Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: Post election, I wanted to talk to my friends and
the creator of the Thinking Ispower dot com websites, Melanieteresa King.
I know I had you on earlier this year. I've
interviewed you on video, but I just needed to talk
to somebody who is also Do I call you a
de escalator these days? I mean, are you trying to
lower the temps out there?
Speaker 3: I try really hard to communicate important concepts, basic critical
thinking concepts, and it's really hard to get people to
hear what you're saying when they're triggered. So I do
try and avoid triggering.
Speaker 2: Hang on hang on, Melanie, I get hung up on
the word trigger. Maybe we can come back. What do
you mean by trigger?
Speaker 3: Yeah, when people are emotionally I need another word besides trigger,
you'll go ahead emokely activated. So like when we're angry,
when we're afraid, when we're these emotions activate the basil
part of our brain that goes into it's called the
four FS fight, flight, freeze, or mating. And when we're
in those emotions, we're not able to think critically. I
use what I call a critical thinking training wheels approach,
which is start with easier issues to help people practice
the skills so that hopefully they graduate to the more
difficult ones. But if I just turn them off right away,
then they're going to shut down and not hear what
I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, angry and afraid sums me up. I'm having
trouble sleeping. Anybody else having trouble sleep?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: I've struggled with insomnia my whole life. A true story
for the I mean, this will be interesting for those
who've been following my journey. But I told some of
my dearest friends that I've been struggling. I'm wake up stressed.
My mind is like a spinning hard drive. And so
we were at dinner and one of them handed across
the table a gummy and said, take this.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is legal, but I don't think
anybody really cares, right, So it's totally legal, is it? Where?
Where is it legal?
Speaker 3: Massachusetts?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well Oklahoma is behind every other part of the
country in almost every other way. So we'll get there,
but it'll probably be, you know, twenty thirty five. But
she's got a license, and she's like on Gambian Gammy.
Try it. And I was very hesitant because I've never
done anything. I'm such a baby in this world. But
finally I thought, okay, I've got to get some rest,
and so I I I cut it in half and
I took it. It was one of the most stressful, sleepless,
fitful nights of my life. It was terrible. And I
guess for some people this is a thing. Do you
have any experiment. I'm not mean to put you on
the spot, but like when people say I tried this,
this just makes sense to you. Melanie.
Speaker 3: Okay, first, I can't wait to meet Natalie because I'm
going to ask her about this story.
Speaker 2: I need the behind. Okay, she paid the price because
as I was over there flipping and I looked like
I was being basted. I mean, I'm just over and
over and over and over, and she kept waking up
and she was so patient, but I could see the
irritation because she desperately needed her rest. But yes, you
will meet, you will talk, you can share stories. So
what do you do, PRIs Have you been worried? Like,
has worried hits you, concern, anxiety? Does any of that
resonate with you.
Speaker 3: It's been an interesting process for me because twenty sixteen
was very difficult for me. That election I took really hard,
and this one I'm not taking as hard. And I
think it's partly because I didn't allow myself to hope.
At least that's what I'm telling myself, but I'm not
really sure about that. Since this election, I have I
felt more of an urge to try and not only
understand people and why they voted the way that they did,
and try to talk to hate using these words but them,
but also us, like what is motivating us? What might
we be able to do better? Because at the end
of the day, all I can do is change my
actions and hope that I'm using my actions in a
positive way.
Speaker 2: So I'm over here spinning like a drive shaft and
you're sleeping the sleep of angels or what's the hell
by the way, confession. And I don't do this very
often because I think it's a bad habit. But last
night it was desperate. It's like one in the morning,
and I got up and I took some Nike Will
and then I crashed and dreamed. I was playing tennis
with Steven Spielberg, so I don't know what they put
in Nike Will. I was on the tennis court. I
was playing tennis with Steven Spielberg. Woke up this morning
and had to what the hell moments? Anyway, what I'm.
Speaker 3: Getting there is that you have an issue with substances.
You don't handle them very well.
Speaker 2: No. I literally I've never been drunk in my whole life,
and I'll tell you I'm a little afraid of alcohol.
And this is probably because of my upbringing, which was puritan.
If we'd had a beer in the fridge, Mom would
have had an intervention. She would have flipped. This is
how bad it was. We were going on a fishing
trip when I was maybe fifteen, and we needed a
cooler to put the sandwiches in, and so Dad went
down to the convenience store and he bought a couple
bags of ice and the only cooler that they had
it was a styrofoam cooler and it had Budweiser on
the side. It was the only one they had. It
was a Budweiser cooler. Mom refused to go on the
trip unless that was covered up, and so Dad had
to take strips of tape to cover up. So this
is how puritan my upbringing was. And I guess some
of that just echoes into me. And now I worry
because I'm a control freak. I don't want to lose control.
