The Munk Debates Podcast - Ayaan Hirsi Ali Dialogue

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Ayaan Hirsi Ali joins us for an enlightening discussion on how many of our longstanding beliefs about reasoning and rationality are coming under attack at a time when they are needed most. “Feelings and sentiments have been elevated to a place that makes discussion of anything almost impossible… it's just not conducive to intelligent and rational debate and discussion” The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events.This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Executive Producer: Rudyard Griffiths Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Adam Karch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Thanks for listening to the monk debates. we're stepping away from our usual one-on-one debate format to bring you another monk dialogue, the six and final in our series on rationality. Today, a fascinating one-on-one conversation with activist, author, and scholar, Ian Hersey-Alee. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator of these, the Monk Dialogues. Thank you so much for joining us this winter in spring for our six-part series on rationality,

exploring how we think, whether we're thinking together in good or bad ways, and how possibly we can have more kind of coherent conversations together about the challenging issues shaping our society today. We're really fortunate to have as our final speaker in this six-part series, someone that I've always followed and read closely as I know you have too. Her name is Iyan Hersey Ali. She's a Somalia-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, and scholar, a former member with the Dutch Parliament. She's a research fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution, and she's the best-selling author of multiple books, including infidel and her most recent

pray. And she joins us now from California for this monk dialogue. I and Hersia Lee, great to be in conversation with you once again. It's lovely to see you again. Likewise. Well, so much to talk with you about. I purposely slotted you into the last conversation, this six-part series, because you're someone who I've admired over many years, who's put yourself forward in the public square to have to have difficult conversations about challenging ideas. And on this series, we're trying to explore just the nature, the topic of rationality, and more importantly, how that rationality evidences itself or not in the conversations that

we have. And maybe just off the top, if you could indulge me, because I noticed before coming on the program today that I and you have somewhere close to half a million Twitter followers. And we've had some news, as you know, over the last week or so. about a big development in the public square, an important institution Twitter that many people feel is bound up for better or worse than the type of public conversations

we have about difficult issues. Being now seemingly acquired by none other than the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. You've come out strongly in support of this development, IAN, and I'd love to hear your reasons why. You think a Twitter controlled by Elon Musk is something we should be celebrating in terms of the types of conversations we could or should have with each other and the cause of free speech generally in society today.

Wow. So that's a lot packed into one question. I would say the straightforward answer is I am celebrating that Elon Musk has bought Twitter. I think it's a great day for the free speech. I've tweeted as much. I remember in the late 1990s when the Internet was unfolding and, you know, there was this possibility that everyone would be able to express themselves for good or for bad. That was the promise. It was going to be the great equalizer. Now, looking back, I think that what we see is a lot of power concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people. And what happens in those circumstances is that those people with way too much power, they like to have control, they like to have power. And in this case, they like to control information, which is a very, very big deal.

Now, over the years, I have had a lot of people, including billionaires, express their unhappiness with the ever-rising constraints in speech. but he is now one billionaire who has stopped complaining and has said, okay, I'm going to do something about it. Is he going to succeed? I don't know. I hope so. That remains to be seen.

But I think it's a fantastic development. I also want to point out to the fact that in America is just this unique feature that when things go arrive, people tend to, I think the impulse is to go to the governments to go and fix it. And in America, I think what we see over and over again is that the market fixes it. And Elon Musk, as, you know, I almost

want to call him the market, but as a player, a big player in the market, not just in the market of technology and money, but also in the market place of ideas, he has taken a stance. He's taking a principled stance and he's saying he thinks

that free speech is the bedrock of a free society. If he wants that to be his legacy, then I think we should cheer him on. We should appreciate it. I appreciate it. Excellent. I, Ann, and I appreciate you allowing me to kind of seemingly swerve off track here a little bit in the beginning of our interview. But I think it's fascinated me just how this debate about Twitter and Elon Musk acquisition of it

touches on some of the issues that I want to explore with you in our conversation, again, from free speech to better or worse forms of public dialogue. I wonder what you think about the argument, because you made it yourself, which is, it's an important one, that we've seen a lot of concentration and control in media generally and especially in new media. So what is the, what's the argument? Because I know you're enthusiastic about this development with Elon Musk. What is the argument that his control is going to be different, let's say, than the control of a Jeff Bezos, who owns, you know, the Washington Post. You can go through a whole list of American billionaires and look at all. all the different media properties that they respectively own together.

