Animal Farm by George Orwell w/Tom Libby and Jesan Sorrells

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this
is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. Episode
number 155.
The technology of movable type invented by Johannes
Gutenberg 570 years ago
this year launched a revolution in the spread of

(00:23):
ideas, the growth of literacy, the discovery of new worlds, and
even the fomenting of revolutions.
Without such technology, storytelling in the Western world would have remained a matter of people
passing along an oral tradition.

(00:44):
Tradition and the bad ideas actually did.
But technology cannot defend itself successfully against
committed ideologues and the principles of free speech, free
assembly, free freedom of worship. These have all become part and
parcel of the conversations that are around,
that are around the revolution that Gutenberg and

(01:05):
Gutenberg's invention wrought. By the way, they're
still part and parcel of all the conversations we have today in
the children of the revolution that Gutenberg
wrought through the computer, mass distribution of
books, and of course, our current obsession with
large language models. Today,

(01:28):
on this episode of the podcast,
we will be recommending and we will
be talking about a book and its themes that leaders
can use during times of change
that may seem cynical, during times of fatal opportunism, and
even during times of cultural slop. We're going to talk about a small book that

(01:51):
kind of cuts through all of that and that most. A book most
people have read in high school, but wasn't really taught really well to
them. It's a book that's so deceptively simple
that most of us just miss it.
So we're going to cover and we are going to talk about the
themes inherent in George Orwell's

(02:15):
Animal Farm leaders.
We have looked at society that is messed up and we have found
ourselves wanting, so now it's up to us to
fix it. And Animal Farm and Orwell somewhat
show the way. And of course, today, as usual,
we are joined by my usual co host, my usual

(02:38):
partner in crime, I believe I could say that. Now on the show,
my usual partner in crime, Tom Libby. How you doing, Tom?
Living my best life. Hey, son, you're always living your best life. You're never
not living your best life. When does that not happen? When are you gonna. When
are you gonna open up the kimono and let the listeners in? Well,
because I can't live anybody else's life and nobody else can live mine, so I

(03:00):
can only live my best life. I don't know how else to say it. You
know, it's. It's one of those things that, you know,
there's whether my. Whether my best life is
good or bad from somebody else's perspective. Now, that's not for me to judge, but
I'm just saying, you know, it's my best life, so. Okay, well, you know what?
I guess that goes along with your truth as well. Whatever that may.

(03:21):
Whatever that may mean. Your truth, my truth. The truth. Right.
Exactly. God, if my wife were here, she'd be like, shut up, Jesan. That's a
new thought. Get out of here. We wouldn't, you know, tolerate any of that nonsense
here. There's principles.
Oh, my Lord. All right, well, today, as I said,
we are going to be reading. We're going to be reading excerpts from a

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book that I don't think Orwell thought would make that much of an impact. I
think he was probably shocked and surprised how much impact it actually
made. I think he would continue to be shocked and surprised that,
just like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, it is a book that high
school students read, and just barely. I'm actually going to tell a
story about this book. I think

(04:05):
my. My kids read it in middle school, actually. Okay, this the
story I have to tell. And I'll wait until we. We hit our sort of
our third section there. But someone who I do jiu jitsu with, he was telling
me, and he's, like, in his mid-30s. He told me an entire story about how
he never actually got the book because something
else happened in the teaching of it.

(04:26):
All right, well, picking up from Animal Farm, I'm going to go ahead and
pick up from right here at the beginning, and we're going to talk about
a. A pig named Major who
had a dream.
All the animals are now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept on a
perch behind the back door. When Major saw that they had all

(04:49):
made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he cleared his throat and
began. Comrades, you have heard
already about the strange dream I had last night, but I will come to the
dream later. I have something else to say first. I do not think,
comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer. And before I die,
I feel it my duty to pass to you such wisdom as I have acquired.

(05:09):
I have had a long life. I have had much time for thought as I
lay alone in my stall. And I think I may say that I understand the
nature of life on this earth as well as any animal now living.
It is about this that I wish to speak to you now,
comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it. Our
lives are miserable, laborious and short. We are

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born we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our
bodies. And those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to
the last atom of our strength. And the very instant that our usefulness has come
to an end. We are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in
England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No
animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery.

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That is the plain truth.
But is this simply part of the natural order? Is it because this land
of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who
dwell upon it? No, comrades. A thousand times no. The soil of
England is fertile. Its climate is good. It is capable of affording food and
abundance. To an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm

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of ours would support a dozen horses, 20 cows, hundreds of sheep. And all of
them living in comfort and dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining.
Why, then, do we continue in this miserable condition? Because
nearly the whole of the produce of our labor Is stolen from us
by human beings. Their comrades Is the answer
to all of our problems. It is summed up in a single word. Men.

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Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove man from the scene,
and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk. He
does not lay eggs. He is too weak to pull the plow. He cannot run
fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is the lord of all the animals.
He sets them to work. He gives back to them the bare minimum that will

(06:59):
prevent them from starving. And the rest he keeps for himself.
Our labor tills the soil. Our dung fertilizes it. And yet there is
not one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I
see before me. How many thousands of gallons of milk have you given during this
last year? And what has happened to that milk which should have been breeding up
sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies.