I think if I have more than two glasses of whatever,
I might wake up naked at the zoo. And this
scares me, Melanie, you know, it scares me such.
Speaker 3: A bad thing that might be a fun experience.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this has gone south. Okay, I was
going to ask you another question before we got further
into beliefs, and I'm going to talk about some of
Jonathan Height's work and is it hate or Height? I
always read it, HII DT Are you one blue Sky? Yeah?
Have you migrated over there to that social media platform.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not there, and it's mostly because I am
weary of adding another social media platform. I'm kind of
full at this point, and I adding something else just
seems like more work to do. Facebook is my biggest ay,
and it's a good place for me to post kind
of content that I want to post. I want to
send people to my website. I want to do longer
form content. I want to post videos. I'm trying to
figure out Instagram.
Speaker 2: I'm on TikTok, but just you know, I post on there,
but it's the wild West. So I'm still kind of
figuring that out. But the claim is, here's an example.
I've got somebody who shows up in the comment section
of my latest speech that I posted. It's called the
brick Wall Brain. Why are in facts changing minds? And
they are critical of the content and they are not happy.
And then they post and post and post and comment
and comment and comment, and most of it just seems
it's not necessarily trolling, but they're sending, not receiving. And
then it's debate me. You know, I'm calling you out.
Are you a coward? Kind of thing? And I just
got tired of them suffocating the comments, and I blocked
them from the channel. So now the claim is I'm
either a free speech animy or I want to live
in a bubble where everybody only agrees with me. Is
that person right?
Speaker 3: So people on one end of the spectrum are one
end of the bell curve don't really need me, and
people on the other end of the bell curve are
probably not reachable, at least with my time, energy and
skill set. I am not saying I'm writing anyone off,
but I am saying, with the amount of time it
takes me to reach them, I could be much more
productive by trying to get to the normals. The free
speech argument is an interesting one because that tends to
that comes back to the legal argument, and by free speech,
that's a government like if the government's not putting you
in jail, it's not a free speech concern. I just
don't want you polluting my page and my comments with
bad faith arguments, and so the rules on my side
that I try to enforce. I want to make a
community where people feel free to learn, to ask good
faith questions and to engage in productive dialogue. And I
want to model that for people and the trolls that
come in with those kinds of concerned. They are concerned,
you know what I mean. They're not there for actually learning.
They have their mind made up and they're just trying
to take your time and energy. And so I don't
think that that argument holds must wait on Twitter. That's
what I find a lot of these days, is that
people aren't there to actually engage in a way where
they're trying to learn. To be fair. I have never
found Twitter that for me, Like I don't have anywhere
near as number followers as you do. I've used Twitter
mostly to connect with people, and I'm going to miss
that aspect of Twitter, but it's not ever really been
a place where I feel like I've reached the masses
with my kind of message. For me, that's really Facebook.
And I might add for TikTok. My following is still
pretty small on TikTok, but oh my god, I love TikTok.
TikTok is the best play Like there's the CAF videos
on there are epic, like they're truly spectacular. I'm trying
to communicate good messages on TikTok and try to get
people to learn, and I will freely admit that when
I go to TikTok, I don't go to learn. I
go to be entertained, And so that's the problem on
something like TikTok. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily watch my own content,
but please do. If you're on TikTok, please follow me.
Speaker 2: Oh, Natalie's got us hooked on something. I don't even
know what platform it's on, but it's a woman who
has two dogs and she places them behind a desk
with plates on them, and then she just puts various
foods on the plate and the dogs decide whether or
not they're going to eat them. I haven't seen that.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 2: It's sixty seconds so or they turn their noses up
and they WinCE their eyes until the next goodie comes along.
I don't know. I can't stop watching. There's another one, Kiki.
This spider Monkey still spider Monkey rescue and a diaper
runs around somebody's house. Maybe maybe we need that right,
Maybe we need to diss connect just a little bit.
Let me ask you about this. I had somebody on
that speech that I gave, and I think this is valid.
I was talking about de escalation. I use the line
I'm going to try in my life whenever possible, and
I throw the asterisk whenever possible, and it's not always,
but whenever possible. I want to be like my dog.
I want to bark less and wag more. In the
one on ones, I'm not talking about the Macro. I'm
not what I'm going hard at Marjorie Taylor Green and
all these people. And the response is, and I think
it's valid, but the response is, I'm not going to
play nice with the arsonists right the house is on fire.
I'm not going to go in with a soft voice
and pat him on the head. At this point, it's
war and it needs to be war. And I'm not
convinced they're wrong. If they said this on your page, Melody,
I'm curious how you'd handle it.
Speaker 3: And I have similar backgrounds, we've both radically altered our worldviews.
Would you say that's fair?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, almost a one eighty yeah.
