An Invitation

Short term pain, long term gain.

Free speech attorney Greg Lukianoff, founder of FIRE, was recently interviewed on Spotify by Lex Fridman, view/listen here.

And, for readers who would prefer to listen for 5 minutes:

Why am I recommending this? Because Greg illuminates what’s happening with cancel culture and the fear that we live in these days that we’re going to say or do the wrong thing and end up being vilified, judged, sanctioned, even fired or shunned by friends and family. And, living in fear creates an environment that foments mental illness of all kinds.

One memorable example he gives is of Levi's brand president Jennifer Sey who was fired for speaking out against COVID measures for kids. She worried that school closures would do more harm than good (a position that is now generally accepted, in retrospect, as having been proven true) and went public with her concerns. She was censured by her company and eventually offered a one million dollar settlement to 'stay quiet' after moving from California to Denver so her children could attend school during Covid. She turned that down and, faced with being fired, resigned. Here’s her story. It’s fascinating.

During the interview, Greg recalls what happened back when the printing press was invented. Suddenly, people could write about things, other people could read them, and all hell broke loose. Women were accused of being witches and burned at the stake. Religious persecution spiked. In response, King Henry tried to contain the damage, issuing proclamations to limit what was written.

That didn’t work. The genie was out of the bottle. It was horrible.

But, long-term, our ability to write and publish and learn has fueled great advances in human evolution. So, there was short-term pain but long-term gain. Greg draws a parallel with the invention of social media today and suggests that we are at a similar pivotal moment. There’s no doubt that social media is damaging, especially to children. But attempts at censorship, trying to contain the beast… it won’t work this time either.

He makes the point - and it’s a difficult one to fully embrace - that just because something is offensive doesn’t mean we should forbid it. An example he gives is of Ira Glasser and the ACLU supporting a neo-Nazi rally in Skokie, Illinois in 1977. There’s a new documentary film out on this, Mighty Ira, see the trailer here. For those of you who won’t dig into this - spoiler alert - the rally happened, but a counter rally totally dwarfed it and the whole angst-ridden episode resulted in the building of a museum for Holocaust survivors. Short-term pain, long-term gain.

I’m using this theme to set up an offer, which I hope will be irresistible to at least a handful of you. And, knowing how few people read long articles (this is already long by some standards), I’ll be extending personal invitations to those of you who I believe might be interested. A few of you have already said “Yes.” I’ll be in touch with details.

The offer I’m referencing is to help beta test materials I’m developing for the non-profit foundation I’m launching, the OpenMind Fitness Foundation. These will take the form of short audio programs which I describe as mental workout programs. It’s an experiment and I frame this in the short-term pain, long-term gain paradigm, because there’s discipline involved.

Participants will need to commit to being consistent, listening every day (programs are very short, total time investment is probably 10 minutes a day) and journaling what happens over a two-week period, 10 days actually because we take weekends off. There will also be a brief opening zoom call required plus a zoom debrief at the end.

I plan to launch the program in early November and conclude before Thanksgiving.

What do you get out of it? Well, the programs are being developed to improve mental/emotional function. So, if they work, that’s a personal benefit. I’m also going to offer every person in the beta test a one-year free subscription to the app we’ll develop for these programs. That should be available some time next year.

Please let me know if you are interested in exploring this. Just email me back and I’ll put you on the list for more details to come.

Back to the free speech issue: having an open mind is healthy! Personally, and in society. So, this program is meant to increase open-mindedness.

In the meantime, I hope you click into some of the links above and educate yourself on this issue. Truly, it is a momentous pivot-point in human history and we don’t know yet what the long-term picture is going to look like. Let’s inform ourselves so we can contribute to positive outcomes and be on the right side of history.