Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford w/Libby Unger

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number one forty-five. In this episode today, we will talk about a book that is part and parcel of a larger tetralogy. I love that word. That means four books. Right? Not

just not just a trilogy, a tetralogy. This book, stands as a cultural, political, and moral commentary on a world that was in the progress of passing away, but had not yet been completely swept away by war, economic strife, and as we were talking about just before, we press the record button today, social incoherence. This tetralogy this tetralogy is part of a larger narrative describing British and Western transitions during a typically unpredictable

third turning period. And in case you've forgotten what a third turning is, I'm going to go ahead and pull the definition from William Strauss in your Neil Howe's book, from the nineteen nineties, The Fourth Turning, where they describe what a third turning is, and I quote, the mood of this era, they say, is in many ways the opposite of a high. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while

individualism is strong and flourishing. The authors say highs come after crises when society wants to coalesce and build and avoid the death and destruction of the previous crisis. Unravelings come after awakenings when society wants to atomize and enjoy itself. And the period that is described in this book today, in Parade's End, in this novel, is a period of unraveling.

This is a eighty year cycle. Right? The eighty year seculum cycle that dominated the West that began at the end of the American Civil War and ran all the way to the end of World War two. And this book tracks the travails and relationships of men and women in a world where colonial assumptions were strong, but were beginning to unravel. They were beginning to be

questioned. By the way, this book, this tetralogy, was translated into a five episode show on HBO, that showed up about twelve years ago. And it features a love triangle, and repressed Victorian, Edwardian elements. While reading this book, I was reminded of yet another very British show that was popular back in the day, that I didn't watch. It was yet another cultural touchstone shared by many that sailed on by me, like a cruise ship moving through the North Atlantic.

Today, we will be summarizing and analyzing the themes and larger lessons for leaders from what is probably the consummate narrative of the pre World War one world. Harades End by Ford, Maddox Ford. Leaders, how does one lead in a world that is unraveling underfoot faster than you can make decisions about what directions or even what answers or what actions to take.

And today, we will be joined, by our guest cohost yet again in our now fourth season of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, regular guest cohost Libby Unger. Hello, Libby. How are you doing today? Hello, Jesan. I am spectacular. So last time we talked, it was last year, before the, the presidential election in The United States. Now we are in 2025. The world has not ended, dare I say, although some people would claim that it has. And,

yeah. I don't know. We're reading, we're we're gonna read, we're gonna read and look at Parade's End. Even before I jump into the book, I know normally we jump into the book, but I'm gonna break it up a little bit differently, this time. The the copy that I have has a great, Pre Raphaelite, you know, cover. It's an open source copy. You can get, copies of Parades

Inn floating around everywhere. It's an open source book, because it's been in, been in the public, public domain for, now a hundred years. And this book is dense. Right? And it's a tetralogy. Right? So it's four books in one. I will be honest. I did not read all four books. I read the first one and a little bit of the second one, and then I I called it good, primarily because the type was so tiny in the copy that I've got, because they tried to

cram all four books together. And so they made it, like, eight point type, and I have elderly eyes. I finally reached the point where my eyes are elderly. Finally reached Switch to the the Kindle. Well, this is what this is what all my friends say, but I'm I'm a sucker for the physical book. I am I'm a sucker for the physical book still. What did you think about this book? I just wanna get that off the table

right off the bat. If you're gonna read any excerpts, if you're gonna read anything, what did you think about this book? I actually really enjoyed it. But Okay. I think I just love being pulled in to hearing about the history of the time. And, World War one, I had a great grandfather who was at yeah. Did the trench warfare and came back. And the visualization and the feel that you get from the book just makes it very

real. And, I think I just am yearning for that feeling of tangible life that, you know, we're really devoid of unless you really go go searching for it now. Like, living life in a digital age, we were talking about, you know, the current is it fifth gen warfare that we're experiencing? And then thinking just as recently as, you know, a hundred and ten years ago, you know, our grandfathers were fighting in the trenches. You know,

but a hand to hand, you know, warfare. And that's, it's hard to fathom and imagine, but I enjoyed it. I also enjoy seeing and reading about how little human nature really changes. Our clothes, they change, and the way we speak and what we, you know, and how we express ourselves may be different, but, fundamentally, you know, we still at our essence are the same. And so the women coming through like, if I didn't know this book was written in 1919 or 1920, I would thought that this was a nine

2020 version Mhmm. Or depiction of 1919. Yeah. It's so there are some authors, and I I was reminded of this when, when I read this book of some of the books that I read in my English literature class in college. Right? The one English literature class that I took. And, and, yes, indeed, I yes. For folks who are wondering, yes, I did get an a in that class.

But, when we would read Victorian literature, particularly victor post World War two Victorian literature, it was written from a perspective that was very, Not triumphant. That's not the term. Mhmm. The it it was very it was written from a perspective that was very that was still creating or still insisting that the pre World War one world was was a paradise. Right? And that the post World War one world was where was what you get on

the other side of losing paradise. Right? There were and there were and I was also reminded the second thing that I was reminded of when I read this book was of how many authors and poets and artists just ground out, just died in the song and died in the Western Front. You know, how many voices just were clipped like roses on a spring day, right, in an attempt to get, you know, four yards

of four yards of dirt. Right? And I read a I read a an article or a blog post, about the anniversary of World War one, sort of as a connect as an anecdotal well, not anecdotal, but as an extra add on to this book because, normally, I'll read, like, research around the book, and I'll try to find out a little bit about the author. We'll talk about Ford Maddox Ford today and his his life.

But, one of the points that was made in the article that I was reading was that World War one is still a war that is not yet fully comprehended by Americans, because it was probably the last European war, genuinely Europeanly European led World War. Right? Mhmm. The others argue it's made that World War two was a European led war, but that was much more global in its scope.

Right? Because all everybody sort of jumped in the pool on that. But for World War one, the British, the French, and the Germans really did, and the Russians, really did bang it out, right, on the Western front. And, yes, there were other there were other, fronts that were opened. Like, we've read DH Lawrence. We've read Seven Pillars of Wisdom on this podcast. I'm a huge fan of DH Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. So we read about Lawrence of Arabia. We read about his adventures in in in Arabia.

We I'm aware of Churchill, and his his challenges in serving in the British military in, in, Greece. Right? And in that area of Southern Europe during World War during World War one. And then, of course, the Americans came over, you know, you know, sort of at the end, and were sort of a fresh injection of blood and of bodies into something that let's say what you want about pre World War two Germany. They did have a point that they were never fully defeated on the battlefield.

They were correct. They weren't fully defeated on the battlefield until the Americans came along and gave the British and French a shot of bodies that they needed. And so you can see where I can see where German resentment around that and the romanticization of the period going into World War two from coming out of World War one allowed someone like the Weimar or allowed the Weimar Republic that allowed Hitler to sort of come along and do this thing. Right? And so I tell I say

all that to say this. This book is about the British experience with World War one, both in a pre World War one world and then a post World War one world. It had it has that sense of Victorian romanticism. But for all of the problems that Britain had in World War one in the trenches of Western Europe, they didn't lose one colony. And no one ever comments on the irony of that. Like, they didn't stop being colonial colonialists. They

didn't they didn't they didn't lose one colony. They didn't surrender one colony. They saw no need to. They still had the Rudyard Kipling white man's burden attitude. Like, that that didn't fully get beaten out of them until World War two. And then even why did it get beaten out of them in World War two? Well, it got beaten out of them because they couldn't Churchill couldn't figure out a way to beat the Germans without the Americans.

He couldn't figure out a way to pull it off. And if they could have pulled it off, if they had had enough men immaterial to beat the Germans, not just to take a pounding in London with the blitz, but if during World War two, they had had the men immaterial to push the German machine back to Berlin, the British would have marched through Northern France all the way to Berlin, and they would have wrapped up that war in a heartbeat. And the French would have come along, you know, as an

after thought, that would have made de Gaulle very unhappy. But he was in he was unpleasant just in general. So nothing was gonna make him happy. But, he was incapable of being happy. But, but but I think that's why. I think that's that was the that was why it got beaten out of them because they were so demoralized that they couldn't they couldn't do the thing that they would have done or would have tried to do historically. This is where my, my knowledge of history is

perhaps a little limited. But so, it sounds like because all of the men and materials were focused on Europe that weekend, both the French and the British, presence in their colonies, like in India, for example, or in. Right? And so that was the opportunity that, like, India

took to push the French out. Yep. Yeah. And French to or in the French colonies took to push the French out as they were in a weakened state, men, materials, money, forced by World War two, and that's what's forced the decolonization. Yeah. I mean, the Gandhi so Gandhi really didn't and and my timeline's maybe screwed up, so people can correct me on this. But Gandhi really didn't get on his anti British kick until, after World War

two. Right? And you're right. Like, the British had no and it had no they had nothing for that. Right? The French I was explaining this to my wife the other day, because she was like, how did Pol Pot happen? Because she didn't understand how Pol Pot happened. And I said Pol Pot happened because of the Khmer Rouge

