CHAPTER XIII. The Outlawed Parent There is one thing at least of which there is never so much as a whisper inside the public schools, and that is the opinion of the people. The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents. Yet, the English poor have very definite traditions in many ways. They are hidden under embarrassment and irony, and those psychologists who have disentangled them talk of them as very strange, barbaric, and secretive things. But as a matter of fact, the traditions of the poor are mostly simply the traditions of humanity, a thing which many of us have not seen for some time. For instance, working men have a tradition that if one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language. One is less likely to be seduced into excusing it. But mankind had this tradition also. Until the Puritans and their children, the Ibsenites, started the opposite idea, that it does not matter what you say as long as you say it with long words and a long face. Or again, the educated classes have tabooed most jesting about personal appearance. But in doing this they taboo not only the humor of the slums, but more than half the healthy literature of the world. They put polite nosebags on the noses of punch and bard-off, stiggens and serenal de Bergerac. Again, the educated classes have adopted a hideous and heathen custom of considering death as too dreadful to talk about and letting it remain a secret for each person, like some private malformation. The poor, on the contrary, make a great gossip and display about bereavement and they are right. They have hold of a truth of psychology which is at the back of all the funeral customs of the children of men. The way to lessen sorrow is to make a lot of it. The way to endure a painful crisis is to insist very much that it is a crisis, to permit people who must feel sad at least to feel important. In this the poor are simply the priests of the universal civilization. And in their stuffy feasts and solemn chattering there is the smell of the baked meats of hamlet and the dust and the echo of the funeral games of patroclus. The things philanthropists barely excuse, or do not excuse in the life of the laboring classes are simply the things we have to excuse in all the greatest monuments of man. It may be that the laborer is as gross as Shakespeare or as guerrillas as Homer, that if he is religious he talks nearly as much about hell as Dante, that if he is worldly he talks nearly as much about drink as Dickens, nor is the poor man without historic support if he thinks less of that ceremonial washing which Christ dismissed, and rather more of that ceremonial drinking which Christ specifically sanctified. The only difference between the poor man of today and the saints and heroes of history is that which in all classes separates the common man who can feel things from the great man who can express them. What he feels is merely the heritage of man. Now nobody expects, of course, that the cab men and coal heavers can be complete instructors of their children any more than the squires and kernels and tea-merchants are complete instructors of their children. There must be an educational specialist in local parenthas. But the master at Harle is in local parenthas. The master in Hoxton is rather contra parentham. The vague politics of the squire, the vague or virtues of the kernel, the soul and spiritual yearnings of a tea-merchant are, in veritable practice, conveyed to the children of these people at the English public schools. But I wish here to ask a very plain and emphatic question. Can anyone alive even pretend to point out in any way in which these special virtues and traditions of the poor are reproduced in the education of the poor? I do not wish the coasters irony to appeal as coarsely in the school as it does in the tap room, but does it appear at all? Is the child taught to sympathize at all with his father's admirable cheerfulness and slaying? I do not expect the pathetic, eager pietas of the mother with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats to be exactly imitated in the educational system. But has it any influence at all on the educational system? Does any elementary schoolmaster accorded even an instance consideration or respect? I do not expect the schoolmaster to hate hospitals and COS centers so much as the schoolboy's father, but does he hate them at all? Does he sympathize in the least with the poor man's point of honor against official institutions? Is it not quite certain that the ordinary elementary schoolmaster will think it not merely natural but simply conscientious to eradicate all these rugged legends of a laborious people and on principle to preach soap and socialism against beer and liberty? In the lower classes, the schoolmaster does not work for the parent, but against the parent. Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority and rooting out the customs of the majority. Instead of their Christlike charity, their Shakespearean laughter, and their high Homeric reverence for the dead, the poor have imposed on them mere pedantic copies of the prejudices of the remote rich. They must think a bathroom a necessity because to the lucky it is a luxury. They must swing Swedish clubs because their masters are afraid of English cudgels.  What's wrong with the world by G. K. Chesterton, Part 4, Chapter 14, Folly and Female Education It is the same in the case of girls. I am often solemnly asked what I think of the new ideas about female education, but there are no new ideas about female education. There is not, there never has been, even the vestige of a new idea. All the educational reformers did was to ask what was being done to boys and then go and do it to girls, just as they asked what was being taught to young squires and then taught it to young chimney sweeps. What they call new ideas are very old ideas in the wrong place. Boys play football, why shouldn't girls play football? Boys have school colors, why shouldn't girls have school colors? Boys go in hundreds to day schools, why shouldn't girls go in hundreds to day schools? Boys go to Oxford, why shouldn't girls go to Oxford? In short, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn't girls grow mustaches? That is about their notion of a new idea. There is no brainwork in the thing at all, no root query of what sex is, of whether it alters this or that, and why, any more than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education. There is nothing but plotting, elaborate, elephantine imitation. And just as in the case of elementary teaching, the cases are of a cold and reckless inappropriateness. Even a savage could see that bodily things, at least, which are good for a man, are very likely to be bad for a woman. Yet there is no boys game, however brutal, which these mild lunatics have not promoted among girls. To take a stronger case, they give girls very heavy homework, never reflecting that all girls have homework already in their homes. It is all a part of the same silly subjugation. There must be a hard stick of collar round the neck of a woman because it is already a nuisance round the neck of a man, though a Saxon's surf, if he wore that collar of cardboard, would ask for his collar of brass. It will then be answered, not without a sneer, and what would you prefer? Would you go back to the elegant early Victorian female with ringlets and smelling bottle, doing a little in watercolors, dabbling a little in Italian, playing a little on the harp, writing in vulgar albums and painting on senseless screens? Do you prefer that? To which I answer emphatically yes. I solidly prefer it to the new female education, for this reason, that I can see it an intellectual design, while there is none in the other. I am by no means sure, that even in point of practical fact, that elegant female would not have been much more than a match for most of the inelegant females. I fancy Jane Austen was stronger, sharper, and shrewder than Charlotte Bronte. I am quite certain she was stronger, sharper, and shrewder than George Elliott. She could do one thing neither of them could do. She could coolly and sensibly describe a man. I am not sure that the old great lady, who could only smatter Italian, was not more vigorous than the new great lady, who can only stammer American. Nor am I certain that the bygone duchesses, who were scarcely successful when they painted Mel Rose Abbey, were so much more weak-minded than the modern duchesses, who paint only their faces and are bad at that. But that is not the point. What was the theory? What was the idea in their old, weak watercolors and their shaky Italian? The idea was the same, which in a ruder rank expressed itself in homemade wines and hereditary recipes, and which still, in a thousand unexpected ways, can be found clinging to the women of the poor. It was the idea I urged in the second part of this book, that the world must keep one great amateur lest we all become artists and perish. We must renounce all specialist conquests, that she may conquer all the conquerors, that she may be a queen of life. She must not be a private soldier in it. I do not think the elegant female with her bad Italian was a perfect product any more than I think the slum woman talking gin and funerals is a perfect product, alas. There are few perfect products, but they come from a comprehensible idea, and the new woman comes from nothing and nowhere. It is right to have an ideal. It is right to have the right ideal. And these two have the right ideal. The slum mother with her funerals is the degenerate daughter of Antigone, the obstinate priestess of the household gods. The lady talking bad Italian was the decayed tenth cousin of Portia, the great and golden Italian lady, the renaissance amateur of life. Who could be a barrister because she could be anything? Sunken and neglected in the sea of modern monotony and imitation, the types hold tightly to their original truths. Antigone, ugly, dirty, and often drunken, will still bury her father. The elegant female, vapid and fading away to nothing, still feels faintly the fundamental difference between herself and her husband, that he must be something in the city, that she may be everything in the country. There was a time when you and I and all of us were very close to God, so that even now the color of a pebble or a paint, the smell of a flower or a firework, comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty, as if there were fragments of a unbuttoned message or features of a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education, and closest to the child comes the woman. She understands. To say what she understands is beyond me, save only this, that it is not a solemnity, rather it is a towering levity, an uproarious amateurness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as run. To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids, and toss up the planets like balls, that is that inner audacity and indifference, which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. That is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female, drooping her ringlets over her water colors, knew it and acted on it. She was juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining the bold equilibrium of inferiorities, which is the most mysterious of superiorities, and perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother, that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. End of Folly and Female Education. The Empire of the Insect This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, auto-volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by David Barnes. What's Wrong with the World? by G.K. Chesterton. Part 5 The Home of