Welcome to the new Think Green. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend Alex Preyou Harvey Donal. Gobble gobble what's up mother turkey. Sorry.
This is our Thanksgiving Day episode. Normally Alex greets me. Yeah. Our good friend Greg McBrayer.
How are you Greg on this Thanksgiving Day? Just grateful. Yeah. At this age, you know, I'm just grateful for every day to the good love you guys.
Yeah. Greg, tell me when you see David, you get the same feelings I do. Like you just want to slather that butter ball and some olive oil and butter and put a little time in his cavity, a little lemon, some bread crumbs and just based him covering some tin foil and just dig in. So how you feel?
More of a ham kind of guy myself. I'm used to try those legs on. Like a spiral cup, those and dig in. Listen, listen, this isn't Peter Singer's podcast Preyou.
Oh yeah. So tell the for our listeners who may have missed the news. So Greg, did you ever have either of you guys ever get a signed Peter Singer and your like pseudo philosophy classes? I don't remember so long ago.
You did. Yeah, his great or his well put him on first of all, he's Australian. So he's like already a criminal by nature. He's the criminal mind.
Dude, we have listeners in Australia, man. Shout out to our Aussie and Kiwi friends. Keep going. They're recent imports, I'm sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course not. Yeah, yeah. I'm just not just being anti-Australian.
Not for the whole thing, but you write some book about animals. I'm like, I think it's like, you know, in the 70s maybe. Right. I can't recall.
And then he tweets something bizarre a few days ago. And he is the co-founder of a new academic journal. I can't remember the name of something like Journal of Dangerous Ideas, you know, where they publish things like exploring why people should be able to sleep with children. Ridiculous things.
So they, and he says, I looked at his little tweet thread. They're all peer reviewed by respectable academics. Alex gets sent a lot of the pieces, finds them all, they're reading. And so he was highlighting a recent piece from the recent, from the recent print issue.
And it had to do with, it was a case for Zuophilia, as I pronounce it. And then I'll see what all the hell up is about it. I just, everyone loves animals, right? But I think, coming from Greg's the founder of NAMBLA, the North American Man Beast Love Association.
Oh, I see. I see. Good, good, good, good. Other NAMBLA.
The FBI, we listen. Folks, you're going to be like, this is about thanksgiving. I feel really misled. Anyway, let's get back to Thanksgiving.
No no no, I'm going to hear. We're going to show it's a defensive, why you should be able to sleep with animals. And I think it's insane. Where's like, well, maybe this animal has no home.
It's a stray dog. And he just caress on it a little bit. It wants to kill him. His argument that he presented is like, if you were an animal, once you have it be loved tenderly and consensually then farmed out, I'm pretty sure you can avoid doing both of those.
Also, they don't make those kinds of judgments in their mind because they're animals. I know, it's they're so involved. What was the topic for today? Gratitude.
Gratitude, right. Right. Everything's giving everybody. Everything's giving.
What's your favorite Thanksgiving side? I'll tell you right now. My favorite thing to do is take Thanksgiving leftovers and make a sandwich with cranberry sauce horseradish and turkey. Delicious.
Yeah. A little zang. What about the size? What are you going for for?
Stuffing. How about you, David? I hate to take care of stuff. I don't like it.
What? I convinced my young lonas they make me lasagna. I just find like turkey disgusting and cranberry and stuffing. What the hell is stuffing?
It's disgusting. I love Thanksgiving food. I guess cranberries. Do you eat cranberries at any other time?
I eat cranberries. Are they crampers? Are they celebrated all the time? My favorite Thanksgiving side is friends and family.
Good cheer and good times. You eat your friends and family? Jesus. Dude, it's a zoop.
That's definitely too far, Alex. Yeah, that involves murder. What are we talking about? What are we?
The four parts to this episode? Yeah. I sort of had the stupid idea that we would just sort of loosely think about gratitude. Talk about Thanksgiving and then maybe talk about the thing is by looking at sort of aerosol and maybe dash of, you know, little side dishes and maybe if we get there but starting with Lincoln because Lincoln issued the first proclamation that they really established Thanksgiving as a national holiday here in America.
That's what I thought. That's right. Should we jump in? Yeah, I was going to say just a little different than our usual thing.
Usually we are going to do like a single thinker or a single text. Yeah. And I thought it might be fun to just sort of dash around amongst a few texts to see if we can understand this idea of gratitude. Things were thankful for.
Yeah, and Lincoln was grateful because of he had more fans. I don't know what that means, but from the look on your face, I'm going to suggest I should not Google that in the fangent to not Google it either. No. It's like a mermaid.
A type of gigantism disease, right? Oh, oh, I see. He was grateful that he could still live a life and a tangent on this. Yeah.
Marpeh Rapler kind of like you. Yeah. I read some stories. Didn't have, like, superhuman strength.
I've been struggling with this. I'm a fan of people with Marpehans reporting to the local constable anticipation of their crimes. But I think it's because he's a whale splitter. Stronger.
Would you call him? A rail splitter. Oh, like a railroad. Okay.
Yeah. Got it. that this sets Thanksgiving as a tradition in play in the United States. I guess I never even thought, because you learn in school, I was at the pilgrims in the Indians, like, okay, I guess it just kicked off then.
And from time immemorial, essentially, we've had this tradition. But Washington has a Thanksgiving proclamation as well, and it was not uncommon, but I think this is the one that really sets off the tradition of the Pacific Day in November as a holiday that sort of seems to stand the time. Yeah, this kicks off. This kicks off the turkey days we come.
So it's 1863. Right. The proclamation is October of 1863. What's going down in America there, Greg?
