If you’ve paid attention to some of the things I’ve been doing over the years, one of them is this idea, the concept of the King Lear effect.
The king Lear effect comes from, of course, the play by Shakespeare called King Lear. Surprise.
[Transcript Edited from audio slightly for clarity. Listen on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.]
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7M0JgjtELL7ZQuBwPW6uV2?si=JpMgvvCzQ86FWzhvoMYqWQ
King Lear the Story is this, for those who read it and maybe you haven’t and that’s okay, the story of this king named Lear, who had three daughters, and he gathered these three daughters. And in a moment of particular insecurity as a father and a king, he asked his three daughters how much they loved him.
Have you ever done like, you know, you just feel insecure and you want your kids to just tell you how great you are. I’ve actually done this with my kids. There was a day when I was particularly feeling like a bad mom. and I emotionally manipulated them and said, am I a good mom? And of course, they gush and tell me how wonderful I am. And I said, why? Why am I a good mom? Like, how am I a good mom to you? Be specific. And we had a really good conversation about what it means to be a good mom. And ultimately, we decided it was, do you feel loved by your mother? Does your mother make it clear that she loves you and will fight for you and will support you and will help you become a well adjusted well informed and caring, loving person anyway, and so we had this whole conversation. This is with my children in the about, about being a mom.
The King Lear effect is this. King Lear was looking for something specific. He was looking for affirmation of his leadership. He was looking for affirmation of his ability to be a father and how much his children cared for him and loved him. He was looking for clarity on whether or not his children would carry on his legacy after he was gone. He wanted to make sure that they, you know, were doing what was best for the kingdom, that they cared about the kingdom, that they cared about the things he cared about.
This was all, you know, all of this with underneath, his impulse to demand that his daughters come before him in front of the whole court and tell them, tell him, and everybody in the room how much she loves her father. Clearly there’s a little bit of a performative aspect to this kingly effect, because his daughters came one by one and the first daughter absolutely gushed over him, said, how much in big flowery speech and how much she committed to honoring and loving her father and serving the kingdom. Second daughter same thing, of course we love you. Of course you’re a wonderful father. Of course, you’re a great king!
And the third daughter comes and says “You know how I feel about you. You know what you need to know about me” … and that did not fly. The king lost it, like what in the world! He demanded that she do better. And again, she’s like, “you’ve known me my whole life. You’ve known the relationship we have. You’ve known what I’ve done for the kingdom. You know, you KNOW my life is the answer.”
and King Lear did not like that.
Lear wanted the speech. He wanted the words, even though we know that he knew and everybody knew that she was right, that she absolutely was the most loyal of all three daughters and she absolutely was the one who was the most loyal. The one who loves her father the most, the one who had the heart of the kingdom. She understood it. Everybody in that room knew. They knew the truth, but what happened next was King Lear in a moment of absolute lunacy and self absorbed narcissism, condemned her, the third daughter, and kicked her out, banished her.
At the time, I read this in college the first time. I was an English literature major, so I read almost all of Shakespeare’s plays at some point and more than once. Some of them. And it was an absolutely horrifying moment. Shakespeare really got it. Like, he really nailed it. He understood the angst and. Well, you come to find out in that story, of course, is that the first daughter and the second daughter were plotting secretly against the king to overthrow him. And they end up, they do end up having this huge civil war and spoilers, I guess. You know, it’s a tragedy, so spoilers, everybody dies. Almost everybody. King Lear dies. He dies and his third daughter, Cordelia. Cordelia loves her father, and he realizes before he passes that he was so very wrong. He’s so wrong. That’s putting it mildly.
I’m not Shakespeare so I can’t quote… I can’t make up some amazing line right now, but the story is just gut- wrenching. It’s heartbreaking.
And there is a version of it on Amazon, I believe. I’m not sure if it’s free or not. Last time I checked, it wasn’t free. But Anthony Hopkins is King Lear. I can’t remember who else is in it. It’s staged beautifully. The costuming is on point, as the kids say, because it’s not staged in that time, you know, it’s not Shakespearean contemporary design, which I think really adds to its relevance now. If I remember correctly, they’re in, are they in Nazi uniform? No, no, no. Don’t quote me on that. They’re in some uniforms. And it gives it a new angle, which is just really it’s great. I love it. [NOTE: I looked it up and it’s militarized costumes though not German specific.]
The King Lear Effect is when you are looking for people to say the exact words that you want to hear in order to agree with them. And in order to believe, to really understand where their loyalties lie, you were looking for exact phrases and exact posture and on some level it’s performative, but you don’t care. You just want them to perform. You want them to posture in front of you and to grovel and to do all the right, quote unquote right, things and make you feel better about yourself. But you’re not willing to really engage in what people are really doing and what they’re really saying. The King Lear effect is such that you will disregard people who are actually true co-laborers with you in your ideals, ultimately, in your dreams, the dream that you have for America and for your families? The dreams we once shared for all of us.
