WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.080 And I'm still Wo. 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:47.920 On today's Stone Choir we're going to be discussing persuasion. 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:51.120 In the last number of months we've tackled a bunch of different 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:56.480 so called controversial topics, subjects that you know the world takes a 00:00:56.480 --> 00:01:00.400 very different view than we take and responds to the views that 00:01:00.400 --> 00:01:04.560 we have shared on Stone Choir generally with hysteria. 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:08.880 And we tackle those issues specifically because some of them are hard 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:09.280 to hear. 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:11.840 Some are probably hard for some of you to hear. 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.120 And the point is that we wanted to be able to present 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:19.760 a calm, reasoned case for these things, in part to make the 00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:24.080 point about the subjects, but also with every episode that we've done, 00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:27.280 we're trying to demonstrate that you don't have to be a bomb 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.080 throwing madman to agree with us about scripture being true, or about 00:01:32.080 --> 00:01:34.880 history being true, or about science being true. 00:01:34.880 --> 00:01:36.400 Truth is truth. 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:41.040 And when faithful, honest men talk about the truth, they should be 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:44.000 able to do that without getting worked up about it. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.640 So this week we're talking about persuasion specifically because you know last 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:52.560 week we talked about not wanting people to get sucked down into 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:55.600 the tar pit of okay, I'm red pilled now. 00:01:55.600 --> 00:01:58.400 I want to know all the red pill subjects and I want 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:02.000 to engage in every so called conspiracy theory, and I know that 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.800 they lied to me about something, so they must have lied about 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:08.080 everything. This is now my personality. 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:11.520 When we tackle these subjects, we don't want people to feel like 00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:16.880 talking about race or the Jews or Hitler is your personality because 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:17.600 it's not. 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:21.360 It's the Ryan Gosling meme where the guy watches drive and then 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:24.720 for the next eight years all of his relationships are defined by 00:02:24.720 --> 00:02:26.560 pretending to be somebody else. 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:27.600 That it's fake. 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:30.640 That's not it's not mature, it's not healthy. 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:34.240 And we certainly don't want to be a part of anyone else 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:37.120 going down that path on any of these subjects because we all 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:41.200 have our lives, we're living in the community, we're doing whatever it 00:02:41.200 --> 00:02:44.320 is that God put us here to do and when you learn 00:02:44.320 --> 00:02:46.640 about something new, that's great. 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:49.840 Today we're gonna talk about persuasion, because on one hand we don't 00:02:49.760 --> 00:02:54.480 want you to fall into a trap of getting obsessed with stuff. 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:57.280 Which is something that Corey and I are often accused, like, oh 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:00.320 those guys are those are the race guys, those are the haters. 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:01.360 We're not. 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:04.800 And when someone listens they realize that, but if you only listen 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:09.760 to the slander about us instead of listening to us, you'll believe 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:13.680 that you know it's it's only crazy people who think these things. 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:18.000 When you're clear reasoned arguments, like, okay, well that that makes sense, 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:19.680 even if you disagree. 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:23.360 And so today we want to talk about how to be persuasive 00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:26.720 as you're tackling some of these subjects. 00:03:26.720 --> 00:03:31.520 You know, Dale Carnegie with Winning Friends and Influencing People and the 00:03:31.520 --> 00:03:35.520 Dilbert guy, uh, Scott Adams, he's talked a lot about persuasion. 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:40.320 We're not trying to jump into that sort of big brain TED 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:44.800 talk world where here's how you make people like you more. 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:48.800 The specific point that we hope to get across in today's episode 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:51.920 is that if and when you choose to engage in some of 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:55.440 the subjects that we discuss, there are certain things you can do 00:03:55.600 --> 00:04:00.320 if you're not thinking that will turn people off completely to what 00:04:00.320 --> 00:04:02.560 it is you're trying to convince them of. 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:06.160 And there's certain things you can do that will be persuasive. 00:04:06.160 --> 00:04:09.360 It's this is just basic adult human stuff. 00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:11.840 There's a good way and there's a bad way to do anything. 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:15.760 And there's no particular script for how to do it well in 00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:17.040 every single situation. 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:18.800 Every individual is different. 00:04:18.960 --> 00:04:20.400 You're different than we are. 00:04:20.400 --> 00:04:22.080 Your family is different than you are. 00:04:22.080 --> 00:04:25.200 You have more similarities with your family than probably with us. 00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:28.160 You have more similarities with us than you have with someone on 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:29.280 the other side of the world. 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:33.760 So they're varying degrees of familiarity and all those have to be 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:37.520 incorporated into how we discuss things. 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:40.560 One of the things that made us think about doing this episode 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.360 is that when we did last week's we were talking about conspiracy 00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:46.400 theories, somebody on Twitter replied and said, you know, basically he was 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:48.560 a a fan of the show and he always looked forward to 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.200 what we put out, but he said last week's show wasn't our 00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:51.920 best work. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:54.960 And I appreciated that comment because it was it was critical, you 00:04:54.960 --> 00:04:57.760 know, it was he wasn't being nasty, but it made me think. 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:01.760 It made me think specifically why do we select some of the 00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:03.200 topics that we select? 00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:06.400 Why would it be that someone would hear last week's episode and 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:08.720 think, Yeah, that wasn't really for me, that wasn't great. 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:10.960 Maybe it was right, maybe it was a crap episode and it 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:13.200 wasn't suitable for anyone. 00:05:13.200 --> 00:05:16.320 Almost immediately after we got a ton of feedback from other people 00:05:16.320 --> 00:05:18.160 saying, thank you so much for this episode. 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:20.080 I loved it, it was really important. 00:05:20.080 --> 00:05:24.000 And I realized that one of the reasons for that disparity, it 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:26.480 wasn't that like the guy who said that has bad taste or 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:29.680 something, he had never dealt with probably I I didn't ask, but 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.680 assume, he never dealt with the problems that we were addressing in 00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:34.560 that episode. 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:37.760 There are a lot of people, especially in the dissident right, who 00:05:37.760 --> 00:05:41.040 go completely nuts for so-called conspiracy theories. 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:43.520 Like I said, it becomes their personality. 00:05:43.520 --> 00:05:46.320 And if you talk to one of those guys, you can't help 00:05:46.320 --> 00:05:48.640 but hearing about that stuff, even if you want to talk about 00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:51.360 something completely different. 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:54.240 And so I realize that one of the things that Corey and 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:58.080 I do when we tackle subjects is every episode is not for 00:05:58.080 --> 00:05:59.280 every listener. 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:00.720 That's not to be dismissive. 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.520 It's just that we're trying to tackle a specific issue in hopes 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:06.640 that you know eventually in a perfect world everyone would get on 00:06:06.640 --> 00:06:07.600 the same page. 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:11.520 So if you hear something like that's not really for me, it's 00:06:11.440 --> 00:06:13.120 fine if you don't like the episode. 00:06:13.120 --> 00:06:16.800 But I realized when he said that that especially in light of 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:19.760 all the other people saying, Yeah, those are really valuable episodes. 00:06:19.760 --> 00:06:21.120 I realized that 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:25.200 there are people that just don't have certain problems. 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:28.880 And so when if we do an episode and you're like that 00:06:28.960 --> 00:06:32.720 doesn't have anything to do with me, I'm not saying you should 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:33.840 just like every episode. 00:06:34.320 --> 00:06:39.040 If someone says something and it doesn't make sense to you and 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:41.840 we're telling you, this is a big problem in the world. 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:46.480 Like conspiracy theory obsession is a problem in the world, especially on 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:47.280 the right. 00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:50.320 So when we say, hey, here's a really important thing to deal 00:06:50.320 --> 00:06:53.040 with, and someone's like, that doesn't have anything to do with me, 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:55.360 hey, thank God that you've been spared that. 00:06:55.360 --> 00:06:58.480 But B, be aware that there are people who are actually being 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:05.280 significantly burdened by confusion and disorientation and obsession in some cases about 00:07:05.280 --> 00:07:07.920 a about a subject that thankfully you've been spared. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:09.840 And that's kind of the case with a lot of our episodes. 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:13.120 You know, some people you know, there some people in certain denominations 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:15.520 when we talked about slavery, like, Yeah, that's fine. 00:07:15.520 --> 00:07:18.240 You know, maybe it's not exactly what I've I've heard in church, 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:23.040 but that's consistent with a scriptural approach, and then there are other 00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:26.560 people who completely freak out because they've never heard anything except for 00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:32.080 the modern strictly moral anti slavery views that have only existed in 00:07:32.080 --> 00:07:33.840 the last century and a half. 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:34.560 So 00:07:35.840 --> 00:07:39.520 one of the things about being persuasive is is really knowing your 00:07:39.520 --> 00:07:44.240 audience. In our case, as podcasters, we have a generic audience. 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.280 It's entirely opt-in But we don't know you. 00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:48.320 We don't know you personally. 00:07:48.320 --> 00:07:50.640 We don't know what your interests are, your concerns are. 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:56.160 So obviously we can't address every episode to each person listening individually. 00:07:56.160 --> 00:07:59.680 So when you think that there's a miss on something, just think 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:02.160 about maybe the fact that there are other people out there that 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:04.800 are dealing with something that you've been spared. 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.440 You know, be thankful for that, but also be aware of it. 00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:10.560 Cause if we take the time to devote an entire week to 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:13.840 something, it's because we see enough in the world, we haven't you 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:16.480 know enough people commenting to us, DMing us. 00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:21.120 We've seen enough struggle that we're saying this is something affecting others. 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:21.440 And 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:26.400 when we talk about being persuasive, that's part of it, knowing that 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:30.000 my problems are not necessarily your problems. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:32.720 You know, the worst thing that's ever happened to me is going 00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:35.760 to be different in degree than the worst thing that's ever happened 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:36.800 to each person listening. 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:39.920 You know, there's some people who may maybe you have a horse 00:08:39.920 --> 00:08:43.440 girl where she has she's rich, daddy's rich, and the worst thing 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:45.920 that's ever happened to her in her life, she's never lost friends 00:08:45.920 --> 00:08:49.360 or family, but her dad had to sell her horse and she 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:50.160 was bereft. 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:53.120 That was the worst thing that ever happened to her. 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.080 I think we have a tendency to look at someone, you know, 00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:00.400 like that in the hypothetical and be completely unsympathetic and say, oh 00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:04.640 you spoiled little brat, how dare you complain about this when my 00:09:04.640 --> 00:09:08.080 problems are XYZ worse than that? 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:12.000 The sympathetic approach is to look at that and to empathize, to 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:15.520 realize that that was the worst day in that girl's life if 00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:19.040 the horse that she dearly loved got sold, you know, for whatever 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:22.720 reason and that was cause of heartbreak, she's heartbroken. 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:24.960 It's the worst thing that ever happened to her. 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:29.120 I think that we can approach things as we're trying to be 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:33.760 persuasive and just trying to discuss things with people to some degree 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:35.520 by putting ourselves in their shoes. 00:09:35.520 --> 00:09:39.760 Because if something is really hurting someone else and it doesn't bother 00:09:39.760 --> 00:09:42.800 you at all, you have to you have to keep that in 00:09:42.800 --> 00:09:44.320 mind when you're interacting with them. 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:47.280 And certainly don't dismiss whatever's concerning them. 00:09:47.280 --> 00:09:51.360 Because even if their concerns are dumb or wrong, it's still what's 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:52.320 concerning them. 00:09:52.320 --> 00:09:55.120 And you can find common ground simply in the fact that you 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:56.320 yourself have concerns. 00:09:56.320 --> 00:09:59.120 There are things that burden you, things that frighten you, things that 00:09:59.120 --> 00:10:00.160 confuse you. 00:10:00.160 --> 00:10:03.040 And so if the only commonality that you have with the person 00:10:03.040 --> 00:10:07.200 you're talking to is that you share having had a bad day, 00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:08.800 that's still a place to begin. 