Any time I've had my mind changed about something substantial, the epiphany always hit several days (or months) after the event that precipitated my reconsideration of a given issue. It seems I am incapable of being persuaded on the spot. I think it is because I first have to go through an internal process wherein I pose point against counterpoint, sort of resembling the dialogues in your videos. (I used to have a job running a floor buffer in a large hotel lobby for two hours every night. Highly recommend. The monotony and steady white noise really lend to the contemplation of weighty matters.)
Also similarly, the result has rarely been that I "switched sides" (except maybe twice). Rather, I usually arrive at some reframing of the issue. Based on conversations I've had, I suspect a large number of people have never had this experience. So I certainly see the value of compellingly modeling the process of rumination leading to a reformed perspective. Will it fall on deaf ears? I don't know. I need to better understand the forces that keep us deadlocked in our perspectives. Now, where is my floor buffer?
You described the process I've gone through in having my mind changed as well! Usually it starts with simply the recognition that something is more complicated than I believed. Then comes the half-conscious, back-of-mind stewing that can move me toward a different view eventually. Most major changes came in part from enjoyable disagreements with people I respect.
Your experience is why I don't really talk in terms of changing minds, but in terms of *expanding* minds :)
And actually....I used to produce a podcast that told the stories of people who've made all kinds of 'mind expansions.' There weren't really 180's, but like you said, reframings of the issue. You might enjoy this episode while you look for that floor buffer: https://www.reckonings.show/episodes/17
Such an outstanding article, Stephanie! A round of virtual applause for you! 👏👏👏 Faces of X is exactly what this country and the entire western world need right now! I’m so glad you let me know about this series! Most political and social issues are NOT simple or binary. Reality itself is multifaceted and contains many sides. We need to put all the pieces together to see the whole puzzle. Your example of when you we’re working with those activists in the Redwoods and you thought you guys were taking on a greedy corporation but it turned out to be a bunch of ordinary, working class people including migrants from Latin America working as loggers to make a living and put food on the table was a perfect illustration of this truth! I’ve encountered this many times both in my studies as an up and coming historian and looking into the big political issues of our times especially the Israel-Palestine Conflict. It is definitely essential we build a more all encompassing world view because reality is complex. I will give a couple examples of each. I’ll start with the American Civil War. The Civil War is one of the most important events in our history that shaped us a nation for generations to come. But it is very poorly understood by your average person. This is because it’s seen in one of two ways. Either it was the good and noble South just fighting for their states’ rights against the evil and tyrannical federal government in the North or it was the good and noble North just fighting the evil South who committed treason to hold human beings as property. The truth is that the American Civil War was fought over both of those issues and many others. While the Confederacy was (typically for its time) a slaveholding society where black people were second-class citizens, there we’re 3,000-6,000 black Confederate soldiers and sailors. It should also be known that thousands of black and mixed-race Southerners volunteered their services to the South when the war broke out and supported secession as they saw the South as their home just like their white counterparts. By the same token, while the abolitionist movement was going strong in the North, Northerners generally agreed slavery was wrong and black people who lived in the North were free and did not have to deal with slavery, the North was by no means a racial utopia. In fact it was just as racist as the South. Ever heard of the 1863 New York City Draft Riots? This was when angry mobs of mostly Irish immigrants reeked havoc on the Big Apple for several days. Guess what it was partly caused by? Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The Irish did not want to have to compete against free blacks for jobs. Their was horrific violence against black Americans during the riots including a black orphanage being burned to the ground, a black man being hung and set on fire and random black pedestrians being beaten to death by angry feral mobs. Not to mention, you know where the first Jim Crow laws were implemented? In the North! Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and their fellow activists fought against streetcar segregation not in Alabama, Mississippi or Kentucky but in Massachusetts in places like Portsmouth, Salem and Boston. The other historical example I would use would be the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. While it is certainly true the Jewish state was in a fight for its survival and that the surrounding Arab countries and most of the local Arabs had intended to strangle the newborn state in its cradle and horrific war crimes were committed against the Jews by the Arabs, that’s only one side of the story. There were also war crimes committed by Jews against the Arabs this would include looting, rape and mass executions (such as the massacres committed at Deir Yassin and Lydda). Nor did the Israelis always engage in good faith negotiations with the Arabs. I would also note that there were many cases of Palestinians who had fled trying to return to their homes and property and the Israeli soldiers who had since conquered their land would turn them away. I will now use a couple examples from American politics. I support gay marriage and LGBT civil rights 100% but I also believe in religious freedom protections. I don’t believe the government can say, force a church to officiate a gay wedding, a baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding or a DJ to spin their sick beats at a gay wedding if these parties choose not to. The public in turn is free to do a free market boycott (which I would join). I would also use the example of immigration. I firmly believe in reforming the immigration system, giving amnesty and a pathway to citizenship to all undocumented immigrants who don’t have a criminal record, raising the immigration quota, abolish ICE and returning to legacy INS, and starting a temporary guest worker program. But I also believe we need to build a wall on the Southern border, keep the diversity lottery and all the requirements that come with it, increase funding for the border patrol, bring back the Remain in Mexico Policy and Rapid DNA testing for illegal immigrants, and end the use of sanctuary cities. Again, love what you're doing Stephanie! Keep up the incredible work!
