Learning from the Great Ancients ｜ SCOTT HAMBRICK
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Summary
We all have access to the world s greatest minds, philosophies, experiments, and ideas. And all it takes for us to tap into these is to crack open what my guest refers to as a great book and unlock the lost thoughts, ideas, and secrets to a successful life. Today I am joined by Scott Hambrick, founder of Online Great Books, to talk about how to best tap into the great ancient works, how to extract the most value from them, and where to start when learning about ancient literature and philosophy.
Transcript
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We all have access to the world's greatest minds, philosophies, experiments, and ideas,
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and all it takes for us to tap into these is to crack open what my guest refers to
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as a great book and unlock the lost thoughts, ideas, and secrets to a successful life.
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Today, I am joined by Scott Hambrick, founder of Online Great Books, to talk about how to best tap
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into these great ancient works, how to extract the most value from them, where to start when
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learning about ancient literature and philosophy, the benefits, of course, of reading the classics,
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and what you can learn from the great ancients.
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Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
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When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
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At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder of this movement and this podcast,
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Man, I've gotten so many great messages from you guys over the past several weeks on the
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I've got a really interesting one and a conversation that, frankly, we just haven't talked about,
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which is tapping into ancient literature and the great minds of the past.
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So I think you guys are going to enjoy this one.
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I really want to do a better job of just jumping right into the meat of the discussion.
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So we'll get to that here in just a second, because I do want to make a quick mention
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So do that after the show though, because for now I've got a great one lined up for you.
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I've known him for not too long, but I have been familiar with his work.
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And I know a lot of you guys who listen to this are familiar with the starting strength
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So we may have to do another podcast down the road.
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Today we cover the other side, the philosophical side of things.
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You're going to hear that from our conversation together today.
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He's also a practitioner of the Socratic method.
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You're going to hear him talk about that as well.
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And actually take me through a little bit of that during this conversation.
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So guys, I think you're going to enjoy this one.
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And Scott's goal with Online Great Books is to introduce tens of thousands of people
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And being on this podcast is definitely a start towards that mission.
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And you're going to want to pick up some books after listening to this conversation as well.
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I'm always so flattered that people will let me take part in their platform and talk to their
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It's amazing what's happened with all this technology.
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I've been listening to podcasts and doing them now for years and years.
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I mean, we've only been going for three and a half years now.
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And if you would have told me four or five years ago, this is what I would be doing for
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a living, talking to people via Skype, I would not have believed you.
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And in fact, it's funny because sometimes I'll run into somebody who doesn't know what I'm
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And I don't really know how to answer that question because I'm not crystal clear on what
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But I'll say something along the lines of, you know, I have a podcast and I teach men
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And it's pretty amazing what we've been able to create using the technology that we have
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It's like AM talk radio used to be, except now we can niche down and speak directly to
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the people that care about the things we care about, you know?
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You would have had, I would have had to have written a letter to you and we would have had
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this long drawn out correspondence back and forth and then maybe got to meet up in some
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town somewhere and got to know each other and we can just, you know, snap our fingers
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Well, and not only wrote a letter to me, but wrote a letter to some sort of gatekeeper
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that would have allowed you access to the few individuals who have the voice, right?
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I think there's power in, in having a voice and being able to share it.
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And I think that obviously stretches throughout time and eternity, which is actually the subject
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And that's being able to tap into some of the greatest minds the world has ever known,
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which is through these, uh, these classical books that we have access to in the teachings
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Well, shameless plug, I own this website, online great books.com.
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And I created this thing to help people work their way through the Western canon to help
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them read and learn from the greatest teachers that ever lived and better themselves every
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day through the teachings of people like Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Shakespeare.
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I've found, cause I tried for a long time and I think we found a good way to help people do
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that in a community and help each other stay accountable and provide a sounding board for
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And I'll be the first to admit when you reached out and we connected about getting together
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to do this podcast, I thought it would be good, but I thought it would be significantly
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more valuable for me than probably a lot of guys listening because I will be and readily admit
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that I have not studied a lot of the great historical literature.
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And to that, I think part of the reason that is, is because busyness, right?
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We get busy with so much that we have going on.
