You're listening to serious inquiries only.

Hello and welcome to serious inquiries only. This is episode 261. I'm Thomas and this is not the last episode before the election as some of my other shows have been already I plan on doing something more directed at that hopefully like Monday so that it's in time for you to still listen to it before Tuesday, but before that though I wanted to do a little follow up. I had a lot of people write in that they were fascinated by the monster island episode

with Aaron and kind of coincidentally there also was somebody who had responded to Aaron's characterization someone who was also in the group someone coming from kind of a different background different experiences who had some things to add maybe some some things that Aaron didn't quite capture and I thought it was perfect to be a chance to get the story from someone else's perspective who was also there but is coming from a different background than Aaron and would have maybe seen different things.

And since people really love that first episode anyway why not do a follow up on it so here we go here is Chris on to talk about his experience on monster island Chris how are you doing today.

I'm really well Thomas how are you I'm doing great thanks for asking so yeah why don't why don't you tell us your story let's start with could you mind giving us a little background and especially around the time of you know whenever this group started I know what was going on for you in your life and that kind of thing.

Sure sure yeah so I can't so I mean it must have been around you know obviously just a little bit before 2016 I remember sort of getting this invite and I can't remember from where but I got this invite to this group.

And when I got in there it was just you know it was the idea we were I was sort of enmeshed in other debate sort of groups and then there's other one was kind of going on and the idea was if I remember correctly that we're just going to get people from different perspectives and we're going to kind of go at it a little bit.

And so I was like okay you know I'm pretty done for that let me see what's going on and so like so I'm a I'm a philosopher by training but I don't but I'm not in I'm not in the academy I don't work and I can I mean I work in academia but not in academia I should say so.

So you know I have a lot of sort of moves and I guess you know like all philosophers I know the names of all of the sort of you know within the discourse so I wasn't going in there to like do that I already have enough of that so I was just going into like have these discussions and be in this place.

And so you know we kind of got going and then I think the sort of the regular people very quickly sort of stood out and there was a regular cast of characters and you know I think it was this sort of typical like hot button issues that but you know so we just sort of go at it about these hot buttons.

Do you mind if I ask for background kind of where you're coming from politically at this moment.

Oh, yeah so I'm all kinds of leftist like I'm pretty like so like I think I'm probably the toxic left person that I may have been that person because lots of times who would come tag me and then I would sort of come in and be like oh we're not even you know we're not even having a discussion anymore we're just slinging shit.

Right and so that's you know we would just that's what would happen that's what we'll go down but you know I think you know I think sort of one thing that's worth sort of talking about is there's a there's a difference between it's sort of being at the fight and sort of being in the fight right sure.

And I think the distinction is something like if somebody says something that hurts you then you're in the fight but if somebody says something that you that that doesn't really affect you or you know doesn't affect sort of a group that you're a part of you're sort of just at the fight and you can respond at the fight in sort of a ways but when you're in the fight.

It feels a little bit different it feels a little sure maybe if you're in the fight you know you know there's there's harshness and stuff but you know you do have to walk away from those things and it's not just an instant process like you know you can just cut out yeah I might stick with you a little bit.

Yeah that's a that's totally valuable distinction do you think though that there's kind of going to be different levels of that you know it might be you might be out of fight in some ways but like let's say something's directed at your kids or something that's not you but you're I'm in that fight you know and

and I would I would also argue that that could that could vary like it could be issues that are anywhere from completely not going to affect me to going to affect people very personally in my life and I still and go so far as to say that that means I'm in the fight like I would take gay marriage for example like I have so many gay people that I'm close with that I get very emotionally distraught when I think about what's happening with the court and what's going to happen to them granting of course that you know my marriage won't be it be affected by that.

Be it be affected but I would still say that there's like going to be a spectrum of I guess I just didn't want to think like being at the fight doesn't mean you don't care or aren't personally affected in some ways would you grab that absolutely totally agree with that.

Sure cool so what was your mindset of going into this group you mentioned it a little bit but are you looking for an outlet or you know to just kind of be able to to like you said sling shit at some people who deserve it or are you looking

Was there a genuine thought of like I'm going to change someone's mind or how are you approaching it yeah yeah it was definitely like a place where you just go to ramble so I was kind of good about the group I think while there's still some sort of cohesion you know lots of the group members are still friends and I think it's because people were kind of funny there was a like kind of a high quality.

There wasn't a there wasn't you know there wasn't a person you just regularly misspelled all the time you know there wasn't like there wasn't too you know the discourse is pretty okay.

People were kind of funny they would bring up sort of interesting topics and sort of get into sort of nuanced things bad as they were.

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