I mean, control is control at the end of the day. And I'm just wondering if you think that free speech in a society is compatible when society's institutions, the means through which it communicates with itself, especially platforms like Facebook and Twitter, are themselves tightly held. Mark Zuckerberg, now Elon Musk. Is this really in free speech's interests? So I think there are a few things here. There is a criticism, and I think it is well-deserved on monopolies in general.

So, yes, you have a small group of individuals who own and monopolize, you know, huge segments of the information market, and that has its consequences. When we talk about free speech, first of all, there's a constraint, and I think Elon Musk says this himself. He says free speech within the bounds of the law. and then we live in the information age and it is one thing to say speech can only be constrained by the government

it's quite another to say well if you look at all these platforms there's only one viewpoint that's allowed or to put it differently if there are viewpoints that are unwelcome to that small group of power holders then that can be eliminated omitted, downplayed, you know, you can play all sorts of games.

Is this going to make a difference? I think what makes Elon Musk's position different is that he is saying he's making this purchase. He's entering, you know that these free speech debates are raging, and they've been raging, and they're going to get even more and more intense. And here he's walking in, taking over what he calls the town square,

which is this, and he's saying the only reason he's doing that is to promote free speech. I believe him, but I think he is going to be tested. He's going to be tested by the government of China. He has a lot of economic interests there. He's going to be tested even by our own government. He has a lot of interest here. He's going to be tested by his own colleagues in the tech world.

And I think the rest of the game now is. is, you know, is he resilient enough? Can he really give this his all? And I think that remains to be seen. One thing people need to know is he really is not the only billionaire. He is not the only wealthy man who is extremely frustrated with the artificial cosmetic constraints on speech that have been going on. And so this notion that it's just him and the rest of the world,

I think that doesn't hold true. I think there are a lot of people who feel exactly the way he does. But he's taking the leadership here, and that's something that's very welcome. Yeah, it's certainly courageous, and I agree with you, and he's stepping into the public spotlight in an entirely different way. It's one thing to produce electric cars or solar panels is another thing to kind of effectively control and own

a significant media institution. Ian, what do you think about the argument that, you know, in our conversations with each other, we need to privilege civility. Yes, free speech is important, but in a fractious, tribalized, hyper-politicized society that we find ourselves in today, civility is also a collector of attribute that we need to embed in our kind of practices and in our

conversations. And I mentioned this in the context of Twitter, because I think that's some of the anxiety about the possible changes that an Elon Musk could bring to Twitter, which is Twitter has taken a number of steps, you know them well, tweaking the algorithm, the whole idea of these kind of blue-star, you know, verified commentators. most of them in the mainstream press, most of them arguably probably center left in their political orientation. What do you take of that, of Twitter,

to this point, trying to strike some balance between free speech rights versus a kind of value of civility as a, I don't know, an aura, a context for how public conversation should unfold. Do you see those two things in competition? What is the relative, waiting of one to the other? I think that, first of all, let's understand when we talk about free speech,

we're talking about speech that offends. But offensive speech is not necessarily an expression of bad manners. So I think if you just have a stream of swear words and earth bonds and, you know, just terrible manners. That tends to in a civilized society like ours, people who do that sort of thing, they don't get a lot of followers. They're not

saying much, they're just being rude. What do you do about rudeness? I think that question is entirely different from the O-WAT, you know, the offending in the free speech word, which is,

this is just, again, it's a main trait of the human being. We like to hang out with the people who agree with us. Right. We don't like people who put us in cognitive dissonance. When we're discussing very serious issues like climate, like poverty and race, like those who have power and those who don't have power,

all very important issues, I think that some people think that viewpoints that are different from theirs is offensive. Religious figures, you know my life story a little bit, any sort of scrutiny or criticism towards religion in general, and Islam in particular is considered offensive. And you've seen Islamic countries and leaders gather together and try and impose religious constraints. on the freedom of speech.

Now you have the woke trying to impose their secular faith precepts and turn that into offensive speech or hate speech or whatever the label is that they're using. So I think if we go back to the simplicity of the idea that the first amendment in the United States, the protection of free speech is about protecting speech that you disagree with that is considered offensive.