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I think the understanding of how these great men and teachers spoke and used language is lost
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And although I recognize value in it, it just becomes increasingly difficult in a world where
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there's so much more that demands my attention.
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I always wanted to do this, you know, gosh, since I was maybe 14, 15 years old, I, you know,
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I really wanted to read Plato and I wanted to know when people talk about Plato, I wanted
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So I would, I dove into the Republic and tried to read it, failed.
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And for the next 30 years, I kept digging into these books and failing.
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And then finally I found the great books program.
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And I learned that if you approach them in the right way and in the right order, they
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And if you do that in a community, it's actually doable up until maybe the 1830s.
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You would read some Plato, you would read some Aristotle, you would read some moral works
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You would learn Latin probably to read those things and you might read some Shakespeare
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in the Bible and some Euclid and then you were done.
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And if you approach reading this canon and learning from these people in the right way,
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So you can kind of stick your toe in the shallow end and then wade into these works.
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And pretty soon, you know, you've read Homer and you've read Herodotus and you've read
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And then when you get to Aristotle, he makes sense.
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But if you just go pick up a volume of Aristotle at the used bookstore and crack that thing
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I had to do this for years and years on my own, started a group in my home with Brett
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And then we started reading these books together.
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We've read like 13,000 pages and it's one of the most important things in my life outside
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What do you feel has been the value and the benefit for you specifically?
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Well, the community, there's a great conversation that takes place and it takes place between
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And then also when you discuss these in a Socratic seminar, you have a conversation with these
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other people either online in your seminar or in your living room.
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And the community that develops there, it's almost like going to like group therapy.
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If you read Plato and you read Plato's The Meno and he talks about what is virtue.
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So if everybody in this group has an honest conversation about virtue, it's actually very,
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You learn a great deal about that person way more than you would ever learn when they were
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talking about the big game on Sunday or whatever, you know, BS that, you know, comprises
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small talk, the community with those men has become very, very important to me.
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And then these authors are almost like my uncle now, you know, it's like Uncle Socrates.
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I read these people and they share what they knew with me and they sacrificed a great deal
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As I read these books, I often like I cry all the time.
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I tear up because you think about how they had to write them.
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Like Plato, when he was writing his dialogues, writing materials were terrible.
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I mean, you know, you wrote thousands and thousands of words laboriously and then monks
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and other people have copied these things by hand for thousands of years so I could get
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And there's the weight of history just weighs on me.
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I think there's probably a level of scrutiny then as well that authors don't nearly receive
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I mean, I imagine that they're getting criticized, that they're potentially risking physical harm
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to themselves, their family, and potentially even death in some of these writings.
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I need to copy some books so my grandkids can have them.
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You're going to start with the important stuff.
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So you get the Plato, you get the Aristotle, right?
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So just the sheer labor involved makes sure that we only got the best from thousands of years
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And then, like you said, these people were under threat of death in some cases, you know, and
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they probably hid these books and they're under their floorboards and in their attics
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and took a great deal of risk sometimes to make sure their grandkids and their progeny
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So when I read, I mean, I think I'm nostalgic and soft maybe, but I think I have a duty to
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And now that I've started on MyGreatBooks.com, man, I've got to read a lot closer because I've
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got a bunch of smarties reading behind me, you know?
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That level of accountability and giving you a push is important.
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And I also think it's important that you guys are having these discussions because I think
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more and more through the age of technology and social media, that long form discussions
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like you're talking about here are few and far between.
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But these are the types of discussions that will foster growth in ourselves and produce
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some new perspectives that might help solve some of the biggest problems that we address
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We want people to be able to talk about the things that are important to us and divide us.
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These discussions that are about very, very important topics, but we're removed from
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When we can talk about what justice is in terms of a Socratic dialogue that Plato wrote, we
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can talk about justice and get some distance from it.
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And we don't get in an argument maybe about social justice warriors, right?
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We can talk about this with some degree of removal from it.
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And it teaches us to speak beautifully about these things.
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That's the three classical liberal arts, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
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Traditionally, people were educated with a liberal arts education.
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And loosely, grammar is just the bones of a subject.
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You know, the special words you use in certain trades, maybe, like the jargon.
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The logic is how all of these pieces are assembled.
