TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - On Worth

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/In todays world we know the price of everything but the value of almost nothing! What is a human life worth? What does our culture value? Is it WORTH it? Dr. Salomon and I have a candid conversation on the repercussions of living in a world where importance seems to be synonymous with wealth. We present some heartwarming ideas of what we think could help to make the future a little bit brighter. http://www.davidasalomon.com/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Ladies and gentlemen, it's after Christmas

Welcome back to the podcast I keep getting these people telling me More David Solomon and here he is We finally got him back here, Dr. David Sullivan, happy holidays. I'm so thankful you're back. And I can't wait to get into this discussion today. How are you? Maybe for some people that may not, that may be joining us for the first time. Could you introduce yourself? Sure. And it's good. Good to see you again, George. Happy holidays. I'm stuck right here in between the Christmas and New Year's and everything

else. So I am the director of undergraduate research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University, which is in Newport News, Virginia, near Virginia Beach. Been here for, this is my sixth year, three decades as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature, religion, and culture, written a few books. My most recent one is on The Seven Deadly Sins, and just trying to get through the holiday season, you know, with its choice and its sadness. I think it's both, right? Absolutely. It's that double-edged sort of pleasure and pain, which brings us to a quote that I recently heard that I think can start us off is I think it was from Raj Patal who said in today's world, we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. What is going on in this world of what things are worth? You've written an interesting blog, which people can find in the show notes down below. But let's talk about your blog and these ideas that you were having. Maybe you can start us off.

Yeah, I mean, I think there is a real distinction now between worth and value. And what does value mean? You know, we tend to think in our contemporary Western world of value as being monetary and only monetary. And we think of things worth being, again, in terms of the dollar. And that is not the way things always were. and it is probably not the best way for us to operate. I was thinking about this morning and thinking about the difference that we make between monetary value and sentimental value. Right.

And so we'll say, you know, well, I'm holding on to this, you know, book because it has sentimental value because, you know, it means something to me. It has no monetary worth. you know so someone outside looking at it objectively would say well you know why hold on to that it's not worth anything so i think there's a distinction here and it's an important one to make because it really does increasingly affect the way that we perceive our own worth as human beings and the worth of others and especially around this time of the year it's it's really interesting i i had to run into my office this morning. We're closed this week, but I had to run in this morning to drop some things off and grab something from my office. And I was surprised there was a young woman

working in the building. My office is in our library. And the library, of course, is closed. And it was a young woman working in the library. I actually had never seen her before. And so I struck up a conversation with her to see, you know, how she was doing. I think she was the only person in the building. And I said, you've got to work the whole week. And she said, well, I'm part time. So part-timers only work when they only get paid when they work, whereas full-timers were given the week off for the holiday. And it just, it just, you know, it struck me as I was talking to her, and I thanked her for working and for the hard work that she does, because there's a good example of, you know, the question of the worth of a person and the,

and the meaning of the money it's just our world is just so fast backwards when it comes to look at value in terms of money um and i think that that comes down to everything from the things that we own to the way that we we look at jobs and salaries and and think about uh you know the the material objects that that we get as a result of that yeah it it seems to me, and I'm curious to get your opinion on this, you know, we have so much technology today and the way the world is going. It seems to me that somewhere along the line,

we have decided that we shouldn't mold a model based on what's best for humanity, but instead we've built a model that's based on profit. And when you do that, you irreversibly undermine the credibility of the leaders and the human experience. Yeah. No, it's based on profit. It's based on instant gratification, right?

And, you know, I mean, it reminds me, you know, it's the scene of the graduate where, you know, the future is plastic, right? You know, I went into a best buy yesterday. I think I could say the name of the place. And they had a TV right there at the front of the store. They had them stacked up. There must have been a dozen of them still there. I think it was a 65-inch TV, and it was like $600. Wow. Um, you know, and that's just, uh, you know, if you think back to how much TVs cost, I mean, I, I think our first color TV probably cost $600, if not more. It was one of those gigantic console TVs. Um, and, you know, it, it just reminds me of the days when, when things broke, you got them fixed.

Um, and we don't do that anymore. We live in largely a disposable society. If something breaks, you get rid of it and you replace it. And that's because. largely they don't cost as much as they once did. So we look at the things as disposable. I mean, I was talking to you before George, before we went on the air, my MacBook this morning started acting all wonky, which is unusual. And I don't know what's going on, but it, you know, that I looked it up and I realized, well, it is, you know, four years old, and I do use it a heck of a lot. And it's probably at the end of its life.

And, you know, if you go back 30, 40 years and think about our parents and our grandparents, I mean, if you said that something at the end of three or four years, but at the end of its life, they'd look at you like you were insane. You know, what are you talking about? I mean, get it fixed. And I saw a great meme on Facebook this morning that showed this hideous olive refrigerator from the 1970s that many of us remember. And those things will outlive us all, right?

I mean, things were built to last. And I think that that said something about the way that we valued them. We valued them, we gave them greater value. We were willing to spend a lot of money on an item because the assumption was, well, it's going to last. And that really doesn't happen anymore with anything. Close, right? I mean, you've got a young daughter. I mean, I've got a 19-year-old.

old daughter i mean clothes doesn't last um and and you know my daughter who who her and her her friends love to shop at a discount well it's not a discount but it's a place i i won't say the name because i shouldn't say names on here um and i mean they're notorious for having clothes that are dirty but they're made terrible they're gonna fall apart and they know that buying me and they're okay with that you know It's just being an indication of the way that we think about worth. And I think that that then sort of transcends then to the way that we look at people and the way that we look at each other and the value that we give to each other.

