291 Jeff Scheuer

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

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Jeff Feldberg: Jeffrey Scheuer writes mainly about politics, media, history, and education. His first book, The Soundbite Society, was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Scheuer has published essays, articles, reviews, and commentary in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and some two dozen other daily newspapers, and has also published in Dissent, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Gettyberg's Review, Potomac [00:02:00] Review, Wilson Quarterly, Niemann Reports, Philosophy Now, Private Pilot, and elsewhere.

Scheuer is also an amateur photographer, a private pilot with seaplane and tail drag ratings, and an antaquarian book collector. He lives in pre Civil War houses that he renovated in New York and West Tillsbury, Massachusetts.

 Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. And you heard it in the official introduction. We have a thought leader, a scholar, an author, an overall incredibly smart and insightful individual. Let's expand your role today, Deep Wealth community. Let's see where we can take this. Jeff, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast.

By the way, love your name. It's an absolute pleasure to have you with us. Jeff, there's always a story behind the story, and I'm really curious. What's your story, Jeff? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Jeffrey Sheuer: Well, it's a long story, Jeffrey. I started out as a journalist, but with a background in philosophy. I migrated gradually back toward philosophy and toward freelance writing. [00:03:00] I did a lot of reviewing and commentary, and then I wrote two books on politics and the media after which I felt I had little more to say about that subject.

I was looking for something new, and it seemed like the attacks on the liberal arts were starting up

In the early 2010s. And it seemed like a natural thing for me and really became quite a, passion and a calling as I got deeper into the subject of what are the liberal arts and why do we need them?

Jeff Feldberg: Yeah. It's interesting. We're going to talk about that, but before that, I mean, this is not your first book. I suspect it won't likely be your last book either. I mean, you've done a lot of different things. You've gone down different rabbit holes, as we'll call them in terms of even the sound bite society, the big picture, really tackling what people are thinking about, but they're not really talking about, and that takes a brave soul to do that.

What's going on with that? did that come from? Wow.

Jeffrey Sheuer: It came from my interest in philosophy and in answering, or at least raising, [00:04:00] general questions broad questions about media, about politics, about education. So I see quite a through line between the three books, even though Inside the Liberal Arts is not a book about media, per se. It's about information and education, and media is part of where we get that.

Media is a kind of adult education, in fact. So, I see the whole inf information ecosphere as one, more or less unit. And I don't feel like it's a, a, great departure from the two books I wrote about the media.

Jeff Feldberg: And so when you're thinking about inside the liberal arts, and it's interesting because if you were to ask the typical person on the street today, they would likely say, and I'm just venturing this and you can correct me if I'm off base with this Jeff, but they'd probably say liberal arts, who needs that waste of time, waste of money, society's well beyond that.

Let's, let's put our time, effort, money. Focus into having people on relevant skills, very specific skills. And [00:05:00] so to that kind of conversation and from the book, I mean, was that what was the rally cry for you of, Hey, let me change that narrative and put something out there, tell us about that.

Jeffrey Sheuer: Absolutely. And you're right, Jeffrey. Lots of people say that and think it and it's popular in the political world today to attack the liberal arts as somehow irrelevant. In fact, it's the opposite. And if you can't learn to think and to be a good citizen, what's the point of learning skills?

I mean, you'll survive. Sure.

We'll all survive. Raking leaves or writing computer programs, but really to have a democracy, you need citizens and to have citizens. You need liberal learning. There's just no other way around it. I'm all for the STEM disciplines, science, technology, economics, engineering, and math.

I'm all for business education. I'm, every kind of education is good, but my argument is that if you don't have at least [00:06:00] some liberal education, meaning in the humanities, the social sciences, natural science you're not going to be a fully rounded citizen, and that's what we need more than anything else.

We need civic as well as cultural and economic citizens. and they all feed into each other. So you can't really isolate one or you can't say I'm just going to study computer programming or business or technology or learn a skill. And that's that. Yes, you can do that, but I don't think it's healthy.

For the individual or for society, 

Jeff Feldberg: Absolutely. And for our listeners out there, you may be saying, Jeffrey, what's going on? We're talking about the liberal arts, but this is a Deep Wealth Podcast. And for all you business owners out there, here's a rhetorical question. Do you want to have a world class talent that can think for themselves, that can think out of the box, that can help you create a market disruption, grow your business, grow your profits, knock the competition out of the way, do all those wonderful things?

