Transcript: Episode 0039

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Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler, and I'm still woe. On today's Stone

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Choir, we're going to be discussing persuasion. And the last number of months we've tackled

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a bunch of different so-called controversial topics, subjects that the world takes a very

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different view than we take, and responds to the views that we have shared on Stone Choir,

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generally with hysteria. And we tackle those issues specifically because some of them are

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hard to hear, some are probably hard for some of you to hear. And the point is that we wanted

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to be able to present a calm reasoned case for these things in part to make the point

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about the subjects, but also with every episode that we've done, we're trying to demonstrate

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that you don't have to be a bomb-throwing madman to agree with us about Scripture being

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true, or about history being true, or about science being true. Truth is truth. And when

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faithful, honest men talk about the truth, they should be able to do that without getting

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worked up about it. So this week, we're talking about persuasion, specifically, because last

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week we talked about not wanting people to get sucked down into the tar pit of, oh, Cam

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Red Pill, now I want to know all the Red Pill subjects, and I want to engage in every so-called

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conspiracy theory. And I know that they lie to me about something, so they must have lied about

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everything. This is now my personality. When we tackle these subjects, we don't want people to

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feel like talking about race, or the Jews, or Hitler, is your personality, because it's not,

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you know, it's the Ryan Gosling meme where the guy watches Drive. And then for the next eight

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years, all of his relationships are defined by pretending to be somebody else. That it's

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fake. That's not, it's not mature. It's not healthy. And we certainly don't want to be a part of

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anyone else going down that path on any of these subjects, because we all have our lives. We're

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living in the community. We're doing whatever it is that God put us here to do. And when you

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learn about something new, that's great. Today, we're going to talk about persuasion, because on

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one hand, we don't want you to fall into a trap of getting obsessed with stuff, which is something

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that Corey and I are often accused, like, Oh, those guys are, those are the race guys, those are

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the haters. We're not. And when someone listens, they realize that. But if you only listen to the

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slander about us, instead of listening to us, you'll believe that, you know, it's only crazy

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people who think these things. When you're clear reasoned arguments, like, Okay, well, that makes

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sense, even if you disagree. And so today, we want to talk about how to be persuasive. As you're

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tackling some of these subjects, you know, Dale Carnegie with winning friends and influencing

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people and the Dilbert guy, Scott Adams, he's talked a lot about persuasion, we're not trying to

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jump into that sort of big brain TED talk world, where here's how you make people like you more.

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The specific point that we hope to get across in today's episode is that, if and when you choose

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to engage in some of the subjects that we discuss, there are certain things you can do if you're

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not thinking that will turn people off completely to what it is you're trying to convince them of.

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And there are certain things you can do that will be persuasive. It's, this is just basic adult

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human stuff. There's a good way and there's a bad way to do anything. And there's no particular

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script for how to do it well in every single situation. Every individual is different. You're

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different than we are. Your family is different than you are. You have more similarities with your

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family than probably with us. You have more similarities with us, you know, we have with

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someone on the other side of the world. So they're varying degrees of familiarity. And all those

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have to be incorporated into how we discuss things. One of the things that made us think about doing

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this episode is that when we did last week's, we were talking about conspiracy theories. Somebody

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on Twitter replied and said, you know, basically, he was a fan of the show, and he always looked

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forward to what we put out. But he said last week's show wasn't our best work. And I appreciated

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that comment because it was, it was critical. He wasn't being nasty, but it made me think. It made

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me think specifically, why do we select some of the topics that we select? Why would it be that

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someone would hear last week's episode and think, yeah, that wasn't really for me. That wasn't

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that great. Maybe he's right. Maybe it was a crap episode and it wasn't suitable for anyone.

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Almost immediately after we got a ton of feedback from other people saying, thank you so much for

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this episode. I loved it. It was really important. And I realized that one of the reasons for that

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disparity, it wasn't that like the guy who said that has bad taste or something, he had never

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dealt with probably, I didn't ask about, assume he never dealt with the problems that we were

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addressing in that episode. There are a lot of people, especially in the dissident right, who

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go completely nuts for so-called conspiracy theories. Like I said, it becomes their personality.

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And if you talk to one of those guys, you can't help but hearing about that stuff, even if you

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want to talk about something completely different. And so I realized that one of the things that

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Corey and I do when we tackle subjects is every episode is not for every listener. That's not to

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be dismissive. It's just that we're trying to tackle a specific issue in hopes that, you know,

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eventually in a perfect world, everyone would get on the same page. So if you hear something,

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you're like, that's not really for me. It's fine if you don't like the episode. But I realized

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when he said that, that especially in light of all the other people saying, yeah, those are really

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value of episode, I realized that there are people that just don't have certain problems. And so

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when if we do an episode, and you're like, that doesn't have anything to do with me, I'm not saying

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you should just like every episode. If someone says something, and it doesn't make sense to you,

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and we're telling you, this is a big problem in the world, like conspiracy theory obsession is a

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problem in the world, especially on the right. So when we say, Hey, here's a really important

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thing to deal with. And someone's like, that doesn't have anything to do with me. Hey, thank God,

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that you've been spared that. But be be aware that there are people who are actually being

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significantly burdened by confusion and disorientation and obsession in some cases,

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about a subject that thankfully you've been spared. And that's kind of the case with a lot of

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reps. As you know, some people, you know, there are some people in certain denominations, when we

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talked about slavery, like, yeah, that's fine. You know, maybe it's not exactly what I've heard

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in church, but that's consistent with a scriptural approach. And then there are other people who

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completely freak out because I've never heard anything except for the modern, strictly moral

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anti slavery views that have only existed in the last century and a half. So one of the things

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about being persuasive is really knowing your audience. In our case, as podcasters, we have a

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generic audience is entirely opt in. But we don't know you, we don't know you personally, we don't

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know what your interests are, your concerns are. So obviously, we can't address every episode to

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each person listening individually. So when you think that there's a miss on something, just think

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about maybe the fact that there are other people out there that are dealing with something that

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you've been spared, you know, be thankful for that, but also be aware of it. Because if we take the

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time to devote an entire week to something, it's because we see enough in the world, we haven't,

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you know, enough people commenting to us DMing us, we've seen enough struggle that we're saying,

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this is something affecting others. And when we talk about being persuasive, that's part of it,

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knowing that my problems are not necessarily your problems. You know, the worst thing that's ever

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happened to me is going to be different in degree than the worst thing that's ever happened to each

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person listening. You know, there's some people who maybe you have a horse girl where she has,

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she's rich, daddy's rich. And the worst thing that's ever happened to her in her life, she's

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never lost friends or family, but her dad had to sell her horse. And she was bereft. That was the

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worst thing that ever happened to her. I think we have a tendency to look at someone, you know,

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like that in the hypothetical, and be completely unsympathetic and say, Oh, you spoiled little

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brat. How dare you complain about this when my problems are XYZ worse than that. The sympathetic

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approach is to look at that and to empathize to realize that that was the worst day in that girl's

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life. If the horse that she dearly loved got sold, you know, for whatever reason, and that was

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cause of heartbreak, she's heartbroken. It's the worst thing that ever happened to her.

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I think that we can approach things as we're trying to be persuasive and just trying to discuss

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things with people to some degree by putting ourselves in their shoes. Because if something

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is really hurting someone else and it doesn't bother you at all, you have to keep that in mind

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when you're interacting with them and certainly don't dismiss whatever is concerning them. Because

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even if their concerns are dumb or wrong, it's still what's concerning them. And you can find

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common ground simply in the fact that you yourself have concerns or things that burden you, things

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that frighten you, things that confuse you. And so if the only commonality that you have with the

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person you're talking to is that you share having had a bad day, that's still a place to begin.

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And so I think as we begin talking about persuasion, finding common ground is one of the most

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crucial elements. So I think at the outset, it's important to distinguish between two distinct

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things that are both really in this area we're discussing in this episode. The first is persuasion,

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which is what we are discussing properly. How do you persuade someone of something? What is

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persuasion? And the second is manipulation. There's a distinction between these. We are not talking

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about manipulation. Some of the psychology or things like that would get into manipulation,

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where you're talking about propaganda in the negative sense, and we'll get into that later

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in the episode as well. But for our purposes here, persuasion is attempting to convince someone of

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something by engaging with that person. So you're engaging that person's reason or emotions. It's

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not always wrong to engage the emotions. God gave you emotions for a reason. You don't totally ignore

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them. Yes, when you're dealing with something that is a purely logical problem, you set your

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emotions aside. It's important to be able to do that, particularly for men. But it's not wrong

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to engage the emotions of another person per se. That can be used to manipulate, of course.

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But the distinction is that manipulation is an attempt to circumvent or subvert, to take advantage

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of the other person in some way. So you're trying to befuddle the person, confuse the person,

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engage with emotions that aren't really at issue here in order to manipulate the outcome. So it's

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the difference basically in intent. There's some difference in means as well, but largely it's the

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intent. Persuasion you want to bring the person to, one would think, your position through convincing

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the person, engaging with that person's reason, engaging with that person's emotions, engaging

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with that person's thoughts, etc. Whereas with manipulation, again, you are attempting to subvert

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or control. Now, manipulation technically is not an inherently negative term. Because manipulation

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also has the sense of just doing something skillfully, because it just comes from Latin

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manipulus, which is Latin for handful, has to do with the hands. And the hands are obviously

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dexterous, as it were. However, in modern English, manipulation has taken off that negative

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connotation. So here, we'll just contrast those two. Persuasion being what we are discussing,

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manipulation being sort of the shadow version of it, the dark version of it, not what we are

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advocating. And as well mentioned, we're not going to get into the psychology of, you know,

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if you want to convince someone, do these four things in this order. Yes, we could get into that,

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but that's not the point here. The point of the episode is, how do you engage with other people

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in a meaningful way on these topics? And how do you choose when to engage? Because that's part of

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it. As Will mentioned, you don't just always go 100% on every single one of these issues.