Yeah, that was my next question. It seems to me that it's all connected. And so if we begin to live in this world of what Benjamin George is talking about Apple's planned obsolescence is deliberate, you know, when we began to look at that idea of planned obsolescence, and you had mentioned that it seems in the past there was a greater emphasis on craftsmanship and pride and work. And, you know, that has to affect our psyche. That has to affect the way we look at ourselves. When you buy something and it fails in two years, that has a psychological effect. on you. And if you have, if you're surrounded, if you are in fact a extension of everything that surrounds you and everything is planned obsolescence, maybe that's why we're seeing this surge in

sort of, um, uh, euthanasia. That's why we're seeing this. I've heard more sirens this year during Christmas than I ever have in my life. And it makes me sad. You know, and I'm wondering, those, those things got to be connected. And it's this idea of worth. Like, we are worth so much more. Yeah. Well, I think. you're right i mean and we are seeing kind of a of a renaissance in craftsmanship yeah and an interest in vintage and antique items and i think that that um that largely speaks to this question as far as when we're talking about things at least right um that that we we we do value craftsmanship um and but the problem is that

You know, it was interesting. We, we, when we were traveling over the holidays, we were up in, we were Massachusetts, visiting my mother-in-law. And I don't remember why, but there was a, there's a Walmart down the street from where she lives. And so we went down there to pick up something. I can't even remember what we went in there. Oh, my daughter won a peanut butter.

And, and we don't shop in Walmart as, as, as, you know, we don't shop in Walmart as, as a rule for a variety of reasons. And it's just incredible because the prices are so low, you can see why people do. And I think that's the thing here. It's you walk into a store where items are priced high because they're made well. And we've made that a class thing.

You know, I can remember, I remember when I was in high school, I was dating this girl who I took to prom and her birthday was coming up. So I wanted to go to her birthday present. So my best friend at the time and I, we went to the mall and we went to this jewelry store. And I'll never forget this. We walked into the jewelry store. And as soon as we walked in, I realized that this was way out of my price range. It was carpeted and there were places to fit in front of

the display cases that I thought, oh, no, I'm really screwed here. But I was already in the store. So, you know, you've got to save face, right? Right. So I walked forward in the salesperson came forward to greet me and I think I stumbled on a buckle in the carpet and really face planted on the floor. And we just high tailed it out of because it was, but we've turned it into a class issue. And that, I think, is really dangerous.

It's dangerous because it pigeonholes people. You know, I think back to, you know, we bring them up off in Shakespeare. And when I teach Shakespeare and we talk about, you know, whether or not these characters are, have any kind of mobility when it comes to society. Or are you just born into what you're born into and that's it? And I think that part of the so-called American dream, which many argue is dead, is that you aren't born into a spot that you are stuck in, that you can move about in society, in class. and I think it's more than

it's more than indicated by more than just salary. I think it's indicated by our spirituality. It's indicated by what we value in others. And that's a tremendous part of the reflecting that so many of us are doing this last week of the year.

right? I mean, it's this time for reflection as the new year comes and you start to think about what you're grateful for and what you're thankful for and how and it's most often it's about the way that you value friends and family and colleagues and people who like that young woman working in the library this morning who I don't even know her. But, you know, I value her for what she's doing and I respect her for it and I want to show her that I appreciate that. You know, a few weeks ago before we closed down for the holidays on campus, I threw a holiday party in my office. We did it before COVID, but we haven't done it since. Of course, we couldn't in the time in between. And it was, we, I cater it from outside. And we pretty much open it up as an open house. But I make sure that I personally invite the housekeeping staff.

And when they showed up, I mean, a couple of people even mentioned, you know, that they look like the happiest people in the world, that they were getting Olive Garden, you know. And, you know, if I can do that, then to show them how. I value them. That's great, but I, it isn't just that one time in the year, right? I'm always baffled at how people treat others who are doing menial work and, and ignore them or look down on them. And I don't, I don't know which one is worse. I think ignoring it actually worse. And I remember a couple of years ago, I think it was when I first got here. I was talking to somebody on campus who worked in the physical plant, was either a housekeeper or one of the guys who work on campus. And I was

having a conversation with him. And later on, a colleague of mine said that she noticed it, and she said, the guy looked stunned. And I said, I don't know why. And she said, because probably nobody really ever talks to them. I mean, they don't talk to professors. Professors don't talk to them. There is in our culture such a hierarchy, which I think is such a dangerous and nasty thing. I mean, you know, my daughter complains that I'll talk to anyone. You know, I mean, I had a half-hour conversation with the guy who calls for the cabs at the hotel when I was in Washington, D.C. over the summer. I found out all about them. What an interesting life that guys.

Yeah. It's important to do that, to show. that we value each other. Yeah, that seems like the fabric of society that keeps us together. And, you know, I think there's a lot to be said about social mobility in a healthy society. When there is no social mobility, then I think you start running into the despairs that or the cancers that can cause the deterioration of society. You run into these things called hate and dishonesty and distrust. in. You know, there's no self-care in that particular relationship and no self-respect.

