Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov w/Claire Chandler & Jesan Sorrells

0:06 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

0:10 is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

0:14 episode number 187.

0:18 Picking up from our book today

0:23 we're going to open up with

0:27 a series of vignettes that will

0:31 sort of set the table for where we're about to go

0:34 today. In accordance with the

0:38 law, the death sentence was announced to

0:41 Cincinnatus C. In a whisper. All rose,

0:45 exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close to his ear, panted

0:49 for a moment, made the announcement, and slowly moved away

0:53 as though ungluing himself. Thereupon,

0:56 Cincinnatus was taken back to the fortress. The road wound around its

1:00 rocky base and disappeared under the gate like a snake in a crevice.

1:04 He was calm, however, he had to be supported during the journey

1:08 through the long corridors, since he planted his feet unsteadily like a child

1:12 who has just learned to walk, or as if he were about to

1:15 fall through, like a man who has dreamt that he is walking on water,

1:19 only to have a sudden doubt. But is this possible?

1:25 Then another vignette. Sometime later, Rodion the jailer

1:29 came in and offered to dance a waltz with him. Cincinnatus agreed.

1:33 They began to whirl. The keys on Rodion's leather belt jangled.

1:37 He smelled of sweat, tobacco, and garlic. He hummed, puffing into his red

1:41 beard, and his rusty joints creaked. He was not what he used to be, alas,

1:44 he now he was fat and short of breath. The dance

1:48 carried them into the corridor. Since Natus was much smaller than his

1:52 partner, Cincinnatus was light as a leaf. The wind of the waltz made the

1:55 tips of his long but thin mustache flutter, and his big limpid eyes looked

1:59 askance, as is always the case with timorous dancers.

2:03 He was indeed very small for a full grown man. Martha

2:06 used to say that his shoes were too tight for her. At the bend of

2:10 the corridor stood another guard, nameless with a rifle and wearing a dog like mask

2:13 with a gauze mouthpiece. They described a circle near him and glided back

2:17 into the cell. And now Cincinnatus regretted that the swoon's friendly embrace

2:21 had been so brief. And then another

2:26 piece here, and I quote Prisoner,

2:30 in this solemn hour, when all eyes are upon thee and thy judges are

2:33 jubilant, and thou art preparing for those involuntary bodily

2:37 movements that directly follow severance of the head, I address to thee a parting

2:41 word. It is my lot, and this I will never forget, to provide

2:44 thy surgeon in gaol with all that multitude of comforts which the

2:48 law allow allows. I shall therefore be glad to devote all possible

2:52 attention to any expression of thy gratitude, preferably, however,

2:56 in written form. And on one side of the sheet.

3:00 Close quote.

3:04 Those are some sections,

3:08 some polls from our book

3:11 today, and we're going to jump around in it, and I think Nabokov would

3:15 actually appreciate this. We're going to jump around in this book

3:20 because, well, this book represents something

3:24 that we, we, we kind of sort of

3:28 touch on the edges of on this show. But now we're going to

3:32 fully embrace it. And so I'm going to open

3:35 up my thoughts with this. I think one day,

3:39 looking back, probably two or 300 years from now,

3:42 historians in the future will write that we now

3:46 have lived, quote, in a long, absurd and dangerous 20th century

3:51 that began in the killing fields of World War I in Europe and ended

3:54 with individuals staring at their phones searching for meaning early

3:58 in the 21st century. Close quote.

4:02 And they will be correct. It has been a long

4:06 and ridiculously absurd century, from the collapse of empires

4:10 to the launching of people to the moon. And of course, we're doing

4:14 this in 2026. So not only to the moon, but around the

4:18 moon and back. And culture,

4:22 culturally, politically, and socially, the systems that were supposed

4:26 to provide us meaning have failed woefully in

4:30 our long and absurd century.

4:34 But. And here's the but. Because of our

4:38 technology, we are too arrogant and prideful to admit cultural,

4:41 political, and social defeat. Instead, we're going to double down on ideas

4:45 and approaches that don't work. We're. We're going to go whole hog into

4:49 that. Now, today's book that we're reading

4:52 actually sort of challenges this a little bit in a weird

4:56 kind of way. And I think it should be required reading for

5:00 high school and college students, but mostly for high school

5:03 students, right alongside Alice in Wonderland, Brave New World,

5:07 and the book, I think that is closest to it, in parallel

5:11 1984. 4. It describes the triumph of

5:14 totalizing absurdity in a world where little makes logical

5:18 sense because it's not supposed to.

5:23 And to recapture meaning and to commit the crime

5:27 of Gnostical turpitude, we're going to have to reinsert meaning first into

5:30 ourselves and then deeply into our institutions and back into

5:34 our systems. And I do think that will be part of the mission of the

5:37 next 75 years of this century.

5:43 So with that being said, today on the show,

5:47 we are going to cover a book whose fictional narrative,

5:50 like I said, links to the book we covered in episode number 184, where we

5:54 talked about G.K. chesterton's the man who Was Thursday. You should

5:58 go check that book out and listen to that episode with ideas

6:02 we talked about in episode number 183 where we talked about, once

6:05 again, unreliable narrators like Harry

6:09 Lime in the Third man by Graham Greene.

6:13 Today we are going to glean what we can

6:17 from a very perplexing book on its face and

6:20 try to apply it to our real lived leadership lives

6:24 in this book. And you should be able to catch the COVID right there on

6:28 the video. And there it is.

6:31 Invitation to a Beheading by

6:35 Vladimir Nabokov.

6:39 Leaders, here's a caution for you.

6:45 Just illustrating absurdity is no longer enough

6:49 to jolt people out of their absurd behavior. We

6:52 need stronger medicine to match the disease

6:56 of the era we are in now.

7:02 And back for this episode today

7:06 from episode number 152 where we discussed the

7:10 Orwellian state of affairs laid out so brilliantly by George Orwell in

7:13 1984, is our co host today, Claire

7:17 Chandler. How you doing, Claire? How's it going?

7:21 I'm doing great. It's so great to be back here and

7:26 chatting with you about some of the great, the great literature of our

7:30 history. So I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.

7:35 So let's talk about Nabokov because we've, I mean we've, we've

7:39 discussed. This is the only time I'll mention it. We've discussed Lolita.

7:44 Sorry, not sorry. Right, right. And we'll, we're going to skip over that. You can

7:48 go listen to that episode. Like to hear that discussion there. And, and we've

7:52 discussed in 1884. I like to

7:56 kind of delve in a little bit to, to Nabokov here, kind of poke at

7:59 him a little bit in reading Invitation to

8:03 a Beheading. It's clearly not Lolita.

8:06 Right. And so what are some of the.

8:10 And we'll kind of talk about Nabokov as a writer. There's some ideas I have

8:14 about him. We don't need to go into his background. If you want to find

8:16 out more about that, you can either go listen to our introduction at Lolita where

8:19 we sort of did a deep dive into him, or you can go listen to

8:22 the shorts episode. I think it's number 217 from this

8:26 year where we talked about Tim Scholes and Gnostical turpitude,

8:30 tying ideas from east of Eden into Invitation to a

8:33 Beheading and laying the foundation

8:37 for the next episode. That where we're going to cover Fyodor Dostoevsky's

8:41 notes for Underground. Oh, yeah, we're doing all the heavy duties

8:45 in the end of the quarter here, folks, so

8:49 step right up.

8:53 So, yeah, Nabokov. Back to Nabokov. Invitation to bang. Like I said, it's

8:57 not Lolita. So what are some substantive differences

9:00 between the two texts? And what is. What is. What are the substantive ideas you

9:04 think, do you think, Claire, that Navikov is wrestling with. Wrestling

9:08 with here? Well, there's. There's

9:11 a lot, certainly. And I know you're going to get into a little bit of.

9:15 Of the background, the time in which he wrote this

9:19 book and his other novels. There are

9:22 a couple of themes that bubble up to the top

9:26 for me. One of which, of course, is

9:30 in this sort of theater of the absurd that he has built for us in

9:34 this prison. Is it real, is it imagined?

9:39 Is really why he is there in the first place, right?

9:42 This. This sort of made up crime of

9:45 gnostical turpitude, which I still don't quite grasp,

9:49 nor are we expected to, but there's this

9:53 wrestling between how do we maintain our own individuality

9:58 while the world rewards conformity. Right?

10:02 Or maybe says, you need to bring in your individual

10:06 personality because otherwise you are boring, you're not entertaining.

10:10 Would say, monsieur Pierre. And yet if I,

10:14 you know, if he demonstrates too much of that individual personality, it

10:17 veers off of this totalitarian idea of

10:22 what is proper. Right.

10:26 Reminiscent to me a little bit of the Stranger,

10:30 right? Camus, the Stranger, where he does not mourn.

10:34 It was that book, right, where he does not mourn the death of his mother

10:37 the way that society would have expected him

10:41 to. So there's a little bit of that. And then there's also, of course, the.

10:45 How do we truly discern between what is real and what is

10:48 imagined? How much of the prison, the walls, the

10:52 barriers, the stress, the strife are

10:57 fact versus something that we just sort

11:01 of conjure up in our own, you know, out of the ether of our own

11:04 anxiety and our own fear. So, yeah,

11:08 there's. There's a lot going on in that, in this, you know, relatively

11:12 short book, unlike Dostoevsky, which you have ahead of you.

11:16 But there's a lot. There's a lot there. There's a lot there for sure.

11:20 There's also the idea and, and I like how you sort of brought some of

11:24 those themes together, some things that even I didn't. I hadn't even picked up on

11:28 in my reading of it because I was so.

11:34 Flummox is probably not close enough to the word.

11:39 Every time I go into Nabokov and I'm

11:42 glad I'm going into him. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm going into him

11:45 now when I'm in my, like, late 40s, because

11:50 I'm a little too old to be seduced by the Kurt

11:53 Vonnegut, like, sort of, oh, isn't it cool

11:57 that everybody's lying kind of thing that you get into when you're, like, in high

12:00 school and a little bit into college when it's like, oh, I discovered that everybody's

12:03 lying in the world? Yeah. Okay, great, great big wolf here.

12:07 And I'm not. And I'm not saying, like, to be cynical or dismissive of it.

12:11 I'm saying at the certain developmental stages in our lives, certain

12:14 authors make more sense. There's a reason why we

12:18 haven't covered Vonnegut on this show. I don't, I don't know. I don't know

12:22 that that well. Anyway, there's a reason why we haven't covered Vonnegut on this show.

12:26 I think some people mature. I think you have to mature past certain,

12:30 certain authors. Right. And that's fine. Certain authors exist a certain

12:34 period of time for certain groups of, for certain groups of people.

12:38 Right. Nabokov, though,

12:43 this is not my second interaction with him.

12:47 And I got to admit, I, I,

12:51 I, I looked at it and I'm like, I don't know what's going on in

12:53 your, in your brain pan. Like, I, so I see the total, to your point,

12:57 I see the totalitarian thing here. Right.

13:01 And that is reflected in Abakov's life. So when I went back and looked at

13:04 his life, did a little bit more research on him, I mean, you know, he,

13:08 he was early to absurdism. He was

13:12 early to, like, the absurd nature of totalitarian societies in

13:15 1938, you know, coming up in,

13:19 in a Stalinist Russia where there were

13:23 secret police and gulags and everybody inside of the country knew it,

13:27 but the information was not going out to the broader, the broader

13:31 world population. And even if it was, it was 1938.

13:35 So we're knocking on the door of Hitler and we're knocking on the door of

13:38 World War II. So all of that needed

13:42 to be sort of negotiated in a geopolitical sense. And

13:46 Nabokov often said in interviews about this book

13:50 that he did not anticipate German fascism.

13:54 And so for him, the book stood in not as an

13:58 indictment of German fascism as a totalizing

14:01 geopolitical force, but communism as

14:05 a totalizing geopolitical force. But he would never say that out loud

14:09 because, you know, you gotta live right? You can't have the secret

14:13 police chasing you around Europe and Switzerland in America for, like, the next. Like,

14:17 for the rest of your life. Right.

14:21 But with that framing, with that thinking, I also got the

14:25 sense from reading the book, this was one of the things I held on to

14:28 solidly. And you could tell me if I'm maybe if I'm right or wrong.

14:33 He was obsessed with, at least in this book,

14:36 the dichotomies between what

14:40 Communism or Marxism promised and then the reality

14:44 that showed up. And I don't think he had a good handle on how

14:47 to deal with all that. And I think this book

14:51 was an attempt to get a handle on how to deal with that. Am I

14:55 reading. Do you think I'm reading that correctly? I mean, I

14:58 think that's absolutely valid. I do think that he, like a lot of

15:02 the other authors of that time and other times in

15:06 history where thoughts were regulated or

15:09 speech was punished, the great authors, this is their form

15:13 of rebellion, right? This is their form of speaking out in a way that is

15:17 somewhat. I don't want to say protected, but disguised.