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And then rhetoric is how to speak convincingly or beautifully about that subject.
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You know, you don't really learn something until you teach somebody else.
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So when we read these books the first time, we're kind of getting the grammar of the issues.
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And we start to understand the logic of what maybe Aristotle is saying about ethics.
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And then when we go to the group and we have to speak convincingly and beautifully about it,
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that's when we actually can help teach somebody else about what we read.
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And that's when we really learn about what we just read.
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That's when we put into action that which we just read.
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Having that discussion makes our reading comprehension just skyrocket.
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There are books that I've read that I haven't had discussions about.
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And then there are difficult books that I've read that I did have the discussion.
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And the ones I discussed are the ones that own me and I own as well.
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The component of logic is so important because that to me seems like a very dying skill set to have.
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It's amazing to me how often an individual can say something.
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And it can be so misconstrued and picked apart and looking for every little exception.
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And people think they're talking about them when it has nothing to do with them.
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And people are not exercising any sort of logic.
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They're not incorporating any sort of context in the conversations that we're having.
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And I think it's creating some real problems in conversation.
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When you and I are talking about logic, if we both don't understand what logic is in a common way, we can't talk about it.
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So when we read Plato, more about logic here, when we read Plato, Socrates is his main character.
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Well, somebody would come up to him and say, hey, Socrates, do you think that virtue can be taught?
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And then he would immediately just say, hey, King's X here.
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So anything that anybody ever brought to him, he made them drill down, drill down to their axioms.
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He made them declare what they believed at the core of the subject before they would build on that.
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But when you read these great books, and they all learn from Plato, Whitehead said that all of history is but a footnote to Plato.
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So when you read a blog post, you hear some stuff on the news or whatever, he trains us to pick apart what we're being told and what we're hearing and take it down to its most basic pieces and then reassemble it in our mind.
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That's what the trivium teaches us to do so we can understand what the other person is saying.
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I mean, there's a lot of talking heads and little talking points that we articulate that we don't even truly understand or believe.
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Reading these tough books by these really smart people, which often contradict each other, by the way.
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So Plato comes up with his idea of what truth is and how you make truth claims.
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And then Aristotle throws it all out and rebuilds it.
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But when you read that stuff and you see these guys fighting it out over the millennia, it installs a heavy-duty BS detector in your own mind because you see the greatest just going head-to-head in this arena of ideas.
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I imagine these guys, not only do they contradict each other, but I imagine they also at times contradict themselves because they are so willing to explore their own belief system.
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There seems to be kind of an early, mid, and late Plato.
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And it's a utopian exploration of what he thinks or what Socrates thought that government maybe should be.
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And there are some people that say it's actually satire and it's all a big joke.
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And he describes this totalitarian regime where scoop all the kids up and raise them in common somewhere, take them away from their parents.
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But then later he writes about his laws, and he contradicts almost everything that he wrote in The Republic.
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So you also get to see him fight it out with himself.
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I've probably read it five times, probably three of those times I didn't think it was satire, and twice I did.
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So I'm going to have to read it two more and see what I think.
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And I think it's indicative of a great thinker and a virtuous individual who's willing to examine what they've previously held.
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I think so many people, and I've been guilty of this, I'm sure you have as well, and everybody listening, is that we double down when we feel threatened.
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Right, and so rather than explore the idea that maybe we're wrong, we double down on it and actually compound the problem.
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Yeah, our experience of ourselves seems to be the experience of the content of our mind.
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Your thoughts are your experience of being Ryan.
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And when you find out that your thoughts might be wrong, it's like an existential threat.
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You feel like you're going to get annihilated because all of that which you identified as yourself, all these things that you thought you believed and held to be valuable, might be wrong.
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So these guys, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, when you read them carefully and you fight it out with them in your head, they let us be a lot more comfortable with ambiguity in our own thought.
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They let us be a lot more comfortable with changing our minds.
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And they let us be a lot more comfortable with being wrong.
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And going to a discussion group about this and butting heads with some other people really helps that.
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I mean, because you've really got to flush out and you've got to know your stuff.
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Otherwise, you're going to get completely destroyed, essentially.
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So you've got to really know what it is you believe and be able to back that up, verify it.
