Welcome back to the new thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always. Alex, for you, my best friend. How are you, Alex?
I'm good. How are you doing? Good. And with me is my best friend, Greg McBreyer.
He's my bosom friend. Bosom, buddy. Good to be here, fellas. Always good to see you guys.
You know, that's, that's, I first heard that expression by Moby Dick. No, Charles Butterworth, our old teacher. I asked him about, I think it's like relationship with some other Shralsian. I forget.
He said, you know, we were close friends. We weren't bosom friends. And I was in other grass. What the hell is he talking about?
Bosom friend. And I looked it up and, and I grew depressed. I was like, I need bosom friends, you know, like a real deep friendship. It's so funny.
It made me feel like a shallow modern. That makes sense. I don't do it. So today is an episode I've been looking forward to for a long time.
We're going to discuss. I'm just excited on Monday. We're doing this one. We had three days ago.
And I decided to see really that we do affect. So I got it. Sorry. Yeah.
I decided it secretly. So Winston Churchill is my hero. I think he's the greatest man of the 20th century. I think that's beyond dispute, right?
I mean, I saw you tweeted that the other day. I thought, what's he got against Strauss? I thought he likes Strauss. I do like Strauss, but I mean, I think Strauss would even there's that famous note that Strauss wrote on the Churchill's passing.
Do you guys remember that? It's like four or five sentences. It was something amazing. I mean, what did he say about?
Sure. What did Strauss say about Churchill's soul? That he was a living embodiment or he was the embodiment. Or he was the embodiment or he was the greatest old man.
Yeah. So that's something to think about. Today, we're talking about one of his essays entitled Mass Effects in Modern Life. It's published in 1931.
Greg thought it was the speech because Greg was born in 1928. He thought it was a little baby. He remembered Churchill giving it. But that's not true, Greg.
This was not a written thing that I think appeared in the publication, The Strand. Yeah, it's a popular occasion that had about a circulation of like half a million. Really? But it was popular.
So this is this sort of been widely read, right? It would have been around. This is in England right in the 30s and 40s. Yeah, so it's it's it's but yeah, and it's a few years before I think church Hitler comes to power.
So it's it's a very, very, I think the people don't give Churchill. I don't know. I don't even know what I'm saying. So that's true or not.
But seems to me at least in the popular imagination, people don't understand what a fabulous intellect Churchill possessed. So they'll describe him as a war hero and a great leader. And those things are all true. But I don't think it's it's recognized enough.
What an amazing writer. He won the Nobel Prize for literature for his books on the World Wars. I think it's for his work on Marlboro. Was it on the World War II, the one for?
Yeah, I don't think it was Marlboro. But but then he wrote on the same as ancestor. Yeah. Because he was an aristocrat.
So he wrote on Great Marlboro. A number of other books. So so Alex, you know, what's a quick, I mean, how do you want to launch into this? Well, I think one question that's obviously going to be raised is this is a political philosophy podcast.
And this is a work by a person who's known as a statesman. And he's done works of history. But I don't think he he's known it all as a political philosopher, at least in the strict sense in which we think they're writing treatises on the nature of political things. So why would we read something about him?
Also, it's a it's a work that's really kind of predictive. It's about the course of history. It's not really a particularly theoretical work in that sense. There's obviously a lot of theory underpinning it.
And the fact that there's theory underpinning it points to a peculiar fact about statecraft in the highest sense. And I think it's fair to say that Churchill practiced a craft in one of the highest sense. He's not a founder or something like that, but he certainly guided a community through, you know, great, great difficulties through war and brought them out the other side. The way I tend to think about individuals like Churchill, aerosol is great, sold men is one angle, but I think also from Plato's statesman, where the question that they're specifically concerned with is how is the statesman different from the political philosopher?
And it turns out there's a considerable overlap. To just point to one, I think, and possibly the most important feature, they both have to ask about the relationship between problems and law. This is what our system is. This is the way we're supposed to conduct our affairs.
This is what's expected, what's normal, what the norms are. But here's this problem, this challenge, this difficulty, something that maybe reflects general problems in the world itself, fundamental problems. And they have to figure out how do I adjust or finesse customs as they are in a way that gets us through this difficult trial. And Churchill here is concerned with a difficult trial, one that reflects deeper, more fundamental philosophical problems, problems of political philosophy, not just philosophy.
And so I think what you're seeing here is an overlap or a kind of glimpse in which a great statesman is wrestling with deep fundamental problems of material prosperity versus greatness, right? About human fragility versus human excellence, about our investments and our risk-taking as individuals that reflect bigger issues. So I think if you can, this might not be the work of a political philosopher, but really as an essay, you can read it through the lens of political philosophy and gain much from it, especially with a great appreciation for the immense pressure that he evinces in this work. Now, what does this work about?
Well, Mass Effect is about modern life. Modern life has given birth to these mass processes, right? These large kind of institutional entities and bureaucracies, corporations, the technological makeover of society and how this has mass effects on our lives, right? And whether it's basically concerned with two questions, one, can we get out of this, right?
Sensing that this is a pinging on our freedom. And two, is this overall for the greater good or bad of human beings? And a great just shook his head. And I think he's right.