and because of the Vietnam War. And the reason the Vietnam War happened was because Ho Chi Minh, who was educated, if I remember correctly, in France in Marxism, saw an opportunity post World War two to drive the French out of what was formerly known as Indochina, and the Americans underneath Eisenhower, after the whole Suez Canal disaster, decided, you know what? We're not gonna help the French out. We're just gonna sort of let them flop around there in Southeast Asia. We'll send

some advisers, but we're not sending troops. And the French desperately wanted us to send troops in '57 to Vietnam. Well, what would later become Vietnam, which was known as French Indochina at that point to protect French colonial interests there. Because the French were like, we can't we can't lose this colony. But by that point, it was starting to unravel I think it was starting to unravel anyway. And they were about to have a bad problem in Algeria, which they couldn't get around,

and that's it. Like, that began they've that began their their their beating of their retreat out of Asia and Africa. You know, the long sunset of the French empire. Which, by the way, interestingly enough, we were talking about geopolitics before we got on this. I suspect in the next twenty five years, the French will be running the European Union, and they will be just as shady gangsters as they are twenty years from now as they are right now. And they'll be running it

for their own interests. Because I don't see any but I don't see any I don't see any other in the current geopolitical climate, I don't see any other power on the continent that will be able to to push the EU in a particular direction. The germ the Germans can't do it. Why not Germany? Mhmm. Why not Germany? Because the Germans are fractured. They're fractured internally. Their party politics are fractured internally. They can't even agree on whether or not to build a coal fire plant.

Yeah. I mean, they, that is true. Over the last ten to fifteen years, France has done a pretty good job at building its business base. They've also using nuclear. You know, you're wondering if they did play five-d chess with Germany because Germany fully the, got out of manufacturing. They ruined themselves with the climate crisis. Yeah. Mhmm. Climate change by, you know, through deindustrialization, through getting rid of

all not allowing nuclear, not allowing their coal plants. I mean, it it's it does feel like self sabotage. And, you know, and someone's benefiting from it. It's not the Germans. And you never you never hear, with the exception of a few challenges that the French had in the mid early two thousands with their ghettos, where the Muslim immigrants are all pushed unceremoniously. They got a real ghetto problem, like a Cabrini Green level ghetto problem.

But they don't ever talk about that, and they don't ever talk about it. They don't ever talk about dealing with it. They don't ever talk about fixing it. And partially, this is because of the French character, I think, where if you don't speak the language, you're not French. And even if you do speak the language, it doesn't matter, you're still not French. Like, they have a real clear idea of what's French and what's not. What's French is anybody who was

in France. What's not is everybody else, period. Doesn't share if we doesn't matter if we share the same skin color, doesn't even matter if we speak the same language. And and, I could speak with a little bit of authority on this. I had friends who were from Liberia who spoke sub Saharan French. Yeah. And then when they would go to France, the French people in France would say they weren't speaking French correctly. And it would drive my Liberian

friends crazy. You see the same dynamic with people from Quebec. Right? Like, the Quebecois, when they go to France, when they go to Paris, the the Parisians have nothing for them. They think they're degenerate, you know, savages because of the language. And so France, even though no one speaks French globally, it's not it's not a global language anymore. They have a very strong and definitive idea around their language of who's in and who's out,

and they have no problem telling you either. I gotta pull a Murray on you. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Pull a Doug Murray on me. Go right ahead. Go right ahead. I'll be whatever that libertarian guy's name is. Just from your reading and your conversation. I'm sorry. I couldn't help but bring in Charles Murray. Sure. That being said, there is something to be said about how the French play politically, and they always seem their elite,

anyway, always seem to come out unscathed. Like, the way that they played World War two when they house Mhmm. And they house the, they supported the Nazis. Mhmm. The way you know, they there has always been a, a north an African issue. At least, I remember my friend, yeah, French literature class when I was actually reading French literature and French Mhmm. In high school, and we would talk about they would talk

about the. Mhmm. Yeah. And that was, you know, how they spoke about the Africans who were in the country, and there was always, tensions. Mhmm. But they do have a very powerful narrative that keeps the attention off of them Mhmm. And on, you know, and on, you know, UK and German and US. I don't know if you're follow with Kansas. I went to Macron at all. But she's being sued only like, they can't find any lack of facts in what she's saying. They're just doing their on

it being inconvenient. And so it is whether what she's saying is true or not, I don't really care. It's the drama, and it's the legal it's the when you watch how laws are used and applied Mhmm. Like, is it on the facts or is it on the inconvenience? The inconvenience. Yeah. Right? Right. So the French do have an interesting way of always coming out with their institutions intact, at least in the last hundred and fifty years in Europe, not Mhmm. Not not with the

colonization. Yeah. No. They they but they traditionally seem to have struggled with not seem to have. Traditionally, the French struggled with their colonies. You can see that in how they engaged around Haiti, and also, how they engaged or disengaged with the Louisiana Purchase, you know, which Napoleon the only reason Napoleon sold all of that was because he needed money That was great. To go gallivanting around Europe, and,

you know, drive the, drive the British crazy. And, you know, the old joke about the European Union is, and I I always remember this, the French in, the Germans down or no. The the French up, the Germans down, and the British out or something like that. Like, that was the old joke about the about the European Union. And, it's true. You know, the French wanna the French wanna run things. So They they're the I mean, they really are. The joke from World War two is the ad for the

French army gun. Dropped once, never used. I should I should laugh. I should laugh. Anyway okay. That's terrible. I should laugh. But it's true. I know, but they do. And so I'm thinking about how many like, they were it used to be the language of diplomacy. Right. How embedded are they still in UN and, you know, in a lot of these, international, you know, organizations. Yeah. The Germans, you don't have as much of the diplomacy factor. Right? They just like the brute

brute force. But you gotta wonder. You gotta you gotta wonder. Well and well, and the British seem to be uninterested currently, in asserting asserting themselves in any well, to go back to the book for just a minute, because we will get back to the we will get to the book, folks. We will get out of geopolitics. We'll get to the book here in a minute. But, the British seem to have abandoned whatever.

No. Not even abandoned. The British are going through a process of having to rediscover what it means to be British. I agree. I don't know what's gonna come out of the other side of that, when I look at the problems that Kiersten Mar is having given just talking about. And I'm gonna say it out loud. You know, gangs of Muslim men raping women and other pathologies, and he can't talk about them as the prime minister

of Britain. And then you have a conservative party that split, with Nigel Farage doing the best he doing his best Donald Trump impression, which doesn't really work there, because now is probably not the moment for it. But doing his best Donald Trump impression, And it's parliamentary politics, which is also a big mess. I I don't like parliaments. I don't like I don't want I don't like countries. I don't like the parliamentary system of government for

a whole variety of reasons, and this is the big one. You have no cohesive understanding. At least in United States, you have polarization. You have a co cohesive understand people people on one side or another have a cohesive, and they may be maybe ideologically, what do you call it, floating out to sea, pulling out into the well, yeah, under the Pacific, the Atlantic, or the Gulf Of America. That's a little tweak there, folks. They may be that in America, but at least

you've got two poles. In a parliamentary system, everybody's out to sea, and you're trying to make, what do you call it? You're trying to make allies and alliances, and it and it ended it falls apart ten seconds from now. And so Starmer won because the conservatives couldn't get their crap together. And also, let's be clear. Boris Johnson wrecked the party like he did. His behavior wrecked the party. And so what are you gonna do?

But but the British have to discover what it means to be British if they are going to mount any sort of resistance to a French led European Union, and I don't know that they're gonna be able to do that in the next twenty years. Yeah. I think the I think the takeover by Europe is well, you know, is well underway, and I know we've done that before we started this podcast today. I do think once Britain, did Brexit, you know, the attack

Mhmm. Became exponential, and that's where you're seeing all the immigration issues. All their institutions are cracking down on free speech. You know, the fact that you couldn't speak about these rapes, is just, you know, kind of heartbreaking that the government was, you know, facilitating it or supporting it by virtue of keeping it, you know, quiet. Right. Yeah. With The U US is the last standing vestige of any sort of,

freedom for the world. And thank god we have the ocean between us, but I don't I don't think there is coming back for UK anytime soon. Mhmm. Yeah. I think it's gonna be really hard. And, I mean, best case scenario, you wind up as Canada. And that's your best case scenario, Canada and Europe. Or worst case scenario, this is the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, you wind up as a vassal state of of of

France. Normally, I would say Spain, but they haven't been relevant in a hundred and thirty years, so forget them. But, yeah, you wind up as a vassal state. And, you know, Europe needs a, Europe needs a fortress and a port. And so, you know, England's good for something as an island. Yeah. And it it always was. The only thing that could help them maybe is William, ascending. Yeah. You know, and bringing back, you know, some young blood

and some royal legitimacy. I think with the queen dying, that was the end of that reign and the traditions, and no one takes trial seriously. You know? Well, William does have he does have the William does have the correct looking wife. I will grant him that. For a man with no hair who should just go bald, just shave it off, dude. Stop holding on. You will get so much more respect. Look at you American. I am an American. You dad gum right. Like an American and not even Korean.