00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:12.720 And so I think as we begin talking about persuasion, finding common 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:15.600 ground is one of the most crucial elements. 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:16.160 So 00:10:16.160 --> 00:10:20.640 I think at the outset it's important to distinguish between two distinct 00:10:20.640 --> 00:10:22.080 things that are 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:26.800 both really in this area we're discussing in this episode. 00:10:26.800 --> 00:10:30.640 The first is persuasion, which is what we are discussing properly. 00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:33.120 How do you persuade someone of something? 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:34.640 What is persuasion? 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:36.400 And the second is manipulation. 00:10:36.400 --> 00:10:37.840 There's a distinction between these. 00:10:38.160 --> 00:10:41.280 We are not talking about manipulation. 00:10:41.280 --> 00:10:46.000 Some of the psychology or things like that would get into manipulation 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:49.200 where you're talking about propaganda in the negative sense, and we'll get 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:52.480 into that later in the episode as well. 00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:57.760 But for our purposes here, persuasion is attempting to convince someone of 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:01.520 something by engaging with that person. 00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:05.360 So you're engaging that person's reason or emotions. 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:07.680 It's not always wrong to engage the emotions. 00:11:07.680 --> 00:11:09.920 God gave you emotions for a reason. 00:11:09.920 --> 00:11:12.240 You don't totally ignore them. 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:15.440 Yes, when you're dealing with something that is a purely logical problem, 00:11:15.440 --> 00:11:18.160 you set your emotions aside, it's important to be able to do 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:20.560 that, particularly for men. 00:11:20.560 --> 00:11:24.880 But it's not wrong to engage the emotions of another person per 00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:28.240 se. That can be used to manipulate, of course. 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:33.520 But the distinction is that manipulation is an attempt to circumvent or 00:11:33.520 --> 00:11:37.120 subvert to take advantage of the other person 00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:39.040 in some way. 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:44.480 So you're trying to befuddle the person, confuse the person, engage with 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:48.960 emotions that aren't really at issue here in order to manipulate the 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:53.200 outcome. So it's the difference basically in in intent. 00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:57.680 There's some difference in means as well, but largely it's the intent. 00:11:57.680 --> 00:12:00.720 Persuasion you want to bring the person to 00:12:01.920 --> 00:12:07.200 one would think your position through convincing the person, engaging with that 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:13.440 person's reason, engaging with that person's emotions, engaging with that person's thoughts, 00:12:13.440 --> 00:12:20.240 etc. Whereas with manipulation, again, you are attempting to subvert or control. 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:23.360 Now, manipulation technically is not 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:27.200 an inherently negative term. 00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:29.840 Because manipulation also has the sense of just doing Of just doing 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:33.680 something skillfully, because it just comes from Latin manipulus, which is the 00:12:33.680 --> 00:12:36.560 Latin for handful, it has to do with the hands, and the 00:12:36.560 --> 00:12:41.520 hands are obviously dexterous, as it were. 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:46.400 However, in modern English, manipulation has taken off that negative connotation. 00:12:46.400 --> 00:12:49.760 So here we'll just contrast those two: persuasion being what we are 00:12:49.760 --> 00:12:54.320 discussing, manipulation being sort of the shadow version of it, the dark 00:12:54.320 --> 00:12:57.280 version of it, not what we are advocating. 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:00.960 And as well mentioned, we're not going to get into the psychology 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:04.160 of, you know, if you want to convince someone do these four 00:13:04.160 --> 00:13:08.240 things in this order yes, we could get into that, but that's 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:09.840 not the point here. 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:15.280 The point of the episode is how do you engage with other 00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:19.840 people in a meaningful way on these topics? 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:22.400 And how do you choose when to engage? 00:13:22.400 --> 00:13:23.600 Because that's part of it. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:29.200 As Wo mentioned, you don't just always go one hundred percent on 00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:31.760 every single one of these issues. 00:13:31.760 --> 00:13:36.720 Yes, you've listened to the episodes on race and World War two 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:40.160 That doesn't mean that the first thing you say when you sit 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:43.840 down to have a beer with someone is so, how about racial 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:46.720 IQ? You don't open that way. 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:49.600 Mean maybe if it's with your friends and it's a joke, fine, 00:13:49.600 --> 00:13:51.440 but you have to know your audience. 00:13:51.440 --> 00:13:55.680 You have to know where you are as well, and how to 00:13:55.680 --> 00:13:59.360 engage with that audience in that place. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:05.200 And so as was mentioned, we don't know our audience personally. 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:08.320 Of course we know some of you personally, but we generally don't 00:14:08.240 --> 00:14:11.360 know the overwhelming majority of our audience personally. 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:15.920 So what we are doing here is necessarily more general than what 00:14:15.920 --> 00:14:18.400 you would be doing with someone in person or what we would 00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:20.880 do with someone in person. 00:14:20.880 --> 00:14:25.520 Woe was just on the myth of the twentieth century, and there 00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:28.640 he is engaging personally with someone. 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:32.080 So that's different from how you would engage, say, on this podcast 00:14:32.160 --> 00:14:33.120 with the audience. 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:36.320 With each other, we can engage personally, we know each other. 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:38.960 But with the audience, it has to be more general. 00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:42.000 So the first thing you want to do when you're going to 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:46.480 persuade someone is just to know the other person. 00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:48.960 Start with an actual conversation with the person. 00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:53.040 You don't have to open up with politics and religion and theology 00:14:54.320 --> 00:14:57.440 You can open with a general discussion. 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:02.960 You're building a relationship, building rapport to some degree, and that is 00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:06.720 going to count toward whether or not that person will give any 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:10.880 weight to what you say later, if you just open up cold 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:12.800 open with so 00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:18.240 about the World War two yeah probably not going to get you 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:24.080 anywhere. That's Part of why people like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:27.200 Mormons, when they do the cold call at your front door, they 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:30.080 typically don't get anywhere with that. 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:35.200 Now, maybe over time they can wear certain people down. 00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:39.360 But if you have a relationship with someone, you have an established 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:43.840 rapport, you're going to be more successful in persuading that person. 00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:48.560 So that first part is just getting to know your audience, knowing 00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:50.400 your audience. 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:50.720 And 00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:54.080 that goes back to something that we've discussed in the past, the 00:15:54.080 --> 00:15:57.200 basic question, what problem were you trying to solve? 00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:00.800 And I think something that I hope that people in our audience 00:16:00.800 --> 00:16:04.160 will keep in mind is that if you learn something new, maybe 00:16:04.160 --> 00:16:07.360 it's from Stone Choir, maybe it's somewhere else, and it's a really 00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:10.880 big deal to you, like it revolutionizes some aspect of how you 00:16:10.880 --> 00:16:14.320 view the world, you're probably going to be excited about that. 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:15.360 Like, this is cool. 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:17.280 Like, this opens on new horizons. 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:20.480 This explains things that I never understood before. 00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:21.520 I'm energized. 00:16:21.520 --> 00:16:22.640 I have this new knowledge. 00:16:22.640 --> 00:16:24.640 And you want to share it. 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:28.720 The question of what problem are you trying to solve when you're 00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:33.280 looking to persuade people in your own life is that I think 00:16:33.280 --> 00:16:38.640 the mistake that many people make in interpersonal discussions is suddenly the 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:42.240 problem you want to solve with your friends or God forbid your 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:44.880 family is a oh they're not wet red pilled. 00:16:44.880 --> 00:16:47.760 I need to go lecture them about these things that I know 00:16:47.760 --> 00:16:51.280 about and that they're wrong about, and I need to fix them. 00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:53.680 That is exactly the wrong approach. 00:16:53.680 --> 00:16:58.240 If you approach wanting to discuss a subject in terms of I 00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:00.960 need to fix you, it's revolting. 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:04.880 Yeah, we did an episode, a five-part episode on race, three-part episode 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:05.520 on Jews. 00:17:05.760 --> 00:17:08.960 Between those, it was probably close to twenty hours of content. 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:12.720 As Corey mentioned, you know, people knocking on doors for for these 00:17:12.720 --> 00:17:16.240 cults. If I showed up on your door and said, hey, I'm 00:17:16.160 --> 00:17:19.200 here to talk to you about race for three hours, you're gonna 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:20.320 chase me off. 00:17:20.320 --> 00:17:22.480 Even if you happen to like me, you're not gonna want to 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:23.280 hear it. 00:17:23.280 --> 00:17:28.240 There's a blessed passivity to things like podcasts and articles that you 00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:32.080 can share with other people because it's completely one-sided. 00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:34.480 You can pick up an article or maybe a book or a 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:38.880 podcast episode and you can listen or read, engage in your own 00:17:38.880 --> 00:17:40.480 time on your own terms. 00:17:40.480 --> 00:17:42.880 If you don't like it, you can just walk away. 00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:46.720 If we say something in one of our episodes that rubs you 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:49.680 the wrong way, like I gotta put this down, it's it's annoying 00:17:49.760 --> 00:17:52.880 or whatever, you can't and you don't have to chase us off 00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:54.400 to do it because we don't know who you are. 00:17:54.400 --> 00:17:58.240 We're never there's never any mutual engagement there. 00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:02.000 So we can make a case for something in this sort of 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:06.240 passive teaching environment that's different fundamentally than the way you can make 00:18:06.240 --> 00:18:08.160 a case to someone you know personally. 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:11.760 And so the very thing that we can do quite successfully on 00:18:11.760 --> 00:18:15.280 a podcast where take it or leave it, you can listen or 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:18.800 not, it would be virtually impossible to do this in person to 00:18:18.800 --> 00:18:22.400 strangers, even though virtually all of you s are strangers to us. 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:22.880 The fact that 00:18:23.840 --> 00:18:27.520 we're not coming to you and trying to convince you is part 00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:30.400 of what makes it easy for you to listen. 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:33.200 And I think one of the keys for us to understand as 00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:35.520 we're engaging interpersonally is that 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:39.360 one of the things that we say all the time, I particularly 00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:41.280 say a lot here, and I actually said on the myth of 00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:44.320 the 20th century this past week, I don't care if anyone agrees 00:18:44.320 --> 00:18:44.880 with me. 00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:48.400 And Adam on the the other show thankfully got me to clarify, 00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:51.040 I didn't mean that I'm completely indifferent to people believing these things. 00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:55.200 What I was talking about and what I say on this podcast 00:18:55.200 --> 00:19:00.640 frequently is I am completely outcome independent to how you receive this 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:04.080 information. Yes, Cory and I are spending you know probably about 30 00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:08.320 hours a week on some of the easier episodes preparing and delivering 00:19:08.320 --> 00:19:09.440 this stuff to you. 00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:10.880 And so there's clearly investment. 00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:14.480 We wouldn't be doing this if no one were listening and we 00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:16.080 thought no one cared. 00:19:16.080 --> 00:19:19.040 When I say I don't care, what I mean is that if 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:22.880 you as an individual who's completely unknown to me, don't agree with 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:24.640 the thing that we just told you Told you. 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:25.920 That's okay. 00:19:25.920 --> 00:19:27.920 We frequently say take it or leave it. 00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:31.120 There are a lot of episodes where we explicitly say don't take 00:19:31.120 --> 00:19:32.160 our word for it. 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:36.400 Don't listen to a couple of podcasters tell you stuff that's completely 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:38.000 contrary to everything you've ever heard. 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:40.320 That should rightly raise your hackles. 00:19:40.320 --> 00:19:42.400 I use that phrase frequently. 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:49.600 We have a natural basic animal understanding of something being off and 00:19:49.600 --> 00:19:54.400 the instinctual response to off is to be protective, and that's fine, 00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:55.120 that's good. 00:19:55.120 --> 00:19:57.680 The reason that Corey and I can say it's fine if you 00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:00.640 don't believe us, go look for yourself, is that we know that 00:20:00.640 --> 00:20:02.000 we're telling you the truth. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:05.920 And so our confidence in the subjects that we discuss is based 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:07.360 on the fact that we know they're true. 00:20:07.360 --> 00:20:11.680 We've done all the legwork long before we come to the microphone 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:14.000 and deliver one of these episodes. 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:17.360 So when I say I don't care and I say, you know, 00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:19.520 you can take it or leave it, it's not that I don't 00:20:19.520 --> 00:20:21.760 want you to believe or I don't I'm indifferent. 00:20:21.760 --> 00:20:25.200 It's that if you say that's crap, I don't believe any of 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:27.280 it, there's no skin off my nose. 00:20:27.280 --> 00:20:30.480 It doesn't hurt me if you don't agree. 