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And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this year? And how many
of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest have all gone to market to
bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those
four foals you bore. Who should have been the support and pleasure of your old
age? Each was sold at a year old. And when you will never see them
again, return for your four confinements.

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All your labor in the fields. What have you ever had except your
bare Rations
and a stall and myself. I do not grumble. I'm one of the lucky ones.
I am 12 years old and I've had over 400 children, such as the natural
life of a pig.

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But no animal escapes. Every one of you will scream your lives out of the
block within a year. To that horror, we must all come. Cows, pigs, hens, sheep.
Everyone. Even the horses and the dogs have no better fate. You boxer. The
very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will send you
to the knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the hounds
and for the dogs when they grow old and toothless. Jones ties bricks around their

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necks and drowns them in the nearest pond.
Is it not crystal clear then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of
ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of man and the
produce of our labor will be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and
free. What then must we do? Why, work
night and day, foreign

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soul, for the overthrow of the human race. That might be in a weaker and
100 years. But I know as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet
that sooner or later, justice will be done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout
the short remainder of your lives. And above all, pass on this message of mine
to those who come after you, so that future generations shall carry on the struggle
until it is victorious. And remember, comrades, your resolution must never
falter. No argument must lead you

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astray. Never listen when they tell you that lies. Man serves the interests
of no creature except himself. And among us animals, let there be perfect
unity, perfect comradeship. In the struggle, all men are enemies.
All animals are comrades.
At this moment, there was tremendous uproar While Major was speaking. Four large rats had

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crept out of their holes and were sitting in the hindquarters listening to him, the
dogs. And suddenly,
for silence. Comrades, he said, here is the point that must be
settled. The wild creatures such as rats and rabbits, are they our
friends or our enemies? Let me put it to a vote. I propose this question

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in the meeting. Are rats
comrades?
God, I love that. I love that opening so much.

(10:17):
Matter of fact, that opening right there is the entire book. I mean, that's the
whole thing. Yeah, for sure.
And it's. It's Orwell's now.
1984 was not a brilliant book, and we covered that on the podcast. You
should go back and listen to that episode. We're actually doing these books in reverse
because normally people read Animal Farm first and then they go into

(10:37):
1984. And they expect the same level of
literary elon, such as it were in 1984.
And you don't really get that. It's like he ran out of. We talked about
this on the episode with, with Claire
Chandler and David. David Bombrucker. It's almost as if
he runs out of energy, literary energy. But Animal Farm is so

(10:59):
short, it's barely. What, like it's
125 pages. It's so short.
And he doesn't run out of energy and he establishes the whole
thing and everything follows from the
old Pig Major speech right there at the beginning.
So, Tom Libby, I'm going to go off script a little bit here are

(11:21):
rats, Comrades.
I mean, are we still talking metaphorically or
talking in the. The actual animal kingdom? I don't know, it's.
Guess it depends on the way you look at it. Oh, okay. All right, let's
start off something simpler. What did you think of Animal Farm? Talk to us about

(11:41):
your experiences with this book and when you first read it. Well,
okay, so let's, let's. I mean I didn't reread it, but
let's just be realistic here. I read it, you know, 35
years ago. The,
the things that I remember. And, and again, you know, as, as you read
stuff like this, it's very easy to have a vision

(12:03):
in your head of, of like,
like that, that, that, let's say commercialized vision in
your head. So whether it's animation or whether. Whatever, like. But you.
This book is very easy to actually envision how you're
like, what is actually happening as you're. So when Major's giving that speech,

(12:23):
I'm thinking of like. I'm thinking of a pig standing at a podium or
maybe not, I don't know, whatever, but like almost very
Hitler like, or, or you know,
Mus...Mussolini-like, or something like that. And he's supposed to be,
he's supposed to be a, an avatar for Lenin. For Vladimir
Lenin. Yeah. Vladimir Lenin, yeah. And Lenin would give fiery speeches in

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particular from the back of train cars after Germany sent him. Sent
him back through, sent him back to Russia through Finland
to, to get the Russians out of World War I and to start off the
Russian Revolution back in the day. So Orwell would have been familiar with all that.
Sorry, go ahead. Right. No, no, I was gonna say. Exactly. And, and if you're,
if there's any mistake of, of what he's referring to,

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though just the use of the term comrade should tell you right up front
like that this is Some sort of, like, you know, mirror.
Some sort of animalistic version of, of what was
happening at Russia at the time of his life. Right. Like, this is, that's the
whole, you know, the whole point of it. I, I guess, I mean, that was
his intention from what I understand anyway. But,

(13:28):
but like, as the book goes on, and I'm sure you're going to talk
about it, you know, going, going forward, but as the book goes on, I think,
you know, watching that dynamic change and the position of power
and like, how that, how it all kind of evolves and is very interesting
to me. I, I, I've always found the book very interesting, but
very basic. Like, like it's, it's almost like, it's

(13:51):
almost like the, you know, he's using animals to depict
the natural order of human beings. Actually, not animals.
Like, you know, it, it's
us as human beings if we were treated the way the animals,
the way he described. But let me rephrase this. When
we are treated, when human beings are treated the way that the animals are

(14:14):
described in this, in this book, which is we're basically pieces of meat that
move, you know, I pick things up, I put things down, you know, whatever, and
you're, you're only, you're only, you're only as good to them until you're as
long as you're productive. And then once you're not productive, they get rid of you.
I mean, we have had uprise over, uprise over,
uprise over this, like from a human perspective. So he's just

(14:34):
depicting it in an animal state. It's, it's literally the same story we've seen a,
a hundred times through, through human history. So. Right.
And he, and he, he seems to. One of the things that jumps
out to you about Animal Farm number one is of course, it's a short book,
which I already mentioned. But then the second thing that jumps out to you about
it, and it is something that's kind of interesting, is

(14:58):
the fact that the
animal
pursuing a use of utopia,
and they are, and they're doing it, they're doing it ruthlessly. Hold on a second.
Let me do this. Hold on. Pause for just a second.

