Leadership Lessons From The Great Books - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott w/Tom Libby
Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode
number 106.
With our book today, I'm going to read a little
synopsis here just to start the show with our book
today, a novel that has embedded itself so
deeply into the overall psyche of the United States of
America, that it is confused in the average
readers minds and memories with things that didn't really
historically happen. Books and stories
create cultural memories. And this book that we are going to be covering
today has created more cultural memories in the minds
of Americans from the age of 8 all the way to adulthood
than probably any other book written in the last 100
and 50 years.
The author of this book, developed her approach to writing during
the gilded age of the United States of America,
an era that probably was the last time
that ripening cultural confidence in the American way of life and the
American approach to family and culture was relatively
undisputed. She was also a female
author, just like Baroness Karen Blixen, whose work we covered
in episode number 105. And, she was heavily
influenced just as the Baroness was by her father,
as well as her positions and her
family's positions around the burgeoning feminist
movement in the United States post civil war.
Today, we will be covering the book based on the author's lived
experiences during the American civil war.
Little Women by Louisa May
Alcott. Yeah, that's going to be a risk. It's going to be a real interesting
one today. We're not going to read the whole book. We
can't possibly do that. So we are going to read selections from
it. And of course we are joined by our regular
cohost, Tom Libby. How are you doing, Tom?
I am doing fantastic, Haysan. I can't wait till a couple of,
guys break down literature women, like, the
sisterhood of little women. This is gonna be this is gonna be fascinating. This
is gonna be spectacular. This is going to be spectacular during the
month of May where we are recording this
the day after mother's day. So to all of you mothers who
are listening out there, happy mother's
day. And, well, to all of you mothers
out there, you know who you are. And and and
Tom just had his birthday, so happy birthday to Tom
Libby. I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, I
won't ask how old you are because that would be impolite on the
show. I've had a couple of summers
under my belt.
We're just we were talking about this a little bit because Tom and I
are relatively close in age. We can remember when things happened historically
it's similar similar points in our lives. We have some some overlap in some in
in in a few areas. And, you know, when you get to a
point where you've seen a few summers, then you get to
actually preface that, that your use that as a
preface. That's not what I'm saying. You get to use that as a preface
fourth, for for putting things in a particular context. And so
I I I anticipate that Tom will start doing this fairly soon here on the
show. Yeah. We'll say
this. I'll say this. I I remember the first time I could say,
well, 20 years ago, we did this, this, and this, and I was referencing
my work life. Mhmm. I realized I was getting old. I There
you go. I realized I was getting old.
Well, you shouldn't you shouldn't I don't think you should frame it as getting old.
I think you should frame it as fourth aging, like fine wine.
I I think that'll be out for debate. We'll just leave it at that.
Or or you can say curdling like milk. I mean, either one, Like, either way.
Fourth. All right. Well, leaders, this is a book that,
similar to, I would say, the good
earth probably, is, is going to be
the most interesting. We're gonna have the most interesting conversations,
around this. And we are going to, of course, talk about as we usually do
on the podcast, the literary life of Louisa May Alcott. We're
gonna talk about her background. She is one of the
more interesting, I would say female writers or
female authors, of the, of the 19th
century, particularly the American 19th century.
And she is a, she was a product of.
While she was a product of her age, which is
something that we all are no matter what, how many
summers we have seen. Alright.
I'm gonna go to the book here. We're gonna start off a little bit here.
And, again, we're not gonna read the whole book. We're just going to read selections
from the book. I would encourage you to pick
it up from
Literature Women by Louisa May Alcott.
When mister March lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend,
the 2 oldest girls begged to be allowed to do something toward their own support
at least. Believing that they could not begin too early to cultivate energy,
industry, and independence, their parents consented and both fell to work with a
hearty goodwill in spite of all the obstacles is sure
to succeed at last. Margaret
found a place as a nursery governess and felt rich with her small
salary. As she said, she was, quote, fond of luxury, unquote, and her
chief trouble was poverty. She found it harder
to bear than the others because she could remember a time when home was beautiful
life, full of ease and pleasure and want of any kind unknown.
She tried not to be envious or discontented, but it was very natural
that the young girl should long for pretty things, gay friends, accomplishments, and a
happy life. At the Kings, she daily saw all
she wanted, for the children's older sisters were just out and may caught frequent
glimpses of dainty ball dresses and bouquets bouquets.
Her lively gossip about theaters, concert, slang parties, and merry makings of all
kinds and some money lavish on trifles, which would have been so precious to
her. Fourth make seldom complain, but a sense of injustice
made her feel bitter toward everyone sometimes for she had not yet
learned to know how rich she was in the blessings, which alone can make
life happy. Joe happened to suit
aunt March, who was lame and needed an active person to wait upon her. The
childless old lady had offered to adopt one of the girls when the troubles came
and was much offended because her offer was declined. Other friends
told the Marches that they had lost all chance of being remembered in the ritual
leaders will, but the unworldly marches only
said we can't give up our girls for a dozen
fortunes, rich or poor. We will keep together and be happy in one
another. The old lady would speak to them for a time,
but happening to meet Joe at a friend's something in her comical face and blunt
manner struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion.
This did not suit Joe at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better
appeared. And Tom everyone's surprise, got on remarkably well with
her irascable relative. There was an occasional
tempest, and once Joe marched home declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but aunt March
always cleared up quickly and sent for her to come back again with such
urgency that she could not refuse for in her heart. She rather liked
the peppery old lady.
I suspect the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was
left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died. Joe remembered the kind of
gentleman the kind old gentleman who used to let her build
railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about queer
pictures in his Latin books and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever he met her
on the street. The dim dusty room with the busts
staring down from the tall bookcases, the cozy chairs, the Globes, and best of all,
the wilderness of books in which she could wander where she liked made the
library a region of bliss for her.
The moment Aunt March took her nap, who was busy with company, Joe hurried to
this quiet place and curling herself up in the easy chair, devoured
poetry, romance history, travels, and pictures like a regular bookworm. But like
all happiness, it did not last long for a shoe just fourth as sure as
she had just reached to the heart of the story. The sweetest verse of a
song or the most perilous adventure of her traveler, a shrill voice called
Josephine Josephine, and she had to leave her paradise to
wind yarn, wash the poodle fourth read Belsham's essays
by the hour together. Then I'm going
to skip that paragraph. I'm going to go to this. Beth was too bashful
to go to school if it had been, it had been tried, but she suffered
so much that it was given up. But she did her lessons at home with
her father. Even when he went away, her mother was called to devote her skill
and energy to soldiers aid societies. Beth went faithfully on by herself and
did the best she could. She was a house wifely little creature and helped
Hannah keep home neat and comfortable for the writers. Never thinking of any reward,
but to be loved Long quiet day. She spent not lonely or
idle for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends and she was by
nature, a busy bee. There were 6 dolls to be taken up and dressed every
morning for Beth was a child and still loved her pets as well as.
Not one whole or handsome one among them all were outcasts till Beth took them
in for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because
Amy would have nothing older. That's cherished them all the more tenderly
for that reason and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever
stuck into their cotton vitals. No harsh words or blows ever given them. No neglect
ever sat in the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed,
nursed, and caressed with an affection which never failed. One
forlorn fragment of the landity had belonged to Joe and having led a
tempestuous life was left a wreck in a rag bag from
which dreary poor house. It was rescued Beth by Beth and
taken to her refuge. I mean, no top to its
head. She tied on a neat little cap and as both arms and legs were
gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best
bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the
care lavished on that Dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts even while
they laughed. She brought books of bouquets. She read to
it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coach. Essays saying it
lullabies and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face and whispering tenderly.
I hope you'll have a good night. My poor dear, there
are many Books in the world, shy and quiet sitting in corners
till needed and living for others. So cheerfully that no
one sees the sacrifice to the little cricket on the hearth that stops chirping
and the sweet sunshiny presence humanities, leaving
silence and shadow behind.
So who is this, Louisa May Alcott?
Again, a book so embedded
into the American psyche that we actually don't really think about the
book or the author anymore. We just sort of
take it up whole cloth. We do literature women and the other book she
wrote literature men and we kind of combine it in, in our heads, or at
least I do, combine it in my head with, everything that I ever
used to see on literature house on the prairie. Remember that show from the 19
seventies? Yeah. It kind of all merges together in my head, And
that's because it's part of a collective, conscience
that we all have around a particular era that all of us
were born, At least those of us who were listening to the podcast today, all
of us were born too late to directly experience. And so of course
that era is now fading into,
perhaps is already long faded into myth.
But who created those myths? Right. And we've talked
about whether or not myths are accurate on this podcast,
but myths are necessary for a culture, Well, we have to know who
wrote those myths. Writers. And so Louisa may Alcott was born
November 29th, 18 32, and she died March 6th, 18,
88. She wrote short stories. She wrote poetry and of
course she wrote multiple novels. She
was raised in new England by her transcendentalist parents. And we're going to
talk a little bit about transcendentalism today too, because it relates to this
idea of generational turnings and generational cycles
and religious awakenings that happened in the United States. And
she was part of, well, her, her parents were part of the
backend of the Jesan great awakening in the United States. And so this
great awakening produced well, produced a lot of
different artistic, efforts, particularly in
the literary and novel space. So when Louisa
May Alcott was growing up, she was surrounded by many of the well known
intellectuals of the day that were part of the transcendentalist movement, including
Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. Early in her career, she
sometimes used pen names such as a M bear Bernard Barnard,
under which she wrote Lurie fourth stories and sensation novels for
adults that focused on passion and revenge.
Poverty was a driver as it was mentioned there in that little
piece there for little women. But poverty made it necessary for
Louisa May Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, a
seamstress, a governess, a domestic helper, and of course, a writer.
Her sisters also supported the family turning as seamstresses while their mother
took on social work among the Irish immigrants. Only the
youngest, Abigail, was able to attend public school. Due to all these
pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott. As a
matter of fact, in the civil war, she served as a nurse in
Washington DC and wrote letters home that inspired her book
Hospital Sketches, which was written in 18/63. And then later on,
she published Literature Women in 18/68. She
banged out, get this, 500 pages of
writing in 3 months. Take that
chat GPT.
Some things still do defy the algorithm Along with Elizabeth
Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure
Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during
the Gilded age, which was the age that came right after the civil war.
And she was lauded for addressing women's issues in
a modern and candid manner. Their works
were as one newspaper columnist of the Jesan noted among the
decided fourth, unquote signs of the
times. By the
way, back in the day,
the signs that they were looking at were the signs that,
the feminist movement was gaining traction. Women
were angling for the right to vote and the
abolitionists who had stirred up the civil war had to redirect their
energies. And so they were directing it to social change in
particular Sorrells change with the incoming,
not only Irish, but also Eastern European immigrants
that were showing up in New York Harbor, trying to
escape the revolutions of Europe
as it went through its own convulsions coming out of its
long, long 19th
century. So that's a little background on Louisa May Alcott, this
little background on little women. So I'm gonna switch this over to
Tom now. Cause I've rambled long enough. So Tom
has not read the book as usual, but
he has seen the movie, and he didn't wanna talk about Winona
Ryder. So I'll kick it over to you. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna say
I I I was gonna have a question before before answer here because I
Yeah. I feel like I feel like people don't give enough
credit to some of the information that you just read off. Right?
Mhmm. Because there's, like, there's a sense of, like, was this the
beginning of the end of the women
should be seen and not heard kind of scenarios? Like, I know it might have
taken a 100 years. I get that. And I understand that women still felt that
way in the early 19th, in the early 20th century, probably
right up until the toward the end of 20th century, but but she was
really advanced in in this particular area. She was much
more advanced than people give her credit for, at least I think.
So, a lot of these social
reforming movements that eventually
wound up in the civil rights movements of the latter part of the 20th century
started if you look at history if you if you look at history
in cycles rather than as just a straight line,
began in cycles that started with the 2nd great awakening,
which began in, like, 17
no. Sorry. 18/30,
18/24, somewhere in there, and then slowly
began to wind out. By the way, out of that came
the abolitionist movement, which the abolitionist I mean, yes. People had always been
opposed to slavery in the United States essays, like, since the founding. This is not
that was not anything new. But the level of
the temperature on the pot got turned up,
a lot as the and and the pastors and the
preachers of the day would particularly those in the fourth in your neck of the
woods, would claim that the holy spirit was was
moving through the country and was,
well, was was was was
marching through and and, you know, and, you know,
trampling out the truth. Right? That's what that's what they how they would frame
it. But you also had and you always see this
with religious revivals and the revivalism in the United States.