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:36.160 And while that's easy in an impersonal situation like a podcast, I 00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:38.640 think the vital thing that one of the key things I hope 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:42.400 people will take away from this episode is that it's okay to 00:20:42.400 --> 00:20:46.000 have a sense of that same spirit in person with your friends, 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:47.280 with your family. 00:20:47.280 --> 00:20:51.360 And one of the big turnoffs when when you want to talk 00:20:51.360 --> 00:20:53.760 about a subject is when it's just the most important thing in 00:20:53.760 --> 00:20:55.360 the world for you to talk about it. 00:20:55.360 --> 00:21:00.080 If you're just brimming with excitement to tell something about somebody about 00:21:00.080 --> 00:21:03.680 something, maybe the best approach, you know, depend it depends on your 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:06.240 relationship. Maybe you have a relationship where your friends are just used 00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:08.960 to you getting excited about stuff and they'll humor you. 00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:09.280 But 00:21:10.400 --> 00:21:15.040 Sometimes for some people, depending on their personalities and their friends, if 00:21:15.040 --> 00:21:18.880 you're brimming with excitement to share something you just learned, maybe the 00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:21.840 best thing is to wait and to say nothing and to let 00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:23.760 it naturally come up in conversation. 00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:27.520 So you've been informed, you've learned about something, you really want to 00:21:27.520 --> 00:21:30.960 share details, but you don't want to be this guy who's just 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:34.720 wild-eyed about convincing other people. 00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:39.440 Sometimes the best way to be convincing is to completely relax and 00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:40.640 just forget about it. 00:21:40.640 --> 00:21:44.000 And then later on, you know, maybe months down the road, some, 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:46.640 you know, say race or IQ comes up. 00:21:46.640 --> 00:21:49.840 You now have something you can contribute to the conversation that's going 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:53.200 to be novel to your circle of friends because you know they're 00:21:53.120 --> 00:21:53.680 not listening. 00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:55.120 They haven't heard this stuff before. 00:21:55.120 --> 00:21:58.400 You can drop a few facts in conversation that are probably going 00:21:58.400 --> 00:21:59.360 to blow their minds. 00:21:59.360 --> 00:22:01.920 And you know, maybe they'll get really mad at you, like some 00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:02.960 people get mad at us. 00:22:02.960 --> 00:22:05.360 Maybe they'll pique their curiosity. 00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:09.040 The nice thing about having resources like books and articles and podcasts 00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:12.480 to point people to is that you don't have to have the 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:15.680 personal investment to say you must believe and listen to this thing 00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:16.400 right away. 00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:18.000 This is the most important thing. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:20.800 You can say, you know what, I heard something really interesting. 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:21.840 Listen to this episode. 00:22:21.840 --> 00:22:22.720 Tell me all you think. 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:24.480 I I found it curious. 00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:26.880 I was I was really interested by what they had to say. 00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:30.960 You can be non-committal, but curious, and that doesn't put pressure on 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:33.600 the other person to have to just sell, yeah, you're absolutely right. 00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:35.040 Those guys make complete sense. 00:22:35.040 --> 00:22:37.200 Maybe they're going to respond very negatively. 00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:40.240 And so one of the reasons that Corey and I created Stone 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:44.240 Choir is that we can we can take the heat for you. 00:22:44.240 --> 00:22:47.040 We can be the the crazy men screaming into the void on 00:22:47.040 --> 00:22:47.680 the internet. 00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:49.840 And then if a few people come along in here and say, 00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:53.600 Yeah, that makes sense, then you can have a conversation with your 00:22:53.600 --> 00:22:58.000 friend in your own particular context in a way that you know 00:22:58.240 --> 00:23:02.160 we've delivered the the scary payload and then you can work with 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:04.800 whatever bits of pieces and add your own and you know, say 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:08.240 you disagree with something we said and agree with something else, but 00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:11.360 you can take the pressure off of yourself and off of your 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:15.120 friends and family if you say, hey, here's something somebody else is 00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:17.280 doing. We've had a lot of feedback recently. 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:19.920 Yeah, I mentioned it to Adam on Myth of the Twentieth Century 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:22.960 that a number of people have said wives and girlfriends have started 00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:25.760 listening. And I realized that for saying that it might to to 00:23:25.840 --> 00:23:28.400 individuals who said that it might seem a little doxy. 00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:31.440 Any wives and girlfriends who are listening, I want you to know 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:34.720 that we've heard that dozens of times in the last couple weeks. 00:23:34.720 --> 00:23:37.120 So you should assume if you were one of those wives and 00:23:37.120 --> 00:23:41.680 girl or girlfriends, hopefully not both, that or mothers in some cases, 00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:44.400 it's not the man in your life that we're talking about, it's 00:23:44.320 --> 00:23:46.000 somebody else because there have been a bunch of people. 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:48.320 So it's it's kind of a firing squad where there's a blank. 00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:51.760 Assume that the guy that you th your your boyfriend or husband 00:23:51.840 --> 00:23:54.240 who told you to watch, he's not the one who DM'd us 00:23:54.320 --> 00:23:57.760 'cause like we don't people feel like there's a conspiracy to trick 00:23:57.760 --> 00:23:59.120 you into believing things. 00:23:59.120 --> 00:24:02.480 That's precisely the opposite intent of what we have. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:04.560 Here's some stuff, take it or leave it. 00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:06.160 We think there's some value here. 00:24:06.160 --> 00:24:09.280 That's an approach that when we take it into personally, it becomes 00:24:09.760 --> 00:24:12.400 very convincing just because the guy's relaxed. 00:24:12.400 --> 00:24:14.400 He's not freaking out. 00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:18.800 there's inherent skepticism when anyone delivers new information. 00:24:18.800 --> 00:24:21.840 And if they deliver it in a way that's wild-eyed and like 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:24.240 wants to grab you by the lapels and shake you and say 00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:25.920 you must believe this. 00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:28.880 My first response is no, I want no part in that. 00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:31.040 So we want to make sure that we don't come across that 00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:33.840 way and we don't just naturally like that's not my personality or 00:24:33.840 --> 00:24:35.360 Cordy's personality. 00:24:35.360 --> 00:24:39.520 But the same can also be even more effective in person. 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:42.080 Just say, hey, there's this cool thing I learned about. 00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:43.360 What do you think about it? 00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:44.400 And ask that way. 00:24:44.800 --> 00:24:46.960 Don't say you must believe this. 00:24:46.960 --> 00:24:48.880 Say, here's an interesting article. 00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:50.880 Here's an interesting podcast. 00:24:50.880 --> 00:24:52.160 What do you think about this? 00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:55.840 And then use it as a springboard for your own discussion to 00:24:55.840 --> 00:24:57.360 think what you think about the thing. 00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:01.200 Doesn't mean it doesn't need to be to mirror what some stranger 00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:02.160 on the internet told you. 00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:04.080 What do you think about the thing? 00:25:04.080 --> 00:25:06.000 How do you think it affects your life? 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:07.200 Then it becomes personal. 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:11.280 It doesn't become here's a religious tenant of this new big red 00:25:11.280 --> 00:25:12.960 pill discovery I have. 00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:16.400 It's just, huh, I think this is a fact and I think 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:19.600 it has this to do with life and I think that's relevant. 00:25:19.600 --> 00:25:20.640 What do you think? 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:25.440 That can be an interesting human conversation at a small scale where 00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:27.520 there's no hard feelings. 00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:30.560 If they if they if they say that's racist, that's dumb. 00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:32.800 You can just laugh and say, well, I I think everything gets 00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:35.280 called racist at this at this point, so I don't think that 00:25:35.280 --> 00:25:37.920 matters. Oh, by the way, those guys did an entire episode on 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:41.920 the invention of racism in the 20th century, you know, maybe find 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:44.320 out what the word that you're using actually means. 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:47.040 And then again, you can blame someone else if they disagree. 00:25:47.040 --> 00:25:48.960 You don't have to you don't have to fight. 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:54.400 We don't want people fighting with each other or straining relationships for 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:58.000 the sake of things that even though they do have impact on 00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:00.720 all of our lives, it's not immediately obvious. 00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:05.200 And so the the immediacy of the need is really what this 00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:05.920 part is about. 00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:09.360 There's no immediate need for the person you're talking to to agree 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:09.920 with you. 00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:12.640 Just as there's no immediate need for you to agree with us, 00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:15.360 you can listen to an episode and say, Yeah, I don't get 00:26:15.360 --> 00:26:17.760 that. That's dumb or it's crazy or whatever. 00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:18.480 That's fine. 00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:21.200 Maybe you come back to it later, maybe you completely forget about 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:22.480 it and never care. 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:24.400 That's perfectly okay. 00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:27.280 If you take that approach with your friends and family, you can 00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:32.960 still have normal human relationships with them, even while you're incorporating new 00:26:32.960 --> 00:26:36.400 things that you've learned into your your life and and maybe your 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:40.400 conversations. But don't make it the determining factor for whether or not 00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:43.920 you're going to be friends with your friends, or certainly whether you're 00:26:43.840 --> 00:26:45.920 gonna have a loving relationship with family. 00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:49.280 None of these things should ever undermine those things as far as 00:26:49.280 --> 00:26:50.240 it depends on 00:26:50.240 --> 00:26:51.440 you. You 00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:54.640 touched on a couple of things there that I want to expand, 00:26:54.640 --> 00:26:58.640 but first I guess I really should give an example of manipulation 00:26:59.280 --> 00:27:02.560 not being a negative thing, because I did say that and some 00:27:02.560 --> 00:27:05.120 maybe have not encountered that. 00:27:05.120 --> 00:27:08.800 One of the best and most obvious examples in is interacting with 00:27:08.800 --> 00:27:14.800 a small child, particularly one who is being cantankerous or Uncooperative for 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:17.840 some reason, maybe he doesn't want to put on his shoes. 00:27:17.840 --> 00:27:21.040 A neat little trick, if you've never done this with children, I 00:27:21.040 --> 00:27:25.680 highly recommend you use this, is instead of saying would you like 00:27:25.680 --> 00:27:27.280 to do something? 00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:31.680 Or if you do this then we'll give him two options, both 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:33.840 of which are acceptable to you. 00:27:33.840 --> 00:27:37.040 So for instance, if your child is not picking what he wants 00:27:37.040 --> 00:27:41.200 to eat for lunch or he's just being difficult with eating his 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:45.360 lunch. Say, would you rather have carrots or broccoli? 00:27:45.360 --> 00:27:48.000 Assuming he'll actually eat either of those. 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:52.960 Most children, when given the option of two things, will pick one. 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.840 Yes, eventually they get old enough to figure out your trick and 00:27:55.840 --> 00:27:57.680 go no, I want candy. 00:27:57.680 --> 00:27:59.520 But for a while it works. 00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:01.600 And that's manipulation. 00:28:01.600 --> 00:28:02.960 That's not negative. 00:28:02.960 --> 00:28:06.720 You're actually being a parent or an uncle or whatever you happen 00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:09.040 to be with relation to this child. 00:28:09.040 --> 00:28:13.680 You're doing your duty, and yes, you're manipulating the child to do 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:15.120 it, but that's a positive. 00:28:15.120 --> 00:28:19.200 You're doing it for a good reason in a good way. 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:22.800 But then the two things on which I wanted to expand, first 00:28:24.240 --> 00:28:31.120 you touched tangentially on the fact that human beings are hardwired to 00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:37.040 process things negatively more so than positively. 00:28:37.040 --> 00:28:42.000 This is just an important psychological and biological fact about humanity, and 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:46.320 the reason for it is fairly obvious if you think about it. 00:28:46.320 --> 00:28:50.960 If you are walking through the woods, and you hear some strange 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:55.360 noise, and you decide, Yep, that must be a bear or wolf, 00:28:55.360 --> 00:28:57.840 I am going to go the other direction. 00:28:58.480 --> 00:29:02.640 You're probably going to survive whatever that encounter is. 00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:06.160 Unless you're being actively stalked by something, in which case, you're still 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:08.160 more aware, your odds go up. 00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:10.720 If on the other hand, you are the person who just says, 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:13.840 Oh, must be a squirrel, and just keeps walking, you put a 00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:17.200 positive spin on it, you are more likely to be eaten by 00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:19.440 something and not survive. 00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:25.120 And so evolutionarily, and I do mean in the micro sense, the 00:29:25.120 --> 00:29:28.080 minor sense, not speciation, I'm not talking about that. 00:29:28.080 --> 00:29:31.600 And as Christians, yes, we can say that evolution in the micro 00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:32.480 sense is true. 00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:32.880 We know that. 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:36.160 That's why we have different dogs, why we have different races of 00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:41.920 men. But when it comes down to it, we are hardwired for 00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:46.320 a negative interpretation of novel information. 00:29:46.320 --> 00:29:51.120 Unless we have reason, good reason, to put a positive spin on 00:29:51.120 --> 00:29:54.960 it. So this goes back to that building of a relationship. 