Peter and Matt did not use the “right” pronouns, cancel them. That is another bad joke. I had to rewatch the feedback responses to this question a couple of times because Sandra’s comments and concerns really resonated with me, but so did Peter’s comment about compelled speech vs courtesy. After watching Gina’s and Matt’s responses several more times, I am starting to think about this in a more nuanced way. I came home to visit for the holidays during my first year in college, and my older sister pulled me aside for a private conversation. She told me my best friend from high school wanted to talk to me about something but wanted her to talk to me first and see how I reacted. I was immediately confused as to why my friend would talk to my sister about something important instead of me. He and my sister never talked to each other; it made no sense to me at all. I immediately asked her, why wouldn’t he just come to me directly? She responded that he was worried about what I would think of him afterwards. I had no clue what she might be talking about and was now even more confused because I couldn’t fathom anything that my friend could not tell me. I asked her to continue and she told me that my friend wanted to come out of the closet, that he is gay. I answered honestly that it didn’t change anything for me. In fact, in that moment, it did change something for me, not the way I looked at my friend, but the community in general. Instantly, the community changed in my mind from “them” to “us”. All I could think about was calling my friend and easing any concern that he had. I was a little shocked, but more that my friend thought I would not accept him for who he was, than from the revelation itself. It wasn’t until later that weekend that I started to understand why. We were hanging out watching a movie, I think it was “Cabin Fever” or one of those haunted cabin movies. During the film the characters started referring to situations they didn’t like as “gay”. It was the first time I heard that word used like that and gave it a second thought, I felt like I was going to throw up. I realized I had used similar expressions in the past, not as a conscious expression of dislike for a particular community, but just repeating an expression I had heard many times. Something that had no meaning to me previously was suddenly filled with a great deal of meaning and I realized why my friend thought that his coming out would ruin our friendship. I was repeating phrases I had heard used commonly, that I had never really given much thought about how it effects those around me. In my case, knowing a person that is gay, made a huge difference in how I thought about my own speech. That is why the responses by Gina and Matt are worth reconsidering, they are reminding us to separate the ideology from the parts of the community that are just getting caught up in all of this and are not part of the ideological problem, and to take care not to neglect our own values of treating individuals with dignity and respect. So all things re-considered, I think I could hang out with Blaire White youtube.com/c/BlaireWhiteX and use the word “she” when referring to her; I could even drop the air quotes. I believe it is possible to still advocate for objectivity, distinguish between reality and delusion, and be polite, without contradiction.
I was thinking about the slippery slope and wondering where I would draw a line in the sand, probably somewhere around being told it is impolite not to meow at people who identify as cats. It makes it hard to say why your slippery slope argument is wrong. Perhaps I do have a contradiction in my thinking. I’m going to give this more thought. Thank you!
Thank you again! If you don’t change anything about the show, it is still some of the best content on the internet. My hope is that you will continue to grow your audience until the media has to run hit pieces on you, claiming your right-wing media outlet is constantly spreading extremism, and should be “streng verboten” like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan.
On the feedback, of NPR being ideologically captured for a longer duration, Gina’s response of taking a stance of curiosity, was the best imho. https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=1220 I agree the blatant framing of free speech as a bad thing, while explicitly calling it “free speech” in the process, is new. I liked Gina’s restatement of the problem, as the media deciding through top-down narrative, that we should not listen to a large quantity of people, because their opinion is “unacceptable”. https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=1376 Perhaps that is what is meant by some of the feedback, saying NPR has “always been this way.”
If I had one suggestion, it would be that the shows are better off without the straw-man analogies https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=3241 It is not a good look.
I’ve wondered what logical reason would someone have, for wanting to convince US citizens (including their own descendants) that they are better off without free speech? A story that may be interesting to explore is which topics on YouTube get the little "Context" box beneath them because they are "prone to misinformation"? support.google.com/youtube/answer/9004474?hl=en
Considering that free speech is fundamental to freedom, that it is intricately related to the US Constitution and thus US national sovereignty, perhaps a story on the difference between the way the average American views national sovereignty, and the way their politicians and media sources view national sovereignty, would be interesting. What is more important, journalistic integrity, or world peace?