You're on a roll with your synthesis perspectives! I love your articulation of the Civil War. Indeed, Faces of Race notes that it was actually the *North* that made blacks 3/5 human -- for votes.
I love this project you've taken on, and it' a relief to see this point made so clearly! I would love to see a Faces of The Electoral System, vel sim., because frankly I am fascinated by what feels so clear and obvious to me every time we face a presidential election: that something is clearly deeply wrong about the way we are representing the will of the people. In my mind, the statistical odds of ending up with such a perfect deadlock every four years are wildly unnatural and, imo, an indication that something is structurally awry. Yet, any time I mention this on social media, I'm astonished at the number of folks who seem so firmly against any reform. Personally, I'm a fan of RCV, but I've also read about the STAR system and think that could be equally impactful. Regardless, I'd love to see a synthesis of contrasting viewpoints on the general notion of reforming our electoral system and maybe even some exploration of what kind of reform would suit the most people the best.
As an aside, I would love to hear you talk with Yascha Mounk -- Yascha is one of my other favorite poli-/social-science wonks and I think it would be awesome to see where you both do and do not align. I've found that he can be very academic, to the occasional loss of accessibility, but you both appear to me to share some common goals. It's folks like yourself and Yascha that give me the most hope these days, and I think if we could form thoughtful communities with minds like your own at the helm we could really find a way out of this socio-political quagmire we've been in since the dawn of social media.
Miss Blacksheep, You Absolutely Broke Through the Noise... Thank You!
Hey Stephanie,
I just had to take a moment to personally thank you for your post, "Even The Worst People Know Things You Don’t."
I can’t even begin to express how refreshing it was to stumble across something this raw, real, and fantastically original amidst all the Trendmill-Type content we usually wade through.
What you’ve done here is exceptionally rare, it's like finding a golden nugget buried deep in a sea of The-Samefeedness-Syndrome.
Your post, and idea... didn’t just challenge the usual narratives... it completely obliterated them.
You didn’t settle for TweetTrap level hot takes or the ContentCarbonCopy that plagues most of the content out there... but you, you dug deep and brought something that actually mattered.
I can’t tell you how much that’s needed in a landscape full of Opinionaire-Echoes and Hash-Tag-Haze.
Personally, I needed it!
I mean the way you wove together your experience with the Redwood Action Team (RAT) and how it led to the creation of Faces of X was simply brilliant! It’s the kind of personal authenticity that is so sorely missing from the usual Influencenertia we see.
I was absolutely hooked when you explained the moment you realized the loggers weren’t the caricatures you’d imagined but real people with their families... that was such an incredibly important insight, one not talked about enough... Empathic Ignorance.
It’s this kind of empathy and nuanced thinking that we desperately need to see more of online.
Your approach to "steel-manning" different perspectives is... Revolutionary!
So often we get stuck in Memenotony, just hearing the same straw-man arguments over and over again.
But with Faces of X, you’ve given us something truly special... the integration of real, thoughtful perspectives in a way that doesn’t reduce complex issues to simplistic binaries. It’s clear that you’re striving for true synthesis, not the superficial both-sides-ism that so often passes as nuance.
And speaking of nuance, the way you handled the gender discussion with Buck Angel in Faces of Gender?
Absolutely breathtaking. You didn’t shy away from the hard stuff... you took it head-on and created a space where real, meaningful discourse could happen.
It’s something that, frankly, I thought the internet had lost entirely...
But here you are, proving that there’s still room for thoughtful, deeply considered dialogue amidst the Vibortex of hot takes.
This post and your work with Faces of X didn’t just stand out to me... it was a Reaction-Breaker.
I’m still thinking about it, hours later, and that’s not something that happens with most content these days.
You've managed to integrate perspectives in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or forced, but deeply thoughtful and real.