00:29:54.960 --> 00:29:59.440 If you are speaking with someone whom you trust, and that person 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:00.960 gives you novel information, 00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.360 you don't necessarily have to put the negative spin on it that 00:30:05.360 --> 00:30:10.320 you otherwise would because you trust the source. 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:12.960 For instance, if we go back to the example of being out 00:30:12.960 --> 00:30:16.160 in the woods, if you're wandering through the woods and you find 00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:20.080 a random mushroom and pick it up, unless you're a crazy person, 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:22.880 you're not going to just eat the random mushroom if you don't 00:30:22.800 --> 00:30:24.400 know what it is. 00:30:24.400 --> 00:30:28.480 However, if you're walking through the woods hiking with your friend who 00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:32.080 knows mushrooms really well and he hands you a mushroom, you're more 00:30:32.080 --> 00:30:34.640 likely to maybe try that. 00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:38.720 So it it matters that relationship you have, and it's important to 00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:42.720 bear in mind Bear in mind that we are all, to various 00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:49.120 degrees, of course, hardwired to put a negative spin on novel information. 00:30:50.400 --> 00:30:53.440 At least if we haven't become completely credulous and we believe everything 00:30:53.520 --> 00:30:58.000 we hear, which is the opposite problem. 00:30:59.360 --> 00:31:02.400 But then I I really already touched on the second point I 00:31:02.400 --> 00:31:05.520 wanted to make to expand on the issue of trust and that's 00:31:05.520 --> 00:31:05.760 just 00:31:07.120 --> 00:31:09.200 that's vital to all of this. 00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:12.560 Whether or not the audience trusts you. 00:31:12.560 --> 00:31:15.520 Whether or not the person with whom you're speaking can trust the 00:31:15.520 --> 00:31:16.480 things you say. 00:31:16.480 --> 00:31:17.680 And that's built over time. 00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:19.680 Trust takes time to build. 00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:23.760 It can be destroyed in seconds, which is always important to bear 00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:27.120 in mind, but it takes time to build. 00:31:27.120 --> 00:31:30.080 And that is fundamentally one of the things that we are doing 00:31:30.080 --> 00:31:31.520 on this podcast. 00:31:31.520 --> 00:31:35.120 It's why we don't mislead on anything. 00:31:35.120 --> 00:31:38.800 Whether or not you want to hear it, whether or not it 00:31:38.800 --> 00:31:42.720 is going to be necessarily good for us to say it, whatever 00:31:42.720 --> 00:31:46.640 the consequences may be, if it's true, we're going to say it. 00:31:46.640 --> 00:31:49.680 Now, we may endeavor to say it in a way that is 00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:54.080 persuasive, hence why we are doing this episode, and it wouldn't make 00:31:54.080 --> 00:31:57.040 much sense if we deliberately produced episodes in a way that was 00:31:57.600 --> 00:32:03.040 not persuasive, but we are not going to subvert the facts or 00:32:03.040 --> 00:32:05.360 the truth in order to be persuasive. 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:07.840 That veers into manipulation. 00:32:07.840 --> 00:32:12.560 Because part of the reason we can be effective, part of the 00:32:12.560 --> 00:32:17.520 reason you can share these episodes with others and actually have people 00:32:17.760 --> 00:32:22.480 listen and perhaps believe the things we say is because of that 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:25.680 building of trust, the fact that we are going to tell the 00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:30.800 truth about every single topic that comes up on this on this 00:32:30.800 --> 00:32:37.600 podcast. Because building that trust over time is vitally important. 00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:42.000 And all it takes is lying on one topic or about one 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:43.200 facet of a topic. 00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:44.640 And it destroys that trust. 00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:47.520 Because then people, when they listen to you, if they know in 00:32:47.520 --> 00:32:52.000 the past you've lied about something particularly particularly something important, then they're 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:55.440 going to wonder if you're lying every time. 00:32:55.440 --> 00:32:59.760 Now that eventually attenuates to some degree over time. 00:32:59.760 --> 00:33:03.040 So if you lied to someone ten years ago about something, and 00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:08.800 you have been truthful since, that's largely in the past. 00:33:08.800 --> 00:33:11.440 But it can take years. 00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.400 So it is important to maintain that trust you have 00:33:15.680 --> 00:33:19.920 with others if you are going to attempt to be persuasive with 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:22.080 those those others. 00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:26.240 And on the subject of lying, it's important again to distinguish between 00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:31.280 if we were to deceive for the purpose of advancing one of 00:33:31.280 --> 00:33:34.640 our points and if we simply got something factually wrong. 00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:37.760 We endeavored at great lengths not to let that happen. 00:33:37.760 --> 00:33:38.560 We're not perfect. 00:33:38.560 --> 00:33:43.120 We may misspeak, or we m we may inadvertently misconstrue something, it's 00:33:43.040 --> 00:33:46.080 not going to be something that's a key part of a point. 00:33:46.080 --> 00:33:49.360 But we're not saying if anyone ever makes any mistakes in their 00:33:49.360 --> 00:33:52.000 entire life you write them off, because that's that's insane. 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:53.600 No one can survive that. 00:33:53.600 --> 00:33:55.280 But again, it's the deception. 00:33:55.280 --> 00:33:58.960 You know, we talked last week about some of the people engaging 00:33:58.960 --> 00:34:03.120 in some of these clear deceptions where it's clear that they're you 00:34:03.120 --> 00:34:08.320 know whether they're grifters or they're just being entertaining, they're willing to 00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:12.960 fill people's heads full of lies for the sake of entertainment. 00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:16.800 And who knows what they get out of that doesn't matter. 00:34:16.800 --> 00:34:22.560 That's fundamentally different from just misspeaking or or accidentally mistaking something. 00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:24.960 Yeah, for example, when I was a myth of the twentieth century 00:34:25.120 --> 00:34:26.880 is after I I normally go to sleep. 00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:31.920 And so when I'm extremely tired, my reason, my faculties are fully 00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:34.480 intact, but my recall just goes in the toilet. 00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:37.680 So a couple times I completely flubbed some timeline stuff. 00:34:37.680 --> 00:34:40.880 And like, you know, if you I I practically had Moses landing 00:34:40.880 --> 00:34:43.920 on the moon, I was getting some of the timelines still wrong. 00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:47.280 That doesn't discredit what I said because like I acknowledged it at 00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:52.160 the time, but the overall point I was making wasn't hinging on 00:34:52.160 --> 00:34:56.080 that. And I think it's okay for you like try to get 00:34:56.080 --> 00:34:58.880 things straight before you say them as as we do. 00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:02.640 But if you make a mistake, don't be terrified of that either. 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:07.280 that's human to to misspeak or to accidentally get something wrong. 00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:10.400 If you find that you've made an error in something factually actually 00:35:10.640 --> 00:35:12.880 go back and fix it. 00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:18.400 On the related note of you know outcome independence and convincing people 00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:22.000 over time, I think time is a key part of this. 00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:24.480 Yeah, when we do an episode, we lay it down and then 00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:28.080 move on, and we'll refer it often to previous episodes and in 00:35:28.080 --> 00:35:30.640 newer ones as we're doing in this one. 00:35:30.640 --> 00:35:34.240 For example, one of the early episodes we did on framing, this 00:35:34.240 --> 00:35:35.920 is really a continuation of that. 00:35:35.920 --> 00:35:40.240 In the framing episode, we focused entirely on the use of frame 00:35:40.240 --> 00:35:42.400 in persuasion or deception. 00:35:42.400 --> 00:35:48.480 So this is kind of a continuation of that metacognition aspect of 00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:50.640 things. You know, this is this is a meta episode where we're 00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:54.240 talking about thinking about talking about things. 00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:57.600 Which is most people don't normally approach things that way. 00:35:57.600 --> 00:35:59.760 We're willing to do that, even though it's you know it's kind 00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:02.160 of a lull episode in terms of here's not a ton of 00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:02.960 new facts. 00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:06.000 It's just we've been delivering so many facts over the last number 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:09.840 of months that are really hard to swallow in some cases for 00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:10.720 some people. 00:36:10.960 --> 00:36:12.800 We want to just give people a little bit of time to 00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:16.480 digest and then figure out how to incorporate it themselves. 00:36:16.720 --> 00:36:19.360 I want to give a a personal example of this, just kind 00:36:19.360 --> 00:36:20.000 of demonstrate. 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:22.880 Like we we don't want to make this about us, but on 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:25.600 this podcast, we are the frame of reference for everything. 00:36:25.600 --> 00:36:29.440 So as you're listening, you know, you can apply what we're saying 00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:31.280 about ourselves in your own lives. 00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:32.400 I don't want you thinking about us. 00:36:32.400 --> 00:36:35.040 I want you thinking about yourself and how you can live a 00:36:35.040 --> 00:36:38.480 better Christian life speaking faithfully in your community. 00:36:38.480 --> 00:36:42.960 So just pointing to our example is not intended to be self-aggrandizing. 00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:46.480 It's literally just here's something that happened and maybe you can learn 00:36:46.480 --> 00:36:48.000 something from it. 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:50.480 I was on Gab for a year or so. 00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:54.160 Um I prior to that I had engaged before I got on 00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:57.760 Gab for for good after I finally got expelled from Twitter for 00:36:57.760 --> 00:36:58.480 the last time. 00:36:58.480 --> 00:37:01.360 I had engaged with the Andrew Torbon Gab and I eventually gave 00:37:01.360 --> 00:37:04.240 him a whole rash of crap because of some of his hiring 00:37:04.240 --> 00:37:07.600 practices. I was pretty antagonistic about him openly and he blocked me 00:37:07.680 --> 00:37:08.640 and like I don't blame him. 00:37:08.640 --> 00:37:11.760 I was I was ankle blowing on his timeline. 00:37:11.760 --> 00:37:15.600 And I was right incidentally about his hiring practices. 00:37:15.600 --> 00:37:18.400 He and he turned out later on to regret some of those 00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:22.160 people. But we began with kind of a strained relationship and then 00:37:22.160 --> 00:37:24.560 I got on Gab and he gave me a second chance and 00:37:24.560 --> 00:37:27.360 eventually he started boosting some of the things that I said and 00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:31.680 I appreciated that because I had shifted focus more than you know, 00:37:31.600 --> 00:37:34.880 in twenty seventeen versus twenty twenty. 00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:35.200 And 00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:39.280 I can't remember the ty I think it was it was either 00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:42.160 the end of twenty nineteen or twenty twenty was I think it 00:37:42.160 --> 00:37:46.960 was probably twenty twenty when I was invited by Andrew to do 00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:50.560 an essay on Christian nationalism. 00:37:50.560 --> 00:37:54.560 It was one of the earliest things that news.gab had been, they'd 00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:59.520 just begun sort of highlighting writers from the community, uh Boniface Option 00:37:59.680 --> 00:38:01.440 was one of the first guys he had and he had a 00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:03.600 few others, but I was one of the very first and I 00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:07.600 was almost the first to be invited to discuss anything about Christian 00:38:07.600 --> 00:38:12.320 nationalism. Now the episode that Corey and I did on Christian nationalism 00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:16.960 earlier this year was a much more fully fleshed out version of 00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:18.480 what I gave to Andrew. 00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:22.800 And the reason I'm highlighting this example is that when I was 00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:26.480 invited to do that, both Andrew and I knew like we never 00:38:26.560 --> 00:38:29.360 we've never had pr private personal conversations about any of this stuff 00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:32.480 I can just tell like by reading the room, reading the audience, 00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:35.040 even if it's an audience of man, one, if it's another man 00:38:35.040 --> 00:38:36.480 you're interacting with. 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:38.880 It was clear to both of it at the time that I 00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:42.400 was further to the right on things like race and and capital 00:38:42.560 --> 00:38:44.400 and nationalism than he was. 00:38:44.400 --> 00:38:47.840 And so when he invited me to write on Christian nationalism, I 00:38:47.840 --> 00:38:52.320 knew at that time that if I were to make the 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:57.920 fully racialist case for the subject that we made on Stone Choir, 00:38:57.920 --> 00:38:59.360 he wasn't going to publish it. 00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:02.320 Because at the time at least those were not his views. 00:39:02.320 --> 00:39:04.160 And so I didn't be antagonistic. 00:39:04.160 --> 00:39:06.800 It was an honor to be asked to do anything about a 00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:08.400 subject that was important to me. 00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:10.560 So I think we'll link in the show notes the essay that 00:39:10.560 --> 00:39:12.240 I did on Christian nationalism. 00:39:12.240 --> 00:39:14.640 So you can take a look at it if you're interested, and 00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:16.880 maybe contrast it with some of the things that we say on 00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:21.360 this episode, I bring this up because it's an example of being 00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:23.600 patient in your persuasion. 00:39:23.600 --> 00:39:27.280 I could have done a couple different things when Andrew came to 00:39:27.280 --> 00:39:30.800 me. I c I could have fought him and said, Well, I'm 00:39:30.800 --> 00:39:33.520 only gonna write for you if I get to make the completely 00:39:33.520 --> 00:39:36.960 racial case for what nations are, and I'm going to say that 00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:40.800 America is a whites-only country, and that's going to be the point. 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:43.440 If I had done that, he would have flat out said no. 00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:44.800 I knew that, and so I didn't. 00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:46.640 I wasn't gonna be antagonistic. 00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:50.000 Again, there when you look at the essay, everything that I say 00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:51.120 is entirely true. 00:39:51.120 --> 00:39:54.800 I was not being deceptive about what I said. 00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:58.400 However, I I omitted a big chunk of the argument for Christian 00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:01.600 nationalism by basically just focusing on the Christian part. 00:40:01.600 --> 00:40:04.400 I talked about the history, I talked about you know the state 00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:08.720 of of the West of Christendom and then the United States in 00:40:08.720 --> 00:40:14.880 terms of Christianity and a Christian government, I almost completely omitted any 00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:18.000 discussion of race because again, I knew it wouldn't be welcome. 00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:20.720 I knew that it would be too far at that time. 00:40:20.720 --> 00:40:24.160 So that was an example in my mind of trying to be 00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:25.680 effectively persuasive. 00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:29.520 I did make the case for Christian nationalism on the Christian side. 00:40:29.520 --> 00:40:32.080 And there's absolutely a case to be made there. 