Speaker 3: Same here. And I think about the person that I
used to be and the ways that I might try
and reach her, and I'm not sure what would work.
But I am freely damn sure what wouldn't work, And
that is calling her evil or stupid, mocking her. I'm
at a point where I don't disagree the house is
on fire, but I don't think the answer to that
is to demonize people. People have a lot of reasons.
If we circle back to the election for a second,
people have a lot of reasons for voting the way
that they do. Some of them I probably would put
into that corner that far into the spectrum that the
bell curve of just being truly awful people. But I
don't think everyone is, and the way to reach them
isn't by lumping them all together. And so the only
thing back to the only thing that I know how
to do is to control my actions and behaviors and
try to model what I think is the most productive
way forward, because at the end of the day, I
have to live with myself. I don't know if I
can make any changes, but I have to live with myself.
Those commenters who come on my site who are just
throwing grenades and trying to when I engage with them
and I realize that it's starting to make me look bad,
the person I'm engaging with is probably not going to
change their mind, but everybody else who is watching I
might be able to reach and when I represent myself
that way, then I don't feel good about what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Given that the show is named trigger Warnings, we are
going to get into that subject and more in just
a second. Hang on, Thanks for your supports as a patron.
If you enjoy what you hear and you want to
support the broadcast, it makes a huge difference. Patreon dot
com slash Seth Andrews Continuing now my conversation with Melody
triesa king of thinking is power dot com. I am
writing a speech and I've almost thrown it in the
trash a dozen times about a lot of the stuff
that we get wrong in my own tribe in a
meeting of my people of shared values, whether it's atheists
or whether it's liberal or humanist, seculars, whatever, we like
to think that the problem is always them. I have
seen an intolerance of self reflection, certainly an intolerance of
criticism in my own tribe. If somehow we're not human beings,
And what I often will hear is, well, why in
the world will we take a breath and even look
at us when they are so much worse. It's like
a cheat to try to self improve, and we take
all the shortcuts and this is bringing me back to
the Jonathan Heighte analogy of the elephant and the writer.
But we see something that validates us, and we are
almost just as quick to like and share without fact checking.
There was this Stephen King, suppose it's Stephen King quote
that said Fox News did to our parents what our
parents were afraid video games were going to do to us,
and everybody then memed it. Then there's a picture Stephen
King with the quotations and there's his name at the bottom. Well,
I did a thirty second search. He shared it, but
it was originated by somebody else. Stephen King didn't actually
originally say it. So I go and I say, actually,
Stephen King didn't originate. He's not the source. And people say, well,
it's still true, like there's an immediate deflection. There was
another Stephen King related one where they said Elon Musk
had kicked him off of X because Stephen King had
joke that Elon was the first lady in the wake
of the election, and he's been banned, and people were indignant.
They're like, Elon Musk was a free speech absolutist and
look at his hypocrisy, and they soapboxed and soapbox. I
took thirty seconds. Stephen King never said it, he was
never banned. It was apparently somebody else, or it was
all satire. We need jerk, I think as quickly as
anybody else. But when I say this, and this is
true in the atheist verse, whenever we make bad arguments,
or we do something that speaks to bias, or we
just get in a hurry, people are intolerant. They don't
want to talk about it. Can we talk about reflecting
on our own tribes and why that's not a cheat?
I need validation.
Speaker 3: Gosh, I heard so much in there that I related
to I personally. Have you seen the There's a news
clip supposedly from Trump in the I think it's the
late nineties, and it's from People magazine where he says
that if I were to run for president, I'd run
as Republican. Yeah, because they're the stupidest voters in the
world or something.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's been memed all over the place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not true, not true, completely fake. I always use
it when I present about fake news because the point
is when we tend to fall for things that aren't true,
primarily when they confirm our biases, like Oh yeah, that
makes sense that he would say that when it triggers
our emotions. There's that word again, So it makes us laugh,
it makes us feel oh, self righteous, angry, afraid, and
when we hear it repeated, So amongst left echo chambers,
it goes around a lot, but it's not true. I
tend to show it alongside the There was a news
story that popped up around the same time, and it
was Pope Francis shocks the world and endorses Donald Trump.
This was in twenty sixteen and again totally fake, but
that went around right leaning things because again it seemed true.
It confirmed biases, and it triggered emotions. We can all
fall for things that aren't true because of ourselves, our
own vulnerabilities. They make us feel like, yeah, we're right
about this, and look how stupid. The other side is
people think misinformation is an other people problem. Other people
are stupid and other people will fall for misinformation. But
I am really smart and I wouldn't fall for that.