(15:21):
All right. Picking up where we broke. You're gonna, you're
gonna edit everything after this, all right? Or before this. Three, two,
one. Okay, so it's an allegory, right? Like, that's the
thing with, with Animal Farm, and you're right, he's describing.
Or where, where, where, or where this rises to a level of art
is because he's describing the human condition in terms of a fairy tale. And it's

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easier for us to accept this as a fairy tale.
And it's a fairy tale about Marxism, right, Which
it's. It would be really hard to. For us to kind of swallow, particularly for
people. Back when this book was published in. Let's see,
1940,

(16:06):
was it 46. It was like 43 was when
he started coming up with the idea, if I remember correctly. And then he published
it in 45, if I remember correctly. Although you're probably
gonna. I'm probably gonna get corrected on those numbers, and that's fine.
But he, He. He wanted to

(16:27):
put together a book that would be critical of the. Critical
of Marxism, which, as a socialist, an English socialist,
he thought that that was. That communism was a bridge too
far, basically. And so he was critiquing the left from
the left, right? And, you know, at the
time, the, The. The. The victory

(16:49):
of. And you'll see this later on in Animal Farm when they start doing production
and they, they start tracking production and the pigs start running everything,
which is interesting, by the way. But
he, He. He was beginning to see the cracks by the time the 40s
came around in the system, particularly under. Particularly under
Stalin with the. With the concentration camps and the gulags.

(17:12):
So second question. Is Animal farm better than 1984? I know you
read it 30 years ago, but is. Would you say the Animal Farm is a
better book than 1984? The only reason I say
yes is because I probably remember more of animal farm than
1984. So obviously it made some sort of more impactful.
Something more impactful to me than the 1984. The. I don't, I

(17:35):
don't necessarily dissect it the way that you do from a literary art perspective. I
mean, obviously you do that for a reason, because that was at one point your
labor of love. Being a journalist, you know, being able. Being an
art major and, you know, our art has been very important to you. For me,
it's more about. It's more about
practicality. Like, what can I actually use in. In.

(17:56):
In. And convert into my practical living? So. Right again.
Back in High School, 1980, Animal
Farm. This is gonna sound so stupid, but think about
it, like, think about it from like a. Like a sports perspective, right? Like, so
you played sports, I played sports. You got this hierarchy that happens.
And, and by the way, back in the day, when we played sports, there was

(18:18):
no such thing as hazing. That was just the way things were. So.
Right. Like, it's true this is true. We didn't.
We didn't even have a word for it. We just. It was like a rite
of passage. Right. Like you. It was a day ending in why and get out
there and run. Exactly. I was a freshman. I was a. I was on
a varsity team as a freshman, which meant I was treated worse than everybody

(18:39):
else. So, again. But when I read Animal Farm, I'm looking at it going, okay,
so at some point, I can grow into this. I can do that. You know
what I mean? Like, it was like, I was. It was a direct relation to
what I was coping with at the time of, like, power and power struggles
and power hierarchies and who's in charge and who dictates what.
So 1984 kind of wasn't right. Like, really. I didn't

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really interpret it that way when I was reading it. I. I felt there was.
You know, and again, I'm reading this in the late 80s, by the
way. So 1984, again, my
generation, there was a slight confusion. Like, we had to be reminded that this was
written 45 years earlier. We're like, no, this isn't about four years
ago, guys. This is about, like, you know, 1950. Right?

(19:21):
Yeah. Whereas Animal Farm didn't have that
confusion. We. We. Like I said, when you read it, you could picture what was
happening. Like, you like, okay, this is a farm. Animals are revolting. This is kind
of like, you know, students rebelling against teachers. Or Right
at the time when we had the Iran Contra affairs and we watched. Oh, yeah,
we're watching things on TV about revolutions over in the

(19:43):
Middle east and all this other. It was very. It was much more relatable to
me, I guess, is the. The point. Which is why, for me, if I had
to, like, literally put my finger down and say, yes, one book was better than
the other. I'd pick Animal Farm just because it was more impactful at the time.
It was more impactful at time, yeah. Okay, back to the book. Back
to Animal Farm here. So we're going to pick up
after the old Major Diesel, and

(20:07):
this is Squealer.
And. And then Napoleon.
Napoleon, Snowball and.
And. And a small fat pig named Squealer. They get
together. I know this is gonna be a short episode, but we could have went
to at least a half an hour dissertation. Why did he pick the name Napoleon

