Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

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

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

in the year of our Lord 2025. We are

in the midst of a social and cultural dynamic in the United States

of America where smothering conformity

to political positions, particularly smothering

cultural conformity to certain political positions, has

replaced the smothering conformity

previous in the mid part of the 20th century

to religious traditions. There is much

going back and forth between various political, social

and cultural factions in the United States about whether

this transition, which began in the mid-1960s

and has only increased in stride and see for the last 60 to 80

years, is an overall net positive or

if it is an overall net negative.

If we had a time machine or a hammer,

whether it was H.G. Welles time machine or Dr.

Emmett Brown's time machine, it doesn't really matter. And we could go

back to when the writer we are going to be talking about today was

writing the book we are going to be talking about today and we could tell

him of all the wondrous social changes, all of the

wondrous replacements that have occurred and reach their

apotheosis in the early 21st century.

Well, I think like many of the writers we talk about on this show,

particularly the writers of the mid 20th century, he'd

be shocked and somewhat amazed

and perhaps may be a little disappointed because

here's the problem. Con men,

hypocrisy and venal appetites that rest

deep in the hearts and in the behaviors of human beings don't

just disappear when we culturally

exchange one stifling system of conformity and belief

for another equally stifling system of conformity

and belief. It turns out that human

nature is persistent and will have its

way. Today on

this episode of the podcast, we will be introducing

and discussing four of the multiple

themes from our book

Stranger in a Strange Land by

Robert Heinlein. Leaders, we

are in the midst of yet another transformational social

and cultural dynamic. But I guarantee you, smothering

conformity lies at

the clearing, or lies in the clearing, as it were,

at the end of this path as

well. So we are going to have

an incredibly short, I think, introductory episode today because

the book that we are covering, Stranger in a Strange Land by

Robert Heinlein, is still under vicious copyright.

And so we will be summarizing some of

the main themes and the main ideas from each one of the chapters and

talking about Heinlein's impact as an

author. And then we'll go into sort of what I think

about all of this short introductory

episode today. So we open up the book Stranger in a Strange Land.

And the copy that I have was published by Penguin Random House

back in the day, and the copyright is owned by the

Robert and Virginia Heinlein Trust.

When you open up the book, you see that the book is divided into five

parts, five different chapters. And the book

is. The book's title comes from

the story in the book of Exodus in the

Torah, or what is called by some the Old Testament. And

it comes from this line in Exodus 2:21

22, and I quote, Moses agreed to stay with the man

who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.

Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses

named him Gershom, saying, I have become a

foreigner in a foreign land.

Or in some translations, I have become a stranger in a strange

land. When you open up Stranger in a Strange

Land, what you see, of course, is the. The various parts. And

so part one is about the origins of

the man from Mars, a gentleman named Val Valentine

Michael Smith. Now,

this is a curious idea because the man

from Mars was part of an expedition,

or was the result not part of. Was the result of an expedition that

initially went to Mars and failed,

actually. But in that failure, a child was produced, a

child was born, has almost biblical

connotations, particularly New Testament biblical connotations. And that child

was raised not by human beings, but was.

Was a human baby raised by the Martian,

the Martian environment, the Martian old gods.

There's very much a tinge in the beginning part of

Stranger to Strange Land, in what is entitled

His Immaculate Origin, a play on

the idea of the immaculate origin of

Jesus. There's very much an idea that this is a. This is

a man come to Earth, a man come from the sky, a savior

come down to save us. A second expedition

goes up many years later, following a war

and some other strife, and the second

expedition finds the man from Mars and brings him

what brings him back to Earth. And from there we begin

to fall into Heinlein's view

of history. Now, one of the things that you're going to want

to note also about the structure of this book is that each

part translates or it

moves. It moves Valentin Michael

Smith through the process, not of necessarily

becoming more human, although that is a popular idea,

particularly when you look at the typical critical

interpretations of this book and its content. But it actually

moves Valentin Michael Smith through the process of changing other human

beings, which is a core idea that we will

talk about a little bit later on in the

show. Robert Anson

Heinlein was born July 7,

1907, left this world to go

where all individuals wind up going

on May 8, 1988.

He had a long life that spanned almost all of

the 20th century. He was an

American science fiction author, an aeronautical engineer, and a

naval officer in the United States Navy.

