Episode 49: History

Welcome to Wisdom from the Aerial View, the podcast for those who wish to learn how to crush their anxiety and find meaning and purpose in their lives. Good afternoon or even good morning. Mark Klein, how are you today?

I'm good. We are actually recording in the morning. but you know, people, I know people listen to this at all hours of the day or night.

Okay, so I'll say good morning.

I know I do. actually have literally found myself listening to it at three o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, well, you can join our loyal group of insomniacs.

Yeah, I'm not good sleeper. I've been sleeping through history. Oh, history. Let's talk about history. We are about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country. So I guess the question is, what have we learned from 250 years of our nation's existence? And the question I guess we should talk about is, should we celebrate? And how should we celebrate? I was thinking 1776, we have the Declaration of Independence, 1787, the Constitution, creating a new government. 1964, the Civil Rights Act, 1920, the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, et cetera, et cetera. We've got a great history. There are many people who actually talk about this thing they call American exceptionalism, whatever that is. I guess what we ought to talk about is history. Why would we talk about history? But I think if we are gonna talk about history, the timing couldn't be better because we're about to celebrate 250 years. Should we celebrate?

sure. Why wouldn't we? Yeah. Who doesn't want a good party? You know, okay. No, I, well, I'll ask you, should we celebrate?

Tell me. Yeah, we'd like to party, but yeah, go ahead, tell me.

Yeah, you know, we've done some great things. mean, we Americans invented jazz and we invented the internet. We invented rock and roll, country music, gospel music. We've gotten some pretty good inventions. We've done some really great things. We invented the telephone. There's a lot of things in our history that we've done that we've done right. And then there are a lot of things in our history we've done wrong. So do we celebrate and... If we do, do we whitewash the things we did wrong? Because a lot of that is happening now. We seem to be wanting to whitewash things and pretend they didn't happen.

Well, I look at history a bit differently than many folks, but we can stick with the American story for a minute and then I want to move on past that. But yeah, of course we did things right, wrong. mean, do know a human being who's done everything right in their life? Nobody does, right? There's no such thing. So people are going to make mistakes. People are going to err. We had a podcast episode about why we err, why we make mistakes. But...

Yeah. Okay.

Yes, yes we did.

But it's gonna happen and they're gonna do it individually. They're gonna do it collectively, Salem witch trials, crazy things like that. You you're thinking more of slavery, of course, but you even things like the Salem witch trials, when you read about that, go, holy crap, what? Right, I mean, and there are all kinds of things in history, but that's what history is always going to be. It's always going to be a conglomeration of good stuff and bad stuff.

Yeah.

But here's, so should we celebrate? Yes, because as last I looked, nobody's trying to break out of America and there were a lot of people trying to break in. So that's all you have to know. You don't have to know another thing about the country. You could listen to, and I won't list names here, but certain people who have been spoken so poorly of the United States that we're the worst country in the world and we're racist and we're this and we're that. Okay, fine. Your intelligence, your opinion, but if just, you know, people are talking with their feet. How many people are escaping and leaving the country besides Rosie O'Donnell? I think she went to Ireland or something. And how many are trying to get in? If we open the borders, billions with a B would come in. Anybody who could find a way to get in would come. That's telling you something. Be okay. Yeah, we know you're not perfect. We know you got, you know, warts and things and you did things wrong and you had these slavery and you had a bunch of things that you're not proud of and you shouldn't be proud of and they were awful. But all in all, on this planet, this round sphere we're on, we're coming to you, right? We want to come to you. Okay, that's all you got to know, right? So stop with the other nonsense. Stop with the 1619 project and all this. People are telling you, they are telling you from around the world, you got a good thing going and we know it's not perfect. So yeah, of course we should celebrate. But definitely we should celebrate. We should always try to be better. We shouldn't say, ah, we're exceptional and that's it and we're done. No, no, you know. We've done a lot of good things. Let's do more of the good things. Let's do fewer of the bad things. Let's keep moving that ball forward. Yeah. But what's interesting about history, let's talk about the election of, I think it was 1803. Do I hear that right? God, that's embarrassing. Anyway, the election between Jefferson and Adams.

the year I was born, yeah.

