Let's go.

Welcome to Citizen.

Today, we're going to talk about excellence.

And something my friend Andy F Fressela, says all the time,

personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion.

And he's actually got an organization called the Arete Syndicate.

That's A-R-E-T-E.

It's an old Greek word.

Arete or Arete.

And the reason I want to talk about it today is because there's this institutional rot,

this decay, and pretty much all of our institutions.

Excuse me. And the one that we chiefly see it in is politics, obviously.

Because that's the soup de jour now.

But everything feels political because everything is downstream of culture.

And that's been weakening for a long time, our culture.

You can feel it pretty much everywhere. you can feel it in the dishonesty of public life you can feel it in the theatricality of leadership you can feel it in

the way that institutions speak in the language of management while demanding the emotional obedience

of children.

You can feel it in the way that every election is sold as the final battle for civilization,

only for the same patterns to return like a chronic disease,

panic and slogans and performance, false urgency, false hope, and then disappointment again.

And men are tired, not just angry, they're tired, tired of being lied to, tired of being manipulated,

...