00:07:28.080No, it's not the graduates. I was going to say, it's not the graduates. It's not middle America. As a result of all of this, Dan, there's bitterness and resentment over the debt. There's wasted time. There's the slavery that will ensue and be required to pay it all back. And this is causing a huge generational rift.
00:07:48.880Now, all this, by the way, is related to more core principles that I want to delve into in this episode,
00:09:13.680you do like Christians have a high view of work. We have a high view of all of the different types
00:09:19.500of work as well. We have a high view of skilled trades. We have a high view of knowledge work.
00:09:23.840We have a high view of arts and media work. We have a high view. I mean, you could go through
00:09:29.200the list. We have a high view of the vocation of motherhood and homemaking. We have a high view of0.97
00:09:33.920what, why do we have a, can we have a high view of all these work and not these different types
00:09:38.420of work and not make them like enemies where it's blue collar versus white collar or college degree
00:09:43.200versus no college degree. Well, the reason is because we believe that Christ is Lord of the
00:09:48.280soil and he's Lord of the code in the software program. We believe that you can go into the
00:09:54.020world and that he really did design it such that you can find meaningful, God-glorifying work in
00:10:00.840any area of the world that he made that serves people and is in obedience to his law. I mean,
00:10:07.920That's basically what we're talking about. Serving people, that's what work is, providing value to people, meeting human needs. And so Christians should have a high view of the whole landscape of work. And one of the implications of that is that we should also, therefore, have a high view of all of different types of education and vocational training.
00:14:39.620Now, when we think about something like work and higher education and specifically as a
00:14:43.840preparation for vocation. The first thing we need to do as Christians is to properly situate
00:14:49.680work where it fits in human life. So we need to say like, because there are ditches you can fall
00:14:56.840in. You could say, well, work is going to be this all-consuming, all-encompassing thing,
00:15:03.180and it swallows up all of my strength, all of my life, and I just sacrifice my children to it,
00:15:09.560sacrifice my family to it, chasing the dollar. Well, as Christians, obviously, we're not going
00:15:14.480to do that. We want to make money, and we want to, because God commands us to, or the equivalent,
00:15:20.680to provide for our families, lest we deny the faith and are worse than unbelievers.0.99
00:15:24.960We can't fall in that ditch. We also can't fall in the ditch that work is a result of the fall.1.00
00:15:30.280Work is somehow terrible, and the whole goal in life is to escape work and just live a life of
00:15:35.080endless recreation. Obviously, vocation can't fit there because before the fall, there was work.
00:15:42.240God gave our father Adam work to do, and it was good. It was very good that he was made to that
00:15:47.300work. And then he even gave the woman to the man to help him in his work and his mission as a
00:15:53.200priestly worker keeper of the garden, naming the animals, taking dominion, et cetera. So as
00:15:58.540Christians, in order to answer this question rightly, we have to start by situating work
00:16:02.960in its proper space in our lives, not make it a God, not make it an enemy, but understand that
00:16:09.800work is a gift of God that he gave us to serve certain purposes. And when you start answering
00:16:15.600that theological question about what work is and where it fits and how the training for work
00:16:20.100ought to fit into your life, I really think that's where you start to see the importance
00:16:25.220of thinking intergenerationally with your work and to see how modernity in the last,
00:16:32.640since the industrial revolution forward, has disrupted a normative human pattern for work
00:16:39.740and vocation and trade and handing on a legacy to your children and made everybody essentially
00:16:44.800rootless vocationally, continually shifting, continually moving, getting new jobs every two
00:16:51.180years, every five years, or changing careers six different times. And I'm not saying that any of
00:16:56.240those things in and of themselves are bad. But as Christians, when we understand the nature of our
00:17:03.660work and how it relates to our families, we begin to see the importance of whether we're handing
00:17:08.640our children literally a trade that they can join in our family and continue doing the same thing as
00:17:14.000us, or setting them up through the overflow of our own industry, that we actually do have
00:17:20.540this vital link between the generations. And we have to fight against the modern urge to sever
00:17:27.360that link and basically just send our kids out as if they're starting like Adam. There's nothing
00:17:34.280to build on. They're just start over every single generation because what we end up with then are
00:17:39.540rootless, divided, not intergenerational, but atomistic families that have no proper Christian0.90
00:17:45.160view of the world we're living in or how vocation fits into it. So, I mean, that was a classic1.00
00:17:49.920rambly Brian answer, but those are some of the things that come to mind when I'm thinking about
00:17:54.000the intergenerationality of work. No, I think that's really good because
00:17:57.320it's hard to see the direct tie if you're an engineer and you're like, well, hold on,
00:18:01.900how am I supposed to do this work so that I can pass it on to my sons? That becomes pretty
00:18:06.120difficult, especially if you know your sons and you're like, this, my boy is not an engineer.