Well, it can't happen from people who can't do critical [00:07:00] thinking or can't think of themselves. 

Jeffrey Sheuer: I would add to that, Jeffrey, that what are employers looking for? They're looking for liberal arts grads. They know that people who've studied the liberal arts are better critical thinkers, better communicators, better working in teams, more flexible in their minds, more adaptable to new situations, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, a lot of the skills we learn won't be needed in 20 years or 30 years whereas the thinking will always be needed for citizenship and for business.

Jeff Feldberg: absolutely. And Jeff, let's put the conspiracy theories aside because it's so easy to get caught up in that. And that's not what really we're about here. And just your really data point of one, or from your research or what you're seeing out there, why would there be an agenda from the powers that be to not want to have people think for themselves?

I mean, do you see anything going on with, is there anything to that the first place or,

Jeffrey Sheuer: Yes, there's very much to that. Just look at Ron DeSantis in Florida,

Some other governors. That are crying, trying to, in their states, to [00:08:00] squash liberal arts education at least, well, both on the high school level and on the college level. It's part of, it's the culmination of a process that began with the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, which everybody knows as the GI Bill, which was one of the most successful and powerful pieces of legislation in American history. It created the post war middle class in America, educated millions of people who wouldn't have otherwise been educated. And it's primarily a liberal arts program. Framework, in which it operates. So, over the course of the decades, and another, there's another book not mine, but one by Will Bunch called the Ivory Tower Falls, which describes very well this whole history of defunding public education and what it's done to this country.

It's been devastating, and it... feeds into mostly right wing, but not [00:09:00] entirely, mostly right wing narratives about what we need is to prepare people for jobs that are out there. It's true. We have to be mindful of employment opportunities. It's certainly true if you're in college, you have to think about how you're going survive once you're out. But it's very short sighted to think that the purpose of college is to simply train people for starting jobs. Those starting jobs may not be there for a long time, they may not provide very high reward ceilings or very high outcomes in the long run for the individual, they may not be fully satisfying, they may not make you a fully complete citizen. There's a lot to be said against that view, in my opinion if you just look at it in terms of where our democracy is right now and what's happened to it in the last six, seven years,

if you get rid of the liberal arts, you really get rid of citizenship and democracy, per se you really accelerate the trend toward [00:10:00] authoritarianism that we're experiencing.

Jeff Feldberg: And so that's a really big statement to put out there, Jeff. And before we get there, let's take a quick step back. And like with anything else, our listeners are no different than worldwide, we always want to tune into the world's favorite radio station, WII. FM, the what's in it for me. Earlier in our conversation, you've begun to explain.

Why the liberal arts are key to having people who can think for themselves. They can be analytical. They can do the critical thinking, get to different kinds of decisions, perhaps in a better, more efficient way than the other alternatives. So for business owners who are out there, they're hiring people in the community.

They're making a difference. They're looking at ways to differentiate their business. What's in it for them to ensure that liberal arts programs not only survive, but they're back out there thriving and have more graduates that are going out into the workforce to make a difference?

Jeffrey Sheuer: I think they'll have better, happier, more productive employees, actually.

If these are people [00:11:00] who have learned to think well, get along with others and cooperate in teams, as I said before all the things that liberal art does, it really teaches rationality in the various forms of rationality that I talk about.

In the book, it's not just a single thing. I more or less equate critical thinking with rationality, but it has a number of subdivisions. and so I'm providing a framework really for higher education, graduate education and beyond, lifelong learning, for anyone interested in thinking and being more flexible and more stronger thinker.

I come out of philosophy, but you don't have to be a philosopher to get to where I want people to go. In fact, I think one thing I talk about in the book is how all of us philosophers to begin with, being more critical thinkers just makes us better philosophers than we were before.

When we use language we're using philosophy whenever we think we're using philosophy. So, it's not like in some far [00:12:00] corner of the intellectual universe. It informs all of the liberal arts and everything we, Do and think about.

Jeff Feldberg: And Jeff, let me ask you this, where do you think as a society we began to, I don't want to use the word or the term wrong, that we got it wrong, but that we left the path onto a different path. What do you think was behind that?

Jeffrey Sheuer: Well, we got a lot of things right in our history, and we got a lot of things wrong, and it's hard to pick them apart.

Jeff Feldberg: Sure. 

