Listener Feedback on ROMAs 66 and 67

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

— Carl Jung

Do not search for truth; only cease to cherish opinions.

— Zen saying

The two recent ROMAs (episodes 574 and 575) have sparked some interesting conversation. If you haven’t listened to the episodes, I talked about how I’d recently watched world-famous misogynist shithead, Andrew Tate being interviewed by Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson and, despite feeling an instinctive aversion to all three of them, I had to admit that there were things said that I agreed with. This led me to thoughts about how we can find areas of agreement even with people we find annoying and repellant, and how important it is to remember and practice this. I argued that ideas are more important than our feelings about the people who happen to be espousing them. Not everyone agreed. What follows are lightly edited excerpts from some comments on Substack, Reddit, and emails sent to me, as well as my responses. Thanks, as always, for the engagement!

CPR

biogray wrote (on Reddit): “I never thought I would see the day when Chris would be defending a human trafficker and rapist.”

Alex: “I hadn’t listened to Chris in a while and was surprised how hostile he is on this subject. Really disappointing. [He] ends up with a similar position as right-wingers.”

Let’s get this out of the way early on because, in very few words, these two comments manage to express and exemplify so much of what I was arguing against. (They’re almost poetic, in that sense!)

Tate, whatever we think of him, has not been convicted of human trafficking or rape. He’s been accused, but not convicted. There used to be a difference between accusation and conviction, but in the age of social media, that distinction seems to have faded. Many of the men who were and are accused of being sexual predators, creeps, “problematic,” and so on were not considered “innocent until proven guilty,” a phrase at the heart of the American legal system, but nowhere to be found in the punitive extra-legal system that can destroy career, family, and reputation without any opportunity to defend yourself.

And acknowledging that Tate said some things that made sense to me is not in any way “defending” him. Whatever alignment my thoughts on a particular subject may have with any individual or group doesn’t mean ANYTHING about my thoughts overall. This is precisely what I was trying to highlight, both in my own thinking and in society at large: the tendency to drift into either/or tribal cognitive habits: “If you agree, you’re one of us. If you disagree, you’re one of them.”

What if I’m an adult with enough common sense to agree with some of the things you say and some of the things they say? Am I in or out? Welcome or shunned? This is no way to think clearly or maintain a peaceful, mutually-respectful society.

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This guy posted his thoughts on Tik-Tok:

Is that dog stuffed?

Tate has no criminal record in any country, so comparing him to Hitler seems a tad unfair. Still, as I’ve said, his whole preening, boastful, hyper-masculine vibe creeps me out, so it wasn't easy for me to listen to him for over an hour with an open mind. But I did, and thought it was worth reporting on the experience.

Since you mention Hitler, I’ll say that like Hitler, Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Alex Jones are connecting with millions of people who feel disrespected, angry, and lost. If people had focussed on that fact in the 1930s, and responded to it intelligently with appropriate adjustments to the reparations regime that was destroying the German economy rather than by ridiculing them as angry losers, WWII might have been averted.

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Andrew looks at the broader but related topic of how we should deal with the creations of people we condemn, using Woody Allen and Richard Wagner as examples: 

In the years old film “Wild Man Blues” documenting Allen’s trip to Europe, he comes across as a shitty person. He’s ungrateful and dismissive to his mother who won’t let him off the hook. He jokes about Soon Yi eating out of garbage cans in Korea. We watch a controlling man who married his common law step-daughter (who he met when she was nine) and made his carer. A subordinate to “the great man.” It’s all about him. This is one of questions in “Monsters” is it more acceptable for “geniuses” to dominate/use their partners? Should it be? Have already given that away? If we discount the work of Ronan Farrow and believe the child sexual assault charges were encouraged and developed by the Mia Farrow, then is Allen a “monster” or just a creep? Should we celebrate the work of virulent anti-semite Richard Wagner and his articles against Jews. Hitler attended the Wagner Beyrouth festival yearly from 1933 and lionized Wagner for use of Germanic culture and his hatred of Jews. … Wagner wrote about it his disgust for Jews at length for decades in his journals. Should it matter? Or should we just enjoy his art for it’s own sake? Picasso was a cruel man with a habit of putting cigarettes out on his partner's skin including their faces. Should we “cancel” him? Willa Cather’s racism in My Antonia? Part of it’s time? Virginia Woolf’s anti-semitism? Does any that matter? What’s your take, Chris and friends. Is there a line? Or should separate art from artist?