The king Lear effect is when you are looking for people to say the exact words that you want to hear in order to agree with them. And in order to believe, to really understand where their loyalties lie, you were looking for exact phrases and exact posture and, on some level, it’s performative, but you don’t care.
You just want them to perform.
You want the things that you want from the people you see as ideological enemies.
You end up putting up this fence, like a gatekeeper. You become a gatekeeper of who’s in, who’s out by very specific and often shallow performative [I was thinking perfunctory] actions and sayings and all you want to hear is all you want to hear. And you can’t step outside of that. It shakes you too much. It rattles you. It makes you uneasy. It gives you some discomfort on some level because you can’t quite get your brain around what they’re really saying and what they’re really doing.
Now, we’re seeing that all the time, aren’t we? Right now there’s this performative aspect of everything. I mean, particularly on social media. Now, I’ve been a student of social media for a long time. I’ve written a lot about it. I’ve studied it. I’ve read research. You know, there was a time when I really thought about going into like sociology and trying to understand some of these patterns I was seeing, but I had already gotten the master’s. (I have a Masters and a graduate level certificate and I was kind of like, I really, really don’t want to write any more papers.)
Anyway, I say that because I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve looked at a lot of things. I’ve written a lot about social media and about how social media acts and how the algorithms act. I mean, first of all, let’s be very clear that not all social media acts the same. It doesn’t. And in fact, that’s the reason why there are so many different kinds of platforms, because they don’t all act the same. Some companies actually are more interested in true algorithms that are people-based, actually socially based and not something that is hyper-inflated or false. The sort I’m looking for, it’s not aided by things like who has the most money. Listen, if I boost a post by throwing money at it, it’s going to get more reach. If I have money to boost my own signal as it were, then yeah, it’s going to perform better and more people are going to see it and more people are going to be impacted by it. And instead of holding those things accountable, saying this post was funded and let’s say I made a social media post and I threw $1000 dollars at it. We should all know that’s why I’m seeing this. It’s the advertising, right? It’s something like let’s say the Super Bowl. We all know that Super Bowl ads are pricey, to put it mildly. There’s a big price tag on a Super Bowl ad because we know it’s going to reach millions, if not billions, I don’t know what the record is. Around the world, I mean, people watching the same. And so they’re what they say in that ad should be appropriately assessed as they through this amount of money into it. They need to be that accountable. They need to be people who actually have the accountability behind it as well. So if you put a billion dollars onto a Super Bowl ad and you say something in it that is incorrect or misleading or false advertising, it’s not by everywhere anymore that that argument falls apart, when you are saying that we’re going to platform this particular thing that has information in it that is false. How do we then hold them more accountable than some dude who posts on social media with his 500 followers, right?
That’s what’s interesting to me about this whole conversation about this kind of performative aspect of social media. It needs to be addressed. We’re talking about range and impact as well as having very clear guidelines on who gets to decide what this post is saying, because here’s the other piece for me: comprehension. Reading comprehension is a skill. Reading comprehension has always been interesting.
Again, I was an English literature major. I was in a lot, lot, lot of classes where we had to read, and then we had to talk about what we read. And I was always very interested in the folks who had very different conclusions from me on things that we would read, the exact same words and the conclusions were absolutely not the same. And I would often wonder, like, “Are you… did you even read the same thing I read?” It would floor me just how different our interpretations were. I wouldn’t say that I was always right, and sometimes I miss things, but sometimes I would reread what we were talking about and think “no, I don’t. I still… nope, still don’t see it. Please explain to me. Please tell me in more detail how you came up with that particular conclusion from these set of words… from this set of words, this is what you came out with.” It’s an interesting thought exercise, isn’t it?
The way that we engage in reading and the way that we engage in understanding, in classes, is all about teaching literacy, right? Literacy is more than just being able to read the words. It’s also being able to comprehend what it’s saying and understanding how people lay out an argument, whether it’s, you know, in non-fiction writing or fictional writing.
Literacy is more than just being able to read the words.
It’s also being able to comprehend what it’s saying.
I used to write a lot more fiction. I haven’t in a while. I’ve been thinking, I should go back to that. But anyway, when you write something and you have a purpose, you have some, let’s say, you know, moral to the story or whatever, and you lay out the characters and the plot, the events that happen. How do you make sure that people understand what you’re trying to say? How do you create some kind of magic by which you know you’re being successful? You want people to be clear without necessarily over-characterizing or beating people over the head with the story, right? You want to make sure that the events and the dialogue and whatever details you include, all point to what you’re trying to convey and so when people read it, they’ll know what you’re trying to say and or that you’re trying to give them some space to come up with their own conclusions.