You're dad gum right. Look. Look. Look. Alright. Is that any segue? All I know is you put all you you all y'all put your old man on the money. That's all I know. You got an old man on the money staring at me now. Every time I go to Canada. And before, it was an old lady staring at me. Come on now. What are we doing? All I think of, Charles, is his big stubby, like, bloated sausage fingers. Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's the segue. Now we're gonna go to the book. Thank you. Let's

go. The book. Let's go to the book. Go to the book. Let's start with the book. Oh, so we're gonna pick up with, we're gonna pick up with, what I'm picking up with? Look at my script here. Here we go. Okay. So we're going to pick up with the first book, some do not from Parade's End. We're gonna start with our first section here. We're gonna be introduced to a fellow

named Macmaster. Okay? It's gonna get you a little bit of, understanding of what we're doing here and a little bit of understanding of the voice, the drive, the, the the tone of Ford Maddux Ford. In the train from beneath his pile of polish dressing and dispatch cases, Tiejens had thrown his immense kit bag with his own hands onto the guard's van. McMaster's McMaster looked across at his friend. It was for him a great day. Across his face were the proof sheets of his first small delicate looking

volume, a small page, the tight black, and still odorous. He had the agreeable smell of the printer's ink in his nostrils. The fresh paper was still a little damp, and his white rather spatula had always slightly cold fingers was the pressure of the small flat gold pencil he had purchased especially for these corrections. He had found none to make. He had expected a wallowing of pleasure, almost the only sensuous pleasure he had

allowed himself for many months. Keeping up the appearances of an English gentleman in an exiguous income was no mean task. But to wallow in your own phrases, to be rejoiced by the savor of your own shrewd aukeness, to feel your rhythm balanced and get sober, That is a pleasure beyond most and an inexpensive one at that. He had had it from mere articles on the philosophies and domestic lives of such great figures as Carlyle and Mill or on the expansion of intercolonial trade. This was a book.

He relied upon it to consolidate his position. In the office, they were mostly they were mostly born and not vastly sympathetic. There was a sprinkling too. It was beginning to be a large one of young men who had obtained their entry by merit or by sheer industry. These watched promotions jealously, discerning nepot nepot increases of increment and clamoring amongst themselves at favoritisms. To these, he had been able to turn a cold shoulder.

His intimacy with Tianjin's permitted him to be rather on the born side of the institution. His agreeableness, he knew he was agreeable and useful to sir Reginald Ingleby protecting him from in the main from unpleasantness. His articles had given him a certain right to an austerity of demeanor. His book, he trusted to let him adopt an almost judicial attitude. He would then be the mister McMaster, the critic, the authority. And the first class departments

are not averse to having distinguished men as ornaments to their company. At any rate, the promotions of the distinguished are not objected to. So McMaster saw almost physically, sir Reginald Ingleby perceiving the with which his valued subordinate was treated in the drawing rooms of missus

Lemington, missus Creasy, the honorable missus Lemus. Sir Reginald would perceive that for he was not a reader himself of much else other than government publications, and he would feel fairly safe in making the easy path of his critically gifted and austere young helper. The son of a very poor shipping clerk in an obscure Scotch harbor town, McMaster had very

early on decided the career he would make. As between as between the heroes of mister Smiles, an author enormously popular in McMaster's boyhood, and the more distinctly intellectual achievements open to the very poor Scott, McMaster had had no difficulty in choosing. A pit lad may rise to be a mine owner. A hard gifted unsleeping Scott's youth pursuing unobtrusively and objectively objectionably a course of study and of public usefulness will certainly achieve distinction,

security, and the quiet admiration of those around him. It was the difference between the may and the will, and McMaster had no difficulty in making this choice. He saw himself by now almost certain of a career that should give him at 50 a knighthood, and long before that, a competence, a drawing room of his own, and a lady who should contribute to his unobtrusive fame. She moving about in that room amongst the best of the intellects of the day, gracious,

devoted, attributed once to his discernment and his achievements. Without some disaster, he was sure of himself. Disasters come to men through drink, bankruptcy, and women. Against the first two, he knew himself immune, though his expressed expenses had a tendency to outrun his income, and he was always a little in debt to Tianjin's. Tianjin's fortunately had means. As to the third, he was not so

certain. His life had necessarily been starved of women and arriving at a stage when the female element might, even with due respect to caution, be considered as a legitimate feature of his life. He had to fear a rashes of choice due to that very starvation. The type of woman he needed, he knew to exactitude. Tall, graceful, dark, loose gowned, passionate yet circumspect, oval featured, deliberate, gracious to everyone around her. He could almost hear the very rustle of her garments.

Ford Madox Ford, the son of Joseph Leopold Ford Herman Maddox Hilfer, was actually, no. I'm sorry. Not the son. Full name, Joseph Leopold Ford Herman Maddox Hilfer, was born 12/17/1873 and died 06/26/1939. He was an English

novelist, poet, critic, and editor. Ford is now remembered primarily for his novels, The Good Soldier, published in 1915 as we were talking about World War one, The Parade's End Tetralogy, which we're reading today, published between 1924 and 1928, and The Fifth Queen trilogy, published between nineteen o six and nineteen o eight. Ford was born in Merton in Surrey to Catherine Maddox Brown and Frances

Hoefer or Hoefer, the eldest of three. His brother was Oliver Maddox Hoefer, and his sister was Juliette Hoefer, the wife of David Soskis and mother of Frank Soskis. Soskis. Soskis. British names. In November of eighteen ninety two, at age 18, he became a Catholic, quote, very much at the encouragement of some Hoffer relatives, but partly, he confessed galled by the quote, unquote, militant atheism and anarchism of his English cousins.

Ford was involved in the British war propaganda at the after the beginning of World War one and at the beginning of World War one. He worked for the War Propaganda Bureau managed by CFG Masterman along with Arnold Bennett, GK Chesterton, who we've read on this podcast, John Galsworthy, Hilaire Belock, who we'll be reading next year on the podcast, and Gilbert Murray. Ford, Maddox Ford, was a very British writer who,

led a very interesting life. So he got married early at 19 and then proceeded to basically have mistresses and lovers the entire course of his marriage. His wife refused to divorce him, which was interesting even though he petitioned her for divorce several times. She refused to grant his petition and just stuck around. Primarily, it is believed because as a writer herself, she did not want to lose the cache of being associated with Ford, Maddox Ford.

The other thing about him, which is interesting, which you can find in his Wikipedia write up, is that he was a mentor and an advocate for younger writers who came out of World War one. Hemingway, what's his name? Scott Fitzgerald. So where I'm reading Tinder is the Night right now. We'll cover that on the podcast here in a little bit. That's coming up. Again, Libby will come

back to to talk with us about that. But he he helped those those young, writers who were a generation or generation and a half younger than him and who had been through the the terrible exigencies of World War one. He helped many of them become

famous writers. As a matter of fact, he did so much for these young writers that he has quoted in his Wikipedia article as complaining one time, that he was not gonna ever get the kind of credit that he deserved, for the other writers having the kinds of careers that they wound up having as a result of his advocacy for them.

Warren Maddox Ford died on the cusp or died at the cusp of the beginning of World War two and probably saw it coming, and probably stared in slack jawed horror at Europe going down, the road of war again. But he also was a writer like Hermann Hesse and and others who tried to make sense of what happened, in the collapse of the Victorian and Edwardian world from his perspective in the trenches of World War one.

We already talked a little bit about sort of what we could get from the book, but what lessons maybe, Libby, let's talk specifically a little bit about this. What are some lessons we can glean from parades and overall, and maybe even also from the literary life of Ford Maddux Ford? I like I liked it a lot again because it revealed a lot about, like, the human condition that is

timeless. One of the themes that I've had with you in the, you know, in our past podcast is that you have to stick with your values, and what's important to you regardless of what everyone else is doing. And, you know, and teachings is human and did have, you know, did have out of marital, like, sex. Right? But he ended up, quote, unquote, doing the right thing.

And throughout the story, he's or throughout the story, he instead of sticking with the commanders back in London and, putting forth war plans that he believed to be wrong and, you know, and to purse and, mediocre, he was he would go to the front lines and fight there because he did want to be able to influence them in a direction that he believed to be the right the right way, and he was willing

to put his life on the line. Yeah. So what I really you know, and he the the challenge I had with him was he wouldn't when people would try to shame him or lie about him, He didn't stand up for himself. And that to me, I, you know, I had a bit of a challenge with because, you know, if you're gonna stand up for what you believe in, don't do it just silently and let others abuse you through the lies. Like, you do need to stand up for yourself.

