Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the leadership lessons from the great books podcast, episode chronologically number 111. But this is actually going to be part 2 from episode number 108, where we will continue with our conversation with Tom Libby around Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. When we stopped our previous conversation in part 1, which has already been released, you should go back and listen
to it. We had been talking about, several different areas that were involved with the book, including the links between language, dialect, and intellectual capacity. This idea among the African American community of talking white or acting white. And, Tom had brought up the idea of identity based on a card
coming from the federal government. And we both came to the conclusion that these are nonsensical ways of viewing identity viewing group, group, what's the word I'm looking for group loyalty or measuring group loyalty, or even just strange ways of looking at class and looking at
class structures. And we were moving very gradually into the back end of their eyes were watching God and really exploring, Janie's Jesan marriage, the back end of her Jesan marriage, and then the beginnings of her connection to her to her 3rd marriage. So Janie's Jesan marriage, just so that you can all get caught up, was Tom Joe Starks. Joe Starks moved Janie in their eyes were watching God to Eatonville
in writers Florida. In Eatonville, he set her up as a well, as a fourth of a kept lady, operating the store in Eatonville while Joe went out and moved and shook as an entrepreneur and eventually put the first light in the town, set the first road and became its first mayor, which is a role that I've said this before on the podcast that I often aspire to. I aspire to no higher than mayor of a town. Don't wanna be mayor of like Boston or something. That's insane. I don't wanna actually have to
run things, but you're ever a small town? That's kinda cool. That would be that would be that's a I think if you just buy a if you buy a big enough piece of property, you could be the mayor of your own town. How's that? Well, I'm buying 5 acres coming up here fairly soon, so I'll be the mayor of my 5 acres. It'll be and Libby be outside the county so no one can tell me what to do anyway. Yeah. One of our colleagues actually were talking with him the other day
on another project that Tom and I are involved in. He has a, large tract of land that is is called a compound. Yeah. Hashtag not a cult. Anyway, back to the book. So Jamie Jamie's life with Joe Starks. Jamie's life with Joe Starks turned on turned turned well, on the one hand, was sold to her. Right? Because Joe Starks is a good salesman, was sold to her as being one turning. But ultimately and fundamentally, Joe and Janie wound up hating
each other. And that's explored in the book. And she talks about how the spirit of the marriage left in the bedroom, and, you know, it moved into different parts of the house and eventually moved out of the house altogether. I think that's a very stunning way of explaining how love can die in a marriage or the beginnings of love can die in a marriage. And, based off of what 2 people are doing to each other or not doing for each other in that
in that situation. Janie's marriage ended with Joe's death in the book and her moving from being a young married woman to an old widow. And I put old in quotation marks because I am 5 years older than Janie is in the book. And I don't feel old when she is widowed in her forties. This is a period of Tom. And Zora Neale Hurston explores this.
And, in the back half of their eyes were watching God, in chapters 9 through 13, where she looks at and where she begins to understand after Joe's funeral that she has a certain measure of freedom that she never had before, not even with her grandmother when she was 16, not in her first marriage when she didn't really understand love, and definitely not in her Jesan marriage gradually over time, with, with Joe
Starks. She one of the lines that Zora Neale Hurston has, and I've underlined it in their eyes or what she got. I'll quote from it just very briefly. When Janie emerged into her morning white, she had hosts of admirers in and out of town, everything open and Frank men of property Tom among the crowd, but nobody seemed to get any further than the store.
She was always too busy to take them to the house to entertain. They were also respectful and stiff with her that she might've been the empress of Japan. They felt that it was not fitting to mention desire to the widow of Joseph Starks. You spoke of honor and respect. And all that they said and did was refracted by her inattention and shot off towards the rim bones of nothing. Close
quote. At this part of the book, this part of the story, Janie is in a weird spot because she's single for the first time in a very, very long time. She's not looking to overthrow social conventions, but she's also not looking to go along. But just being what she is, being in that turning space is a space
of throwing off social conventions in and of itself. Yeah. I get the feeling that she didn't feel compelled to worry about social conventions just out of the simple fact that, like, she wasn't because all of a sudden, she's not poor. All of a sudden, she's not for wanting. Like, she's she's very comfortable in her situation, so she really doesn't care what anybody else thinks at this point. Right. But she can't say she doesn't care. Right. But she can't say that, right,
to the culture. She can't be like, ah, I don't really care. She's she's not in a space that we are in in our culture right now, which is why I guess it resonated with me in this part of these chapters. She's not this space that we're at in our culture, which I described a few years ago as the I do what I want kind of culture. Yeah. Which Tom me strikes me very much as like the fourth to 7 year
old's approach to life. Whereas Hurston's writing about or portraying Janie in a way that is counter to the convention of 1930s African American culture, which is, and by the way, not just African American culture, just 1930s culture, period. In general. Yeah. In general, writers? Where there are certain proprieties you will uphold. You will you will wear black in mourning, not white. And by the way, wearing writers, just like that threw everybody off in in Eatonville.
But you will wear black. You will show appropriate deference, to the death of your husband. And then, of course, the thing that will happen at the back end of that is because you're a woman of property and means, you will, of course, get married because a woman of property and means can't possibly manage that herself. And by the way, you'll marry someone that's socially acceptable to all of us in the community because we have a vote. Which is why she
was getting courted by all the, quote, unquote, right people. Right? That's correct. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. And so I kinda like the way that that, that, that the author I I I just lost her name. I apologize. Fourth, the others. Zoran. Yes. To Earth Thurston. I like the way she just kinda was like, just gonna write this how I want. Yeah. I'll do what I want. Well She she basically did the same thing writing it as her character did in the book. She
just said, I'm just gonna do it the way I want. This is I'm gonna pretend I'm in New York Libby. I'm doing it my way. This is this goes along with who she was. I mean, one of the things that Hurston said, and this is one of the things that you note fourth of about her life, and it ties in at a deep level into their eyes are watching God, particularly later on when she's in her finally in her third marriage to Tea Cake, because
we'll talk about that today. But there was a moment where a hurricane comes, comes through west Florida. And, we'll talk about this a little bit more, but there are Indians or Seminole Indians that are escaping the hurricane. And she has interesting thoughts about the Indians, which I want to get into that, that Hurston puts into Janie's brain, basically. But one Tom, and I'm tying these 2 ideas together. One Tom, I think Hurston was interviewed and she said that, like, yeah, I
couldn't couldn't find the quote on Google. Someone will go out and find it for me. But she said something to the effect of I've been the only African American in the room that didn't have that didn't have, that didn't have a teepee or feathers in my background or something like that or didn't claim it because every African American claims that there's some Indian in their background. Every single one. I've never been in a room where there hasn't been one. It's weird.