These are interesting and important questions. As for me, I don't think it's either/or. I listen to the music, look at the painting, and read the book WITH the knowledge of the ideas or personal characteristics I may find abhorrent, and that may well lead to deeper thinking. I don't know Wager's music well, so let me swap him out for Mahler, whose music I love deeply. Far from being an anti-semite, Mahler was Jewish, and persecuted for it. He had a rough life. He was orphaned at an early age, and raised his siblings by performing and teaching music. He was, unsurprisingly, deeply traumatized, which manifested in behavior that was obsessive, suspicious, controlling, demanding, and sometimes violent. No doubt, he was a pretty unpleasant guy to be around. But the music he created is sublime.

So what is the nature of genius? Can annoying — even evil people create works of great beauty? Can we transmit feelings or insights in artistic creation that we do not embody or enact in our lives? Can an artist express what she cannot comprehend?

I think so.

Having written some stuff that people have passionate reactions to, I've learned that they have a relationship with the book that is separate from their relationship with me, or my relationship to the book. This happens all the time: someone who's just read Sex at Dawn wants to debate some point with me THAT I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER WRITING. I wrote that book 15 years ago and haven't read it since. This guy just read it last week. I step back and let him have his relation with the book. It doesn't involve me.

So there's Mahler. There's Mahler's music. And there's me. I may dislike Mahler but love his music. Or I may love Mahler but not love his music. Why do we need to conflate these two clearly distinct relations? Not all ugly food tastes bad, and not all beautiful food tastes good. Why can't we view artists and their art with the same bifurcated understanding?

I find Sting to be arrogant and kind of obnoxious. But I love his songs, so I have a relationship that's -/+ with Sting. Peter Gabriel: +/+. Freddy Mercury: +/-. Marilyn Manson: -/-. Hemingway: -/+. Obama: +/-. Sushi +/-. And so on.

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Dr. Jenny wrote:

Wow Chris this is a tricky topic, very relevant. I have a couple points on the topic.

1. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences. If someone is espousing dangerous misogynistic beliefs to an audience of impressionable young men, people can be upset. Platforms can kick them off for violating the terms of service. If someone is “cancelled” because people don’t want to hear what they have to say, that’s the consequence of their speech.

2. There is a difference between social consequences and consequences from the state. I don’t think people should be fined, imprisoned, etc. for their speech. But if they get fired from their job for hate speech towards their colleagues? Reasonable.

Agreed, but what systems are in place to be sure this person isn’t being fired for something they didn’t actually say or do? What rules of evidence are in place? Do their intentions matter? Context? Is there opportunity to defend oneself? Far too often, there are none. The HR department or supervisor decides it’s not worth the hassle or exposure to get to the bottom of whatever happened (or maybe didn’t happen), and since it’s a private company and the employee is very unlikely to have union affiliation these days, they are defenseless.

I’m reminded of Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the chair of Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry who awkwardly complimented an extremely dark-skinned model online and had his entire career and reputation demolished within hours because he referred to her famously unusual pigmentation as “a freak of nature.” He was saying that she’s beautiful in an unusual way, which is true. Is it “reasonable” that his career, income, and reputation were erased for having used this awkward phrasing? Is his destruction acceptable collateral damage? This was a million miles from “hate speech,” and yet he has no rights or redress. “See ya, doctor Lieberman.”

3. If I gave you a cup of tea that was full of really healthy antioxidants, and a little bit of my shit, would you drink it? It’s just a little bit of shit. There’s a lot of good antioxidants in there. And just a pinch of shit. If you wouldn’t drink the tea for the antioxidants, why would you drink the words of Andrew Tate, who’s full of shit, for the rare bits of good stuff?

One crucial difference between tea and speech is that we can pick and choose the words and ideas we choose to “swallow,” but we can’t separate the shit from the antioxidants. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write!)

4. You can have compassion for a person AND have healthy boundaries with them. I feel compassion for Tate, for all these young men. You don’t violently espouse the oppression of an entire gender because you have self love and confidence within yourself. But I have no interest in ingesting all the shit into my mind because of that compassion. I am open to hear the thoughts and feelings of these young men. I don’t want to hear and normalize the hate filled prescriptions they offer to fix it.

Fair enough, but I wasn’t recommending that everyone should go listen to Andrew Tate or Wager or pick up a copy of Mein Kampf. I appreciate the point about compassion and boundaries, and agree that Tate seems to be a badly damaged individual. His father managed to be both absent and abusive, and Tate’s entire life looks to me like an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his twisted, long-departed father.

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Kate wrote: Just to let you know that as a woman and parent, I can’t accept what you say about Andrew Tate. Fine for adults who have the experience to make their minds up about whether he’s a hero, harmless clown or dangerous hate-speaker. I’m sort of ok with that.

My issue is that so many kids - boys- listen to him, and don’t have the guts or experience to challenge some of the things he says. I see it in the groups of boys in the United Kingdom who call girls nasty names and encourage each other to speak degradingly about girls and women. It may be something they grow out of and all “harmless banter” for them, but it’s not for the girls. They hear and internalise and don’t grow out of it. They get really upset and carry it with them.