It's the right to offend. Right. But it's not the right to express bad manners. Good point. Now, I and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today is you're somebody who's born

a lot of this censorship. You've been involved in some high-profile incidents where, in effectively, you've been deplatformed. I think it'd be interesting for the audience to hear a little bit about that, especially your experience with universities and university campuses and what you might think is going on there. Because if we talk about free speech, if we talk about society, you know, having places where difficult ideas can be discussed and debated, many of us assume that that is a role, that is a function of the university.

But you've recently, unfortunately, confronted universities who have a different way of thinking about what their role, in fact, is in society. That's right. So on the free speech issue, I would say your free speech can be threatened only by the government. So it is the state that has the powers to come and basically shut you up or shut you down. But in other institutions like colleges, there are ways of keeping information and knowledge out of the hands of students. basically by editing out viewpoints that are supposedly these days they use safe spaces and they use the word harmful

and all the rest of it, you know, viewpoints that aren't allowed by the prevailing groups on campuses. These are central left and far left administrators, faculties and professors. In my case, the way I have been censored on some universities is to be disinvited, it's to be subjected to all sorts of smears, I've been accused of wanting genocide for Muslims and things like that. But I haven't been sent to prison. I haven't been arrested.

I haven't been deprived of my income. That has happened to lots of professors on. United States campuses, there's a great deal of fear even for tenured professors to express their true beliefs, especially if they're conservatives and even students. So people feel that they are constrained in ways that they're not constrained by the government, but are constrained by the government. And I would say that is in violation of the key job of a university, which is to teach students how to think, not what to think. thankfully there is a reaction against that now and I think some of it will be corrected by the market

as we're seeing universities that shut down dissenting voices and omits interesting things there'll be deserted and students who can afford it will go to other universities but I think we need a lot more work than for just things to organically self-correct and how do you respond, IAN, the argument that many of those universities would make that, you know, their role needs to change

with the times. And right now, the pressing social issue is to bring to the four the voices of marginalized groups and communities who previously had been pushed aside by a power structure that was primarily male, white, ethno-European, for lack of better phraseology, you know what I'm talking about. And that in order to do that, those communities need to feel that they have spaces and places where their lived experiences recognized, where they are not threatened by words, imagery, argumentation that evokes or triggers, to use your phraseology, you know, past memories, past harms, everything that they bring with them as marginalized groups into the public square.

Yeah. So I'm looking for a very polite and civil English word to describe that. And I just want to call it hogwash. I think the best way to include individuals who come from historically marginalized groups, now that we are no longer marginalized because we're equal before the law. But once we get access, we, you know, if there are barriers to access to higher education, then remove those barriers. In the U.S., we have all sorts of affirmative action programs.

There's a lot of effort to get individuals from those communities into higher education. But once we're admitted, I think the best way to advance the rights and the privileges of those individuals is to teach them how to think, not to protect them. and this is some kind of artificial protection from what I don't understand. I don't think that opening their minds up to think about these subjects and to be introduced to all perspectives is an exercise in oppression. It is not to deprive them of the knowledge and the practices that lead to economic success and political success and cultural success.

that would be, in my view, to harm their interests. So when a black student comes to Harvard University, Harvard University should try and get that young individual to be educated to the best of his or her ability, not to shroud that individual student in some kind of figurative cotton wool and protect them from what had happened in the past to people who share a skin color with them. That's strong.

Fascinating stuff. And tell us a little bit about the Open University in Austin that you're involved with, because this is, in a sense, a movement, the beginnings of a movement, to try to create a different university campus with a different set of objectives. I know it's a project that's close to your heart. So tell us a little bit about that and what you're trying to solve with the Open University of Austin. So that is also an initiative from another billionaire. not as well known as Elon Musk.

His name is Joe Lonsdale. And thankfully in the US, we have very young billionaires. And they're very socially engaged. And one of the things that frustrated Joe is that some of these universities are all, even the Ivy League, they're all leaning towards this closing of the minds instead of opening and challenging and requiring marriage, everything that our society needs to advance. And what is the market response to that?

If the available institutions are not providing what they should be doing, then what is to stop us from starting new institutions? So it's really born out of that simple market idea. And surprisingly, a lot of people, many of them tenured professors, just heaved a sigh of relief and responded by, yes, Right now there are more applications to come to this. This university is still an idea. Yeah.

We still need to buy land. We still need to get accredited to establish a university. But it's happening. And I think these are sort of these market forces, these corrective measures. I think one of them is one of the things that we should admire. My involvement in it is free speech is very difficult. to my heart. I'm going, I'm being invited to come and give a workshop.

