Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein - Introduction w/ Jesan Sorrells

0:01 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 160

0:14 in the year of our Lord 2025. We are in the midst of a social and cultural dynamic in the United States of America where smothering conformity to political positions, particularly smothering cultural conformity to certain political positions, has replaced the smothering conformity previous in the mid part of the 20th century to religious traditions. There is much going back and forth between various political, social and cultural factions in the United States about whether this transition, which began in the mid-1960s and has only increased in stride and see for the last 60 to 80 years, is an overall net positive or if it is an overall net negative.

1:07 If we had a time machine or a hammer, whether it was H.G. Welles time machine or Dr. Emmett Brown's time machine, it doesn't really matter. And we could go back to when the writer we are going to be talking about today was writing the book we are going to be talking about today and we could tell him of all the wondrous social changes, all of the wondrous replacements that have occurred and reach their apotheosis in the early 21st century. Well, I think like many of the writers we talk about on this show, particularly the writers of the mid 20th century, he'd be shocked and somewhat amazed and perhaps may be a little disappointed because here's the problem.

1:54 Con men, hypocrisy and venal appetites that rest deep in the hearts and in the behaviors of human beings don't just disappear when we culturally exchange one stifling system of conformity and belief for another equally stifling system of conformity and belief. It turns out that human nature is persistent and will have its way. Today on this episode of the podcast, we will be introducing and discussing four of the multiple themes from our book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Leaders, we are in the midst of yet another transformational social and cultural dynamic.

2:50 But I guarantee you, smothering conformity lies at the clearing, or lies in the clearing, as it were, at the end of this path as well. So we are going to have an incredibly short, I think, introductory episode today because the book that we are covering, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, is still under vicious copyright. And so we will be summarizing some of the main themes and the main ideas from each one of the chapters and talking about Heinlein's impact as an author. And then we'll go into sort of what I think about all of this short introductory episode today.

3:39 So we open up the book Stranger in a Strange Land. And the copy that I have was published by Penguin Random House back in the day, and the copyright is owned by the Robert and Virginia Heinlein Trust. When you open up the book, you see that the book is divided into five parts, five different chapters. And the book is. The book's title comes from the story in the book of Exodus in the Torah, or what is called by some the Old Testament. And it comes from this line in Exodus 2:21 22, and I quote, Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.

4:25 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. Or in some translations, I have become a stranger in a strange land. When you open up Stranger in a Strange Land, what you see, of course, is the. The various parts. And so part one is about the origins of the man from Mars, a gentleman named Val Valentine Michael Smith. Now, this is a curious idea because the man from Mars was part of an expedition, or was the result not part of. Was the result of an expedition that initially went to Mars and failed, actually.

5:15 But in that failure, a child was produced, a child was born, has almost biblical connotations, particularly New Testament biblical connotations. And that child was raised not by human beings, but was. Was a human baby raised by the Martian, the Martian environment, the Martian old gods. There's very much a tinge in the beginning part of Stranger to Strange Land, in what is entitled His Immaculate Origin, a play on the idea of the immaculate origin of Jesus. There's very much an idea that this is a.

5:56 This is a man come to Earth, a man come from the sky, a savior come down to save us. A second expedition goes up many years later, following a war and some other strife, and the second expedition finds the man from Mars and brings him what brings him back to Earth. And from there we begin to fall into Heinlein's view of history. Now, one of the things that you're going to want to note also about the structure of this book is that each part translates or it moves. It moves Valentin Michael Smith through the process, not of necessarily becoming more human, although that is a popular idea, particularly when you look at the typical critical interpretations of this book and its content.

6:52 But it actually moves Valentin Michael Smith through the process of changing other human beings, which is a core idea that we will talk about a little bit later on in the show. Robert Anson Heinlein was born July 7, 1907, left this world to go where all individuals wind up going on May 8, 1988. He had a long life that spanned almost all of the 20th century. He was an American science fiction author, an aeronautical engineer, and a naval officer in the United States Navy. Sometimes called the quote, unquote, dean of science fiction writers.