Yeah, I didn't know. Because that was just a wee lot at the time. So I text my friend. The war of war didn't go in.
Right, right. Well, I see we're not going to have any reverence on this actual day of thanks. We're just going to dwell with the Zwafilia and some blatant racism. But calling it the war of more than aggression.
And that's what you call it. That's what you call it. I call it. Yeah.
Yeah. I love this country. Whoa! You don't love it, Leo at Gullhillhead.
Just my friend Chris, who's been on the show, I just said, hey, what's going on in October of 1863? And he said, the tide is finally turning through the Union. Grant is mostly secured to Western. It's about to start turning to the Tomak.
He said the rebels are on the run of Virginia. But I think that this is actually we're getting into the meat grind of part of the war. It starts to get pretty like a lot of deaths happening. The battle against Burgers just happened back in July.
So there's a few four months after that. And the Gettysburg Address is going to happen in roughly a month after this. So this is a proclamation. Is it okay if I just read it?
Yeah. And Greg, can you put special emphasis with that? Thanks for that background. Yeah, sure.
No. Uh, carnage is happening everywhere in the United States. People are fearful, cousin fighting against cousin. And then what's the first sentence?
Grogble gobble citizens. Right. That was the first sentence, Greg. It's just so funny in this with that backdrop.
The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and helpful skies. Yeah. I think this is beautiful. And I said, I just set you up.
No, no, I appreciate it. And I think that I realized that, you know, 2023 isn't quite nearly as grim as it was 160 years ago. But it's, you know, people can look around the world and think things are so good. And so you're right that things aren't very good.
And here he is thanking the Almighty God for the blessings of the fruitful fields and helpful skies. Let me just, I'll just read it. We'll stop it. You guys will return to how discussion about the year is drawing the year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with blessings of fruitful fields and helpful skies.
To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart, which is evisually insensible to the ever-watching Providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater military conflict. While that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the union, mutual diversions of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased, non-withstanding the waste that has been made in the camp this siege in the battlefield, and the country rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor has permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God who, while dealing with us and anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly reverently and grateful acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens and every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are so journeying in foreign lands to set up the heart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwell within the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the descriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows or suffers in the lamentable civil strife in which they are unavoidably engaged and fervently implore the imposition of the almighty hands to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as maybe consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union. And then some sort of concluding I signed this on this day. I don't know, pretty moving.
I've never read it. I don't think I've ever read it. I really liked it. I thought it was quite thoughtful and full of link in sort of solemnity and care at the same time.
I mean, we've talked about so many linking speeches with friend of the show and TNT homeboy, Michael Zugert. Shout out to Zooks. Zooks. This is going to be here in Nashville next week.
That's the one. I'm sorry you guys were joining around and saying Zooks. Zooks. David.
Zooks. There we go. Anyways, I thought it was great. There's themes of technology, themes of divine providence, themes of natural plenty or nature giving its bounty.
And yeah, you're right. As you read the beginning, I think you're both right. David's right that this is kind of a shocking statement. But he immediately says, we are prone to forget the source from which these blessings come, right?
That we're sort of inclined to forget it. And it's a nice reminder. It is true, right? We do have these blessings, even in the worst of times.
We have had these blessings. Yeah. I interpreted some of his seemingly optimistic or rosy language after the first quick reading is that this speech was intended for two audiences. One is, and we can talk about how they registered to both.
One is internally, of course, because he does want to heal a fracture country, a sincere in that. But also I thought it was a piece of, I can't, I don't know the background to this. And I was distributed. But Lincoln was worried about foreign invasion, but you're having civil war in the United States.
We're at our weakest point. Every, all of our guns are pointed inward. And it's a perfect time for our enemies to take advantage of us in our, in our, you know, nature's bounty, which we have an abundance. And so what he's saying, because there are these funny lines, where he's like, yeah, like things are still going well in the iron doors.
And if you, if you, if you, if you, I'll stop working, why they haven't, there's like a plow in every home works just as well. And so that is a picture of the United States with all the wheels turning and business as usual. And we know that wasn't the case. And so why is he saying that?
And to me, it's the projected image of a strong America that could unify any time. And you would have some trouble with Mr. Foreign Bay. But again, I don't just, that's really good.
One other thing I'll pick up on is, I mean, I think that's right. But I think there's the internal audience is probably again bifurcated, right? And he's speaking to the north and the south. But as is his usual way, he doesn't divide them, right?
And he says, I encourage us to offer thanks, but I also encourage us to act, to sort of do acts of humble penance for our national perversions and disobedience, right? There's no sort of notion here, just like in the second inaugural that the south, or the Confederacy is the one responsible. It's our sin, it's something that we've all done wrong. And we're all paying the penalty for it.
I don't know, it just seems completely devoid of any sort of moral condemnation. We're grateful even in the midst of this terrible suffering. And we should try to ask for forgiveness for the things we've done wrong. In a way, therefore, I mean, I get to get a little too, the only way it seems very much like the Lord's Prayer, and which is sort of this very simple prayer, right?
Like, give us daily bread, so we're getting daily bread, forgive us for our trespasses, all that sort of stuff. It's very simple and it's theology or it's teaching. I read that the speech was actually written by Secretary of State Seward, not by Lincoln. Say that, yeah, I'm sorry.
That the speech was written by his Secretary of State William Seward, of Seward's folly. Oh, well, how about that? Yeah, but I'm sure he, he took, who knows? I mean, I'm sure he knows.
One thought I had, this kind of related to what you said, Greg, is he says, when he moves on to the actual proclamation, he says, I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, right? Which I thought was a sort of humble admission in part that his power only extends so far, and that he, it's also an invitation, not really order, right? Saying, I think we should celebrate. I guess it tests the gratitude of the people, whether they'll go, but that clearly excludes the Confederacy.
