E5. "Pretty Pragmatism" - Can a good idea come from a horrible source?
“Can a good idea come from a horrible source?”
Kolby, Jeremy, and Jessica discuss the ethics in the short story, “Pretty Pragmatism” by Jenean McBrearty.
Transcript (By: Transcriptions Fast)
Pretty Pragmatism
Kolby: Hi and welcome back once again to After Dinner Conversation. After Dinner Conversation is a website and podcasts that promote critical thinking and socializing with your friends and talking about ethical things. We are once again today in La Gattara.
Jeremy: La Gattara.
Kolby: Finally, I’m getting it right. Where they have cats for adoption. I was going to say for purchase.
(laughter)
Kolby: Because you do have to pay for them; they don’t just give you the cats.
Jessica: It’s an adoption fee though.
Kolby: Give me this cat. They’ve got this cute cat right here. Very cute kitty.
Jessica: It’s not cat trafficking.
Kolby: Yeah.
(laughter)
Kolby: Yes, it’s not cat trafficking. That would be terrible.
Jeremy: That might make a good story.
Kolby: That cat trafficker. So, we’ll continue to do this. If you enjoy it, please like or share as our cat goes right in our camera. Alright, you’re going to get demoted kitten. Please like or share, feel free to submit them. You can buy these e-books wherever e-books are sold, Amazon, whatever, all the places that they go, so you can read along with us. I am your co-host Kolby. I am here with Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, I’m Jeremy.
Kolby: I see you remembered to talk this time instead of just waving.
(laughter)
Kolby: It’s the worst podcast voice ever. And Jessica....
Jessica: Hello.
Kolby: …who is going to be joining us for the next bunch of episodes. Ashley is on, what we call sabbatical? What’s she doing? Triathlon stuff?
Jessica: She needs a break.
Kolby: She needs a break from Jeremy and I.
(laughter)
Kolby: But she’ll be back I’m sure to taunt us incessantly. Our story, it’s already that kind of day, so our story, “Pretty Pragmatism” by Jenean McBrearty.
Jessica: McBrearty.
Kolby: McBrearty. We’re going to go with that, is our first story. And I think Jeremy you’ve got a story summary and you wrote your story summary.
Jeremy: I wrote a story summary this time. I was disappointed with our previous story summaries.
Kolby: Way to bring your A game there, man. Nice. Let’s hear it.
Jeremy: So, our story opens with Senator Sal Boundini talking to a senior staffer, Rob, about the merits of hiring a press secretary based on her looks and introducing a bill proposing compulsory national service.
Kolby: You got to talk slower dude. I’m barely following that.
Jeremy: Okay. Sal and Rob bounce between these seemingly unrelated topics as they prepare Sal for an appearance before the Senate Ethics Committee. Apparently the idea of requiring two years of public service...
Kolby: Are you going to read all that?
Jeremy: Yeah.
Kolby: Dude. Less...
Jessica: Let him read it.
Kolby: Alright, I’ll let him read it. That’s a lot dude. That’s a lot.
Jeremy: So apparently...
Jessica: Don’t be micromanager. Back off.
Kolby: Alright. Sorry.
Jeremy: Two years of public service in the National Parks isn’t sitting well with the Ethics Committee because it was founded by an Italian fascist and was the basis for Germany’s Hilter Jugend or Nazi Youth Party. Sal argues that rich people send their kids to summer camps, why can’t poor people do the same? But Rob counters that it’s not the idea that’s bad, but the source of the idea that’s bad. Rob ends a conversation with advice to not make Senator Whitcomb, presumably the committee chair, mad at Sal since she already thinks he’s a pig. The next scene opens at the end of Sal’s chewing out by the committee where they have basically accused him on proposing child servitude or prison indoctrination camps ending with Whitcomb questioning if Sal was lazy, stupid, a fascist, or all three. Nonplussed Sal spends the next two paragraphs arguing that all good policies spring from other people’s earlier good ideas, mixing examples from fascists and non-fascists alike. This is the crux of the story; can good ideas come from discredited sources? And secondarily, does this matter more in politics, where everything can be used against you in the election cycle? Scene ends with an unappeased Whitcomb recommending censure. In the final scene we see Sal pondering the potential implications of the committee decision. Next, a note from Rob that he’s fired Roxy, the aforementioned press secretary, prompting thoughts of retirement for Sal. Rob reappears then with news that due to a loss of votes, Senator Whitcomb is willing to drop the censure if he’ll vote for her budget bill. Elated, Sal and Rob celebrate his win ending with the revelation that Sal had dumped Whitcomb for Roxy tying our plot points together and adding additional motive for Sal’s proposed censure. The story ends with Sal adding to his Washington memoir equating the strength of good ideas with the strength of the writer of those ideas.