You see a a a religious revival, and then you see a secular
move as well moving along that with that same energy alongside of it.
And so the abolitionist movement was both religious and secular. We just have to talk
about it in both those cut or you do have to rec re reference it
in both those contexts, but you are correct.
The feminist movement, the proto feminist movement
Jesan right alongside that, that abolitionist movement. And
matter of fact, I've long made the argument that the,
the, middle class and aristocratic,
Caucasian women of the era, WASP women of
the era, once the civil war had been fought and
done, needed somewhere else to put there. Because they were in shell shock just like
the men were. They needed someplace else to put their energies and
feminism kind of over the door. Cause there's a lot, I mean, there was a
lot of space, you know, a lot of dead men. I mean, whole entire
family's taken off. And so who was going to step into those roles? Well, it
was gonna be women. And so they were empowered and thus they could move forward.
And that's what Louisa May Alcott saw as well. Well, especially,
like and and to your point, men would go off to the civil war, die,
and women would run their ranches, run their farms, run, like and
then there was, like, an epiphany almost going, wait. We
can do this. Like Ding.
I I feel like, you know, when you when you talk about, like, when you
talk about, like, I I forget how you worded it a few minutes ago. When
you talk about books like this like the Literature House on the Prairies and
the, you know, things like that, being this, like,
myth you're you're talking about myths. I think it would be almost like,
romanticizing of of what life was like back then as as much
as it is myth. Right? But I it's like it's it's
interesting to me because for all the like,
in in my mind you, people listening here, there's you
couldn't pay me enough to go back to that era and
live a a life. Like, it was a hard life.
But for some reason, when you read these and they romanticize
about it as being like this glorious
and wonderful and look how, like, life is so different, and we can
do and, like, it just it makes me kinda chuckle going,
wait. I I know the actual history about that
timeline, and nobody would want to nobody would volunteer to go back in that time
and and live then. So fourth, Tom volunteer to do it. You have nothing to
worry about because quantum leap told us that you cannot
leap past your time in which you were born. You just can't. So you're stuck
in your own. You're stuck in your own, like, that's it. You're done. You can't
leap past the time you were fourth, that quantum leap set that
Like, that's the rule. That's the rule. That's how physics works.
So to understand, you also need a flux capacitor. I was trying to explain this
to my kid the other day. You need a flux capacitor in order to make
time travel possible. So we don't have a flux capacitor. We haven't even done that
yet. So We haven't even gotten there yet, so we're good. So you don't have
to worry about that. That is the one. But on a more serious note,
I look at I mean, when I read that she
banged out 500 pages in 3 months Incredible.
That's incredible. The only way you get to do that is if you don't have
any of the modern conveniences that we've got. Or
the modern distractions. Bingo. That's right.
Fourth every convenience, there is a distraction. Just like, you
know, for every for every revival, there's a for every religious revival in
America, there's a secular component that goes along with it. For every convenience. There's a
distraction. So for every, every time saving
act of like, okay, I don't have
Tom. You know, I don't have to wash my
clothes down by the river anymore and hang them up and whistle
while I work. I can just shove them into a washing machine.
Yeah, that's great. I can do more at scale, but now I'm going to spend
this time, like doom scrolling on TikTok. Like I'm not gonna, not gonna write,
like, you know, but This is, like, this is one
of my favorite debate. This is one of my It's gonna work. One of my
my classic debates in my house. The whole myth. You talk about
myths. The whole myth of multitasking because it's
a myth. I hate to tell you this people, but it's a myth. There is
no way that you are going to be able and capable of functioning
2 completely separate mental functions at the same time. It just doesn't happen.
Right? Yeah. So but they always throw things at me like that. Like, Oh, well,
I can put the water on for the pasta and go cut the
vegetables. Okay. Are you sitting there boiling the water?
No. You're turning the stone. That's not multitasking. The water the the flame
is cooking the water. I can I can put my load of wash in
the washing machine and I can go cook dinner? That is not multitasking.
The washing machine is washing the dishes. Well Back book in those
days, if you're down by the river washing the clothes, you're not at the house
cooking dinner. Well and here's the other thing that we have to
remember. And I always I always call attention to this.
So, yes, you're correct. Multitasking is a myth. I'm going to settle that in your
house. You just tell them I said so, and it's done. We're finished. Now Okay.
Okay. Alright. You're fit I mean, well, you know, sometimes it has to come from
a stranger. Sometimes you can't hear the truth from, like, people in your own family.
My youngest son will be the biggest wise Wiesenheimer
that there is. Right? He'll be like, yeah, but I can walk and chew gum
at the same time. That's multitasking, dad. And I go, no. That's
subconscious thought. You don't have to think to do that. Don't
don't is this the same person that walks out of your house after you're
done doing the lawn work yard work and looks at you and goes, would you
like to have some help? Oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, well, so see there okay.
Yeah. You got problems up and down the hierarchy.
Alright. No. The other thing that I think about often is
okay. For those people in that
Tom, and we have to really, I think,
regular arms around this idea. So the the
the challenge of history is that we think it's and the way it's taught to
in school, and we've talked about it on the podcast fourth. It's not taught in
cycles as if things, you know, return, which they do.
They just come in different forms. Instead, we teach history as a progressive
arrow that's always moving forward and never moving backward and always better and better.
Okay. Or j curve that goes up into the right. Okay.
The prob one of the other problems psychologically and just,
I think, epistemically, just to use a word that
encompasses, you know, emotions and psychology and religious thinking
together, epistemically,
we lack humility in our current era, which is one of the things that bugs
me because we think just like you said,
oh, well, back then, it's terrible. Okay. But if you go back if
you actually look at how they wrote back Jesan, and and Louisa May
Alcott writes this way in Little Women, they're not writing as if they
think it's terrible. Yeah. They think it's
the height of of, like, civilization as
well. But, okay, in fairness though They don't they don't know that a washing machine
is coming a 100 years later. They have nothing to know about that. Right. At
that Tom, it was. Because think about it. 50 years before
them or a 100 years before fourth, they are turning, I'm not going back book
living back then. Right. Exactly. I'm not They have the
same thought. I could wash my clothes in a tub in my house.
I don't have to walk to the river. To the river. Right. Right. This is
and so the the what happened during the 20th century was
we had explosions that occurred,
in, in the progress of our technological tool making.
I mean, we went from Kitty Hawk in 1906.
Yeah. Somewhere around there Tom, like, going to the moon in 1969.
Right. That's insane. That doesn't happen
in in in general. That doesn't happen in the
history of the world. I mean, we went from we went from being on
farms and understanding everything about
agriculture for 5000 years Tom
in 300 years, 250, really,
industrializing almost everything in the Writers world.
That's just nuts. That's that's a compression of pro
of of of speed of technology based on what we could do,
which, by the way, is what's freaking us all out right now with AI because
we just went through the thing we call AI.
We just went through all of this compression within the industrial revolution,
and then we went through the compression with tech with, the computers and
all of that. And now we're getting ready to go through another compression, and it's
speeding us, speeding us, speed up. That's the at least it feels like to us,
it's speeding up. That's the part that's freaking us out, I think,
which is why leadership is important. I was up to say that at the end,
because that's what'll get you through that. No. Winona Writers, come on now.
Don't don't dodge the question. Talk about the movie. Come on. You like the I
I watched the trailer for the movie before I because I spent all years. It
came out in 1994. fourth movie adaptation of of of little The new one with
Emma Watson came out in, 19, 2019. There was
a newer a newer version. I didn't even know that you could even get
so I was reading this book and I thought they they can't possibly make this
movie today. Like, they couldn't possibly turn this into a film. Like, how would it,
But apparently, I was wrong. So alright. 2019, Emma
Watson. So, no. I
I I think this is the first actual memory I have is, from
Winona Ryder in an actual movie. I don't know if she did the movie before
this, but it's the first memory I have of her in a movie. And I
just remember thinking, she's really cool. And she was, like,
20 something when she did this. Right? Like, 22, 23 years old. Yeah. Something like
that. This movie. Yeah. So I I just thought She's now
seen a few summers herself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
I will I will say, though, if she was 20 3 when she did this
movie, she is a little older than me, so I'll just leave it at that.
Not by a lot, but she's a little older than me. Anyway, but no. But
in again, you're right. I saw the movie. You know, I
I gotta I have to admit when I when I was asked to go watch
the movie by my spouse, I said, are you out of
your mind? What and what what would make you think I would wanna see this
movie? Again, I was
20 some 20 years old, something like that, and a guy,
by the way. So, like, you know, I was thinking to myself,
fine. It was one of those, like, okay. I'm handcuffed, like, take me to the
movie.
I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the movie was good. I thought the
if they now, again, to fourth point, I didn't read the book, so I don't
know how close because that that's the whole book movie turning. Right? Like,
that everyone talks about. The books are the books are always so much better than
the movies well, today anyway. Back back a while back,
the movies and books were pretty darn close. Mhmm. So we didn't have the
same issues where people are writing, you know, 700 page books and
turning it into an hour and 20 minute movie. You know, like Well
well, when you look at Little Women, how it's written, the structure of it, it's
structured at least the first, I would say 10 to 12
chapters are structured based on dialogue alone. Right. Like,
there's very little description. So she wrote it to be
well, they didn't know the word cinematic because they didn't have cinema, but she
wrote it to be and she was driven by thinking
play. Right? Then we could turn this into a play. At the at that time
frame, like, she was turning, I I could see people acting this out. It she
they still had actors back then. They were just Yeah. On stage and not on
screen. So I I agree with you. I think that there was a part of
it that she was thinking, I have to write this in a way that somebody
could act this out. Like, somebody could actually showcase what I'm thinking and
feeling from the writing. So but I think that they did that really well in
the in the 1994 movie. I I think Winona Ryder was awesome,
and, you know, I think it I think it definitely launched her career
for sure. I think she she became more and more popular at that point.
Yeah. She so Reality Bites came out in
92? Yeah. But that wasn't.
Stop it. You be quiet. You you writers, sir. And
then Heather's, which was I'll I'll just
I'll do I'll pull the Joe Rogan. I'm just gonna look it up because I
don't remember when Heather's came out.
Heather's was let's see. I am
this is the sound of me looking this up. 1988.
Yes. 1988. Thank you. Yes.
Which, you know, that goober Christian Slater,
who, by the way, he has become a very goobery fellow. He he really has.
Like, I I'm not gonna something happened to him. He became he
just became weird. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Point is, so
Heathers is 88, which Heathers I mean, Winona
Ryder fans will say that that really was the film that
cemented her, the public zeitgeist.
And I think Little Women was one of those scripts that kinda just came to
her because she was the hot it girl, you know, at the at that time
fourth hot it actress. I shouldn't say girl. But the hot yet actress at
that time, just like with, the literature women that came out in
2019, we're looking this up with, yes, you are correct, Emma
Watson,
something Ronan. I don't know. I think I know I can't pronounce her first
name. It doesn't matter. And, Florence Pugh,
who I'm not a giant fan of. And then that fellow
Timothy with 2 e's and a little oom lot over one of his
e's Timothy Charlemagne. Yeah. Charlemagne, Charlemagne,
whatever.
Anyway and then Meryl Streep as aunt March.
Nice to see Meryl Streep getting work. So you can't
have anything against Meryl Streep. Come on, dude. I just
so we just we literally just covered Karen Blix Baroness Jesan Blixson's
work last episode, in in one zero five. You should
go back and listen to that. Jesan gothic tales. Fun fact
about Karen Blixson, she was a Danish
aristocrat, basically, who moved to
Nairobi, Kenya with her first husband, who turned out to be
a philanderer and a, and a cheat
in Africa, which is interesting, during
the colonial period of European expansion.
And she wrote about Wait. What again Hold on. Let me let me get the
surprise. Wait. There there was somebody from Europe that went to
Africa and was disingenuous? No. Let me show you my shocked
face. Oh, oh, I'm about to play something else on you
about the Baroness Jesan Blixit. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So
her husband was not only unfaithful, but her husband also passed on to
her the, the glorious disease
of syphilis, which she had for the re well, she claimed she
had for the remainder of her life, but actually she might have just had an
autoimmune disease that came about because of the mercury they used
to cure her syphilis.