A deep hearted... Thank you, Stephanie, for creating something that genuinely made me stop and think.
You’ve crafted a piece that transcends the usual Scrollegnation and gave me hope that the digital space still has room for fresh, original voices like Yours!
Keep going, because we need more of this!
More steel-manning!... More synthesis... More realness!
You’ve not only added value to the conversation... you’ve elevated it to a whole new level!
With deep, deep, appreciation and a hopeful look at "Faces of X"...
😊... You may use in ANY way, all or in part, of the post as you wish. All yours do you as you wish as it was sincere and for you.
I don't know the label "integral theory" but I will look into, holds weight coming from you.
Please feel free to contact me for any help i can offer as far as content generation from text to research to creating any multimedia you might need. Those are my fortes.
I like what your doing with "The Black Sheep" and "The Faces of X"... very promising projects I think!
Would love to contribute... if you have the need anyway.
Many controversial debates in politics, work, relationships are polarities - not problems. Polarities reflect tension across a spectrum - where you may seek balance or resolution, but there is never one perfect solution.
The idea of steelmanning perspectives - in pursuit of synthesizing them into a broader, more compelling new truth - is excellent.
I love this perspective Waqas, it's a difficult one to develop and practice but it offers us so much more nuance when we do. I think we often come to see different viewpoints today as inherently contradictory, Us vs Them dynamics when they really aren't.
You can often confirm this is true by how the same Us vs Them framework shows up between increasingly similar points of view, for example: Rightwing vs Leftwing seems like inherently opposed viewpoints in every way, but the same Us vs Them dynamic often shows up between two leftwing viewpoints too! This shows me it's more often just the way we're choosing to frame things rather than the truth of the situation.
Any time I've had my mind changed about something substantial, the epiphany always hit several days (or months) after the event that precipitated my reconsideration of a given issue. It seems I am incapable of being persuaded on the spot. I think it is because I first have to go through an internal process wherein I pose point against counterpoint, sort of resembling the dialogues in your videos. (I used to have a job running a floor buffer in a large hotel lobby for two hours every night. Highly recommend. The monotony and steady white noise really lend to the contemplation of weighty matters.)
Also similarly, the result has rarely been that I "switched sides" (except maybe twice). Rather, I usually arrive at some reframing of the issue. Based on conversations I've had, I suspect a large number of people have never had this experience. So I certainly see the value of compellingly modeling the process of rumination leading to a reformed perspective. Will it fall on deaf ears? I don't know. I need to better understand the forces that keep us deadlocked in our perspectives. Now, where is my floor buffer?
You described the process I've gone through in having my mind changed as well! Usually it starts with simply the recognition that something is more complicated than I believed. Then comes the half-conscious, back-of-mind stewing that can move me toward a different view eventually. Most major changes came in part from enjoyable disagreements with people I respect.
AMEN, Benjamin.
Your experience is why I don't really talk in terms of changing minds, but in terms of *expanding* minds :)
And actually....I used to produce a podcast that told the stories of people who've made all kinds of 'mind expansions.' There weren't really 180's, but like you said, reframings of the issue. You might enjoy this episode while you look for that floor buffer: https://www.reckonings.show/episodes/17
Thanks. I’ll give it a listen.
