RPF0618-Reflections_on_the_State_of_the_USA_From_Two_Travelers
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00:00:30.620 | - Chris Moody, welcome back to Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:33.060 | - It's so great to be here and live and in person.
00:00:34.960 | - Indeed, live and in person this time.
00:00:36.760 | Last time you were on the show,
00:00:38.560 | you and your wife had been traveling, it was July,
00:00:41.660 | so you'd been traveling at that time for a month?
00:00:43.500 | - Barely a month.
00:00:44.540 | We had just gotten on the road
00:00:46.540 | and now here we sit, we have traveled 21,000 miles,
00:00:51.380 | nine or 10 months in 72 square feet,
00:00:54.680 | living in a cargo van with my wife
00:00:56.740 | and we still love each other so much.
00:00:58.920 | - So you're taking the answer to my question up front.
00:01:02.020 | Would you do it again?
00:01:03.860 | - Absolutely.
00:01:05.120 | We have learned so much in living this time together
00:01:08.700 | in a small space,
00:01:10.020 | traveling all over the United States and Canada.
00:01:12.920 | I'll tell you, we would do it so much
00:01:14.460 | that we're gonna do it again in 2019.
00:01:16.360 | We've got a whole 'nother leg of the trip around the country
00:01:19.400 | and I would tell you where we're going,
00:01:20.740 | but I don't know yet, that's the beauty of it.
00:01:23.200 | - So give new listeners who didn't hear
00:01:25.000 | your first appearance on the show,
00:01:26.500 | the 30 second version of what happened
00:01:28.720 | and how you and your wife came to travel like this.
00:01:31.220 | - My wife and I lived in New York City
00:01:33.320 | and because of a job layoff,
00:01:35.220 | we had a new opportunity to do
00:01:37.520 | kind of whatever we wanted to
00:01:40.220 | and so we decided to sell and give away
00:01:42.820 | all of our possessions, got rid of our apartment,
00:01:45.660 | bought a used cargo van and together built
00:01:48.800 | a 72 square foot off-grid home inside the cargo van
00:01:52.700 | and decided that that would be,
00:01:54.540 | that and gas would be our only expense
00:01:56.700 | and we traveled all over the country,
00:01:58.680 | in part embedding with communities
00:02:00.720 | that have chosen to, as we would say,
00:02:02.220 | opt out of a lot of mainstream ways of living
00:02:04.880 | to try to find a new American dream
00:02:07.120 | and we met a lot of people along the way
00:02:09.960 | and it is not for everyone,
00:02:13.220 | but we learned to live for free all across America,
00:02:17.120 | so many places you can sleep and stay overnight
00:02:20.300 | without paying a dime and our only expenses
00:02:22.160 | were food and gas and maybe some fun.
00:02:24.100 | - And the most important thing about that transition
00:02:26.000 | is you were living in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan,
00:02:28.840 | so you were in the middle of the hoity-toity crowd
00:02:32.740 | and now you're a van dweller,
00:02:34.080 | so this was quite the transition.
00:02:35.740 | - It was a complete transition,
00:02:37.320 | although we were kind of transitioning that direction
00:02:40.180 | in how we lived our lives in Manhattan.
00:02:42.960 | I worked in media and I was very much sucked
00:02:47.160 | into the everyday minutiae of the world,
00:02:50.360 | of Washington and of culture and of politics,
00:02:54.700 | but we set some very strict rules
00:02:56.400 | when we lived in New York City
00:02:57.700 | about how we would live when we were together
00:03:00.200 | in our apartment, for example, not to be vague,
00:03:02.540 | but for example, we would not have any device use
00:03:07.320 | beyond the threshold of the door in the apartment
00:03:09.880 | and when we were home together,
00:03:11.680 | we were present and home together
00:03:13.380 | and we would live this kind of quiet log cabin existence
00:03:17.820 | in the middle of Manhattan while we were home
00:03:20.520 | and that's really the way we were heading
00:03:22.720 | and it just so happened that we ended up taking it
00:03:24.760 | into an extreme level by living in the woods
00:03:27.320 | in a van for nine months.
00:03:28.900 | - So your experience and my own family's experience,
00:03:31.340 | we've just returned from almost six months on the road,
00:03:33.440 | not quite as many miles, but about 13,000 miles
00:03:36.080 | and I guess 25, 30 states, something like that,
00:03:38.640 | I need to go back and count them,
00:03:40.540 | but we've also had an interesting experience
00:03:42.440 | and the bulk of what we're gonna focus on
00:03:44.740 | in today's discussion is basically
00:03:47.080 | the United States of America,
00:03:48.180 | what's happening at this moment
00:03:50.620 | and I thought this would be a really fun interview
00:03:53.360 | for us to do together
00:03:54.740 | because we both have curious personalities.
00:03:57.540 | You come from a professional reporter's background,
00:04:00.540 | so you have that natural bent or cultivated bent probably
00:04:04.100 | to asking questions and learning people's stories.
00:04:06.960 | You've traveled all four corners of the country
00:04:08.980 | over the last six months.
00:04:10.160 | We've traveled a good portion of the country
00:04:13.500 | and one of my main reasons for going out and traveling,
00:04:16.520 | in addition to personal reasons,
00:04:18.540 | was to get a sense of what's happening
00:04:20.900 | in the United States of America.
00:04:22.060 | One of the big challenges for me
00:04:23.360 | in building radical personal finances,
00:04:25.420 | I no longer have a water cooler
00:04:27.180 | or a coffee pot to talk around.
00:04:29.500 | It's very easy for me in a normal week
00:04:32.300 | to sit in front of my computer
00:04:34.060 | and all of my work is solitary.
00:04:35.900 | I don't work physically with any coworkers,
00:04:38.640 | I just sit in front of my computer
00:04:40.340 | and I get together with a few personal friends
00:04:42.540 | and some church friends and that's about it
00:04:44.820 | as far as my in-person interaction.
00:04:47.560 | And what I have learned is that's very dangerous for me
00:04:51.480 | because then it leads me trying to form my understanding
00:04:55.080 | of what's happening in the world from Twitter
00:04:57.720 | or from YouTube or from NewYorkTimes.com
00:05:01.600 | or whatever those kinds of things are.
00:05:03.520 | And I've struggled to maintain a grip on reality
00:05:08.200 | without having coworkers to talk to at the coffee pot.
00:05:12.240 | And so today we're gonna talk about
00:05:14.780 | what's happening in the country
00:05:16.000 | and you and I have both been out traveling,
00:05:18.960 | getting a sense of what's happening.
00:05:20.680 | So my question for you,
00:05:21.880 | is what you've observed over the last six months
00:05:24.400 | a surprise to you?
00:05:25.440 | Is the world about how you thought it was
00:05:27.680 | when you were living in Manhattan or is it very different?
00:05:30.800 | - The short answer is no, I learned a lot.
00:05:33.720 | First of all, let me set the scene of how we lived.
00:05:37.400 | So part of this experience,
00:05:39.040 | I almost completely opted out of any exposure to media.
00:05:44.480 | I have not read the news in months,
00:05:46.380 | although I found I'm exposed to information.
00:05:48.740 | People just tell me things, so I don't feel less informed,
00:05:51.500 | but I used to read the news on a moment to moment basis.
00:05:54.100 | - And you were reporting the news.