Right. Still a baroness, by the way, still a baroness.
And she wrote about all of her experiences and put it in her second
book, which was called Out of Africa,
which was nominated for best picture
in, like, 1984 and best director.
And the woman who portrayed the Baroness, Karen
Blixson, Ezeac Dennison was her pen
name, was Meryl Streep.
6 pixels of film separation here on the podcast. Right?
Yeah. Africa and Literature Women. We got
it. We got it in there. We got a not 6 pixel. Sorry.
Six degrees of separation. 6 degrees. But yeah. So okay.
So so what about the powers of books and
stories to create cultural memory? Because I we now I mean, yes. I'm doing a
book podcast for a whole because nobody reads. Right? Like,
trying to bring these books to people's attention. Right? That's really the point of this
podcast is to bring these books to people's attention and to encourage literacy
and to encourage literate behavior. Right?
Books were very powerful in creating cultural memory, for a
long stretch of our history, and it is only the United States history. And it
is only within recent times, I would say within the last 25
years, that that that reading has declined,
precipitously. But
books create cultural memories. Like, if you go and look at
you and I were actually talking about this. I was looking at Pauline Kale, the
the writers Paul Pauline Kael's reviews of of films,
that she did. She had a long a long career. And,
you know, in her critique of the film, she would note what the source
material of the writing was. And 90% of the films that she
reviewed that were made before, I would say, because she died in
1992, or in the early nineties. I won't say 19.82, but she died in the
early nineties. 90% of the films that she reviewed
during her career came from a short story or a
novel. They were adapted from some source material. So there
was strong source material underneath that was supporting the
development of this secondary material known
as film. Right? And
we, by the way, we're see this currently today. So the show that's on,
Hulu, and I canceled Hulu, so I haven't seen it, but I've heard
a lot about it. Shogun. Yes. Loved it.
Okay. It's based off the James Clavill book. Clavill. Yeah. Yeah.
Right? Again, strong source material. Right? And then
you're building that secondary thing off of it. And now, of course, you'll probably have
a Shogun podcast, so that's gonna be, like, the third thing out over the over
there. So The Shogun podcast was corresponding with the episodes. Oh, it was
corresponding with the episodes. Okay. They they did a
phenomenal job covering all the bases on this one. Like, they really did a
the articles, there were a lot of there was there was a lot of writing
about it, as it was happening. There was a lot of, like, there was a
lot of information. So, I mean, I remember the first show
that came out in 1980. I mean, I was just a kid at the time,
but I remembered I didn't remember all the details of the actual
show, but I remember that Shogun was a show back
then. Yeah. And now you can't really find the original on it, but from what
I'm from what I'm reading and all the comparing and contrasting, that
this version was enormously better, like,
like, night and day better from Well, that's what happens. You go back to the
source material. Right? We were just saying the book versus the movie kinda debate. Right?
Like, which one's better? Okay. So I don't wanna talk about which one's better,
but I wanna address the power of the book, the power of the book
to create cultural memory.
Is the Internet gonna is the Internet I'll I'll frame it this way. I'll frame
it as a counterfactual question. Is the Internet going to create
any cultural memory, or is it just gonna destroy all of it and
we're just done? Like, we're done creating cultural myths and memories?
I think I think it will I think it will change it
but not eliminate it. And what I mean by that is, like, think about okay.
So Shogun was written in the mid
9 the mid 20th century, about 1600
Japan. Right? So in Little Women, but the here's the
difference. So in in the middle of 20th century, Clavell was
able to do all the research, find all the information, and
write a book based on the information that he found.
Alcott or or Alisa
Books May Alcott lived it. I think that's
gonna be the difference. Right? Like so it's not that we're not gonna be able
to create the cultural memories based on it. It's just the cultural memory is gonna
be based on on research instead of
instead of experience. Writers, and it's interesting that you point this out because
Greta Gerwig I forgot this, and then it clicked over in my head. But Greta
Gerwig directed Literature Women. Greta Gerwig was also the
director of the Barbie movie. Of the Barbie
movie? Okay.
So, anyway, so
but, again but that's but that's my I guess, that's kind of
my point. Right? So people like her, they're gonna they're not they don't need
they don't need to do all this cultural research in order Tom produce cultural
memory, right, which is what she's gonna Barbie's gonna be one of those things.
Little girls watching Barbie today are gonna remember it 50 years from now.
Right? Like, the it's gonna be an impact well, we think. There there's a possibility.
Anyway, the right? If it's on the
stage what do you got? Oscars fourth crying out loud. Right? Anyway but,
sorry. There are some other that I dropped
Greta Gerwig on you, and that just derails your entire thought
process.
There are underlying themes in Barbie that are very important to society. I'm just
there are underlying themes, but you have to look for them and you have to
really you have to it's a reach, but whatever. Right? Anyway,
but, but but I think I think that's where the paradigm
shift is gonna happen. Right? I think it's gonna be less about people writing.
Think about think about who's writing about their experiences right now. It's
the Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks of the world that
that, writers, that's not so much
like, Louisa May Alcott was talking about her life, and we're looking at that life
romanticizing it about 200 years ago fourth, well, not quite 200, a
150, a 160 years ago. I don't think
a 160 years from now, people are gonna be looking at Elon Musk the same
way or Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg the same way or Jeff Bezos the same way as
we look at Louis Malecott. They're not
what what we may see is maybe JK Rowling's,
but the type of writing that she has is not that those aren't gonna be
cultural memories. Those are gonna be, like, those are gonna be
because, like, the kids today who are in their mid to
late twenties who read the Harry Potters of the world growing
up, that's cultural memory. That's fine. But the
the the subject matter of that book is not
gonna create a 150 years from now cultural memories
because these people will be gone. They'll be dead and gone. Right? So it's not
gonna be the same way. Because and and
I think the I think some of those I think some of those days are
gone, I guess, is what I'm getting at. So, like, people I can't remember the
author's name, but the person who wrote, like, The Outsiders. Right? Like, what they grew
up in they grew up in the seventies. The the the gang the
gang environment in the seventies was very different than it is today. But the
but the the book and the movie, The Outsiders,
could potentially be that in a 150 years, where it's cultural
memory where like, that's so sure. Because the guy lived in that era. He like,
he understood that era. Like, whereas Shogun was more research and I
think more of that is gonna start turning. Mhmm. That we're gonna have
research and and and, research and cultural memory based on
on that type of research than it is actual, experience.
Well, the outsiders was directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Coppola. Right. Whose daughter and son,
daughter Sofia Coppola, also worked with Greta
Gerwig and gave her her shot. So now you can go from the
outsiders to little women, to the Barbie movie.
All in one fell swoop. Alright. Here we go.
Read on fearless leader. Read on. By the
way, what lesson should leaders no. This is this is actually a a last legitimate
question because, yeah, we do have to move forward here. We are gonna kinda get
a little bit bogged down here. So gotta rescue the narrative from
itself. What can leaders take from that,
though? Like, if if I'm in an organization, an organization's
do function, institutions do function under cultural
myths. We don't like to talk a lot about it because it kinda makes us
feel icky as Americans, but it's
true. Like, this is why we cover the constitution on our podcast
because it creates not only cultural myths, but it's also
the story. It's part of the the framework of the
story of America. And you have to know what the framework is. That way you
can lead inside of that framework. If you don't wanna lead inside of that
framework, then we have to have a different kind of conversation.
Right? How can leaders, you know, lead in a
place where or lead from a space where those cultural
where the cultural artifacts are built on research, not,
not a not a myth making kind of thing. Because our natural tendency
is to make myths, not to do research. The
the the the way to to to think scientifically, that's a that's
a in the course of human life, that is a human
civilization. That is a radically recent invention. Well,
just remember Tom, it's it's you're thinking scientifically
to be creative. It's it's almost like a cause and effect thing. Right? That's not
Right. It's It's not like you're thinking sign and and, like, readers is
dictating research doesn't tend or doesn't have to dictate
the writing. Creativity can still dictate the writing. So in the same sense,
the you know, research doesn't have to dictate the leadership or the leadership
style. It just has to it has to be there for foundational
purposes, number 1, or number 2. And and and I
I literature yesterday I know it was Sunday. For those of you
listening, we we record this on a Monday. Yesterday was Sunday. You made
reference to mother's day yesterday. So, anyway, I had
a very long conversation with the with
the head of the, the history department at a local university
here. Him and I, we've known each other a long time. I bumped into him
in the supermarket. We were having this very long conversation and I'll circle this back.
The reason why I brought him up was we were talking about
why have we not with all of the research that we have available to us,
with all of the data that we have available to us, why have we not
figured out a way to stop history from repeating
itself over and over and over again? Oh, because
we still have this problem today. We still have
this problem. And by the way, just pick a
facet of life. It it it doesn't even matter. Like, him and I were were
we were literally we're halfway joking and halfway
serious about, like, well, you know, the way that the way that people
view marriage and the way that people view, you know,
war, and the way that people view famine, and the way people these things
have all been cyclical over the course of the 5000 years of history of
humanities written history. But yet, we
how is it how is it even remotely possible that we have not
figured out a way to stop this cycle of happening? It's
fascinating to me. It blows my mind every time I think about
it. And to have somebody of his authoritative value
and I say authoritative value because the university that I'm talking about is a very
big university. Mhmm. And he is the head of the history department. He this is
a man who knows what he's talking about when it comes to history,
and he has not been able to figure it out. So
I might have an answer for him. I might have a thought,
but I'm gonna hold that question for our next segment. So back to the book,
back to little women, back to this cultural artifact.
Well, yes, this cultural myth of little women.
We're gonna, move forward or actually move backward a little bit,
and we're going to talk about
we're gonna talk about a letter that they received because men are not really
other than Lawrence are not featured highly in,
prominently in literature women because it is focused on women, but there
is a man who is missing from the narrative. And
by the way, a book was written about him recently by an author who
looked at this book and said, hey, there's something missing here. And then
she crafted a, crafted a narrative. It's very
interesting. I'm gonna talk a little about that in the next section here. So back
to the book, back to literature women by Louisa May Alcott. I'm
gonna pick up here with this piece here. Well, dearies, how
have you got on today? There was much to do getting the boxes ready to
go tomorrow that I didn't come home to dinner. Has anyone called Beth? How was
your cold Meg? Joe, you book tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby.
While making these maternal inquiries, missus March got her wet things off,
her warm slippers on, and sitting down in the easy chair drew Amy to her
lap, preparing to enjoy the happiest hour of her busy day.
The girls flew about trying to make things comfortable each in her own way.
Meg arranged the tea table. Joe brought the book and set chairs dropping,
overturning, and leaders everything she touched. Beth trotted to and fro
between parlor pitch parlor kitchen, quiet and busy while Amy gave
directions to everyone. As she sat with her hands folded.
As they gathered about the table, Ms. March said Mrs. March said with a
particularly happy face, I've got a treat for you after supper.
A quick writers smile went round like a streak of sunshine. Beth clapped her
hands regardless of the biscuit she held, and Joe tossed up her napkin turning,
a letter, a leaders, cheers for father. Yes. A nice
long letter. He is well, and he thinks you you shall get through the cold
season better than we feared. He sends all sorts of loving wishes for Christmas and
in a special message to you girls, said missus March, patting her
pocket as if she had a treasure there. Hurry and get done. Don't
stop to quirk your little finger and simper over your plate, Amy, cried Jo, choking
on her tea and dropping her bread butter side down on the carpet in her
haste to get out to the tree. Beth ate no
more, but crept away to sit in her shadowy corner and book over the
delight to come till others were ready.
I think it's so splendid in father to go as a chaplain When he was
too old to be drafted and not strong enough for a soldier said Meg warmly
don't. I wish I could go as a drummer of Yvonne, what's his name or
nurse so I could help him and be near him, exclaimed Joe with a groan.
It must be very disagreeable to sleep at a tent and eat all sorts of
bad tasting things Tom drink out of a Ted bug site. Amy, When will he
come home? Barney asked Beth with little quiver in her voice. Not for
many months, dear, unless he is sick, he will stay and do his work faithfully
leaders long as he can. Now we won't ask for him back a minute sooner
than he can be spared. Now, come and hear the
leaders. They all drew to the fire, mother in
the big chair with Beth at her feet, Meg and Amy perched on either arm
of the chair, Joe leaning on the back where no one could see any sign
of emotion if the letter should happen to be touching. Very few letters are written
in those hard times that were not touching, especially those which father said
home and this one. Literature was said of the hardships
endured the dangers faced fourth homesickness conquered. It was a cheerful,
hopeful letter full of lively descriptions of camp life marches, and
military news, and only at the end did the writer's heart overflow
with fatherly love and longing for the little girls at home.