He is doing something else. I'm giving a workshop on free speech. And the emphasis for me will be to get across to my students. What that means is that you are exposed to ideas and notions that you probably will not be exposed to in other universities. Some of these ideas might be very strange and alien and even offensive. to you, but you need to know of them. And it's to spark the capacity to think and think really hard.

I don't think most universities say, oh, but we want to teach students how to collaborate. I don't think you can collaborate successfully unless you really understand the perspective of your opponent, or the perspective of the other people around in the room. So what I would like to do in my class is to create a place where students, will not feel inhibited, where they'll not feel threatened, but where they can engage to the best of their abilities and hear everything. And those students who say, you know,

my feelings have heart or my religious sentiment is offended, my response to them would be you're in the wrong place. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits. including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world,

and you get a specially curated Friday weekly Monk Members Only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. So, I want to shift gears in our conversation and talk a bit about some of the issues that have elicited a lot of debate and that you're writing on and commenting on. And to try to unpack these issues from the context of understanding how we could have better conversations about difficult ideas. I know, having followed some of your recent writing, that you have a strong point of view

when it comes to, as a feminist, when it comes to the involvement of transgendered people in women's sport. I want to touch on that. It's a hot topic, and I get it that there's a lot of sensitivities around it on multiple sides, but it seems to me to evidence and surface a lot of these peculiarities about the public conversation at this moment. So talk to us a little bit about your involvement in this debate, how feminists are struggling with the issue.

Some are with the inclusion of transgendered people in women's sport, and why you think that this, in your view, is symptomatic of a larger public conversation that's gone wrong. I think that's a good question. I think for me, I come. to this as I do in any other conversation, okay, what is the conflict? Then I get to understand what the conflict is. And then the next thing is, can we have this conversation in a rational,

civil way with, at least in my case, I'll speak for myself, I believe that we can reach some kind of, or negotiate some kind of conclusion that is a win-win. So you don't, let's now go with the topic of transgender rights versus women's rights. I think it's possible to sit down and come to a conclusion where transgender people don't feel that they're victims of discrimination, that they're treated with dignity, with respect, and that their human rights are. I mean, as women, we know and we constantly fight for our rights to be respected. So we empathize a great deal with any other individual or group who feel that they're stigmatized or excluded or treated poorly. So I think we can get to a place where you can advance the rights and the interests of transgender people without depriving women of the rights that they fought for for such a long time.

When I looked into this issue, what I ran into, it's not the people who are gendered. who want to transition from being male to female or from female to being male. The people I run into who are causing the problems are organized groups who say they speak on behalf of people with gender dysphoria. And what these organized groups are demanding is a wholesale deprivation of women. rights. They want pretty much to say women's rights, women's sports are open to anyone and everyone. And most of them, the people who are making this case are men who say that they identify as women. Women's prisons now see their doors open to men that's causing some terrible problems. Children, we have now a huge problem where really young children.

who have all sorts of psychological problems, they may or may not have gender dysphoria. But there used to be a normal waiting period where these things, with the help of parents, psychologists, and other medical experts, they could get to a place to decide whether they really want to transition or not at a later stage. But now a young child, as young as 12, 13,

can go behind their parents back and the medical community will not ask any question. and some treatments are started that have irreversible consequences. I mean, taking away body parts that won't grow back again. And we are now seeing some of those children at a later stage in their lives, miserable and saying, I wish I hadn't done this before, but they can't reverse those things. Now, given that we're seeing all of these problems,

and these are very, very serious problems, violations of children's rights, women's rights, don't you think we can come back to the table and say, how can we have a rational a rational conversation about this in a civil and dignified way and it's these organized groups that don't want that. They want to sabotage

that. They start calling people like me and J.K. Rowling and all of these other women who are saying, wait, wait, this is going too fast for us. They call us Terfs. They call us all sorts of terrible names. And they then engage and I think this is where the Twitter and the other social media platforms have started to become problematic

is either you agree with these activists, in this case on transgender, or on climate, or on race, or on any, you name it, any serious issue. And if you don't adopt the viewpoint, which is not even a viewpoint, it's more like a religious tract, unless you adopt that, you are to shut up and put up with it. And we're not going to put up with it.

