Ep 417 ｜ The Self & The Sexual Revolution ｜ Guest： Dr. Carl Trueman
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Summary
Dr. Carl Truman is a biblical and religious studies professor at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania. He recently wrote a book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which outlines the philosophical foundations for how we understand who we are in mainstream culture today. This book gives us a lot of insight into, for example, transgender ideology and the entire idea that we are our own gods and that we determine our own truth.
Transcript
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I'm so excited for you to listen to this conversation with Dr. Carl Truman.
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You might have read some of his articles before.
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He recently wrote a book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, where he really
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outlines the philosophical foundations for how we understand who we are in mainstream
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culture today that gives us a lot of insight into, for example, transgender ideology and
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this entire idea that we are our own gods, that we determine our own truth.
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Really a lot of stuff that we also talk about in my book as well.
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But he gives a lot of academic and intellectual and philosophical and theological context for
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all of this, just a fascinating book and a fascinating person to speak to.
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So I'm just so excited for you to listen to this dialogue.
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For those who don't know and haven't been reading your stuff like I have, can you tell
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I'm a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.
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And I write at First Things and Public Discourse online.
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And I teach a variety of historical and humanities courses here at Grove City College.
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And you recently wrote a book published by Crossway called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,
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Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.
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You probably feel like you could have written a lot more.
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Can you tell everyone why you decided to write this book with so much information and
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background about the cultural changes that we're experiencing right now?
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Yeah, it's a book that really arose in some ways quite by accident.
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A few years ago, Rod Dreher and Justin Taylor, Justin is the editor at Crossway, approached
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me and asked if I would write a book introducing the work of the sociologist Philip Reif to a wider
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And as I was starting to work on that, I came to realize that a more interesting book would
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be an application of Reif's ideas to contemporary society.
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And this was round about the time that Obergefell v.
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Hodges, the gay marriage supreme court case was being decided.
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And transgenderism, trans ideology was beginning to grip the popular imagination.
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So the book really arose out of a desire to try to help people understand why the dramatic
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changes specifically in the areas of sexual morality and sexual identity that we're now
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witnessing are taking place by looking at the long story of Western culture over the last
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300 years and applying some of the insights of Philip Reif and a couple of other philosophers,
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Charles Taylor and Alistair McIntyre, to our contemporary situation.
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Most people feel that a lot of the changes that have happened in the sexual revolution
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Maybe before that, we just weren't paying attention or we didn't notice.
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I think even six years ago, if you would have said that by the time 2020, 2021 comes around,
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we won't be able to or the government won't be able to objectively define what a woman is
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or what a man is. Most of us would say, we don't see the culture going that direction at all.
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You sound crazy. And yet you argue that this has been building up for a very long time,
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even before the 1960s, when a lot of the sexual revolution started.
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Can you talk about some of that buildup and the philosophical foundations for where we are?
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Yes. I mean, you're absolutely correct that the speed of things seems to have been breathtaking
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over the last few years. And I think that's part of what gives us the clue that what we're
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witnessing are fast and rapid and dramatic changes, but they have to have come from somewhere.
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For them to have happened with such speed means that other changes in society have to have already
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taken place and been very deep seated. And I take as my cue in the book, the statement,
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I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, or I'm a man trapped in a woman's body. And I ask what has to
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be true in broader society for that sentence to come to make sense? And essentially, a number of
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things need to be true. One, we need to have authorised our inner feelings in a way that they carry
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decisive authority for who we think we are. Two, we have to have, in a related sense,
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downplayed the importance of the physical, downplayed the importance of the body for our
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identity. In other words, transformed our identity into something that's really connected to our inner
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desires. And thirdly, we have to have made the move that sees any attempt to curb or corral those
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desires as being politically oppressive. And that's the narrative I trace. I think we find
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the authorising of inner feelings taking place in the late 18th, early 19th century with Rousseau and
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the Romantic movement. We find the sexualising of those desires taking place with Sigmund Freud,
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beginning of the 20th century. And then by the middle of the 20th century, we find the idea that
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sexual codes are politically oppressive, beginning to grip the popular political imagination. And that
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all lays the foundations for what we're witnessing today, which in some sense is just the last
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dominoes falling in a chain that goes back for at least 300 years, if not before.