00:40:32.080 --> 00:40:35.760 Here's what Christian nations look like. 00:40:35.760 --> 00:40:40.160 I completely omitted any discussion of what nation means, which is again 00:40:40.240 --> 00:40:42.320 the other half of the conversation. 00:40:42.320 --> 00:40:45.200 And I did that because I knew it wouldn't be welcome. 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:48.240 A few years on, he's saying many of the same things now 00:40:48.320 --> 00:40:50.560 publicly that I was saying then. 00:40:50.560 --> 00:40:53.120 Things that I I you know, again I haven't talked to him, 00:40:53.120 --> 00:40:56.480 but just based on the other things going on at the time, 00:40:56.480 --> 00:40:58.160 I knew they wouldn't be welcome. 00:40:58.160 --> 00:41:00.480 And so rather than picking a fight with a guy with whom 00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:02.560 I'd already fought in the past, like, you know, we got over 00:41:02.560 --> 00:41:05.040 it, whatever. 00:41:05.040 --> 00:41:08.560 I chose to bite my tongue and to make the narrow case 00:41:08.560 --> 00:41:10.880 that I could make that we could both agree on. 00:41:10.880 --> 00:41:13.120 I, you know, I not to say the endorsed a hundred percent 00:41:13.120 --> 00:41:15.760 of what I said, but he was willing to publish it pretty 00:41:15.760 --> 00:41:16.480 much as is. 00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:19.440 So like I didn't I didn't push any buttons that were going 00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:22.880 to alienate the people he wanted to reach at the time. 00:41:22.880 --> 00:41:24.080 That's persuasion. 00:41:24.080 --> 00:41:26.960 You can make part of the case even knowing that you have 00:41:26.960 --> 00:41:28.160 other stuff to say. 00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:30.320 So what is that what does this have to do with you 00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:33.360 personally? You don't have to say it all at once. 00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:36.080 It's fine to just get one or two things out on the 00:41:36.080 --> 00:41:38.320 table and let people digest it. 00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:40.960 You know, a lot of the things that m my s my 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:45.360 friends and I were saying on Gab at the time are things 00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:48.000 that now Andrew is much more willing to say in public. 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:49.440 I don't think he believed in them. 00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:52.160 He's more willing to say them now because he realized that we 00:41:52.160 --> 00:41:53.200 were right. 00:41:53.200 --> 00:41:56.880 I'm not I'm certainly not taking personal credit for whatever to whatever 00:41:56.880 --> 00:41:58.880 degree he was persuaded by anything. 00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:02.480 I'm simply pointing out the fact that if instead of doing what 00:42:02.480 --> 00:42:06.000 I did, if I had been antagonistic, if I had said, unless 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:08.880 we go whole hog and do everything that I want us to 00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:10.880 say, I don't want any part of it. 00:42:10.880 --> 00:42:14.960 If you're an aggravating friend, if you're an aggravating ally to someone, 00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:18.000 that's a turn off to whatever it is you're trying to convey. 00:42:18.240 --> 00:42:21.040 If I have a point to make, I want to make it 00:42:21.040 --> 00:42:24.080 as gently and persuasively as possible. 00:42:24.080 --> 00:42:26.240 It's funny for me to say gently because I think a lot 00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:28.880 of people assume that Corey and I are bomb throwers. 00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:31.920 You know, we're we're bulls in a china shop just storming through 00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:36.240 everything that's going on and just leaving wreckage in our wake. 00:42:36.240 --> 00:42:37.840 That's not the case. 00:42:37.840 --> 00:42:42.000 But if you're not giving us a charitable view, particularly if you're 00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:45.040 just looking at social media, some people conclude that. 00:42:45.040 --> 00:42:47.120 Most of that frankly is reputational. 00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:48.880 It's not things that I've done. 00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:51.200 It's things that people have said about me. 00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:52.560 And so, you know, whatever. 00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:55.600 If I have to worry about what people are thinking about me, 00:42:55.600 --> 00:42:57.440 it's a complete waste of time. 00:42:57.440 --> 00:43:00.800 I worry about people getting these subjects right. 00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:04.720 And so when I was offered the opportunity to make a case 00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:08.320 for Christian nationalism, I did the best I could in the constraints 00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:09.360 that I had at the time. 00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:11.920 And then when Corey and I had our own platform here on 00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:16.000 Stone Choir to make a more fleshed out case, particularly for the 00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:21.200 nation side, the racial side of Christian nationalism, we made it here. 00:43:21.200 --> 00:43:23.440 And we made it, you know, in public and in a way 00:43:23.440 --> 00:43:26.560 that people who maybe read part of it, you know, before they've 00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:30.160 heard it elsewhere, they can come along at their own pace. 00:43:30.160 --> 00:43:32.160 I think that's another key element of this. 00:43:32.160 --> 00:43:34.240 Let people come along at their own pace. 00:43:34.240 --> 00:43:35.920 Because you're not trying to fix them. 00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:38.400 I wasn't trying to fix Andrew or anyone else. 00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:40.240 I was just trying to tell the truth. 00:43:40.240 --> 00:43:43.040 And if there's only a portion of it that they can receive 00:43:43.040 --> 00:43:46.880 and absorb, it's important to know that and to leave the rest 00:43:46.880 --> 00:43:50.160 out. Because if I can give you, you know, one dish that 00:43:50.160 --> 00:43:53.120 you're really gonna like and another dish that I know you're gonna 00:43:53.120 --> 00:43:56.160 hate, if the goal is for me to get you to eat 00:43:56.160 --> 00:43:58.240 a dish, I'll give you the one you're gonna like. 00:43:58.240 --> 00:44:00.880 I can save the you know, save the broccoli for later. 00:44:00.880 --> 00:44:01.680 Give you the carrots. 00:44:01.680 --> 00:44:04.000 That's That's perfectly fine. 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.120 We get so excited about trying to convince people and trying to 00:44:07.120 --> 00:44:10.000 fix them that we forget that, you know, in many cases we 00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:11.680 didn't believe this stuff a few years ago. 00:44:11.680 --> 00:44:15.600 So just be patient, show some grace, and give people a chance 00:44:15.600 --> 00:44:18.320 to come along at their own pace and leave them as r 00:44:18.480 --> 00:44:21.600 much room as you can, you know, tell them a truth where 00:44:21.600 --> 00:44:24.560 you can find common ground and push them a little bit. 00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:26.720 Give them a little bit more than they're comfortable with. 00:44:26.720 --> 00:44:28.160 Give them something to think about. 00:44:28.160 --> 00:44:29.040 But if you try to just 00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:33.360 waterboard someone and and put it down their throat all at once, 00:44:33.360 --> 00:44:37.200 you're you're going to alienate them even with the truth because the 00:44:37.200 --> 00:44:42.160 manner in which it's presented is so much worse that who cares 00:44:42.160 --> 00:44:45.600 what the content is if you're aggravating, it's people don't want anything 00:44:45.600 --> 00:44:46.480 to do with you. 00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:48.720 Be patient, have low time preference. 00:44:48.960 --> 00:44:52.640 We talk about this all the time in in the racial space. 00:44:52.640 --> 00:44:56.960 There are certain races that have higher or lower time preference. 00:44:56.960 --> 00:45:01.120 They're more focused on the future or the current. 00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:03.120 And we must be patient. 00:45:03.120 --> 00:45:04.880 We must be focused on the future. 00:45:04.880 --> 00:45:09.200 And knowing telling something to someone that's hard to hear, it's probably 00:45:09.200 --> 00:45:10.400 going to take some time. 00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:12.320 It might have taken you time to absorb it. 00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:15.920 It's going to take them maybe even more time because you have 00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:18.000 a certain set of givens and experiences. 00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:19.120 Theirs are different. 00:45:19.120 --> 00:45:22.240 If it takes them twice as long as you, just let it 00:45:22.240 --> 00:45:25.360 happen. Give 'em a little bit, give them what they can digest, 00:45:25.360 --> 00:45:26.480 and then wait. 00:45:26.480 --> 00:45:30.640 And be willing to answer questions in a way that's not challenging, 00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:33.840 that doesn't make them feel like you think there's something wrong with 00:45:33.840 --> 00:45:36.480 them that they don't agree with you. 00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:38.080 Just give it time. 00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:39.600 Be patient. 00:45:39.680 --> 00:45:39.840 So 00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:43.840 you're saying that time preference actually matters? 00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:46.000 it tr matters tremendously. 00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:49.440 And in the same people who think that you know the whites 00:45:49.440 --> 00:45:52.240 have super low time preference and we're just the masters of of 00:45:52.240 --> 00:45:54.960 patience. As soon as we learn something new, we go nuts and 00:45:55.120 --> 00:45:56.800 like, oh, I gotta tell everyone right away. 00:45:56.800 --> 00:45:58.000 It's good to be excited. 00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:01.920 It's bad to make other people regret y being in the same 00:46:01.920 --> 00:46:02.560 room with 00:46:02.560 --> 00:46:03.200 you. 00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:09.120 I was actually just discussing something tangentially related to this with someone 00:46:09.120 --> 00:46:10.240 last night. 00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:15.760 When you're building an argument, you may very well have to build 00:46:15.760 --> 00:46:18.800 the argument in pieces. 00:46:18.800 --> 00:46:22.960 And there's a tendency for some when it comes to politics or 00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:28.240 religion, these hot button issues, as it were, to attempt to get 00:46:28.240 --> 00:46:31.040 someone to believe everything all at once. 00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:33.200 And that's just not how things work. 00:46:33.200 --> 00:46:36.480 That's particularly not how human beings work. 00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:41.280 It to some degree, beliefs and things like that, very few people 00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:44.320 are going to turn on a dime and go from believing one 00:46:44.320 --> 00:46:47.920 thing to believing the diametrically opposed thing. 00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:51.280 Usually how it works is more akin to Bayesian updating, which essentially 00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:55.680 is just a fancy way of saying that as additional information comes 00:46:55.680 --> 00:47:00.080 in, the person slowly moves with regard to what he believes about 00:47:00.080 --> 00:47:01.920 the issue. 00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:05.360 And so over time, you may get someone to change his position 00:47:05.360 --> 00:47:05.840 on something. 00:47:06.880 --> 00:47:12.320 You're probably not going to get that in one discussion, in one 00:47:12.320 --> 00:47:15.440 conversation. With most people, some men, yes, if you present a strong 00:47:15.440 --> 00:47:18.160 enough case, they'll say, I was wrong previously. 00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:19.600 I now believe this. 00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:22.400 You may encounter some men like that. 00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:23.760 Not many. 00:47:23.760 --> 00:47:29.920 Most people take time to change their views, particularly on important things. 00:47:30.560 --> 00:47:34.880 And the context in which I was discussing this with the aforementioned 00:47:34.880 --> 00:47:38.240 person was basically apologetics. 00:47:38.240 --> 00:47:42.320 How do you prove the Christian God is the true God? 00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:46.400 I'm not going to go into apologetics in depth in this episode 00:47:46.480 --> 00:47:50.080 because I'm sure eventually we'll get around to probably a series of 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:55.440 episodes on apologetics different arguments for God and things like that. 00:47:55.440 --> 00:47:59.040 But the core point that I want to draw out of that 00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.800 is that when you're building the argument for the Christian God, you 00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:09.680 don't start by arguing for the Christian God. 00:48:09.680 --> 00:48:13.280 Particularly if you're dealing with an atheist or an agnostic, if you're 00:48:13.200 --> 00:48:16.240 dealing with someone who doesn't even believe in God, you don't start 00:48:16.240 --> 00:48:20.720 by saying, Jesus is your Lord and Savior, period. 00:48:21.280 --> 00:48:23.360 That's not going to get you anywhere the person is going to 00:48:23.840 --> 00:48:25.680 stop listening and probably walk away. 00:48:25.680 --> 00:48:28.720 And probably also be quite annoyed with you and perhaps not listen 00:48:28.720 --> 00:48:30.080 to you again. 00:48:30.080 --> 00:48:34.480 Instead, if you're building up, you build up to that argument by 00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:35.440 establishing 00:48:36.320 --> 00:48:42.240 more basic facts, by laying the groundwork, building a foundation, and you 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:48.160 do that by establishing, well, there's something other than matter. 00:48:48.160 --> 00:48:51.920 Okay, if there's something other than matter, the universe is not purely 00:48:52.080 --> 00:48:54.960 material, it's not a materialistic universe. 00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:58.320 We have to explain this thing that isn't matter. 00:48:58.320 --> 00:49:01.760 And then you can get into proving that the necessity of the 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:05.760 infinite. Then you can prove that the infinite is personal. 00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.880 The infinite being personal must be God. 00:49:08.880 --> 00:49:11.600 And then you can move on from there and build up and 00:49:11.840 --> 00:49:16.400 build your argument piece by piece and arrive at the conclusion that 00:49:16.400 --> 00:49:22.640 the Christian God is the only explanation for the information presented. 00:49:22.640 --> 00:49:26.880 But that takes time, that takes patience, that takes i multiple interactions 00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:28.160 with this person. 00:49:28.160 --> 00:49:30.480 You're probably not going to go through all of this in one 00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:31.760 marathon session. 00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:34.000 Maybe you will, maybe you happen to be the kind of person 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:37.280 who enjoys that, and if the other person also does, then by 00:49:37.280 --> 00:49:40.480 all means talk about it for six hours. 00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:45.840 But typically speaking, it is going to take many interactions over a 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:50.000 course of days or weeks, months, even years. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:56.480 I have friends where I have discussed religion and these issues for 00:49:56.480 --> 00:49:57.600 years with these people. 00:49:57.600 --> 00:50:00.560 They've slowly changed their position, but it takes time. 00:50:00.560 --> 00:50:04.240 And some are more resistant to change than others. 00:50:04.240 --> 00:50:08.960 My My father has a friend that he has had for 00:50:10.240 --> 00:50:14.960 I want to say 30 years almost who recently became a Christian 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:22.080 after my father had been discussing religion with him for thirty years, 00:50:22.080 --> 00:50:23.680 patience matters. 00:50:23.680 --> 00:50:27.520 These things, when they're these very important things, are going to be 00:50:27.520 --> 00:50:29.040 in large part in God's time. 00:50:29.040 --> 00:50:31.920 That doesn't mean don't play your role, do your part. 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.280 Of course do that, that's your duty as a Christian. 00:50:35.280 --> 00:50:36.880 But be patient. 00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:40.960 Recognize that a lot of these things are to some degree out 00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:42.880 of your hand. 00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:44.720 We're advising you to be effective 00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:50.400 and to be wise as a serpent when it comes to the 00:50:50.400 --> 00:50:52.800 things that are in your hands, the things that are in your 00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:58.560 control. Don't worry about the things that aren't the There was one 00:50:58.560 --> 00:51:04.000 time when Martin Luther was asked why he wasn't more worried about 00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:10.400 the state of Christian knowledge amongst supposed Christians and just the general 00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:12.240 state of Christendom. 