I don't think I've got any ill will though, but I think kind of just a sense that, look, I'm the president of this, and I think we should acknowledge. I'm sorry, why does the exlutant Confederacy? Well, they're not part of the United States, since if we're in this. That was not Lincoln's understanding.
Lincoln's understanding was they'd never left the union. But they didn't vote for him for reelection, right? I mean, like he understands that there was, there's a limit to the extensions, but I know he thought like seceding was illegal, right? That you can't do that.
But I mean, if they're not voting for president, if they're not part of the Senate, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is a semantic question, but. Well, I think it's at the heart of why we call the Civil War, not the war of Northern aggression, the war between the states. I mean, that terminology is the terminology Lincoln used, right? It was a war to tear apart the country, not a war of secession, or a war to go away.
So, but no, I mean, yeah, it is very much semantic, but I don't think it's only semantic. And I said, but again, I always point here, it would be that I think he is actually inviting even the Southern to pray this prayer with him, although it's going to fall in deaf ears. They're not going to listen to, of course. Then you would interpret it then as a kind of overture, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, really. And as a sort of invitation to sort of say, look, what are we doing? We have this down, we're blessed with an industrious people.
We're blessed with great opportunity for the future. And we're able to do that even as we spend money and needlessly spend life on this war. Yeah, I will. It's interesting.
I was curious. How you guys read his condemnation of America as seen through the eyes of the Lord. So when he writes, we ask of humble penance for our national perverseness and disobedience. And then commend to his tender care, all those who become widowed, thanks to our national perverseness and disobedience.
He could have said things, he could have written that in a different way. Unless you suspect that this is a not so subtle indication that, look, our national perverseness comes from one side. They are the ones who want this perverse institution called slavery. And they're the ones who are visiting the wrath of God upon the United States.
Nobody else. Well, the second augule is what year and a half later, a very famous language with mallistore non-cherry tortole. And he says, this is an extraordinary language. He says, one ate that the whole population were colored slaves and distributed generally over the union.
But localized in the southern part of it, like that as far as they'll go toward blaming the cell, these slaves constitute a peculiar and powerful interest all new to this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would run the union even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial and larger another. Neither part expected the war, the magnitude, or the duration which was already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easy triumph and as a result less fundamental understanding, both read the same bible and pray the same God. Each invokes his aid against the other. Here's where he lets it slip just a little bit. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask the Just God's assistance in reading the bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged.
So he calls it American slavery, just a few lines down from there. So there is at least, and it may be it is just a pragmatic or prudential consideration, but there's no laying of the blame at the feet of the south, it seems to me. But I'm sort of struck by- I mean, if you wanted to- Again, my contention is, I don't know whether you guys necessarily disagree with it, is that with the potential foreign audience in mind, and would be foreign plotters, governments that want to take advantage of us in our weakness, it wouldn't make sense for him to say, look things are so fractured and just start heaping blame on one side, because that would give a lie to what he said earlier about all the plows functioning and chicken and every posh You know what I'm saying? Yeah sure, no that's good.
I see. I didn't think about that. That's not bad. Yeah.
And look, super to the Secretary of State, right? What's on his mind? Besides Alaska? Yeah, yeah, very good.
So we have another- Oh, it's going great. Oh, just say we make it the fact that- I mean, like the second auger from which I just read mentioned the bible and makes fairly clear reference to Genesis and Matthew. But here I didn't really carefully reread this one. This just occurred to me.
I see nothing that would make me suspect that this is particularly Christian or biblical. This is one detail. He says, no human council has devised an art. So when I was asking, what are we really grateful here?
It seems like divine providence. He says, do you human council have devised? No, have any mortal hand worked out these great things, which could be him saying, I didn't do this. Right.
They are the gracious gifts of the most high god who, while dealing with us in anger for a sense, have nevertheless remembered mercy. So the one- It's Christian-y sounding language. Yeah, but there's obviously divine forgiveness in the Old Testament, so you don't want to do it. Even this, the word mercy has, is a kind of Christian overtone possibly to it.
Yeah, that's fair. I just was thinking about some of the other things I read about Lincoln where he's accused of not being a Christian. He sort of has this very loosely speaking religious posture, it seems. Although he seems always emphasized, I mean, in all these public addresses where he's exhorting forgiveness and exhorting thanksgiving, there's this recognition that- I think there is this recognition that a posture of gratitude for the things we have does sort of depend upon some kind of religiosity.
No? Like the theme of this podcast today, this episode is about gratitude, and one of the things I want to drive out at least was thinking about the role of the divine in gratitude. And it seems like Lincoln, when he brings up this question of gratitude and thanksgiving, I realize it's not a super religious holiday in any sort of sectarian way, but it does seem very loosely like Heidi's kind of lurking in the background of thanksgiving. That really struck me here because he says, when he says thanksgiving, he says, a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelt from the heavens.
It's so explicitly religious. Right. Whereas you go around the table at thanksgiving and every year we always say what we're thankful for and having a ceremony of it. And I think we never- the way I like to think about gratitude always is in relation to grace.
You're grateful to those who grace you with some sort of blessing that they need to give you. This is something above and beyond justice. But when it comes to events and circumstances in your life, it's not clear who's gracing you. Right?
Nature, perhaps? Doesn't seem like it. At least in this case, it seems like you have to point to an actor, right? Like an agent of some kind.
And when pointing to an agent of his control of an agent, you have to posit something like that. So I mean, I agree that at least in this form of gratitude, the graceful person or the person gracing you is gotta be God. It has to be religious. You know, it's missing from the speech.