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Most people who hold the view that, for example, someone can declare themselves a woman and suddenly
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be just as much of a woman as I am, would have no idea really of what you're talking about. They
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might not even know what Rousseau argued for. They might not know the philosophical foundation
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of their belief system, or even that they really have a belief system. They've just kind of come to
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believe that, sure, this is common sense. This is tolerance. This is love. How does it affect me if my
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neighbor is a biological man but wants to be a woman? What do you say to that person who is just
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basically like, who cares where all of this comes from or where all of this going? It doesn't affect
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me. Yeah, well, I think there are two strands of an answer to that. First of all, the origins of
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these ideas are helpful in understanding what we might call the dynamics of them, the implications
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of them. It's very true that the average man and woman in the street might think that the sentence,
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I'm a woman trapped in a man's body makes sense, but not be able to articulate the philosophical
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framework in which that takes place. But it's helpful to study the ideologues. It's helpful
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to study the philosophers who make that case in order to see what the implications of it are.
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As to the second, what difference does it make? There's a sense in which that has a certain
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plausibility to it. I often think of that statement of Thomas Jefferson, what does it matter if my
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neighbor believes in one God or 20 gods or no God? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
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Well, we live in a world now where identity is very psychological. And so any attempt to deny my
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own convictions about my psychological identity may not break my leg so much, but it certainly
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hurts me as a person, we might say. And that's underlies some of the legislation we're now seeing
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going into place in the United States. President Biden, as we're recording just a week or so after
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President Biden signed a bill, an executive order on trans ideology and public schools.
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And at that point, we begin to see, well, this identity stuff, it's one thing for my neighbor to
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identify. He's a man, but he identifies as a woman. But that's going to have implications for
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bathroom policies for my kids. It's going to have implications for women's sports. It's going to
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have implications for employment legislation. I might find myself being fined for using the wrong
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pronouns at some point. So it's interesting that in theory, yes, it shouldn't make any difference,
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but in practice, it's becoming rather intrusive. And it's being pressed on us now in quite an aggressive
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way, which I think makes it very useful to understand the dynamics, the deeper philosophical dynamics of
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what is going on here. Which is interesting, because a lot of the people that advocate, for example,
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for an executive order like Biden signed that says, for example, I saw the ACLU, they tweeted just
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a few days ago that, you know, in all caps, fact number one, trans girls are girls, and they have no
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advantage over biological girls when it comes to sports. None of these things were actually factual.
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They were their opinions about this. And yet, these kinds of opinions are being stated as fact,
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and then they are informing policy, which affects our real lives. And people that are in the ACLU and
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advocates of executive orders and policies like this, they make a big stink about something like
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the separation of church and state, or what they perceive to be the separation of church and state.
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They certainly don't believe that I, as a conservative Christian,
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should allow my worldview to influence what I think about policies, or if I were a lawmaker,
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to influence the kind of policies that I propose. And yet, it seems like they have a belief system
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that is very akin to a kind of religion that they are allowing to drive all of their policy positions
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and policy proposals. Is that intentional? Is that in, did they not realize the duplicity in that?
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Or is it, you know, like I said, I guess, is it purposeful?
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Well, as to the ACLU, I am the faculty sponsor for the women's rugby team at Grove City College.
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Any member of the ACLU is welcome to come down to one of our training sessions anytime. And we will
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easily demonstrate to that person that there is a tremendous difference between biological males and
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biological females on the rugby field, such that it would be insane to allow a team of men identifying
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as women play against a team of women identifying as men. It would be carnage on the field.
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Secondly, as to whether they genuinely believe this or not, well, you know, the history of human
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society indicates that just because an idea is self-evident nonsense doesn't stop a lot of people
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believing in forming public policies and building civilizations upon it, unfortunately. Whether
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these people are cynical liars or whether they are so captivated and mesmerized by modern expressive
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individualist ideology, I don't know. Maybe it's a mix of the two. But certainly this is complete
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arid nonsense. And it's kind of ironic when you hear people talking about, you know, the Democrats
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are going to govern with science. One of the first things the Democrat administration has done is
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sign into law trans ideology, which is very much counter science, I would suggest. So, you know,
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it's, yeah, it is a mess. It's built, I think, upon capitulation to lobby groups. It's not built on a
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recognition of reality at this point. You know, this whole thing, I would say this part of the sexual
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revolution, this latter part of the sexual revolution, in addition to a lot of postmodern nonsense, like
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all kinds of critical theory, including critical race theory, has really made strange bedfellows
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between, for example, Christians and atheists who both see the logic of maybe transgender ideology
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or radical feminists and a conservative traditional, you know, Christian woman like me who both say,
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hey, the eraser of women probably isn't going to be a good thing. And yet these people, a lot of people
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who identify as atheists, we still disagree on the fundamentals of what the self is and how the
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self is defined. You talk about this in your book, how the romantic philosophers were some of the
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first people to try to assert that the self can be defined outside of theistic origins or a theistic
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understanding. To me, even though I find myself in common cause with a lot of atheists and agnostics
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today, politically and ideologically in some ways, this confusion really starts from that kind of
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atheistic worldview that says that we are all self-defining, basically kind of replacing the
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God of Scripture with the God of Self. Would you agree with that?