You remember one of the most famous short stories that you teach to kids? I mean, probably middle school, if not, maybe high school. It’s one of the most frustrating short stories for a lot of people called “The Lady or the Tiger.” Yeah, back in Rome I think? (When was the last time you thought of the Roman Empire? lol) I can’t remember if he’s a gladiator or not, but anyway, so, you know, the whole story goes and at the end, you’re not told who’s behind the doors. It’s, you know, you pick a door, one has a woman, the woman you love behind it, the other has a roaring tiger ready to kill you and and the story ends and you don’t know which one it is. the story ends and the kids everywhere get so frustrated by it. Tell me which one it is. And then you have to go back into the story. Like, does it tell you? Is it kind of suggesting which one it is? Or are you just supposed to be frustrated by it? Is there something else you’re supposed to learn about this story, right? Like, it’s really, it’s funny and not funny at the same time.
The irony, of course, being sometimes we read into stories and we want it to end a certain way. And so we’ll do everything we can to make sure that the story in our head is saying what we want it to say. This is the king Lear effect. This is how we go through life sometimes when we will disregard the people that seem to be arguing with us. They seem to be, you know, antagonizing us.
But that’s not really what’s happening, is it? What’s really happening sometimes is that people who are actually on the same side as you may not be saying exactly what you want them to say. They may not be kissing up to you to make you feel better, but they are actually doing the work and they are actually doing the things that are life giving to you. As in the case of Cordelia, who is actually doing the things to preserve the kingdom and the legacy of her father and trying to fight against people who are betraying him like her two sisters. And the betrayal of the first two sisters, whose names I don’t even remember, and that’s for a reason, right? I don’t remember their names. Yeah, no. The two of them are plotting against their father. They don’t respect their father. They don’t like what he’s doing and they want to overthrow him, but they’ll say to his face how much they love him and how they’re gonna do all the things. They’re gonna be the right people to carry on the kingdom, but he doesn’t wanna hear what the third daughter has to say. The third daughter, we’re told, is annoyed to all get out over her two sisters because she knows better. She knows that they’re not being truthful. She knows that they’re hypocrites and will betray their father. She knows this, and she’s not going to play their game. So she says what she says because she’s not gonna deal with her sisters. But her father can’t see it. King Lear is so blinded in that moment by his own ego and can’t get passed what he feels like is her betrayal. He can’t see the reality of the situation and no more spoilers … so you have to read it for yourself or watch the movie version, which is fine. It’s all good. It’s good stuff.
Not everyone is gonna get it. Not everyone’s going to understand the message of King Lear and not everyone’s going to see when the King Lear Effect has taken over their own ability to understand the reality and with clarity and integrity in their own lives. They’re not going to be able to decipher what’s really happening.
You know, as a Christian, I paid close tension to the words of Jesus and Jesus says “Unless you remove the log from your eye, you’re never going to be able to see what’s wrong with other people or help other people.” And I cannot help but think how we do not have the tools and the clarity in the American evangelical church and a lot of Christian culture. I’m not saying all, not always insert not all clause here, but there are an awful lot of broadly evangelical church groups and leaders who are speaking out right now who need to remove the log of their own ego and their own pocketbooks to see the reality of where we’re at and who’s who and who will really betray the kingdom and who’s really betraying the King.
Are you going to know? Am I going to know who’s really betraying the King?
It’s the question that I think we all need to ask. I’m asking for me, but I am also asking you. Do you know? Are you going to know the guidelines that you’re going by? Who’s advising you? You could also talk about that. I think I wrote a paper back in the day about the advisors. There are all these advisory characters in King Lear, which is also really interesting to pay attention to, the people who have something to say who are not the nobles. They’re not royal blood. They’re just there and they’re smart. They’re wise. They know. They’re trying to discern what’s really happening and they give advice to the main characters. There are some that are obviously trying to do what’s best for the kingdom and others that are obviously trying to overthrow the kingdom and plot against the king because they just want the power. They don’t like him. They don’t like what he’s doing, but instead of working within that system, they’re trying to overthrow it and plot to kill the king and it works. There’s a big civil war. Everybody ends up dead except for a couple because you know, a good Shakespearean tragedy, everybody’s on the floor dead on the stage at the end. and only one person standing there who gets to break it all down for you. And sometimes they don’t. I mean, sometimes we just don’t get that kind of epilogue or whatever.
Anyway, it’s good stuff. Shakespeare was okay. It was okay.
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Asking For Me 
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