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for this? Like, that part was fascinating to me, too, but
go ahead, read the book. Napoleon. So Napoleon was supposed to be a standard for
Stalin? I know, but. I know, I know, I know. I know, I know. Yeah,
yeah. Oh, I know. Oh, I know. Yeah. Oh, it struck me, too. I have
all kinds of notes in the margins. There's all kinds of blood in the gutters
in this book for me. And then Snowball was Trotsky,

(20:50):
and then Squealer was supposed to stand in for Pravda, which
Pravda was the newspaper that was put out in the
Soviet Union that was the official mouth of the Russian revolution. And
Pravda in Russia or in Russian, sorry,
means--you're gonna love this--TRUTH.
Back to the book. These three had elaborated old Major's

(21:14):
teachings into a complete system of thought, which they gave the name
of animalism. Love that. Several nights a week
after Mr. Jones was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and
expounded the principles of animalism to the others. At the beginning they met with much
stupidity and apathy. Some of the animals talked of
the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as master,

(21:36):
or made the elementary remarks such as, Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone,
we should starve to death. Others ask such questions as why should we care what
happens after we are dead? Or if this rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference
does it make whether we work for it or not?
Pause. Still questions that are asked today

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anyway. And the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this
was contrary to the spirit of animalism. The
stupidest questions of all were asked by Molly, the white
mare. The very first question she
asked Snowball was, will there still be sugar after the rebellion?
No, said Snowball firmly. We have no means of making sugar on this farm.

(22:20):
Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you
want. And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my mane?
Asked Molly. Comrade,
then, Snowball, those ribbons that you are so devoted to are a badge of
slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?
Molly agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.

(22:41):
The pigs have an even artist struggle to counteract the lies
put about by Moses, the tame raven, by the way. Pause.
Moses represents religion.
Back to the book. Moses, who was Mr. Jones special pet, was a spy and
a tale bearer. But he was also a clever talker. He claimed
to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugar Candy Mountain,

(23:04):
to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the
sky, a little distance beyond the clouds. Moses said, in Sugar Candy Mountain. It was
Sunday, seven days a week. Clover was all in season all year round, and lump
sugar and linseed Cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated
Moses because he told tales and did no work. But some of them believed in
Sugar Candy Mountain. And the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that

(23:26):
there was no such place. Now,
I'm pausing there, not because we're doing a short episode, but
because that's the whole thing right there. I mean, that's
the whole nugget of like, Marxism, right? I'm sorry, cannibalism
right there. There is no sugar Cany Mountain. Religion is the opiate
of the masses and you need rebellion right now. You even see in

(23:49):
that setup the different people who were involved in the
revolution. So you've got Molly, who doesn't really care about
revolution, God bless her. She cares about
bows in her main and in vanity, right? Bows. And can she still
have bows and sugar after the revolution? Then you have the hardcore
people who were all the way in. That's snowball, you know. No

(24:10):
comrade going to go hardcore for the revolution.
We're bringing this right now. They want the fight because they want the fight.
And then you have folks like Boxer and Clover,
who. Those are the two draw horses who. And I'll pick up on this
part. Their most faithful
disciples were the two cart horses, Boxer and Clover. The two had great difficulty in

(24:33):
thinking anything out for themselves. But having once accepted the pigs as their
teachers, they absorbed everything they were told and passed it on to the
other animals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their
attendance at the secret meetings in the barn and led the singing of Beasts of
England, in which the meetings always ended.
Now, as it turned out, the rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than

(24:56):
anyone could have expected. In past years, Mr. Jones, although a hard
master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on
evil days. He had become much disheartened after losing money in a lawsuit and had
taken to drinking more than was good for him. For whole days at a time.
He would lounge in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading the newspapers, drinking, and
occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men

(25:17):
were idle and dishonest. The fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted
roofing, the hedges were neglected and the animals were under
bed.
There's something there, by the way, for corporate leaders
that I want to point out just early in the
episode. If you're not

(25:40):
paying attention to your people, if you're fat and lazy,
if you're stupid and yes, I did use that word. If you're not
up on industry trends, if you're not up on trends outside of your industry.
If you have fallen on hard times through no fault of your own.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn't
matter. You've got to be active and you got to remain

(26:04):
competent. Otherwise. Otherwise the rebellion will come as
surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Go ahead, Tom. Tom has a thought there. I, I can see it on his
face. Yeah, all I was going to say is so, so the, like the, the,
the key to me and the, the more direct translation here is again,
let's just stay with the theme of the book where the farmer basically

(26:25):
fell on hard times with no. Of. No fault of his own.
So let's. Right, for today's leaders, just fixate on that. So,
yeah, to your point though, falling on hard times,
no fault of your own does not give you permission to treat
people poorly. To neglect your responsibilities as a leader
to. It doesn't give you the right or permission to do that.

