I had a great chat with the authors of the new book “The Cancelling of The American Mind”, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. We discuss cancel culture’s effect on human psychology and how to course correct a society intent on cancelling itself.
Transcript
Greg: [00:00:00] There’s a profound naivete around the idea that censorship can somehow fix the problem of human evil. I think ultimately, despite the fact that some ideas might make you uncomfortable, um, that ultimately it’s a very good thing about human civilization, um, that ideas to a degree can’t be stopped.
Scott: Today, it’s my great pleasure to welcome Greg Lukianoff and Ricky Schlott to the podcast. Greg is an attorney and the president of FIRE, which stands for Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Ricky is an author, journalist, and podcaster. Together, Greg and Ricky wrote the new book, The Canceling of the American Mind.
Cancel culture undermines trust and threatens us all. But there is a solution. Personally, I’ve known Greg for quite some time. He first came on my radar when he coauthored The Coddling of the American Mind with Jonathan Heights. That book was seminal in showcasing how young people are essentially learning the opposite skills of cognitive behavioral therapy.
For example, they [00:01:00] are learning that it’s good to catastrophize, have black and white thinking, and to jump to conclusions with emotional reasoning. Ricky came on my radar more recently, when we all did an event together at the Comedy Cellar, along with Greg and Jonathan, in which we discussed the role of truth telling in comedy.
Greg and John hold Ricky in high esteem, and I see why. As you will see in this interview, she is quite wise and nuanced in her thinking about such an important topic. And yes, this is a very important topic in America at the moment. Things seem to be getting worse and worse when it comes to cancel culture.
And we’re not just talking about canceling conservatives. Everyone seems to be stepping on eggshells these days, scared to speak their mind or real opinion. As Greg and Ricky argue in their book, and in which you’ll see in this episode, they argue that cancel culture is not the right path forward for democracy.
Thankfully, they offer solutions to get us back on track. So let’s get into it. I bring you Greg Lukianoff and Ricky Schwatt. Greg and [00:02:00] Ricky, thank you so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast.
Greg: Thanks for having me, Scott. It was a pleasure chatting with
Scott: you. Yeah, it really is. Congratulations on this new book, first of all.
How do you guys feel about it?
Greg: Uh, real good. Like, we were really pleased to see, um, so many great endorsements kind of flood in, you know, over the past day. I mean, my co author, John Heights, had wonderful things about it, but it was also nice to see, you know, every from everyone from John McWhorter to, um, kind of all the Johns.
Yeah, all the Johns, you know, like, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s been very heartwarming, you know, to see people come out, uh, to, to, to, to recommend it to people. What do you think, Rae?
Rikki: It’s just been really bizarre for me. It’s like the first time that I opened up the box full of books in the flesh as a first time author, that was, um, kind of insane.
So I’m just, I’m enjoying the ride. I’m thrilled and I’m really proud of the work that we did together and couldn’t have a better co author to be on this journey with,
Greg: so. Same.
Scott: That’s, I love that. Ricky, let, let me double click on you for a second. [00:03:00] Um, you know, how did you come into this picture? Uh, from what I understand, you, you wrote this article called The Crisis of Self Censorship.
When you were, what, were you like 19 years old or
Rikki: something like that? I was, I was a junior at NYU at that point in time, so I was probably like 20. Um, and I wrote an op ed about, um, about NYU and my experience there and how I felt that there was, um, just a lot of self censorship, that, that free speech is not healthy, um, and that was something that I met John Haidt through, but I actually met Greg.
Through a separate article that I wrote for The Post, which was also one of my like first four uh, there, where I thought, you know, maybe we could uncoddle Gen Z with the pandemic, and it would be a fortifying, generation defining event, and I contacted Greg, and we talked about that possibility. And, um, I still think it’s wishful thinking.
Greg’s a little more optimistic that maybe some of us will come out for the better as a result. But, um, yeah, so that was, that was how we first crossed paths. And then that became a fellowship. And then the fellowship at FIRE, [00:04:00] uh, became writing a book together and, and really leaning into our intergenerational, uh, common values.
And I think that’s, uh, uh, an interesting and unique perspective that we’ve been able to kind of like meld our minds into this
Scott: book together. I love that. I love this origin story. Um, and in Jonathan’s foreword to your book, he writes, In writing this book, Greg has made a smart move in trading me in for Ricky Schlott.
Hardly. Hardly. Look, I love your modesty, Ricky. As long as I’ve known you, which has not been that long, but you are consistently, um,
Greg: It’s hard not to be and she’s been perfect to work with the, uh, you know, like, um, I definitely got some funny looks when I told people I was, you know, writing a book and signing a contract with a 20 year old, which by the way, I hadn’t actually met in person until after we had the contract signed for months, you know, um, so, and I remember first seeing her and be like, Oh my God, you really are a [00:05:00] kid.
Well,
Scott: Ricky, are we, you’re 22 years
Rikki: old now. I’m 23, and I think, was the first time that we met, Greg, the night that we did the Comedy Cellar,
Greg: uh, What? Yeah, that’s, I thought you were someone’s daughter. Well, I guess you are, but, you know. She is,
Scott: but did I bring you guys together, in person? For
Greg: the first time, yeah.
Scott: Wow. Okay. Well, I just love this universe. Um, okay. So this idea of cancel culture, well, how does self censorship, um, relate to the idea of cancel culture? Can you make a link between Ricky’s original article and, um, Um, and the definition of cancel culture you have in your book.
Greg: Sure. And that our definition of cancel culture is the uptick of campaigns to get people fired, deplatformed, otherwise punished, et cetera.
Um, since 2014 and accelerating in 2017 and the culture of fear, um, that results [00:06:00] now people have. always, and this has been a frustrating part of the debate on self censorship, um, like, and there’s all of these sort of baked in ways of sort of rationalizing cancel culture. And when you see these questions coming out, like, are you self censoring your political point of view?
And, you know, uh, 60 percent of Americans, I can’t remember what the actual stat was, but the New York times, you know, Publish this, um, say yes, uh, in an article where they said, Oh, by the way, cancel culture is real. All the data indicates, um, that it is the, the, um, sort of lazy response. And there’s so many lazy responses to, to, to, to, to cancel culture, um, included kind of like, well, self subject it’s a good thing, you know?