So, Iyan, what do you think about those who would say, you know, any group that comes forward and makes, you know, a rights demand, you know, faces opposition. Women have faced opposition in making rights demands and their rights were subsequently largely accommodated. And this face this. Yeah, and, you know, many African-American persons of color

faced racial discrimination. They made rights demands to have those discriminations removed and society responded to them. So why isn't this just another case of a set of rights demands coming forward? Society, albeit struggling with them, unsure how to to deal with them, but this is following a pattern,

a pattern of societies seeking ever greater freedom, ever greater opportunities for individuals to define themselves as they choose to define themselves and to have society recognize that act. I think

it's true to a certain degree. So individuals with gender dysphoria, transgender people. In many communities, they are not recognized at all, and they're considered to be sick. They're stigmatized. They're treated really badly. And I think for those individuals to come out as individuals and as a group and to organize

and to say, we want this to stop. We want to have the same rights as everyone else, and we want to be treated with respect. that is completely justified and they have my support in that. What is different is the proposition that for them to achieve that they need

to deprive women of their rights. They need to deprive children of their rights, that they're willing to do things that they may think of as collateral damage, but that is just as you know,

it's just as destructive to the people who are affected directly and maybe in some ways even more destructive than some of the complaints of the transgender people. But I believe that we can actually reach, this isn't in the middle of the time of slavery or apartheid where the sorts of forces that you were fighting were very, very different.

I think what we have in American, what we have in Western society is a majority of the people who are willing to sit down and say, I didn't know about this. I'd like to know some more, what can I do to help? We don't have legal barriers or economic barriers. And where they are, most of us are willing to take those away as soon as we recognize them.

But we don't want to then say in order for that community to advance its rights, we're going to take rights away from women and children. I'm not up for that. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to get to a place that is completely win-win. Got it. I don't think, yeah, I don't think you should exclude parents from, you know, these very serious decisions about hormone treatment and even surgery from their own children. I think you should give children in those vulnerable teenage years the best possible information

that you can guarantee that you can give them. And I think having to do in the state of California where I live, a child as young as that team can go and undergo these irreversible treatments without informing his parents, teachers, and there's no one in the medical community can stop that. I think that's wrong. I don't think that advances that the rights of the transgender community. It just deprives these young vulnerable people of their own rights. Thank you, I. So we've talked about Twitter and social media. we've talked about universities and campuses.

We've just explored the competing rights claims of the transgender community and those that they are impacting and interacting with. I want to go to one other kind of contentious area debate and then spend our remaining time with you to try to unpack from these four different topics that we've discussed some kind of lessons about rationality and reasoning

that we can draw from this, hopefully to lead us to, a better conversation about these types of complicated issues. And the last issue I want to have you talk about is one that's very close to you, and it's the issue of religion. You and I had the pleasure, you more than I, being exposed to Christopher Hitchens, our dear old friend, who, as you know, was a strident atheist, one of the so-called new atheists.

You similarly have evidence through the course of your life, a strong conviction that religion and religiosity can have profoundly negative effects and consequences on both an individual's ability to reason and a broader societal impact that can close off avenues of freedom, intellectual curiosity, and open debate. So I'd like to hear a kind of updated did 2022 I.N. Herssey-Ey-A-Lie a take on where religion is at in the world and in society today and whether you still think it's as an urgent debate as the one that our friend and you and Christopher Hitchens and others were having, you know, back in the early 2000s? Well, I mean, fast the memories of Christopher Hitchens sometimes ask myself, oh gosh, if he were

alive today, what did he make of these issues? Yeah. Wouldn't it be very, very interesting. Yeah. On religion, so specifically, I mean, the religion and the intolerance that I experienced myself and that we've seen expressed in so many different ways comes from Islam. I grew up as a Muslim and I know, of course, of masses of Muslims who are not violent, who are not intolerant, who are wonderful people. way they understand their religion, the way they express their religion, is, if not constructive,

purely personal and just limited to their community. But we've also seen a minority that with the Quran in the hand and waving the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad, cause and continue to cause mayhem and murder. And, deprive women of their rights and just introduce the most barbaric, you know, ways of living that we've seen. I want to remind everyone in case they've forgotten of this outfit called ISIS, where they were openly beheading people, lining homosexuals up, and throwing them off skyscrapers, lining up the Christian minorities, and putting them in orange.

shoots and cutting off their heads, putting someone in a cage alive and then burning him alive and videotaping that and, you know, just these gruesome atrocities that they were committing in the name of Islam. And I want to say, thankfully, 10 years ago, I didn't believe it could happen, but now I'm seeing a lot of Muslims believing practicing Muslims come out and reject those things and turn away from ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim. Muslim Brotherhood, many of them are actually leaving Islam. And that's a story that's not being told in our media.