What do Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Walter Cronkite, and Richard Haass have in common?
“First we Americans are going to have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That's going to be to many, a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith, a lot of persuasion, for them to come along with us on this necessity.” - Walter Cronkite youtu.be/ANiqW8F0A5c?t=345
One of my own videos, which starts with an MSNBC interview with Richard Haass, gets “contexted” as well: youtube.com/watch?v=DabZL4GiZIM
Should Americans have open conversation about whether their national sovereignty should be relinquished to a world body or are such questions too important to leave to the “plebes”?
I know mentioning a potential top-down down narrative and speculating on motive, runs the risk of being labeled “crazy” or “conspiracy-theorist”, two of my favorite c-words, so I might as well go for the hat trick and circle back around to “creationist” youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=2154 Here are a few more quotes from Craig Venter, and don’t worry, shortly after Craig’s apparent heresy I mentioned during the AMA, Paul Davies sanity-checked him and Craig passed the inquisition with flying colors. youtu.be/xIHMnD2FDeY?t=1134 So, you can rest assured that Craig is still legit.
"We decided to synthesize the much larger chromosome, the mycoides chromosome, knowing that we had the biology worked out on that for transplantation. And Dan led the team for the synthesis of this over one-million-base pair chromosome. But it turned out it wasn't going to be as simple in the end, and it set us back three months because we had one error out of over a million base pairs in that sequence." - Craig Venter. https://youtu.be/QHIocNOHd7A?t=531
"So the team developed new debugging software, where we could test each synthetic fragment to see if it would grow in a background of wild type DNA, and we found that 10 out of the 11 100,000-base pair pieces we synthesized were completely accurate and compatible with a life-forming sequence. We narrowed it down to one fragment; we sequenced it and found just one base pair had been deleted in an essential gene. So accuracy is essential." - Craig Venter. https://youtu.be/QHIocNOHd7A?t=562
Craig’s quotes are interesting because it seems odd, that a single mutation in an essential gene, would crash an entire chromosome. A topoisomerase, youtube.com/watch?v=EYGrElVyHnU is an enzyme that is essential for the functioning of any DNA-based system, for example: every known living organism. Since topoisomerase is a necessary enzyme for life, wouldn’t it be reasonable to predict that all organisms would express topoisomerase using the same proteins? Children must, by definition, inherit essential genes from their parents, so it seems more like an obvious conclusion from a Darwinian viewpoint, rather than a prediction. If it were a fact, that various animals realize topoisomerase using different proteins, we couldn’t call it a failed prediction, since evolution is incontrovertible; but wouldn’t that be peculiar?
I have one small critique, and it’s only because those who would be harder to reach about these things could use this to dismiss the show.
Maybe it’s just that the only people to leave their video testimonies were mostly white men, but it would superficially hold more sway if there were different skin colors and more women.
As I said, I’m just thinking of how others could dismiss this, and “of course a bunch of white men are pissed that NPR is all about racism and sexism” comes to mind every time.
Yes, *I* know that. Do you see what I’m meaning though?
I guess I have another question about who the show is for? Those who’ve already quit NPR etc and are peaked with all the SJ stuff or people who are still kinda in it?
Those who are entrenched in it, are more likely to filter information based on WHO is saying it. It’s just where we are right now 😩
I totally understand what you mean, Maz. This is the thing: anyone who dismisses the show because more white men spoke than other human categories is not someone we can reach. They are operating with different values than we are. We might catch them for a moment, but it would be inauthentic. Of course, even if we caught someone for a moment for the wrong reason, it could still lead to some enlightenment on their part...
I had a terrible experience in my former circle of super-woke friends. I have ideas for turning the situation into something positive, and I want to ask for advice. Sorry for the long post.