And it’s like, no, when fired asked this question in particular, in most places, they’re, they’re actually not. Asking, like, are you telling little white lies to not be rude? They’re asking, are you withholding your authentic political opinion in a lot of these cases? And that’s not very healthy for a democracy.
Um, and that existed already on campus, even just by social force. But when you add into it, even the slightest possibility that you might lose your [00:07:00] job or get Um, or otherwise just have a horrible, horrible year, you know, become a pariah at Haverford, for example. I heard some nightmare stories about that.
That leads to a situation where people are less authentic, less willing to say what they really think, less willing to engage in thought experimentation, devil’s advocacy, all these things that make thinking better. And it’s utterly toxic, particularly to academia, but it’s also not good for
democracy
Rikki: either.
Yeah. And I would also add to that, that I think there’s, um, A generational, uh, element to this as well, where Gen Z, I mean, myself included, I pretty much only remember in any advanced, mature way, the post kind of 2016 meltdown world where cancel culture was very, uh, very much on display. And when you’re a young person growing up.
In that sort of context, you see people getting torn down for one off tweets or, or videos that emerged decades down the line, or even teenagers losing their college acceptances that, that preemptively makes you self censor to the point where you never [00:08:00] even were authentic in the first place, which is something that I.
I experienced myself having like gone, gone to NYU, showed up there, was terrified by the concept of being canceled by the people that I needed to live with and, and in a new city and, and nervous and socially anxious. And so I was hiding books under my bed, like quite literally, um, because I was, I, I was self censoring and fearful of the potential consequences of being canceled.
politically authentic. Usually
Scott: when I think of this, these, uh, the charges of cancel culture, I think of people on the right, um, who feel like they can’t authentically express themselves in environments where it’s predominantly people on the left. Um, I, I guess I don’t really hear too many instances of people on the left complaining about cancel culture.
Um, cause tell me a little bit more about like, about that. Like, is there an asymmetry
Greg: here? Sure. Well, I mean, there, there is an asymmetry, particularly because the institutions that we’re talking about that are, um, that where it’s the worst are [00:09:00] overwhelmed. They’re not just majority left leaning. They’re super 99%.
Yeah. You know, when it comes to administration, when it comes to professorate. So, yeah, I mean, like there is, there is more of it on the, on the left. However, we spent a lot of time talking about cancel culture on the right as well. And it’s also very worthwhile to explain that a lot of the professors, a lot of those professors who are getting punished are on the left, and about one third of the punishments are initially encouraged by, you know, Fox News, by off campus, you know, right wing institutions, Turning Point USA’s horrible professor watch list.
Like, this stuff actually does happen, but of course, when it comes to who actually does the firing on campus, it’s usually someone who’s more left leaning. Uh, but A lot of the professors who are targeted by the left are on the left. They’re just not sufficiently, uh, so according to some of the activists.
And most importantly, people miss this. Yes, one of the reasons why cancel culture got so intense and why so many professors have lost their jobs over the last [00:10:00] 10 years, um, is partially because this big uptick around 2017 of student petitions to get people, uh, to get professors fired. But, but your audience needs to understand a lot of times those are.
Encouraged by, facilitated by, cheered along by administrators. So a lot of the reason why it’s gotten so bad on campus is not just that administrators were bad on free speech for since my career started in 2001 and suddenly students became bad on free speech in 2014. It’s said in a lot of cases that administrators are actually cheering some of the stuff on and making it possible to cancel people with things like bias related incident programs where you can literally report your professor and your friends for that matter, sometimes anonymously on a
Rikki: hotline.
Yeah, at NYU, it was quite literally on the back of our ID cards right underneath like 9 1 1, the student health center, the campus police, and like all the very important phone numbers that you might need as a person on campus, and then the biased response hotline for if your feelings are poked and prodded, which [00:11:00] I mean, of course, perhaps there are Limited instances of legitimate bias on campus.
But I think the idea of a hotline and institutionalizing it demonstrates that there’s there’s a an institutional apparatus that is like willing to respond to speech. And apparently people are so aggrieved on campus that that’s necessary, which I actually think sends a really terrible message. It’s one of the most progressive Um, Schools in the country.
I think we’re and I’ve had an overwhelmingly welcoming and open minded class of peers and students around me. I don’t think that bias is a mass issue at a place like NYU. Of course, if it pops up, I would, I would hope that an administrator would respond to that adequately. But the idea of a hotline and that we need it plastered on the back of our I.
D. Cards or on the back of bathroom door stalls is, um, really chilling, I think, in my opinion, because Who knows what, what one person might think bias is and, and internal reports from NYU showed that, um, some of the examples of things that people had called [00:12:00] in, uh, included someone saying that the, the photos of students used in promotional material for NYU did not reflect the diverse student body enough.
Apparently that’s something. to call the hotline.
Scott: I think that, uh, a central thing about this is that a lot of, is the whole notion that ideas can make you, can make you feel unsafe, right? I mean, that seems to be what this is about, you know, and, uh, and, and from a compassionate point of view, I mean, I actually, that makes sense to have a hotline.
If something makes you feel unsafe, you, of course you would call hotline if you feel physically unsafe. So now if ideas can make you unsafe. Then, you know, that’s obviously the extension that that that’s their logic. I’m saying that’s their logic, but, um, where do you, this, this is so tricky in trying to really, um, logically and compassionately think through the lines.
Where are the lines between, um, ideas that can, that can generally, uh, lead to [00:13:00] violence against people like you, you know, whatever group you’re a part of and ideas that make you feel unsafe, where. Everyone on the outside is like, that is overreacting, but on the inside, it doesn’t feel like you’re overreacting.
It really does make you distressed. How do you sort through that swamp? We
Greg: should be thankful, um, that there’s no way to stop ideas, really. Um, I, I think ultimately, despite the fact that some ideas might make you uncomfortable, um, that Ultimately, it’s a very good thing about human civilization, um, that ideas to a degree can’t be stopped and one thing that I think, um, there’s a, there’s a profound naivete, uh, around the idea that censorship can somehow fix the problem of human evil.