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Yes, you've listened to the episodes on race and World War II. That doesn't mean that the first

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thing you say when you sit down to have a beer with someone is, so, how about racial IQ? You don't

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open that way. I mean, maybe if it's with your friends and it's a joke, fine, but you have to

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know your audience. You have to know where you are as well. And how to engage with that audience

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in that place. And so, as was mentioned, we don't know our audience personally. Of course,

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we know some of you personally, but we generally don't know the overwhelming majority of our audience

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personally. So what we are doing here is necessarily more general than what you would be doing with

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someone in person or what we would do with someone in person. Woe was just on the myth of the 20th

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century. And there, he is engaging personally with someone. So that's different from how you would

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engage, say, on this podcast with the audience. With each other, we can engage personally. We

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know each other. But with the audience, it has to be more general. So the first thing you want to do

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when you're going to persuade someone is just to know the other person. Start with an actual

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conversation with the person. You don't have to open up with politics and religion and theology.

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You can open with a general discussion. You're building a relationship, building rapport to some

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degree, and that is going to count toward whether or not that person will give any weight to what

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you say later. If you just open up cold open with so about the world war two, probably not going

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to get you anywhere. That's part of why people like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons,

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when they do the cold call at your front door, they typically don't get anywhere with that.

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Now, maybe over time, they can wear certain people down. But if you have a relationship with

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someone, you have an established rapport, you're going to be more successful in persuading that

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person. So that first part is just getting to know your audience, knowing your audience.

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And that goes back to something that we've discussed in the past, the basic question,

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what problem are you trying to solve? And I think something that I hope that people in our

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audience will keep in mind is that if you learn something new, maybe it's from Stone Choir,

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maybe it's somewhere else, and it's a really big deal to you, like it revolutionizes some

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aspect of how you view the world, you're probably going to be excited about that. Like,

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this is cool, like this opens up new horizons. This explains things that I never understood

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before. I'm energized, I have this new knowledge, and you want to share it.

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The question of what problem are you trying to solve when you're looking to persuade people in

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your own life is that I think the mistake that many people make in interpersonal discussions is

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suddenly the problem you want to solve with your friends or God forbid your family is,

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oh, they're not red-pilled. I need to go lecture them about these things that I know about and

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that they're wrong about, and I need to fix them. That is exactly the wrong approach. If you approach

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wanting to discuss a subject in terms of I need to fix you, it's revolting. We did an episode,

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five-part episode on race, three-part episode on Jews, between those is probably close to 20 hours

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of content. As Corey mentioned, people knocking on doors for these cults, if I showed up on your

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door and said, hey, I'm here to talk to you about race for three hours, you're going to chase me off.

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Even if you happen to like me, you're not going to want to hear it. There's a blessed passivity to

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things like podcasts and articles that you can share with other people because it's completely

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one-sided. You can pick up an article or maybe a book or a podcast episode and you can listen or

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read, engage in your own time on your own terms. If you don't like it, you can just walk away. If

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we say something in one of our episodes that rubs you the wrong way, like, I got to put this down,

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it's annoying or whatever, you can't. You don't have to chase us off to do it because we don't

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know who you are. There's never any mutual engagement there, so we can make a case for

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something in this sort of passive teaching environment. There's different fundamentals

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than the way you can make a case to someone you know personally. The very thing that we can do

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quite successfully on a podcast where take it or leave it, you can listen or not,

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it would be virtually impossible to do this in person to strangers, even though virtually all

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of you are strangers to us. The fact that we're not coming to you and trying to convince you

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is part of what makes it easy for you to listen. I think one of the keys for us to understand as

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we're engaging interpersonally is that one of the things that we say all the time, I particularly

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say a lot here and I actually said on the midst of the 20th century this past week,

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I don't care if anyone agrees with me. Adam on the other show thankfully got me to clarify,

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didn't mean that I'm completely indifferent to people believing these things. What I was talking

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about and what I'd say on this podcast frequently is I am completely outcome independent to how you

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receive this information. Yes, Corey and I are spending probably about 30 hours a week on some

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of the easier episodes preparing and delivering this stuff to you. So there's clearly investment,

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we wouldn't be doing this if no one were listening and we thought no one cared.

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When I say I don't care, what I mean is that if you as an individual who's completely

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undone to me don't agree with the thing that we just told you, that's okay. We frequently say

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take it or leave it. There are a lot of episodes where we explicitly say don't take our word for it,

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don't listen to a couple of podcasters, tell you stuff. It's completely contrary to everything

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you've ever heard. That should rightly raise your hackles. I use that phrase frequently. We have a

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natural basic animal understanding of something being off and the instinctual response to off is

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to be protective and that's fine, that's good. The reason that Corey and I can say it's fine if

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you don't believe us, go look for yourself is that we know that we're telling you the truth.

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And so our confidence in the subjects that we discuss is based on the fact that we know

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we've done all the legwork long before we come to the microphone and deliver one of these episodes.

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So when I say I don't care and I say you can take it or leave it, it's not that I don't

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want you to believe or I'm indifferent. It's that if you say that's crap, I don't believe any of it.

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There's no skin off my nose. It doesn't hurt me if you don't agree. And while that's easy

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in an impersonal situation like a podcast, I think the vital thing that one of the key things I hope

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people will take away from this episode is that it's okay to have a sense of that same spirit

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in person with your friends, with your family. And one of the big turnoffs when you want to

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talk about a subject is when it's just the most important thing in the world for you to talk about

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it. If you're just brimming with excitement to tell somebody about something, maybe the best

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approach, it depends on your relationship, maybe a relationship where your friend is just used to

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you getting excited about stuff and they'll humor you. But sometimes for some people, depending

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on their personalities and their friends, if you're brimming with excitement to share something you

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just learned, maybe the best thing is to wait and to say nothing and to let it naturally come up in

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conversation. So you've been informed, you've learned about something, you really want to share

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details, but you don't want to be this guy who's just wild eyed about convincing other people.

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Sometimes the best way to be convincing is to completely relax and just forget about it.

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And then later on, maybe months down the road, some say rice or IQ comes up, you now have

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something you can contribute to the conversation that's going to be novel to your circle of friends

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because they're not listening, they haven't heard this stuff before. You can drop a few facts in

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conversation that are probably going to blow their minds and maybe they'll get really mad at you,

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like some people get mad at us, maybe they'll pique their curiosity. The nice thing about

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having resources like books and articles and podcasts to point people to is that you don't

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have to have the personal investment to say you must believe and listen to this thing right away.

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This is the most important thing. You can say, you know what, I heard something really interesting.

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Listen to this episode, tell me how you think. I found it curious. I was really interested by

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what they have to say. You can be non-committal, but curious, and that doesn't put pressure on

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the other person to have to just say, you're absolutely right. Those guys make complete sense.

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Maybe they're going to respond very negatively. And so one of the reasons that Corey and I created

22:39.920 --> 22:46.800
Stone Choir is that we can take the heat for you. We can be the crazy men screaming into the void

22:46.800 --> 22:51.040
on the internet. And then if a few people come along in here and say, yeah, that makes sense,

22:51.040 --> 22:56.640
then you can have a conversation with your friend in your own particular context in a way that

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we've delivered the scary payload, and then you can work with whatever bits and pieces and add

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your own. And say you disagree with something we said and agree with something else, but you can

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take the pressure off of yourself and off of your friends and family if you say, hey, here's something

23:14.240 --> 23:18.720
somebody else is doing. We've had a lot of feedback recently. I mentioned it to Adam on

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Myth of the 20th Century that a number of people have said wives and girlfriends have started

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listening. And I realize that for saying that to individuals who said that, it might seem a little

23:27.600 --> 23:33.280
doxy. Any wives and girlfriends who are listening, I want you to know that we've heard that dozens

23:33.280 --> 23:37.120
of times in the last couple of weeks. So you should assume if you were one of those wives and

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girl or girlfriends, hopefully not both that or mothers in some cases, it's not the man in your

23:43.280 --> 23:46.480
life that we're talking about. It's somebody else because there've been a bunch of people. So it's

23:46.480 --> 23:51.840
kind of like a firing squad where there's a blank. Assume that the guy that your boyfriend or husband

23:51.840 --> 23:56.640
who told you to watch, he's not the one who DMed us because we don't people feel like there's a

23:56.640 --> 24:01.840
conspiracy to trick you into believing things. That's precisely the opposite intent of what we

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have. Here's some stuff. Take it or leave it. We think there's some value here. That's an approach

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that when we take it in personally, it becomes very convincing just because the guys have relaxed.

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He's not freaking out. There's inherent skepticism when anyone delivers new information.

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And if they deliver it in a way that's wild-eyed and wants to grab you by the lapels and shake

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you and say, you must believe this, my first response is no. I want no part of that. So we

24:29.280 --> 24:33.280
want to make sure that we don't come across that way and we don't just naturally. That's not my

24:33.280 --> 24:39.600
personality or Cordy's personality, but the same can also be even more effective in person.

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Say, hey, there's this cool thing I learned about. What do you think about it?

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And ask that way. Don't say you must believe this. Say, here's an interesting article. Here's an

24:49.360 --> 24:54.640
interesting podcast. What do you think about this? And then use it as a springboard for your own

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discussion to think what you think about the thing. It doesn't need to be to mirror what some

25:00.720 --> 25:05.200
stranger on the internet told you. What do you think about the thing? How do you think it affects

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your life? That becomes personal. It doesn't become, here's a religious tenant of this new

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big red pill discovery I have. It's just, huh, I think this is a fact. And I think it has this

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to do with life. And I think that's relevant. What do you think? That can be an interesting

25:22.480 --> 25:29.520
human conversation at a small scale where there's no hard feelings. If they say that's racist,

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that's dumb, you can just laugh and say, well, I think everything gets called racist at this point.

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So I don't think that matters. Oh, by the way, those guys did an entire episode on the invention

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of racism in the 20th century. Maybe find out what the word that you're using actually means.

25:44.480 --> 25:49.360
And then again, you can blame someone else if they disagree. You don't have to fight. We don't

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want people fighting with each other or straining relationships for the sake of things that,

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even though they do have impact on all of our lives, it's not immediately obvious.