Give them all of my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of
them by day, pray for them by night and find my best comfort in their
affection at all Tom. A year seems very long to wait before I
see them, but remind them that while we may all work so that these hard
days do not be wasted, I know they will remember all that I
said to them and they will be loving children to you. We'll do their duty
faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely and conquer
themselves so beautifully that when I come back to them, I may be fonder and
prouder than ever of my little women. Everyone sniffed
when they came near to that part. Joe was ashamed of the great tear that
dropped off the end of her nose and Amy never minded the rumbling of her
curls as she hid her face on her mother's shoulders and sobbed out. I'm a
selfish girl, but I'll truly try to be better, so he mayn't be disappointed in
me by and by. We all will, cried
Meg. I think too much of my looks and hate to work, but I won't
anymore if I can help it. I'll try and be what
he loves to call me a quote, unquote little woman and not be rough and
wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else,
said Joe turning that keeping her temper at home was a much harder
task than facing a rebel or 2 down fourth.
Beth said nothing will wipe her tear wiped away her tears as a
blue army sock and Jesan to knit with all her mind losing no time
in doing the duty that lay nearest to her while she
resolved her quiet little soul to be all that father hoped to find her
when the year brought around the happy coming home.
So there's a couple different things going on in here, and there's a reason I
picked that section of the book to read. But I
wanna address a couple of things or set the table for how we're gonna talk
about this, I think. I don't know where
Tom hangs out. He probably hangs out at different places than I do on the
Internet because the Internet is vast and gigantic and we all hang out in different
places. I learned that during COVID. We're all using the internet for different turning, apparently.
And I found out during COVID that I had no idea what people were using
the internet for. They weren't apparently using it for
the same things I was, which is always a fascinating thing to find out
about your neighbor. Anyway, some of the places where I hang
out on the Internet, some of the
more darker corners,
the more doom and gloom corners,
are engaged in a whole lot of and it's been this way for a while,
for at least, I would say, 8 years, maybe
10. A lot of casual talk on both the
political right and the political left in the United States about the
potential for a Jesan world a second civil
war, during our current fourth turning, our current
seculum. A matter of fact, I just read an article the other
day before I wrote this script where a guy who was
a former military guy was speculating on the death toll of a
second civil war in America. And he speculated that
about a 100,000,000 people would have to be carried off in order to make that
work out of a population of 312,000,000.
Right. And I read
articles like that writers by people who do have certain expertise
in certain areas and may have seen different things than what I have seen
and lived a different life than what I've Libby. And I'll give them their druthers
for sure. But I will say this.
We are so far away from the last war on our soil 160
years ago that we have forgotten the real human impacts of war
on family and culture and our casual are
almost too casual conversation reveals this level of unseriousness
in our experience. And that part irks me
greatly. We can it's one thing
to watch it on television or watch it on YouTube and see it happen
someplace else. It's quite another
to have one out of every 3 people
that you know just get carted off. And by the way, he
speculated that that wouldn't just be from bullets. He thought it would be from famine
and disease and everything else that goes along
when you open up a can of well, that
on each other. And by the way, with all this talk,
again, casual conversation, far too casual for my
taste. Anyway, one of the questions that's never asked
or answered is this one.
Why would anybody from one place in this
country march to another place in this
country to do what exactly?
What is the instigating act?
What's the, to use the Latin term causa
bellae? Why are we engaged in this process? And I can't think
of one thing, even with our current
political disagreements that do lead to protests
and sometimes even violence in small levels, that would lead to
catastrophic apocalyptic levels of
violence. But as my wife told me when I brought up this
point to her, she said, I'm sure no one, no
average person in the run up to the civil war thought that that would lead
to anything either. And it's not really there
until it's there. Speaking of the civil
war, the generation that started, which was the transcendental
generation and the generation that fought the civil war, who were later
known as the gilded generation in the 4th turning apocalypse of
that civil war, were totally burned out and rejected. Their
position was totally burned out and rejected on much of anything by
subsequent generations after the war was over. And they
earned their just spiritual and moral and even political
desserts from their material decisions deciding to,
as was said in the song of the time, trample out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored. By the way,
that song came out of Boston. That song came out of the fourth
and the Yankee soldiers sang it as they marched down south.
One of the important things, and this gets to the history idea that Tom was
just bringing up. One of the important things that we forget is
that usually in every, every cycle there's about 4
generations that are usually in the zeitgeist at the same
Tom, With the exception of the civil war cycle, where there were only
3 generations, that has been pretty much the standard in
not only European based cycles, but also American
based cycles, for the last Tom minimum,
now almost 400 years, If you look at history,
it's been pretty consistent in that way. And those 4 generations
typically tend to balance each other out.
And currently, we have 4 generations in our own 4th 30 that we're in right
now, and I think we're getting to the end of, as I've said repeatedly on
this podcast, including the socially, culturally, and perhaps even
spiritually ameliorating presence of the smallest generation, the
generation that Tom and I belong to, the 13th generation.
And, all that crusading talk about war has very
little practical action with us. And maybe we're the
ones fourth small as we are, and we are the smallest of the
4 current generations, the boomers, the gen z ers,
and the millennials, the gen xers, Tom and my generation. We are
the smallest at around, depending upon which number you look at, 25
to 35,000,000 folks. That was the generation that was
missing and died in the trenches, died in the trenches of world war 1,
but many of them died in the fields of the civil war.
And I do believe there's a reason for having 4 generations. Historically, we just
don't understand why, because we're actually not
that smart on some of those things, I think, or we
just, maybe haven't turned our minds to that sort of research.
So I read that letter from father in literature women, and he served
as a chaplain. And you can read his
entire tale of woe. Well, most of his tale of woe in
Little Women, at least from their perspective, you do understand the
human consequences of civil war or you begin to understand the
human consequences of civil war. And there's a little section that we'll read here today
as well, which reflects the, the pathologies of
immigration during the civil war that was also beginning to occur at that
time. So for Tom, so with that ramble laid
down, let's do let's do this.
Like I said, there's a lot of casual civil war talk going on in our
culture. They're going on for about the last 10 years. And by the way, when
I was growing up, like, you whispered that, and now people are
talking about it out loud. I mean, I see articles in the Atlantic and in
the New York Tom about this. This is nuts to me.
How do we Tom this talk down? How do how do we stop
people from even it's like when
every time Russia and the Ukraine gets brought up, nuclear
war starts getting talked about. I'm like, why are we doing this? And I think
we've had this conversation on our on this on this podcast before about that.
Because I'm frustrated with that, but just focus on just America.
Like, we can't come up not we can't.
The consequences of us coming apart would be
apocalyptic. Well, let let me
just clear make one one clarifying statement part of that. Sure. Yeah. The
consequences of us coming apart violently would be apocalyptic.
But if we were to come apart
under, like, clear dividing channels, turning, like, if we
had we're a we're a country of 50 states. If 20 of
those states decided to collectively secede from our union
Mhmm. And it was all agreed upon that it was for the betterment of
both parties, meaning both the new comp
whatever. I'm not so sure it would be apocalyptic. I think it would
be I think it would be world changing. I think things would I think it
would be very weird. I think the world would react to it, but I'm not
sure it'd be apocalyptic depending on how that happens. So to your to your point,
though, if it were to happen violently, I I
really do think I I think it would be
catastrophic cat catastrophic implo implo
implications across the world. I really do feel strongly about that. I do
think that that would be it. Now so how do we get this to stop?
How do we get, like, conversations to stop? Yeah. How do we switch a conversation
from from that to, hey. What's some
ways maybe that we can actually figure out how to work together?
See, I, this this comes this comes at me in about 900 different
essays. Yeah. Really. Because I think I think on the one hand, I
think we don't stop talking about it. I think we I think we talk about
it Tom, but bring the conversation to that
apocalyptic level and then get people to understand that this should not
happen. Like, the more you talk about it and the more you start showing them
all of those detrimental turning, nobody wins in this
case. I don't care. Like, if you wanna talk about our original civil war
fourth south and if you wanna claim the fourth one or whatever,
I don't even care about that because in this case, nobody would win, including the
rest of the world. So Oh, no. There there's a there's a portion of us
that we should not stop the conversation about it and actually
push the envelope of that conversation to force feed people to think
about the the the end result. The other
components of it, like, I think I think there's I think if we
if we point them to the direction of maybe big business, pharma,
like, some of these big because they would be hurt more than anybody if you
think about it. Like, giant companies, General Motors, you
know, Pfizer, all of these giant companies,
they would get hit just as hard, if not worse, than anybody else in the
on the planet. So maybe they take
it at an from a business angle. Instead of looking at it from a social
angle, look at it from a business angle, and look at it from, like, things
like that. Like, again, like I said to to your point, I I think
900 different ways this thing comes at me when I start thinking about this. And
Tom mind mind you, let me just tell you, for the record,
it's utterly ridiculous for us to even
have this as, like, a a a remote possibility. Like, what are we
what what are we thinking here, people? Really? Well, I think I think we're I
think what we're turning, and and I'm glad you asked that. Here's what I think
we're thinking. The leadership over the
last 25 years that we relied on to provide answers to the
most the most the most
problematic, to use a term that's used now that I don't like,
but the most problematic problems, the most, like,
institutionally endemic problems seems to have left
the room. Like, okay, so let's,
I'll make it very blunt. The thing that would take the entire
country down as an entity together
is the debt. All true. Yeah.
Really, we are the most indebted country in the
history of the world. And by the way, we have been under
book, And, again, this is not a republican or democrat problem.
It's not a presidential problem. It's a uni party problem. Yes. I did use
that word, uni party. It's both of them together under
both Trump. Actually, not even Trump. Going back to Barack Obama.
Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now Joe Biden, and it may be Donald Trump
again fourth Tom not. It may be RFK Junior. I don't know. It doesn't
matter. Point is under the
current presidents that we've had, who we've elected as leaders, and, by
the way, the people in Congress we've elected who have the power of the purse,
the president doesn't have that. Writers our
system, it's the Congress. Just
keep voting to print more money.
What the actual hell. And I and I and I'm
not even talking about the Fed. I haven't even brought in the Federal Reserve. Like,
there seems to be no adults in the room. And then from there Jesan I
mentioned this years ago, a couple of years ago on the podcast. Like, you from
there, you go to any other place in culture, and it seems like
adults have abandoned the room. And that's the
thing we're frustrated by, I think. And so when all the adults abandon
the room and the children are running the the institutions and the
children are running the when the inmates are running the
asylum, all kinds of craziness gets to pop
up. And when no one says no, when no one says no, we're not
doing that, when no one says no, I have a vision for going this way,
when that's not offered,
then people go to the next logical thing, which is, well, why am I hanging
around with these people that I can't get along with? I
need to separate from them. I still I still have a hard time
making the leap from that national debt
piece to civil war. Right? Like Well, the national debt piece will take us
down collectively together. There's no there's no way out of that. Right?
Right. Right. But the other things that come off of
the lack of leadership on the national debt piece translate to a lack of
leadership other places. So fourth instance,
If if I can't even get get a person in Congress
to propose a budget, instead, they just continue to pass
resolutions to continue to fund the government, but they don't
come to me and say, this is why we're passing the resolution.
Instead, they just do it at midnight on December 31st, as they have
traditionally done with no budget. I look at that as the
average Jesan, and then I'm told that we are 7,000,000,000,000 or 8,000,000,000,000 or
23,000,000,000,000 in debt. And I go, what, what are we doing
here? Where's the leadership? And by the way, most average people just go,
where's the leadership? And then they apply that question to everywhere,
which is why we do this podcast. If there's no leadership,
why am I hanging around? Why why am I hanging around?
Why why do I need to hang hang out here? Now there may be parts
in and I will admit. There may be parts of this explanation that I'm filling
in with things that I know, that I'm that you don't know and so whatever.
And then this is not a political podcast. I'm just using this as a as
an example. We could even go to cultural stuff.
Okay. If I can't figure out a way
to culturally get along with the
person next door to me or whatever or
if it's just easier to engage in a flame war on Facebook or
whatever than it is for me to like my neighbor. And no one's coming down
saying, hey. Don't do a flame war on Facebook. No one's come down saying that.