And one thing that I really want people to understand, and this is where the combination of my, you know, First Amendment, uh, specialization, and also my obvious intense interest in social psychology, you know, which you can see in Coddling the American Mind, I get obsessed with that stuff, really kind of come together.
[00:14:00] Because in First Amendment law, there was this idea that you should allow even odious opinions to be aired because otherwise they, they go underground and they fester. And I, and I, and the reason why I don’t love that analogy is because it’s not strong enough. Because we know about group polarization, we know about group polarization, you know, through lots of studies that essentially if you tell people to go to places where, because first of all, no, censorship changes nobody’s minds.
Nobody’s like, Oh, you’re saying it’s illegal to have this opinion. Well, I guess I don’t have that opinion anymore. Yes, they realize that they should talk to people they agree with, but we all know, and the research is strong on this. If you end up in a group of people who are all on your political fence, and I think we’ve had this experience too, that, um, you know, you get together and you talk political issues and you, and you leave much more radicalized in the, in, in the direction of the opinion.
And that This replicates. But one cool thing about the book that I probably should mention more. We got some really interesting data from the National Contagion Research Institute about [00:15:00] what happened when people were kicked off Twitter for being offensive or being pro Trump or whatever. All these different sort of mass expulsions from, uh, from Twitter resulted in and it meant that they all went to gab and the research also indicated they all got much more out of touch, much more radicalized.
So there’s an actual danger to society from the naive belief that we can actually deal with bad ideas by shutting people up. As I often say that you are, uh, the most important thing about. Freedom of speech, um, is that we’re engaged in the project of human knowledge and part of the project of human knowledge is knowing the world as it is.
Um, but you can’t know what the world as it is unless you know what people really think. And if you believe you’re safer for knowing less about what people really think, you’re diluting yourself. Yeah.
Rikki: And I would say right now, I mean, I’ve, I’ve just been thinking about this recently. Um, Greg and I were talking about truth social today, and I mean, you couldn’t have a more perfect example of how censorship does not actually remove [00:16:00] bad ideas or ideas that someone might consider bad if you’re not a fan of Trump’s.
I mean, all that that really did kicking him off of Twitter is gave him his own little echo chamber of people who only agree with him and the rest of us. I mean, or at least I can speak for myself. I don’t really know what he’s going Truth socialing, unless I see a screenshot from somewhere else and, and yet he’s the front runner candidate of one of the two major political parties in this country and the censorship did nothing to actually stop that, if anything, it just insulated him from criticism and insulated everyone else from actually understanding what a large faction of the country believes at this point in time.
Scott: It just, it bogs my mind, and we don’t need to go down the whole rabbit hole of Trump, but it bogs my mind that he, you know, that literally the definition of speech that incites riots or violence, I mean, he’s like king of that, he’s like king of speech that incites violence and riots, and he doesn’t get in trouble for it, so if he’s not getting in trouble for it, who is?
Who
Greg: is going to get in trouble for it? That’s an interesting [00:17:00] debate in the First Amendment field is, um, was January 6th technically incitement? I don’t know. I think, you know, I, I’ve discussed this a lot with David French about like, if that’s not it, I don’t know exactly what it is, but there are a lot of first amendment lawyers that didn’t quite get there.
And it’s like,
Scott: cause they’re paid to argue that they’re getting a fancy check to make that argument. Um, I want to talk a little about Pandora’s Toolbox. Can we do that? Can you tell me a little about Pandora’s Toolbox?
Greg: Oh, thanks. Yeah. No, I, I, I, I think the, um, I’ve noticed that we’ve gotten, uh, some harsh reviews from, uh, London conservative British papers.
My mother’s British, so it hurts my feelings a little bit. But the main thing that they seem to not like are, are the. allegories and literary devices that I love using, you know, like, so we opened up cuddling the American mind, the opening to cuddling the American mind, it talks about going to a guru who gives us terrible advice.
And this came out of a point when Hyte and I were working together and we’re getting so in the weeds on [00:18:00] intersectionality. I told them we’re starting to write a book that I don’t want to read , and, and that’s a bad thing. That’s fair enough. Yeah. So I like allegories and I, and I know that they don’t always work.
Um, but in this case, I liked it. I, I hope, I think it helps bring people in, you know, by, by having a, a, a story that actually encapsulates the whole idea. So the idea is that there is a society in which the, uh, sorcerer is Pandora. That, that’s, that’s dysfunctional. The sorc sorcerer. Pandora takes away everybody’s ability to.
make ad hominem arguments to, um, to, to, to avoid the topic. Everybody actually has to be truthful and everybody has to be engaged in like the rules of argumentation where you address, you know, the, the actual topic and this society absolutely explodes successfully. Like it becomes, you know, the most innovative place in the country, in the world.
All the scholars go there. It’s able to solve problems because people don’t dodge around. They just get right to the point. But after like a hundred years of [00:19:00] this people, her magic starts waning, which is our image of like the, it, um, kind of like people missing the point, you know, like to a degree and the city starts to be divided against itself.
We call it gnosis opulence, which is city of knowledge because we’re, you know, um, and, uh. And on either, so her, her two granddaughters, you know, one represents like the east side, one represents the west side that are at each other’s throats. And she tries to encourage them to bring the people together.
And they’re like, no way, granny, like we, we want those weapons back. We want, we, we want the ad hominems. We want the things that let you win every argument because I want to own you libtards. Uh, but I, I want to, you know, get you groomers. And so we, just like in, in, in coddling the American mind, we sort of like introduce a little bit of humor to it.
But it’s a way of saying that’s. Kind of where I feel like we are. If you can’t argue towards truth, you’re wasting tremendous cognitive energy on cancel culture, cat videos, and just figuring out a way to not actually hear what the other side’s saying. Doesn’t Ricky like cat videos though? Well, I love cat videos too.
We love [00:20:00] cats.
Scott: So cancel culture is, you argue that cancel culture is part of a strategy to win arguments without actually winning arguments. Yeah. Um, so can you explain what that means?
Greg: You know, why actually bother one of the reasons why we have so many rules for, like, formal debate, um, is because we want to actually, you know, get to the point of an argument and have substantive discussions.