I think as much as it should be told. But, you know, good news doesn't make headlines, so it's not being told. And then religion in general, my take on it is it can be used as a tool to do good things. And I see this happen around me all the time. it only goes wrong when it's used as a tool to accumulate power and then to use that power to rob other people of their freedoms, the freedom to their own body and their dignity, the freedom to speech, the freedom to assembly, to assemble all of these things. So religion is a power, it can be a powerful good, it can be a power for evil,

and we've seen both manifestations. And I think intellectual honesty demands that we articulate both of those things. So as an observer, I will call out the religious when they use their faith to do bad things and laud them when they do their faith to do good things. And Ion, on that point, the extent to which people turn to religion for many kind of social goods, that arguably you could say that the secular components over society are failing to provide today. Goods like community.

Goods like trust, trust between people and across groups. Isn't part of the challenge here if we think about religion or how we should consider it is that there are failings in our secular society that religion provides, not only arguably answers to, but supports that return to our secular society to allow it to function and flourish also. And is there a danger in being too negative about religion that we

underestimate the extent to which many of those religious customs and traditions and observances are in fact undergirding the very democracies and freedoms and individual liberties that you obviously expanse. Absolutely. I think it is, I don't do politically correct, so I'm happy to say that even the Enlightenment is a product of these Judeo-Christian traditions. and that the church or the synagogue has functioned and continues to function as a force for good, where members of the community gather and where people look out for the vulnerable and help one another.

And to a certain degree, the mosque does the same thing, except that in some mosques, they have been hijacked by people with very, radical ideas. And these radical ideas are, yes, they do have their foundational principles in the Quran and in the Hadith. And this is this

conflation of religion and power or religion and politics. But if you want to say, and this I agree with you and I agree with all the other people who say this and who observe this, it's a fact.

that these religious communities, churches, mosques, synagogues, established religions, they have been and still are, you know, forces for good and stability, just like the institution of the family, the school, the sports community, the church is part of all of that. and where the church and a religious community provides these types of services, I think that should only be encouraged and applauded. When abuse appears, and that's not exclusive to churches, by the way, abuses occur anywhere where a human enterprise is,

I think when these abuses occur, there should be some form of protocol to make the people involved aware that these things are happening and to deal with it effectively. Thank you, Iyan. Let's spend our remaining time together kind of unpacking from our discussion of these four kind of big debates in society, social media, university campuses, the effects of competing rights claims between different groups and now religion, to some lessons that you've taken away from a life of engaging with these types of difficult conversations about how we could have a more rational, productive. debate. Over the course of these talks that we've been doing, one of the things that many thinkers have come back to is the idea that we need something to ground our conversations in, whether that's in science and objective facts, whether that's in habits of mind or thinking. I'm curious as to where you come down on that. How do we, IAN, develop maybe some first

principles and what could they be to guide a more rich, substantive, honest conversation in a public square that just seems at times so polarized, so cacophonous, so incoherent and so ultimately unsatisfying? I would say maybe a fast principle would be to try and keep the government out of it as much as you possibly can. I mean, people are threatening violence and and are threatening to break the law, that is one thing. But try and resist the temptation to involve the government in the hope that the government of the day is now on your side. And you're happy and cheering on this government that's on your side

to silence your opponent. But pretty soon, you know, the shoe could be on the other foot. So let's resist the temptation to involve that type of power. In terms of habits of mind, if we're having a discussion, I think, where science is relevant, then of course, one of the things is, I think we should make a distinction between science and Scientism and following these discussions on COVID, I think science has become just another of those tools for many people. You know what I'm going to use, I'm going to invoke science just to declare, you know,

I am right and you are wrong. So you are the one who is anti-science. That's that's scientism. That's not how we use science. And then there are matters, I mean, matters of faith and faith. feelings and all sorts of things where science doesn't have a lot to say on. And people are really not in the kind of mood that science demands, where you are an observer, you're patient,

you are willing to engage for a long time, because some of these issues are axiomatic. But I think the best thing is to have the kind of manner where you have a civility and you come into a conversation with a goodwill and try and resist the bad man type of thing.

