The Dr. Josh Axe Show - BANNED: Free Speech - The Cost of Silencing Ideas

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Is free speech under siege?  Dr. Josh Axe pulls back the curtain on censorship and its chilling effect throughout history. We’ll reveal how stifling free expression has repeatedly led to disastrous consequences as pioneering thinkers had their ideas suppressed. By shining a light on censorship’s shadowy past, he empowers us to defend the enlightening power of controversial ideas. You’ll learn:  Examples throughout history of pioneering thinkers who initially faced backlash Where we’re seeing censorship in the world today Why we should open our minds to different views The benefits of open inquiry and debate The risk of further divides and tension when censoring speech   Join Dr. Axe as he reveals the truth about free speech and censorship today. Arm yourself with wisdom to defend expressive liberties and open discourse.  Want more of The Growth Lab with Dr. Josh Axe? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you think it's better for somebody to be able to share their thought openly on either side? Or do you believe that that information one side should be cut off? Should one or the other side be censored? Your answer to that question is really important. 55% of people, more than 50% of people believe the government should be censoring. Whoa. What's labeled hate speech today is not hate speech. Sometimes it's love speech.

Think about that. More than 50% of people think if somebody says something hateful, they should just automatically lose their job. And then if a speaker has a different opinion, they should be banned. People that have that opinion, they're fearful, lack wisdom, and they just don't know the history of the world. And when there's less information you have access to, it's going to be harder to find and discern the truth.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Growth Lab podcast. I am Dr. Josh Axe. I am the founder of ancient nutrition, Dr.ax.com and Leaders.com, I'm also graduate of John Hopkins University. And each and every week on the show, we cover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career, your relationships,

and your spiritual wellness to the next level. Today I'm going to be talking about what you should believe about censorship and free speech. This is actually a huge deal. And I want to share with you how a business I had decreased by 20 times because of censorship violations and how it can impact, you, your business, your freedom in the future, all on today's show. I'm going to be talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, and many others, and what they have to say about free speech and censorship. And you might even notice today, when you search on Google,

some of the things that you might have found in the past, they don't come up. In fact, I was doing a consultation with somebody this week, a medical consultation. They said, I've been trying to look for natural ways to fight diseases like cancer and Lyme disease and a number of other things. And he said, I can't find any natural information anymore. And I said, you know what? That's because Google, you may not be aware of this. Google owns YouTube, by the way, Google owns many pharmaceutical companies. So Google is a pharmaceutical tech company.

So Google and YouTube is a pharmaceutical slash. tech company. So what they do on searches, especially in regards to medical information, is they want to highlight the mainstream medicine and pharmaceuticals and those sort of treatments. And so what they will do is they will, they change the algorithm and censor people that would essentially hurt their business. And a lot of people don't know this truth. By the way, if you knew that and realize that, let me know in the comment section. If you realize that pharmaceutical companies and tech companies like Google are now censoring at the highest levels in history. We're going to cover all this on today's episode.

Now, I want to talk about why free speech and anti-censorship is so important. In the words of Jordan Peterson, and Jordan Peterson is a famed Harvard psychologist who also taught at the University of Toronto. Now, listen, a lot of controversy surrounds him, but he understands and he went and studied things like the Soviet Union and Hitler's regime. And he found that one of the first things that kicks off tyranny, and that's where somebody enslaves you. So you became a slave in a society,

which is still very alive and well today. There are many countries, in fact, you even look at China or Venezuela or Cuba. There are many countries to where they're highly censored and oppressed, to where you can't speak your opinion, even a thought you have if you would speak it, if it's against the narrative of the government, you can be imprisoned when arrested and even killed.