Sometimes called the quote, unquote, dean of science fiction writers.

He, along with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac

Asimov, really emphasized getting the science correct

in his novels and in his short story

writing. Speaking of the great

science fiction writers of the 20th, the mid 20th

century, Heinlein was 30 years. Thirteen, not 30,

13 years older than both Ray Bradbury and

Isaac asimov, and was 10 years older than

the great Arthur C. Clark, the person

who, who wrote oh

Gosh, was it 2001 A Space Odyssey and

consulted on the. The movie that was directed by Stanley

Kubrick. A truly odd film if you ever have the opportunity to watch it,

and the sequel books, although not

necessarily the sequel films. And

as one of the deans of science fiction who was

really interested in getting the science right, Heinlein was one of the

first American science fiction writers to make science

fiction great again, such as it were. He was

one of the first ones to break into mainstream magazines in

the 40s and 50s, such as the Saturday Evening Post,

Reader's Digest and others. A lot of people

were exposed to Heinlein's view of

science fiction, his view of science, and his view of

the world via the Shine. The science fiction genre that before

that had really been resorted to

pulpy fanfic. Pulpy, pulpy fan fiction, like what we would call

fan fiction, like publications these days,

dime store novels that really appealed to, really were meant to appeal

to children or that were

considered to be. Or science fiction was considered to be a genre

that was a vehicle for other

kinds of allegory or political

statements, such as the science fiction written by

H.G. wells. Heinlein, however,

used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political

ideas. And you can especially see that in Stranger in

a Strange Land, but also in a number of other

books that he. That he authored, including

my favorite story from. From Heinlein,

Starship Troopers. Okay. And he

wanted to use his science fiction to speculate on how

progress in science and engineering might shape the future of plan,

politics, race, religion, and of course,

the third rail topic, sex.

By the way, Heinlein came out of a time being born in

1907. That was the beginning of the

political progressive movement in the United States, which

really began its proto development at the end

of the Civil War and reached its height in

the 1920s, at least it's height

culturally in the 1920s, before

political progressivism began to, to crash to

the ground in the, in the 19, in the

1950s, right with the coming of Dwight Eisenhower.

So during the time that, that Heinlein

was a young man and moving into his

middle age, political progressivism was a

driving force in American politics, American

culture, and it was a driving force that was

counter to the forces of conformity

that were that that Heinlein and Bradbury and even

Isaac Asimov were using science

to battle against. In

January 1924, speaking of the 1920s,

a 16 year old Heinlein lied about his age to enlist in company

C, the 110th Engineer Regiment of the Missouri National Guard

in Kansas City. His family could not afford to send Heinlein to college, so

he sought an appointment to a military academy. And this appointment to the

military academy, of course, led him to service in the United States Navy,

in particular service during World War II. So there were

two, there were two rails that Heinlein

really ran his fiction down. The rail of political

progressivism and utilizing science and

technology to get to a technocratic political

progressive end. And then the rail of

discipline that comes about from being

forced to walk a parade ground and PT

and scrub a toilet too. So there you go.

By the way, these two rails were

not seen as being mutually exclusive as they are in our time. In

the first quarter, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, because

of our historical perspective,

you have to remember most of the people that were running the naval academies

at the time, in between World War I and World War II

were men who had served in World War I

and had seen what World War could actually do and were

desperately, desperately seeking

peace. Heinlein was an individual who was

desperately seeking progressivism through technology

and through science and used the military to discipline

himself, himself to order his

thoughts. So back to the book, back to

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.

So we pick up in part two of Stranger in a

Strange Land. Once again, we're summarizing each one of the parts of

the book and seeking to pull main themes from those

summaries. Because we cannot read the book on the podcast

today, would encourage you to go pick up a copy of it. If you are

a leader who is fascinated by science fiction.

It'll be a good addition to your library. So we pick up a part

two of Stranger in a Strange Land. And in that

second part, which is Called his preposterous heritage.

We run across a man

named Jubal Harshaw. And Jubal

Harshaw is the. Is the central character, not Valentine Michael

Smith, in the second part of

A Stranger in a Strange Land. The reason why

it's subtitled, the second part is subtitled. His preposterous heritage

is because this is when Valentine Michael Smith begins

to interact with the larger power structures,

the larger governmental structures, the larger civil, social,

and even religious structures that human beings have constructed

in this brave new world that he is

now an alien to. Right?

