Dr. Todd Rose

He watches the audience.

And he said, they laughed at all the right parts.

They laughed at things that you would not find funny if you truly believed in communism.

And he writes in The Power of the Powerless that he recognizes the fundamental problem was not that the people of Czechoslovakia believed in communism.

It's that they believed that they believed.

It was a collective illusion.

I mean, I don't know how he got there, but it's amazing he figured it out.

The solution then was not weapons.

It was not even political.

It was authenticity.

He called it authenticity and personal responsibility.

And here's what he did.

He said, well, then the answer is we've got to create ways for people to start to be comfortable living in truth again, because we've become way too comfortable living in the lie.

Okay.

So he starts what he called the small works.

How do we help people start to lean into their authentic selves in ways that weren't risky to begin with?

Literally created a literary magazine so people could publish poetry.

They did gardening.

They did all these things.

People mocked him, mocked him.