The Modern Stoic #33: What Is Free Speech? Seneca Takes Down Social Justice Warriors - a podcast by Jon & Dre

from 2018-07-16T20:53:39

:: ::

Why do flame wars happen? Why are so many people on the Left shutting down free speech through no-platforming? Do Social Justice Warriors even know what they're trying to do? How can we have conversations with people we don't like without it degenerating into an emotional bloodbath? This week, we try to answer all these questions and more as we dig into Letter 48 from Seneca (unexcitingly titled 'On Quibbling as Unworthy of a Philosopher').

Seneca's words eerily predict our own times, walking on eggshells for fear of offending someone. Sometimes it can feel like the only thing that can be said with impunity is 'you can't speak because of who you are'.

But that's no way to live, and certainly no way to improve mutual understanding. If we can't talk about extreme or inflammatory issues, we shrink the spectrum of our experience and become offended by even the most minor issues. If we don't expose ourselves to bacteria, we never build a strong immune system. In the same way, we growthrough offence – we grow by exposing ourselves to challenging people and situations.

What does it really mean to have a knee-jerk reaction to other people? Most of the time, the answers lie within us: we project onto others the things we're most worried about in our own lives, from our weight to personality traits that we don't like or have been conditioned to think are 'bad'.

It's easy to dismiss people with different views as stupid. But what does stupidity mean? People aren't stupid because they haven't read tons of books or collected stacks of degrees. It's a lack of curiosity, often combined with a deep sense of certainty that they knowwhat's right. Stupidity isn't lack of knowledge, it's a refusal to recognise the limits of what we know and to be curious enough to challenge those limits.

But book-style intelligence can go horribly wrong, too. This is what Seneca calls 'quibbling' – getting caught up on specific words and definitions which hamstring our ability to ever actually say anything. Jon challenges Andrea on his tendency to do just this, and in the process we learn how to have better conversations.

Part of the problem is that words mean different things to different people; a huge number of arguments and enmities stem from simple miscommunication and misunderstanding. So we've got a few actionable tips on how to side-step these dramas and manage to open up channels to real communication and understanding.

But before the quibbling begins, we need to know the purposeof it. Is the aim of it to improve mutual understanding or get to some kind of positive outcome, or do you just want give yourself social brownie points? Are you trying to have a conversation, or just to virtue signal and hashtag your way into more Facebook likes?

We also delve into some broader psychological mechanisms that can seriously screw us over in social situations. Jon opens up about his tendency to push people away when he's struggling to feel good in himself: it can feel easier to deal with negative thoughts and feelings without drawing anyone else into the picture and worrying about how you're affecting them too. But in the process, we end up isolating ourselves even further and rejecting love because we're (currently) feeling unworthy of it.

But it's not all darkness and despair by any means. We also have time to talk about breathing in Julius Caesar's farts, Jon's poor wardrobe choices, and our ambitions to destroy the TV evening news.

 

Also Including:

  • Suicide as an expression of free will
  • A powerful antidote to envy
  • Why people on TV are animated corpses
  • How to notmake yourself a victim
  • When did 'normal' become a dirty word?

Find Out More:

Be Silly. Be Kind. Be Weird.

Further episodes of Voices in the Dark

Further podcasts by Jon & Dre

Website of Jon & Dre