And so Jordan Peterson has studied this his whole career. In fact, what actually got Jordan Peterson into psychology is he did a trip to Europe, and he started seeing the devastation in the Soviet Union and what's Russia today. And he said, wow, what could cause such devastation, order for genocide and for hundreds of millions of people to be killed between the Holocaust and Mao's regime and China? China, and he found that a lot of it starts with censorship. And so this is a really, really big deal. And here's what he says. He says, you know, free speech is important because if you can't speak

freely, you can't properly think. You can't be a free thinker. He said the greatest way that we think is by speaking our thoughts out loud. And so, you know, in order for you to work through right and wrong. You may say something out loud and it's wrong, but you need to get out there saying, hey, I was thinking this or I believe this. And when you speak it out loud, it gives you a chance to sort of work through your thoughts. And so sharing your thoughts with other people. And another way to do this is writing, by the way. So the closest thing that most people ever get to thinking is writing down their thoughts and beliefs about something and being able to go and say, okay, is this right? why is it not right? Looking at both sides, being able to hear both sides evenly, allow someone to

determine what the truth is if they're thinking correctly. The problem is what most people do today is they say, you know what, I don't want people to not like me. I don't want to be canceled. And so what I'll do instead is just go along with the narrative. So here's what most people do instead of thinking. They memorize the narrative of the culture and they just repeat it. So they really have no idea how to think for themselves. Here's how you think for yourself. Again, you hear both sides. You write you write down your thoughts about both sides or you speak both sides. And you and you have a time to have kind of the, you know, the angel and the devil, this, you know, the dark and the light and sort of work it out together thinking about what is truth. And honestly, the best way to do

this is through with mentors and with groups of people being out of open communication. We are seeing this happen less than ever before in America today because of seven. censorship and because we're afraid to be canceled. Cancel culture. You know, in fact, this is very, very, very much the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible says grace. Listen, hey, you messed up. It's okay. There's grace for it. Hey, you're thinking incorrectly. Hey, let's talk about it. Let's talk about, let's try and discover the truth. The problem is most people, rather than trying to discover the truth, they're trying to become popular and liked. Okay? So they're trying to protect themselves. And you can't grow. This is the way this works. When you're body's in a state of protection, it's the opposite of growth. It's your body's fight or fight response. Your body's in a fight or fight response. It's trying to protect itself. Your body is kicking into full gear, adrenal's, adrenal hormones are being kicked out. You're trying to protect itself. Rest, growth, digestion, all those things. That's at the opposite of the scale. So just know this. When you are canceling others or you're unwilling to say what you think or unable to, you know,

even write those things down, you're in a state of protection. you're not healing, you're not growing versus the opposite is growing, is you're able to speak. You want to hear both sides. You're not just dialed into the one side. And so it's really important that, again, we get back to this. And here's the other thing that's so important. This is why censorship is a big deal.

And free speeches is very important. If you can speak freely, people can battle with their words. Okay? So before there's a blow with fists or knives or guns or war, people can battle it out by what they say. Okay. So, hey, you share your side. I share my side. We say where we meet. We talk about where we differ. And we do our best to come into alignment to do what's the best for society, not just ourselves, but ideally society. Well, if you can't battle with words, what Jordan Peterson found, people will start battling with violence. Rather than, you know, via via words, it'll be it'll be with swords. And so that's why just know there's always a tradeoff. There's, there's a study, and I'm going to get into this in a few minutes, but there's a study that the majority of people now believe that the government should be censoring people.

That's dangerous. I mean, we're in America. You know, we're not living in China today. So again, this is a really dangerous president. So here's what happens. If you restrict people from sharing what they believe, even if you believe it's racist or you believe it's wrong, let people speak because, again, people will decide for themselves. Versus if you don't let people speak, they'll find a way.

to be heard via violence. That's every civilization in the history of the world. That's what happened. If you can't speak freely, it's been violence. Here's another thing. There's never been a time in history where those who were censoring people ended up on the right side. When we look back throughout history and we say, who are the evil people? Who were the true oppressors?

At the time, there was a lot of confusion, but you've always find that it's the people that were censoring, they were wrong. Whether it was, you know, some tyrant. government or even the church. Either way, if you, there is censorship, that person we see today was on the wrong side of history. You know, many people have been censored and even died for their beliefs. Galileo was executed for saying the world was round. Listen, this is a big deal because you might say to yourself, well, I don't want to see hate speech. You know, I don't want any hate speech. Well, who decides what's hateful. What if somebody has a different opinion about, about same-sex marriage, okay?