Kolby: Wow.
Jessica: That is an excellent, excellent, excellent story.
Kolby: When you told me that it took you a half hour to write, I was like, “how could it take you a half hour to write a summary?” And now...
Jeremy: Because it’s a summary.
Jessica: Because it’s a summary.
Kolby: I totally, get, yeah. When it’s my turn to summarize, you need to have lower expectations.
(laughter)
Kolby: Much. You’re going to get, like, “it’s like Jaws in space”, that’s what you’re going to get from me.
Jeremy: Nice. That’s your summary.
Kolby: That’s “Alien” by the way.
Jeremy: Yes, it is.
Kolby: Okay.
Jeremy: Wait, so who’s the old boat pilot?
Kolby: I don’t know. Sigourney Weaver? I’m not sure. No she can’t. I don’t know, man.
(Laughter)
Jeremy: That’s a different topic. Anyways...
Kolby: So, basically, it’s about a senator who tries to create mandatory two-year youth camps. Like, two-year service things.
Jeremy: Right. And it’s unclear whether it’s...
Kolby: And did he intentionally steal the idea from the Nazi Party or did he find out later, after he came up with the idea? Like, “Oh, yea, that’s what the Nazi party did.”
Jeremy: I think it was unclear. I think it was just an idea. It’s unclear whether he stole the idea or took the idea from earlier writings or came up on his own and just happens to match earlier good ideas.
Kolby: It’s interesting because Jessica and I were talking about this on the way in that she does a Girl Scout Troop.
Jessica: I do a Girl Scout Troop.
Kolby: And one of the things that this story reminded me of, is that people don’t really know.... see, even when I move my bag, the cat goes to my bag to vomit on it....
(laughter)
Kolby: …was that actually the Boy Scouts of America are, low and behold, formed right around World War II, because they are a response to Hilter’s youth things.
Jeremy: When I was doing research on this one, there was originally issues with the Boy Scout party at the same time because of that connection.
Jessica: Right.
Kolby: And it’s not like this is unprecedented. The Boy Scouts is a version of what they were doing in World War II. That’s interesting. At any rate, I’m curious what did you think Jessica? Welcome to the show by the way.
Jessica: Well, thank you Kolby.
Kolby: You’re a rock star. We flew you in special.
Jessica: You did fly me in special.
Kolby: Like brie, right?
Jessica: I was going to say, “like a cleaner.”
Kolby: Oh yeah.
(laughter)
Jeremy: Like Jean Reno.
Jessica: Yeah
Jeremy: Here with your trench coat and bag of acid.
Jessica: To clean up with mess....
(laughter)
Jessica: I’m just kidding.
(laughter)
Jessica: I think it’s interesting. I have a former life in politics, so I have a lot of experience dealing with how…
Kolby: That’s right! You worked on people’s database things or whatever.
Jessica: Yea, I worked for a company that did database software for campaigns so I worked with a lot of politicians and you know, spin is a big part of that. Contributions and who’s contributing and how they’re going to spend that is a big part… do the ends justify the means kind of thing. And I think that story is a little bit at the heart of that. Especially when we have Whitcomb, the senator who is putting the censure on Senator Sal is, you know, at the end she is asking for a vote. She’s basically saying, “I will step aside and I will not censure you on something that I think is completely wrong as long as I get what I want in the end.”
Jeremy: As long as I get what II want for my constituents.
Jessica: Right.
Kolby: It’s still horse-trading.
Jessica: It’s still horse-trading and although there’s a romantic relationship that complicates the story as well, I think it’s a very interesting, like, my ethics are very strong until I need a vote to pass my bill. And then there’s always the question, is a censure worth people’s jobs? How do you value those ideas? So, I think it’s an interesting story in that way. I struggle a lot with this subject because especially being a writer, we have lots of artists especially in the last 10 years, whose art has been brought into question because of sexual harassment, or because of pedophilia…
Kolby: Dropping like flies.