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And so the immediacy of the need is really what this part is about. There's no immediate need

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for the person you're talking to to agree with you. Just as there's no immediate need for you to

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agree with us, you listen to an episode saying, yeah, I don't get that. That's dumb, or it's crazy,

26:16.800 --> 26:21.520
or whatever. That's fine. Maybe you come back to a later, maybe you completely forget about it and

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never care. That's perfectly okay. If you take that approach with your friends and family,

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you can still have normal human relationships with them, even while you're incorporating new

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things that you've learned into your life and maybe your conversations. But don't make it the

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determining factor for whether or not you're going to be friends with your friends, or certainly

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whether you're going to have a loving relationship with family. None of these things should ever

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undermine those things as far as it depends on you. You touched on a couple of things there that

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I want to expand. But first, I guess I really should give an example of manipulation,

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not being a negative thing, because I did say that and some maybe have not encountered that.

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One of the best and most obvious examples is interacting with a small child, particularly

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one who is being cantankerous or uncooperative for some reason, maybe he doesn't want to put on his

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shoes. A neat little trick, if you've never done this with children, I highly recommend you use

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this, is instead of saying, would you like to do something? Or if you do this, then we'll

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give him two options, both of which are acceptable to you. So for instance, if your child is not

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picking what he wants to eat for lunch, or he's just being difficult with eating his lunch,

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say would you rather have carrots or broccoli? Assuming he'll actually eat either of those.

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Most children, when given the option of two things, will pick one. Yes, eventually they get old

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enough to figure out your trick and go, no, I want candy. But for a while it works. And that's

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manipulation. That's not negative. You're actually being a parent or an uncle or whatever you happen

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to be with relation to this child. You're doing your duty. And yes, you're manipulating the child

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to do it. But that's a positive. You're doing it for a good reason in a good way.

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But then the two things on which I wanted to expand. First, you touch tangentially on the fact

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that human beings are hardwired to process things negatively, more so than positively.

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This is just an important psychological and biological fact about humanity. And the reason

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for it is fairly obvious if you think about it. If you are walking through the woods, and you hear

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some strange noise, and you decide, yep, that must be a bear or a wolf, I am going to go the other

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direction, you're probably going to survive whatever that encounter is. Unless you're being

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actively stalked by something in which case, you're still more aware your odds go up. If on the other

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hand you are the person who just says, oh, must be a squirrel, and just keeps walking, you put a

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positive spin on it, you are more likely to be eaten by something and not survive. And so,

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evolutionarily, and I do mean in the micro sense, the minor sense, not speciation, I'm not talking

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about that. And as Christians, yes, we can say that evolution in the micro sense is true. We know

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that. That's why we have different breeds of dogs. That's why we have different races of men. But

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when it comes down to it, we are hardwired for a negative interpretation of novel information,

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unless we have reason, good reason, to put a positive spin on it. So this goes back to that

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building of a relationship. If you are speaking with someone whom you trust, and that person gives

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you novel information, you don't necessarily have to put the negative spin on it that you

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otherwise would because you trust the source. For instance, if we go back to the example of

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being out in the woods, if you're wandering through the woods and you find a random mushroom and pick

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it up, unless you're a crazy person, you're not going to just eat the random mushroom if you don't

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know what it is. However, if you're walking through the woods hiking with your friend who knows

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mushrooms really well and he hands you a mushroom, you're more likely to maybe try that.

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So it matters that relationship you have, and it's important to bear in mind that we are all,

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to various degrees, of course, hardwired to put a negative spin on novel information.

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At least if we haven't become completely credulous and we believe everything we hear,

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which is the opposite problem. But then I really already touched on the second point I wanted to

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expand on the issue of trust, and that's vital to all of this. Whether or not the audience trusts

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you, whether or not the person with whom you're speaking can trust the things you say, and that's

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built over time. Trust takes time to build. It can be destroyed in seconds, which is always important

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to bear in mind, but it takes time to build. And that is fundamentally one of the things

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that we are doing on this podcast. It's why we don't mislead on anything. Whether or not you want

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to hear it, whether or not it is going to be necessarily good for us to say it, whatever the

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consequences may be, if it's true, we're going to say it. Now, we may endeavor to say it in a way

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that is persuasive, hence why we are doing this episode, and it wouldn't make much sense if we

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deliberately produced episodes in a way that was not persuasive, but we are not going to subvert

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the facts or the truth in order to be persuasive, that veers into manipulation,

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because part of the reason we can be effective, part of the reason you can share these episodes

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with others and actually have people listen and perhaps believe the things we say, is because of

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that building of trust, the fact that we are going to tell the truth about every single topic

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that comes up on this podcast, because building that trust over time is vitally important,

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and all it takes is lying on one topic or about one facet of a topic, and it destroys that trust,

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because then people, when they listen to you, if they know in the past you've lied about something,

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particularly something important, then they're going to wonder if you're lying every time.

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Now, that eventually attenuates to some degree over time, so if you lied to someone 10 years

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ago about something, and you have been truthful since, that's largely in the past,

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but it can take years, so it is important to maintain that trust you have with others

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if you are going to attempt to be persuasive with those others.

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And on the subject of lying, it's important again to distinguish between if we were to

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deceive for the purpose of advancing one of our points, and if we simply got something factually

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wrong, we endeavored gray lengths not to let that happen, we're not perfect, we may miss speak, we

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may inadvertently misconstrue something, it's not going to be something that's a key part of a point,

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but we're not saying if anyone ever makes any mistakes in their entire life, you write them

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off, because that's insane, no one can survive that. But again, it's the deception, we talked last

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week about some of the people engaging in some of these clear deceptions, where it's clear that

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they're, whether they're grifters or they're just being entertaining, they're willing to

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fill people's heads full of lies for the sake of entertainment, and who knows what they get out

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of that doesn't matter. That's fundamentally different from just miss speaking or accidentally

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mistaking something, you know, for example, when I was on Myth of the 20th century is after I

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normally go to sleep, and so when I'm extremely tired, my reason, my faculties are fully intact,

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but my recall just goes in the toilet. So a couple times I completely flubbed some timeline stuff,

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and like, you know, if you, I practically had Moses landing on the moon, I was getting some

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of the timelines still wrong. That doesn't discredit what I said, because like, I acknowledge you at

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the time. But the overall point I was making wasn't hinging on that. And I think it's okay for you,

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like, try to get things straight before you say them as we do. But if you make a mistake, don't

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be terrified of that either. That's, that's human to, to miss speak or to accidentally get something

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wrong. If you find that you've made an error in something factually, go back and fix it.

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On the related note of, you know, outcome independence and

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convincing people over time, I think time is a key part of this. You know, when we do an episode,

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we lay it down and then move on. And we'll refer it off into previous episodes and newer ones,

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as we're doing in this one. For example, one of the early episodes we did on framing,

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this is really a continuation of that. In the framing episode, we focused entirely on

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the use of frame in persuasion or deception. So this is kind of a continuation of that

35:45.600 --> 35:50.960
metacognition aspect of things. You know, this is, this is a meta episode where we're talking

35:50.960 --> 35:56.560
about thinking about talking about things, which is most people don't normally approach

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things that way. We're willing to do that, even though it's, you know, it's kind of a lull episode

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in terms of here's not a ton of new facts. It's just we've been delivering so many facts over

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the last number of months that are really hard to swallow. In some cases for some people,

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we want to just give people a little bit of time to digest and then figure out how to incorporate

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it themselves. I want to give a personal example of this, just kind of demonstrate, like we,

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we don't want to make this about us, but on this podcast, we are the frame of reference for everything.

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So as you're listening, you know, you can apply what we're saying about ourselves

36:30.400 --> 36:33.840
in your own lives. I don't want you thinking about us when you're thinking about yourself

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and how you can live a better Christian life, speaking faithfully in your community. So

36:38.960 --> 36:44.000
just pointing to our example is not intended to be self aggrandizing. It's literally just

36:44.000 --> 36:47.200
here's something that happened and maybe you can learn something from it.

36:48.160 --> 36:55.120
I was on Gab for a year or so. I prior to that, I had engaged before I got on Gab for,

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for good, after I finally got expelled from Twitter for the last time,

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I had engaged with Andrew Torbund Gab and I eventually gave him a whole rash of crap

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because of some of his hiring practices. I was pretty antagonistic about him openly and he

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blocked me and like, I don't blame him. I was, I was ankle biting on his timeline. And I was right

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incidentally about his hiring practices. He turned out later on to regret some of those people, but

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we began with kind of a strange relationship and then I got on Gab and he gave me a second chance

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and eventually he started boosting some of the things that I said and I appreciated that because

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I had shifted focus more than in 2017 versus 2020. And I can't remember the time. I think it was,

37:38.800 --> 37:46.000
it was either the end of 2019 or 2020 was, I think it's probably 2020 when I was invited by Andrew

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to do an essay on Christian nationalism. It was one of the earliest things that news.gab had been.

37:54.160 --> 38:00.000
They'd just begun sort of highlighting writers from the community. Boniface Option was one of

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the first guys he had and he had a few others, but I was one of the very first. I was almost the first

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to be invited to discuss anything about Christian nationalism. Now, the episode that Cory and I

38:11.040 --> 38:17.120
did on Christian nationalism earlier this year was a much more fully fleshed out version of

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what I gave to Andrew. And the reason I'm highlighting this example is that when I was

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invited to do that, both Andrew and I knew, like we've never, we've never had private personal

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conversations about any of this stuff. I can just help like by reading the room, reading the audience,

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even if it's an audience of man, one, if it's another man you're interacting with.

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It was clear to both of us at the time that I was further to the right on things like race and

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in capital and nationalism than he was. And so when he invited me to write on Christian nationalism,

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I knew at that time that if I were to make the fully racialist case for the subject that we

38:56.320 --> 39:01.520
made on Stone Choir, he wasn't going to publish it because at the time, at least those were not

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his views. And so I didn't want to be antagonistic. It was an honor to be asked to do anything about

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a subject that was important to me. So I think we'll link in the show notes the essay that I did

39:10.720 --> 39:15.600
on Christian nationalism. So you can take a look at it if you're interested and maybe contrast it

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with some of the things that we say on this episode. I bring this up because it's an example

39:20.800 --> 39:27.120
of being patient in your persuasion. I could have done a couple different things when Andrew came to

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me. I could have fought him and said, well, I'm only going to write for you if I get to make the

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completely racial case for what nations are. And I'm going to say that America is a white's only

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country. And that's going to be the point. If I had done that, he would have flat out said no.