The first answer, the first question is we cannot get out of it unless we're shoved out of it or we consciously just destroy it to the ground. And two, the question is, it comes with a lot of negatives, but also with some positives, right? He's pretty clear that it is a mixed bag. So, and basically, the largest chunk of it is a concern with what these mass effects look like during peace and also what they look like during war.
And it gets very stark when he talks about war. And I think, you know, as far as what this is going to have to do with political philosophy, I think we'll see as we go through it. But that's generally what it's about and how I like to think about this. How long is it, Alex?
I mean, this for listeners, this really is where treat yourself and you could pause the show right now. And it's how many pages, seven, seven pages in the version I give you. It's actually 26 paragraphs. Some are quite short, but interesting enough, 26 paragraphs.
I bet Greg will make something out of that. I'm just joking. It's not 26. That's 22 paragraphs.
I actually found it. You do like that. Well, I can't wait to listen. If you're listening while you're driving, please don't heed David's advice and start reading it.
Wait till you get to your destination. Yeah. And then Google. Yeah.
Please, they all traffic laws. Yeah. So mass effects in my life, Google it. You'll find it some places say it's 19 25.
As far as I can tell, it was published first in 1931. We tried to look C.V. delivered it. There's no real record of it.
It seems like, I mean, you can imagine that he gave this as a talk. I mean, he's talking about World War one is recent. So it could have been originally delivered in 1925 and then only published in 1931. He published it in a collection of essays called thoughts and adventures in 1932.
And in that book, I found download a copy. There's no mention of where anything was even published before delivered. So at the very least in putting together this collection of essays, he thought it fit to stand alone as an essay, a popular essay for public consumption, but not necessarily custom tailored to a particular occasion, the way that like the Gettysburg address, right? It's important to think about that context.
It was kind of funny. You guys both know this. I think many of our listeners will too, that Churchill wrote for money. I mean, he needed the money and he was an aristocrat.
He was born of, you know, his great moral role family, but, uh, uh, he, it's, and it's not like you'd fall into peniority of any kind, but he really did need to publish and publishing is how he kept in pockets and I kept chart well or whatever I can't recall the name of the statement is the softest. That's how we, that's how we kept it up. I always think of Churchill a little bit like Xenophon. Um, both that they were both kind of like political.
Santa Fean is a deep political philosopher in a way that Churchill is not, but as far as writing style and seeming accessibility on Xenophon's part and certainly just a service level accessibility for Churchill, there are a lot of many similarities. Definitely a subtle way to totally, very, very funny, not, not like, he's not the con. Not so subtle sometimes too. Yeah.
Greg, Greg loves Churchill's jokes. You want to give us one of them? Some of the famous ones. Oh, this is the new thing.
We should have a little bit of comedy. We've been really, yeah, the depressing content of this essay. Uh, what's the one where, you know, some lady comes up to him and a party and says, you're just, you know, disgustingly drunk and he responds, yes, to Madam, but tomorrow I wake up sober and you will wake up disgustingly ugly still something like this. I have a question for you, Greg.
Yes. If Churchill, such a misogynistic one to start. I didn't say it was Churchill. Not me.
Sorry. He's from that era. You know, he's from that era. Greg, if Churchill found himself transposed back, you know, I mean, I mean, up to modern, modern times and pops cheese, barn or cheese and porium.
Uh, would he find it just so disgusting? You, he would burn it all to the ground or. I thought he was a real gourmand. I love to.
He loves to. I don't know. He loved. I don't know what the question is.
You know, it's worth like a pint of a pint, but didn't you drink a pint of a pint in the breakfast? I say people, I think that's all I can say is, you know, you drink bottles of champagne and then conduct a successful World War II and then write over three million words. You know, it's not. I think it's overblown.
I think maybe he, I do. I mean, he's not a drunk. I mean, some people say drunk and she can't just be wasted. I didn't do all these things.
Uh, I think he did consume a lot of booze though. Yeah, that seems, uh, I just recently came across a note that he had written, I guess, a doctor and he visited the US when prohibition was still enforced. He got a doctor's note to consume booze. And he also stayed and he liked to stay in your suit.
If you're a big drunkard and you just stockled Turkey could kill you. Yeah. If he, uh, he also liked to stay in bed for as long as possible. Uh, it's what I've read to conserve his energy.
So it's like he would conduct his affairs laying prone and, of course, he would get up, but it's not because he was a slob or anything when it was time to rest. And then I think also now I read napping. He was a big fan of what we call the power nap, right? Cause he was sleep.
Like, I think it would sleep like five hours or four and a half hours in the night and maybe take like an hour and a half now to the afternoon or something. Yeah. Oh, it's really efficient. Yeah.
But his body type also, he was like, he was a big chungus, you know, he just indomitable. I don't know what he's that. What is that? So it's a Twitter.
It's a big bug. I don't think he's a big bug bunny. I'll talk to you offline about it. Uh, right.
Let's, let's, let's watch Greg. Sure. Before we get, I mean, as we go on, I guess, we want to be able to tell another women hating joke. No, no, no, no.
Well, there isn't the other one about the poison, but I'll leave that one. You mentioned that he's not a, he's not a political philosopher, but, um, I mean, we are interested in political thought. I mean, to the extent that it is the purview of political philosophy to sort of examine the thought of statesmen and politicians, I think that that's definitely not a purview. But I mean, seriously, and this is what we read and what we're going to talk about.
