tackling this book with us and

going on the journey. And well, with that, we're out.