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Every great books discussion group I've ever been to was kind and gracious and everybody's there on equal footing.
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But, you know, if you say something wrong and somebody says, hey, wait a minute, what do you mean by that?
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And when you can't, your ass is just hanging out.
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But through going through that, I think we become much more rigorous and much more vigorous thinkers.
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Well, I think there's two outcomes that come from this idea.
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The first outcome is that you solidify your position and you're more convicted in that.
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The second outcome is that you have exposed yourself to something you didn't previously consider.
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And now you have more information to make a more informed decision, which is also a win.
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I don't think if you're respectful and you're coming at it from the right place that you can lose in a situation like this.
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Let's say you read The Republic again and you learn something about what your theory of government is, like what you think government should do and what's proper for government.
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And later on, you go read Aristotle's Politics and he changes your mind.
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It's actually easier to change your mind because you know what you thought before.
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You know why you believe the things you believe.
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And so if Aristotle breaks one of those things that you used to build your opinion, it's actually easier to change your mind later.
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If you put a stake in the ground here, it's easier to figure out where there is.
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And I imagine, too, and I don't know how to quite articulate this, but is it best to detach yourself from your thoughts in a way like you don't necessarily identify with your current beliefs?
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I hope you understand what I mean and the question I'm asking.
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I think that there's almost something Eastern about it, you know, Buddhist about it.
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We start to say, well, this is what I think now.
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My best effort has gotten me here, and this is what I think for now.
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After being proven wrong several times at surviving it, we're able to experience ourself as something separate from opinion.
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It didn't wreck your universe that you were – it's like the quote, one of my favorite quotes is, never let me fall into the vulgar trap of believing that I'm persecuted each time I'm contradicted.
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Socrates said the only thing that he knew is that he didn't know anything.
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I think that's the central teaching of Plato and Socrates is that you probably just really don't know, and that's okay, and that's okay.
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Are there certain people that – I'm sure everybody can develop this skill to an extent, but I imagine also that there's certain people that either can't or don't want to or don't have the capacity or figure that the information they have is enough.
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Like I don't know if this takes a special philosophical mind to be able to engage in these types of conversations, discussions, and readings.
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I would love to – it's what you believe right now, right?
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What I believe right now is that these books, the great books – maybe we should talk later about what great books means – have something in them for everyone.
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And if you come to them in a generous way, you know, where you think that they have something to offer and you're going to hold judgment on it until you understand what the guy is saying, I think anyone can benefit.
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I think a sharp 13-year-old kid can read The Republic and enjoy it and kind of start to navigate the vocabulary – remember the grammar logic and rhetoric – sort of the vocabulary, the grammar of theory of government.
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Is he going to get the same thing out of it that somebody that's 63 years old and an attorney who has been in the criminal courts for decades was to get out of it?
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But these books are so good that they tend to meet everyone where they are.
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If you're willing to work on it, there's something in it for you.
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And if you read the Iliad, it could be just an action adventure or it could be about duty.
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It could be about marriage and duty to the state versus the family.
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There's so many themes in it that there's something in it for everybody.
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And based on where you are and your level of maturity and your current perspective, you're going to take something else out of it that another person might not.
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We have a gentleman who's in his 80s that one of my great books and the first book that we read is the Iliad.
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Paris and Hector are some of the main characters, some of the main Trojans.
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And then Hector is their most powerful soldier.
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And their father, their father mourns these kids.
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Priam mourns, you know, what's befalling his city and his children and his progeny.
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And I'd never really thought about what Priam has to say in this book.
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And this 80-year-old gentleman, I think he's 83, was talking about all of that sort of end-of-life stuff.
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This thought, this stuff about your children, your grandchildren, your legacy, concerns for civilization.
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You know, so this older gentleman, and we get discussed, we had a discussion, right?
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We all come into this chat room and we all have this discussion about it.
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And I'd never thought of that before because that's not where I am yet.
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You know, we were just all in tears before he was done talking about it.
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Yeah, I could definitely see how that would change based on where you are.
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I mean, I think about my own life, you know, being a father, for example, my perspective on being a child has changed and what's significant and what's important just based on where I currently am.