Jeffrey Sheuer: But the trend that I picked up on in my first book, The Soundbite Society, was how television and radio were atomizing information and giving people little bits and pieces and soundbites of things and not encouraging them to see the bigger picture, to connect the dots.

Not just to collect the dots, what we're getting now even more with social media is torrents and torrents of dots, of data points with very little connective tissue so You need to be able to think well to handle that inflow of information, [00:13:00] and to organize it, and to put it in context, that kind of thing.

It started, I think, with television, maybe with radio before that maybe even the telegraph in the 19th century, who knows? The telegraph certainly led to a very stripped down, parsed way of communicating. It was extraordinarily useful in its time. I'm not knocking it, but a lot of electronic media, I think, gave rise to a new kind of right wing culture that inhibits people from thinking more holistically, more interactionally, more communally, so my argument in that book was it helps the right and hurts the left.

I've moved on from there. I haven't disavowed that theory at all. But the focus of this book, Inside the Liberal Arts, is we need liberal arts for democracy. Now, democracy can be shaded in different ways, too. I have a rather broader view of democracy than some [00:14:00] others do.

But that's for the reader to decide.

And in any case, I think that's what college should be about it should be about getting people, helping people to become better citizens not left or right partisan, but just better citizens, better small D Democrats.

Jeff Feldberg: Hey Jeff, I would love your thoughts on this. And for our listeners, as Jeff and I are talking about this, I really want you to expand really your viewpoint of who you're speaking to in your circles. Are you speaking to people just like you and excluding anyone who's thinking differently than you? And there's repercussions for that because you're not really getting the full picture.

And so Jeff, this is my data point of one. You can tell me if I'm on base or off base. Many, Many benefits of social media. I will give you that. And social media has done some tremendous things that we wouldn't have had before. We have a voice. We have different distribution channels of getting messages and information out there and all that in the right context can be very good.

One of the criticisms of social media though, [00:15:00] is because it's in your last book, you talked about soundbites. It's soundbite information that we're being trained, that the young generation in some ways is being trained of listening. You don't have to think for yourself. You can get your information in a one or two sentence, a little tidbit there, and you're being told what to do anyways, that It really takes the desire or the need to want to know how to do some critical thinking really out of the forefront there.

Am I onto something there? Or is that just Jeffrey and his 8.

Jeffrey Sheuer: But guess what? You do have to think for yourself. If you want to be a meaningful human being in the world, you have to think for yourself. If you want to just listen to Fox News and buy everything they say, fine, but that's not going to link you into a wider world. It'll secure you in a bubble.

Just as the same is true on the left, I suppose. But yeah, I think you're right, social media has provided some very good things

But I'm very concerned with its effects. On young [00:16:00] people and teenagers and the amount of time they spend on their devices, as opposed to reading, talking with people, person to person, actual human experiences.

I think that's a shaping factor in the rising generation that's going to turn out disastrously, frankly,

Unless countermeasures are taken.

Jeff Feldberg: And let me ask you this, Jeff, let's go down the road where the people who are not in favor of liberal arts, let's just wave this magic wand in this imaginary world and they get their way. There's no more liberal arts in the schools. It's completely gone. No more graduates are coming through this. What do you see happening to society?

What would be some of the repercussions from that?

Jeffrey Sheuer: First of all, you get terrible business decisions, you get terrible leadership in both the for profit and non profit worlds, you get terrible leadership in government, and a lot of the people in politics who are railing against the liberal arts There are people who went to Harvard Law School, other [00:17:00] prestige institutions, so there's an element of hypocrisy there but I think, ultimately, I don't think you can have a democracy without people learning ideas other than how to fill low level role in a very stratified economy.

Jeff Feldberg: And so reading between the lines of what you're sharing here, you can tell me if I'm on base or off base with this. If that were the case, it sounds like the power would be with the elite few who do have those critical thinking skills that they can analyze a situation and come to those better conclusions and really cut out a life for themselves

for the better.

Uh 

Jeffrey Sheuer: I don't think... Your education affects your native intelligence, and we'll always have intelligent people and less intelligent, but the training of the mind is really important. And even a really smart mind needs training and a slightly less smart mind like my own needed it even more to get me where I am and so I think you would [00:18:00] feel it in the business world in the, Non profit world, in the political world, all across the spectrum, there would be a decline of quality of decision making, decline of quality of leadership and you would have more voter suppression and more of what in our democracy has become endemic, which is undemocratic institutions and non performance governance.

