Further
to my previous post about long-form internet TV, I thought it might be worth
flagging up at least one show that the curious viewer might wish to check
out. There
are many people providing excellent and challenging content in long-form chat
shows on the so-called ‘intellectual dark web’. Among these are Joe Rogan,
Stefan Molynuex, Sam Harris, Gad Saad and Dave Rubin.
The latter’s
‘Rubin Report’ is one of the most reliable and civilised on the market. Rubin
is a charming man with an open, inquiring mind and he will often demonstrate
that he’s prepared to do the old-fashioned thing of changing his mind when the
facts change.
He's a gay man from the old liberal left whose life experiences led him to the
conclusion that a number of his key assumptions were mistaken. His oft-expressed
view is that he didn’t leave the left; ‘the left’ left him. He tells
a nice story which illustrates why he now finds himself thoroughly embroiled in
the fight for enlightenment values.
He was invited
for a drink by an old liberal friend that he hadn’t seen for several years.
During their conversation, his friend expressed the view that he was somewhat alarmed,
not only by Rubin’s willingness to engage with ‘objectionable’ people, but by
the fact that he appeared to have changed his mind on a number of big topics.
The friend implied that Rubin’s ‘conversion’ was motivated by financial
concerns, because his show was obviously picking up a lot of subscribers.
After a
frustrating exchange of views, Dave decided to ask a question which he thought
would at least create some kind of base from which they could start to build a reasonably
constructive dialogue. I’m paraphrasing, but this is more or less what he asked
his friend:
“For the purposes of this discussion, are you
prepared to allow that my aim is the same as yours, namely to try and make the
world a better place; and further, that my positions are not only sincerely
held, but have been arrived at through careful consideration of the available
evidence?”
Without
a second’s hesitation, the friend replied: “No,
I’m sorry … I can’t.”
And
there, in the shell of a nut, is an illustration that, in an age of tribalism
and entrenched group identity, there can be no dialogue between opposing
viewpoints.
Dave
Rubin, unlike his former friend, understands that, unless you can approach political
conversations with the belief that there is at least a possibility that the other person might just know something that
you don’t, then -whatever else you are doing- you’re not really listening.
Here’s a
recent example of his work, a free-ranging discussion with Steven
Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University and the author of ‘Enlightenment
Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress’.
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