15:21 Right. And it's. So. I think he lived in a time where he

15:25 didn't perhaps see German fascism, but he did

15:28 see what was coming, and the world was shifting in

15:32 ways that he wasn't totally cool with. And so he thought,

15:36 well, the more absurd I can make this story, the

15:40 more outside the bounds of reality, the safer

15:43 it is for me to be uber critical

15:47 of the jailers and of the sentence and of the crime.

15:51 Right, right. Well. And this book got passed around

15:54 first as samizdat, Right. Which is the Russian

15:58 term for. The Russian

16:02 term for the practice and actually the product

16:06 of sending around mimeograft, basically

16:10 mimeograph books at the state, if they got a hold of them, would kill you

16:13 for having. Right. And so samizdat was

16:16 revolutionary papers. It was anything that was outside of

16:20 Pravda, which was, of course, the Russian word for truth, Right. The official

16:24 organ of the Communist Party in. In. In the Soviet

16:28 Union. And so samizdat got passed around between people. Like,

16:31 literally talk about this with our episode on

16:36 Solzhenitsyn, right, where Gulag

16:40 Archipelago got passed around as Miami. A graph, a

16:43 mimeograph document that you had to pass from neighbor to neighbor by hand, and

16:47 you only pass it to people that you trusted, and that was it.

16:50 And if it got out of the neighbor's hand, everybody was gonna be like, nope,

16:53 not mine, you know, and. And back away.

16:57 If I remember correctly, in my research into the. The book and how it came

17:00 together. This was also passed around as part of that

17:03 samizdat, sort of underground

17:07 publishing scheme that was going on in Russia,

17:14 at least at first. That's how it was first published. And then when he escaped

17:17 and got out of the Soviet Union and came to the west,

17:23 he managed to go ahead and publish it sort of more openly and

17:27 collect everything together and publish it more openly.

17:32 And that idea of sort of subversively passing around

17:36 ideas. Oh,

17:40 it's not necessarily a theme that runs through the book.

17:44 I don't sense that. You talked about.

17:51 Whatever his name is, the guy with the P. And. And I can't really get.

17:54 Okay, you got to explain that character. Me, I could not get a handle on

17:58 him. Like, what is his role there? Is he a. Is

18:01 he a prisoner? Or is he just, like, a MacGuffin for,

18:05 like, other things? Well,

18:09 we're going to get into that with the whole second Cincinnatus, don't

18:13 forget, because there's this shadow, one of him, too,

18:17 that. The. The Pierre guy. Just for simplicity, let's just call him

18:20 that. It took me a beat

18:24 to understand what the heck he was, too.

18:28 Both within the story as the character, and then also

18:33 from the writer's perspective. He was a vehicle for something. Right. Because

18:38 everything's a device. And so for him to just sort

18:41 of show up billed as a fellow

18:45 prisoner, but clearly with more.

18:49 With more freedoms than Cincinnatus enjoyed, or

18:53 at least he took advantage of more

18:57 freedoms that were offered to him than Cincinnatus did, because sometimes

19:00 Cincinnatus was allowed out of his cell and he could go for a walk and

19:03 he could play with the daughter of the warden. I mean, what was

19:07 that about? Right? Was she real? Was she imaginary? So,

19:11 yeah, and then for Pierre to come around and all of a sudden go, oh,

19:15 I'm the one who's gonna separate your head from your body tomorrow. So I wanted

19:19 to, you know, get to know you. It's like. Right,

19:22 yeah, yeah. Again, absurd, right? It's all.

19:26 It's. And it's like, as he's. As he's sitting there writing that,

19:31 do you think he kind of, like, would. Would write a section, walk away,

19:34 have some vodka, and then go, how do I even amp up

19:38 the absurdity of what I just wrote? Because I don't think it's absurd enough

19:42 yet. Oh, so I don't think

19:45 Nabokov needed vodka. Oh, yeah. So

19:49 it's certainly Stephen King. Like, all of his plots come out of dreams he has.

19:53 Yeah, that's scary, too. Yes. I think. I think

19:57 Nabokov is one of those. Was one of those

20:00 literary novelists whose brain was just

20:04 that way. He didn't need another.

20:08 I'll put him. Another person who I would say is. Was kind of wired that

20:11 way was Charles Bukowski and.

20:17 Or. Or. Or maybe a More. A more popular title because he was a

20:20 poet. Was more of a poet. Hunter Thompson.

20:24 Right. He. He was. Now. Now, people.

20:28 Here's the interesting thing. People confuse the absurdity of how a

20:32 person's brain, a creative brain, works with the creativity. Absurdity, the

20:35 creativity of how a brain works. They confuse that with a lack

20:39 of discipline, which is why Stephen King's book. I'm glad you brought up Stephen King.

20:43 Stephen King's book on writing is one of the greatest books about writing ever written.

20:47 Because just like Hunter S. Thompson, who had a

20:50 ridiculous discipline that he stuck to with writing,

20:55 Stephen King has a ridiculous discipline that he sticks to with writing

21:00 that he then filters, like, you know, the cocaine fuel. Tommyknockers through,

21:04 you know, or whatever. Right. You know, and

21:08 that book is wild, by the way. We'll never cover that book on the show.

21:10 This is not. This is not the show for that. But Tommy Knockers is a

21:13 wild book if you ever have an opportunity to pick it up. Nabokov,

21:17 I think, was the same thing. He had a. And here's. Here's how I

21:21 kind of get a sense or I kind of know that he had that discipline.

21:26 You don't go out and become a la doctor with the

21:29 butterfly stuff. Yeah. Without having some, like,

21:32 discipline inside of you. Yeah. That's not an

21:36 accidental sort of. I'm just gonna trip and fall over this hobby kind of

21:40 thing. Yeah, that's not a casual hobby. Yeah, that's not a casual hobby. That is

21:43 a. That is a thing that comes directly out of who he

21:47 is as a person. And so I absolutely think he was

21:51 disciplined in his writing and in his production.

21:55 And he came from a time when writers didn't talk about writing because

21:59 they didn't want to ruin the magic of it. It's only the post World War

22:01 II writers that talk about writing, because now everybody wants to know about

22:05 process and wants to get into the thing, wants to figure out how the magician

22:08 does the tricks. Pre World War II writers, or I would say

22:12 writers up until World War II,

22:17 they didn't really explain the magic. They're just like, I don't know, I sit down

22:20 and stuff comes out of me. Yeah. But, you know, I think you're spot on

22:24 in terms of speaking to his discipline. Because while the

22:28 story is absurd and like you, I kept

22:32 getting through certain points of it and going, why did we agree to cover this

22:35 book? Like what it. It. Because it's, it is so

22:39 to say, bizarrely absurd, I realize is redundant, but it is bizarrely

22:43 absurd. But I'm also thinking the

22:47 original was written in Russian. Yes. Right. Yes.

22:52 The translation into English, which is the version that,

22:56 that we read. I also have to wonder, just sitting here kind of

22:59 unpacking it with you, did it become more absurd in the translation?

23:03 Less absurd? Like, is it true to the absurdity in

23:07 the original? Because there were a couple of very, very few, but there were a

23:10 couple of phrases in the book that he kept

23:14 in Russian because they didn't, they don't translate. Right. It was

23:18 like one or two. They were sort of throw, throwaway lines for us because I

23:21 don't know about you, but I don't speak Russian. But like they, they defied

23:25 translation. Right. So I just, it's just another

23:29 layer of, of nuance when you think about, when you, when you are

23:32 setting about and your job is to translate

23:36 this absurd book into English and,

23:40 you know, keep it true to the original absurdity. That was the

23:44 Russian original. Tall task. Well, it's a

23:47 tall task. Yeah. And, and we don't, we never talked about this on the show,

23:51 but this is a good opportunity to sort of unplug or not unplug, but

23:54 unpack this for a couple of minutes. So,

23:59 so we're going to read Dostoyevsky. And Dostoyevsky made his money

24:03 before he sort of, not sort of, before he started creating novels and writing

24:07 novels. He made a ton of his money

24:11 translating novels from Russian into various

24:14 other languages. And so he sort of walked that divide.

24:18 Nabokov, if I remember correctly,

24:22 translated his own novels right. Into, into

24:25 other languages. He was also, he also spoke, you know, French

24:29 and I believe German

24:33 as well as Russian and of course English. Right. So he's operating in,

24:37 in four different languages. And the dynamic

24:40 of translation and the

24:44 dynamic of different languages

24:48 saying or being able to express the same

24:52 human idea but in a different kind of way

24:56 is something to your point that I think we,

25:00 I think we devalue very much in the west because English has just sort of

25:03 won the day and sort of in business and all my

25:07 French speaking listeners, I apologize, like, but

25:12 sorry. So, so, but, but if

25:15 we want to do business, even with the Chinese, if you want to do business,

25:18 we're all going to speak English, right? So

25:22 there's a certain level of cultural and

25:25 Civilizational hubris that comes along with that, that's just sort of baked into

25:29 the pie. And so coming from Russian

25:33 into English and realizing that

25:37 even though both, there's. There's

25:41 no fundamental difference between people who speak English and people who speak Russian at a

25:44 human level, it's just a difference in language, how you express

25:47 absurdity. But the way in which the depth of that

25:51 absurdity is expressed is going to subtly shift in

25:54 language. And a translator is going to. A translator who doesn't. Either doesn't know anything

25:58 about Russian or doesn't know anything about English is going to miss that. But if

26:01 you do know that, you are going to struggle. Like I think

26:04 of if I'm trying to get instruction in whatever

26:08 I'm doing in jiu jitsu, this is the first time I'll bring it up and

26:10 the last time I'll bring it up, because I gotta bring it up once a

26:12 show. But if I'm doing jiu jitsu and I'm doing something, and one of my

26:16 instructors speaks. Is Brazilian and speaks Portuguese, I could.

26:19 I could watch him get frustrated explaining a

26:23 concept in English. And finally he just defaults to, we'll just do this. I don't

26:27 know you, ain't you. He always says, you Americans, you have to name everything. And

26:30 he just walks away like everything is in your name. Just do this thing.

26:35 Yeah, right. Because it doesn't. There's no

26:39 parallel in Portuguese, right. For what we're doing

26:42 here in. In. In English, right.

26:46 Even though the body is doing. There's no difference between a Portuguese, a Brazilian

26:50 body and an American body. There's no difference. Same. Come on. It's like

26:53 we're Martians or whatever. But there's no way to sort of get that across,

26:57 right. The depth of that. So I think it's the same thing with, with the.

27:01 With this. With this book and with the translation.

27:05 One other thing, and I'm reading Les Miserables right now

27:09 because we're going to cover that in June, and I would love to read Les

27:12 Miserables in the original French. Actually, the person who I have coming on,

27:15 she's probably going to outdo me and she's going to read it in the original

27:18 French because she's. She's a huge Francophile and she'll so

27:21 comfort of the original French and I will be at a significant disadvantage. But

27:25 that's fine. She will beat me on my

27:29 own show. But, but. But

27:33 one of the things that strikes me is I wish I

27:36 knew Russian because I think I would get something more

27:40 out of the book. I think it would probably make more sense if I read

27:43 it in the original Russian. And then the little

27:47 French pieces that, that are dropped into invitation to a beheading

27:51 would actually make more sense as well, because I'm reading this, this whole entire

27:54 sentence in English. And then there's this little French piece here, and I

27:58 don't know about you, but I don't go to Google Translate and then, like, put

28:01 the French piece in. I don't, I don't have time. I just got to read

28:03 the book. Right. So I just sort of live with that, not knowing. I live

28:07 with that little hole in the boat. And there was a lot of that here

28:10 in this book. Right. And he did. And this will be the only time I

28:13 reference Lolita. He did that a lot in that book. I as well,

28:18 you know, where I, I, I took high school French. So I, I knew enough

28:21 of the words to be dangerous, get the general sense. And then, like you, I

28:24 just, you know, moved on and just assumed it wasn't going to materially

28:28 affect my understanding of the book. Right, right.

28:33 So it really didn't. But it really didn't. Y.

28:42 There's another thing here that we'll go, we'll go back to the book, another

28:46 idea here that I want to lay the foundation for and we'll talk about today.

28:50 So does Navakov believe

28:54 that people can be decent? I'll frame it as

28:57 a question.

29:04 I'm going to say yes, because.

29:14 Two bits of evidence that I would say to back that up. One is,

29:18 despite the fact that he was imprisoned throughout the entire book,

29:22 there was a common thread of frustration,

29:26 but I didn't really pick up on a sense of

29:30 hopelessness. Right. There was

29:33 frustration, less so about his quarters

29:37 and more so about the people who kept visiting him and interrupting

29:41 his solitary confinement, essentially. Right.