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Yes. I mean, I would want to preface that by saying I'm very grateful for some of the very courageous
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feminists who've taken pretty firm stands on this.
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And it's great that somebody like her who has the public persona and the money to be able to hold
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the line on this. I'm very grateful for J.K. Rowling. Never thought I'd say I'm very grateful for
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Jermaine Greer. I'm a big fan of Jermaine Greer these days on this issue. Very, very grateful for
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Jermaine Greer. But I think you're correct that as a Christian, I'd want to say the bottom line is
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to properly assert the distinction of male and female, to properly assert the moral structure
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of humanity and of reality. One really needs some kind of theistic framework. Nietzsche really calls
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the bluff in the 19th century on the Enlightenment and says, you know, if you get rid of God, you get
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rid of metaphysics, everything's up for grabs. There are no facts, only interpretations. It becomes
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then a matter of you making your truth that works for you. And I do think that though we stand
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shoulder to shoulder with radical feminists on this issue, there are some deep philosophical
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differences. I don't think that should stop us from standing shoulder to shoulder with them.
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There is a common good here that we share and desire to see maintained. We want to see
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young girls, women protected from this kind of nonsense. So it's important, I think, that we find
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common cause of them. But it shouldn't blind us to the fact that at root, there are serious
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philosophical differences between us. It's almost the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if you like,
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Oh, yes. Definitely. I couldn't agree more. I'm just wondering if you can kind of explain a little
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bit more why that theistic framework for the understanding of the self is so important to
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being able to analyze from a Christian perspective everything that's going on that just seems
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haphazard. What you argue is that it actually comes from a philosophical place. It actually comes
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from a consistent, logical place if you understand its origins. Tell us how it competes against what
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we as Christians understand about the self, where we come from, why we're here, and whose authority
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That's a very good question. And this is to set it in somewhat simple oppositional terms. But I think the
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big difference, the dividing line down through humanities, if you like, those of us who think
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that we are merely the material we're made of, and those of us who think that we have some larger
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purpose beyond the material that we are made of. And Christianity is very much in that latter camp.
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And if you were to ask me, well, what is a human being? I would default straight away to saying human
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being is made in the image of God. That means we reflect the image of God. We reflect the being of God in
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in key ways. We're intentional beings. We have a moral structure. There is a morality to the world
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and to ourselves to which we are accountable. We have to use our bodies in certain ways if we are
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to flourish. I think if you reject that position, if you want to be a secular feminist, let's say,
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but then you find yourself in the position of saying, well, really, we ultimately are no more than what
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we're made of. And yes, our bodies may appear, for example, to point in certain directions and to
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require us to behave in certain ways to flourish. But hey, somebody is going to come along and say,
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well, science can help us get around that with its drugs, with its surgery, et cetera, et cetera.
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So I think when you're dealing with a radical atheist feminist who agrees with us on the trans
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question, there's still at root a big difference, that they are ultimately committed to what we might
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call an imminent view of humanity. Humanity is simply what it's made of. And that really tilts
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towards us being able to determine our own purpose in a way that a Christian operates within a transcendent
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view of humanity. We are who we are precisely because we stand against the background of a sacred
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order established by God and reflecting God's own character. So yes, there's a big difference at that point.
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Can you talk about what Christians, what can we do in the midst of all of this craziness? A lot of
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people are worried about their kids, the kind of ideologies with which they're being indoctrinated,
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either at school or just among their friends or on social media. It almost feels like we're
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Winston in 1984 having to daily convince ourselves, okay, two plus two does actually equal four. A man
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really is a man. A woman really is a woman. No, Christianity isn't a domestic terrorist threat.