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I knew that. And so I didn't. I wasn't going to be antagonistic. Again, when you look at the essay,

39:49.200 --> 39:55.680
everything that I say is entirely true. I was not being deceptive about what I said. However,

39:55.760 --> 40:00.800
I omitted a big chunk of the argument for Christian nationalism by basically just focusing on the

40:00.800 --> 40:06.880
Christian part. I talked about the history. I talked about the state of the West of Christendom

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and then the United States in terms of Christianity and a Christian government.

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I almost completely omitted any discussion of race because again, I knew it wouldn't be welcome.

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I knew there would be too far at that time. So that was an example in my mind of trying to be

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effectively persuasive. I did make the case for Christian nationalism on the Christian side.

40:29.520 --> 40:33.520
And there's absolutely a case to be made there. Here's what Christian

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nations look like. I completely omitted any discussion of what nation means, which is,

40:39.920 --> 40:44.720
again, the other half of the conversation. And I did that because I knew it wouldn't be welcome.

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A few years on, he's saying many of the same things now publicly that I was saying that.

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Again, I haven't talked to him, but just based on the other things going on at the time,

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I knew they wouldn't be welcome. And so rather than picking a fight with a guy who might already

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fought in the past, we got over it, whatever, I chose to bite my tongue and to make the narrow

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case that I could make that we could both agree on. I'm not to say that he endorsed 100% of what

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I said, but he was willing to publish it pretty much as is. I didn't push any buttons that were

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going to alienate the people he wanted to reach at the time. That's persuasion. You can make part

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of the case, even knowing that you have other stuff to say. So what does this have to do with

41:29.920 --> 41:35.680
you personally? You don't have to say it all at once. It's fine to just get one or two things out

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on the table and let people digest it. A lot of the things that my friends and I were saying

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on Gab at the time are things that now Andrew is much more willing to say in public. I don't think

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he believed in them. He's more willing to say them now because he realized that we were right.

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I'm certainly not taking personal credit for whatever to whatever degree he was persuaded by

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anything. I'm simply pointing out the fact that if instead of doing what I did, if I had been

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antagonistic, if I had said, unless we go whole hog and do everything that I want us to say, I don't

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want any part of it, if you're an aggravating friend, if you're an aggravating ally to someone,

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that's a turn off to whatever it is you're trying to convey. If I have a point to make,

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I want to make it as gently and persuasively as possible. It's funny for me to say gently because

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I think a lot of people assume that Corey and I are bomb throwers. We're bulls in a china shop

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just storming through everything that's going on and just leaving wreckage in our wake. That's not

42:36.720 --> 42:42.640
the case, but if you're not giving us a charitable view, particularly if you're just looking at social

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media, some people conclude that most of that frankly is reputational. It's not things that

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I've done, it's things that people have said about me. Whatever, if I have to worry about what

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people are thinking about me, it's a complete waste of time. I worry about people getting these

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subjects right. When I was offered the opportunity to make a case for Christian nationalism, I did

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the best I could in the constraints that I had at the time. Then when Corey and I had our own

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platform here on Stonequire to make a more fleshed out case, particularly for the nation side,

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the racial side of Christian nationalism, we made it here. We made it in public in a way that

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people who may be read part of it before they've heard it elsewhere, they can come along at their

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own pace. I think that's another key element of this, let people come along at their own pace

43:34.240 --> 43:38.320
because you're not trying to fix them. I wasn't trying to fix Andrew or anyone else,

43:38.320 --> 43:43.040
I was just trying to tell the truth. If there's only a portion of it that they can receive

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and absorb, it's important to know that and to leave the rest out because if I can give you

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one dish that you're really going to like and another dish that I know you're going to hate,

43:54.320 --> 43:58.160
if the goal is for me to get you to eat a dish, I'll give you the one you're going to like.

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I can save the broccoli for later, give you the carrots, that's perfectly fine.

44:04.080 --> 44:07.680
We get so excited about trying to convince people and trying to fix them

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that we forget that in many cases we didn't believe this stuff a few years ago,

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so just be patient, show some grace and give people a chance to come along at their own pace

44:17.440 --> 44:23.280
and leave them as much room as you can. Tell them a truth where you can find common ground

44:23.280 --> 44:26.640
and push them a little bit, give them a little bit more than they're comfortable with,

44:26.640 --> 44:32.000
give them something to think about, but if you try to just waterboard someone and put it down

44:32.000 --> 44:37.680
their throat all at once, you're going to alienate them even with the truth because the manner in

44:37.680 --> 44:44.080
which it's presented is so much worse that who cares what the content is if you're aggravating,

44:44.080 --> 44:49.280
because people don't want anything to do with you. Be patient, have low time preference. We talk

44:49.280 --> 44:55.920
about this all the time in the racial space. There are certain races that have higher or lower

44:55.920 --> 45:03.040
time preference. They're more focused on the future or the current and we must be patient,

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we must be focused on the future and knowing telling something to someone that's hard to hear

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is probably going to take some time. It might have taken you time to absorb it, it's going to take

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them maybe even more time because you have a certain set of give-ins and experiences,

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theirs are different. If it takes them twice as long as you, just let it happen. Give them a

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little bit, give them what they can digest and then wait and be willing to answer questions in a way

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that's not challenging, that doesn't make them feel like you think there's something wrong with them,

45:34.400 --> 45:38.640
that they don't agree with you, just give it time, be patient.

45:39.760 --> 45:42.320
So you're saying that time preference actually matters?

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It matters tremendously and in the same people who think that the whites have super low time

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preference and we're just the masters of patience, as soon as we learn something new we go nuts and

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like, oh I gotta tell everyone right away. It's good to be excited, it's bad to make other people

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regret being in the same room with you. I was actually just discussing something tangentially

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related to this with someone last night. When you're building an argument, you may very well

46:15.120 --> 46:22.800
have to build the argument in pieces. And there's a tendency for some when it comes to politics or

46:22.800 --> 46:29.520
religion, these hot button issues as it were, to attempt to get someone to believe everything

46:29.520 --> 46:35.200
all at once. And that's just not how things work, that's particularly not how human beings work.

46:36.800 --> 46:43.280
To some degree beliefs and things like that, very few people are going to turn on a dime and go

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from believing one thing to believing the diametrically opposed thing. Usually how it

46:48.640 --> 46:53.360
works is more akin to Bayesian updating, which essentially is just a fancy way of saying that

46:53.360 --> 46:59.920
as additional information comes in, the person slowly moves with regard to what he believes about

46:59.920 --> 47:07.920
the issue. And so over time you may get someone to change his position on something, you're probably

47:07.920 --> 47:14.640
not going to get that in one discussion, in one conversation with most people. Some men, yes,

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if you present a strong enough case, they'll say, I was wrong previously, I now believe this.

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You may encounter some men like that. Not many. Most people take time to change their views,

47:27.280 --> 47:33.440
particularly on important things. And the context in which I was discussing this

47:33.440 --> 47:40.800
with the aforementioned person was basically apologetics. How do you prove the Christian

47:40.800 --> 47:46.720
God is the true God? I'm not going to go into apologetics in depth in this episode, because

47:46.720 --> 47:51.920
I'm sure eventually we'll get around to probably a series of episodes on apologetics, different

47:51.920 --> 47:58.880
arguments for God and things like that. But the core point that I want to draw out of that

47:59.120 --> 48:07.120
is that when you're building the argument for the Christian God, you don't start by arguing

48:07.120 --> 48:13.120
for the Christian God. Particularly if you're dealing with an atheist or an agnostic, if you're

48:13.120 --> 48:18.800
dealing with someone who doesn't even believe in God, you don't start by saying, Jesus is your Lord

48:18.800 --> 48:24.400
and Savior, period. That's not going to get you anywhere. The person is going to stop listening

48:24.400 --> 48:28.880
and probably walk away and probably also be quite annoyed with you and perhaps not listen to you

48:28.880 --> 48:37.120
again. Instead, if you're building up, you build up to that argument by establishing more basic

48:37.120 --> 48:43.600
facts, by laying the groundwork, building a foundation. And you do that by establishing,

48:44.240 --> 48:50.000
well, there's something other than matter. If there's something other than matter,

48:50.000 --> 48:56.240
the universe is not purely material. It's not a materialistic universe. We have to explain

48:56.240 --> 49:02.160
this thing that isn't matter. And then you can get into proving the necessity of the infinite.

49:02.720 --> 49:08.160
Then you can prove that the infinite is personal. The infinite being personal must be God.

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And then you can move on from there and build up and build your argument piece by piece and arrive

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at the conclusion that the Christian God is the only explanation for the information presented.

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But that takes time. That takes patience. That takes multiple interactions with this person.

49:28.080 --> 49:32.480
You're probably not going to go through all of this in one marathon session. Maybe you will.

49:32.480 --> 49:36.480
Maybe you happen to be the kind of person who enjoys that. And if the other person also does,

49:36.480 --> 49:42.560
then by all means talk about it for six hours. But typically speaking, it is going to take

49:42.960 --> 49:51.840
many interactions over a course of days or weeks, months, even years. I have friends where I have

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discussed religion and these issues for years with these people. They've slowly changed their

49:58.400 --> 50:05.520
position, but it takes time. And some are more resistant to change than others. My father has

50:05.680 --> 50:14.320
a friend that he has had for, I want to say 30 years almost, who recently became a Christian

50:16.080 --> 50:24.400
after my father had been discussing religion with him for 30 years. Patience matters. These things,

50:24.400 --> 50:29.120
when they're these very important things, are going to be in large part in God's time. That

50:29.120 --> 50:34.000
doesn't mean don't play your role, do your part. Of course, do that. That's your duty as a Christian.

50:34.160 --> 50:41.520
But be patient. Recognize that a lot of these things are to some degree out of your hand.

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We're advising you to be effective and to be wise as a serpent. When it comes to the things

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that are in your hands, the things that are in your control, don't worry about the things that aren't.

