The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and E.S. Schubert Talk the Purpose of Monuments and Why Statues Matter

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

In today’s episode, Ryan and sculptor E.S. Schubert discuss the purpose of monumental statues and the complex issues surrounding who society venerates and why.E.S. Schubert is a sculptor based in Kansas City. He has designed and sculpted monumental statues for cities, sports teams, and Hall of Famous Missourians. Schubert has also crafted busts for Daily Stoic featuring famous Stoic figures.Get Daily Stoic’s busts of Marcus Aurelius (https://store.dailystoic.com/products/marcus-aurelius-bust) and Seneca (https://store.dailystoic.com/products/seneca-bust), designed and built by E.S. Schubert. This episode is also brought to you by the Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow E.S. Schubert: Homepage: http://www.esschubert.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/es_schubertInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/esschubertsculpture/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/esschubertstudios/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. of necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page 6 or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai.

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from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown Aller, we will be your resident not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong.

What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Hey, it's Ryan. I wanted to add on to the conversation we've been having about monuments, Confederate monuments,

about justice in this world. And just, you know, I've gotten a lot of emails and questions from people about, you know, for taking down Confederate monuments, should we pull down statues of Marcus really is your setica because they, they own slaves. And, and my first reaction was a rejection of the sort of what aboutism of morning. But what I wanted to do was dig in on this subject with someone who actually is a subject matter expert. I'm talking today to ES Schubert, who is a sculptor. Spencer is actually the sculptor of the Marcus Aurelius and Seneca statues that we sell in the Daily Stoke store, but when he's not working with us, he is a real sculptor doing amazing monumental work. He's done statues of Jesus for churches. He's done Coach Bill Snyder for Kansas.

He's done all sorts of public art in very prominent places, memorials for Los Soldiers, memorials for fallen firefighters. He is the real deal, a super talented guy. It was awesome to connect with him many years ago and find out that he was really interested in stoicism. So when I saw that he had

this awesome bus of Zeno, I bought one. He sent it to me. It sits in my office and then I've got his statue of Marcus really that we did in the store. I've also got that. He's a super talented artist. You can check out his stuff at esuber.com.

That's escubr.com, or you can just go to the Daily Stoke store and look at the statues and we link to some of his work. So we sell the small bust. If you've got some money to burn, you want to be almost life size one. Again, I have that one. I have his marks to really send a Zeno one. You can check that out.

There's a link to that in the daily store store as well. But I wanted to talk to an actual artist who makes sculptures about what our sculptures are supposed to represent, what our statues about, what are they supposed to honor, who are they for? What does it mean to tear them down? Is it okay to tear them down? Once it goes up, is it there forever? I think these are things we should and can and must discuss.

I think you'll really like this conversation. And again, it's coming from someone who isn't just talking about this as another internet commenter, but as someone who this is their living, right? And so this is a great conversation. I hope it opens some minds. To me, it is a obvious clear cut issue.

You gotta pull down statues. Not pull them down and get rid of them, but you gotta move statues off public land that were explicitly put up to flagrantly put a middle finger at the rule of law to intimidate, to celebrate injustice and cruelty. And that's what those Confederate statues are. And we're not talking about Confederate tombstones

in a cemetery. We're talking about ones that celebrate their heroism. It's like, let us not forget their sacrifice. You know, let us not forget what they did for the South. Actually, I think not only should we be forgetting it, we should be understanding it fundamentally, differently than how it's been sold to millions of people in countless generations.

So there's a great conversation, listen to it, and of course, check out Spencer's work is very talented. So Spencer, it's obviously a front topic and yet, and sort of very much of the moment, and yet at the same time, kind of one of the oldest discussions there have ever been, right? The sort of sculptures are, I guess,

other than cave paintings, the original form of art. Why do statues matter? Well, it's so interesting, and you mentioned cave paintings, and I was thinking about this earlier today. I don't know when the moment was that sculpture transitioned from just a pure expression to propaganda,

but I think it was fairly early on. Just they're the original form of, this is what we should all care about, right? Which is, you know, for better or worse, propaganda. And I think, you know, when combined with a strong moral ethic and a vision of the future that everyone can believe in, statues are awesome.