Man. Chapter 1 The Empire of the Insect A cultivated, conservative friend of mine once exhibited great distress, because in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke an atheist. I need scarcely say that the remark lacked something of biographical precision. It was meant to. Burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious cosmic theory, though he had not a special and flaming faith in God, like Robespierre. Nevertheless, the remark had reference to a truth which it is here relevant to repeat. I mean that in the quarrel over the French Revolution, Burke did stand for the atheistic attitude and mode of argument, as Robespierre stood for the theistic. The Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion. He did not attack the Robespierre doctrine, with the old medieval doctrine of just divinum, which, like the Robespierre doctrine, was theistic. He attacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity. In short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere moulded by or fitted to its environment and institutions. In fact, that each people practically got not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. I know nothing of the rights of men, he said, but I know something of the rights of Englishmen. There you have the essential atheist. His argument is that we have got some protection by natural accident and growth. And why should we profess to think beyond it, for all the world as if we were the images of God? We are born under a house of lords, as birds under a house of leaves. We live under a monarchy, as niggers live under the tropic sun. It is not their fault if they are slaves, and it is not ours if we are snobs. Thus, long before Darwin struck his great blow at democracy, the essential of the Darwinian argument had been already urged against the French Revolution. Man, said Burke, in effect, must adapt himself to everything, like an animal. He must not try to alter everything like an angel. The last weak cry of the pious, pretty, half-artificial optimism and deism of the eighteenth century came in the voice of Stern, saying, God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. And Burke, the iron evolutionist, essentially answered, No, God tempers the shorn lamb to the wind. It is the lamb that has to adapt himself. That is, he either dies or becomes a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught. The subconscious popular instinct against Darwinism was not a mere offense at the grotesque notion of visiting one's grandfather in a cage in the Regent's Park. Men go in for a drink, practical jokes, and many other grotesque things. They do not much mind making beasts of themselves, and would not much mind having beasts made of their forefathers. The real instinct was much deeper and much more valuable. It was this, that when one once begins to think of man as a shifting and alterable thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist him into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes. The popular instinct sees in such developments the possibility of backs bode and hunchbacked for their burden, or limbs twisted for their task. It has a very well-grounded guess, that whatever is done swiftly and systematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost solely in their interests. It has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids and half-human experiments much in the style of Mr. Wells's Island of Dr. Morro. The rich man may come to breeding a tribe of dwarfs to be his jockeys and a tribe of giants to be his hall-porters. Humans might be born bow-legged and tailors born cross-legged. Perfumers might have long, large noses and a crouching attitude, like hounds of scent. And professional wine-tasters might have the horrible expression of one tasting wine stamped upon their faces as infants. Whatever wild image one employs, it cannot keep pace with the panic of the human fancy when once it supposes that the fixed type called man could be changed. If some millionaire wanted arms, some porter must grow ten arms like an octopus.  In the distorted mirror of hypothesis, that is of the unknown, men can dimly see such monstrous and evil shapes. Men run all to eye or all to fingers with nothing left but one nostril or one ear. That is the nightmare with which the mere notion of adaptation threatens us. That is the nightmare that is not so very far from the reality. It will be said that not the wildest evolutionist really asks that we should become in any way unhuman or copy any other animal. Pardon me, but that is exactly what not merely the wildest evolutionists urge, but some of the tamest evolutionists too. There has risen high in recent history an important cultus which bids fair to be the religion of the future, which means the religion of those few weak-minded people who live in the future. It is typical of our time that it has to look for its god through a microscope, and our time has marked a definite adoration of the insect. Like most things we call new, of course it is not at all new as an idea. It is only new as an idolatry. Virgil takes bees seriously, but I doubt if he would have kept bees as carefully as he wrote about them. The wise king told the slugard to watch the ant, a charming occupation for a slugard, but in our own time has appeared a very different tone, and more than one great man, as well as numberless intelligent men, have in our time seriously suggested that we should study the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists merely took the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and arbitrarily among the animals. The ant was an almost heraldic symbol of industry, as the lion was of courage, or for the matter of that the pelican of charity. But if the medieval's had been convinced that a lion was not courageous, they would have dropped the lion and kept the courage. If the pelican is not charitable, they would say so much the worse for the pelican. The old moralists, I say, permitted the ant to enforce and typify man's morality. They never allowed the ant to upset it. They used the ant for industry, as the lark for punctuality. They looked up at the flapping birds and down at the crawling insects for a homely lesson. But we have lived to see a sect that does not look down at the insects, but looks up at the insects, that asks us essentially to bow down and worship beetles like ancient Egyptians. Maurice Metalingue is a man of unmistakable genius, and genius always carries a magnifying glass. In the terrible crystal of his lens we have seen the bees, not as a little yellow swarm, but rather in golden armies and hierarchies of warriors and queens. The imagination perpetually peers and creeps further down the avenues and vistas in the tubes of science, and one fancies every frantic reversal of proportions. The earwig striding across the echoing plain like an elephant, or the grasshopper coming roaring above our roofs like a vast aeroplane as he leaps from Hartfordshire to Surrey. One seems to enter in a dream, a temple of enormous entomology whose architecture is based on something wilder than arms or backbones, in which the ribbed columns have the half-crawling look of dim and monstrous caterpillars, or the dome is a starry spider hung horribly in the void. There is one of the modern works of engineering that gives one something of this nameless fear of the exaggerations of the underworld, and that is the curious curved architecture of the underground railway, commonly called the topony tube. Those squat archways without any upright line or pillar look as if they had been tunnelled by huge worms who have never learned to lift their heads. It is the very underground palace of the serpent, the spirit of changing shape and color that is the enemy of man. But it is not merely by such strange aesthetic suggestions that writers like MetaLink have influenced us in the matter. There is also an ethical side to the business. The upshot of Mr. MetaLink's book on bees is an admiration, one might also say an envy, of their collective spirituality, of the fact that they live only for something which he calls the soul of the hive, and this admiration for the communal morality of insects is expressed in many other modern writers in various quarters and shapes. In Mr. Benjamin Kidd's theory of living only for the evolutionary future of our race, and in the great interest of some socialists in ants, which they generally prefer to bees, I suppose, because they are not so brightly colored. Not least among the hundred evidences of this vague insectulatory are the floods of flattery poured by modern people on that energetic nation of the Far East, of which it has been said that patriotism is its only religion, or in other words that it lives only for the soul of the hive. When at long intervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid or skeptical, and mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to pour them westward like a dark movement of matter, in such cases it has been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice or incessant armies of locusts. The Eastern armies were indeed like insects, in their blind, busy destructiveness, in their black nihilism of personal outlook, in their hateful indifference to individual life and love, and in their base belief in mere numbers, in their pessimistic courage and their atheistic patriotism, the riders and raiders of the East are indeed like all the creeping things of the earth. But never before, I think, have Christians called a Turk a locust and meant it as a compliment. Now for the first time we worship as well as fear, and trace with adoration that enormous form advancing vast and vague out of Asia, faintly discernible amid the mystic clouds of winged creatures hung over the wasted lands, thronging the skies like thunder and discolouring the skies like rain, Beelzebub, the lord of flies. In resisting this horrible theory of the soul of the hive, we of Christendom stand not for ourselves but for all humanity, for the essential and distinctive human idea that one good and happy man is an end in itself, that a soul is worth saving. Nay, for those who like such biological fancies it might well be said that we stand as chiefs and champions of a whole section of nature, princes of the house whose cognizance is the backbone, standing for the milk of the individual mother and the courage of the wandering cub, representing the pathetic chivalry of the dog, the humour and perversity of cats, the affection of the tranquil horse, the loneliness of the lion. It is more to the point however to urge that this mere glorification of society as it is in the social insects is a transformation and a dissolution in one of the outlines which have been specially the symbols of man. In the cloud and confusion of the flies and bees is growing fainter and fainter and is finally disappearing, the idea of the human family, the hive has become larger than the house, the bees are destroying their captors, what the locusts hath left, the caterpillar hath eaten, and the little house in garden of our friend Jones is in a bad way. End of The Empire of the Insect The fallacy of the umbrella stand. This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ray. What's Wrong with the World? by G. K. Chesterton. Part 5 Chapter 2 The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand When Lord Morley said that the House of Lords must be either mended or ended, he used a phrase which has caused some confusion because it might seem to suggest that mending and ending are somewhat similar things. I wish especially to insist on the fact that mending and ending are opposite things. You mend a thing because you like it. You end a thing