00:51:12.240 --> 00:51:17.520 And his response was that he put in the work, and the 00:51:17.520 --> 00:51:20.560 outcome was in God's hands, and so he could enjoy his beer 00:51:20.560 --> 00:51:23.040 with Melanchthon. 00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:27.760 That's the right perspective to have on these things. 00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:33.440 And that's why that outcome independence that was mentioned earlier matters. 00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:37.600 Do the thing because it is the thing you should do, not 00:51:37.760 --> 00:51:39.600 because it guarantees a result. 00:51:39.600 --> 00:51:43.040 Because when it comes to human beings, the result is almost never 00:51:43.040 --> 00:51:47.920 guaranteed. Particularly when you're dealing with persuasion, you're dealing with psychology. 00:51:48.240 --> 00:51:52.800 You're dealing with things that are very much beyond your control. 00:51:52.800 --> 00:51:54.800 You can influence these things. 00:51:54.800 --> 00:51:57.680 You cannot really control them. 00:51:57.680 --> 00:52:03.280 So you can make the persuasive argument, you can properly engage with 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:08.400 other people, but if you become obsessed with the outcome, you're actually 00:52:08.400 --> 00:52:12.400 going to harm your chances of arriving there because you're going to 00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:14.240 be obnoxious. 00:52:14.240 --> 00:52:19.840 If you're constantly insisting, no, you absolutely must believe this specific conclusion. 00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:25.920 And yes, I that's sort of what social media and certain fora 00:52:25.920 --> 00:52:27.760 tend to encourage. 00:52:27.760 --> 00:52:30.800 That it brings it out of a certain personality type. 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:35.040 I willingly admit that I engage in some of that sometimes. 00:52:35.040 --> 00:52:37.120 But there's a time and a place. 00:52:37.120 --> 00:52:41.520 Engaging on Twitter again, general audience you probably don't know most of 00:52:41.520 --> 00:52:43.200 those people personally. 00:52:43.200 --> 00:52:46.880 You're going to engage differently from how you engage with a family 00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:51.520 member or a close friend, or someone you met at a bar, 00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:54.560 stranger, what have you. 00:52:54.560 --> 00:52:56.800 So, know your audience. 00:52:56.800 --> 00:53:01.840 When you know your audience, and you aren't so hyper focused on 00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:04.960 the outcome that you can just be a person and have a 00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:10.640 conversation You are going to be so much more effective than if 00:53:10.640 --> 00:53:11.280 you are 00:53:12.240 --> 00:53:18.160 just hyper laser focused on that outcome and driving people away because 00:53:18.800 --> 00:53:20.400 you're being abrasive. 00:53:21.120 --> 00:53:24.880 If you're being abrasive or obnoxious you are going to be less 00:53:24.880 --> 00:53:28.160 effective. That's just the fact of the matter. 00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:30.720 Yes, it's about the truth, ultimately. 00:53:30.720 --> 00:53:33.120 The truth matters. 00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:35.840 But your goal is to get people to believe the truth. 00:53:35.840 --> 00:53:37.120 Hopefully, that's your goal. 00:53:37.120 --> 00:53:40.080 If that's not your goal, then it's manipulation and you're doing something 00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:41.120 you should stop. 00:53:41.120 --> 00:53:44.560 But if your goal is to get people to believe the truth, 00:53:44.560 --> 00:53:50.080 then yes, you are absolutely correct to say, think and believe that 00:53:50.080 --> 00:53:52.880 the truth matters. 00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:55.760 But that's not the end of it, because you have to have 00:53:55.760 --> 00:53:58.800 a way, you have to know how to get people to that 00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:02.560 truth. And you can't get them to the truth if all you 00:54:02.560 --> 00:54:06.000 do is just keep insisting, This is the truth and you must 00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:07.040 believe it. 00:54:07.040 --> 00:54:09.840 You have to know how to get to the truth, and that's 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:13.360 where what we're discussing in this episode comes in. 00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:15.840 That's where persuasion matters. 00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:18.560 How do you get from where you are 00:54:19.840 --> 00:54:21.680 to where you need to be? 00:54:21.680 --> 00:54:26.160 How do you get other people to join you to in going 00:54:26.160 --> 00:54:27.920 to where they need to be. 00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:29.120 Where is the truth? 00:54:29.120 --> 00:54:31.600 How do we get there? 00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:36.880 Another big part of persuasion is having that degree of confidence, not 00:54:36.880 --> 00:54:39.520 necessarily in yourself, but in your beliefs. 00:54:39.760 --> 00:54:43.280 You know, when the uh we did the episode on the fear 00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:45.760 of the Lord, I talked about when I had a stroke and 00:54:45.760 --> 00:54:50.000 my confidence in God and the fact that that's not me, that's 00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.320 not my faith doing something because I chose it for it to 00:54:54.320 --> 00:54:55.040 do that. 00:54:55.040 --> 00:54:58.560 That was God giving me a gift and taking care of me 00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:00.000 when I needed it. 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:03.280 And I only mention it then, I only mention it now because 00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:07.600 it's an example of how when we have genuine confidence in the 00:55:07.600 --> 00:55:11.920 promises of the one true God, it's something from outside us that 00:55:11.920 --> 00:55:16.640 doesn't it gives us a sort of supreme confidence that in the 00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:19.600 in the liturgy it's described as the the peace of God which 00:55:19.600 --> 00:55:21.360 passes all understanding. 00:55:21.360 --> 00:55:26.720 That sort of absolute assurance in a belief, and I'm not saying 00:55:26.720 --> 00:55:30.400 that you know everything that you believe about all these material things 00:55:30.400 --> 00:55:34.000 should have the same degree of confidence as your confidence in your 00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:36.160 faith. Our faith should be paramount. 00:55:36.160 --> 00:55:40.000 And so there are a lot of aspects of this episode that 00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:43.840 go to sharing the gospel, but they also equally apply to sharing 00:55:43.840 --> 00:55:44.800 other things. 00:55:44.800 --> 00:55:49.440 Regardless of what we're sharing, when we're confident and what we're saying, 00:55:49.440 --> 00:55:50.560 that comes across. 00:55:50.560 --> 00:55:54.400 And there's a mixture of there there's a balancing act between the 00:55:54.400 --> 00:55:58.000 confidence and what we have to say and the desire for others 00:55:58.000 --> 00:55:58.800 to believe it. 00:55:58.800 --> 00:56:04.880 You know, Corey's father's friend, after thirty years, regardless of the arguments 00:56:04.880 --> 00:56:08.800 that his dad made to him, the fact that he still cared 00:56:08.800 --> 00:56:12.880 enough and loved him enough and didn't give an inch of ground 00:56:12.880 --> 00:56:18.400 on the subject all by itself was a testimony to his faith, 00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:21.280 to the fact that there was something real there. 00:56:21.280 --> 00:56:26.160 Because that sort of persistence is rarely found where falsehood is found. 00:56:26.640 --> 00:56:29.920 People don't die with the lie, not in real life. 00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:32.960 Yeah, if you're trying to trick someone, you might try to go 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:37.200 down with a ship for something to gain some advantage, but only 00:56:37.200 --> 00:56:41.040 if you actually believe something will you stick to it when you 00:56:41.040 --> 00:56:43.680 have nothing else left to cling to. 00:56:43.680 --> 00:56:49.200 And so as we look to be persuasive, it's not about winning 00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:50.800 arguments. I think that's one of the key things. 00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:53.760 It's not about winning arguments on the internet or in person or 00:56:53.760 --> 00:56:54.240 anything else. 00:56:54.240 --> 00:56:55.760 It's not about winning. 00:56:55.760 --> 00:57:01.040 It's about if you have the truth, any truth, and someone else 00:57:01.040 --> 00:57:04.560 is missing it, the problem you're trying to solve is to convey 00:57:04.560 --> 00:57:08.080 that truth to them in a way that they'll actually receive it. 00:57:08.080 --> 00:57:12.560 And again, that may take patience, it may take a particularly rational 00:57:12.560 --> 00:57:15.680 argument. It depends on whom you're speaking with. 00:57:15.680 --> 00:57:19.520 Different men will respond differently to different types of arguments. 00:57:19.520 --> 00:57:24.240 And so in some cases, for some individuals, maybe you're not up 00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:24.560 to it. 00:57:24.560 --> 00:57:25.200 And that's fine. 00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:29.280 You know, a lot of people are not equipped to make the 00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:35.040 fully sound convincing argument for something to any random man. 00:57:35.040 --> 00:57:37.520 You know, if there's a if there's a blue-collar guy who's a 00:57:37.520 --> 00:57:41.680 machinist and on his in his spare time, he does small engine 00:57:41.680 --> 00:57:45.360 repair. He probably doesn't worry about any of this crap. 00:57:45.360 --> 00:57:46.880 And God bless him for it. 00:57:46.880 --> 00:57:51.280 I wish that more people didn't have to worry about these things. 00:57:51.280 --> 00:57:55.120 The reason that a man like that becomes the battle space is 00:57:55.120 --> 00:57:58.720 that while he is blessed by not paying attention to any of 00:57:58.720 --> 00:58:02.560 this stuff, many of the subjects that we've discussed in the past 00:58:02.560 --> 00:58:05.520 episodes are still floating around in the ambient world. 00:58:06.240 --> 00:58:09.120 And so he's absorbing bits of pieces. 00:58:09.120 --> 00:58:13.520 And some of those things have been deliberately inserted into the world 00:58:13.520 --> 00:58:17.760 that he's only barely paying attention to in order to encircle him 00:58:18.160 --> 00:58:22.480 and limit the options for you know his kids, his community, his 00:58:22.480 --> 00:58:28.400 schools, whatever, he has fewer options, he has fewer legitimate moral choices 00:58:28.400 --> 00:58:32.560 in the world's morality because of the things that we talk about. 00:58:32.560 --> 00:58:36.800 So while he's not paying attention to it, maybe there's a time 00:58:36.800 --> 00:58:38.960 and a place where you would have a small piece of the 00:58:38.960 --> 00:58:42.880 discussion with such a man and say, hey, you know, did you 00:58:42.880 --> 00:58:45.520 hear about X, Y, and Z in the news? 00:58:45.520 --> 00:58:47.280 I think that this is what's going on. 00:58:47.280 --> 00:58:48.480 I learned this other bit. 00:58:48.560 --> 00:58:50.400 I think we connect A to B. 00:58:50.400 --> 00:58:51.840 There's a picture there. 00:58:51.840 --> 00:58:54.000 The guy who's not going to pay much attention, maybe you can 00:58:54.000 --> 00:58:56.160 make a case to him, and maybe that's all you do. 00:58:56.160 --> 00:58:59.280 Maybe all he's worried about is the local schools where his kids 00:58:59.280 --> 00:59:03.520 go and he wants his kids to turn out as decent human 00:59:03.520 --> 00:59:06.160 beings, as everyone does. 00:59:06.160 --> 00:59:08.960 You don't need to make a full case to every single person. 00:59:08.960 --> 00:59:12.240 You need to make the necessary case to make sure that they 00:59:12.240 --> 00:59:14.160 can't be used against you. 00:59:14.160 --> 00:59:17.920 They can't be weaponized to harm what's around them. 00:59:17.920 --> 00:59:19.840 And for some people, that's the whole hog. 00:59:19.840 --> 00:59:24.640 There are some people that are sufficiently engaged, they're sufficiently persuasive to 00:59:24.640 --> 00:59:29.840 others that if they're missing out on something, it's important for someone 00:59:29.840 --> 00:59:31.120 to reach them. 00:59:31.120 --> 00:59:34.160 Yeah, when I when I was on Myth of the Twentiet Century, 00:59:34.160 --> 00:59:36.160 one of the questions that Hans asked me was if I could 00:59:36.160 --> 00:59:38.560 recommend any books on Christian nationalism. 00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:42.800 And I mentioned uh Torba and Boniface Options book and Stephen Wolfe's 00:59:42.800 --> 00:59:44.720 book, and I'd said I hadn't read them. 00:59:44.720 --> 00:59:47.520 And I I think maybe I was a bit uncharitable to those 00:59:47.520 --> 00:59:51.120 books. Because I hadn't read them, the only impressions I had of 00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:54.640 them were of the things that those men have said since they 00:59:54.640 --> 00:59:56.960 came out over the last year or so. 00:59:56.960 --> 01:00:01.600 And my impression was that the arguments that they were making were 01:00:01.600 --> 01:00:04.080 essentially civic nationalist arguments. 01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:10.880 Arguments that blood doesn't matter, the nations are countries, and therefore it's 01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:11.680 a legal entity. 01:00:11.680 --> 01:00:12.880 That was the impression I had. 01:00:12.880 --> 01:00:15.040 If that was wrong, I apologize. 01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:18.560 Certainly lately, some of their comments are much closer to things that 01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:19.280 we're saying. 01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:20.320 I'm thankful for that. 01:00:20.320 --> 01:00:21.280 Again, that's 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:26.320 I highlight that to say that I think that when those books 01:00:26.320 --> 01:00:31.200 came out they were making another part of the argument for Christian 01:00:31.200 --> 01:00:33.680 nationalism, just as I did in the original essay. 01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:35.760 There was a lot more to say than what I said. 01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:39.280 It's perfectly legitimate to make part of the argument, if it's the 01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:44.240 part that you can gain credibility with and you can make credibly. 01:00:44.240 --> 01:00:50.160 The reason that I highlighted the distinction between my overtly racial view 01:00:50.160 --> 01:00:54.160 of Christian nationalism on myth of the twentieth century with Adam was 01:00:54.160 --> 01:00:58.560 that I know that much of his audience is not Christian or 01:00:58.560 --> 01:00:59.920 not particularly engaged. 01:00:59.920 --> 01:01:03.920 And so that what they see coming from within the church is 01:01:04.240 --> 01:01:11.520 a completely pan-nationalist, essentially universalism, that all human beings are completely interchangeable, 01:01:11.520 --> 01:01:18.320 borders are evil, countries should be subsumed by basically NGOs, just unifying 01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:21.120 us as one human mass of 01:01:22.160 --> 01:01:23.360 charity cases. 01:01:23.360 --> 01:01:26.880 Like it's just all the horrors that you know Soros is producing, 01:01:26.880 --> 01:01:30.400 especially in Europe, because guys can walk or take a boat from 01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:31.600 Africa into Europe. 01:01:31.600 --> 01:01:33.120 It's harder to get them here. 01:01:33.120 --> 01:01:36.720 They have to you have to walk up from Mexico. 01:01:36.720 --> 01:01:41.200 I wanted to specifically highlight to his audience that there's an explicitly 01:01:41.200 --> 01:01:44.960 racial case that is a fundamental case in my view of the 01:01:44.960 --> 01:01:49.920 Christian nationalist argument because I don't want people to think the only 01:01:49.920 --> 01:01:53.920 way to be Christian is to say that all states must collapse, 01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:58.960 that all borders must be destroyed, that all people must be wiped 01:01:58.960 --> 01:02:02.640 out by virtue of interbreeding, that you take every race, you mix 01:02:02.640 --> 01:02:05.760 it with every other race, until we're all the same color, we 01:02:05.760 --> 01:02:08.080 have no differentiating features whatsoever. 01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:11.760 There are a lot of people in the church saying precisely that. 01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:14.960 And so if I was uncharitable or if I was inaccurate, I 01:02:14.960 --> 01:02:16.240 apologize to them. 01:02:16.240 --> 01:02:20.560 I was trying to specifically make the case that there's absolutely a 01:02:20.560 --> 01:02:24.000 racial view in scripture of nations. 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:25.360 It's synonymous. 01:02:25.360 --> 01:02:29.360 It's synonymous in the law in the seventeen nineties in this country. 01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:32.240 It's synonymous two thousand years earlier in scripture. 01:02:32.240 --> 01:02:36.240 The reason that there's not much discussion of race in Christian history 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:37.840 is it was so obvious. 01:02:37.840 --> 01:02:41.360 There's no theology for us to go back to and borrow from 01:02:41.360 --> 01:02:45.120 the past when men were more intelligent about making these arguments, because 01:02:45.680 --> 01:02:47.280 this wasn't the fight. 01:02:47.280 --> 01:02:50.800 The fight in previous centuries was about other doctrines. 01:02:50.800 --> 01:02:55.040 And so today, when Satan moves the fight to being about 01:02:56.240 --> 01:03:02.000 race, about genes, about borders, about the created body, male and female, 01:03:02.000 --> 01:03:08.000 two sexes, not infinite sexes, disparate races, distinct races, not some just 01:03:08.320 --> 01:03:11.120 sea of humanity that's indistinguishable. 01:03:11.120 --> 01:03:14.080 Those are the two sides that they're the most important for me 01:03:14.080 --> 01:03:15.280 to defend. 