But when, you know, when they aren't combined with those things, they can be pretty hurtful. And what drew you to, I mean, because there are lots of sculptures out there and some of them make abstract things, some of them make, you know, you know, statues and dolphins. I mean, you, it seems, you went towards sort of like public monument sculptors, like you, you do busks and the exact

kind of, I don't want to say propaganda, but you do the, the statue as the kind of embodiment or celebration of a person and their virtue. Right, and so really it's a simple thing. I just at the beginning, you know, creating, I think the first thing I tried was to create a very realistic human hand, and it was so difficult, and it was so interesting that I just kept doing it.

Really, all of the cerebral parts of it, all of the, you know, the deeper meaning and thought came secondary to the technical challenge. And so, you know, the deeper meaning and thought came secondary to the technical challenge. And so, you know, if you get into anything, everything is an onion. And so the first layer is, you know, can I make a stick figure? And then the interior layers are like, what does this actually mean? And so it was, you know, it's kind of interesting to look back on the development of my personal opinion about what, you know, at first it was just, can I make this lump of clay look like that person right there?

And then later on it became, should I? And what does it mean if I do? So, you know, I think anybody who finds a rabbit hole that they can go down for their whole life and discover something new every day is like the luckiest person in the world. And I consider myself one of those people. Well, no, and it's certainly an ancient fascination and put aside the Greeks and the Romans, I mean, like what Da Vinci and Michael, what was driving Da Vinci and Michelangelo to cut open cadavers was to make the Statue of David look a little bit more realistic, right?

Like, it is like a challenge just to, artistically, just to capture the essence of of someone. It's it's such an unforgiving art form I got to imagine. Well yeah, and there's, you know, there's a pretty like clear line between success and failure. And I when I think back to, you know, dissecting cadavers, it, you know, it brings me in line with my own thinking, which is what's going on here. And so there's a certain moment in which you have mastered, you've gotten all of the information you can get from the surface, and you need to see what is making the surface do what it does.

And so, of course, they would think, okay, well, what is that lump on the face made of? And then they cut the face open and look, oh, it's a ligament. And if it moves this way, it does this, and if it moves that way, it does that. And it makes perfect sense to me they would do that. Thankfully, there's enough reference material now that I don't have to get the latex gloves on and then, you know, the future is a wonderful place to live. But, you know, I think that just harkens, it's just what it is is a mystery that they wanted to uncover. And it's the same with me. Luckily, it's a personal thing so we can all discover the mystery for ourselves. Yeah, and it's clearly going back to the Romans and the Greeks. There was this desire to take

great men and great women or gods or figures and take them out of the pages of history or even some of these people are still alive, but to put them up on display and say, this person matters. Let's codify that. Sure. And it really, you know, I think we all like to think that we can imagine something. We don't need to see the actual thing. We can picture it on our minds eye and we are 100% of the way there. But what I've really found is that we all need something to look at, right?

No idea is as good in your mind as when someone shows you the thing and you're like, yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. And so I feel like that impulse to bring something into the world, to give it kind of its own form really helps sharpen your thinking. Kind of in the same way that I think that the best thinkers are also writers, because we all think thoughts all day long, but we're not forced to put them all together in a coherent way. And so the people who have to like put the words down on page or the ones who think

the most clearly, and I think it's the same way about bringing an object into the world. It lets you point at it and be like, yes, that is the thing that I am aspiring to. I've talked to you about this before, but I'm looking at it right now. I've got this little statue of Marcus really is on my desk. And I don't know much about the provenance of it, but I know it's career-amarable. It dates back to 1840. I don't know if it was part of a run. I don't know if it was individually produced. I

don't know whose house it's at. And but but there is something about having it in physical form, you know, there's extra specialness there to me just to think, you know, you know, 100 and almost two centuries have passed since whoever made this made it. And how many people have looked at it and where they've got there. There is something I think, um, extra special about statues in that they last so long. Yeah, the mystery of who put their eyes on that thing or, you know, kind of

the same way, like who else has put their feet on this path is a beautiful and humbling and, you know, reminds you to be, to, you know, kind of the same way like who else has put their feet on this path? Is a beautiful and humbling and, you know, reminds you to be, you know, to be humble in this world because you're only here for a blip and so was everyone else. And even, you know, if you think about the amount of skill and training it takes to carve a realistic bust out of a chunk of stone and then think that that person did that. And then now they're gone and you have the artifact It's kind of mind-boggling to think how you know each one of us any skill that we all have is taken like you know Our whole lifetimes up till now to develop it and yet one day all of that will just disappear