Mhmm. But, as someone who has worked with the c suite my, yeah, my entire career, one of the and actually less so over the last five years because it's just you know, I don't really think you drive much significant change at that level, and I think it's become harder and harder as people are more focused on saying the right things versus doing

the right things. And it's really just about posturing and positioning regardless of the outcomes to others and more just for financial reward to myself and my peers. Yeah. And so as I watch someone who he could have stayed, back and dictated, you know, to the troops, you know, where what they should do or not, he didn't believe, you know, in in endorsing the mediocrity Mhmm. And ultimately, causing

the death of others unnecessarily. You know, in modern day, I look at big businesses and their, mediocrity and, push for status quo as actually killing the soul of of workers. Now I can make the case for many workers that they don't have to accept that, that they can

go out and start their own businesses or find other companies. But when work is a means to make it living versus, like, some of us who's lived for work, you know, that is a risk that many are don't feel they can take when, you know, they have to when when they're taking care of their family and being a part of a community or pursuing other interests. So there is a parallel between the modern big business, and the pursuit of mediocrity while espousing, you

know, self importance. Mhmm. And, you know, and how was you know, chose to fight in the trench war Mhmm. Upfront versus, you know, accepting mediocrity so that he would be accepted in society. There's a great line in a Pink Floyd song, and I can't remember the name of the song right now. I should. But it's on Dark Side of the Moon, where, they, the band sings forward they cried from the rear, and the front rank died. And I always think of

World War one when I hear that line. Right? Because all the generals well, the second line of the song. The generals sat, and the lines on the map move from side to side. Right? Now Pink Floyd, of course, was writing this song about, you know, we're in the twilight of Vietnam. And so I'm sure they were thinking about that, but it applied way the heck more to World War one and to our conversation, a little bit ago. The the the the ways in which and Ford Maddox Ford saw

this in the war propaganda department. So he wrote about this from experience. Right? The ways in which the way in which the war was fought, and I've often said this about World War one, it was the first modern war fought with modern equipment and modern techniques, but the people fighting the war had a and the people prosecuting the war. And you see this in John Keegan's book,

about the history of World War one. The people fighting the war and the people prosecuting the war had a pre World War one mindset. Mhmm. They still had a mindset that was focused on and you could just sort of sense it. It was an eighteenth century epaulettes and swords and horses kind of mentality, but you have tanks and propaganda and gas and, you know, machine guns and trenches and barbed wire and bombs and you you know, like, you've got all the modern

things. Right? But you insist that to your point about Tingyens, you insist that your mindset still be stiff upper lip Victorian. Mhmm. And you don't seem to understand that the machine gun and the gas and the biplanes have all sort of pushed that to a different spot. And the only way you're really gonna understand that is if you get out of the back of the you get out of the rear with the gear and you

get to the front. And too many generals, heck, too much of the command structure in World War one just wasn't about that. It it took me to about 02/2021 to 02/2022 to just realize that this separation of the top from the front Mhmm. The bottom is, like, so great and, you know, a tail, you know, as long as the test of time, right, that we have elites making decisions that are,

well, I don't know. Maybe in, you know, in the wars, you know, in the middle ages and such, you know, you did have kings out there fighting with the troops, and it was much more barbaric. And so they understood the reality of it a bit more. But now you you just have the elite who don't feel the consequences of any of their decisions, and the bodies are just are just, you know, names in a book and not real lives.

They have no idea what's going on out here. Yeah. And they couldn't, especially, yeah, even now technologically, you know, how even though we know what's going on, we're still divorced from the humanity of it. Right. Right. Well, and that's and that gets you. But war is but war is not an easy thing. Yeah. Right? No. There's got we can't, I I don't wanna get into moral justification of any war, because it all depends on the side that you're sitting on. Right.

You know, but what does matter is, that you're dictating how others should fight a war and you're too divorced from the reality of it. And I personally admire folks who could Mhmm. Sit in the halls of, you know, Winnetka or Princeton, New Jersey or, you know, Manhattan and say how we should, you know, fight, you know, fight wars, and they're completely devoid from the reality on, you know, in the war zone. Or it's not again,

it's not much different than corporations either. Right. You know, where executives are real like, they used to care. Mhmm. If you're climbing the ladder, how people were trained, you know, were treated. And then once they're at the top, you know, they no longer care, and they just want people to work harder and longer for lower wages. Well, in well, in there's a certain sense as well, and you see it in and we're gonna talk about it in this

next section. You see it in the interpersonal relationships between which is one of the things that struck me about this novel, the interpersonal relationships between men and women before the war pieces began. Like, that to me is the one of the three pillars that Arades End is is set up around. Right? And you talked you've talked about Tijen's marriage to, to Sylvia, then, you know, the one up miss one up, and we're gonna talk about all of that and how that sort of began to begin to unwind.

Tigen's never had an idea. I won't say never. So what is interesting to me about the book is that Ford, Maddox Ford, wrote Teejens as a Teejens as a real human being with an internal struggle about whether or not to stay married to a woman who, quite frankly, was not the best human specimen. Let's just let's just be let's just be clear about that. But but also, he's he's trapped or maybe not trapped. I shouldn't use that term. That's a very

postmodern idea. He is bound well, well, the postmodern man doesn't want to be bound by tradition. I was listening to a preacher talk about this on Sunday. The postmodern man doesn't wanna be bound by tradition. The postmodern man believes that he is individual, and that he is this individual consumer and that he can make individual choices. The problem is every single individual choice that you make is the same as every

other individual choice that everybody other individual is making. So you're actually not an individual. You're actually not a free thinker. Like, if I see somebody with, like, a free thinking bumper sticker, I know exactly what kind of things those that person thinks. Exactly. Yeah. It's just like the just like when I see somebody with a coexist bumper sticker on the back of their car. Like, come on. I I know what you believe. I don't even need to I don't need to ask you.

So for a postmodern person, a postmodern reader, they will read Parade's End, and they will not understand why Tijens just didn't get divorced from his wife and just go do what he wanted to do. But he was bound by traditional Victorian morality. He was bound by being a man inside of traditional Victorian morality where the rules for men and women were fundamentally different. And this is where you get into miss Wannop. I love how how Maddox Ford introduces her as a

feminist, what we would call progressive. But a feminist progressive, you know, I just wanna get the vote, and if I just get the vote, everything will be fine kind of kind of person. And sitting on the back end of a hundred and twenty years of that, I just started laughing. I did. I literally started laughing at the way that that that she was introduced. Because if you could've gone back and told her what would happen from her just getting the the vote in Britain, she would have, like,

quit the whole thing right off the bat. Well, that that was the others there's two other storylines in there, two other takeaways that also to me say, hey. Fundamentally, human the human condition or human nature hasn't changed a whole lot. And the one is with, Sylvia. Mhmm. You know, she has everything handed to her. And when life is too easy and you don't have something a purpose, Mhmm. You know, far too many people just like to create chaos and noise and stories.

Mhmm. And so, you know, she she actually if you think about it, it's this 7¢ that I, you know, that we've seen, over the last ten years also play out on the left. Like, I never followed the seven deadly sins. Like, you know, it was a movie seven was about as close as I understood it, and then I watched what's happened over the last, like, you know, five to ten years, on yeah. In the American progressive, and it's about, you know, gluttony and, you know, jealousy and, you know, all of vanity.

Vanity. You know, you've got pride and gluttony and gel all of that. Right? And, you know, when you when things are easy and you don't have a way to direct yourself from a purpose perspective either, like, you have to work to put food literally put food on the plate, you know, where people go. And she she wanted attention. She, you know, and she did have you know, negative attention is

better than none at all. Right, and so the way that she acted out is how you see many people when it's too easy and they're bored without purpose, act out. And then Valentin is yeah. Again, I think this book was written in 2020, and it was 1919. Yeah. She's all about you know, men don't you know, you know, men don't respect women and think we're so smart, and we just you know, and we need to get the vote. And once we get the vote, I'm gonna be happy, and then she gets the vote.

And it's the classic thing that we all learn is that it's not the milestone, it's the journey. Because that the joy you have when reaching a milestone is fleeting and ephemeral, And she realizes it's actually the quality of relationships that would bring her enduring, you know, happiness. And that's also what teaching like, institutions are important, but not blind obedience to institutions. You need to use the institution that's right for you and go into it with the right

intention, and that's marriage. Right? Like, he ultimately goes into you know, he, you know, takes an l, divorces, and then goes into it for love. But blind obedience to institutions is the lesson, and that's what the fourth the fourth four turnings to me are all about. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Good intention, then someone comes in. Yeah. It's kind of like, what? They say shirt to sleeve to shirt sleeve in three generate.

Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you're building something, the intention and the people that are building it with you because it's hard work Mhmm. You know, I think there's good intention. It's when you start to get the administrators and the managers who are leeching off the work where you start to bring in,

the bad players. And then you get to the third generation, and it's mostly bad players because all the meetings been sapped out of it, and it's just, you know, financial financial cow that they use until it's all depleted, and then you get into the next cycle where you have to rebuild all the institutions, tear them down and. Open. Exactly. Exactly. Well, let's, no. That's that's good analysis. Yeah. Let's, let's get back to the book. Let's get back to

parades and we're still in the first this first chapter. Now one of the things you'll note as you read parades and, in particular, if you depending upon the size of the type of the copy that you have, you will note that the chapters are long. Right? The chapters are dense. There's a lot packed into, into each chapter. And so and and then the books are dense. Right? So it's

divided up into parts, and then the parts are are collapsed together into books. And each part is each part is a each part is a meal. Right? And it comes again. It is written in a way just from to talk about the writing of it a little bit. The writing style of Ford Maddox Ford is very much a pre modern Victorian style of writing, similar in similar in-depth of meaning to the Raphaelites, and to the, into the the writing efforts of folks like, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and others, who are writing,

in that long eighteenth century in Europe. Okay. So back to the book, back to Parade's End. I'm gonna pick up with I'm gonna bounce around a little bit in this section, because this is, this is Sylvia talking, a little bit here. There's Sylvia? No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. This is gonna be Tishan's and miss Wannop. So we already sort of, you know, brought up, the, the the young lady. And, well, we're gonna meet her, we're gonna meet her mother. We're gonna start with that. K?