Such an outstanding article, Stephanie! A round of virtual applause for you! 👏👏👏 Faces of X is exactly what this country and the entire western world need right now! I’m so glad you let me know about this series! Most political and social issues are NOT simple or binary. Reality itself is multifaceted and contains many sides. We need to put all the pieces together to see the whole puzzle. Your example of when you we’re working with those activists in the Redwoods and you thought you guys were taking on a greedy corporation but it turned out to be a bunch of ordinary, working class people including migrants from Latin America working as loggers to make a living and put food on the table was a perfect illustration of this truth! I’ve encountered this many times both in my studies as an up and coming historian and looking into the big political issues of our times especially the Israel-Palestine Conflict. It is definitely essential we build a more all encompassing world view because reality is complex. I will give a couple examples of each. I’ll start with the American Civil War. The Civil War is one of the most important events in our history that shaped us a nation for generations to come. But it is very poorly understood by your average person. This is because it’s seen in one of two ways. Either it was the good and noble South just fighting for their states’ rights against the evil and tyrannical federal government in the North or it was the good and noble North just fighting the evil South who committed treason to hold human beings as property. The truth is that the American Civil War was fought over both of those issues and many others. While the Confederacy was (typically for its time) a slaveholding society where black people were second-class citizens, there we’re 3,000-6,000 black Confederate soldiers and sailors. It should also be known that thousands of black and mixed-race Southerners volunteered their services to the South when the war broke out and supported secession as they saw the South as their home just like their white counterparts. By the same token, while the abolitionist movement was going strong in the North, Northerners generally agreed slavery was wrong and black people who lived in the North were free and did not have to deal with slavery, the North was by no means a racial utopia. In fact it was just as racist as the South. Ever heard of the 1863 New York City Draft Riots? This was when angry mobs of mostly Irish immigrants reeked havoc on the Big Apple for several days. Guess what it was partly caused by? Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The Irish did not want to have to compete against free blacks for jobs. Their was horrific violence against black Americans during the riots including a black orphanage being burned to the ground, a black man being hung and set on fire and random black pedestrians being beaten to death by angry feral mobs. Not to mention, you know where the first Jim Crow laws were implemented? In the North! Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and their fellow activists fought against streetcar segregation not in Alabama, Mississippi or Kentucky but in Massachusetts in places like Portsmouth, Salem and Boston. The other historical example I would use would be the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. While it is certainly true the Jewish state was in a fight for its survival and that the surrounding Arab countries and most of the local Arabs had intended to strangle the newborn state in its cradle and horrific war crimes were committed against the Jews by the Arabs, that’s only one side of the story. There were also war crimes committed by Jews against the Arabs this would include looting, rape and mass executions (such as the massacres committed at Deir Yassin and Lydda). Nor did the Israelis always engage in good faith negotiations with the Arabs. I would also note that there were many cases of Palestinians who had fled trying to return to their homes and property and the Israeli soldiers who had since conquered their land would turn them away. I will now use a couple examples from American politics. I support gay marriage and LGBT civil rights 100% but I also believe in religious freedom protections. I don’t believe the government can say, force a church to officiate a gay wedding, a baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding or a DJ to spin their sick beats at a gay wedding if these parties choose not to. The public in turn is free to do a free market boycott (which I would join). I would also use the example of immigration. I firmly believe in reforming the immigration system, giving amnesty and a pathway to citizenship to all undocumented immigrants who don’t have a criminal record, raising the immigration quota, abolish ICE and returning to legacy INS, and starting a temporary guest worker program. But I also believe we need to build a wall on the Southern border, keep the diversity lottery and all the requirements that come with it, increase funding for the border patrol, bring back the Remain in Mexico Policy and Rapid DNA testing for illegal immigrants, and end the use of sanctuary cities. Again, love what you're doing Stephanie! Keep up the incredible work!
AMEN, Noah!!!!
You're on a roll with your synthesis perspectives! I love your articulation of the Civil War. Indeed, Faces of Race notes that it was actually the *North* that made blacks 3/5 human -- for votes.
Thank you!
💜💜💜💜
Under the towering Redwood tree
The village worthy stands
I love this project you've taken on, and it' a relief to see this point made so clearly! I would love to see a Faces of The Electoral System, vel sim., because frankly I am fascinated by what feels so clear and obvious to me every time we face a presidential election: that something is clearly deeply wrong about the way we are representing the will of the people. In my mind, the statistical odds of ending up with such a perfect deadlock every four years are wildly unnatural and, imo, an indication that something is structurally awry. Yet, any time I mention this on social media, I'm astonished at the number of folks who seem so firmly against any reform. Personally, I'm a fan of RCV, but I've also read about the STAR system and think that could be equally impactful. Regardless, I'd love to see a synthesis of contrasting viewpoints on the general notion of reforming our electoral system and maybe even some exploration of what kind of reform would suit the most people the best.
As an aside, I would love to hear you talk with Yascha Mounk -- Yascha is one of my other favorite poli-/social-science wonks and I think it would be awesome to see where you both do and do not align. I've found that he can be very academic, to the occasional loss of accessibility, but you both appear to me to share some common goals. It's folks like yourself and Yascha that give me the most hope these days, and I think if we could form thoughtful communities with minds like your own at the helm we could really find a way out of this socio-political quagmire we've been in since the dawn of social media.
Aw thank you Phil!
Much appreciated!
Faces of The Electoral System...love it....noted.
And I'd love to talk with Yascha! I reached out to him but never heard back 🙃
Miss Blacksheep, You Absolutely Broke Through the Noise... Thank You!
Hey Stephanie,
I just had to take a moment to personally thank you for your post, "Even The Worst People Know Things You Don’t."
I can’t even begin to express how refreshing it was to stumble across something this raw, real, and fantastically original amidst all the Trendmill-Type content we usually wade through.