Jessica: Right. So, the question always comes us is like, “does the actions negate the art?” And I think a lot of times, when there’s a good idea, does the source of it negate the good idea-ness of it? And I think sometimes it absolutely does. I think one of the things this story reminds me of is in politics, when there is a quote-unquote good idea, but “oh, it was associated with something bad or someone bad”, a lot of times we don’t take it out of the, “oh, it was this person’s idea” and then talk about how did, for example, in the camps, Nazi youth camps aren’t a good idea. I don’t care.
(laughter)
Jeremy: Well when you put it that way.
Kolby: You can’t call it a Nazi youth camp; you have to call it a “Pre-World War II Exercise Facility.” You’ve got to rename it. It’s all branding.
Jessica: Right, but even in the re-branding, we don’t carry the four. So, mandatory youth camps are great if you’re completely able-bodied, you’re not homosexual, you’re not introverted, you’re not… right? All these things are great ideas until you carry the idea farther down and then it becomes, yes, the big reveal happens. So, yes, what a great idea. Summer camps.
Kolby: I think there are two things you’re talking about there. One is, can a good idea come from a bad source? And number two, in this story was having these camps even a good idea? And it sounds like you’re for sure on the having a mandatory camp isn’t a good idea.
Jessica: Correct.
Kolby: And I kind of agree with that. Although I do think mandatory service is not necessarily a bad thing.
Jeremy: Not necessarily bad. And the whole idea from Sal’s point of view, it’s getting people out in the National Parks to do things. Maintenance of the parks, not necessarily a “youth camp.” But it depends on how you spin that and really what is the goal of the bill. Is it to national service where people are doing things for the common good?
Kolby: Like free labor for the government, for the common good?
Jeremy: Right.
Kolby: Maybe that’s what he should’ve called it, “Free labor for the government for the common good.”
(laughter)
Kolby: F-C-C-P whatever CA….
Jessica: I feel like no party would object at all to that.
Kolby: What about, does it it…
Jessica: Wait, wait, I want to add one thing. It’s not that I think this is a bad idea, although I do think it’s a terrible idea. What I’m saying though, is a lot of times is we don’t learn from our history so looking at the Nazi camps and Sal does in the story, he goes and he looks at those before and after pictures of those weakling kids and then at a 6 pack…
Kolby: And why are there 3 kids less? What? Weird? We started with 20 kids in the camp and we finished with 17. So odd.
Jessica: And I think that’s where we get lost. A lot of times we’ll say, “oh, it’s a good idea no matter where it came from.” But we don’t explore the bad idea part of it in the historical context. Yeah, these were a bad idea and why and how could that play out in our version of this idea?
Jeremy: Really. And that’s the important part of, or what should be the important part of this discussion is what are the merits of the idea good and bad? As opposed to where it came from, which is a logical fallacy anyways.
Kolby: Which is what the story and all the politics is related and where the idea came from. There’s no discussion at all…
Jeremy: On if it’s a good idea.
Kolby: Right.
Jessica: Well, and I think, that’s just human nature. Every idea Kolby comes us with, I’m immediately going to say it’s a bad idea.
Kolby: It’s a terrible idea.
(laughter)
Jessica: You gotta argue with me that it’s a good idea.
Jessica: And yet, you still got on a plane.
(laughter)
Kolby: I’m going to tangent, half a tangent for a second, years ago a friend of mind was, I suppose they still are, an economist. And got PhD in economy and came here as a German guy, blah blah blah, whole thing. And I asked him, “look, I’ve never understood, in the middle of the great depression, a world-wide great depression the 1930s, the United States a wreck, Europe is a wreck, every place is a wreck, Hitler somehow creates economic policies that creates a massive, not just military, but recovered economy surrounded by shattered economies including the United States. And the only thing that gets the United Stated out of the Great Depression is the government spending on war efforts to fight Germany and fight Japan. So surely…
Jeremy: There’s a lesson in here.
Kolby: Yeah. Besides the fact of “don’t be horrible,” there must be some economic lesson on how you boot strap your own country out of a world-wide depression when there is nobody in the world to sell too because everyone’s in a bad shape. And so, I asked this German economist guy who’s staying with me at this time, I asked him, “how was this studied?” And he said, “we don’t.” And I’m like, “what do you mean you don’t?” He’s like, “nobody studied it. It would be academic suicide to study something that the Hitler Germany did to understand why it was good.” He’s like, “so we don’t.”