Being too well brought up to interrupt, she waited till he had said all he wanted to say. Then she exclaimed, let's settle the preliminaries. It's obvious mother means us to see a great deal of you. You're going to be a mascot too like your father. I suppose you are. You saved me from the police yesterday. So pause. In the narrative, the daughter, Valentin, was in a, was in a contratomp, for lack of a better term, a protest.

And, she ran across a golf course, Her and another young lady named Gertie and were being chased by the British constables across the golf course, a private golf course, and, Tigin saved her from the police. So that's what she's referencing there. K? So back to the book. I suppose you think you saved me from the police yesterday. You appear to have saved my mother's neck today. You appear too to be going to make £20 profit on a horse deal. You

say you will, and you seem to be that sort of person. £20 is no end in a family like ours. Well, then you appear to be going, to be the regular Belle Ami of the Wannop family. Tijin said, I hope not. Oh, I don't mean, she said, that you're going to rise to fame by making love to all the women of the Wannop family. Besides, there's only me. But mother will press you into all sorts of odd jobs. There will always be a plate for you with a table. Don't shudder. I'm a

regular good cook. Cuisine bourgeois, of course. I learned under real a real professed cook, though a drunkard. That meant I used to do half the cooking, and the family was particular. Ealing people are. County counselors, half of them, and the like. So I know what men are. She stopped and said good naturedly, but do for goodness

sakes get over it or get it over. I'm sorry I was rude to you, but it is irritating to have to stand like a stuffed rabbit while a man is acting like a regular admiral Crichton and cool and collected with the English country gentleman air and all. Tietjens winced. The young woman had come a little too near the knuckle of his wife's frequent denunciations of himself. And she exclaimed,

no. That's not fair. I'm an ungrateful pig. You didn't show a bit more side really than a capable workman must who's doing his job in the midst of a crowd of incapable duffers. But just get it out, will you? Say once and for all that, you know the proper pompous manner. You are not without sympathy with our aims, which you disapprove, oh, immensely strongly of our methods. It struck Tianjin that the young woman was a good deal more interested in the cause of

votes for women than he had given her credit for. He wasn't much in the mood for talking to young women, but it was with considerable more than the surface of his mind that he answered. I don't. I approve entirely of your methods, but your aims are idiotic. And then jumping forward a little bit, they are talking about, the the laws that they need to change and sort of what the vote will do. And then, and then here we go. He says,

or she says, look here. Don't be one of those ignoble triflers who say the vote won't do women any good. Women have a rotten time. They do really. If you'd seen what I've seen, I'm not talking through my hat. Her voice became quite deep. She had tears in her eyes. Poor women do, she said, little insignificant creatures. We've got to change the divorce laws. We've got to get better conditions.

You you couldn't stand it if you know what I know. Her emotion vexed him for it seemed to establish a sort of fraternal intimacy that he didn't, at the moment, want. Women do not show emotion except before their families. He said dryly, I dare say I shouldn't, but I don't know, so I can't. She said with deep disappointment, oh, you are a beast, and I shall never beg your pardon for saying that. I don't believe you mean what you say, but merely

to say it is is heartless. This was another one of the counts of Sylvia's indictment, and Tensions winced again. She explained, you don't know the the case of the Pimlico army clothing factory workers, or you wouldn't say the vote wouldn't would be of no use to women. I know the case perfectly well, Tisha said. It came under my official notice, and I remember thinking there never was more signal instance of the uselessness of the vote to anyone. We can't be thinking of the same

case, she said. We are, he answered. The Pimlico Army Clothing Factory is in the constituency of Westminster. The undersecretary for war is a member for Westminster. His majority at the last election was 600. The clothing factory employed 700 men at £1, 6 an hour, and all these men having their votes in Westminster. The 700 men wrote to the undersecretary to say that if their screw wasn't raised to Bob, they vote solid against him at the next

election. Miss Wannop said, well then. So, Tijen said, the undersecretary had the 700 men at 18 fired and took on 700 women at 10p. What good did the vote do the 700 men? What good did a vote ever do anyone? Miss Wannop checked at that, and Tijen's prevented her exposure of his fallacy by saying quickly, now if the 700 women, backed by all the other ill used, sweated women of the country, had threatened the undersecretary, burned the pillar boxes, and cut up all the golf guard greens

around his country house. They'd have had their wages raised to half a crown next week. That's the only straight method. It's the feudal system at work. They go on and on around this area, and this is sort of the way in which Tijins and miss Wannop are, engaged with each other at least initially. And I I point that out because well, for a couple of different reasons. One of the things that you see in, Parade's End is the relationships, as they are between men

and women. And they are fractured or fracturing during that time that Ford Maddox Ford is writing about, in the '19, well, in the pre World War pre World War one world, and then they would fracture even more when fewer men came back home from the trenches of World War one. And so where there is a vacuum, nature will fill it. And nature did fill that vacuum, and women did get the vote in

Britain. Later on, hundred years or so down the road, we now live in an era where more women than men publish and read fiction. We've also wound up in a spot where the promises of early twentieth century feminism have been fully realize have been as fully realized as they are probably ever going to be. Yes, we talk a lot in our country, a lot about glass ceilings and,

and pay inequalities between men and women. But the statistics, do show, and this has been shown repeatedly, that when men and women do the exact same job at the exact same educational level with the exact same institution, well, men and women's salaries are on par with each other and have been for quite some time. Where they are not on par, and I'm going to check everybody who's gonna send me an email on this, where they are not on par are in the dirty jobs that men will do that

women never will. I can count on my number of no hands how many female garbage men I've ever met. Okay. These two facts, where the promises of early twentieth century feminism and the reading of fiction intersect, among others, have caused interpersonal relationships between men and women in 2025 to be at an all time low if you read the reports from the ever online Intelligentsia. I don't date. I'm married quite happily, and I cannot imagine being out

there now. It's got to be just incredibly difficult to connect, with people. And it is more made more incredibly difficult by not only the facts of the last hundred years, around feminism and around interpersonal relationships, but also by the facts of technology. Technology impacted war, but it also impacted interpersonal relationships, and it continues to do so, by the way. And the fact is, in real life, men and women are failing as they always have, and we see this actually, exemplified in

that little section of parades in that I read. Men and women are failing at the most basic skill that everyone needs to be successful at in the world, and that is the skill of negotiation. But you cannot negotiate with somebody if you do not understand or are not curious about how their brain works. And that lack of curiosity between men and women, the seeds for some of that were laid almost a

hundred years ago. So the question that I have so we're gonna make this personal a little bit not personal to Libby or personal to myself, but personal to us as readers, is I think you can I think you could find out about people's mindset from reading fiction? That's why we're reading this this very dense book. This book is identified as literary fiction. So how can reading literary or highbrow fiction help men and women in navigating their interpersonal interactions now in the

year that we live in now, Libby? How can that how can that help? Or can it help? Or are we too far gone for it to help? By the way, men don't don't nearly read as much fiction as women do. And the idea is that and I I listened to an author talk about this. He said that, what's interesting is not only are men not reading literary fiction, there isn't nearly as much published

literary fiction by men in the market today. And he said that book publishers made an intentional decision in the early two thousands to abandon the male market. And now boys and men who were formally pushed into video games and into Netflix and all of that, are now even dropping out of those spaces. So what can we learn what can men and women learn from literary fiction about how to deal with interpersonal their interpersonal relationships?

One, I it's I'm surprised that there's been such a big decline from men reading litter literary fiction. Mhmm. It has always surprised me how much women will read fiction and they don't read, nonfiction. And I specifically look at that from, you know, a a professional perspective as well as just understanding history and our place in history. Mhmm. I find that it kinda speaks to this need to escape, and live in fantasy. I don't know. But, it has always struck me as a bit odd, how few

women will actually read nonfiction. Mhmm. But I do think there's a lot of men who will read fiction, like short stories and, you know, and that type of thing, but they must be getting it through other other means and mechanisms. Well, apparently and in the interview that I was listening to that covered this or where the guy talked about this, the author talked about it. He's been writing books for twenty years now, and he said that even twenty years ago when he was first entering

the publishing world Yeah. They were talking about or publishers were talking about how to get the mail market. Right? How do we get the mail market? How do we get the mail market? But he said over the course of the last twenty years, what's happened is there was a wholesale abandonment of that market. And now, weirdly enough, in 2025, he's now getting called back into conversations about how

to get the mail market. Yeah. But it's it's these conversations are being driven by people who don't fundamentally understand the mail mind and don't have a curiosity about it, or just think that you could just, like, to your point, layer some nonfiction over it, and it'll be good. Like, we'll call it a good thing. You know? Yeah. And he he he the interview that I was listening to, the individual was talking about this or

the perspective of, of boys reading. So there's a massive drop off with boys reading starting around the ages of between 10 and 13. Boys just stop reading. Now formally, they were going into video games or into, like, or into, like, Netflix shows. But he's like he said, if you look at the statistics on that, even Netflix consumption and video game consumption is starting to decline among the 10 to 13 year old male group.