Is that person, if somebody believes it should or shouldn't, or both of those sides is one hateful or not? No, we have to talk about these things. And so just because somebody doesn't believe the exact same thing you believe doesn't mean it's hateful. In fact, it could be the greatest form of love because they're sacrificing you liking them. That's hard. We all want to be like So again, going back to this, here's examples of past censorship. Again, Galileo was executed for saying the world was round. Socrates denied the city's gods in the governments of the time. Socrates, you know, Socrates, who's the mentor of Plato and then Aristotle,

Socrates was killed because he didn't believe in all the city's gods. So again, a free speech of beliefs there. presented his discovery that diseases were spread by germs and was rejected by the whole medical community at the time. Marshall and Warren found that bacteria were causing cancer. They were ridiculed as it was believed that bacteria could not survive in stomach acid. So we even see recent medical things that were said, no, that's absolutely wrong. We're going to censor you. And we find that later to be right now, how often did we see this with the mandates in the past? that people were given and false medical information we've seen over the past four years.

How many times was Dr. Fauci wrong? How many times was the World Health Organization? How many times were these institutions wrong? Well, we see almost constantly. So if somebody speaks out against them and censored is censored, oftentimes we're censoring the truth. We need to be able to hear this. This is why this is such a big deal.

Now, I want to share something. that happened to me. Actually, before I do that, let me get into this. You know, Jordan Peterson recently expressed his views on X, formerly known as Twitter, criticizing the transgender movement. He also criticized heavily, the Canadian Prime Minister and climate alarmists. And a governing psychology board targeted Jordan Peterson for these views, and a Canadian court stood with them and upheld their demand for him to go through a re-education as well as ordering him to pay a $25,000 fine. So think about this.

Do you think it's morally and ethically right for somebody, let's say it was you, and you disagreed with one of the presidents, whether it was Trump or Biden, you disagreed with them and you say, I don't think you're correct on this matter for this, this, and this reason. And I don't think you're a good person for that. Okay. If you said that, do you think you should have a $25,000 fine and have you, your degree or your license removed for posting that on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Well, that's what's happening to Jordan Peterson right now. So whether you hate Jordan Peterson or love Jordan Peterson, you have to answer the question, is that morally and ethically correct? And do you want to live in the type of world where if you speak ill about a leader in the country that you can pay a $25,000 fine, potentially go to jail, and also have your account, shut down. In fact, I recently saw his YouTube account for a short time with shut down. It may be, might be back up again, but where, because Google and these other social platforms like YouTube are censoring Jordan Peterson. Here's what Jordan Peterson said about some of this. He said, there is no difference between free speech and thought. If you can't speak freely,

you can't think. He says, it's very hard for you to have all of your thinking inside your head. He said, the way that we actually find out what we're thinking is by speaking and writing. So when you think you have a problem, here's what happens. Your brain generates an answer. Once you've received the answer, you use your internal speech to start to dissect the answer. Now, here's the thing. If you can't share your thoughts openly, you can't fully think. Writing and speaking your mind openly allows you to think at another level. Most people choose just to memorize and repeat the cultural narrative rather than thinking for themselves. And, you know, we also are taught to do this in school, by the way. John Rockefeller said, I don't want a nation of

thinkers. I want a nation of workers to work on an assembly line. And that's what our school systems teach us to do. We're taught to memorize what you learn in school, memorize what the media says, and just repeat it and that that's truth, and that's not the truth. We see the wisest people of all time think and they speak freely and they have engaged with conversations with other people, oftentimes they disagree with, to get to the truth. But if that freedom is taken away, you're not going to be able to fully think and be able to discern the truth there as well. Now, I want to tell you a story about what happened to me personally and how I was affected

by censorship. And I also want to say this affected you. So I started Dr. at axe.com in 2008. And over the next 10 years, it grew to be the number one visited natural health website and in the top 10 of all medical sites. So my website, Dr.axx.com, had 20 million unique visitors a month. and nearly 20 million of that was organic search. So, for instance, if you would go online to Google and type in turmeric, Dr.ax.com was in the top three. If you searched coconut oil, it showed up in the top three. If you searched chia seeds or how to make healthy chocolate chip cookies, Dr.ax.com showed up in the top three. Or something like how to reverse diabetes.