Okay.

And Adams was president and Jefferson was running against him, who of course he won, became the third president of United States. And the politics was vicious. Now, they didn't have an internet, didn't have TV, didn't have radio. They were handing out pamphlets, they were making speeches, they were calling each other the worst things you could imagine. Right. In the public square. And so people go, politics today is worse than ever. go, no, not really. How about in the 1850s when we were whacking each other with canes in Congress about slavery, right?

Right. In the public square. Mm-hmm. Yes.

And talking about division, mean, in 1860, we started a civil war. We had a of states secede. So this isn't nearly as bad as sometimes we've had in the past. It's bad. I don't like it. But let's forget the United States for a second. Let's go back into that jukebox of time a little further, maybe 1,000 years, maybe 3,000 years, 5,000 years. Doesn't matter. Go back as many years as you want. And you're going to see the same stories again and again and again and again.

Okay.

Because the story of human life does not change. People don't change. They have the same emotions, the same ups and downs, the same stresses, and they react in the same way. It's no different now than it was 3,000 years ago. The only thing that changes is the set. So instead of being out in Mesopotamia, next to the Tigris River, now we're in the streets of Manhattan with skyscrapers and AI, right? So the set's totally different, but the stories are not different at all. They're not different in terms of interpersonal relationships between romantic relationships, friend relationships, employee relationships. There's always somebody in charge. There was always somebody working for that person in charge. These stories are ubiquitous, which is why people like literature, which is why old literature survives. The Iliad and Odyssey, right? People still read that. It's a little harder to read or Shakespeare, a little harder to read, but stories are exactly the same as modern stories now. They're no different. So that's the interesting thing about history, right? One of my favorite pet peeves is that people say to ignore history is to repeat it. Well, we need to retire that line because if you haven't been paying attention, we've been repeating history forever, not just as societies and civilizations, but as individuals. We all go through the same things our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, forefathers went through and foremothers. Is there a word foremothers? I don't know about that. But anyway. Our stories are exactly the same. story of politics is the same. The story of war is the same. The story of interpersonal relations is the same. There's no such thing as something that this is brand new and it's never happened. So I look at history.

But that's why that adage is important then, because we need to study it. So if we don't study it, if we do ignore it, then what happens when history finally smacks us in the face, we're surprised. And the point of it is we shouldn't be surprised because it's never gonna change. It's always the same, right?

Okay, that's why you might as well. Okay, you're right. It would be great if we all remember history and go, we're not doing that again. No, no, we're not doing that again. But have you seen that happen yet? No. Here's why, generation to generation, people forget.

What? Right. No, of course not.

and they start a because that's again a huge clue to our purpose. We talk a lot about meeting a purpose. That is a huge clue. If we didn't each have an individual purpose, right, then we would have learned perfectly from the past. We wouldn't make the same mistakes. We'd have these incredibly very docile, boring, in a nice way, lives and societies and everything would be hunky dory because it's all happened. We go, no, that's bad. You pass a law like that, bad, right? You treat people like that, bad. Let me show you. Go back, you we're gonna go back 1200 years, here's what happened. But that's not what happens. We do repeat history. We do ignore history. Not because we can't read or we're stupid. We ignore history because every individual must go through this life and through the journey of life individually. We must all experience the same things that our ancestors did. And so when that happens... is to be expected that the end result of those feelings and emotions and desires will replicate exactly what happened in the past. It's impossible not to. It's not that we don't learn, it's that our individual desires, goals, feelings, trump what came before and then as we act on those things, we go and create the same exact cascade of events that occurred the last time and the time before that and the before that and the same situations will recur. in a different setting. Now, we have the ability to do things we couldn't do before. Now it's a little more serious because we can blow up the entire world. We can poison the entire world. We can infect the entire world. We can wipe out the entire world. No problem. We have that capability right now. So it is a little more risky, a lot more risky, but the story is exactly the same. You're not going to get away from it. We could study history to a blue in the face. It will not change tomorrow. It will not change the future. And that's a fantastic clue.

