February 7, 2020 • 46 mins
"Cancel culture" has come to represent a lot of things. For some, it's a necessity in order to remove from positions of influence and power, people who are toxic. But for others, it almost feels like no one is safe. Everyone's past has transgressions, and should we be held to the fire for who we used to be or is it more important to focus on the growth and change of who we are becoming? If we hold one another to the standard of perfection, we have no other option but to fail. So let's cancel perfection. Let's become better. Let's be who we are meant to be.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode. I'm gonna start
plugging some stuff up at the front so we can
get the business out of the way in the beginning
as opposed to the end, because I like to end,
you know, some music in a nice way instead of
like ending all emotionally and special, and then music fades,
and then I got to come back and say stuff,
which is weird, and then more music and then it
(00:33):
has to fade again. It's like it's repetitive. So this
is a motivation Report. I actually want to make an
announcement so you're all aware. Last episode was about Sonder,
our web series. Took a little time away to film that.
We wrapped production, which is really really great. Make sure
that you're keeping up with that show at Sonder dot
la on Instagram. It's going to be a lot of
(00:53):
fun and things are looking really really good. We're really
excited to share it on October sixteenth, so don't forget
to follow Sounder dot org on Instagram. I'm on Instagram
at Will Sterling Underscore. That's me and yeah, the show,
the Motivation Report started god three years ago, yeah, I
don't know, a long time ago, and it started I
(01:16):
do have a passion for motivational speeches, but you know,
it kind of comes in waves, and I don't always
love what everybody says. I don't always think that what
everybody says in terms of the grind and the hustle
is actually healthy. I talked about that in the episode
on Burnout a couple of episodes ago, that you know,
a lot of it is like this encouragement of doing
everything at one hundred and ten percent all the time,
(01:37):
which is not sustainable or possible, and like taking no rest,
and like isolating yourself and like not hanging out with
your friends and not doing anything fun. It's weird. Life
is about a balance. It's not about obsession in that way.
I think you do have to be obsessed with the
success that you want, but you you're not necessarily going
to find happiness through isolation. So yeah, anyway, but the
(02:00):
show started because I had a passion for speeches like that,
and I wanted to communicate some of the life lessons
that I had learned. But I used this podcast as
like therapy for myself, honestly, and so the things that
I'm giving as topics and episodes is really stuff that
I'm going through and I need to learn about in
process and this is a way for me to talk
to myself, which next episode is going to be about
(02:22):
communication with yourself, which is super super important. But I
need to hear my thoughts out loud in order to
process the things that I'm going through. And so I
don't know. The title just came about randomly when I
was walking my dog and I thought the motivation report,
Like you know, I don't know, there's always like a
report on something. And to be perfectly honest with you,
I've never liked the title of the podcast. It's like
(02:43):
sixty some odd episodes, and I'm confessing that I don't
even like the title of my own podcasts. I never
really have. Charles Schultz when he made the Peanuts, he
wanted to be called little folks, like l L little folks,
and they were like, no, it's not going to be that.
How about Peanuts Because the Peanut Gallery, which was like
the audience of kids in the show Howdy Duty, they
(03:06):
call them the Peanut Gallery, and the kids referred to
as peanuts, so the publisher was like, why don't we
call it peanuts. He always hated the name peanuts, but
of course you know, it's a huge influence on my
life and the most successful comic book strip that's ever existed,
So I guess should say just comic strip, not comic book,
but the title the Motivation Report, it's just you know
(03:27):
it Also, after a while sort of started feel like
I was putting myself in a box that it is
a playground in a way for my creativity, but it
doesn't sync up always with the title the Motivation Report.
So you know, I've done some like Christmas variety shows
in the past, and the Superman Relative Dimensions, audio drama,
and just a lot of different things that I try
(03:48):
to put a motivational spin or at least a positive,
happy spin on everything to fit with the theme. But
I don't feel that the Motivation Report really captures that
kind of part of my personal which is my creativity.
And I've always wanted the podcast. It's just really been
exists for me to learn and grow and think about
things differently, especially topic wise, but also from a production
(04:11):
standpoint and a creative standpoint, writing and acting and directing
and all that kind of stuff, and using this as
a way of doing kind of whatever I want. And
so I've always wanted it to be a sandbox or
I've always wanted to have a sandbox for myself where
I can do whatever it is that I want to do.
And so I think over time the show has it
kind of settled more into only motivational speaking because I'm
(04:31):
able to do that stuff off the cough a little bit.
But truthfully, my heart is with the wanting to be
more and more creative and wanting to treat the show
more as a sandbox. So moving forward, there's still going
to be a couple of more episodes that will be
under the title of the Motivation Report, but I will
be sort of reformatting the show. I won't tell you
(04:52):
the title just yet, but it's going to be a
space that's not going to be too different, and depending
on my emotions, you know, you might get an episode
that's titled Motivation Report and then it's about something you know,
just kind of like that's one facet of what I
like to do. But I also want to be able
to share my poetry and short stories and I don't know,
chapters from books and have conversations with friends and people
(05:12):
in the film and entertainment industry or in the arts,
or in politics or culture. Or religion or whatever it is.
I just want to be able to share interesting conversations
and share topics that I'm fascinated and fascinated by, I
should say, and also a way to share my creativity
consistently with you. That also gives me a platform in
(05:34):
a place where when people look, you know, look me up.
I guess to a certain degree not to say that
any that special, but if they do, they'll find, you know,
a space that I have that's my own, that is
representative of my creativity that they can say, oh, this
is what he can do, or this is what he
is doing, and this is all the product of his
personality and of that creativity. And it's also a space
(05:55):
I want other people to be able to share. So
music and other poems and writings and whatever it is.
It's going to be a space just for interesting conversations
and for creativity. So that's a little tease. It's going
to be coming in the next couple of months, probably
as I get all the branding and everything squared away
in a new logo and all that stuff. But this
(06:17):
will all stay in the feed, you know. These will
just be old episodes and they'll hang out here nothing's
really going to change. If you're subscribed, it'll still go
directly to your little inbox there where you find your
podcast and you can listen to it. But yeah, so
you know, keep your ear to the ground and be
ready for the evolution of the Motivation Report becoming something
(06:37):
new like Mathra. It's going to be like a giant
caterpillar like thing, and then I'm going to go into
a cocoon and I'm going to come out like a
beautiful butterfly Mathra. They call her Mathra, but it's really
a butterfly anyway. That's what's coming Matha the podcast today,
I wanted to talk about something that I think a
lot of people are talking about right now and have
(06:57):
been for a while, which is cancel culture. You know,
the title of this episode is indicative of bad because
I think it's important to address it in a not
black and white way, at least for myself. I think
everybody has opinions and thoughts on this kind of stuff,
(07:18):
and it's good. It's a good thing that we're going
through this because it's part of growth and change in conversation.
But the biggest encouragement I think that I want people
to have when sort of reframing what cancel culture means
is not disallowing ourselves the ability to understand that people
all possess the capacity for change, and that everybody is
(07:40):
not who they are just in a moment. It's who
they have been leading up to that moment, and then
more importantly, it's who they're becoming. And a lot of people,
in a lot of different ways, have had a lot
of things in the past used against them, for good
and for bad. I think there's some of it that
and this is all my opinion, and you can, you know,
(08:01):
hate me or love me forward or whatever. But when
I see people react immediately to something in a really
aggressive way, regardless of what it is, I always wish
that there was like a calm person to kind of
be like, Okay, well, let's listen more than we speak
for a couple of minutes, and before we jump out
and start talking and running our mouths, let's observe what's
(08:23):
going on with the situation in the world around us
so we can better respond. Because just like humans are
not who they are and an instant, your opinion is
going to change over time, and your personality is going
to change over time, and your words, even in a moment,
are going to change over time, So your reaction to
something in an instant without thinking about it could be
completely different than what you know a week later you're like,
(08:44):
oh shit, I should have thought about that a little
bit better, or changed my wording on this, or put
a comma here. Because there is no such thing to me,
truthfully as an evil or a bad person influence. It's
given to people. You know, we're kind of blank slates
when we're born, and I think that we inherently possess
(09:05):
goodness within us. I think that everybody desires to a
certain degree, unless you know, there's some chemical imbalance. I
suppose that's an argument that could be made for like
a psychopath or something. But everybody desires, you know, not
to experience pain or inflict pain because of that feeling.
The golden rule, I think is just organically derived out
of the notion that you don't want to hurt, so
why would you hurt others? But a lot of the
(09:27):
hurt that we end up doing to other people is unintentional.
Some people do it intentionally because things have led them astray,
and that's becoming you know, who they are. But a
lot of things people say in the past are now,
you know, being able to be used against them in
ways to quote unquote cancel them or ruin careers or
whatever it is. And some of those people certainly deserve it,
(09:49):
because there are a lot of fucking a holes out there.