It's difficult to respect yourself when you don't respect others around you. And like you said, you spoke with a guy that you may not have had a whole lot in common, but when you start talking about cabs, you realize, I don't know anything about cab. This guy's an expert. This guy's had a lot of information that I could probably learn from. He had told me he'd worked for that hotel for something like 30 years. He'd worked his way up. He's done just about everything there could be in there. And now he was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, who stands out in front. And, you know, we were talking about the people he meets,

and it was intriguing. I think it's really important to get that insight into how, what makes people tick and what gets them to where they are, how they got to where they are. I mean, he said he was very happy with what he did. It was very happy. You know, whereas other people might look and say, oh, what a cruddy job, you know, stand out there all day.

calling cabs for people. He said he loved it. And so I gained an appreciation for what he did by talking to him. And then further gained an appreciation for just for him as another human being and not thinking about him as, you know, the doorman. Right. You know, and I think about the closing, there's a closing scene. and there's a novel by Saul Bello called Seize the Day.

I don't know if you know it. It was Bellow's first book. Bellow, the great Chicago novelist Nobel Prize winner. And Seas the Day, his first novel published, I think, in the late 50s, early 60s. It's about a guy who is basically down on his luck and is trying to get help from his very well-themed. father who refuses to give it to him. And at the end of the novel, Tommy Wellhelm, this character, has been taken in by a scam artist. And he's running through the city looking to try to find him because the guy has disappeared with his money, what was left of his money. He stumbles into a

funeral. And he gets into the funeral line. And as he gets to the front of the line, he starts, it's weeping. And the people who are sitting there at the funeral think, oh, that must be somebody, you know, very close to the deceased. You know, and the interior monologue that Bello gives you is that what Tommy was really thinking is that there's another human being. It's just that simple. It's that we consider each other as human beings.

I mean, you know, it sounds cliche, but. you know on one level or equal right yeah um there's not much that makes us different um and when it comes to to looking at at worth i mean we've talked about that i told you that story about my trip to san francisco when i was in graduate school and and meeting that that homeless gentleman on the street and and kneeling down to give him some money and looking him right in the eye and saying you know you take care of yourself and he just looked stunned Um, that afternoon that I had that day was just life changing for me because it just showed me how we're all the same. We're all just trying to, to make it, right? Um, whether I'm, you know, standing there with my, my new briefcase and my trench coat and trying to get a job as a professor or the guy who's in the jump suit cleaning out the ashtrays at the, at the elevator. Um, we're all trying to do the same thing.

And I think that, you know, that speaks to how considerate we are of each other. You know, there's been so much talk during and since COVID about showing grace for people, right? Give people grace. Give them a little bit of space. Yeah. Right. And I think we should always be doing that. We're all struggling. Yeah.

It's fascinating me to think about, you know, I have some, I had some notes that I was thinking about. And it just turned out that I had one written on grace. And I forgot exactly what I did with it. But there seems to be, and maybe you can speak to this, because I think it's relevant. You know, there's two ideas, I think, in theology without grace. One is eminence and one is eminence. And one is that grace comes from God to us. and then one is that emanates from inside us.

Are you familiar with those two things? Maybe you could flesh them out of us. Yeah, more or less. I mean, it's, again, it's that distinction between how we view the deity. Yeah. Right. I mean, is it external to us and are we waiting for presence, basically, both in the sense of presence with a T.S and presence with a C.E.

you know, are we waiting for that or do we make that ourselves? Now, of course, you know, in Catholic theology, I mean, the idea is that only God grants grace, right? I mean, you can't do it. But I think that as we have moved to a more, I don't know if it's even secular or if it's ecumenical society, I think we've gotten a little bit beyond. that notion with the idea that, yeah, we really do need to show grace. And we can. And that if we operate under the notion that it will only be given to us from above, it's going to create a lot of division and a lot, as you mentioned before, a lot of hatred.

and a lot of lack of compassion for each other. I mean, the only reason that I have compassion for someone is because I can show them some grace. I understand what you're going through. You know, here, you know, have some space. You know, do you need to talk? And that has become so important. During COVID, it was interesting

because so many of us, myself included, We're really despairing and wondering, how are we ever going to get out of this? And I went back and I was reading about, well, I wanted to read about how the country came out of the 1918 pandemic, which were so horrific. And so how did we get out of that? And I went back and started reading some of the books that were written about that pandemic at the time. And there wasn't much mention about the recovery. And I talked to a historian friend of mine and I said, you know, I'm looking for something that really looks at, how did the country come out of that? And he said, World War I.

And it never even clicked that that's, you know, that's what was going on. And so, you know, it's interesting because here we are now, what, three years in? into this. I mean, it'll be, let's see, it was March of 20, right? So yeah, it's almost three years what since the outbreak of COVID and it hasn't gone away. We knew it wouldn't. And I'm still not sure that we've recovered, quote unquote, whatever the hell that means. Certainly, the economy hasn't recovered. I don't know if society as a whole. has recovered. I mean, I just did some traveling throughout the Northeast and saw a lot of people still wearing masks. To my surprise, there were a couple of places where I went in New York City

where they actually required masks still or had brought them back. I don't know if they had to let them go. And so I'm still questioning, you know, how do we get out of this? How do we what does recovery look like i don't know i don't know what it will look like um but i don't think we're there yet but a lot of that comes from again you know the increased feeling that we have for each other i mean you know the value that i place on on on our friendship george yeah is is very important to me you know, for, and I was just going to use a throwaway and say for what it's worth. I mean, it's not worth anything, right? I mean, it's not worth any monetary value.