Um, but it’s much easier, uh, to engage. So we talk about rhetorical fortresses and we talk about everything from logical fallacies to ad hominem attacks to demographic dismissal. We call one the perfect rhetorical fortress and the other one, the efficient rhetorical fortress on the right. Um, but cancel culture is the most extreme.
version of of of a dodge, because if you can scare someone out of saying what they really think, um, or get them [00:21:00] punished for saying what they really think, you might not ever have to have that argument with anyone again because they don’t actually. It’s like, I don’t want to be the next person who gets fired for that.
So cancel culture. We try to make people understand they should see it as Part of the only the most dysfunctional part of a dysfunctional way to argue that we’ve known is dysfunctional going back centuries like we had rhetorical, you know, ideas of what a good argument looks like going back well before the ancient Greeks, probably, but definitely, you know, back with the ancient Greeks and Romans.
And, uh, and cancel culture, you know, like what, what, what, what kind of like with the allegory of nosisopolis, kind of what we’re saying is we’re regressing to these, these habits that are very predictable, um, in, in human nature. And if we let people use them, they’ll use them like crazy, but they get you nowhere.
They get you less than nowhere.
Rikki: Yeah. And I, one thing that’s interesting, um, having been on a college campus recently, when we talk about these ad hominem attacks of, of people’s immutable [00:22:00] characteristics and saying, Oh, you can’t, or you’ve no right to say that because you’re X or Y or Z or whether it’s race, gender, sexuality, whatever it may be is I’ve seen it just that, that reality is so entrenched on, especially on campuses, um, that when I was in discussion based philosophy courses, especially I would hear.
all the time. People preface their arguments almost as a way to like buttress themselves against criticism by saying, as a woman, XYZ or as a person of color or whatever it might be because we’ve, we so fundamentally know that, that we will get attacked based on our characteristics or that our characteristics have something to do with.
The idea is that we’re presenting that we try to like buttress ourselves at the same time Which is like almost the inverse of of the ad hominem attacks in a kind of funny way But
Scott: you can’t be like as a cisgender white man. I you know, listen to my perspective I mean, I feel like that one
Rikki: does all I have is the woman card, but you know [00:23:00]
Scott: That’s my point that seems yeah, there are different
Greg: cards And when we, and we take it through the perfect rhetorical fortress, one point that we make because the perfect rhetorical fortress, one of the reasons why it’s perfect and it’s so complex is because since it comes from the left, it’s largely been adapted on campus where there’s just exquisite ways to kind of dodge arguments.
And so the first one is if you can label someone conservative, doesn’t matter if they are, you don’t have to listen to them anymore. And I can attest even back when I started law school back in 1997 at Stanford, kind of like you. Can dismiss somebody like that was well established, like arguing someone’s conservative was kind of the same thing as arguing that they were wrong.
And we and we still do this very much, you know, on on Twitter. And it’s embarrassing. And 99 percent of people can be accused of it. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why you started seeing the ACLU being accused by some activists being right wing or in the New York Times. It’s like, well, it’s worked on everyone else before.
They hate being called this. But then we go down what we call the demographic funnel, which we had some [00:24:00] fun with. Height actually encouraged me not to, to not actually put the demographic numbers on it, but I insisted in part because it, most Americans don’t understand what the demographics of the United States actually looks like.
So we go through all the, the, the race dismissal, gender identities dismissals, et cetera, et cetera. And by the time you’re done, you get down to about 0. 9 percent of the population. of the country. But here’s the trick. Here’s the kicker. If you’re in that 0. a trans non white person, and if you have the wrong opinion, you’re still wrong.
And actually, you might get even greater frustration because people say you have internalized transphobia, you have internalized misogyny, you have internalized depression, etc, etc. You actually might be up for greater hate. So like, like basic and we’ve got examples and quotes of, of, of people saying this.
It’s like, there’s a great quote that we have in there from Coleman Hughes, um, a black independent thinker who sometimes called, you know, uh, [00:25:00] dismissed as conservative, but he’s amazing, amazing, thoughtful dude. And he says, he makes the point that it’s like, I’m often being told that essentially the color of my skin is the most important thing to give me credibility on any number of topics, but as soon as I have the wrong.
I get told that I’m not really black. So you see, it’s perfect. Like, either I have the right opinion, or I’m not really black. John McWhorter said the same thing, uh, Wilfred Riley, like, every black conservative and most black moderates we talk to said they’ve been told, and I think often by white people, they’re not really black for their opinions.
And that’s what makes the, the, the Rhetorical Fortress perfect, because it’s kind of like, there’s no way to get out of it, um, you know, being legitimate. Ricky, do you want to touch that?
Rikki: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m, I walk off any cliff. I have no sensitivities at all whatsoever, but it’s funny. I was on, we did, um, Jordan Peterson’s podcast, which I don’t think either was expected would concentrate so much on toxic femininity, but
Greg: Oh boy, that was a little awkward.
Is he obsessed with [00:26:00] that topic? I was looking, I was looking at the, it clearly seemed like he was directing it. Partially because we, you know, my coauthors, a young woman that I, I liked watching the expression on her face as this was coming at her, be getting a little bit like, okay, Duke’s up. I
Rikki: was just, I was very, I was nervous, but I actually, I listening back, it was a really interesting conversation.
I thought it was, um. discussing a lot of things that, that you otherwise maybe would not have been able to discuss if there was not a woman at the table, which I don’t actually think is that productive of a reality, to be honest. Um, but I also, of course, like got all the accusations as a result that it’s like my internalized misogyny that I might agree with him on some points.
I didn’t agree with him on everything that he said, but, um, there’s that certainly that accusation that even if I can participate in the conversation because I am a woman, but then even if I have a different. Or more heterodox opinion on some things and not the expected opinion as a woman, then I’ve, I must have internalized some sort of, uh, External bias, which is, I don’t believe to be the [00:27:00] case.
I just might think about it a little bit differently, regardless of my, my immutable characteristics.
Greg: My favorite version of this is actually directed at Peter Thiel. And we mentioned it in the book, which is that Peter Thiel is a gay conservative. Um, and there was an article that we quote in the book making the argument that Peter Thiel is not in fact gay.
