Recommends Soldiers and Kings.

Transcript context

…I'm always reminded of that frame of reference when I go to a funeral and people reading the eulogy and the old advice of what do you want your eulogy to say and making that your mission. But on the flip side, there's this viral video of Mike Tyson. Someone was coming up to him I think before his big match recently, and asked him about his legacy, and he's like, "I don't give a shit about my legacy. It's just a made up thing that doesn't matter." So let me just ask you this. Why is it important to think about legacy? Does legacy even matter? We're dead. What's the difference? Far be it for me to criticize Mike, and don't hit me Mike, because even as an old guy, I wouldn't want to be hit by Mike Tyson. I don't know what's behind his response, but I can tell you what's true for me. I made oblique reference to Captain Chaos in the world as it is right now. The world's a tough place right now. We live in a world where it's almost normalized that a teenager will shoot other teenagers in school. It's almost normalized that people are dragged off to jail. Something is happening, something that's really disturbing. Now, to be clear, we've always had disturbing times. I mean, I was reminded recently, I'm reading a book called Soldiers and Kings, which I highly recommend, which is about human smuggling from Central America into the United States, and it's an extraordinary book. And in reading that, I was reminded of policies that the US government has used over the years, whether it's supporting dictators in Central America or other sorts of things, things that I oppose, that feel immoral, if not directly immoral. Why does this come up for me? I can't shake the feeling that someone down the line in my lineage is going to ask of me, "And what did you do, grandpa? And what did you do, great grandpa?" I know what I want that answer to be, which is I tried. Lenny, God gave me the ability to put two sentences together in a way that people listen. I feel a moral responsibility to use that God-given gift to help create the world, that I would like to see, a world of kindness and empathy, a world where poverty is diminished, a world where people feel safe however the fuck they identify. I don't give a damn. So is that my legacy? Yeah, and maybe there's some ego implicit in that, but can I go on for just a bit on this? Absolutely.…

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