But there's also a lot to be said for throwing
the first stone. I did. You know, my background is Christianity,
and there's still a lot of valuable lessons that I
take and I remember from those things. And one of
those examples was Jesus catches a woman in the act
(10:11):
of adultery, and there's some historical context to that which
the Bible doesn't really go into, but looking at history
and that kind of example, this group of men, you know,
finds this woman in the act of adultery and physically
brings her in front of Jesus and it's like, what
are you gonna do? You know what I mean, Like
(10:31):
she was caught doing this thing, and you know, trying
to get a rise out of him, I suppose, or
getting him to pick this like hard line stance on something.
And he says, let he who has never sinned cast
the first stone, meaning that you know, at the time,
if a woman is caught in the act of adultery,
(10:52):
she would be stoned to death. So they're basically asking
Jesus to justify the fact that they want to murder
her for having sex with a married man or for
her being married. I you know that context, I'm not sure,
but the context behind that, I guess, incidentally or historically
is that those guys had to know this woman's behavior
to a certain degree, or that she was having an
(11:13):
affair with somebody for a period of time and had
to spy on her in order to catch her in
the act of it, in order to then capture her
and bring her, you know, to Jesus. And so what
the fuck are those guys doing? You know what I mean? Like,
what a weird, creepy thing to do. Now, this is
two thousand plus years ago, but even still, like why
(11:36):
don't you mind your business and live your life? But
at the same time, this act of adultery, Now, in
other cultures might not necessarily be such a big thing,
but I suppose Western civilization we have an understanding of
what a marriage means. Or when you've committed yourself to somebody,
you say I won't cheat. You know, you could be
an open relationship or whatever it is, or polyamorous. It's
(11:58):
all fine, but in this specific the context, you know,
we're saying, this is what people are choosing, which is monogamy.
And they take someone who's having an affair a woman.
They now keep in mind that the man, if he's
a married man and she's stripping him or vice versa,
nobody's mad at the dude, right, nobody's mad at him
for doing it. They're only mad at her. And there's
(12:20):
an infinite amount of sexism involved in any world religion.
But I always loved that response because it was so
the opposite of what they wanted. People want justification for
their bloodthirst. You know, I call it the fuck you speech.
I've talked about it on here a couple of times.
Is when you feel so angry about something and you
want to prove a point, and you want everyone to
know how upset you are and why you deserve to
(12:41):
feel the angry feelings that you have, and everyone should
pay attention, everyone should care because you're in the right
and they're in the wrong. And so you just sort
of lay into people and you go off thinking that
your anger is going to be vindicated. But usually it
just makes you look like an asshole, and you end
up burning bridges and severing ties by giving the fuck
you speech, and it doesn't go well. Now, the fuck
you speech is also a similar sort of reaction to
(13:01):
what we're talking about, which is listening less and speaking more,
which is bad. We want to listen more and speak less.
Mark Twain said something like, what does he say? If
God want us to talk more than listen, he would
have given us two miles in one ear. I'm probably
misquoting that, but it's a paraphrase. And so the reaction
to things is always really sharp and bitter, you know,
(13:24):
like a snake bite to a certain degree. And we
want our feelings to be felt not just by ourselves
but by everybody, so they know how important we are
and you know what we stand for, which is fine.
But patience is key to all of life. Patience is
key to communication with other people in order to create
harmony and peace and love and maintain healthy relationships with friends, family,
and loved ones. But patience is also important to remember
(13:48):
that when we go through our lives, if we are
people who desire to preach peace, love and understanding just
as a way of life, as sort of you know, one,
love and unity and all these kind of things. We
have to have a lot of patients, and it's easier
said than done. I'm not saying that we go like
that racist person said this racist thing, so we should
be like, well, I'm sorry, Greg, I hope you feel better.
Like That's not exactly what I'm saying. But what I'm
(14:12):
getting at is that there's a lot that goes behind words,
and there's a lot that goes behind who people were
in the past versus who they are now. And I
think that when we react really sharply, instantaneously to certain things,
it shows a lot more about our character to a
certain degree than it does about theirs. Now, yeah, somebody
could have said something mean or hateful or racist, but
(14:37):
what is missing in our lives that the value comes
from canceling somebody or getting rid of somebody. The value
obviously comes from getting rid of toxic people, which is
a necessity. So there is an element to cancel culture
that is important because we do want to remove people
that are practicing hateful rhetoric. You know, everybody has the
freedom of speech, but certain freedoms of speech are not
(14:59):
pret detected. Hate speech inciting certain things libel, slander, You
can't say whatever you want everywhere. You can't go into
a movie theater and you'll fire. There's a lot of
things that you're not allowed to do because your speech
in dangers or hurts potentially other people and creates panic.
So hate speech can do those things, but also to
(15:22):
a degree. The flip side of that, the one eighty
is the immediate, like, well, they're done, they're canceled. And
I've always wanted to see knowing that people are not
just who they are in a moment, but who they
are becoming. Life is nothing but growth and change, for
better or for worse. And patience means that we have
(15:44):
to look at everybody in our lives, and if we
want to be empathetic and experience empathy, we have to
practice it with those around us, just like peace, just
like the golden rule. You know, do unto others. If
you want people to be empathetic to you, you have to
be empathetic to others. It's pretty simple, but I think
that there's an element to which if we really pay
(16:06):
attention to people's behavioral patterns or to growth, or to
who they are and what they've said, and who they're becoming.
We can kind of understand if we listen empathetically where
their heart really is. So people who are saying blatantly racist, hateful,
mean things, this word in cell, which I've never really
(16:27):
known until recently, is that kind of person, right, inciting
violence and really terrible things and things that we do
need to cancel. Absolutely, But a lot of people, especially
in the entertainment industry, make bad jokes, sexist remarks, things
that are stupid. However, many years ago, and none of
this is to say that any of that is okay.
(16:50):
There's a degree to which when I was a kid,
there was always I always knew certain things, certain things
I wasn't supposed to do. Saying the N word was
one of those. That's just an easy example because I
always grew up and I don't even know if it
was my parents. It was just like, you are not
supposed to say this word because it's not yours, and
I was like, cool, great, got it. So it always
made me uncomfortable when white friends would say it or
(17:13):
say it in front of their black friends and be like, well,
he's fine with it if I say it, because I
always knew that it was off limits to me, but
then you learn the cultural context of it. As a
little kid, you can't know right even to a certain degree,
if you can stay in an ignorant bubble. People just
say ignorance is bliss, but it's really not. Can sort
of use that ignorance as a justification for not knowing
any better, and to a certain degree it is true.
(17:36):
And I want to keep a tone of peace and
compassion in this episode just because I don't. I'm not
trying to rile any feathers, trying to walk the line
as best I can, because I want to encourage everyone listening,
myself included, to remember that we are not our mistakes
in any capacity. I don't necessarily believe in mistakes. I
(17:56):
think that everything is an opportunity for growth and change.
So to say that I'm made a mistake is to
sort of imply that I have a regret, and I
don't regret anything, because if I regretted it, it means
if I could go back, I would change it. But
I wouldn't be who I am today in the present
without everything that's happened in my past, and all of
you are exactly that same way, you wouldn't be who
(18:16):
you are right now, for better or for worse, without
every instant that's led up until this moment. So how
you behave in an instant is all of the influences
that are building to every individual moment. If you think
about our behavior being second after second after second, we're
always acting out our influences, and we can once we
become aware of them through therapy and certain things, we
(18:38):
can sort of rewrite our scripts. It's a great old
episode of the show. You should listen to it with
karushra set called rewriting your script and sort of changing
our behavior. But certain things to a degree, I've sort
of lived my life, especially even with my friends and
in relationships like I can't know what I don't know right,
(18:58):
And there's an element to which I want to live
my life as much as I possibly can, to be
someone who works to promote peace, of quality, love everything
you know. But I'm not perfect, and I make a
lot of mistakes, and there are what did I just say, haha,
caught myself make a lot of mistakes. I have a
(19:18):
lot of opportunities for growth, I should say that, and
some things might go my way, some things I might
make the wrong choice. Everybody does in big ways and
in small ways. But to say that humanity or certain
people about certain things deserve to have, you know, their
lives or their livelihoods stripped away from them because of
(19:43):
an opportunity for change or growth that maybe they missed
or didn't think about, is pretty irresponsible. I think when
we are experiencing hate, that's something we want to get
rid of, right, not in a negative way. How do
we do that effectively? You know, just because we cancel
somebody or take away their platform doesn't mean that they
(20:03):
go away. And we can't murder then that makes us
the same. You know, you can't be like that person's
a bad person, so kill them. That's why I don't
believe in the death penalty. You know, that's a whole
other debate. But I just think that there's a lot
of learning to be done, a lot of patience to
be had, and a lot of reflection on the part
(20:24):
of people who are saying things they're not supposed to
be saying, but on our part too, in order to
know that when we interact with the world around us,
we're not just seeing people in that moment, we're seeing
into those people. That's what Saunders all about We talked
about that in the last episode with Alex And part
of this is that, you know, how do we have
(20:45):
empathy even for people that we disagree with and even
people that we quote unquote hate, which is you know,
a strong word, and I encourage people to use it infrequently,
but beyond specific things that we do want to get
rid of people who do have done blackface or you know,
used racial slurs or made racist jokes. It's easy for
(21:10):
me to say because I'm a straight white man, so
there's an element of privilege that I have to recognize
in order to be able to make this assessment. But
it's just what I'm going through personally, So you know,
hold my hand as I try to do this. I'm
trying to speak on a human level beyond all of
those things. And knowing that hurtful language is hurtful period.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may
(21:31):
never hurt me is one of the biggest lies in
the world. I think a lot of people would much
rather get like punched than experience a life of prejudice
where none of the wounds are physical and all of
them are emotional, and they cut so much deeper and
they stay and last forever. And the only way to
move past them and to heal is to become aware
(21:53):
of them and actively work towards healing. But some of
that is out of our control. Who do make these comments?