Or I I shouldn't say no one. It has taken almost 15
almost 20 years of Facebook for for people to finally wake up and go,
oh, hey, Jonathan Haidt. Oh, hey. This might be a bad thing.
We might wanna, like, not do this.
And even then, it's sort of lukewarm leadership. Instead of someone saying,
no, you can't have this, or no,
you shouldn't be doing this. Yeah.
Which by the way, people who want it are, of course, gonna reject that. They're
gonna rebel against it. But, you know, people have always
rebelled. Like, my kids rebel when I tell them no. Don't put a stick in
your mouth. Like but it it doesn't mean I'm not gonna tell him to put
a stick. I mean, come on. Like, I'm not gonna let my 7 year old
just eat a stick. Oh, it hurts his feelings. Well but,
yeah, it's gonna hurt the roof of his mouth more, and then I gotta go
to the hospital.
Like, there's
so many of these different areas in the country. I think that people get
frustrated and they just go, well, separation is the best way to go, which by
the way, I don't agree with that from a whole bunch of other different areas.
I don't agree with that. I don't think that's where you should go. And I
think that a lot of people have gone to a lot of governors in
particular. I find it interesting that politically,
when the party shift in Washington, DC, all of a sudden,
the opposite political party in individual states, all of a sudden discovered that there's a
10th amendment in the constitution and the states have rights and could do
stuff. And then they start, like, doing stuff. Like, well, we'll have this again. Like,
if Donald Trump gets elected, we'll have Fourth will all of a sudden discover that
there's a 10th amendment. Oh, Massachusetts too. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They'll be
like, oh my god. There's this amendment, and we didn't know that. And that's what
frustrates people. I don't need you to discover it when the opposite political
party is in power. I need you to discover it when your political party is
in power. Right. Right. That's when I need you to discover
it. I need you to discover it when it's, quote, unquote, working for
you, but it's exploding the national debt.
Yeah. I I don't know.
I I I'm not really sure how to respond to this one.
Just because, you know listen. I I've
said a 1,000 times. Right? Like and and so to your point about
having no adults in the room, I see the I see
weird things, like, in the political landscape where
the younger generation who has to to your point,
we're the smallest generation. Right? So Oh, yeah. The younger generation has
the the highest voting power Mhmm. Or, like,
the, like, the the strongest voting power, but yet votes the
least. Right. They have the ability to
literally change the dynamics on the landscape of our entire country,
but they don't. I don't understand that part of it. They do all
of the almost a 100% of the complaining. Right. But
none of 0% of the action. Right. They don't
find their voting let's say, like, their
voting feet, they don't find their voting
appetite until they're in their thirties. Right. And then they're no
longer that youngest generation. Right. But now now they're a generation that
has kids and jobs and tax, and they they care about all this stuff. So
now they're now they're trying to weigh the balances of, do I
want higher taxes and more government involvement, or do I want lower
taxes, less government involvement? Do I want social reform? Do I not
care about so, like, it doesn't come book like, it doesn't really truly hit you
until you're, like, in your thirties. Well, this is why we should raise the voting
age and lower the drinking age. Yes. I'm good with that.
Yeah. Actually, I'm actually good with that. And I'm not saying lower the
drinking age to, like, whatever. No. Lower the drinking age like 18. Right? I'm
not we're not Europeans. You don't need to be drinking wine when you're 14. Like
okay. Like, no. 18, lower the drinking age, but raise the
voting age. No. I 30. I would raise the
voting age to 30. I I say 30 is the goal, but you hit
25 first to test the waters to see how it goes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I
I I'll go halfway with you on that. Take them one step at
a time. But but to your point, I had somebody tell me once when I
was young that if you are if you are
old, older and liberal
no. Sorry. If you are young and con the the I there was a way
he phrased it to make it make sense. If you are young and conservative.
You have no heart. If you are old and liberal, you have no
brain. Yep. That was Winston Churchill. But that's because
well, he was quoting him then. Yeah. Yeah. It was not Winston Churchill said it
to me, and that that's the only time I remember it was this one particular
guy saying it to me. And, at the time, I was about I was
probably about 26 or 27 years old, and he was probably about 55.
Mhmm. I was at the very beginning of my sales career, and he was at
the end toward the end of his sales career. He said that to me, and
I was like, it didn't hit me until maybe 10 years ago when I
was like, oh, damn. He that makes sense. Like and and I'm not talking about,
like, when he says if you're old and liberal, you have no brain, he's
not talking about not caring about social reform or not care
Right. He's talking about if you go so far to the left that you don't
care about your own money, then you're crazy. And the government should feel the
same way. That was basically what I was thinking. So to your point,
I'm not suggesting and again, this is not a I don't even know how. God.
I don't even I'm not sure how this readers to literature women. But, anyway, we'll
get back to that. Well, it's a civil war thing. So yeah. Civil
war. Yeah. But, like, but but it it it does get to a point
where you wonder, does the government care so much about one
particular topic? I don't care if it's social reform, military, whatever.
Pick your poison. But does the government care too much about one particular
topic that they're overspending without thinking?
Right? Writers, that that to your point about the debt, like like, it's
and then I I don't know. I I remember Well well, and not
only not only with the debt, but also with how do,
how do we get out of it? This is the question that everybody how do
we get out of the and actually, I won't even make it about the debt.
I'm gonna make it way larger. I'm gonna bring the bring the the
microscope back into a telescope. Right? How do we get out
of the problems we're in right now? Because we've got problems everywhere. So we've got
we've got challenges between people of different races. You know? We've
got on the cultural level. We've got,
social media that's being used not only to,
not only to spread propaganda and, as the
government says, disinformation, but also
is not allowed to be a wild west where everybody can just say anything
short of crying fire in a crowded theater because it
benefits the big corporations, and Facebook and Google and Microsoft are big
corporations that wanna make money off of, you know,
outrage and clicks and ads. Okay. Then we've that that
by the way, those are just two problems right there. And those those problems in
mold into each other. Then we've got the problem of not all forget
forget national debt. Personal credit card debt is the highest it's ever been
because inflation is through the roof, because we printed a bunch of money during COVID
to pay people to stay at home and to shelter in place. And we can
argue about whether or not that was good or bad or whatever, but that's what
we did. Then number 4, we've got we've still got
people running around in masks. We've still got people who are afraid of
COVID, and no one's calmed their fears. I just think
fourth big things right there. COVID,
personal debt, credit card debt inflation, social
media outrage machines, and a diversity, equity, and
inclusion, or just issues of race between people
of different races versus people of different classes Fourth things. No. I don't
I don't hear any leadership talking about it. We're gonna talk about this today because
I want our podcast to be about that. How do we get out of any
of those? What's the way fourth? Don't just tell me,
oh, well, we just have to get through it. What's the vision of the future.
What does America look like in 2030? Describe
that so that the average plumber who's got
$16,000 in debt and feels like he will never be able to work his way
out of it on his Discover card cause he's just trying to make groceries every
week. He understands it. Explain it,
and that's what I think people are missing. Yeah. We know what the problems
are, but we have 0 people proposing solutions.
That well, that I can't even argue with that. I agree with that a 100%.
Have you ever seen the movie wag the dog? Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Because I think
that's half of what our problem is, by the way. Yeah. I really do. If
you think about this, what the the the
hot spot or the hot topic
changes based on the pulse of the country. Right? Like, so Right.
We're we're the we're the dog being wagged by our tails
here. Mhmm. So, like, we're if if we get enough
people to be worried and wanna focus on
My daughter just brought this up to me yesterday, as a matter of fact. We
were talking about, like, the Black Lives Matter movement and stuff like that and how
you haven't heard anything from it. Nothing. Where where is the momentum
that that that that group like, there was really and I mean,
I I was actually hopeful that this
was the time. Mhmm. The Rodney King stuff, all that
stuff was the precursor to what the BLM Movement was going to be
able to accomplish that none of the rest of them were. And now
nobody nothing happened. And I think I I think this is
kind of par and parcel for the course here where the
powers that be do a really good job keeping us distracted with what they
they want us to think is important at the time. Right now, it's all
these right now, we're we're talking about these protests on
college campuses, but what we're not talking about is what the
actual problem is over in Gaza and and Israel. Oh, yeah. No.
Nobody's trying to solve actually solve that problem. The
the the real the real problem is these kids protesting on the campuses.
Come on. Like, why are we being distracted with this
this this is a simple this is a simple thing. This is, like, these
and then, by the way, in but a year ago,
to your point a little while ago, it was Ukraine and the possibility
of nuclear war, but nobody's talking about Ukraine right now.
And they're still at war, by the way. Like, they're still turning
stuff up over there. And we keep voting to send them more
money. Right. But nobody's talking about it. And why
this is my this is my like, what I one of the the most
fundamental things I don't understand, and this is where I was I I started heading
this way a little while ago when I said, when when I was starting to
talk about all these young kids that are protesting on these college
campuses, how many of them actually went out and vote? How many of them are
going to vote in the in the in the next election? They're they
protest, but they don't I'm not suggesting that
protesting is not a good action, because god Martin Luther King would raise out
of his grave and smack me right in the head. I I'm not suggesting protests
are are not a path, but what I am suggesting is
that these groups of protests are not doing
anything. These guys are not marching on Washington. They're not mark they're
they're not it it's so fourth type of
protest is not actionable. Go vote
fourth Christ's sakes. Like, go vote. Right? Like, you're gonna you're gonna do
this. You're gonna complain that the the the the police are are removing you from
a peaceful protest. You're gonna complain that the police are arresting people. You're gonna complain
you're gonna complain and complain, complain, complain, complain, but not actually
do the function that makes a difference, which is at the ballot
box. Right? Like
Right. So it it frustrates the hell out of me, number 1. So but my
my my point to all of that rant was the fact that we're we're we're
we're so focused on the whatever
the fourth you just talked about. Mhmm. DEI was huge a year and a half
ago, 2 years ago. No one's really talking about it anymore.
All the the national debt only comes up when we talk about the budget.
Like, when the the the we have to pass that that, you know, that
resolution real quick because we're gonna shut down the government. You know what? Shut
down the government. Shut down the government. Shut it down. That happens. The
state governments operate independently. I know the state of Massachusetts where I
live is going to be fine if you shut down the federal government. We're we're
not gonna lose any sleep over this. Like, which
by the way, Charlie Baker, who was our just just left
our governorship has been begged to run for president, and
he refuses because he does not want any of that shit show. Like so
now mind you, between between Charlie Baker and the
3 governors before him Mhmm. They have done a phenomenal Massachusetts
podcast year, every resident who paid taxes last year,
every single resident got money back outside of
their tax writers. Wow. Because because we had a surplus
of tax money, and that was one of Charlie Baker's promises. If we get
to a point of surplus, I'm gonna give the money back to you. Wow.
Wow. You did. Every taxpayer and it was based on a percentage of whatever money
you paid, whatever. But I did an extra I forget. It was like $500. It's
not gonna make or break me, but Sure. That's not the point. It was the
principle of it. Right? Yeah. It was the principle of it. He made a promise
to his Tom his writers. He ran the state government well enough that we had
a surplus of money, and he gave back the money because that was what he
what he promised to do. And, by the way, he also mat
Massachusetts, by the way, which we're everybody knows our
nickname. Right? Taxachusetts? He actually he was
actually able to lower 2 of our main
taxes because of this surplus. He took the tax
rate and lowered it. May I may I also point out that Charlie
Baker is currently the president of
the NCAA. So, actually, I now know who to blame about that. But,
anyway, I now know who to have a conversation with about that. But but but
he's also a Republican. A Republican in Massachusetts. Running
a Democratic state. Writers. A Republican. Now think about this.
All the Massachusetts is 88% Democrat.
Register voters. 88%. And a Republican won the governorship. By the
way, he was reelected. So he was reelected by by
a Democratic state. Now everybody in this we're like, we need this guy to
run for president because he's he's a
good balance of Republican financial responsibility
and Democratic social mindedness.
Okay. He doesn't wanna change everything socially. He doesn't think everything that
we throw at him from LGBTQ to DEI to all the he
doesn't think all of it is worth it, but he's at least willing to listen.
So and and,
yeah. And so I and this goes but this goes back to my this goes
back to my assertion about adults in the room. Right. Like He refuses to
run because he wants no part of that shit show in in in DC. Right.