00:05:55.340 | - I was reporting, that used to be the news, right?
00:05:57.540 | But I also don't consume online content anymore.
00:06:00.580 | My phone went from a content machine
00:06:03.540 | to just something that tells me how to get places
00:06:06.420 | or where a restaurant is.
00:06:07.940 | And that's just about, and to make phone calls and texts,
00:06:09.980 | and that's it.
00:06:11.700 | And so it seems like while I was on the road
00:06:14.760 | for the past nine months,
00:06:16.000 | the whole country was acting like everything was on fire.
00:06:19.320 | And yet the world that I was encountering
00:06:21.920 | on a human to human basis was nothing like that.
00:06:26.440 | I don't know if people are living multiple lives
00:06:28.500 | where on Facebook, they act like everything is crazy
00:06:31.660 | and that they feel crazy, but in person and out,
00:06:34.600 | I'm gonna say out in the country,
00:06:35.720 | but I used to live in Washington, DC and in New York City,
00:06:38.520 | and there it's just all right in your face.
00:06:40.520 | And you start to think that those East Coast cities
00:06:43.960 | are the only cities, not that matter, but that exist.
00:06:47.000 | And everything else is just like,
00:06:50.360 | it's a thing out there.
00:06:51.640 | And I know that that is a stereotype,
00:06:53.460 | but that is, you get to a very narrowly focused viewpoint
00:06:57.520 | when you live in those places for a long time
00:06:59.360 | and to get out into the country and just listen to people.
00:07:03.340 | So I found that for the most part,
00:07:06.320 | people are living really happy, positive lives
00:07:10.420 | and they're not focused so much on the news
00:07:12.820 | as people think they are.
00:07:15.200 | They're focused on their family, their jobs
00:07:17.560 | and what they're gonna do this weekend.
00:07:18.920 | And that is what they talk about.
00:07:20.880 | Let me give you an example, Josh.
00:07:22.480 | So I made it a point when I was in my job,
00:07:26.600 | I always had to ask people about politics.
00:07:28.600 | That was my job.
00:07:29.640 | What do you think of Trump?
00:07:30.480 | What do you think of Hillary Clinton?
00:07:31.520 | What do you think of what's going on?
00:07:33.260 | Well, going out on my own really gave me an opportunity
00:07:36.000 | to not ask those questions and see what people say.
00:07:40.320 | In nine months, no one brought up politics once.
00:07:45.080 | And I talked to a lot of people.
00:07:46.820 | I let them guide the conversation.
00:07:49.000 | Not a single person mentioned
00:07:51.560 | what was going on in Washington.
00:07:53.360 | Now they might've just been polite 'cause I was new,
00:07:55.320 | but I spent a good amount of time with people,
00:07:56.960 | maybe series of days.
00:07:59.000 | There is so much more to talk about
00:08:01.240 | and they have an interest in talking about it,
00:08:05.280 | but it didn't have anything to do what was in the newspaper.
00:08:07.940 | And I found that phenomenally refreshing,
00:08:10.920 | but also fascinating as well.
00:08:12.580 | - Right, right.
00:08:13.840 | So frankly, Chris, I don't know how to analyze this.
00:08:17.880 | So I also, when we were traveling,
00:08:20.320 | I also was very cut off from much of the media world.
00:08:23.460 | I've had massive problems
00:08:25.580 | disconnecting myself from my phone
00:08:27.700 | in order to get anything done.
00:08:28.880 | I'll tell you how extreme I've had to be.
00:08:30.060 | So for years, I've taken off social media.
00:08:32.240 | I used to be addicted to YouTube.
00:08:33.880 | I took off YouTube.
00:08:35.040 | Then I took off all the social media apps.
00:08:37.820 | It got so bad that for me to get something done,
00:08:39.720 | I had to completely eliminate my browser,
00:08:43.360 | my web browser from my phone.
00:08:45.560 | So for the entirety of our traveling around the country,
00:08:48.440 | not once I didn't log on to Facebook.
00:08:52.080 | I haven't logged on in eight months at this point.
00:08:54.760 | I didn't log on to almost anything.
00:08:56.960 | And I did not have a web browser on my phone.
00:09:00.080 | My wife has much more self-control than I do.
00:09:01.960 | So if we needed to look something up, we use her phone
00:09:04.000 | 'cause I did not have it.
00:09:05.480 | And it completely removed the utility
00:09:07.860 | of this thousand dollar device in my pocket.
00:09:10.700 | But it made me much more peaceful.
00:09:12.780 | But I would drive around and I would look at people
00:09:14.540 | and I would imagine the arguments
00:09:16.540 | that I used to get into online.
00:09:18.460 | And I'd be driving past some house in Colorado
00:09:22.100 | or they see a house and I would think,
00:09:25.020 | this person is on Facebook.
00:09:27.620 | This person is talking there.
00:09:29.500 | But this life that I see around them
00:09:31.380 | doesn't seem connected to the arguments
00:09:33.240 | and the vitriol and the politics and whatnot there.
00:09:35.820 | So is it just that the people are living,
00:09:37.780 | and I had the same experience,
00:09:38.820 | that people didn't talk in real life
00:09:40.580 | like we do all of us online.
00:09:43.940 | So is it just that we maintain two different personalities,
00:09:46.680 | one real life person and one an online persona?
00:09:49.820 | Or are there just the people in Washington and New York,
00:09:53.220 | they're the ones who are arguing and no one else cares?
00:09:55.620 | - No, people do care.
00:09:56.860 | But I think people in Washington and New York
00:09:58.820 | assume that most people are thinking about them
00:10:01.140 | far more than they are.
00:10:02.420 | - I agree.
00:10:03.260 | - And in the business that I was,
00:10:04.680 | I remember thinking that what Congressman so-and-so
00:10:07.200 | just said in the hallways of Congress
00:10:08.760 | was the most important thing.
00:10:09.700 | And I had to get it out immediately
00:10:10.900 | and it was gonna change the world.
00:10:12.640 | And I realized, oh, people consume a lot slower
00:10:16.300 | than they do when you're in the belly of the beast,
00:10:20.240 | so to speak.
00:10:21.540 | But no, I think you might find that people
00:10:23.440 | are living two separate lives.
00:10:25.080 | But you'll find that even though the noise
00:10:28.080 | is all about what is happening in the West Wing
00:10:30.880 | or in Washington right now,
00:10:32.400 | that seems like all that's going on in the country,
00:10:34.500 | there is so much more going on in the country.
00:10:37.480 | A lot of the cities around the country
00:10:39.800 | that people might not have given a lot of credit to
00:10:41.880 | in the past 30 or 40 years are really blossoming
00:10:44.720 | and coming into becoming real centers of culture and art.
00:10:48.640 | And places beyond just New York City
00:10:53.440 | are really exciting places to live with exciting people.
00:10:56.480 | And that might be news to some people back east,
00:10:58.360 | but it's so true.
00:10:59.200 | - Right, absolutely.
00:11:00.320 | Last comment on just the influence.
00:11:02.400 | I ran the numbers one time on,
00:11:04.480 | I was looking at the viewership for the cable news channels
00:11:08.800 | and it seems like the cable news channels
00:11:10.360 | seemingly drive all the conversation.
00:11:12.040 | Everyone's always either talking about
00:11:13.760 | what just got reported on the cable news channels
00:11:15.720 | on whichever side of the political spectrum.
00:11:17.800 | I looked at it and I said,
00:11:18.960 | with the exception of a few big shows,
00:11:20.980 | which might have a million or two million people,
00:11:22.800 | you know, a big Fox News show or something like that,
00:11:24.800 | the average audience for a cable news channel
00:11:27.360 | is under half a million people.
00:11:29.360 | And yet this under half a million people,
00:11:32.040 | they're not sitting and watching it currently,
00:11:34.040 | it's just on in the background.
00:11:35.160 | So Nielsen's scraping the fact that it's on,
00:11:36.920 | but they're not necessarily paying total attention to it.
00:11:40.040 | In a nation of 300 million people,
00:11:42.040 | that's really not that much of an impact.
00:11:44.340 | Most people just don't care about the news.
00:11:46.740 | Most people don't care about what,
00:11:47.960 | all of that stuff that's self-importance.
00:11:49.960 | But when I'm in the middle of it,
00:11:51.100 | I think it's all that matters.
00:11:52.200 | And you've been far more in the middle of it than I have.
00:11:53.980 | And only getting out of it
00:11:54.920 | and completely walking away from it have I seen,
00:11:57.000 | listen, it's not that important.
00:11:59.080 | The crisis of the day is not the most important thing.
00:12:03.120 | So I agree with you.
00:12:04.520 | Now, I wanna talk about a number of different areas
00:12:07.080 | and try to speak practically about our observations.
00:12:10.520 | And I brought you here to balance me out
00:12:13.400 | 'cause I have a tendency to be more negative
00:12:16.080 | probably than is warranted.
00:12:18.120 | I struggle with this question of optimism or pessimism
00:12:22.080 | because I think that optimism is always a logical solution.
00:12:26.160 | If we look and analyze,
00:12:27.780 | life is getting better in general for most of us
00:12:31.200 | on most every metric in general.
00:12:33.680 | If you look at the course of the history of world,
00:12:36.000 | millions of people are coming out of poverty,
00:12:37.480 | things are getting better.
00:12:38.960 | It's just hard for us to recognize it
00:12:40.600 | because we don't understand what it was like a decade ago.
00:12:43.620 | And we're so caught up in the crisis of the day
00:12:45.400 | that we don't see the macro trends.
00:12:47.240 | So I think that the logical position is to be optimistic.
00:12:50.320 | But I also observe and see that things have changed.
00:12:54.040 | I don't know what your reading has been like
00:12:58.020 | while you've been on the road,
00:12:58.860 | but the most influential book I read in 2018
00:13:01.060 | was a book called "The Silk Road."
00:13:02.660 | And the author, or "The Silk Road,"
00:13:05.060 | the author was a historian
00:13:06.460 | and he traced the history of the world
00:13:08.620 | in this about 500 pages.
00:13:10.500 | And it was fascinating
00:13:11.460 | because of course he was touching on basic things.
00:13:14.260 | But what I saw was that the history of the world
00:13:16.180 | is constantly a history of problems.
00:13:18.460 | And figuring out how to bring together this macro trend
00:13:23.260 | while being realistic with the micro trends,
00:13:25.300 | I find it impossible.
00:13:26.740 | And I don't know how to do it,
00:13:28.180 | especially as looking at the United States.
00:13:30.100 | - I think you just look at the data
00:13:31.940 | over the long period of time,
00:13:33.700 | that the trajectory, despite a lot of hiccups,
00:13:36.780 | in terms of prosperity, health, is up.
00:13:41.880 | And I think it's easy to feel pessimistic
00:13:44.940 | because we are met with a lot of noise
00:13:47.220 | that sounds very scary.
00:13:49.380 | But we also are heading into this new year
00:13:52.380 | that is a year where there's more prosperity
00:13:54.940 | than there ever has been.
00:13:56.980 | And I know that it's not maybe doled out, so to speak,
00:14:00.260 | in a way that some people would appreciate it to be.
00:14:03.180 | But I think the trend lines are going up.
00:14:05.860 | We have access to more goods and services
00:14:08.520 | and there's more trade happening between nations
00:14:11.000 | than there ever has been before.
00:14:12.300 | And with more trade comes more peace,
00:14:14.380 | not ultimate, not eternal peace, but some.
00:14:18.900 | And so I can only be optimistic on a grand scale,
00:14:23.140 | but still go through the year being pessimistic
00:14:27.080 | about maybe the way that the culture is heading
00:14:29.620 | or the way that, the priorities the country is focusing on.
00:14:33.940 | But in the long term, I can only feel good.
00:14:36.700 | - When you traveled across all the corners of the country,
00:14:40.340 | did you observe one America?
00:14:43.380 | Did you observe two, multiple?
00:14:46.080 | How do you put together the fabric of this nation?
00:14:48.940 | - Less divided than we're given credit for.
00:14:52.500 | The one thing that I found amazing and could not believe
00:14:56.140 | was, this is back when I was reading the news,
00:14:59.060 | all the essays saying,
00:15:00.620 | we are the most divided we've ever been
00:15:03.360 | and we're heading for some kind of fracture, a civil war.
00:15:08.020 | Y'all, everybody, most people are like pretty chill
00:15:12.060 | with their neighbors.
00:15:14.500 | There was no sense that the people I was meeting
00:15:17.380 | or talking to of any kind were gearing up
00:15:20.820 | to get their muskets and pitchforks
00:15:22.560 | and heading for the hills to fight the civil war.
00:15:24.800 | This was not in anyone's mind.
00:15:27.180 | Like I said earlier, they're thinking about
00:15:28.640 | what their weekend plans are with their family
00:15:30.660 | and the idea of no one has the effort to go forth
00:15:33.480 | and fight a civil war.
00:15:34.320 | Like this is not a thing in people's minds.
00:15:36.680 | I think it's a thing for those who live their life
00:15:39.240 | through Twitter.
00:15:40.080 | And as a person who used to do that,
00:15:42.140 | it's easy to think that twitter.com
00:15:44.920 | is the only universe that exists.
00:15:47.400 | It's right in your face.
00:15:48.440 | It's there throughout all of your day.
00:15:50.080 | The morning you wake up
00:15:51.280 | and then when you go to bed at night,
00:15:52.680 | but that is not the world.
00:15:53.660 | But it seemed like the people writing those essays
00:15:55.600 | were living in that universe.
00:15:57.600 | You just gotta take a deep breath and step back
00:15:59.160 | and realize that that is not happening.
00:16:01.440 | That is not.
00:16:02.280 | So that's the biggest, I think, myth that I saw.
00:16:04.960 | It's not nearly as divided.
00:16:07.180 | On policy, yes, absolutely.
00:16:10.660 | And we're about to go through another presidential
00:16:12.360 | election cycle and it's gonna be wild
00:16:14.400 | and it's gonna be crazy.
00:16:15.640 | And I would recommend any listener
00:16:18.480 | to just consume your media wisely.
00:16:21.880 | Do it in a controlled fashion.
00:16:24.240 | Don't let it control your entire day.
00:16:26.880 | Take a half hour a day to read the news
00:16:29.000 | and then that's it.
00:16:30.200 | - Right, right.
00:16:31.220 | So when I look at the country,
00:16:35.800 | I agree with you in terms of generally.
00:16:38.040 | I think there's a lot less fracturing
00:16:41.000 | of what it means to be an American.
00:16:42.220 | I think, in general, if you look at wars,
00:16:44.280 | the politicians declare wars,
00:16:47.040 | but normal people don't go to war.
00:16:49.400 | They don't wanna go to war.
00:16:50.800 | If the people who actually go to war
00:16:53.280 | were the ones that would vote for it,
00:16:54.280 | we wouldn't be in any wars.
00:16:55.320 | But it's the politicians that go to war
00:16:56.640 | and they send everyone else's kids off to war.
00:16:58.920 | And I think, to me, that just seems generally true
00:17:02.100 | in most countries, most places in the world and most wars.
00:17:05.340 | But I do think that there's a lot happening economically.
00:17:07.760 | I think there's a pretty significant divide
00:17:10.360 | happening economically.
00:17:12.040 | And it's all across the country.
00:17:13.520 | There are different discussions of it.
00:17:14.960 | Some people talk about it at the coasts
00:17:16.520 | versus the interior.
00:17:17.780 | A lot of discussion can be made
00:17:19.000 | of the city versus the country.
00:17:20.640 | You can talk about it on the level of academic achievement.
00:17:23.420 | But it seems to me that there are a lot of people
00:17:25.480 | who are really doing well
00:17:26.880 | and a lot of people who are really struggling.
00:17:28.920 | And the rich are getting richer
00:17:30.480 | and the poor are getting poorer.
00:17:31.760 | And that seems to be challenging to figure out,
00:17:35.880 | how do we fix this?
00:17:38.480 | What were your observations economically?
00:17:41.360 | - Well, over the past five years,
00:17:43.760 | I'd say we've gotten very used
00:17:45.440 | to looking at the stock market
00:17:47.000 | and it going up, up, up, up.
00:17:48.920 | And that makes it really exciting for us
00:17:51.060 | to log on to whatever our bank account is
00:17:53.880 | where we have our stock brokerages
00:17:55.360 | and look at the trend line going up.
00:17:57.040 | And so we might've gotten into the habit
00:17:58.840 | of checking it every day.
00:18:00.380 | And in the next year ahead or the next few years,
00:18:03.680 | I'm no prognosticator,
00:18:05.000 | but maybe it won't be so.
00:18:06.360 | Maybe it won't only go up.
00:18:07.320 | So while we've gotten used to checking it all day,
00:18:11.040 | it might not be nearly as fun.
00:18:12.440 | And that might, talking about short-term pessimism,
00:18:14.480 | really get us down.
00:18:15.640 | And I think it's important for people to,
00:18:19.900 | in this time of uncertainty,
00:18:21.740 | look back at your long-term plan
00:18:25.160 | and make sure you're comfortable and confident in it,
00:18:27.800 | and then rest your hope on that
00:18:29.660 | and not on your daily habit of checking the stock market.
00:18:33.080 | But to your question about the divide,
00:18:36.920 | I think the data are showing
00:18:39.700 | that while there is divides in certain areas,
00:18:43.440 | poor people that are in poverty,
00:18:47.000 | still the standard of living is increasing.
00:18:51.160 | - Absolutely.
00:18:52.000 | - And so I would still say that it's still,
00:18:55.880 | people are doing better year after year.
00:18:58.680 | - Yeah, I agree.
00:18:59.520 | And so the classic argument, which I would affirm,
00:19:01.360 | is what matters is not so much the difference
00:19:05.320 | between the rich and the poor,
00:19:06.480 | in terms of the nominal difference.
00:19:08.480 | What matters is what is the standard of living.
00:19:10.320 | And so the poorest among us today,
00:19:12.580 | even on a global basis, the poorest among us today
00:19:14.840 | are richer than we've ever been.
00:19:16.940 | Which brings me to my big concern.
00:19:19.680 | And I sometimes question, Chris,
00:19:21.560 | if I'm just too much of a pessimist.
00:19:24.480 | I certainly do.
00:19:25.300 | But when I look at it culturally,
00:19:27.560 | one of my biggest concerns culturally
00:19:29.680 | is I see us feeding greed and covetousness
00:19:34.680 | in the culture and envy.
00:19:37.880 | The besetting sins of the US American culture
00:19:40.080 | that I would say right now are primarily those three,
00:19:43.800 | which are all together, covetousness, greed, and envy.
00:19:46.800 | And we seem to be, in my observation,
00:19:50.240 | just indulging this very dangerous idea of saying,
00:19:55.240 | well, let's take from other people.
00:19:57.240 | And we seem to have become a culture of takers,
00:19:59.640 | rather than a culture of people
00:20:01.360 | who recognize the opportunities we have
00:20:03.720 | and want to engage in those.
00:20:05.680 | We've become much more focused on our jealousy
00:20:08.380 | of what our neighbor has,
00:20:09.420 | and how can we get some of it for us, get me some,
00:20:12.000 | rather than how can we produce something
00:20:14.000 | that our neighbor might wanna buy from us.
00:20:15.560 | - I think you hit on something very important
00:20:17.260 | about covetousness and envy.
00:20:20.080 | I think we're reaching an envy epidemic right now.
00:20:24.400 | And I think the access to constant use of smartphones
00:20:29.840 | is having something to do with this,
00:20:31.600 | where people are spending their entire day mixing,
00:20:35.960 | looking at what everyone else is doing,
00:20:38.360 | and then expressing their best live on Instagram
00:20:40.920 | or Facebook, and then feeling envious of it.
00:20:43.700 | Has this ever happened to you?
00:20:46.320 | You just spent the most amazing day with your family
00:20:48.600 | where you took an adventure climbing a mountain
00:20:50.280 | or having a picnic,
00:20:51.140 | and it was just so pleasant and beautiful.
00:20:52.840 | And then at the end of the Sunday evening,
00:20:54.640 | you check Instagram and you see somebody else
00:20:56.600 | had a good time, and then you feel bad
00:20:58.960 | about them having maybe a better time than you have.
00:21:01.360 | We do that.
00:21:02.200 | And you mix that with the constant access
00:21:04.360 | of online shopping.
00:21:05.200 | I think we are seeing a time
00:21:06.600 | when people are living lives of envy,
00:21:09.120 | and that is poison.
00:21:10.840 | And I hope people are becoming more aware
00:21:14.800 | that they need to put up barriers,
00:21:16.280 | just like you did on your phone,
00:21:17.960 | to protect themselves from these feelings.
00:21:19.860 | 'Cause these are very base human feelings.
00:21:21.600 | There's a reason why ancient ethical
00:21:23.680 | and religious codes mentioned it.
00:21:25.280 | - Right, right. (laughs)
00:21:26.260 | - Like the big ones, the 10 commandments.
00:21:28.980 | Because the people from 3,000 years ago
00:21:31.700 | were dealing with the same stuff we are,
00:21:33.180 | and this is not going to go away and not change.
00:21:35.340 | - Right, right.
00:21:36.300 | But I get concerned about what that's doing
00:21:39.020 | in people's lives.
00:21:40.620 | I fear it's leading, especially,
00:21:43.380 | so here's what I see.
00:21:44.560 | And I think there's good sociological data to this.
00:21:46.980 | The book that, probably my book of the year in 2017,
00:21:50.540 | was I read Charles Murray's book, "Coming Apart."
00:21:53.060 | It was called "Coming Apart, the State of White America,"
00:21:55.300 | from 1960 to 2010.
00:21:57.700 | - 10.
00:21:58.740 | - And in that book, Murray posited the argument
00:22:01.900 | that, in essence, there are two brand new social classes
00:22:05.900 | in the United States of America.
00:22:07.660 | An upper class elite that had never before existed
00:22:11.100 | in the United States of America,
00:22:12.220 | and that upper class elite was not measured
00:22:14.140 | in terms of nominal wealth,
00:22:17.180 | because there'd always been rich people in the United States,
00:22:19.500 | but rather it was measured in terms of a cultural,
00:22:23.100 | a distinctive culture, an elite culture,
00:22:25.900 | which may or may not come with wealth.
00:22:27.980 | And then he also posited that there was a new lower class
00:22:31.220 | that had been built.
00:22:32.220 | Again, not in terms of poverty,
00:22:34.140 | but in terms of a distinctive lower class culture.
00:22:36.940 | And that this was the change from 1960 to 2010
00:22:40.980 | that was marked in US American society.
00:22:45.060 | And what I was, frankly, horrified to discover
00:22:48.500 | was that I am part of the upper class elite.
00:22:51.260 | I always thought I was a common man.
00:22:52.780 | And then I read his book and I took his test
00:22:54.660 | and I was shocked to find out that, wait a second.
00:22:57.500 | - You were in the bubble, as it were.
00:22:59.260 | - I was in the bubble.
00:23:00.340 | And that was sobering to me,
00:23:01.620 | because I've always prided myself
00:23:03.060 | of not being in the bubble.
00:23:03.940 | I've always tried to be exposed to other things,
00:23:05.500 | but I was squarely in the bubble, my wife too.
00:23:07.900 | And then I realized how in the bubble that we really were.
00:23:11.460 | But I've seen this expressed more and more.
00:23:13.260 | And let me give you just an example from my history.
00:23:15.420 | When I was in college, I spent some time in Nicaragua,
00:23:18.220 | which is the second, or at least was at the time,
00:23:21.500 | the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,
00:23:23.260 | Haiti, of course, being the poorest.
00:23:24.380 | Nicaragua, basically at the time,
00:23:26.180 | had six and a half million inhabitants,
00:23:28.020 | six million of which were desperately poor
00:23:29.780 | and half a million of which were desperately rich.
00:23:32.300 | And just a massive caste system in terms of wealth.
00:23:36.860 | And I stayed with this family for a week out in the Campo.
00:23:40.540 | And it was a nice enough house
00:23:44.340 | compared to the rest of the village.
00:23:46.020 | We had concrete walls, but we had dirt floors.
00:23:48.180 | And it was very basic.
00:23:49.340 | And many of the houses in the village,
00:23:50.980 | dirt floors, rusty tin roofs,
00:23:54.540 | walls that you could see through.
00:23:56.500 | We had a latrine.
00:23:57.420 | We poured a bucket of water over our heads for a shower.
00:24:01.100 | Extremely basic.
00:24:02.740 | And I would wake up in the morning with chickens
00:24:05.140 | under my bed.
00:24:07.500 | They would come in and scratch around
00:24:08.620 | on the floor in the living room.
00:24:10.140 | And I watched every night.
00:24:11.580 | I watched the Nicaraguan family I was staying with.
00:24:13.740 | They had, I think, five or six children.
00:24:15.020 | I watched them sit and watch telenovelas
00:24:18.260 | for about three or four hours,
00:24:20.100 | which were coming from Buenos Aires,
00:24:22.060 | from all of the rich cosmopolitan cities.
00:24:24.820 | And I'd watch them sit there
00:24:26.060 | and watch these telenovelas for hours.
00:24:28.660 | And here we are sitting in plastic porch chairs,
00:24:32.100 | which is what the world's poor sit in,
00:24:34.020 | in a dirt hut, watching telenovelas
00:24:38.700 | from the upper class high rise.
00:24:40.900 | And I thought, this is so destructive.
00:24:43.220 | This is utterly destructive.
00:24:44.340 | Because instead of these people actually doing something
00:24:47.540 | or having the time to do it,
00:24:48.980 | they're sucked into this entertainment culture
00:24:51.060 | that's all about things that are completely unattainable.
00:24:54.300 | And yet the same thing I see happening today.
00:24:56.380 | And so I stand in line in poor areas of the United States,
00:24:59.660 | where you can see that poverty
00:25:01.140 | is very, very evident all around.
00:25:03.220 | And there everyone is flipping on Instagram,
00:25:05.220 | next, next, next, celebrity this, celebrity that,
00:25:07.620 | things that are totally unattainable.
00:25:09.540 | And it's really troubling to me
00:25:10.900 | because I don't see how, without a cultural transformation,
00:25:14.340 | which I think has to start at the base,
00:25:17.180 | I don't see how that leads to good things.
00:25:19.660 | I don't know how to fix that.
00:25:21.820 | - Well, I think with the divide,
00:25:23.740 | you're talking about, as you put it, an elite divide.
00:25:27.940 | And I think we saw a lot of evidence of that frustration
00:25:30.940 | in the 2016 election.
00:25:32.780 | - Absolutely.
00:25:33.620 | - Where people did not feel listened to.
00:25:38.420 | They did not feel that their views were put,
00:25:41.900 | at least cast in the way that they thought that they meant,
00:25:45.140 | or at least misinterpreted, you know.
00:25:47.580 | But they felt like they were not being represented properly
00:25:51.380 | in the culture centers of the country,
00:25:52.940 | in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, right?
00:25:55.820 | And I think that there was so much frustration about that,
00:25:58.940 | that for some people is why they voted the way that they did
00:26:03.940 | and then expressed themselves in the way that they have
00:26:06.660 | over the past couple of years.
00:26:08.380 | - Right, right.
00:26:09.700 | So what do you see happening, kind of just culturally,
00:26:12.500 | or socially, or religiously?
00:26:14.060 | Or these, 'cause I struggle to talk about economics,
00:26:16.860 | 'cause I think economics is downstream
00:26:19.300 | of culture, in a sense.
00:26:20.460 | First of all, I don't think you can compare economics
00:26:22.900 | to the stock market, because most people don't own stocks.
00:26:25.740 | The average person just simply doesn't own stocks.
00:26:27.700 | And so you can't look and say,
00:26:29.940 | well, the stock market is doing well,
00:26:31.220 | so that automatically is indicative of the economy.
00:26:33.780 | They are related, but they're not directly related.
00:26:36.180 | I think the stock market has a much bigger influence
00:26:38.460 | on the elite, the wealthy elite who own stocks,
00:26:41.940 | rather than on the majority of the US American population.
00:26:45.480 | But I do think economically, you can, of course,
00:26:49.260 | look at things like employment,
00:26:50.660 | you can look at things like wealth, et cetera,
00:26:52.860 | and those are important.
00:26:54.140 | But that's downstream of, in my opinion,
00:26:57.340 | culture, of what's happening in a person's life.
00:26:59.800 | 'Cause today, I defend, without reservation,
00:27:03.780 | that if you are willing to work hard,
00:27:06.620 | you can get a job, you can earn plenty of money,
00:27:09.300 | and you can become wealthy.