We showed up in the top three in Google. Google then went through an update called The Medicines. update. And this is where they decided if your opinion was more natural and less mainstream medical, we're going to be penalized. The traffic of Dr.ax.com over the next two years dropped from 20 million unique visitors down to one million organic search a month. So we went from being on the top page, first page of Google, buried all the way down on page 10 so where almost nobody would find information. Now, if you go to Dr.ax.com and you read an article on turmeric or ginger or chia seeds or

probiotics or how to reverse diabetes, you'll find heavy medical citations. You'll find very research focused and probably the best articles written on natural medicine and nutrition. But you'll go online. If you search turmeric, you'll see WebMD and maybe they have a single paragraph up and they don't cover much, they'll still show up number one. Well, why is that? Well, Google runs ads for their own pharmaceutical company on WebMD, on medical news today, on health line, on all these sites, and it doesn't benefit them for people to learn about nutritional supplements and exercise and

meditation and lifestyle and those sort of things. And so I personally, financially took an incredible hit, and my own name image and likeness got buried because of censorship. Now, listen, I started Dr.ax.com for one sole reason. Initially, I wanted to help people heal. My mom was a cancer survivor. My mom used natural medicine to help herself recover from multiple illnesses. And I said to myself, I never want to see anyone have to suffer like my mom did. And I know there's a better way. I know there's natural ways that people can lose weight and feel great using vitamins and supplements and foods and getting sunshine and exercise. And I want to get that message out to people. But again, it didn't, it didn't fall in line with the Google and the

pharmaceutical narrative. And so it got buried deep, deep on Google and then even on YouTube. It started penalizing it as well. And so you may have noticed that. Oh, I noticed, Dr. X, I used to notice when I searched your name or anything natural, you'd come up on that first page of Google and now you rarely do. Well, this is because of censorship. And so it is affecting you. So here's the truth now. And by the way, you can see this on this graph. Look at where we were. 22,600,000 some organic traffic a month. And then look at this. Over the course of one year, February 2018 to December 2019, down to 800,000. We're talking about more than a 20 times decrease in organic traffic in just over a year. And this affects you because when you go and search, you're now not getting the best

information. You're getting incredibly biased information. So you're not actually getting the truth now when you search. You're getting the thing that benefits Google financially the most or YouTube the most, that's what is prioritized in the algorithm. So censorship is happening. And not just that. Some people have been completely bland and blocked and lost their accounts on these social media platform. You know, you know probably one of the biggest areas where censorship is growing and flourishing today is on college campuses. Colleges are supposed to be an area where there is freedom of thought and where people go, it's a battleground for people to battle out ideas and for truth to be found. Well, what happens when, and you might already know this, guess what the ratio is

of liberal professors to conservative professors at public colleges today? It's not one to one as it should be. It's one to 13. And at schools like Harvard, it's one to like 100 at some Ivy League schools. So if you go to a college campus, over 90% of those professors, it's probably somewhere around 93% are going to be liberal professors. And so you're not getting a balanced conservative and a balanced liberal view. It should be 50-50 of learning these ideas and fleshing them out. You're getting, it's completely off. And again, college campuses are supposed to be spaces dedicated to the free exchange of ideas where critical thinking is taught. But instead, we're seeing the greatest threat of censorship today at these universities.

Let me give you an example of these people that have been banned. Ben Shapiro is disinvited to speak at CSULA in 2016. Ivanka Trump invited to speak at Wichita State commencement was rescinded. Mike Pence, not entitled to a platform at a University of Virginia because of his words of violence and threaten the safety of his students. If you know Mike Pence, he's this very harmless kind man. Matt Walsh ban, for example. Here's another big one, Riley Gaines.