00:18:10.640Yeah. Like he's, he's got other giftings. And so how do you do that? And I think it's really
00:18:15.580important to have that. And we talked about this in other places to have that idea of what you're,
00:18:20.760what the thrust, the mission, the, the vision of your life is and be working towards that end.
00:18:27.760And that should be the mission that you invite your children into that. You especially invite
00:18:33.520your sons into to work towards that end. And so it might not look exactly like a trade,
00:18:40.740but it definitely is work. It's definitely a work to raise your generations in the Pai Dei0.99
00:18:46.580and New Thesia of the Lord. It's definitely work when you're trying to take over certain1.00
00:18:52.420areas of the country. For example, I want my boys to stay here in Ogden. I want them to have
00:19:00.960families here. And so what can I be doing so that I can enable them to stay and give them every
00:19:06.440excuse that they want to stay, win their hearts to stay and enable them to do that? Well, it's
00:19:12.440probably helping them secure property so that they have a place to live, securing a job so that they
00:19:18.820have a place to work, having a church so that they have a place to worship, having a school so that
00:19:24.700they have a place to educate their kids. It's really a way for them to be rooted.
00:19:28.040Exactly. Yeah. And that's, I think, probably the best way I can say intergenerational work can be passed on to your next generations. Because it is hard to see a trade sometimes.
00:19:43.160Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And we'll get into the difference between trades and knowledge in just a second.
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00:20:29.100One thing to add that you just inspired me. As a father, because we're talking about covenant
00:20:34.220succession here as it relates to New Christendom, basically passing faith in the skills necessary
00:20:38.760for our people to thrive, exist, and expand and grow. Get a foothold that turns into something
00:20:44.340greater than a foothold in our place so that we can establish christendom there like that's what
00:20:49.040we're talking about here so one of the key elements that dan just touched on that was it's so central
00:20:54.940to this question when it comes to our children is that as fathers we're called like shepherds to
00:20:59.980know the state of our flocks and that means knowing our children knowing them deeply and reading the
00:21:06.060son that's not an engineer saying this this one's not going to be an and not trying to force that
00:21:10.200I'm not going to make him be something he's not.
00:21:12.820I'm going to ask of the block of marble, where's the statue of David in this thing?
00:21:17.100I'm going to say, where in this boy that's in front of me that God's given me?
00:21:21.820My kids are so radically different, they're going to be doing totally different things
00:21:26.280from the five, six, seven-year-old, nine-year-old view.
00:21:29.440But my job as a dad is to work with the grain of my children, with that Christendom in mind.
00:21:36.900Yeah, because the command of fathers from Paul in Ephesians 6 is fathers do not provoke your children to wrath.
00:21:43.960And if you want to provoke your child to wrath, I mean, we've seen this in stories and in testimonies, you know, our whole lives about I never met my father's expectations.
00:22:06.360Gentlemen, one thing I want to ask you as we're talking about higher education, I think there's like two extremes here.0.75
00:22:12.200On the one hand, people can say, you know, and I've actually heard this sort of an anti-intellectualism, like all higher education is stupid.0.94
00:22:20.540I would definitely argue that higher education as we have it today as a public entity that costs what it costs and puts people in a bad situation.
00:22:28.880I would say for the most part that that's been a lot harder and worse for Americans than it's been pitched.
00:22:34.100But does that mean that all higher education is bad?