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In book six of the Iliad, Hector goes back to his apartments where his wife, Andromaca, and his son are.
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And his son's a baby, not even crawling around yet, I don't think.
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And she says, don't go back out there and fight.
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And it's about his job and what he thinks his job is, what she thinks his job is.
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Her name's Andromaca, which means man fighter, by the way.
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The Greeks kill the baby and throw him over the wall.
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It's not in the Iliad, but later on you get to read of that and some of these other works.
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But I think it has to be in a way too, because that's how we learn, right?
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We learn through the realities as gruesome and difficult as they are to bear at times.
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I mean, it's the same reason that I teach my kids about difficult things that they may run
00:25:52.080
across, whether that's the potential for kidnapping or finding themselves in a violent situation.
00:25:56.260
I don't want them to be exposed to that stuff, but they need them to be exposed to it
00:26:02.120
If you can expose your kids to some of these ideas about proper use of violence and how
00:26:08.440
In a book, that's a whole lot better than getting stabbed somewhere to learn those lessons.
00:26:13.880
You don't want to learn that lesson the hard way.
00:26:16.880
That story there in book six of the Iliad about the husband and the wife and the baby
00:26:21.200
It's so important because now we can conduct war like a video game.
00:26:25.160
We can have these drone strikes and we're much more removed from it than those men were.
00:26:30.800
If young people can read about the heartache involved, I think all of society will benefit
00:26:35.820
if people have a deeper understanding of how it seems like it's a given that it's super
00:26:43.600
Yeah, unless you've experienced that intimate side of it, it would be very difficult for
00:26:49.340
And I think it allows us to tap more into our humanity when it comes to the way that
00:26:53.140
I believe we show up as men, which is to serve and at times to be violent, but also to be
00:26:58.140
empathetic and to be kind and lead with sacrifice and honor and commitment and all of these virtues
00:27:10.460
Don't be pulling the Socratic method out on me now here.
00:27:12.580
Don't put me on the spot because I imagine, you know what, that's actually pretty challenging.
00:27:17.640
For me, if I were to define what virtue is, it would be a, hmm, how would I define that?
00:27:24.720
A generally looked at positive characteristic or quality that produces moral outcomes.
00:27:36.940
Like what's our measuring stick that we would get?
00:27:40.920
I would think that ultimately would determine that, you know, I have to, for example, for
00:27:46.260
my family, since I am at the head of my family to determine a positive outcome, I'm solely
00:27:51.700
I guess I would say in collaboration and partnership with my wife for humanity, I think it's got to
00:28:06.840
Do we have one for like, that pertains to the family and then one that pertains to the
00:28:15.040
Well, the way I would answer that is I would say that our individual virtues generally will
00:28:22.060
be indicative of society's virtues, which is why I think in the US and I'm sure throughout
00:28:28.140
the world as well as, you know, talk about morality, for example.
00:28:36.940
Therefore, society's morality has declined in proportion to that.
00:28:48.880
We use the word society to make it easy to talk about large groups of people.
00:28:53.820
And I've been guilty of using it like a blanket term without really defining what it is I'm
00:28:57.820
Oh, it's really the only way we can talk about big groups of people.
00:29:01.500
You know, we can say hordes or crowds or whatever.
00:29:07.880
So you would say that then the morality of the society is aggregated from individual
00:29:16.040
I can see just going through those last couple of questions that this would be a very intimidating
00:29:21.880
Very intimidating, very challenging, but also very enlightening.
00:29:26.960
I actually experienced this as I wrote my book.
00:29:29.920
There was some statements and some thoughts that I had articulated through social media,
00:29:38.340
And then as I started to write these things down, I had to ask myself, do I really believe
00:29:45.240
Because now instead of just throwing a statement out, I have to actually back it up.
00:29:50.860
You know, when you have to convey to another consciousness of those things that you're thinking,
00:29:57.560
That's the piece that's so often missing in, you know, individual study, you know?
00:30:02.780
And so when you write like you did, man, you know, it just makes you step your game up.
00:30:07.440
Or if you go, you know, speak to other people that care about the same things or, well,
00:30:11.340
or even worse or even more difficult, care about different things.
00:30:14.940
And, you know, it makes us really tighten our game up.