Riley Gaines, actually, she's not even conservative or liberal. You know, at the time, Riley Gaines said, I don't think that men should be competing in women's sports. And she was banned from multiple college campuses, and they called her a racist. for simply saying, and because she lost to a man who said that he was a woman, in a swimming event, a swimmer for Penn University, said that he was a woman.

And he swam the three years before as a man. And then just the next year said, I'm a woman, swam, and ended up tying with her. And they said, oh, you get the trophy because it's good for media coverage. You have to say, is this ethical? Is this morally right? And again, what happens over time is if people tend to, as Jordan Peterson said, if people can't work out there a war of words, there's a war of sorts. And so you've got to understand there's always a tradeoff. If you censor somebody, you think, oh, problem solved.

I censor them. I have my opinion. And if people can't hear the other side, that's good. So I want to go through this quick. This is something Elon Musk said. And I want to get into something he said here in just a minute. But here's the thing. Censorship today across social media has the power to affect something as large as scale as presidential elections, the most powerful position in the world.

Listen to this quote. Twitter, today known as X, even went as far as blocking the distribution of an article by the reputable Washington Post. The Post had published an article about the son of Joe Biden in Twitter, stopping its users, sharing the link by making it. it as being potentially unsafe by marking it as being potentially unsafe. The company later announced that they had blocked the content since the post article was based on a hacked private account, which is against their internal guidelines. Basically, a social media company was claiming to have higher ethical standards than the traditional newspaper, The Washington Post. And we saw this constantly via the Twitter files coming out, which I can't believe that more people didn't study and

dig into all the censorship that happened in the past. Here's another interesting take from Elon Musk. Elon Musk was asked if there was any company he feared to which he answered Google. Now here's why Elon answered Google, and I think there's two main reasons. One is the censorship mechanisms. I would say a similar thing goes for app. I mean, Google owns Google and YouTube, right? The two largest search engines in the world. So when people search, they think, well, I'm finding truth. Well, they're finding one side primarily. And what that does to culture over time.

The other thing is he has concerns over artificial intelligence and how that will relate to it as well. But all that being said, this is something that should concern all of us and why it matters. So here's why this matters. If you can't discover the truth in online searches and in social media apps, it's very hard. to find the truth. Now, you can buy paperback books, but at some point, Amazon may say, hey, we're not going to sell these books either. So then how do you find the truth? So it gets more and more difficult to discover the truth when there's censorship. And we want people to have access to both and be able to discover the truth by themselves by helping people learn to think and by growing

in the virtue of wisdom. Now, I want to say this to YouTube just updated their censorship policy here's what they said. YouTube is taking immediate action to expand its medical misinformation censorship policies. Its focus will be on cancer, and I also believe likely COVID. Starting today and ramping up in the coming weeks, we will begin removing content that promotes cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective or content that discourages viewers from seeking conventional medical treatment or professional medical treatment. Now, how do they decide what's ineffective or effective? Well, here's how they decide. And this is what they say in their own words if you dig deeper.

It's by number one looking at what does the World Health Organization say? That's how they decide. So local doctors or mainstream doctors like Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization. That's how they decide what's true and not true. And one of the other issues that they get into is you read more articles here on everything. You'll start to find out that oftentimes World Health Organization, this is tied to the government. So essentially the government gets to decide to what's true and what's not true. So now you're having a government censor information.

This is basically what's happening. And this is what's happening with Google. It's what's happening with YouTube. Because of this, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has constantly been censored. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was running as a Democrat. Now he's running as an independent presidential candidate. And he is suing YouTube and its parent company, Google, for allegedly violating his free speech according to a complaint filed August 2nd.

YouTube has removed Kennedy's videos because they've labeled it as vaccine misinformation policies on multiple occasions according to the complaint. And he says, since YouTube does not allow, people to say anything that contradicts local health authorities, the LHA or the World Health Organization, the WHO, medical information about COVID-19. This means the government sets the medical censorship guidelines according to Kennedy's new lawsuit. So again, here's the problem. Americans have mixed opinions on whether the censorship we're seeing today is good or bad. So here's the problem, according to Alan Dershowitz.