But it has a value that's really beyond that. Yeah, in some ways, thank you. In some ways, I think that maybe the way out of this is redefining or remembering what is, worth worthwhile. You know, I'm always reminded of this. Sometimes I'm reminded of this quote and I cannot I always forget the exact book and the numbers, but it's something along the lines of.

I was born with a thorn in my side, a messenger from Satan to torment me. I prayed to the Lord to take the thorn away from me. And in his infinite wisdom, I heard a voice call to me. My grace is sufficient for you. For in weakness, my power is made perfect. And I think that this talk about grace, this idea of what's really worthwhile is seeing yourself and the other person. And I think that maybe what we're doing on some level talking to a few people here or admiring the relationships we have or taking time to talk to someone you haven't met before and not only talking to them, but communicating with them and giving them your sincere ideas.

Hey, thank you for doing this. I'm stoked you're here. It's a pleasure to see you. And like that goes a long way. That stretches further than any buck will ever go. And I think by some of the things you said, maybe our objective should be to realign society along the laws of grace and just carry ourselves with a little bit more humility

and understand that, hey, material, maybe grace is the shield for materialism. But I like what you're saying. And I think that it does redefine worth. It's like, who were we to let the material world define worth for us? Maybe we should be stronger than that. Maybe we should define what worth is. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, I think the problem is we're swimming upstream when it comes to that, right?

You know, we're swimming against a current of capitalism and greed and materialism that that makes it very difficult. you know, as we were chatting earlier about the fact that the holiday season now has transformed from being Thanksgiving to Christmas, you know, four weeks maybe, when stores were very busy selling a lot of what they sold, you know, that was the way they made their money really for the year in those four weeks. That's not really the case anymore because now it's, you know, with the internet, it's 24-7. And we've got, you know, Cyber Monday and this Tuesday and that Wednesday. I mean, you know, we've come up with names for all these crazy things in order to just make more money. I mean, we were watching the news a couple of hours ago and all the problems that the airlines are having in the last couple of days, especially Southwest. Yeah.

And the fact of the matter is these are corporations that make billions of dollars and the people who run them make billions of dollars. and the people who run them make billions of dollars. And so, you know, when they get on and complain about how, well, we can't do this because we don't have the resources, it's like, you make $10 billion a year, you individually. You know, I mean, there's just something out of whack about it. Something just completely out of whack about it. I mean, we all want to be paid what we're worth. Right.

Now, what the hell does that mean? I don't know. I mean, it's based on. I suppose it's based on our experience, is based on our education, it's based on our knowledge, it's based on our skill set, I mean, all of those things.

But it just doesn't seem to work out that way, though, does it? You know, and there are a lot of people who are making a lot more money, and it's kind of out of whack with what their skill set is. You know, I mean, the big complaint about about professional sports. I mean, it's insane, the salaries that they're making. It's insane.

And people say, oh, well, they're only going to work for a couple of years. Yeah, okay. So you spread out what they're getting paid. I mean, Aaron Judge just re-signed with the Yankees. And I forget what the contract was, but it was some obscene number. You know, and I post on Facebook the story, and I said, it's just under what I make as a professor. You know, I mean, it's just how do we value these things?

How do we set a value on them? I don't know what the answer to that is. You know, and things have changed so dramatically in the last 30, 40, 50 years when it comes to this. I mean, I grew up upper middle class in the Bronx. My father was self-employed. He had a business. He was a sales. My mother didn't work growing up. When I was growing up, she raised the kids. I had two siblings,

a younger brother or younger sister. I don't know how the hell we lived the way that we did. I really don't. My father didn't make a lot of money. He was comfortable. I think he would have said he was comfortable. And we were always comfortable. We never wanted for anything. But you look at it now. And, you know, I look back on that. I mean, I have one daughter. I don't know how to have he did it having three kids i couldn't afford that today yeah it's and i think that there's some other interesting maybe it's the evolution of our idea of money you know and it seems that with this increased materialism comes increased fear and with increased fear comes broken relationships and with broken relationships comes the inability to fully actualize who you are and it just seems like

this cycle is coming but you know i i i i i choose to think that, you know, it's always dark before the light. And while I see some storm clouds gathering, maybe this is exactly what we need to redefine it. I really think that the thing you see happening on the world, whether it's a war going on in the Ukraine, whether it's SBF and this destruction of crypto and billions of dollars, or whether it's the commercialization of Christmas and the stripping of spirituality from the lives around us, it seems to me that it's, it's crumbling in on itself and just like a phoenix we're going to see something come out of it and i know i said the second ago but i really think that the foundation is built from the everyday

people from like from stacey and ben that are listening to us and nick listening to us to you and i to the relationships that we build on and every day we may never live to fully actualize and see what comes of the relationship or the time you spoke with the homeless guy down there and the the random acts of kindness that you do for people. But I honestly think that those are the cornerstones of building a life worth living. And I think we're doing it down here. And it's hard because you don't see it. You may never see it.