And so this is the thing. So one of the
fundamental pieces and he was born at Elmira. That's
amazing. Okay. Elmira, New York. That's astonishing.
I used to drive through Elmira, New York. I had clients in Elmira, New York.
That's wow. Okay.
You point out guys like this. So Charlie Baker fourth
say what you want about him, Ron DeSantis in Florida. Like, he's doing what what
people in Florida think is best for people in Florida
fourth, Greg Abbott in, in
Texas or Gavin Newsom as much as I am not a
gigantic fan of Gavin Newsom. He's doing what people in California
people in California like him. He's he's clearly working for the people of California,
which is the point of what you're supposed to be doing. And if I don't
like him, I don't have to live in California. That's the glory of the
republic. I know that there is
I know that there is leadership at the local level or or even at the
small business level. I know there is. I know this exists. I
know that there are competent, qualified leaders who can
tamp down ridiculous talk and unite people together
regardless of whether they have an r fourth d next to their name. I
I I I know this. I know it exists.
What gets pushed is Tom your point. Maybe I can
summarize it a little bit better. What gets pushed is chaos.
Yes. Chaos gets pushed. And I've had about
enough of that because when you push chaos,
people who are, I'm just going to
be blunt about it. People who are psychologically weak minded
begin to coalesce together. And again,
certain dark spots of the internet and start having
conversations they shouldn't be having,
that, yeah, it may be a place where
you can let off steam because maybe those conversations need to happen to your point.
But also someone needs to come along and say to those
people, stop. This is the thing that needs
to happen, or this is the thing that is happening by the way.
I do agree with you that because of governors like Charlie Book or,
what's his name down in Virginia, or the governor,
even Kathy Hochul, you know, the governor of New York. Governors will
always be the backstop on a lot of this nonsense from Washington
DC because governors have to get reelected in
their own state. And the the the the
cobblers together of our constitution do something fundamental about human
nature. They knew that the government which governs best
is the one that governs the most locally, not nationally,
locally. And so if the republic were to come apart, it
would come apart in localities that would be self serving
for their own state, which that might create friction
and problems. But I don't know that it would create
friction and problems to the point of,
to the point of violence. I'm I'm not convinced. I'm just still not convinced of
that. I'm not I'm not convinced of that either. I'm not convinced of that
in in the in the at the at the not I'm just not. I'm just
not. So it doesn't,
but I don't think we're there yet. But can we say for the record that
we have 300 and whatever? Let's just say I I thought it was
350, 312, whatever. Let's just say we have
300,000,000 people in this country and these are the 2 best people
that we can find to run for president?
I I find that is an absolute atrocity. But
we've been saying that same line
going all the way back to
Herbert Walker Bush.
Yeah. Yeah. We've been we've been we we we've come to that same
conclusion collectively, left, right, and center. I'm not sure. When when when
Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney, that was probably the first time
in a long time that we had 2 candidates that were probably both worth it
on their respective parties. Well, what about John McCain?
I see. I still he's like the old regime kinda Jesan, though. That
that's what I was turning. Like Okay. I I'll grant you that. I'll grant you
that. And by the way, I I was I was no fan of John McCain.
I'll grant you that. But, no one would say
that he was unqualified. People just said it just like they did with Hillary
Clinton. They said it's his turn. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.
Yeah. I know. Yeah. And that's we don't want somebody that it's it's their
turn. We want somebody we want to be there. Right. Right. And this
is so I I this is why I
think we're on the backside of our secular cycle. I
think we're on the backside of the cycle because the kinds of
conversation that you and I are having and that are that folks are listening to
indicates that we are at an end of an era, not an end of a
civilization. And I think that that's where people who are talking about the
civil war talk or who were releasing movies called civil
war, Like, come on. Let's
stop people. Like, those kinds
of of of those kinds of cultural
whack a mole things that are popping up, I think people are confused.
It's the end of an era of a certain type of
competence, an end of an era of a
certain type of leadership, the end of an era of a
certain type of bigness or a certain type of smallness.
The parties are shifting around. Most people don't know
this, but for better or worse,
Donald Trump got more of the black vote in both 2016 and the
2020 election than any Republican at a national level in the
history of the Republican party going all the way back to, like, the pre civil
rights era. That's insane. No one ever talks about it out loud
because it's just too insane to to even contemplate. And by the way,
he actually successfully did something that no other Republican has ever done before.
He split the black vote. More black
males voted for Donald Trump and more black females voted
for Joe Biden. Interesting. And voted
for Hillary Clinton. That tells
you that the electorate is shifting around,
down in the state where I live. So I live in Texas. Yeah. The state
where I live, Hispanics, particularly
Hispanics that are, you talk about younger, younger
Hispanics that are 2nd and third generation
from immigration that occurred in 19 eighties
overwhelmingly are breaking for Trump right now. Overwhelmingly.
Yep. Overwhelmingly. It has the Texas Democrat party in
a in a cold panic.
Interesting. This is unprecedented
because we're at the end of an era of competency. We're at the
end of an era of political parties. When you tell me that a Republican
governor just got I mean, not only got elected
twice in deep blue Massachusetts, Massachusetts where there's 3 Republicans huddled
in a room together somewhere in, like,
fourth northwestern part of the state up near Rhode Island where they can all
hide or something. I don't know. Like, they're all in a quarter somewhere. You're telling
me that a Republican twice convinced Democrats to vote
for him? Well, don't forget that Mitt Romney was our governor
before that, So that's another Republican. Yeah. Right. Tom Mitt Romney's from
a different era. I mean, that's baked capital. That's a little bit of different era.
That's a little bit better. Yeah. You're talking about and and and this guy, Charlie
Baker's only 67. That's insane.
Yeah. That tells you that things are shifting around. And
it's not just at the political level. It's also the social level, which is also
part of the chaos. It's at the cultural level that's also part of the chaos.
It's at the spiritual level, which is also part of the chaos. No one ever
talks about it, but massive evangelical
churches are beginning to break apart and have been for the last 10 years For
sure. To to break it. And COVID actually accelerated a lot of that. And none
of those people that are leaving those churches are going to even bigger churches and
nor are they creating bigger churches. What they're doing is they're creating much smaller churches
in much more concentrated ways. So you talk about, particularly in the context of
Little Women, you know, Louisa May Alcott wrote this,
wrote this underneath the spiritual aegis of the 2nd great awakening.
I'm of a con I'm convinced that there is another awakening coming
down the pipeline, but it's not going to look like the
awakening we previously had, which
occurred in the 19 late 19 sixties and 19 seventies in America. That was
the 3rd great awakening in America. You're not gonna have
something that's gonna look like that. It's going to look radically different because we're at
the end of an era, not the end of a civilization. And I think
we have to shift our thinking in order to talk about leadership differently
in a different kind of era. Well, I mean,
I'm certainly not gonna argue with that because we've already seen
how you talked about the 4 generations living at the same time
and all this stuff. Like like, there there's 3 of those generations
are in the workforce. Right? So you have, like Right. You have, like,
the the Gen Xers trying to manage and lead Gen Zers
coming out of college right now. Mhmm. That Tom me is a recipe for
disaster. Like Well, it's a it's what you got.
But we've already but we've already faced this. We've already faced this with the
boomers trying to run the millennials Right. And the Gen Xers trying to
run interference. Right. Right? So this is basically
again, this whole cyclical thing. Right? So we're gonna have, like, these these Gen
Xers trying to run these Gen Zers, but the millennials are gonna run interference.
Oh, yeah. They're they're gonna be the ones that's that that's that, like,
that missing link generation gap thing that we that we have going on here. But
this has happened throughout history. We've seen this happen so many times. But I think
that I think the learning curves are getting shorter. Right? So when the Gen
Xers had to deal with the millennials coming in and the the
look at me, look at me, you know, I win a trophy every time I
play a sport, so you're gonna have to deal with this. Like and
then, of course, I'm the one looking at all of our peers going, hey.
You created this monster. You were Yeah. It's it's a new problem.
Complain about it. Right? You gotta figure out a way to how to help these
guys realize like, I was the one I was sitting in there
Anyway but so now, like like, we're we're looking
at this going, like, these Gen Zers are
they it's it's almost like the Gen x looks at them
like they have zero work ethic. They don't know and
understand. They'll start a job and then and quit in a month because they don't
like the way their boss spoke to them one day. Right? Like, they don't have
this and I said I book at them and I went, just wait until they
have real bills. Right. They're doing that now
because they can. And you know what? Let them. Okay. Let
them. I don't understand why you're fighting this. Let them.
Because you're you're gonna go to the next one. At some point, you're
you're gonna hire the right Jesan, and it's gonna be great and grand and
whatever. But you can't hire a
22, 23 year old right out of college, expect them to have the same work
ethic that you had when you left. It's not the same time. We don't we
don't think like that anymore. Like but So I I do I do think they
will. They they'll get there. Like I said, when they have real bill these 22
year olds are coming home, and they're living at home for the next 4 years
because they have astronomical student debt and all this other stuff that they have to
deal with. Mhmm. Once they figure out how to get that under wraps, then
they start figuring out they wanna go out on their own. Well, we need a
leader to explain to them how they're gonna get it out of this is, again,
this is a leadership problem. I need a leader to
rise and explain to me how you're going to walk out of that
debt in real ways
without appealing to the government to forgive it.
Yeah. I mean, I have like I said earlier, I I have one. My daughter
graduates college next week, and her and I have already sat down with
with, you know, her short term goals,
long term goals. What is she gonna do with this this her student debt isn't
outrageous. It it's more than I would like it to be, but it's not like
it's not 100 it's not 100 it's not 6 figures. Yeah. Yeah.
So so but expect her to pay it. I ain't paying
it. She's paying it. Right. Right. So it's but we've we've already sat
down fourth than once. We sat down. We're talking about this. What
is your like, so for the next she she's gonna come home. For
the next x amount of years, she's gonna do this. This is how you knock
down that debt. Once you get to this point, you start looking to move on
and move out. Right? Like, move on into your own stuff. We are
basically we we are forcing this generation to delay
their actual lives because of the student debt. If you do it
right, you basically you just come home, you pay it off, you move on.
Like, you if if you do it right. The problem is nobody's doing that. Nobody's
and nobody's advising kids to do that. They're basically saying you're 22, you're on your
own, go do your turning, and and that's why they're not being able to pay
these debts. They're not nobody's nobody's teaching them financial
literature, and they're not getting it from school. And I
don't know why their parents aren't teaching them, but me and my kids sit and
talk about finances all the time. So
As do I in my house
and back to the book. Back to Little Women.
We've kinda gone a little bit far field, but that's okay because I'd recommend you
go out and pick up the book. By the way, the copy that I have
is a lovely open source version of, of
Little Women. And so you can find Little Women
on, the Internet book archive. You
could find it in a bunch of different other open source spots.
And so, yeah, I'd recommend you go and pick it up. It
has entered the, again, entered the public zeitgeist,
and has created, gosh, just a whole lot of
different bill a call of different places for us to have conversation and
have chats. By the way, that
father's the the the so the father in Literature Women,
look this up on Google. Hold on a second.
Who was the chaplain? There was a book written about him. I
did reference this earlier, Robert March,
And the, the father
was played by
No. Which is interesting. Bob Odenkirk in the 2019
version of Literature Women. He was played by, by
Bob Odenkirk. And, after the
war, he became a minister, to, to a
small congregation because that's it's basically, you know, what he
was. And there was a book written about
him, and I'm looking through the
Wikipedia currently by
Can't find it right now, but I'm going to look it up. I did see
it actually when I was researching, Little Women,
and researching this book for the podcast, but there was a book written about him
by a contemporary author, I think a couple of years ago who kind of fleshed
out his backstory. Because his backstory is not really, not
really gone into deeply here. Okay. Back to the book, back to a
little women, we're going to pick up, where
they are.
Oh, yeah. They're at a party. So gonna pick that up.
Alright.
Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to parties.
And informal as this little gathering was, it was an event for them.