But as he begins to interact with people

all the way from the nurse Jill to the journalist Ben Caxton

to the lawyer Jubal Harshaw, all the way to Senator

Douglas and even the. The head of

the Church of the Foster Right Brotherhood, as he

begins to interact with these folks and begins to learn more about how human

beings either commit to each other or don't

commit to each other. How they communicate, how they don't communicate. As

he begins to learn about ideologies and he begins to learn about

ideas. What Heinlein does so cleverly

in this part two is he structures certain

arguments that he really wanted to have with people

of his time and of his era. You begin to see

Heinlein's progressivism that I referenced in in just

previously. You begin to see it begin to come out. And

it's a subtle thing. It's not anything that you're hit over the head with directly.

But if you know how to. If you know how to look for it and

you know what to look for and you know what the tells are, you'll definitely

see it. However, there is a strain in here

also of rebellion, right. And of questioning in

particular. When you think about the character Jubal Harshaw, a lawyer, a

doctor, but also a raconteur and a

man about town who, who has three

buxom secretaries living in his

palatial estate in the Poconos in Pennsylvania,

there's a way to read chapter two that is

not progressive in our time. There's a way to read it

through a feminist lens. But when we talk about the

character of Valentine Michael Smith and when we talk about his

heritage, we talk about where he came from and where he is going,

the ideas in part two begin to lay the foundation for

frank, further ideas and further developments that are going to occur in parts

four and five, after Valentin Michael Smith

goes away from Jubbal Harshaw, in

essence escapes the the cradle and begins

to walk around in the world in all kinds of different ways

and eventually comes to an idea that

he will have to build a system, he will have to build

a distance discipline, he'll have to build an organization

in order to understand human beings and attract human

beings of his own.

So as we read Stranger in a Strange Land and as we read

Parts One and Part Two, one of the things that jumps out

to me about this book and its leadership

applications is that this is a logical conclusion.

Conclusion to some ideas that were being explored by. Or

Heinlein presents a logical conclusion to some ideas and some theories that were being

explored by another famous author of

his era, Ray Bradbury. By the way,

one little tidbit about this book. Heinlein actually said later

on that he wrote Stranger in a Strange

Land in the early 1950s, late 1950s, 40s until the

1950s, because he had this idea for it, and then he let it sit for

10 years before he published it in the 1960s, because he

was waiting for society to change significantly so that the

ideas basically wouldn't get him tarred and feathered and thrown out of polite

society. During the time that he was, of

course, basting on these ideas or maybe letting the

manuscript sit, Ray Bradbury published the Martian Chronicles. And in

the Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury postulates a very

outrageous idea. The idea that he

postulates is that,

is that going from Earth to

Mars changes human beings

to become more like Martians, rather than the

dominant idea of the time, which was a dominant idea coming out

of World War II, where a country was confident and had

cultural confidence, the United States had cultural confidence. And of course,

Bradbury was publishing as an American author in an American context.

He was looking at all this cultural confidence and saying,

if you go to another, another planet and you are a

human being, how does that planet change you? Not how do

you change the planet? And so Heinlein

plays with the inverse of this. A human being born on Mars,

who, technically speaking, should behave like a human,

wouldn't behave like a human, they would behave like a Martian. And

then bringing that Martian who looks like a human to

Earth, how does that change things? How does that

mold not just the Martian, but also humanity?

That makes Stranger in a Strange Land the logical

sequel, or the logical end

argument of Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles.

The reality is that Mars as a planet fascinates us still. I mean,

SpaceX and Elon Musk still

want to get there. I mean, Elon walks around with a shirt that says Occupy

Mars for God's sakes. And because it

fascinates us and, and has for some time Many hundreds

of years before Elon or H.G. wells

or NASA came along because it fascinates us.