But the fact that you know it allows you to have the courage to move forward to continue to do it. I think you're proud of it. You're absolutely right. And I think that that really speaks to it. I mean, the fact of the matter is you may not, we may not see it. We may not know it. right and but we all but again we live in in a world of instant gratification we want it immediately but we may not see the result you know i mean it's it's it's what i deal with in higher ed

talking about the value of a liberal arts education excuse me value of the liberal arts education is not an immediate payoff and so when they do these moronic market analyses about you know majors and how much they're being paid. It's like, well, yeah, the computer engineers are making a buttload of money right away. Of course they are. They have skills that they're learning immediately that are applicable to the real world and what they're doing. Liberal arts education takes a lot longer to sink in because we're talking about thoughts and ideas that you really need to ruminate on. And so I've always said, you know, if you really want to gauge the value of a liberal arts education, talk to people 10, 20 years after they graduate and see how they reflect then.

And luckily, I mean, for Facebook, I'm able to keep in touch with students from literally decades ago and to be able to hear from them about what the, and see the value of what they learned and how it's finally paying off. But it may take quite a long time. And I think that's the case with things too to some degree. I mean, I'm sitting here in my study, and I'm going to go off screen for a second and grab something. I have always kept this. This is a cane that was my grandfather's.

I used to have a top hat that went with it. That was his top hat, unfortunately, got destroyed. But this cane, I mean, I don't think it has any monetary value, but it has a lot of value to me because it was his. He died in 1970 and I haven't found a picture with him using it.

I'm sure that there probably are some somewhere. I probably have some somewhere. But there's a value to this, to me. And I think if we think about long-term value of not just things, but of ideas and thoughts and what we learn and how we feel, that we do better off than we do looking at, well, what's the immediate payoff?

You know, what am I seeing from this? Because life doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. And I think that the things that are the greatest value to us are the things that endure. and oftentimes that we don't realize for a long time afterwards. And whether that's relationships or experiences, you know, I mean, we could talk about experiences and the value of experiences, right?

And the fact of the matter is that in most cases, you don't realize immediately the value of an experience. It takes a while to reflect on that and realize that that was really important. important. Yeah, if, you know, it's as we're thinking about value in grandparents and reflection, especially this time of year, you know, we can take a look at some of the greatest literature that was ever written. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the best of times, it was the worst of times. It seems that in times of calamity, we often look back at literature and you hear these people talk, it was the best time of my life, even though the bombs

were raining down. There was a sense of community like I've never, it's almost like when there's these tragedies and calamities in our lives, everything is stripped away except what matters. And we are showing this is what matters. And it's sad that it has to get to that point. And it may have to get to that point now, but, you know, maybe. we could take a clue from that. And I'm sure you could think of some great literature of every war where people were talking about that. Well, I'm just thinking, I mean, the resurgence in the reading of the diary Van Frank over the last couple of years is really interesting. Right.

You know, and a lot of Holocaust literature for that matter. But yes, looking back on literature that was written during times of incredible hardship. I mean, one of my favorite George Orwell novels is his autobiographical novel called Down and Out in Paris and London. And it's miserable. I mean, it's a miserable experience that this character has, living in Paris and London, basically living underground, for lack of another way of putting it. But it's a brilliant novel because what you see from those experiences is then, as you mentioned earlier, Phoenix, right? The triumph. How do you get out of it? How do you get out of it? You know, there's a great little video that people can look up on YouTube where Kurt Vonnegut explained

the shape of a story years ago. It's it's absolutely hilarious. But he's absolutely right. He talks about the fact that we can, talks about we can graph stories, he's got a chalkboard. We can graph stories like you do a math problem. And he says the greatest stories of the stories, where somebody starts out at a certain point and things go really downhill and then they come back out of it. We love those stories, he says. We want to see how people do that, how they get out of it.

And I think part of it is because we see ourselves there and part of it is that it's strategizing. I mean, when you're at your lowest point, how do you get out of it? I think about the book by children called When Things Fall Apart, the Buddhist book, which is really a wonderful little book on being just in a horrific place and how you get out of it. How do you survive? It's a wonderful little book that I highly recommend when things fall apart.

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, comedy comes from the, these same places, like some of the best comedy is these people that are sitting around their dinner table with nothing to eat, you know, or like just sharing up a small portion and you have the family of them and someone says something and everyone starts laughing. But it's almost like everything must be stripped away for you to see things clear. We're so, the idea of the material has clouded our judgment, has clouded our tables and has clouded our thought process for so long. it's almost like we live in a world of decadence and we're so unhappy about it. It's kind of crazy to think about.