And he said most he said what most people are doing is they're doom scrolling on their phones, and they're either if they're young boys, they're looking at pornography. And if they're young women, they're engaged with, they're engaged with simping, basically, for pornography through OnlyFans. And he said, that's it. That's what everybody's doing. That's what I wondered as if it was the porn. Yeah.

Yeah. And they're getting yeah. Yeah. The combination of porn versus video streaming and, and all that, but my guess was it was porn, which is unfortunate. But, the I find fiction is just valuable. Is a a val a valuable vehicle to learn in an unthreatened and unverifiable way. Mhmm. Right. Yeah. Right? And, you know, through stories, you get to learn about different lives and ways of thinking, that you can't like, that unlike nonfiction, like, it's debatable, and fiction is just one per yeah.

It's just a story. Right. And what I like about this you asked is, for me, you're learning that there is no one simple answer and what's, you know, what one, marriage or being single or, you know, you know, professing a different gender or sexual orientation. Like, none of those things are necessarily going to be answers. There's complexity with every one of those situations. Mhmm.

You know? And so, the answer to feminism like, when I was growing up in the seventies, it was just about being professional and being able to, like, learn and grow to the top of a company, but still are interested in family. Yeah. It it wasn't about a negative perspective on family. It wasn't a negative perspective on having children. And feminism has been taken to such an extreme now that it's all about just being individual and not needing someone

else. You don't even hear it about career aspiration. It's it's just about me, me, me, me, me. And so the it has been taken to the ultimate extreme. And I think women are finding that the me, me, me isn't satisfying, especially when you don't balance it with anything that is of meaning. Like, at least from a career perspective, I knew where I was going and what I was trying to accomplish. And there was some goal at the end of it, and I didn't I pursued it because it felt good.

Mhmm. Right. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and I grew up with a divorce in a divorced household, and I did want to have kids. But my parents had me when they were 23 and far too young, in my view, for ambitious parents to have kids. So I wanted to wait until I was in my, you know, into my late thirties or forties so I could actually spend time with them. So, you know, for me, the feminism wasn't about not needing anyone or

not having kids. It was about the freedom to pursue the same things that men are able to pursue, but not demonizing the other, yeah, the other sex, or institutions. Like, I didn't understand marriage, but that's me. Like, I wanted Kurt Russell fully gone. You know, I still wanted a partnership, but I just had a different definition of it. And I didn't look at my friends who were getting married and go, oh my god. You're losing yourself. You know? Right. Now

yeah. But the lesson to me is that there is no one right model, and to pursue one with certainty about what it will mean to you, is about is a bit scary. And you can learn through fiction, like, the pros and cons of a lot of different lifestyles. Right? Like, the woman who doesn't Yeah. You know, so for the suffragette, you know, who realized just the boat wasn't up. Or and she could find happiness. Or, like, Megyn Kelly is like, you can't have it all. It's just you know?

And you can have it all at once. So stop believing people who say you can't have it all at once. I do. But, yeah, there are other people who choose to have it all at once throughout their life. You know? Like, I'll focus on work now. Right. And then family, can't go back to work. But there's not one right model. The reality is life is complex. People are complex, and you're gonna have to learn from your for

yourself what fits for you. The challenge with modern relationships right now is women freaking demonized men and told them that they were worthless. You know? So it wasn't just that I wanna be independent. It's that you stuck, and I'm gonna push you down to elevate me as opposed, you know, with all of these identity type politics and societal games. It's only, you know, at when it only when you can rise only by pushing someone else down, it's not gonna successful.

And that's what the western western civilization has promoted for the last thirty years is that women can only elevate by pushing others, you know, by pushing others down. And once they get there, they realize that it sucks to just be me without, like, a family and men around. And this and it does actually having strong men and a partner is really meaningful and valuable. But they've they've

created conditions where men are going to Europe yeah. Or going to Asia to get wives because I wouldn't marry I wouldn't marry an American woman. I'll tell you that much. I wouldn't marry a woman. And I wouldn't marry, but that's me. But I can understand. Mhmm. You're like, I'm just Asian. Because women here suck. They don't know what they want. Well, the and the the thing is and I don't I think Tien Ts is sort of trying to be gentle about it as most men usually do try to be gentle with women.

Yeah. And and and and one of the ways that men try to be gentle with women is is is trying to be verbally gentle with them because, like, if you well well, there's good reason for that. One of the things that one of the things that I that I note consistently is that and I do say consistently is that men spend a lot of time mediating conflict between other men. You just you just do. Like, that's because because here's the thing. Here's the thing.

If I am in a, you know, in a discussion or something with another man, right, and it escalates to a certain point, like, we can always go outside and fix it. Like, we have that physical thing that we can do. That that's always the cul de sac at the end of the at the end of the at the end of the road. Right? I don't have that so you avoid it. Oh, we do everything

we possibly can to avoid that. Everything we possibly can. Because if I'm spending half my time just getting in and out of fist fights, like, that's Yeah. It's just not it's not productive. Right? Okay. And by the way, it takes us between the ages of 10 and, like, 18 to sort of figure that out. That's usually where that learning occurs. Okay. But with women, you're not gonna go out and and, you know, you're not gonna fist fight a woman. Like, come

on. Like, even even in our degraded era, you're still not going and I'm I'm I'm I'm looking with a cocked eye. I am. I'm keeping a cocked eye on all the transgender stuff, but I'll leave that aside. That's another that's a different kind of thing for a different kind of day. That's not part of this conversation. In interactions between men and women, pure classical interactions between men and women, men do spend a lot of time being verbally gentle with women because we don't

want to escalate to a particular spot. Now the reason and you see that in Ting Jin's engagement with, with miss Wannop. Right? Like, he was going to give her the facts about the the army factory fire, but he was trying to give them to her in the in the gentlest, most judicious way possible, in order to encourage understanding and in and in order to reduce or minimize the opportunity for conflict. Okay. Fast forward all of that to a hundred years to where we are at now, and think that there are

some optimum traditional ways to do that? For sure. And am I a proponent of those optimal traditional ways? For sure. Because I think they hold the society together. Yep. But it's only be by having those optimal traditional ways of holding things together that you get to have the outliers.

Okay. Now where we are at, from my perspective, as a person who's standing outside of all this, right, is that if you if you fundamentally to to to the point earlier, you fundamentally lack curiosity about how another person thinks, then you are then you are automatically putting yourself into a world of trade offs. And this is what men don't tell women, by the way, but every man knows this. The world is a vicious series of trade offs.

Yes. It's a brutal series of trade offs. And every man knows this starting around six or seven, actually. We don't know the term trade off, but that's what we know. We know that there's there's certain things you can do, and there's and and this the level of brutalness of those trade offs just continues to escalate throughout your entire life until you hit a certain point where you're like, okay, I don't wanna make any more of

those trade offs. I'm gonna go do this thing in the other direction, and here's what you find out as a man. Everywhere you go, there are trade offs. Everywhere. So for instance, I'll use myself as an example. I played rugby for many years. Rugby is a brutally hard sport. Great, but brutally hard. Right? And I played late in my twenties and into my thirties, and I messed up my body, messed up my knees, whatever. I've I've you know, I was never gonna be a pro rugby player

going to Europe and playing rugby. It wasn't gonna happen. Right? And that's a trade off. So why would I do something that's hard in breaking down my body? Right? Well, because I enjoyed it. Right? But I knew I was trading off something in the future, and I was willing to make that trade off. Right? I was willing to live with that negotiation. And there were the movie Invictus sticks with me. Right? With Matt Damon. Right? There were movies that demonstrated fiction, that demonstrated those

trade offs in a really interesting way. There were books that illustrated that trade off in a really interesting way around rugby. What fiction does is it demonstrates those trade offs in a way that allows people to not have to go out and experience the thing. And you need trade offs, and you need trade offs for both men. So men understand that the trade offs that men make. For women, so the women understand the trade offs, that

they are going to have to make it. By the way, I'm not a proponent of women quote, unquote, having it all because, quote, unquote, frankly, no one can have it all. That's talk about seven deadly sins. That's one of those, let me be even more old school. That's one of those lies from the pit of hell. Let me be even more old school. There are always inherently trade offs that you're making. Always. You've just accept you've just accepted when you say that you have it all,

like, Megan Kelly says she has it all. It's the trade offs were worth it for what she's defining as it all. As it all. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And trade offs. And, I would agree that in this in the feminized society that we now are living under, there is not a desire to recognize trade offs and or that things need to be negotiated. Like, shoulds, when you do everything based on should or feels Mhmm. You're inherently accepting trade offs without

talking about them. Right. Yep. You ultimately have to wait until you reach a catastrophe before something is done about it. And so the field should rolled, almost leads to an asymmetric decline and event, whereas, you know, you and I are both are in business. Mhmm. And in business, you're always if if you're running a good business, you're always having to make hard trade offs. Mhmm.