(26:48):
You can, you can fall on hard times, Your company can have a downturn,
and guess what helps you figure it out. Like
your people, it's your best asset. It's your number one
asset. So if you treat them right, treat them fairly,
inform them, keep them up to date as what's going on, a little transparency goes
a long way. I'm not suggesting you open your books and show them everything, but

(27:11):
a little transparency goes a long way and being able to
kind of at least share your vision of
what you. What should be coming out on the other side of it could
potentially, could potentially
stave off something, an animal like, like that, that revolt, that rebellion,

(27:31):
that massive exodus of employees, that, that ends up happening on these
cases. But if you just bury your head in the sand and you don't deal
with it up front like, yeah, you're right, they're going. You're gonna go. They're
gonna go. So, so to, to the point that you're making here in the book,
it's his fault. It's his own. It's his own damn fault, right? Like it's his
own fault. Because falling on hard times or not, you still control

(27:53):
you. You can still go out and plow the field. You can still do the
things that you have to do that cost you no money and
probably would have kept your animals happy and feeling like you cared about
them, I. E. Employees.
There's a direct relation here, like direct correlation here, right? Like
that's, it's well, well and otherwise. I mean, I think of the.

(28:16):
Oh God. There was a Whole joke in Seinfeld in one of those episodes of
that show which I loved. I used to know that show back and forth inside
and out. But there's one episode where
Kramer and the character. Kramer and the
character, the postman, Newman. Oh, Newman. Yeah, yeah. Got together
about some nonsense. No, no, I

(28:39):
remember. And I remember I knew in the encyclopedia of my mind it would come
back. Kramer decided that he was going to import.
He was going to pick up Cubans from the airport. Not
cigars people. And he was going to have them roll cigars in his
apartment because he didn't want to pay for Cuban cigars.

(28:59):
And so his sort of wound
up in a weird kind of Animal Farm sort of thing
where he was the leader of these Cubans and he was taking them around town
to showing them around. And. And the.
What's her name? Elaine was dating a Marxist, one of those
academic Marxists who refused to name names,

(29:21):
whose father refused to name names. And so
he was very much. He was like snowball. He was very much into the revolution,
right? And I can't remember all the vicissitudes of the particular
episode listeners can find this episode. But somehow he wound up
talking to the Cubans. And then the Cubans rebelled
and they had no work. That was it. They had no work

(29:43):
because Kramer has no work in that apartment. And
Kramer went to Jerry and he said to him, you know, when there's a
revolution, you know who they come for first? El presidente.
Exactly. Exactly. And so.
And so Jerry was like, are we still talking about people? Are we talking about
cigars? Like, what are we talking about here?

(30:06):
And it was just one of those goofy things. But it. I don't know why
that suddenly unbidden came into. Well, because my brain is a
font of pop cult 90s pop culture. That's what it is.
And so that. That unbidden came to my. Came to my mind,
okay, so going back to high school for just a minute, I
was talking with a friend of mine who I roll. I roll Jiu Jitsu with.

(30:29):
This is my one obligatory Jiu Jitsu story per episode
here, who I rolling Jiu Jitsu with. And he was telling me, because he saw
me reading the book at the. At the Jiu Jitsu gym in preparation for this.
For this episode. And the first question he asked me is, are you actually
reading that book to teach other people or are you reading that book for yourself?
I said, I'm reading this book to give it to other folks. Right? And he

(30:51):
said, oh, that's interesting, because he Said, when I was 16, he went to a
military high school. When I was 16, we all rebelled against our
instructor because we couldn't see the point. And this is the whole point of the
story. We couldn't understand the point of the book. And he
was like 16 in like 2008, right? He's like, we
couldn't see the point of the book and he wouldn't explain it to

(31:12):
us. And so he just was just like, oh, you don't have to read it,
and just walked away from the book, right? And I said to him,
well, you know, this book is an allegory for Marxism and communism, right?
And like, things happening in the 1930s. And it's sort of a warning to watch
out for these kinds of things. And it's just all written with animals. And
he said to me, he said to me, we all couldn't figure out

(31:33):
why the animals were there and what the fairy tale was. And we were like,
this is, it was an all male military school. Say, this is garbage. We're throwing
this thing out. Like, we don't, we don't care. And he said, if they had
just explained to us that it was about Marxism, we probably would have been really
interested in that. And that's,
I think, one of the things that's

(31:54):
allowed this book to stick. So if you get people who actually know how
to teach it about the pursuit
of like, Marxist utopia, you can actually teach this
book. You can actually get people to accept it. I mean, my, my daughter read
it when she was in high school and she's in, she's in
college now, and my youngest

(32:17):
daughter is going to be reading it this year. She just turned 15, so she's
going to be reading it this year as part of her, part of her, her
reading curriculum for, for, for her education.
And I think it's important to get this book across to folks because we do
have many folks in the younger generation who are

(32:37):
attracted to the tenants of animalism.
They are, I mean, just in our time, just recently, I mean, we had
a Muslim out and out communist
win the primary race for New York City mayor.

(32:57):
Like, there's no way that the promises that that guy has made, whether we think
they're politically feasible or not, is another thing altogether. The nature of the way in
which he makes the promises are literally what the pigs say
in Animal Farm.
Literally the same promises, almost even the same language. And I would
laugh if it weren't so tragic. And there

(33:20):
are people who have gone to Columbia University who think that
this is a good idea. And they voted for him.
There is a failure somewhere in American high school education.
Well, I, I think, I think part of it. I think part of
it. And by the way, by the way, I don't care if you want it.
I don't care if you want it. Great. You want socialism, you want Marxism, fine,

(33:42):
cool. Vote for that. Vote for the guy who. Cool. But don't say we didn't
warn you because we educated you. Yeah, well. So I, I
had a recent conversation with my youngest son, who by the way is
going to turn 26 in, in about two weeks. So not young
young, but he's my youngest of the four sons, right? And.