00:22:36.200If not, what is the principle that would kind of guide your thinking on the value of higher education?
00:22:42.120Man, I think no matter what our children are doing, we want to teach them to the best of our ability and with the grain of their creational nature, how God made them.
00:22:54.240I think we talked about this in education, to read well, think well, speak well, and be virtuous young men and women.
00:23:02.840That's our goal. Because so much of life is going to be about words. To be a righteous man,
00:23:09.520you have to relate properly to words. You can't be an unlettered fool. What separates us as the1.00
00:23:16.080pinnacle of creation partly is that humanity are masters of word in a reflection of God in a way
00:23:24.440that the animal kingdom is not. Dolphins, they overhype like chimps learning sign language,
00:23:29.600but like there is an ontological gap in our being between animal kingdom and humanity with respect
00:23:36.480to our speech this is one of the reasons like it's it's so powerful an image in the chronicles
00:23:41.420of narnia the talking beasts not talking beasts and when the talking beasts rebel against aslan
00:23:48.000the christ figure in narnia in the end in the last battle he they become dumb beasts again
00:23:53.300they can they lose the ability to talk the cat you know it's this horrible picture of0.97
00:23:57.980humanity degrading into animal, in their animalian nature. So our children, we don't want them to be
00:24:05.160beasts. We want them to be men and women. And that requires, in my opinion, the peak, the best we can
00:24:12.520give them, is this great foundation of classical Christian learning, where they understand, they
00:24:19.640honor their father and mother, they've inherited this great tradition in the Western Christian
00:24:24.460world of good words, of words spoken fitly, and they should be able to interact and understand
00:24:30.540that legacy. So whether they're going to be a plumber or a professor, I want them to be able
00:24:37.740to read Eric's favorite work, The Aeneid, and I want them to be able to read it richly, right?
00:24:47.920Whether they're going to be a 200 book a year guy or a 10 book a year, I want them to be people of
00:24:52.980words so they can understand the book, the scriptures, I mean, and this great inheritance.
00:25:19.180It's not just spoon-feeding your children.
00:25:21.220And I know this is about higher education. I'm getting there. It's just taking the long way around is that you want to be able to give your kids the tools to learn so that they can approach the Aeneid themselves and they can understand it. They have the tools in their tool belt that they can understand some of these more difficult works.
00:25:38.480They can look at the world around them and kind of interact and interpret what is going on in the worldview that's operating.
00:25:46.780And then in the ideal world, what you would have would be godly Christian universities with mentor-type relationships with different professors that have much life experience and are steeped in the Western tradition.
00:26:07.640So that is the ideal. And those do exist. Those schools do exist, but they are very rare. New St. Andrews exists to do that. Brian took a class on classical Christian education in preparation for our school. He said it was very rigorous.
00:26:28.000Yeah, very rigorous. I mean, we read a stack of books from all across history, difficult books. And if you look at NSA, their basic thesis for higher education is that, and the reason that they offer this liberal arts degree, is that the liberal arts historically are the liberating arts.