01:03:15.280 --> 01:03:15.920 And so 01:03:17.200 --> 01:03:20.640 back to my point earlier about Andrew, if I had attacked him 01:03:20.640 --> 01:03:23.520 at the time and said, No, we must make the racialist case 01:03:23.600 --> 01:03:26.400 or there's no case at all, I don't think that he would 01:03:26.400 --> 01:03:28.400 necessarily be where he is today. 01:03:28.400 --> 01:03:30.880 Again, I'm not taking credit for that, I'm just saying I could 01:03:30.880 --> 01:03:35.680 have very easily done harm to my views by being a jerk 01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:36.240 about it. 01:03:36.240 --> 01:03:38.480 If I had argued and picked a fight. 01:03:38.480 --> 01:03:41.280 In fact, I left Gab, you know, about a year later, or 01:03:41.520 --> 01:03:43.040 maybe not too long after. 01:03:43.440 --> 01:03:47.600 For unrelated reasons, I was very frustrated with some business choices. 01:03:47.600 --> 01:03:52.320 He had made some moderation choices, some culture choices on Gab. 01:03:52.320 --> 01:03:57.600 I made a strategic decision about persuasion not to fling mud at 01:03:57.600 --> 01:04:01.120 him. Because although I disagreed with the things that he was doing 01:04:01.120 --> 01:04:04.400 on his platform, not mine, he's the boss, he owns it, he 01:04:04.400 --> 01:04:05.760 can do what he wants with it. 01:04:05.760 --> 01:04:08.160 I strongly disagreed with some of the things that he did and 01:04:08.160 --> 01:04:10.000 I kept my mouth shut. 01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:12.640 The reason I did that, the reason I didn't go after him 01:04:12.640 --> 01:04:16.720 when I was pissed off and I was disappointed, was that despite 01:04:16.720 --> 01:04:19.440 my differences with him about how he was running his business and 01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:23.040 some of those strategic strategic decisions, he was still doing very good 01:04:23.040 --> 01:04:25.040 work and things that mattered to me. 01:04:25.040 --> 01:04:28.800 And I knew that alienating him, him being a jerk, being the 01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:33.760 guy who's sniping at someone would make anything that I'm saying elsewhere 01:04:34.000 --> 01:04:35.840 a turnoff to him. 01:04:35.840 --> 01:04:39.680 And I highly him in particular because he has influence. 01:04:39.680 --> 01:04:42.400 He has much more influence than we have. 01:04:42.400 --> 01:04:47.200 And we're not ankle biters and we're not trying to ride coattails. 01:04:47.200 --> 01:04:50.480 But if there are people, there's certain people in the world who 01:04:50.480 --> 01:04:52.160 have bully pulpits. 01:04:52.160 --> 01:04:56.400 There are people who have influence over more people than you do. 01:04:56.400 --> 01:04:59.760 If you're in a position where you can influence someone who's more 01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:03.200 influential than you, it's really important to get it right. 01:05:03.200 --> 01:05:06.160 And part of that is not making them regret listening to you. 01:05:06.160 --> 01:05:08.480 And so I didn't go after him, despite the fact that I 01:05:08.480 --> 01:05:10.080 was frustrated at the time. 01:05:10.080 --> 01:05:12.800 I pretty much kept my mouth shut publicly, other than saying a 01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:16.320 couple things that were limited to the scope of that because he's 01:05:16.320 --> 01:05:17.680 doing really good work. 01:05:17.840 --> 01:05:21.200 I saw the trajectory and I hope that he would continue to, 01:05:21.200 --> 01:05:23.840 for lack of a better term, move to the right. 01:05:23.840 --> 01:05:24.560 And he has. 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:28.000 He's saying a lot of the things today on Twitter and on 01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:30.960 Gab that were on the verge of getting people banned from Gab 01:05:31.040 --> 01:05:32.320 a few years ago. 01:05:32.320 --> 01:05:35.600 So people change, people's views change. 01:05:35.600 --> 01:05:40.240 And sometimes being persuasive, they just biting your tongue. 01:05:40.240 --> 01:05:43.600 One of the most persuasive things that I did in that particular 01:05:43.600 --> 01:05:48.480 situation was not to be antagonistic about something that wasn't a big 01:05:48.480 --> 01:05:49.520 ticket item. 01:05:49.520 --> 01:05:52.000 It had to do with this platform, but it didn't have to 01:05:52.000 --> 01:05:55.200 do with the larger project that I saw us as allies in, 01:05:55.200 --> 01:05:58.720 and that is I want this to be a Christian nation. 01:05:58.720 --> 01:06:02.240 I want his kids to grow up in a place where they're 01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:05.360 not going to be persecuted for the fact that they're white. 01:06:05.360 --> 01:06:06.480 That's important to me. 01:06:06.480 --> 01:06:07.680 I don't have kids of my own. 01:06:07.680 --> 01:06:08.640 I never will. 01:06:08.640 --> 01:06:11.840 The only thing that I can do is effectively to fight for 01:06:11.840 --> 01:06:14.080 other people's kids in their world. 01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:16.000 I don't get anything out of any of this. 01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:19.280 And one of the things that Ab mentioned to me after doing 01:06:19.280 --> 01:06:22.480 the podcast was that he sees the treatment that Corey and I 01:06:22.480 --> 01:06:25.360 have received at the hands of the church as part of our 01:06:25.360 --> 01:06:26.800 persuasion to him. 01:06:26.800 --> 01:06:30.400 He can tell that we are sincere because we're being treated like 01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:34.800 crap by some of the people he sees as being detrimental to 01:06:34.800 --> 01:06:35.760 the world. 01:06:35.760 --> 01:06:38.560 I I apologize if I'm speaking out of term by saying something 01:06:38.560 --> 01:06:41.600 you said to me private, but like that is a common view 01:06:41.600 --> 01:06:42.960 that I think a lot of people have. 01:06:42.960 --> 01:06:46.880 And Cory and I understand that instinctively, and we also understand it 01:06:46.880 --> 01:06:50.400 explicitly from all the conversations we've had with these men. 01:06:50.400 --> 01:06:53.360 There are a lot of men on the right who don't have 01:06:53.360 --> 01:06:57.920 a church, they don't know God, they see ontological evil in the 01:06:57.920 --> 01:07:02.800 world, and they're looking for where people talk about ontological good. 01:07:02.800 --> 01:07:04.080 That should be the church. 01:07:04.080 --> 01:07:05.120 It is the church. 01:07:05.120 --> 01:07:07.280 And yet, Corey and I are two of the only men in 01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:10.400 the world who can speak to men like Adam and say, look, 01:07:10.400 --> 01:07:14.320 there's a Christian case to be made for not destroying your race 01:07:14.400 --> 01:07:16.400 in your nation, in your country. 01:07:16.400 --> 01:07:18.080 There's a Christian case for that. 01:07:18.080 --> 01:07:20.880 There's a moral case, you know, there's a secular case too. 01:07:20.880 --> 01:07:22.640 I want there to be a Christian voice in those 01:07:23.600 --> 01:07:28.720 conversations. If you're persuasive in a way that makes you someone people 01:07:28.720 --> 01:07:32.560 are willing to listen to, you're given the opportunities to say more 01:07:32.720 --> 01:07:35.280 than maybe you would have just said on your own. 01:07:35.520 --> 01:07:38.720 You know, if if we were the bomb throwers that people say 01:07:38.720 --> 01:07:40.400 we are, he wouldn't want to talk to me. 01:07:40.400 --> 01:07:43.600 I'd just be another crazy guy on the internet. 01:07:43.600 --> 01:07:48.160 If you can seem calm and persuasive and relaxed and not worry 01:07:48.160 --> 01:07:50.160 about what people think. 01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:52.240 People care more about what you think. 01:07:53.040 --> 01:07:57.280 it's one of the many ironies of the way the human psychology 01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:01.200 works. We're convinced by people who don't care if they're convincing more 01:08:01.200 --> 01:08:04.080 than we're convinced by people who really want to be convincing. 01:08:04.080 --> 01:08:06.800 And it's not an act on the part of Corey and myself. 01:08:06.800 --> 01:08:09.440 I just I I want you to believe because it's true. 01:08:09.440 --> 01:08:12.720 And we I frequently say if we never get any credit, fine, 01:08:12.720 --> 01:08:15.920 whatever. We never wanted to do this in the first place. 01:08:15.920 --> 01:08:18.080 We didn't want to start a podcast. 01:08:18.080 --> 01:08:20.880 We did it because we felt that no one else was speaking 01:08:20.880 --> 01:08:22.080 to these matters. 01:08:22.080 --> 01:08:25.120 And the subject of credibility, if you go back and look at 01:08:25.120 --> 01:08:29.280 the arc of of episodes on Stone Choir, we waited until we 01:08:29.280 --> 01:08:31.840 were six, eight months in, until we got into some of the 01:08:31.840 --> 01:08:35.120 really controversial so-called subjects. 01:08:35.120 --> 01:08:37.440 That was conscious, that was deliberate on our part. 01:08:37.440 --> 01:08:41.440 If we had begun on episode one talking about Africans and Jews 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:44.880 and these other things that get people so angry. 01:08:44.880 --> 01:08:47.760 We would have just been the podcast that talks about really angering 01:08:48.000 --> 01:08:49.440 controversial subjects. 01:08:49.440 --> 01:08:50.560 That's not us. 01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:52.640 There's a lot of things to talk about. 01:08:52.640 --> 01:08:56.240 So it's fine to tailor the message, narrow it down, and make 01:08:56.720 --> 01:08:58.320 your point and then wait. 01:08:58.320 --> 01:08:59.760 Let the point do its work. 01:08:59.760 --> 01:09:03.200 And then you come back later and see if anything's growing and 01:09:03.200 --> 01:09:05.920 find out if it was rocky soil or if it was fertile 01:09:05.920 --> 01:09:07.840 soil. But you never know. 01:09:07.840 --> 01:09:12.640 It's n it's the truth that gives the growth to the message. 01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:15.680 It's not it's ultimately not how persuasive you are. 01:09:15.680 --> 01:09:18.480 Really a lot of persuasion is just not getting in the w 01:09:18.640 --> 01:09:22.480 in the way by your own stumbling In getting in the way 01:09:22.480 --> 01:09:26.720 of the truth that you're trying to convey to others. 01:09:27.040 --> 01:09:27.200 When 01:09:27.200 --> 01:09:33.520 it comes to making these arguments, particularly about complex or central, very 01:09:33.520 --> 01:09:38.800 important subjects, you should always bear in mind that you may not 01:09:38.800 --> 01:09:44.160 be the person who actually makes the final part of the argument. 01:09:44.160 --> 01:09:46.400 You may even not make the majority of the argument. 01:09:46.400 --> 01:09:47.360 You may just 01:09:48.560 --> 01:09:50.080 put one brick in place. 01:09:50.080 --> 01:09:52.240 You may add one building block. 01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:56.240 You may be the one who lays part of the foundation. 01:09:56.240 --> 01:09:59.440 You're building part of the argument for that person. 01:09:59.440 --> 01:10:03.040 Don't necessarily feel that you have to be the one to make 01:10:03.120 --> 01:10:04.960 the entirety of the argument. 01:10:04.960 --> 01:10:07.840 Now if it's a family member or a close friend, maybe you 01:10:07.840 --> 01:10:10.720 will be the person who makes the rest of the argument as 01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:11.120 well, but 01:10:12.720 --> 01:10:16.320 you may be discussing something with someone you met at a coffee 01:10:16.320 --> 01:10:20.000 shop and you may lay the foundation for someone else to come 01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:22.560 in and make the rest of that argument in the future. 01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:26.560 So don't think that necessarily just because you didn't get to whatever 01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:30.080 ultimate conclusion you think you should have been able to make that 01:10:30.080 --> 01:10:33.360 what you did was ineffective or useless. 01:10:33.360 --> 01:10:36.080 It probably was not. 01:10:36.080 --> 01:10:40.800 Human beings work by building up information over the course of a 01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:44.480 lifetime, so all of those interactions matter. 01:10:44.480 --> 01:10:48.080 It may be that your role is just to add that one 01:10:48.080 --> 01:10:52.800 brick. Don't necessarily feel that that's unimportant. 01:10:53.120 --> 01:10:56.400 Go ahead and find a wall, if you're so inclined, and start 01:10:56.400 --> 01:10:58.560 pulling random bricks out and see what happens. 01:10:58.560 --> 01:11:00.640 They all matter. 01:11:00.640 --> 01:11:02.320 Every little piece matters. 01:11:02.320 --> 01:11:05.040 I'm not actually telling you to go pick apart your neighbor's wall. 01:11:05.040 --> 01:11:06.000 Don't do that. 01:11:06.000 --> 01:11:08.960 Only your own wall. 01:11:08.960 --> 01:11:13.280 But there's another point in all of this that I feel it's 01:11:13.280 --> 01:11:14.480 important to make explicit. 01:11:14.480 --> 01:11:18.240 We've sort of implied it throughout the episode so far, but 01:11:19.600 --> 01:11:25.360 fundamentally, you will never persuade anyone of anything. 01:11:25.360 --> 01:11:28.480 Now what I mean by that is something very specific Specific 01:11:30.240 --> 01:11:37.360 No one is persuaded by someone else because ultimately how it 01:11:37.360 --> 01:11:40.960 works is the other person takes in the information, takes in the 01:11:40.960 --> 01:11:46.480 argument, the Data, whatever it is that you are providing, synthesizes that 01:11:46.480 --> 01:11:49.920 himself and he persuades himself. 01:11:49.920 --> 01:11:53.440 Now, for some men, it may be that your argument is the 01:11:53.440 --> 01:11:56.240 one that he takes, makes his own, and persuades himself, given your 01:11:56.320 --> 01:11:58.880 argument your argument. 01:11:58.880 --> 01:12:01.840 Now it's it's a subtle point, it seems like a minor point. 01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:04.960 It's almost on the level of Kant's point about the thing in 01:12:04.960 --> 01:12:08.320 itself versus the thing as we perceive it with the senses, but 01:12:08.320 --> 01:12:11.280 it's a salient point. 01:12:11.280 --> 01:12:16.240 What you are doing is providing that other person with the necessary 01:12:16.240 --> 01:12:21.600 means to construct what he needs to arrive at the conclusion. 01:12:21.600 --> 01:12:23.840 And that's why it's important to know your audience. 01:12:23.840 --> 01:12:26.720 That's why it's important to know the person with whom you're speaking, 01:12:26.720 --> 01:12:30.960 because you'll know what he needs to construct that argument for himself, 01:12:30.960 --> 01:12:34.880 the one that will convince him, that will persuade him. 01:12:34.880 --> 01:12:38.800 Because ultimately that is an internal matter to the person. 01:12:38.800 --> 01:12:42.400 Persuasion happens in the psyche, as it were, in the mind of 01:12:42.400 --> 01:12:44.720 the person being persuaded. 01:12:44.720 --> 01:12:47.760 It doesn't happen externally. 01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:52.720 Yes, the information is provided externally, the argumentation in some cases, the 01:12:52.720 --> 01:12:55.280 data, whatever it may be. 01:12:55.280 --> 01:12:58.480 But the ultimate persuasion is an internal matter 01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:04.160 And that is again why knowing your audience, having that relationship, having 01:13:04.160 --> 01:13:06.880 that built-up trust truly matters. 01:13:06.880 --> 01:13:10.240 Because then the person can take what you are giving him and 01:13:10.240 --> 01:13:13.120 construct the case himself. 01:13:13.120 --> 01:13:17.280 Because ultimately he is the one doing that final construction in his 01:13:17.280 --> 01:13:18.640 own mind. 01:13:18.640 --> 01:13:24.320 So yes, you can be persuasive, but the ultimate act of persuasion 01:13:24.320 --> 01:13:28.400 lies in the mind of the person persuading, in this case, persuading 01:13:28.400 --> 01:13:29.920 himself. 01:13:29.920 --> 01:13:32.800 The last big point that I want to make is is a 01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:36.000 corollary to that. 01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:39.920 Something happened in the last few years really in the universe. 01:13:39.920 --> 01:13:41.120 I think we've all felt it. 01:13:41.120 --> 01:13:47.200 Between COVID and the BLM riots, I think everyone has a sense 01:13:47.200 --> 01:13:52.000 that there's been a shift somehow metaphysically. 01:13:52.000 --> 01:13:55.360 And one of the things that happened both in COVID and with 01:13:55.360 --> 01:14:02.400 BLM is that the divisions within families, within communities, 01:14:02.400 --> 01:14:06.400 within friendships became much more apparent. 01:14:06.400 --> 01:14:10.880 Or in some cases where there was previously no division, now there 01:14:10.880 --> 01:14:12.000 is division. 01:14:12.240 --> 01:14:15.360 The important thing that I want to highlight in the case of 01:14:15.360 --> 01:14:21.280 of COVID and BLM and all the associated screaming is that when 01:14:21.520 --> 01:14:25.840 those divisions occurred in what had formerly seemed to be cohesive units, 01:14:25.840 --> 01:14:31.120 you know, some cases congregations were split by COVID policies or COVID 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:35.120 fears or, you know, COVID messaging, whatever. 01:14:35.120 --> 01:14:40.240 We on the right, the people who are right about these things, 01:14:40.240 --> 01:14:42.720 should never be the ones who are 01:14:43.760 --> 01:14:48.000 causing the division for the sake of accusation. 01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:50.640 What I mean by that is if you look back at BLM 01:14:50.640 --> 01:14:54.480 and COVID, it was the people on the left who by and 01:14:54.480 --> 01:15:00.720 large became utterly hysterical and filled with condemnation and rage at anyone 01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:02.480 who wouldn't comply. 01:15:02.480 --> 01:15:06.400 It seemed like there was an entirely new emergent religion that appeared 01:15:06.560 --> 01:15:10.240 almost fully formed in the span of like six months. 01:15:10.240 --> 01:15:16.000 And in that time, the adherence to that new religion were vicious 01:15:16.000 --> 01:15:19.120 to anyone who would not bend the knee to it. 01:15:19.120 --> 01:15:22.160 You know, literally bending the knee in the case of the BLM 01:15:22.160 --> 01:15:28.400 crap. Those were the people who were cutting us out of their 01:15:28.400 --> 01:15:31.120 lives. Those are the people who if we had to cut them 01:15:31.120 --> 01:15:34.560 out of our lives, it is it was usually self-defense. 01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:38.480 It was usually actual fear that these people who had once been 01:15:38.480 --> 01:15:42.640 friends or maybe even family had now become a real potential physical 01:15:42.640 --> 01:15:44.480 threat to you or your family. 