We had a non-commercial club going in my home town, a place where people would meet at the bar, drink, make art and music, have fun. I did some art projects there, donated time and money, and was a member of the organizational Plenum for several years. About a year ago, we got a request from an external group who wanted to use our place. They used very woke and aggressive language, and they wanted to do a recurring feminist music workshop where men, who were generalized as evil and brutal, would be forbidden to enter. I did not like this, as I understood our place being very open-minded and liberal, in the original sense, not in the woke sense. I did not have a good feeling about letting these people in.
In the next plenary meeting, I said that I was very weary how some people might react to what I was going to say, but that I could not back the decision to exclude people from our space based on sex or other innate characteristics, as I considered this reactionary and not compatible with the open spirit of our group. I made very clear that I supported a feminist music workshop for women per se. I offered my practical help with any such workshop (tech, etc) as long as it did not involve exclusion of people based on sex or other non-voluntary personal characteristics. I even offered to facilitate with another club, which is physically close and already practices sex segregation, and arrange to let them do the workshops there. I explained that I find special events for marginalized groups important, but not even the gay parties I frequent exclude women, or straight men.
The reaction was much less sane than I expected. One person literally cried and called me a Nazi for not wanting to exclude people based on sex. I managed to stay pretty calm, which was confirmed by several other people I talked to afterward. I didn't even react to the Nazi remark. At the end of the meeting, while I tried to make a final proposal to meet in small groups in a bar setting instead of the heated plenary, I was shouted down by one person, literally screaming the word "NO" at the top of her lungs over and over.
Weeks later, the group held another meeting. I was "forbidden" to attend, even though it was clearly about me, stated reason being that I had "had enough opportunity to speak". The invitation did not go over our mailing list. Instead, individual people were invited via messenger. Date, time and place of the meeting were kept secret from me (of course I knew when&where it happened as the scene is quite small here, but I didn't go).
I then went on a traveling trip for several months, which I didn't want to cancel for something like this. The group meanwhile created a strange incongruent political pamphlet mentioning me by name and smearing me, and requiring all members of our club to agree. This was translated into 2 languages and sent around on our mailing list and Telegram channel. Some time later I got an email saying that I was "not a member of the organizational circle any more"; meaning I would be forbidden from entering the plenary meetings, I had to remove all my stuff from the place, and give back my keys. I was also removed from all digital communication channels except the one I created, where they couldn't kick me out. I didn't even know what to say. As I didn't react quickly enough for them, they put my stuff, including tech equipment and art pieces I created, into the alleyway in front of our place. People piss and dump trash there. Someone also exchanged all the locks.
Several people have told me afterwards that they would like to speak up for me, but that they fear what would happen to them.
The thing has kind of shaken my image of humanity as I did not think it possible that any decent person would act like this, let alone my "friends". I notice that people talk behind my back, as the hate group kind of has the "Definitionsmacht" (for lack of a better word) now that I am excluded. My social surroundings have become somewhat toxic and I tend not to trust people. I don't make friends easy and this has pushed me closer to depression-like states which I have been fighting a long time. I am however not ready to give up. I have two silly plans:
1) I am fascinated by your SE videos and am reading your book. As an attempt to get something good out of all this, I want to try to make a street epistemology session. The statement would be something like "We need more sex-segregated cultural events", "Some cultural events must exclude men", "Society would improve if we had more sex-segregated cultural events", or variations of that. I am not certain what variation to choose yet. I want to do it somewhere beside the street or in a park, in our neighborhood. I might make a little invitation leaflet and give it out to people in the former circle of friends, but am not sure whether that's a good idea. I don't have decent audio/video equipment, but a handheld audio recorder as a mic and a phone for video should be enough for a start. I'm not sure if I would need someone for security, or just to watch out against vandalism. I might upload the resulting video somewhere if this first experiment turns out interesting. I thought about putting it behind a substack paywall for a tiny amount, just to keep out the worst trolls.
2) Also, I'm thinking about writing a kind of leaflet explaining what happened. I would take it to the club (I'm not banned there, I'm "just" prohibited from entering the plenary meetings, organizing anything or speaking out), hand it to visitors and try to get into a conversation. This would certainly infuriate some people, but it might help me to find support.
