The Conversation Cancelers Come for Joe Rogan

10 minutes

Language

I’m two hours into a four hour conversation. Yes, four hours. The interviewer, Joe Rogan, is a standup comedian/mma fighter who seems to know everybody. He’s not an intellectual. He certainly doesn’t hold the same worldview I do. Some of his guests espouse strange, trippy beliefs, while others are experts in very rarified academic fields, or billionaires obsessed with the paranormal, or musicians with great stories from the road. This guest is a once-famous child actor. That guest is a high-profile whistle-blower living in hiding from a government that will never give him a fair trial. Yet another is an American woman in her twenties, survivor of a kangaroo conviction in Italy for a murder she couldn’t possibly have committed. What they all have in common – with each other and with Joe Rogan – is their ability to engage in a real conversation. 

The current guest, Jordan Peterson, is a man who has probably done more than any popular intellectual to introduce willing members of the meaning-starved masses to some of life’s deepest questions. He has taught businessmen and burger flippers, mechanics and masseuses, to be philosophers, ethicists, psychologists, and even religious truth-seekers – this, even though he does not appear to yet have the grace of faith (here’s hoping!) He’s the sort of man from whom you cannot help but learn every time he speaks. Peterson has haunted eyes. He’s haunted by meaning; even its shadow. And the English-speaking intelligentsia hate him for that.

Early on in the recording, Peterson makes a sweeping assertion about the virtual meaninglessness of words like “environment” and “climate.” Rogan, clearly not buying, challenges him again and again, forcing Peterson to define his terms. This leads to a semi-tense back-and-forth about the meanings of the words and assumptions that form the basis of climate science. Both men make contrary factual assertions. Rogan instructs his “Man in the Chair” to check a claim Peterson made about the number of children who die from indoor particulate pollution. Man-in-the-Chair finds the article that Peterson referred to, but it doesn’t say quite what he remembered it saying. The upshot is that Peterson refines his claim, and apologizes for misstating a fact, while Rogan learns that the substance of what Peterson said was still close to the truth, and the that actual facts do support one of his points. 

An anecdote about one of Peterson’s drug-addicted patients becomes a side-argument about the efficacy of cocaine experiments with monkeys. Rogan also makes a claim about the cause of a celebrity’s death, and, realizing that he may have misremembered the facts, immediately instructs Man-in-the-Chair to check if he’s right. It turns out he misremembered the facts; got them backwards. The upshot is that that line of argument is abandoned, and we return to the original question that sparked the side-path that led away from the main issue. This, for those of you who haven’t seen or been in one for a while, is called a conversation.

As the conversation continues, it takes a more definite shape. Now we are talking about music, and meaning, and the very essence of dialog itself. The speakers continue to challenge each other’s perspectives, but now more fruitfully. Ironically, the very process unfolding before us – we privileged flies on the wall – becomes a subject of Jordan Peterson’s analysis (at around 1 hour 46 minutes.) “Dialog,” explains Peterson, “is a redemptive process.” It is the means by which the Logos enters into reality, expressed in the duality, the give and take, of the speakers, and their process. Rogan, not a religious man, stays politely silent, merely commenting that conversation, for him, is more of an expansive than a redemptive process. Peterson references Christ in Revelation, the Redeemer holding a sword. In dialog – in true conversation – the players are open to all things, seeking to find and save whatever can be saved. And yet there’s a refining process, a pattern of trimming and weeding out; the sword in Christ’s hand. It’s redemption, says Peterson, because one wants to embrace all the good that can be embraced, but still exclude error, and arrive at truth. Conversation redeems because it can break both speakers out of the hell of their own isolated, tyrannical, ideas. Without dialog, the truth remains undiscovered. Thoughts cannot have any real purchase, and they cannot bring unity and meaning.

Peterson wants meaning so badly. It’s hard to get a read on him. Does he or does he not believe in Christ and God in an actual sense, or only in some kind of Jungian sense? His melancholy, his joy, his hunger for meaning, comes through when he talks about music. I will not risk bastardizing what the man has to say about music as a participation in the patterns of being that underlie all things in reality. Listen for yourself. No one who watches Peterson here can fail to notice that what he says strikes at the heart of human existence, at the essence of art, and at Peterson’s own sorrowful search for truth. Want to see a grown man on the verge of actual tears? Watch and listen to this podcast. As can only happen in real conversations, Peterson’s heart is on full display. It gives you chills. That is the promise of real dialog between two people. And it is utterly absent from the packaged, pre-approved, vetted, and officially stamped totalitarianism of the “real” media.

There is so much to say about this, and I do not have the heart to say it. My heart is bruised-over by the hard-heartedness of America’s political, media, and celebrity culture. How could anyone hope to find any truth in this field of misinformation? Yet if they do find it, it only happens through personal friendship, and through conversation.