So I'm a biologist and the single most unifying theory
in all of the life sciences is evolution. Evolution helps
us understand the unity and diversity of life, why things
are similar because they have a common ancestor, and why
they're different because of different selection pressures and genetic drift
and so on that led them to different evolutionary endpoints. Okay,
all that's to say, my tribe generally accepts evolution, but
it's not because they understand it. It's because their tribe
accepts it. So when we look down on people who
don't hold those same beliefs, it's not because we're really
smart and because we have an understanding of science that
you know, the stupid people don't. It's just because our
tribe happens to believe those things. But there's absolutely zero
chance that our tribe is right about everything. So tribal beliefs,
though I'm on a rant here now, seth, you're gonna
have to stop me. Go ahead, because part of tribal
beliefs is that it's in us in them in order
for them, for there to be an us, there has
to be them. When we're coming to our beliefs, one
of the shortcuts that we take is what do the
people around us believe? We know shockingly little about most
of our beliefs. There's a great concept in psychology called
the illusion of explanatory depth, which is, if you want
to know how much you actually know, try to explain
it like, okay, so how does evolution work? Define evolution
for me? Start at basics. What are the mechanisms of evolution?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Woul those different mechanisms work in different populations? Address these
various misconcepts. Most people who aren't scientists but are in
that tribe would struggle with those questions. Yet they're really
pleased with themselves about their accepting the science. But we
need to realize that we're prone to the same kinds
of thinking errors that the other side is. We just
happen to be in a different tribe that aligns with
reality on this particular issue, but we could be wrong
about other things. So having empathy for the other side
starts with understanding ourselves and recognizing our own limitations, having
the humility to realize we're not as smart as we
think we are, and we're probably not right about everything,
And the other side isn't necessarily stupid. They just maybe
have a different worldview and see the world differently than
you do. I'm going to try and stop, please interrupt.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of this is a popular acronym atheist, a thoughtful, honest, ethical, intelligent,
skeptical thinker. It's popular, it's been flying around for decades.
It's not true I'm an atheist. This means I do
not believe in God's any God anywhere. Doesn't determine anything
else about me. It doesn't mean I'm intelligent, doesn't mean
I'm skeptic, doesn't talk about my capacity for understanding. It
doesn't tell you whether I'm a good person or not.
And yet we sort of lead with this as frustrating
as religion is a mental illness. Ah oh, I tell you.
And this is why I've been thinking about doing this
presentation next year, is because I'm like, just stop. Every
time we even for the most noble of reasons, even
if we want to help in this world, every time
we lead with an argument that is a bad argument.
We are shoveling the ground beneath our own feet, and
we're making it easier for others. Then they're not just
misrepresenting us, they can actually use the words that we say.
We're destroying our own position. It's so frustrating, and we
as atheists, and I'm a frontline atheist, I'd like to
think I have the equity to talk about this. We
are not immune from saying dumb shit, right should I
say dumb shit? We are not immune from having misguided
ideas based on identity, beliefs and my asses. Okay, fine,
there you go, Melanie, take that and run with it.
Speaker 3: So with as much as I'd like to take the
higher ground, I don't think it applies to cursing. And perfectly.
Speaker 2: My Puritan mother used to cuss once every six months,
and her face would always twist up like one of
those trees and the Wizard of Oz, like it's what
she really wanted to say. She'd be like, she gets
so frustrated, and then we would just feel victorious, like, yes,
we got her to crack, and then she would apologize
and pray and all those things. But I thought, you know,
let it out, right, let it out. Sometimes you need
to say the word. Go ahead, Melanie.
Speaker 3: There was a study somewhere along the way. I don't
care who did it, I don't care if it's been replicated,
but it basically said that people who cuss are smarter,
and I am going to go with it.
Speaker 2: Go with that, yeah, go with that.
Speaker 3: So if we still go back to the heights, writer
and the elephants. I think this is so helpful in
understanding ourselves. Jonathan Height is a psychologist and has produced
a lot of interesting work around why we believe what
we believe, and he has an analogy called the l
Elephant and the Writer that I think is a great
way to help us understand our thinking. It's a dual
processing theory, which is there are various ones, like Daniel
Kahneman famously had a system one system too. I just
from my students, I find that systems are less easy
to relate to than elephants and writers. So the elephant
in the writer is imagine in your head you have
an elephant and then you have a writer on top
of the elephant. So the writer up here in the
prefrontal cortex. It's the part of the brain that you
think of as you It's the part that can think
critically and analytically, and can evaluate evidence and come to
a logical conclusion and make sound arguments and so on.
But it sits on top of an elephant. And back
here I'm at the amygdala. The elephant is the part
of the brain that is emotional and biased and tribal.
It's motivated by its desires, It uses what it already knows,
and it jumps to a conclusion to save energy. Right,
it takes a lot of work to think through things.
So a lot of the times what happens is our
brain is filtering information. It comes in here, and then
the elephant goes, yet, so this is true, and the
writer instead of reflecting and going, well is this true?