Formations within our democracy that eat it from within and, you know, like the gerrymandering, like the voter suppression, things like that, which are really designed by, yes, well educated people for the most part, but people who are afraid to have real democracy and prefer more of a plutocratic system.

Jeff Feldberg: Jeff, as you're talking about that, I'm thinking about the headlines with artificial intelligence. Every day it's a new headline. Society as we know it is being shaped and changed. And at the forefront of that narrative,[00:19:00] it's really all about morality. Who's calling the shots here and the rules? I know chapter 13, you talk all about morality and the liberal arts.

And so for the benefit of our community, can you really let us in on how and why the liberal arts are so important when it comes to morality?

Jeffrey Sheuer: sure. But you mentioned AI. That's a whole can of worms unto 

Jeff Feldberg: Yes it is.

Jeffrey Sheuer: It creates enormous possibilities and enormous threats, like social media. And I think two of the biggest threats I'll mention quickly are the inauthenticity the fact that we're accumulating information, but we're not processing it ourselves.

I would say that's the biggest threat, but then there's also the threats of faking political ads and that deep fakes of that kind. it could wreak havoc, probably is already wreaking havoc with our political discourse

And needs to be regulated or, we're a very libertarian society, we like to [00:20:00] just let things rip and see what happens.

Well. As with social media, I think AI, if we let things rip, is going to do some terrible things to us.

Jeff Feldberg: Sure, there's always two sides to a coin and always some good things, but also the flip side of the coin, perhaps some situations that aren't ideal or can become problematic or even worse. Sure.

Jeffrey Sheuer: Now, you asked about morality, Jeffrey, and I didn't answer that question. There are a number of axes along which morality and the liberal arts intersect, and I talk about them in that chapter, and I talk about how language is inherently a moral enterprise because you can help or hurt people with the words you pick.

And a theme of the whole book is how important language is to critical thinking. We really do almost all our thinking in words and in language. And then there are a number of other levels I talk about, like the issue of how we get along in the classroom, the issue of how we deal with moral issues.

And [00:21:00] how we, to some extent, if we can, insulate the moral questions from the political questions that they bleed into, because if, and here I probably am a little closer to my conservative friends than my progressive ones if we allow too much politics to seep into the classroom, the laboratory, the study hall, whatever. Then I think the liberal arts get distracted from their mission of creating citizens rather than partisans. It's okay to be partisan. It's good to be partisan, but I don't think it's the role of the school to enhance partisanship as opposed to citizenship generally. Why?

Because those basic shared democratic skills will make us partisan in a more civil way. 

In a more productive way, where we respect people we oppose, as long as they're not extremists. The problem of our political culture is it's become polarized. Between sort of the center and left and the Republicans who have become much more [00:22:00] extreme in the last 10 years.

So, they're actually anti, in many cases, anti democratic. So, the whole axis of political discourse has shifted from left, right to Democratic versus non democratic and you don't want to be in that place. You don't want to be defending democracy. You want democracy to be strong enough on its own.

Jeff Feldberg: Absolutely. And Jeff, as you're talking about that for our listeners and Jeff, I know some of our listeners are saying, okay, Jeffrey, what's going on here? This is the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're knee hip into the liberal arts. What's happening? Have you lost it, Jeffrey? 

Jeffrey Sheuer: A long time ago. I'm interested in ideas and thinking. And what I can share about thinking to help democracy. so if you're looking at liquidity events I'm hoping my book is a liquidity event for me, but I'm not interested in how to get you your liquidity events. 

Jeff Feldberg: Well, absolutely. 

Jeffrey Sheuer: I hope you get them.

but I'm, that's not my job.

Jeff Feldberg: for our listeners, [00:23:00] a quick thought experiment and what I want you to do, if you have a phone, pull out your phone, or if you have a notebook or a computer. Look at your desk where that is, does it happen to be an iOS device from Apple? And if it is, then obviously you love Apple and its products.

I want to read you a quote, and the quote is from none other than Steve Jobs. And it says, it is in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the results that make our hearts sing. And if there ever was a case for the liberal arts, not only surviving, but thriving and flourishing, that's one of many examples that if not perceived jobs who went down that path in the liberal arts, which at the time you couldn't connect the dots, but made such a societal impact later on.

That's, I suspect, one of many, many examples that are out there. Jeff, thoughts on that?