Harry G. Frankfurt’s masterpiece On Bullshit perfectly characterizes our political, media, and advertising culture when he notes the absolute preponderance of bullshit it produces. But what is bullshit? It is not “lies.” The liar, notes Frankfurt, cares enough about the truth to deliberately misstate it. Bullshitting is far worse than lying. The bullshitter, unlike the real conversationalist, does not say what’s on his mind. He is not at all interested in producing an accurate representation, either of the content of his own mind, or of external reality. What the bullshitter is interested in is achieving a certain preferred outcome. That outcome might be a socio-political one that he considers preferable, or it might be creating a certain impression of himself. He may, incidentally, tell the truth, or he may completely distort the truth. Truth and falsehood are immaterial to the bullshitter. He only cares about outputs. Selling a product. Embodying a persona. Placing himself within a category defined as acceptable. Winning an election. He is indifferent to the actual facts. He makes no attempt whatsoever to reconcile himself to reality, or to reconcile the tension between different aspects of reality, nor even to reconcile his current line of bullshit with other, previously more convenient lines of bullshit. 

“If God is your father,” says Satan, who already knows who Christ is, “command these stones to become bread.” Bullshitting is the antithesis of actual dialog. If dia-logos is redemptive, bringing two into one, then bullshit is satanic, casting things apart. It’s an indifference more slothful, more hateful even than good old fashioned lies.     

That is why the current dustup over the Rogan show and “misinformation” is just another example of contemporary bullshit. Anyone who has ever listened to a Rogan episode, let alone dozens, knows that he’s listening to a conversation. A thousand+ guests with a thousand+ opinions, thoughts, theories, etc., engaging in a thousand different subjects over the course of hours. That’s the Joe Rogan experience, take it or leave it. Rogan and his interviewee espouse their views, lay out their arguments, make their assertions, and cite – or miscite – their sources. Rogan challenges the interviewee. The interviewee challenges Rogan. Man-in-the-Chair checks claims on both sides. It sounds just like the last really interesting conversation you had, and passions flair and ebb just as frequently. It’s not science. It’s just talking.  

But the logic of dialog always governs. This is not news, thank God. This is not an encyclopedia entry. Rogan is anything but a CNN or FOX anchor telling you, by inclusions and omissions, by intonations and eye-rolls, what you should think. Rogan does not pretend to possess the kind of authority over his audience that would allow him to tell them what they ought to believe. He is not a professional reporter. Thank God. He’s just a damned good conversationalist.  

But conversation is risky. Chesterton once said of a novel he wanted to write that, like most novels he wanted to write, it was the best novel he ever wrote. As long as we are stuck inside our heads, thinking our own thoughts, marinating in our own imaginations and self-righteousness, we are able to believe that our thoughts and plans are unassailable. Conversation proves that execution is everything. Conversation makes demands on us: “Make that same statement you did,” demands the goddess Dialog, “but now make it to an actual person, one who doesn’t live inside your own echo chamber. How much of what you blithely assert do you really know?” Dogmatists of all stripes hate dialog. They feel threatened by it.

There is another, much larger demographic who fears substantive conversation; especially conversation that challenges approved wisdom. These are the many who, being members of a democratic society, feel that they must espouse a certain opinion, hold the correct view, take a side on issue X, etc.  As human beings, they feel the weight of the obligation to think things through, but they have neither the desire to make the effort, nor the habits of thought that make it possible. Everyone is telling them to take the right side, but they are very busy people. They are also, we assume, very well-intentioned, not wishing to look suspiciously at the narrative-makers, (though these same narrative-makers have no qualms about casting personal aspersions on those who question them.) They aren’t about to dispute the core of the party line, you see; maybe quibble around the edges, but that’s all. Questioning the narrative proper leads to madness. And who has the time? Perhaps these good folks simply haven’t been burned enough, or deceived enough, to feel the urgency to hold back from assenting to the blaring, emergency certainties peddled by the powerful.

But I suspect that in some cases, the motives of the anti-conversationalists are not as pure as those named above . Some people do not want to seek wisdom – that would be too hard – but they do want to seem to have sought it. In actuality, they are deathly afraid of holding a view out of the mainstream, for they lack confidence in their ability to arrive at or defend any nuanced opinion. They are deathly afraid that the murky grounds of their own belief – what often amounts to some version of the fallacy of mere appeal to an authority – will be made clear under the slightest scrutiny. For these folks, holding a certain correct view places them in the category of the winners and the good people. The woke people. Attacks on the approved view, no matter how well-argued, and no matter how well-qualified the attackers, are a matter of existential life and death. Witness the current flap over Rogan’s conversation with Dr. Robert Malone. 

For people who feel obligated, for political or personal reasons, to espouse strong views on Covid, but who have little ability to defend those views, the thought that Joe Rogan would even engage in dialog with a guest like Dr. Malone – a highly credentialed and well-connected immunologist and virologist who espouses skepticism toward aspects of the Covid narrative, and who opposes lockdowns – is tantamount to heresy. That the guest in question actually helped to invent (and may have been the principal inventor of) mRNA vaccines, makes this conversation an existential threat. A matter of life and death. Such a conversation must not be allowed. 