00:30:21.540
Yeah, it really is because people are asking you to start working out your own issues.
00:30:28.480
It's a lot of fun, you know, getting to see how other people think, sharing your thoughts
00:30:35.020
You know, if there's a troll in there, we'll kick them out.
00:30:41.300
So, you know, we want to make sure that people, I mean, that it's truly a safe space.
00:30:44.600
It's a place where you can go screw up a whole bunch.
00:30:47.340
There aren't really very many places like that.
00:30:50.240
You know, as a dad, you can't screw up much because their stakes are high.
00:30:57.560
But, you know, you go to seminar and you got some ideas.
00:31:05.900
And then people commence to help you clean it up.
00:31:10.340
You get to know how people work and how they think.
00:31:14.460
You know, I imagine to your point about trolls, I imagine one of the reasons that you don't
00:31:19.860
get these trolls is because it requires effort.
00:31:24.160
It requires critical thinking and it requires somebody to exert themselves.
00:31:28.000
And that's not typically what a troll is willing to do.
00:31:30.320
They take quick shots, easy jabs, but they aren't willing to engage intellectually, which
00:31:35.540
I think the barrier for an intellectual discussion keeps the trolls at bay.
00:31:39.340
You know, I don't know that these conversations are actually that intellectual, but they got to
00:31:43.460
You really have to say the things that you think.
00:31:48.660
You know, if some troll comes to one of these seminars and says, LOL, whatever, dude, the
00:31:53.040
whole room gets quiet and says, hey, what do you mean?
00:32:01.180
Is there ground rules that you have in these types of discussions, whether it's a seminar
00:32:04.880
that you're leading or even if you're doing it online, is there ground rules and rules,
00:32:10.580
guidelines that you have in place to facilitate these discussions?
00:32:13.460
The first one was to always want them to be fun.
00:32:15.320
And then beyond that, we don't ever talk about any living political figures or current events.
00:32:20.040
So we wouldn't talk about, you know, Trump, but we might talk about Churchill or Napoleon
00:32:28.180
I have not even slightly considered that, but I could see how that would be valuable.
00:32:36.320
We don't want anybody being the devil's advocate for sport.
00:32:39.180
You know, if you're being the devil's advocate, there's actually probably somebody in the seminar
00:32:42.780
can actually play that role in an authentic way.
00:32:46.600
That doesn't have to pretend to be the devil's advocate.
00:32:49.780
There's somebody in there that just disagrees wholeheartedly.
00:32:52.200
And so that leads me to the next rule, which is if you disagree, you need to go first.
00:32:57.900
Because that takes a look at if you're at a seminar and let's just assume we'll just
00:33:02.860
If you're 80% of the seminar believes one way and you're among the 20% who believe something
00:33:06.960
different, that takes a lot of courage to stand up and say, no, no, no, no.
00:33:14.700
The way we try to do it is we try to, as a seminar host, as somebody that's kind of
00:33:19.200
facilitating that conversation, we want to role model this honest inquiry.
00:33:25.900
And we want to bring up the things to the group that we don't agree with.
00:33:30.800
And the things, we want to bring up the things to the group that we don't understand about
00:33:34.600
We try to be the first among equals and show the shared inquiry model.
00:33:42.040
So even though I might've read The Republic several more times than you have, I would
00:33:45.940
never want to teach about it or tell you what I think about the thing unless you ask
00:33:50.220
But I'll darn sure ask the questions that bug me about the thing.
00:33:56.140
And you found that that gives them permission then to go ahead and do the same thing.
00:34:00.800
So the thing that bugs me is probably the thing that bugged you too.
00:34:04.400
You know, so we can often kind of flip that rock over.
00:34:06.960
I've actually thought about this with, with music.
00:34:09.380
I was listening to some music the other day and I can't even remember the song, but I
00:34:14.460
I'm like, well, other people think this is a good song as well, but we didn't collaborate
00:34:17.880
on deciding that this was going to be the song.
00:34:21.900
And everybody collectively, or the majority, I will say likes the song.
00:34:26.420
It's just interesting that we don't need to collaborate on what we believe.
