Unless you live under a rock (in which case, please recommend where I can find one too), you’ve been subjected to the Kanye-related news cycle that just won’t quit. And why would it? Kanye’s offensive remarks offer everything the mainstream media loves: celebrities, controversy, gossip, and a side of political narrative fuel.
While it might feel like Kanye is just another symptom of a society hurtling toward chaos, we’re missing the subtle silver lining.
Lex Friedman’s recent podcast conversation with Kanye West proves an old optimistic truth: in every problem, there is an opportunity. Before we dive into why this interview is a masterclass in battling ideas with ideas instead of force, let’s be frank: most well-adjusted people are deeply uncomfortable with blatant prejudice, especially the kind that carries a recent dark history. Our culture’s desire to atone for a less tolerant past is evident in the anger that Kanye’s comments drew.
There are two ways to change someone’s behavior: you can make the behavior so unpleasant that the person has no real choice but to abstain or you can help them find another option that’s more appealing than the current behavior. There’s a reason good therapists will never condemn you for your bad behavior: real change must be chosen, not coerced.
Lex showed us an approach to dealing with bad ideas we don’t see often today. Rather than censor Kanye and punish him with isolation, Lex did the opposite—he gave Kanye a place to sort through his ideas and used the collaborative process of conversation to highlight to help Kanye see the flaws in his own thinking.
Many people believe the only way to deal with bad ideas is by forcing them into hiding. You can’t annihilate ideas, but you can suppress them, and what’s out of sight is out of mind.
This is a short-term strategy that comes at a hefty cost—censorship is a blunt weapon that inevitably takes good people and ideas down with the bad ones. Worse yet, a blunt weapon in malicious hands is far more dangerous than ideas alone.
If you reject censorship in favor of free speech, you don’t get utopia, you just get different problems. The value of free speech is based on the idea that the problems it comes with can be solved by the benefits it comes with. Free speech is a self-correcting system; bad ideas will still appear, but they can be challenged with better ideas. With censorship, when bad ideas inevitably appear on the side that can censor their correction, it takes real-world destruction and opposing force to do so.
Lex Friedman’s conversation with Kanye gave us a glimmer of what our society has forgotten:
If bad ideas are truly bad, the holes in the argument will appear more clearly when under the light of examination than in the darkness of censorship.
Lex did a good job of pushing back on Kanye’s ignorance and highlighting where the holes in his argument were while still extending the respect required to get someone to consider changing their views. If you genuinely want to show someone a better way of seeing the world, you’ll never do it by denigrating them. Strong ideas are tethered to strong emotions—something Lex uncovered in Kanye.
Sometimes the last bit of control someone feels they have in life is holding onto their ideas; trying to force a change only motivates them to cling even more tightly. Attacking ideas is no exception to Newton’s third law: every action yields an equal but opposite reaction.
If it seems like the only way to deal with bad ideas is to punish people and exile them, look to the American prison system for how well that model works. If we can understand that even rehabilitating murderers requires offering a basic level of human dignity and a path to better choices, we can understand why Lex’s conversation with Kanye will do more for combatting antisemitism than any censorship will.
While Kanye’s offensive ideas may upset you, there’s hope in seeing an ancient human problem that usually ends in bloodshed be approached with the civilized tool of discussion.
No, bad ideas won’t immediately disappear just because they’ve been openly discussed, but they never have—censorship only buys us temporary comfort by hiding a reality we dislike.
Real progress against bad ideas comes from placing them in the light of discussion and getting to the root of why they appeal to people. It’s satisfying to dismiss people with offensive ideas as evil, but only Hannibal Lecter-level psychopaths act purely out of a desire to hurt others; most humans make their choices not to cause pain, but to escape it.
If we want fewer bad ideas in our society, we can’t just hide them or hate them, we have to understand them and offer a better answer to the problem they’re solving.
Quote of the Month
People are quick to condemn each other today. It seems like we’re just as eager to sort the world into Good vs. Evil as our ancient ancestors were.
While deciding what’s good and bad for you is a crucial part of creating a fulfilling life, don’t forget that other people are entitled to the same individualistic outlook.
Building a worldview that’s flexible enough to embrace the complexity of other people’s existence is the only way to stay sane.
You’ve probably done your share of “bad” things, whether they did serious damage or simply took you further from your growth. When you snap at your partner or fall off your workout routine, you aren’t “bad,” you’re facing a problem you haven’t chosen a good solution to. Instead of viewing other people through the lens of good vs. evil, we can consider whether another framework like constructive vs. destructive or adaptive vs. maladaptive makes more sense.
When we realize that people usually don’t act out of evil, but out of a failure to choose a productive solution to a problem, it’s easier to see how we could help them solve that problem or at least find some empathy for them.
What do you think about using other frameworks to analyze people instead of good vs. evil? Comment your answer on this post.