But to be honest with you, as long as there are humans, we are going to have the cacophony, we're going to have the disagreements. We're always going to have the greedy people who will say just agree with me and with me only. We will always have the people

who just wanted to concentrate power and have it for themselves. The best we can hope for is that the frameworks that we have in politics and in these other institutions, there are all sorts of procedures that are violated now. I mean, I'm speaking because we were in academia, but in the academic world that are already violated. And a fast step would be simply to go back to respecting the protocols that are in place. I had a sense also that you think that free speech, the willingness to accept offense, to be offended on the understanding that your interlocular is not trying to destroy you or race you, but maybe saying and doing things that you personally find, you know, difficult, challenging, offensive, however we wanted to find that. You think that there's something in that mentality that's really important for us to hold on to.

So explain why. So one of the things I have seen is that feelings, sentiment has been elevated to a place that makes discussion of anything almost impossible. I think you and I can discuss rationally and anyone would be willing to discuss anything rationally where you. you start with. First of all, what are things like? What do they look like? And then you go to the next stage of the normative. What would we want them to look like and what kinds of paths do lead us there if we agree? That sort of discussion really implicitly demands that you leave your feelings at the door or that you restrain your feelings. But now we're in a place where we're saying feelings prevail over everything. And so I can bring into a way.

a discussion, something about feeling offended or my skin color or my gender. And these things just really, they distract. I don't know what to say to someone if suddenly she starts crying, for instance. Or people say that their feelings are hurt. That is not, it's just not conducive to intelligent and rational. debate and discussion. But that's where we are in our society. That's what young people are learning.

And, you know, I don't know, maybe I come from some of the harder places like Africa where people had no time for your feelings. But, and that was one extreme. But to be here and watch people, you know, constantly talking about how they feel, it's disconcerting. And I think maybe we could get to a place where we say, you know, your feelings are not welcome. Maybe bring back comedy because a real comedy has gone away. You can't make fun of this. You can't make fun of that. Only a Jewish person can make fun of a Jewish person. Only a gay person can

make fun of a gay person. You know, these sorts of divisive ways that take away from the sense of community in very heterogeneous societies like ours, I think these are the things that we need to address. I think we need to conclude that if you are interested in having a discussion, then restrain your feelings. For me, the difference between a child and an adult is that a child is overtaken by their impulses and they let their feelings kind of mock. A child can suddenly start howling and crying and kicking a fuss. We don't expect an adult to do that. But we're seeing a lot of adults to do that in boardrooms, in open public platforms, and then they're demanding that we cancel people because they feel this way. That's not right.

So let's get out of the emocracy. So we have an emotional, you know, so-called aristocrats, and we are now living in this emocracy. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you put it that way, because I think they're, you know, the word I've used it before, but civility was understood in many ways as a series of kind of social conventions that allowed us through pre-enlightment and enlightenment onwards to move away from pulling out swords and daggers and going at each other. And instead, we had these conventions that kind of looking to us today back to the 17th and 16th century might look quite controlling and overlooking.

and overbearing and formalistic, but they allowed us as once very violent societies to actually come together and do really complicated things like discover capitalism and invent democracy and all that stuff that we enjoy today. Yeah, so let's bring them back. Maybe we should stop, we should start here in Silicon Valley

and say they stop wearing pajamas and start wearing suits. And everybody gets dressed, I don't know, and comes to play the part of taking part in a serious grown-up discussion and not come and display their feelings. I mean, really, the display of feelings in many societies is seen as something awkward and weird. And here in the West, we've taken it to a place.

That's just, you know, reality is now more comical in fiction. And there are many moments. Let's talk about where you think this could all be headed for here. would look at the cup right now when it comes to our democracy, the types of conversations that we have with each other and say, look, it's not only half empty, it's empty. There is little to be optimistic about. You know, we're headed for, in your case, elections in 2024 that could be even more divisive and injurious of American institutions.

traditions, you know, the future is paved with each other's bad intentions. What's your sense? Because I know, I mean, you've always had an optimism, an enduring belief that these institutions are strong, these values are important. There is a crucible of learning and truth that comes from the enlightenment that's been transmitted through generations and that is a common patrimony that we've been. still share today? So I remain optimistic. I will say, if you ask me what keeps you awake as night right now, of course, it's the threats of nuclear war, someone like Vladimir Putin,

who feels cornered and then resorts to the ultimate weapon. That's a conversation we are having now. We didn't have it five months ago, four months ago. And that's really frightening. And I remember the time, I'm old enough to remember the time of the previous conversation when it was also just like, wow, what, you know, the world, we could be, we could as human beings, annihilate one another. I'm more optimistic about where America is going.