The reality is, and we don't really,

we have no way of confirming this or we will have no way of confirming

this until we actually go there and actually try to plant a flag there. The

reality is that the planet of Mars is probably not supporting anything like

what we think of as intelligent life. Which

means that there will be no Martian invasion. There be, will, will be no War

of the Worlds, right? There will be no Independence Day

style fireworks. Unless we're talking

about an invasion worked out along the lines of what Heinlein gets

to in his novel. And we are itching

to get after that planet, aren't we? I mean, I think by at

the very minimum the end of this century,

we will at the very least have established if not an

outpost on Mars. We will very least have established

regular rocket trips to, to Mars. I

think my, I think my youngest child will be part.

Will be an adult in a generation in a time where it will be

going to Mars will be as a semi regular

an occurrence as, as NASA or the

European Space Agency or India or China putting rockets

up in the sky to launch, launch satellites. I don't know

that civilizations or, or settlements will be established

in our century. I think that'll probably happen in the 22nd century.

But we are going to Mars. It is going to happen.

The question of course is how is it going to change

us? What are we going to turn into? And then the

other question is how are we going to change Mars?

I think something more spiritual or psychological rather than material or

temporal however is putting a current pause

on our appetites and our ambitions.

And I think it's because we haven't quite figured out the answer to the

question that both Bradbury brings up in Martian

Chronicles and that Heinlein so cleverly inverts

in Stranger in a Strange Land.

Back to the book back to Stranger in a Strange

Land by Robert Heinlein. So we pick

up in, in part three of Stranger in a

Strange Land and this is really focused on

the education, right? The eccentric or eccentric

such as it were education of Valentine Michael

Smith Smith or the man from Mars as he is now known.

The chapter of course opens with him being him

escaping or, or leaving the.

The gentlemen strations of Jubal Harshaw being

pushed out into the world to deal with it as he

finds it as he goes out into the world. One of the first

stops, one of the first places where he begins to sort of

understand and, and Begin to put together

some ideas around

belief, around. Around

deception, around illusion. One of the first

places where this begins to manifest is in,

ironically enough, a rural carnival.

Yeah, that's right. The man from Mars becomes a magician

in a rural carnival. His assistant, of course, is.

Is Jill the nurse, who has now become his.

His lover in addition to being his water

brother. And they tour the country

under the guise of this. Of this carnival. And through

becoming a carney, through engaging in.

In the carnival acts of deception and trickery,

figuring out who is a mark and who is not,

who's real and who's fake, who even understands what the game

is and who are cynically manipulating people.

The man from Mars, Valentin Michael Smith in

Stranger in a Strange Land, begins to figure out

how he can incorporate, how he can

include I. Ideas from.

From illusion, ideas from magic, ideas

from being a carnival barker, ideals, from being a

marketer into what eventually will become

his very own church.

By the time I got to this point in the book, by the way, I

said, well, of course he's going to go off and form a church. And one

of the things that jumps out to you about this

eventual development and sort of how it goes through in part in

parts three and then part four and part five,

is not who he draws to himself, not even

who he. Who he develops his acolytes

in a school that's structured along the lines of a church,

not even who he rejects. What

jumped out, to me, at least in this section, most prominently,

was sort of related to the piece that I

opened up with during this podcast today.

I do think that if the man from Mars,

AKA Valentin Michael Smith, had come down from

Mars today and lived in our era, if

Heinlein was writing this fantastical novel now,

Valentin Michael Smith would not start a church

valentine. Michael Smith would instead become Warner

Brothers with Elon Musk and maybe Reid

Hoffman and maybe a few others, and he would

start a political party.

Because the fact of the matter is there is a shift in culture, or there.

Yeah, there is a shift in culture that Heinlein couldn't have

predicted and had no barometer for.

We've shifted away from, as I said in my opening,

we've shifted away from the stifling conformity of religion to the

stifling conformity of political opinion.

In a search for meaning in the west, we have replaced

the search for transcendence with the

discovery that men, men

running political parties and men promoting

ideas have feet of clay.

We have removed religion from its appropriate

place, and we have replaced it. Well. We've

replaced it with something else. And now, interestingly

enough, in the year 2025, the

old strong gods of religion are attempting to

reinsert themselves or reassert themselves

over and above the objections of the new

weak gods in politics

in the West. So what are we to take from

Heinlein? What are we to take from these first

three parts of Stranger in a Strange Land? What is the,

what is the larger message for leaders here? Well, I

think that one of the big ideas or one

of the big beats, right, that's in

Stranger in a Strange Land, at least the one that strikes me the most

prominently is inverting the eschaton

or how one can resist bringing heaven to

earth. The entire history of the

20th century was about man's search for

utopia. Either a scientifically generated one, a

technologically generated one, a socially generated one, or

at the end of our century or the end of the last century, a culturally

generated utopia. And all those

utopian visions, from the ones

tinged by Marx to the ones tinged by Milton Friedman,

all those utopian visions failed miserably and

continue to fail because you can't bring heaven to earth.