50:55.840 --> 51:05.120
There was one time when Martin Luther was asked why he wasn't more worried about the state

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of Christian knowledge amongst supposed Christians and just the general state of Christendom,

51:12.240 --> 51:19.440
and his response was that he put in the work and the outcome was in God's hands and so he

51:19.440 --> 51:26.000
could enjoy his beer with melanchthon. That's the right perspective to have on these things.

51:28.000 --> 51:31.840
And that's why that outcome independence that was mentioned earlier matters.

51:33.600 --> 51:39.840
Do the thing because it is the thing you should do, not because it guarantees a result, because

51:39.840 --> 51:45.360
when it comes to human beings, the result is almost never guaranteed. Particularly when you're

51:45.360 --> 51:49.920
dealing with persuasion, you're dealing with psychology, you're dealing with things

51:49.920 --> 51:56.160
that are very much beyond your control. You can influence these things. You cannot really control

51:56.160 --> 52:03.600
them. So you can make the persuasive argument. You can properly engage with other people.

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But if you become obsessed with the outcome, you're actually going to harm your chances of arriving

52:10.640 --> 52:17.280
there because you're going to be obnoxious. If you're constantly insisting, no, you absolutely must

52:17.280 --> 52:24.560
believe this specific conclusion. And yes, that's sort of what social media and certain

52:25.360 --> 52:32.320
fora tend to encourage, that it brings it out of a certain personality type. I willingly admit that

52:32.320 --> 52:39.120
I engage in some of that sometimes. But there's a time and a place. Engaging on Twitter again,

52:39.120 --> 52:44.400
general audience, you probably don't know most of those people personally. You're going to engage

52:44.400 --> 52:50.720
differently from how you engage with a family member or a close friend or someone you met at a bar.

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Stranger, what have you. So know your audience. When you know your audience and you aren't

53:00.560 --> 53:05.600
so hyper focused on the outcome that you can just be a person and have a conversation,

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you are going to be so much more effective than if you are just hyper laser focused on that outcome

53:16.240 --> 53:23.440
and driving people away because you're being abrasive. If you're being abrasive or obnoxious,

53:23.440 --> 53:29.760
you are going to be less effective. That's just the fact of the matter. Yes, it's about the truth,

53:29.760 --> 53:36.480
ultimately. The truth matters. But your goal is to get people to believe the truth. Hopefully,

53:36.480 --> 53:40.320
that's your goal. That's not your goal, then it's manipulation and you're doing something you should

53:40.320 --> 53:47.040
stop. But if your goal is to get people to believe the truth, then yes, you are absolutely correct

53:47.760 --> 53:55.440
to say, think and believe that the truth matters. But that's not the end of it. Because you have to

53:55.520 --> 54:01.440
have a way. You have to know how to get people to that truth. And you can't get them to the truth.

54:02.000 --> 54:07.520
If all you do is just keep insisting, this is the truth and you must believe it. You have to

54:07.520 --> 54:12.800
know how to get to the truth. And that's where what we're discussing in this episode comes in.

54:13.520 --> 54:21.040
That's where persuasion matters. How do you get from where you are to where you need to be?

54:21.840 --> 54:27.360
How do you get other people to join you in going to where they need to be?

54:28.080 --> 54:34.720
Where is the truth? How do we get there? Another big part of persuasion is having

54:34.720 --> 54:42.640
that degree of confidence, not necessarily in yourself, but in your beliefs. We did the episode

54:42.640 --> 54:47.920
on the fear of the Lord I talked about when I had a stroke and my confidence in God and the fact

54:47.920 --> 54:55.040
that that's not me, that's not my faith doing something because I chose it for it to do that.

54:55.040 --> 55:01.680
That was God giving me a gift and taking care of me when I needed it. And I only mention it then,

55:01.680 --> 55:08.160
I only mention it now because it's an example of how when we have genuine confidence in the promises

55:08.160 --> 55:14.560
of the one true God, it's something from outside us that doesn't, it gives us a sort of supreme

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confidence that in the liturgy it's described as the peace of God which passes all understanding.

55:21.440 --> 55:28.240
That sort of absolute assurance in a belief. And I'm not saying that everything that you

55:28.240 --> 55:33.200
believe about all these material things should have the same degree of confidence as your

55:33.200 --> 55:38.000
confidence in your faith. Our faith should be paramount. And so there are a lot of aspects

55:38.000 --> 55:44.400
of this episode that go to sharing the gospel, but they also equally apply to sharing other things.

55:45.040 --> 55:50.640
Regardless of what we're sharing, when we're confident in what we're saying, that comes across.

55:50.640 --> 55:56.000
And there's a mixture of, there's a balancing act between the confidence in what we have to say

55:56.720 --> 56:02.560
and the desire for others to believe it. Corey's father's friend, after 30 years,

56:03.360 --> 56:09.280
regardless of the arguments that his dad made to him, the fact that he still cared enough and

56:09.280 --> 56:17.360
loved him enough and didn't give an inch of ground on the subject, all by itself was a testimony to

56:17.360 --> 56:22.800
his faith to the fact that there was something real there. Because that sort of persistence

56:23.440 --> 56:29.520
is rarely found where falsehood is found. People don't die with the lie, not in real life.

56:30.160 --> 56:34.080
You know, if you're trying to trick someone, you might try to go down with a ship for

56:34.080 --> 56:40.720
something to gain some advantage, but only if you actually believe something will you stick to it

56:40.720 --> 56:48.000
when you have nothing else left to cling to. And so as we look to be persuasive, it's not about

56:48.800 --> 56:52.320
winning arguments. I think that's one of the key things. It's not about winning arguments on the

56:52.320 --> 56:58.320
internet or in person or anything else. It's not about winning. It's about if you have the truth,

56:58.960 --> 57:03.760
any truth, and someone else is missing it. The problem you're trying to solve

57:03.760 --> 57:09.120
is to convey that truth to them in a way that they'll actually receive it. And again,

57:09.120 --> 57:14.320
that may take patience. It may take a particularly rational argument. It depends on whom you're

57:14.320 --> 57:19.440
speaking with. Different men will respond differently to different types of arguments.

57:19.440 --> 57:25.680
And so in some cases for some individuals, maybe you're not up to it. And that's fine. You know,

57:25.680 --> 57:32.640
a lot of people are not equipped to make the fully sound convincing argument for something

57:32.640 --> 57:40.400
to any random man. You know, if there's a blue collar guy who's a machinist in his spare time,

57:40.400 --> 57:46.320
he does small engine repair. He probably doesn't worry about any of this crap. And God bless him

57:46.320 --> 57:52.880
for it. I wish the more people didn't have to worry about these things. The reason that a man like

57:52.880 --> 57:58.800
that becomes the battle space is that while he is blessed by not paying attention to any of this

57:58.800 --> 58:04.800
stuff, many of the subjects that we've discussed in the past episodes are still floating around in

58:04.800 --> 58:11.280
the ambient world. And so he's absorbing bits of pieces. And some of those things have been

58:11.280 --> 58:17.120
deliberately inserted into the world that he's only barely paying attention to in order to

58:17.120 --> 58:23.760
encircle him and limit the options for his kids, his community, his schools, whatever.

58:24.400 --> 58:30.240
He has fewer options. He has fewer legitimate moral choices in the world's morality,

58:30.240 --> 58:34.640
because of the things that we talk about. So while he's not paying attention to it,

58:36.000 --> 58:39.760
maybe there's a time and a place where you would have a small piece of the discussion

58:39.760 --> 58:46.880
with such a man and say, Hey, did you care about X, Y, and Z in the news? I think that this is what's

58:46.880 --> 58:51.440
going on. I learned this other bit. I think we connect A to B. There's a picture there.

58:52.000 --> 58:55.200
The guy who's not going to pay much attention, maybe you can make a case to him. And maybe

58:55.200 --> 59:00.640
that's all you do. Maybe all he's worried about is the local schools where his kids go and he wants

59:00.640 --> 59:07.840
his kids to turn out as decent human beings as everyone does. You don't need to make a full case

59:07.840 --> 59:12.560
to every single person. You need to make the necessary case to make sure that they can't be

59:13.200 --> 59:18.720
used against you. They can't be weaponized to harm what's around them. And for some people,

59:18.720 --> 59:22.000
that's the whole hog. There are some people that are sufficiently engaged. They're

59:22.720 --> 59:27.680
sufficiently persuasive to others that if they're missing out on something,

59:28.400 --> 59:34.240
it's important for someone to reach them. When I was on Myth of the 20th Century,

59:34.240 --> 59:38.080
one of the questions that Hans asked me was if I could recommend any books on Christian nationalism.

59:38.640 --> 59:43.600
And I mentioned Torba and Boniface Options' book and Stephen Wolf's book. And I said,

59:43.600 --> 59:48.880
I hadn't read them. And I think maybe I was a bit uncharitable to those books. Because I hadn't

59:48.880 --> 59:53.680
read them, the only impressions I had of them were of the things that those men have said

59:54.240 --> 01:00:00.240
since they came out over the last year or so. And my impression was that the arguments that

01:00:00.240 --> 01:00:05.200
they were making were essentially civic nationalist arguments, arguments that

01:00:06.160 --> 01:00:11.920
blood doesn't matter, that nations are countries, and therefore it's a legal entity. That was the

01:00:11.920 --> 01:00:17.360
impression I had. If that was wrong, I apologize. Certainly lately, some of their comments are

01:00:17.360 --> 01:00:24.000
much closer to the things that we're saying. I'm thankful for that. Again, I highlight that to say

01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:30.720
that I think that when those books came out, they were making another part of the argument for

01:00:30.800 --> 01:00:34.800
Christian nationalism. Just as I did in the original essay, there was a lot more to say than

01:00:34.800 --> 01:00:40.320
what I said. It's perfectly legitimate to make part of the argument if it's part that you can

01:00:41.040 --> 01:00:46.800
gain credibility with and you can make credibly. The reason that I highlighted the distinction

01:00:46.800 --> 01:00:53.280
between my overtly racial view of Christian nationalism on Myth of the 20th Century with

01:00:53.280 --> 01:00:59.920
Adam was that I know that much of his audience is not Christian or not particularly engaged.