Yes, we can.

totally appreciable from the aerial view of why we're here. You're here for specific reason, to make a very individual personal evolution from selfish to selfless, from inward to outward focus. That's the mission you're on. And it doesn't matter what happened before, because you're going to go through that process. You're going to go through what is a human life. It's going to happen. You will have ups and downs. You will have joys and sorrows. You will have tragedies and triumphs. These will happen. And when you react to those and make decisions based on those, you will recreate the same cascade of events that has been recreated centuries and centuries and centuries before. The story will not change.

So means we're gonna have war, we're gonna have famine, that's gonna continue to happen, right?

Until people until the day until the day that everybody listens to our podcast until the day until the day when people wake up and go, it's not about power and fame and money things we talked about recently.

That must be it, yeah.

I am here for a reason. it doesn't matter what anybody else is. I am responsible for my own behavior. I don't have to worry about how somebody else acts because I'm in control of how I feel, the Victor Franklund. When these things become obvious, if they ever do, and they may never, until we destroy humanity. I don't know the outcome. know, people think, well, okay, well, Jesus is going to return, or Mohammed, somebody's going to, something's going to happen, and we're have a new Messiah. Maybe. I don't know. But until something like that happens or people come to realize collectively that we're on the wrong path and we're seeing life the wrong way, yes, then we will absolutely repeat this again and again and again. That's not to be.

So how do you, but how do you change that? Is it with education? Do we start young? We have to teach our children about this. I mean, how else can we ever change anything unless we don't educate those among us who in fact can change, can make a difference. You and I are old biddies. We can't do anything anymore. Can we? Can we make a difference? We can make a difference in our own selves, but can we make a difference globally? Can we affect?

Yes.

Of Of course.

the larger segment of society that right now is under a great deal of duress. Can we make that difference? How? Tell me.

Yes. Which is why we talk about these things all the time. Because I was at a fundraising dinner last night and happened to be sitting next to a young guy and his now fiance from Virginia. And he is a elementary school teacher. So I said, tell me in short, what we really need to be teaching our kids. And he jumped into

Okay, let's go.

some math skills, he talked about specific math skills, and he talked about reading, and he talked about those things. And I didn't have a chance to say this, because then the events of the evening unfold, and were speeches for the next two hours. So I couldn't really talk to him. what I wanted to say was, those are all important. I'm not minimizing any of that. But here's what we really should be teaching kids. We should be teaching them the Victor Frankl rule. You get to decide how you feel about everything. We should be teaching them that they are here for a reason. And it's not about the normal things we think. It's about making this personal evolution. And until we start teaching kids that civility is important, that respect is important, that kindness and generosity are the most important things, that these are not just important, the most important things, whether you're the best, whether you're the prom queen or the best athlete at the school or the richest or the strongest or the meanest, those things are never gonna get you anywhere. So until we start inculcating the, young people in our country right from the very beginning. This is I should be teaching in elementary school. I actually started creating a curriculum about this based on things I wrote in my first book. That these are the things you need to understand about life. When you do that, then you have a chance. Until we do that, it's going to be... We're going to keep repeating history until we make this now. It may be that it will never happen I don't know but that doesn't mean you don't have to try so why we why do we you and I do this? What do I write books and why we have this podcast and why do you do all the things you do for? The hungry because you recognize the fact that it's the right thing to do and you're trying to make the world a better place Even if you know you're not gonna feed everybody even if you know you're not gonna be totally successful You will have an impact and some impact is better than none, but we this is what we need to do We need to refocus our society away from the violence and the selfishness and the greed and the thirst for power to something much more elementary, which is how we treat each other. Why are you here? What's your purpose? What's your superpower? You get to decide how you feel about everything. What does death teach us about life, about why we're here? These are the things we need to start very early on. That's the way we make a difference. So people listen to this and go, God, here he goes again. This is the Don Quixote of the podcast realm.

But yes, of course, you have to be, everybody has to be. You asked the question, how do we make a difference? That's how you do it.