I am a tech guy and an artist and quite introverted. Speaking publicly about difficult/emotional issues doesn't come naturally to me. I've never done something like SE before. I have no platform. Only a tiny Telegram channel with a handful of people I know personally. I feel I need to do something about this and I really want to turn this into something good (make lemonade if life gives you a lemon and all that), but I fear personal "retaliation" from the group. They might try to smear me again, to a larger circle of people. Or who knows what they think of the next time. On the other hand, I might find a few individual rational, decent people if I speak out. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
I would really appreciate some advice from you, Peter, or anyone else who has experience with SE, or has been in a similar situation. Or anything relevant. I can also be reached by email at sachzwang.substack1@wachzwang.de. Thanks.
Great idea! Here's short sweet clip from Ute Heggen youtube channel, about my dad being just, a classic good guy dad, and the father of my sons deciding he's not a dad. For holiday sharing, as well. Only women get pregnant. Just sayin'
I was struck by the comment that advocacy journalism is what is taught in university journalism classes today. That statement is right on target. Balanced reporting is no longer a media goal. Most news articles read like editorials and the political bias is usually quite evident. As such, you can assume that most news stories are merely an opinion. Publications also express their political bias by what they don't mention and what they don't publish. Matt's suggestion to assume that news stories are wrong and to do your own research is excellent advice. All Things Reconsidered has made a good start at helping more Americans gain better skills at critically examining the media. I'm looking forward to more episodes in 2023.
There is a difference between a courtesy and compelled speech. I'm fine with extending this courtesy.
Peter and Matt did not use the “right” pronouns, cancel them. That is another bad joke. I had to rewatch the feedback responses to this question a couple of times because Sandra’s comments and concerns really resonated with me, but so did Peter’s comment about compelled speech vs courtesy. After watching Gina’s and Matt’s responses several more times, I am starting to think about this in a more nuanced way. I came home to visit for the holidays during my first year in college, and my older sister pulled me aside for a private conversation. She told me my best friend from high school wanted to talk to me about something but wanted her to talk to me first and see how I reacted. I was immediately confused as to why my friend would talk to my sister about something important instead of me. He and my sister never talked to each other; it made no sense to me at all. I immediately asked her, why wouldn’t he just come to me directly? She responded that he was worried about what I would think of him afterwards. I had no clue what she might be talking about and was now even more confused because I couldn’t fathom anything that my friend could not tell me. I asked her to continue and she told me that my friend wanted to come out of the closet, that he is gay. I answered honestly that it didn’t change anything for me. In fact, in that moment, it did change something for me, not the way I looked at my friend, but the community in general. Instantly, the community changed in my mind from “them” to “us”. All I could think about was calling my friend and easing any concern that he had. I was a little shocked, but more that my friend thought I would not accept him for who he was, than from the revelation itself. It wasn’t until later that weekend that I started to understand why. We were hanging out watching a movie, I think it was “Cabin Fever” or one of those haunted cabin movies. During the film the characters started referring to situations they didn’t like as “gay”. It was the first time I heard that word used like that and gave it a second thought, I felt like I was going to throw up. I realized I had used similar expressions in the past, not as a conscious expression of dislike for a particular community, but just repeating an expression I had heard many times. Something that had no meaning to me previously was suddenly filled with a great deal of meaning and I realized why my friend thought that his coming out would ruin our friendship. I was repeating phrases I had heard used commonly, that I had never really given much thought about how it effects those around me. In my case, knowing a person that is gay, made a huge difference in how I thought about my own speech. That is why the responses by Gina and Matt are worth reconsidering, they are reminding us to separate the ideology from the parts of the community that are just getting caught up in all of this and are not part of the ideological problem, and to take care not to neglect our own values of treating individuals with dignity and respect. So all things re-considered, I think I could hang out with Blaire White youtube.com/c/BlaireWhiteX and use the word “she” when referring to her; I could even drop the air quotes. I believe it is possible to still advocate for objectivity, distinguish between reality and delusion, and be polite, without contradiction.
