Great show today, interesting and enjoyable.

A though occurred to me that there may be a ‘formula’ which leads people to lean towards Communism or Fascism.

Could it be people who have always felt that they have been at the bottom of society feel that a great ‘leveling’ of resources can only bring them up as they can’t fall any further anyway.

Could it be people who themselves or their parents or grandparents had a stake in society but have watched their position drop or erode over years or generations feel that a strong nationalist leader who looks like them and pretends to be sympathetic to them is their best hope of bringing them back up again.

Actually I think I heard this idea somewhere before, possibly here on the Podcast in the lead up to the election.

Showing folks how to do something is better than nothing, for sure, but I agree about taking a little extra time to make folks do something themselves. It solidifies the skill and it gives them confidence.

I’ll share two quick examples. I wanted to learn to can. I got the canner, the “blue Bible”, all the supplies, and I even processed juice from cherries and plums from my homestead. I wasn’t confident though, and I was convinced I was going to mess it all up and kill someone, so my mom came to my house and spent several hours “teaching” me how to can. Basically, she stood there and talked me through the whole thing and I felt really dumb afterward. I kept thinking, “Now why was I intimidated by that? It was so easy.” I just needed a “mentor” to make sure I didn’t screw anything up too badly though.

The second story comes from a Zello meetup at Elisha’s Spring. There was a rabbit that needed butchered, and I asked the gal who was doing it if I could be involved since watching videos were useless to me as a blind person. She killed the rabbit and made some of the cuts, but she let me get really hands-on with the whole thing.

Afterward, I was talking with one of the other folks who happened to take a video of the whole thing, and she said, in so many words, “I felt like I got so much more out of the process just by observing her teaching a blind person. You asked questions and made observations that wouldn’t have otherwise been communicated if she was just standing in front of everyone demonstrating.”

I joked with Patrick Roehrman once that he needed to do a video where he “teaches the blind lady how to sharpen knives”, and he agreed that’d bring something extra to the process and it’d make him a beter teaching. Not only do we learn better by doing, but by doing, we can become better teachers. I’m so glad you pointed that out, Jack!