7:42 He, along with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov, really emphasized getting the science correct in his novels and in his short story writing. Speaking of the great science fiction writers of the 20th, the mid 20th century, Heinlein was 30 years. Thirteen, not 30, 13 years older than both Ray Bradbury and Isaac asimov, and was 10 years older than the great Arthur C. Clark, the person who, who wrote oh Gosh, was it 2001 A Space Odyssey and consulted on the. The movie that was directed by Stanley Kubrick.

8:26 A truly odd film if you ever have the opportunity to watch it, and the sequel books, although not necessarily the sequel films. And as one of the deans of science fiction who was really interested in getting the science right, Heinlein was one of the first American science fiction writers to make science fiction great again, such as it were. He was one of the first ones to break into mainstream magazines in the 40s and 50s, such as the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest and others. A lot of people were exposed to Heinlein's view of science fiction, his view of science, and his view of the world via the Shine.

9:12 The science fiction genre that before that had really been resorted to pulpy fanfic. Pulpy, pulpy fan fiction, like what we would call fan fiction, like publications these days, dime store novels that really appealed to, really were meant to appeal to children or that were considered to be. Or science fiction was considered to be a genre that was a vehicle for other kinds of allegory or political statements, such as the science fiction written by H.G. wells. Heinlein, however, used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political ideas.

9:55 And you can especially see that in Stranger in a Strange Land, but also in a number of other books that he. That he authored, including my favorite story from. From Heinlein, Starship Troopers. Okay. And he wanted to use his science fiction to speculate on how progress in science and engineering might shape the future of plan, politics, race, religion, and of course, the third rail topic, sex.

10:29 By the way, Heinlein came out of a time being born in 1907. That was the beginning of the political progressive movement in the United States, which really began its proto development at the end of the Civil War and reached its height in the 1920s, at least it's height culturally in the 1920s, before political progressivism began to, to crash to the ground in the, in the 19, in the 1950s, right with the coming of Dwight Eisenhower. So during the time that, that Heinlein was a young man and moving into his middle age, political progressivism was a driving force in American politics, American culture, and it was a driving force that was counter to the forces of conformity that were that that Heinlein and Bradbury and even Isaac Asimov were using science to battle against.

11:40 In January 1924, speaking of the 1920s, a 16 year old Heinlein lied about his age to enlist in company C, the 110th Engineer Regiment of the Missouri National Guard in Kansas City. His family could not afford to send Heinlein to college, so he sought an appointment to a military academy. And this appointment to the military academy, of course, led him to service in the United States Navy, in particular service during World War II. So there were two, there were two rails that Heinlein really ran his fiction down.

12:13 The rail of political progressivism and utilizing science and technology to get to a technocratic political progressive end. And then the rail of discipline that comes about from being forced to walk a parade ground and PT and scrub a toilet too. So there you go. By the way, these two rails were not seen as being mutually exclusive as they are in our time. In the first quarter, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, because of our historical perspective, you have to remember most of the people that were running the naval academies at the time, in between World War I and World War II were men who had served in World War I and had seen what World War could actually do and were desperately, desperately seeking peace.

13:14 Heinlein was an individual who was desperately seeking progressivism through technology and through science and used the military to discipline himself, himself to order his thoughts. So back to the book, back to Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. So we pick up in part two of Stranger in a Strange Land. Once again, we're summarizing each one of the parts of the book and seeking to pull main themes from those summaries. Because we cannot read the book on the podcast today, would encourage you to go pick up a copy of it.

13:53 If you are a leader who is fascinated by science fiction. It'll be a good addition to your library. So we pick up a part two of Stranger in a Strange Land. And in that second part, which is Called his preposterous heritage. We run across a man named Jubal Harshaw. And Jubal Harshaw is the. Is the central character, not Valentine Michael Smith, in the second part of A Stranger in a Strange Land. The reason why it's subtitled, the second part is subtitled. His preposterous heritage is because this is when Valentine Michael Smith begins to interact with the larger power structures, the larger governmental structures, the larger civil, social, and even religious structures that human beings have constructed in this brave new world that he is now an alien to.