Right? And she was very proud of that fact. She was very proud of the fact that I can trace all my ancestry back to here, and she was an anthropologist anyway. I can trace all my ancestry back to here, and I'm not trying to claim and I I get a sense this is what she meant. I'm not trying to claim extra oppression here to win some weird game. I'm just I'm violating social conventions by not doing that. Because everyone in the Harlem Renaissance
was running around claiming that they were really good, so they were really bad. She's like, no. Come on. I guess, be real here, people. And so you get that with Janie. You get that that that that flying in the face of social conventions in, in this part of the book, which I love. Yeah. Same. I love that. In our time, of course, we're consumed more with race than we are with class.
We've kind of talked about a little bit on the podcast. We talked about a little bit in, To Kill A Mockingbird, the episode that comes in between this one, by Harper Lee. And, of course, we'll talk about it again. There's no wants to talk about there's a loss of things to talk about with that. But I think the fact that we are consumed more with race than with class is a triumph of the approach to culture, by those in the political activist camp of African Americans, the W. E. B. Du
Bois camp. And I don't know what to make of that. I think it's very interesting that in a class based life evolution occurs more subtly. People adapt more subtly. And you and I were kind of talking a little bit about this earlier. You know, when you have the ability to when you have the ability to take your life savings and put it into a business take a business venture, that's a class based
act. There's something there that, quite frankly, I mean, you mentioned earlier on this podcast in the previous episode, but also subsequent podcast you've mentioned, you've talked about this. And with To Kill A Mockingbird that you talked about this, Tom, how you grew up poor. Right. I grew up working class. Like my parents were turning class poor. Right. I don't think my mother made it, made, made any more than $32,000 until the time she was, like, 50. That's the same. Right? Yeah.
Uh-huh. And raised 4 kids and everything else. Right? fourth years ago, $32,000 a year was actually not terrible. Like, that was Not terrible? What No. No. No. Don't get me wrong. I'm not I'm not saying that you were upper middle class. I'm just saying, like, it was survivable is really what I should say. And let and let me frame this this way. My kids know what arugula is. Like, I get that arugula on it's very it's rolling fry. I get that arugula on layaway.
So to your point, I mean, I grew up very poor. I didn't know what quinoa was until I was an adult. My kids knew what quinoa was. That's what I'm saying. They were. Right? Like, this so, yeah, I get it. So it's only got better than we did. Oh, what? Oh my gosh. Please. Please. A feast of riches. I tell this to them all the time. When my when my boy or not even my boy. I pick on him a lot on this. I do. I I'd write him a lot. But but my middle daughter, my my youngest I'm
dumb. Not middle daughter. Youngest daughter, when she's laying on the couch just, oh, should I watch, like, Avengers for the 4th time? It's another 899 on Amazon. Dear god. Yeah. How many times you gotta watch Infinity War? You already got the plot. Yeah. When my kid so to your point, my kids are going, oh, should I watch cable or prime, or should I find something on Netflix or Hulu? Like, no. I I'll check Disney Plus. And I'm thinking to myself, I had, like, 4 channels, and they were
all just disgustingly staticky. The Remember the remember the UHF channels? We didn't have a color TV in my house until I was like, the until I was adults. I knew it was out of control when I when at one point in time and this doesn't exist anymore, but at one point in time in our house, we had, like, 4 remote controls. Oh, yeah. I knew it was out of control. I was like, this is this is this is this is nuts. This is out of control. We gotta stop this. Like, somebody's gotta put the brakes
on this. But, yeah, like, your kids know what quinoa is. My kids know what arugula is. I mean, they're living better lives than we lived. And to to our credit, I think that that's because we worked hard at it. I don't believe in luck. For sure. But I also think that there are certain evolutions that occur as you move up or down the class structure. I think Hurston was sensitive to that. I think any creative is sensitive to
that. And I think leaders should be sensitive to that. So I guess I'd like to sort of officially open up the question here. Just like leading people in in with any other differences, right, leaders have to be aware of class literature. But we have a real struggle wrapping our mouth around those ideas, you know, in America. Because I was telling you this is somebody who I was talking to a few days ago who's from, who's a Dutch person from,
from, from England. And I had to explain to him that everybody in America thinks they're middle class from bill gates to the homeless guy in San Francisco. Who's mainlining, like, you know, heroin with a touch of Fentanyl. Like, you know? Like like, I mean, you know, he thinks he's middle class too. He thinks he's just he's just one more syringe away from hitting
that middle class dream. And so talk a little bit about that dichotomy because I've never I came to that conclusion years ago that this is how people think, but, I don't know if I'm maybe I'm an outlier on that. So let's start with that. Like, what do what do how do we think about class in America?
Well, I mean, you know, I I think it's funny. When I grew up, I always I always had to hear about you know, there was the there was the the low like, you had low class, then you had lower middle class, then middle class, then upper middle class, and then upper class, then you had rich people. Right? Yes, sir. Turning about lower class, there was, like, there was even, like, these subsets of lower class. Right? There was, like, you're just basically living in
poverty. Like that like or like or you're not even living at all. You're a you're a homeless guy in in San Francisco. I mean, you've got nothing except the shopping carriage you're pushing down the street. That was even different than being poor because being poor just meant you didn't have extra money. Right? Like, you you could you could survive on your basic needs, and
then that was it. That was like you you were literally living day by day on whether or not you could or couldn't afford food, but you still had a roof over your head and, you know, whatever. Right? So, I I I think that I think that those most I think we we've tried so hard to eliminate most of those variances or subset of of, of classes that, like, we just want there to be an upper, middle, and lower class and that's it. Like, we just want it to be those
three things. And in in order in in trying to do that, we've just blurred the lines even more. Like, we've just basically said, you know what? The class you belong in is the class that you feel most comfortable in. How's that? Like, if you if you made $40 a year and you think you're middle class, then go for it. Call yourself middle class because nobody's gonna argue. Right? Like, that's kinda where we're at at this
point. It's essentially where you've declared yourself and not really where fourth actual Well, except the problem is reality with that. Right? Like, if I'm making 40,000 a year, that means my take home is 40,000 gross. That means my take home is, if I'm lucky, 32. I was thinking closer to 27 or 28, but sure. 32. Sure. That's why I said if I'm Libby, 32. Right? Depending on and by the way, 32 in Arkansas goes a hell of a lot further than 32 in Chicago. Absolutely. Yes. Okay.