Yeah. Well, I think, and I think you're right, though. I mean, some of it is stripping it away and sort of an almost thing of the absurdity of it, right? Yeah. You know, I'll tell you a funny story. I must have been about, oh, maybe 15. We were having a Passover Seder, which we used to do every year. and everyone in the family would sit around the table

and would read the Hagata, which is the story of Passover. And everybody has their own sort of role. So the youngest reads the four questions. There are different sections of it. There was a spot where my brother had to read a passage and he misread it. It was something about saving our...

good future and instead he read it as saving our good furniture we were all on the floor laughing and it was a moment that just took away it stripped away the the pompousness of of this the ceremony of it and just showed you know how silly this is right and it was funny because for years after that whenever we came to that passage we would all just break out laughing because we were remembered when he misread it that year. But I think that you're right. I mean, some of the greatest comedy, of course,

I mean, look at slapstick comedy in the 1930s, right? Which came out of the Depression. I mean, it was people wanting to see silly stuff and laugh. And there was a special on, I think it was on last night on PBS. I haven't

seen it yet. On Dick Cavett and Groucho Marx, a big Marx Brothers fan, so I want to see it. And, you know, I mean, look at the Marx Brothers comedies. It's the same kind of thing. It's about stripping away the kind of the, it's stripping away the decadence in many ways. Yeah, it is. Right.

I mean, the characters in most of those films are down on their luck kind of guys and working menial jobs and, you know, poking fun at the decadence. The Chaplin films, some of the Chaplin films are the same thing. Yes. There's the same thing. You know, I mean, in that film, the rich guy thinks that, you know, Charlie has saved his life and is wealthy and he takes him on. And it's just so ludicrous. But, I mean, in many ways, it's that kind of looking at the world as being just absurd, right? which is a in some ways a very existentialist approach to things.

You know, I'm thinking about, of course, you know, Samuel Beckett waiting for Godot and absurdist theater, right? Where, I mean, the point is to show you that life is kind of absurd. I mean, that play, if folks don't know it, waiting for Godot, right, a two-act play in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for a guy named Godot. They've never met him before. They don't know what he looks like.

They wait for him. The play ends. He never comes. And when it was premiered in New York City, I had a graduate professor who was actually at the premiere, and he said, people got up at the end of the first act and said, what the hell is this? Nothing happened.

You know, nothing happened. And in many ways, that's what our existence is, right? I mean, most of the time that we spend alive, nothing happens. I mean, you're waiting for the bus, right? Yeah, I would say the majority of our life is in process to something. You know, and we're so caught up in this idea of reaching the mountaintop or cashing the million dollar check or finishing this or finishing that. But the truth is you're in process. Even if you hit that milestone, hey, you made it.

I'll get back in line. You know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And we focus more on the journey. Yeah. The journey is more important. Yeah.

It seems, you know, I think that somehow worth and meaning are connected. You know, and the beauty of that is that you keep in life, you can't choose what happens to you, but you and you alone get to choose the meaning of that event. And I think if you learn to ascribe or give meaning. to things in your life, it will be more meaningful. And it can be something small. It can be the moment you have breakfast with your daughter.

It can be making a cup of coffee for your wife in the morning and putting a little whipped cream leaf on there or something. You know what I mean? And that helps with the process. Like now you have something to look forward to. You have someone to love and you've got something to do. And maybe that is like the beauty of life is that at any point in time, we can choose to live a wife worth living,

a life worth living. You know, I think it's there for us. And it's conversations like this that help me bring it out. Like if I'm in a funk or, you know, I'm caught up and work,

like it's so refreshing to talk to some people. Man, that's another thing. Like you and I are having an amazing conversation. It makes my life better. And I look forward to it. And I hope other people do. But it's right there for us.

We can't have these meaningful moments. But we, but in order to understand that these things have meaning, we need to take a moment. and pause and reflect on it. But modern life is so fast, we're moving on to the next thing, and we don't get the chance, many people don't,

to stop and reflect and say, oh, wow, that was really amazing. And as a result, I think it's numbed our senses. Yeah. And so we're expecting things to be even more incredible, right? Yeah. Because it's got to overwhelm us. And then we're disappointed when they don't. It's a Buddhist idea, right?

I mean, you know, life is suffering, right? But there is a way out of it, right? And part of the way out of it is on reflecting and contemplating what has occurred to you and making meaning out of it. Right? I mean, things have meaning that we oftentimes, you know, rush under the rug. Yeah.

It's like, well, wait a minute. That was meaningful. And so, you know, think about that. What does it mean? Because really, everything that occurs to us has to have some kind of meaning. You know, unless you're in waiting for Godot and he never shows up. I mean, I believe that there is meaning to things. I don't believe that in that absurdist approach.

But I think we need to really pause to think about it. And discussions like the ones that we have and folks tuning in, you know, are certainly interested in, I think, doing that and slowing down and thinking about something, thinking about, well, what does that mean? What's the value of that experience? What was the value of that experience, right? thinking back on it. And we do that through our whole lives. It's just some of us are a little bit more, um,

I don't know, tapped into it and, and, and, you know, interested in it and, and interested in not living a superficial existence.

Does that sound too highfalutin? No, I, I, I would agree. I, I think that, you know, in,

in today's world, technology and marketing and profit and, you know, not a whole lot of reflection. You know, we have a Johnson here. Thank you for making some comments. Nick, everybody, thank you for making some comments on here. You know, he brings, Johnson brings up this idea about government. And it seems to me, like when I look at what's put on the airwaves, it almost seems like, you know, pick your poison. But it just seems like there's all these hate merchants that are trying to.

get us to not reflect on who we are and what life can be. But I do honestly think that there is a brand new marketplace, and that's marketplaces for our attention. And it goes back to what you said about us not having the time to reflect. There is this, when you look at some of the new technology and they're monitoring your eye movements or you're looking at the metaverse or, you know, people get paid by likes and followers. There is so much emphasis on, you know, on acquiring this new real estate that is attention. And when there's a market for attention, there's all these people competing for it.