Let's think about it. Let's evaluate the evidence. How logical
is this argument? It goes, yeah, you know what that
sounds right, let's go with it. And then if asked,
the writer goes, well, here are all the reasons why
the elephant is right. So the elephant and the writer
helps us understand that the vast majority of the time,
most of our thinking is blow the level of consciousness.
It is automatic and it is not based on an
objective evaluation of evidence. So it jumps to a conclusion,
and the writer acts more like our elephant's lawyer or
it's pr department. It works to find justifications for what
the elephant wants to believe. So seth, I think that
my writer is talking to your writer, but actually my
writer is motivated by my elephant, and so is yours.
So if I want to understand my own thinking. I
need to realize what my motivations are. Is this a
tribal belief? Are my biases leading me here? Is this
something I really want or don't want to believe? Basically,
am I using my writer to find justifications or am
I actually thinking through this?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: The problem is this takes a lot of energy in time,
so we don't do this most of the time. We
have to turn this on. But I need to understand
this about myself, and if I'm trying to have a
productive conversation with you, I need to realize that your
elephant is also leading your writer. So I think that
if I'm giving your writer facts and good arguments, that
it should convince you. But it's possible that your reason
is not objective. There's something motivating it. So having a
more productive conversation means having an elephant conversation. What are
my motivations and biases and desires and so the same
thing for you? What kinds of things can we agree on?
There's probably more than we think, and then working together
to try and understand reality better. Our writers aren't necessarily
going to war here. Productive conversations means understanding the motivations
behind our thinking and trying to work together to come
to a better conclusion than we would have been able
to individually.
Speaker 2: Is that the difference between going out to find out
if you're right or going out to be proven right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot in there. Once our writer has
decided that it's right, it tends to find more evidence
that it's right. The problem is, if we want to
find evidence that we're right, we're always going to be
able to do it, especially these days, Like you go online,
you can find anything to support what you want to believe.
A better way of trying to figure out if your
belief is true isn't try to find evidence to support it,
is to try to prove it wrong. Don't try to
confirm it, try to disconfirm it. If it's true, it
will withstand the scrutiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that gets us into what source do I
use to find legitimate criticism. If I'm reading an article
about evolution and I type it into a Google search
engine and I end up at evolution News, which looks legitimate,
they're actually an apologetics website. So now I've got a
sourcing problem. Who's credible, who's not? Who's an expert who's
not and does that get me into the argument from authority?
There's another broad question, but that's just what we're doing today.
How would you address it?
Speaker 3: No, I love this because so when I teach critical thinking,
and so I teach a class that I designed to
teach critical thinkings, information literacy, and science literacy, and importantly
it is in that order because if we first don't
understand our own motivations. For example, previous me did not
want to accept evolution. It was part of my tribal identity.
If I accepted evolution, that means that God wasn't real.
It would mean that my special place in the universe
isn't real. It would mean that my entire worldview would
start to crumble, like if I went along that path,
which means that if I want to understand if evolution
is true, I need to understand my own thinking. What
do I want to believe or not want to believe?
And then I need to be able to subject those
beliefs to actual scrutiny. Critical thinking means that we have
to be honest with ourselves, because if we're not. And
I go to information, I go to Google, and I
use Google to I can use Google as a search
tool to confirm any belief that I want. If I
don't first understand myself, I'm going to use information and
search engines as a tool to confirm what I already
believe or what I want to believe. So understanding information
and using information in a productive and objective way means
understanding myself first. And if I do that and then
understand the various ways that some ways of knowing are
more reliable than others, for example, the process of science
versus individual experiences, then I can use information define sources
that are using that process of science to objectively evaluate
those claims and what is the best available evidence at
any given time. Let me just bookend this by explaining
one of my pet peeves, which is people who call
themselves independent thinkers, But what they really mean is they
often come to my site and they'll say something like,
so you're saying, I just trust what experts have to say,
and I'm an independent thinker, So I'm going to be
able to evaluate this information of about myself. An independent thinker,
A real independent thinker understands themselves. They are aware of
what they want to believe and what they don't want
to believe. They're aware of the ways that their perceptions
can fool themselves, They're aware of how their biases can
lead them astray, and they're actually in a good faith
attempt trying to find the truth. So they are also
aware of how various systems of understanding the world, like science,
is a process of evaluating collectively evaluating information and evidence
so that we reach a better conclusion than we would
have been able to on our own. The point is
people tend to use this idea of an independent thinker
to discount what the best available evidence has shown us
to be true, because what they really want to do
is use their biases to lead them to a conclusion
and then find reasons to justify them having that conclusion.
That is actually the exact opposite of an independent thinker.