You may be able to bring the man from Mars back to earth, but you

can't bring heaven to earth. And

Heinlein, Robert Heinlein, in all his cynical, liberal,

humanistic glory, actually understood something about human nature

that we have all forgotten as well. We arc

past the first quarter of the 21st century and it's something that bears

repeating. No one and nothing can

bring heaven to earth today. Not alien, not technology,

not human, not system. But the entire corpus

of the 20th century, as I said, was about the

vain attempts to do so. And

the first quarter of the the 21st

century has been about the hangover as

the consequences of such pursuits are visited

upon us. The challenge of our time,

right, that Stranger in a Strange Land also blew right past is

one that I've already mentioned. Again, for leaders, it bears

repeating. Religion is no longer the primary driver

of meaning in a post Christian America. And whether you believe

it or not, from your own personal perspective,

your own personal thoughts on religion, your own personal geography

on religion, whether that's the American south, the American west, the American Midwest,

the American Northeast, or the American South

East. No matter what your

geographic perspective, no matter if you live in a major metropolitan

area or you live in a rural area, no matter if you live, you live

in a place where there's a lot of broken down churches that still attract a

few old people, or you live in an area where there are vibrant churches

or buildings that call themselves churches, attracting 800

people to 3,000 people a weekend.

It doesn't matter what you're seeing. The

statistics show that religion is on the decline in America

and it's been on the decline for at least the last 25

years. We are in a world that no longer

we are in a West, we are in America. By world I just mean Western

world. We are specifically in the United States of America

in a place now where culturally the cohesion and

conformity that was enforced by religion is now

enforced by politics. And politics does not operate

in the church building. It may visit the church

building occasionally in a sermon, and you may see it show up in the people

who come into the church building. But for the most part,

politics exists in the secular

humanistic world and secular humanism is now the new religion.

And because we live in a post Christian America, because we live in

an America that is now increasingly hostile

to even Christian acts, much, much less

religious ones, pagan drivers and hedonistic fulfillment of base

appetites have ascended the stairs of meaning for many of us.

Heinlein couldn't have predicted that. And by the way, that

includes those who claim the mantle of Christianity. Still, if

you look at statistics, the divorce rate of people who go to church every Sunday

and the divorce rate of people who watch football every Sunday is almost

exactly the same. If the man from

Mars wanted to get after it in 2025America, he

would start a third party, or maybe a fourth

one. What does this say about

how to resist bringing heaven to earth? What does it say to

leaders? Well, it says this. Your utopian visions are for

naught because human nature

at the end of it will win out.

So remember I said this was going to be a short episode.

I would encourage you, if you have the opportunity, as I said before, go to

pick up Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land because you're going to want to

check out parts four and five of that book. The setup is in

the first three parts and then the last two parts are, are

quite spectacular. By the way, Heinlein did

almost a complete rewrite of the first couple of parts of the book

in an effort to meet meet

publishers demands. And so one version, the version

that's the common, I think mass market paperback version

is, is basically one version of Stranger in a Strange Land. But

then there's an extended version that his wife Virginia released

after his death that had additional material

in it. So if you can grab that additional material, you can

probably get the entire vision that Heinlein was pursuing

today on the show. We've read from the mass. Well, read from. We've

analyzed the, the big ideas and the big themes

from the mass market paperback. I doubt that they

really differ that much from the extended

versions, but I would still encourage you to go out and pick it up. It

could sit right on your, on your, on your shelf next to

Emotional Intelligence or whatever it is that Adam

Grant is putting out. Now.

How do we solve problems with Stranger in a Strange Land? How do we solve

problems with, with these ideas, some of which we've, we've talked about?

