There are times when you learn of a person that completely changes your mind, and view on life. It’s like a revelation. It’s almost like being born again. I mean it. For me, that was yesterday, 2-11-2020. Yesterday I listened to the JRE podcast, and though I have been a critic of the show, credit should be given when it is due, and it is due.
On episode #1419 (below), Joe Rogan had the most amazing person I had never heard of, Mr. Daryl Davis. Mr. Davis is a black man that claims to have been the impotence (his word) in the decision of 200 KKK members leaving the klan. And how did he do this, you ask? Through conversations and mutual respect. Trump has done such a good job in radicalizing both sides of the aisle, and the all-important art of conversation has gone down the drain. The easiest response has been cancel people; the idea that anybody we do not agree with, should be removed from the online platforms we most often use. While this approach does work in the interim, it does not work in real-life. In real-life, that person that was cancelled, remains alive; continues to build on those opposing, poisonous, negative views, but now without any push-back or even a way to vent, the result is more radicalization.
Instead, Mr. Davis suggest we listen to people with an open mind. To approach conversations with diverging points of view by being sincere and asking people to help you see their point. This, of course, is easier said than done. This approach risks the possibility of you being wrong, of you learning something, and we don’t want that. We simply want to make our point, be right, and walk out.
The age of the internet has brought many opportunities we never thought possible; electric cars (no flying cars yet), instant communication to/from anywhere in the world, entertainment galore, etc. And with it, it has also brought the ability to more easily create segregation of thought and minds. Some call this a feature personalization, I call it the other side of the coin. Outside of the internet, in the real-world, we must survive around people unlike us. People who are different from us in the way they look, dress, speak, and think. Before the internet, we had to deal with them. There was no way to cancel them. Even the idea, that we could cancel them was alien (except for perhaps the early and mid 1900s; eugenics and the holocaust). The option was simply not there. The only option available was to compromise, work-it-out, learn from each other, or agree to disagree… and live together. All of which I would agree are not perfect, but life is not perfect. Life is, and only is, those options.
So, thank you Joe Rogan for bringing Mr. Davis to my attention. I am a changed person.