because you don't. To mend is to strengthen. I, for instance, disbelieve in oligarchy. So I would no more mend the House of Lords than I would mend a thumbscrew. On the other hand, I do believe in the family. Therefore, I would mend the family as I would mend a chair, and I will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that wants mending. But here comes in the essential point about the mass of modern advanced sociologists. Here are two institutions that have always been fundamental with mankind, the family and the state. Anarchists believe, disbelieve in both. It is quite unfair to say that socialists believe in the state, but do not believe in the family. Thousands of socialists believe more in the family than any Tory. But it is true to say that while anarchists would end both, socialists are especially engaged in mending, that is strengthening and renewing the state. And they are not specially engaged in strengthening and renewing the family. They are not doing anything to define the functions of father, mother, and child as such. They are not tightening the machine up again. They're not blackening in again the fading lines of the old drawing. With the state they are doing this. They are sharpening its machinery. They are blackening in its black dogmatic lines. They are making mere government in every way stronger and in some ways harsher than before. While they leave the home in ruins, they restore the hive, especially the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labour and poor law reform recently advanced by distinguished socialists amount to little more than putting the larger number of people in the despotic power of Mr Bumble. Apparently progress means being moved on by the police. The point it is my purpose to urge might perhaps be suggested thus, that socialists and most social reformers of their colour are vividly conscious of the line between the kind of things that belong to the state and the kind of things that belong to mere chaos or uncoercible nature. They may force children to go to school before the sun rises, but they will not try to force the sun to rise. They will not, like canute, banish the sea but only the sea bathers. But inside the outline of the state their lines are confused and entities melt into each other. They have no firm instinctive sense of one thing being in its nature private and another public, of one thing being necessarily bond and another free. That is why piece by piece and quite silently personal liberty is being stolen from Englishman, as personal land has been silently stolen ever since the 16th century. I can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A socialist means a man who thinks a walking stick, like an umbrella, because they both go into the umbrella stand. Yet they are as different as a battle axe and a boot jack. The essential idea of an umbrella is breath and protection. The essential idea of a stick is slenderness and partly attack. The stick is the sword. The umbrella is the shield. But it is a shield against another and more nameless enemy, the hostile but anonymous universe. More properly, therefore, the umbrella is the roof. It is a kind of collapsible house. But the vital difference goes far deeper than this. It branches off into two kingdoms of man's mind, with a chasm between. For the point is this, that the umbrella is a shield against an enemy so actual as to be a mere nuisance, whereas the stick is a sword against enemies so entirely imaginary as to be a pure pleasure. The stick is not merely a sword, but a court sword. It is a thing of purely ceremonial swagger. One cannot express the emotion in any way except by saying that a man feels more like a man with a stick in his hand, just as he feels more like a man with a sword at his side. But nobody ever had any swelling sentiments about an umbrella. It is a convenience like a door scraper. An umbrella is a necessary evil. A walking stick is a quite unnecessary good. This, I fancy, is a real explanation of the perpetual losing of umbrellas. One does not hear of people losing walking sticks.  It is minced even when it is not needed. When my right hand forgets a stick, may it forget its scunning. But anybody may forget an umbrella, as anybody might forget a shed that he has stood up in out of the rain. Anybody can forget a necessary thing. If I might pursue the figure of speech, I might briefly say that the whole collectivist error consists in saying that because two men can share an umbrella, therefore two men can share a walking stick. Umbrellas might possibly be replaced by some kind of common awnings covering certain streets from particular showers. But there is nothing but nonsense in the notion of swinging a communal stick. It is as if one spoke of twirling a communal mustache. It will be said that this is a frank fantasia and that known sociologists suggest such follies. Pardon me if they do. I will give a precise parallel to the case of confusion of sticks and umbrellas, a parallel from a perpetually reiterated suggestion of reform. At least 60 socialists out of 100, when they have spoken of common laundries, will go on at once to speak of government kitchens. This is just as mechanical and unintelligence as the fanciful case I have quoted. Sticks and umbrellas are both stiff rods that go into halls in a stand in the hall. Kitchens and wash houses are both large rooms full of heat and damp and steam. But the sole and function of the two things are utterly opposite. There is only one way of washing a shirt. That is, there is only one right way. There is no taste and fancy in tattered shirts. Nobody says, Tompkins likes five holes in his shirt, but I must say, give me the good old four old holes. Nobody says, this washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pajamas. Now, if there is one thing I insist on, is the right leg ripped up. The ideal washing is simply to send a thing back washed. But it is by no means true that the ideal cooking is simply to send a thing back cooked. Cooking is an art. It has in it personality and even perversity. For the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse. I know a man, not otherwise dainty, who cannot touch common sausages unless they are almost burned to a call. He wants the sausages fried to rags, yet he does not insist on his shirts being boiled to rags. I do not say that such points of culinary delicacy are of high importance. I do not say that the communal ideal must give way to them. What I say is that communal ideal is not conscious of their existence and therefore goes wrong from the very start, mixing a holy public thing with a highly individual one. Perhaps we ought to accept communal kitchens in a social crisis, just as we should accept communal cats meet in a siege. But the cultured socialist, quite at his ease by no means in a siege, talks about communal kitchens as if they were the same kind of thing as communal laundries. This shows at the start that he misunderstands human nature. It is as different as three men singing the same chorus from three men playing three tunes on the same piano. End of The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand. Recording by Ray of rarity.com r-a-e-r-i-t-y dot com. From Hong Kong, April 2009. The dreadful duty of gudge. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. What's Wrong with the World by G.K. Chesterton. Part 5. The Home of Man. Chapter 3. The Dreadful Duty of Gudge. In the quarrel earlier alluded to between the energetic progressive and the obstinate conservative, or to talk a tenderer language between Hudge and Gudge, the state of cross purposes is at the present moment acute. The Tory says he wants to preserve family life in Cindertown. The Socialist, very reasonably, points out to him that in Cindertown at present, there isn't any family life to preserve. But Hudge, the Socialist in his turn, is highly vague and mysterious about whether he would preserve the family life if there were any, or whether he will try to restore it where it has disappeared. It is all very confusing. The Tory sometimes talks as if he wanted to tighten the domestic bonds that do not exist. The Socialist as if he wanted to loosen the bonds that do not bind anybody. The question we all want to ask of both of them is the original, ideal question. Do you want to keep the family at all? If Hudge, the Socialist, does want the family, he must be prepared for the natural restraints, distinctions, and divisions of labour in the family. He must brace himself up to bear the idea of the woman having a preference for the private house, and a man for the public house. He must manage to endure somehow the idea of a woman being womanly, which does not mean soft and yielding, but handy, thrifty, rather hard, and very humorous. He must confront without a quiver the notion of a child who shall be childish, that is, full of energy, but without an idea of independence, fundamentally as eager for authority as for information and butterscotch. If a man, a woman, and a child live together any more in free and sovereign households, these ancient relations will recur. And Hudge must put up with it. He can only avoid it by destroying the family, driving both sexes into sexless hives and hordes, and bringing up all children as a children of the state, like Oliver Twist. But if these stern words must be addressed to Hudge, neither shall Gudge escape a somewhat severe admonition. For the plain truth to be told pretty sharply to the Tory is this, that if he wants the family to remain, if he wants to be strong enough to resist the rending forces of our essentially savage commoners, he must make some very big sacrifices and try to equalize property. The overwhelming mass of the English people at this particular instant are simply too poor to be domestic. They are as domestic as they can manage. They are much more domestic than the governing class. But they cannot get what good there was originally meant to be in this institution, simply because they have not got enough money. The man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity, quite lawfully expressed in throwing money away. But if under given circumstances he can only do it by throwing the week's food away, then he is not magnanimous, but mean. The woman ought to stand for a certain wisdom, which is well expressed in valuing things rightly, in guarding money sensibly. But how is she to guard money, if there is no money to guard? The child ought to look on his mother as a fountain of natural fun and poetry. But how can he, unless the fountain, like other fountains, is allowed to play? What chance have any of these ancient arts and functions in a house so hideously topsy-turvy? A house where the woman is out working and the man isn't. And the child is forced by law to think his schoolmaster's requirements more important than his mother's. No, Gouch and his friends in the House of Lords and the Carleton Club must make up their minds on this matter, and that very quickly. If they are content to have England turned into a beehive and an anthill, decorated here and there with a few faded butterflies playing at an old game called domesticity in the intervals of the divorce court, then let them have their empire of incest. They will find plenty of socialists who will give it to them. But if they want a domestic England, they must shell out, as the phrase goes, to a vastly greater extent than any radical politician has yet dared to suggest. They must endure burdens much heavier than the budget, and strokes much deadlier than the death duties. For the thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the distribution of the great fortunes in the greatest states. We can now only avoid socialism by a change as vast as socialism. If we are to save property, we must distribute property almost as sternly and sweepingly as did the French Revolution. If we are to preserve the family, we must revolutionize the nation. And of the dreadful duty of Gudge, recorded by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin in 2009. A last instance. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the reader's ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me—the suspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership—that the quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that the way in which they perpetually play into each other's hands is not an everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic industrialism. Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. Gudge wants women workers because they are cheaper. Hudge calls the woman's work freedom to live her own life. Gudge wants steady and obedient workmen. Hudge preaches teetotalism. To workmen, not to Gudge. Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny. Hudge proves from Tolstoy that nobody must take arms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed gentleman. Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge's washing to people who can't practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bisexual toil, which is totally inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy it. Therefore, Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a prophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall soon gloriously outgrow. I do not know whether the partnership of Hudge and Gudge is conscious or unconscious. I only know that between them they still keep the common man homeless. I only know I still meet Jones walking the streets in the grey twilight, looking sadly at the poles and barriers and low red goblin lanterns, which still guard the house, which is nonetheless his, because he has never been in it. End of A Last Instance Conclusion This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jeannie. What's Wrong with the World? by G.K. Chesterton Part 5 Chapter 5 Conclusion Here it may be said my book ends just where it ought to begin. I have said that the strong centres of modern English property must swiftly or slowly be broken up if even the idea of property is to remain among Englishmen. There are two ways in which it could be done. A cold administration by quite detached officials, which is called collectivism, or a personal distribution so as to produce what is called peasant proprietorship. I think the latter solution, the finer and more fully human, because it makes each man, as somebody blamed somebody for saying of the Pope, a sort of small god. A man on his own turf tastes eternity, or in other words, will give ten minutes more work than is required. But I believe I am justified in shutting the door on this vista of argument instead of opening it, for this book is not designed to prove the case for peasant proprietorship, but to prove the case against modern sages who turn reform to a routine. The whole of this book has been a rambling and elaborate urging of one purely ethical fact, and if by any chance it should happen that there is still some who do not quite see what that point is, I will end with one plain parable, which is none the worse for being also a fact.  I mean of course all little girls whose parents were poor. Many very unhealthy habits are common among rich little girls, but it will be long before any doctors interfere forcibly with them. Now the case for this particular interference was this, that the poor are pressed down from above into such stinking and suffocating under worlds of squalor that poor people must not be allowed to have hair, because in their case it must mean lice in their hair. Therefore the doctors proposed to abolish the hair. It never seems to have occurred to them to abolish the lice, yet it could be done. As is common in most modern discussions, the unmentionable thing is the pivot of the whole discussion. It is obvious to any Christian man, that is to any man with a free soul, that any coercion applied to a cabman's daughter ought, if possible, to be applied to a cabinet minister's daughter. I will not ask why the doctors do not, as a matter of fact, apply their rule to a cabinet minister's daughter. I will not ask because I know. They do not because they dare not. But what is the excuse they would urge? What is the plausible argument they would use for thus cutting and clipping poor children and not rich? Their argument would be that the disease is more likely to be in the hair of poor people than of rich. And why? Because the poor people are forced, against all the instincts of the highly domestic working classes, to crowd together in close rooms under a wildly inefficient system of public instruction. And because in one out of forty children there may be a fence. And why? Because the poor man is so ground down by the great rents of the great ground landlords that his wife often has to work as well as he. Therefore she has no time to look after the children. Therefore one in forty of them is dirty. Because the working man has these two persons on top of him, the landlord sitting literally on his stomach, and the schoolmaster sitting literally on his head, the working man must allow his little girl's hair first to be neglected from poverty, next to be poisoned by promiscuity, and lastly to be abolished by hygiene. He perhaps was proud of his little girl's hair, but he does not count. Upon this simple principle, or rather precedent, the sociological doctor drives gaily ahead. When a crappulous tyranny crushes men down into the dirt so that their very hair is dirty, the scientific course is clear. It would be long and laborious to cut off the heads of the tyrants. It is easier to cut off the hair of the slaves. In the same way, if it should ever happen that poor children screaming with toothache disturbed any schoolmaster or artistic gentleman, it would be easy to pull out all the teeth of the poor. If their nails were disgustingly dirty, their nails could be plucked out. If their noses were indecently blown, their noses could be cut off. The appearance of our humbler fellow citizen could be quite strikingly simplified before we had done with him. But all this is not a bit wilder than the brute fact that a doctor can walk into the house of a free man whose daughter's hair may be as clean as spring flowers and order him to cut it off. It never seems to strike these people that the lesson of lice in the slums is the wrongness of slums, not the wrongness of hair. Hair is, to say the least of it, a rooted thing. Its enemy, like the other insects and Oriental armies of whom we have spoken, sweep upon us but seldom. In truth it is only by eternal institutions like hair that we can test passing institutions like empires. If a house is so built as to knock a man's head off when he enters it, it is built wrong. The mob can never rebel unless it is conservative, at least enough to have conserved some reasons for rebelling. It is the most awful thought in all our anarchy that most of the ancient blows struck for freedom would not be struck at all today because of the obscuration of the clean, popular customs from which they came. The insult that brought down the hammer of Wat Tyler might now be called a medical examination. That which Virginia's loathed and avenged as foul slavery might now be praised as free love. The cruel taunt of Foulon, let them eat grass, might now be represented as the dying cry of an idealistic vegetarian. Those great scissors of science that would snip off the curls of the poor little school children are ceaselessly snapping closer and closer to cut off all the corners and fringes of the arts and honors of the poor. Soon they will be twisting necks to suit clean collars and hacking feet to fit new boots. It never seems to strike them that the body is more than raiment, that the Sabbath was made for man, that all institutions shall be judged and damned by whether they have fitted the normal flesh and spirit. It is the test of political sanity to keep your head. It is the test of artistic sanity to keep your hair on. Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages, is this. To assert that we must instantly begin all over again and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That, I know, is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter, I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair. Because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home. Because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother. Because she should have a free mother, she should not have a notorious landlord. Because there should not be in a serious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property. Because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched totalling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lame and altered. Her hair shall not be cut short like a convict's. No, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image. All around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall.  End of conclusion. Recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alana Jordan. What's Wrong with the World? by G.K. Chesterton Three notes. One. On female suffrage. Not wishing to overload this long essay with too many parentheses, apart from its thesis of progress and precedent, I append here three notes on points of detail that may possibly be misunderstood. The first refers to the female controversy. It may seem to many that I dismiss too curtly the contention that all women should have votes, even if most women do not desire them. It is constantly said in this connection that males have received the vote, the agricultural labours, for instance, when only a minority of them were in favour of it. Mr. Galsworthy, one of the few fine-fighting intellects of our time, has talked this language in the nation. Now, broadly, I have only to answer here, as everywhere in this book, that history is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced. If we really forced general elections upon free labourers who definitely disliked general elections, then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do. If we are Democrats, we ought to undo it. We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people, and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares. But this analogy is false for a plain and particular reason. Many voteless women regard a vote as unwomanly. Nobody says that most voteless men regard a vote as unmanly. Nobody says that any voteless men regarded it as unmanly. Not in the stillest hamlet or the most stagnant fen could you find a yokel or a tramp who thought he'd lost his sexual dignity by being part of a political mob. If he did not care about a vote, it was solely because he did not know about a vote. He did not understand the word any better than bimetalism. His opposition, if it existed, was merely negative. His indifference to a vote was really indifference. But the female sentiment against the franchise whatever its size is positive, it is not negative, it is by no means indifferent.  