14:53 Right? But as he begins to interact with people all the way from the nurse Jill to the journalist Ben Caxton to the lawyer Jubal Harshaw, all the way to Senator Douglas and even the. The head of the Church of the Foster Right Brotherhood, as he begins to interact with these folks and begins to learn more about how human beings either commit to each other or don't commit to each other. How they communicate, how they don't communicate. As he begins to learn about ideologies and he begins to learn about ideas.

15:30 What Heinlein does so cleverly in this part two is he structures certain arguments that he really wanted to have with people of his time and of his era. You begin to see Heinlein's progressivism that I referenced in in just previously. You begin to see it begin to come out. And it's a subtle thing. It's not anything that you're hit over the head with directly. But if you know how to. If you know how to look for it and you know what to look for and you know what the tells are, you'll definitely see it.

16:02 However, there is a strain in here also of rebellion, right. And of questioning in particular. When you think about the character Jubal Harshaw, a lawyer, a doctor, but also a raconteur and a man about town who, who has three buxom secretaries living in his palatial estate in the Poconos in Pennsylvania,

16:32 there's a way to read chapter two that is not progressive in our time. There's a way to read it through a feminist lens. But when we talk about the character of Valentine Michael Smith and when we talk about his heritage, we talk about where he came from and where he is going, the ideas in part two begin to lay the foundation for frank, further ideas and further developments that are going to occur in parts four and five, after Valentin Michael Smith goes away from Jubbal Harshaw, in essence escapes the the cradle and begins to walk around in the world in all kinds of different ways and eventually comes to an idea that he will have to build a system, he will have to build a distance discipline, he'll have to build an organization in order to understand human beings and attract human beings of his own.

17:31 So as we read Stranger in a Strange Land and as we read Parts One and Part Two, one of the things that jumps out to me about this book and its leadership applications is that this is a logical conclusion. Conclusion to some ideas that were being explored by. Or Heinlein presents a logical conclusion to some ideas and some theories that were being explored by another famous author of his era, Ray Bradbury. By the way, one little tidbit about this book. Heinlein actually said later on that he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land in the early 1950s, late 1950s, 40s until the 1950s, because he had this idea for it, and then he let it sit for 10 years before he published it in the 1960s, because he was waiting for society to change significantly so that the ideas basically wouldn't get him tarred and feathered and thrown out of polite society.

18:28 During the time that he was, of course, basting on these ideas or maybe letting the manuscript sit, Ray Bradbury published the Martian Chronicles. And in the Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury postulates a very outrageous idea. The idea that he postulates is that, is that going from Earth to Mars changes human beings to become more like Martians, rather than the dominant idea of the time, which was a dominant idea coming out of World War II, where a country was confident and had cultural confidence, the United States had cultural confidence.

19:09 And of course, Bradbury was publishing as an American author in an American context. He was looking at all this cultural confidence and saying, if you go to another, another planet and you are a human being, how does that planet change you? Not how do you change the planet? And so Heinlein plays with the inverse of this. A human being born on Mars, who, technically speaking, should behave like a human, wouldn't behave like a human, they would behave like a Martian. And then bringing that Martian who looks like a human to Earth, how does that change things?

19:47 How does that mold not just the Martian, but also humanity? That makes Stranger in a Strange Land the logical sequel, or the logical end argument of Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles. The reality is that Mars as a planet fascinates us still. I mean, SpaceX and Elon Musk still want to get there. I mean, Elon walks around with a shirt that says Occupy Mars for God's sakes. And because it fascinates us and, and has for some time Many hundreds of years before Elon or H.G. wells or NASA came along because it fascinates us.

20:30 The reality is, and we don't really, we have no way of confirming this or we will have no way of confirming this until we actually go there and actually try to plant a flag there. The reality is that the planet of Mars is probably not supporting anything like what we think of as intelligent life. Which means that there will be no Martian invasion. There be, will, will be no War of the Worlds, right? There will be no Independence Day style fireworks. Unless we're talking about an invasion worked out along the lines of what Heinlein gets to in his novel.