00:26:46.860built on this, this spine, these three subjects called the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric
00:26:52.200that if you can, that teach you basically how to think well, read well, speak well, like that's
00:26:56.620what, that's what it's really built on becoming an interested and interesting and rigorously
00:27:01.120knowledgeable person and virtuous along the way as well. Um, their thesis is that that's the basis
00:27:07.820that we should aim to give all of our children as they come up into adulthood so that they can
00:27:12.960then go do anything well. And I think even though I don't necessarily know, I don't know if they
00:27:19.500would say like everyone should get this degree versus going into a trade at 18. I definitely
00:27:24.840think though that they're onto something there in the sense that think about every vocation that
00:27:31.140you could possibly come up. I mean, you could list out from the trades to white collar work
00:27:34.840all the way up, which one of those would not be benefited by a person who can think well,
00:27:40.860speak well, communicate well, read well, learn. They have the tools of learning so they can go
00:27:46.040learn anything because they have the tools to do that. And it's like, it doesn't matter if you're
00:27:51.040going, people have this mistaken impression that education should first be about giving them the
00:27:56.980tools to do a job. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what education is first for. Education is first
00:28:02.020making virtuous human beings who know how to learn and know how to think so that they can then go
00:28:08.840learn how to do anything well kind of does that make sense yeah one of the things that sort of
00:28:14.100like americana the heart of you know american culture especially early american culture
00:28:18.800i think was this kind of this picture of the jeffersonian agrarian intellectual
00:28:24.740um you know joel salatin has pointed to this but yeah somebody who could work the land and and be
00:28:30.680you know a really hard worker in in very physical ways with their hands they didn't however set
00:28:36.360handwork against work of the mind no and so yeah you know Jefferson all his foibles and problems
00:28:42.700etc was you know a very smart guy he read he had a huge library and he also was a successful
00:28:50.060owner of lands and you know did a lot of really cool things yeah for the country one question I
00:28:57.420think a lot of people would have is you mentioned this before Brian with with your sons but like
00:29:02.440it's your you're looking at your sons and you're saying okay this one should go to college and this
00:29:06.080one maybe shouldn't, or higher education, I should say. The question I would have is,
00:29:12.780do you think, A, how would you evaluate that process? Like, what are you looking for? And
00:29:18.580are you saying that you think everyone should get higher education? Because I think part of this
00:29:22.800debate is, and part of the thing with Moscow has always been, yeah, that's great on paper.
00:29:28.420And if I was rich, I'd do that too. Or part of it too is, I knew a guy who was,
00:30:04.200And how do you evaluate who should go there, what should higher education entail, and why would you get it?
00:30:11.000Yeah, so I think before that, you want to make sure – I mean antecedent, like in the flow of logic.
00:30:17.220You want to make sure that your children's education from their six years old through 18 is rigorous.
00:30:26.280I hope that by the time our children graduate from St. Brandon's Classical Christian Academy, Lord willing, that they have the tools of learning in their belt.
00:30:35.640And, yeah, they're going to – like a 25-year-old really does have a greater degree of competence in using those tools after another seven, eight years of practice with them than an 18-year-old.
00:30:45.520There's maturing that's going to happen.
00:30:46.960But I would want that everything that is needful is in the cask, and now it's going to go mature and deepen with the other things they read and take in.
00:30:56.280I'd want them through that educational process to develop a love for reading and a love for learning so that whether their assessment and my assessment as their dad and as they're looking forward into their life is that they should or shouldn't go to a place like NSA, that we would both agree that they're going to go out and continue to learn rigorously and widely.
00:31:19.340So to me, it's more of an assessment, and I haven't gotten there with my kids, but I'm already looking at them and going, yeah, my firstborn, classic firstborn style, he's a reader to the core.
00:31:43.540So looking at working with the grain of that son, I think here's a kid who may benefit from something like a liberal arts degree as he grows up and will continue that assessment.
00:31:52.780One of my other boys, my second born, is he is just absolutely energetic about work.
00:32:00.640He'll go do a work with your hands project, building a deck.
00:32:22.180And I look at him and go, and he's not an early reader the way my firstborn son was,
00:32:26.760totally different relationship to reading and learning.
00:32:29.400He's a smart kid, but he's just different relationship.
00:32:32.000And so already I'm looking at the knots and the grain of his character.
00:32:35.220Like C.R. Wiley said last week, you need to be a student of your children, study them
00:32:39.060like a master craftsman studies his materials, work with the grain, use the knots to the best
00:32:44.440advantage. Yes, correct and guide, but also put to use. And I love that picture because I'm looking
00:32:50.300at what to me looks like knots in my boy early on, like he can't read yet. He's still, that's not his
00:32:57.280thing. But I think, well, but hang on. He is the way he is about working with his hands, partly
00:33:03.580because he is, you know, correspondingly the way he is about books. So I want him to be able to
00:33:08.900read, think, be a virtuous young man. I trust that he will be, he's going to get a great education,
00:33:13.300but looking at him now, that boy, maybe at 16, we're going to be making a call. Like you're
00:33:19.580going to start some supplemental trade work in something you're passionate about. It's just
00:33:24.620knowing your kids, like, and thinking deeply about the things that frustrate you about them
00:33:29.000and like figuring out if there is a way to work that knot into the design of the furniture that
00:33:35.960you're built, you know, to use the metaphor that C.R. Wiley is, to use that knot to best advantage.