Jeremy: Because there’s so much bad involved.
Kolby: Because there’s so much bad about it. So, I’m like, “You don’t even know how they did it?” He’s like, “Well, we roughly know.” I’m like, “did anyone get a PhD in figuring it out?” And he’s like, “no, probably not.”
Jessica: To be fair…
Kolby: I mean, he was German.
Jessica: To be fair, I think there’s also the human instinct to…
Kolby: The wretch instinct?
Jessica: I was going to say, to take something half-cocked and not understood and run with it as a platform, is so utterly scary, I absolutely wouldn’t study it, because some jerk is going pick that up and say, “hey, the way to economic recovery is to repress and genocide a bunch of people.” And some politicians, is going to be like, “yea, that’s not such a bad idea.”
Jeremy: “I’d get on board with that because it keeps us in power.”
Kolby: That’s how you go from Darwin to eugenics.
Jessica: Exactly, this is exactly how you go from Darwin to eugenics.
Kolby: I think that’s fair.
Jessica: That’s fair. If I was Germany, I’d be like “guys, just shut it down.”
(Laughter)
Jessica: Whatever might have been good, I don’t even care. I don’t want anybody rehabilitating this movement. Of course, that did not work.
Kolby: Yet, you sent your kid to kindergarten. Let’s just be clear.
Jessica: Well, my kid goes to a German bi-lingual school so….
(laughter)
Kolby: Your political career is over!
Jessica: I was never going to get into politics anyways. I’m a horrible person.
Kolby: Jeremy, let me ask you a question. One of the things that comes up is the guy goes through a listing of good ideas from other sources.
Jeremy: Certainly.
Kolby: I think he talks about the autobahn and a couple other ones. There’s some he didn’t even mention, like the little BMW symbol is a helicopter, is a propeller, because they made war planes for German. I think it’s BMW, it might’ve been Mercedes.
Jeremy: Mercedes.
Kolby: Yeah. Do you think it’s okay to take ideas that are either military ideas or war ideas or all the sort of research that came out of human limitations that were done on concentration camp people, it’s still data, do you think they throw it away?
Jessica: Wait, how do you know its valid data?
Jeremy: Right, you don’t.
Jessica: We just know its data. We don’t know if its valid or not.
Kolby: That’s true. But the example they use in the story is the rocket technology. I want to be clear there was an American who did rocketry first and but Germany continued that from his work, and then we basically gave them all a free pass and was like, “look, if you’ll come to America, we’ll just say you were doing Nazi work and you didn’t have a choice.” And now we have a rocket program. Do you blank that to keep a clean moral slate, or you okay, like, “you were bad but you were bad but useful”?
Jeremy: That’s ethically questionable and the government is typically not very good at that, and they will just blanketly allow SS scientists to come to the US and work in the atomic program and the rocket programs, even though they did bad things.
Jessica: Although I think it’s defiantly more prevalent in government, I do think that’s true for a lot of sectors. Like the guy who invented cardiac catheters, the one that goes up the vein and into the heart, he did it on himself first.
Kolby: What?
Jessica: Yep, his name is Werner Forssmann.
Kolby: That’s Frankenstein stuff.
Jessica: Yeah. He got fired for it.
Kolby: And then he got a Nobel Prize for it, probably.
Jessica: He did! He did get a Nobel Prize for it! Shut the front door. Thank you “imager(?)” for reminding me of this. But he...
Kolby: I wonder how many people got a Nobel Prize for something they got fired for? He’s got to be it?
Jeremy: No. I’m sure there’s more.
Kolby: Madame Curie.
Jessica: But what I was going to say is that, he did that and then he joined the Nazi Party.
Kolby: Really?
Jessica: Right? And so, we as a medical community, of course, we’re not going to just be like, “hey, forget it, were not going to cardiac catheter, that’s probably not good because it came from a Nazi.”
Kolby: So, do you think there’s a distinction between medical and scientific sort of separation, versus political separation? So, if you come up with the version of the something catheter…?
Jessica: Cardiac catheter.
Kolby: So, if you come up with the political theory version of the cardiac catheter, do you chuck that opinion out because it’s a different world in politics?
Jeremy: Politics and finances and economics. Which is what we’re saying…
Kolby: So, you’d say yes then?
Jeremy: Because they’re much more a public sector, there is a larger impression and it’s much more visible. In politics, because of the election cycle, everything you do it brought forth.
