Navigating the Nuances of Free Speech: A Journey Through Expression, Backlash, and the Quest for Clear Understanding
Apr 27, 2024Season 1Episode 217
Layne Boyle & Guests
Can you say anything you want without facing the music? This episode wades through the stormy waters of freedom of speech and the responsibilities that come with it. We tackle the misconception that speaking your mind is a free pass from backlash, shining a light on the delicate balance between expression and consequence. With a global lens, we recognize that the liberties we sometimes take for granted in America aren't universal. Our dialogue takes a turn toward actionable advice as we discuss how to navigate public discourse with integrity, reflecting on high-profile cases like J.K. Rowling's to underscore the power and repercussions of our words.
Untangling complex ideas can be as tricky as a Gordian knot, but we're here to hand you the sword. In this episode, I share personal struggles with intricate concepts, offering you strategies to deconstruct and relate a variety of topics for a clearer understanding. Whether it's dissecting fallacies or revisiting dense material, we embrace the journey of learning, one step at a time. This isn't just about memorizing facts; it's about fostering a critical mindset that enables you to weave through the complexities of any subject. So brace yourself for an enriching experience that goes beyond the surface, encouraging patience, persistence, and a dash of curiosity along the way.
Can you say anything you want without facing the music? This episode wades through the stormy waters of freedom of speech and the responsibilities that come with it. We tackle the misconception that speaking your mind is a free pass from backlash, shining a light on the delicate balance between expression and consequence. With a global lens, we recognize that the liberties we sometimes take for granted in America aren't universal. Our dialogue takes a turn toward actionable advice as we discuss how to navigate public discourse with integrity, reflecting on high-profile cases like J.K. Rowling's to underscore the power and repercussions of our words.
Untangling complex ideas can be as tricky as a Gordian knot, but we're here to hand you the sword. In this episode, I share personal struggles with intricate concepts, offering you strategies to deconstruct and relate a variety of topics for a clearer understanding. Whether it's dissecting fallacies or revisiting dense material, we embrace the journey of learning, one step at a time. This isn't just about memorizing facts; it's about fostering a critical mindset that enables you to weave through the complexities of any subject. So brace yourself for an enriching experience that goes beyond the surface, encouraging patience, persistence, and a dash of curiosity along the way.
FYI OUTRO
Speaker 1:
Thank you, welcome to America, where everything is made in China, where a girl can have a penis and the boys can have vaginas, where people purchase guns and go to school to open fire and our government manipulates the truth, trying to divide us. Welcome to the democratic usa. You're homophobic and racist. If you ain't black, you're gay. We're the stars and the stripes that go up in flames, but every classroom in the country has a rainbow flag.
Speaker 1:
It's the land of opportunity we're natural immunity don't matter when big pharma has a cure to sell to you and me. Welcome to the home of the woke're going broke. You'll get canceled for a joke by folks who voted the joke. Where our freedom isn't free, it's being held for ransom. Where we'd all be locked away if people didn't have guns. Where our only information is their propaganda. Everybody, please, rise for the national anthem. You ain't gonna shut me up. You're gonna have to kill me and cut off my tongue. You ain't gonna shut me up. I I be saying what I want at the top of my lungs. You ain't gon' shut me up.
Speaker 1:
You gon' hear what I say till I'm six feet deep. You ain't gon' shut me up, you can hate, all you want.
Speaker 1:
I got freedom of speech and you ain't gonna shut me up. Welcome to America. I used to be the home of the brave. I love my country. Fuck the government, I won't be a slave. You voted today, so what? They just threw your vote away. Trump won, but they stole it. Put a clone in his place, jesus. Why they keep pushing mental diseases, please? Can a real woman not have a penis, a fetus, alive till you keep it from breathing? You just took a life like they, taking our freedoms. Think about the words that we all used to say, but the men today act more pussy than the ladies. You can't hurt my feelings. I was born in the 80s. Shout out to the women. Only they can have babies. Dudes wear dresses. Now I'm trying to call it normal why they use the women's left. True and not, as you all know, it's so sad to hear about these young kids' lives.