And if you are somebody who has experienced racism, more prejudice,
or hate or vitriolic language in any way, you know,
you know because you didn't ask for it. It's also
(22:14):
the same way that we talk about girls with clothing,
when women will say, oh, they asked for it when
someone is raped or sexually assaulted, which is a fucking
ridiculous thing to say, because it implies that just by
their existing as they are as a minority or as
a woman, that inherently they are asking for it. It's
(22:34):
not just the clothes. That argument goes so much deeper
because when people say she was asking for it by
dressing a certain way, the truth of that is not
she was dressed in this fashion, therefore this thing happened.
The thing happened because a bad fucking person did a
horrible thing, not because she was dressed a certain way,
(22:56):
but because she was a woman. And so I think
it's ridiculous to say that anybody who's experienced hate or
violence or assault could ever be asking for it, because
it's based solely on the notion that people don't recognize
others as who they are and they don't care, they
(23:16):
don't see themselves as equals, and so with what we're seeing,
people make bad jokes. And I myself know for a
fact that when I was in high school and probably younger,
the word gay was used in a negative way, and
(23:37):
I am a culprit to misusing that word repeatedly as
a kid. And I could say that I didn't know
any better, but what I will say is that I
can't know what I don't know. And it wasn't until
people started telling me, hey, that hurts, don't do it
did I think, oh my god, I have to stop.
(23:59):
The reaction was and what a lot of people do
is like, well, don't tell me what to do, and
then they sort of do it on purpose, like when
you say, like, my preferred pronouns are he she or
she her or I'm sorry, he him, she heard, they them,
whatever the preferred pronouns of yours are, and people feel like, no,
I'm just gonna call you a girl even though you
identify as non binary, because I'm lazy, and I can't
(24:21):
do that. That's tremendously disrespectful. And if that causes that
other person injury not to be recognized for their authenticity
or for who they are, then it is upon us,
why to come out weird, upon us to make the
change in order to help that person feel more loved.
And my old ignorant self used words in high school,
specifically the word gay, misuse that and also the F
(24:45):
word talking to your friends and in all kinds of
different ways, And when I think about it, it makes
me upset because at the time I wasn't even consciously
thinking about what I was doing, but it was happening.
But of course, then when I started to learn through
conversation and broadening my friend group in high school and
(25:08):
meeting kids who were diverse, and having family members who
are part of the LGBTQ plus community and all of
these different things, I sort of to understand that the
world is not just about me, right in any capacity,
when you make friends of any kind, friends and minorities,
people of color, and your mind sort of starts to
get open to the fact that the world is not
(25:29):
just about us, and we don't all perceive the world
the same way. And I think that this desire not
to change and not to respect people comes from a
place of not wanting to change because we're afraid. We're
afraid to grow, we're afraid to put ourselves through the
challenge of becoming better, because that's truly the hardest thing
that we can do. Becoming better is the hardest thing
(25:53):
that you could ever go through, in whatever way. That
means healing from hurt physically, emotionally, trauma, abuse, anything, whatever
you've experienced to become better. The path to becoming better
is an impossible journey to go on, but one that
we have to in order to grow and in order
to change and get better. And in my past, I
(26:16):
know for a fact words were misused, jokes were made, impressions, stereotypes,
lots of things to my group of friends. And it
bothers me to know that it happened. But what am
I supposed to do about what already happened? Because if
(26:39):
we're in an element of saying, let's not necessarily believe
in mistakes, let's say everything as an opportunity for growth
and change, That's what that was. Somebody made me aware
of the fact that I was doing something that was
hurtful to them or to a community. I decided to
change because it was necessary, because I want to create, preserve,
and promote peace and love. And I can't do that
(27:02):
if I say that everybody else is wrong and I'm right.
We have to admit when we're wrong, and I think
we can start to inform ourselves for so long that
we can't be wrong right because we don't want to change.
So therefore everybody else in the world must be wrong,
and that just makes for crazy people, and that's how
you get radicalized individuals or groups. But I say all
(27:28):
this because it's important for you all to remember too
that you're not perfect either. And it's not me saying like, well, yeah,
I have this past, but you have this past too.
But I know for a fact that everybody has lived
a life of what we would consider mistakes. If I
didn't do this, this wouldn't have happened. If I didn't
say this, this wouldn't have hurt this person's feelings. If
(27:49):
I didn't make this joke, if I didn't embrace this stereotype,
if I didn't go along with the crowd, this thing
would not have happened. But it did, and we can't
change it. But what we can do is change who
were becoming. We can change right now in this moment
and decide to go on that impossible journey of becoming better.
(28:15):
Certain people do deserve to be canceled. We can't protect
hate speech. It's not okay, and I don't know how
much of this is even going to sit well with listeners,
but it's important to remember that let he or she
or they who have never sinned cast the first stone,
(28:37):
because there's an element to which we are all culprits
in something. Everybody's guilty of something, right at least those
are kind of strong words. And to be honest, if
we can't be okay with our past, we're not going
to be okay with our present, and we're certainly not
going to be okay with our future. So what can
I do? Became the question for me? Right? How do
(28:59):
I make this better? I started a podcast about trying
to motivate and open people's minds and do my best
to listen more than I speak, even though ironically this
podcast is nothing but me speaking to you, But I
try to live my life two to one rule right,
listen twice as much as you speak, and then, well,
everything I distill from all the lessons I've learned, Okay,
I bring it here to talk to you guys. However,
(29:24):
it's important that I tell myself and understand that. Let's say,
I but got really famous in five years. I can
guarantee that there's something somebody can find that I said
in a place of ignorance, not knowing any better, that
might not look good. I've never used I've never used
like insightful, hateful, racist language because that's never been who
(29:46):
I am at my core. I've always believed that we're
all equal, are created equal. We all possess the same
capacity for good, the same capacity for change, and the
same capacity to change the world around us and go
on the journey of making our lives and that world
a better place. But we can only do that by
(30:07):
recognizing where we have miss stepped right, because everybody makes
the wrong decision at some point, But only through recognizing
that can we change. And a lot of people who
are having things used against them to certain degrees might
not necessarily be that person anymore. It doesn't make it okay.
(30:31):
Wasn't okay then, it's not okay now. But it isn't
to say that that's exactly who they are. And I
think that it's funny when we sort of glamorize change
in movies and TV, but in real life it's like
we have no tolerance for it. It's weird. We expect
people to be perfect all the time and never to
make mistakes, never to grow or change, and just to
(30:52):
be fine all the time. And that's the sort of
impossible standard to hold anyone to, especially the self. And
I think that reactionary thing where we talk faster than
we listen is because we're hurt inside and we want
other people to understand that we're hurt. And in a way,
it's a cry for recognition, not necessarily for help, but
it's people saying I have a voice that matters, and
(31:14):
I want to do something. It's changed the world around
me by getting rid of a bad person, and I
want to be recognized for doing something that matters. But
sometimes what matters is flexible to a certain degree. And
in movies and TV. Take American History Acts for instance.
(31:35):
It's a great movie with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong,
the two Edwards about a former white supremacist neo Nazi
character who goes to prison and has a change of
heart by making a friend who's black and comes out
of prison and then actively tries to help his little
brother not make the same mistakes that he made, so
(31:58):
that way they do create a better place, better world
worth living it. This person, by our standards of what
we're talking about, especially in terms of cancel culture, said
and did the worst things, blatant racism, blatant violence, blatant
hateful rhetoric, goes to prison, changes comes out on the
other side and says, I'm a changed man and I
(32:19):
want to make the world a better place because I
was wrong. And when we see it in a movie,
we go, God, that's beautiful. We cry and we're like,
oh my god, I wish everybody could possess the same
capacity for change as this man. That's like, it's only
okay when it's dramatized. And again it doesn't make the
(32:40):
language okay. But there's a kid, I think it was
an episode of The Daily, and I'm not sure of
his name, but he was a white supremacist, grew up
in a white supremacist family, was friends in some way
with David Duke, had this weird radio station, went to
college and started making some friends who are people of
college and realized, I am so wrong. Everything I thought
(33:04):
I believed is incorrect, and all of that behavior that
I've been living for almost two decades is hurtful and
dangerous to the people I now love and care about.