(34:03):
It seems like every time he sees an article in the
news, left article, right. Article, doesn't matter. Just any
kind of article in the news that is like
somebody takes journalistic and integrity and throws it out the
window and just, you know, romanticizes this or, or
over exaggerates that or whatever, Right, sure, yeah.

(34:26):
And he reacts to it, like viscerally reacts
to it and I don't. And he always gets confused by why. Like,
aren't you reading this? Aren't you looking at this? Aren't you? And I said, yeah,
but I'm twice your age and been through a hell of a
lot more than you. I've seen this before. I've read this book before. Like,
what you're experiencing is not new to me. And I think that to your

(34:48):
point, like, I, when, when people talk to me about utopias and
socialism and all this stuff that they think is going to fix the world, and
I say, yeah, we've seen this story. Like, we've seen
this before. Like, we've seen this happen throughout history
over and over and over again, and not a lot changes. You know why? Because
if you take whatever the magic number is,

(35:11):
20 people, and you throw them in a compound and you call it a utopia
and they're all happy, probably, okay, you take 20,000,
probably not going to happen, right? Like, because there's always
leadership roles that take over. Like, people look to people for answers. People
and those that this is exactly what happens in Animal Farm. Nobody
knows what to do. So the pigs take over, right? Like, the pigs basically say

(35:34):
we're smarter than everybody else, so we're going to take over. And
initially seems like it's not the worst idea in the world until they
realize the hunger of the power and then they just
like dive into it head first, right? Like, oh yeah. Then all of a sudden
it's. It's power. Power. And, and we saw that happen
even, even back in the day in the communist, like, we saw the

(35:55):
world look at Russia and say, oh, this could potentially be a
decent thing, this communism thing, where everyone's considered equal, blah, blah,
blah. Well, guess what, folks? That didn't happen that way. Nope. Like,
it didn't end up that way. You know why? Because it doesn't work like it
does. It just doesn't. It doesn't work. So, so
like, so when it's really

(36:17):
hard for, like, okay, you're going to revolt, go for it. And who's
gonna take the lead in that revolt? Are you going to be the leader after?
Are you going to take charge? Or are you going to step down? Because now
you want to be equal with everybody else. I hate to tell
people, but as much as we want to, there. As much as
we. There are people out there that despise capitalism.

(36:38):
Right. And despise the way capitalism works. But if
it's, if it's. If you look at the two systems side by side
and you look at all of their theologies, sure, socialism
and all that, that looks better. It looks better on paper.
But in practicality, again, like I said, 20 people
on a farm, sure. 20,000 people in a small city,

(37:02):
probably not going to work. So, so anyway, like my whole point to that,
whole that into your body, like it's. How do
you, like, this is more of the same. Think about this. He wrote
about this in 1945. This book was published in 1945, by
the way. I don't know why that just popped into my head, but I remember
it was 1945. Go ahead. Yeah, go back and forth between 43 and 46 or

(37:24):
whatever. So book written in 1945, it.
And nothing has changed in 50 years. Like
60, I don't know, 60. It's been 60. 60, 60, 70, 80
years almost. Whatever. Right. Like 80 years almost. And, and we're now we're
still talking about trying to strive for that utopia and push
toward that equal everything. Like

(37:47):
there are things that should be equal regardless of race, creed, color,
whatever. Absolutely. Human rights. Sure.
You know things like being treated like a person. Yes, sure. Great. But
if I work harder than you and we make the same amount of money because
of it, like that's going to piss me off. Right? Like that's right. Like I'm
not gonna. Then one of the things is gonna happen, either I'm gonna work less

(38:09):
and you're gonna get mad at me because I'm working less now all of a
sudden, and we, we see this small Dynamics and in very
like blue collar environments like, like my, I spent
good portion of my early career in restaurants. You always
get that kid that's killing himself like really busting his ass and
somebody else not doing much. And as a leader, it's my responsibility not to part

(38:30):
punish the guy who's working his ass off and tell the guy who's not working
to go get, let's go move right and get going. Like, you know what I
mean? Like. Well, the fundamental, the fundamental problem that I've had
with, with ideas of,
let me use a modern term, equity is,

(38:51):
is there's, there's two fundamental things that are wrong underneath there
that are never addressed. The first thing is,
and I'm going to address it as a negative first, if you fundamentally
believe that a meritocracy is a rigged game,
you're just not competent enough to win that game.