Which is probably where really where more of what that comes from is what we were talking about a few minutes ago. Yes. Exactly. You know? So if I'm making 32 in Fayetteville, Arkansas, my class is and by the way, Fayetteville is not a bad town. I don't have a problem with Fayetteville. It'd be writers for Fayetteville. That's a great place to live. Very inexpensive. I would encourage you go from Chicago, not to move to Fayetteville, but, like, just consider
it. Anyway, get out of New York. Well, if at least if you're making fourth grand a year in Chicago, you're not serious. Exactly. Get yourself out of Chicago. My god. You're dying. You think it's a good year in Chicago, you're living on south side. Right? Like, it looks like south side Chicago that is not a very good neighborhood apparently. You might you might actually be in one of those tents we're talking about earlier.
Because that's all you could afford. Yeah. But $32,000 in Fayetteville, Arkansas, $32,000 take home. That goes a lot further in Fayetteville. Yeah. I I think the challenge, particularly of the last 20 years in in our era, has been the envy machine that is the mobile phone. Because I can look around and see it was easier maybe
maybe 30, 40 years ago. In our historical memory, it was easier. Because like when I was a kid, I didn't know that there were other people who lived the way that I did that were like across the world or across the country. I didn't know that. I just knew the people essays thing with you. I just knew the people in my neighborhood. Like, I didn't I'll be honest. Like, I didn't know you. Like, I like, the the
concept of talking to somebody. Like, my father was a huge radio guy and would have loved the Internet, would have loved podcasts, would have loved all this. Like, if I had told him that I could have a chat with somebody in London, he'd be like, why? It's Why do they what do you care with somebody in London? Is that gonna change your life somehow? Like, what do you and and he wouldn't have asked the why for, like, an economic end. It would have been the why from, like, you're getting an
English degree. Why? You speak English? The hell's your problem? Yeah. Yeah. So it goes Tom that same space. And so where class ties into that is when I can see someone that I use this example, because it's the most recent one, but when I could see one of my quote unquote friends in Fayetteville, who went to Little Rock this weekend to go see a Taylor Swift concert and I know Taylor Swift tickets cost $1,000, and he took 6 people to the Taylor Swift concert, and they took a bunch of pictures.
They took a bunch of videos, and I see the highlights. I can go to Ticketmaster and see that those concert tickets are $1,000. And now and I'm making $32,000 a year in Fayetteville, or I can see that, you know, Brad Pitt shot his new movie in Chicago when I can see all the shots in Chicago because they're all on Brad Pitt's Twitter Twitter feed.
Right? I can see all of this stuff now. And so the envy that maybe wouldn't have been there for that lifestyle, for that class, now comes downstream to me. And by the way, the biggest purveyors, I think, in our time of this crap actually aren't the cell the cell phones. I think well, no. I think it's the cell phones plus the Kardashians. I'll put those 2 together.
What the hell? I'll blame the Kardashian and all that and and and Fourth and all that entire crew of nonsense that's going on over there. Because I think those people made they made envy cool. Sure. Them and the Real Housewives of whoever the hell, wherever. Like, it's never the Real Housewives of Fayetteville, Arkansas. It's never that. Right. Yeah. Like, who cares? Like, you wanna see The Real Housewives of, like, Dubai. Well, why do
we wanna see The Real Housewives of Dubai? We went from lifestyles of the rich and famous to the Real Housewives and Kim Kardashian. Can we just say, like, I missed that show? I really missed that show. I don't know why. House is rich and famous. Yeah. Maybe it's just Robin Leach's voice. I don't know, but I actually do miss that show. And I think the Kardashians ruined it because they basically became that show. Like, it took over and whatever. But anyway Well, okay. Is that like what what
was it? The the MTV show about, the the, the the the MTV show that that toward the rich people's houses. Like, I forgot the name of Cribs. Thank you. I love that show. Between that show and the Kardashians and Tom My Ride, Robin Leach had no shot. I wonder I wonder what Zora Neale Hurston would think of Pimp My Ride. I wonder what she would think of that. I wonder what she would say. I don't know the woman myself, but just based on some of the stuff I've read about
her, I think she'd had problem with this. She might've had an issue. She might've had a challenge. If this was one of her children, I think she would've just smacked it outside the head and said, what are you doing? Fix the car. Fix the car. Stop it. Okay. So
what do leaders do with class envy then? Like, because we see a lot of it now, and it's it's driven by this like you said, we've tried to flatten everybody into the middle class, but then we have that other tension on the other side, which is I can look at what everybody else has. Yeah. And and and I think I think that this beholds leaders to even be more diligent about treating people based on their merits and not Yeah. Yeah. Their not their optics. Right? Or
Yeah. Any optic, by the way. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's race, color, creed, class, whatever it looks like from the outside, and basically being and and saying to somebody that we are going to treat you based on your actions, your your actions and reactions and and how you and and how you perform for the company. It's really that simple. And I think that leaders have to be that much more diligent because it's so easy. Right?
It's so easy to get distracted with this other stuff that we're talking about. It's easy to get distract my opinion this is strictly opinion, by the way. If I as a leaders, as a person who has run sales teams and so on and so forth, I refuse. I will not go on anybody on any of my sales rep's social media. I do not wanna see what they're doing on social media. Now if I happen to see on our company site that they shared one of our company posts, I
might like it. Great. Put a thumbs up on there. But I'm not going down a rabbit hole looking at their social media because that could potentially very heavily influence the way I think about them the next day. Right? And videos of them on the some table in a bar drinking and whatever. And if I'm if I'm a recovering alcoholic, which I'm not, by the way. I'm just saying, if I'm a recovering alcoholic, I see that kind of behavior, I all of a sudden have this trip wire, and I don't like that
person tomorrow morning. Right. I have been pretty diligent about not going down the rabbit holes of looking at social media of my employees. And I think that that's wisdom. That could potentially be something that other people don't do and gets them in some trouble.