And he decided to change to become a better person
because he knew that he couldn't live in a world
(33:27):
where he continued to do damage to the people that
he cared about. And people said, this is a great story,
but it sort of exists outside of our own perspective
because it feels like entertainment. But it's real. It happens
all the time. People change, People can stop hate, We
can prevent homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, We can stop these things.
(33:53):
It is possible. People have changes of heart, people grow,
and people decide to take the journey of becoming better
because when they look at what their actions are doing,
they realize it isn't about me. Life isn't about me.
(34:13):
It's about all of us, and we're in this together.
And if I don't change, I am part of the problem.
And I can't be part of the problem anymore. And
it's important that we recognize that nothing anybody says truly
can never be excused, especially if we say it on
social media or Twitter or whatever it is. They can
(34:36):
live forever. I'm sure there's episodes of podcasts where I
said things I shouldn't have said because I was ignorant.
There's not an excuse, truly, there isn't. But I have
to recognize that I did something that was not okay
in order to say in the present, oh my god,
that's not right, and I have to make it right
(34:56):
by doing things better in the present and in the future.
In to know that I'm doing something good and I'm
trying to be better, that I'm trying to make the
world a better place, and that I'm trying to show
everybody how much I care about them. That all lives
do have value, because this is key. All life has
value because of the fact that we possess the capacity
(35:20):
for change. Value doesn't come from perfection. We think that
if we work ten thousand hours and become a master,
then we have value. Right, we have value because we're
fuck ups. We have value because we make mistakes. We
have value because there is no such thing as someone
who has not sinned. Therefore, when we recognize that we
(35:41):
have all made missteps, and we reframe the mistakes or
opportunities for growth and change, we eliminate violence. I'm not
trying to make a specifically Christian message, but it is
a great story and I did learn a lot of
important things from Jesus as a teacher. And connected to
(36:01):
that example is something that not enough people talk about.
When he says, who has not sinned? Cast the first stone,
and everybody walks away one by one, he stoops down
and write writes in the dirt. The Bible says, nobody
knows what he writes, but he starts writing a dad's hypothesis,
which I think is a pretty good one, is because
he's sort of all knowing and magical. Starts listing all
(36:22):
the things that people have done wrong because he knows,
and they're like, oh fuck, and they got to get
out of there because he knows. Or maybe he just
stooped in the dirt to doodle, you know, until they
got bored. Regardless, by asking that question and making people
recognize that they have all made missteps, it's somewhere in
(36:44):
their life, he ended up eliminating violence. Because they wanted blood,
They wanted to kill this woman and they wanted to
feel justified in doing so, and by him having and
patience and waiting and saying okay, but whoever is perfect,
(37:07):
you get to do it. I want you to take
this person's life, and nobody could do it, and she lived.
Now that's a sort of kind of modernizing it, because
I can't guarantee what kind of life that poor woman
lived after that, knowing how history has been towards women.
But I think that it is important to remember and
(37:28):
to recognize that when we have patience and when we
listen twice as often as we speak, and we allow
people the room for growth and change, we eliminate and
we lessen violence. Those things are directly connected. And in
order to make the world a better place, we can
(37:50):
only do that after we recognize that we are not perfect.
One of my favorite quotes from East of Eden, and
again i'm paraphrasing, is and now that you realize you
don't have to be perfect, you can do good because
good deeds don't come from perfect people. Good deeds come
from people like us, the fuck ups, the disenfranchised, the poor,
(38:13):
the rich, the spoiled, the unspoiled. Everybody is capable of
doing good. Everybody is capable of helping and loving and
creating and spreading piece. But we can only know how
to do that effectively if we have patience for people
who make the wrong choices, and we ask ourselves first why,
as opposed to saying we have to get rid of you.
(38:34):
Because if we just try to nip all of these things,
you know, like we're trying to clean up a garden
and we're pulling out all the weeds, basically, we have
no capacity for understanding how to then effectively create change
and promote change, and how to make the world a
better place effectively, because what we're doing is we're sort
of putting our blinders on and we say, like, we
(38:55):
can only drive straight. I have another episode called Life
in three sixty which talks about this. That's an old one.
You have to see life in three hundred and sixty
degrees in order to understand that's empathy. You can't have
empathy if you only see in one direction. You can't
have empathy if you don't engage with people who are
different than you, if you don't celebrate cultures that are
(39:15):
different than yours, that makes you close minded, and it
makes you part of the problem. But in and of
that self, we become part of our own problem if
we don't give the room for people to change. Once again,
we can't make excuses for people. That's not okay. We're
not going to defend hate speech, and there isn't a
place for it. It's also not allowed in the Constitution,
(39:37):
even though somehow people say manage to get away with it.
I just want to encourage myself and everybody listening to remember,
when you see somebody doing something bad or something they
shouldn't do, well, ask why who put that thought in
their head. We're not born racist, we're not born hateful,
(40:00):
we're not born bad. So what does it take to
remind people to get back on the path toward living
a better life or toward doing good. It's a recognition
that nobody's perfect. But people can't know what they don't know.
I can't know what I don't know, and I continue
to try to do better every day. But I'm always
(40:21):
going to make quote unquote mistakes, right, I'm always going
to mess things up to a certain degree. And as
culture continues to grow and change and become more unique
and diverse and interesting, and we learn all these things
that have existed for all of time, but didn't know
until we started putting words to them. We can't know
what we don't know, and it simply takes politely reminding
(40:43):
people first, you know what, how do I guess respect
one another to hopefully incite change. But then you're going
to come up against people who say, no, I'm not
going to do that. And it's also important that you
remember that that's not your responsibility all the time to
try to change everybody else, because then you get exhausted
(41:04):
and you get burned out and you can't even take
care of yourself, and then you yourself can effectively go
through change because you go down the social media k
hole of it arguing with people on Facebook or Twitter
or Instagram. All you can do is your best. All
you can do is remind people and put your goodwill
out into the world and help people know what they
(41:27):
don't know. But you are not obligated to waste all
of your time on everybody else who seemingly does not
want to go along with trying to make the world
a better place. And all we can do, rather than
yell at that person or try to get rid of them,
is through our actions remind them what it means to
(41:49):
be a loving, kind, accepting, peaceful person. Then we are
what we repeatedly do, and that is contagious. Goodwill really
is contagious. And the more that people see us doing
and endeavoring to do good, practicing more and more and more,
trying to get things right as much as we can,
(42:09):
and seeing that when we do misstep or make a
wrong decision, we correct and we say, whoops. Now I've
learned and I'm going to change. I told myself this
is only going to be a twenty minute episode, and I
feel like I say that every single time I release something.
I also wanted to keep my tone pretty calm, cool
and collected. Then it's possible that I've upset a lot
of people, but it's also important. I don't know. I
(42:32):
remind myself and maybe some of you who are struggling
with some of this stuff. But I have patience, not
just with others, but with yourself. If you feel like
your voice is not being heard, start talking to somebody.
It's easier said than done, but therapy is very helpful.
But people can't know what they don't know. And if
(42:52):
you're hurting, where you're suffering, or you're struggling, you're going
through something, keeping it a secret, thinking it's going to
get better is not true. That is the greatest lie
that we could ever live. My friend Tessa, who if
you are following Sonder, is actually acting in it and
is on a great episode of a show called Pride,
(43:13):
which is a podcast here on straw Hut Media that
we were guests on together to talk about Sonder is transgender,
and she got a message on Instagram from someone who said,
I'm going through a really difficult time right now. I'm trans,
but I'm engaged and have kids, and no one knows.
But she found Tessa some way and decided to risk
(43:37):
coming out to somebody about it. Because the more we
try to keep these things a secret and keep these
things in, the more damage we end up doing to ourselves.
And I can't imagine being in that person's shoes, I
truly can't. But what's important is that that person decided
to talk to somebody in any capacity, because people can't
(44:00):
know what they don't know, and you can't be who
you are destined to become without talking, without speaking out,
without encouraging people to change, without letting people know, hey,
this is not okay. This is not right. Don't use
these words, and if that's what you want for yourself,
just start practicing it bit by bit, start listening more
(44:23):
than you talk, because then when you respond, you will
give an educated response, and then you can effectively help
things grow and change in a positive way, because when
we lash out, we're really distancing ourselves from other people
or distancing people from us, and that's not how we
create sustainable change. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. It's
(44:44):
very difficult because of the nature of the topic, but
I needed to talk about it for myself. Mostly had
to start a conversation because I felt like the one
thing nobody was doing was talking about the fact that
there's a level to which it's kind of insane. You
can't just put our foot down and say life has
to be perfect. People have to be perfect because that's
what I expect of them, because it truly is saying
(45:06):
I expect perfection of myself and I can't give it
to myself because I don't know how, and I'm holding
myself to a high standard that I can't achieve. And
instead of trying to dismantle whatever influences people have given
me that have poisoned my mind and my value of myself.