Missus Gardner, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly and handed them over to the
eldest of her 6 daughters. Meg knew Sally and was at ease very
soon, but Joe, who didn't much care for girls or girlish
gossip, stood about with her back carefully against the wall and felt as much
out of place as a cult in a flower garden. By the way,
before they go to this party, just as an interjection fourth they go to this
party, Louisa May Alcott describes their
clothing, and, the, the back of one of
the dresses is actually burned. And so they're wearing secondhand clothing. They're
wearing damaged clothing. They're trying to make it as good as they possibly can because
they're coming out of a place of need because, you know, you have a civil
war, your supply chains, are disrupted. And these, I mean,
this is during a time when, you know, you could raise everything literally on
your own fourth, and people were a lot more self sufficient than they
are than they are now. That's sort of the reason why the
descriptions are structured in the way they are in this particular piece of the
book. All right. Back to the book. Half a dozen
Jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed
to go and join them for skating was one of the joys of her life.
She, telegraphed her wish to Meg, but the eyebrows went up so alarmingly that
she dared not stir. No one came to talk to her, and 1 by 1,
the group dwindled away until she was left alone. She could not roam about and
amuse herself fourth the burned breath would show. So she stared at people rather
for lonely till the dancing Jesan. Meg was
asked at once and the tight slippers tripped about so briskly that none would have
guessed the pain. Their wearer suffered smiling late. Joe saw a
big red headed youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she
slipped into a curtained recess, intending to peep and enjoy herself in
peace. Unfortunately, another bashful person had chosen the same refuge
Sorrells the curtain fell behind her, she found herself face to face with the quote
unquote Lawrence book. Dear me. I didn't know
anyone was here. Stammer Joe preparing to back out as speedily as she had bounced
in, but the boy laughed and said, pleasantly though, he looked a little startled.
Don't mind me essays if you like Shanti disturb you?
Not a bit. I only came here because I don't know many people and felt
rather strange at first, you know? So did I. Don't go away, please, unless you'd
rather. The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps till
Joe said, trying to be polite and easy. I think I've had the pleasure
of seeing you before you live near us. Don't you Next door.
Now you looked up and laughed outright fourth Joe's prim manner was rather funny, but
you remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home. That
put Joe at ease as she laughed Tom, when she said in her heartiest way,
we did have such a good time over your nice Christmas present. Grandpa sent
it, but you put it into his head, didn't you now? How was your Tom?
Miss March asked the boy turning to look sober while his black eyes shown with
fun. Nicely. Thank you, mr. Lawrence, but I am not miss March. I'm
only Joe returned the young lady. I'm not mister Lawrence. I'm only
Fourth. Laurie Lawrence. What an odd name. My first name
is Theodore, but I don't like it for the fellows. Call me Dora. I made
them essays Fourth instead. I hate my name too. So sentimental. I
wish everyone would say Joe instead of Josephine. How did you make the books stop
calling you Dora? I thrashed him.
I can't really pause for just a moment.
That's I mean, turns out the male and female
sexual politics are pretty much the same throughout throughout
Tom. Back to the book. I can't thrash on March, so I suppose I
shall have to bear it. And Joe resigned herself with a sigh. Now would you
like to dance, miss Joe? Asked Laurie book as if he thought the name suited
her. I like it well enough if there's plenty of room and everyone is lively.
In a place like this, I'm sure to upset something, tread on people's toes, or
do something dreadful. So I keep out of mischief and let Meg bail about.
Don't you dance? Sometimes you see I've been abroad a good many
years and haven't been into company enough yet to know how you do things here.
Abroad cried a Joe. Oh, tell me about it. I love Tom dearly to hear
people describe their travels. Laurie didn't seem to know where to begin, but
Joe's eager questions soon sent him going, and he told her how he had been
to school in Vive, where the boys never wore hats and had a fleet
of boats on the lake and for holiday fun, went on walking trips about Switzerland
with their teachers. Don't I wish I'd been there, cried Joe. Did you go to
Paris? We spent last winter there. Can you talk French?
We were not allowed to speak anything else at Vivek. You say some, I can
read it, but I can't pronounce it. I can't read
it either, but he's going to say something about something. How nicely you do
it. Let me see. You said, who was the young lady of the pretty
slippers? Didn't you this? I can essays though, we
mad Mozilla. It's my sister, Margaret, and you knew it was. Don't you think she's
pretty? Yeah. She makes me think of the German girl. She looks so fresh and
quiet and dances like a lady. Joe glowed with
pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister and stored it up to repeat to
Meg. Both peeped and criticized and chatted till they felt like old
acquaintances. Laurie's bashfulness soon wore off for Joe's gentlemanly
demeanor, amused and set him at his ease. And Joe
was her Mary self again, because her dress was forgotten and nobody lifted their eyebrows
at her. She liked the Lawrence boy better than ever and took several good looks
at him so that she might describe him to the girls, for they had no
brothers, very few male cousins, and boys were almost unknown creatures to
them. Curly black hair, brown skin, big black eyes, hands and
nose, fine teeth, small hands and feet taller than I am very polite for a
boy and altogether jolly wonder how old he is by the way. Pause.
That's an Instagram description.
Again, nothing's changed. Our technology is just better.
Back to the book. It was on the tip of Joe's tongue to ask, but
she checked herself in Tom. It was unusual tact, tried to find out in a
roundabout way. I suppose you're going to college soon. I see
you pegging away at your books. No, I mean turning hard. And Joe blushed at
the dreadful pegging which had escaped her. Laurie smiled, but he didn't seem
shocked and answered with a shrug, not for a year or 2. I won't go
before 17 anyway. Aren't you but 15? Asked Joe, looking at the tall
lad whom she imagined 17 already. 16 next
month. How I wish I was going to college. You don't look as if you
liked it. I hate it. Nothing but grinding or skylarking, and
I don't like the way fellows do either in this country. What do you
like? To live in Italy and to enjoy myself
in my own way?
I was gonna talk about one thing, but I'm gonna talk about something else. So
It turns out that men and women still meet each other the exact same way
even in our era. It also
turns out that the conversation is probably the most important part
of the mating ritual. And,
yes, we do it on Tinder and grinder and
only fans and Instagram reels and all this other
nonsense these days. But if you took away all of that stuff,
the much talked about gen Zers who by the way,
are apparently engaged according to statistics in the least
amount of sexual behavior, both men and women of any generation
in the last fourth generations of American history,
apparently are struggling with, and we need to teach them how to talk to each
other. So, I know that Tom has
young people in his home. I have had and
do have young people in my home. And one of the things that I do
is I take away the phones and force them to go talk to other people.
Makes for exciting times. I fourth them to speak in double.
No. No. No. No joke. We so as Hae san knows, we have
a very deep rooted cultural, you know, background,
and we are invited to do these guest lectures all the time
at either colleges, universities, religious,
environments, whether it be, you know, UU what is it called?
U, yeah, UU churches or something like that. United. No. No.
Universal Oh, the Unitarians. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But anyway Yeah. Nice. But, you know, come all you faithful. Right? Anyway
Mhmm. I'm sorry. I don't mean to make fun if any of you are. You
you I I don't mean that as a as a dig. Anyway
but but we get invited to all these things, and I I go and I
do a lot of speaking engagements. And one of the ways that I I kinda
get I force them to the front of the line. I say, well, I
wanna talk about a particular topic. You're gonna talk about it
because the age you are, it comes differently from you
than it does fourth me. Right? So, like, certain things are
just, you know so so to your point, you get rid of the
phones. Well, you know, when we're in those environments you
can. We're in those environments. We don't have our phones anyway, so I can't take
the phone. They don't have the phone, but I fourth them to speak in public.
None of my kids are afraid of public speaking, by the way. Okay. They're
not afraid of public speaking, but are they afraid of approaching someone
1 on 1 and having a conversation with them? Because I noticed this starting to
happen probably book 10 years ago. What happens at the end of
these at the end of these lectures is we end up sitting on
the side and people come up to them all the time to ask additional
questions fourth, like so they are forced to
to speak 1 on 1 with them. Now, it is a little different to
your point. They're not they're the ones being come up to. They're
not usually they're not going out and seeking these people after these events and
saying, hey. Do you have any additional questions? I'd like to, you know, ask me
this, ask me that, whatever. But it still forces a 1 on 1
conversation after the fact. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
No. That's good. I when I read this whole entire section with,
you know, with Lawrence and Joe, and they're running around, and then there's other aspects
of that in the book as well, A little bit of talking and
the book does sort of address their not really courtship,
but they're sort of in the 19th century way, kinda going around and around,
just like in war and peace, which we talked about.
I know how that opened with a party.
I I think we
again, it's the end of an era, right, not the end of a civilization.
So I think part of the end of an era of mass
communication or putting
people in situations where, are not
putting people. We we we are at
an end of a of an era when
the ability to engage with people
in mass 1 on 1 in person
is less useful for getting the message out, whatever your message may happen to
be, than, you know, engaging with someone
electronically or engaging with people electronically and hoping that
you're blasting into this, you know, void of people who are going
to engage with you, which of course is what the internet has taught us. It's
taught us how to do that. So, you know, I'm sure.
Your kids know just as well as mine, do that, you know,
if they have 11,000 followers on Instagram, you know, they can
go talk to all 11,000 of those people, which is way more than the
100 people or 200 people that may walk up to them. You
know, 10% of who may actually have a question for them at the end of
a particular speaking engagement. You know, if the percentages are the same with
your engagements as they have been with mine in the past, it's usually under 10%.
Yeah. You know, and so where the
value is, I think also is, is something that's shifting around and we don't really
know how to effectively articulate that to people. And so I try to
articulate to my kids that the value of
engagement is in that interaction with that human being,
not in the technological objects you have in your hand.
Sure. And that's a very, that's a difficult lesson to kind of get across.
Sometimes you gotta be, well, sometimes it's like taking away the stick from my
7 year old old who wants to put in his mouth. So Well
and I think there's something to be said too. So I the whole taking away
the phone thing, I I I don't quote, unquote take it from
them. But we've had a we've had a long standing tradition in my house where
we don't bring the cell phones to the dinner table. So, like Yeah.
No. We don't sit down and eat dinner every day at 5 o'clock. Like, we're
not that kind of family. And and if if everyone's schedule is all over the
place and, you know, and you're sitting down at the dinner table by yourself and
eating to have your phone. Who cares? But the second an additional
person sits down there with you, the both of you put your phone aside. Yeah.
Like, that's kind of been a rule of thumb. Now that goes to before my
kids even had cell phones and I was my my wife and I were the
only ones in the house that had cell phones. Yeah. We we wouldn't bring
our cell phones to the table. So we Yeah. It just became a habit that
and because mom and dad did it when our kids were teenagers and started getting
cell phones, they just followed suit. So they Right. And now my kids are
all even though they are young, they're still young adults. So my again, my
my youngest is graduating college next week. But as
even as adults, they still come to the dinner table with no cell phone. Like,
that's just it's been a habit of ours. So and to your point, it's just
because you wanna be in the moment. It's not about like, for us,
it's not about we don't use that
scenario to justify the quality interaction with human to
human interaction. We justify getting rid of the
cell phones in that environment about being in the moment. In the moment. Yep.
Because it's not about 1 on 1 interaction at that point. We have very
typically, just to give you an idea, we don't eat every day dinner. We don't
eat dinner every day as a family, but on Sunday, we do. Sunday's our day.
Everybody comes to the table. There's usually 10, 12 of us that sit at the
table depending on who's coming over for dinner. Like, my nephew will come, my aunt
you know, whatever. So we'll have additional family members. But you're
not getting 1 on 1 interaction at that point, but it's still not any less
valuable to have that collective of human
interaction and the different varying degrees of generations at the table
and Yeah. You know, like, we have, my nephew has a daughter who's only
2a half years old. It's important for her to see a 2a half that we're
all talking to each other and not looking at our phones. Right? So
There's there's an important piece in a little bit which we're not gonna get to
today because we gotta wrap this up. But,
there's an important piece where they sacrifice, the the March
family does. They sacrifice their, their Christmas, right.
For a family that's down the street. Right. Who's, you
know, they're they're immigrants, and they're poverty stricken.
And so so they literally pick up their entire Christmas and they take it
down the street, you know, and they're stuffing, you know,
cloths and holes in windows and they're feeding like little sickly, the little
sickly kid and, you know, they're giving up their, their Christmas,
breakfast, which is like milk and bread. Like it wasn't anything
huge, but those people had nothing. Right. And so they're taking that down the
street to those folks. And it's a, it's a touching moment. And I think it's
in like chapter 3 or 4 of, of literature women.
And that ties into what you're talking
about here. Because one of the, one of the thread lines through
the book is, traditions,
writers? And the power of traditions, right? Even in the midst of an
apocalyptic civil war where everything's falling apart, you can't get anything more than bread and
milk on Christmas. There are still traditions
that matter to engage with folks around.