Speaker 1:
Fuck a pedophile school shooter. Hope they all die. You ain't gon' shut me up. You gon' have to kill me or cut off my tongue. You ain't gonna shut me up. I'll be saying what I want at the top of my lungs.
Speaker 1:
You ain't gonna shut me up, you will hear what I say till I'm six feet deep, you ain't gonna shut me up. You can hate all you want. I got freedom of speech and you ain't gonna shut me up. Even if we disagree, I'll die for your right to have your voice heard when you're speaking your mind, even if we disagree. I'll die for your right To have your voice heard when you're speaking your mind, even if you're saying things and I think you're lying, I will fight so you'll never be silenced.
Speaker 3:
Even if you're yelling in my face, calling me a bunch of names, blaming that I'm full of hate, that's okay.
Speaker 1:
I will stand by your side In support of you, cause I believe in free speech for the morons too. You ain't gon' shut me up, you gon' have to kill all right.
Speaker 2:
So that song was called Freedom of Speech by Tom McDonald. I wanted to play that one because obviously we're talking about the art of thinking clearly and critical thinking. And I wanted to talk about it because there's a lot of discussion about freedom of speech in society today and there is a little bit of a mixed message going around that freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want and get away with it, which isn't the case. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence. We live in a world where people think you know, I can say this shit, get away with it and not have to worry about getting arrested or getting whatever. So you know, there's people saying absolutely racist shit out there or whatever, and I think people need to also understand that, yes, you can say what you want, but there are consequences. And, um, I think a lot of the problem with this, this concept of freedom of speech, comes from the fact that people think that it's uh, and it's something that's a right afforded to them because of something that was written in a constitution in America, and not everyone lives in America. We have a global platform which is like the Internet, and so not everybody has that quote right given to them by the American government. So you know, people in North Korea can't say what they want. Not the entire world is afforded that freedom. So use your freedom of speech, I would say, in a manner that's befitting of your values. But, uh, be careful because that might also put you in hot water.
Speaker 2:
Um, again, this is this is critical thinking. Um, we, we have to think about this stuff on a grander spectrum in terms of what, what we're saying and how we're saying it and, uh, if it aligns with what's going on. But the other thing is, too, when someone else is saying something that is classified as freedom of speech, and they're saying what they want, whatever, we also have to look at it and break it down again from a critical thinking standpoint, where someone might misinterpret it and claim that they're this or the other thing. So great case in point is the tweets that um got jk rowling at hot water. Uh, there was a video out about those where, um, you know, people were claiming that they were transphobic or whatever. Um, and if you actually break down the tweet itself, there's nothing transphobic about it. It's literally just her voice and her opinion. And we've become a society of cancel culture where we're canceling someone for the stuff that they say, without actually breaking down what they're saying. So I think we have to also understand that, even though there is freedom of speech, there's also having to take what they're saying with a grain of salt and, uh, apply context to it because, like, unless it's essentially breaking the rules or like you know, it's illegal what they're saying, or it's like, overtly racist. Is this really that bad of something that someone said or is it just getting blown out of proportion by a specific group of people who want to vilify the person? So yeah, obviously I'm going on a rant, but that's the reason why I wanted to start with the freedom of speech concept and with this critical thinking topic. But yeah, so we're here for the art of thinking.
Speaker 2:
Clearly it's supposed to be pages 150 to 200, but I had proposed this uh idea to lane that last week we didn't really cover all the ones that were in the um the allotment of chapters, allotment of of um reading.
Speaker 2:
So I asked them if we could just kind of go back do? I think we stopped at like 45 or 46. So do that and only go to like 65 instead, because we're trying to fit 50 pages in and in those 50 pages winds up being too many to cover, and what winds up happening is we're not actually covering all of them, so we can't. We end up skipping over a bunch, and I'd rather try and talk about as many as we can and not skip over them. And then this way we're actually trying to cover all the ones that are the book, as opposed to we're doing these pages but we're not covering like a third or a half of what we were discussing. So that's, uh, I think, the route we're going to go today. Um, welcome to bamboo book time. Hopefully my intro wasn't too long-winded lane over to you.