So when, at what age do we start telling someone, children I suppose, that for them to start thinking about their purpose in life? When are you old enough to understand kindness, purpose, mission? When are we old enough to understand that? And when in fact do we start putting it into play? This elementary school teacher that you sat next to, that was not top of mind to him when you asked him that question. And it needs to be.

No. Right.

So how and when, so first we have to teach the teacher about how important this is. Before we teach the kids, we have to teach the teachers. I'm sure he was, yeah.

Yes. And this guy seemed like a great guy. You could tell he really cares. And I thought, good for you. And I even said to him, fantastic, you chose this profession. That's great. We need really kind, good people. So the answer is two. You can start teaching kids at two. Now, you're not teaching them meeting in person. You're teaching them. to say please and thank you, to be grateful, right? To understand that they, respect other kids. You don't push kids in the schoolyard, you don't steal their toys, you treat people nicely, you listen to your teachers, you listen to your parents. You don't have to teach them that it's about purpose and meaning, but you're building this foundation, right? We call this becoming a person of substance. It starts very, very, very young.

right.

So you can teach kids very young, you don't have to sit them down and talk about meaning and purpose. But by through what you, how you point them, what you expect of them, they get it very, very early. That's right. You're exactly right. Right.

Well, is, but that is meaning and purpose. just, we're not putting a label on it. We really are. I mean, it seems to me that the curriculum, it's a book, let's write the book. And the book is, the front of the book is for the teacher. To teach the teacher, train the trainer. In my business, how you start me to train the trainer. This is teach the teacher about what the teacher should be teaching the kids. And then you turn the book over and it's about what exactly are we teaching the kids? Because unless and until we do that, those records don't change. It's the same record over and over and over again. What we think we have to do is figure out how do we get the flip side of the record. Records have two sides, you know, the little 45s that you and I grew up on. They had two sides. It was the A side and the B side. Yeah, not that old. Yeah, right. You're the one with no hair over there. But there's the A side and the B side. So now we're on the A. We've got to get to that B side of that record in order to make sure that we've got a hit on our hands. How do we do that?

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not that old.

Well, know, teachers, yes, but parents first, because there aren't any, you know, some kids go to preschool and they get, but, you can't expect, you can't expect a preschool teacher to cover all the bases. He or she has got a lot on their plate, right? A lot of kids they got to worry about. But you do want to teach them, but you got to get the parents getting it right. Right. So it was much easier when we, you and I were growing up, because the parents tended to be on the same page in terms of this.

Okay.

Everybody knew you should be respectful of your elders. Everybody knew you listened to your teacher. I will tell you that from our youngest son, my wife, if a teacher said that he had done something, it's like very, very early on, like preschool, early school, had done something inappropriate. The teacher would say, look, I have to tell you this. And my wife would say, the next time he does it, grab him by the hair. But not grab, correct him. You can't get away with that. No, no, he's got to. And when he would get home, we'd say, your teacher said this and that's unacceptable. You must listen to your teacher. OK. Well, you don't get that anymore. Now it's parents saying, you can't tell my child this. You can't touch my child. Come on. What kind of world do want to live in? Unless everybody's working together to raise your child. You Hillary Clinton, I didn't read the book, but it takes a village. Of course it takes a village. It takes everybody, right? Everybody. We all have to be on the same page in terms of what's expected of each other, that there's a certain amount of respect. That's what we had this conversation about language a few, maybe a month ago, two months ago, you and I.

Mm-hmm.