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No, I'm not racist just because, you know, I don't believe in all of the ideology of Iber Max
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Kindy or whatever it is. We're constantly having to convince ourselves of that, which we knew
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was common sense. It seems like just a few years ago. And there's a lot of people who are just
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discouraged. They're worn down by the bullying. They're worn down by what seems like constant
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propaganda. What can Christians do to arm themselves against this kind of delusional
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view of the self? And how can we have some optimism in the midst of what seems like just
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a train that's going a thousand miles an hour and doesn't care who it takes out on the way?
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Yeah. Well, first, I agree with my friend Rod Dreher that optimism isn't the way to look at it. I think
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hope is the way to look at it. Optimism always has that feeling, that Pollyanna-ish, well, it's all
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going to turn out okay. I think hope is what Christians are in the business of. So the first
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thing I would say that all Christians need to do at this particular moment in time is remember the
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promises that the gates of hell will not prevail. The Lord is very, very clear that the church is going
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to win. The historical process is going to be won by the church. That doesn't mean your denomination
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necessarily or my denomination or my congregation, but it does mean the church as a whole is going to
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win. So the first thing is there's no place in the Christian life for despair. Chaste and hope, yes,
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but there's no place for despair. Secondly, I think there's no place for passivity. We are charged with
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certain tasks as Christians, and I think probably the most critical one facing us at the moment is
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thinking about how to train the next generation, how to teach the next generation. One of the things
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I have the privilege of at Grove is I teach classes full of young people, many of whom are Christians,
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and many of whom take the Bible very, very seriously. But I've noticed that sometimes they
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wonder why the Bible says some things it does. Yeah, the Bible opposes homosexuality, but is that just
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because God doesn't want people to be happy. And there I think there's a place for teaching young
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people—I refer to it as natural law in the book, but I'm using the term very broadly there—teaching
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young people that actually God's rules make a kind of sense given the structure of our bodies,
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given the structure of the created world in which we find ourselves. So teaching our young people to
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think and to understand the coherence and the sensible nature of the Christian faith and of
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Christian ethics is important. I think also we need to remember that our identities are often
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community-formed. We all belong to various communities. We have a workplace, we have family,
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we have friends, we have church. Our strongest identities are always going to be formed by the
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strongest community to which we belong. And therefore, I think the church needs to work
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very hard at being a strong and tight-knit community. Why has the LGBTQ plus movement been
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so successful? Well, humanly speaking, a lot of its success comes down to it was a tight-knit community.
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People genuinely cared for each other, looked after each other. If you read the testimony of Rosaria
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Butterfield, former lesbian professor now married to a Reformed Presbyterian pastor, she talks about the
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power of the community when she was part of the LGBTQ plus movement. I think the church really
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needs to start thinking about what does it mean to be a loving community, not just people who gather
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together for an hour on Sunday to read the Bible, sing hymns, and hear somebody deliver a homily or
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sermon. What does it mean to be a community that really cares for each other? And when we think about
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that and we start doing that, I would say the church becomes not so much an institution that's at war with
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the wider culture. It becomes an institution that is protesting the wider culture, a culture that is
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falling apart at the moment. And I think if the church can be a powerful community and a powerful
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culture, that gives us some grounds for practical hope in the future.
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And not just protesting against the wider culture, which I absolutely agree with, but a refuge from
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the wider culture. I think something that's not advertised very often is just the chaos and
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confusion and unrest and dissatisfaction that a lot of people are finding both in themselves and
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in the world. That this illusory pursuit of self-defined happiness is actually very exhausting.
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This constant pursuit of self-empowerment and self-fulfillment and self-actualization
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is actually very burdensome. As liberating as it sounds, as freeing as it sounds, it's actually
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very exhausting. You're on this hamster wheel of being told simultaneously that the self is the problem
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and the solution. And so you're trying and failing to find the answers to your self-made problems inside
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of yourself. And we just end up being more disappointed and more deflated than we were
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before. The church can and should offer something different. That the answers to the problems that
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you're facing or the insecurity that you feel, the inadequacies that you feel, the confusion that you
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feel or that you're finding in the culture, the answers to those things aren't going to be found
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inside yourself, but they can be found in someone else. And for Christianity and for the church to be a
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refuge, from that exhausting and burdensome elevation of the self, I think, is where we can thrive.