Basically, he says that, you know, today, when it starts with kids and they're raised up in academic institutions that are 13 to one liberal teaching that point of view, those will in the academic institutions and school systems become the future leaders of society. Those people then today are leaning towards heavily censoring versus free speech. And so if you look 20 years into the future, The likelihood of censorship getting worse, not better, increases dramatically. He also says, in today's attitudes towards free of speech, many millennials become tomorrow's rulers of our nation, and we could lose much of our freedom of thought, speech, expression,

and dissent. Those who cherish these freedoms must become more proactive in their defense. And so if you believe free speech is important, you should be speaking out about it. You should be having conversations about it. You should be against censorship in this way because it will lead to more violence if there's censorship. And there's less truth. You can't discover the truth. I'm not trying to totally censor one side. Now, I do think there should be thought about what kids learn at different ages in school.

But in colleges, someone teaching, let's say, a Christian idea or Judeo-Christian thought about slavery and somebody teaching what somebody believes in the early stages of critical race theory, I'm okay in college is teaching both, but I don't want it to be absolutely one or the other in public institutions. Now, if it's a private school, that's a different thing as well. But overall, in public universities, it should be equally both. Now, American attitudes towards moderating false information online, these stats are mind-blowing to me. Listen to this. 65% of Americans today support tech companies moderating and censoring false information online and 55% support the U.S. government taking these steps.

These shares have increased since 2018. So think about this. 55% of people, more than 50% of people believe the government should be censoring. Whoa. 65% of Americans believe that tech companies should moderate false information. well, how does a tech company decide what's true and what's not and what's what's hate speech and what's not? And then here's the other thing. Five years ago, Americans were more inclined to prioritize freedom of information over restricting false information.

Today, it's 58% to 39%. So obviously is a huge, huge difference. And this, of course, falls very closely into, this is very relevant to politics. Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, whereas nearly 65% say instead the government should be taking steps to restrict false information and limit free speech. So 65% of Democrats believe we should limit free speech. 70% of Republicans believe we should be taking more steps to increase free speech. So obviously, you can see here the Democratic Party wants to limit free speech. The Republican Party obviously is more pro-free speech according to the data we're seeing here. And you can kind of see here the U.S. government should take steps to restrict versus tech companies should take to restrict.

And the difference here in growing differences between Republicans and Democrats there. Now here's one more example of this. Social media news consumers say the news posts they see generally lean more liberal than conservative. That is absolutely true. In fact, when you look at the data, I want to say it's 80 to 90% of media companies are owned by people that are liberal versus conservative. Even Elon Musk, here's the thing about Elon historically. He actually has voted Democrat. And even he is more of an independent and middle thinker, the owner of Twitter slash X.

And he is so ridiculed by so many people for trying to be more free speech at the same time. So again, here, it comes down to this principle. Do you think it's better for somebody to be able to share their thought openly on either side? Or do you believe that that information, one side should be cut off and limited? I want to give you an example of this same-sex marriage. Let's say one group of religious folks here, Judeo-Christian say, we don't believe that it is morally right. That's what they say. It's not morally right. Let's say another side. And the other side says, that's hate speech. Should one or the other side be censored? Your answer to that question is really important, what you believe there. And again, my answer is I want both sides to be able to share completely openly what they believe. And I want the public to be able to think for themselves. I don't, here's the thing. I'm the opposite of J.D. Rockefeller.

I don't want a nation of workers. I want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation. I want a nation of people who say, I want to find truth. I love truth. And I don't care if it's not what aligns with me right now. I just want the truth. I'm not here to take Republican or Democrat or left or right. I'm not here to take a side. I just want the truth because the truth will set me free. And when there's less information you have access to, it's going to be harder to find and discern the truth. So I want to get into a study here now and it's really eye-opening. According to a survey by the Civil Liberties Organization Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, more than half of Americans, 50, 55% think a person should lose their job if they say something hateful.