Jeffrey Sheuer: Yeah, I agree with the sentiment of [00:24:00] Jobs. I'm not sure Apple has done a lot for the liberal arts but I use Apple products. I love them and I hate them but they serve my purposes very well. Computer, iPhone, etc. Yeah what he says, Harkens back to something that Henry David Thoreau said in the 19th century in his book Walden, one of the great books of American literature.

He said, our tools are just improved means to an unimproved end.

All technology is accessory to our ends, to what we want to do with it. It is not an end in itself.

And I think that's a good point of departure when we're talking about either the effects of social media or the effects of AI, it's always a double edged sword and we have to keep in mind what our means are and what our ends are.

And the end is almost always a healthy, vibrant democracy, which at the moment we don't have.

Jeff Feldberg: Sure. And Jeff, I'm [00:25:00] wondering, because the narrative out there seems to be linking the case that we shouldn't have the liberal arts because liberal arts graduates, they're not getting jobs. They're a burden on the economy and the list goes on and on. Fact or fiction, what's going on with that?

Jeffrey Sheuer: A little bit of fact and a lot of fiction.

Jeff Feldberg: Okay.

Jeffrey Sheuer: It's true if you get an engineering degree, say, or a computer science degree, you'll probably get a better job right out of college if you don't go to graduate school or do that. What's not true is that in the long run, you earn more or you're a better citizen.

Jeff Feldberg: Mhm.

Jeffrey Sheuer: In fact Over their lifetimes, college graduates out earn non college graduates by about, I think it's 2. 6 million to 1. 8 million, something like that,

Significantly, so the public has an idea in its head, that college does not pay, and they're flat wrong, just as

People who thought the earth was flat Were [00:26:00] flat wrong. Now as between the STEM disciplines and liberal arts, yes, you probably get a slightly higher paying job at the outset in the STEM fields or in a technological field. But that doesn't hold up over time. And in fact, over time, I think philosophy grads earn more than business grads

Over the long term. 

Jeff Feldberg: would stand to reason that if somebody can reason, if somebody can have that critical thinking that they will in a positive way, really come to better decisions, better insights, more realizations, observations that will separate them out from the crowd or the competition, whatever the case may be.

Jeffrey Sheuer: and hopefully get more and contribute more to society. And to me, that's the very definition of citizenship. It's the giving and getting at the same time between an individual and a larger community. And that happens in the economic realm. It happens in the cultural realm and it happens in the civic realm and the political realm.[00:27:00]

So, it's a triangle, as I put it, and all those different points of the triangle relate to each other.

Jeff Feldberg: triangular citizenship, which is fascinating. So let me ask you this, how do we change the narrative? So for listeners that are walking away saying, okay, you know, never really thought of it before or yeah, kind of got caught up in the popular talk that liberal arts is just a drain on the economy. But yeah, I get it now.

I want employees who can think for themselves. I want leaders who can think for themselves.

Jeffrey Sheuer: We should have more drains like the liberal arts on our economy. We'd be thriving. Just look back at what I said before, look back at the GI Bill and what educating millions of World War II vets did for our economy.

Jeff Feldberg: Absolutely. So what do we need to do on a go forward basis from your perspective, Jeff, in terms of having the liberal arts thrive, survive, do terrific things?

Jeffrey Sheuer: yeah, first of all, everyone should read my book, Inside the Liberal Arts. I think it's good. I think it will help a lot of [00:28:00] people frame and organize their thinking whether you're in college or, beyond. But of course, that's a glib and selfish answer and there are other answers. Rather than cutting liberal arts programs, we should be funding them.

Rather than cutting aid to public education, we should be increasing it. It's the best investment in our economy we could possibly make. And we don't make it. We're short sighted.

We should also be teaching civics more, a lot more specifically so that people understand the form of government we're talking about trying to defend and to that there should be a civics section on all of the college entrance exams so that schools are forced to teach it.

two or three of my first, of my top agenda items. 

Jeff Feldberg: I suppose that part of the challenge with this is really the ability to think critically, to be able to analyze, to be able to differentiate that you really only get from the liberal arts in that regard

Jeffrey Sheuer: and analysis

Jeff Feldberg: and the analysis, yes,[00:29:00]

Jeffrey Sheuer: is really, I take two, two chapters of my book on that. It's not a very complicated process. It's about making distinctions and connections. It's about seeing how the connections obscure distinctions and vice versa, and how to get beyond them. It's really An updated version of the Greek idea of dialectic that was invented, in ancient Greece 500 years ago.