I think I can see the plumbians. buses and minuses of the internet and social media, and I tend to see the positive more than I see the negative. Let me tell you this. I don't want to go back to a time when we didn't have the internet. And I remember that time very, very well. And a time when we didn't have the cell phone. And I remember that time very, very well. And I think as human beings, we are way more affluent than we ever were. And so that gives me a great deal of optimism. Obviously, we have been confronted with some of these unintended consequences. I think we can address them. Other, you know, ideologies and frameworks are being marketed to us by China.

But looking at China, I think what they're doing now to their own people, what they've done to the Uyghurs, what they've done in Hong Kong, the threats they pose to Taiwan, but what they're doing right now to their own mainland in Shanghai and other places, I think that's the type of thing that makes me feel very grateful for the chaotic, cacophonic democracy that I live in. now and that maybe our divisions are so exaggerated compared to what we are seeing in other places. And then looking at Russia, Putin's Russia, and what he's doing, again, it makes me feel very grateful for our own democracy and then the Islamist. The Islamic utopia manifested itself in ISIS. And so I still remain confident that this civilization,

Western civilization. And it's what it has given us in terms of scientific advancements, the Enlightenment, these government institutions that are not perfect that are plotting along, that all of this

is so much better. And for us, it's really a question of tweaking, preserving, handing it over to the next generation and fighting off these external threats. And in that, I'm optimistic. of course, if we control our emotions.

Well, that would be my final question for you. If you have one word of advice to someone who does want to make a contribution, that does want to model better behavior, that wants to try to have rational, civil, substantive debate and discussion, what would that one piece of advice be? We've asked this of all of our participants over the course of this program, It's been interesting to hear the range of answers, but there has been also a certain commonality in response.

I'd be curious what yours would be. I think what I have in common probably with everyone else is it starts with yourself. So do that. And maybe one extra thing I would add is do not lose interests. I've seen a lot of rational, wonderful people who say, well, I'm watching all these discussions. There's no place in it for me because of the way these discussions are conducted, what you then see is that all the civil rational people edit themselves

out or off the stage, and then more and more institutions are left in the hands of people who don't want to observe those protocols of civil behavior. So that's what I would add is not just be civil yourself and, you know, act according to, you know, behave, be an example of good manners that doesn't. doesn't mean you have to agree with other people, but also remain engaged. And if you disengage and things don't go your way, then don't complain. Yeah, that's a great set of insights. And it corresponds to a lot of what we've heard over the course of these six programs,

which is, you know, it can feel uncomfortable. It can feel tiresome. It can feel like anything but a nice ice cream Sunday, but engaging with. with people, confronting people with different ideas, talking about challenging subjects. You just have to do it. You have to do it for yourself and your own kind of mental development and faculty,

but it's kind of a social obligation in an interesting way. It's what kind of weaves the networks, the tissues, the fabrics of our society together. And you've done that in so many ways, Ian Horseli, over the last number of decades that I've known you. I just want to thank you again for being so generous with your time today and sharing your insight and wisdom with us.

And I'm so looking forward to doing this with you in person sometime soon. Canada needs more IAN Hercie-L-E north of the border. So let's find a time for that to happen. Brilliant. Thank you very much. And thank you for providing this platform and your leadership in doing so for all of this. So thank you very, very much. While that wraps up our monk dialogue on rationality to listen to past dialogues in this series

with big thinkers like Stephen Pinker, Dan Dennett, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, go to monkdebates.com forward slash dialogues or download them straight from this podcast feed. We always appreciate your feedback on our pod. Let us know what you thought in my conversation with Ian Hersia Lee. You can do that right now at podcast at monkdebates.com. A big thank you to the Peter and Melanie Monk Foundation for making these muck dialogues possible and to the generosity of our presenting sponsors, Onyx and Gluskin Chef, for their generous support. Thank you also to our listeners and subscribers, helping us bring back the art of public conversation,

one dialogue at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffith.