Excellent video by Ryan Long. The answer is to start with this premise: There are real-life human beings on all sides of this horrific situation. Start from this position. Martin Buber's I-Thou. Then think slowly, not impulsively, with the assumption that the past doesn't strictly determine the future.
One more meme . . . Be a problem solver. Don't pick sides.
Matt Orfalea made this video to show news media hysteria, the over-exaggerations of the dangers of COVID, the unhinged commentators and "experts" claiming that they knew things that they didn't know. Now hosted on X (Twitter), it's an 11-minute demonstration of top-down bullshit driven by lies and power-mongering. This is what our country was subjected to. It's an incredible shameful reaction by a country that has our resources. And all of this propaganda was going in one direction: Get the vaccine! It's important for all of us to see this montage and reflect on how we will perform regarding the next pandemic. I am pessimistic.
Matt's video consists only of already-published video clips of of news commentators and "experts," leading to Youtube's decision (in May) to demonetize it because "it is not suitable for all advertisers." Welcome to America, 2023.
Tribal affiliation is the biggest threat to intellectual humility. It is insidious--we join tribes emotionally and organically--there is not official signup form, so we don't even know that we joined. Once we join, the confirmation bias takes over, making us hubristic and even willing to fight for things we didn't choose to believe.
The solution is to disengage, to step out of one's tribe. That is extremely difficult once we get used to the comfy confines, the smiles and encouragement of our comrades, the non-stop warmth of that feeling that of belonging, the feeling that one is always at home. Once we are comfy, we turn off any thoughts that maybe we don't belong. We are completely credulous regarding tribal dogma. Stockholm Syndrome takes over. We become our own prisoners, setting up electrified fences to cordon off any improper or impure thoughts. The only hope for most people is that external tragedy resulting from the dogma comes crashing in, resulting in depression, nihilism and scales falling from our eyes. This might offer us a more-or-less blank slate on which to rebuild, a chance to build one's own belief system based on intellectual humility: curiosity, skepticism and evidence. More likely, it merely sends one on a shopping trip to join the next most attractive tribe.
This week, a friend introduced me to one of his favorite podcasts: "Sasha Stone's Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning."
I jumped right into Sasha' most current podcast, "The Mugshot Heard Round the World: Did the Democrats finally make a Trump voter?"" Sasha is intensely and creatively thoughtful and her non-partisan ideas will emotionally move for those of us who are not completely enraptured with one political tribe. Hence, the "Free Thinking" part of the title to her podcast.
Despite the paltry and insulting offerings to American voters year after year, the challenge is still to vote for the lesser of two evils, right? What is the lesser of two evils in 2024, at the point where the Democrats have repeatedly shat upon the rule of law, desperately embraced censorship and become louder cheerleaders for endless war than even the Republicans?
And will this be the year when black voters thoroughly reject the political party that has repeatedly taken them for granted, often in insulting ways? I'm speaking of the Democrats. I'm basing this question on several conversations I've recently had over the past month, but Sasha also sees a wider trend based on her own research. And I don't think that most loyal democrats have the faintest inkling that these tectonic plates are dramatically shifting.
In this single episode, Sasha repeatedly challenged me, forcing me to reframe some of my long-held ideas. I immediately became a subscriber. I invite you to listen if you are looking to be challenged.