So, liberal arts start are named the liberal arts in the early Roman times.

The term artist liberalis didn't mean anything to do with the arts or with liberals. It meant the skills needed for a free citizen, and that's still what that means though the term liberal arts is awkward and it's a plural and it shouldn't be, well, there's a lot wrong with phrase, but the idea behind it really goes back farther than ancient Rome, it goes back to Greece and to Plato and Aristotle and all those guys.

Jeff Feldberg: So we're tying it full circle, going all the way back, all the way forward. [00:30:00] And so let me ask you this, for a listener who's listening into this fireside chat that you're having and I'm having of what's going on, what should be happening, what we could be doing, what could be one action? That a listener could do coming out of this episode, before they pick up that next call or go into the next meeting or get bogged down in all those emails that are waiting for them. From your vantage point, Jeff, what would that look like in terms of one action? Maybe it's a low hanging fruit, low effort, high results. 

What would that be? 

Jeffrey Sheuer: what I'm talking about sounds to a lot of people very general, very broad, and it is. It's talking about a cultural shift to the liberal arts. There's no single way that a single person can do that with the wave of a wand. So it's hard to isolate, but I would say, read books.

Think about them. Think about your own life what you get and what you give to society. Think of it in terms of the different ways you interact, [00:31:00] if you interact at all. I wasn't much of an activist as a kid. I went to some anti Vietnam War protests and marched in some marches, but I wouldn't say I was an activist.

When I got to college, all I wanted to do was study. and it served me very well at the time. I look back now, I wish I'd been a little more of an activist. But yes, there's a lot going on now that we need to act about and protest and try to change. The right to vote is challenged and that's...

A key part of our democracy there's a lot of civil rights work that still needs to be done. So, I'm much more for other people, younger people, more active people doing that work, I'm trying to provide some intellectual foundation for it.

Jeff Feldberg: Sure. And, for our listeners, one of the questions perhaps in the business, on the personal side, in your family, with your friends, are you doing the critical thinking? Are you doing the analyzing or are you having other people do that for you? Are you letting the newspapers do that for you?

Social media do that for you? And [00:32:00] if the answer is yes. No judgment with that. Perhaps you can pick up the art and the science of how to think critically, how to analyze, how to do all the right things to get you to the right places. 

Jeffrey Sheuer: if it isn't for your own education, a lot of people have kids and have to think about their kids educations,

Should think deeply about what they want for their children, what kind of education they want and why, what kind of people they want their kids to grow up to be. So, I chose a school for my kids and I didn't question everything the teachers taught.

I didn't agree with it all. I didn't think it was all perfectly well taught, I let it go. I didn't interfere and they came out in very good shape.

Because the overall, the school experience they had was very positive for them, even though when they got to college maybe they needed to work a little harder to catch up in a uh, academically.

they did. And so I would just say to other parents, do the same, or think more. Maybe even more [00:33:00] critically than I did about what their children are experiencing and what they need to experience, including diversity, including challenge, including having their imaginations stoked.

It's a big universe, but I think for a lot of people who are parents, that's a key question that they need to be asking themselves and thinking critically about.

Jeff Feldberg: I love some of the questions you're putting out there and really a lot for our listeners to think about, but it's really coming from a place where for you, for your family, you can take them to a better place. And once again, it's ironic, Jeff, because this is where the role of analysis and critical thinking comes in.

If we don't have that, if we don't have access to that, it's really to everyone's loss at that point in terms of what we're missing out on.

Jeffrey Sheuer: Yes, and I think one ends up responding from one's gut to situations and problems that's not always a bad thing we all, ultimately our emotions drive everything, reason is not an end in itself, it's a [00:34:00] technology, so to speak but it's a technology that does help us to achieve our ends more effectively, maybe.

Jeff Feldberg: sure. And Jeff, I'm curious, as we go into wrap up mode very shortly, are there questions I haven't asked? Are there topics that we haven't covered or is there a message that you'd like to get out to the community that we haven't spoken about up to this point?

Jeffrey Sheuer: we've covered a lot, Jeffrey, thank you. It's been fun. I could go into some details on the book, but I think it's better if people read it. I talk about some of the gateway concepts, so quote unquote, of the liberal arts, like language, like rationality, like analysis, like truth, like causality, complexity, those things.