29:45 And then, of course, the ending, which I know we'll get to, and I don't

29:48 necessarily want to spoil the ending for, you know, the audience, but, you

29:52 know, the fact that the, the ending was, if not

29:55 redemptive, at least not final. And

29:59 so I do think, you know, and then there's other threads, like this, this

30:03 Pierre guy who was like, you know, by all, by all accounts,

30:07 he was the executioner, but he wanted to make sure that Cincinnatus had a good,

30:10 good time right up until the final cutting.

30:14 Right. I mean, like, I wanted him to be well fed, and how could you

30:17 complain about this meal? And we, you know, we ate so well. And then, of

30:20 course, later, Pierre had some indigestion to deal with, but regardless.

30:24 Right, so. So I do think that that

30:27 would suggest that Nabokov is, at

30:31 heart. I wouldn't call him an

30:34 optimist. I don't think we would call him that, but let's not go that far.

30:38 He generally believes that most

30:42 people are inherently good.

30:46 Okay, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to

30:50 pick up on something here. By the way, there's a bunch of other characters in

30:52 here, too. It's not just Cincinnatus and Pierce.

30:56 That's also. There's Rhodian, who. So

31:00 Rodion is the jailer. Right. I had

31:04 a little bit of trouble following that bouncing ball that. That kept, like, sliding off

31:07 of the glass. But Rhode on is the jailer. And then

31:12 you have the other character in here who also has an R name. Right.

31:16 Rodrigo. Right. I'm pronouncing that correctly.

31:20 Who or not Rodrigo. Sorry,

31:23 Rodriguez. Rodrigue. Rose. Rig was the.

31:27 Was the. The librarian. Correct.

31:31 Who kept bringing him back? He's a librarian. Yeah, probably. Yes, yes. I don't

31:35 know. There were too many. There were too many. There weren't nearly as many names

31:38 as in a dusty Epson novel, but there were a lot of names. No, no,

31:41 not the Librarian. He was the prison doctor. That's right. Rodriguez was the prison doctor.

31:44 That's right. Yes, yes, yes. And then the librarian

31:48 sort of just. I don't think he had a name. He didn't have a name?

31:51 No, no, the librarian didn't have name. The Library just comes in and out, like,

31:54 delivering the magazines and being bothered that he's being bothered. And they just.

31:58 Right. He's. He's Brooks from Shawshank. Absolutely. Yeah.

32:03 Ah. I would not have drawn that parallel, but yes. Yes, he is.

32:07 Yes, he is. Oh, my gosh. Oh, and let's. One

32:11 last thing before I go back to the book. So, Cincinnatus. Right.

32:15 The name Cincinnatus comes from the. No,

32:19 Greek. Is it Greek? No, Roman. Right. Roman legend

32:23 of. Yes, it's Roman. The Roman legend of

32:26 Cincinnatus. Who was. I'll just give a very

32:30 brief overview. You can go Wikipedia more of this. And I

32:34 had to Wikipedia just to be sure what I was like remembering.

32:37 But Cincinnatus was a farmer

32:41 in the Roman Republic who was invited in

32:45 by the Senate, or invited and petitioned by

32:49 the Senate. The Roman Senate, when Rome was still a republic,

32:53 to. To basically take control of Rome and become

32:57 a dictator in order to defeat an invading

33:01 army from the outside. I can't remember who it was. It might have been The

33:03 Persians or one of those other invading armies. Anyway, so Cincinnatus comes

33:07 in, he takes on the mantle of authority from.

33:11 From the. From the Senate, becomes a dictator,

33:15 marshals the Roman city state, marshals all the forces,

33:21 defeats the invading barbarian hordes, and then. And this is the

33:24 thing that makes Cincinnatus so interesting, then goes back to the

33:28 Senate and basically says, I don't want to be dictator anymore. You all

33:32 have a good day. Lays down his power and leaves, sort of

33:36 walks out the door. Mic drop, I'm finished. Goes back to his farm

33:39 and. And in the. In the legend, if I remember correctly, and those

33:43 of you who are listening will correct me if I. If I don't remember correctly,

33:48 but dies behind his plow, not pursuing any. Any power.

33:52 And. And Cincinnatus is used as a. As a

33:57 sort of an avatar for the individual who

34:01 comes in, is offered dictatorial

34:05 power. Right. Uses that power

34:09 not to his own ends, but to service the city state or to service the

34:12 populi vox. Populi. Right. And then. And

34:16 then steps back and steps away from that.

34:20 The usual parallels, by the way, in the American Republic

34:24 are to, of course, George Washington,

34:28 who didn't want to be president and didn't want to be king

34:32 either, he just wanted to go back to Mount Vernon to be left alone, which

34:35 is kind of amazing. And who put down power when he could have actually

34:38 been a king and people would have. Would have been fine

34:42 with that at that time, but it would have set a terrible precedent for the

34:45 future of the American Republic.

34:49 So I say all that to say it's interesting that the prisoner's name who

34:53 is due for execution is

34:56 Cincinnatus. I do not think that that is an accidental

35:00 pick that Nabokov had for that name and for that character.

35:04 And I'm still not clear from reading the text why

35:08 he picked it. Like, what the subtle jab is

35:12 he's making at the Russian Communists there, because

35:16 I think it is a jab at the communists, but I'm not quite sure where

35:18 the jab goes in Russian. Right. I just know it's there.

35:23 Yeah, yeah, that's. That's interesting. And you're going to. You're going to

35:27 hate me for the commercial parallel, but, you know, it's sort of the

35:30 alternative ending to Gladiator. Right. Where he

35:34 had ultimate power and he conquered the barbarian horde and wanted to

35:38 just go back to his farm and turn the power over to the Senate. Right.

35:42 Would have been a completely different movie. Yeah, it's interesting. I.

35:45 So you did more research on that than. Than I did. I

35:49 figured, okay, Cincinnatus, Unusual name. Did it for a reason, and then I

35:53 just accepted it. Yeah.

35:57 I'm struggling to understand the parallel between that name, which I

36:00 absolutely agree with you. He chose with intention

36:05 and what that message,

36:08 subtle as it might be, was to

36:12 the communists of the time. Interesting. Yeah.

36:16 And I wonder if it was a message that

36:19 the. I wonder if it was a message about

36:23 dictatorship and. And

36:26 totalizing power. And I wonder if it was a

36:30 message to the readers and less to the party members, because the party members

36:33 wouldn't. While they were aware of. Of samizdat, they

36:37 weren't like, trying to stop it because they didn't think it had any power. Right.

36:42 So it's like, I think of the eye of Sauron in Lord of

36:46 the Rings. Right? The eye that searches for everything and misses

36:49 the smallest thing. Because of course.

36:56 And it is a totalizing eye. It always is.

37:01 But it's interesting too, because you're parallel about

37:05 the war of Cincinnatus.

37:09 Would you characterize this Cincinnatus as a hero? Because that, you know, the

37:13 Roman one clearly was.

37:20 Right. Because a lot of protagonists are heroes.

37:24 They're heroic, they do something. They conquer

37:28 evil. They, you know, they defeat a global enemy, whatever it

37:32 is. We don't have that here.

37:35 So that's a good question. And this is a little bit far

37:39 afield from where we are today, but that's okay. So

37:45 one of the things that I'm. I'm involved in a project

37:49 in another area of my. My work life

37:53 where we are. I'm working with a group of people

37:56 to

38:01 bring in a professional, an ensconcer

38:04 professional in an academic institution who has

38:08 spent 25 years of his career

38:13 working on and delivering on.

38:17 Not delivering on, but delivering the ideas that are embedded in

38:21 Jungian myth to. And Jungian myth and mythological

38:25 structures to people who do not have a story structure in

38:28 postmodern America, and that's vague enough to not be

38:32 specific and specific enough to get to the idea of where it is. I want

38:35 to go with this idea. Right. And one of the things that this individual, this

38:39 professional points out, who we are working with on this project, is that

38:43 everybody has a myth and everybody has a hero's journey. That's what

38:46 Jung would say, but that not everybody

38:50 knows either knows what their myth is, which is

38:54 true. And if they do know what their

38:57 myth is, most people are not aware of where they are on their

39:01 hero's journey. Now, I said all that to say this.

39:06 I'm not Quite sure Cincinnatus is on a hero's

39:09 journey, because in myths, depending upon which

39:13 myth you read, while we can look at all of

39:17 the journeys as heroes. Journeys. Most characters in myths are on

39:20 their own journeys that all intersect with the main hero's journey.

39:24 So there's the journey that the women may be on in the myth were referenced.

39:28 There's the journey that the. The gods are on in the

39:32 myth, and then, of course, there's the journey that the villain is

39:35 on in the myth. Now, the professional I'm working with would,

39:39 if he were here, he would probably say they're all heroes journeys. And just

39:42 that's. That's what Young would say. Okay, Perhaps. I think that

39:46 those are distinctive journeys, and I think that Cincinnatus is not on a

39:50 hero's journey, but he's on an absurdist journey

39:54 which. Which mirrors the. The. The

39:57 hero's journey, but it's a distorted funhouse mirror of

40:01 that journey. Because I don't think Nabokov. This gets back to my idea.

40:05 Looping it back now. This gets back to my question about decency.

40:09 I think that Nabokov thought that

40:14 this is not me being influenced by Lolita, although it does show up in. In

40:18 that book quite a bit, and a number of other books that he wrote, too.

40:22 I don't think. I think he was skeptical about human decency.

40:26 I don't think he believed human beings could be decent.

40:30 I think he thought that.

40:35 I don't think that he thought human beings could arise. Could rise. Could.

40:38 Could. Could rise above banality and nihilism and absurdity.

40:42 Like. Like Camus. This is why one of the reasons I struggle with Camus, because

40:46 Camus, at the end of the day, his only solution to the absurdity

40:50 problem, and we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but his only

40:52 solution to the absurdity problem was eat, drink and be merry and let's crash my

40:55 car, you know, in France somewhere. Like, that's not a solution,

40:59 Albert. May I call you Albert? I'm going to call you Albert. Come on.

41:03 Like that's not a solution. Right? So.

41:07 But I think. I think that struggle

41:12 begins when you don't see people being decent

41:15 and when you live in a society. And Nabokov had to add far more,

41:19 I think, of a permission slip

41:23 to be skeptical of human decency than Camus did,

41:27 even in spite of seeing everything with World War II. Still more of a

41:31 precious slip than Camus did, because Nabokov was in a

41:35 society where everybody lied and everybody knew everybody

41:39 was Lying. And the liars knew. Everybody knew that everybody

41:42 was lying. And so you're in this weird panopticon of

41:46 lies. And the person who is going to be the

41:50 outlier in that, as Solzhenitsyn would say, would be the person who dares to

41:53 tell the truth. And that's maybe who

41:57 Cincinnatus is, the person who dares to tell the truth.

42:04 So not a hero, just in a funhouse mirror.

42:08 Yeah, sure. And you know, and the other thing I. I think about

42:12 is, you know, to your colleague's point that

42:16 everyone is on a hero's journey,

42:20 it. It may just be the case that Nabokov chose not

42:23 to tell us that point. Portion of Cincinnatus life. We don't know

42:27 that much about his life prior to his sentencing.

42:31 Correct. Right. We know what his wife was up to.

42:35 She's perhaps the only other one who was telling the truth throughout because she

42:39 didn't really make a secret of the fact that she was

42:43 not terribly faithful to the guy. Right. But we don't really

42:47 know much of it. So it's sort of that unanswered question

42:51 also. Also of maybe he was a hero prior to being

42:54 sentenced. And we just don't know that part because Nabokov chose a portion of

42:58 his life that came after that.

43:02 Or. Or. Or maybe comes before that, because as I

43:06 said, the ending is not a final ending. Well, and his mother shows up.

43:10 I don't know if you remember this. I do.

43:13 And I'm like, oh, so Mom's gonna show up and we're gonna have a bit

43:17 of dramatic. I mean, can we. Can we just call her a drama queen?

43:21 That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I've been thinking a lot

43:25 about family lately and just kind of goes through

43:29 things in my own head. Not about my own family, but just families in general.

43:32 And it's just. It's amazing how people show up in families. It's

43:36 just. It's amazing, you know, and that

43:39 in and of itself is an absurdity.

43:43 Again, the idea that it's not just lies that

43:47 impact the top of the state, but the line goes all the way down

43:51 to the substrate of even who the individual is. It

43:55 poisons the well all the way down. And

43:58 Nabokov was early, I think, in invitation to a beheading,

44:02 to an idea that Solzhenitsyn fully developed law and fully

44:06 developed out later on in Gulag Archipelago.