So I think that's wisdom. I mean, a lot I train a lot of, a lot of groups of employees and managers and supervisors, And I've done that work for quite some time and through my consultancy and particularly in the civil service, like, it's it's they are encouraged to keep their social media on lockdown, which is hugely important. And I know that when I was in higher education as well, I was not and this is in the early days of social media before everything
sort of got to where it is now. But you could see you can begin to see the clearing at the end of the path, you know, on some of this. I was encouraged, and I took the posture with my employees who were 18, 19, 20 years old. I said, I'm not gonna be, we're not gonna be friends on Facebook. That was a big thing at the time. We're not gonna be friends on Facebook until after you're graduated
and already done. Because I if you're drinking in your room with peers or you're drinking in a place where you need to be drinking at and you're doing it irresponsibly. I never said that. But if you're doing it irresponsibly, I don't wanna know. Yeah. Right. I really don't wanna know because what I have what I know about, I have to do something about. And if I don't know, I don't have to do anything about it. I don't even follow my own kids
on on social media for the same reason that you just mentioned. I don't wanna know. I don't know if they're doing it like that. Well, and for kids for my kids, I I solved that problem in a different kind of way. I just banned all cell phones. But, I'm working on I'm working on a deeper cut than even that. But my point is that those kinds of boundaries between leaders and
followers have to be maintained. But what do you do when, what do you do when followers are friends with each other on social media? And now because this has been happening quite a bit over the last 5 to 7 years where I follow you on social, I'm your co worker, and you post something I don't like. Oh, yeah. The this I can only imagine what some of the yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. And that right. Right. Right. Right. Oh, you know where I'm
going with this. And and now we're all policing each other in this weird pseudo virtual environment that, again, doesn't have anything to do with with with the material real world we're all living in instead is a reflection, a highlight reel of reality. But because human the human brain can't distinguish between what's real and fake without being told, you have to be told what's real or fake. Right? People don't have good critical thinking skills to be able to tell themselves that or
to be able to make those delineations. And so, you know, my my coworker posts essays, well, I mean, the month we're in, so I might as well just go for it. My my coworker posts a rainbow flag right in their bio or whatever fourth writes some post about something. And I didn't know that thing about my coworker. I never asked that thing about my coworker, but I'm friends with my coworker. And maybe I have a difference of thought. And so I write something that's opposite to that. And I respond to my
coworker. By the way, these things happen. The leader is usually the last to know by the time this stuff explodes. What how do leaders deal with that? This is a huge Jesan this stuff explodes? Because usually they're the last they're not invited they're not invited to the original posting. I think, I think one thing, you know, let let's let's take a step back for a
second. Sure. I I I think I think if you can find a way, shape, or form Tom get ahead of it with some really good written company policy to begin with, this may not end up becoming a problem in the first place. Right? So Yeah. What I mean by this is, for example, you know, maybe it's a a company policy of not I don't know. Maybe I don't think we could do this, but I'm just saying, like, you're not allowed to follow fellow employees that are that are
in the same group that you are. Like, again so, like, somebody in the finance somebody in the finance department wants to be friends with sales and they follow each other, fine. Because guess what? If they get mad at each other, they're probably not impacting each other's day. Right? Like, you can you can stay away from each other. But somebody on the in the finance department following another finance department
person may be a bad idea. Right? Like, so let's let's avoid that. Now, again, I don't know if that's actually even legal, to be honest with you, to tell somebody they can or can't follow each other on social media. But let's just say that it's not legal and you can't do it that way. You can still you can still put some sort of company policy in place that says that fourth and and be very
clear about it. Your personal things, where where again, whether it's your personal belief systems or your personal social media, your personal family life, whatever that is, is not allowed to implode the the the workplace. And by implode, you list them out. Like, if you see something if a coworker's doing something on social media you don't like, that's okay for you not to like it, but it cannot impact your workday. If and and literally list out some, like, really clear
versions of this. Now that being said, even in doing that, I don't know if you're gonna avoid that problem. I still think there's a possibility you'll avoid that problem. So in that case, but but at least the leader has something to defer to as a guiding principle as to how to handle the issue. Right? Sure. So employee a and employee b come into my office. What's going on? Well, they posted something on social media and they posted
something on social media and we didn't like it. Okay. Let me refer to this
policy right here. Do you remember signing off on this? So tell me what about this policy you can't live with and and and, like, and kinda make it make it more a a matter of fact thing than a, like, a personal attack on either one of their belief systems because you certainly don't wanna get certainly don't don't wanna go down that rabbit hole because if you attack either one of their or even if you allude to what looks like
an attack on either one of their personal belief systems, you forget about employee problems. You're opening yourself up to lawsuits. So you can't do that. But, again Well and this is and this is the brave new world because you're also into, like again, remember I said, the leader usually doesn't find out about this Yeah. Until after the problem is already, like, begun. Right? And we're well
down the road. We're well down the road. I mean, I've read stories about employees doxing and harassing each other, you know, gaslighting, and just all kinds of nonsense. Right? And again, the manager, the supervisor, usually the last in line to even realize that this is going on, although increasingly and a lot of this I think was broken during COVID because remote workers are working so much on instant messaging systems like
Slack or chat or whatever your internal system is. And we saw this at Google actually with the employee, the employees who organized and Google. So here's what Google. Instead of having everybody follow everybody on social media or on Google because Google doesn't do social, there are surveillance and data scraping company. Instead instead, what they oh, everybody
knows. Instead, what, what they did was they instituted sort of a Slack and internal Slack where they allowed people to kind of blow off steam and kind of unite in the internal Slack, thinking that that was going to be the thing that was going to eliminate conflicts, particularly around 2020 and DEI and social justice and all these other sort of hot button social issues that are
going on in the culture. And, of course, Google's in San Francisco. So, of course, everybody's got an opinion about these Sorrells issues because they're not in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where people would just be like, go outside. I don't know. Like, leave it what?
Stop. Okay. So, and I'm not saying that when you get people that would get upset about DEI, payable, Arkansas, but the the vast majority of folks there are going to be probably a little bit more down to earth than the folks who are in Mountain View. Okay? Now that didn't work out for Google. That internal
Slack channel didn't work out. As a matter of fact, it didn't work out so well that some Google employees decided they were going to protest, the Palestinian, Hamas, Israeli, Gaza war in the offices of people who weren't even in their work group, leaders who weren't even their leaders. And so they went and they boycotted the offices or not boycotted, but they went, they barricaded themselves in the office and basically disturbed the workday. And I'll give you the punchline.
This happened probably about a month and a half, maybe 6 weeks ago, and all those employees were fired. I don't think Google had a policy for that. Google didn't have the Google didn't have the Google didn't have the the in case the people decide to take the thing off the internal Slack and go and barricade themselves in the office of people who don't even supervise them policy, I don't think they had that written down, and I don't know how HR even covers that. Yeah.
Yeah. I I yeah. Good question. Right. I got it. I I yeah. I don't know. But it was one of the more ridiculous things that I saw, And I suspect that and again this is related to class if you work at Google, you're of a different class than someone who works in I picked a lot on Arkansas today, so I won't. I'll move along. I'll move across the country. You you probably are of a different think of yourself in a different class structure or in a different class distinction than
someone who works in Memphis, Tennessee. For sure. Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent, you probably think of yours even though you both may make the same amount of money, you know, a $150,000 in Memphis, Tennessee and a $150,000 in Mountain View is still $150,000. Alright. But in Mountain View, you're living in a shack, and in Tennessee, you're living in a mansion. Correct. But you still but living in that shack, you think that you're of a better class because
I work at Google. Meanwhile, the person in Memphis, Tennessee may work for a plumbing company that's been there for 150 years. For sure. So class is weird and I think Hurston hit on it. By the way one last point on this, so I follow a I follow a magazine, I guess, a newsletter called Pirate Wires. I'm gonna give a shout out to those guys here. They probably won't hear this, but I'm gonna give a shout out to those guys. You should subscribe if you're listening to Pirate Wires Daily.
They are very, very book, and they track a lot of this sort of in the sort of interesting things that occur around, the intricacies of class in tech, along with many, many other things in tech. And it's one of those daily newsletters that I get. And Mike Solana is the, the editor in chief. And, one of the 3 takes, I get a I get a daily update. It's 3 take daily update. They have 3 articles in one
newsletter. And the one that I happened to see, dated, today, got it at 5 am, 10 hours ago as of this recording, which is, June 14th, flag day, 2024. Mike Solana wrote yesterday scales and scale as an AI company. I think scales, Alex Wang fourth announced
his company's new hiring policy. And we're talking about this MEI fourth merit, excellence, and intelligence explicitly banning race, gender, and identity based hiring from the company, quote, that means we hire only the best person for the job, the founder controversially explained, and, quote, hiring on merit will be a permanent policy of scale, he further controversially added. Partly a public gesture of this kind was inevitable following years of DEI backlash.
Partly, it's probably close to the law at this point following the supreme court's ruling over Harvard's racist admissions practices. But mostly, it's just interesting how few people melted down over his decision. No massive media backlash, no staff exodus. The man said, quote, we are hiring smart people. I don't care if they look alike. I don't care what they look like. And everyone said, okay. Then he got a bunch of love online. Stay losing, Robin D'Angelo
obsessed HR cat ladies. It's the revolution of the same. That's fourth Mike Salata. Those are not my words. Closed quote. Merit, excellence, and intelligence, m e I. I mean, welcome to the 21st century. Like, shouldn't everyone be out? What the hell? Who can are we we're gonna applaud him for something that, like, everybody should be doing anyway? What the hell? This is where we're at. Something like that. He wants a button. He wants a
like button. Well but but see but see now you can you can look at his posting, that was somewhere. I think it was on Twitter that he made this announcement. And you can like it and or you can look at it and not like it and feel envious. Hey. Yeah. Hey. Sure. This is the envy machine of social media. Oh my gosh. Alright. I lost I lost the the ability to have envy when I realized that when I when I was a kid that everybody had more than me, so I would be envying
the entire world if I like, it's a useless emotion. I'm not gonna worry about envy anymore. Just skip it. This is gonna skip envy and go straight to jealousy on the people that I know I can support. There you go. Well, this is One of the things I sometimes will talk on our solo episodes, I sometimes talk about this, whenever we talk about sort of more theologically oriented books like Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, or we'll talk about Reinhold Niebuhr,
fourth even Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Right? You know, anything by a theologian. I I I'm fascinated by the fact that almost no one in our culture, our modern postmodern culture, uses those old school words like envy and jealousy anymore, even though we know what those emotions are. Right? And we seem to have lost that language. Greed. Oh, we know that word fourth sure. Like, greed, please. I mean, who is it that said in the 1980s, you know, quote, unquote greed is book? I think there was some movie
Wall Street. You know? Yeah. Oliver Stone put that put those words in Michael Douglas's mouth. So greed, we absolutely know, and greed, we could spot like dimes on the highway. But the other ones interchange greed with capitalism. Right. But the other ones, we don't. We don't interchange, like, vanity with the Kardashians. Right. Like, we don't interchange envy with social media. We don't interchange lust with pornography. We don't. No. We don't do that. It's just empowered sex work.
Okay. Please, let's be real, People, come on. And so we have all these old school human nature things, which Hurston would appreciate because she came out of anthropology. And there's nothing fourth. There's no other field, I think, that clearly shows exactly man's inhumanity to man at a visceral level than anthropology. Probably psychology gets there too. But, like, human beings are driven by these base appetites, and then we just try to put masks and levels and
layers on top of them. And and and those masks and layers and levels we call civilization. Like we just do. That's what we call civilization. Because if we if we strip all that away I mean, we've seen this in war zones. You strip all that away and the guy or the guy you're into something else. The the take all those emotions, wrap them up in a in in a version where you can control, and we call that humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And things still and things still leak out the sides. Like,
forget it. You can't Yeah. Exactly. I mean, this is why this is why it's interesting that they're called the 7 deadly sins and not the 7 kind of fourth of maybe dangerous sins. I mean, just take out all of the other vernacular. Just say the 7 dangerous sins would even be, like like okay. They're kinda maybe not great. You don't wanna maybe do this. No. Like, pride. Again, the month we're in.
If we're using that term, when we really mean dignity, we fundamentally misunderstood what's at the bottom of both of those words. And we're literature leadership podcast, so words matter. The word pride, just like the word vanity or envy or lust or jealousy, there's a darker thing at the root of all of those words. But words like dignity and honor and duty and, well, and faith, there's something that's not dark at the bottom and the root of those words. And we used to kind of
understand that, I think, in our culture. I I also think and I I said it I I made this comment on the, episode, the part one of this of this podcast episode with with Thurston. Words have the power that we give them. So if you're gonna take pride and turn it into a negative, that's because we've given it that kind of negative power. There's there's a there's there it's not a sin to be prideful of something that that you have worked
your tail off to accomplish. Like, you can be being prideful of that is not a sin, but we give that word, that negative power or the sinful power based on other things, not being prideful about something you've worked on. It's a different kind of so we gotta be careful how we how we, assign the words, basically, in in in the in the the manner in which we're using them and deploying them for certain
things. Like, it that all matters. Right? Like, to Tom my point earlier in that the first fourth first episode of this podcast, The words have power that we give them. Like, it's we we give them that power. The word pride does not have power all by itself standing there. The the word dignity, the word the gluttony fourth any of the other 7, almost dangerous sins that we we're we're giving them that power. It's it's us we're we're giving them
that power. It's not it's not as like, we can take those same exact words and move them into a different segment. It turns into something different. So I would like to use this opportunity to give the to give the the makers of Ozempic some marketing advice. Call it a gluttony reducing medicine, and we will be fine. People will line up around the block for it. That means fine. Sure. Because what we're doing is we're actually using this drug to reduce our appetite so that we are not gluttonous,
Sorrells. I feel good about putting those two words together. I feel just fine about that. So, you know, at the dinner table or, you know, quite frankly, anywhere else. Yeah. You know, I understand that there's many, there's very few things, and this Seth Godin said this years years ago, we wrote it in a book, fourth might have written it in a blog post or I might have heard