This is pretty profound. I mean, he does seem to have some insight into politics. This is, we're not, I mean, he's not super, I mean, I speak to my own name. I think Churchill, I mean Churchill is a superior mind.
I mean, he's a first rate mind. I mean, there's in his, my early life, he talks about, at one point, a man has to choose if he's going to nail his life to the cross of thought or of action. In other words, I think Churchill himself was cognizant of the fact that he's going to either be a statesman or a thinker and he consciously shows the life of the statesman. And so I don't think it's any disservice to him to say that he's not in that realm.
But I think in the political realm, he's almost without equal as David said. Yeah. And it's not a disservice. And I think the fact that it's the same individual who's making that choice implies considerable overlap still.
And I would say the fact that he won the Nobel prize, which shows that he probably could have devoted himself to the life of thought had that been his natural tendency and had not maybe events or circumstances compelled him to trust in an action. No, I mean, he writes three million words in his light on himself. Wait, this isn't this isn't some, what do you say? He said, how many tweets is that even?
Yeah. Oh, that's how we reckon things these days. I don't know. There's many tweets.
I mean, this isn't some, this isn't some joke memoir written by a former president, you know, it's like ghost written by some wackadoo at the Wall Street. I'll go right. Former, I mean, it's a simple Wall Street Journal. We can all agree that the ghost writers are wackadoo's, right?
Yes. Yeah. Let's try this. Let's get into the material.
Sorry. One more point. Sorry. I'm going to write to me, pre you, the founder of this.
Actually, I wanted to, this occurred to me when you said that he's not the highest kind of politician, the founder. I actually wondered, I was, this is only something I'm trying out. Is he actually a kind of founder? And here's what I have in mind, like a refounder in some way, right?
The British Empire says it's apex. It's actually, it's clear. I think it's clear to Churchill that the British Empire is on its decline and may even collapse. And so I actually wonder if it doesn't take an enormous amount of state to oversee the end of an empire, but also then to sort of transition to whatever the next thing that the British political regime is.
And so he's, and by the way, you know, the, the, the end of empires is are typically not pretty in history. And I think that he actually, as far as one can manage these affairs, did a pretty fantastic job. And the most impressive part, I think, is I suspect that Churchill very consciously tried to pass the baton of world leadership over the United States. And so I think in a way, sort of, to the, I don't like to overstate this, but to a degree, maybe Churchill can be given some credit for foreseeing and for helping along that 20th century is seeing the rise of the United States as the global superpower.
So I mean, that's good. That's good. Yeah. I think it's, it's hard to, it's really hard on the highest level to separate states and, and, and, and if the laws are themselves in crisis or our ways are in crisis, right, our regimes in crisis and you want to preserve it, you still got to change it, right?
And so I think the real trick, the real trick, and maybe this is what you're trying to say about Churchill, the real trick is, can you maintain a continuity of regime or an apparent continuity in regime while fundamentally changing it, right? Yeah. And this is a way that the Constitution is like this, right? It acts as though it's coming justly into being out of the Articles of Confederation.
This is a decision while, while obviously setting the stage for growth in federal power that I think none of the more anti-federalists, contingencies would have ever approved of, right? Yeah. So on this, you know, refounding or founding or seeing this huge change in the British Empire, I mean, this essay that we're devoting our attention to today, the mass effects in modern life, I mean, the title even kind of already recognizes mass effects. I mean, mass effects sounds democratic to me.
And so there's this democratizing effect of the modern world is another way of looking at that. Since as far as the modern world seems to be, democracy seems to sort of represent the modern world. And, and insofar as Churchill is not of that world, Churchill seems to be, as David mentioned a little bit ago, he's from a previous kind of world. And if you guys have watched down to now, this is the world of Winston Churchill, he's an aristocrat.
He's not a modern man. He's sort of a vestige of the past, in many ways, still pre-modern as far as aristocracy is a part of the old world. I mean, you know, if you've watched down to Navi, I think that gives you some indication of what the world is like for aristocrats versus in democracy. Where people had places that were clear hierarchies, people had rules.
I don't think you've been overstated the profound difference that has been affected in human relations as we move from a predominantly aristocratic world to a democratic world. Just give you one example. I frequently, occasionally, I guess I'll teach his my early life. And in this book, he gives a picture of the family.
And he talks about one time, he was swimming and lost his father's heirloom watch. And now Alex is his lovely bride is pregnant. And one day, Alex is wife, if they get birth to this kid who also loses a watch in a lake, I can foresee exactly how he will play out that the kid will come running back to Alex crying a little Tristan will come up crying to Alex and say, I dropped the watch in the lake. And now, now, OK, it's OK.
He's trying to go on, Greg. I love you. You're my precious, Ray Sunshine. And you could never, I will always love you no matter what.
And you can do no wrong because that's the democratic family. So let me explain something. Yeah, that's definitely. Alex, let me explain something to you.
Sometimes when a man tells a story about another man, it's really about himself. So notice the old Georgia boy, good old Georgia boy, Greg. Right? Good old Georgia boy, Greg.
Tells a story in which my son is actually my nephew. My nephew's name is Tristan, by the way. He's trying to apply something disgusting. But that's how would I have known?
That doesn't happen up in Connecticut. That's a Georgia phenomenon, Greg. All right. I'm sorry.