He is a man who has sex with men because his politics are wrong and that somehow makes him magically not gay. And it’s like, great, like, mwah, just congratulations, you’ve created a perfect rhetorical version.
Scott: So do you think there’s a lot of gaslighting? of the American mind.
Greg: Do you want to answer that, Ricky?
Scott: That’s a softball question.
Rikki: I’ll let you answer it because that was one of our original, uh, uh, titles that I think we were going to do before I was canceling, right?
Greg: That, that, that was it. That, that was actually, um, one of the titles we were originally thinking about, um, you know, kind of. I’ve never liked the title coddling the American mind, but now I feel like I’m stuck with the formula.
So it’s always [00:28:00] gerunding the American mind something, um, but we went with, you know, canceling in this case to make it clear. It’s about cancel culture, but we have a chapter called gaslighting of the American mind, and it’s talking about this. Absolute blow up on Twitter of just people freaking out Keith Oberman getting really mad former and New York Times reporter saying that they wouldn’t work for that organization anymore if they, uh, If they were there, they’d quit right away.
And what was this in the New York Times had committed? They wrote an article citing actual data that cancel culture is real They point out that cancel culture also comes with the right, which we take on in multiple chapters in the book, by the way, to be clear, we don’t, we don’t dispute that. Um, they’re saying things that as best I could tell were obviously true from personal experience and also from the data.
It’s the New York Times and people flipped. out. And by the time that even the New York Times can’t, you know, get completely roasted for saying something that’s obviously true by people are saying this can’t possibly be true. I’m like, Nope, that’s that’s called gaslighting. You’re telling the whole rest of the country that we’re not [00:29:00] actually seeing what we’re seeing with their own eyes.
Yeah. And
Rikki: I would add to that. If you look at the actual statistics across Different age groups, uh, what their view is of cancel culture. It’s older people have a more negative view. Younger people have a more positive view. Millennials are super gung ho and love it apparently. And then it completely inverts when you get to Gen Z and actually Gen Z has the most negative view of any generation.
So they completely break that pattern. And I think there’s gaslighting with young people in particular, because we grew up so mired in cancel culture. And like, if you’re a young person trying to explore yourself, figure out who you are, where you want to fit in, uh. Go to a new college, start a new job.
Like there’s, there’s so many places where you can fumble and screw up. And I think growing up with no grace or forgiveness on that front really fundamentally shaped a generation. I think there’s a massive authenticity crisis with young people that I felt myself. Um. for, for a long while. And so I would say young people are particularly gaslit.
Um, I think
Scott: that it’s important to point out that [00:30:00] this issue goes far beyond K through 12 and universities. Um, so in your book, you cover, um, psychotherapy. You cover social media, science and medicine, um, and my favorite, comedy. But, so, let’s double click on two, two of my favorites, psychotherapy and comedy.
Um, a lot of comedians need psychotherapy, trust me. I say that as someone who dabbles in the comedic realm. Um, tell me a little bit about how is this infiltrating, how is cancer culture infiltrating psychotherapy? Let’s start there.
Greg: Oh man, that was probably the most depressing chapter for me to re, uh, write.
Um, for us to write. And the, uh, and partially it’s the, um, the fact that I have, you know, I know people who are getting their clinical, you know, psychology PhDs. I know people who are in various programs, and they’re afraid to complain about any of this to their classmates. Um, and One thing that comes up all the time is that they’re, they’re, one of their [00:31:00] nightmare scenarios is what if it turns out I’m treating someone who’s like a Trump supporter?
What if I actually find out that they’re actually kind of right wing? Like, what do I do? Like, do I just immediately cancel it? And of course, you know, the people I know are kind of like, well, then you treat them, you help them, you know, like, like you’re, you’re, like, you’re supposed to. And we’ve heard this from multiple sources, but also there was a therapist talking about this and Barry Weiss and Camille Foster talked to us about this too, about being in a therapy session.
And having your therapist correct your point of view on something like take time out of the thing you’re paying for, which makes it even worse. But to correct to point out like, oh, that might be internalized racism. And I think about, you know, the thing that led me down this entire road was, um, that led to calling the American mind.
And this whole weird adventure I’ve been on was like, You know, getting ready to kill myself back in 2007 because I got clinically terribly depressed, partially because of the culture war, which is one of the reasons why I actually take all this stuff so seriously. And I think about what if at the time I went in to talk [00:32:00] to, uh, to, to my therapist.
And they started judging me on the observations that I was having that were just true coming out of my constantly being in the culture war all the time, like, I literally not sure I’d still be here. And that’s, that’s no exaggeration. So the expansion of some of this sort of like, I have to correct your thoughts or I don’t have to treat people who are, um, you know, 50 percent of the population, uh, if I don’t like them, that’s dangerous stuff.
for the mental health of the country, and it certainly creates horrible ethical dilemmas for the, um, for the profession. But actually, have you heard any stories about this, Scott?
Scott: Oh, yes. What I see is a lot of, ironically, implicit bias within the psychotherapy profession. I’m turning it back on them, you know, that phrase, implicit bias.
But you know, there’s almost like greater compassion for certain kinds of clients, like immediate. Without even knowing their life story, you know, a certain like, like, oh my gosh, you know, I’m treating this person of color, so therefore I need to treat them de more delicately and show them more [00:33:00]compassion.
You know, just prejudging things without, um, which I thought the sort of aim of psychotherapy was the Carl Rogers unconditional positive regard, humanistic psychology approach that I take. Is that you care about the individual experience more than anything else. You know, you, um, want to get to know a whole person, you know, and, uh, not prejudge them.
So it seems to go be the opposite of that. You know, there seems to be a lot of implicit bias in the field is what I’ve noticed. Um, shall we talk about comedy? Shall we lighten things up a little bit? This is a heavy topic. You know, you guys wrote a heavy book. You know it. You know it. You know it. I don’t need to tell you that.
But, um, but comedy, um, so, thank God for comedians, right? Can we all agree? Can I get an amen? They might be the last Amen. The last true speakers that we, that we allow. You know, but you’re saying maybe we don’t allow it anymore. Maybe they are, even they are [00:34:00] being cancelled. What have you found in your work there?