(39:12):
And it may be that you're not competent enough because you didn't develop the skills,
you don't have the interest, you don't have the education. Your parents
never, never told you, you didn't have the right pedigree,
you didn't get the right degree, the right credentialing, whatever the
material reasons are. You think meritocracy is
a rigged, and I'm putting that in air quotes system because the

(39:34):
people with merit were competent enough to play that game and get to the top
of it and you weren't. I don't know
what to tell you. Pick a different game. There's mult. One of
the great things about the United States is we don't live in a country with
limited number of games to play. There are multiple
games to play. So if I want to play the, I

(39:55):
don't know, I'm going to pick up something random here. If I want to pick,
if I want to play the exterminator game, I can go
be an exterminator. It doesn't require a whole lot of education to be an exterminator.
And I'm spraying around chemicals and I could probably win that game.
I could probably become really competent at being an exterminator.
And yet maybe I don't want to win that game. And we

(40:19):
don't ever talk about that, by the way, out loud. We don't talk about the
idea that there are people with different temperaments and different ideas and different
interests. And we need enough freedom for everybody to explore
their interests without bumping into too much, into
barriers and whatever. And even inside the exterminator
game, there are people who never get past the spraying for

(40:39):
bugs around your house level. And then there are people that go all
the way to the top of the exterminator game and become multibillion dollar owners of
exterminator companies. Okay? And that's just one game.
One game. There's millions of games you could pick. And this is what we
don't tell kids. What we tell kids is you could be anything you want to
be. And what we really mean is you could pick any game you want to

(41:01):
play, but you have to be willing to get to the top of, or
work to get to the top of the middle or stay at the bottom of
whatever that game is. And that's on you. That's your decision. And my
job as a parent and jobs of family and community is
to prepare you to play whatever game you pick
in the best possible way you can play it. That's our job. So this is

(41:21):
the first thing that those utopian ideas ignore is it confuses
meritocracy with equal within, with
inequality. That's the first thing. And then the second
thing that all these systems, even capitalism does this, but not to
the egregious level that socialism and communism do.
And even fascism, which is a whole other conversation. I'll leave that aside for just

(41:43):
a minute because that's a term that's been over overused for the last 10
years. My God, you don't even wouldn't know what fascist was ever.
Walked up and slapped him in handcuffs. Oh
my God. It drives me crazy because words mean things.
But in, in these isms,
in these systems, the

(42:07):
fact of the matter is human
nature has to be taken into account. Right?
And the closer you get to the pursuit of utopia,
the less understanding your theory or ism has
about human nature. Agreed.

(42:27):
And so to Tom's point about restaurants, I
worked in restaurants for about a spit of a minute. Not as long as Tom,
because I couldn't handle it. I couldn't deal with the, I couldn't deal with the,
with the, with the serving of the people. I couldn't deal with the nastiness out
front. I couldn't deal with the low tips. I couldn't deal with the
people. The people in the back, actually, weirdly enough, were fine, probably if I never,

(42:48):
if I just stayed in the back, I would have been fine because like all
those guys were great. And I worked in like a Greek
restaurant, so it was like fabulous. And I got good Greek food and that's
the whole reason why I worked there. But I was only there for a spit
of A minute. And I was a dishwasher, too. So, like, I had the suckiest
job possible ever. Right? And this is like before automatic

(43:09):
dishwashers and all that. No, no, they do it by hand. And the old metal
thing that, like, rattled, and then you put it in there and you had to
hold it so it wouldn't rattle a hole. And when the things came out, they
were so hot you couldn't touch them. I still have no
feeling in my right finger and my left hand's fingertips. I. I
grabbed a pan out of the oven the other day without an oven mitt. My
kids thought it was nuts. And I was like, oh, I didn't realize I was

(43:30):
holding it. I didn't realize I was holding the hot pan.
No joke, people. I will tell you. I
was playing four different games at that time in my life, in my 20s, without
going to college. College was not one of the games. I was in four different
jobs in four different industries because I decided I wanted to play four different games.
And the restaurant game, I only played for, like, I think nine months.

(43:51):
And I was done. I was done with that game. I was there for
10 years. Right, right. So guess what? Tom has more
merit in that game and earned more money in that game than
I. And you know what? I'm not crying about it. I'm not trying to
make the outcomes between me and Tom the same on the restaurant
game. Right, but that. Yeah, but

(44:13):
okay, we. Again, we could probably have. I think we need to have like an
eight-hour, we do session where we can go really in deep with all
of this stuff because it really. It does blow my mind how, you
know, and again, by the way, I was never one of those people. I was
never one of those parents that looked at my kids and said, you can be
whatever you want to be. I never said that to. To them once. What I
did say, though, is if you. You. If you. You. If you

(44:36):
pick and choose your battles, right, and work your ass off, you can be
successful. That's basically the way I said it. You can be
successful at anything you choose. But you
have to define what success looks like, too. Right? You can't
define success based on what somebody else's definition is.
Correct. Right. Well, and I'm always. I'm always on my kids. My kids

(44:58):
would tell you this if any of them trotted through here. I'm always on them,
on the basics. I think there's just basics. So one
of the things in our household, you cannot be defeated by basic math. That's a
mantra in My house. Like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
Sorry, just. These are, these are table stakes. I'm currently
in a. And this. And that would dramatize it too much.

(45:20):
I'm currently in a ecumenical struggle with
my 8-year-old about independent reading. Because he's an 8-year-old and he doesn't
want to independently read. He's bored by it because it's not TV in his head,
right? And I, between my
wife and I were, we're. We're the hammer and sickle on this, right? And because
you can't be defeated by books. I mean, for God's sakes, I wrote a book

(45:41):
podcast. You can't be defeated by books, kid. Like, you can't. This is the
concrete, this is the foundation. Because if you don't have those
things, in my opinion, if you don't have basic reading skills
and comprehension, by the way, and you don't have basic math
skills, because two plus two is always four, no matter
how you feel about it, you will be defeated

(46:05):
in the world. And there will be systems and technologies and
people and processes that will push on you and that will try to
convince you of things and you will be easily fooled.
There's no room in the world, I don't think anymore for to go back to
the draw horses from Animal Farm for just a moment for boxers and
clovers. We just, we just don't have the room in the world for them anymore.