So I think I was thinking about what are the preconditions that need to be met before you will break bread with somebody. Or before you will go even further than just breaking bread before you will break bread in thanks. And plus, cheeks. You wouldn't do it with your enemy or somebody you hate.
So precondition, if you're a quarrel with that person would be forgiveness. There's nothing about forgiveness in this speech. So it's like he jumps ahead. So you might be reading and go, what a dave Thanksgiving with my enemies?
Like he killed my brother. And so you had even gotten to the stage of forgiveness. And then he goes, and then I'm going to eat with them at the dinner table. What is this?
And so I didn't know what to make it that I don't know if that point makes sense. I mean, that connects to a point that I had, I think this helps to contextualize it well, which is when he asks for when he gives the, he says right after what I read, he says, I recommend to them his fellow citizens and all that, that while offering up the descriptions justly due to him, God is capital H.M. For singular deliverances and blessings, they do also with homo penitence for our national perversus and disobedience, commended to his tender care, all those who become widows orphans, mourners or sufferers. So he points.
I mean, we obviously, I, you know, the Civil War, they're serious disagreements and divisions that mark us off as one against each other as an enemy. There's also serious suffering. There's a great John Ford movie. We should probably do an episode on this.
That's, that's about post-war healing. It's called the Sunshine's Bright. I think it's one of his finest films, but you do get a sense that the common suffering is the thing that can unite the country. But you get these weird pictures of people coming together after the battle of Gettysburg for their union, right?
Like 10, 20, 30, 40 years after the fact or whatever. On both sides. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And there's arms, right? You have a similar phenomenon with Vietnam vets and their counterparts, right? There are a lot of those flights still happening here.
It does say toward the end that we fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation. So in that fervently, he does pick up again in the second order. So like, the idea is there is some prayer for you, right? It's not, it's sort of infused in this proclamation like it is and other things.
By the way, I just mentioned I'm working on this other piece for Xenophon. And I was struggling with translating this one Greek word. And I finally settled on proclamation. You may remember I was texting you guys about it because I think the word proclamation has a kind of religious tone to it.
It seems to me, it not, it need not, but it can. It seems to me. And so even I think saving day proclamation has a religious kind of official religious sound to it. I mean, you think that emancipation proclamation, but anyway, I read this, you know, three times today.
But my third, my first reading, obviously, was just on foreign policy, but my third upon my final reading, it got very dark. And this is probably a misinterpretation of Lincoln's intent. But I read him saying things are so far gone in the United States, and so that I can say this, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's pretty good.
Let's move on to a very ungrateful man. Oh, we're gonna do this the second little Lincoln thing real quick or no, yes, we're gonna say what you want to say. I don't know, just as I was thinking through these things, this is about civil war, we talked about the people dying and a friend of mine pointing me to this letter that he wrote to Mrs. Lydia Bixby in 1864.
All of her, all five of her sons died at a battle. Just wait, just, I don't know, in a day in an age when presidents seem never to be lost for words, you know, sort of Lincoln's recognition of the power of rhetoric and the power of words, but also the recognition of the limits of what words can accomplish. This letter that he wrote to her seems to me to be in that spirit. So he says, Dear, Madam, I've been shown the files of the War Department of Statement of the Edgens, General of Massachusetts that you were the mother of five sons who died gloriously on the battle on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tenoring to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks that are publicly died to say, giving thanks. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar for you. Yours very sincerely, respectfully. So again, here, again, uh, salinity reverence, sacrifice again.
There's this notion of gifts and sacrifices and things that you're thankful for seem to involve a sacrifice we're giving that's above and beyond what you want. I didn't have much to add on that line. I thought I thought about the best one going to have heard in a while. He says, I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.
It's it's reminds me of a lot of Pericles Funeral Nation. Yeah, and also the Gettysburg Address where little note nor longer remember. Yeah, like speech can't do anything. And if it's going to do anything, it's got to be trickery.
And there's almost something indecent about writing the letter necessary to write the letter because it would be indecent not to say anything, right? And not to acknowledge the loss and to try to console her is is is also indecent. So you have to say something but the second you say something, it's like, what are you trying to do? Like nothing's going to and I just felt that was such a frank and beautifully stated sort of admission of that but also a strange expression of thanks.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, gosh, yeah. And even the proclamation we just read is sort of short.
I mean, you mentioned I did try to count the things he's thankful for and I can't was six. I don't want to press that too much. Um, I know, I know. Um, but it's very it's very short to the point, right?
Like there's there's something about this that you can't can't or shouldn't fully express your gratitude. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. But the case of the dead children as much as much more solemn, it seems, it seems like a microcosm of what's happening in the proclamation. It's far it's far harder to be general about it because she's thinking of like, you know, right?
Yeah, specifically the name of her, uh, kids Charles, Oliver, she's thinking about them and how they're gone and whereas you can you can be thankful in general for that the nation is healed. Um, to have lost five sons and then watch the nation kind of move on and you're unable to it's got to be very difficult. Should we go to the most ungrateful man of all the great soul man? The great soul man.
Yeah, yeah, please. Yeah, leave us off. So you and I were all text about this. I just thought, uh, we should do an ancient and then I thought, well, we should do an aerosol and I was like, wait a minute, gratitude isn't a virtue, right?
For aerosol, we couldn't come up with anything, it seemed analogous and then it dawned on us that, well, in fact, this possible peak of more over to you might be completely ungrateful. So. Yeah. And when thinking about it in terms of, of, um, religion, right?