I was thinking about the slippery slope and wondering where I would draw a line in the sand, probably somewhere around being told it is impolite not to meow at people who identify as cats. It makes it hard to say why your slippery slope argument is wrong. Perhaps I do have a contradiction in my thinking. I’m going to give this more thought. Thank you!
I love thé all things Re-considered! Was looking forward to new episodes weekly
Thank you again! If you don’t change anything about the show, it is still some of the best content on the internet. My hope is that you will continue to grow your audience until the media has to run hit pieces on you, claiming your right-wing media outlet is constantly spreading extremism, and should be “streng verboten” like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan.
On the feedback, of NPR being ideologically captured for a longer duration, Gina’s response of taking a stance of curiosity, was the best imho. https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=1220 I agree the blatant framing of free speech as a bad thing, while explicitly calling it “free speech” in the process, is new. I liked Gina’s restatement of the problem, as the media deciding through top-down narrative, that we should not listen to a large quantity of people, because their opinion is “unacceptable”. https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=1376 Perhaps that is what is meant by some of the feedback, saying NPR has “always been this way.”
If I had one suggestion, it would be that the shows are better off without the straw-man analogies https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=3241 It is not a good look.
I’ve wondered what logical reason would someone have, for wanting to convince US citizens (including their own descendants) that they are better off without free speech? A story that may be interesting to explore is which topics on YouTube get the little "Context" box beneath them because they are "prone to misinformation"? support.google.com/youtube/answer/9004474?hl=en
Considering that free speech is fundamental to freedom, that it is intricately related to the US Constitution and thus US national sovereignty, perhaps a story on the difference between the way the average American views national sovereignty, and the way their politicians and media sources view national sovereignty, would be interesting. What is more important, journalistic integrity, or world peace?
What do Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Walter Cronkite, and Richard Haass have in common?
Dick Cheney (only 13 seconds and has context attached) youtube.com/watch?v=Oqy4L-dqx-8
Hillary Clinton youtube.com/watch?v=-6TXcQpgC9Q
“First we Americans are going to have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That's going to be to many, a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith, a lot of persuasion, for them to come along with us on this necessity.” - Walter Cronkite youtu.be/ANiqW8F0A5c?t=345
One of my own videos, which starts with an MSNBC interview with Richard Haass, gets “contexted” as well: youtube.com/watch?v=DabZL4GiZIM
Should Americans have open conversation about whether their national sovereignty should be relinquished to a world body or are such questions too important to leave to the “plebes”?
I know mentioning a potential top-down down narrative and speculating on motive, runs the risk of being labeled “crazy” or “conspiracy-theorist”, two of my favorite c-words, so I might as well go for the hat trick and circle back around to “creationist” youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=2154 Here are a few more quotes from Craig Venter, and don’t worry, shortly after Craig’s apparent heresy I mentioned during the AMA, Paul Davies sanity-checked him and Craig passed the inquisition with flying colors. youtu.be/xIHMnD2FDeY?t=1134 So, you can rest assured that Craig is still legit.
"We decided to synthesize the much larger chromosome, the mycoides chromosome, knowing that we had the biology worked out on that for transplantation. And Dan led the team for the synthesis of this over one-million-base pair chromosome. But it turned out it wasn't going to be as simple in the end, and it set us back three months because we had one error out of over a million base pairs in that sequence." - Craig Venter. https://youtu.be/QHIocNOHd7A?t=531
"So the team developed new debugging software, where we could test each synthetic fragment to see if it would grow in a background of wild type DNA, and we found that 10 out of the 11 100,000-base pair pieces we synthesized were completely accurate and compatible with a life-forming sequence. We narrowed it down to one fragment; we sequenced it and found just one base pair had been deleted in an essential gene. So accuracy is essential." - Craig Venter. https://youtu.be/QHIocNOHd7A?t=562
Craig’s quotes are interesting because it seems odd, that a single mutation in an essential gene, would crash an entire chromosome. A topoisomerase, youtube.com/watch?v=EYGrElVyHnU is an enzyme that is essential for the functioning of any DNA-based system, for example: every known living organism. Since topoisomerase is a necessary enzyme for life, wouldn’t it be reasonable to predict that all organisms would express topoisomerase using the same proteins? Children must, by definition, inherit essential genes from their parents, so it seems more like an obvious conclusion from a Darwinian viewpoint, rather than a prediction. If it were a fact, that various animals realize topoisomerase using different proteins, we couldn’t call it a failed prediction, since evolution is incontrovertible; but wouldn’t that be peculiar?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647321/
https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=1915
https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=2951
https://youtu.be/f-_HwU-XS4E?t=3258
Thank you. We appreciate the feedback.