We recorded that episode on language. And I made the case that using foul language is a symptom of what's going on in our society and that it makes a difference. These things make a difference. The little things make a difference. If you allow little things, you're going to get big bad things. And it sounds maybe an ancient way of thinking. Sorry, but this is the way that the world has been forever since dawn of man, the current man, what, 200,000 years ago. It's always been like this. You can't reinvent the way the world needs to work just because you decide it's more politically correct or it seems more more societally acceptable at this point. No, the rules don't change with people. Your rules don't change. You have to instill this in a very young age and everybody's got to be on the same page. I think I told you the story once. was this a long time ago, probably. Oh, 30, I don't know, a time ago, a long, time ago. And I drove into a shopping center and a group of like preteens or, you know, maybe junior high school kids. And they were trashing the place. They were throwing crap all over the place. And I got out of the car and I go, hey guys, you need to clean this up. And they looked at me like one of gave me the finger, started laughing and they all rode off on their bicycles. Well, that was unthinkable when you and I were growing up. That would never have happened. One of the reasons that there's a good chance somebody would have known who you were because communities were smaller and people knew each other and everybody was responsible for each other's kids to a certain degree. There's a lot of reasons why this wasn't the case. somebody said to me, you're a crazy dude. Somebody could have shot you. went, that's really true also, especially now. Right. But.

All right.

Yeah, I thought about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But we all were on the same page. We had certain expectations for kids, how they were gonna behave, how adults were gonna behave. know, behind closed doors, didn't always behave that way, obviously. But there was a certain level of societal, that society demanded a certain level of respect and dignity, and we've lost that. And that has to start extremely early on. And with the idea, meaning as we move forward, that as the kids get older, we start to elevate the level of discussion meaning and purpose and why you're here and what your responsibility is. We don't tell kids they're responsible for anything. We say, we owe you this. We're going to give you self-esteem. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. That's not going to work ever, ever, ever, ever as much as you want it to. It's just not going to work. You can't give people something that they know they didn't earn. It doesn't work.

You know, I was thinking though that the role of the role model in society, where are our role models? If we look at certain cultures, we look at what people are doing, the role model of a particular culture is such that we want to emulate them. So if the role model is the athlete, then we have to look at the behavior of the athlete. And is that good? Is that bad? I just was reading this morning in the paper, there's a basketball player whose name shall remain nameless.

Mm-hmm.

crazy first name, anyway, John Moran. He's now been, well, that's because I think he's not gonna sue me, but he may, and he's been, mean, he's basically, he's just been doing bad things off the court, maybe even on the court as a matter of fact. But these are the people that some people are looking at as their role model. And so maybe when we were growing up and we lived in an idyllic situation, we really did, and I'm not sure that,

So he's not nameless anymore.

our upbringing was the same as somebody in Topeka, Kansas, or the same as somebody in East LA.

Whoa, hold on a second. Were you rich?

Not in money, but in other things, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, not in money, right? So people should understand we grew up in a very middle-class neighborhood. This was not like big giant houses or nothing like that, you know? And I told you, my dad, I learned as I got older, we really were living from paycheck to paycheck and I didn't even know it. So this is very important. It's idyllic why.

yeah. No.

So are we.

because of the community and the sense of responsibility and bringing us up to live in a certain manner. That's what you're talking about.

Well, I am. There's no question about it. My father worked six days a week because we didn't have that. Yes. But that to me, that was idyllic because in the end of that day, when he he came up, yeah, he loved me. mean, but but the point is the role model that I grew up with and that you grew up with might have been your mother or your father nowadays. Not so much. And I think that that's a large part of and the other question. The other thought I have is violence.

Right.

I'm agreeing. I'm agreeing with you, right?

We, I don't know this, but it seems as though we are more violent now than we were when we were growing up. I don't remember anybody in our class had a gun. The six-year-old who shot the teacher here in Virginia. mean, violence has become a way of life in this country, and that's a problem too.

no no no.

Yes, for the same reason. It's the same story. So the violence is the expression of the underlying dilemma, the underlying trouble, the underlying lack of purpose and meaning and understanding why we're here. That's where the violence comes from. We've talked about this. In fact, I was telling somebody yesterday about this. every child grows up, and we've talked about this before, if every child grew up with unconditional love, we'd have a lot less problems on our hands. That's really what it is. And getting back to the role models, like the

Yes.

athlete. So we had role models when we were growing up. had athletes who we admired. We didn't know a lot about their personal life actually in those days. But they were just great athletes. That was fine. But we wanted to go up to be the great baseball player, the great musician, or the great artist. We didn't know anything about what they were like as people. That's fine. But