And God, right? Right? I mean, God doesn't come up a lot in here. Mary Nichols is going to set us straight on this in a couple of months, by the way, yeah, I'm with you.
But he says kind of the first third of this, he says, um, so the great, so we're talking about Aristotle's and the Kevin King ethics book for chapter three, I think we've done it. We have all the idea of reference to chapter one book for as well. I want to bring up anyway, go ahead. But he says he, he who divides a great soul man this way, he who deems himself worthy of great things and is worthy of them is held to be great, sold.
Little later, he says, worth is spoken of in relation to external goods and we would posit as the greatest of these, one, that which is assigned to the gods, two, that at which people have worth aim, and three, that which is the price conferred on the noblest people and honor turns out to be such things. So one place that God comes up, it's in the context of honor, which is assigned to the gods. And it's that which great human beings aim at and the noblest get, right? And so God is set up almost as a kind of rival or as a benchmark for this person.
And so he would like to be the object of gratitude then. Yeah, though, only from the highest people. Okay. Right.
Not from anybody. He doesn't want to be grateful, but he wants the highest people's gratitude. Yeah, they want to be grateful for his doing in a difficult and very trying time. A place where I thought God though not mentioned, but could certainly be lurking is in his discussion of good and bad fortune or of chance.
He says a little later, he says, he says, he says, he was this is a 1124, a 15, a 77 in the Collins and Bartlett translation. He said, the great soul man then is as we said, especially concerned with honors, but he was surely also be disposed in a measured way toward wealth and political power, as well as good and bad fortune. However, it may occur, he will be neither overjoyed by good fortune or deeply grieved by that fortune. And so here's, I thought an interesting issue, somehow he's subject to chance because he's human, right?
And he's not in control of everything as a God would be beautifully be. And yet because he is deserving of the honor of a God, right? And worthy of being sort of most great, he has to somehow deem himself above fortune or chance. And so one one question I found myself asking as a way to focus this disagreement is, okay, the great soul man is the greatest ever.
How great can human beings actually be? Right? Like how, how much can they be deserving of honor over their greatness or what they accomplish? How much of it is owed to chance?
And it seemed like the great soul man in order to be sort of live up to his sort of estimation of himself has to deny not only lowly things, but even treat chances something low as though he's above it or somehow inured to it. No, that's what I thought I thought I saw there. No, I mean, feel free to keep going. I like the notion, I mean, I'm going to keep coming back to the vine in this because it seems like it's so central to our notion of gratitude.
But it seems like our great soul man wants to be the object of gratitude. He wants to be the one providing goods for people that they deserve and that they don't even deserve. I don't know if this is fair to ask at this point, but just actually let me stay right here for this moment. This is in book four chapter one, it's on page 68 in the Bartlett Collins.
This is 1120A15 or so. Aristotle says, Moreover, gratitude flows to one who gives and not to one who refrains from taking and prays even more so. So there's this notion that in the part you read, the great soul man does seem to be concerned with praise, but not necessarily gratitude, but here he analogizes them. And so you suspect I suspect that the great soul man would have the same attitude toward gratitude that he does toward praise.
And we can return to this, refraining from taking business maybe at some point later as well. But I don't know, I mean, it's weird. It's curious to me. I was kind of serious actually about Mary Nichols coming on and explaining to us why we're mistaken about the lack of piety on the ethics.
But it does seem like this morally, this morally serious human being does not seem at all to sound like Lincoln to me in his view on gratitude. And yet I often hear Lincoln described as perhaps a model of the great soul man. And so I don't know if that's worth thinking about it. Because then he described as that model in a popular way.
Okay. Yeah, that seems that's not a fastile understanding of yours, but it's aerosol face value, let's say, we're trying to think in problems. Yeah, I see, in other words, but they're always thinking of those problems. And some people be like, look, I mean, how's wrong with you?
Yeah. But that would mean that Lincoln wouldn't under the more under the close reading of the ethics then Lincoln does not sound all like this great soul man. And he doesn't really really doesn't sound like Achilles. He doesn't sound like these other guys are the actually names who are supposedly great sold out somebody to you.
I'm not just using as an example, it's just about because it's somehow I'm not going through a nurse to trillion lens. How do we? Yeah, it's almost like you want to to give him you want to use that word to describe it. It's somehow unfair not to describe in those terms.
And yeah, I mean, the more I read ours, the less I'm in the less I'm enamored with this great soul man. So maybe that's part of it. But for me, the risk of selling lens to look at Lincoln might be statesmanship that he's sort of this man who's able to and Fred Douglas in his famous oration for Lincoln says that Lincoln was a statesman and the way that he's able to pursue the goal, but prudentially. And I think that and there's some other characteristics that Lincoln that Douglas describes at Lincoln, right that he's just these courageous and that he's prudent.
And this intellectual capacity is about figuring out the best way to get from point A to point B, which he says the statesman kind of has to do, right? Like Alex and David and Greg can sit in our fancy company offices and talk about what the best thing to do is that we don't actually have to deal with invading army or what to do with an enslaved population. And so there's just there were strains on the statesman that we don't face. But I didn't intend to talk about Lincoln and magnimity, but it does occur to me that Lincoln sort of highlights just how far apart a statesman might be from the great soul man.
Like we did this episode in Coriolanus where I think we least understand the notion that he's an example of great soul man, but he seemed really far from being a statesman. So these two types might be in some tension. Alcibiades as impressive as he was wasn't exactly a very good statesman. And so I don't know.