him say it. Might have been in a blog post or maybe a book. But human beings don't like and you'll appreciate this, Tom, being in the marketing space. Human beings don't like things being marketed Tom that marketed to them baldly. They don't like being told the full truth of a thing. That's why we have marketing. And of course he referenced back to, as I always do, the graffiti on the
walls of Pompeii advertising ladies of the night. Like there's very few things that human beings want to have marketed to them as the truth of the thing. But 99.9 percent of everything else, people want a gloss on it. They don't want the word used. That's why Ozempic is a weight loss drug, not a gluttony reducing pill. That will probably screw you up later. By the way, I'm waiting for Ozempic just like olestra. Anybody remember that? I'm
waiting for the for the devil to come due on that. Waiting for that class action suit to be filled? Oh, I'm waiting. It's I think and I think I I don't think I'm gonna have to wait really long. I think it's gonna come right around the corner. Yeah. You might be right. Anyway, back to the book. Back to their eyes are watching God. By the way, a great title, You might wanna research where she got that where she got that title from. It's an interesting
little story. It's funny that you say that because I was gonna I was gonna ask that because I found the I I didn't I didn't research where it came from, but I remember thinking to myself, I really like to know how she came up with it. Like, what what is the impact to her? Because there there seems to be a story there for her on the title, not for the story itself. Yep. Yep. Well, this is one of the lines that that they actually say here, in the they could see is it close to the end,
Maybe. Yeah. Feet cake dies and, and sort of the the circle gets closed. Right. And she talks about well, she essays, Jane Janie talks about several different or or not talks about reflects, on her life and on the nature of her life. And so that's sort of where that idea gets to
be gets gets closed in. The other thing is the end of the end of the novel, which we're wandering towards the end of the novel, the end of the novel and the beginning of the novel Libby together quite tightly, which is just like just like the end of, the beginning of the end of, To Kill a Mockingbird linked together quite tightly. And so which is the sign of, a writer who did not lose the thread, of the narrative. She didn't, she didn't lose the, she didn't lose the narrative. And, I could
appreciate that. So the back half, right, of their eyes are watching god. So Janie and TK get married. Well, actually, before that, Janie meets a woman. Not meets a woman, but well, yes. She meets a woman, and there's other people who are, like, sort of floating around her turning to get her married off and and all this kind of stuff. And she's like, I'm a woman in my forties. I'm really enjoying having this, having this
shop. I'm really enjoying having my freedom. I'm not really looking for a man. She doesn't really say that, but that's what she Jesan. That's what she means. And she's hanging out. And all of a sudden, this guy comes rambling down the road. And his name is, I love this name, Virgible Woods, aka
tea cake. And he courts her not by chasing after her money and not by chasing after her body and not by chasing after any of the sort of material things that may be in an environment like that, you would, you would anticipate that a man would come along and chase after a woman if she had them. Right. He wasn't interested in her class. He wasn't interested. And this is something that women need to pay attention to. And I thought it was interesting how Fourth hit on this in
the book. Tea Cake was not interested in Janie's money. Janie thought that Tea Cake was interested in her money. As a matter of fact, there's an interesting literature moment that they have when they move from Eatonville to the West Everglades where Tea Cake is going to go make some money. And, Janie brings basically her life savings pinned inside of her dress And she wakes up and she finds out
that it sees that it's gone. And it turns out that, he goes and gambles it and he loses some of the money, but he brings back, you know, more, money. And, you know, she's freaking out, you know, and she doesn't understand that he's a gambler because he didn't tell her this from the jump. He just sort of presented himself as being this jokester kind of guy. And she starts losing her mind about the money, and she starts losing her mind
about him going on and on with another woman. And he comes back to her. He says, I don't really need I don't need your money. I just use it as a stake to start me off, but I can make my own money and watch. And he goes and he does. And he's a hard worker, in addition to being a gambler. He's a guitar player and, took any odd job he could possibly be offered to make any money. And these days, Seacake would be called a hustler, not a scammer, but just a hustler. Right?
Hustled into his work, did hard work, and he was an honest hustler. Right? He was even an honest gambler, which is which is so strange for Hurston to structure TK's personality this way because I'm sure the vast majority of African American gamblers she ran across were guys who were on the make. Guys who were, not to put you find a point on it, but guys who were pimps, writers? Who were who were, were money hustlers, who put on a good show but could lose it all on a
Saturday night. I'm sure that's the milieu that she was writing against with Tea Cake's character. He also possesses a deep devotion to being married to Janie in chapters 13 through 20, a devotion that runs so deep that when a hurricane comes through, he tries to well, they try to move to higher ground. Writers. And, they get the warning that the hurricane is coming, but they don't they don't take it seriously.
And and they don't take it seriously because, well, because they're quite frankly, living the high life. Writers. They're making friends with Bahamian workers. They are figuring out how their culture goes. But as the hurricane begins to draw closer, they notice that the animals are starting to migrate. Right. And the workers are starting to really realize the workers who are familiar with how hurricanes come through the Everglades are starting to pack up and
leave. And there's a moment that happens in Chapter 18 where Janie is at home and t k is off in the field working, trying to get his last few dollars that he can get before the hurricane comes. And this happens, which I thought I thought of Tom when I read this actually, in chapter 18 and I quote, so she was home by herself one afternoon when she saw a band of Seminoles passing by the men walking in front and the laden stolid women following them like bureaus like burrows.
She had seen Indians several times in the glades in twos and threes, but this was a large party. They were headed towards the Palm Beach Road and kept moving steadily. About an hour later, another party appeared and went the same way. Then another just before sundown. This time she asked where they were all going. And at last, one of the men answered her. Going to high ground, saw grass book, hurricane coming. Everybody was talking about it that night, but nobody was worried. The fire dance kept
up till nearly dawn. The next day, more Indians moved east unhurried, but steady, still a blue sky and fair weather beans turning fine and price is good. So the Indians could be, must be wrong. You You couldn't have a hurricane where you're making 7 $8 a day picking beans. Indians are dumb anyhow. Always were. Close quote. I did. I sat there, and I I underlined it, and I thought, okay, Zohra. Alright. But this is the overlap. I mean, we ran into this when we read black
Indian slave narratives. Narratives. Right? Like we this is the overlap between cultures in America. And it's so subtle what she's doing there. You know, Janie's perception and then the Indians as the warning and not taking the warning seriously. Like, why wouldn't you? Right? But then the Bahamians were fourth the books from from the Bahamas who were there, they didn't take it seriously either. They were staying out in the field, making 7, $8 a day.