We're not all blue bloods, silver spoon descendants of the shop. So silver spoon. You don't sleep with our siblings. So Greg.
Well, but the contrast real quick, though, was that so the joke, but I mean, you might go to the grocery store and see his parents sort of coddling children and children, children, and parents. That's a democratic kind of thing you'll see. Right. So church, okay, okay.
Go on. Go on. Go on. Go ahead and do one thing.
Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on.
Go on. Go on. I mean, you know, the one thing I push back a little bit against this is I think a creature of democracy, he's talking about large corporations. large-scale warfare, right?
And individuals who might otherwise be free are now engaging in these mass processes with there and receiving the mass of the facts. But he's seeing the change. I mean, he's the product of aristocracy who's seeing the change too. I mean, he was a part of the last cavalry, right?
Wasn't the last major cavalry battle? But he also sees this. It might be an awkward democracy, but he also associates it with tyranny, right? He says the Soviet Union is doing something quite similar.
I think that's, so he's on the one hand, I'm not trying to counter what you're saying, but he's an aristocrat looking at this democratic move. But he's also seeing that this democratic move has tyrannical, possibly tyrannical consequences, right? So while he's at the one hand looking maybe down on it a little bit, he's also concerned that it gets too bad, right? That it gets far worse and trying to caution against these tyrannies.
We see this all the time now. When we're talking about mass processes, today we might talk about something like social media, right? An economic system having to be part of a large corporation and work for them, right? Not being able to feel like you have a voice in elections for president, feeling like your vote doesn't matter.
Like these just these massive movements and just events are occurring and you're subject to them, and they change your life manifestly, but you can't resist them. That's something that's of great interest to tyranny. And so you look at like who's at the cutting edge of monitoring individuals? It's China, right?
Creating a social credit system. That's what you're going to say, and our Silicon Valley in a different way. Well, yeah, but it's at least decentralized in that it's not initially the government. There are some tensions between the government and these, but absolutely they're robbing you of your privacy, your autonomy, right?
But there's a very easy move if a government chooses to go up this where it could start to look tyrannical, right? Where doesn't Plato teaches Professor Priu that democracy could devolve into tyranny quite easily? Absolutely. And even perhaps a little more controversial, I would say that modern communism is democracy, run amok, or it has very democratic minutes.
It's extraordinarily democratic, I would say. Let me, why don't we kick it off? I know Greg, this is your section, but since I have the sentence in front of me, can I read it? This is at the unless you'd like to, Greg.
This is a sentence that jumps out at the end of paragraph one. So he asks, is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals? Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions at any rate throughout the English speaking community's hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events?
And lastly, if this be true, will it be for a greater good and glory? These questions merit some examination from thoughtful people. And so from this jumping off point, I think unfolds with little forays and different directions, most notably war the rest of the essay. To be sure, I sort of take this introductory paragraph, which by the way, I'm teaching class on Reddit right now.
And so I mean, the number of rhetorical devices that Churchill employs in here, there's just another reason why I thought this was an orally delivered speech. I mean, the number of rhetorical questions in this first paragraph, and then anticipating questions that anticipate a question that he wants to answer these kinds of things. In any event, this idea of history here, I think that this again gets to this thing I want to talk about aristocracy and democracy. I think in aristocratic times, because of course, modern life wasn't fully developed, you didn't have technology, these kind of things, I think that it's true that history was driven by great individuals.
And so there's this double effect actually, that's strangely enough that democratic historians don't want to focus on great individuals because they don't want to believe that great individuals driving history. But I think Churchill is also talking about the fact that modern life seems to be rendering it such that it will no longer be the case that great individuals will drive history. We will be sort of just nameless faceless cogs and even talks about the machine basically, right? Sort of, in all of these examples in war, right?
For example, it's not the generalists, the great generals, it's actually truly where we're out in the battle for them. So yeah, I mean, this really is a fascinating kind of question. And I think he sees that in many ways the world will not be for our greater good and glory. There's some benefits to be sure, but it looks as though history is going to have this enormous effect of diminishing the influence of outstanding individuals.
I think as an aristocrat, he laments that. You know what I'm sorry, I apologize. It seems that it's not just that outstanding individuals won't stand out from their fellows. He almost doesn't say this.
I read into this. He seems to give some indication that intellectually, actually, he does say this explicitly. Intellectually, with the exception of the hard sciences, we haven't made any progress. He's writing this 100 years ago, essentially.
But even there, strangely enough, there will continue to be these great breakthroughs in science. There are going to be great inventions, great technologies, great discoveries. But there, he says, no one's going to be on the pedestal. It's going to be all of the scientists.
And actually, I don't mean to attract too much, but I was talking to a colleague who was a scientist the other day, who was on the cost of retirement. And he was so sad. And I said, why are you so sad? He was so fun.
You've had a career. He says, well, I just now I could do so much more. And I'm really sad that, and Strauss actually talks about this too, right, that modern scientists, because science is so progressive, it sort of robs the scientists individually, like personally, of their contribution, because they know it'll be surpassed in the next five years, 10 years, 20 or 100 years, whereas if you view knowledge as a kind of recovery, the activity itself is kind of a pleasant kind of thing to do. So there's this huge mass of scientists who are leading the progressive way.