That is, as insulting certain affirmative traditions to which they are attached. You may think such a view prejudiced, but I violently deny that any Democrat has a right to override such prejudices, if they are popular and positive. Thus he would not have a right to make millions of Muslims vote with a cross if they had a prejudice in favor of voting with a crescent. Unless this is admitted, democracy is a farce we need scarcely keep up. If it is admitted, the suffragists have not merely to awaken and indifferent, but to convert a hostile majority. Two, on cleanliness and education. On rereading my protest, which I honestly think much needed against our heathen idolatry of mere ablution, I see that it may possibly be misread. I hasten to say that I think washing a most important thing to be taught both to rich and poor. I do not attack the positive but the relative position of soap. Let it be insisted on even as much as now, but let other things be insisted on much more. I am even ready to admit that cleanliness is next to godliness, but the moderns will not even admit godliness to be next to cleanliness. In their talk about Thomas Beckett and such saints and heroes, they make soap more important than soul. They reject godliness whenever it is not cleanliness. If we resent this about remote saints and heroes, we should resent it more about the many saints and heroes of the slums, whose unclean hands cleanse the world. Dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth, but the fact remains that the classes that wash most are those that work least. Concerning these, the practical course is simple. Soap should be urged on them and advertised as what it is, a luxury. With regard to the poor, also the practical course is not hard to harmonize with our thesis. If we want to give poor people soap, we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then emphatically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty. I have not dealt with any details touching distributed ownership or its possibility in England for the reasons stated in the text. This book deals with what is wrong, wrong in our root of argument and effort. This wrong is, I say, that we will go forward because we dare not go back. Thus, the socialist says that property is already concentrated into trusts and stores. The only hope is to concentrate it further in the state. I say the only hope is to unconcentrate it. That is, to repent and return, the only step forward is the step backward. But in connection with this distribution I have laid myself open to another potential mistake. In speaking of a sweeping redistribution, I speak of decision in the aim, not necessarily of abruptness in the means. It is not all too late to restore an approximately rational state of English possessions without any mere confiscation. A policy of buying out landlordism steadily adopted in England, as it has already been adopted in Ireland, notably in Mr. Wintham's Wise and Fruitful Act, would in a very short time release the lower end of the seesaw and make the whole plank swing more level. The objection to this course is not at all what it would not do, only that it will not be done. If we leave things as they are, there will almost certainly be a crash of confiscation. If we hesitate, we shall soon have to hurry. But if we start doing it quickly, we have still time to do it slowly. This point, however, is not essential to my book. All I have to urge between these two boards is that I dislike the big, whitely shop, and that I dislike socialism, because it will, according to socialists, be so like that shop. It is its fulfillment, not its reversal. I do not object to socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce, but because it will leave it so horribly the same. End of Three Notes Recording by Lana Jordan, St. Louis, Missouri End of What's Wrong with the World


The power Tesla presently possesses is evidence of both its recent commercial successes and its promising future. A decade ago, most auto industry experts laughed at Tesla's chances to succeed where many other would-be new entrants had failed. Now that Ford Motor and General Motors, two titans of the auto industry, have accepted the electric transition, they are effectively acknowledging that they allowed Tesla to gain a significant advantage as the first mover in the EV market. Customers are even more impressed with Tesla's foresight as a result of this validation. However, the entire sustainability ecosystem that Tesla is developing is where its genuine value lies. Future goods like the passenger-cyber truck and the commercial semi will increase its influence in the transportation industry. It will be possible to see Tesla's competitive edge by selling energy storage and home-based renewable power systems using its well-known brand. Not to mention the brand-new Gigafactory locations in Germany and Texas. Having said that, Tesla has a ton of chances to stay at the forefront of various industries that are seeing rapidly expansion. Do you honestly believe that General Motors and Ford allowed Tesla to gain a significant advantage as the first mover in the EV market, or do you believe Tesla took them both by surprise? Post your thoughts below.


We're here with Heidi Michaels and Zuja Wellness to talk about summer and exercise and how to ease yourself into a summer program, especially if you haven't been exercising for a while. So how would one person get started this summer in a good exercise program? Well, I think the first step that people need to make is to show up.  And we can get people right into classes right away. We take things at a pace that works for the individual. So we encourage people to work at their own pace. That's really important. In order for me to continue doing something, I have to feel good about what I'm doing. And I want to feel that I can continue to work towards something and it's not going to feel overwhelming for me. So we understand that, that sometimes it's very difficult for people to come into a program like this and feel like they'll be able, they look around sometimes and perhaps feel like they won't be able to keep up. But we absolutely make sure that we're working with people and we're showing modifications and we may even need to work individually with somebody in a class to maybe make a modification that we haven't even shown because there's something specific for them that they need. And that's okay because we all move differently. So I think it's really important for us to just get moving. Great. And speaking of moving, I understand you're going to give us a demonstration of one of the exercises. Yes. This is Annika. And Annika is going to do a demonstration of the snatch to burpee. So she's going to show a snatch to burpee of someone who's doing this at probably what their high speed would be. So Annika, if you will, she's snatching the bell overhead, down, jumping back into a burpee. And she's doing this as quickly as she can with good control up and down. Thank you, Annika. So if we were to modify that in a class, which we often do, Annika is going to be lifting the kettlebell, utilizing her legs with her lift. So she's going to be slowing it down. And then she's going to be walking through the burpee. So this would be a fairly typical modification for this exercise, Annika. So you can see she's using her legs to help lift the bell up and with control, setting it down and walking through the burpee. Thank you, Annika. We're going to show you another exercise that would probably be incorporated into class pretty regularly. We're going to be using a TRX. So Annika's going to be doing some body weight training. And this is something that allows her to simply use her body weight to create the challenge level that she wants. So she's going to go into a squat. And in this case, we're going to have her keep both feet on the ground and she's going to be doing a squat and pulling herself into a rowing motion. So just her body weight is giving her the resistance that she needs for this exercise. So this would be something that we would do as a modification for this exercise. Now if we wanted to take up the challenge level, we're going to have Annika drop one of the handles and she's going to stand on one leg to do her squat. So she's going to do that same exercise, the squat to row, but she's going to be challenging herself by destabilizing by lifting one foot off the floor. Now she has to utilize her core muscles more and it's requiring more strength for her to be able to do this. So this is a way that we can easily progress people into various exercises and they can work their way into these exercises very easily in a class.


And one thing we want to discuss when we're talking about a cyanotic heart defect is Eisenmanger syndrome. What's Eisenmanger syndrome? It's essentially a reversal of the shunt in which a left-to-right shunt becomes a right-to-left shunt and we'll discuss in a second how that happens, but basically it's the consequence of a long-standing and uncorrected left-to-right shunt. So any kind of larger AST, BST, or patent ductus arteriosus could lead to Eisenmanger syndrome. And let's discuss the physiology of how this happens because this is really important to understand. We have an example of an atrial septal defect on the right side here. And again, as you'll recall, we have blood flowing down the pressure gradient from the left atrium to the right atrium into the right ventricle and then out through the pulmonary artery. And over time this increased amount of blood flow will lead to increased pressures in the pulmonary artery and eventually these patients will develop a pulmonary hypertension. And in response to the pulmonary hypertension, this right ventricle is pumping so hard against the pulmonary hypertension that it begins to hypertrophy in response. And eventually the pulmonary hypertension will become so bad that actually what will begin to see happen is the path of least resistance is no longer from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery. It's now from the right ventricle back into the right atrium and into the left atrium. Okay, so the pressure gradient now favors the flow of blood from the right ventricle into the right atrium rather than the from the right atrium into the pulmonary artery. That's how you get Eisenmenger syndrome. And as you can see now, we have a right-to-left shunt rather than a left-to-right shunt. And again, what kind of patients are we going to see this in? It's in someone who's had a uncorrected shunt. So generally this would be a child or a yoga adult that may have had a known heart defect or was never diagnosed with one. And then what kind of symptoms are they going to have? Again, now we're dealing with a right-to-left shunt and that would cause the patient to develop some cyanosis. Again, they have even poor oxygenation of the blood as well. So they're going to have dyspnea. And again, in response to poor O2 saturation, you'll see some clubbing in their digits as well. And again, these patients are going to be evaluated with the echocardiogram. And on their labs, you might see some rethrocytosis. And the reason this happens is, again, you have poor O2 saturation in the blood. But the difference here is that it starts to develop gradually as Eisenmenger syndrome starts to develop. It's a slow process. So the bone marrow will adapt by increasing the production of red blood cells to try to maintain oxygenation of the peripheral tissues. And how do we treat these patients? Again, they're going to have pulmonary hypertension that causes them to develop Eisenmenger syndrome as well. They're going to have some symptoms of bright-sided congestive heart failure. So we can give them diuretics and medications for pulmonary hypertension to manage these symptoms. But eventually, Eisenmenger syndrome has quite a poor prognosis. So a heart transplant is going to be the definitive treatment for most of these patients. And they generally don't have very good outcomes. So this is why it's so important to identify these defects early. That's why we do a good physical exam on newborns, do the appropriate workup. So if there is a defect present, we can catch it and prevent the onset of Eisenmenger syndrome.