01:01:00.480 --> 01:01:07.120
What they see coming from within the church is a completely pan-nationalist, essentially

01:01:07.120 --> 01:01:12.800
universalism, that all human beings are completely interchangeable, borders are evil,

01:01:13.520 --> 01:01:20.880
countries should be subsumed by basically NGOs, just unifying us as one human mass of

01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:28.000
charity cases. It's just all the horrors that Soros is producing, especially in Europe, because

01:01:28.640 --> 01:01:33.600
guys can walk or take a boat from Africa into Europe. It's harder to get them here. They have

01:01:33.600 --> 01:01:40.320
to walk up from Mexico. I wanted to specifically highlight to his audience that there's an

01:01:40.320 --> 01:01:47.040
explicitly racial case that is a fundamental case, in my view, of the Christian nationalist argument,

01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:53.200
because I don't want people to think the only way to be Christian is to say that all states must

01:01:53.200 --> 01:02:00.080
collapse, that all borders must be destroyed, that all people must be wiped out by virtue of

01:02:00.080 --> 01:02:04.880
interbreeding, that you take every race, you mix it with every other race until we're all the same

01:02:04.880 --> 01:02:10.080
color, we have no differentiating features whatsoever. There are a lot of people in the church

01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:15.680
saying precisely that. If I was uncharitable or if I was inaccurate, I apologize to them.

01:02:16.320 --> 01:02:19.440
I was trying to specifically make the case that there's absolutely

01:02:20.400 --> 01:02:27.200
a racial view in Scripture of nations. It's synonymous. It's synonymous in the law,

01:02:27.200 --> 01:02:32.960
in the 1790s in this country. It's synonymous 2000 years earlier in Scripture. The reason that

01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:39.120
there's not much discussion of race and Christian history is it was so obvious. There's no theology

01:02:39.120 --> 01:02:43.760
for us to go back to and borrow from the past when men were more intelligent about making these

01:02:43.760 --> 01:02:50.240
arguments, because this wasn't the fight. The fight in previous centuries was about other doctrines.

01:02:51.120 --> 01:02:59.040
Today, when Satan moves the fight to being about race, about genes, about borders,

01:02:59.040 --> 01:03:05.840
about the created body, male and female, two sexes, not infinite sexes, disparate races,

01:03:05.840 --> 01:03:12.400
distinct races, not some just sea of humanity that's indistinguishable, those are the two sides

01:03:12.480 --> 01:03:19.600
that they're the most important for me to defend. Back to my point earlier about Andrew,

01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:23.600
if I had attacked him at the time and said, no, we must make the racialist case,

01:03:23.600 --> 01:03:28.480
or there's no case at all, I don't think that he would necessarily be where he is today.

01:03:28.480 --> 01:03:32.480
Again, I'm not taking credit for that. I'm just saying I could have very easily done harm

01:03:33.040 --> 01:03:39.040
to my views by being a jerk about it. If I had argued and picked a fight, in fact,

01:03:39.040 --> 01:03:44.720
I left Gab about a year later, or maybe not too long after. For unrelated reasons,

01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:49.680
I was very frustrated with some business choices he had made, some moderation choices,

01:03:49.680 --> 01:03:58.480
some culture choices on Gab. I made a strategic decision about persuasion not to fling mud at him,

01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:02.480
because although I disagreed with the things that he was doing on his platform,

01:04:02.480 --> 01:04:07.040
not mine, he's the boss, he owns it, he can do what he wants with it. I strongly disagreed with

01:04:07.040 --> 01:04:11.360
some of the things that he did and I kept my mouth shut. The reason I did that,

01:04:11.360 --> 01:04:15.280
the reason I didn't go after him when I was pissed off and I was disappointed, was that

01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:20.480
despite my differences with him about how he was running his business and some of those strategic

01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:26.480
decisions, he was still doing very good work and things that mattered to me. I knew that alienating

01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:32.800
him and being a jerk, being the guy who's sniping at someone, would make anything that I'm saying

01:04:32.880 --> 01:04:39.680
elsewhere a turn off to him. I highly am in particular because he has influence,

01:04:39.680 --> 01:04:46.320
he has much more influence than we have. We're not ankle biters and we're not trying to ride

01:04:46.320 --> 01:04:51.280
coattails, but if there are people, there are certain people in the world who have bully

01:04:51.280 --> 01:04:57.600
pulpits, there are people who have influence over more people than you do. If you're in a position

01:04:57.600 --> 01:05:02.240
where you can influence someone who's more influential than you, it's really important to

01:05:02.240 --> 01:05:07.600
get it right and part of that is not making them regret listening to you. I didn't go after him

01:05:07.600 --> 01:05:12.160
despite the fact that I was frustrated at the time. I pretty much kept my mouth shut publicly

01:05:12.160 --> 01:05:16.640
other than saying a couple things that were limited to the scope of that because he's doing

01:05:16.640 --> 01:05:22.160
really good work. I saw the trajectory and I hope that he would continue to, for lack of a better

01:05:22.160 --> 01:05:28.400
term, move to the right and he has. He's saying a lot of the things today on Twitter and on Gab

01:05:28.400 --> 01:05:34.320
that were on the verge of getting people banned from Gab a few years ago. People change, people's

01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:41.680
views change and sometimes being persuasive is just biting your tongue. One of the most persuasive

01:05:41.680 --> 01:05:47.520
things that I did in that particular situation was not to be antagonistic about something that

01:05:47.520 --> 01:05:52.560
wasn't a big ticket item. They had to do with this platform, but it didn't have to do with the

01:05:52.560 --> 01:06:00.560
larger project that I saw as allies. I want this to be a Christian nation. I want his kids to grow

01:06:00.560 --> 01:06:04.800
up in a place where they're not going to be persecuted for the fact that they're white.

01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:10.400
That's important to me. I don't have kids on my own. I never will. The only thing that I can do

01:06:10.400 --> 01:06:15.600
is effectively to fight for other people's kids in their world. I don't get anything out of any of

01:06:15.600 --> 01:06:21.280
this. One of the things that Adam mentioned to me after doing the podcast was that he sees the

01:06:21.360 --> 01:06:26.080
treatment that Corey and I have received at the hands of the church as part of our persuasion to

01:06:26.080 --> 01:06:32.400
him. He can tell that we are sincere because we're being treated like crap by some of the people he

01:06:32.400 --> 01:06:38.560
sees as being detrimental to the world. I apologize if I'm speaking out of turn by saying something

01:06:38.560 --> 01:06:43.920
he said to me private, but that is a common view that I think a lot of people have. Corey and I

01:06:43.920 --> 01:06:49.440
understand that instinctively. We also understand it explicitly from all the conversations we've had

01:06:49.440 --> 01:06:55.520
with these men. There are a lot of men on the right who don't have a church. They don't know God.

01:06:55.520 --> 01:07:02.240
They see ontological evil in the world and they're looking for where people talk about ontological

01:07:02.240 --> 01:07:07.280
good. That should be the church. It is the church. Yet Corey and I are two of the only men in the

01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:13.200
world who can speak to men like Adam and say, look, there's a Christian case to be made for not

01:07:13.200 --> 01:07:18.160
destroying your race in your nation, in your country. There's a Christian case for that.

01:07:18.160 --> 01:07:22.960
There's a moral case. There's a secular case too. I want there to be a Christian voice in those

01:07:23.840 --> 01:07:30.160
conversations. If you're persuasive in a way that makes you, someone people are willing to listen to,

01:07:30.160 --> 01:07:35.040
you're given the opportunities to say more than maybe you would have just said on your own.

01:07:36.480 --> 01:07:40.800
If we were the bomb throwers that people say we are, he wouldn't want to talk to me. I'd just be

01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:48.400
another crazy guy on the internet. If you can seem calm and persuasive and relaxed and not worry

01:07:48.400 --> 01:07:54.960
about what people think, people care more about what you think. It's one of the many ironies of

01:07:54.960 --> 01:08:01.120
the way the human psychology works. We're convinced by people who don't care if they're convincing,

01:08:01.120 --> 01:08:05.280
more than we're convinced by people who really want to be convincing. It's not an act on the

01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:11.520
part of Cory and myself. I want you to believe because it's true. I frequently say if we never

01:08:11.520 --> 01:08:16.720
get any credit, fine, whatever. We never wanted to do this in the first place. We didn't want to

01:08:16.720 --> 01:08:21.600
start a podcast. We did it because we felt that no one else was speaking to these matters.

01:08:22.400 --> 01:08:27.840
The subject of credibility, if you go back and look at the arc of episodes on Stone Choir,

01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:31.920
we waited until we were six, eight months in until we got into some of the really

01:08:32.720 --> 01:08:37.440
controversial so-called subjects. That was conscious. That was deliberate on our part.

01:08:37.440 --> 01:08:43.120
If we had begun on episode one talking about Africans and Jews and these other things that

01:08:43.120 --> 01:08:47.920
get people so angry, we would have just been the podcast that talks about really angering,

01:08:47.920 --> 01:08:54.080
controversial subjects. That's not us. There's a lot of things to talk about. It's fine to tailor

01:08:54.080 --> 01:09:00.000
the message, narrow it down, and make your point, and then wait. Let the point do its work. Then

01:09:00.080 --> 01:09:04.880
you come back later and see if anything's growing and find out if it was rocky soil

01:09:04.880 --> 01:09:11.920
or if it was fertile soil. You never know. It's the truth that gives the growth to the message.

01:09:13.760 --> 01:09:17.600
It's ultimately not how persuasive you are. Really, a lot of persuasion is just

01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:23.360
not getting in the way by your own stumbling and getting in the way of the truth that you're trying

01:09:23.360 --> 01:09:31.840
to convey to others. When it comes to making these arguments, particularly about complex or

01:09:32.560 --> 01:09:39.360
central, very important subjects, you should always bear in mind that you may not be the person

01:09:40.160 --> 01:09:45.760
who actually makes the final part of the argument. You may even not make the majority

01:09:45.760 --> 01:09:51.600
of the argument. You may just put one brick in place. You may add one building block.