But do you know the name of the guy that figured out the Covid vaccine? I don't. He says, again, the mass effect largely suppresses the individual achievement, even though right, the throne is occupied by a throng. I mean, science is specifically saying that, right?
The other one, he says, these are vacant thrones and has left this line because it's a reminder of so many like academic, he says, the array of blameless mediocrities, you strutted consciously around the seats of the mighty, decked in the discarded mantles and insignia. Every time I went to a graduation at two and it was like eight in the morning, I had to leave like six 30 to get there. And it was the Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama is there with the president of Tulan. They've put up these like styrofoam fake old buildings, because it has to be like the where the the saints, the saints play.
No, he's in a super room. It's like, it's like nine a.m. The Dalai Lama gives a speech. That's really a series of like moral syllogisms.
And every every 18 year old co-ed on campus, it's like, oh my god, the Dalai Lama's here. This is going to be amazing. Like he's so wise. And then they all just fell asleep because they're not actually want to hear somebody like talk about big issues.
So he gives a speech and then they gave two honorary doctors to these jazz musicians, and really jazz musicians. And it ended with these musicians playing, I think it was some Stevie Wonder. And meanwhile, the president of the university danced with the Dalai Lama under a tiny umbrella, right? With all the people.
I'm not lying. I'm saying that I'm like, Jake, you're going to want to come here. I'm like, what the f*** am I watching? This is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.
And I was looking, I was like, look, it's got medieval style buildings, but they're made out of like styrofoam. They've got the dumb road with the stripes on it, but they're dancing to jazz, which is fine. And the Dalai Lama, a religious figure is like rocking back and forth with the president of the university. Like talk about discarded insignia in regalia.
I mean, it's really, it's really quite shocking. But that's the democratization, I think, absolutely. Yeah. One question I did have, though, is it still seems, I hear what you guys are saying about the democratization, but it also appears that mass effects, after my question is this, once mass effects are kind of put in play, once this starts in motion, does it really matter under what kind of regime one lives?
Isn't the effect on kind of are inelect the same, whether we live under a monarchy now in the 21st century or under, maybe it seems more odious in the democracy. But, well, he has some remarks about this. Now, we're kind of more into his discussion of what these mass effects and mass processes look like in times of peace. He kind of starts there, goes into war, then returns to peace at the end.
But one of the things he talks about is he compares the Soviet Union to the great emancipated nations by which he meets Great Britain, the United States, Germany, this is under the Weimar Republic still, and France, right? And he compares the Russian Bolsheviks, he compares their side to that of the termites. He goes, subhuman goals and ideals are set before these asiastic millions. The Beehive know, for there must be no queen and no honey, or at least no honey for others, right?
So, you're like, wow, yeah, we've got honey, isn't that great? It's like, you're still a bug, like you might like being a honeybee, but you're not a termite, you're not an answer, something like that, you're still a bug, right? Because you're forced to do something by virtue of this, well, a little earlier, just to touch on the corporatization side of it, he talks about the effects of this on our material well-being. He says, in part, we are conscious of the enormous processes of civilization, which are out of work among us.
We have long seen the old family business, where the master was in direct to personal touch with his workmen. Swept out of existence or absorbed by powerful companies, which in turn are swallowed by mammoth trust. So, you have the great hedge funds investing in certain companies that have bought up small businesses, right? You can try to be an entrepreneur nowadays, but what's the goal?
Sell your company to Facebook or Google. We have found in these processes, he continues, whatever hardships they may have caused to individuals, immense economic and social advantages. The magic of mass production is carried all before it. The public have a cheaper and even better article, or a superior service.
The workmen have better wages and greater security. We're materially better, but he goes on to say, when it comes to national character and psychology, it's not so great. These individuals may be better off as the salary officials of great corporations, he says, that they have lost in forethought, an initiative, a tribe and freedom, and an effective civic status. I recently taught this with my students who are all engineers and I asked them, I'm like, what would you rather be?
Would you rather be a sort of rural artisan who made, let's say, cuckoo clocks, right? Or make clocks, and you decide, I want to specialize in cuckoo clocks, and you make the whole clock, and you really enjoy it. Or, any make-em-audous living, you can afford a comfortable life, you have a family and all that. Or, do you want to be a middle manager in a huge corporation where you might make six figures designing the spring for the cuckoo clock?
One of the springs, and you have a team of 20 working on making that cost effective and stable and all that sort of stuff, which is a better life. That's a hard choice, right? Do you want to have that kind of individual freedom and prudence that development of the faculties on the one hand? Or do you want the material benefit?
I think it's really hard to turn away from this structure, this economic and social structure once it's there. And you might have to be one of these sort of flat spring makers who make six figures doing that. Yeah, though, he says, and of course we'll talk about this in a few minutes, never underestimate the potential of a backward slide. So things can come undone.
Yeah, another point in just the section that I really like. But really quick, Alex. Oh, yeah, if you wanted to just one of the expansions of the last point, let's go ahead and think of this out. He talks, I found this really hit home for me as an academic, I'm sure it does for Greg as well.
Not so much for you, David. He's talking about how the classics are available, classics are available for cheap, right? And that we can all read them. And my bookshelf is full of books that 500 years ago a monk would have to copy, and then you have to pay an arm and a leg, and then it wouldn't even be good quality.