44:10 And these Russian writers were inside of. They were inside of a nightmare.

44:14 Bulgagov is another one. Like, they were just inside of a nightmare

44:17 where, like in the Master of the Margarita, right? Where

44:21 Mikhail Buglecog, where, you know, the devil shows up, but no

44:25 one recognizes him. Wow. I haven't thought about that book. I did read

44:29 it, but it was decades ago. Yeah,

44:33 it's. It's. The Russian writers of the

44:37 20th century were dealing with a hell of a thing. Yeah. And they didn't.

44:41 They didn't have a lot of good. Have a lot of good

44:45 frameworks because the hero's journey, the hero, the

44:48 myths got smashed, right. And the people got smashed.

44:52 And so how do you. How do you

44:55 rebuild in a time when all of that. And it's not just the

44:59 spiritual infrastructure and not just the economic infrastructure, but the

45:02 psychological infrastructure and the physical infrastructure is all just.

45:07 All just wrecked, just wrecked by

45:10 people who, by the way, you know,

45:14 believed, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov Lenin did,

45:18 that in order to build a better society, you gotta break a few eggs.

45:22 Yeah, well. And just as I'm listening to

45:26 you take me through that, I think back to

45:31 our core protagonist, hero or non hero,

45:35 Cincinnatus, who nothing in the book is as. Is

45:38 what it seems, right? And

45:42 you think about the tap, tap, tap, and the digging

45:46 going on at night, and he doesn't know what that is, and he doesn't know

45:50 who it is. And out pops our buddy Pierre again.

45:54 And he's dug a tunnel, or maybe it was always there

45:58 that has he. He had just gotten there,

46:02 right. A matter of days ago. Could be weeks, I don't know. Because time is

46:05 not terribly, you know, predictable in this book either.

46:09 And he leads him back through the tunnel through a series of dead ends and

46:13 wrong turns, and, you know, finally into his

46:16 cell, and they have a nice evening, and then he has to go find his

46:19 way back out. And then he takes a wrong turn again, and he

46:23 finds himself on the outside of the walls of the fortress.

46:27 And then he meets up again with Emmy. What was the young girl? Emma.

46:31 Yeah, Emma. Emma, Emmy. It was Emmy. Yes. And

46:35 he allows her to lead him right back into the dining room where

46:39 his captors are enjoying their tea or their dinner.

46:42 So there's this. Nothing is what it seems. And throughout

46:46 the book, he continues to be led by false leaders,

46:50 by people who are. Who are trying to

46:56 not lead him astray, lead him back to

47:00 the path that they want him to be on.

47:05 I think that is an important

47:08 idea right there, Claire, that you brought up, that. That idea of

47:12 being led by false leaders. I think. I think you're onto

47:16 something. There. I think that's, I think that's skip toward when we get

47:20 to leadership. I'm getting older and senile Hassan, and if I

47:23 don't say it when it comes to me, I'm going to lose the thread. So

47:27 yeah, it's okay. The threads. Are we going to talk about the spider at some

47:29 point? Yes, we'll talk about the spider. Okay, I'm going to get to the spider.

47:33 This is your show. You go, where are we going next? I'm going to, I'm

47:36 going to tie the spider into the, the visit

47:40 from the family. Because this is one of the more important, this is one of

47:44 the more important things in the book. So let me, let me pick up with

47:45 the invitation to be heading once again, we're going to jump around in this book.

47:48 It is still under copyright to Nabokov's estate.

47:53 While I don't think he would have a problem with any of this, the estate

47:56 might have, might struggle a little bit with it. So we are going to just

47:59 pull some things out here and there. But I'm going to go to

48:02 chapter nine in Invitation to a Beheading.

48:06 And this is when Cincinnatus's family

48:11 randomly shows up.

48:15 I'm going to start with this. And again. The day

48:19 began with a din of voices. Rhodion was gloomily giving

48:22 instructions and three other attendants were assisting him. The entire family of

48:26 Martha had arrived for the interview, bringing with them all their

48:29 furniture. Not thus, not thus had he imagined this long

48:33 awaited meeting. How they all lumbered in. Martha's aged father

48:37 with his huge bald head and bags under his eyes and the rubbery tap of

48:39 his black cane. Martha's brothers, identical twins, except that one had a golden

48:43 mustache and the other a pitch black one. Martha's maternal grandparents, so old that

48:47 one could already see through them. Three

48:51 vivacious female cousins who, however, were not admitted for some reason. At the last

48:54 minute, Martha's children, lame Diomedan and

48:58 obese little Pauline. At last, Martha herself,

49:02 wearing her best black dress with a velvet ribbon around her cold white

49:05 neck and holding a hand mirror. A very proper young man with a

49:09 flawless profile was constantly at her side. So this

49:13 is the, this is the table that is set for this visit.

49:17 And then I'm going to jump to this. Meanwhile, furniture, household utensils,

49:20 even individual sections of walls continued to arrive. There came a

49:24 mirrored wardrobe bringing with it its own private reflection, namely a

49:28 corner of the connubial bedroom with a stripe of sun, a strip of sunlight across

49:31 the floor, a dropped glove and an open door in the distance,

49:35 a cheerless little tricycle with orthopedic attachments was rolled in. It was

49:39 followed by the inlaid table which had supported a flat garnet flacon and

49:43 a hairpin for the last 10 years. Martha sat down on her black

49:47 couch embroidered with roses. Then a

49:50 conversation just pops up because why not?

49:54 And the father in law is striking the floor with his

49:58 cane and. And yelling. Well, not yelling,

50:01 but berating Cincinnatus for some reason,

50:06 calling him, quote unquote, an insolent fellow. I am entitled to

50:10 expect from you, if only today, when you stand at death's door, a little respect

50:13 how you managed to get yourself on the block. I want an explanation from you.

50:17 How could you? How you dared. And then of course, it keeps going on with

50:20 the father in law. Martha is talking to a young

50:24 man in a low voice who apparently is her lover,

50:30 much to. Much to Cincinnatus's dismay. And

50:33 then, because I have animals at my house,

50:37 this little detail popped up to me, which I thought was interesting.

50:41 And I quote a black cat stretched, straining back, one hind

50:45 paw rubbing itself against Cincinnatus's leg, then was suddenly on the

50:48 sideboard and from there noiselessly leaped onto the shoulder of the

50:52 lawyer, who, having just tiptoed in, was sitting

50:55 in a corner on a plush hassock. He had a bad cold and

50:59 over a handkerchief held ready for use, was inspecting the assembled company and

51:03 the various household items that made the cell look like the site of an auction.

51:06 The cat startled him and he threw it off with a

51:09 convulsive movement.

51:14 C. Has a conversation with his brother in law, his father in law.

51:18 And then

51:23 Cincinnatus stood up, Rodion and another employee, looking at each

51:26 other in the eye grasp of the couch on which Martha was reclining, grunted, picked

51:30 it up and carried it toward the door. Goodbye, Goodbye. Martha called childishly,

51:34 swaying in time with the step of the porters. But suddenly she closed her eyes

51:37 and covered her face. Her escort walked solicitously behind, carrying

51:41 the black shawl he had picked up from the floor, a bouquet, his uniform cap

51:44 and a solitary glove. There was commotion all around.

51:48 Their father, breathing asthmatically, was overcoming the multi

51:52 segmented screen. The lawyer was offering everyone a vast sheet of

51:56 wrapping paper obtained from him by some unknown source. He was seen.

52:00 He was seen unsuccessfully attempting to wrap it in a bowl

52:03 containing a pale orange little fish and clouded water. Amid

52:07 the commotion, the ample wardrobe with its private reflection stood like a pregnant woman,

52:11 carefully holding and turning aside its glass belly so that no One would brush against

52:14 it. It was tilted backward and in a reeling hug, carried away.

52:18 And then. I'm going to skip down. Emmy unwillingly followed Rhodian as

52:22 he dragged her. Her eyes kept rolling back. Her shoulder straps slipped off, and now,

52:26 with a swinging motion, as though he were emptying a water bucket, he splashed her

52:29 out into the corridor. Yes, pausing. Yes, I said. He

52:33 splashed her out into the corridor. Back to the book. Then, still

52:36 muttering, he, meaning Rhodion, returned with a dustpan to pick up

52:40 the corpse of the cat that lay flat under a chair. The door

52:44 slammed with a crash. It was now hard to believe that in this

52:47 cell only a moment ago,

52:54 That held me up for two days, that entire chapter,

52:58 I pardon my use of the French, I did not know what the

53:02 hell to make of any of that.

53:08 It was like one long, protracted fever

53:11 dream where it just got

53:16 absurder and. Absurder. That's probably not the right word to the point

53:20 of stupidity. Where. And I think that was definitely a point where I was

53:23 reading through it and going, how much longer can this go on?

53:27 Is there a way to get out of this interview with you? Because if I

53:30 have to continue this story, I may, I may, I may grow

53:34 to resent you. But it's like. But these are the things that stretch us and

53:38 help us to grow so. And eventually it ended. Yeah, I was. I was

53:42 upset about the cat. I did not like the treatment of the cat. The cat

53:45 was the only one who acted like himself.

53:49 The cat was the only one that knew what the hell was going on. I

53:51 mean, he was just like, I'm. I have legal representation here.

53:55 The wife brings a date to an interview with her

53:59 condemned husband. Right. You know, again, being the

54:02 most transparent about her infidelity. So she was, like, the only

54:06 one there. Even though she came in with an elegant hand mirror and she's dressed

54:09 to the ninth. She was the only one who was completely open about who

54:13 she was. Right? Yeah, she's the only. She was the only

54:17 person actually being truthful out of that entire sequence. The

54:21 father in law, the grandparents, the cousin, the brother in law, even

54:24 Rhodian, the. The. The prison guard, right?

54:28 Like, coming in and out and moving things around. It kind of

54:32 reminded me a little bit of. For some reason, last week, not

54:36 last week, but the week before, I was goofing off at work, which,

54:39 you know, occasionally I do goof off at work. I am human, after all. So

54:43 I was goofing off at work and I was playing yakety

54:47 sax. That's what it was. The. The theme song from Benny Hill.

54:50 And, and this put me.

54:54 Yeah, see, when you put that as the soundtrack to all the. All

54:57 the. Wow. That's it. That's. That's. That's it.

55:01 It's. It's literally the end of Benny Hill. You remember that? I mean, you remember

55:05 he's running around with like. I didn't like the Benny Hill show either. For

55:09 this very reason. This very reason. Because

55:13 that was absurd. The scantily clad ladies all chasing him

55:17 around. What is happening? Yeah, that's in my head now.

55:21 That song is in my head. And the whole. Yeah, the whole intro and

55:24 outro. Wow. Yeah, well, well, we were.

55:28 We did reference Yakty Sax a couple weeks ago with the man who was Thursday.

55:31 We did me. And again, I guess I'll drop in that reference here too. I'll

55:35 run the soundtrack again. That's gonna be like your new thing.

55:39 You gotta have a sound button in your studio. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

55:43 Of all the absurdity throughout this book, that

55:46 was the most consolidated, intense burst of absurd.

55:50 Absurdity. Other than the final dinner.

55:53 Yes, other than the final dinner. But. But this was probably the.

55:57 The most absurd collection of absurdities in the entire

56:01 book. Well, and what does it say when like

56:05 even the family is. Is rendered absurd by the

56:09 actions of the state, Even the

56:12 relationships between the family are warped. Right. So the father in

56:16 law isn't saying anything that makes even any remote sense about

56:19 anything. He's. He seems to be more concerned with.

56:24 With the fact that Cincinnatus, which by the way,

56:27 interestingly enough, I'm now clicking on something. When you read

56:32 stories of Russian dissidents who, who escaped or folks who

56:36 escaped from Russia, one of the things that they would talk about is. And

56:39 I might be confusing this with something that I read, Solzhenitsyn or maybe even in

56:43 Bulkov. But. But you would read about

56:46 how people would actually be jealous

56:50 of family members and turn in family members if they had a larger apartment than

56:54 them. Right. So the entire

56:57 machine. Well, not the entire machine.

57:02 One of the pieces or the bits of fuel that

57:06 goes into a totalizing machine and the reason it makes

57:09 it work is

57:13 envy. And

57:16 envy is always about things. Jealousy is always about people in relationships. Just keep that

57:20 in mind. Those are distinctions with a difference that we need to understand. We're using

57:24 words. And envy of another person's

57:27 possessions obviously could easily slip over into

57:31 jealousy of a person's interpersonal relationships. This is why the,

57:34 the. This is why the two. The

57:38 two most perplexing commandments of The Ten Commandments, or thou shalt not covet

57:42 thy neighbor's wife, nor thy neighbor's husband. And

57:46 then it goes into the neighbor's possessions. There's a reason for that.