What you’ve done here is exceptionally rare, it's like finding a golden nugget buried deep in a sea of The-Samefeedness-Syndrome.
Your post, and idea... didn’t just challenge the usual narratives... it completely obliterated them.
You didn’t settle for TweetTrap level hot takes or the ContentCarbonCopy that plagues most of the content out there... but you, you dug deep and brought something that actually mattered.
I can’t tell you how much that’s needed in a landscape full of Opinionaire-Echoes and Hash-Tag-Haze.
Personally, I needed it!
I mean the way you wove together your experience with the Redwood Action Team (RAT) and how it led to the creation of Faces of X was simply brilliant! It’s the kind of personal authenticity that is so sorely missing from the usual Influencenertia we see.
I was absolutely hooked when you explained the moment you realized the loggers weren’t the caricatures you’d imagined but real people with their families... that was such an incredibly important insight, one not talked about enough... Empathic Ignorance.
It’s this kind of empathy and nuanced thinking that we desperately need to see more of online.
Your approach to "steel-manning" different perspectives is... Revolutionary!
So often we get stuck in Memenotony, just hearing the same straw-man arguments over and over again.
But with Faces of X, you’ve given us something truly special... the integration of real, thoughtful perspectives in a way that doesn’t reduce complex issues to simplistic binaries. It’s clear that you’re striving for true synthesis, not the superficial both-sides-ism that so often passes as nuance.
And speaking of nuance, the way you handled the gender discussion with Buck Angel in Faces of Gender?
Absolutely breathtaking. You didn’t shy away from the hard stuff... you took it head-on and created a space where real, meaningful discourse could happen.
It’s something that, frankly, I thought the internet had lost entirely...
But here you are, proving that there’s still room for thoughtful, deeply considered dialogue amidst the Vibortex of hot takes.
This post and your work with Faces of X didn’t just stand out to me... it was a Reaction-Breaker.
I’m still thinking about it, hours later, and that’s not something that happens with most content these days.
You've managed to integrate perspectives in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or forced, but deeply thoughtful and real.
A deep hearted... Thank you, Stephanie, for creating something that genuinely made me stop and think.
You’ve crafted a piece that transcends the usual Scrollegnation and gave me hope that the digital space still has room for fresh, original voices like Yours!
Keep going, because we need more of this!
More steel-manning!... More synthesis... More realness!
You’ve not only added value to the conversation... you’ve elevated it to a whole new level!
With deep, deep, appreciation and a hopeful look at "Faces of X"...
Mr(There is Hope After All)Joe
Wowwww thank you Mr Joe!!!!!!
Deeply appreciated 💛 💛 💛
Can I use excerpts from your comment to fundraise for future videos?! (<-- Seriously.)
Also, can't help but ask....are you familiar with integral theory? It's been a major source of inspiration, and may resonate with you: https://integrallife.com/the-faces-of-x-making-peace-with-the-culture-war/
😊... You may use in ANY way, all or in part, of the post as you wish. All yours do you as you wish as it was sincere and for you.
I don't know the label "integral theory" but I will look into, holds weight coming from you.
Please feel free to contact me for any help i can offer as far as content generation from text to research to creating any multimedia you might need. Those are my fortes.
I like what your doing with "The Black Sheep" and "The Faces of X"... very promising projects I think!
Would love to contribute... if you have the need anyway.
Cheers my friend, good stuff!
SWEET, thank you, will do 🥰
Many controversial debates in politics, work, relationships are polarities - not problems. Polarities reflect tension across a spectrum - where you may seek balance or resolution, but there is never one perfect solution.
The idea of steelmanning perspectives - in pursuit of synthesizing them into a broader, more compelling new truth - is excellent.
I love this perspective Waqas, it's a difficult one to develop and practice but it offers us so much more nuance when we do. I think we often come to see different viewpoints today as inherently contradictory, Us vs Them dynamics when they really aren't.
You can often confirm this is true by how the same Us vs Them framework shows up between increasingly similar points of view, for example: Rightwing vs Leftwing seems like inherently opposed viewpoints in every way, but the same Us vs Them dynamic often shows up between two leftwing viewpoints too! This shows me it's more often just the way we're choosing to frame things rather than the truth of the situation.
Couldn’t agree more. Sharing a related thought: https://x.com/vixsheikh/status/1718336864124571911?s=46&t=cuLmZmT1cnQGctFiGxO5jw
AMEN, Waqas! Polarities are to be tended, not eliminated :))))