Rikki: Yeah, I mean, there’s example after example of, of comedians being protested or shut it down or asked to stop in, um, in mid, uh, routine due to sensitivities that people have. I think one of my favorite examples was, um, Constantine Kissin at one point. In the UK was invited to do, um, uh, some sort of charity event, I think.
Um, and he, he was doing stand up there and I asked him to preemptively write or sign a contract that would say that he wouldn’t offend people based on, you know, race, religion, gender, et cetera, um, before he even showed up, which I, and then he pulled out of the event. I don’t blame him because that’s certainly, I mean, you have to risk being offensive if you want.
to be comedic, frankly. I mean, I think it’s a place where, or a cultural space where we can, uh, lean into some of the most controversial and uncomfortable realities in a kind of cathartic way and share laughs. And this is one, but this definitely is one that gave me a little bit of [00:35:00] hope in the, in the course of writing it.
It’s like uniquely, probably the only case study in our book where I feel like there is maybe light at the end of the tunnel because it’s so egregious to see cancel culture in this. area that I think, I think some people who might be more sympathetic to it creeping up in other crevices of society are more allergic to the idea of censoring comedians.
Because there’s two examples that I think were heartening. One was the Dave Chappelle, um, Netflix protest. A lot of, of their employees protested a special in which he made jokes about transgender people. But the company in the end changed their entire policy and, and, and, um, kind of like workplace manual to say You know, we’re going to say things and publish things that you’re not going to like because we’re, we’re a publishing platform.
And if that’s a problem for you, then this is not the company for you, which I think is a really great standard, um, to put forth because it requires everyone to put their own personal politics and sensitivities aside. And the other example that was really heartening was, um, Andrew Scholes had a, a run in with a major streamer.
I don’t think he [00:36:00] ever said publicly, which one. Um, where they wanted to cut out a few jokes in the special that they bought from him, and he bought it back and sold it on his own and actually ended up making a ton of money on it. I mean, of course, these are people who already had very well established platforms, which puts them in a much better position to be able to fight back against the cancel culture versus someone who’s up and coming.
But I do think this is one place where It’s just like a lot more people have been willing to say no, like not, not here.
Greg: And you do improv, right? Right. Right. Scott.
Scott: Um, improv, but also stand up. I have an alter ego. Yes. What’s
Greg: it, what, what’s the environment like, uh, in your opinion?
Scott: Well, it helps having an alter ego.
That no one can recognize that has a mustache and an afro. Uh, I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say afro, to be honest. Uh, ju fro. Maybe that’s more Um, but no, the environment, you know I still find that comedians, you know, one of the greatest [00:37:00] joys amongst comedians is offending each other. Like, when I hang out with my friends who are comedians, we enjoy offending each other.
Is that taboo to say that? I mean, I feel like that’s just, like, part of the exercise.
Greg: Well, that’s been one of the things that I found really funny about, sort of, like, the rewriting of history, when I look at people getting offended by, like, You know, Sarah Silverman’s, you know, old TV show back in the 2007.
I remember looking at the content of Comedy Central back in 2007, and it was also edgy. I’m just kind of like, you know what? The situation for free speech can’t be that bad if this kind of stuff is like people get that all this stuff is a joke. And then I kind of like. I saw this kind of look, looking back, you know, offense archaeology stuff that we talk about in the book, the idea of like looking backwards in time to try to find something that was, uh, wouldn’t be acceptable today to, for example, get Sarah Silverman in trouble for her, uh, for some of the really [00:38:00] racy bits that she did in her, in her short lived Comedy Central piece and getting her canceled.
Uh, meanwhile, I watched that show. And the whole joke was that, you know, because she was constantly making fun of herself. The joke was that Sarah is a horrible person and she’s selfish and narcissistic and does offensive things and doesn’t even know they’re offensive. Like, so it was actually really funny.
But sometimes you get the sense when, particularly from younger people looking back, it’s like, you did know that there were multiple levels of things going on in this. Like, we know, we knew this was offensive. That was part of the joke. But the joke wasn’t that, ha ha, this is offensive. It was what kind of Idiot would actually say something that stupid.
Yeah, I mean, I think
Rikki: honestly No offense to the SNL people, but I think embracing a lot of the PC stuff actually has made comedy considerably worse like I I think about just how how In my own lifetime watching SNL growing up, like, it’s just gotten considerably less funny because they’re not willing to call out very obvious excesses on their [00:39:00] own side, and then all of a sudden, once in a blue moon, they’ll, there will be some degree of self awareness or, or like a political joke that, um, pokes fun at the left, and that’ll be the thing that goes viral because we make fun of the right pretty constantly in forums like that, and, um, I think from time to time it’s, A little bit of like self, self referential comedy has become something that we’ve also pulled away from as well, um, in a, in fear of being politically
Scott: incorrect.
Yeah, really, you guys are making really good points. Uh, it seems to me like the, the ability to develop the capacity to laugh at yourself or to not take everything so personally should be something we should teach people, not the exact opposite. That’s it. You know what I mean? It seems like a great skill, like to be able to harness the skills of not taking rejection so seriously and to look at your foibles and, um, you know, being able to laugh at them a bit.
It seems like, you know, a great skill.
Greg: Absolutely. It’s one of the things that you can tell when I was really depressed back in 2007 when I was actually a danger to [00:40:00] myself. The one thing that you, you, Scott would not have recognized about me was I couldn’t joke and I couldn’t. laugh. And as far as like my, it’s my major coping, you know, mechanism.
Um, and, and if I’m, if I’m not, if I can’t laugh, I’m, I’m, I’m in trouble.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I, I see therapists because I have trouble taking anything seriously, but that’s, that’s a condition all on its own.
It seems like Americans are really losing trust in science. It is, it’s in the air. It’s, you know, you see on Twitter, like, Like everyone just immediately dismisses any science, any scientific study. Now, can you tell me a little bit about how we’re seeing cancel culture, um, affect, um, you know, our, our mistrust of, uh, information.
Yeah.
Greg: I mean, this is a major theme of the book, um, is about how cancel culture actually affects you, whether you know it or not, because like, you know, I, I, I, I [00:41:00] use this example a lot, um, partially because I know her, but have you ever interviewed Carol Hoeven formerly of Harvard?