00:27:10.300 | There is nothing standing in the way of you,
00:27:12.900 | in the sense of if you have the character
00:27:15.500 | to do those things.
00:27:16.540 | I talk to people all the time, employers, business owners,
00:27:19.540 | they cannot find good help.
00:27:21.200 | They can't find people who will show up to work on time,
00:27:23.900 | not be drunk or high when they get there,
00:27:26.060 | and will do the job that they're told to do.
00:27:27.660 | If you just do that, then you have opportunity.
00:27:31.620 | And then once you're earning income,
00:27:33.300 | it's never been cheaper in some ways, on some measurements,
00:27:35.780 | never been cheaper, easier to live cheaper.
00:27:37.420 | I mean, here you are living in a van.
00:27:39.940 | Anybody could live in a van.
00:27:41.580 | You can buy most of the things in life very inexpensively.
00:27:45.140 | You can have access to things that the kings of the world
00:27:47.300 | didn't have access to.
00:27:48.340 | - You're being so optimistic, Josh.
00:27:50.220 | - Right, well, here's my point for pessimism.
00:27:52.820 | The problem is, you have to have character.
00:27:55.620 | You have to have, I don't know what other word,
00:27:58.260 | you have to have some get up and go.
00:28:00.180 | And if you're sitting around, you know,
00:28:01.460 | smoking weed in a hovel,
00:28:05.620 | thrilled with the fact that now marijuana is legal,
00:28:08.160 | so that you can sit back and destroy any kind of energy
00:28:13.160 | that you can put towards your life, how do we,
00:28:16.900 | I don't see how you get there
00:28:20.700 | without a cultural transformation.
00:28:22.700 | And I look at that, and that's where I see the weakness.
00:28:25.900 | The social fabric, the cultural fabric,
00:28:30.540 | to me seems very thin at the moment.
00:28:32.460 | - So one thing that I've seen is people spending a lot
00:28:36.300 | of their time focusing on stuff that's happening
00:28:39.620 | in Washington, and sometimes not as much
00:28:42.780 | that's happening in their living room.
00:28:44.580 | - Right.
00:28:45.500 | - And I think this is a very easy thing.
00:28:47.780 | You can find out, do you spend more time reading
00:28:49.620 | or thinking about something happening thousands of miles
00:28:51.860 | away in the federal city, or in your home?
00:28:54.580 | And if the answer is in Washington,
00:28:55.940 | and you're not working in politics,
00:28:57.540 | well, maybe you need to think, have a readjustment of that.
00:29:01.300 | And I would hope that people can focus more
00:29:06.200 | on the things over which they do have control.
00:29:08.580 | And I'm not talking about local politics,
00:29:10.300 | I'm talking about micro things like themselves,
00:29:13.500 | and then their family, and then their community,
00:29:16.760 | just beyond that.
00:29:18.180 | And spending more time working on those
00:29:20.820 | than thinking about the upcoming election.
00:29:23.320 | People spend a lot, major forces spend a lot of money
00:29:28.740 | getting you to want to think about politics a lot,
00:29:31.060 | and about elections.
00:29:32.180 | And it takes a lot to kind of resist that.
00:29:35.500 | There's a heavy advertising machine,
00:29:37.740 | not just for products, but for politics as well.
00:29:39.980 | - So I hope the same thing.
00:29:41.420 | - Yeah, but--
00:29:42.240 | - I hope the same thing.
00:29:43.080 | - Right, right.
00:29:43.900 | - But my question is, are people doing that?
00:29:46.820 | - I'm worried, given the power of media these days,
00:29:51.820 | in that it's not only in your living room now,
00:29:54.120 | but it's also in your pocket, and in your bedroom,
00:29:57.460 | and in your bathroom, and wherever else you want to take it.
00:29:59.900 | These are incredibly powerful forces,
00:30:02.080 | where people spend, as I said,
00:30:03.220 | a lot of money going for your attention.
00:30:05.780 | And I don't know, in the near term,
00:30:09.180 | that people are going to be able to resist those forces.
00:30:11.600 | I know that they are not right now.
00:30:14.660 | But, as I've come kind of back into society
00:30:17.400 | for the holidays, I have noticed,
00:30:19.740 | while listening to the radio,
00:30:21.740 | or watching television for the first time,
00:30:23.680 | people starting to feel a bit of uneasiness
00:30:27.020 | about the power it has over them.
00:30:29.020 | And thinking, at least in the beginning stages,
00:30:31.360 | of thinking how they can take back some of their time,
00:30:35.220 | and not be controlled by these forces.
00:30:38.100 | But I don't see a big cultural shift
00:30:40.620 | happening anytime soon, which does worry me.
00:30:43.200 | I think we'll be more led by external cultural forces
00:30:47.380 | that we bring into our homes,
00:30:48.920 | than the power of our home culture transforming the outside.
00:30:53.660 | So there's my short-term pessimism.
00:30:55.220 | - Here's a piece of data in favor of what you're saying.
00:30:58.640 | You, of course, wouldn't have seen it,
00:30:59.960 | because you were living in the woods under a rock.
00:31:02.980 | But a few months ago, there was a series of articles
00:31:05.780 | in the New York Times, and it was talking about
00:31:08.160 | smartphone culture in Silicon Valley.
00:31:10.660 | And basically, the most anti-smartphone place
00:31:13.140 | has become Silicon Valley.
00:31:15.180 | And it's good reporting, I should find the articles for you,
00:31:17.300 | because you would read them, you should read them.
00:31:19.860 | But it even went so far to talk about how
00:31:22.300 | the Silicon Valley parents have virtually a spy network,
00:31:27.300 | where they spy on one another's nannies.
00:31:29.700 | And one of the things that now, mothers and fathers,
00:31:32.060 | who are working in Silicon Valley at the big tech companies,
00:31:34.740 | they hire nannies to take care of their children,
00:31:36.540 | and they have their nannies sign a contract
00:31:39.040 | that the nanny is forbidden from looking at her smartphone
00:31:42.640 | while she's at work.
00:31:44.100 | And so then, if somebody's at the park,
00:31:46.820 | and they see a nanny pushing the kids on the swing,
00:31:49.420 | and the nanny's using the phone,
00:31:50.740 | they'll take pictures of it, and they have message boards
00:31:53.500 | among the mothers and fathers there about,
00:31:55.460 | whose nanny is this, I saw them on their phone, et cetera.
00:31:58.220 | And so if you look at, Melinda Gates has been quoted
00:32:02.740 | as saying, "I wish we had waited longer
00:32:04.340 | "to expose our children to technical devices."
00:32:06.740 | Steve Jobs famously didn't permit devices for his children
00:32:11.180 | for some period of time.
00:32:12.700 | And several other big names in tech,
00:32:14.580 | who basically all kind of narrowed down.
00:32:17.100 | And so, and then similar things on classrooms.
00:32:19.840 | What you see is in Silicon Valley,
00:32:21.420 | as reported in the series of articles by the New York Times,
00:32:24.340 | we see Silicon Valley is a press away
00:32:26.660 | from computerized classroom teaching.
00:32:29.380 | And so you see a much more of a turning away from screens,
00:32:32.540 | getting children off of screens,
00:32:34.060 | using other forms of education.