00:33:41.520And I don't think there's any silver bullet. It's just you got to study your kids.
00:33:45.440Yeah, certainly not a wooden thing. Dan, I want to ask you in particular about,
00:33:50.760I think it's a pretty hot button issue, particularly when you get into like homeschooling
00:33:55.520movement classical christian education uh and patriarchy there's debate about should women go
00:34:01.280to school i know doug has promoted women in higher education i don't know if i'm not sure
00:34:07.440maybe you guys would know if he says like hey they absolutely should or it's a really good idea
00:34:11.880he says the the point he makes that is the the what i like about doug is he'll have to make a
00:34:17.760point on a principle that's universal everyone should agree to it yeah and here the principle
00:34:21.920I think he defends is these are you're the mother these are going to be mothers who educate your
00:34:27.520children so make sure they're educated and then and then I think there's some open-endedness to
00:34:33.000how yeah that's higher education and I think that's really helpful and that's true we should
00:34:36.800all agree on that but but the question I think that a lot of people had is you know how should
00:34:41.980we think about girls and college as I mentioned before one of the downsides with university
00:34:46.740they go to school, you get a bunch of debt, um, you get out of school, you know, it's this sort0.82
00:34:53.160of thing of like sleep around in college, get a bunch of debt. And then not realizing when you
00:34:57.100get out a, that makes it really hard to, uh, start a family for one thing. And it makes you
00:35:03.560in terms of candidacy for marriage, it makes you less appealing to a large number of men,
00:35:08.500particularly if you're a righteous Christian guy, that's not appealing. So again, how would you be
00:35:13.080thinking through this for girls in higher education softball question yeah that's a good question
00:35:19.040you're not going to offend anybody potentially with this answer yeah yeah i'm trying to figure
00:35:23.940out what angle i'm going to come at this should i come at it from the angle yeah why not um the
00:35:28.980thing is is it's it's so difficult to get into a mindset outside of modernity because we live in
00:35:36.300we breathe it i grew up in it i was educated in it the i mean girl power the rate of graduations
00:35:45.900from universities i mean is heavily skewed towards women yeah and like you said eric what what ends
00:35:52.640up happening with especially right now at our moment in time is you have a vast number of
00:36:02.280university graduates that have tremendous amounts of debt. The cost of tuition has just ballooned
00:36:10.480because of government supplements and many other reasons, the availability of debt.1.00
00:36:17.480And so you have droves of women that are debt slaves.1.00
00:36:22.940They're debt slaves. And the interesting thing, the statistics bear this out, something like
00:36:28.760uh, 70% of college educated women are the ones who initiate divorce.1.00
00:36:35.220Yeah. Uh huh. No, I think you're right. I think it is.1.00
00:36:37.340There's a lot of bad factors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of bad things. I mean,
00:36:41.880the universities aren't exactly training virtuous women. Like the culture around it is horrible.
00:36:47.820I know I was there. Like it's terrible for women, but, but just even if you're like a virtuous
00:36:53.800christian woman uh it's a very dangerous place to be there's uh it's not going to be very helpful
00:37:01.780i think even even i we had just briefly mentioned and kind of passing and didn't even really look1.00
00:37:08.540at it straight like for men going to a state school is probably not going to be that great
00:37:14.820for you outside of like you said some caveats like engineering or whatever but they're going
00:37:20.920to cram some just absolute trash down your throat yeah like when you go into an engineer program0.96
00:37:26.660engineering program you're still going to have to take all of the absolute garbage underwater1.00
00:37:31.060homosexual basket weaving yeah i mean because the thing is a university what they're trying to do is1.00
00:37:36.120to form you into an image that's what part of education is they're trying to make you into an0.94
00:37:41.040image because a student when fully mature is like his his teacher i mean so they're trying to make
00:37:46.300you like, we have Utah State and Utah University, and they're trying to make you look like a student
00:37:54.680at Utah University. They're trying to hit that. So for women, that becomes really difficult if
00:38:01.120you think about a godly woman and a godly man. The guy is in economic trouble. You're just behind
00:38:09.620the eight ball right now in the world that we live in. And then you're going to marry a woman1.00
00:38:14.340that also has debt which will in a lot of cases force her to work to service that debt that's why
00:38:23.000you know i say debt slavery and ends up becoming wage slavery because you can't get out you're0.78
00:38:32.500stuck and so working for another man by the way yeah building his house and everything like that
00:38:38.360So here's the thing. Doug is right. What Brian said was great. It is very important for women to be educated. Very important. I'm not saying something ridiculous like women shouldn't be taught to read or some such nonsense like that. By the way, I just realized somebody could cut that out and make me say that.
