Leadership in Absurd Times

<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>00:01</time>
<p>Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, Shorts. There's no co host on these Shorts episodes. We have extended the time on these shorter episodes from five to six minutes to fifteen to twenty minutes for this season. This is so that these Shorts can serve as introductory episodes released ahead of our weekly longer form episodes.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>00:31</time>
<p>But don't worry, I will still let you know my observations, ideas, thoughts or rants about the literature, philosophy, psychology, and even the theology of leadership. Particularly as we prepare for the restoration of leadership and leadership principles during the next historical high in America. Why these episodes? Well, because listening to me talk about leadership for now around fifteen-twenty is still better than reading and trying to understand yet another business book. Even that business book that you bought with that famous person's name as the author, but you haven't applied any of the principles from that book to your leadership practices, at least not yet.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>01:20</time>
<p>We need to be decent men in indecent times. All of us, to a person, in The United States at least, live, work, and lead in a culture where most, if not many, objective truths, or truths we what's held to be objective, have been reduced in their power and primacy to the power and primacy of our subjective feelings about those truths. Objective truths that used to dominate our thinking as a society and culture used to be inarguable. This argumentation and now postmodern navigation lead all of us into the dangerously perilous waters of an increasingly globalized environment where we encounter all species, all manner of unreliable narrators. Is there a backstop to the presence, the proliferation of these unreliable narrators?</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>02:25</time>
<p>Sure, we can know people relationally and locally. We can grope uncomfortably and of course, with immense emotional friction to determine the reliability of their closely held narratives. This may lead to conflict and it may lead to uncomfortability, but at least we will know who's reliable and who's not. However, even that groping is becoming a problem at the localized level, which is the level most of us still live at. And then in frustration and in perplexity, most of us default to asking the internet, specifically Reddit though any other message board will do, which, while dominated by a crowd of unreliable narrators itself, usually recommends just escaping the presence of our localized unreliable narrator.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>03:21</time>
<p>You know, the easy out. Another simpler way of putting this is that we are all dealing with a bunch of liars. And the only way we have developed to actually address the liars in our midst is to cut ourselves off of them and escape them. In a world full of liars, the most dangerous and courageous person is the one who insists, despite the conditions surrounding them, that one, there is objective truth. Two, humans can know what that truth is.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>04:02</time>
<p>And three, the subjective feelings about objective truths represent the beginnings, the plenary stages of rebellion against the order of reality itself. A rebellion that of course is egged on by the unreliable narrators proliferating all around us. It turns out that the problem, dear Horatio, of the modern world, the problem of how to be a decent man in indecent times lies in us, not in the stars. So, what does this mean for our book this week that we are going to cover? Well, we're gonna look at a book that's about an unreliable narrator.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>05:12</time>
<p>But it's about an unreliable narrator who gets his just desserts, written by a man who was driven by his theology to believe that just desserts could indeed be dished out by decent men. Graham Greene, writer, journalist, and relatively staunch Catholic believed that there was objective truth, believed that humans can know what that truth is, and he believed that subjective feelings about objective truth represented the beginnings of rebellion against the order of reality itself. He used his writing to critique, to question, and to exculpate from an unconstrained vision the intricacies and assumptions that an unconstrained vision of a moral universe tends to bring. And he was doing that in light of the fact that the train on the unconstrained vision had left the station, particularly in mid century North America and was rapidly picking up speed Henry Graham Greene born 10/02/1904 died 04/03/1991 was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the twentieth century. I'm going to read directly from his Wikipedia entry, quote, Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Green acquired reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels and of thrillers or entertainment as he termed them.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>06:52</time>
<p>He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times Through sixty seven years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthorne Prize, and the Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tate Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the best of the James Tate Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare prize and the 1981 Jerusalem prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol 1948 and The Third Man 1949, close quote. William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies called Greene, the ultimate chronicler of twentieth century man's consciousness and anxiety, which he was.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>07:52</time>