And one of the things that I've observed as women become, almost a majority in the workplace versus a minority, that when someone is wanting to discuss trade offs and or scenarios, and it's a male, that women will feel that's threatening and mansplaining. And so you're bringing in kind of this should feels role in a world where you need to be able to

have conversations about trade offs. And this is where the negotiations aren't you know, I see it manifest in the workplace, and it it moves into the you're bringing in household dynamics almost into the work. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't wanna bring household dynamics into the workplace. Like, when I'm at the work when I'm at work, I wanna make great product that people are willing to pay for, that we have partners that wanna work with us. We have employees

that know that they're valued and, you know, and thriving. They're not coddled, but they're challenged and excited about being at work. And it's an economically viable business that doesn't require external investment in order to survive. Mhmm. In order to have that end to end optimal excellent scenario, you're making trade offs across about what matters from a product design perspective, what matters with respect to the partners you choose and how you support them. Yeah. Everything is about

hard trade offs. And we've in this world where we've had too much capital free flowing, not a lot of accountability, The absence of trade offs being made constantly in the business is being shown as mediocrity everywhere. I mean, you can't buy anything that will last, you know, longer than it takes to walk out a store. Right. Right. Well and and and you I love it how you said you don't wanna bring home dynamic or not you don't, but we are bringing home

dynamics into the workplace. I've been I I've I've been struck by an idea over the last, I would say, maybe four to six months that I've had. It's sort of a recent revelation, or maybe it's just me finally coalescing a bunch of ideas in my head that it feels like a revelation, but it's really not. I've just been having these random ideas through these random conversations on this podcast. But it's this idea that we're asking certain institutions to carry more

weight than they were designed to carry. So the workplace was not designed to carry the weight of the home, and the home was not designed to carry the weight of the workplace, by the way, just as and and communities and churches aren't designed to carry the weight of the workplace. They're designed to be a partner with that, but they're not designed to carry the weight of that. Right? And so the decline of institutions

hasn't caused people to need those institutions less. It's just caused individuals, and and enough individuals get together and it's collective at that point. But it's caused individuals to move the the emotional and psychological weight to places where it wasn't meant to carry that weight. And you see this in, like, the institution of marriage, for instance. Like, you see that there where, you know, men and women used to have separate spheres spheres spheres spheres spheres of friends.

And that was fine because the marriage has a relationship and to be the container for everything to everybody or to those two people inside of that container. But in our modern world, you know, you and I'll put this on men. I I work with men, and I have I have worked with men in the past who will literally say, my wife is my best friend. And I'm like, that's a lot of weight to put on your wife. That's a lot of weight to put on the institution of marriage there. And what if she can't handle that?

And I presume the same thing happens with women. You know? And so so I think we've gotta have a reordering because we're at the end of the fourth turning, and now is the time for reordering. I think we have to have a reordering of how we think about these institutions. And, yes, maybe a return to old things. But if you don't wanna return to old things, then a renegotiation to something new. And that renegotiation, I think fiction has to be a part of

that renegotiation. Yeah. I mean, there's there's no doubt that the breakdown of the family structure well, first is women going into the workforce. Yeah. I'm I'm the product of, you know, the lock yeah. The what is it? They they Oh, the latch key kids? The latch key kids. Yeah. And it you know, in some way, it was fabulous because we had to be self sufficient. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. Because our parents weren't home. A good model of what being a responsible citizen was too.

Mhmm. But you had the raising of children move to schools, and schools have to take over that burden. Mhmm. But the family structure no no longer was. And then it's just natural that folks who rely on the schools will not expect the next institution being work Right. To carry forward. I will say that one of the reasons, like, marriage never quite appealed to me is because it wasn't business enough. Right? It's like because it was too emotional. It was just too emotional. Yeah. Right? I'm

like, no. This is a partnership. We can discuss the different like, I'm fine. I we might decide through negotiation that I carry more like, I do more of the traditional feminine things, and he does more of the traditional male. But to me, it was like I'm not an emotional I'm not an emotional, like, woman, and I don't want a man who expects me to be, like, an emotional woman that you can't talk to. Like Right. I watch all of my friends,

male friends, walk on, eggshells around their wives. I was like, what? You know? And then I hear women say that they're men things that I would never dream of saying to someone I loved. Right. My observations are clearly, you know, biased in my my observations. But that's why I always liked work is because, you know, you knew what each other's agenda was, you knew what the goal was, and you're willing to have tough conversations.

Mhmm. And now the workplace isn't a place where you can have tough conversations because it's become too feminized not I feminized doesn't mean it's because women are there. It's become feminized. Right? Because you could have men who have feminine and heterosexual men who have feminine energy. It's like, no. No. No. It feels good. It feels right. You know, move on. But, there's a lot. Technology is a piece of it.

Social is a piece of it. But, yeah, the we need a we need a correction, and moving to the family structure is Yeah. Is an element Well, we we need a we need a correction. We need a re we need a renegotiation of the weight. You know? We just we just do. We need a renegotiation of the weight. And maybe Anything. Maybe that will happen. You know? Anything that starts out with condemning the other is not gonna work. Right. Yeah. No. Exactly. Yeah. No.

Exactly right. Something positive that we're working towards, and that's what otherwise, I'm gonna be black pilled. Well, well, back to the book. Back, well, back to the book. Back to Parade's End. So we're going to pick up with, we're gonna pick up with, father Consett, Sylvia, and Sylvia's mother. So Sylvia is Tianjin's wife. I'm going to use a particular word here to describe Sylvia. She is, estranged. I love that word. That is very much a Caucasian American English

word. I have never heard a minority person in America use the word estranged. I've never heard that. I only ever hear Caucasians use that term, or use that word. And I don't know why that is, by the way, but I just it's something that I've noted in my own very talking about sample sizes, Libby, my own very small sample size. Go ahead. They're like that seems like pretty normal word to me. I know. Right. It seems exactly. But I've never I only ever hear

I do. The word I'm sorry. Nowadays is utilize. Everyone's using utilize instead of use. I was like. Oh, yeah. That's another don't get me started on that. That's one battle at a time, Libby. Absolutely. I can't be fighting I can't be fighting everywhere all at once. We try. I tried, but I can't. I have only so many troops. It's okay to demand. You know, I I played risk with my children this weekend. Found out that my middle daughter apparently is a ruthless military

tactician. I did not know that. But now I know. So now I now I know what I'm getting into. But, I did wind up in a spot where I was literally fighting her on every front, everywhere, all at one time. Ace. And this is the first time she'd ever played risk. I was like, oh, wow. I guess we're I I guess this is the thing we're doing now. I guess we're doing this. Oh, boy. Now you wonder what what game she's been playing with you. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. Guess I said at the end. I thought I was on to you. So sure. I'm not so sure. The entire fifth last fifteen years have to be, reexamined. We gotta reexam. We gotta reexam. We gotta reexam the whole thing. Alright. So we are going to pick up with a long conversation. I'm gonna read bits and pieces of it that I think are relevant for our conversation today. So Sylvia is, like I said, Tingen's, estranged wife.

Then you have missus Satherweight, who is Sylvia's mother, and father Conset, who is their religious adviser, a good old fashioned well, I believe he would be Anglican if I'm not mistaken, because they are English. Alright. So let's pick up in some do not. Father Constance, Sylvia said to her mother, has been renewing his social circle. It's not, father Constance said, amongst the dregs of the people that you must live if you don't want to hear of the dregs of society.

Sylvia stood up. She said, you'll keep your tongue off my best friends if you want me if you want me to stop and be lectured. But for mister Vanderveck for missus Vandervecken, I should not be here. I return to the fold. Father Constance exclaimed, don't say it, child. I'd rather have help me. You had gone on living in open sin. Sylvia sat down again, her hand listlessly on her lap. Have it your own way, she said, and the father returned to the fourth sheet of the telegram.