Hello and welcome once again to the youth ministry course. Hope you all are doing well. Awesome Great, let's just get into the Chapter 6 where we stopped in the last class. Okay, just quickly pray. Although we submit this hour into your hands Lord everything that we learn I pray Holy Spirit that you will come and help us understand and give us the wisdom the knowledge to Go about everything that you've called us to do father Jesus name Right so in the last class we looked at a bunch of challenges and we tried understanding the different generations It would get right giving them, you know defying generations From the 40s to the 60s 70s 80s and all the way to the generation Z Gen Z as we call it all the post millenials are trying to understand You know their lifestyle really and how it's led to a bunch of different trends You know that is being set in the societies and communities in countries even Okay, so today we'll continue with a chapter and then chapter six and we'll see how okay now One of the things that we've learned is just understanding the challenges is not enough It's it's it's the beginning. It's the first step to you know finding. Okay. What can we do now? What what next how can we? You know cater to this generation that is being impacted and influenced by all these different trends or areas, right? And again, it's very simple for at the moment You know how we would cater is you know without a doubt Is having an effective social media medium to engage with your young people, right? So in impacting millenials and engaging them in effectively one of the ways is the use of technology and social media Right. So if we read the Gospels Most of the times we see where Jesus would go to where people were Until people started following him Right and so now the crowd or people most of them are on social media and I think you know It's and and the church the global church You know has been doing a good job in terms of engaging their audience online And so, you know and and that way I think we are doing a good job and we can do better Continue to do better But if you're in your church if you're leading your youth ministry or you have a youth leader who's leading a youth ministry You know, just check with that person about their strategy to engage the youth online like what are they doing? What is their strategy or you know, what's the game plan? so to say to engage the millenials or the generations II on online because it as And again, I just not to re-emphasize this but then we know that For example, you take an example of a relationship this generation, especially post Gen Z They don't understand the difference between an online and an offline relationship Okay, if I say that so they don't really understand the difference between an online and offline for them everything is the same right they think that they They have learned to swim by reading about it online Okay So these are the ways your hand has to be certain angle and your feet has to go up and down in a certain angle at a certain force You've read about it and now I know how to swim so pretty much, you know and also Two individuals can have a full-blown a A proper relationship on line without even having met face-to-face You know like a proper romantic relationship Online is is a possibility in this day and age and so asking yourself again I think the church globally worldwide has learned if there's anything that we've learned through the pandemic is that Technology is the new Sunday Right technology is the new Sunday Everybody there was I don't think there was a single church on the planet that did not opt to go or at least try to exploring You know the online option Right the streaming option was always available, but that was always secondary Everybody, you know would preferred going in person And whatnot so we didn't really think it was important or even necessary for that matter But we've all learned we've all adapted the global church has adapted and kind of realized that yeah Hey technology is the new Sunday, and it's here to stay. It's not going to change Right, it's and it's only going to advance You know if there's one thing that technology is going to do is that it's only going to get better and better and more advanced It's here to stay Okay, so Having understood that technology is powerful We need to ask a few questions as an are we communicating with our young people in ways where they can engage back with us using technology Are you is there a social media platform where you are available to engage with the young people from your church? And you know and they engage back with you It's more when we think of social media or a page for that matter We the only thing that comes to our mind is is just Producing contents and throwing it out there producing contents and throwing it out there that anybody can do that Isn't it the whole point of using a technology really well is making it engaging Right, how can you get them to connect with you? It's not just that you know, okay?  I just want to share about it It's not just one-way traffic So that you need to ask yourself that okay create community in new ways using technology create new educational pathways online to help people grow in a biblical knowledge in whatnot so Effective use of technology You know online the online medium and social media is going to be effective in your youth ministry The second effective thing in where you can impact your young people in church is Leadership and it's not just any leadership. It is relational leadership Right relational leadership. Now. I know there's a a Lot of talk about leadership the importance of of being a leader and all this pressure of To the leaders being a good leader, and if you're a good leader, you need to be a better leader and You know, there's always this thing but What I'm trying to say is that? In the last decade or so The perspective of the leadership has changed a little bit to this generation And so this generation prefers a more of a relational leadership Versus the authoritarian leadership Now you can read all the books by John Maxwell He is like the boss on this topic of leadership You should at least read one book of his on leadership and again as mentioned, there's There's no lack for resources on the topic of leadership that you can read on that you can study on and So yeah, having observed this is again one of my observation based on my observation and also observation made by certain leaders worldwide is that the young people these days they respond to a relational leadership right so and Not necessarily like an authoritarian leadership. There's an excerpt from John Maxwell's book that I've shared an image in your notes. I hope hoping that you can look at it In it says book called the five levels of leadership from John Maxwell It relates position or authority to the lowest level of leadership Right, so let's let's just look at that, you know table of what John Maxwell is trying to say So your you are now a leader Okay, and so let's say your It's let's go from the bottom all the way to the top So You've been given this position of a leadership first of all leadership is not a position But most of it look at it that way. So there's a position of leadership with that People will follow you because they have to That's positional leadership people will follow you Because they have to them.  So that's one level of leadership. It starts there The other level is the permission-based leadership where okay, you are building relationships and here There's a slight change people follow you because they Want to Okay, people follow you because they want to because they think okay, there is some Accountability here. There is some connect or a rapport between the leaders Leadership and those he is leading the team all the people that he is leading All right, and then the third level is the production.  You know, you're saying an example kind of thing and Then there's the fourth level which is the people's development So people follow because of what you have done for them Okay, so you see again, there's a slight change from people will follow you for what you've done for the organization was the previous one now here taking it up a notch by Where people will follow you because of what you have done for them You know and they see what you are doing.  It's very interesting from level one to level four. It's about doing By doing for the organization doing for the people building relationships and all of that While all of that is important It's very interesting to see that the pinnacle of the leadership You know a stage is that they follow you for who you are and What you represent Right, it boils down to your character your integrity your values your principles and and whatnot. So so Yeah, a relational leadership is very important. This is another book that I would recommend you to read It's called turn the ship around Turn the ship around by L. David MacKer So he is a retired captain from the US Navy and he wrote this book So in the summary of this book is available online if you want to don't want to read the book It's very interesting. You can you should The summary is that when when David was made leader or a captain of Of the ship Amongst the fleet of ships his ship was considered to be the worst Ship worse it had like people of just no experience They had there was no quality Nothing, it's in the notes con you can look at it Turn the ship around by L. David Yeah, it's in the notes and I think it's in page 29 you can take a look at it I've mentioned the name of the book and the author And so basically it's about how this captain David he you know transforms that that people in the ship and You know just by giving them freedom in terms of leadership He creates this different levels of leadership and so and then now that ship later goes on to becomes become the best ship in the fleet of the Navy and Hence the book of being called the turn the ship around it's nice play words, isn't it? so He goes on to say that lead from authority, but not with authority And they're saying people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care It's another thing. So One of the quotes from his book. He says is leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than Forging followers now there's a huge part of it that I agree and then and then The last aspect of it not as much That is, you know that we are to create leaders and not forge followers because where I disagree I'm not sure disagree is a Right word or if it's too strong of a word, but just a difference in opinion is that we need followers to As I mentioned you can just do a survey Or a study of the number of the leadership conferences that happens around the globe and the number of books on leadership or the number of the articles or resources on the topic of leadership versus Followership right Our societies our communities our schools our colleges Our places at work our workplaces. Everybody seems to only emphasize on this thing called a leadership But being a good follower is very very crucial. That's the beginning the first step of Becoming a good leader is you learn to become a good follower There is a book. Oh Gosh, I know the name of the book Armabero's there's a book called Armabero forget the author Teddy Nance something if anybody's heard of the book Sure, but it's it's a must read book again The