Joe Rogan, Aristotle, and nuance.

The internet is a wild and fun place. It has been brilliant at creating tribes. You can find people who like what you like, be it wanting to bring the Sonics back to Seattle or people wanting to share videos of their kittens being adorable. The freedom to be anyone, or to say anything, creates an environment where interpretations and biases run rampant. 

It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it.

Aristotle

An eloquent (shocking for Aristotle, I know) phrase illustrates that it takes a mind with some horsepower to be able to look at an issue from the opposite perspective and see any virtues that the other side has. Not locking into your position as the only one with any merit whatsoever.

This brings us to the current Spotify controversy where artists are leaving the platform because of the podcasts of Joe Rogan. Artists, firstly, Neil Young and now many others, are removing their music from the platform because they think Rogan has been spreading misinformation about covid. 

Rogan has said he just has conversations with people and is interested in finding out the truth and ‘having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions.” These are all very noble goals. The challenge is that these conversations are on the internet. Sound bites are taken out of context. People don’t read the studies they reference or even listen to the whole podcast.

The cherry-picking of ideas to support your own position doesn’t bring us closer to the truth. 

Rogan says that he is just doing a podcast but when he has greater attention figures than the big cable channels he has become the mainstream. This creates an abdication of responsibility for the people that don’t have the ‘educated minds’ and struggle seeing multiple sides to complex situations. 

Sometimes you don’t want the responsibility but it is thrust upon you whether you like it or not. 

Now I am not going to say that I enjoy all of the guests on the podcast. I think Rogan should be harder on lots of the people he has on his platform. I think some of them have very horrible ideologies wrapped around carefully by an articulate speaker to make it seem like it’s not terrible. However, I do agree we should have more conversations with people we disagree with, either you will learn something, or they will.

What does this mean for you?

Have more difficult conversations. Be clear about your values, what you want, and if someone doesn’t understand them, then you need to find a different way to express them. 

Sometimes you won’t get all your points out the first time. It is ok to stop and start the conversation. It is also ok to change your mind if they make great points. 

The more ambiguous your message is at work, or with your relationships, the more it opens up to misunderstandings or assumptions. Many workplaces operate with the hope that everyone knows what they are doing. ‘Everyone has been here so long, we all know what’s important.’ 

However, we don’t. 

Rogan’s podcasts are a clear example of this, as some people have focused on a few particular pieces of a very small subset of his podcasts to draw their conclusions.

Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.

Albert Maysles

As for the Aristotle quote above, he never said that. It is an oversimplification of another passage he wrote because there is no nuance on the internet.