01:09:52.240 --> 01:09:58.320
You may be the one who lays part of the foundation. You're building part of the argument for that

01:09:58.320 --> 01:10:05.120
person. Don't necessarily feel that you have to be the one to make the entirety of the argument.

01:10:05.120 --> 01:10:09.600
Now, if it's a family member or a close friend, maybe you will be the person who makes

01:10:09.600 --> 01:10:15.120
the rest of the argument as well, but you may be discussing something with

01:10:15.120 --> 01:10:20.240
someone you met at a coffee shop and you may lay the foundation for someone else to come in and

01:10:20.240 --> 01:10:24.960
make the rest of that argument in the future. So don't think that necessarily just because you

01:10:24.960 --> 01:10:30.160
didn't get to whatever ultimate conclusion you think you should have been able to make that

01:10:30.160 --> 01:10:39.040
what you did was ineffective or useless. It probably was not. Human beings work by building up

01:10:39.120 --> 01:10:43.520
information over the course of a lifetime. So all of those interactions matter.

01:10:44.640 --> 01:10:51.280
It may be that your role is just to add that one brick. Don't necessarily feel that that's

01:10:51.280 --> 01:10:57.440
unimportant. Go ahead and find a wall if you're so inclined and start pulling random bricks out

01:10:57.440 --> 01:11:03.680
and see what happens. They all matter. Every little piece matters. I'm not actually telling you to go

01:11:03.680 --> 01:11:10.240
pick apart your neighbor's wall. Don't do that. Only your own wall. But there's another point

01:11:11.600 --> 01:11:16.640
in all of this that I feel it's important to make explicit. We've sort of implied it throughout the

01:11:16.640 --> 01:11:23.760
episode so far, but fundamentally, you will never persuade anyone of anything.

01:11:24.480 --> 01:11:28.080
Now, what I mean by that is something very specific.

01:11:30.320 --> 01:11:39.120
No one is persuaded by someone else. Because ultimately, how it works is the other person

01:11:39.120 --> 01:11:44.400
takes in the information, takes in the argument, data, whatever it is that you are providing,

01:11:45.360 --> 01:11:53.200
synthesizes that himself and he persuades himself. Now, for some men, it may be that your argument

01:11:53.200 --> 01:11:57.200
is the one that he takes, makes his own and persuades himself given your argument.

01:11:59.040 --> 01:12:04.160
Now, it's a subtle point. It seems like a minor point. It's almost on the level of Kant's point

01:12:04.160 --> 01:12:09.120
about the thing in itself versus the thing as we perceive it with the senses. But it's a salient

01:12:09.120 --> 01:12:18.320
point. What you are doing is providing that other person with the necessary means to construct

01:12:18.400 --> 01:12:23.760
what he needs to arrive at the conclusion. And that's why it's important to know your audience.

01:12:23.760 --> 01:12:27.760
That's why it's important to know the person with whom you're speaking because you'll know what he

01:12:27.760 --> 01:12:33.360
needs to construct that argument for himself, the one that will convince him, that will persuade him.

01:12:34.960 --> 01:12:41.200
Because ultimately, that is an internal matter to the person. Persuasion happens in the psyche,

01:12:41.200 --> 01:12:46.480
as it were, in the mind of the person being persuaded. It doesn't happen externally.

01:12:46.800 --> 01:12:52.960
Yes, the information is provided externally, the argumentation in some cases, the data,

01:12:53.520 --> 01:12:58.160
whatever it may be. But the ultimate persuasion is an internal matter.

01:12:59.680 --> 01:13:04.800
And that is again why knowing your audience, having that relationship, having that built-up

01:13:04.800 --> 01:13:11.040
trust truly matters, because then the person can take what you are giving him and construct the

01:13:11.040 --> 01:13:17.680
case himself. Because ultimately, he is the one doing that final construction in his own mind.

01:13:18.800 --> 01:13:25.840
So yes, you can be persuasive, but the ultimate act of persuasion lies in the mind of the person

01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:32.480
persuading, in this case, persuading himself. The last big point that I want to make is a

01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:39.920
corollary to that. Something happened in the last few years, really in the universe,

01:13:39.920 --> 01:13:47.280
I think we've all felt it, between COVID and the BLM riots. I think everyone has a sense that

01:13:47.280 --> 01:13:55.040
there's been a shift somehow metaphysically. And one of the things that happened, both in COVID and

01:13:55.040 --> 01:14:04.560
with BLM, is that the divisions within families, within communities, within friendships became

01:14:04.560 --> 01:14:11.440
much more apparent. Or in some cases, where there was previously no division, now there is division.

01:14:12.400 --> 01:14:19.200
The important thing that I want to highlight in the case of COVID and BLM, and all the associated

01:14:19.200 --> 01:14:25.920
screaming, is that when those divisions occurred in what had formally seemed to be cohesive units,

01:14:25.920 --> 01:14:33.520
in some cases those congregations were split by COVID policies, or COVID fears, or COVID messaging,

01:14:33.520 --> 01:14:41.920
whatever. We, on the right, the people who are right about these things, should never be the ones

01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:49.520
who are causing the division for the sake of accusation. What I mean by that is if you look

01:14:49.520 --> 01:14:56.800
back at BLM and COVID, it was the people on the left who by and large became utterly hysterical,

01:14:57.360 --> 01:15:03.440
and filled with condemnation and rage at anyone who wouldn't comply. It seemed like there

01:15:03.440 --> 01:15:09.040
was an entirely new emergent religion that appeared almost fully formed in the span of like

01:15:09.040 --> 01:15:16.960
six months. And in that time, the adherents to that new religion were vicious to anyone who

01:15:16.960 --> 01:15:25.200
would not bend the knee to it, literally bending the knee in the case of the BLM crap. Those were

01:15:25.200 --> 01:15:31.200
the people who were cutting us out of their lives. Those are the people who if we had to cut them out

01:15:31.200 --> 01:15:37.920
of our lives, it was usually self-defense. It was usually actual fear that these people who had

01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:43.360
once been friends or maybe even family had now become a real potential physical threat to you

01:15:43.360 --> 01:15:49.360
or your family. And so if you did cut them off, it was almost certainly defensive. And it wasn't

01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:54.720
simply, I hate this guy because he's wrong about something. And so the last point I want to make

01:15:54.720 --> 01:16:01.440
is that we on the right are not the ones who isolate people and disparage them for being wrong.

01:16:02.480 --> 01:16:06.720
If you have someone that you love, someone you're friends with, some of your neighbors with,

01:16:06.720 --> 01:16:11.360
and they're wrong about something, that's a matter of Christian love and concern. You want them to

01:16:11.360 --> 01:16:18.320
be right. You want to help move them in the right direction. But because it is rooted in love and not

01:16:18.400 --> 01:16:24.080
rooted in wanting to win an argument, you never get to the point that you say,

01:16:24.080 --> 01:16:29.280
I hate you because you don't agree with me. I want nothing to do with you because you believe

01:16:29.280 --> 01:16:35.200
the wrong thing about this. That's not us. That's not what we on the right do. That's not how truth

01:16:35.200 --> 01:16:41.200
behaves. Yeah, Corey and I can tell you don't believe a word we say, go read for yourself.

01:16:41.200 --> 01:16:45.040
And we know you're going to come to the same conclusions in part because we don't want you

01:16:45.040 --> 01:16:50.160
to be persuaded by podcasters or by people writing articles or people writing books.

01:16:50.160 --> 01:16:55.920
You shouldn't be persuaded by the guy who makes the loudest, angriest, whatever argument. You

01:16:55.920 --> 01:17:02.480
should be persuaded by truth. And so when we do these meta episodes, we want to get people engaging

01:17:02.480 --> 01:17:08.160
in metacognition about thinking about thinking about truth. What are you thinking about? How do

01:17:08.160 --> 01:17:14.720
you incorporate the ideas that you hear into what you believe? Because it's a two step process.

01:17:14.720 --> 01:17:19.520
You hear something, you think about it. If you believe it, it becomes much more intrinsic.

01:17:20.240 --> 01:17:26.640
What we saw with COVID and BLM is that they kind of skipped the truth part and just went straight

01:17:26.640 --> 01:17:32.480
to the belief part. And so a religion emerged with nothing behind it except for these fictional

01:17:32.480 --> 01:17:42.080
fantasy stories. And the religious fervor that was used to target us was horribly divisive.

01:17:42.080 --> 01:17:46.880
Again, it divided families, it divided communities and congregations in terrible ways.

01:17:47.600 --> 01:17:54.000
And we should never be the ones who are causing that. So if your friends with someone and you're

01:17:54.000 --> 01:18:01.920
further to the right than them, never go after them, certainly publicly, for not being as right as

01:18:01.920 --> 01:18:06.960
you are for being wrong about something that you're right about. Don't tone beliefs the way they

01:18:06.960 --> 01:18:14.240
say things. It's funny, people think that I'm a bomb thrower on Twitter, not to the same degree

01:18:14.240 --> 01:18:19.680
as Corey, but people think that we're both antagonistic. If you actually look at me replying

01:18:19.680 --> 01:18:26.880
to other people's accounts, I very, very rarely say anything negative in someone else's replies.

01:18:26.880 --> 01:18:32.960
Usually if I reply to someone and I disagree, it's A, it's a mutual. B, I'm very respectful.

01:18:32.960 --> 01:18:38.880
And C, I'm trying to make a narrow point. I'm trying to nudge things a little bit. But I never

01:18:38.880 --> 01:18:43.760
look at someone's timelines. I never look at their statements and say, I got to fix what

01:18:43.760 --> 01:18:48.880
they're saying. They got something wrong. But it's their timeline. It's their space to make

01:18:48.880 --> 01:18:54.160
their point about whatever they want to talk about. Sometimes I can contribute something

01:18:54.160 --> 01:18:57.840
helpful. Sometimes I can contribute. I want to nudge in a slightly different direction because

01:18:57.840 --> 01:19:01.040
the thing will be helpful to them in what they're actually trying to say.

01:19:02.720 --> 01:19:07.440
The important point that I want people to take home is that if you see someone making a mistake

01:19:07.440 --> 01:19:15.360
wherever and in conversation on social media, your first instinct shouldn't be, I got to fix this.