But now I get them for fairly cheap. And he says, this great diffusion of knowledge, information, and light reading of all kinds may, while it opens new pleasures to humanity and appreciably raises the general level of intelligence, be destructive of those conditions of personal stress and mental effort to which the masterpieces of the human mind are due, an age in which the classics are readily available is an age in which classics are not made, right? The conditions that make great masterpieces possible are also the conditions that make them fragile. And this is needed.
So and you look at your books and you say, I've got all these books, but there's no place for these people anymore. Is that better? To have them only in writing, but not in the flesh. So real, I mean, a real heavy challenge coming out of this, doesn't it?
Yeah, that's a very good, that's very there's a one point in the essay, I can't find it where he says it's something like stress or suffering is needed to make this art, which is an old conversation, the conditions under which great works and great human achievements are produced. I have a wonder to what extent people even, you know, I mean, and one last thing you guys went to a bookstore was that the vast majority of books that I see are not these sort of pentacles of civilization. No, so I mean, so strange. I mean, the proliferation of great books or even books period at cheap prices, you know, there's usually some section near the front of the book and a little island by itself where it's like the great books or something like this, usually in fairly cheap editions, but it's strangely enough.
I mean, always have all these things that are fingertips readily available and yet not only is the preconditions for the people who produce those kinds of things not there, but I don't know if the preconditions for the type of people who read or enjoy those kinds of things. Yeah, I mean, to be to be, to be in under these, he's loving them together with light readings. So I think he's talking about mass culture generally. So there are widely available.
And it's hard to say, I mean, it's hard to deny that more people read things than you still are. A lot of it is, you know, just like newspapers or like, you know, blogs and things like that. But yeah, well, literacy for that matter. Literacy, yeah.
The one of the interesting questions in this section, he says, and we're going to talk about this hopefully in a in an episode where we tackle Rousseau's essay on the hero. What's that titled again, Alex? The virtually most characteristic of the hero, I think, or something. Yeah, but it's this pair.
Okay, good. And I think we've all agreed to do an episode on that. But it's this sentence. It begins, I get the Marlissar's on a pages page for modern conditions do not lend themselves to the production of the heroic or super dominant type.
That to me is a real issue in any age you live in that necessity. This is like a question right that me backtrack that children are asked, you know, who's your hero, right? Like the fireman, the policeman, my dad, whatever. But is, but Churchill seems to be calling into question whether or not we have these men who will stride the narrow world like a Colossus or the quote from six beers, Julius Caesar is, they don't seem to exist or they won't exist or we won't be able to spot them.
Or what did you guys make of that? I mean, that to me seems like a very big issue. He transitions right after this sentence essentially to discussing war. And so I understand why there won't be a Churchill in war or like an Achilles in war.
But necessity, what would hero look like outside of the battlefield for Churchill? I think you're right. I mean, the paragraph talks about the hero, the commander, and the teacher. And by the way, there's all capitalized, which is sort of a weird thing.
I don't think Churchill sort of capitalizes words without remarise. And so I think he would distinguish between a lowercase hero and a uppercase hero and a commanding thing with a man or teacher. And I think you're right. I mean, we know that he thought of himself as being particularly interested in war and thought that that's where you tested your metal and was more impressed.
I think you're, I mean, where would one see these types outside of war? I mean, it's impossible, right? Yeah. So who are the heroes of the young?
I mean, you said some things, but I mean, I typically ask my students this question, whom do admire? And I give them a caveat, like it can't be someone I don't know. And I would say the most common answer is a professional athlete for its worth. Occasionally, a successful businessman or something like this.
But that makes sense. But in a way, because I suppose athlete is a kind of distorted image of the warrior type, what seems to me, it seems to demand to kind of courage and something. And it's impressive, but it's nothing like being a war hero, I would say. No, I mean, and you know, when you take these old school heroes, first of all, it's impossible because he's talking about them being out on the battlefield, right, directing what's going on.
You don't do that anymore. You're 50, 60 miles away, he said, at a desk with the telephone, right? Yeah. Yeah.
He's a grown up. He's a curator these days. Yeah. That's even so he says of World War One, that's a very, I think, on point, he's asking about the hero.
He talks about the general, he says, this worthy, he's sitting at a desk and he's basically a stock trader, right? Or he says a master of a stock yard, sending animals to slaughter. He says, this worthy man must assuredly be rewarded as a useful citizen and a faithful, perspicacious public servant, but not as a hero. The heroes of modern war lie out in the cradard fields, mangled, stifled, scarred.
And they are too many of them for exceptional honors because of mass suffering, mass sacrifice, mass and victory, right? All of this is diffused. Doesn't he talk really even talk about the gun sort of equalizing, you know, aristocrat and villain or something like this? Like you don't have to have amazing virtue or honor to shoot someone.
It's sort of, it's a mass technology, and martial technology have removed some of the nobler aspects of war. I mean, World War One doesn't look noble at all in retrospect, right? It looks just a tedious, huge mistake where tactics lag seriously behind military technology and just this grotesque is disgusting result. Yeah, he just refers to it as an Armageddon.
He calls it the Armageddon. Yeah, that's right. But I think to David's point, right? At least in World War One, there were people who who find died, you know, for the sake of what, who knows, but you know, on a side now, you know, with drone warfare, targeted strikes, you know, who's getting these awards, somebody, you know, pressing a button, right?