I'm going to take that out on other people. There
are no excuses for hate. We can't change the past,
(45:31):
but we can change the future. And it starts with us,
and it starts with recognizing that precisely because you don't
have to be perfect, you can do good. Thanks for listening.
I'll see you next time. The name
Thanks for listening to this week's episode. I'm gonna start
plugging some stuff up at the front so we can
get the business out of the way in the beginning
as opposed to the end, because I like to end,
you know, some music in a nice way instead of
like ending all emotionally and special, and then music fades,
and then I got to come back and say stuff,
which is weird, and then more music and then it
(00:33):
has to fade again. It's like it's repetitive. So this
is a motivation Report. I actually want to make an
announcement so you're all aware. Last episode was about Sonder,
our web series. Took a little time away to film that.
We wrapped production, which is really really great. Make sure
that you're keeping up with that show at Sonder dot
la on Instagram. It's going to be a lot of
(00:53):
fun and things are looking really really good. We're really
excited to share it on October sixteenth, so don't forget
to follow Sounder dot org on Instagram. I'm on Instagram
at Will Sterling Underscore. That's me and yeah, the show,
the Motivation Report started god three years ago, yeah, I
don't know, a long time ago, and it started I
(01:16):
do have a passion for motivational speeches, but you know,
it kind of comes in waves, and I don't always
love what everybody says. I don't always think that what
everybody says in terms of the grind and the hustle
is actually healthy. I talked about that in the episode
on Burnout a couple of episodes ago, that you know,
a lot of it is like this encouragement of doing
everything at one hundred and ten percent all the time,
(01:37):
which is not sustainable or possible, and like taking no rest,
and like isolating yourself and like not hanging out with
your friends and not doing anything fun. It's weird. Life
is about a balance. It's not about obsession in that way.
I think you do have to be obsessed with the
success that you want, but you you're not necessarily going
to find happiness through isolation. So yeah, anyway, but the
(02:00):
show started because I had a passion for speeches like that,
and I wanted to communicate some of the life lessons
that I had learned. But I used this podcast as
like therapy for myself, honestly, and so the things that
I'm giving as topics and episodes is really stuff that
I'm going through and I need to learn about in
process and this is a way for me to talk
to myself, which next episode is going to be about
(02:22):
communication with yourself, which is super super important. But I
need to hear my thoughts out loud in order to
process the things that I'm going through. And so I
don't know. The title just came about randomly when I
was walking my dog and I thought the motivation report,
Like you know, I don't know, there's always like a
report on something. And to be perfectly honest with you,
I've never liked the title of the podcast. It's like
(02:43):
sixty some odd episodes, and I'm confessing that I don't
even like the title of my own podcasts. I never
really have. Charles Schultz when he made the Peanuts, he
wanted to be called little folks, like l L little folks,
and they were like, no, it's not going to be that.
How about Peanuts Because the Peanut Gallery, which was like
the audience of kids in the show Howdy Duty, they
(03:06):
call them the Peanut Gallery, and the kids referred to
as peanuts, so the publisher was like, why don't we
call it peanuts. He always hated the name peanuts, but
of course you know, it's a huge influence on my
life and the most successful comic book strip that's ever existed,
So I guess should say just comic strip, not comic book,
but the title the Motivation Report, it's just you know
(03:27):
it Also, after a while sort of started feel like
I was putting myself in a box that it is
a playground in a way for my creativity, but it
doesn't sync up always with the title the Motivation Report.
So you know, I've done some like Christmas variety shows
in the past, and the Superman Relative Dimensions, audio drama,
and just a lot of different things that I try
(03:48):
to put a motivational spin or at least a positive,
happy spin on everything to fit with the theme. But
I don't feel that the Motivation Report really captures that
kind of part of my personal which is my creativity.
And I've always wanted the podcast. It's just really been
exists for me to learn and grow and think about
things differently, especially topic wise, but also from a production
(04:11):
standpoint and a creative standpoint, writing and acting and directing
and all that kind of stuff, and using this as
a way of doing kind of whatever I want. And
so I've always wanted it to be a sandbox or
I've always wanted to have a sandbox for myself where
I can do whatever it is that I want to do.
And so I think over time the show has it
kind of settled more into only motivational speaking because I'm
(04:31):
able to do that stuff off the cough a little bit.
But truthfully, my heart is with the wanting to be
more and more creative and wanting to treat the show
more as a sandbox. So moving forward, there's still going
to be a couple of more episodes that will be
under the title of the Motivation Report, but I will
be sort of reformatting the show. I won't tell you
(04:52):
the title just yet, but it's going to be a
space that's not going to be too different, and depending
on my emotions, you know, you might get an episode
that's titled Motivation Report and then it's about something you know,
just kind of like that's one facet of what I
like to do. But I also want to be able
to share my poetry and short stories and I don't know,
chapters from books and have conversations with friends and people
(05:12):
in the film and entertainment industry or in the arts,
or in politics or culture. Or religion or whatever it is.
I just want to be able to share interesting conversations
and share topics that I'm fascinated and fascinated by, I
should say, and also a way to share my creativity
consistently with you. That also gives me a platform in
(05:34):
a place where when people look, you know, look me up.
I guess to a certain degree not to say that
any that special, but if they do, they'll find, you know,
a space that I have that's my own, that is
representative of my creativity that they can say, oh, this
is what he can do, or this is what he
is doing, and this is all the product of his
personality and of that creativity. And it's also a space
(05:55):
I want other people to be able to share. So
music and other poems and writings and whatever it is.
It's going to be a space just for interesting conversations
and for creativity. So that's a little tease. It's going
to be coming in the next couple of months, probably
as I get all the branding and everything squared away
in a new logo and all that stuff. But this
(06:17):
will all stay in the feed, you know. These will
just be old episodes and they'll hang out here nothing's
really going to change. If you're subscribed, it'll still go
directly to your little inbox there where you find your
podcast and you can listen to it. But yeah, so
you know, keep your ear to the ground and be
ready for the evolution of the Motivation Report becoming something
(06:37):
new like Mathra. It's going to be like a giant
caterpillar like thing, and then I'm going to go into
a cocoon and I'm going to come out like a
beautiful butterfly Mathra. They call her Mathra, but it's really
a butterfly anyway. That's what's coming Matha the podcast today,
I wanted to talk about something that I think a
lot of people are talking about right now and have
(06:57):
been for a while, which is cancel culture. You know,
the title of this episode is indicative of bad because
I think it's important to address it in a not
black and white way, at least for myself. I think
everybody has opinions and thoughts on this kind of stuff,
(07:18):
and it's good. It's a good thing that we're going
through this because it's part of growth and change in conversation.
But the biggest encouragement I think that I want people
to have when sort of reframing what cancel culture means
is not disallowing ourselves the ability to understand that people
all possess the capacity for change, and that everybody is
(07:40):
not who they are just in a moment. It's who
they have been leading up to that moment, and then
more importantly, it's who they're becoming. And a lot of people,
in a lot of different ways, have had a lot
of things in the past used against them, for good
and for bad. I think there's some of it that
and this is all my opinion, and you can, you know,
(08:01):
hate me or love me forward or whatever. But when
I see people react immediately to something in a really
aggressive way, regardless of what it is, I always wish
that there was like a calm person to kind of
be like, Okay, well, let's listen more than we speak
for a couple of minutes, and before we jump out
and start talking and running our mouths, let's observe what's
(08:23):
going on with the situation in the world around us
so we can better respond. Because just like humans are
not who they are and an instant, your opinion is
going to change over time, and your personality is going
to change over time, and your words, even in a moment,
are going to change over time, So your reaction to
something in an instant without thinking about it could be
completely different than what you know a week later you're like,
(08:44):
oh shit, I should have thought about that a little
bit better, or changed my wording on this, or put
a comma here. Because there is no such thing to me,
truthfully as an evil or a bad person influence. It's
given to people. You know, we're kind of blank slates
when we're born, and I think that we inherently possess
(09:05):
goodness within us. I think that everybody desires to a
certain degree, unless you know, there's some chemical imbalance. I
suppose that's an argument that could be made for like
a psychopath or something. But everybody desires, you know, not
to experience pain or inflict pain because of that feeling.
The golden rule, I think is just organically derived out
of the notion that you don't want to hurt, so
why would you hurt others? But a lot of the
(09:27):
hurt that we end up doing to other people is unintentional.
Some people do it intentionally because things have led them astray,
and that's becoming you know, who they are. But a
lot of things people say in the past are now,
you know, being able to be used against them in
ways to quote unquote cancel them or ruin careers or
whatever it is. And some of those people certainly deserve it,
(09:49):
because there are a lot of fucking a holes out there.
But there's also a lot to be said for throwing
the first stone. I did. You know, my background is Christianity,
and there's still a lot of valuable lessons that I
take and I remember from those things. And one of
those examples was Jesus catches a woman in the act
(10:11):
of adultery, and there's some historical context to that which
the Bible doesn't really go into, but looking at history
and that kind of example, this group of men, you know,
finds this woman in the act of adultery and physically
brings her in front of Jesus and it's like, what
are you gonna do? You know what I mean, Like
(10:31):
she was caught doing this thing, and you know, trying
to get a rise out of him, I suppose, or
getting him to pick this like hard line stance on something.