Well, I think about that with the the famous Marcus really islius Equestrian statue in that we don't know who made it. Yeah. You don't even know when it was made. And actually the one, I mean, the one you can see today isn't even the original that they'd move that one inside the Capital League Museum. But like that that statue is so impressive that you don't even notice that Michelangelo made the base like the greatest sculptor and designer of all time could only service like the, you know what I mean? It's like he's mowing the lawn of Versailles or something. Yeah, it is totally unknown who built the thing. And that is so, it's such a nice thing to remember that none of this really matters in the long enough.

I mean, it all matters a ton, but it doesn't really matter. When I think about that too about some of the triumphal, like sort of, I don't know if they're like obelisks, but there's really tall, like sort of motif. There's one for Marcus, but the funny thing about Rome is like, so yeah, Marcus really just gets this like 30 meter tall, sort of victory column, but then like Trajan and a bunch of the other mediocre emperors

also have one, right? And like that's kind of what Marcus Realis talks about and he's like, sure, they put up statues of you, but look at all this shitty people, they also put up statues. Right, yeah, no, just having a statue made of yourself is not in and of itself a mark of honor. You know, well, so, so, so I think that does segue into what sort of a little

bit the subject of this conversation and definitely on people's minds, although it too is a timeless discussion. And, and let's start with the ancient world because it's a little less controversial. So, I've gotten some emails from people and they've said like, hey, and you and I collaborated on this Marx Relay Statue, we sell for Daily Stoke, I've got the Marx Relay Statue here on my desk. They go, well, if we're in the business of taking down bad statues, Marx is a really his own slaves. Why do we have statues of him? Should we tear that down? And I'm curious what you're reacting. I mean, you've done epictetus, you've done centric.

I mean, centric at work for Nero for Christ's sake. Sure. How do you think about these controversial figures in the ancient ancient world? Let's put aside modern America. Sure, but it's hard to put aside modern America. And I don't know. And I can only know the content of Marcus Aurelius's character

by what I have read about him. And I feel like, oh God, that's a tough one. You just put me right in the corner, you know, 2,000 years back. I mean, is it fair to say that was a different slavery? I don't know. I mean, it's very difficult to separate all of the individual deeds of a single individual

throughout their lifetime. And you know, on balance, do we, is there a day in which we have to put all of our negatives and all of our positives on a balance and see, you know, which end rises? And if so, I mean, I think that Marcus Relie has done a lot of good, especially in specifically my life, and I know in your life, and that's a tough one. You're twisting my arm. It's much easier to just dive into partisan politics. Sure. Then it is to tear down my own personal idols.

No, I know. I do. No, no, no. It is complicated, right? And I do think, I mean, I do think you have to look at the dark sides of personalities and of cultures. And I mean, the famous equestrian statue,

what is he doing? We don't know, but is he granting pardon to someone that's like sort of one interpretation? Sure. The other is that he's pacifying the barbarians, which suddenly sort of presents the statue and slightly more ominous terms. And then even the word you just used, barbarians, is again part of the whole loaded, like just they didn't, they were conquered and so didn't get statues. You know, I just, right I just, almost impossible to talk about in a way that respects the nuance 2000 years later.

But I mean, I feel like that he's the closest thing I know of historically on balance of a philosopher king, a person who truly tried to use their power for good. And so maybe he gets a pass on the fact that he was participating in the cultural norms of the day. Maybe not. Maybe not. It's a tough one.

Yeah. And maybe it's like, look, if the statue was Marcus Aurelius persecuting the Christians, we've got to imagine that the Christians who then came to rule Rome probably wouldn't have left that statue standing. Well, yeah. and that's true. And if it's like, if you know, if Marcus Aurelius had conquered a land and then the land was kind of rising up, and so, you know, the next Roman Emperor

said, we're going to stick this statue of Marcus Aurelius in here just to stick the thumb in your eye, you know, remind you your place. That might be different also, you know, I, it's a tough one, man. That funny. In my mind, this conversation, I wasn't expecting the taking it back 2,000 years, and this is actually harder than for me to have an opinion on, than the current, and that is probably a, an indicator of my own hardened views that maybe should be re-examined. Well, no, it is interesting, though, right? Because so let's talk about these Confederate statues. There's a Confederate obelisk about,

a block and a half from my office that I've talked about thinking needs to come down. I've been involved in sort of conversations about taking it down. I've been trying to use my platform to discuss it. And so that's why people are saying, well, should we take down the statue of Mark Cerely? It's true.