00:38:59.040Or women shouldn't learn theology, that kind of thing.0.87
00:39:03.920I mean, I desire very much so for my wife to be very intelligent, to be dangerously intelligent, to be able to think well, read well, speak well, write well, all of those things.
00:39:16.520But I don't think that college, in most cases, is going to help that.
00:43:19.360So I think that's one of the best safeguards that fathers – I don't have any daughters, so I haven't given it as much thought as probably Brian has.
00:43:28.700But that's just – I think one of the best things that you could do for your daughters is keep them at home until they're ready to be married.
00:43:34.580Well, and even – the goal is that we shouldn't be raising our daughters in such a way that by the time they're 18, you're asserting your fatherly authority to make the shot for her.
00:43:43.980It should be that as she grows up, your relationship matures to where she respects your authority and voluntarily gladly is under your fatherly authority so that it's not like, well, I'm 18. I get to make the shots now. It's like, no, I respect my dad. I love my dad.
00:44:02.580even in the situation, like I said, NSA, like I might, I might, that's a very rare scenario
00:44:08.840because it's, there's a community there. That's a high trust community, high trust community,
00:44:14.040high trust church community, where I know that I could have meaningful, even from Utah to Moscow,
00:44:20.500I know I could have meaningful fatherly exercise of protection and authority through, what's the
00:44:26.840word, through deputies, pastoral deputies, you know, that sort of thing there. But even then,
00:44:31.700And even something like that, that's going to be – like it's going to be a serious question because I want – that is so important that you protect your daughter.
00:44:44.180And man, they can get taken in by – like there's a reason that for – one of the reasons for male headship is because the woman is more easily deceived.0.99
00:44:53.300This is why college is so successful at making women apostates and feminists.0.81
00:44:59.380It's because they're easily deceived in many cases by these other demonic religions that are being proselytized at university.1.00
00:45:07.540So to me, it's like an absolutely not to the state university model for my girls.0.79
00:48:21.100Before we get there, I just want to give Dan the opportunity, because I think this is a subject that you've talked a lot about and really well, and that's that our sons and daughters should have range, right?
00:48:32.000So I don't want my son to be like, oh, he only reads Latin.
00:48:35.980No, I want my son to be able to say, I think of like Ben at Boniface Woodworking.
00:48:40.000He's woodworking and he's, you know, studying classical music and he's in the sanctuary in the mornings playing the piano because he's working on Vivaldi.
00:50:18.780Not just the subjects, which is very important, but the time period.
00:50:23.380Because every time period has its errors and its shortfalls.
00:50:28.080And I think it's really important to be well-read, to know your place in history.
00:50:31.840I think that's one of the most important reasons for range because these, especially in the Western canon, the books that have been passed on for sometimes thousands of years have lasted that long for a reason.
00:50:47.160It's because some of the greatest thoughts ever thought have been put to paper and have been passed on.
00:50:53.440And so it's really good also to orient yourself in your time and to know the times and to be able to see certain patterns that are unfolding around you.
00:51:02.600It really does give you better eyes to see your current time by reading the past.
00:51:07.600The other thing is to read widely in different subjects.
00:51:11.080The thing is, God made just a crazy world.
00:51:53.860They're like, you know, 650, 800 pounds and they're screaming in the woods and they're,
00:51:58.860I mean, it's just, it's, it's just crazy.