And as that sort of unwound, Hurston did a really good job in these back chapters of the book, dripping out that drama, that was happening. And so the hurricane did come, and it did sweep away everything that wasn't on high ground. And the Indians weren't dumb. They did know things. You should have listened. You should have paid
attention. But it swept away everything and fundamentally wound up, well, Tea Cake and Janie tried to escape, successfully escaped for a little bit, and then wound up in a spot where, well, Janie almost drowned. And in the process of saving her, tea cake got bitten by a rabid dog in the face. No Jesan. Now that bite doesn't kill him immediately. He shakes off the dog, fights the dog, whatever. But it winds up being a problem much leaders, as rabies moves through his body.
And, eventually, Janie has to do the thing that you do with a rabid dog, but she has to do it with tea cake. By the way, after the hurricane well, the physical hurricane anyway is over. Their Eyes Are Watching God ends with Janie becoming a whole Jesan, weirdly enough, and winding up back where she started at her home where her grandma was. And she becomes a whole person who can live by the truth of herself rather than seeing herself through other people.
And the challenge I think that Zora Neale Hurston puts forth in Their Eyes Were Watching God is this one: how do you find meaning in relationships with other people? And how do you in spite of class, in spite of cultural differences, in spite of race, in spite of how much money you have or don't have, where's the actual meaning in a life? Right? Where's the actual meaning in a life from, like, 16 to fourth or 16 to 50? And the only place I think where you find that meaning is
in marriage. And I think Zora Neale Hurston was a big fan of marriage. I think she thought that that was the social construct that was going to hold together not only African American culture, but all cultures in general. And we live in a weird spot where marriage and familial behaviors and behaviors that lead to marriage have been unraveling for about the last 100 years. And that
unraveling has created a sense of deep chaos between men and women. I mean, we're seeing it right now in in gen z, you know, the youngest generation that's in America right now. The rates of virginity are going up. Like, it's not just not dating, people not having sex. Now pornography use isn't going down. You know, that continues to trend up as a matter of fact. Studies show that in general this is why I banned
phones from my house. In general, a child, a young man, has his first touch with pornography these days at the age of 7, which is insane. And for young women, it's at the age of 10. There's something broken in that, and
I suspect what it is. Actually, I know what it is. I have a good or I have a good idea of what it is, but you can't in can't give that to a 7 year old or a 10 year old via the dopamine inducing machine known as social media, known as the cell phone, without creating downstream chaos in an institution that's designed to find meaning. And meaning is hard to come by a social and moral environment where we don't want to sacrifice ourselves in favor of
responsibilities to somebody else. And even childbearing itself is on the decline. I Jesan, the United States is now below replacement writers. And what's weird is, globally, most countries are below replacement rate. And this does not bode well. I mean, Elon Musk talks about how to save civilization, you have to have babies. Everybody laughs at him. He's right. He's exactly correct. Now I have 5 kids my I have 4 kids myself. Tom had 5. I think Tom's got had 2 marriages under
his belt. You know, I was a divorce and family mediator for many years. I saw people's marriages fall apart. And so by hook or by crook, I'm staying married to this woman even if I gotta move into another how part of the house. Like, it's gonna happen. But I also think that this is an individual thing. Right? So the meeting crisis is at the 50,000 foot level. Marriage and family is probably a little bit
above that, or or maybe it's right in there. But I think all these things linked together in Hurston with Janie Was trying to show I think that that marriage and family and and and even children, even though Janie didn't have any, can drive where you wanna go and can give you a solid life. I don't know that love solves everything. I don't necessarily believe that. I'm
too old for that. But I do believe that relationships can be the beginning of how you, well how you can have your eyes watching God just in real life. I think she makes that relatively evident by the fact that think of the timeframe that this book was writers. The idea of a woman being married three times was almost non existent, But she didn't she couldn't envision a, a world with with this strong of a woman not
being married. So I to your to I think to your point, and and the only relevance I'm making there is I think you're right that she valued the institution of married very highly marriage very highly. And I think she had I think she had, had tied that to not just her own moral compass, but what she felt should have been society's moral compass. Right? Like, she
felt Right. Because if not, then she wouldn't have written it in 3 times. Like, she there was plenty of opportunity, especially when the second husband dies and she's got that wealth status money. She's got all that stuff that she needs. She's got everything she needs to live the rest of her life in a in a positive fashion, but yet still finds a way to get married marries her off in the book to to another person. So I I do think
you're right. I think she does value that institute very highly. Well and there's something else, and I think it's a subtle point that most people miss in any kind of analysis of any form of entertainment, whether it's, literature or film or television. As forms of entertainment, creators put forth ideas into these vehicles that can move culture. We talked a
little bit about this with To Kill a Mockingbird. Right? Sometimes you're too early, sometimes you're too late, and sometimes you're right on time. And that individual creator imbues that product with their own moral view. Okay, cool. Atticus Finch. Right? Perfect example. Into Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch, you know, raising 2 kids with Calpurnia, who's the stand in for the mother because the mother died, and Atticus stands as that whether we like it or not, I mean, he's the the paternal
moral compass of that book. Right? Whereas in their eyes are watching God, Janie is the maternal moral compass in this book. And Hurston herself never had kids. And I believe, if I remember her biography correctly, she was no. I might be confusing her with Catherine and Porter. I have to go back and look at that. But I don't I don't think she was married fourth she was married. It was only once, and it didn't work out. But be that as it may, a good creator and this is a
subtle distinction in our culture, and I think we're missing it. A good creator or creative looks at the structures of culture and essays, even though those didn't work for me and my individualistic situation, They are still good for the vast majority of people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think as our culture has become more and more individualistic and by the way, individualistic, meaning because it's good for me, it must be good for society.
And so what's good for me has to scale up to society. But what's good for society doesn't have to scale down to me. Screw those guys. They don't know what they're thinking. It's it's the whole idea that the state is is messed up and I'm fine. And if the state would just change, then I'd be good. Except the problem is you're screwed up. Like like, we're all individual. I'm screwed up. Tom's screwed up. All of our listeners, we're all screwed up in our own individual ways as Charles
Dickens would would say fourth Neil Tolstoy, actually. You know, every family is, you know, uniquely dysfunctional in its own uniquely dysfunctional way. Right? Like, we're all we're all dysfunctional. We're all screwed up. But that doesn't mean that I can take my screwed up ness to society and be like, it's your fault. Fix it. Or the choices that I've made in my individual life it would be arrogant to the point of unbelievable to ask the laws to match my life.