21:05 And we are itching to get after that planet, aren't we? I mean, I think by at the very minimum the end of this century, we will at the very least have established if not an outpost on Mars. We will very least have established regular rocket trips to, to Mars. I think my, I think my youngest child will be part. Will be an adult in a generation in a time where it will be going to Mars will be as a semi regular an occurrence as, as NASA or the European Space Agency or India or China putting rockets up in the sky to launch, launch satellites.

21:47 I don't know that civilizations or, or settlements will be established in our century. I think that'll probably happen in the 22nd century. But we are going to Mars. It is going to happen. The question of course is how is it going to change us? What are we going to turn into? And then the other question is how are we going to change Mars?

22:13 I think something more spiritual or psychological rather than material or temporal however is putting a current pause on our appetites and our ambitions. And I think it's because we haven't quite figured out the answer to the question that both Bradbury brings up in Martian Chronicles and that Heinlein so cleverly inverts in Stranger in a Strange Land. Back to the book back to Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. So we pick up in, in part three of Stranger in a Strange Land and this is really focused on the education, right?

22:57 The eccentric or eccentric such as it were education of Valentine Michael Smith Smith or the man from Mars as he is now known. The chapter of course opens with him being him escaping or, or leaving the. The gentlemen strations of Jubal Harshaw being pushed out into the world to deal with it as he finds it as he goes out into the world. One of the first stops, one of the first places where he begins to sort of understand and, and Begin to put together some ideas around belief, around. Around deception, around illusion.

23:43 One of the first places where this begins to manifest is in, ironically enough, a rural carnival. Yeah, that's right. The man from Mars becomes a magician in a rural carnival. His assistant, of course, is. Is Jill the nurse, who has now become his. His lover in addition to being his water brother. And they tour the country under the guise of this. Of this carnival. And through becoming a carney, through engaging in. In the carnival acts of deception and trickery, figuring out who is a mark and who is not, who's real and who's fake, who even understands what the game is and who are cynically manipulating people.

24:37 The man from Mars, Valentin Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land, begins to figure out how he can incorporate, how he can include I. Ideas from. From illusion, ideas from magic, ideas from being a carnival barker, ideals, from being a marketer into what eventually will become his very own church.

25:08 By the time I got to this point in the book, by the way, I said, well, of course he's going to go off and form a church. And one of the things that jumps out to you about this eventual development and sort of how it goes through in part in parts three and then part four and part five, is not who he draws to himself, not even who he. Who he develops his acolytes in a school that's structured along the lines of a church, not even who he rejects. What jumped out, to me, at least in this section, most prominently, was sort of related to the piece that I opened up with during this podcast today.

25:54 I do think that if the man from Mars, AKA Valentin Michael Smith, had come down from Mars today and lived in our era, if Heinlein was writing this fantastical novel now, Valentin Michael Smith would not start a church valentine. Michael Smith would instead become Warner Brothers with Elon Musk and maybe Reid Hoffman and maybe a few others, and he would start a political party. Because the fact of the matter is there is a shift in culture, or there. Yeah, there is a shift in culture that Heinlein couldn't have predicted and had no barometer for.

26:39 We've shifted away from, as I said in my opening, we've shifted away from the stifling conformity of religion to the stifling conformity of political opinion. In a search for meaning in the west, we have replaced the search for transcendence with the discovery that men, men running political parties and men promoting ideas have feet of clay. We have removed religion from its appropriate place, and we have replaced it. Well. We've replaced it with something else. And now, interestingly enough, in the year 2025, the old strong gods of religion are attempting to reinsert themselves or reassert themselves over and above the objections of the new weak gods in politics in the West.

27:38 So what are we to take from Heinlein? What are we to take from these first three parts of Stranger in a Strange Land? What is the, what is the larger message for leaders here? Well, I think that one of the big ideas or one of the big beats, right, that's in Stranger in a Strange Land, at least the one that strikes me the most prominently is inverting the eschaton or how one can resist bringing heaven to earth. The entire history of the 20th century was about man's search for utopia. Either a scientifically generated one, a technologically generated one, a socially generated one, or at the end of our century or the end of the last century, a culturally generated utopia.