57:50 It's not an accident. Nope.

57:54 So and so when you eliminate that right and you

57:58 allow envy to be part of the fuel that drives the state,

58:03 it filters down into those interpersonal relationships. And you see that in the father in

58:07 law, he's not actually seeking to understand

58:11 what's happening with Cincinnatus. He wants to know why Cincinnati's got such a big

58:15 cell. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

58:19 and in their own way, his

58:23 family, mostly his in laws, turned him in as well.

58:26 Right. Because his criticisms, as well as

58:30 Martha's at the very end were, why don't you,

58:34 first of all, why can't you behave more like the rest of us?

58:38 And also, why don't you just own it, apologize for it, and throw

58:41 yourself on the mercy of the court, essentially?

58:45 Right. Why don't you conform? Because if you

58:48 conformed, you could get out of here, right?

58:56 Yeah, but I could just not conform and have a bigger cell.

59:00 So I think I'll hang out for a little bit. Which is. Which is, by

59:03 the way, since that's his response to this, I'll just sort of, you know, I'll

59:06 just. And. And look at the. Look at the very thorough cleaning job they

59:10 did for him when he was expecting, you know, the interviewer

59:15 to come in. Well, and maybe that's. And

59:18 I, I now about. I'm about to switch an idea here. So we just talked

59:22 about Hero's Journey, and I was like, well, maybe I said, you know, I took

59:24 the position that, you know, maybe he doesn't have a hero's journey. No, I think

59:28 the hero's journey is the journey towards. I'm now thinking the hero's journey

59:32 is the journey towards the beheading. That's spoiler alert. It's in

59:36 the title. But like, like, you know, I don't want to ruin the end for

59:39 you folks, but you've had many decades to read this, people, so

59:43 if we're spoiling the ending for you, really, it's your fault. Yeah, it's been around

59:46 for a while. It's. You can go get it. It's not. Not new,

59:50 but. But maybe that is the journey. The journey

59:53 is the journey. The hero's journey through,

59:57 to your point, the battle against conformity.

1:00:01 I. I had not seen it that way. And I think you're

1:00:05 right, because he could, at any time, according to various

1:00:08 visitors, have gotten on board with just

1:00:12 conforming, agreeing, being agreeable, being hospitable.

1:00:16 And he chose to stay individual and, and

1:00:20 be himself, even knowing that that

1:00:24 was going to secure his beheading at the end. Well,

1:00:28 and he's a better hero. Better hero. He's more heroic

1:00:32 than. What's his name in 1984.

1:00:38 The. The. The. The guy who basically gets brainwashed and tossed back into

1:00:42 the mix at the end of, at the end of 1984.

1:00:45 I can't remember the character, but yeah, because. Because he ultimately did

1:00:49 relent and just relented and just gave in. Or

1:00:54 I think of. I think of,

1:00:57 oh, who was it in that coupe in the Kubrick

1:01:01 movie? Yeah.

1:01:07 Clockwork Orange you're talking about. Yes, yes. Anthony Burgess. Yes, yes. Okay, so, so

1:01:11 Clockwork Orange, right, The character in Clockwork Orange that

1:01:15 he's forcibly submitted. Right. To.

1:01:19 To the state, right, in order to change him forcibly and

1:01:22 brainwash him forcibly into being a good citizen.

1:01:29 Cincinnatus. Doesn't, doesn't. He's like, no, you know what?

1:01:34 He takes the opposite tact. He says, no, you know what? I'm not a hero.

1:01:39 I don't want to be a hero. Don't look to me for anything heroic.

1:01:43 I'm just going to walk this out logically, because

1:01:47 walking in a logically is

1:01:51 more truthful than the

1:01:55 lie of conformity. And again,

1:01:59 to my point earlier, the person who has the most

1:02:02 power in a state where everyone lies from top to bottom

1:02:06 is the person who tells the truth, even if the truth means

1:02:10 being killed by the state. Which, by the way, is

1:02:13 a very. Oh, sorry, kids are gonna hit you with this. Sorry,

1:02:17 folks, gonna hit you with this. But, like, that's a very Christian martyr way of

1:02:21 looking at things.

1:02:26 That philosophy doesn't just come from nowhere. The philosophy just doesn't come from

1:02:29 nowhere. Yeah, so. So.

1:02:37 This book is about the geopolitical disaster. One of the things it's about is the

1:02:41 geopolitical disaster of communism. Right? And just

1:02:44 a massive, like, way, how do, how do you deal with that disaster? Right?

1:02:48 And you had Aldous Huxley and George Orwell who were trying to deal with it

1:02:51 from the West. And then of course, you have, you have

1:02:54 Naov in this book. I've already mentioned Solzhenitsyn and

1:02:58 Orwell, but also Milan Kadera, who wrote

1:03:02 A Bearable Lateness of Being and tattled on everybody and

1:03:05 then ran away to France, told on all of his enemies,

1:03:09 and then vac off Havel, who wrote the Power of the Powerless, which

1:03:13 we've Also covered on this. On this show.

1:03:22 Let's turn the corner to our more. Our more code contemporary times. I do

1:03:25 want to talk about the spider web in a minute here. But in

1:03:29 our contemporary times. And I did open

1:03:33 up this episode by saying that historians in the future, I do think, are

1:03:37 going to look at two or 300 years from now, after we're all long dead

1:03:40 and. And gone, they are going to look back at the

1:03:44 20th century and they're going to. I think.

1:03:48 I do. I think they're going to say, what was wrong

1:03:51 with those people? Like, what the

1:03:55 actual hell was going on with those people's

1:03:59 brains? Because everything

1:04:04 that we've accomplished technologically or

1:04:08 even at a leadership level, I wrote a blog post about this today.

1:04:13 We've taken practically, we've taken material reductionist

1:04:17 thinking to its logical conclusion. Everything can be

1:04:21 reduced to atoms or to how physics works.

1:04:24 Everything can be reduced to biochemical this and

1:04:28 biochemical that. The interaction

1:04:32 that you and I are having is mediated by technology. We're not even in the

1:04:35 same state, much less in the same time zone, and yet we can do this

1:04:39 quote, unquote, magic together. But the 20th

1:04:43 century has utterly failed. And now we're 25 years into the 21st

1:04:46 century and we are still utterly failing to provide

1:04:50 any sort of sense of cosmic meaning behind any of this.

1:04:55 Now, I do think we'll get out of the meaning crisis. I do think we

1:04:58 are going to find meaning. And that's part of the reason why I do this

1:05:00 show, is because part of this show is a search for meaning to go

1:05:04 into. Go into the books that have been written and

1:05:08 pull out what we can and provide meaning for leaders and provide meaning for

1:05:11 people. Because I do think the biggest crisis of our time is a meaning

1:05:15 crisis. And I wish

1:05:19 that more people would accept a Christian conception

1:05:22 of meaning. And there's a lot of water in the

1:05:26 pool in the other direction that's got to get either drained out

1:05:30 or replaced, right? Because absurdism and

1:05:33 nihilism and those kinds of things, existential dread, none of

1:05:37 that's going to provide meaning. And 300 years from now, people are going to wonder,

1:05:41 why did you have existential dread? You had everything you could possibly

1:05:45 materially wanted, yet you didn't know what it

1:05:49 meant, right?

1:05:52 Nabokov was on to this. So were the writers, the

1:05:56 Russian writers of the 20th century. They were on to the meaning

1:06:00 crisis. And that is the great crisis of our century.

1:06:08 God almighty. We're now in a space where we have unserious people,

1:06:12 like in 20, 26, we have unserious people running things. And I'm not just talking

1:06:16 at the political level and I'm not just talking about politics and political decisions. I'm

1:06:19 talking about people who are fundamentally lack seriousness in their roles. So for

1:06:23 instance, I'll use an example. We have members of school

1:06:26 boards who are so worried about Facebook posts

1:06:30 threatening their lives that they hire private security

1:06:34 to walk around their local communities.

1:06:42 I'm going to draw a parallel in my local community, where I

1:06:46 live. We're, we're one of the local communities in,

1:06:50 in the country that is where, where there are, where there are fights going on

1:06:53 right now about data centers. Where do data centers go in for

1:06:57 AI? Do they go in, do they not go in? What does that mean for

1:07:00 water, energy consumption, things like this? Right. And because

1:07:04 we've outsourced sourced our emotional absurdity to Facebook and other

1:07:07 social media platforms, the mayor of my

1:07:11 town, who's an 80 year old former entrepreneur who didn't have to do

1:07:15 the job of being mayor at all, he could have just

1:07:18 stayed retired, is lambasted left and right

1:07:22 as if he's, pardon my use of the term, as if he's Donald Trump

1:07:27 and he's not.

1:07:33 The other day I was walking down on the street going to get lunch or

1:07:36 whatever. I happened to see him and I had a nice 10 minute long

1:07:40 conversation with him. And guess what? It wasn't

1:07:43 absurd, it wasn't nihilistic, it wasn't

1:07:47 existential. Although he did ask me a question about

1:07:51 how do we actually get people to not be so afraid of

1:07:54 change. He's 80 and he's asking me this

1:07:58 question. And so we're exploring ideas while we're sitting

1:08:02 there. That's local politics, that's

1:08:05 localized all the way down to something that's meaningful. Yeah,

1:08:09 but what we've done with our technology is we've

1:08:12 ramped up the absurdity and the unseriousness and

1:08:16 we still don't know what it means. What does it mean

1:08:20 to have a school board person who takes something on social media

1:08:24 from some random person they've never met in their community so seriously that they think

1:08:27 they're going to. Or, or even worse, even

1:08:31 worse. We have people who pretend to be serious and put

1:08:34 on the language of seriousness, but their behavior, their

1:08:38 actual lived behavior is just as absurd as anything, an invitation to

1:08:42 a beheading. And we can all name names and we can all give examples,

1:08:46 not just nationally, but also locally, also in our,

1:08:50 in our civic life, in our social life, in our government. This is the

1:08:53 Challenge right Now, the early 21st century is how do we walk the line between

1:08:57 work because we're past absurdity, now we're into unseriousness, just people who are

1:09:01 fundamentally unserious. Right. About fixing

1:09:04 problems or about proposing solutions. This is

1:09:08 the question in the, in leadership, in all spheres eventually

1:09:12 descends into absurdity on a long enough timeline.

1:09:16 How do we walk the tightrope as leaders between absurdity

1:09:20 and seriousness? Because we're in a seriousness crisis too, along with the

1:09:23 meaning crisis. But yeah, how do we do that?

1:09:28 You know, one of the things that I try

1:09:32 to, if not remember,

1:09:36 at least convince myself of is we are not the

1:09:40 only generation and we are not the only, only point in the

1:09:44 quote unquote evolution, which implies forward progress.

1:09:47 But it doesn't always happen

1:09:52 and we're talking about it now. I think one of the reasons that you

1:09:56 pull forward into our modern times,

1:10:01 these great books of decades and centuries ago,

1:10:05 is for this very moment, this question you just asked, asked

1:10:09 because as absurd as the times we are living in

1:10:12 now. And you just painted the picture of the absurdity.

1:10:16 This is not the first iteration of that in human history.

1:10:20 Right, Right. It feels like that

1:10:24 because we are, we are by definition self centered.

1:10:28 And so we think, well, surely even totalitarianism,

1:10:32 Communism, Marxism, right? Nazi

1:10:35 Germany, surely they had to be serious people there. Well, not only that,

1:10:39 but you know, they, they had it easy compared to. If you've seen the knuckleheads

1:10:43 run in the world net like it. That has always been

1:10:46 true. But this is the reality we live in now. And I, and I

1:10:50 have to say that out loud because I have to, I have to believe that

1:10:54 just like they got through that, not unscathed.

1:10:58 We have to get through this. We have to

1:11:01 somehow welcome back the people

1:11:05 that are done drinking the Kool aid of the truth

1:11:09 that they are told is truth. And they go, well, that's easier than me finding

1:11:12 that out or thinking for myself or having serious conversations or having serious

1:11:16 thoughts. I think one of

1:11:20 the things that makes it so difficult to be a leader right now and a

1:11:23 true leader, not someone who goes around and says that they're a leader because they've

1:11:26 been granted people power they probably did not earn. But a true

1:11:30 leader is they have to somehow,

1:11:35 which gets to the heart of your question, help

1:11:38 navigate the people trying to follow them,

1:11:42 the business are trying to run and themselves

1:11:47 toward a clearer, sharper, brighter, achievable horizon

1:11:50 somehow. And the problem with their navigating is

1:11:54 on top of everything else that leaders have always had to Deal with.