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I remember hearing a pastor a few years ago say that the church actually thrives on the margins.
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It doesn't die on the margins. And I think that is also a reason for our hope, not just in the
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ultimate coming of Jesus Christ, of course, but also in the here and the now. Even as the church and
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Christianity may be pushed out of mainstream culture, there's a very significant place for
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Absolutely. And in the book, towards the end, I say, you know, if we're looking for an analogy
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of the present with the past, then perhaps the second century. Now, there are some differences.
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The second century was a world that had never been Christian. It was a pagan world by genealogy.
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Our world is a world that is de-Christianizing at a rapid pace. But the church was on the margins,
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and marginal communities tend to be strong communities and tend to punch well above their
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weight. You see this with the Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages, right down to the 20th century.
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And I think there's no reason not to believe that when the church has pushed the margins,
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this might not be an opportunity. At the moment, we're transfixed by the rapidity of what's
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happening. And people are despairing over being shunted to the margins. I think we need to see this
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not as so much as an unconditional, unqualified setback, but also to see it as a tremendous
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opportunity to regroup, to rethink, and become that powerful community that you mentioned.
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People want to belong. And the world as it is at the moment offers very few strong communities to
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belong to. The church could step into that vacuum.
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Yep, absolutely. And we don't have time to get into all of this, but I also think about how socials—you
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talk about Karl Marx in this book and how he is one of the philosophers that kind of contributes to
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this atheistic view of the self, how we're just kind of formed by class economics, power, and all of
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that. I think about how socialism seems to thrive and seems to grow right alongside godlessness,
00:25:52.360
and how it offers that sense of community, that sense of belonging at first. I mean, it advertises
00:26:00.020
itself that way, that it offers a sense of you will be taken care of, you will be a part of
00:26:05.620
something. There is someone who is going to make sure that you are cared for. Of course,
00:26:10.480
we can look throughout history, especially in the past 100 years, and see that that's not actually
00:26:14.620
the case. But I would say that that's the political side of this as well, in addition to the cultural
00:26:20.820
side, that when people are looking for a place to belong, someone to take care of them, they won't
00:26:26.900
just look to themselves, but they may also look to the state. Do you think that's true?
00:26:31.520
Yes. And I think one of the things that that model sort of gets wrong, of course, is that the true
00:26:38.640
community can't be declared from the top. I think Edmund Burke is correct, that communities rise from
00:26:46.220
the bottom up. Communities start at the local level. And again, I think that's where the church can
00:26:51.140
really, could really step in at this point. There's no, we, you can't instruct people to be a community.
00:26:57.640
It doesn't, communities don't work like that. Communities develop from the ground up. And I
00:27:03.320
think, again, yes, that's where the church can step in at this point.
00:27:07.500
Right. And in order to be that refuge, in order to be that place that people run to,
00:27:12.640
from confusion into clarity and to Christ, the church has to look very different from the rest
00:27:18.400
of the world. And compromise certainly isn't going to make us that refuge for people who are lost and
00:27:24.220
looking for, looking for answers that they've tried and failed to find inside themselves.
00:27:29.620
Thank you so much for writing your book, for taking the time to talk to me in between teaching
00:27:33.800
your classes. Can you tell people where they can find your book, how they can support you and continue
00:27:40.900
Well, the book can be bought from Amazon or from crossway.org. That's the publisher.
00:27:46.580
And there are other publishing outlets out there, I'm sure, that set up at Amazon and crossway would be
00:27:51.040
two big ones. Most of my writing goes up at FirstThings, FirstThings.com. But I also do
00:27:57.340
some work at Public Discourse, which is the online daily e-bulletin of the Witherspoon Institute in
00:28:06.700
Awesome. And can they follow, do you have social media? Can they follow you on social media or
00:28:13.400
I'm afraid not. I regard social media as the antichrist.