Please don’t assume that just because it may be ok for an adult to make their own mind up and most will not give AT much headspace, neither with admiration nor worry, it’s not ok for kids. They can’t put things into perspective, they alienate themselves from others, hurt others feelings and it doesn’t help them grow up to happy balanced adults.

I’m not going to follow or listen to you any more after hearing you doubling down - i can buy anyone making mistakes and hearing how the discussion pans out, but I was really disappointed in the latest ROMA with your lack of openness to the pushback. It was fun, thanks for the good times, but I’ve had enough now.

In the second ROMA, I was in fact responding to the feedback, as I am here. Not sure how much more open to feedback I can be. The question of how to allow adults the freedom to choose what they read and see, while protecting kids from potentially destructive content is an ever-present issue, and has only become even more complicated in the age of the internet. I don’t have an answer to that. As a culture, we let kids listen to music that calls women "bitches" and "hoes." We let them engage with films, TV, and video games featuring rape, murder, and bomb in incredible detail. Kids can easily find gangbangs, bukkake and all sorts of other nastiness on porn sites. YouTube carries drone footage of real human soldiers being blown apart in Ukraine … but Andrew Tate is where we’re going to draw the line? Do you think silencing him will solve the problem? I don't. The problem runs deeper than any particular person. The problem is not the window; the problem is OUT the window. Shutting, breaking, or replacing the window isn't going to solve it.

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Bri-Bri wrote: Wouldn’t mind a future ROMA about which is a bigger problem: trans and queer people disproportionately experiencing violence or older middle-aged people complaining about new pronouns.

Your premise is that if only Boomers would acquiesce and change their language, the violence against trans people would stop. I think that's a false premise. Forcing people to pretend to agree to something they don't actually agree with doesn't solve the problem, it just increases resentment. The insane attacks on JK Rowling, for example, didn't do anything to help the cause of trans people. They just made the trans community look unhinged, which is unfair to the 99.9% of trans people who just want to live their lives.

Bri-Bri responded: I wouldn’t say that’s my premise, Chris … I suppose I am trying to push forth the idea that trans rights are more important than people resisting changes in language and “older middle-aged” folks are where I feel like I hear the most resistance to these things.

Should the USA not have legalized gay marriage or ended the segregation of black people because there was a population that resisted it? Where is the line there for you?

I think you're still missing my point (and/or I'm missing yours). You write, "trans rights are more important than people resisting changes in language...." I agree. But your premise, which you deny is your premise and yet repeat it here, seems to be that enforcing these changes in language would result in greater support for trans rights and less violence against trans people. That's what I'm disagreeing with. The linkage. I don't believe that real structural change comes via Orwellian language control, and in fact, such attempts often backfire.

Your examples (gay marriage and segregation) aren't about language, are they? Segregation didn't end because white people were forced to stop saying "negro" and started saying "African American" instead.

We agree that trans people deserve the same rights as anyone else, we're disagreeing about the best way to get there, I think. Framing it as trans rights vs free speech misses the point, in my opinion.

I'm happy to address anyone how they'd like to be addressed. What I'm not happy to do is refer to people from Latin America as "Latinx" because some graduate student decided that was going to end colonialism, and nobody from Mexico and south gives a damn. See the difference? One is personal, the other is structural and institutional. If you write professionally, you're supposed to capitalize "Black" now. Why? This is going to correct centuries of slavery? Every time you give a talk in Canada and many parts of the US, you're supposed to declare that this sacred ground once belonged to this or that tribe. Empty words. Does the tribe get anything tangible? Is there anything REAL being done to address endemic poverty in native communities, or are these linguistic adjustments just symbolic distractions from anything significant, like being told that you're getting a promotion at work. Now, instead of "Manager," you're going to be "District Manager." Same shitty wages, no benefits, no sick days, but you're supposed to be grateful anyway....

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And lastly, Andrew wrote: I don't get why finding that Trump and me agree on one topic is supposed to change my view of him. The way I see it is if you weigh how much harm or pain an individual is causing the result should guide you on whether they should receive any praise from you for thinking like you on one topic or another. For guys like Trump and Tate it's a definite no.

I wasn't arguing that this should change your view of Trump or Tate, but that it should make us wonder what is it in them that's resonating so strongly in our culture. And to say I agree with something someone’s said is not to “praise” them. What have they said that resonates so much, and what can we learn from that? These people are a window on something important that's happening in our culture. We may not like the window. It doesn't matter. It's what can be seen THROUGH the window that matters.

At least, that’s how it seems to me. Feel free to comment below, or go back to the ROMA comments. As always, thank you for your support and attention. I sincerely appreciate it — even when you think I’m full of shit. Especially when you think I’m full of shit!

CPR