That's a good question, Dave. I think one way maybe this is sort of a direction to go with David's comment. One way to think about the great soul man is from the perspective of a very stylish audience who was sort of somewhat aristocritically educated and they might have certain hopes of more virtue and greatness and self-sufficiency that don't really pan out, right? I mean, so I mean when he's continuing to the discussion of good fortune, Aristotle objects to what he said, he says, but instances of good fortune too seem to contribute to greatness of soul.
So if the well-born deem themselves worthy of honor as do those who possess political power or wealth, for they are in a position of superiority and everything superior and point of goodness is more honorable. A little later, yet in truth, only the good human being is honorable, though he who has both goodness and good fortune is deemed even worthier of honor. So he's trying to sort of go against these two and he, you know, pit these two opinions against each other. And the view he comes to is that really what matters is your own sort of intrinsic excellence or goodness, though your good birth can contribute to it.
So there's a kind of hopefulness, I think, but there's also sort of two references to the hottiness of the great old man in that he looks down upon honor, even though he pursues it. And also there's a hottiness of people who possess goods from good fortune, but who don't have virtue. And so I think there's a real question of what's the proper disposition to honor? Should you pursue it while thinking yourself above it?
That seems very difficult. But also there's a challenge, a psychological challenge about where does your sort of high estimation of yourself come from? Can you pursue the virtue or from your birth and everything? Because your hottiness could either be well-founded or poorly found.
It could be either quite sharp or inaccurate or could be foolish. And in that sense, you could then understand the chapter as picking up on sort of moral expectations, showing certain problems at the peak, and therefore generating a more sensible sort of approach to these concerns right about honor and the like. We just did that episode with actually, I'm not sure which will come out for the audience, but we recorded an episode with Burnsy on Leo Strauss and modern technology and all sorts of things. And we talked at length about Winston Churchill.
So related to our discussion of Lincoln and the great old man, would it be more apt to describe Churchill as that type? And if so, did Churchill seem grateful? Is that a characteristic that he's seen to his dude? Maybe where this is not a fair question for us?
I'm spotted. On the question of Lincoln, I was reminded when you were speaking earlier of when that movie came out with Daniel Day Lewis, and they previewed his voice. I think they are worried, but Lincoln has by all accounts a very kind of scratchy, tinny, high-pitched voice. And people were outraged.
They were like, wow, this isn't Lincoln. That's not what he sounds like. Well, look at all the historical evidence. And he says, here's all he says, such as the possess beautiful and useless things, more than useful beneficial ones.
Also, slowness of movement seems to be the mark of a great old man, as well as a deep voice and steady speech. And so there's something, but I think that proves, maybe this is just me trying to sell this one, but I think it proves that one Lincoln is great sold. We do honor many seems, at least in the way he conducts himself to have sought out this event and thought himself worthy of handling it more than anybody else. On the other hand, it seems like we bring a lot to the table and thinking about Lincoln that may not be there or fitting to the phenomenon.
Maybe greatness of soul manifests itself differently in very democratic regimes. I don't know. Maybe that's kind of the truth, but same word over to you. I don't know.
I just thought that the statesman has to accommodate himself to his times. And maybe a really prudent great sold man would recognize the need for virtues that he might lack, but might still try to cultivate them publicly. Like someone reading McBath and realizing the mistake, mistakes McBath makes, we know that Lincoln was a fan of McBath, right, reading Coriolanus and seeing yourself in Coriolanus and then realizing he can't bring himself to a lie with the pleeps. I don't know, just some, but then that makes it sound a little too cynical, maybe, whereas it seems sincere and authentic.
This expression of Thanksgiving from Lincoln. Like Aristotle's complicated. I only get to the next guy. I'm excited about this next one.
Hobbs. Yeah. No, he's not he's not complicated at all. He's not next.
Oh, is anything? That's right. I'm really looking forward to what you were going to say. Yeah, this was the whole impetus for this episode, but I'm not sure how much is going to help.
I'm just going to talk about gratitude. I just talked about this talk about it. I was like a little night. I've been working on a long-term project on Zenofen's education with Cyrus that I hope to be done and maybe, I hope to be finished writing in maybe a year or two.
But the theme I'm really focusing on is Cyrus's extraordinary ambition and his attempt to make himself look like he's, I guess, quite frankly, like a god or something like this. And Wayne Ambler was in town last fall teaching a little bit of education of Cyrus to some students that I teach and he and I had lunch and dinner a couple times. And he helped me to see a little more clearly just how important gratitude was in Cyrus's securing of his rule. This might be a good transition to Hobbs because whereas Lincoln seems to talk about gratitude as a sort of authentic expression of your thankfulness.
What Zenofen seems to be showing us is the psychology that's at work in the phenomenon of gratitude. And through Cyrus, I think he's showing us how one can exploit it. Yeah, and weaponize it. Yeah, from like, throughout the life cycle of a human being, actually.
Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we can go through all the little examples if you want, but at the very beginning of the book, the education Cyrus Zenofen sort of begins in this very sort of introductory way. We look around the world and we notice that governments are always being overthrown, that democracies are overthrown, oligarchies are overthrown, and if a tyrant rules for you a little bit, we're sort of amazed by it or maybe even admire him. We sort of realized therefore that humans couldn't be ruled.
And then we saw this guy Cyrus who was such a great ruler. So we had to change our mind and we realized that you actually can rule others if you have a knowledge or a science of how to rule. So Zenofen at least sets the premise or I don't know the the theme of the book is Cyrus has figured stuff out the conceit of the book, I suppose, is that he possesses the science or knowledge, which I'm not sure that does. But what is the science assistant right here in the introductory chapter in section five?