00:28:16.880
Oh, I don't blame you. I do not blame you at all. That is a wonderful way to be. Well,
00:28:22.260
thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. I know people
00:28:25.840
are going to gain a lot of insight, not just from this conversation, but from your book and the rest
00:28:30.940
of your writings as well. I highly encourage everyone to go out and buy it. Go to crossway.org,
00:28:36.340
you said, and that's where they'll be able to search and find your book. Thank you so much,
00:28:46.880
Thanks so much for listening to that conversation. Really fascinating. Like I said, he was doing the
00:28:59.440
interview right between classes. So this is a little bit shorter of an episode than we typically
00:29:04.380
have, but hopefully you feel like we packed a lot in. And of course, like you said, if you're
00:29:08.180
interested in hearing more of what he has to say, you can go to firstthings.com and you can
00:29:13.140
read his consistent articles. He also talks about critical race theory. He talks a lot about
00:29:16.860
Marxism. He talks a lot about the things that we talk about on this podcast. And I wish that we
00:29:22.700
could have gotten into more of it, especially how all of this, how postmodernism and the craziness
00:29:29.200
and the disconnect that we are all feeling right now, we're all seeing right now between reality and
00:29:39.280
what people think and the worldviews that they hold have so much to do with godlessness that
00:29:44.080
once you reject the idea of a moral lawgiver, once you reject Genesis 1-1, that in the beginning,
00:29:49.920
God created the heavens and the earth, anything is up for grabs. Once you no longer have a transcendent
00:29:55.780
authority who says what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad, facts themselves,
00:30:00.340
science itself becomes completely arbitrary. If we all are our own gods, then we then determine our
00:30:06.740
own truth. And we can fit facts. We can fit numbers. We can fit the idea of justice. We can
00:30:12.580
fit biology. We can fit statistics. We can fit absolutely anything that we want into our perspective
00:30:21.160
if that's what makes us feel good. If our entire purpose here on earth is just to feel good and to
00:30:27.220
do what we want to do, then who cares what the rules are? But God calls us to something bigger than that,
00:30:33.600
more substantial than that, more grounded than that. And I think a lot of people don't realize
00:30:39.940
that, say, for example, they've got a traditional worldview. They do believe in a right and a wrong.
00:30:45.580
They do believe in maybe traditional marriage, traditional family, being a responsible person,
00:30:50.200
a hard worker. They believe that the state is not where we go to receive our solace and to receive
00:30:56.160
our caretaking and to receive our morality. And yet they don't realize that that worldview is
00:31:03.420
actually based in something bigger than them. There are plenty of people who do not believe
00:31:08.880
in God and yet hold a lot of similar views as I do. The only—I mean, one of the big differences,
00:31:16.080
of course, between the Christian and a person who may hold similar political and cultural views is that
00:31:22.420
we believe that it comes somewhere. We believe that there's a reason for it, that we're not just
00:31:26.640
material objects floating about who get to determine what our purpose and what our destiny is,
00:31:31.560
that God has already determined that. And our goal is to submit to His authority in every area of our
00:31:39.160
lives. Don't let anyone bully you out of that. When the church just starts to look like the world,
00:31:44.820
when we adopt the world's language on things like justice, on things like race, when we adopt the world's
00:31:50.220
language when it comes to gender, when it comes to sexuality, when we borrow the world's definitions of
00:31:55.280
love and hate. When we start to redefine sin according to what culture says it is and redefine righteousness
00:32:01.600
according to what culture says it is, we no longer exist as that refuge on the margins where people
00:32:07.340
can go for clarity in the midst of confusion. This all reminds me as well of Love Thy Body by Nancy
00:32:13.860
Piercy. She did a really good job of explaining the philosophies and the mentality behind the sexual
1.00
00:32:21.120
revolution. And our ideas of the body, this dualistic idea that the physical, our physical body is
00:32:29.040
actually in submission to what we feel, that our true identity is actually what we declare and what
00:32:34.160
we feel in biology. And our bodies are just arbitrary. She debunks that very well theologically
00:32:39.600
in her book, Love Thy Body. So I also encourage you to get that as well. So much here, so much to talk
00:32:46.460
about, get Carl's book, sorry, Dr. Truman's book, Get Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. And if I can plug
00:32:54.460
as well, a much more compact, and I would say probably a little bit simpler way to understand
00:33:02.940
kind of this false idea of the self is something that I write about in my book as well. You're not
00:33:07.420
enough and that's okay, escaping the toxic culture of self-love. We go through five cultural myths that
00:33:12.600
center on this misunderstanding that the world has of the self and unfortunately how a lot of
00:33:17.520
Christians have borrowed that misunderstanding of the self and it has disastrous consequences.
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So that's all we've got for today. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back here soon.