01:19:15.920 --> 01:19:20.480
You've said that all along. Your friends, your family especially are not people you should be

01:19:20.480 --> 01:19:26.800
fixing. They're people you should be loving. And loving them involves helping them at some point

01:19:26.800 --> 01:19:31.280
get some of these things right. But if there's someone who's friends with you or friends with

01:19:31.280 --> 01:19:38.160
your sphere of friends, particularly if you're the undesirables, as Corey and I are, social

01:19:38.160 --> 01:19:42.640
media is very interesting because anyone can interact with anyone. You can reply to Elon Musk

01:19:42.640 --> 01:19:49.040
and he may see it. That's incredible. That's completely insane. On Gab, it's a smaller space.

01:19:49.040 --> 01:19:55.040
You can respond and or he's likely to see it because it's a much more tight-knit community,

01:19:55.040 --> 01:20:00.880
which is one of the awesome things about it. It's a community. It's a town square. It's not

01:20:00.880 --> 01:20:05.600
like a global billboard. That's a different culture and that's a good thing. The internet needs

01:20:05.600 --> 01:20:12.320
multiple different cultures. On the internet, if someone says something and you disagree with it,

01:20:12.960 --> 01:20:18.160
it's okay to let it go. You don't constantly have to fix everything around you. And so

01:20:19.200 --> 01:20:24.400
because other people can interact completely at random on Twitter especially because it's so large,

01:20:25.520 --> 01:20:29.280
it's very conspicuous to me especially in the last few months just kind of looking at

01:20:29.280 --> 01:20:36.080
own interactions. Who is willing to still talk to me because there's been such a concerted slander

01:20:36.080 --> 01:20:42.000
campaign against Corey and myself and against Stone Choir that a lot of people just refuse to

01:20:42.000 --> 01:20:47.360
acknowledge we exist anymore. Even some who will speak in private won't speak to us in public because

01:20:47.360 --> 01:20:52.400
they're downsized to them. And I respect that. I don't go after these people in public. I'm not

01:20:52.400 --> 01:20:56.880
naming them here. I'm not trying to shame anyone by mentioning this. I'm simply highlighting that

01:20:57.840 --> 01:21:03.120
there are people who are still willing to follow me, who are willing to respond, reply to me and

01:21:03.120 --> 01:21:09.120
engage with me in public. I respect the fact that they're taking a chance to even be seen

01:21:09.120 --> 01:21:15.840
interacting favorably. There are multiple parables in scripture about engaging with the

01:21:15.840 --> 01:21:22.000
public. You have lepers. You have these text collectors. You have undesirables of the lowest

01:21:22.000 --> 01:21:30.240
order and the manner in which they were treated in those days. Today, being on the dissident

01:21:30.240 --> 01:21:35.760
right is basically being part of a leper colony. And it's artificial. I mean, it's not leprosy.

01:21:35.760 --> 01:21:41.440
Leprosy was a highly contagious, hideous disease. It was incurable. Leprosy colonies existed because

01:21:41.440 --> 01:21:46.480
those people had to be set apart not only because ceremonially they were unclean, but because they

01:21:46.480 --> 01:21:53.680
had a horrific, contagious disease. There's no contagion among the dissident right. There's

01:21:53.680 --> 01:21:57.680
only people who are telling the truth, and then other people are afraid to go near them because

01:21:57.680 --> 01:22:03.360
of it. So I highlight this because if there's someone who's willing to actually still talk to me

01:22:03.360 --> 01:22:09.440
publicly, I respect that and I respect them for it. And part of my respect for that is that I'm

01:22:09.440 --> 01:22:14.160
going to engage with them as little as possible because I don't want to bring heat on them by

01:22:14.160 --> 01:22:19.360
speaking to them because there are people who hate me so much that they're sitting in the telegram

01:22:19.360 --> 01:22:24.880
public chat for Stone Choir trying to dox pastors and laymen. If anyone they can find,

01:22:24.880 --> 01:22:31.200
they want to dox them and go to their congregations and try to get them destroyed because they hate

01:22:31.200 --> 01:22:36.480
the fact that we are speaking so much. Why do they hate it? They hate it because we are the men

01:22:36.480 --> 01:22:41.680
who are actually able to talk to men like Adam and men like Andrew from different perspectives

01:22:41.680 --> 01:22:47.440
and help them move in a direction that's closer to the truth. And it's a truth that's completely

01:22:47.440 --> 01:22:52.640
at odds with the world. And there's servants of the world that passionately hate that and will

01:22:52.640 --> 01:22:58.720
spare no expense of, and they'll take any amount of time to try to harm us and anyone who comes near

01:22:58.720 --> 01:23:03.760
us. So if someone is not willing to come near me publicly, I notice, I absolutely notice,

01:23:03.760 --> 01:23:08.240
I'm really good at pattern recognition. If you used to talk to me and you don't anymore,

01:23:08.240 --> 01:23:13.360
I can tell. And I don't care. If there's anything to forgive, I certainly forgive it.

01:23:13.360 --> 01:23:17.600
But it is conspicuous when someone's willing to talk to me. I mention this because if there's

01:23:17.600 --> 01:23:22.400
someone who's still willing to engage with the men who are treated as lepers and as tax collectors,

01:23:23.120 --> 01:23:28.160
don't make them regret it. Don't make their lives harder because they're one of the few people who

01:23:28.160 --> 01:23:33.120
are willing to actually treat us like Christian brothers and like human beings.

01:23:34.720 --> 01:23:40.320
If you hold views that are not popular, if you hold views that are contrary to the world's religion,

01:23:40.880 --> 01:23:47.360
and someone is willing to engage with you, make sure they don't regret it. That's one of the chief

01:23:47.360 --> 01:23:51.920
messages of this episode. Make sure that when you're trying to persuade someone, sometimes it's

01:23:51.920 --> 01:23:56.800
just as simple as, I'm not going to be a jerk. I'm not going to make your life any harder than it

01:23:56.800 --> 01:24:03.520
already is because you have your own thing to focus on. That's important too, to not be the guy

01:24:03.520 --> 01:24:09.440
that someone regrets that they were friends with because that's a way to lose friends and negatively

01:24:09.440 --> 01:24:15.280
influence people. I mentioned the Andrew example earlier on. If I had gone after him and bet a

01:24:15.280 --> 01:24:20.480
complete jerk, he would have very rightfully ignored some of the things I said and maybe he

01:24:20.480 --> 01:24:25.440
wouldn't think what he does now. Even maybe if only for the sake that he didn't want to be associated

01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:30.880
with someone who would be as much of a jerk as me. Sometimes you just have to shut your mouth and

01:24:30.880 --> 01:24:37.440
let someone be wrong on the internet. It's not the end of the world. It may be that by being silent,

01:24:37.440 --> 01:24:41.840
in the future, you're buying a chance to make the persuasive case that you didn't have

01:24:41.840 --> 01:24:48.320
the opportunity to make in that moment. Patience, grace are the key elements of persuasion.

01:24:48.320 --> 01:24:52.640
Sometimes just saying nothing is the most powerful thing you could say. In some part of that is just

01:24:52.640 --> 01:24:57.680
still being a friend, like Corey's father, who was friends for a man because they were friends

01:24:57.680 --> 01:25:02.320
and the fact that the man wouldn't receive the gospel didn't dissuade him from being his friend

01:25:02.320 --> 01:25:07.760
or for continuing to talk about it. Being friends with people who have different views

01:25:07.760 --> 01:25:13.360
is a testimony to the confidence that you have in your own beliefs. Don't let your beliefs become

01:25:13.360 --> 01:25:19.840
an excuse for you to be brittle. Truth never causes brittleness. It causes strength. Wherever

01:25:19.840 --> 01:25:25.760
you find strength, especially today when there are men with convictions, people who don't know

01:25:25.760 --> 01:25:31.280
anything will see strength being upheld in the face of adversity and think maybe there's some

01:25:31.280 --> 01:25:36.720
truth behind that because there has to be some metaphysical explanation for how someone could

01:25:36.720 --> 01:25:42.320
withstand the hatred of the world. Maybe he's just completely crazy or maybe he's on to something.

01:25:43.120 --> 01:25:47.600
Maybe all you do as a personal witness to the world is acting in his example who says,

01:25:47.680 --> 01:25:52.240
I'm still here. You can't chase me away. If that's the only persuasion you can do,

01:25:52.240 --> 01:25:56.480
that's a powerful message because there's so few men today who are willing to do that.

01:25:59.280 --> 01:26:04.880
There's a lot to think about here. It's a meta discussion around how we interact with each other

01:26:04.880 --> 01:26:11.760
and how we think about ourselves. Be patient. It's okay to be quiet. Measure twice, cut once.

01:26:12.480 --> 01:26:18.240
Think before you go after someone, anywhere. Even think before you tell them the things

01:26:18.240 --> 01:26:22.800
that we talk about on Stunkwire or wherever else you're getting your interesting information.

01:26:23.520 --> 01:26:28.880
Don't be hasty to try to upend someone else's life because even if it's beneficial,

01:26:28.880 --> 01:26:34.560
it may well upend things. Have some empathy for that and have some grace for that person

01:26:34.560 --> 01:26:39.440
to try to go easy and to make it easy for them. If they want nothing to do with it,

01:26:39.440 --> 01:26:43.600
you should still love them because whatever relationship you had beforehand should still

01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:49.120
exist. If they respond the way people did with COVID and BLM by writing you off,

01:26:50.000 --> 01:26:56.240
well, that was part of Jesus' prophecies of end times, that fathers would be adversaries against

01:26:56.240 --> 01:27:00.880
daughters, mothers and sons, daughter-in-laws and father-in-laws and butchering the relationships.

01:27:00.880 --> 01:27:06.080
Like Jesus basically covered everything. Families will be torn down. Churches will be torn down

01:27:06.160 --> 01:27:11.520
internally, not just externally. Whether or not this is an end time moment,

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the fact that these things are happening are always a reminder to us to believe

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God's promises because they will come true one day. When we see them happening,

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it's not a cause for panic or worry. It's just a cause for making sure that we focus

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on the things that matter most. Chief of all, that's God and His promises,

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and that includes the truth of all things in creation.