Risking carpal tunnel syndrome? That's not really a real sacrifice. And so I mean, he compares this to his gardener exterminating Seven Wauseness at his house, another bug metaphor, by the way. Just to push back on that, just a touch.
I mean, I've actually, I'm very synthetic that you out, but I will say, like, if you reduce warfare to the extermination of termites, I would, that probably does take a huge psychological toll on somebody. Now, obviously you're not the risk to yourself and that you'll die, but there's a certain sort of course name of the soul that has to take place if you're sitting from the comfort of an office and just pressing a button and executing people thousands of miles away on the inside. I think your word choice is exactly right. It's the course, and the sort of braver, if you can call it, have an executioner, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So it's not logically, but it's not noble, right? No, no.
Well, insofar as somebody has to do it, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But no, it's interesting.
I grant the problem with it. Yeah. It's interesting is he says, okay, so no heroes on the battlefield, per se, we're not in the same outstanding, like, I visit visible way of old, because of course, we still have heroes like our boys that died in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to die today or heroic. But he says, instead, the generals who used to be on the field, these budding Napoleans, he calls them, he goes, don't go into business.
And then quote, and this is where it gets interested, he says, quote, we need not waste our tears on the mass effects in war. Let us return to those of peace. And then he poses a question, can modern communities do without great men? Can they dispense with hero worship?
And one sentence later, can nations remain healthy? Can all nations draw together in a world whose brightest stars are film stars and whose gods are sitting in the gallery? And that that that's the present. Odds sitting in the gallery, they're matter of history.
You said over one phrase, I really like talking about these, the new generals, you call them spectacle brass hat of a future world agony. Oh my God, like just some nerd in a brass hat who's killing people. Yeah. Or somebody like Elon Musk is what would be like this new Napoleon, except he's flat-chested and to call him intrepid is a bad joke.
But that's who we have, right? Like Steve Jobs, that's the hero worship. To me, it doesn't connect in a visceral way. Greg's point, right?
They're surpassed. They get surpassed. I was thinking about this, the iPod. Remember when everyone is crazy about the iPod?
Do you have an iPod? Now it's weird. Nobody has an iPhone. And then there'll be something else that makes this stuff just kind of archaic.
You look at the first iPhone, which isn't even that old. And it looks like rudimentary, like a caveman's fun or something like that. Even if Elon Musk gets us to Mars and establishes a colony in Mars, there will be a time where this stuff is just dated, whereas you look at like a Napoleon, right? Or a Churchill, right?
For that matter, you say this was a person who did things, right? On behalf of a side, right? Or for a nation that has an enduring meaning, right? Or an enduring importance, not a kind of transitional force.
I wonder what we tell our children then, right, young people, because this is awfully, this is right at the end of the essay. I mean, it's, I mean, he says, it is pleasing to look back over the plains and morassas through which our path has lain in the past. And remember in tradition, the great years of pilgrimage, then we point to the frowning crag or the point of the frowning crag, their venerated El Capitan, which is a rock face, or El Duce, casting its majestic shadow in the evening light and ask whether we have anything like that up there. We certainly have not.
Yeah. And in line with this, he has this peaks and valleys thing, but he calls it a high plateau. It's very high up. He says it's so high that a peak of 10,000 feet above the old sea level is scarce and noticeable.
So we're talking way, way, way, yet, and you can't look down to the old peaks, but it's completely flat. There's nothing above, right? And he says, we want a monarch peak with base enormous enough, big enough to fit all of us on this flat plateau, whose summit is forever hidden from our eyes by clouds and down these precipices, cataracts of sparkling water, thunder, we want something grand like that loud and gorgeous, but unachievable. So that we don't end up on another plateau.
And he says, unhappily, the democratic plateau or platform does not keep that article in stock. I mean, sorry, sir, that's not for sale here. You might have to go to another shop, right as a commercial metaphor. He says, you can try to do with smoking mirrors.
And a lot of, I think rhetoric around the greatness and achieving something new rings really hollow to democratic ears. He said, but we're going to see through that. We'll see through that. So really the choice ends up being, do we stay or do we go back, right?
Or do we stay or will we be forced back? I think that's really our question now, right? Issues of nationalism and people were belling against modern technology and corporations, right? Are we forcing ourselves back?
Will we be forced back when things seem like they inevitably collapse into their own weight? I mean, you think about this 90 years ago, so precious. That's right. I'll let's hear the paragraph that David read from where I'm going to, I'll just read the whole paragraph because I find it to be a whole paragraph.
There's a series of rhetorical questions. And I think unspoken, Churchill even spoke in the answer to those questions, but I think the answer to them is all, well, unsatisfactory. So the paragraph begins, can modern communities do without great men? I think Churchill and the answers know they can't, we need great men, but we don't produce them.
Next question, can they dispense with hero worship? I don't think so. And I think that even the iconic lesson we see around us is in a strange, perverted way, probably a reflection of this sort of human propensity for hero worship. So no, we can't dispense with your worship.
Next question, can they provide a larger wisdom, a nobler sentiment, a more vigorous action by collective processes than wherever God from the Titans? No. Can nations remain healthy? The quite the sentence you read.