Kolby: Aren’t we kind of glad that scientists don’t follow that same rule otherwise you wouldn’t have a cardiac catheter?
Jeremy: We wouldn’t have a rocket program.
Kolby: Right. So, if it’s good enough for science, why isn’t that good enough for economics?
Jessica: Okay, but here’s the thing, we have to be careful even in science because they we start saying anything for science as long as it advances humanity, therefor it’s valid. And then we get Henrietta Lacks and the woman whose DNA, I’m going to mess this up, sorry internet, Henrietta Lacks, there’s a whole book on it, there’s a really great radio lab podcast on it.
Jeremy: I think I’ve heard this the same way.
Jessica: Her DNA, her cells in her body, she was dying of a disease, a uterine clot or something, and a sample was taken without consent, and it now is the basis of almost all the vaccine science in the world. Henrietta Lacks. She’s amazing. She died. Nothing was ever attributed to her, her family received no financial gain, she was a poor black woman, and she was taken advantage of.
Kolby: Of course, she was. Let me guess, in Alabama or something.
Jessica: Exactly. And so, again, it’s that anything for science. Without Henrietta Lacks, we would not be where we are today medically. However…
Jeremy: There’s still ethical issues with what they did.
Jessica: There’s still big ethical issues and we should have done it right and instead we did not. And so, that always is going to concern me. Yes, we should learn from bad people. Hello, there’s cat fighting.
Kolby: There’s cat fighting going on.
Jessica: They’re displeased with this line of inquiry.
Kolby: I feel like any cat not named Logan is a wasted opportunity. I gotta be honest.
(laughter)
Kolby: I’m just going to throw that out there right now.
Jessica: My nephew is names Logan.
Jeremy: But your nephew isn’t a cat.
Kolby: Or Krueger. Krueger would work too. Not the park, the horror guy. Sorry.
Jessica: Anyway, I think that’s a slippery-slope. I think that is to say, “oh, as long as it’s science or medicine,” because again, medicine is one of those, how much did we learn from horrible experimentation or the repression, especially black women in the United States, the whole OBGYN field is just marred with terrible atrocities that we never ever recognize. So, I think I have a problem with that.
Jeremy: Right, but the other side of the, basically critical thinking in the scientific process, is that you’re building on previous work and so people aren’t always, I would assume in science, looking at who did the work, they’re just looking at the work, reproducing the experiments, or building on that research. And so, there’s a disconnect between who did the research and the research itself.
Kolby: So, I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m just going to throw blood in the water.
Jessica: We’ll tell you when you’re wrong.
Kolby: I feel like there’s an understanding then, that when it comes to physics, when it comes to medicine, that truth until we know better truth exists. Like, we know that Newtonian physics is correct until we get Einstein-ian physics and then we know that’s correct until we get…. And truth simply exists. So, I don’t know why that belief of like, “well truth exists but I’m going to take a pass on these other ideas because I don’t like where they came from because I question their motivation in gathering truth.”
Jessica: I think probably because the scientific method does exist.
Kolby: As opposed to politics where it’s just the sausage method.
Jeremy: Yes.
Jessica: Right, and it’s a lot of PR and a lot of spin and it’s a lot of what was society ready for at the time and what are they not? I think trying to apply that to art, why did Edgar Allen Poe die penniless and alone? Why did that happen when he was so popular later on?
Kolby: That makes sense in politics and art, truth is a much more fluid thing.
Jessica: And very nuanced and dependent on a lot of things. I still think that’s true for science. I just think we do a better of sussing it out. When you were talking about the data for the Holocaust victims and you said, “validated.” And I said, “how do we know it’s valid?”
Kolby: Sure. We try and reproduce it but we can’t.
Jessica: We can’t. So, I think it goes back to that as well.
Kolby: Jeremy, generally what did you think of the story? Like it, dislike it, did you find it interesting?
Jeremy: It’s pretty well written, the points that it brings up are good. I feel like there could have been more research done, or research presented in his argument as opposed to the pretty well-known ones that were provided.
Kolby: And nobody ever talks about the caffeine pills and all the speed that they gave all the pilots and the people in German.
Jeremy: Right, they were all on meth.