No, we didn't. That's right. That's right.

as to have a live life and what kind of person to be. That we got from our parents and our communities. We didn't get that from the role model. So it is unrealistic to expect a basketball player or a football player or a movie star to be a role model. You can say, I'd like to have that job or I wish I had that skill or talent. But in terms of what you want to be when you grow up, When you transfer that to somebody you know nothing about, very dangerous and a big mistake. But it's going to happen if the parents aren't fulfilling that need, if they're not setting those standards. If you're parent and your kid likes you every day of their life, you're a lousy parent. At some point, your kids have to say, I hate you, you're ruining my life, at least several times, because that means you're paying attention, you're setting boundaries, you're demanding them to behave in a certain way. Do your homework, show up for school, clean up your room, be nice to other people, don't steal. These are unacceptable. Don't be rude to people in public or out of public. That's it, those are the rules. you're so strict. Okay, well, sorry, live with it, right? If you want your kid to be your best friend. And you don't do those things, you're gonna have a kid that you're not gonna be happy with one day, you're not for sure, but you're certainly steering them into a position where they're not gonna have a lot of meaning, purpose, and joy in their lives, right? So these things do matter, and they're so especially visible from the aerial view. This is why when I look at these things, and I see them differently maybe than some people, it's because I have decided, I don't wanna be too dogmatic here,

Good night.

Because I don't have the market corner on truth, absolutely not. But I look at some of these simple things and I realize, okay, the things we've just been talking about, how we treat people, how we live our lives, what are the standards by which we live, what do we expect of each other and of ourselves, these are the key things that matter. we need to, getting back to that question of education, we need to inculcate this at very early age. We started talking about history. You probably forgot that, right? But we're like almost at the end of this half hour and we've moved, but the point is,

Yes. No, I didn't forget that.

History will repeat itself again and again and again until we recognize that there's another story to life, that it is about the things that Victor Frank last talked about. It is about how we treat other people, how we look at life, how we turn that camera outward. When we do that, once we do that simple thing, it is so simple. Once you practice and start as often as you can, not always, but as often as you can to turn that camera outward, The whole, your whole life changes. Your whole meaning changes. Your whole purpose changes. You're filled with joy. You're filled with contentment. And you're going to treat other people better just because you're in a better place and you're gonna be happier and your life is gonna have meaning. And by the end of it, you're gonna go, wow, that worked out pretty well. And what happens then? We end up with a society in which we all wanna live. When each individual person does that or the vast majority do that, that's how we get a great society. That's how we collectively look after each other. care about each other, don't hate each other, and realize that all we have to do is concentrate on how we're doing individually. As long as we're turning that camera around and focusing on others as often as we can, the rest of it will take care of itself.

Yeah, those are wise words, they're good words, and they're wonderful words. And I think that the history will, if we change history, we can change it one person at a time. I think you're right. I think maybe that book needs to be written. So let's start writing.

I actually have a friend who's a pediatrician who I think listens. And she's actually starting to focus a lot on this exact thing. And I think I told you, I did want to create this curriculum, which is not based on science, math, and reading. Other people can take care of that. It's about how do we grow people that are going to be...

Right.

happy, fulfilled, live meaningful lives and generate a society that we all want to be a part of. This is not impossible to do. This can be done. So we do it one at a time. We keep striving, but hopefully we will get to the point where history at some point maybe may not repeat itself.

That would be wonderful. Those are closing words. They're great words. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed this conversation. think it gives us a lot to think about. And I think that's important. We have to start thinking about how, in fact, can we change the things that are not going so well and make it a little bit better. Final word, Doc, and then we will say thank you to our listeners again. Final word.

Yeah, we all need to practice turning the camera outward. It's hard, it's not easy, but the more we do it, the happier we're gonna be. And that's how we generate that cascade of events that will yield, again, the society and world in which we wanna live. Just one person, we each have to do it individually. Thank you, Enid, it's great to see you. Thank everybody for listening and we'll speak to you next time. Bye bye.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Peace.