00:34:30.540
I just think there's a large percentage of people who, like you said, this is what bothers
00:34:39.120
They can't even articulate why it's just something that resonates with them or doesn't resonate.
00:34:49.920
That's an interesting one because they're just the band that everybody loves to hate.
00:34:53.640
People like their music, but nobody wants to admit that they like their music because
00:34:58.080
it's cooler to say, I don't like their music than it is to say, I do.
00:35:04.520
That Nickelback has been kind of fun to kick around for, I don't know, 15 years now.
00:35:14.240
I do want to address the Socratic method and Socratic seminar, I believe you called it.
00:35:19.940
The way that I understand it is that you're encouraging and fostering discussion through
00:35:26.080
the asking of questions, but I'm sure that you can elaborate more on that.
00:35:31.360
We read Plato and particularly these kind of early dialogues like Domino, Socrates is
00:35:38.140
asking these questions and he really exposes the big questions of philosophy, like what
00:35:51.440
He kicked all the dirt off of the big questions in those early dialogues and we get to see
00:35:55.920
him role model how to honestly pursue those questions.
00:35:59.240
And, you know, in the last about 120, 130 years or something like that, the Socratic method
00:36:05.100
has kind of picked up again and a lot of law schools use it and we use it and we don't
00:36:14.600
Like if you read Socrates in those early platonic dialogues, man, he just wears people out.
00:36:23.740
Actually, we use sort of elements from that method and we do what we call shared inquiry.
00:36:29.280
We're there in it with you and we're all seeking answers together.
00:36:33.820
So we try to make it more collaborative than maybe Socrates would because, and he'd just
00:36:39.340
In the Mino, one of his, I don't know, conversation partners says he's like a stingray, you know,
00:36:43.980
that he just like, he stung him and he's just, he's just numb after dealing with Socrates.
00:36:50.480
You would go down to the marketplace and try to buy some figs or something.
00:36:53.240
He'd just jump on you and just berate you about what virtue was, you know, just trying
00:37:00.420
Gentlemen, just a quick pause and an interruption in our conversation.
00:37:03.740
By now you've probably heard of our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council, but I thought
00:37:08.280
I'd share with you what we are addressing as the topic of this month for December, 2018.
00:37:16.200
Now it seems to me, and I think you would agree that we live in a society that is becoming
00:37:22.580
I would say overly emotional and at times unnecessarily outraged.
00:37:28.180
It's our goal inside the Iron Council this month to give you and the rest of the men, all
00:37:32.500
the tools, guidance, direction, accountability to understand your emotions.
00:37:37.540
And it's not so you can express them unnecessarily, but so you can harness them, harness your emotions
00:37:43.200
to produce a better results in your career with your wife and children and in your life
00:37:48.820
You're going to get assignments, weekly challenges, weekly conversations.
00:37:52.300
All of them, again, are designed to equip you with everything that you need to understand
00:37:55.900
and utilize your emotions for productive outcomes for you and those you have a responsibility
00:38:01.940
So guys band with us band with the 450 plus men in the Iron Council this month, tap into
00:38:07.580
this month's topic, fostering emotional resiliency.
00:38:10.360
And of course, you're also going to be able to tap into our library of past topics, conversations
00:38:14.920
and guest Q and a sessions, head over to order of man.com slash iron council.
00:38:20.500
Again, that's order of man.com slash iron council.
00:38:22.940
You can learn a little bit more and you can lock in your spot.
00:38:26.540
Do that after the show until then we'll get back to and finish my conversation with Scott.
00:38:32.500
So one of the things that you had just mentioned with Socrates is he asked about language.
00:38:37.920
And my knee jerk reaction is what does it matter?
00:38:42.100
Now let's focus on something more significant that actually is going to help us move the
00:38:46.080
And so I've, I've had this disconnect between philosophy and application.
00:38:51.160
I don't know if you've ever experienced that or how you bridge that gap for yourself.
00:38:55.280
You know, when you're ordering coffee or something like that, you know, does it really matter?
00:38:58.900
As long as the coffee comes, you know, that you ordered comes in correctly.
00:39:02.980
But then you say, how did they know those thoughts that I had?
00:39:06.040
You know, how was I able to transmit, you know, these wishes in my consciousness to theirs
00:39:09.440
so that they could then prepare the coffee I wanted?