And they each have their chapter or As you said, I talk about morality in Little Brass. I even talk a little about the politics of it in the final chapter. So, the takeaway I would like to leave is that I cover the waterfront in this book. I look at the history of the idea of the liberal arts.

I looked at, look at it conceptually. [00:35:00] What is its core? Its core is reasoning and what different forms of reasoning, and what is it for its purpose? And it's for democracy. Nothing else. Really nothing else. It's for citizenship across the spectrum of business and economics, culture and the arts, civics and politics.

Jeff Feldberg: Well said. And again, for our listeners, all of this will be in the show notes. It can't get any easier. It's a point and click. Buy the book, Inside the Liberal Arts, Critical Thinking and Citizenship. And somewhat of a rhetorical question, do you love the freedoms that you have? Do you love doing what you do and that you're able to do, that you don't have to worry about it or look behind your back?

Well, that all stems from what we're talking about here with citizenship, with democracy. If that goes by the wayside, so does everything else. So it really gets to the crux of the matter of something that is not being talked about that needs to be talked more out there and more attention. And Jeff, really grateful for you bringing this to the forefront for us to [00:36:00] think about, consider, and hopefully having our community act on.

And so Jeff, with that in mind. It's time for me to really have that privilege, that honor, to have that ritual where I ask every single one of our guests the same question. Let me set the question up for you. It's a fun one. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car, which can take you to any point in time.

And so, Jeff, the fun part is tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, and not only is the DeLorean car there curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, and you can now go back to any point in your life. Jeff, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, hey, Jeff, do this, but don't do that?

What would that sound like?

Jeffrey Sheuer: Wow, that's a big question. That's a big question. I wouldn't say anything very profound to my younger self. I think my life played out in a way that was both more challenging and more rewarding in some ways than I had expected. It [00:37:00] was a somewhat tortuous path to get where I am today, writing books about things I really care about.

I don't know there were any shortcuts I could have taken maybe sticking out graduate school, getting a PhD which I didn't do, but that was hard for me at the time. Not intellectually hard, but hard in other ways. And the choices I've made in my personal life have mostly been okay, like everyone else.

Not perfect, but mostly okay. So, no big regrets, really, nothing I would change radically, but I took up flying and aviation in my 40s,

Became a private pilot briefly, haven't done much flying since, but I really wish I'd done that sooner.

That was a fantastic adventure for me that I wish I'd started sooner in life.

Other than that, meh, you

Jeff Feldberg: so perhaps it could be there are no shortcuts

Jeffrey Sheuer: No shortcuts. Everyone has to struggle and find their path as it unfolds. There's no way to, [00:38:00] plan it out in ahead and expect it to happen. 

Jeff Feldberg: And perhaps take more adventures earlier on in your life and embrace them and follow them.

Jeffrey Sheuer: maybe a little more travel than I did. Yeah. But I enjoy those things now and the older I get, the more I enjoy the moment. As the moments get fewer, the more I enjoy them.

Jeff Feldberg: Enjoy the moment. That's powerful. If there ever was one,

Jeffrey Sheuer: For everybody. 

Jeff Feldberg: Enjoy the moment. Yeah. Really like that. And Jeff, for our listeners, if they have questions, if they want to have a discussion with you, where would be the best place online someone could find you?

Jeffrey Sheuer: the JeffreySchoyer. com and My email is jeffscheuer at gmail. com. I welcome any input from any of your listeners. And I'm very grateful to have been able to have this discussion with you, Jeffrey. It's really been fun.

Jeff Feldberg: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Right back at you with that. And for our listeners. Hey, take Jeff up on his offer, contact him, ask him some questions, see where that goes, expand your [00:39:00] thinking and go into different areas, become random, see where that takes you and put yourself on your own new adventure with some critical thinking and some analysis.

And Jeff, thank you. Thank you for doing what you're doing, for really taking on. The more difficult topics, but you're putting yourself out there and not just with this book, but with your other books for our listeners. Again, it's all in the show notes. It's a point and click. It doesn't get any easier. And Jeff, as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, it's number one, it's official.

It's a wrap. Thank you. You're a fabulous and may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Jeffrey Sheuer: Thank you, Jeffrey. Same to you. I really appreciate it and enjoyed it. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

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Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

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Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that [00:42:00] could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

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