Make Your Life Your Argument

The other day I came across a quote, I guess this is about a year ago that started to radically change the way I thought about how I want to engage on things like social media with people who are very argumentative and combative political opinions that I might disagree with. Conversations on social media platforms, conversations about the pandemic or the virus or the jab or whatever else it might be that comes up. And it seems like we as a culture have started to get lost in this hyper combative oriented way of being that we are constantly living in this reactive state. You know, you see somebody post something online that you disagree with, boom, you're reactive, right? Your nervous system is engaged, you're attached to it, you're in fight flight or freeze mode. Maybe you want to check out altogether and so you numb out. Or maybe you become combative and you want to fight. And so you, you know, you start drafting up this message or, you know, you think, how ridiculous is that? And it consumes your thoughts. And later on in the day you post something you think is sort of contrary to what that person's opinion you saw or read hours before. This is sort of like this attempt to disagree with them but not actually do it directly. I mean, there's so many different ways that we as human beings have become hyper argumentative and hyper combative and incredibly reactive to everything around us. Because as I've talked about in the past, we aren't meant to. You as a human being and your nervous system aren't meant to interact with the amount of external stimulus that you do on a daily basis. You know, your body, your mind, your emotional body, your psychological makeup and your nervous system are not designed for the amount of information that you take in on a daily basis. You know, if you spend 30 minutes on social media, you're going to see hundreds of different opinions, perspectives, beliefs, comments about, you know, what's happening in the world right now. You're going to learn a tremendous amount of information if you scroll through platforms like Reddit or Facebook or, you know, whatever it is that your, your favorite website is. And we are constantly in the state of consuming. And with that consuming comes a certain type of reactivity. And that is almost second nature. You know, that's almost at an unconscious or subconscious level. And it's not even a conscious thought process. Most of the time you're not even thinking about how you are reacting to what you are reading, what you're seeing, the conversation that you're having with somebody on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or what you're viewing on Snapchat, right? Suddenly you're just reacting to it, and you think, how ridiculous is that? And you're hijacked. And so I've been thinking quite a bit about this because there are some very real challeng obstacles, hurdles that we are facing in our current culture, in our current society. And I've been grappling with these large questions of how do I want to respond to them, because I haven't, for the most part, I've steered clear of making political comments on this show. Even when Trump was in power and everybody was sort of piling on, I did my best to navigate a middle ground of creating a space within man talks that was free of that political discourse and charge. Because what I observed was that 98%, 99% of the conversations were completely useless. You know, there was no real critical thinking happening. There was no real discourse happening. It was just slinging shit. You know, it was literally just people arguing constantly and bickering and being combative, and nothing really came of it. And so for me, I took a big step back a few years ago and started to question, how do I engage? How do I, as a human being, as an individual who has a platform, who has a voice, who feels compelled to speak about these things, begin to engage in these conversations and begin to take somewhat of a stand for what I believe in? And that's when I came across this quote. The quote is by a man named Albert Schweitzer. And the quote is very simple. He said, my life is my argument. My life is my argument. And when I read that quote, it was quite a profound moment in many ways, because it made me realize that who I am in every conversation, what I do, and the life that I build and the man that I am around people, the decisions that I make, is the total sum of the argument that I'm making for what it could potentially look like to be a human being. And all of us are sort of doing that to some degree. You know, your life, your way of being, how you show up in the world, how you engage with people at the grocery store and the line and the clerk and online, on Facebook or social media or whatever platform that you use, that is a representation and a manifestation of your life as an argument. So if you show up as a bitter, resentful, combative, maybe ignorant human being, and you're just constantly attacking the character of somebody that disagrees with you, you're making a statement about who you are. You're making a statement about your argument for the human Experience and the human existence. You are making a statement almost from an ontological standpoint of what being is. You know, that it's. That being should be combative and argumentative. So I've started to look at how do I structure my life as an argument for what I believe to be right, to be true, to be