00:32:36.740 | But simultaneously, Google and Apple
00:32:40.780 | are both constantly trying to get Chromebooks and iPads
00:32:43.600 | into every school, and trying to get every single student
00:32:45.980 | on their platforms, and the whole idea is,
00:32:47.520 | we're gonna go with this virtual education.
00:32:48.900 | Everybody thought, what would be the rich people
00:32:50.860 | who have computers, and the poor people who don't,
00:32:53.260 | but it's turned into the exact opposite.
00:32:54.840 | The poor people's children are being raised
00:32:56.500 | by their smartphones, and the rich people's children
00:32:58.620 | are being raised by actual teachers.
00:33:00.820 | And so there is a piece of data to your thesis,
00:33:04.220 | but this is what adds to my concern,
00:33:05.740 | because I don't see how,
00:33:07.040 | Chris, I've become such a curmudgeon, it's so bad.
00:33:10.660 | But I don't like to be critical of people,
00:33:12.940 | but you can't go out to dinner
00:33:14.260 | and find children talking to their parents.
00:33:16.400 | - Right, yeah.
00:33:19.100 | - What kind of world are my children gonna live in
00:33:21.540 | when children, when their peers don't know
00:33:23.740 | how to talk to their parents?
00:33:25.460 | - Mm-hmm.
00:33:26.980 | It's a real concern, and you have to set the boundaries
00:33:31.780 | in your home for this to work at all.
00:33:34.820 | No one is going to legislate this, and they shouldn't.
00:33:37.320 | But, you know, this is what I mean when I say
00:33:41.020 | people need to turn more inward to their home culture
00:33:44.020 | than turning outward and just bringing the culture in
00:33:46.500 | and letting them babysit their children that way.
00:33:48.980 | I have since, you know, if you read the new book
00:33:51.740 | called "iGen," you know, it talks about the generation
00:33:55.140 | that comes after the millennials.
00:33:57.100 | And, you know, the data is still rolling in every day,
00:33:59.820 | but it makes me very nervous, you know, about the future.
00:34:03.500 | And that is a very, like, old man yelling at cloud thing
00:34:06.100 | to say. - Of course.
00:34:07.500 | - Although, if I could say one positive thing,
00:34:09.180 | Generation X, I think, is maybe the greatest generation
00:34:11.940 | of our time, 'cause they're the only ones, like,
00:34:14.360 | not whining or not doing disastrous things
00:34:17.020 | and going to work and making the country run.
00:34:19.500 | I am not Gen X.
00:34:20.740 | I am a millennial, but I have great respect
00:34:23.220 | for the Generation X.
00:34:24.820 | - Hold on, my son is crawling on a table.
00:34:26.660 | Hold on. (laughs)
00:34:28.180 | Child crisis averted.
00:34:29.900 | I guess, kind of in summary, Chris,
00:34:32.880 | I was hoping when I went on my walkabout,
00:34:38.520 | I was hoping to come to some conclusion
00:34:40.300 | about the future of the country.
00:34:42.660 | I was hoping to come to some conclusion
00:34:44.780 | about, you know, positivity or negativity.
00:34:48.140 | And I know that it's naive to think
00:34:49.380 | that it would be all one way or the other.
00:34:51.020 | Obviously, that's naive.
00:34:52.600 | Life is not so simple.
00:34:54.100 | Life is a combination of things together.
00:34:57.740 | And there's always gonna be advances and declines,
00:34:59.780 | and those things are gonna come and go.
00:35:01.920 | Just don't know what to make of it.
00:35:08.480 | I still don't.
00:35:09.500 | I didn't come to any conclusions.
00:35:11.340 | I didn't come to, the only conclusion I came to,
00:35:14.220 | I guess I could say this.
00:35:15.080 | The conclusion that I came to was,
00:35:17.640 | you can create a positive, successful environment
00:35:22.980 | in your own microclimate, so to speak, in your own area.
00:35:26.460 | And frankly, my biggest concerns is the cultural,
00:35:31.460 | the declining culture.
00:35:36.460 | And specifically, I mean, marriage, family formation,
00:35:40.660 | which leads to success.
00:35:43.020 | Because with the attacks that marriage run,
00:35:45.940 | or these things have long-term effects,
00:35:49.460 | and they have long-term financial effects as well.
00:35:51.920 | We could get into that data, but of course,
00:35:54.980 | we don't have it at our fingertips.
00:35:56.260 | But I see it happening all around.
00:35:58.920 | And what I observe is,
00:36:02.020 | with the increasing angst about politics,
00:36:04.120 | perhaps it's just the coastal elites
00:36:06.020 | who live and breathe in this world.
00:36:08.660 | But basically, what I see many of my peers doing
00:36:12.100 | is because we've walked away from the areas
00:36:14.420 | where we can actually make a difference,
00:36:16.420 | we spend our time arguing about things
00:36:19.540 | we can't make a difference,
00:36:20.420 | and that just leads to depression.
00:36:22.560 | So, like, I'm the king of my castle.
00:36:24.820 | I can make a difference in my castle.
00:36:26.500 | I don't have to ask anybody.
00:36:27.660 | I don't have to apply for a license.
00:36:29.460 | I have my wife, and I have my children,
00:36:32.140 | and I can make a difference there.
00:36:33.980 | And that difference will ripple throughout
00:36:36.400 | the coming centuries in terms of what I do.
00:36:39.060 | So far be it from me,
00:36:40.900 | it would be what a disaster for me to waste my time
00:36:43.780 | arguing with people online about things that I can't change,
00:36:46.700 | and thus ignoring the needs of my own children.
00:36:49.300 | And yet, and the same thing in my neighborhood.
00:36:52.020 | I can make a difference in my neighborhood.
00:36:53.300 | I can make a difference in my business.
00:36:54.460 | I can make a difference in my job.
00:36:56.060 | I cannot make a difference on who the next president
00:36:58.540 | of the United States is gonna be.
00:37:00.100 | And so, I observe that that's the only solution
00:37:03.520 | I have found, is to walk away from that nightmare
00:37:07.540 | and to focus on loving my wife, loving my children,
00:37:11.940 | and loving my neighbor,
00:37:13.380 | and building the local community that can endure.
00:37:17.780 | Because that local community is what will build
00:37:20.460 | the fabric of the next generation.
00:37:22.540 | That local community is what will build the fabric
00:37:24.820 | of my neighbors and their success, their stability.
00:37:28.300 | And I can't go across the country and say to
00:37:33.300 | all those millions of people what I think they should do
00:37:36.260 | if I haven't even gone across the fence
00:37:38.140 | to my next door neighbor and said,
00:37:40.740 | "How can I serve you?
00:37:41.700 | "How can I help you?"
00:37:43.260 | That's the only solution I've come to.
00:37:45.100 | - Well, I think a lot of people could gain a lot
00:37:47.420 | by coming to that solution as well.
00:37:48.980 | Look, I don't mean to say that everybody should
00:37:51.820 | completely opt out of reading the news.
00:37:53.140 | I did it as a personal experiment,
00:37:54.820 | and now I can bring it back into my life
00:37:57.260 | in a more healthful way.
00:37:58.580 | But I think we can change our relationship
00:38:03.180 | with the national political scene,
00:38:06.100 | and not let it dominate us so much.
00:38:08.300 | And that gives us more time to focus on the things
00:38:11.300 | over which we do have control, like you just said.