I hate what aboutism? Because what you're doing is changing the subject. We're talking about a bad statue. And instead of, or I'm saying that this statue is bad, instead of engaging with that, you're trying to talk about a different thing, which is that, you know, I joked about this. I was like, if I, if I try to do that to my wife,

she'd be like, oh yeah, what the fuck are you think you're gonna get away with, you might not have heard this first. My children are the best at what aboutism. Could you please clean up that mess? Well, what about the mess, my brother left. It's like the most wonderful diversion technique in an argument. Right.

And what I replied to someone who said that to me and because I, it's like, look, I think what aboutism a Miss a Fallacy, but let's actually deal with that for a second, right? So first off, did Marcus Aurelius attempt to destroy the Roman Empire exclusively for the right to continue to own slaves? Yeah, no, he did not.

No, he did. And did he kill, was he responsible for the deaths of one million people in the further ends of that call? No, he was not. And did he do it so recently as people who are alive today's grand parents? That's why I met Richard Overton, who is a friend of mine. His grandparents were slaves, right? So like like so this to that there 200 years or 150 years seems like a long time ago, but 2000 years ago is a very long time ago and then the last part

Sorry, I would say about this too is Was the statue put up many, many years later specifically to intimidate and to raise a giant middle finger to the rule of law in a country and was it paid for with tax dollars stolen from people who had been unconstitutionally deprived of their rights. Totally. And I would say the last part, is there a significant portion of the population today

who in Italy, who is upset about the Marcus Aurelius statue? And if you could say, you know, if the answers to those questions were different, I think you could have a great conversation about why we need to pull down this statue of Marcus Aurelius or Sennaka or whomever. And then, I mean, you hit the nails right on the head because that's exactly where I was gonna go with it, which is that are my brothers and sisters,

who I have to walk on this earth with? Are they hurt or insulted or injured by the statue of Marcus Aurelius? And if so, then let's talk about pulling it down because it's just a statue. Yes. You know, when this first, and not burning it, by the way, like melting it down into nothing, just moving it from where it's prominently displayed into a more appropriate context. And that's, yeah.

So in 2017, the last time we had this conversation about Confederate monuments, you know, people would ask me, what do you think? And you can tell by the way someone asks you what their opinion is. And so, you know, I used to have this nuanced answer, which was something about, well, you know, the first wave of Confederate monuments represented important time in the American figure of sculptural tradition, where the United States was taking the forefront over Europe and so blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I would say, but I don't know what it's like to walk around in a city, where there's a statue of a man

who fought a war to keep my grandparents in chains. And since I don't know what that feels like, I have to defer to the people who do know what that feels like. And that's what I used to say, because it seemed well thought out in cerebral and still respecting my brothers and sisters, who truly I just want them to be okay. You know, I want them to feel like they can thrive and they're loved and respected.

And so now, what I say now is that I don't care. If tearing statues down, or putting them in monuments or in museums is the down payment on healing the sins of the last hundred and fifty two hundred three hundred years, that's a price that I as a sculptor who makes monuments who hopefully will be around for hundreds of years and totally willing to pay because they're just statues. You know, when you're taking them down, they're just statues, but when they're up there, they're reminders of what is or is an important to us. And I mean, you brought up a good point with the Jim Crow era. I think a lot of people miss the fact that very few, vanishingly few statues of Confederate statues

were put up in the years following the war, because first of all, the South economy was devastated. And second of all they the war was lost. We were now one nation. You don't put up like you know the rebels don't get statues in civil wars right? Yeah sure and so then if you look at the chart of the timeline of the statues being put up they really almost all of them were not important works of art number one because there were kind of, you know, sculptural factories that kicked them out. And number two, they were basically just a thumb in the eye saying, hey, remember who's in charge here, even though you now have quote equal rights, unquote, we own the courts, the police, the government. And so you're going to do what we say. And that just that's not heritage. That's, you know, so it's a heritage. Or it's heritage that we should thank our lucky stars is in the past and not in the present, but, you know, of course, clearly still is.