Oh, sure. Right? It seems odd to me. Well, that's, I mean, that's what Google is all about, right? Yes. It's about getting eyes on things, right? I mean, that's what so much of this is. I mean, You know, it's an off-track, off-tangent point, but something that we should probably think about, to talk about in the future is, you know, the growing and in recent days, the frightening news about artificial intelligence, right? I mean, and the ways that now there's these new AI systems

that just are, they're kind of frightening in how close they are to Alan Turing's, idea. But, you know, I just, I laugh at that because, you know, so we're getting good at artificial intelligence and, you know, we haven't even gotten that good with human intelligence. You should work on that case. That's so true. And so I think it's kind of ironic, you know. So we're going to have artificial intelligence will actually be, you know, pretty good. And human intelligence still, we got a lot of work to do.

Right. It's so hubristic to think that we can create something better than what we have. Like we're not even trying to make ourselves better. What gives us the idea that we can make something artificially better than we're not even trying to make ourselves better? It seems funny. And of course, the initial idea behind it is that, well, so it will be able to take care of all these menial tasks. and do these kinds of things that, you know, it'll free us up to do what. Right.

Right. What are we doing? Yeah. We can watch more Netflix. I mean, you know, what are we doing? I don't see that people are taking advantage of the freedom that technology is giving them to actually advance the species. Right.

That's a great point. It seems that we've gotten away from shared sacrifice and shared goals. And now it's just who has the most. And when you get there, you undermine the foundation. You've taken away the idea that we all share things together, that we're all part of this. You've taken away this idea that you don't come into this place. You come out of it. And when you come out of it, everybody's working together to create a better life for our children.

Or maybe my kid doesn't have the same life that someone else's kid have. But we can have the same goals. We can have the same sacrifices. And if I see somebody else do it, maybe I learn how they do it. Or maybe they learn from me. And when we stratify the way we, when we set up this pyramidal structure where, okay, this person up here has the most. They're better.

Wait a minute. Like we get back to worth. Like that's not true. And I bet you there's a lot of people. I have fell into this before where, you know, it's almost like when you see somebody who's really wealthy. you assume that they've earned that. You assume that they've done something great to get it,

but that's not always the case. Yeah. No, I think you're right. And I think that the value of collaboration is often lost, right? I mean, so working together, we can make significant advances and changes. You know, Benjamin mentions, you know, the AI was the same promise of the computer.

It really was, right? I mean, you know, we've mentioned it before. I mean, that fantastic essay by Vannevar Bush, as we may think, written in 1945, where, I mean, he basically predicts the Internet. You know, the whole idea was, well, it's going to free us up to do the higher level thinking that human beings really should be doing. It's like, well, how's that working out for you? I don't see a lot of that going on.

And so, you know, it's looking at meaning and value. And, you know, as Stacey says, we put too much focus and meaning onto goal-based achievements. Yes. Certainly, you know, we, everything is, we're striving for a goal. We're striving for an end. And again, it's going back to this, you know, it's important to instead really focus on the process and the journey. It makes me think about video games, right? Which I do not play.

But, you know, I remember playing in the arcades in the 1980s. But, you know, they're all goal-based, aren't they? I mean, it's all, you know, you're looking to achieve something or unlock some thing to bring you to a next level. Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know. It's just, we seem to have confused what really is important. Yeah, we've, I think we've lost. our way in some ways. And I really think that this unraveling that we're seeing,

you know, I think I'm hopeful that we can come to a state of clarity before the unraveling completely happens. Because I think that there are things we can do. You know, when we talk about this older idea of, you know, of computers freeing us up to have more time, like there's plenty of things. Like, why don't we tax the computers? All these corporations that have machines, why don't those machines pay a income tax? You know, why is it, why don't the employees that used to work there now make the same amount of money from those machines instead of that money being kicked upstairs? Like that money could go in to all kinds of infrastructure. Like, there are things we could do if we weren't based in a society in which profit was the only

motive. And I realize that some people look at that as, oh, well, that's being socialism or that's being this like we don't need those terms like it doesn't have to be that it could be something where we could reinvent ourselves to a point where you know i think it's buchan that has a gross national happiness you know what i mean like there's no shame in having at least an idea about that like we could measure our wealth by how few homeless people there are we could do a lot of things that we're not doing because a few people want to continue to go down the path we've been going down even though it's destructive. Yeah, I mean, the profit-driven society, I just think, has really, it has not done us, done us well as a society. Certainly, it's done some people very well.

But it has not done as well as a society. And, you know, when I walk into a store and they have replaced the cashiers and the cash registers with the self-checkout things, right? I mean, which is, you know, such a controversy. Right. You know, people joke about the fact that, well, you know, they should be paying me now because I'm doing their job, right? You know, I mean, I'm checking myself out, so I should be paid the job of the cashier. But, I mean, you know, the big fear is, well, what happens to all those people? What are they doing? Yep.