And one of the things that is interesting to me is
as society gets redefined
in a, in a, in a seculum at the end of a
seculum cycle, right? At the end of a historical cycle, traditions
get redefined as well, but
the core of what people require Has it
changed for 5000 years? How
we do that may change, writers? Or the
manner, even the tools we use maybe might change,
but we still require Tom your point.
1 on 1 engagement with a real human being without technological
or, or object interference, you know,
you still require that because how else are you going to learn about community
at 2 other than experiencing community at 2.
Right. And the families that do that,
are the ones that are going to,
make sure the republic stays together. And I don't care what color they are. I
don't care what class group they come from. I don't care about any of that
crap that all becomes nonsense after at a certain point, or maybe I should say
nonsense sauce for the goose. Writers. It's about, do you have those
traditions? So I know many people who come out of,
and we're talking about, you know, talking at, at, at like a Unitarian
church. I know many people who come out of specific religious traditions that's
and that's what they do on Saturdays or Sundays or Fridays, you know? And so
they have those traditions, in my household. You
know, we do try not try. We do as many days of the week
as we can to eat together, period. So younger when
my kids were younger, we did too. It's just, as they got older, it's just
got impossible. Yeah. It becomes more of a challenge, to your point,
it becomes more of a challenge. But even my wife and I were talking about
that because we're not quite there yet, but it's coming. We're
like, you know, it's just gonna be her and me.
That's it. Just the 2 of you. Just the 2 of you. Just the 2
of us, like it says in that song.
And so, you know, one of the things we were joking about was,
you know, we have to eat at least 1 meal a day together just
to see each other. Right. That's tradition.
That matters even at the end of an era that
matters. Okay. Solutions to problems.
Let's talk about solutions. I don't know if we've resolved anything.
This is like the 3rd or 4th episode we've done. We haven't resolved anything. We
just talked a little bit about the book and then we brought up a bunch
of things. There's a little there's a little thing here, though. There's a there's a
little thing that just to wrap up what you and I were just talking about
Yeah. With the traditions and the cell phone thing and the dinner and all that
stuff. There's a little thing there that leaders, in my opinion,
can take and a small solution to the problem that
kinda went away a little bit if you think about it in, like, the early
2000, which was leaders, they need to lead by
example. Right? Like and and I don't see a lot of
leaders going out of their way to sacrifice,
as you just mentioned about in the book. Do you make
sacrifices? Do your employees see you make sacrifices for the betterment of the
company? Do fourth employees see you making sacrifices
for the betterment of them? Like, are you willing to
take a to Tom sacrifice certain things? I'll give you
an example. I was I I I have a client of obviously no
names mentioned. I have a client that was struggling through COVID.
He eliminated his own salary so that he did not lay anybody
off. And and they were still doing business. They just wasn't
busy enough for Mhmm. He he had he had to make a decision. Do
I lay off whatever it was? I don't remember the equivalent. It was 2 or
3 people, whatever, in order for me to not to take a
hit. And he decided not to he elected to eliminate hit.
What do you think that does for him in the emotional
equity of his people? Right?
No. They're they're not quitting. I'm sorry. I hate to tell you this. They're never
quitting that job. That guy probably just kept 20 people for
the rest of his life as as a leader. If he decides to close-up
his company and start working for somebody else, all 20 of those people are gonna
go work. But but we don't see enough of that kind of,
like, the solution. It's so simple.
Like, are you making sacrifice? No. He didn't have to he probably didn't
have to take the hit on his whole salary. He could've taken half and laid
off 1 person or 2 people instead of 4. He probably would've
got similar results from the from the
emotional response from his people, but he felt
compelled to save all of them. I don't think we see that,
and we certainly don't see that in bigger companies. Are you kidding me? Don't even
get me started. The, you know, inflated bonuses and
all this other BS when it comes to, like, big companies that that just
take and take and take. But to your point earlier about local government
and local small businesses, I do find there's real leadership
there. I do find that that some of those solutions
I think one of our bigger problems, we don't allow those solutions
to be the answer above, like, to to to push the to push it up
Yes. And say, you know I I
don't know. I I I just I don't know a salespeople or fourth fortune 500
company that would have done what that guy did. So there's a there's a
biblical admonition here that I wrote in my notes. Love your neighbor as
yourself, you know, which is what we always think of, but,
actually, Jesus starts with this one. He says, love the lord fourth
god with all of your heart, all fourth mind, and all of your your your
soul. In some translations, it's all of your spirit, but whatever. I'm not gonna get
into theological Disney just to give you the whole turning. Right? Right writers. Right there.
And then he does, and love your neighbor as
yourself. And then he follows up with, and the entire
law and the commandments rest on these two ideas. That's the
whole structure of reality. So love the thing
that you have above you, the hierarchy. Right? And
in order Tom your point about the boss, in order to serve that hierarchy,
sacrifice and love your neighbor as you would love yourself. Because what would you
want your neighbor to do for you? Yeah. You would want your neighbor
to sacrifice what they had for
you if you were in that situation. And you're right. If we
saw that at scale, like I, there was a local election. I'm not
going to get into the specifics of it, obviously for, fourth a local municipality that
I live in and they are asking
the people of the municipality to
vote for a tax increase in Jesan.
And the people who are the people who are going to
benefit from that are not setting down their salaries at
all. And it keeps getting
voted down and they can't understand why.
And I I I literature go, it's because you're not making
the appropriate sacrifice in the direct in the correct direction. And
so I think one of the major solutions to our problems
is leaders just gotta start making appropriate
sacrifices fourth to your point, leading by example. Absolutely
right. Again, you know, it it it's funny. I I saw within
1 generation turning about, you know, love thy neighbor. Right?
Yeah. And I saw it never mind
never mind love your neighbor. Yeah. No. Do you actually do you actually know
your neighbor? Because I saw Right. I've seen I've seen in one generation
that the neighbors across the street from us, my my kids don't
even know them. They they have no idea who they are. They don't like,
that Tom me is even weird. Like, I grew up in a neighborhood where I
literally could throw a rock and
I'll say it this way. I could be I could be down
3 streets away, throw a rock and break a car
window and say, oh, crap. I'm out of here. Run home. By the time I
got to my house, my mother would know about it. Mhmm. Yeah. They're like, oh
my god. Missus Libby, did you know that your son broke the window? Blah blah
blah. I'd walk in the house, and my mother was like, what are you thinking?
And I'm like, oh, crap. I forgot. You already knew. Like, because all the neighbors
knew each other. They would Right. They would talk to that it takes a village
thing is gone, and I don't understand why. I don't understand why. I
think I think we're losing I I guess it goes back to what
you were talking about, getting rid of the cell phone. The distraction caused different
problems. The more technology we get, the more problem. We're we're
losing sight of, like, the
I I'll go one step further here because I I never bought
into the whole, you know, treat someone
like, I the phrase. Right? Treat somebody the way that you wanna be treated. Mhmm.
Yep. I think that's crap. I always tell my kids,
treat somebody the way they wanna be treated because it might not be the way
that you wanna be treated. Mhmm. Learn and understand them. Talk to
them. Find out what what how do you would how would you like me
to to to treat you? Because sometimes, I don't care if you're
blunt and direct with me, but if you're blunt and direct with somebody who doesn't
like that, you could offend them. So you can't treat somebody the way you wanted
it. You have treat them the way they wanna be treated. Now that all being
said, it goes to leadership and understanding your people, learning their
habit, learning their motivations, learning you gotta be involved.
You gotta lead by that example. So
leaders and not leaders. This is
the last thing I'll say that we can close podcast thing I'll point I'll break
up, but then we can we can close.
There's endless talk about problems. Yeah.
Endless. One of my
massive frustrations and and one of the core reasons I do this podcast
is because I'm tired of talking about problems.
I named off 4 of them today, right, that have
been well documented. Both sides of the problems have
been documented. All aspects of the problems have been
documented. And for those of you who didn't hear that part or maybe skipped over
it, the fourth problems are, you know, diversity,
personal debt, okay, personal credit card debt,
COVID. Okay. And, the 4th one was,
I can't remember what the 4th was. It doesn't matter. Those goes, oh, yeah. Social
media fragmentation. That's right. Social media fragmentation. Those fourth
problems, we have had volume after volume,
after volume, after And
what was the root? We've had the exploration. And what was the root. We've had
the exploration. Give me
a solution
problem. Because once you give me a
solution, then I have a direction. And once
I have a direction that I'm no longer seeing something through, like it's a
transparent piece of glass, now it becomes opaque.
It becomes solid. It becomes,
solvable. All fourth those
problems have solutions. We may
not like the solution. It may not make us comfortable. It
may be hard to implement. I'll grant you all of that. It
may gore some people's sacred cows,
but it is a solution. Can't get away from that. It may
not be one you like might not make you feel comfortable. It might gore your
sacred cow, but it is, it is a solution.
And when we start going to a solution based conversation,
fundamentally, now we can actually start
moving towards a goal, towards a direction.
Now we are now we are at a way out of chaos
rather than just continually
wandering around in a cul de sac of chaos all the time.
I'm tired of being in the cul de sac. I want out.
Well, and and and the the the positive the really
the super positive piece of this is as soon as you hear one
solution, it should open up a floodgate. Right? Like, because that's
typically what happens. Somebody comes up with a solution. Somebody else says, oh,
I like that, but I think we should add this, or I like that, but
I don't think it fixes this component of it. So we should figure out like,
it it all of a sudden opens up a different kind of dialogue.
Mhmm. That that that now all of a sudden, okay,
it may skew your pathway. Like, you know, you just said that at least you
at least you have a direction. At least you have a it might skew that
a little bit and open up the road a little bit.
But would it be a terrible thing if we found 2 or 3
solutions that actually would book? And now we're trying to figure
out, so what gives us the best outcome of these 3 solutions? Which one
gives us the bet? It's a different conversation at that point. Right. I agree with
you. I think a lot of the, a lot of the I I I think
at least 2 of the 4 that you just named, we're not gonna
see solutions come for a long time. Yeah. I mean, honestly I mean, the
social media thing, I think we're just creating more and more because the more every
time we turn around, there's a new one. They're you know, TikTok has,
opened up a completely different door of challenges that Facebook didn't have.
And now Facebook saw that, and they said we can do that. And
social media, I think, is going to be I think we're the solution to the
social media dilemma is better parenting. And I think
until somebody tells parents that they need to be better
parents, that's not gonna fix itself. Social media's never gonna
fix itself. And we're certainly not gonna police it because you got all the people
complaining about the first amendment first amendment infringement and all this other stuff that happens.
So people are afraid. They're afraid to fix the social media problem, but
but I think we can if we get better parenting out of it. So, like,
if we get if we can get these younger parents to understand
that that social media is
a problem and that you need to help your kids solve it,
I I don't I think that's gonna be the that that's the only solution I
can see forward from it, from this at least the social media part. There's another
one in there that there's another one in there that I thought I I think
very similarly Tom we don't have to go into all of them, but but there
but there's there's another one in there at the at the very least 2 of
the 4 that you mentioned. I think that's I think that
parenting is the problem there. Yeah. Not the government, not
leadership. The leadership comes from within at that point. It's the who's
what's the leadership structure look like within the home? How do you start
teaching your kids to be just human beings and better
people? Like How very pre modern of you,
Tom. I don't know. Maybe I'm
You know what? You know what? Well, you know what? You know what? What can
I say? Do you see the gray hair?
You've you've you've seen a few sunsets and a few surprises.
New summers. New summers.
I often say this and I'll close with this. I've been saying this a
lot lately. Postmodern problems require pre modern
solutions And
we, we ignore those pre modern
solutions because we think we're more sophisticated and there's
nothing fourth, there's nothing harder to break than the iron
triangle of like arrogance deceit, and then just like
resentment. And but you but you've gotta break that iron
triangle if you wanna actually get to a solution to a problem.
Listen, Occam's razor has been around for eon. Right?
Oh, gotcha. Yes. Yep. And it still applies today.
Most Tom, the simplest answer is probably the right one. Probably the
right one. So why are we trying to overcomplicate and over sophisticate
every single problem we encounter? Sometimes it really is simple.
And with that, I'd like to thank you for listening to the
Leadership Lessons from The Great Books podcast today,
And, well, Tom and I are out.
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