Speaker 2: I've heard flat earthers say, it's my skepticism that brought
me to flat Earth. It's my distrust of you know,
authority taking the party line, listening to the authority with
the capital I mean, you can do that with anything
denying the moon landing or nine to eleven truth or
anti vax you know, I'm just uber skeptical. Look at me,
short break, I'll be right back with the final segment
of our conversation in just a second, talking here with
Melanie Teresa King. She is an educator a teacher. She
is also the admin stand creator of Thinking is Power
dot com. I want to come all the way back
around to something to a word we use near the beginning,
because I want your take on it again. I'm going
to attempt nuance and I'm just going to prepare myself
my inbox or what's coming. But we use the word trigger.
I wrote about this in one of my books. I
can't remember which one, but I was talking about how
we have always had content warnings when we get into
really sensitive stuff. I mean, if you're going to watch
a movie, it will say this film contains violence and
nudity and language, and I think even smoking. They say, oh, warning,
someone smokes in this film, which of maybe a bit much.
I think when we beat content warnings all the time, Hey,
heads up, this is kind of heavy, and I think
that's great, and prepare your audience. I'll do it when
I'm giving a speech. If I'm showing a medical photo
and I'm like, now, this has got to be intense, but
check this out, and that gives them a second to
prepare themselves in their brain and kind of blink if
they don't want to look. But I worry that in
the era of trigger warnings, we are now trying to
make sure that no one else around us feels uncomfortable,
when discomfort might be my intention, like I want you
to feel uncomfortable, or you need to feel this particular emotion,
or it's not my job to bubble wrap the world,
because then it becomes maladaptive. If you aren't developing the
skill set, the tools, etc. To engage in a world
that is unfair and may not care we exist and
all those things, then you are not really adapting to life.
And then people come back and say, how dare you?
Marginalized groups and people who are here seriously affected, whether
they're nero, divergent, etc. They need us to give trigger warnings.
It's a mess. I don't know. Maybe this is an
example of that line I gave in the speech. More
than one thing can be true at the same diet, Melanie,
trace it King. I just like saying your name altogether
so people will google it. What do you say when
I say the term trigger warning?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So trigger warnings don't appear to have the impact that
we hoped that they would. I would love to if
you allow me to, I will post some more recent
research on trigger warnings. But trigger warnings are based on
the assumption that if we warn people about potentially emotionally
upsetting material, they will be able to they can opt
out of it, or they are more emotionally prepared and
are better able to handle the material. The evidence is
showing that trigger warnings themselves don't necessarily work. So I'm
glad you brought up this word trigger again, because it
could mean different things in different contexts. I was using
the word to refer to when people are emotionally inflamed
in some way. When they're amigdala is activated, they're less
able to use their prefrontal cortex to think critically, and
that is pretty well established. The idea of trigger warnings,
which is letting people know in advance that there's potentially
emotionally upsetting content, doesn't seem to have the intended impact
that we hoped that researchers had hoped. So the idea
here is that if we let people know in advance
that there's like, for example, if we're going to read
a passage in which there's a rape scene. Letting people
know in advance that this is what's happening, and preparing
them by giving a trigger warning, a specific trigger warning
about this particular passage might help them. Either they could
choose to opt out, or they can be prepared so
that it doesn't impact them as much. The research is
not bearing that out. Actually, our attempts at preparing people
emotionally in advance to protect them from the impacts of
those emotions doesn't seem to work. All this is to
say I don't think trigger warnings and resilience are necessarily compatible.
Letting people know in advance that they might be emotionally
harmed versus letting them experience the shit that humans put
up with in a way that helps them persevere is
truly spectacular.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you and I both are dancing around this
one because we don't want to be dismissive for those
who have been generally impacted by trauma in their lives.
But I think maybe it was Jonathan Hyde who had
written about how we do we worry about creating a
generation of tissue skinned people unprepared for the hardships of life.
You know, we're so busy saying I was at a
convention years ago, and I remember there was a person
who was having a conversation with a stranger and they
were starting a story about their lives, their deconversion, and
they kept saying, now, if stop me, if this is
going to trigger you, it's just triggering to you. I
don't want to trigger you. It was almost it was
very self conscious, and I thought the flow of what
they were saying and the ability of the interlocutor to
properly take that journey was derailed because someone was they
had taken upon themselves whether or not someone else would
be traumatized. But if I expressed concern about that, then oh,
looks that's a cis white privileged male who hasn't been
through abuse X or abuse. Y look at him dismissing
all the people who need the trigger warning. I mean,
it's a minefield.
Speaker 3: My husband is African American. He's a decendative slaves on
both sides of his family, and they have taught me
so much over the years to watch my husband because
he's an educator and a truly wonderful one, and use it.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: He's a musician and often uses music to help people
understand different cultures, to have empathy for what people were
going through when they composed various things. You could see
his various instruments and such behind me, he says, scholar
actually of African American music, specifically slave songs and their derivatives.