00:52:00.740And that's just one ungulent, like not even that, that interesting of an animal when you're
00:52:07.200comparing to other things, the world God made is just fascinating and there's so many mysteries
00:52:13.340And that's part of the glory of kings or the joy of kings, I can't recall, is to go out and find those mysteries.
00:52:21.040It is the glory of God to conceal things and the joy of kings to find them or something like that.
00:52:27.200And I think, too, like when you look at Solomon, he has this picture of wisdom, the pinnacle of wisdom in the Old Testament until you get to Christ.
00:55:41.300I was working at a bank, and there's like a row of cubicles that I'm working in.
00:55:46.200And I had the realization like, wait a minute.
00:55:48.720am i a factory worker because i'm just doing like data input and like customer service stuff
00:55:55.820dan you're free now you're free as a knowledge i am in a gray carpeted cubicle with people that i
00:56:02.760don't like i mean this was a long time ago so they they don't know anyway i just came to the
00:56:08.860realization no this is the new factory work yeah that's exactly what it is um you know and a lot
00:56:13.960of it is uh there was a book titled bs jobs i'm not gonna i guess say the word since we're
00:56:20.540we don't want to be canceled by costihan costihan cussing you know so bs jobs uh but but it's a
00:56:26.760really good book actually that talks about how like 90 percent of people in the world today in
00:56:31.680modern industrialized nations say that most of the work that they do is meaningless and soul
00:56:37.620destroying yeah so i'm like wow that's horrible and that's most of what our economy is producing
00:56:43.660So I think in response, again, people like Mike Rowe, the TV show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, they've been trying to highlight this value of trade work.
00:56:52.400You can work with your hands in a skilled trade, and one of the benefits of this, I really think it is a form of higher education post high school education.
00:57:02.340One of the benefits is instead of going into debt, many of these professions will actually pay you to get trained, and then you'll have some pretty handy certifications.
00:57:12.400So one of the things I used to hear as a child all the time,
00:57:14.640people would say, well, you need to make sure you go to college
00:57:17.400so God forbid you don't become a plumber.
01:00:20.220So to me, it's like I love a world where Rudyard Kipling exists and wrote the poem, If, and Wendell Berry exists and writes some of the greatest poetry of any living man.
01:00:30.880Great poetry and also loves the earth.
01:00:36.940I think Christendom must be marked by a range all the way from the earthwork to the wordwork, up and down all the way, and not have any of it be enemies with another.
01:00:48.400And what this means for us is that we have to, again, look at our children, work with the grain
01:00:53.140of their creation and say, some of you are made to be the greatest tradesmen, the greatest HVAC
01:01:01.620installers in our city. And you're going to employ 20 people and you're going to be a millionaire
01:01:07.840when you're 35. So you're going to do that heartily as unto the Lord. You're going to be generous and
01:01:13.220you're going to be great. And some of them need to go and be like, you are the best. You are wired
01:07:02.060Those are white collar things, but there's still a durable trade.
01:07:06.680So Dan, as you think about this principle of a durable trade,
01:07:09.920Why would that be so important when we're thinking about legacy building, particularly like handing our kids a trade or setting them up in a trade so that they can pass that on for future generations?
01:07:21.500Well, I mean, I think you highlighted it really well.
01:07:23.680If you start looking through the corridors of time and you think, well, the industry I'm in, I'm retrofitting cell towers to accept 5G or something like that.
01:08:07.320Yeah. And here I am like I'm looking at these this documentary and I'm like those pathetic losers. They failed to adapt like economic the economic value proposition had changed. You have to adapt in order to survive.1.00
01:08:24.460And so not all of our, I mean, like one of the top ones is like being a shepherd, like trade in Rory Grove's book.
01:08:33.320Like, well, man, it's going to be tough sledding out there.
01:08:36.200I've been hunting and there's, there are shepherds out, you know, watching sheep in the mountains while I'm elk hunting.
01:08:41.280And they don't exactly look like successful individuals.1.00
01:08:44.300Most of the time they're illegal immigrants.1.00
01:08:46.280Usually from like Argentina or something, Peru.1.00