WRITING, SPEAKING AND PREACHING

Image Credit: Palmetto News-Opinion

The transition from the written exchange of ideas to the audio-visual has been seismic. This may explain the extremity of expression in the public domain. Reading and reflecting upon a well constructed opinion has fallen prey to Twitter reflexes. The incitement caused by watching the passionate, or simply ignorant, clouds the perception of the ideas behind the visual and aural. The range of YouTube presentations goes from the tightly constructed social-political essays of Black Pigeon Speaks to the riffing rants of adolescents with poor education and no life experience.

The fact that intellectuals like Peterson, Weinstein, Rubin, Murray and Harari share the same video locale as PewDiePie is in itself revolutionary. The fact that the youthful viewership of the former have been massively outweighed by that of the latter is disturbing.

The defining characteristic of the intellectual wing of streaming media has been its recent transition to the roadshow format. This has been a promising trend toward cultural and intellectual equilibrium from the imbalance created in universities by race and victim obsessed administrations. The large turnout at public lectures by intelligent presenters alone and on panels may be an indication that the more educated and affluent are interested in turning from the collectivist mob culture of indoctrinated Leftists in favor of science, statistics and common sense.

But actions instigate equal reactions in the balancing act of cause and effect. The loud attention-seeking behavior of the immature Left has evoked a loud and somewhat preaching response from The Center and The Right. The former group has set the tone of shrill diatribe, punctuated with cartoon costumes and simplistic placards. The challenge of the intellectual reaction is treading the line between preaching and discourse in public speaking.

David Rubin's Rubin Report channel on YouTube is a fine example of  intelligent video conversation. Rubin is an excellent interviewer who has carried on the tradition of great television interviewers like David Susskind. Susskind provided intelligent interviews in sharp contrast to his successors, like Barbara Walters or Merv Griffin, who changed the interview-show format from enlightening conversation to light entertainment.

Videos of live roadshows of intellectuals like Jordan B. Peterson or Yuval Noah Harari or Douglas Murray, whose recent books have shaken awake the educated and literate of The West, reveal another aspect of this cultural transition in the presentation of ideas. Somehow the live lecture format, as opposed to the live debate format, can drift toward an atmosphere of preaching to the choir. The intellectual equivalent of rock stars singing to their groupies. This too makes sense from the point of view of the process of balance. The opposing diversity and social justice wave which has inundated universities is based in preaching, shaming and forced repentance.

As a writer of ideas with no investment in any one team, I am able to enjoy the rants of Cornell West and Paul Joseph Watson equally. This has all brought me back to my Buddhist-inspired practice of detachment. From that detachment, I draw my own conclusions or hypotheses, which are often constructed in part with harmonic and sympathetic pieces of opposing viewpoints. presented in various media. Becoming a team player in terms of lock-step ideology has never been my scene.