If you want to see an example of bullshitting at its best, read this article from The Atlantic on Dr. Malone. Note how the author spends a whopping five paragraphs “framing” the issue, before bothering to engage the factual question of whether or not Malone a) invented mRNA vaccines, and b) is, in any event, extremely well-qualified to have an opinion on that matter of their use and implementation. Notice how the author is more concerned that his readers know what sort of person Malone is (bitter, angry, tough to work with, etc.,) than in Malone’s actual reasons for taking the views he does. Notice how the little point about whether Malone invented mRNA vaccines is all-but conceded in the end, but carefully danced-around and qualified to the point where the reader almost forgets that it absolutely pertains to the question of expertise and authority. Forgets, indeed, that the author has hardly gone into the substance of Malone’s views, but instead has taken a hatchet to his person. The point of this article is not to refute Malone. It’s to make sure you never have the chance to refute him. That is the mainstream media for you. That is misinformation. That is bullshit.

Now I am not in any position to determine either the truth of Dr. Malone’s specific claims about mRNA vaccines, nor the truth of all of his positions. I am not a scientist, let alone one with the specific, highly-specialized training necessary to adjudicate the point. (Neither, for that matter, was the journalist.) I do not, like Dr. Malone, work deep inside the world of virology, immunology, actual treatment, and medical regulation. It’s 11:33 p.m. here, and I should have been in bed an hour ago. I listen to podcasts in snatches, and have to break the conversation off early. I have a life, and researching every claim, official or dissenting, does not fit into that life. I do not have the professional time to do the extremely time-consuming journalistic work of discovering whether Malone was the inventor of mRNA vaccines, or merely one its first and most towering influences (a point that The Atlantic writer side-handedly concedes.) I’ve always been told that discovering the truth or falsity of specific factual claims was what journalists were supposed to be good at, what they spent their professional time on, but apparently this matter of who first invented mRNA vaccines is beyond discovery – at least when such a discovery becomes inconvenient to the reigning narrative.

In any event, a mere conversation on the matter, or on the efficacy of lockdown policies, of masks, of peer-reviewed studies on the relative strength of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity, and of the efficacy of certain drugs, does not trouble me. Conversation on matters of substance never troubles me. Why does it trouble the author of the Atlantic article? Why does it trouble Twitter? Why does it trouble Neil Young, and other, lesser-known former free-thinkers? Why does a conversation on a podcast merit the notice of the World Health Organization? Why does raising an issue, and allowing others to observe the conversation about that issue, make some people so angry? How can a conversation, one which you can choose to listen or not listen to, even be characterized as “misinformation?”

Real misinformation is when a professional media outlet edits a 911 recording to make one of the speakers sound racist, then pretends it was all an accident. Real misinformation is when an incoming presidential administration pretends to be opposed to foreign entanglements, when actually it has thoroughly committed itself to such entanglements months in advance of taking power. Real misinformation is when a drug company continues to push pain-killers it knows to be highly addictive and deadly, with the cooperation and cover of government regulators. Real misinformation is when a bill that eviscerates the American form of government, and all its careful checks on the Executive Branch, is given the name “The Patriot Act.” Real misinformation is when the same media that relentlessly focuses its cameras on unsafe Covid behavior turns a completely blind eye to exactly the same behavior among its political co-belligerents. Real misinformation is when lockdown leaders tout the importance of masking for everyone, isolating and harming the psychological lives of entire nations, while they privately enjoy busy, mask-less parties. Misinformation – making statements of dubious truth value in order to further a narrative – is the trade and tackle of politicians and politically motivated journalists; of activists and advertisers. This is well known.

Conservatives know it. Liberals know it. Everybody — everybody — knows it. And it’s our constant exposure to this sanctioned misinformation, to this unrelenting professionalized bullshit, that makes us ordinary people, us humble conversationalists, slow to take just anything said by “official” channels at face value. Everything has become politicized. Political and corporate speech, being speech directed toward policy outcomes, is, almost by definition, tainted by misinformation. 

I don’t claim to know the full truth about Covid. Joe Rogan, if you actually listen to his podcasts, doesn’t claim to know the full truth about Covid. Malone is quick to point out that he is only one man, and could be wrong about this point or that. I don’t know — and you don’t know — the full truth about the efficacy of vaccines, natural immunity, masks, lockdowns, various alternative treatments, or the prudence of the current policies. But one thing I do know, one thing I and the other conversationalists understand, is that the pursuit of truth, health, and happiness can only happen in an environment that allows freedom of dialog; of speech oriented toward the discovery of truth. And any other arrangement is a gateway to perpetual misinformation.

This time around, the attempt to cancel yet another practitioner of thought-crime has apparently failed. Rogan is bigger than Spotify, which is part of the problem from the cancelers’ point-of-view. He was big before them. He can exist without them. The logic of cancellation depends on isolation; on cutting off the offending speaker from the conversation of culture. Locking him down. Keeping him gagged, and masked, until he apologizes, and drinks the hemlock of false-apology and perpetual scorn, which is the only mercy that these tyrants allow their victims. And to think, all of this hate is packaged and pitched-in hot as a concern for safety, and as love of one’s neighbor. What a load of bullshit.

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