28:32 And all those utopian visions, from the ones tinged by Marx to the ones tinged by Milton Friedman, all those utopian visions failed miserably and continue to fail because you can't bring heaven to earth. You may be able to bring the man from Mars back to earth, but you can't bring heaven to earth. And Heinlein, Robert Heinlein, in all his cynical, liberal, humanistic glory, actually understood something about human nature that we have all forgotten as well. We arc past the first quarter of the 21st century and it's something that bears repeating.

29:14 No one and nothing can bring heaven to earth today. Not alien, not technology, not human, not system. But the entire corpus of the 20th century, as I said, was about the vain attempts to do so. And the first quarter of the the 21st century has been about the hangover as the consequences of such pursuits are visited upon us. The challenge of our time, right, that Stranger in a Strange Land also blew right past is one that I've already mentioned. Again, for leaders, it bears repeating. Religion is no longer the primary driver of meaning in a post Christian America.

29:59 And whether you believe it or not, from your own personal perspective, your own personal thoughts on religion, your own personal geography on religion, whether that's the American south, the American west, the American Midwest, the American Northeast, or the American South East. No matter what your geographic perspective, no matter if you live in a major metropolitan area or you live in a rural area, no matter if you live, you live in a place where there's a lot of broken down churches that still attract a few old people, or you live in an area where there are vibrant churches or buildings that call themselves churches, attracting 800 people to 3,000 people a weekend.

30:40 It doesn't matter what you're seeing. The statistics show that religion is on the decline in America and it's been on the decline for at least the last 25 years. We are in a world that no longer we are in a West, we are in America. By world I just mean Western world. We are specifically in the United States of America in a place now where culturally the cohesion and conformity that was enforced by religion is now enforced by politics. And politics does not operate in the church building. It may visit the church building occasionally in a sermon, and you may see it show up in the people who come into the church building.

31:22 But for the most part, politics exists in the secular humanistic world and secular humanism is now the new religion. And because we live in a post Christian America, because we live in an America that is now increasingly hostile to even Christian acts, much, much less religious ones, pagan drivers and hedonistic fulfillment of base appetites have ascended the stairs of meaning for many of us. Heinlein couldn't have predicted that. And by the way, that includes those who claim the mantle of Christianity.

31:58 Still, if you look at statistics, the divorce rate of people who go to church every Sunday and the divorce rate of people who watch football every Sunday is almost exactly the same. If the man from Mars wanted to get after it in 2025America, he would start a third party, or maybe a fourth one. What does this say about how to resist bringing heaven to earth? What does it say to leaders? Well, it says this. Your utopian visions are for naught because human nature at the end of it will win out. So remember I said this was going to be a short episode.

32:42 I would encourage you, if you have the opportunity, as I said before, go to pick up Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land because you're going to want to check out parts four and five of that book. The setup is in the first three parts and then the last two parts are, are quite spectacular. By the way, Heinlein did almost a complete rewrite of the first couple of parts of the book in an effort to meet meet publishers demands. And so one version, the version that's the common, I think mass market paperback version is, is basically one version of Stranger in a Strange Land.

33:20 But then there's an extended version that his wife Virginia released after his death that had additional material in it. So if you can grab that additional material, you can probably get the entire vision that Heinlein was pursuing today on the show. We've read from the mass. Well, read from. We've analyzed the, the big ideas and the big themes from the mass market paperback. I doubt that they really differ that much from the extended versions, but I would still encourage you to go out and pick it up.

33:55 It could sit right on your, on your, on your shelf next to Emotional Intelligence or whatever it is that Adam Grant is putting out. Now. How do we solve problems with Stranger in a Strange Land? How do we solve problems with, with these ideas, some of which we've, we've talked about? Well, here's, here's maybe, here's maybe a broad solution or maybe a broad idea. And I don't know, I don't know if this is going to work for you, but hear me out. What if the aliens that we are looking for don't have our best interests in mind?