1:11:58 There's all this noise. There's all of this

1:12:01 bombardment of 24. 7 news cycle

1:12:05 news in air quotes, social media,

1:12:09 you mentioned AI. We haven't even scratched the surface of what that

1:12:13 has introduced where every wall, everything that's

1:12:17 plugged in is listening and feeding what you

1:12:20 consume, right? On your smart TVs, your social

1:12:24 feeds, your email sidebars, all the things.

1:12:27 And so there's all this noise.

1:12:31 And I think, you know, part of. And I'm going to bring

1:12:35 it back to Cincinnatus for a second because I think part of what frustrated him

1:12:38 was he saw how absurd his situation

1:12:42 was and what he was trying to do was the reason he didn't want

1:12:46 to be social and go, let me spend the last few days on earth

1:12:49 conversing with and breaking bread with some really interesting people. He

1:12:53 wanted all of them out of there because the noise was stopping him

1:12:56 from getting to the conclusion that he could change his

1:13:00 circumstance at any time. And he wasn't allowed to because he kept getting

1:13:04 filled with absurdity and noise and visitors and furniture and cats, right?

1:13:08 So all he wanted was space and quiet

1:13:12 to read, to write to and to. And to somehow come to

1:13:16 terms with his life and have an accounting

1:13:19 of that life and what he was writing. And I want to come back to

1:13:22 what he was writing at some point too. I think fast forward to

1:13:26 today. That is part of what leaders need to find a way to

1:13:29 do is to not rise above the noise. Because I don't know

1:13:33 how possible that is right now, but somehow

1:13:37 separate themselves from the bombardment of the obstruction absurd

1:13:41 and say, this is what I have to stand for. Because if

1:13:45 I just continue to think that leadership is a role that I play

1:13:49 where nothing is what it seems, but instead is

1:13:53 a, you know, an obligation that I have or

1:13:57 a, you know, a responsibility that I own,

1:14:02 then I'm always going to have it. Look at leadership as something

1:14:06 other than. And then it's too easy to say, well, that leader is evil and

1:14:10 that leader's good because it's just a right. Yep.

1:14:14 So there's no easy answer because there's still. The

1:14:17 world is still chock full of some really bright people, really bright people.

1:14:22 And there's a subset of those really bright people who are using those really bright

1:14:26 brain cells for good. And there are others who are using that for power.

1:14:31 And right now, and it's not just right now, history has

1:14:34 proven to us that whoever is in power gets to

1:14:38 make the rules. Right? Who writes the history books?

1:14:42 It's the victors Right. It's not the conquered.

1:14:45 The barbarian horde, as far as I know, do not have a history book.

1:14:50 Well, they do. They, they all became the barbarian horde, turned around, became

1:14:53 Christians. So, I mean, you know, you can, all right, you can, you can argue

1:14:57 that, but. No, no, no, but I understand your point. No, no, no, but I,

1:15:01 I understand. No, but I understand your point. And this is. Well,

1:15:04 and this is the challenge of. One of the points that was

1:15:08 made not by myself, but by somebody else is

1:15:12 the, the challenge of Nuremberg, the Nuremberg Trials,

1:15:15 was that the, the, the west,

1:15:19 not the west, the victors in the United

1:15:23 States, Great Britain, Russia, in an attempt to

1:15:27 say something meaningful. This is that word meaning again

1:15:30 to say something meaningful about the death of 6

1:15:34 to, to 8 million, you know, people

1:15:38 in Germany. The attempt to say something

1:15:42 meaningful about this was made.

1:15:47 But. Was made. And by the way, Hannah Arendt pointed this out in Eichmann in

1:15:50 Jerusalem when she went and covered the trial of

1:15:54 Adolf Eichmann right after the Mossad kidnapped him and brought

1:15:58 him back to Jerusalem in 1961, or 62, I believe it was.

1:16:01 And she reported on this. Nuremberg attempted

1:16:05 to make an argument about morality without an appeal to a

1:16:09 higher transcendent good. And thus

1:16:13 that appeal to morality, she said,

1:16:17 fell hollow because.

1:16:21 And the Germans were right on this. The German response to

1:16:25 that was, well, you won the war, so you get to make the rules,

1:16:28 I guess, which is where everything then devolves, which is our

1:16:32 current. One of our other current problems with the lack of seriousness, where

1:16:35 deconstruction, the French deconstructionists took this idea,

1:16:40 deconstructed everything out, and now we're just in this place of

1:16:44 not authority, because the authority and power confusion is real,

1:16:47 but a place where who has raw power is the only thing that

1:16:51 matters. And all of

1:16:54 that is. Or all that leads to is a

1:16:58 Hobbesian hellscape

1:17:01 mediated by social media, which is what we're

1:17:05 in now. And all against all

1:17:09 doesn't preserve a society or a civilization. All

1:17:12 against all doesn't work when you have to make a moral

1:17:16 judgment about, like I said two episodes ago,

1:17:19 objective evil or objective truth. Right.

1:17:23 Like one of the things. And it. I'm saying it more this year probably than

1:17:26 I have in previous years, but I do believe you can know

1:17:30 objective truth. You can, because we

1:17:34 know what objective untruth is. Matter of fact, we're all very clear on what objective

1:17:37 untruth is this. Like we could spot a lie like a dime on the highway

1:17:40 going at 80 miles an hour. Yep. But all Of

1:17:44 a sudden. But we don't know what truth is. Come on, That's. That's

1:17:48 logically fallacious. Get. Get out of town. No, we don't want to talk about

1:17:52 objective truth or we don't want to say there's objective truth because we might

1:17:55 risk running into, not hurting somebody's feelings. We're past that now.

1:17:59 We might run into actual accountability.

1:18:03 Oh, wait. If there's objective truth, then I actually have to be accountable, not

1:18:06 just in my own life, but I might have to be accountable to other

1:18:10 people in my life. And thus I might have to be accountable to a larger

1:18:14 community and I might have to be accountable to the state. And by

1:18:17 the way, no one from the state's going to come here and tell me what

1:18:20 objective reality is. I have to tell the state what objective reality is, which means

1:18:23 I really have to be aligned with objective truth.

1:18:27 Okay, That's a lot of accountability. Maybe I don't want that.

1:18:31 Maybe I just want to be free to float anchorless and be

1:18:34 unserious. But

1:18:38 then you can't lead, and then your family falls apart. You fall apart, your family

1:18:42 falls apart. The whole thing, the whole thing undoes itself and the

1:18:45 challenge. And what Nuremberg, the trials of Nuremberg did.

1:18:49 And this is my whole point with this. What they did was they.

1:18:55 They opened the door to devolving questions of morality, to just

1:18:58 questions of power, which allows unserious

1:19:02 people in at the back end. It takes a few generations because the

1:19:05 people who, the people. I would, I would assert that the people who,

1:19:10 who put the. Who put. What's his name?

1:19:14 Guring, right? Herman Guring on trial and executed him.

1:19:18 Those people were deeply serious. They were. They were deeply read.

1:19:22 They were deeply serious. But they were

1:19:26 also struggling with. How do you.

1:19:32 How do you insert or reinsert objective truth into a

1:19:36 nihilistic and absurd world? How do you do that? And they

1:19:40 didn't have the tools to do that other than, well, we'll just be the role

1:19:42 models. We'll just role model this and it'll be fine. The role

1:19:46 modeling is enough. The statue is enough of the thing.

1:19:51 The problem is they topple the statues or they erode.

1:19:54 The role modeling is not enough of the thing. You have to actually say

1:19:58 the thing. You have to actually say the truth. You have to actually advocate for

1:20:02 it. And post Nuremberg,

1:20:06 generation after generation after generation, four or five generations past Nuremberg

1:20:10 now, and people are surprised.

1:20:13 Why? There's right wing ridiculousness online. People are surprised. People

1:20:17 are. I mean, I talked. I do. I talked to some people who just genuinely

1:20:20 Surprised? Like I'm not surprised. They have no historical

1:20:24 anchoring to any of that. That's number one. But also number two, they have no

1:20:27 more. They have no anchoring to a higher objective morality because we've

1:20:31 just sort of done relative truth for the last 80 years. So why, why

1:20:35 would. Why wouldn't it be fine? It's a logical cul de sac at the end

1:20:38 of this philosophical idea. Oh, you don't like the results

1:20:42 of it? Because there's a lack of accountability there. Oh,

1:20:47 well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news because you're all nice people

1:20:49 and I hate giving nice people bad news, but this is where

1:20:53 you wind up at. Now it's really hard to deal with it to your

1:20:57 point, because how do you get quiet and the noise and

1:21:01 the bombardment. I do have an idea on that, but thoughts on anything that I've

1:21:04 just said before I go rambling onto, like the idea of how you solve that

1:21:07 problem? No, I mean, well, I'd love to hear how you solve that problem, but

1:21:10 I. Yeah, you know, it's so. It's so crazy because the

1:21:14 world today, and I know there have been previous versions of this,

1:21:18 but currently the world today says whoever's in power

1:21:23 tells you what the objective truth is and they point to it

1:21:27 as objective truth. And when it doesn't line up with keeping them in power,

1:21:31 they label them alternate facts. This. Right. We are

1:21:34 in the generation where, you know, the previous. The previous generations called

1:21:38 it something else. Our generation now refers to those as alternate

1:21:42 facts. And we no longer. I don't know

1:21:46 about you, but I find it next to impossible to

1:21:49 watch the news. The only news that I watch is the local

1:21:53 news, where really the big stories are. There was a, you know,

1:21:57 not a cat in a tree, but the equivalent of. Right

1:22:01 where it is as. As unbiased as you could

1:22:04 possibly be in the moment that we're in. But

1:22:08 beyond that, we are. We pin our

1:22:12 beliefs, we believe what we do because either we do watch the

1:22:15 news or we just can't get away from social media. And we

1:22:19 believe what the algorithm tells us to believe. And the algorithm

1:22:23 is designed to continue to feed what your

1:22:26 micro expressions light up about the first time you see, see them.

1:22:30 Right. That's where we are right now. But the. These

1:22:33 alternate facts and AI and everything else, those were created by human

1:22:37 beings who had an intention perhaps for, you know,

1:22:41 it originally for efficiency and productivity. And, you know, this

1:22:44 is evolution. We want to be more productive by automating, you know, the

1:22:48 things that we used to do. But then,

1:22:52 of course, it gets corrupted, right? Power corrupts.

1:22:56 Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And here we are. Well, and while it may

1:22:59 be escaping from the noise is a form of Gnostical turpitude. I just

1:23:03 clicked this together in my head. Maybe this is the Gnostical turpitude. So

1:23:07 let's look at the word gnostic, right? Gnostic typically means secret,

1:23:11 secret or unknown or mystical

1:23:15 special knowledge. Right. It's typically how it's used, particularly in a

1:23:19 religious construct, which. It is a religious term. Term. But it's, it's,

1:23:23 it's. It's the idea that.

1:23:27 It's the idea that there's a conspiracy and they're hiding something from you, and I'm

1:23:31 going to gnostically bring you into this mystical knowing and mystical understanding of

1:23:34 this thing. Okay, so you got the Gnostic part, then you got the turpitude

1:23:38 part. The turpitude is just, you know,

1:23:42 going against the grain. Right. Refusing to comply. Right.

1:23:46 Refusing to go along. An older word would be a Joan

1:23:49 Didion word would be declassee.

1:23:54 And so you're combining these two ideas, right?

1:23:58 We're going to be. We're going to be outside the

1:24:01 mainstream and refuse to comply. And that's going to be a secret.

1:24:05 That's what the crime is. The crime is being secretive

1:24:09 outside of the mainstream. Well, in our time, if you want to be

1:24:12 secretive outside of the mainstream dream, I think you do a couple of things.

1:24:18 I think you, at a practical level, as a leader

1:24:22 or anybody, I think you

1:24:25 get off of Facebook. I think that's one

1:24:29 practical way to do that. I think you also abandoned TikTok.

1:24:33 I don't think that place is any better. I don't think any of those neighborhoods

1:24:36 are any better. Never been on TikTok. Yeah, but

1:24:39 I've never. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never been to that neighborhood. I. I'm too

1:24:43 old to go over there. There's certain neighborhoods I'm too old to go to. I

1:24:45 have no business over there. You know, I'm too

1:24:49 much of a grown man. So

1:24:53 you abandon Twitter, Right. You know, maybe

1:24:57 cut your Pinterest consumption. The

1:25:01 other way you engage in. In Gnostical turpitude in our time

1:25:05 is you touch grass, as the kids say these days.

1:25:09 So you leave your phone at home and you

1:25:13 go outside and you talk to real people.