And he says, let he who has never sinned cast
the first stone, meaning that you know, at the time,
if a woman is caught in the act of adultery,
(10:52):
she would be stoned to death. So they're basically asking
Jesus to justify the fact that they want to murder
her for having sex with a married man or for
her being married. I you know that context, I'm not sure,
but the context behind that, I guess, incidentally or historically
is that those guys had to know this woman's behavior
to a certain degree, or that she was having an
(11:13):
affair with somebody for a period of time and had
to spy on her in order to catch her in
the act of it, in order to then capture her
and bring her, you know, to Jesus. And so what
the fuck are those guys doing? You know what I mean? Like,
what a weird, creepy thing to do. Now, this is
two thousand plus years ago, but even still, like why
(11:36):
don't you mind your business and live your life? But
at the same time, this act of adultery, Now, in
other cultures might not necessarily be such a big thing,
but I suppose Western civilization we have an understanding of
what a marriage means. Or when you've committed yourself to somebody,
you say I won't cheat. You know, you could be
an open relationship or whatever it is, or polyamorous. It's
(11:58):
all fine, but in this specific the context, you know,
we're saying, this is what people are choosing, which is monogamy.
And they take someone who's having an affair a woman.
They now keep in mind that the man, if he's
a married man and she's stripping him or vice versa,
nobody's mad at the dude, right, nobody's mad at him
for doing it. They're only mad at her. And there's
(12:20):
an infinite amount of sexism involved in any world religion.
But I always loved that response because it was so
the opposite of what they wanted. People want justification for
their bloodthirst. You know, I call it the fuck you speech.
I've talked about it on here a couple of times.
Is when you feel so angry about something and you
want to prove a point, and you want everyone to
know how upset you are and why you deserve to
(12:41):
feel the angry feelings that you have, and everyone should
pay attention, everyone should care because you're in the right
and they're in the wrong. And so you just sort
of lay into people and you go off thinking that
your anger is going to be vindicated. But usually it
just makes you look like an asshole, and you end
up burning bridges and severing ties by giving the fuck
you speech, and it doesn't go well. Now, the fuck
you speech is also a similar sort of reaction to
(13:01):
what we're talking about, which is listening less and speaking more,
which is bad. We want to listen more and speak less.
Mark Twain said something like, what does he say? If
God want us to talk more than listen, he would
have given us two miles in one ear. I'm probably
misquoting that, but it's a paraphrase. And so the reaction
to things is always really sharp and bitter, you know,
(13:24):
like a snake bite to a certain degree. And we
want our feelings to be felt not just by ourselves
but by everybody, so they know how important we are
and you know what we stand for, which is fine.
But patience is key to all of life. Patience is
key to communication with other people in order to create
harmony and peace and love and maintain healthy relationships with friends, family,
and loved ones. But patience is also important to remember
(13:48):
that when we go through our lives, if we are
people who desire to preach peace, love and understanding just
as a way of life, as sort of you know, one,
love and unity and all these kind of things. We
have to have a lot of patients, and it's easier
said than done. I'm not saying that we go like
that racist person said this racist thing, so we should
be like, well, I'm sorry, Greg, I hope you feel better.
Like That's not exactly what I'm saying. But what I'm
(14:12):
getting at is that there's a lot that goes behind words,
and there's a lot that goes behind who people were
in the past versus who they are now. And I
think that when we react really sharply, instantaneously to certain things,
it shows a lot more about our character to a
certain degree than it does about theirs. Now, yeah, somebody
could have said something mean or hateful or racist, but
(14:37):
what is missing in our lives that the value comes
from canceling somebody or getting rid of somebody. The value
obviously comes from getting rid of toxic people, which is
a necessity. So there is an element to cancel culture
that is important because we do want to remove people
that are practicing hateful rhetoric. You know, everybody has the
freedom of speech, but certain freedoms of speech are not
(14:59):
pret detected. Hate speech inciting certain things libel, slander, You
can't say whatever you want everywhere. You can't go into
a movie theater and you'll fire. There's a lot of
things that you're not allowed to do because your speech
in dangers or hurts potentially other people and creates panic.
So hate speech can do those things, but also to
(15:22):
a degree. The flip side of that, the one eighty
is the immediate, like, well, they're done, they're canceled. And
I've always wanted to see knowing that people are not
just who they are in a moment, but who they
are becoming. Life is nothing but growth and change, for
better or for worse. And patience means that we have
(15:44):
to look at everybody in our lives, and if we
want to be empathetic and experience empathy, we have to
practice it with those around us, just like peace, just
like the golden rule. You know, do unto others. If
you want people to be empathetic to you, you have to
be empathetic to others. It's pretty simple, but I think
that there's an element to which if we really pay
(16:06):
attention to people's behavioral patterns or to growth, or to
who they are and what they've said, and who they're becoming.
We can kind of understand if we listen empathetically where
their heart really is. So people who are saying blatantly racist, hateful,
mean things, this word in cell, which I've never really
(16:27):
known until recently, is that kind of person, right, inciting
violence and really terrible things and things that we do
need to cancel. Absolutely, But a lot of people, especially
in the entertainment industry, make bad jokes, sexist remarks, things
that are stupid. However, many years ago, and none of
this is to say that any of that is okay.
(16:50):
There's a degree to which when I was a kid,
there was always I always knew certain things, certain things
I wasn't supposed to do. Saying the N word was
one of those. That's just an easy example because I
always grew up and I don't even know if it
was my parents. It was just like, you are not
supposed to say this word because it's not yours, and
I was like, cool, great, got it. So it always
made me uncomfortable when white friends would say it or
(17:13):
say it in front of their black friends and be like, well,
he's fine with it if I say it, because I
always knew that it was off limits to me, but
then you learn the cultural context of it. As a
little kid, you can't know right even to a certain degree,
if you can stay in an ignorant bubble. People just
say ignorance is bliss, but it's really not. Can sort
of use that ignorance as a justification for not knowing
any better, and to a certain degree it is true.
(17:36):
And I want to keep a tone of peace and
compassion in this episode just because I don't. I'm not
trying to rile any feathers, trying to walk the line
as best I can, because I want to encourage everyone listening,
myself included, to remember that we are not our mistakes
in any capacity. I don't necessarily believe in mistakes. I
(17:56):
think that everything is an opportunity for growth and change.
So to say that I'm made a mistake is to
sort of imply that I have a regret, and I
don't regret anything, because if I regretted it, it means
if I could go back, I would change it. But
I wouldn't be who I am today in the present
without everything that's happened in my past, and all of
you are exactly that same way, you wouldn't be who
(18:16):
you are right now, for better or for worse, without
every instant that's led up until this moment. So how
you behave in an instant is all of the influences
that are building to every individual moment. If you think
about our behavior being second after second after second, we're
always acting out our influences, and we can once we
become aware of them through therapy and certain things, we
(18:38):
can sort of rewrite our scripts. It's a great old
episode of the show. You should listen to it with
karushra set called rewriting your script and sort of changing
our behavior. But certain things to a degree, I've sort
of lived my life, especially even with my friends and
in relationships like I can't know what I don't know right,
(18:58):
And there's an element to which I want to live
my life as much as I possibly can, to be
someone who works to promote peace, of quality, love everything
you know. But I'm not perfect, and I make a
lot of mistakes, and there are what did I just say, haha,
caught myself make a lot of mistakes. I have a
(19:18):
lot of opportunities for growth, I should say that, and
some things might go my way, some things I might
make the wrong choice. Everybody does in big ways and
in small ways. But to say that humanity or certain
people about certain things deserve to have, you know, their
lives or their livelihoods stripped away from them because of
(19:43):
an opportunity for change or growth that maybe they missed
or didn't think about, is pretty irresponsible. I think when
we are experiencing hate, that's something we want to get
rid of, right, not in a negative way. How do
we do that effectively? You know, just because we cancel
somebody or take away their platform doesn't mean that they
(20:03):
go away. And we can't murder then that makes us
the same. You know, you can't be like that person's
a bad person, so kill them. That's why I don't
believe in the death penalty. You know, that's a whole
other debate. But I just think that there's a lot
of learning to be done, a lot of patience to
be had, and a lot of reflection on the part
(20:24):
of people who are saying things they're not supposed to
be saying, but on our part too, in order to
know that when we interact with the world around us,
we're not just seeing people in that moment, we're seeing
into those people. That's what Saunders all about We talked
about that in the last episode with Alex And part
of this is that, you know, how do we have
(20:45):
empathy even for people that we disagree with and even
people that we quote unquote hate, which is you know,
a strong word, and I encourage people to use it infrequently,
but beyond specific things that we do want to get
rid of people who do have done blackface or you know,
used racial slurs or made racist jokes. It's easy for
(21:10):
me to say because I'm a straight white man, so
there's an element of privilege that I have to recognize
in order to be able to make this assessment. But
it's just what I'm going through personally, So you know,
hold my hand as I try to do this. I'm
trying to speak on a human level beyond all of
those things. And knowing that hurtful language is hurtful period.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may
(21:31):
never hurt me is one of the biggest lies in
the world. I think a lot of people would much
rather get like punched than experience a life of prejudice
where none of the wounds are physical and all of
them are emotional, and they cut so much deeper and
they stay and last forever. And the only way to
move past them and to heal is to become aware
(21:53):
of them and actively work towards healing. But some of
that is out of our control. Who do make these comments?