What does this mean? He asked. He returned to the first sheet. This here, accept resumption yoke, he read breathlessly. Sylvia, missus Satterwhite said, go and light the spirit lamp for some tea. We shall want it. You'd think I was a district messenger boy, Sylvia said as she rose. Why don't you keep your maid up? It's a way we have of referring to out, to our union, she explained to the father. There was sympathy enough between you and him then, he said, to have bywords

for things. It was that I wanted to know. I understood the words. They were pretty bitter by words as you called them, Sylvia said. More like curses than kisses. It was you who used them, missus Satterwhite said. Christopher never said a bitter thing to you. An expression like a grin came slowly over Sylvia's face as she turned back to the priest. That's mother's tragedy, she said. My husband's one of her best boys. She adores him, and he

can't bear her. She drifted behind the wall of the next room, and they heard her tinkling the tea things as the father read on again, beside the candle. His immense shadow began at the center and ran along the pitch pine ceiling down the wall across the floor to join his splay feet in their clumsy boots. It's bad, he muttered. He made a sound like, worse than I feared, Except resumption yoke, but on one rigid conditions. What's this? Socially, it ought to be a p, especially

regards child, reduce establishment, ridiculous. Our position, remake settlements and child's sole interests, flat knot house, entertaining minimum, and prepared resign office, settle Yorkshire. But imagine this not suit you child. Remain sister Effie. Open visits both wire of this rough outline. Provisionally acceptable in the case. We'll express draft general position Monday for you and mother reflect upon follow self Tuesday. Arrive Thursday.

Lobscheid go wipe shot fortnight on social task discussion Thursday limited solely, comma, emphasized, comma, to affairs. That means, missus Satterwhite said, missus Satterwhite said, that he doesn't mean to reproach her. Emphasized applies to the word solely. Why'd you take it? Father Consett asked. Did he spend an immense lot of money on this telegram? Did he imagine you were in such trepidation?

He broke off. Walking slowly, her long arms extended carrying the tea tray to carry the tea tray, over which her wonderfully moving face had a rapt expression of indescribable mystery. Sylvia was coming through the door. So he's reading the telegram that, the Tizjens, sent to Sylvia. She serves the tea. They go back and forth a little bit. And then Sylvia start missus Satterwhite starts here. Have a cup of tea, father, while

it's just right. I believe Sylvia is the only person in Germany who knows how to make tea. There's always behind him the Roman collar and the silk bib if you don't believe in him, while the concert went on. Yet he knows 10, a thousand times more of the human nature than ever you can. I don't see, Sylvia said placably, how you can learn in your slums anything about the nature of Eunice van der Wijken or Elizabeth b or Queenie James or

any of my set. She was on her feet pouring cream to the father's tea. I'll admit for the moment that you aren't giving me high jaw. I'm glad, the priest said, that you remember enough of your school days to use the old term. Sylvia wavered backwards to her sofa and sank down again. There you are, she said. You can't really get away from preachments. Me, for the pure young girl, is always at the back of it. It isn't, fa the father said. I'm not one to cry for the moon. You don't want me

to be a pure young girl? Sylvia asked with lazy incredulity. I do not, father said, but I wish that at times you remember you once were. I don't believe I ever was, Sylvia said, if the nuns had known I'd have been expelled from the holy child. You would not, the father said. Do stop your boasting. The nuns have too much sense. Anyhow, it isn't a pure young girl. I'd have you behaving like a Protestant deaconess

for the craven fear of hell. I'd have you be physically healthy, decently honest with yourself, young devil of a married woman. It's them that are the plague and the salvation of the world. You admire mother? Missus Tigeons asked suddenly. She added in parenthesis, you see you can't get away from salvation. I mean, keeping bread and butter in their husband's stomachs, the priest said. Of course, I admire your mother. Missus Satterwhite moved a hand slightly.

You're at any rate a league with her against me, Sylvia said. She asked with more interest. Then would you have me model myself on her and do good works to escape hellfire? She wears a hair shirt on lent. Missus Satterwhite started from her doze on the edge of her chair. She had been trusting the father's wit to give her daughter's insolence a run for its money, and she imagined that if the priest hit hard enough, he might at least make Sylvia think a little bit about some of her ways.

Sylvia Satterwhite is part of the same way that, Valentine, is on the other end, and so is Tensions and McMaster and the priest. All these characters are all part of the unraveling of social structure in Victorian England in the late, eighteenth century. One of the challenges of understanding and unraveling is looking at it through a lens of fact. And we have talked a lot about the facts of World War one, the facts

of feminism, the facts of business. We talked a lot about that. But it's also, showing it through works of fiction, and and works of fiction show the unraveling really, really well. Matter of fact, for my money, and one day we'll do a whole podcast on this show, for my money, the best show that demonstrates the unraveling of America at the later end of the twentieth century was NYPD Blue. Sing Me a Song, O Muse, Spin Me a Tale of Andy Sipowicz, was a great show.

And television and movies took over from novels and plays to explain culturally the shared sense of imbalance during that last unraveling as they did during the unraveling described in Parade's End. Cultural unravelings are always confused with cultural chaos of attorney that comes after them, but that's because human beings don't like uncertainty, and they seek to make sense of, adapt to, and to change the world as quickly as possible. Even Ford Maddox

Ford knew this. He actually stated that his purpose in creating the parades and tetralogy was, quote, the obliviating of all future wars, unquote. He saw the world unraveling into World War one, and he wanted to stop it from happening ever again. He wanted to use the novel as a tool to be able to do that. Not nonfiction, not essays, not poems, but the novel is a form to do that. Now you could reasonably say that he had a hammer and everything you saw was a nail, but a lot of us do

that. We're wrapping up. We're coming around the corner here. We've talked a long time with Libby about this book, and I wanna thank her for being on the podcast. I'm gonna combine a couple of different things together that we have here today, and we're gonna close out in the next few minutes. This is an important question, I think, for our time as well. We just talked about the rebuilding of institutions, and Libby is a a big proponent on this show of building for the good.

She loves that. You know, building for the good thing. Right? Building for the the good ending or the good institution. But here's a question for us to sort of end. How can a leader lead their people when the traditions and the institutions and the social structures around them seem to be falling apart? How how can they actually what's the actual practical thing that a leader can do to guide people through the morass?

You know, part of this part of the question then part of the answer to that question that I found anyway from my part is the leader has to have a vision of some sort. Pick a North Star and just go with it. And sometimes you gotta be ruthlessly inflexible in order to make that happen. But I don't know. Maybe Libby has maybe Libby, maybe you have a better idea than I do. So how do you lead, you know, when things are unraveling, when things are falling apart?

It does it does start with a solid vision, and building towards the future. But you also have to be comfortable, kind of applying, like, agile practices to, building, you know, near term and delivering mentally, allowing yourself flexibility, to adjust based on a changing landscape, but enough direction so that, you know, teams know where you're heading. So that vision for the future, continue to run the business as you know it, tweaking around the edges, and then iterating towards

that future. Businesses always have to deal with ambiguity, around your customer preferences, the, you know, macroeconomics, microeconomics. You know, there's always a lot of different factors. But as long as you have a strong vision, and flexibility in how you're delivering incrementally while continuing to run the business and deliver great things, I think you're in a good position. Scenario planning. Hey. I'm a strategist. I

also started in investment banking. So you always have a good financial model to run scenarios, and you, like, you're always measuring how you're doing against, you know, those three different outcomes and how you need to adjust operations and investments accordingly. But to me, by having that strong vision as well as the ability to adapt proactively and not reactively, you're well positioned to navigate navigate change.

So which temperament you're a strategist, financial strategist, which temperament would you bet on for the next twenty five years in America as we turn out of our fourth turning and go into a dawn? Donald Trump calls it a gold golden age. Right? And maybe it will be, maybe it won't be. I don't know. None of us have lived in that time yet. In twenty five years, I'll be, if the good Lord allows it, I'll be 70. What kind of temperament wins the next twenty five years in America? Is it

more like miss Wannop? Is it Sylvia? Is it Tijen's? Is it the groveling the groveling Mc McMaster? Like, who who wins the future? Who wins the future to build those institutions with that vision? Who sets that? It's with, like, you know, some, you know, some modifying of the edges. Okay. Why why him? Why does that temperament win? I said, why does that temperament?

Because he's the he has a vision for what he believes things should be, and he's willing to work, you know, towards them kind of without letting the noise, you know, too much read too much direct him. If it if you McMasters hadn't been a snake, I actually probably think McMasters is more aligned because he's, like, trying to trying to build towards the future, and he sees, you know, the value of his leadership, you know, from a society

perspective, but he sells his soul along the way. So that's not right. Like, so I don't really see any of these characters. Yeah. To me, it's a hero and builder mentality. So, not right now, we have cosplay of heroics that we've seen for the last, like, ten years. But we're moving towards what a true hero is who's coming in and building the institutions that we need in order to be successful. When I say building for the good, you know, a lot of people have

words and meaning assigned to good Mhmm. That I wanna be very explicit about. It's not about, it's about making hard trade offs about what you can and can't do that will provide good institutions, that provide goods and services that, you know, people need and are willing to pay for. It's providing a work environment that enables people to thrive and not just settle.

You know, these are about institutions of excellence where they're economically sustainable and viable on their own merit, and they grow on their own merit, and not out of just perceived polish and virtue. Mhmm. Mhmm. I think you got something there. I think I think that's a good spot to stop, so I think I'm gonna stop there. Thank you, Libby, for coming on the podcast today. Thank you for taking the time

to read Parade's End. I would encourage everyone to go out and pick it up, and to kinda make your own decisions about who gets to win the future. And with that, well, we're out. Well, hello.