Premium: When Did Everything Become A Matter of Life or Death?

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Mental Health

4.6 • 961 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2024

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.widerlenspod.com

In today’s discourse, many issues are approached with a moral absolutist perspective. Positions are often viewed as either entirely right or wrong, with little room for nuanced understanding or compromise. This binary thinking leads to more extreme reactions and a diminished tolerance for opposing viewpoints.

“If you had facts and reason on your side, you could tolerate a conversation.”

The tendency to frame disagreements as crises or moral emergencies heightens the stakes of discussions. Issues like gender identity in sports or public health measures become not just political or social questions but moral imperatives. This ‘crisis mode’ escalates emotional responses, reduces the likelihood of constructive dialogue, and discourages open debate and the exchange of ideas - ultimately undermining the possibility of finding common ground or reaching compromises.

There is no denying the significant role that media, especially social media, plays in amplifying and reinforcing polarized views. Algorithms and content curation contribute to the formation of echo chambers, exposing individuals primarily to information that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs. This feedback loop exacerbates polarization, perpetuating the framework for debates in terms of moral battles.

In this bonus episode for premium subscribers, Maud Maron reflects on the phenomenon of contemporary disagreements intensifying into a stark dichotomy of ‘good versus evil’, rather than being viewed as areas for legitimate debate - examining how this cultural and social trend (heavily fostered by the influence of social media) is creating a landscape where differing opinions are not just seen as alternative perspectives but as existential threats.

Watch our full length episode with Maud Maron: https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/episode-184

For instructions on setting up a private feed to listen to our premium content in your favorite podcast app, visit https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/how-to-listen-to-our-full-premium.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi Widerlens Podcast listener. What you're about to hear is a preview of one of our bonus
0:05.9	episodes for premium subscribers.
0:08.2	If you'd like to hear the rest, head over to widerLens pod.com and sign up for any of our paid membership options.
0:14.8	Paid subscriptions allow us to continue to create high quality content for our
0:18.7	listeners all around the world. Now here's the preview of this week's exclusive content.
0:24.0	Why do you think that this, like, I guess, crisis of...
0:31.0	I don't want to just say free speech,
0:33.0	as part of it, but it's also like a crisis of discussion and consideration.
0:39.0	Like, why do you think it has reached such a bizarre place?
0:42.0	This is more extreme than, mean I'm I'm in my 40s but I can't think of any other
0:47.1	time when things have been just so polarized to where it's not just seen as a difference of opinion,
0:53.5	it's always a life or death matter.
0:55.5	And I'm not sure why have we gotten to this place.
0:58.9	Yeah.
1:00.1	Yeah.
1:01.4	You know, I want it, you asked me earlier, Sasha, about like, the good faith, tried to attribute good faith to the other side, which gets hard sometimes. So I'm going to give you what I think is a true
1:13.7	answer and it may not sound like good faith but I really just do think when you don't have
1:20.8	facts or reason on your side you can't tolerate the conversation, right?
1:25.2	Like, there isn't a good reason to say this three-year-old little boy knows that he's a girl
1:32.1	and we're going to socialize him as a girl up until when he's nine and we're going to shove him
1:36.4	Purity Blockers and like by the time he's 16 or 17 he's gonna not have a penis anymore like that is a tragic and long form abuse and mutilation and I just, you know, if that if there was a real good reason to do that you could talk about it and I don't think there's a real good reason to do that to a young person which is I say that knowing that there are adult trans people who report being truly happy with their lives and happy with their
2:06.1	transition and but I just don't I think if you had facts and reason on your side you could tolerate a conversation and I find that so I found
	...

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