Speaker 3:
Hopefully my intro wasn't too long-winded. Lane over to you. I like your intros, my friend, and I think if more intelligent, witty, smart, mature people were here on this app, we'd have a lot more people joining in and listening to your hot takes it's always a good time, my bro. Hot takes it's always a good time, my bro. I really like this book. Sparky has really gone above and beyond with gobbling up this information here. He opened up a space the other day. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to pop in there and speak. I was running around and just having a good time listening to you.
Speaker 3:
Think about this, this book, and really this, this book, even with a master plan, and it's like we're gonna go in and talk about omission bias, for example. It's like, oh man, I get hung up on like we read till pages. You know 200 and I I'm still hung up on something on page 130 not hung up, but it's like I've been thinking about it a lot and so, even though I'm 60 pages, 70 pages past it now, that's like what I want to talk about was like just one little paragraph. That I feel is like changing my mind type stuff. This is a great book with, honestly, by the time you're done reading one chapter, you kind of forget about the great stuff.
Speaker 3:
Just one chapter before that there's so much, and maybe because a lot of it is new to me, I've heard about a lot of these fallacies, but actually picking them apart, hearing examples and the examples he gives are very, very good. For example oh shoot, I just forgot the name of the word Um. Anyways, when he's dealing with any kind of definition of any of these fallacies, um, he really dives into some interesting examples that have helped me see the fallacy in a new light, even if I have heard of it before. So that's what's also giving me excitement to read more logical thinking books.
Speaker 3:
After this one, I'd like to hear another personality, because you can talk about this same content from a different personality, from a different take, with new examples, with new case studies, with real-world application for days and days and days. So just to kind of add to your point, sparky, I really think you bring up a good point. You kind of have to chew this, even one chapter at a time. Like we said from the beginning, we should probably take it one at a time, otherwise it's so damn hard to not leak into another one, and then it takes you on tangent a, which takes you on tangent y the benefit winds up just to hear whoever's reading this book, what, what excites them.
Speaker 3:
But, man, yeah, good game plan.
Speaker 2:
I, I think that that's I like that the benefit winds up being, too, though, like especially if you're going one by one, is that eventually you'll get to a point where they start to bleed into each other, and so you can backtrack and say this one actually caught, like it's it's a portion of this or it's a portion of that. It ties in pieces of this, because they're like, even though they have their own individual titles or own individual, um like fallacy names, they are like mixtures of each of them and it's like this one has pieces of this and this one has pieces of that. So you start to correlate, kind of the tie-ins around them and it's it's very interesting because you can like very easily do that and match things up once you start getting later in the book, and it makes it easier to talk about them kind of more in depth as well. But it is it's it's a very tough thing, especially like if you're trying to do, like, like we've said, 50 pages at a time. It doesn't matter if you're actually achieving the 50 pages. We're still not able to actually get through all the stuff that's discussed, and it's not because the pages are so, um, in depth or few. It's it's because the subject that you're you're looking at is so in depth and you can't really digest everything that's being said.
Speaker 2:
Like, there's one that uh, in the, the, the number block that I had suggested between, like uh, 46 and 65. Um, there's one in there, the, the William, whatever uh protocol or whatever the hell it's called. Um, fuck, I. I literally just looked at it like right before we started the space to refresh my mind, and now I can't think of it. Uh, the will Rogers phenomenon. Uh, I don't understand it whatsoever, whatsoever. I read it and none of it is sinking to me. Like I'm just, I don't know what it is about me reading it. Maybe it's because when I first read it, like there was making dinner and everything. And then I read it again and it's like I don't understand this. But then there's another one later on that ties in with the Will Rogers phenomenon and I understand that one and I'm like, okay, but how does this tie in with the Will Rogers phenomenon? And I understand that one and I'm like, okay, but how does this tie in with the Will Rogers? Because, like again, I don't understand the Will Rogers ones.