And yet we do this all the time in our postmodern society, our postmodern culture. And I think Hurst didn't re re I think she saw that coming in the 19 thirties and the 19 forties, and I think she rejected all of that in a way that, like, a Richard Wright didn't, or the way that a Ralph Ellison didn't. And I think that fundamentally was the the the thing that caused Wright to have a problem with her and Ellison Tom, like, just totally, completely kind of kind of book her off, kinda be
like, oh, that's interesting, but I'm I'm going in a different different direction. Like her and particularly her and Richard Wright, they like they butted heads because they were like they they fundamental their fundamental world views were just different. How can leaders stay on the path with leadership lessons from their eyes watching God? What what should leaders take from this book, Tom? Well, I don't know. We've talked about an awful lot with this. We have talked a
lot a lot all the time. It's, it's taken up, you know, 2 episodes of
the podcast. So, I'm I'm hopefully you know, the the the problem for me is I I don't think I have, like, this this epiphany about about leaders with this book other than the fact that, like, some of the things that we've already talked about, like, being able to judge people based on their merits, being able to keep, you know, the keep the the the the the insanity at bay by kind of the the the whole, you know, lead by example situation where, you know,
she's writing this stuff because she feel we just talked just 2 seconds ago, She feels that the institution of marriage is important, so she writes about it. She leads by example there. Like, she's trying to give everybody some insights into her own, you know, her own, worldview. And I think that leaders can do the same thing by by being true to themselves and being able to I I think there's a I think there's a really hard thing to disassociate yourself from from the the chaos, but still
be a guiding light to get people through it. I I I think there's a very this very difficult version of people that they we're all capable of it, though. That's the thing I find the most interesting about us as, you know, as as a as a society in general. I think we're
all capable of it. It's just whether or not you choose to do it. And I think for leaders today, they have not they have to they have to be able to based and judge people on their merit and, again, to your point a few minute a little while ago, including things like their class, their social status, their their social media activity, their race, their color, the all of that. And and I we kinda poke fun a little bit at that founder of of of scales there.
But the reality of it is that should be the norm. Like, we should be able to do that. Like, why are we? Jesan. I I I tell I made a joke one day. It didn't go over too well. But, you know, one day I I said I said, I'm not racist. I'm an equal opportunity hater. Right. And people were like, wait. What? Like, I don't care if the person's black, white, red, brown, whatever. If I don't like them, I don't like them. I don't care what
color they are or what race they are or whatever. And it it struck them as because they were expecting me to say something different, like, that, you know, that I'm not racist because I love everybody and all that. None of that. I can I'm still allowed to not like people. I don't care that they're a different color than me or a different like, that doesn't matter. I still should I should be able to base that on your merits as a person, not may base it on your merits as whatever race, religion,
color, creed, sex, whatever. If I don't like you, I don't like you. And it the leadership should still look at that and and from both sides of that coin. You should like or dislike your employees based on their production, based on their importance to the company, their willingness to be a company person, drink the Kool Aid, whatever the however whatever phrase you wanna use. But most of those things should apply to and and and warrant
your thought process based on their merit, not anything else. I think I think Thurston as an author kinda got that. I think she understood that. And and we talked about her own quotes and her own life in the last section of the episode. And I think just from her own statements and her anthropological research and all this other stuff, she already had that
worldview in 1930. So, I mean, the the fact that we're still talking about it in fourth, to me, is completely and utterly asinine that we still have people deciding whether they like or dislike somebody based on the color of their skin fourth based on their their social scale or based on their economic fourth socio Sorrells socioeconomical situation, it blows my mind. It just blows my mind that somebody from 1930 can already have this thought and we haven't learned this lesson yet.
So I think I think we can learn something from her dramatically, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. And I think that I think that the only way we're going to get there is at a one to one level. Sure. You know, if you wanna sure. Books, movies, plays, operas, songs. These things have meaning, right? These, these things have weight. They influence and impact the culture. And And one of the things we've talked about this month is sort of where do, where does a leader find their moral compass from?
We talked about this with to kill a mockingbird. You know, we just, we just, came off of, D day, the 80th anniversary of D day, a truly amazing act of military prowess, and just national will, that we kind of don't understand, fully. We are in June, so, of course, Father's Day is coming up. You'll probably hear this podcast episode after Father's Day. So for all of you out there who are fathers, including Tom, happy Father's Day.
I know. Worst there's a comedian, and I think I've mentioned this to you fourth. Worst holiday ever. Like, worst holiday ever. And you can go find that joke somewhere. It's floating around TikTok somewhere. Or Instagram reels. I don't know. That might have been where I saw it. But my point is, when we talk about where a moral compass comes from and when we talk about, how do leaders get something and stay on the leadership path while also treating everybody
equally, right? We have to acknowledge that people have biases, and that's okay, by the way. And our biases, I think, are strongest Tom your point when they are against people who are just not behaving well. And I don't think it's hard for us to determine what bad behavior is, but it's become harder over time because we've allowed I think, we've allowed the removal of not just books but also ideas from our culture. We just talked about
the 7 deadly sins, you know, in this episode. Right? We've we've removed that language, and so we struggle to put words next to these things that we see. Or even more weirdly enough, like vanity, we don't talk about vanity. Like I, I, like I just mentioned, Ozempic should be like a gluttony reducing, reducing disease. Well, you know, Botox should be a vanity
helping dizzy helping tool. It's a vanity helping tool. You wanna have thick lips and you don't wanna, like, go have a baby with somebody else who has thick lips genetically? Well, guess what? We're gonna help you out because you're so vain to paraphrase from Carly's side. Or or Kate Hudson from Or Kate Hudson. Sorry. Donathan's got 10 days. Bro, that's right. Like, we're not marketing it that boldly, but it is a vanity cure fourth or or a, a comb over or a, or a bald baldness treatment.
Right? These are all solutions to the problem of vanity. I wanna look good to other people, but I also wanna look good to myself. Right? And we wonder why there's a rise in narcissism in our culture. Well, it's it's not really an accident. So I think leaders have to pay attention to these kinds of things. I think Hurston gives us
the way Tom your point about her her anthropological research. I think that that that as I said all the way at the beginning of our last episode I think that that undergirds everything that she did. She she knew something deep about the human condition. Yeah. And she tried to put that in her books and in her writers. So hats off to her, and, read the read the rest of her of her, resume. You know?
Get all of it underneath you. The more I the more I read about her, I gotta be honest with you, the more she crept up my list of people in history that I would like to have lunch with. You know, like, you always ask that question. If you could pick one person from history, who who would it be? And and my list is relatively long, by the way, but she was not even on it. And now, like, I think she's crept up quite a bit. I think Yeah. I think if I let let me rephrase it
this way. I would definitely not say no to it if if somebody said to me, she's the only person you go back in history and have lunch with. Would you be willing to do it? I would do it in a second without even thinking about it. Yeah. Like so She was great. She was great. Well, with that, I'd like to thank Tom for coming on for part 2. Oh, the leadership lessons from the great books, Their Eyes Were Watching God. And, with that, well, we're out.