And if you are somebody who has experienced racism, more prejudice,
or hate or vitriolic language in any way, you know,
you know because you didn't ask for it. It's also
(22:14):
the same way that we talk about girls with clothing,
when women will say, oh, they asked for it when
someone is raped or sexually assaulted, which is a fucking
ridiculous thing to say, because it implies that just by
their existing as they are as a minority or as
a woman, that inherently they are asking for it. It's
(22:34):
not just the clothes. That argument goes so much deeper
because when people say she was asking for it by
dressing a certain way, the truth of that is not
she was dressed in this fashion, therefore this thing happened.
The thing happened because a bad fucking person did a
horrible thing, not because she was dressed a certain way,
(22:56):
but because she was a woman. And so I think
it's ridiculous to say that anybody who's experienced hate or
violence or assault could ever be asking for it, because
it's based solely on the notion that people don't recognize
others as who they are and they don't care, they
(23:16):
don't see themselves as equals, and so with what we're seeing,
people make bad jokes. And I myself know for a
fact that when I was in high school and probably younger,
the word gay was used in a negative way, and
(23:37):
I am a culprit to misusing that word repeatedly as
a kid. And I could say that I didn't know
any better, but what I will say is that I
can't know what I don't know. And it wasn't until
people started telling me, hey, that hurts, don't do it
did I think, oh my god, I have to stop.
(23:59):
The reaction was and what a lot of people do
is like, well, don't tell me what to do, and
then they sort of do it on purpose, like when
you say, like, my preferred pronouns are he she or
she her or I'm sorry, he him, she heard, they them,
whatever the preferred pronouns of yours are, and people feel like, no,
I'm just gonna call you a girl even though you
identify as non binary, because I'm lazy, and I can't
(24:21):
do that. That's tremendously disrespectful. And if that causes that
other person injury not to be recognized for their authenticity
or for who they are, then it is upon us,
why to come out weird, upon us to make the
change in order to help that person feel more loved.
And my old ignorant self used words in high school,
specifically the word gay, misuse that and also the F
(24:45):
word talking to your friends and in all kinds of
different ways, And when I think about it, it makes
me upset because at the time I wasn't even consciously
thinking about what I was doing, but it was happening.
But of course, then when I started to learn through
conversation and broadening my friend group in high school and
(25:08):
meeting kids who were diverse, and having family members who
are part of the LGBTQ plus community and all of
these different things, I sort of to understand that the
world is not just about me, right in any capacity,
when you make friends of any kind, friends and minorities,
people of color, and your mind sort of starts to
get open to the fact that the world is not
(25:29):
just about us, and we don't all perceive the world
the same way. And I think that this desire not
to change and not to respect people comes from a
place of not wanting to change because we're afraid. We're
afraid to grow, we're afraid to put ourselves through the
challenge of becoming better, because that's truly the hardest thing
that we can do. Becoming better is the hardest thing
(25:53):
that you could ever go through, in whatever way. That
means healing from hurt physically, emotionally, trauma, abuse, anything, whatever
you've experienced to become better. The path to becoming better
is an impossible journey to go on, but one that
we have to in order to grow and in order
to change and get better. And in my past, I
(26:16):
know for a fact words were misused, jokes were made, impressions, stereotypes,
lots of things to my group of friends. And it
bothers me to know that it happened. But what am
I supposed to do about what already happened? Because if
(26:39):
we're in an element of saying, let's not necessarily believe
in mistakes, let's say everything as an opportunity for growth
and change, That's what that was. Somebody made me aware
of the fact that I was doing something that was
hurtful to them or to a community. I decided to
change because it was necessary, because I want to create, preserve,
and promote peace and love. And I can't do that
(27:02):
if I say that everybody else is wrong and I'm right.
We have to admit when we're wrong, and I think
we can start to inform ourselves for so long that
we can't be wrong right because we don't want to change.
So therefore everybody else in the world must be wrong,
and that just makes for crazy people, and that's how
you get radicalized individuals or groups. But I say all
(27:28):
this because it's important for you all to remember too
that you're not perfect either. And it's not me saying like, well, yeah,
I have this past, but you have this past too.
But I know for a fact that everybody has lived
a life of what we would consider mistakes. If I
didn't do this, this wouldn't have happened. If I didn't
say this, this wouldn't have hurt this person's feelings. If
(27:49):
I didn't make this joke, if I didn't embrace this stereotype,
if I didn't go along with the crowd, this thing
would not have happened. But it did, and we can't
change it. But what we can do is change who
were becoming. We can change right now in this moment
and decide to go on that impossible journey of becoming better.
(28:15):
Certain people do deserve to be canceled. We can't protect
hate speech. It's not okay, and I don't know how
much of this is even going to sit well with listeners,
but it's important to remember that let he or she
or they who have never sinned cast the first stone,
(28:37):
because there's an element to which we are all culprits
in something. Everybody's guilty of something, right at least those
are kind of strong words. And to be honest, if
we can't be okay with our past, we're not going
to be okay with our present, and we're certainly not
going to be okay with our future. So what can
I do? Became the question for me? Right? How do
(28:59):
I make this better? I started a podcast about trying
to motivate and open people's minds and do my best
to listen more than I speak, even though ironically this
podcast is nothing but me speaking to you, But I
try to live my life two to one rule right,
listen twice as much as you speak, and then, well,
everything I distill from all the lessons I've learned, Okay,
I bring it here to talk to you guys. However,
(29:24):
it's important that I tell myself and understand that. Let's say,
I but got really famous in five years. I can
guarantee that there's something somebody can find that I said
in a place of ignorance, not knowing any better, that
might not look good. I've never used I've never used
like insightful, hateful, racist language because that's never been who
(29:46):
I am at my core. I've always believed that we're
all equal, are created equal. We all possess the same
capacity for good, the same capacity for change, and the
same capacity to change the world around us and go
on the journey of making our lives and that world
a better place. But we can only do that by
(30:07):
recognizing where we have miss stepped right, because everybody makes
the wrong decision at some point, But only through recognizing
that can we change. And a lot of people who
are having things used against them to certain degrees might
not necessarily be that person anymore. It doesn't make it okay.
(30:31):
Wasn't okay then, it's not okay now. But it isn't
to say that that's exactly who they are. And I
think that it's funny when we sort of glamorize change
in movies and TV, but in real life it's like
we have no tolerance for it. It's weird. We expect
people to be perfect all the time and never to
make mistakes, never to grow or change, and just to
(30:52):
be fine all the time. And that's the sort of
impossible standard to hold anyone to, especially the self. And
I think that reactionary thing where we talk faster than
we listen is because we're hurt inside and we want
other people to understand that we're hurt. And in a way,
it's a cry for recognition, not necessarily for help, but
it's people saying I have a voice that matters, and
(31:14):
I want to do something. It's changed the world around
me by getting rid of a bad person, and I
want to be recognized for doing something that matters. But
sometimes what matters is flexible to a certain degree. And
in movies and TV. Take American History Acts for instance.
(31:35):
It's a great movie with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong,
the two Edwards about a former white supremacist neo Nazi
character who goes to prison and has a change of
heart by making a friend who's black and comes out
of prison and then actively tries to help his little
brother not make the same mistakes that he made, so
(31:58):
that way they do create a better place, better world
worth living it. This person, by our standards of what
we're talking about, especially in terms of cancel culture, said
and did the worst things, blatant racism, blatant violence, blatant
hateful rhetoric, goes to prison, changes comes out on the
other side and says, I'm a changed man and I
(32:19):
want to make the world a better place because I
was wrong. And when we see it in a movie,
we go, God, that's beautiful. We cry and we're like,
oh my god, I wish everybody could possess the same
capacity for change as this man. That's like, it's only
okay when it's dramatized. And again it doesn't make the
(32:40):
language okay. But there's a kid, I think it was
an episode of The Daily, and I'm not sure of
his name, but he was a white supremacist, grew up
in a white supremacist family, was friends in some way
with David Duke, had this weird radio station, went to
college and started making some friends who are people of
college and realized, I am so wrong. Everything I thought
(33:04):
I believed is incorrect, and all of that behavior that
I've been living for almost two decades is hurtful and
dangerous to the people I now love and care about.