<p>He was also a chronicler of how objective reality could be manipulated by bad actors and unreliable narrators, and how the ability to confront the absurd, the nihilistic and the folks existentially full of dread could be successfully embarked upon with aplomb, a stiff upper lip, and a generous dollop of moral courage. And that is what we are going to find in our book that we are going to be covering in our main episode this week, The Third Man, written in 1949, that was then turned into a movie directed by Carol Reed, starring the great humbug of the twentieth century Orson Welles So the question that the third man sort of proposes to us is the same question that was proposed to us when we read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and it's also the same question that gets proposed to us when we read any book that has an unreliable narrator in it. I'm thinking of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which we also covered on this show. The question that Graham Green raises in the third man, and it's also raised in the film, though it's less intense in the film and more intense in the book.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>09:43</time>
<p>The question is this, how do we lead in absurd times? The Third Man, which was which was, like I said, made in 1949, is the ultimate sort of postwar novel and postwar film. It came about at a time when the destruction of World War two was still all around in Europe and everyone could see it. And Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre were putting forth in their very French way, the idea that nothing really mattered and that you could have existential dread and that the only response to absurdity was to, well, embrace it or laugh at it or eat, drink, be merry. How?</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>10:35</time>
<p>How do we overcome that idea though? Because, look, the reality is we live in a space now in our culture that Camus and Sartre and even Graham Greene and even that humbug Orson Welles would have been shocked that we wound up in. How can we lead when the unreliable narrators around us seem to rule absurdly in so many spaces and seem to proliferate absurdly online everywhere in literally every nook and cranny? Well, I've got a couple of ideas that we'll explore in our conversation or larger conversation around the third man. But, but I'd like to propose a couple of things here.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>11:22</time>
<p>And I think Graham Green might agree with these couple of things. Number one, sure, I'll stipulate The social interactions between people, between people and institutions, and between institutions and other institutions themselves are indeed absurd. I'll stipulate that. I'll also stipulate that they've been absurd for a long time, and I will stipulate that they became more absurd during the twentieth century. But pointing out the absurdity of those interactions, those relationships doesn't mean that we've actually solved the problem of absurdity.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>11:59</time>
<p>It doesn't even mean we've accurately identified the places where trade off and negotiation can happen even with people who are absurd. All it means is that we've observed the facts of life in the way a child would, using adult terms to describe our observations, and have decided that a serious effort to address absurdity just isn't quite in our emotional or intellectual makeup. It means we've in essence surrendered the field to those folks who are absurd. By the way, that leads to surrendering to the field eventually to those folks that are unreliable and following along them or following along behind them come the folks who are unserious. And then we've lost the field entirely.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>12:49</time>
<p>Pointing out absurdity doesn't mean anything at all. Presenting the trade offs as alternatives to absurdity and presenting the trade offs as they actually are, not as we would like them to be, is everything. The second point I think that Green would agree with is this one. As leaders, leaders in our families, leaders in our communities, leaders in our civic lives, leaders in our businesses, leaders on our teams, in organizations, wherever it is people are looking to us to do something or to have an opinion or to take a stand. As leaders, we need to commit in a thoroughgoing and unimpeachable way to the idea that the truth, you know, objective truth, can be recognized, identified, and described.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>13:43</time>
<p>That objective truth needs no explanation to justify its existence. After all, are we going to try to justify gravity or air? The risk we run is that such an assertion may lead us to being perceived as being stiff necked and intolerant. Well, so be it. But reality is a heck of a lot more intolerant and uncaring about how we subjectively feel about it.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>14:18</time>
<p>Our job as leaders is to close the door on unreliable narrators, reinstitute seriousness in our leadership behavior and in role modeling the leadership behavior we expect from others, and to refuse to allow ourselves to be seduced into the easy inaction that cynicism, ironic detachment, and lauding of absurdity without proposing trade offs inevitably, comfortably provides. Such ease should be rejected in favor of the hard thing. And I think Graham Greene would agree with that. Neither of these things, either the commitment or the recognizing, the need for trade offs in order to deal with absurdity, neither of these things is an easy task. But if we can do our work, maybe while, maybe while whistling a little tune, well, it might go a little better.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>15:23</time>
<p>And well, that's it for me. Are you ready to elevate your leadership journey through exploring the wisdom of the ages? Subscribe to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast on all major podcast platforms, including Apple iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube Music. You can also find us everywhere else podcasts are available. If you find value on our episodes, please leave a five star review on Apple, Spotify, and of course, YouTube.</p>
<cite>Jesan Sorrells:</cite>
<time>15:59</time>
<p>We need those reviews to grow, and it is true the easiest way to help other leaders and lovers of literature discover this show. And thank you for your support.</p>