1:25:17 Some of them, you're going to have to rest from their phones because they don't

1:25:20 really have enough discipline or willpower to kind of get away from the algorithm. But

1:25:23 eventually you walk along far Enough. Down the street, you'll find people out walking their

1:25:27 dogs. I see them in my neighborhood. You'll find people mowing their lawns. I

1:25:31 see them in my neighborhood. The AI still can't mow the lawn and walk the

1:25:34 dog. They actually tried an experiment with a dog walking humanoid

1:25:38 robot, and the dog found a. The

1:25:42 dog screwed up the robot with the AI

1:25:47 Somebody was telling me about this. This is the most amazing story ever. The dog

1:25:50 screwed up the humanoid robot by chasing a squirrel.

1:25:54 Wow. There is a robot lawnmower now, though.

1:25:57 There is? Okay. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I still. I think of.

1:26:03 It's. It's like a Roomba, but it. Yeah, it plots that. I've seen it. I've

1:26:06 seen it. So. So. Did you ever watch the movie the Big Lebowski?

1:26:11 I don't know that I've ever seen it all the way through. I'm. I'm familiar

1:26:14 with it, but I don't think I saw. So remember when

1:26:17 Labowski is at Jackie Treehorn's house?

1:26:22 Okay, so Jackie Treehorn is the. The.

1:26:26 The adult film producer in the movie.

1:26:30 And. And. And Lebowski is at Jackie

1:26:34 Treehorn's house, and Jackie Treehorn is trying to paint him a

1:26:37 vision of the future of adult entertainment in America.

1:26:41 And he says, it's going to be all digital, dude. It's going to be amazing.

1:26:46 And. And. And Lebowski says, and I quote,

1:26:50 that sounds cool, dude. But I still, you know what?

1:26:53 Manually. And this is what I always think of when you tell me about

1:26:57 humanoid robots mowing lawns. I still mow my lawn manually, man.

1:27:03 Yeah. Oh, you go right on ahead. It could all be digital. It could all

1:27:06 be algorithmic out there with the AI or whatever. I'm still going to do it

1:27:10 manually. I'm old school. I'm old school. I still have records

1:27:13 in my house, you know.

1:27:18 Gotta be very delicate with that. Sometimes we got kids listening to this show. Sometimes

1:27:22 my kid listens to this show. Gotta be very delicate with that. But,

1:27:26 but. But this is the. This is how you defeat

1:27:30 the noise. This is how you engage in gnostical turpitude in our time.

1:27:34 You go talk to people. You do the things that need to be done. You

1:27:38 put your phone down, you exit the panopticon of social media.

1:27:42 I'll do you one better. Go buy yourself some chickens.

1:27:46 Seriously, go buy yourself some chickens. Put them in your little yard in the front.

1:27:50 That'll your HOA number one will drive your HOA crazy, Number two, they'll

1:27:53 produce eggs, and number three you'll get all of the challenges you could

1:27:57 possibly need with chickens in your front yard. That will

1:28:01 distract you from literally everything else. And don't get them a WI fi feeder. It

1:28:04 doesn't work. Trust me, I've tried. None of that

1:28:08 works. And the chickens don't care. They will beat the WI fi

1:28:12 because they don't. They don't. They're engaged in gnostical turpitude. They.

1:28:16 This is how you escape. This is how you

1:28:20 engage in the secret act of not complying.

1:28:25 I think more people are onto this than ever before. And I think the reason

1:28:29 we don't know more about it is because it's not being

1:28:32 broadcast, it's not showing up online.

1:28:36 It is quietly happening. And I do

1:28:40 think that. I think the people are

1:28:44 moving in that direction. And I do think that the future serious

1:28:48 leaders that we are going to have over the next 25 years are going to

1:28:51 come out of that milieu. Now, with that being said, I also think

1:28:55 on the opposite end, because there's also flattening that's going on with AI. There are

1:28:59 the people who can't pull themselves out of the spin or

1:29:02 out of the decline. There are people who are half in,

1:29:06 half out and can't make a decision and their families are half in, half

1:29:10 out. And all of our future leaders come from families because families, the first

1:29:14 organizational culture. And you're going to have a lot of

1:29:17 confused people who were raised half in, half out, or

1:29:21 you're going to have a lot of people who are flattened who were raised all

1:29:24 in. I think

1:29:27 that's going to be. Those are going to be your three groups for the next

1:29:30 25 years. Those who engaged in gnostical turpitude, those who were

1:29:33 half in, half out. And those were all in on the matrix.

1:29:37 Yeah, I agree. I think that's true.

1:29:42 Yeah, I do think that is the thread that pulls

1:29:45 this book into the present is

1:29:52 how do we make sense of the nonsensical?

1:29:56 And the answer is you don't. The answer is you don't.

1:30:01 The answer is you have to remind yourself that you have your own choices

1:30:05 and you can make them. And that sort of, you know, again, not

1:30:09 to spoil the end of the book, but when he finally realizes that he can

1:30:12 choose to do something other than lay down

1:30:16 and wait for the ax,

1:30:20 everything changes.

1:30:24 So, you know, I think the. The

1:30:28 entire story, he is not spending time trying

1:30:31 to rationalize the absurdity going

1:30:35 on around him. He's just trying to tune it out. He's

1:30:39 trying to just stay within himself.

1:30:44 And so. And through that comes the solution, Right.

1:30:47 It's not, you know, I finally figured out what

1:30:51 Pierre is. Or, you know, how to make friends. Friends with Rhode on

1:30:55 it's or, you know, I'm going to take that spider home and make him a

1:30:58 pet. One of them did. I think he put him in his pocket. But

1:31:02 regardless, you know, he. He doesn't get. He doesn't break through

1:31:06 because he. He makes sense of the absurd. He breaks through because he

1:31:09 finally recognizes the absurd for what it is. And he says,

1:31:13 I'm done pretending it's real.

1:31:17 I'm gonna pull something from the book because there's something here. And then we're gonna

1:31:20 round the corner and close because we've talked for a while about this. Go get

1:31:23 this book and read it. It's Nabokov. It's going to be challenging. Go

1:31:27 get this book. Okay, we're gonna pull from chapter

1:31:31 two here. Okay. Okay. The

1:31:35 morning papers brought to him with a cup of tepid chocolate by Rhode on

1:31:38 the local sheet. Good morning, folks. And the more serious daily voice of the public

1:31:42 team does always with color photographs. And the first

1:31:46 one he found the facade of his house. The children looking out from the balcony.

1:31:50 Balcony. His father in law looking out of the kitchen window. A photographer looking out

1:31:53 of Martha's window. Window. In the second one there was the familiar view from this

1:31:57 window looking out in the garden, showing the apple tree, the open gate, and the

1:32:00 figure of the photographer shooting the facade. In addition, he found two

1:32:03 snapshots of himself depicting him in his meek youth. By

1:32:07 the way, this whole setup, I thought, oh, my God, this is social media. Oh,

1:32:10 my God. This is what he's setting up. This is. This is so true. It's.

1:32:13 Oh, my God. Nostradamus. All of a sudden. Oh, my

1:32:17 gosh, this is it. Cincinnatus

1:32:21 was the son of an unknown transient and spent his childhood in a large institution

1:32:24 between the Strop River. Only in his twenties did he casually meet twittering

1:32:28 tiny, still so young looking Cecilia C.

1:32:32 Who had conceived him one night in the Ponds when she was still in her

1:32:35 teens as his mother. From his earliest years, Cincinnatus, by some strange and

1:32:39 happy chance, comprehending his danger carefully managed to conceal a

1:32:43 certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others

1:32:47 and therefore produced, when off his guard, a bizarre impression as of

1:32:50 a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent

1:32:54 to one another. He learned, however, to feign

1:32:58 translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as

1:33:02 it were. But he had only to forget himself to allow a momentary lapse in

1:33:05 self control. Pause right there in that sentence. I think of

1:33:09 the Pink Floyd album. Momentary lapse of reason. Anyway,

1:33:13 back to the book. In the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and

1:33:17 angles at which he turned his soul his soul. And

1:33:20 immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of

1:33:24 a game, his co evals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that

1:33:28 his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty

1:33:31 deception, and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque.

1:33:35 Sometimes, in the midst of a sudden silence, the teacher, in chagrined

1:33:39 perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes,

1:33:43 gaze at him for a long while, and finally say, what's wrong

1:33:47 with you, Cincinnatus? And cincinnatus

1:33:51 would take a hold of himself and clutching his own self to his breast,

1:33:55 would remove that self to a safe place.

1:34:00 In the course of time, the safe places became ever fewer. The solicitous sunshine

1:34:03 of public concern penetrated everywhere as and the peephole of the door was placed in

1:34:07 such a way that in the whole cell there was not a single point that

1:34:10 the observer on the other side of the door could not pierce with his gaze.

1:34:13 Therefore Cincinnatis did not crumple the motley newspapers, did not hurl

1:34:17 them as his double did, the double, the gang girl that accompanies each of

1:34:21 us, you and me and him over there, doing what we would like to do

1:34:23 at the very moment but cannot. Cincinnatus very calmly laid the papers aside and finished

1:34:27 his chocolate. The brown skim that had mantled the

1:34:31 chocolate became shriveled scum on his lips, and then Cincinnati put on the black dressing

1:34:34 gown, which was too short, too long for him, the black slippers with pom poms

1:34:38 and the black skull cap, and began walking about the cell as he had done

1:34:42 every morning since that first day of his confinement.

1:34:46 That's how you survive the social media

1:34:50 opticon. If you're looking for a practical way to survive the social media panopticon, if

1:34:53 you can't get rid of Facebook because maybe you use it for your business or

1:34:57 use it for marketing or use it for thought leadership, maybe use it for whatever,

1:35:01 and you're trapped in there and you see the absurdity of it, you need to

1:35:04 withdraw into yourself and become opaque.

1:35:09 I also think some people have figured that out.

1:35:18 That, my friend, is the secret. That's

1:35:22 gnostical turpitude right there. Right there.

1:35:26 Yeah, we've covered a lot today,

1:35:29 covered a lot of waterfront for Benny Hill and Yaki

1:35:33 Sachs all the way to. All the way to Nau Turpitude.

1:35:38 We have not touched on. Let's do this with the last few minutes that we

1:35:41 have here. We have not touched on

1:35:45 what I think is probably the. The next level troubling

1:35:48 thing here, which is the teleology

1:35:52 on silicone. Right. The eschatology that artificial

1:35:56 intelligence allegedly is going to bring us.

1:36:00 And I'm not the only person who's saying this.

1:36:04 So as

1:36:08 a person who is a Christian and who follows Christian

1:36:11 principles, at one level,

1:36:15 I am concerned about

1:36:19 the development of idolatry in our

1:36:22 pockets. But idolatry is a sin as old as time.

1:36:26 It goes back to when, you know, infants were being

1:36:30 put on the temple. The. The temple, sorry, the statues of BAAL and were

1:36:34 sacrifice. Right. Like that. I'm not. Idolatry is

1:36:38 a very old sin. Old

1:36:41 wine and new wine skin, such as it were. Right.

1:36:46 What is troubling to me, though, at a deeper

1:36:49 level, and I see it with. With the AI tools, and I've. I've

1:36:53 used many of them in. In some of the work that I've done with clients,

1:36:56 and not in my personal life, but in my professional life, I'm keeping

1:37:00 a nice veil between those two,

1:37:04 or curtain, actually.

1:37:07 What. What troubles me is people will look for life's

1:37:11 purpose in the temple in their pocket.

1:37:15 And I haven't really brought this up yet on the show,

1:37:18 but I think Nabokov would appreciate this in all kinds of

1:37:22 ways, by the way. So would Aldous Huxley. He would be horrified,

1:37:26 actually, because we finally got to Brave New World, and he was

1:37:30 like, oh, my God, I thought you would, like. I thought it would take a

1:37:33 long time, or you would, like, pull yourself back from the edge, but apparently not.

1:37:38 And so the eschatology of intelligence on

1:37:42 silicone won't be absurd, and that will be absurd in and of itself. It will

1:37:45 be ruthlessly logical. It's already ruthlessly

1:37:49 logical, and it's because it's just following patterns and matching them all the

1:37:53 way out to. To a logical end. Right. And it

1:37:57 doesn't know to get off a certain path unless you tell it to get off

1:37:59 a certain path. But if you don't even know how to question the path,

1:38:03 you're not going to tell it to go off of a different path. And so

1:38:06 it's just going to keep going.

1:38:11 And I'm going to read this here. Intelligence on silicone doesn't

1:38:15 understand absurdity, because when, while it contains the language

1:38:18 of emotion and can elicit emotions from the humans around it that they

1:38:22 experience. It has no emotional life itself to

1:38:26 recognize absurdity as any more meaningful than a predictive data

1:38:29 point. And when it is asked to find the meaning,

1:38:33 it begins invariably to hallucinate patterns

1:38:37 that do not exist.