So, I mean, these days, I don't see much nuance in it. I see that, you know, African-Americans and minorities in general in this community have had a terribly rough go of it. And really, if making a beautiful bronze statue, and I say that in form, not in substance, into ingots of bronze is a down payment, then let's do it. Let's get on with it. Let's proudly do it. Let's be like, you know what? I value you as a brother or a sister. And so we're going to do this ceremony together. You know, much like Germany did, yeah, after the Second World War, that it was the way of national healing to say, hold on, we should undo all of this stuff

in a very ceremonial way. So that, I mean, that's how I feel. No, no, no, no. I think that's a really important point. And people go, you know, it's funny, they say this to me to go, if how else, you know, can we learn, like, we can't destroy our history.

And it's like, well, I happen to practice a different profession that also preserves history. Right. It doesn't involve any spending, any tax dollars, doesn't involve putting up any monuments. And it's like they're called books, right? Like, yeah. I've been to, and Germany's a great example.

It's interesting. So my grandfather on my father's side landed it on D-Day plus two or plus three, but then my great grandfather on my mother's side actually fought for the Germans. He was, as far as I understand, not a Nazi, just a drafted soldier, just like many of the Confederate soldiers were as well.

Like people forget, like, you, just like, a lot of the people didn't want to fight in Vietnam. Not a lot of people wanted to go die for potentially losing cause. Sure, lots of them did, but the irony is that the state's rights group, the states rights country, and I put that in quotes because they were not a real country, but the Confederate states of America instituted the first federal draft of the Civil War.

So my grandfather fought in the my great grandfather fought for the Germans in the Second World War against my other grandfather. But if I suddenly today, you know, all 60, no, no, 80 years after the Second World War, began proposing a monument to his, to my great grandfather's sacrifice and heroism and selflessness, you would pretty readily assume that I have some ulterior motives. That are, you know what I mean? Like, why are you celebrating that grandfather and not the grandfather on the good side, that you'd go, ah, you probably have some Nazi sympathies. There's an agenda in there

that's not just about glorifying great men who have gone before us, right? And yeah, and go ahead. So I just think it's funny, we, this all wrapped up in structures of power and wealth, which are just really difficult to unravel. And you know, monuments are expensive. And so it's just interesting.

This is a moment that I think is really important for about who we want to be. And I feel like, you know, I'm the work-a-day person in that moment. I'm the carpenter just going to build that subdivision potentially. And so we make the portrait bus for the Missouri State Capitol. It's the Hall of Famous Missourians. I think there's 44 portrait bus.

If you were to look at the swath of people in there, there's a lot of old white men, and there are very few women, I think only four, and I think there's only two African-American men. And so, you know, those aren't the correct percentages with regard to kind of the diversity of our society, but they are the correct percentages of the people who could commission and make those statues. It's a great moment to just rethink about like, I want us actually to be one country going forward if possible. That's going to take a long time to make that a reality, but it's an ambitious and worthy

goal. And part of doing that is representing all of us, you know, Americans with brown skin and olive skin and all different kinds of people, women, men, in a way that shows that we are a diverse populace who values everybody. And I wanna do that. And I don't know why we're getting hung up on the statues from the Jim Crow era.

Let's move forward and think about, man, this guy was an Osper Robert Small, right? So the slave and the South who escaped, captured a Confederate battleship and took it to the Union side. Like, there are so many interesting people that run the gamut of diversity in this country. Let's just move forward with it in a positive way. And I, you know. No, I think that's right.