And 52% of people believe institutions of higher learning should be able to ban speakers with views that are considered hateful. Fire found, the name of this organization, that nearly six in 10 Americans say that democracy is threatened because people are afraid to voice their opinions. Think about that. More than 50% of people think if somebody says something hateful, they should just automatically lose their job. And then if a speaker has a different opinion, they should be banned. People that have that opinion, they're fearful, lack wisdom, and they just don't know the history of the world. That if you negate free speech, listen, by the way, I've spent a lot of my career studying in-depth psychology. And part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is for people, part of of that for them to feel safe and secure is for them to feel heard. You know, that's one of the

biggest causes of issues like suicide today and poor mental health is if somebody doesn't feel like they can be heard, like their opinion isn't isn't heard, it actually affects mental health negatively. So think about this. If you tell somebody, no, no, you can't voice your information. You can't post it online, your accounts deleted, you can't say it a lot, you can lose your job. What does that do to someone's mental health? Well, the mental health crisis is one of the fastest growing health care issue today. In the past it was cancer and heart disease and diabetes. Those things aren't even close today to how fast mental health issues like suicide, depression, anxiety, how fast we're seeing these grow.

And somebody not being able to voice their opinion is much more harmful to that than actually even somebody having hate speech. And again, what's labeled hate speech today is not hate speech. Sometimes it's love speech. I want to give you an example. You know, if I had my daughter and she, you know, and she just, you know, like this happened yesterday, she threw, she's three years old. She threw her food on the floor. I said, Arwin, I love you. You cannot throw your food on the floor. If not, you're going to have to get down. Right. You can't do that. You can't say that. What, I mean, the same thing is happening today. We have college students and people that are so immature that if you just tell them you shouldn't do that, that's not morally right. That's incorrect. That's. That's is that you're hating me. That's hate speech, and it's not. So, you know, the words like racism and hate,

they're just thrown around all over the place today. And the reality is, is oftentimes it's love speech. Somebody is actually speaking the truth in order to help other people. So it's just important to realize this. But here's the big thing. If you limit free speech, you hurt mental health, you hurt people actually discovering the truth, and you hurt civilization actually moving forward

because there's less access to the truth. and so you actually keep a nation stuck. So here are some questions that arise from these studies. Number one, why would some Americans increasingly support forfeiting their free speech in order to remove any chance of reading potential misinformation or fake news? Why would somebody give up their freedom for that? Well, one is, I believe it has to do with their character that they want to be right and they don't walk in humility.

It takes humility to say, you know what? I heard both opinions and I thought this way, but now I think this side's right. Versus, no, I have the opinion of the mainstream and I'm right no matter what and I don't need to change my opinion. So it's really a pride issue slash humility issue. People who don't want to allow free speech, they lack humility and they have too much pride. That's the root of it. Number two, is it easier to not think and have one perspective, spoon fed to you. You know, today's world is so convenient with AI and smartphones and just Google

search online, you know, depending on others to fact check is easier than using your own critical thinking skills to sort through different information forming your own opinions. It's more difficult. So the other one is it's lack of worth ethic and laziness. That's the other root issue. People who want to censor, these are people that are lazy. They lack work ethic. Number three, is it actual fear of misinformation? In some cases, maybe, but think of those who fear giving the anti-vax community a platform because they think their opinions do exponentially more harm than good.

Is it really a fear of misinformation? Or is it trying to protect a business or financials or a narrative, right? Or your own political side? oftentimes it's out of fear. I'm trying to protect this thing I have, and I don't want to risk losing it for financial gain, or I don't want to lose my pride either. These are the reasons why many people operate out of,

and want to take away free speech and want to promote censorship. It's fear, it's pride, and its lack of wisdom in a nutshell. So here's the thing to know. The right to offend is in, in the right to free speech. It is impossible to share thoughts on any important matter without the risk of offending somebody. Those are the thoughts of Jordan Peterson again.

So again, in order to discover the truth, you have to risk offending people and get in debates and arguments and think out loud by speaking and not worry about being canceled or deplatformed. So here's a couple of quotes that I think will help enlighten you about free speech. One is by Sarah Ruger. She's the vice president of the stand-together trust. She says, humans are hardwired to respond to difference with fear. But our difference can be a source of strength when we learn how to respect and engage with each other across even the deepest of divides.