Armabero's the importance of being an Armabero to the king for a season in your life And then before you know before you get promoted So learning to serve before you lead is again very crucial it bow it it molds you it builds you Right, and we see that in the life of David and versus sol Okay, so let's not go too deep into that But so when we talk about this topic of leadership, it's a very important good leaders are always have always been good followers And in our context of in ministry now You can be a good leader only because you you are a good follower of the our ultimate leader of our ultimate captain That is Jesus, right? So There's two effective things you know One is effective You know strategy for your online and social media audience and being a relational leader is very crucial Okay another thing is Is having effective a program and events now we'll talk about the program and events in youth ministry Earlier in chapter 3 we looked at You know we have these five different audiences, right? We have five different purposes from worship ministry worship ministry evangelism Fellowship and you know just baptizing them Bringing them into the family So we have all these different purposes and we can't accomplish or achieve all of these five purposes in one event or one program And so we choose to cater Or design Strategically one event or one program to a certain audience Okay, what is important is you know while you do these events or programs It is very very important that you have a post event a briefing or a review meeting Right post event review meeting Some of the things that we do that I have done with the team is mentioned in the notes Yeah, we look at we don't we don't have anything fancy. We don't call this process I mean whatever we just a post post event review meeting We do oppose the youth camps youth retreats you come by in youth meetings and whatnot and so We ask this question takes a good bad missing confusing So for example in good we ask, okay, what went well What were the wins? Why was this thing a success? We talk about it We let the team members talk about it or explain why this was good white what worked And then the bad what went wrong. This is I think very important We need to address in the program of a program of an event of what went wrong. What didn't work? Did we try something that failed? That will help us No change our plans for the next meeting And then what is missing? Did we forget anything, right? And then Confusing so What what was our goal or purpose for doing this? Did we accomplish it? Were we clear in our communication? Did everyone get the point of what we were trying to do? Okay, so these are some of the things that we ask ourselves as post event. I think this is very important crucial it will Help you guys as well. Any questions or any thoughts so far? Okay? all right So and and the depth there's another point is the depth in spiritual discipleship you know youth meetings should not just be a place of where Get together and just have a have you know Fun and whatnot all of that is important I sound so bad when I say youth meeting should not be a place of fun, right? All of that is important, but get together this can happen anywhere Anybody can have a get together, you know bunch of groups and whatnot And and I think it's very important that while we have fun and fellowship and whatnot We should never miss the focus on spiritual discipleship. That is the whole point of it All is that never forget that you are a shepherd Right having a shepherd's heart for for the people that you're leading is extremely crucial guiding them leading them providing for them protecting them and you know providing in terms of spiritual Teaching a bit because in sound teaching is very very important And if you have your leaders your core team leaders and you're and even us as leaders We should keep remembering reminding ourselves that we are shepherd and not a star because again, I think it's I don't know what it is about this day and age. It's very easy to become Celebrity shepherd You you're saying right It's it's very easy for for pain or success or you know People genuinely celebrating you can get to your head and think okay You're a star now and somewhere it is possible for us to lose a picture that we are still a shepherd We still continue to lead you know Lead them with the shepherd's heart Right so everything to do with Pastoring comes out of the shepherd's heart Because the shepherd exists for the sheep the sheep don't exist. You know for the shepherd kind of a thing, but We continue to you know thrive for them I love this court by Tom Crandall who used to be the I think who heads the youth ministry in Bethel church at the wedding He says if we don't give the next generation an encounter with God There won't be a generation to carry the kingdom of God Okay, that's that's again It's he's using judges chapter 2 verse 10 in his own words And if we don't give the next generation an encounter with God, there won't be a generation to carry the kingdom of God right And so again with everything that we've been learning and how can we continue to do so? is one of a couple of things that we emphasized in our youth ministry at APC is setting a culture Because if a culture is not set for you If you don't set a culture, sorry the culture will be set for you Right and so the culture that you are creating is the culture that you allow For a successful youth ministry a culture is very crucial. No culture is very crucial for again any organization a school institution Workplace whatever the culture is important. What kind of a culture are you setting? Where it could be positive negative, you know in in even at home is very important. There's culture of Family prayer the culture of no gossip the culture of no you know, no Whatever backbiting or whatever you want to call Or all of those things can exist and that can be the culture at you know at any place There's no culture of family prayer. There's no culture of There is the culture of gossip that everybody gossips about everybody Etc etc, right? So you get what I'm saying So it is very important to ask yourself again. What culture is your ministry? Allowing Because the culture that you are creating is the culture that you allow and so We had to again There is no such thing as over communicating We had to put in a few points to say, okay These are the things that we want to see as a culture amongst our youth or youth ministry overall Right and so one of the first point is the come as you are That everybody is accepted Nobody will be charged for how they look what they wear Or what their past is You know what what they have done their sins or mistakes or whatnot Because with so many options that are available for young people it is important that as a youth ministry We commit to a creating a culture where young people can come as they are and feel safe Right regardless of what problems and whatnot, right? So be being intentional about creating a culture of acceptance A culture where young people can walk in from wherever and can simply be themselves It was very crucial It see again some of these points are birthed out of I wish I had all these Things existed in the days when I was a youth when I was being led by the youth leaders and whatnot and so Unfortunately, no, you know, there was this thing where You know, I'm not gonna mention the leaders names. Obviously all the church names I'm just saying all of these things were missing In in a church where there was youth ministry and where I was as where I was the youth there you know, there was this constant tension of a Fear of how how I was looked upon or judged for the way I look because I'm talking about almost 18 years ago I had a little long hair and looked a little bit more ridiculous but Yeah, so coming as you are letting young people know that they can come just as they are how Who you know, whoever they are and who they are they can come they are welcomed is very important And you are teaching your team members that and your intern your team members are talking to the young people as you know We are creating this culture and then you know, every and everybody feels welcomed Okay, so come as you are and encouragement was is another key Creating a culture of encouragement Right because in the world where people focus on tearing others down in just a comment You know, it was very important that we be a ministry where we build people Hey, just remember, you know, you remember this instance in John chapter 8 was stoning a woman caught in the act of adultery You know, everybody took up their stones in this day and age We don't literally take us the stones up yet, but we are you know In many ways we do that with our comments or you know, it's very easy. You get what I'm saying, right? It's very metaphoric nowadays In a day and age where it's very easy for us to bring people down tear them down hurt them Let us be a ministry and create a culture where we can build people Right and so and that happens with the culture of encouragement A word of encouragement to someone on the day that they are being discouraged It's like an oxygen to them or another lifeline to them. You just help them get through that day You know that they've been they've happened. They're going through a very hard time So having a culture of encouragement is very important and the third thing is Communicating your why is very crucial communicating your why and your audience Eventually will know why you are doing what you are doing is Crucial Okay, so when people know why you do what you do they can lean in and own it with even more conviction Okay, why are you creating this culture? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this event? Why are you doing this program? And so when your why becomes clear you have, you know, you You have their their undivided attention Okay, so Simply because we have very limited time with our youth every week So we have to make it count so creating a culture of knowing the why and then finally you are creating a culture of commitment Commitment is key, you know, and that starts with both ways When when your youth sees that you are being committed like no matter what You know, you are again building a culture Now when the pandemic hit you know in 2020 As most ministries we all went online as well including youth ministry and so for two years two years, right? two years or so every Friday from the third week of March 2020 the third week of March 2020 till Till The end November 2022 every Friday we would meet for We had online youth meetings Now the numbers increased they would drop the attendees would increase You know the number of participants would increase and drop increase and drop increase and drop But sometimes it can just be it'll only be the the core team that is that is attending the youth meeting But what was important is that you would continue to do that You you will continue to show and display That you know that you are committed to what you are doing You know after the program after the youth meeting you would share the notes with all the youths and whatnot So everybody knows that the meeting happened and eventually what that instills is that It instills in your youth to be committed Now they will be committed to you know attend the programs or serve in the church and what not Okay, so under commitment the the two things that we looked at was That is yeah, one is come commitment and the other is them being part of a community Okay, I think this is pretty huge You know when it comes to the context of youth ministry and young people wanting to be part of the community There's a couple of questions that we need to ask is why we need why why is building a community? important And there are multiple scriptures in the Bible that for us that we can read in Romans 12 4 to 5 It says just as our bodies have many parts and each of each part has a special function So it is with Christ's body. We are many parts of one body, but we all belong to each other and Some scriptures and Proverbs that I like in Proverbs 11 14 15 22 and 24 6 it says but in the multitude of counselors There is safety But in the multitude of counselors, they are established and in the multitude of counselors again, there is safety. So So community is God's idea, you know, it began when he said it is not good for a man to be alone kind of starts there and again instilling instilling this Culture of commitment and this culture of community and being part of community is very crucial Now I want to share with Do you all have your notes with you guys your PDF? Yes, first. Yeah, okay. So if you look if you go to page 33, right? If you're there, okay page 33 So you You'll see an image with numbers simple addition Kind of a thing. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, Avani has it. Come has it Everybody else has it because I'm gonna ask you this simple question Feel free to unmute your mic and speak. Okay, everybody there looking at the same page. I Hope you are Actually, I try and share so that way that way everybody can look me. Okay. Cool. Everybody's looking at this, right? Cool. So, yeah, what what stands out for you in this? It's a test for you guys so you tell me How It's not a tricky question. Okay, by the way, it's a very simple test Some of you are like sweating as they go mathematics. No Avani, what do you think? Mangi Rose Four plus two. Yeah, go ahead Four plus two is because the seven Right, right. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Thanks a lot. Okay. What else? What about the others? Mangi Avni, I think it should be First number as three it should be a in a sequence So it should be three four five six and the second number should be one two three four And then accordingly the number should add up. No, no, Christopher. It's not that complicated and all Christopher It's a very simple thing There's no sequence in us Okay Anything else anyone else Avani? or Sorry Anyone googling it. It's not worth googling and all guys. Okay What I see is plus the three plus one four four plus and five is right then they are adding The top four and the five with diagonally two and then seven and then Yeah, no Avani. It's not complicated Okay, good See the Now we're all talking about coming in building community. Isn't it one of the reasons why Why we have to build community or reach out to people is because god loves people And you know people it's the people that make the community or a christened community Um Now everybody's answer is right Right, everybody said four plus two is uh, it's not seven. It's six Nobody said, uh, you know that there are three that are right and Everybody pointed out the one thing that was wrong. Nobody said there's three that is correct So what what what we're trying to say is it is very easy I think it's very natural For us as human beings to see a flaw in someone And then leave the rest of the good part Right. Um, so it you hear what I'm saying, right? The dust is the dust is available everywhere on the road. It's right there or right on top But the dirt is Right on the surface, but if you want the diamond We need to dig deep Isn't it? There is there's a diamond in every individual and for that which we just can't see You know bite in their face value and whatnot. So and that is part of being building a christ centered community is looking beyond their surface level Shortcomings everybody has shortcomings. Everybody has flaws Isn't it? It is very easy to look at that one mistake that one wrong thing and they completely ignore The three that is correct Right. How did we learn this? How did we come to this point? Um, and so it's very important that as we lead You know this youth ministry or any ministry for that matter that We build a christ centered community. There are a lot of scriptures that I've given for you all in the notes I would encourage you to do that.   Is your heart, you know, is your heart burning to reach the lost? Are you are you as your heart going after?  Um, you know, again, it's not just that you do one thing on the stage for them to see and live a different life That's not what you get. What we are saying, right? What I'm saying is um All your ministry what you're leading should be an overflow of what you do in the secret And so, you know, when everything that you do right in the secret place with him um, everything else becomes Easy leading creating a culture to building a community a Christ centered community and what not Yeah, I mean that's about what I have to share Any thoughts that do you all have? I first have a question on On allowing everyone to come as they are Yeah Say like come as you are and and Jesus if uh, we couple of couple of months back we uh In in our local church. We had we have the same policy come as you are and then By God's grace or God's willing you get saved however People the young people coming in in in in in the youth meeting with uh intend to sell drugs and uh easily Drug culture is easily spread among our our youth. Um, so question I have pastor How do you manage or how do you control or how do you? Look after your youth so to avoid things like that to happen Yeah so Now again, this is about uh So there's two ways of looking at it mangi and the way I would look at it This is how I would look at it anybody else is free to share their thoughts is One is uh, when I say come as you are I'm looking at an individual Right, and you know when Jesus died with sinners. Uh, look the gospel of Luke is another Tagline sort of say for the gospel of Luke is as Jesus the friend of sinners You know Every time Jesus met with a sinner. He empowered the sinner to live a holy life Right, and that's the that's the point of all of this when you say come as you are You are accepting them as they come and individually with their pass and say whatnot and but then you know You empower them to live a better life as a Christian Okay, so that that's your heart for them and then uh, you know, there can be individuals where You know come in with an intention to uh, say um Do things like what you just mentioned your other responsibility as a shepherd is also to Guard them and protect them uh, and uh, so I would Have a talk with my leadership with my senior pastor and get it into his notice as well and And you know seek his counsel as well in his wisdom as to how we can best handle the situation in the context of your church in the context of the culture of your community and whatnot, so That's how I would approach this whole thing. My is Keeping my pastor a senior pastor in the loop about this thing as well. It's very crucial So and this can happen in any different situations us and that there's one happening right now in our church I don't want to mention but yeah Having the leadership involved in the decision-making of how to protect Your your flock is very important. Yeah, Christopher. Yes Yeah, I just want to confirm faster. Is this the last class you're having for this course Yes, Christopher, right. Yeah, so I I was just going through chapter seven and my initial sort of uh Trying to understand the work passion and how it relates to suffering also um, and uh, you know what never really uh You know, I mean this first time for this actually, okay, so um, um, so maybe you could just explain that a little bit please and also Wow, you know, what's I mean? How do you how do you view the the movie passion of Christ? Because I mean there's some sort of conflicting views of you know that that movie also so just Yeah, sure. So again now, um A passion I If you just look at the dictionary definitions that's mentioned there is uh, is a strong and barely controllable emotion Intense enthusiasm and all of that is great. But then it comes from the root latin word Uh, it simply means pass your uh means To suffer long suffering Long suffering right and so and this week Is called the passion week for a reason The last week when you know the week where jesus is you know cruciferan whatnot. So this week is known as the passion week And so how it relates to us in our ministry and whatnot is When we say i'm passionate about this ministry Uh, it's a it's yes It is up your enthusiasm towards either young people and whatnot But then you know, we go back to one of the points that we learned is you're looking at this ministry or the chat As that in from a marathon kind of a perspective. So when you think, uh, you know Because of all this enthusiasm and excitement and whatnot that you want to interest into the young people's lives And when you don't see that happening immediately Uh, you can get discouraged and and you know end your ministry thing very prematurely But is having this hard understanding that okay passion is All of this enthusiasm and excitement and whatnot and also it means to you know long suffer You know suffer long is okay. Be patient. Just just go on with this like it's a love is long suffering, isn't it? um, so that's the whole perspective of it and um You know I like the movie the passion of christ just as is uh, i haven't been too critical about it But I don't want to comment too much on that stuff. I like the movie I just watch it for what it is the way he's trying to communicate it. I know they can get into a lot of nitty-gritty stuff but I see it for what it is and i'm okay with that. Yeah yeah, I know I guess I um I mean just look going back to that that you know The passion is always, you know viewed in the traditional sense. Yes, and um um, you know suffering Maybe it's I don't know the tough thing means You know long long suffering and you know endurance. Yes, which is which probably makes sense. But yes um, when you live it to the passion of christ, which is Just going making me. I mean that is I mean I would say that was he never really suffering Uh, yeah, so I mean in the in the cool sense for what is me and I would say that is the intense suffering Yes, and he did that because of his love for us, isn't it because of the joy that was said before him He endured the cross. That's what the bible says, isn't it? Okay, everyone. Well, yeah, thank you. I hope you all have learned something about youth ministry It's course as I said, uh, it's kind of a short course Uh slightly intense, but uh, and I hope that they can genuinely carry something and apply it in your area of ministry and uh And as you all know, I'm anytime you want to reach out to me. My email is available. It's the same thing at ocean.johns If you see question at all Feel free to write to me anytime.  Well, I'm looking forward to reading your Reviews book reviews Take it guys. God bless you. Bye Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you so much. Take a mangy It's been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thank you pastor