Can nations remain healthy? Can all nations draw together in a world whose brightest stars are film stars and whose gods are sitting in the gallery? The answer is no. I think, by the way, is that us?
I would say in America, our greatest stars are athletes or film stars. Can the spirit of man emit the vital spark by machinery? No. Will the new problems of successive generations be solved successfully by the common sense of most, by party caucuses, by assemblies whose battle is no longer heated?
No. Or will there be some big hitch in the forward March of mankind, some intolerable block in the traffic, some vain wandering into the wilderness? And will not then the need for a personal chief to come the mass desire? Well, that would be that.
I mean, this is what? 1930 answer there? Yes. I think it might be.
But in that case, it doesn't seem to be very good. Does it? I mean, something really bad might come about where we might turn to a big man again. I don't know.
So maybe the last door of the question, the answer is yes. Yeah. Some vain wandering into the wilderness. It seems like there might be a time where this plateau becomes scary, right?
And we might actually need the person. Yeah. God, I want to go. What's that other story you had about Churchill that joke?
Yeah, let's tell a joke. Tell a joke. We should tell a joke. Tell it now.
Tell that one. Yeah, Joe's always better than the first person, but okay, finally, the story is that a woman sees, sorry, it's a woman again, sees Churchill at a party and he's making some buffoonish joke or something. She says, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee and Churchill responds, madam, if you were my husband, my wife, I would drink that coffee. Sorry.
I think I'm in the mood for Churchill's poison coffee right now. Yeah, I'll come back to the new thing for you folks. Yeah. One time.
Maybe here's a way to try and turn this into a positive. Churchill himself is this is this great man. I mean, at the very beginning of the podcast, David said he thought the Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century. I think there's a lot to that.
There are still great men. There are people who admire just a few years ago. There was this fantastic movie about him. There seems to be a resurgence in appreciation for what Churchill has accomplished.
I think we do recognize that there is human greatness and there are some of us out there who point to it when we see it. I think. Yeah, I think that's I think that's quite apt. And I think this is ultimately what he's outlining.
This is maybe the more political philosophic question is that material prosperity put to push to its limits looks like tyranny and we can, under such circumstances, allow our lower desires for comfort and stability to give birth to this kind of tyranny. The other side of it being that the conditions of stress and fragility that allow for greatness, that also make it elusive and sometimes that can lead to destruction. They have their own negatives. I think what he's laid out is a kind of one through I think this is through a sort of obtuse prison, but a version of the ancient and modern problem, right?
Where it seems like you have a choice, right? Either society devoted to nobility, right? That could come and go away in a flash and perhaps there's nothing else like that for a while, right? You know, like classical Greece or something like that, or you know, or a society that can last for thousands of years where nothing of note happens, which is darker, the occasional flash and deep darkness, you know, is the Plataila wilderness, ultimately, right?
I think that's a really big philosophical question. One more positive note here to end on, I think, is if it's the case that mass society is dehumanizing in some way, roughly in the middle of the essay after talking about how dehumanizing the Bolsheviks are, Churchill says human nature is more intractable than that. And so I think that ultimately there is the hope or the belief maybe and Churchill that you human nature will reassert itself, that if there is this longing for greatness, this admiration for great men and women, we'll see it again. So probably the best thing we can do is to keep them in the galleries, right?
And keep them keep people alive. Speaking of the galleries, let's go to the mailbag. We only had one question in the mailbag, was Bruce A. Hunt's question, and it was about the thing about the personal chief line that you read.
Oh, I think you alluded to it's being hit, but I think that certainly could happen, right? I think the rise of nationalism, for example, can be explained as a reaction to these mass processes and mass effects. But I think also you could imagine an positive form as well. And he's clear, right?
Our return to the valley could be through a number of ways, right? We can go down because we wish, we might wander there unwittingly, we could slide there, but we might even be pushed there, right? So the question is, is how, what way in which we find our way back? I'll tell you how.
Aliens, aliens are going to come, and they're going to wreck us. It's going to be Stone Age time, and then the great hero, Barr, will emerge and lead Montgomery County in a new, you know, new Vista. So that's all I got to say about that. You're here first, David thinks the aliens are going to invade us.
Look, man, otherwise, we just would say, in a way, you know, aliens is preferable almost to our, you know, building a technological tower of Babel, and then it just falls over and we all die, you know, because we're so terrible. But aliens, I prefer. We would all prefer. We think of you seeing Independence Day, that former drunkard who mans the creature jet, and then he shoots right into the anus of the aliens spacecraft, and he explodes the spacecraft, and he saves the world.
So that was heroic. Is that how you see yourself, David? As the fire pilot? Yeah.
No, no, no, no. Yeah. Many stuff. I think you did.
Yeah. That kind of heroism. Thank you for joining us on the new Thinkery. Please like us, right?
I don't think you can raise us. It's okay. It's fine. I got handed to David.
Usually when he comes in with something like that, it completely derails us into like a buffoonery, but I think we needed a good, you know, alien drunkard, anus, comment. That makes no sense whatsoever. But you know, if you see what I'm saying, yeah. So thanks to Jake, the cannon, the cannon, and think he's our hero, produce he's the glue.
Yeah. This was a lot of, I really enjoyed this episode with you guys. Likewise. See you next time.
Bye.