(46:28):
You know, be I will work harder is fine,
but you have to have something underneath to help you also work smarter.
And those are the two things. I always hated that phrase, work smarter, not harder.
I've always hated that phrase because I honestly, I've always felt
you should work smarter and harder. Like, you should not look for the

(46:49):
easy way out because if you do, in taking shortcuts in any facet of your
life, it doesn't even matter what it is, you're not getting the
results that you expect. I need to introduce you to some mechanics that I know
because they say that all the time. Every mechanic I know, every car
mechanic I know, every guy I've ever met is a car mechanic. He says
work harder and smarter. No, no, he's always, they're always. I went to, I went

(47:11):
to college with a whole ton of car mechanics
because the technical college that the, the state university supported was.
And they would live in the residence halls and the dorms and all that with
us. And so I was talking to these guys all the time and
they were always joking about working smarter, not harder. They
always were and these were,

(47:33):
weirdly enough, all those guys graduated and they all wanted to make
six figures within two years
leading the technical college. I wasn't surprised. I was like, oh well, looks
like I picked poorly in my degree.
That's fine, that's fine. Eventually I got my six figures. It's
fine. It all worked out in the end. Okay, Edible Farm,

(47:57):
let's close on this.
So, okay, last question here for leaders. And I think
we've kind of talked a little bit about what leaders can learn from, from this,
from a book like this, from, from a small book like this.

(48:18):
And obviously I would encourage you to pick up animal farm. It's 125 pages. You
can read it to your kids. There's nothing offensive in it. I mean
the psychological horror of it is probably,
probably more, more interesting than anything else. So your kids won't
pick up on it. So you can listen to it in the car. Oh, by
the way, Andy Serkis, the guy who played Gollum in

(48:39):
Lord of the Rings and has done a bunch of other different roles in movies,
directed an Animal Farm movie that is now out.
And by the way, the first Animal Farm movie, just so you know, this is
an interesting piece of trivia that I found when, when
putting this together. The first Animal Farm movie
was made in 1954 and it was commissioned by the CIA

(49:02):
as an anti communist animated film
or. Well, would have watched that one, but. I didn't know it existed. I thought
it was interesting. Did you see the 1999 one that was done
with Kelsey Grammar? Patrick Stewart was in
it. Like, yeah, I didn't know that existed. Yeah, 1999, there
was another one that I, I watched. It was a little different. They did it,

(49:24):
you know, they took some liberties with it, but it makes the point. It
still makes the point. I'm curious now about the new one that just came out
though, because I'm curious to see how that one came out. I didn't see it
yet, but I, I will watch it, just so you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I put, I do have a link in the show
notes to the CIA 1954 version, which you can

(49:45):
get on YouTube. So if you want to see what the Central Intelligence
Agency was trying to do back in the day, you might want to check that
out or. Well, by the way, long since passed away by that point and his
widow went ahead and worked with the CIA on that.
Anyway, so final thoughts on Animal Farm. What can leaders take
from, from this book? We only covered, we barely covered a piece of it, but

(50:06):
it's a short book. So what can leaders take from this book? Tom?
I, I, I think that I'm going to make this really simple. Really, really simple.
Just don't let power go to your head. Just because you are the owner of
a company, just because you are the leader, the quote unquote leader, doesn't mean you
can act like Napoleon the pig.
Because, I mean, let's face it, he was just not a nice pig.

(50:30):
He, he ran Snowball right out of town. Right out of town. Yeah. He
declared him an enemy of the state. Not in those words, but, you know, whatever.
An enemy of the farm. And then eventually, of course, well, anyway,
it doesn't matter, bro. Workers into the ground killed Boxer.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, just don't, just don't be that person.
Like I said, like we talked about earlier in the episode here, just, you

(50:53):
know, listen again. I'll use the restaurant industry as a, as an example. When I
was, I was a general manager of a restaurant, I ran a restaurant with 65
people that worked for me. And there was never a day that I wouldn't
pick up a mop and mop the floor or pick up a broom and sweep
the floor, clean, whatever needed to be cleaned. I would
help Hasan do those dishes if it needed to be done because I never

(51:15):
wanted the employees to say anything that I,
I wanted to be able to look somebody in the eye and honestly be able
to say I would do it myself if I had the time, but could
you do me a favor and go wipe that up or clean that up or
mop that up. And they, they knew it for a fact. Like,
they knew it for a fact because they saw me do it. Right? So, and

(51:37):
I'm not suggesting if you own the company, you have to go scrub toilets like,
you know, the micro, you know, you don't have to be Mike row and go
do dirty jobs. I get that you've worked your way up to owning your
company and go do that, but that also doesn't mean need. It
also means that you don't need to be Napoleon. Napoleon the pig.
There you go. Not Napoleon Bonaparte. Well,

(51:58):
yeah, not Napoleon Bonaparte.
All right, well, I think that's a good space to stop. So
thank you for listening to the leadership lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with
that, well, we're out.

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