Kudos and thank you to all of you!
I have one small critique, and it’s only because those who would be harder to reach about these things could use this to dismiss the show.
Maybe it’s just that the only people to leave their video testimonies were mostly white men, but it would superficially hold more sway if there were different skin colors and more women.
As I said, I’m just thinking of how others could dismiss this, and “of course a bunch of white men are pissed that NPR is all about racism and sexism” comes to mind every time.
The times we live in 😭
We accepted the best submissions and did not consider race as a factor.
Yes, *I* know that. Do you see what I’m meaning though?
I guess I have another question about who the show is for? Those who’ve already quit NPR etc and are peaked with all the SJ stuff or people who are still kinda in it?
Those who are entrenched in it, are more likely to filter information based on WHO is saying it. It’s just where we are right now 😩
I totally understand what you mean, Maz. This is the thing: anyone who dismisses the show because more white men spoke than other human categories is not someone we can reach. They are operating with different values than we are. We might catch them for a moment, but it would be inauthentic. Of course, even if we caught someone for a moment for the wrong reason, it could still lead to some enlightenment on their part...
What an excellent show. Looking forward to next season!
Thank you. We're taking on a new topic next season!
This is just my little selfish wish that the next segment will be perhaps taking on the Grey Lady. A girl can dream...
Hello Peter & friends,
I had a terrible experience in my former circle of super-woke friends. I have ideas for turning the situation into something positive, and I want to ask for advice. Sorry for the long post.
We had a non-commercial club going in my home town, a place where people would meet at the bar, drink, make art and music, have fun. I did some art projects there, donated time and money, and was a member of the organizational Plenum for several years. About a year ago, we got a request from an external group who wanted to use our place. They used very woke and aggressive language, and they wanted to do a recurring feminist music workshop where men, who were generalized as evil and brutal, would be forbidden to enter. I did not like this, as I understood our place being very open-minded and liberal, in the original sense, not in the woke sense. I did not have a good feeling about letting these people in.
In the next plenary meeting, I said that I was very weary how some people might react to what I was going to say, but that I could not back the decision to exclude people from our space based on sex or other innate characteristics, as I considered this reactionary and not compatible with the open spirit of our group. I made very clear that I supported a feminist music workshop for women per se. I offered my practical help with any such workshop (tech, etc) as long as it did not involve exclusion of people based on sex or other non-voluntary personal characteristics. I even offered to facilitate with another club, which is physically close and already practices sex segregation, and arrange to let them do the workshops there. I explained that I find special events for marginalized groups important, but not even the gay parties I frequent exclude women, or straight men.
The reaction was much less sane than I expected. One person literally cried and called me a Nazi for not wanting to exclude people based on sex. I managed to stay pretty calm, which was confirmed by several other people I talked to afterward. I didn't even react to the Nazi remark. At the end of the meeting, while I tried to make a final proposal to meet in small groups in a bar setting instead of the heated plenary, I was shouted down by one person, literally screaming the word "NO" at the top of her lungs over and over.
Weeks later, the group held another meeting. I was "forbidden" to attend, even though it was clearly about me, stated reason being that I had "had enough opportunity to speak". The invitation did not go over our mailing list. Instead, individual people were invited via messenger. Date, time and place of the meeting were kept secret from me (of course I knew when&where it happened as the scene is quite small here, but I didn't go).
I then went on a traveling trip for several months, which I didn't want to cancel for something like this. The group meanwhile created a strange incongruent political pamphlet mentioning me by name and smearing me, and requiring all members of our club to agree. This was translated into 2 languages and sent around on our mailing list and Telegram channel. Some time later I got an email saying that I was "not a member of the organizational circle any more"; meaning I would be forbidden from entering the plenary meetings, I had to remove all my stuff from the place, and give back my keys. I was also removed from all digital communication channels except the one I created, where they couldn't kick me out. I didn't even know what to say. As I didn't react quickly enough for them, they put my stuff, including tech equipment and art pieces I created, into the alleyway in front of our place. People piss and dump trash there. Someone also exchanged all the locks.
Several people have told me afterwards that they would like to speak up for me, but that they fear what would happen to them.
The thing has kind of shaken my image of humanity as I did not think it possible that any decent person would act like this, let alone my "friends". I notice that people talk behind my back, as the hate group kind of has the "Definitionsmacht" (for lack of a better word) now that I am excluded. My social surroundings have become somewhat toxic and I tend not to trust people. I don't make friends easy and this has pushed me closer to depression-like states which I have been fighting a long time. I am however not ready to give up. I have two silly plans:
1) I am fascinated by your SE videos and am reading your book. As an attempt to get something good out of all this, I want to try to make a street epistemology session. The statement would be something like "We need more sex-segregated cultural events", "Some cultural events must exclude men", "Society would improve if we had more sex-segregated cultural events", or variations of that. I am not certain what variation to choose yet. I want to do it somewhere beside the street or in a park, in our neighborhood. I might make a little invitation leaflet and give it out to people in the former circle of friends, but am not sure whether that's a good idea. I don't have decent audio/video equipment, but a handheld audio recorder as a mic and a phone for video should be enough for a start. I'm not sure if I would need someone for security, or just to watch out against vandalism. I might upload the resulting video somewhere if this first experiment turns out interesting. I thought about putting it behind a substack paywall for a tiny amount, just to keep out the worst trolls.
2) Also, I'm thinking about writing a kind of leaflet explaining what happened. I would take it to the club (I'm not banned there, I'm "just" prohibited from entering the plenary meetings, organizing anything or speaking out), hand it to visitors and try to get into a conversation. This would certainly infuriate some people, but it might help me to find support.
I am a tech guy and an artist and quite introverted. Speaking publicly about difficult/emotional issues doesn't come naturally to me. I've never done something like SE before. I have no platform. Only a tiny Telegram channel with a handful of people I know personally. I feel I need to do something about this and I really want to turn this into something good (make lemonade if life gives you a lemon and all that), but I fear personal "retaliation" from the group. They might try to smear me again, to a larger circle of people. Or who knows what they think of the next time. On the other hand, I might find a few individual rational, decent people if I speak out. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
I would really appreciate some advice from you, Peter, or anyone else who has experience with SE, or has been in a similar situation. Or anything relevant. I can also be reached by email at sachzwang.substack1@wachzwang.de. Thanks.
Great idea! Here's short sweet clip from Ute Heggen youtube channel, about my dad being just, a classic good guy dad, and the father of my sons deciding he's not a dad. For holiday sharing, as well. Only women get pregnant. Just sayin'
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_Sgl9Vl8_bk
I was struck by the comment that advocacy journalism is what is taught in university journalism classes today. That statement is right on target. Balanced reporting is no longer a media goal. Most news articles read like editorials and the political bias is usually quite evident. As such, you can assume that most news stories are merely an opinion. Publications also express their political bias by what they don't mention and what they don't publish. Matt's suggestion to assume that news stories are wrong and to do your own research is excellent advice. All Things Reconsidered has made a good start at helping more Americans gain better skills at critically examining the media. I'm looking forward to more episodes in 2023.
I am really considering this perspective and I may adjust my former opinion on it.