 G'day, May 40 here. So someone needs to share this book with Godwood podcast. I think you'll like it. It's called wasps The splendors and miseries of an American aristocracy. So when I was growing up, I never really understood wasp White anglo-saxon Protestants It didn't really have any meaning for me because everyone I knew was an anglo-saxon Protestant pretty much So it's like a fish trying to understand what water is So the the water that I swam in was anglo this is a delicious book just came out and It notes that you find comparatively few murderers among wasps So yeah, why don't white anglo-saxon Protestants and then tend to have a particularly high murder rate but they They gave us the anglo world they gave us the United States much of Canada England Australia New Zealand had a profound effect on the world They've been our upper classes. It's Russia shine in just a few minutes away What better time to talk about the splendors and miseries of the American aristocracy of white anglo-saxon Protestants? It's okay to be wasp So Let's learn about the wasps God would determine who will live and who would die who will be rich and who will be poor So wasps are creatures of guilt and self-questioning more likely to kill themselves and to kill others Suicide blighted whole families Suicides were only the most overt sign of trouble in the culture or the blood Wasps have long been haunted by the despairs lunacies and hysterias in their domestic histories Emily Dickinson spoke of the hour of lead of a funeral in my brain Henry Adams complained of unwee So were the wasps more trouble than other people probably not that they were more Articulate right does this not sound like God would their miseries got into the record and did something to shape the destinies of the United States Reticent that they were in person. They were valuable on paper at some level They wanted us to pay attention Now was families overall were doing quite well out of life. So what went wrong? The puritan gilts and mania's lingered in New England long after the demise of puritanism He sensed it in the dying villages In the shadowed Satanism the morbidity of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King Wasp in the late 19th century were drawn to the haunted countryside They found in the cranks and recluses the eccentric spinsters and cracked seers a reflection of their own uneasy souls So the children of the Brahmins meaning the Anglos Blame their weaknesses their fatigues their failures the scruples that from that prevented them from getting on in the world on Neurostenia so fancy word for chronic fatigue syndrome They believed it to be a medical condition So in his 1881 book American nervousness its causes and consequences the wasp physician Dr. George Miller Beard described Neurostenia as a disease caused by lack of nerve force And productive of such symptoms as insomnia bad dreams mental irritability nervous dyspepsia Meaning a nervous temperament fear of society fear of responsibility Lack of decision in trifling matters profound exhaustion and excessive yawning. Oh I remember about 12 13 years ago 15 years ago was about 40 and My orthodox synagogue hosted a speech by this Bartheshuva orthodox woman Psychologist and She she gave a talk on being single and getting married in the Jewish tradition and afterwards it's time for questions And I raised my hand. I said if you encountered someone who was Who is a 40 year old bachelor? What would you immediately think like what happened and she said well, I'd immediately think fear of success and fear of failure Those are my two of the reactions. This is someone who suffers from fear of success and fear of failure So what distinguished the wasp sufferer from chronic fatigue syndrome the the wasp Neurostenic was his consciousness of unused powers in the soul That he sought to discharge in civic and creative activity like live streaming. You see it most clearly in Henry Adams Who adopted the pose of a neurostenic weakling oppressed by his new england heritage Looking unlife rather than living it doomed to fail in an america that had little use for the patricians theory of virtue it sounds like god would The pose was ironic the man who wrote the education of henry adams was not in any ordinary sense of failure But it enabled adams to explain why the best and brightest of his generation So often fell into neurotic despair Neurostenia he maintained was the natural response of gifted natures to an environment unsympathetic to their gifts Who is the inevitable reaction of those who resisting the fragmentary Part lives on offer in the gilded age marketplace sought to do justice to the whole of their nature In a land where the two great perfectionist experiments new england puritanism and yankee commercial But culturally inadequate precisely because they have founded on too narrow a conception of human flourishing This sounds just like godward Godward is this you I feel like i'm reading about godward here We're witnessing levels of gaslighting never thought to be achieved. Hey, I didn't write this book on wasps I'm just relaying to you the insights on this new book by michael noxbear and the splendors and miseries of an american aristocracy I'm I'm just god's suffering servant here Right. I'm just the one bringing you the bad news Are you experiencing the natural responses of your gifted nature? To an environment unsympathetic to your gifts is is despair So neurostenia was hell But hell was a good thing because through the suffering underworld it led if not to sanity and salvation But to small victories over hellishness This was the tradition of productive lunacy The belief that you can't attain the druslam of your heart's desire without first submitting to a babelonian captivity In writing the life of his dead friend george cabot lodge. Henry adam spoke of the young man's philosophic depression. So weaker people are depressed for very frail reasons, but the true soul The the mighty soul who's depressed they're depressed because of their philosophy It's the dejection one feels when one's powers find no release in joyful activity. One's soul is condemned to feel himself At the lassitudes of neurostenia chronic fatigue syndrome Exempt the sufferer from the demands of the marketplace And they can buy one time time to plot a comeback To obtain one's revenge on those who doubted one's virtue I love this book And out of these neurotic ruins emerged a patrician caste Devoted to civic reform and the renewal of society. That's what we are here out of our neurotic ruins We here emerges a patrician class and we're devoted. I know you're devoted. I'm devoted to civic reform and renewal of society Hey You and I buddy, we're caught between the barbarians above us and the barbarians below us We're caught between the gilded tycoons and a mass-produced middle class So our counter-revolution must be bored like Dante before us We must reform the corrupt city and create a stable world order the american century Why can't the 21st century also be the american century like Dante? We will rebel against the idea of living an empty life And of dying a meaningless hellish death We are driven by a notion of human completeness I know that I am Right. I want to develop my human potential This this drive it distinguishes us from the parochialism and complacency Of the more recent power establishments that are just narrowly founded on money and narrow technical expertise Right. We were absorbed by by Dante's faith in the humanities We're attempting to revitalize liberal education This is not some antiquated heirloom practically useless A good liberal education unlocks human potential. It promotes the civic virtues This is the solve for our psychic wounds guys Look, you don't exaggerate my virtues. Don't exaggerate my vices. Yeah, there's a there's a certain amount of simple arrogance in them so In you see it in the wasp houses In the understated charm that never sacrifices comfort to pretension You're always coming on odd little rooms of flowered chints and cozy untightiness Diverted in conversation leisure and books. That's this this chat room. All right Here the men is are as comfortable as the arm chairs Right You are the guest here in my home My tone of voice. Is it not pleasing? Is it not modulated with a tact that unfeelingly avoids the awkward question? Don't you see it in in our institutions? Now ancient but little studied arts Where we create places that command the heart and more would be type alive to possibilities. We seem to have lost Many admire the wasps for their efforts to shape character in accordance with an ideal But few have studied how they did it examine the techniques the institutional artistry That the wasp wrought upon the saw Now it's difficult to talk about people whose time has passed People who are bathed in the bath of snobbery who with flashes of insight or largely mediocre Who is narrowly european in their culture as they were complacently white in their pedigree arrogance Yet they were pretty nearly alone among americans in pursuing the purpose as they did For all their arrogance and resentment. They sought a path to a new life so That's the end of chapter two Chapter three mrs. Jack Gardner and her unlikely swan. So every chapter begins with a quote from Dante's inferno When we read how the long-for smile was kissed by such a lover He will never be divided from me kiss my mouth or trembling that day. We read no more This book is so much fun. Happy rashashana