Kolby: I just read a stat a little while ago that when they figured out how many meth pills that they were giving out, that it worked out to like, 2 a week per soldier. Millions, hundreds of millions of them were produced. And we don’t really talk about any of that. What about the idea? Not necessarily the go away to camp, but the idea of some mandatory…
Jeremy: Mandatory national service.
Kolby: Mandatory national service. And that’s not necessarily saying that it has to be going to this guy’s idea, but you could go be a lifeguard or whatever the government thinks they need you for.
Jeremy: Exactly. And because the government is running it, it’s going to be fraught with problems.
(laughter)
Kolby: Yes, of course.
Jessica: I mean, way to bring some reality to it.
Kolby: And corruption and nepotism.
Jeremy: Yes. I’ve talked to people from Israel where they go through…
Kolby: Turkey also does mandatory service.
Jeremy: And there’s a lot of countries where people are involved with national service and sometimes it’s, honestly, I was in the Army and there’s a lot of…
Kolby: That could’ve been 2 years national service what you were doing, right?
Jeremy: Absolutely. It was not a glamorous job and really there’s too many people and it was fraught with issues as well, even though it wasn’t compulsory. So, because it’s run by the government.
Kolby: Sure…
(cat meow)
Jessica: Oh, did you guys hear that? There’s a cat fight.
Kolby: There’s a government fight going on over there.
Jessica: I think it’s a fight over the litter box? Which is a very bad scene.
Kolby: You don’t want to be the one waiting for the port-a-potty.
(laughter)
Kolby: You don’t want that world.
Jessica: Get into a fist fight waiting for the port-a-potty.
Kolby: I think, it’s particularly for Jessica and I, you’ll find an audience that’s like, “when government does something, it tends to be bloated and inefficient and corrupt.” But, does that mean it’s not worth doing? So even if you’ve only got 70% efficiency, you might still get the levee built.
Jeremy: Absolutely and I think you see that a lot in the depression area or the Roosevelt’s programs. There were a lot of good programs that came about from that, that were the same ideas. Some sort of national service work programs.
Kolby: I still see, every once in a while, when you walk on a sidewalk, you can see the stamp in the sidewalk, the CCC stamp or whatever, because the sidewalk was built as part of a work-labor program. But they didn’t wall it a labor-camp, they knew better.
(laughter)
Kolby: Yea, they knew better.
Jessica: What you’re talking about also was not just for young people coming out of high school.
Kolby: It was for unemployed adults, there an Unemployment Program.
Jessica: It’s a program which is very different from compulsory service.
Kolby: Yea, no, that’s right. I feel like there’s a branding issue with this for sure.
Jessica: And not even just a branding issue, but make compulsory… I don’t know if you met me, but you tell me that you want me to do something, my first instinct is to do the opposite. So, to tell me, “you have to do this thing for 2 years”… I love the national parks. If you told me I had to work in the national parks for 2 years, I’d be a jerk about it.
Kolby: Just because you told me too.
Jessica: Just because you told me too.
Kolby: Yeah. I feel that’s a very American trait.
Jessica: And whatever, it’s a very Jessica trait. But I don’t think the government shouldn’t be in a position to tell you what to do, especially for two very prime years of life.
Jeremy: Right. You could…
Kolby: Like 18-20 or something…
Jeremy: We could probably spend another half an hour arguing about ways to improve that program, but still, it’s not going to please everybody no matter what you do.
Jessica: Yeah.
Kolby: Alright, let me finish one last question. Jessica, you’re going to get it since you’re our new guest. Do you think that learning more about the person can diminish the legacy of their idea? So, Martin Luther King is famously, or maybe infamously, known as a womanizer that we found out later. That does not mean he’s not Martin Luther King. Henry Ford actually went and visited Hitler in Germany and talked about and he believe in eugenics and he believed in what he was doing, but that doesn’t mean we don’t build things on an assembly line.
Jessica: Correct.
Jeremy: And again, it’s a logical fallacy to condemn someone’s ideas because of who they are or what they’ve done outside of that idea. The idea has merit in itself.
Jessica: It does. What I will say is….
Kolby: Nobody is going to be listening to R-kelly pretty soon.
Jessica: We can only hope.
(laughter)
Kolby: Agreed. I actually didn’t even know who he was.
Jessica: I think the thing that we have to steer away from, is I feel like it’s this binary.
Kolby: Bad guys or good guys.
Jessica: Either it’s 100% their ideas and the person are amazing, or they’re all trash. And I think that…
Kolby: The Christopher Columbus sort of thing.