And he decided to change to become a better person
because he knew that he couldn't live in a world
(33:27):
where he continued to do damage to the people that
he cared about. And people said, this is a great story,
but it sort of exists outside of our own perspective
because it feels like entertainment. But it's real. It happens
all the time. People change, People can stop hate, We
can prevent homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, We can stop these things.
(33:53):
It is possible. People have changes of heart, people grow,
and people decide to take the journey of becoming better
because when they look at what their actions are doing,
they realize it isn't about me. Life isn't about me.
(34:13):
It's about all of us, and we're in this together.
And if I don't change, I am part of the problem.
And I can't be part of the problem anymore. And
it's important that we recognize that nothing anybody says truly
can never be excused, especially if we say it on
social media or Twitter or whatever it is. They can
(34:36):
live forever. I'm sure there's episodes of podcasts where I
said things I shouldn't have said because I was ignorant.
There's not an excuse, truly, there isn't. But I have
to recognize that I did something that was not okay
in order to say in the present, oh my god,
that's not right, and I have to make it right
(34:56):
by doing things better in the present and in the future.
In to know that I'm doing something good and I'm
trying to be better, that I'm trying to make the
world a better place, and that I'm trying to show
everybody how much I care about them. That all lives
do have value, because this is key. All life has
value because of the fact that we possess the capacity
(35:20):
for change. Value doesn't come from perfection. We think that
if we work ten thousand hours and become a master,
then we have value. Right, we have value because we're
fuck ups. We have value because we make mistakes. We
have value because there is no such thing as someone
who has not sinned. Therefore, when we recognize that we
(35:41):
have all made missteps, and we reframe the mistakes or
opportunities for growth and change, we eliminate violence. I'm not
trying to make a specifically Christian message, but it is
a great story and I did learn a lot of
important things from Jesus as a teacher. And connected to
(36:01):
that example is something that not enough people talk about.
When he says, who has not sinned? Cast the first stone,
and everybody walks away one by one, he stoops down
and write writes in the dirt. The Bible says, nobody
knows what he writes, but he starts writing a dad's hypothesis,
which I think is a pretty good one, is because
he's sort of all knowing and magical. Starts listing all
(36:22):
the things that people have done wrong because he knows,
and they're like, oh fuck, and they got to get
out of there because he knows. Or maybe he just
stooped in the dirt to doodle, you know, until they
got bored. Regardless, by asking that question and making people
recognize that they have all made missteps, it's somewhere in
(36:44):
their life, he ended up eliminating violence. Because they wanted blood,
They wanted to kill this woman and they wanted to
feel justified in doing so, and by him having and
patience and waiting and saying okay, but whoever is perfect,
(37:07):
you get to do it. I want you to take
this person's life, and nobody could do it, and she lived.
Now that's a sort of kind of modernizing it, because
I can't guarantee what kind of life that poor woman
lived after that, knowing how history has been towards women.
But I think that it is important to remember and
(37:28):
to recognize that when we have patience and when we
listen twice as often as we speak, and we allow
people the room for growth and change, we eliminate and
we lessen violence. Those things are directly connected. And in
order to make the world a better place, we can
(37:50):
only do that after we recognize that we are not perfect.
One of my favorite quotes from East of Eden, and
again i'm paraphrasing, is and now that you realize you
don't have to be perfect, you can do good because
good deeds don't come from perfect people. Good deeds come
from people like us, the fuck ups, the disenfranchised, the poor,
(38:13):
the rich, the spoiled, the unspoiled. Everybody is capable of
doing good. Everybody is capable of helping and loving and
creating and spreading piece. But we can only know how
to do that effectively if we have patience for people
who make the wrong choices, and we ask ourselves first why,
as opposed to saying we have to get rid of you.
(38:34):
Because if we just try to nip all of these things,
you know, like we're trying to clean up a garden
and we're pulling out all the weeds, basically, we have
no capacity for understanding how to then effectively create change
and promote change, and how to make the world a
better place effectively, because what we're doing is we're sort
of putting our blinders on and we say, like, we
(38:55):
can only drive straight. I have another episode called Life
in three sixty which talks about this. That's an old one.
You have to see life in three hundred and sixty
degrees in order to understand that's empathy. You can't have
empathy if you only see in one direction. You can't
have empathy if you don't engage with people who are
different than you, if you don't celebrate cultures that are
(39:15):
different than yours, that makes you close minded, and it
makes you part of the problem. But in and of
that self, we become part of our own problem if
we don't give the room for people to change. Once again,
we can't make excuses for people. That's not okay. We're
not going to defend hate speech, and there isn't a
place for it. It's also not allowed in the Constitution,
(39:37):
even though somehow people say manage to get away with it.
I just want to encourage myself and everybody listening to remember,
when you see somebody doing something bad or something they
shouldn't do, well, ask why who put that thought in
their head. We're not born racist, we're not born hateful,
(40:00):
we're not born bad. So what does it take to
remind people to get back on the path toward living
a better life or toward doing good. It's a recognition
that nobody's perfect. But people can't know what they don't know.
I can't know what I don't know, and I continue
to try to do better every day. But I'm always
(40:21):
going to make quote unquote mistakes, right, I'm always going
to mess things up to a certain degree. And as
culture continues to grow and change and become more unique
and diverse and interesting, and we learn all these things
that have existed for all of time, but didn't know
until we started putting words to them. We can't know
what we don't know, and it simply takes politely reminding
(40:43):
people first, you know what, how do I guess respect
one another to hopefully incite change. But then you're going
to come up against people who say, no, I'm not
going to do that. And it's also important that you
remember that that's not your responsibility all the time to
try to change everybody else, because then you get exhausted
(41:04):
and you get burned out and you can't even take
care of yourself, and then you yourself can effectively go
through change because you go down the social media k
hole of it arguing with people on Facebook or Twitter
or Instagram. All you can do is your best. All
you can do is remind people and put your goodwill
out into the world and help people know what they
(41:27):
don't know. But you are not obligated to waste all
of your time on everybody else who seemingly does not
want to go along with trying to make the world
a better place. And all we can do, rather than
yell at that person or try to get rid of them,
is through our actions remind them what it means to
(41:49):
be a loving, kind, accepting, peaceful person. Then we are
what we repeatedly do, and that is contagious. Goodwill really
is contagious. And the more that people see us doing
and endeavoring to do good, practicing more and more and more,
trying to get things right as much as we can,
(42:09):
and seeing that when we do misstep or make a
wrong decision, we correct and we say, whoops. Now I've
learned and I'm going to change. I told myself this
is only going to be a twenty minute episode, and I
feel like I say that every single time I release something.
I also wanted to keep my tone pretty calm, cool
and collected. Then it's possible that I've upset a lot
of people, but it's also important. I don't know. I
(42:32):
remind myself and maybe some of you who are struggling
with some of this stuff. But I have patience, not
just with others, but with yourself. If you feel like
your voice is not being heard, start talking to somebody.
It's easier said than done, but therapy is very helpful.
But people can't know what they don't know. And if
(42:52):
you're hurting, where you're suffering, or you're struggling, you're going
through something, keeping it a secret, thinking it's going to
get better is not true. That is the greatest lie
that we could ever live. My friend Tessa, who if
you are following Sonder, is actually acting in it and
is on a great episode of a show called Pride,
(43:13):
which is a podcast here on straw Hut Media that
we were guests on together to talk about Sonder is transgender,
and she got a message on Instagram from someone who said,
I'm going through a really difficult time right now. I'm trans,
but I'm engaged and have kids, and no one knows.
But she found Tessa some way and decided to risk
(43:37):
coming out to somebody about it. Because the more we
try to keep these things a secret and keep these
things in, the more damage we end up doing to ourselves.
And I can't imagine being in that person's shoes, I
truly can't. But what's important is that that person decided
to talk to somebody in any capacity, because people can't
(44:00):
know what they don't know, and you can't be who
you are destined to become without talking, without speaking out,
without encouraging people to change, without letting people know, hey,
this is not okay. This is not right. Don't use
these words, and if that's what you want for yourself,
just start practicing it bit by bit, start listening more
(44:23):
than you talk, because then when you respond, you will
give an educated response, and then you can effectively help
things grow and change in a positive way, because when
we lash out, we're really distancing ourselves from other people
or distancing people from us, and that's not how we
create sustainable change. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. It's
(44:44):
very difficult because of the nature of the topic, but
I needed to talk about it for myself. Mostly had
to start a conversation because I felt like the one
thing nobody was doing was talking about the fact that
there's a level to which it's kind of insane. You
can't just put our foot down and say life has
to be perfect. People have to be perfect because that's
what I expect of them, because it truly is saying
(45:06):
I expect perfection of myself and I can't give it
to myself because I don't know how, and I'm holding
myself to a high standard that I can't achieve. And
instead of trying to dismantle whatever influences people have given
me that have poisoned my mind and my value of myself.
I'm going to take that out on other people. There
are no excuses for hate. We can't change the past,
(45:31):
but we can change the future. And it starts with us,
and it starts with recognizing that precisely because you don't
have to be perfect, you can do good. Thanks for listening.
I'll see you next time. The name
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