00:38:13.540 | And I think that would be, at least for me personally,
00:38:17.340 | one of the biggest takeaways from my trip
00:38:19.660 | would have been actually very similar to what you described.
00:38:23.060 | But when I was in the fury of it all, in the other world,
00:38:28.060 | I didn't give myself the time to think and realize that.
00:38:33.460 | And I'm grateful for the experience.
00:38:36.580 | And I hope other people can come to that conclusion as well,
00:38:40.340 | and start thinking about ways that they can set up systems
00:38:43.300 | that'll allow them to focus on what is more important.
00:38:46.180 | I really hope people in the next year
00:38:48.540 | begin to start thinking about these things,
00:38:50.940 | and practicing them in their daily life.
00:38:53.660 | But I do think it's going to be a long, tough road
00:38:57.100 | with moments of great reckoning that might be painful.
00:39:00.540 | And it might feel like a couple steps forward
00:39:02.580 | of more steps back.
00:39:04.540 | But darn it, I'm still gonna be optimistic
00:39:06.940 | that we are going to come out of these uncertain
00:39:11.140 | and strange times, learn from it,
00:39:13.940 | and hopefully build better communities.
00:39:17.340 | But I know that sounds kind of hokey.
00:39:18.780 | I know it does, but I can't help it.
00:39:21.260 | - Here's what I observed.
00:39:22.100 | It does sound hokey.
00:39:22.940 | - I'm sorry if you--
00:39:24.300 | - It's funny, if you look at so many people
00:39:26.380 | who study the problems from so many perspectives,
00:39:28.860 | people arrive at common solutions, and this is one of them.
00:39:32.740 | There are people from every background
00:39:33.940 | who basically arrive at these common solutions.
00:39:36.700 | I'm gonna ask you a closing question,
00:39:37.540 | and just give you a chance to talk about
00:39:39.540 | your trip in this way.
00:39:40.740 | I think one of the most useful things
00:39:45.260 | that we could encourage people to do
00:39:47.540 | is from time to time to take a sabbatical.
00:39:50.380 | I believe that the concept of retirement,
00:39:53.300 | as in work for 40 years,
00:39:55.460 | and then retire and play golf for 30 years,
00:39:57.740 | is broken because it doesn't, it's broken.
00:40:00.660 | It was a conspiracy foisted upon the poor
00:40:03.740 | by those who were trying to reduce the unemployment numbers.
00:40:06.460 | But the concept of sabbatical, I think, is so valuable.
00:40:10.700 | Work a project for a number of years,
00:40:12.700 | be it five, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, whatever,
00:40:15.940 | and then take a sabbatical.
00:40:17.140 | Take a year off, take two years, take six months,
00:40:19.460 | and do something different.
00:40:21.020 | And when you go back to it,
00:40:22.900 | you'll go back to something new, something productive.
00:40:25.140 | Instead of sitting around playing golf for 30 years,
00:40:27.220 | you'll go back to something productive.
00:40:28.660 | - But to go with a renewed energy, vigor, focus, et cetera.
00:40:32.340 | That's what I've seen that you've done.
00:40:33.820 | What is your comment after having been on a sabbatical?
00:40:37.380 | - Well, I would say that doing something like this
00:40:40.460 | is not possible for everybody,
00:40:42.500 | and I wouldn't be so privileged as to think that,
00:40:45.220 | oh, couldn't anybody just take time off?
00:40:47.060 | You can, you just have to work very hard to build systems
00:40:50.380 | that are beyond the big system,
00:40:52.440 | and it's incredibly difficult to do that.
00:40:55.500 | That said, one thing people can do
00:40:58.380 | is take the concept of Sabbath
00:41:00.460 | on a more micro level more seriously.
00:41:04.300 | Anything from an entire day
00:41:07.020 | to just having micro Sabbaths during your day.
00:41:10.580 | For example, used to be,
00:41:12.600 | we would take micro Sabbaths all the time.
00:41:14.820 | And what I mean by that is a bike ride
00:41:17.100 | with your girlfriend or boyfriend or your wife,
00:41:19.580 | or an afternoon picnic with your family.
00:41:22.900 | When you would leave your house
00:41:24.060 | in the age before cell phones and everything,
00:41:26.180 | you were completely off grid during that time.
00:41:29.560 | And that is no longer the case.
00:41:33.100 | You are still opening yourself up to interruptions.
00:41:36.500 | And I don't know about you,
00:41:37.340 | but if I'm interrupted,
00:41:38.660 | if my headspace is not where I am,
00:41:41.460 | then I'm not there anymore.
00:41:42.500 | I'm gone into the phone or into the news or whatever.
00:41:45.660 | And so to your point,
00:41:47.460 | I would encourage people that if they can't take
00:41:49.380 | a real sabbatical to take micro Sabbaths during their day,
00:41:55.000 | when they are truly with the people they love
00:41:57.680 | or alone in solitude,
00:41:59.360 | and taking back that time for themselves
00:42:03.180 | in a way that we did only a couple of years ago.
00:42:05.560 | And I think you will find a profound difference
00:42:08.100 | in the way that you perceive the world
00:42:11.040 | and you're refreshed enough to be able to tackle
00:42:13.200 | the hard things that are demanded of us in the future.
00:42:17.160 | - So you've gone around interviewing people
00:42:18.860 | who are opting out.
00:42:20.320 | What story or what person that you've interacted with
00:42:24.280 | so far has really stuck with you and made you think?
00:42:27.760 | - One of the first groups of people we met
00:42:29.720 | that are known in the personal finance community,
00:42:33.320 | the Frugalwoods family up in Vermont.
00:42:36.680 | A lot of people know them, they've heard of them.
00:42:38.440 | They saved a large percentage of their income
00:42:41.120 | and then semi-retired to a pastoral life in Vermont
00:42:46.120 | in the way they wanted to live,
00:42:48.480 | where they made the terms of their life.
00:42:50.800 | What they did took an incredible amount of work,
00:42:53.040 | but it also took a lot of bravery in stepping out
00:42:57.920 | and saying, "We are not going to live
00:42:59.160 | as everyone tells us to live.
00:43:00.420 | We're going to do what we're going to do.
00:43:02.240 | And there may be consequences to that, but we don't care."
00:43:06.160 | And the fact that they fashioned the life
00:43:08.760 | that they wanted to build, and everyone's dream is different,
00:43:13.760 | but they were able to do it because they had the discipline
00:43:16.680 | and then went ahead and did it themselves.
00:43:19.000 | And I would say that they're a phenomenal example
00:43:22.360 | of what any normal person could do
00:43:25.880 | if, first of all, you know your goals,
00:43:27.520 | but then work very diligently every single day
00:43:32.040 | to reach them both in a micro and a macro level.
00:43:34.680 | - I look forward to reading the book
00:43:35.640 | when you finish writing it.
00:43:37.740 | Your platform is LifeOptedOut on Instagram,
00:43:40.880 | LifeOptedOut, right?
00:43:42.000 | - That's right, yes.
00:43:42.840 | - So I've been enjoying watching you there,
00:43:44.640 | and I look forward to hearing what's next
00:43:47.160 | for you and Christy.
00:43:48.200 | Thank you for coming on the show.
00:43:49.320 | - Thank you for having me on.
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