Scott: Yep, she’s been on my podcast, and I, uh, was at a conference with her
Greg: recently.
Very thoughtful person. She’s an evolutionary biologist. She wrote an excellent, I mean, honestly, like, I love, you know, the art of popular nonfiction. It’s just such a delightful read while being full of information called Tea About Testosterone. Um, and, you know, a controversial topic. You know, who could have seen that coming, you know, 15 years ago, the biggest controversial was, but she went on Fox News because, you know, a lot of other places don’t want to talk about a book that could be perceived as controversial and she gives this really compassionate explanation of, you know, um, you should use trans people’s pronouns.
You should be respectful. You should be empathetic. You should be compassionate. But biological sex is real. And we can’t pretend it’s not real. Um, it’s real and it’s important. It has medical implications. Um, and she did it, she seemed to do her best to really be the brilliant but also compassionate person she actually [00:42:00] is.
Um, and immediately a DEI administrator at Harvard, you know, starts calling her out, immediately students start organizing and Often, as to be clear, often the student organizing is very much encouraged by administrators as well, you know, to sign petitions, you know, to, uh, to punish her. So eventually, uh, nobody would be her TA, um, which Harvard should have.
came in and said, no, we’re not going to, you know, get, we stand by this professor. But the only person who really did that was actually Steve Pinker, who’s on our board and is, you know, a champion of Beckett McFreedom free speech. And she felt very isolated and she got very depressed. She talks about in the book about for the first time actually having suicidal ideation and she left Harvard.
She came back to work for, for Pinker, uh, for a bit and she’s going to AEI now. And what, how does this relate to trust and expertise? It relates to trust and expertise, because if you’re someone in the public and you see this happen, and you’re like, wait a second, someone just said something that, as best I can tell, has always [00:43:00] been a, has been a scientific fact for my entire life.
She says, says something that I think should be kind of uncontroversial. And Harvard students and administrators ruined her career. So, so I, I don’t think science is owning enough how much it’s done to undermine its own credibility in the past 10 years. What
Scott: a really good point. Yeah. Ricky, do you want to elaborate on that at all?
Rikki: Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic was just like the most clarifying instance of this because we run into it with Um, I mean, I think we, like, over the course of the pandemic, institutional trust went from, like, what even to me in the beginning was a surprising high to a really dismal low, like, I think back to the two weeks to slow the spread sort of time period where I think Almost everyone I knew was a fan of Anthony Fauci and trusting him and trusting institutions, and yet we saw instances where people who had differing opinions on whether it was Jay Bhattacharya pointing out lockdowns, or Jennifer Say [00:44:00] pointing out school closures being an issue, or um You know, Vinay Prasad, I think, just recently had a, um, a speech of his or a conversation that he was supposed to have somewhere get canceled because he’s had, um, like heterodox COVID opinions as well.
Um, and, or the lab leak theory. I mean, that’s pretty much probably, I guess, the lowest hanging fruit on something that seemed evident or very potential to potentially, uh. Possible to people. And yet the there was a total cancel culture teardown of anyone who had a heterodox view on any of these issues.
Plus you add in the fact that people had more time than ever on their hands in lockdown to actually analyze some things for themselves and hold competing ideas in their head. And then you have a one way or the highway sort of public discourse, which I think is just one way to just totally and Almost irreparably, in my opinion, devastate trust and, and voices of authority in a way that, like, I, I mean, I feel that way personally, but I don’t, [00:45:00] I’m not reveling in that.
I don’t think that’s a positive in any way, shape, or form. Uh,
Scott: to what extent is a lot of this, does it come down to righteous? Indignation. So much. Because I really, I want to read one of my favorite quotes and link it to what we’re talking about. The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone.
To be able to destroy with good conscience. To be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior, scare quotes, righteous indignation. This is the height of psychological luxury. The most delicious of moral treats. Aldous Huxley in chrome yellow. I feel like I’m seeing this. Everywhere right now. And I mean, everywhere I look, this left right up down, you know, it’s everywhere.
Now, what? Why?
Greg: Yeah. I mean, what, what, what caveat? We actually found out that wasn’t from Promeo. It was from like the forward to some book that I hadn’t heard of. It was Huxley, right? But it’s Huxley. It’s a real, it’s a real quote. And it’s, I couldn’t believe we didn’t see it until after [00:46:00] the book was done because it’s like, Oh, wow.
Huxley again for the win. I mean, just, yeah. completely right. Um, you know, I think this is one of the things that we’re trying to actually establish that cancel culture should be understood as this historical period, partially because every historical period has its own weirdnesses, you know, like, and one of them is the massive reliance on social media, um, changing the entire way we argue, you know, in some ways much for the much, much worse.
Um, and that, uh, you know, that’s why we, we, our definition of it has a historical, like beginning date, but these instincts. You know that lead to it. They’re part of us. They are hardwired, but righteous indignation. I mean, it just like Huxley says, I mean, it’s calling yourself a hero, you know, just for the way you feel and how much you disapprove and how much disgust you can muster.
And it’s so tempting. It’s so tempting to feel that superiority over someone, particularly when you think your cause is righteous. And it’s one of the reasons why it’s Humility and checking yourself [00:47:00]and, and one of those things, both Ricky and I repeat all the time, taking seriously the possibility you might be wrong on this and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, you’re wrong about an awful lot of stuff.
So, you know, before you go decide to campaign to burn that, which, you know, have a moment of being like, have I been wrong about stuff before? And if your answer is no, you never have been. Well, I don’t think I can help you
Rikki: very much. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that, um. Really stuck out to me in writing this book was an idea that Greg had about called censorship gravity and how our Society or all society is based on the fact that this is our human nature is just naturally inclined to being pulled down towards towards censorship, it’s not a fallacy in this case to say that it’s a slippery slope.
And I, I think like an analogy that he, he brought the censorship gravity idea to the table. And I complimented it with an analogy in the book about slouching. And I think it’s really important to, to realize that it takes a degree in the same way that like you need to be purposeful and standing up straight and [00:48:00] actually realize when your shoulders are slouching, it does take a degree of, of buy in and, and, um, And personal discipline to make sure that you don’t indulge those, um, instincts.