00:39:15.100
And I'm no expert in this, but questions about language is where postmodernism has come from.
00:39:21.080
Some people in the kind of in the beginning half of the 20th century were reading some
00:39:25.560
books and trying to figure out what the heck they meant.
00:39:27.960
And, you know, two people can make an honest effort to get to the bottom of a message that
00:39:34.040
someone writes in a book and come up with two different answers.
00:39:36.540
So they start to say, hmm, what can we really know?
00:39:40.740
If I can print out two copies of something, two identical copies, you take one, I take one,
00:39:45.560
and then we come back together a week later and try to say in our own words what that meant.
00:39:51.680
And they say, well, you know, maybe truth is relative.
00:39:59.120
Then the interpretation that you make of that reading is colored by your socioeconomic background
00:40:07.140
So a theory of language has big consequences for how you make truth claims later down the line.
00:40:14.540
It doesn't mean much to us when we're ordering dinner, like I said, at a restaurant or something.
00:40:18.380
But when you start to try to make truth claims and try to communicate with other people,
00:40:24.060
And postmodernism comes from what I understand.
00:40:28.420
My understanding, I'm not a big scholar of postmodernists,
00:40:31.140
but from what I understand, it comes out of these peculiarities about language.
00:40:37.360
So basically what you're saying is understanding, in this case,
00:40:40.760
understanding language essentially just helps you become a better communicator.
00:40:45.100
Well, it does help you become a better communicator,
00:40:47.460
but it also has big consequences for what you see as something that is true
00:40:57.700
We all know that people have different perspectives.
00:41:00.880
So what is the value in knowing that people view truth differently?
00:41:08.420
I mean, I think it's valuable to know that people view it differently
00:41:11.700
so that we can have some sort of compassion for them
00:41:15.100
when we're trying to make our point with them and they don't get it.
00:41:17.720
Or maybe we try to make our point and we say they don't get it.
00:41:21.780
But in truth, they got something entirely different.
00:41:31.200
They've taken it to the point that they're not really sure that you can say anything that's true.
00:41:41.960
But their philosophy starts with theories about communication.
00:41:47.600
But you can see that how you write things down and then how people decode those
00:41:52.520
has big consequences for what you might think is true or not.
00:41:56.200
And so what I'm saying is, again, in this context is like,
00:42:01.680
assume that nothing anybody can say is absolute truth.
00:42:11.620
We already know that people see things differently.
00:42:17.240
whether it's with another individual or ourselves,
00:42:22.040
Well, if we're talking about things that are important,
00:42:25.500
not just, you know, whether we say hold the mayo on the hamburger or not.
00:42:29.500
If we're talking about those things that matter,
00:42:31.180
I think it's important that you know what you think the end goal is.
00:42:36.220
And for me, the end goal is actually discovering some absolute truth.
00:42:40.060
I think that we can get closer and closer and closer to the absolute truth.
00:42:47.440
and we have to use language to express these things,
00:42:52.020
But I think we can get closer and closer and closer to it.
00:43:00.320
like the language and the logic and how it's all organized
00:43:12.560
Because there's some other stuff we can't nail too,
00:43:17.440
Do you think that or do you think it's just something
00:43:21.840
I think that it's convenient for people to say that there's no truth.
00:43:43.360
or can't articulate what it is we're experiencing.
00:44:04.780
I'm a Christian and have to exercise faith in that
00:44:07.920
because there's a lot of things about what I believe
00:44:12.440
To me, I don't see that as evidence that it doesn't exist.
00:44:16.160
I just see it as something that has not been explained yet.
00:44:20.860
And maybe it will never be explained until after this life.
00:44:27.720
Is it okay to say something isn't true for an ultimate good?
00:44:35.560
It's possible that maybe in certain spiritual systems,
00:44:50.920
but believing those things is so helpful to people
00:45:05.040
over the past month or so within our organization here,
00:45:11.640
I have decided to incorporate a specific code in my conduct
00:45:50.220
our businesses are sort of outpourings of who we are.
00:45:56.060
It's fascinating when you talk about with spirituality
00:46:22.520
But it kept the kids from sneaking out at night