So it's important that we have differences and we can talk it out and flesh it out together and we respect and honor one another's opinions. Also, Antune debate said, censorship may not suppress alternative views, but rather generate them and by doing so, become counterproductive censorship backfires. By the way, here's what I've seen.

When you censor and suppress information, it's counterproductive, and so it actually starts creating more lies. In fact, oftentimes what happens is, you're getting the truth that's being censored, but in order to discredit the other side, they start telling lies in order to discredit those that are censoring them.

And so it's this vicious cycle of what happens. That's exactly how this happens with the left and the right. The left starts to really try and censor where the right is telling the truth, but then some of those on the far right start lying to discredit those on the left and damage them. And then that's the cycle.

That's the cycle we're in today. Now, here's where I think censorship can be good. Some things should be censored for kids such as highly immoral content that leads to destruction and immorality such as pornography, right? So there are certain things that kids shouldn't be allowed to be exposed to, let's say, till they're 18 years old when they can make their own decisions for themselves, and things that have proven to absolutely crush and ruin societies like pornography. But outside of that example and maybe a few others, there really shouldn't be any type of censorship at all.

Here are some of the solutions in how you can help fight censorship and promote free speech. Number one, walk the walk. Don't fight a lie with the lie. Listen, if somebody politically is censoring you, don't just start lying about them. Continue to speak the truth. Again, don't fight evil with evil. Fight evil with good. operate with integrity, and the more virtuous something is, the more virtue at feeds.

Solution number two, speak out. Free speech is important because it leads to wisdom and it leads to the truth. You know, if someone like Jordan Peterson is being banned or is being promoted, they're saying needs to be reeducated, which the reality is, he should be re-educating them. But again, go and support these people, Riley Gaines, somebody who's fighting for women's rights. go and support her, do everything you can't, take her courses, go to hear her speak, do everything to fight for her and helping her in people like Jordan Peterson or in people that are fighting

for free speech. Continue to also have those conversations, learn where the other side is coming from, don't just ridicule and say, I hate you, you're wrong, you're full of lies, that never helps anything. If you're going to post on social media, have something important to say and maybe start off by saying, I understand your perspective. Here's where you're coming from. Here's what I believe and where I believe you're wrong. And here's the tradeoff. I believe the big point here is, is point out, what's at stake. If we go down the path that you're suggesting of censorship, here's what happens, and here's what's happened historically. Look at the Soviet Union, right? So there's these two paths. And so paint the picture of there are tradeoffs. Here's what happens if we go here. Here's what happens to go here.

that's often how you should speak out on social media. Now, listen, you have to think in order to do that. Number three, learn how to be a critical thinker. Do the research and compare both arguments and share your thoughts. Number four, we fight with our words or we fight with our swords. So realize it's always better to fight with your words than to fight with your swords. So in closing, listen, I want to hear from you. Obviously, I've shared a lot in this podcast and in the future.

You're going to continue to hear me talk more about. about some of these deep and important issues. But I'd love to hear what are your views on censorship and free speech? Hey, did you notice that? Have you ever searched Dr.ax.com in the past? You noticed we came up, went down. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Jordan Peterson, on Riley Gaines.

And what are your beliefs about free speech and censorship? And if we keep going with censorship, what could happen to society? Thanks so much for engaging. Thanks so much for commenting. and I can't wait to hear your thoughts as well. By the way, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe here to the podcast. We're each and every week,

we're covering more and more information on the science of growth. Again, I'm covering this information because I think it's important for growth. As I learn these things, and I dig into news and the scientific literature and the psychology news, I'm going to continue to share what I learn with you

in order to help you grow. That's what this podcast is all about. It's helping myself grow, but also help you grow, spiritually, in your career, in your health, and in your wealth, and just personally grow to become the best person you can be. Hey, thanks so much for watching this podcast. For commenting and subscribing. I'll see you on the next episode.