And I don’t think that’s something that we really teach anymore. I, those, the idioms of live and let live and, and to each their own. I, I think those have really gone to the wayside with my generation and, um, and the, I mean, not just my generation, but in the past couple of decades in our culture, and we’re seeing now the consequences of
Scott: that.
No, you, you, you really are far beyond your years there, Ricky. You, I think, I feel like you really, you really belong here. I don’t want to see any more self deprecation. I think you, you know, you’re very, you’re very wise. And, uh, and Greg really did make a great choice. Um. This idea of, um, I’ve been canceled, uh, I think I, I hear everything you’re saying and I agree with basically all of it, but I do see sometimes a sort of victim mentality among some people who say I’ve been canceled.
[00:49:00] And when you look a little bit deeper, they haven’t really been canceled. They’ve been maybe even just criticized by someone on the left, you know, and I really think we need to make These important distinctions about what canceling really is versus those who claim canceling, but really, you know, when you look deeper, some of them actually even use it as ways of increasing their money, getting money and platform.
They scream, you know, I’ve been canceled, support me at Patreon, you know, and then they become richer than anyone else. But there are some people where I feel like they, they, they could easily have made the choice to not have a victim mentality over it and move forward with their lives very productively in a way that they weren’t really actually technically canceled.
What are some of your thoughts? I know you have strong opinions about
Greg: this. Yeah, I mean, our definition of cancellation is very close to our definition of censorship. Um, so, uh, if you got harshly criticized, so what? Like that’s not cancellation if you lost your job because of a campaign because people were mad at [00:50:00] you That’s cancellation as far as far as we’re concerned If you got if you got your paper rescinded if you couldn’t give a speech, you know Because you were shouted down we we count censorship.
Our definition of censorship and cancellation is very close
Rikki: i’ll also add to that that I had uh, I had a point of realization when I obviously was like Just a kid on campus that no one really gave a shit about, and then all of a sudden I’m writing op eds in newspapers, and some people did not like that and came for me, but then I started realizing, like, no, I am developing a victim mentality where, like, if my friend doesn’t text me back for an hour, like, well, maybe it’s because they hate me now, or maybe it’s because they’re canceling me, and I definitely, for a period of time, assumed that Um, you know, anything that might have been negative or ambiguous directed towards me was for that reason.
And in retrospect, I remember just like one morning I woke up and I was like, Oh my gosh, I totally have a victim mentality over this right now. And like, yes, I did lose some [00:51:00] friends, but certainly not everything bad that’s happening is because I wrote an op ed in the New York Post. That’s, that’s for sure.
Scott: Yeah. Well, that’s a great realization. It seems like an important realization for your own mental health. Yeah. Um, I’m going to just cover a couple more of these misconceptions that you cover in the appendix. Um, because you tie your definition of cancel culture to protected speech under their First Amendment, doesn’t that mean you’re saying that people can dance nude in the workplace, call each other racial Appetites and burn flags at the office?
Absolutely.
Greg: That’s exactly what we’re saying. And I put that in there very specifically because we have a couple of critics who actually make arguments like this. And the reason why this ended up in the appendix was because I’m like, I don’t want to waste any serious person’s time with arguments this silly.
The reason why we tie it to first amendment is because it brings in a lot of Uh, complexity and nuance to a short definition. Um, it, it, it recognizes, for example, you know, incitement is not protected. Defamation is not protected. True threats are not protected, except it, it, it allows you to have a lot of complexity in a short definition.
It [00:52:00] introduces a tremendous amount of, of, of, of nuance to it. And your company has the right of freedom association to decide, I don’t want to work with this person. I don’t want this person representing me. But here’s the problem. Um, from a, from a culture of free speech, from a national perspective, if every employer decided that they’re both a widget factory, and by the way, they have a right or left political point of view, that if you disagree with you can get fired, that may be something technically they can do.
But it’s terrible for, for our democratic republicans, it’s terrible for democracy because you’d have a situation where technically you have a first amendment right, but you can’t actually say anything because, uh, because you can’t, you won’t be able to work. So I like having that as part of the definition.
It doesn’t, it’s not too hard to explain, but as far as like the actual objection. That’s why I ended up in the appendix.
Scott: I got you. And I’m glad that I asked it to you because I think that’s important. Your answer. One [00:53:00] more question. I just really quick one to ask. And maybe, maybe Ricky can kind of take this, have the last word on this one.
But isn’t, you know, calls of, Oh, I’ve been canceled only for the privileged. Um,
Rikki: I would say you’re
Scott: not in a position of power. Okay, explain a
Rikki: little more. Um, I mean, there’s, we have so many examples. I think I just had friends that were cancelled in high school. I kind of consider myself among them, a people who are attacked and when they’re literally teenagers.
I mean, the people who, um, who make that case, I think often Just completely ignore the fact that high school and even middle school campuses now, I mean, I hear that often from parents who tell me that like, they’re, they’re middle schoolers being attacked. What, how does politics even have a place in middle school at this point in time?
And I mean, there’s just so many instances of random people here and they’re just being torn down by mobs, um, since the beginning of cancel culture and across all age groups and demographics, I, I, I think there’s a certainly a, uh, Misunderstanding that it’s, um, minority groups [00:54:00] taking back power or only attacking the privilege, the teardowns have, um, been pretty indiscriminate.
If you ask me, and I think, um, the case studies that we have throughout the book demonstrate that fact for sure.
Greg: It kind of feels like the argument is, well, it seems like I’m only reading about famous people in the news when it happens to famous people. It’s like, right. Because that’s what gets in the news.
Like the little person getting torn down, which happens all the time, particularly in freaking high school. That’s just not going to get in the New York Times.
Scott: Uh, wonderful. Well, guys, um, I just want to say again, congratulations on this book. Um, I am honored to consider you all my friend, uh, and, uh, wish you all the best in this crusade to have more free speech and also.
You know, these things are not old at all. These are more free speech, but also more compassion in the world for each other. I mean, these things do not have to be mutually incompatible, right? So
Greg: so much, Scott. And check out the fire. [00:55:00] org.