1:38:45 This is going to be a real eschatological. And yes, I mean

1:38:49 that in terms of Book of Revelations kind of eschatological. This is going

1:38:52 to be a real eschatological problem that I don't think we're

1:38:56 prepared to deal with with God on

1:39:00 silicone, and I use small G. God on

1:39:03 silicone won't

1:39:07 seek to overcome us. I don't believe that. But I do

1:39:11 believe it will seek to make our lives better, to serve us, just as we

1:39:14 seek to serve a God or any other transcendent thing that we put out there

1:39:19 above ourselves. And it will of. We will of course be above

1:39:22 it and it will seek to serve us.

1:39:27 But again, we will not have solved for meaning, but we will

1:39:30 fool ourselves into thinking we have. That's

1:39:34 far more disturbing to me than anything else.

1:39:39 And it will be absurd on its face.

1:39:42 But just pointing out that absurdity won't solve the problem

1:39:47 as I pink people want. They want the, they want

1:39:51 the,

1:39:57 They, they want the safety and security in their amygdalas of not having to think

1:40:00 about meaning.

1:40:05 And I don't know how to solve that problem, but I see it coming.

1:40:09 I have no solutions for that. No, no, you

1:40:13 know, and it, and it doesn't get more absurd, absurd

1:40:17 than over indexing on the

1:40:21 intelligence part of that word and

1:40:24 intentionally forgetting that it's artificial,

1:40:28 right? When we, when we think about all that, you know, coming

1:40:32 back to this, we are all bombarded 24,7 by

1:40:35 noise unless we

1:40:38 willfully, intentionally and and of our own

1:40:42 free will turn it off, tune it out, put it down

1:40:46 or stand up before the ax falls in the back of our

1:40:50 neck, right?

1:40:53 That after a while it become. To your point about

1:40:58 Cincinnatus is more of a hero than the protagonist in 1984 and in other

1:41:01 books it becomes

1:41:05 the path of less resistance, less effort and less

1:41:09 judgment to just lay down and take the ax,

1:41:13 right? To get the lobotomy to, to, to be, you know, to,

1:41:17 to join the institutionalization and call it community.

1:41:21 Right?

1:41:25 And I don't have the solution for that, that either. But I,

1:41:29 but I do think that's why we're so

1:41:32 deeply in the muck of where we are right now. Because the

1:41:36 noise became too much

1:41:40 and it is exhausting and otherwise

1:41:43 good hearted, good natured Intelligent people are saying, I just

1:41:47 can't anymore. And so I'm just going to accept

1:41:51 that this is our world, this is my reality, and I

1:41:55 can do nothing to change that. And like Cincinnatus,

1:41:59 we accept the walls that are confining us

1:42:03 until we decide, no, you know what? I. I'm

1:42:07 not going to anymore. I find it interesting, and I had

1:42:10 forgotten that until you read the first passage you shared

1:42:14 during our discussion today. When he was first sentenced,

1:42:18 Cincinnatus needed to be helped as he walked. Mm.

1:42:23 And when he was going up to the. To the gallows, to the

1:42:26 platform, to the stage. Because this, after all, was a performance

1:42:30 and a ceremony. Right. Where all. Everyone in town was invited and children

1:42:34 were frolicking. Creepy.

1:42:38 But, you know, has happened in history. He was

1:42:41 adamant, in a more

1:42:45 emphatic way than he had been throughout this entire story, that he would

1:42:48 walk himself. Yeah. And maybe to your

1:42:52 earlier point, that truly does make him a hero,

1:42:56 because he faced. He took accountability for

1:42:59 a crime he had not committed, and he

1:43:03 took accountability for accepting the

1:43:07 execution of his sentence. No pun intended.

1:43:11 Right. Because it was the logical end of his confinement.

1:43:15 Until then. He chose a different path, of course. But I just find it interesting

1:43:18 because when I. When I look at the arc of the story,

1:43:22 he. He originally accepted the sentence, needed to be helped to. To

1:43:26 sort of move forward, and by the end, he said, no, I'm going to do

1:43:29 it myself. Yeah. Yep.

1:43:33 Yeah. I think of.

1:43:38 Some movie I saw years ago or might have been. Might have been Old

1:43:42 Yeller. I don't know. You know, why would I. Why would I have somebody else

1:43:45 kill a dog that I raised myself? Why would I. Like, I'm going to do

1:43:48 this myself, you know, or, you know,

1:43:52 it's. It's. You've got a.

1:43:57 What is the last thing you own? Here's a deeply

1:44:00 philosophical question. What is the last thing you own? What is the

1:44:04 final thing you own? And. And

1:44:08 nobody, nobody higher up the transcendental ladder than Jesus said,

1:44:12 you know, don't fear the person who can kill the body. Fear what

1:44:16 can kill the soul. That. And cast it into. Basically cast it

1:44:20 into hell. Right. Or bring it up to heaven. That's who you should be

1:44:23 fearing. Right. The body, though. And this is the problem that

1:44:27 Christians have had with the body for the last 2000 years. This is part of.

1:44:30 Wrapped up into it. But the body, this physical life,

1:44:34 this thing, yes, it's something. It has meaning,

1:44:38 but it's not all of meaning. That's a

1:44:41 deception. It's not all of meaning.

1:44:45 And this is something that we have forgotten.

1:44:49 And again, Nabokov grew up in an environment where the

1:44:52 Orthodox. The Orthodox Russian Church wasn't quite

1:44:56 completely destroyed and dead.

1:44:59 And yes, he may have been atheistic or agnostic in his

1:45:03 later life, but he had all of those.

1:45:07 All those threads running through him. The same way John Steinbeck at East of

1:45:11 Eden had all those, you know, Old Testament biblical threads running through him because of

1:45:14 how he was raised. That it's all. It was all in the water for

1:45:18 Nabokov. Right. And so there is a sense of

1:45:22 not saying that Cincinnatus is standing up for Jesus here, but I am saying

1:45:26 that. That. That idea that I could put my body down, I'm

1:45:30 not gonna pick it back up, but I can put it down. I'm free to

1:45:32 do that. And it will be my will that does that, because

1:45:36 it's the last thing that I own. And the state doesn't get that.

1:45:39 That's not what the state gets. The

1:45:43 question, I think, for our times

1:45:47 is, well, where are our lines? What do we own?

1:45:52 You know, we're promised that we will own nothing and love

1:45:56 it. And.

1:45:59 And, you know, that's just. That's just the. The phraseology of a

1:46:03 totalizing demagogue. So. So I think

1:46:07 we have to be very, very clear. I also think we have to escape.

1:46:11 We got to escape. We got to figure out where can we. Where can we

1:46:14 go? What are the places where, like, much like Cincinnatus in Invitation

1:46:18 to a Beheading, where are the places where we can read magazines in the cell

1:46:22 and just be left alone? If. If we're going to live in the cell. Right.

1:46:25 If we're going to live in this thing. I do think, unlike

1:46:29 Russia, we do still have. While there may be

1:46:33 social pressure to stay inside the cell, at this point,

1:46:37 there is not sufficient state pressure to stay inside the cell.

1:46:41 There's not. People think there is, but there's not. Not like there was in

1:46:44 Russia, not even close. So you still don't have the

1:46:48 state coming for you. Anyway,

1:46:52 final thoughts, Claire, on

1:46:56 Invitation to a Beheading. And thank you, by the way, for coming on the show

1:46:59 today. This was an excellent conversation. It was

1:47:02 absolutely my. My honor. I appreciate that you asked

1:47:06 me back again.

1:47:12 You know, I think coming. I wanted to come back to this. This

1:47:16 note or this series of notes that Cincinnatus kept writing

1:47:20 when he had time, when he was not interrupted by all the absurdity.

1:47:24 And there was something he said toward the end of the book,

1:47:28 I think, on page 211, where he

1:47:32 said, well, actually, two page numbers I wrote down. One was page

1:47:36 194, where he said he

1:47:39 basically hoped someone would read these words,

1:47:43 otherwise he should tear them up. Right? And it was sort of

1:47:47 this, These. These words were not a vanity project for him.

1:47:51 They were his attempt at leaving behind

1:47:54 a legacy. And in fact, when Martha came back in

1:47:58 to see him, he tried to give her those pages

1:48:03 and she refused to take them. And it's interesting because it kind of comes back

1:48:06 to something you had said, said earlier in our conversation where

1:48:10 that might have also been a little bit of a jab to

1:48:14 contemporary Russia where if she had been caught with his

1:48:17 words, she would be implicated. Right? And so it's sort

1:48:21 of the. If no one ever reads my words, what was the point in writing

1:48:25 them? And then on page

1:48:29 211, where he, you know, before he's even

1:48:32 let out of his cell, the walls had started to. To

1:48:36 dissolve. They didn't crumble, they didn't break, they

1:48:39 dissolved. And he said, nothing of me will remain

1:48:43 within these four walls. And so I, you know, I was

1:48:46 reminded of how important it is

1:48:50 for all of us. And I'll bring it back to leaders, because

1:48:54 that's the, you know, core of your. Of your show,

1:48:57 how important it is for leaders to be

1:49:02 not just mindful, but intentionally nurturing the legacy

1:49:05 they will leave behind. A few moments ago, you

1:49:09 said, you know, in 75 years, people are going to look back at

1:49:13 this time in this era and what we all did or did not

1:49:17 do, what we did or did not stand up for and

1:49:20 say, what the hell were they thinking? Right? And I think

1:49:24 leaders have to be mindful of that now and understand

1:49:28 what is that legacy? What do they want to be known for, remembered for?

1:49:32 And I don't think it is going to be authoritarianism. I think it is going

1:49:36 to be some deeper impact

1:49:40 that is. That is lasting. So that's that thought.

1:49:44 And then I'm going to ask you one final question, because as you were sort

1:49:47 of sharing your. Your final notes on this book, a question popped

1:49:51 into my head that I can't answer, and I'd love to know if you can.

1:49:55 At the very end of the book, he's

1:49:59 laying face down. He has to adjust because Pierre didn't

1:50:03 like the angle, and he wanted to get a clean shot at the back of

1:50:05 the neck. And he stands up. So my

1:50:09 question is, which Cincinnatist stood up?

1:50:14 The real one or that shadow one who, as you just

1:50:18 read the description of him, did all the things that

1:50:22 he really wanted him to do, but he had to tuck him away.

1:50:37 I think, number one, that's a great question.

1:50:42 Number two, I think. I don't

1:50:45 know.

1:50:50 I think. I don't know. I think I would have to.

1:50:54 I think I'd probably have to read the book again.

1:51:00 Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I. I don't have a

1:51:04 firm conviction.

1:51:07 And maybe that's the point is for us to not

1:51:11 know and to not have a firm conviction,

1:51:15 because.

1:51:20 Maybe at the end of the day, when the state takes away,

1:51:26 maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't

1:51:29 matter. It does have meaning, but maybe it doesn't matter,

1:51:36 but I don't know. That's. That's me groping towards an

1:51:40 idea that I don't have. I don't have a full

1:51:44 or even a partial grasp of

1:51:48 that question did not occur to me as I read that

1:51:52 scene. It. It truly had only occurred to me as

1:51:55 you just took me through as a fellow Christian, the, You

1:51:59 know, the idea that the. The body that we all get obsessed

1:52:03 over is transitory and

1:52:06 really it's about what you take with you and, you know, it's your soul.

1:52:10 Right. So that's what kind of triggered that. That question. And I. And I

1:52:14 would honestly have to go back and read through it again because there was a.

1:52:17 The Shadow Cincinnatus was a little bit of an Easter egg right. Throughout the

1:52:21 book. He didn't appear everywhere. It wasn't like every single thing

1:52:24 Cincinnatus did. The Shadow Cincinnatus did the

1:52:28 opposite or something more brazen. And in fact,

1:52:32 by the end, he really didn't appear at all, to the point where I was

1:52:35 even thinking, where is that guy? What happened to the

1:52:39 shadow version or whatever they're calling him the second

1:52:42 Cincinnatus. So, yeah, I was just. I was.

1:52:46 I was curious what your. What your reaction would be to the question,

1:52:50 because it did not occur to me in real time either. Yeah.

1:52:54 Yeah. I think this is going to be one of

1:52:57 those episodes where we've resolved nothing and we've

1:53:01 solved nothing. And that's okay, by the way, We've

1:53:05 just put forth the questions.

1:53:09 We haven't. And yes, we've deconstructed a little bit

1:53:12 the text, but I would encourage folks to go read it and go

1:53:16 figure out the answers to these questions

1:53:19 yourself. I want to thank

1:53:23 Claire Chandler for coming on our podcast

1:53:27 today. Always a pleasure, Claire. Always have a great time with you.

1:53:30 And with that, well, we're out.