34:32 What if their intents are so far from being able to be comprehended by human beings that they appear to us as well, demonic or even evil in nature? I am a little bit of a conspiracy theory theorist. Actually I'm a massive conspiracy theorist, but I sort of low bar it or low ball it because to say more makes people think you're crazy. Much like Fox Mulder in that great show in the 1990s, the X Files. I want to believe, I want to believe that there's a vast cabal of evil demonic driven individuals who are seeking to assert elite control over the populace in order to institute neo feudalism and Luciferian and Satanic control in the material here and now.

35:26 For me, that whole spectrum of conspiracy theories is usually or is the best Occam's Razor explanation for things and behaviors that I see from people in power that make absolutely no damn sense. And when I say people in power, I mean people in power. I mean like the Rothschilds and the Bilderbergers and the, and the Royal Family and why they believe things that they believe and why they pursue the decisions that they pursue that seem to benefit almost nobody. Even though like the first, the folks at the World Economic Forum, like the folks at blackrock, they proclaim very loudly from daycs and from and from and from, from, from platforms giving speeches that they are just out here for all of us.

36:24 I don't believe it. I do believe they are controlled by something else. And I do believe that's, that's something else may not necessarily have our best interests at heart. So do I believe in aliens? Do I believe that there's life on other planets? I for sure hope There is, because the universe would be lonely without it, but wouldn't have already bothered to bother with us. Or maybe it has bothered to bother with us. And maybe just like whatever happened with Roswell back in the 1940s. Forties, maybe, maybe someone, somewhere or someone's somewheres have been hiding it from all of us because they're scared of what we might do.

37:09 They're scared of how the system might fail or might fall apart. And they're scared of how they will be disintermediated from power. But what if those beings, what if those aliens that I want to exist don't have my best interests at heart? What if they aren't on our quote unquote side and not in a militaristic Independence Day or War of the World's kind of not being on my side? What if they're not on my side in a way where they want to come down and in that great Twilight Zone episode, get us all to go on ships and go back to their home planet in order to

37:50 serve man? So that's one idea that I got there, and that's a humdigger of a doozy that you may want to think about. Here's another idea. Perhaps it is better not to search for a superman or for a God from the stars, or for a superman or a God, small G, to be brought here from Mars via the machinations of the delicate geniuses at NASA or SpaceX or. And maybe instead we should be considering what destruction in alien terms might actually be. What are they actually offering us? Or what are we actually offering them?

38:26 And is there going to be an even exchange of value?

38:31 Look, at a practical level, I do not share ground with the fictional Dana Scully of X Files fame, Sam Altman, or even the skeptics that currently dominate the public square known as the Internet. I do want to believe in that intelligent life, and I do want to believe that that intelligent life is somewhere in the universe searching to engage with other intelligent life and of course, finding the universe to be as empty and cold as we have found it would be excited to engage with us, would be eager.

39:02 But I also know, logically, putting the emotions of that aside, that the admonitions of caution for our most ancient human traditions, like the religious ones, are never really heeded in any kind of way, ever since the first bulwark or the first groundwork or the first tile was laid in them. Those admonitions of those ancient human traditions are never heeded by those human beings who seek and who desire to enforce utopia from the anywhere, whether that be from the stars or from some half baked political ideology.

39:50 I know that we as leaders have to watch out for that. And I know that skepticism and the desire for belief are intention. They are not opposing. Well, they are opposing forces, but they're opposing forces in tension. And while they are opposing, they are not oppositional. You could be a skeptic and still want to believe. And you could want to believe. You can have belief and still be skeptical. Maybe this goes to what faith actually means, which might be the whole point of Stranger in a Strange Land, which of course begins its grounding in Exodus 2:22.

40:30 Maybe Robert Heinlein was onto something after all. I don't think we resolved anything here today. I just think that I've brought up questions for you that maybe have no answers. And I think that's kind of the best thing that you can get from a book that seems simple but upon a closer look is really very complicated. Complicated. I would encourage you to pick it up as a leader. Read it and let me know what you think.

40:58 And well, that's it for me.