Jessica: We have to get away from heroes. Heroes is the biggest problem we have. Martin Luther King and his womanizing, should be part of…
Jeremy: His legacy.
Jessica: The whole story of Martin Luther King. Dr. Seuss had cheated on his first wife, she committed suicide over it.
Kolby: Really?
Jessica: Yep. Theodor Geisel. He married his second wife and lived a very long, loving life with her. And I don’t judge, I don’t know that situation, I don’t judge that, but knowing that history gives me a full complete picture, a fuller completer picture or Theodor Geisel than just Dr. Seuss who just wrote books.
Kolby: Let me ask a follow up question. That was going to be the last question, but that’s such a good answer, I want to ask one follow up question. What about the fact that learning history and learning our past is a little bit of an onion process in that when you’re in second grade you don’t say, “Columbus discovered American and genocide and rape and disease and wiped out a 1/3 of the population, brought back people to show off as objects, and died thinking that he had found India because he literally didn’t know he’d found a new continent on his deathbed.” You don’t cram all that into a 2nd grader.
Jessica: No, but I think, and Jeremy I’ll let you answer as well, sorry, I just totally ran into…. I think….
Kolby: Can you start off with “Columbus started America” and then just by 9th and 10th grade be like “and he was a horrible human being”?
Jessica: I think you have to tease a little. Like, when Jeremy was reading the story and he talked about the research on it, that was because something peaked his interested. He was like, “I wanna learn a little bit more.” I think you can tell as a mom of a 3rd grader; you can tell the Christopher Columbus story and the terrible things that happened with Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans.
Kolby: You just start getting that in at age appropriate level.
Jessica: Absolutely. You don’t have to go and tell horrible…
Jeremy: In an age-appropriate way.
Jessica: You don’t have to go into horrible detail, but you have to give them… because here’s what happens: they grow up and think you lied to them and that’s a much worse place to be. Whereas instead, you were like, “remember when I told you about Christopher Columbus and the horrible stuff that happened to the Native American’s because of his arrival? Great. Let’s move onto the next…” right? And that’s more intriguing to them than “Christopher Columbus was the best!”
Kolby: Jeremy, you’re nodding yes?
Jeremy: Yes. I would agree. It’s the same way. There are age-appropriate ways to introduce that information and it should all be presented in that fashion.
Kolby: From that start in an age-appropriate way.
Jeremy: Yea, I think so.
Kolby: That’s fair.
Jeremy: And I think it would be very good for, again, from a hero perspective that if we were presented all of these people we get from history, every single one of them did questionable things.
Jessica: Absolutely!
Kolby: Then doesn’t that make studying something like this and the Senator’s idea… if it wasn’t heroes and villains, then his idea is no longer lumped in the villain category, and then it can be discussed in a more rational way.
Jeremy: Exactly.
Jessica: It’s still a bad idea.
Kolby: And Jessica is working at a national park.
Jessica: No, I’m not.
Kolby: Alright. Well, we’re going to wrap it up there. You’ve been listening to After Dinner Conversation with myself Kolby and Jeremy and Jessica. After Dinner Conversation is a series of short stories for long discussions about ethics and morality and all the things we’ve been doing today. We hope that you have the same conversations that we have with your friends. All of these stories can be purchased and reviewed on e-books, at Amazon, you can get these podcasts at all sorts of place where podcasts are, I think they’re everywhere now. And if you’ve enjoyed this, please subscribe, please like this. One, it makes us feel good but also it gives us the ability to do more of these and to leverage this and to have more exciting topics that we talk about. It really does help and adopt a cat.
Jessica: Adopt a cat.
Kolby: Adopt a cat.
Jessica: And what’s the website?
Kolby: That’s a great question. Afterdinnerconversation.com and if you go on Amazon and type in “After Dinner Conversation”, a whole array, there’s dozens of these books up now. And next week, I forgot, we’re talking about “As You Wish” and Jessica you’re going to go our summary. Did you type up a 3-paragraph summary for next week?
(laughter)
Jessica: I will for next week.
Kolby: You will for next week?
Jessica: I will for next week.
Kolby: “As You Wish” is a story of an elderly woman who finds a trunk of tattered stuffed animals and makes a promise to fix them all. It’s a genuinely a children’s story, unlike the one we just did. So, join us next episode. Thank you.