To hear the kinds of conversations that he has with
students these days, and how frustrated he is. Students almost
seem to demand a safe space to the point where
they're unwilling literally unwilling to sing spirituals because of how
they are triggered emotionally. Whereas to him, if you silence
that music, you're silencing the people that wrote it. They
were resilient. We're not helping students by protecting them from
the harms of the world. The world is a rough place,
and if you want to survive in it, if you
want to thrive in it, then you need to understand
how to reconcile those emotions and be resilient.
Speaker 2: Send your email to trigger warnings may not actually help
at Melanie Teresa King at thinking aspower dot com.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that's a fake email address.
Speaker 2: I struggle. I don't Empathy is the whole theme we've
been having and the quote miners could immediately say they
don't care about the traumatized, they don't care about the
neuro divergence. They are dismissing those who may need a
little bit of a you know, a preamble. And I'll
continue to say, you know, heads up, this is kind
of heavy. But I don't make it a big deal.
I just feel like, in my own life, it's not
my job to keep you comfortable. I'm not Does that
sound shitty? Does that sound dismissive?
Speaker 3: So the real world is shitty sometimes, and protecting people
from it does not actually help them.
Speaker 2: See and over it. Go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I'm trying not to get on one of my tent
my like er again.
Speaker 2: See this is what happened. I didn't prep her, and
I barely prepped myself. I just hit start, and this
is the stuff that goes down. All right, No, go ahead,
We've got another few minutes. Hit me, what's on your mind.
Speaker 3: I think that self righteousness is one of the most
unproductive emotions. I do understand it because I was in
it as well. But if you're in a place where
you think that other people must be stupid or must
be evil to vote, the way that they did. Let
me just ask you to reflect, please empathize with people,
is what you're asking is is this helping? Is it productive?
It sucks sometimes to have to be the bigger person.
I fully will admit that, But I don't think the
dwelling on those emotions that I'm better than somebody else
because of my beliefs or my worldview. I mean, I
got to where I am by getting through a place
where I'm not necessarily so proud of. But will future
me look on current me in the same way, like
what am I currently wrong about? That future me will
be like, oh my god, can you believe she believed
that intellectual humility is not just a virtue, it is
the only way that we can learn if we don't
realize that we could be wrong and that other people
have something to add to the conversation that I don't
know any other way forward.
Speaker 2: I was going to finish there, but I have to
It's not even a Devil's advocate question. I think it
may be legitimate. And you brought up slavery. The slave
owner is supposed to look at the slaver and say, well,
you know, they've had life experiences, they've been indoctrinated with
hate and oppression and bigotry, and therefore I am seeing
them in three dimensions. This empathy then what allows me
to better address my own situation and the oppression. You
know what I'm saying. I mean it could be argued
that no, the slave needs to defeat the enslaver because
of the harm that's being done.
Speaker 3: So my husband is a scholar of African American music.
He is now an assistant conductor for an organization called
the handle in Heiden Society, which is the nation's oldest
performing arts organization. They actually perform for Lincoln's funeral, and
they were old at the time they performed for the
Emancipation Proclamation. They were I'm in Massachusetts. They were very
involved in the abolitionist movement in the women's suffrage movement.
A few years ago when a lot of organizations were
having a reckoning with their pasts, this organization wondered about
Handel's connection with the slave trade. So Handel was in
England and he was being paid by a duke that
was involved in the slave trade. So he would write
music for the court and then be paid in stock
and then would go to the bank and turn in
the stock for money. And so when the organization was
having this come uppance with their past, they wondered what
to do, and Anthony suggested, well, why don't we have
a concert, And so his concert idea was to explore
Handle's connection with the slave trade. Now, his concert, it's
in its second year now, and I'm so proud of it.
What he's done is he's created a dual narrative where
on one side there is a Handle in England in
the courts where his wonderful anthems are being played, and
on the other side are the slave songs, the spirituals
that were being done by Africans blacks in the New
World that were slaves. And so this dual narrative, he
actually went through a process of finding spirituals that hadn't
really been performed very often and arranging them in a
way that you might have heard on plantation at the time.
So the concert follows this dual narrative. There's a narrator
that explains what's happening. It's called crossing the Deep. On
one side you have the anthems of the Handles anthems.
On the other side you get the spirituals. And in
the process, you kind of feel yourself being connected to
the slaves in the New World because we know that
slavery is wrong, and we understand that people were benefiting.
Handle was benefiting from trade in people owning people. But
the whole point of the concert you get to the end,
and the whole point of the concert is to realize
that we're all Handle, Like we look at people in
the past and even people across today, and we look
at their morality and we judge them based on our standards.