Zenofen says Cyrus ruled so many nations, even though they didn't even speak the same language as either he himself or one another. Nevertheless, he was able to extend fear of himself to so much of the world that he intimidated all and no one attempted anything against him. So I call him and he was able to implant in all so great a desire of gratifying him that they always thought it proper to be governed by his judgment. So I take the knowledge, I realize this is not unproblematic, but I take the knowledge that Cyrus learned was twofold one how to make people fear him and how to make people feel grateful to him.
And I believe that in Greek it's a men deconstruction. So it's like fear on the one hand and gratitude on the other, which seems to link them in a way as though these were the twin pillars of how he got people to obey him. We don't need to go into it too much, but in his young education in Persia, if young people were ungrateful, they were severely punished. And so from a young age, he's sort of taught that one must be grateful.
And above all, one should be grateful to one's parents, one's fatherland, and one's friends. Why? Essentially because your parents' fatherland's and friends and the gods, excuse me, of course the gods, because apparently they've done good things to you. And you should be very grateful for the things that the gods, your parents, your fatherland, your friends have done for you.
There's one story later in the book I was hoping we could talk about just for a moment, but do you guys have any thoughts or questions before I jump off? Yeah, the only it doesn't break down, but one might object, one might pose this question to Xenophon and saying, this insight that Cyrus has that he present us with in the Syropidea only works because the preconditions of an obedient society that has this notion of the importance of gratitude have already been pre-instilled in them. So would Cyrus have met, would he be able to control in the same way a more decadent society or more atomized society? No, I mean, like he has a people who have been acculturated to these modes.
And so that'll be my only question. No, that might be very helpful explaining how he sort of sets out and has success with his initial band of Persians. But then he gradually conquers everyone, Medea, which is precisely to describe, they live in the lap of luxury and then the Assyrian Empire. People used to being subjugated.
And the example I wanted to read actually is Cyrus's very first conquest. He's still a young man and he conquers Armenia. I can set the stage for just a moment because so this gets exactly your point. So how does Cyrus instill gratitude in this king, this foreign king who does not have this Persian education where he's had this virtue of gratitude and stilled in him?
So I'll just set the grounds for a little bit. So Cyrus when he's a young man, but a grown man is named general of an army of Persians, whom the median empire enlists in aiding them against an Assyrian, an upcoming Assyrian invasion. So there's three major parties here. Cyrus's Persian, their allies with the Medes, I suspect they're the inferior allies.
And then they're at war with the Assyrians. As Cyrus is training his military, he's gradually running out of resources and he needs to find some food, among other things. And so he goes to his ally and says, do you have any other allies that aren't paying you their tribute right now? And he says, well, actually, yeah, they're meeting us.
And so Cyrus is, well, I'll go to Armenia and I'll make them more our friends than they are now. And so he goes to Armenia. He, I'm not going through the ruse, but basically he conquers them and captures the king and puts them on trial. And the king has not been paying his tributes to Medea.
The king has been building a fortress, he's been preparing to rebel against Medea, and Cyrus is caught in red handed in the act. Cyrus then conducts a trial. He invites all the Armenian elites to witness the trial. And so they see the outcome and they know that the king can't lie.
And the trial, the outcome of the trial is that the Armenian king basically concedes that he's guilty of the crimes of which he's been convicted. And the penalty that he more or less prescribes for himself is death. It's important to the story to note that our narrator Zenefan notes that the king understood himself to be acting unjustly. And that's probably very key to what goes on.
So at this point, one of the king's sons, an Armenian named Togranis, and I'm only calling him the Armenian king because he's actually unnamed in the book. This Armenian prince, who's named Togranis, comes to his father's aid, and he manages to save his father's life by arguing or having a conversation with Cyrus. And it all seems finally to persuade Cyrus that he should not kill the Armenian king when Togranis teaches him about the value of fear and gratitude in capturing someone's loyalty. And at one point, I don't want to read it.
I might be a little too didactic, but Togranis, the son of the Armenian king, says to Cyrus, could you ever find anyone who would love you more than my dad would right now? And Cyrus, like, what in the world are you talking about? This is outrageous. Like, it's about my friends, someone people I've never attacked.
And Togranis says, no, no, you're wrong. No one could ever love you more than my father right now, because he's aware of the injustice he's done. He understands that he deserves the penalty of death. And therefore, you would be doing a great good to him, an undeserved, great good, by his own understanding.
And for being the recipient of an undeserved, great good would make him extremely grateful to you. And this is in fact how it turns out. No, no, no, I don't know if I can just say that again one more time. But it seems like what Zenfen is laying out and what Cyrus is able to exploit is, look, if I do something nice, like if I pay you $20 to watch my car, you're like, I'm gonna watch your car and I'm like, oh, great, I'll pay you $20.
And you do it now, you'll be $20. You're not gonna be particularly grateful. You expected the $20. It's what's owed you.
We agreed ahead of time. So it's gratitude is not necessarily good things that we receive from another. We're not grateful for those things. We're especially grateful for those things we don't think we deserve.
This even goes back to the Lincoln speech as far as I'm concerned, because it seems like, despite the perversus, despite our disobedience, God has still been generous to us and therefore, we ought to be grateful. And and to Granny's, by the way, who's been educated by a socratic like character, seems to understand the psychology of gratitude really well. He teaches it to save his father's life to this would be tyrant and in Cyrus uses that teaching for great effect through the rest of the novel. He's constantly trying to make others feel gratitude toward him so that they will be in his debt.
And he never similar to the aerosol, great old man, he never sires never wants to feel gratitude toward anyone else. So I think it's a kind of slavery. I'm sorry. It enslaves the soul of the other person that's really well put.
I think one thing your description, which is great. That was excellent. I finished that book because it sounds like a sort of fascinating sort of exposition. But one thing it brings out about the great soul man that I had noticed before you were speaking is just how manipulative he is.