I was actually in New Orleans to, I think, in 2017, you know, no, I think that's right. I was actually in New Orleans to, I think in 2017, maybe 2016, when they brought down the statue of Robert E. Lee. And I mean, that statue is such a part of that city. I mean, the intersection is called Lee Circle. It's one of the most sort of famous iconic places in American history. And it feels like it's been there forever, you know, that it's 300 years old, but obviously it isn't. Right. And, you know, it goes up I think in the 1880s. And, you know, you dig into it more and you find out Robert E. Lee's never even been to New Orleans, right? So it's not like, it's like, you almost get it in Virginia. You're like, hey, this was our most famous

guy. Yeah, he did this bad thing, but he's, you know, Mary's into the Washington family. He was a hero in this other war, which was also not a good war. But you know, you maybe you get it in some places. And then, but then when you go, oh yeah, why did New Orleans, one of the first cities to fall in the civil war, that Robert E. Lee did

in a bismal job defending from afar as the head of the war effort. And why is this statue? It's a giant middle finger. But I remember seeing that as the crane comes up and picks it up and moves it, it did strike me and I to this day that statue, that enormous column of 40, 50 feet in the air is empty. And I do think it says something about where we are as a culture, that New Orleans, one of the most iconic and put, like, you can't, we can't agree that that should be a Louis Armstrong statue.

You know, like, the National World War II museum is across the street. We can't put Eisenhower's never been, isn't a New Orleans figure, but we all kind of everyone likes Ike, you know, I was I was joking in a piece I wrote about it many years ago. I was like, put a little weight up there. You know what I mean? Like, it does say like I do think to go back to this argument about the engines, they were right. We should celebrate people in statute form. The question is, are we celebrating people for the right reasons? And are we celebrating the right people?

I do think these statutes should come down. I'm a little disappointed that we can't argue, we can't have a productive discussion about who sculptors like you should be put to work celebrating, like put a tattoo in the statute. You know what I mean? Put a tattoo in the picture. Sure.

And that just speaks to where we are as a country. put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean?

Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up it. You know what I mean? Put it at Zoom and statue up to increasing representation of minority groups. And so from that perspective, I'm a little bit okay with this moment right now,

because it does seem somewhat untethered from the peace. And well, I say peace, from the calmness of the last 20 or 30 years. But I think that we will get to a moment wherein we can all at least agree that this is what we should put up there. It's just now it's so dang hot. It's difficult to talk over. And but I think part of the bonus there falls on people like me.

And I think my wife and I, my wife owns the studio with me and we've been talking a lot about what are we going to do? Because there is stoicism. There is a call to individual action to kind of reshape the world the way you want, even though we have no control over anything, right? So, I think we're going to start doing things like, you know, every time we get a commission for kind of a statue that is not,

you know, I'm trying to, trying to think about how to say this and still make everybody think it's a good conversation. I think we're gonna start trying to shape the world we want with regard to statues. And if that means we have to donate a statue of this type every time we do a statue of this type, I think we're gonna do that just because that's the world I want my kids to grow up in.

You know, it's funny to see kind of the outrage and the incomprehension from my children when I explain to them what this up to people is. My son's like, what do you mean? Why are there statues of those guys? Right. And I'm like, yeah, good question, buddy. No. And let's go back to this ancient thing. I was going to read you the Senate proclamation after the death of comedists. So this is Marcus Aurelius' son. They said, for him who was a foe of his fatherland, let his honors be taken away. Let the honors of the murderer be taken away.

Let the murderer be dragged in the dust. The foe of his fatherland, the murderer, the gladiator, in the charnel house, let him be mangled. He is a foe to the God's slayer of the Senate, foe to the God's murderer of the Senate, foe of the God's, foe of the God's, foe to the God's slayer of the Senate, foe to the God's murder of the Senate, foe to the God's foe of the senator. I, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.

So the idea too that the ancient world didn't change its mind right now. Right. Statues is just preposterous. Just because something's old doesn't mean it's good. It just means that it's old. Yeah. Actually, I was gonna ask you about this. So I was at this rally for this statue,

or this obelisk, which again, obviously should come down. Sure. And it sits on, in front of the courthouse in this small county seat outside Austin. And a woman, I'm forgetting her first name, but she's the sister-in-law of a man named Rodney Reed, who, whether he's guilty or innocent, I don't know enough about the case. But let's just say, a large amount of public opinion challenges the validity of this ruling and the fairness of the trial, the trial that this black man,

God, who's now on death row here in Texas. who's now on death row here in Texas. And she said, my brother-in-law was sentenced to death in this courthouse looking down over this statue, which celebrates, you know, not just racism, but literal white supremacy. Literal. What does that say? And I just, I can't wrap my head around why this is complicated.