01:15:44.480 --> 01:15:47.840 And so if you did cut them off, it was almost certainly 01:15:47.840 --> 01:15:51.760 defensive. And it wasn't simply, I hate this guy 'cause he's wrong 01:15:51.760 --> 01:15:52.880 about something. 01:15:52.880 --> 01:15:55.520 And so the last point that I want to make is that 01:15:56.160 --> 01:15:59.760 we on the right are not the ones who isolate people and 01:15:59.760 --> 01:16:02.320 disparage them for being wrong. 01:16:02.320 --> 01:16:05.440 If you have someone that you love someone you're friends with, some 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:09.200 of your neighbors with, and they're wrong about something, that's a matter 01:16:09.200 --> 01:16:10.800 of Christian love and concern. 01:16:10.800 --> 01:16:11.920 You want them to be right. 01:16:11.920 --> 01:16:14.400 You want to help move them in the right direction. 01:16:14.880 --> 01:16:19.680 But because it is rooted in love and not rooted in wanting 01:16:19.680 --> 01:16:23.840 to win an argument, you never get to the point that you 01:16:23.840 --> 01:16:26.400 say I hate you because you don't agree with me. 01:16:26.400 --> 01:16:29.760 I want nothing to do with you because you believe the wrong 01:16:29.760 --> 01:16:30.720 thing about this. 01:16:30.720 --> 01:16:31.920 That's not us. 01:16:31.920 --> 01:16:33.760 That's not what we on the right do. 01:16:33.760 --> 01:16:36.800 That's not how truth behaves. 01:16:36.800 --> 01:16:39.520 Yeah, Cory and I can tell you don't believe a word we 01:16:39.520 --> 01:16:42.160 say, go read for yourself, and we know you're going to come 01:16:42.160 --> 01:16:45.200 to the same conclusions, in part because we don't want you to 01:16:45.200 --> 01:16:49.440 be persuaded by podcasters or by people writing articles or people writing 01:16:49.440 --> 01:16:53.360 books. You shouldn't be persuaded by the guy who makes the loudest, 01:16:53.360 --> 01:16:55.760 angriest, whatever argument. 01:16:55.760 --> 01:16:57.840 You should be persuaded by truth. 01:16:57.840 --> 01:17:01.440 And so when we do these meta episodes, we want to get 01:17:01.440 --> 01:17:06.320 people engaging in metacognition about thinking about thinking about truth. 01:17:06.320 --> 01:17:09.440 We want you thinking about how you think, how do you incorporate 01:17:09.440 --> 01:17:12.720 the ideas that you hear into what you believe? 01:17:12.720 --> 01:17:14.640 Because it's a two-step process. 01:17:14.640 --> 01:17:18.000 You hear something, you think about it, if you believe it, it 01:17:18.000 --> 01:17:20.080 becomes much more intrinsic. 01:17:20.080 --> 01:17:24.400 What we saw with COVID and BLM is that they kind of 01:17:24.400 --> 01:17:27.840 skipped the truth part and just went straight to the belief part. 01:17:27.840 --> 01:17:31.440 And so a religion emerged with nothing behind it except for these 01:17:31.920 --> 01:17:38.480 fictional fantasy stories and the religious fervor that was used to target 01:17:38.480 --> 01:17:42.000 us was it was horribly divisive. 01:17:42.000 --> 01:17:47.680 Again it divided families, it divided communities and congregations in terrible ways. 01:17:47.680 --> 01:17:51.520 And we should never be the ones who are causing that. 01:17:51.520 --> 01:17:55.360 So if you're friends with someone and you're further to the right 01:17:55.360 --> 01:18:01.520 than them, never go after them, certainly publicly, for not being as 01:18:01.520 --> 01:18:04.640 right as you are, for being wrong about something that you're right 01:18:04.640 --> 01:18:07.920 about. Don't tone police the way they say things. 01:18:07.920 --> 01:18:12.320 You know it's funny, I people think that I'm a bomb thrower 01:18:12.320 --> 01:18:15.200 on on Twitter, not to the same degree as Corey, but fee 01:18:15.280 --> 01:18:17.360 people think that we're both antagonistic. 01:18:17.360 --> 01:18:21.760 If you actually look at me replying to other people's accounts, I 01:18:21.760 --> 01:18:26.800 very, very rarely say anything negative in someone else's replies. 01:18:26.800 --> 01:18:30.240 Usually if I reply to someone and I disagree, it's A, it's 01:18:30.160 --> 01:18:31.280 a mutual. 01:18:31.280 --> 01:18:34.960 B I'm very respectful, and C I'm trying to make a narrow 01:18:34.960 --> 01:18:37.920 point. I'm trying to nudge things a little bit. 01:18:37.920 --> 01:18:40.400 But I But I never look at someone's timelines. 01:18:40.400 --> 01:18:43.760 I never look at their statements and say, I gotta fix what 01:18:43.760 --> 01:18:44.400 they're saying. 01:18:44.400 --> 01:18:45.920 They got something wrong. 01:18:45.920 --> 01:18:47.280 But it's their timeline. 01:18:47.280 --> 01:18:50.400 It's their space space to make their point about whatever they want 01:18:50.400 --> 01:18:51.600 to talk about. 01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:52.400 You know. 01:18:52.400 --> 01:18:54.560 Sometimes I can contribute something helpful. 01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:56.880 Sometimes I can contribute, you know, I want to nudge in a 01:18:56.880 --> 01:18:59.600 slightly different direction because I think it'll be helpful to them in 01:18:59.600 --> 01:19:01.840 what they're actually trying to say. 01:19:02.560 --> 01:19:05.520 The important point that I want people to take home is that 01:19:05.520 --> 01:19:09.920 if you see someone making a mistake wherever and in conversation on 01:19:09.920 --> 01:19:15.840 social media, your first instinct shouldn't be I gotta fix this. 01:19:15.840 --> 01:19:17.360 You've said that all along. 01:19:17.360 --> 01:19:21.200 Your friends, your family, especially are not people you should be fixing. 01:19:21.200 --> 01:19:23.360 They're people you should be loving. 01:19:23.360 --> 01:19:27.440 And loving them involves helping them at some point get some of 01:19:27.440 --> 01:19:28.560 these things right. 01:19:28.560 --> 01:19:31.600 But if there's someone who's friends with you or friends with your 01:19:31.600 --> 01:19:35.920 sphere of friends, particularly if you're the undesirables, as Corey and I 01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:40.000 are, you know, social media is very interesting because anyone can interact 01:19:40.000 --> 01:19:40.880 with anyone. 01:19:40.880 --> 01:19:43.360 You know, you can reply to Elon Musk and he may see 01:19:43.360 --> 01:19:44.560 it. That's incredible. 01:19:44.560 --> 01:19:46.880 Like that's just that's completely insane. 01:19:46.880 --> 01:19:50.480 On Gab, you know, it's a smaller space, you can respond to 01:19:50.640 --> 01:19:53.680 And or he's likely to see it because it's a much more 01:19:53.680 --> 01:19:56.800 tight knit community, which is one of the awesome things about it. 01:19:56.800 --> 01:19:57.600 It's a community. 01:19:57.600 --> 01:20:00.240 It's a it's a town square. 01:20:00.240 --> 01:20:02.480 It's not like a global billboard. 01:20:02.480 --> 01:20:03.840 That's a different culture. 01:20:03.840 --> 01:20:04.800 And that's a good thing. 01:20:04.800 --> 01:20:07.200 The internet needs multiple different cultures 01:20:08.480 --> 01:20:12.800 On the internet, if someone says something and you disagree with it, 01:20:12.800 --> 01:20:14.480 it's okay to let it go. 01:20:14.480 --> 01:20:17.840 You don't constantly have to fix everything around you. 01:20:17.840 --> 01:20:22.800 And so because other people can interact completely a random on Twitter, 01:20:22.800 --> 01:20:27.680 especially because it's so large, it's very conspicuous to me, especially in 01:20:27.680 --> 01:20:30.880 the last few months, just kind of looking at my own interactions, 01:20:30.880 --> 01:20:33.520 who is willing to still talk to me? 01:20:33.520 --> 01:20:37.520 Because Because there's been such a concerted slander campaign against Corey and 01:20:37.520 --> 01:20:41.840 myself and against Stone Choir that a lot of people just refuse 01:20:41.840 --> 01:20:43.760 to acknowledge we exist anymore. 01:20:43.760 --> 01:20:46.400 Even some who will speak in private won't speak to us in 01:20:46.400 --> 01:20:48.800 public because there are downsides to them. 01:20:48.800 --> 01:20:50.160 And I respect that. 01:20:50.160 --> 01:20:52.080 I don't go after these people in public. 01:20:52.080 --> 01:20:53.040 I'm not naming them here. 01:20:53.040 --> 01:20:55.440 I'm not trying to shame anyone by mentioning this. 01:20:55.440 --> 01:21:00.240 I'm simply highlighting that there are people who are still willing to 01:21:00.240 --> 01:21:03.680 follow me, who are willing to respond reply to me and engage 01:21:03.680 --> 01:21:05.840 with me in public. 01:21:05.840 --> 01:21:08.800 I respect the fact that they're taking a chance to even be 01:21:08.800 --> 01:21:10.640 seen interacting favorably. 01:21:10.640 --> 01:21:15.440 You know, th there are multiple parables in scripture about engaging, you 01:21:15.440 --> 01:21:18.480 know, with the publican, or you know, you have lepers, you have 01:21:18.480 --> 01:21:23.200 these text collectors, you have undesirables of the lowest order, and the 01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:28.000 manner in which they were treated in those days. 01:21:28.000 --> 01:21:32.080 Today, being on the dissident right is basically being part of a 01:21:32.080 --> 01:21:33.280 leper colony. 01:21:33.280 --> 01:21:34.320 And it's artificial. 01:21:34.320 --> 01:21:35.600 I mean, it's not leprosy. 01:21:35.600 --> 01:21:40.000 You know, leprosy was a highly contagious hideous disease, it was incurable. 01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:44.400 Leprechaunies existed because those people had to be set apart, not only 01:21:44.400 --> 01:21:48.400 because ceremonially they were unclean, but because they had a horrific contagious 01:21:48.400 --> 01:21:53.360 disease. There's no contagion among the dissident right. 01:21:53.360 --> 01:21:56.240 There's only people who are telling the truth, and then other people 01:21:56.240 --> 01:21:58.560 are afraid to go near them because of it. 01:21:58.560 --> 01:22:02.560 So I highlight this because if there's someone who's willing to actually 01:22:02.560 --> 01:22:06.320 still talk to me publicly, I respect that and I respect them 01:22:06.320 --> 01:22:06.880 for it. 01:22:06.880 --> 01:22:09.840 And part of my respect for that is that I'm going to 01:22:09.840 --> 01:22:12.720 engage with them as little as possible because I don't want to 01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:15.200 bring heat on them by speaking to them. 01:22:15.200 --> 01:22:18.160 Because there are people who hate me so much that they're sitting 01:22:18.160 --> 01:22:22.880 in the telegram public chat for Stone Choir trying to dox pastors 01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:23.440 and laymen. 01:22:23.440 --> 01:22:26.000 If the anyone they can find, they want to dox them and 01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:29.520 go to their congregations and try to get them destroyed. 01:22:29.520 --> 01:22:33.360 Because Because they hate the fact that we are speaking so much. 01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:34.560 Why do they hate it? 01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:37.280 They hate it because we are the men who are actually able 01:22:37.280 --> 01:22:40.800 to talk to men like Adam and men like Andrew from different 01:22:40.800 --> 01:22:44.240 perspectives and help them move in a direction that's closer to the 01:22:45.040 --> 01:22:48.960 truth. And it's a truth that's completely at odds with the world. 01:22:48.960 --> 01:22:52.560 And there's servants of the world that passionately hate that and will 01:22:52.720 --> 01:22:56.400 spare no expense of and they'll take any amount of time to 01:22:56.400 --> 01:22:59.280 try to harm us and anyone who comes near us. 01:22:59.280 --> 01:23:02.240 So if someone is not willing to come near me publicly, I 01:23:02.240 --> 01:23:03.840 notice, I absolutely notice. 01:23:03.840 --> 01:23:05.920 I'm really good at pattern recognition. 01:23:05.920 --> 01:23:08.480 If you used to talk to me and you don't anymore, I 01:23:08.480 --> 01:23:09.120 can tell. 01:23:09.120 --> 01:23:10.240 And I don't care. 01:23:10.240 --> 01:23:13.360 I if there's anything to forgive, I certainly forgive it. 01:23:13.360 --> 01:23:16.400 But it is conspicuous when someone's willing to talk to me. 01:23:16.400 --> 01:23:19.200 I mention this because if there's someone who's still willing to engage 01:23:19.200 --> 01:23:22.960 with the men who are treated as lepers and as tax collectors, 01:23:22.960 --> 01:23:24.800 don't make them regret it. 01:23:24.800 --> 01:23:28.000 Don't make their lives harder because they're one of the few people 01:23:28.000 --> 01:23:32.480 who are willing to actually treat us like Christian brothers and like 01:23:32.480 --> 01:23:34.400 human beings. 01:23:34.400 --> 01:23:38.160 If If you hold views that are not popular, if you hold 01:23:38.160 --> 01:23:41.920 views that are contrary to the world's religion, and someone is willing 01:23:41.920 --> 01:23:45.600 to engage with you, make sure they don't regret it. 01:23:45.600 --> 01:23:48.160 I mean that's the one of the chief m messages of this 01:23:48.160 --> 01:23:52.000 episode. Make sure that when you're trying to persuade someone, sometimes it's 01:23:52.000 --> 01:23:54.720 just as simple as I'm not going to be a jerk. 01:23:54.720 --> 01:23:57.200 I'm not going to make your life any harder than it already 01:23:57.200 --> 01:24:00.080 is. Because you have your own thing to focus on. 01:24:00.240 --> 01:24:04.720 That's important too, to not be the guy that someone regrets that 01:24:04.720 --> 01:24:06.000 they were friends with. 01:24:06.000 --> 01:24:10.400 Because that's a way to lose friends and negatively influence people. 01:24:10.400 --> 01:24:13.200 So I mentioned the the Andrew example earlier on. 01:24:13.200 --> 01:24:16.960 If I had gone after him and been a complete jerk, he 01:24:16.960 --> 01:24:20.080 would have very rightfully ignored some of the things I said and 01:24:20.080 --> 01:24:22.000 maybe he wouldn't think what he does now. 01:24:22.000 --> 01:24:24.640 Even maybe if only for the sake that he didn't want to 01:24:24.640 --> 01:24:27.520 be associated with someone who would be as much of a jerk 01:24:27.520 --> 01:24:28.320 as me. 01:24:28.320 --> 01:24:31.920 So sometimes you just have to shut your mouth and let someone 01:24:31.920 --> 01:24:33.520 be wrong on the internet. 01:24:33.520 --> 01:24:35.120 It's not the end of the world. 01:24:35.120 --> 01:24:38.240 And it may be that by being silent, in the future, you're 01:24:38.240 --> 01:24:41.760 buying a chance to make the persuasive case that you didn't have 01:24:41.760 --> 01:24:44.320 the opportunity to make in that moment. 01:24:44.320 --> 01:24:48.240 Patience, grace are the key elements of persuasion. 01:24:48.240 --> 01:24:51.360 Sometimes just saying nothing is the most powerful thing you can say. 01:24:51.360 --> 01:24:54.080 And some part of that is just still being a friend, like 01:24:54.080 --> 01:24:57.680 Corey's father, who was friends for a man because they were friends, 01:24:57.680 --> 01:25:01.120 and the fact that the man wouldn't receive the gospel didn't dissuade 01:25:01.120 --> 01:25:04.480 him from being his friend or from continuing to talk about it. 01:25:04.480 --> 01:25:08.960 Being friends with people who have different views is a testimony to 01:25:08.960 --> 01:25:11.280 the confidence that you have in your own beliefs. 01:25:11.280 --> 01:25:14.560 So don't let your beliefs become an excuse for you to be 01:25:14.560 --> 01:25:18.960 brittle. Truth never causes brittleness, it causes strength. 01:25:19.280 --> 01:25:23.440 And wherever you find strength, especially today, when there are men with 01:25:23.440 --> 01:25:28.960 convictions, people who don't know anything will see strength being upheld in 01:25:28.960 --> 01:25:32.480 the face of adversity and think maybe there's some truth behind that. 01:25:32.480 --> 01:25:36.720 Because there has to be some metaphysical explanation for how someone could 01:25:36.720 --> 01:25:38.480 withstand the hatred of the world. 01:25:38.480 --> 01:25:41.920 It can't just maybe he's just completely crazy, or maybe he's on 01:25:41.920 --> 01:25:42.880 to something. 01:25:42.880 --> 01:25:45.680 Maybe all you do as a personal witness to the world is 01:25:45.680 --> 01:25:48.800 acting in his example who says, I'm still here. 01:25:48.800 --> 01:25:50.480 You can't chase me away. 01:25:50.480 --> 01:25:53.760 If that's the only persuasion you can do, that's a powerful message. 01:25:53.760 --> 01:25:57.440 Because there's so few men today who are willing to do that. 01:25:57.920 --> 01:25:58.240 So 01:25:59.120 --> 01:26:01.040 there's a lot to think about here. 01:26:01.040 --> 01:26:05.040 It's a meta discussion around how we interact with each other and 01:26:05.040 --> 01:26:07.680 how we think about ourselves. 01:26:07.680 --> 01:26:08.800 Be patient. 01:26:08.800 --> 01:26:10.080 It's okay to be quiet. 01:26:10.080 --> 01:26:12.400 You know, measure twice, cut once. 01:26:12.400 --> 01:26:16.000 Think before you go after someone, anywhere. 01:26:16.000 --> 01:26:19.040 Even think before you tell them the things that we talk about 01:26:19.040 --> 01:26:22.720 on Stone Choir or wherever else you're getting your interesting information. 01:26:23.360 --> 01:26:27.200 Don't be hasty to try to upend someone else's life. 01:26:27.200 --> 01:26:30.880 Because even if it's beneficial, it may well upend things. 01:26:30.880 --> 01:26:34.320 Have some empathy for that and have some grace for that person 01:26:34.320 --> 01:26:37.440 to try to go easy and to make it easy for 'em. 01:26:37.440 --> 01:26:40.160 And if they want nothing to do with it, you should still 01:26:40.160 --> 01:26:40.720 love them. 01:26:40.720 --> 01:26:44.400 Because whatever relationship you had beforehand should still exist. 01:26:44.400 --> 01:26:47.920 And if they respond the way people did with COVID and BLM 01:26:48.080 --> 01:26:49.920 by writing you off. 01:26:49.920 --> 01:26:54.080 Well, that was part of Jesus' prophecies of end times that fathers 01:26:54.080 --> 01:26:59.840 would be adversaries against daughters, mothers and sons, daughter-in-laws and father-in-laws, and 01:26:59.920 --> 01:27:03.440 butchering the Relationships, like Jesus basically covered everything. 01:27:03.440 --> 01:27:07.200 Families will be torn down, churches will be torn down internally, not 01:27:07.200 --> 01:27:08.800 just externally. 01:27:08.800 --> 01:27:12.240 Whether or not this is an end-time moment, the fact that these 01:27:12.240 --> 01:27:15.680 things are happening are always a reminder to us to believe God's 01:27:15.680 --> 01:27:18.240 promises, because they will come true one day. 01:27:18.240 --> 01:27:21.360 And when we see them happening, it's not a cause for panic 01:27:21.360 --> 01:27:22.160 or worry. 01:27:22.160 --> 01:27:24.240 It's just a cause for making sure that we focus on the 01:27:24.240 --> 01:27:25.440 things that matter most. 01:27:25.440 --> 01:27:27.840 And chief of all, that's God and His promises. 01:27:27.840 --> 01:27:40.320 And that includes the truth of all things in creation.