Living with integrity and courage will only get harder, as technology permanently makes the mob part of our everyday lives.
Losing touch with your values and getting swayed by the group ends in the quintessential mid-life crisis movie scene, where the protagonist realizes their life hasn’t been their life for as long as they can remember. Especially for people pursuing unconventional lives, withstanding public criticism on a mass level while pursuing what matters most is the key to success. But how exactly do you do it?
I talked to Ali Tate about her journey from canceled model to thriving entrepreneur and how being a black sheep is often a painful but necessary catalyst for growth. After going through a highly public cancellation attempt, she did exactly what the mob most wanted to rob her of: built a business that gave her both financial and personal freedom.
In our conversation, we covered:
How cancel culture trains us to accept empty lives and become NPCs
Unconditioning the habit of deferring your authority to other people
Accepting instead of avoiding the outcomes you fear
Common ways that people disempower themselves today
Opting out of destructive group behavior and beliefs
How having high potential often correlates with being a black sheep
You Can't Create Art Courageously Without This | The Black Sheep LIVE
An artist's guide to the forgotten philosophy of freedom: individualism.
The Common Form of Conformity That Shapes History: The Bandwagon Effect.
You need to know about the social contagion no herd is immune to.
"Follow Your Bliss" Was Actually A Warning | The Black Sheep LIVE
Are you too distracted to live a fulfilling life?
Such an embarrassingly insightful interview with Ali Tate Cutler, Salome! I had no idea you had a podcast with Revolution of One. I just wanted to suggest some future guests for the herd-less podcast: Gillian Florence Sanger, Liza Libes, Christina Buttons, Colin Wright, Zander Keig, Alma Cook, Monica Guzman, John Wood, Jr., April Lawson Kornfield, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Coleman Hughes, Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur, Jillian Michaels, Shelby Steele, Eli Steele, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Carol Swain, and Ayishat Akanbi. With that out of the way, I’ll get started here because I’ve got a lot to say about this podcast!
I think the attempt by that pack of feral woke inquisitors to cancel Ali and destroy her life and career was appalling and disgraceful! There is NO excuse to go after someone like that for her perfectly valid (and factual) opinion. Obesity IS bad! Health at any size is nonsense! By the way “fat shaming” and “fatphobia” don’t exist, those are totally made up concepts! Ali said nothing wrong but they still went after her and nearly destroyed everything she had. But it ultimately didn’t work as she rose from the ashes like a phoenix stronger than she’d been before!
Now she’s a successful entrepreneur with a loving family and a free thinker, no longer afraid to say what she truly believes! She offered us so many gems of wisdom in this interview. She’s 100% right that you don’t just stick with one guru so to speak, your entire life. You have many gurus throughout your life all of which have a fragment of the truth. You’ll never get the whole truth from any one guru. Just like you’ll never learn about current events or all there is to know about a hot button issue just from one thinker or commentator or news source. The truth is usually complex. Not black or white but in the many shades of gray.
I would also reference what she said about cancel culture just being a way to divide and distract the people of this country to fight each other so we can’t team up against them. This is absolutely true! I believe that woke leftist ideology was released into mainstream American society and woke people and ideas were promoted by the establishment in this country: the government, intelligence agencies, big business, and the military-industrial complex they took these ideas and helped them proliferate throughout American society. They realized right away how useful they would be in Balkanizing American society so they could go on with their dirty business as usual! It’s divide and conquer a strategy that’s been used for centuries and is a tale as old as time. After all, if we’re talking about CRT, Trans people in bathrooms, pronouns, white privilege, cultural appropriation, toxic masculinity, etc. how can we unite as one across class lines to fight the powers that be?
I also couldn’t agree more with her we can hold two contradictory ideas inside us which we definitely do as human beings containing both good and bad inside us. There many other examples I could give of this in my own life. I think highly of European colonialism and American imperialism both of which I believe for the most part, did good for the people of the developing world. But I also have deep respect for anti-colonial leaders and movements for national liberation. For example, had I been alive in the 50s and 60s I’m not sure if I would’ve backed the French or the FLN as I sympathize with both causes. I am a fan of both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, two teams that have long been rivals and played each other in the NBA Finals many times. It was quite the dilemma for me in 2008 when I watched Kobe and the Lakers take on the Big Three and the Celtics! I am a committed pacifist who abhors violence or hurting another person but I’m also a hawk on foreign policy, pro-choice, pro-physician-assisted suicide, and pro-death penalty. I love listening to both the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Dixie. I greatly admire top Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Judah P. Benjamin, Stonewall Jackson, P.G.T. Beauregard, and some of the Fire Eaters. But I also look up to Abolitionist heroes like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and the Grimke Sisters. I love the South AND the North and all both unique regions of the country have to offer America despite their longtime rivalry. I love England 🇬🇧 and Ireland 🇮🇪 and would’ve supported the English and Northern Irish authorities in fighting the IRA during the Troubles while also symphazing with the Irish Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and supporting their fight for civil rights 100%! I would’ve sympathized with the Confederacy but hate slavey and would’ve supported Lincoln 100% in his signing on the Emancipation Proclamation! I’d salute an IDF soldier for their service AND a Palestinian activist for their courage any day of the week! Lastly, I’d gladly have supported the New Deal and the Great Society AND the lassiez-faire economic policies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge!
I'm so happy you watched this interview and got so much out of it Noah!
I really resonate with your takeaway from it. Very true about the Balkanizing of America; so many of these ideological campaigns have just been used to divide people, not actually support the groups or causes that activists claim they're working on behalf of.
Also, great potential guest list! I've actually interviewed some people on your list; have you seen these?
Colin Wright + Christina Buttons: https://www.wetheblacksheep.com/p/how-four-ex-leftists-escaped-groupthink
Zander Keig: https://www.wetheblacksheep.com/p/how-open-minded-people-think-differently
Ayishat Akanbi (and Africa Brooke as well): https://www.wetheblacksheep.com/p/you-deserve-better-conversations