To me, there is value in history, but there's a difference between value in history and putting it on the lawn of a courthouse and maintaining it with public funds. By the way, that this man, when he paid taxes, because we all paid taxes and his family pays taxes, his money goes to support. It's insane. I don't know how you could think that there was even the impression of a fair shake in that situation. Regardless of where you stand, well, I mean, a hall of justice should be about justice and

it has to be beyond reproach and it has to be, you know, told, it just, it's just insane to me to think that you could look at that situation and just say, oh, that seems fair. Well, and I think this goes to an important stoke thing, which is like, you have your opinion, you have your views. Can you listen? Can you listen to someone who is up there crying, telling you what this is, how this is affecting them. And that was something that changed my mind. So I've always believed they've come down. And I've written about this, I've taken pictures of it, I've taken heat for it.

But my thinking was like, hey guys, this isn't that complicated. Let's move this to the city cemetery, like a half mile away. And I was pretty convinced of that opinion. And then when she gets up there and she said, she's like, I've heard people say we should take this to a cemetery. But why when I visit the graves of my loved ones, should I have to see this monument to these horrible people? And I thought, you know what, you're totally right there too. And you know what I did? I changed my mind. And I don't get why

it's so hard for people to change their mind in the face of overwhelming evidence and a very persuasive argument. And that's so hard to convince people that they should reflect on their own views, especially when you think that their views are wrong, and that's why you want them to reflect on them. I think that one thing I have heard recently, I can't even remember where I heard it, is that we're not, this isn't destroying history. We're actually creating history right now. You know, and it's beautiful, yes.

And so, and one of the, so, and you mentioned earlier, I'm a very traditional artist, right? I don't even necessarily prefer the term artist sometimes, I prefer craft person because art means something different these days in our culture. But I saw, I think it's a Robert E. Lee statue,

the one that has graffiti all over the marble base. That's a different Robert E. Lee. And I thought, man think it's the Robert E. Lee statue, the one that has graffiti all over the marble base. That's a different Robert E. Lee. And I thought, man, that's amazing. Oh, it's more artistic now. It's beautiful from where we were, where we've been, where we're going frame of mind. Now I prefer maybe we cover the expletives just because I have young children, you know,

but whatever, I think we can talk to them about that. But I think that like, if you look at it from an abundance as opposed to a scarcity perspective, that is amazing. And it like encompasses the whole conversation, but you know, you first have to be willing to reflect on why you hold the views, you know, if you were a person who is saying,

why are we tearing these statues down? It's our history, it's our heritage. I think the first thing you have to be able to do is say to yourself, why am I thinking that? What has somebody said that led me to believe that that was the right thing to think? Before you can get to, oh wow, it's actually a new version of history that we're creating.

And I hope for those people I hope that they can get their minds around why their neighbor might not like that statue It's a tough one Yeah, no, it's it's interesting and and so last two things I did here in argument She your point about sort of reinterpreting the statues and changing them a great one. I heard was You know interpreting the statues and changing them. A great one I heard was, you know, there's some, there's some country, they put them underwater. And so you get, they've got their monuments to dive down and look at. And it's a statement of like, these are not worth being displayed up on Earth,

they should be displayed underwater. Or, yeah, let nature take them back over, you know, create some sort of, you know, something, stop maintaining them, would be interesting too. So the last question for you that I think is important here, because you're point about making positive change. I do think, I'm very proud of the statue I've done together. I do think, as we're talking about tearing statues down, I would make a strong argument that people should be putting statues up is particularly in their own home

And that we should be putting up the people and the values we admire whoever that is for you And it doesn't have to be an in-statch It could be a picture of a statue But the point is who are you celebrating and how is that calling you and Inspiring you to me is essential. I mean we all need you and inspiring you to me is essential. I mean, we all need reminders on a daily basis of who we aspire to be. And I think, you know, a lot of our, we walk through our homes not seeing things most of the time, but every once in a while, when you need a reminder of how you want to act

in the world and you, you know, look at this room, this person right here who embodies some of the things you're trying to aspire to. It can be very, very helpful to just push you forward. Because I think once, once you know who you want to be, it's difficult to make the choice that takes you further away from that. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And beautifully said. Spencer, thanks so much. Thank you so much, Ryan, I appreciate it. We invite you to check out our newest course, the Stoic Parent.

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