And, you know, you can say, well, they're freed up because they're doing other jobs. Like, the reality is they're not. Yeah. The reality is most of them probably laid off. And they lose their jobs. and it's just it's all in the name of profit and the dollar right i mean it you know i think it was a benjamin mentioned you know the age of the endless dopamine hit right i mean that's i like that because that's really what it is i mean we look for that regardless of what we're doing

we get that dopamine hit, whether that's from, you know, achieving, unlocking a goal in a video game or getting more likes on Instagram or, you know, all this other nonsense, which just doesn't have any real value. It doesn't really have any real value. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. All that matters is I've got to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day. I've got to live with myself and care about the people around me. You know, it's one of the messages that I repeat in the book on the Seven Deadly Sins is this care for, you know, how we're caring for each other as human beings and caring for each other as just members of humanity. And we're losing our humanity. I mean, it's that D.H. Lawrence line from his, from his essay, you know, we've lost our son, right? We've lost our center. Yeah. It's, it's a fascinating time we live in. And I, you know, I heard a good analogy a web that I hadn't heard before.

I really like to talk about the idea of just like a silkworm spins its web and gets caught in it. So too do we as a society, as individuals and as. planet, we spin our own cocoon and we get caught up in this idea of we just spin this web around us and then we live in this cocoon of this is what this is, this is what this is. And, you know, but just like a cocoon, there's a metamorphosis that happens. And I like to think that's kind of what's happening to us as a society and this destruction that we see, this, this, this end of empire, this idea of materialism and this idea of this, you know, all of them, the socialism, the materialism, the homelessness, all these problems that are happening, I think, are going to be the detritus of this cocoon.

And we're going to break through. Like, education seems to be a spot where we're beginning to see the world change. And we're beginning to see the way children are taught are potentially going to be the ones that pave a new way for us. But I heard another analogy that's this idea of a snake. The way a snake sheds its skin is it finds a really rough patch of grass or a rough patch of dirt or something. And then it goes out to that piece of dirt and it starts at its mouth. And then it has to wiggle around on this really rough piece of, rough patch so it can get that skin off of it. And it's really vulnerable at that time.

The same way a birth is vulnerable, the same way that a cocoon is vulnerable. So is the snake shedding its skin. And I really believe that that is us right now. We are in the cocoon. We are the snake shedding its skin. And I think we're, you know, we're not done yet. Like there's a lot of trauma that's probably coming. But if you can understand that we are in a metamorphosis,

then you can begin to look for the corrosive part of the cocoon to break out of. Then you can look for other people that may need help getting the skin off of them. And I think that that is maybe something that's for us to do is to look around and find someone that may be a little bit vulnerable and help them. And that's so rewarding. And I think it'll make your life better. No, I agree. but think about how incredibly brave it is for that snake to be willing to be that vulnerable.

Yeah. I mean, granted, you could say, well, it's the snake's nature. Okay. But, I mean, you know, there is something about that. I mean, being vulnerable is scary as hell. Yes. You could die. And you really do have to have some kind of bravery about it to know that, you know,

you're going to come through on the other end and be okay. And that's where, you know, as you mentioned, you know, being there for each other when we're going through this vulnerability is really important. And understanding that vulnerability and appreciating and valuing the vulnerability. Beautiful. You know, I value that you're willing to be able to be vulnerable, right, to transform into something else. Yeah, I think that that kind of takes us back to this idea of worth. Like, it's worth it to be vulnerable because you have to change. You have to grow.

And the only way to do that is to become vulnerable. Otherwise, you'll never grow into that which you need to grow in to be successful or happy or nurture someone around you. And, you know, what's it? It's worth being vulnerable, right? It's worth it. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, well said.

Well said. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, I think if we look at that, that metaphor of the larva and the cocoon and going through those stages, you know, it might be something that's really instructive for us to think about as a species. Then maybe that's what we're going through at the moment. Yeah. I, David, I love talking to you. And I'm so glad that we've had a few moments to do this. I've been looking forward to this.

And as we're getting ready to land the plane here, would you be so kind as to tell people what you got coming up, where they can find you and what you're excited about? Sure. So coming up, I'm working on new blog posts and working on two new book projects and really trying to figure out how I can get them out. Publishing has changed a lot in the last few years.

And one is on angels and demons, the book that I'm writing with my wife, on Angels and Demons and Pop Culture, which I hope will be out in 2024, I think. I think we're going to finish it next year. And then I'm also starting to work on a collection just of essays, some of the things that are in the blog and some other pieces as well, and looking to see where I may be able to, to get that out. Looking forward to the spring semester, new year.

We start classes in a couple of weeks here, and I'm teaching my Advanced Museum Studies course, so my students will be curating an exhibit, so I think that's gonna be really fun. And looking forward to another trip to the UK in June, I'll be in London in May into June for a study abroad trip with students to go to museums in London.

and excited about that trip as well. That sounds like a whole lot of fun, and it sounds like a, it sounds worthwhile, and it sounds like a life worth living. So I'm excited for that. And I hope everybody checks out David's books. I hope you go to his blog,

reach out to him. He's an amazing man who cares a lot about people and education and living a life worth living. And I'm thankful that we're able to have a few moments to talk about the holidays and spend time. So to Johnson, to Stacy, to Benjamin, to Nicholas, to everybody out there that is participating. I love all you guys. I hope you thoroughly have an amazing holiday.

And that's what we got for today. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for everything. That's what we got for today. Aloha.