Slavery is clearly wrong, but people at the time justified
it to themselves. What are we doing today? We're handled
in some way? What are we doing that future generations
will look back on us with their moral standards and say,
can you believe they did these things? His perspective, like
he is a descendant of slave on both sides of
his family, his ability to look at this issue and
have empathy for Handle and to recognize that we're all
doing something that future us is will judge in those
ways is truly humbling. So I think the point here
is for us to be humble and not be so
convinced that our morals are the end all and be
all that we are absolutely right, and to stop judging
other people and trying to cancel them for these ideas
and realize that we all have room to grow, we
can all learn, and we're right in some ways and
wrong in others. But that's part of the process.
Speaker 2: I get into the morality of the Old Testament authors
and you know, the genocide and the slave and whatnot,
and I'm like, well, morality's morality. I think it was wrong.
Now it's wrong then, so I mean, I can see
the other side of that coin. All right. I'm not
going to let the Old Testament authors skate on executing
disobedient children or going into a non Israelite town and
wiping everybody out, including the animals, because of his the
morality of the time. You know, that's tough. That's tough
for me. I need to pray, you know what, I
need a gummy?
Speaker 3: Did you say I need to pray?
Speaker 2: I was going to say I need to pray and
fast and seek the Lord on that. But I understand.
I think the broader umbrella point is that we can
be myopic, and maybe understanding how to dismantle all of
the bad stuff requires perspective. Would that be a fair
way to phrase it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if I might want one other thing to this,
we travel a lot. The first time Anthony was asked
how much he paid for me was at a border
crossing between Uganda and Rwanda, and the border guard wanted
to know, wait.
Speaker 2: Wait, hang on, hang on, hold on, I ask your
husband how much he paid for you.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was the first time, and it was a
border guard. Whoa, And his response was, well, she was
free and that was the role because that meant I
didn't have any value and it's so, but we were
allowed to enter Rwanda, so that was great. But then
after that, yeah, it was oh. I think his final
response that he landed on was that she's priceless. I know,
but I've told this story many times and most people
laugh because you know, it is ridiculous. But they'll generally
then say something like, oh, well, that's culture or that's religion.
And I'll say, well, can you imagine a scenario in
which somebody asked me how much I paid for him?
And how do you respond to that? And that generally
makes the point like we all have morality blind spots,
and the kinds of things that we accept aren't necessarily
because we're morally virtuous. But because of our culture and
our time, you're.
Speaker 2: Doing okay in advance to twenty twenty five. I mean,
I know you're sleeping. I said gummy earlier. That's probably
not the right thing to take. When I'm feeling all
stressed and anxious, I'll burst into flame. You know. Local
activist spontaneously combusts after consuming gummy details at ten. I
don't want that to happen. But looking into the new year.
Speaker 3: Yes, many different gummies.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't speak gummy. I don't understand how they
all work. So I'm going to go fight right now.
The best thing I've got is just to put a
dog on my chest and let Lina sleep near my neck.
And that seems to be the most relaxing thing. Looking ahead, though,
disinformation everywhere. We've got deep fakes, we've got ai, We've
got you can't trust your eyes and ears. What in
the world do you have some way to sort of
I don't know. Bs proof ourselves. I need resources. I
always like to leave us with resources.
Speaker 3: Do you have anything well, I'm writing a book on
this very issue. It's called, tentatively, how to be a Charlatan,
and it's about how to understand the techniques that different
Charlatans are using. It will not be out in twenty
twenty five, so in the interim, I would say, go.
Speaker 2: Ahead, pitch your on site. Go ahead, pitch your on site.
Do it.
Speaker 3: I don't even know like the best advice I could give.
Please visit my site, follow me on face. I would
love to have happy followers who aren't rolls, so please
do that. In the meantime, if I could just remember
your own humanity and remember that you might not know
everything that you think that you know, so have the
humility and the skepticism and curiosity to understand yourself and
to relate to other people. I'm doing my best online,
as Seth. I know you are, but I think a
lot of this has kind of come down to personal
conversations with people that you actually know in real life,
and so it's a heavy lift. I totally understand to
ask people to fight these battles personally, but I don't
know any other way. I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get over that hump myself. I've found
myself not returning phone calls lately because I'm seething, and
I do find myself distant, but I also this is
a gut head or heartthead conflict. I also know that
we're not going to defeat the bad by meming. We're
going to have to engage at the grassroots ground level.
I think with the people that we encounter every single day,
humanized the issues, maybe expanding their perception about what all
of it means and what the implications are. And I
stand by that, and that was the message of the speech,
and it's the reason that following that post, I wanted
to talk to you, and the time has flown, Melanie
Teresa King, Thinking is Power dot Com. I guess we'll
do this again in twenty twenty five, Seth.
Speaker 3: That speech was wonderful. Thank you. I really appreciated it.
Speaker 2: See let me get you my American Express card number
film donate to the site for that very very kind Okay,
all right, wonderful.
Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
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