Well, here's, here's maybe, here's maybe a broad

solution or maybe a broad idea. And I don't know, I don't know if this

is going to work for you, but hear me out. What if

the aliens that we are looking for don't

have our best interests in mind? What

if their intents are so far from

being able to be comprehended by human beings that they appear to us

as well, demonic or even

evil in nature? I am

a little bit of a conspiracy theory theorist. Actually I'm a massive conspiracy

theorist, but I sort of low bar it or low ball it because

to say more makes people think you're crazy. Much like Fox

Mulder in that great show in the 1990s, the X Files.

I want to believe, I want to believe that

there's a vast cabal of evil demonic driven

individuals who are seeking to assert elite control

over the populace in order to institute neo feudalism

and Luciferian and Satanic control

in the material here and now. For

me, that whole spectrum of conspiracy

theories is usually

or is the best Occam's Razor explanation for

things and behaviors that I see from people in power that make

absolutely no damn sense. And when I say people in power,

I mean people in power. I mean like the Rothschilds

and the Bilderbergers and the,

and the Royal Family and why they believe things

that they believe and why they pursue the decisions

that they pursue that seem to benefit almost nobody.

Even though like the first, the folks at the World Economic Forum, like the folks

at blackrock, they proclaim very loudly from daycs

and from and from

and from, from, from platforms giving

speeches that they are just out here for all of us.

I don't believe it. I do believe they are

controlled by something else. And I do believe that's,

that's something else may not necessarily have our

best interests at heart. So do I believe in

aliens? Do I believe that there's life on other planets? I for sure

hope There is, because the universe would be lonely without it,

but wouldn't have already

bothered to bother with us. Or maybe it has bothered

to bother with us. And maybe just like whatever happened with Roswell back in the

1940s. Forties, maybe, maybe

someone, somewhere or someone's somewheres have been

hiding it from all of us because they're scared of what

we might do. They're scared of how the system might fail

or might fall apart. And they're scared of how they will be

disintermediated from power. But what

if those beings, what if those aliens that I want to exist

don't have my best interests at heart? What if they aren't on our quote

unquote side and not in a

militaristic Independence Day or War of the World's kind

of not being on my side? What if they're not on my side in a

way where they want to come down and in that great Twilight

Zone episode, get us all to go on ships and go back

to their home planet in order to

serve man? So that's one idea that

I got there, and that's a humdigger of a doozy that you may want to

think about. Here's another idea. Perhaps it is

better not to search for a superman or for a God from the

stars, or for a superman or a God, small G,

to be brought here from Mars via the machinations of the delicate

geniuses at NASA or SpaceX or. And

maybe instead we should be considering what destruction in

alien terms might actually be. What are they actually

offering us? Or what are we actually offering them?

And is there going to be an even exchange of value?

Look, at a practical level, I do not share ground with the fictional

Dana Scully of X Files fame, Sam Altman,

or even the skeptics that currently dominate the public square

known as the Internet. I do want to

believe in that intelligent life, and I do want to believe that that intelligent life

is somewhere in the universe searching to engage with other intelligent life

and of course, finding the universe to be as empty and cold as we have

found it would be excited to engage with us, would be

eager. But

I also know, logically, putting the emotions

of that aside, that the admonitions of caution for our most

ancient human traditions, like the religious ones,

are never really heeded in any kind of way,

ever since the first bulwark or the first

groundwork or the first tile was laid in them. Those admonitions

of those ancient human traditions are never heeded by those human

beings who seek and who desire to

enforce utopia from the anywhere,

whether that be from the stars or from

some half baked political ideology.

I know that we as leaders have to watch out for that. And I know

that skepticism and the desire for belief are

intention. They are not opposing. Well, they are

opposing forces, but they're opposing forces in tension. And

while they are opposing, they are not oppositional. You could be a skeptic and

still want to believe. And you could want to believe. You can have belief

and still be skeptical. Maybe this goes

to what faith actually means, which might be the whole point of

Stranger in a Strange Land, which of course begins

its grounding in Exodus

2:22.

Maybe Robert Heinlein was onto something after all.

I don't think we resolved anything here today. I just think that I've brought up

questions for you that maybe have no answers. And I think that's

kind of the best thing that you can get from a book that seems

simple but upon a closer look is really very complicated.

Complicated. I would encourage you to pick it up as a leader. Read

it and let me know what you think.

And well, that's it for me.