Right. Like just how like and not great. Like to go around sort of getting people to like you by dismissing their honors and acting like you don't need anything. Like when he says he likes beautiful and useless things more than useful things.
I'm like, well, the dude needs a toilet. Right. I need the fridge. Right.
You got a man's got to eat. Right. You know, there's a kind of obstruction from the neediness and therefore the importance of useful things. And so there's a kind of pretense there, at least in its extreme sort of for this fix that that requires a kind of manipulation.
If one's going to pull this off, you could say that in Aristotle, the great soul man is a kind of fiction and it's like a positive thing. Whereas in size, you're seeing a guy actually trying to do this and it's it's pretty I mean Machiavellia is the way to put it. Right. Yeah, I think that that's right.
And with the great soul man thinking he's worthy of great things, you sort of see why he'd never be grateful to anyone. Like, yeah, of course you did all some stuff for me. I'm the man. Like, I deserve everything you've done and more.
And so he can never feel like you've given him more than he was doing. I mean, that's exaggerated. It's in the spirit of it. Yeah, I wonder.
So I'd be too far. I wonder what someone like like it was actually grateful for. I suppose maybe his generals, right? Or, you know, apart from that, like the guys who got things done for him.
I mean, maybe God for the opportunity and further for helping him see a through or so they're that would be the best. You guys ever feel where somebody maybe this is only has to do with praise, but somebody seems grateful to you for a benefit that they overestimated. Yes. Yeah.
And if they're too laudatory or slavish in their gratitude, it can almost be to kind of contempt both toward them, but really because you find yourself contemptible as an imposter of sorts. These are great. That was wonderful display that you put on. And it's just a complicated piece of grateful for your praise.
So I've also had these emotions. Yeah, right. Right. Right.
I did want to at least touch on Hobbes for a moment because I think it's fascinating. Hobbes talks about gratitude is related to her as subspecies of justice. And he also talks about this notion that it's a gift that someone gives you that is above and beyond what you deserve or something like this. But he also talks about men always wanting power after power.
And he also talks about giving gifts as being a demonstration of your power and giving a gift increases your reputation. And so I'm just wondering if from Hobbesian psychology, if something like gratitude is actually even real, a real possibility, except as a psychological delusion, because anybody who's actually trying to do something for you is just trying to become more powerful in you or show that they're more powerful. It's just another way in which sort of looking at things through a Hobbesian lens, I think really robs the world of beauty. I don't know if that's the right way to put it.
Yeah, I did remember the passage that you directed us towards at first. And so I was thinking in my head before we were like, what do what Hobbes will say? And I was way off. I was like, oh, maybe he'll say you'll be grateful to the sovereign for I think you're just afraid of.
But I think if we're right that gratitude, I want to maybe this is a good way to end with this as a question. But if we're right that gratitude always involves something like religiosity, then it would make sense that he would cut it down. Right? This is absolutely positive fiction with imagination.
I mean, the weird thing on Hobbes is logic is like the only person in Hobbes is psychology who could be capable of giving a gift for which one should be grateful is God actually, because God's the only person who wouldn't benefit from his power growing relative to you or something like this. I didn't state that very well. But like all the people, like it seems like under Hobbesian account of this. Yeah, God would be the only person to whom one could be grateful.
So if you're right, it's just if you're zoos from airsofting speech and supposing like maybe I'll cut human beings into quarters and try to be multiple. Let me ask a question and maybe we can combine this with our closing question of what we're thankful for. But does it make sense to be thankful for this is what I found myself asking reading the great soul man and Lincoln. Does it make sense to be grateful for chance events or for natural things?
Because I was thinking about what I'm grateful for the deepest feeling of gratitude. You guys are gonna think I'm joking about it. The feeling of gratitude had it was probably when I felt like I understood Plato's part of entities for the first time in a general way where I understood why I was attracted to it, how it had changed me and made me a better person as a result of dragging me on and engaging me. I was like, I just felt the most profound gratitude that somebody 2,500 years ago wrote a book that spoke to me like that for somebody like me.
And I'm sure everybody has their photonic dialogue that would do this to them and if they understood how they'd do it, they'd be grateful. But I wonder whether that's a comes from a sort of feeling that we're not for the grace of Plato. I could not do this and I've given eyes to somebody. But I was just trying to think about I wonder when we think about what we're grateful for and a lot of these are sort of chance things or things given just by sort of nature to what extent should we be grateful to them or are we just like lucky.
That sounds really well put to me. Also I want to be a nerd several times. I do. You guys ever get or Greg you start really thinking about these things really unpacking the symposium.
You're like, dear God, I mean, it's a one might even prefer mild ignorance on some of this stuff. You know what I mean? We've all had to talk about a number of times people that it might help explain the near universal pushback against Socratic kind of conversations, right? That people become sort of become dimly aware of the problems and like you can not aware enough to handle.
Yeah. I think they become a little bit of where I don't want to become more aware. Like anyway, sorry. Well, they fall into the wrong tunnel and they just they just can't get out.
This stuff, it's easy to make jokes about, you know, staring into the abyss and I mean the abyss staring to you. If you take it's here. I mean, like, I think the three of us are kind of inured from some of this because our senses of humor and because, you know, we pray to the altar of airstoffinies. That's a kind of protection.
Not because we use humor to mask or to prevent us from like looking seriously at things, but a lot of it is very funny. I think the people take philosophy seriously or at least don't understand the humor side. They do fall into the abyss and it's their minds just aren't prepared to kind of look at these things or they're looking at it improperly without any real guidance. And that's always terrible.