moral, and how do I structure my life in a way that allows that argument to speak for itself so that I don't have to be continually in this process of trying to argue with other people to convince them? Because the reality is that that almost never works. Life is not about arguing to convince other people. And if you've tried to convince somebody, like a parent or a family member or, you know, your spouse, your partner, colleague, of something that you fundamentally believe is true, I mean, it's a very difficult task. You know, it's a very difficult task because in some ways, you have a lot invested in convincing them that what you're saying and what you believe is true. Because our beliefs are attached from an egoic standpoint, from an identity standpoint, to who we are, to who we think we are as human beings. And so when we are trying to convince somebody of what we believe, we are naturally trying to convince them in some ways of who we are. And so instead, I started to take this position that my actions will speak for themselves, my decisions will speak for themselves, and they don't always need to be things that. That I broadcast to the world. You know, I think one of the things that I've. I've heard Joe Rogan talk about, for example, is that he doesn't comment online at all on any of the comments on a social media platform. I started to take a similar approach, which is that I don't debate people online. I just don't do it. I've been on social media for a decade, and any debate that I've ever been a part of, that I've ever witnessed, has almost never come to any form of a common ground, of a more beneficial understanding. It's almost always devolved into some form of character attack or misunderstanding. Because the reality is that human communication is so much more nuanced than the text that we dish out on social media. You know, the 200 and whatever, 40 characters that you can put into Twitter or, you know, the paragraphs that you can put up on Instagram or Facebook. We miss out on the visual cues, on the auditory cues, on the sensory data of being around people. And so rather than debating people online, I decided that I will listen to whatever people have to say, you know, I will read what people have to say. I don't want to close myself off to it. But you know, in doing so, I know that I'm going to subject myself to some very hostile, very degrading opinions and that that's the reality of the human experience, is that it's not just all rainbows and sunshine and there's going to be people who vehemently disagree with you to the degree that they decide to attack your character. And so part of my life as an argument, my life is my argument for existence, for what it means to be human, is that I, and hopefully you, if you choose and feel like this way of being is perhaps beneficial for you, part of this for me has been to start to live and embody my beliefs, my values. So if I value truth, and part of that is embodying truth, speaking truth wherever possible, if I value certain privacies, then, you know, executing with that. Like, for example, I haven't showed my son's face on social media because I value privacy to a certain degree. I don't want Facebook and Instagram to have and own those photos for the rest of his life, you know, nor do I want him to sort of feel the pressure of being a 10 year old and knowing that hundreds of thousands of people know who he is and have seen and have seen who he is. And so to start to live some of those values, I think is the embodiment of making your argument. So if you disagree with certain things that are happening politically, economically, socially, culturally, from a liberty standpoint in the world today, you have to choose to live in such a way where your life becomes the argument where you stop bitching and complaining online on social media, trying to convince other people to believe what you believe. And rather you live in such a way where your life becomes the vision of that belief. And that can be about community, it can be about freedom, it can be about togetherness, it can be about, you know, better economic understanding or diversity or inclusion, or treating the environment with more care and awareness, whatever it is. But it's that you turn your life into the embodiment of your argument and you start to shape that. Now the last thing I want to say about this is that when you do that, when you make that choice, there are inevitably certain hardships and certain challenges that are going to come along with that. Because you, in today's world and in any time in existence, if you choose to live your life as the argument, then it presupposes in some way that you will likely be going against the grain of some people's beliefs and some people's decisions, whether that's the government or Big Pharma or your mom or your dad or your neighbor or whoever it is. Okay? And so you need to know that along with having your life be the argument is, along with that is going to come resistance, pushback. There are going to be certain sacrifices, certain obstacles and hardships that you will inevitably face. But at the end of the day, it is about asking yourself what your life stands for and what it means to you and what you want your life to mean and the role that the meaning of your life is to play within culture and society. And so this isn't a small question to ask yourself. This isn't a shift. You know, this doesn't happen overnight where you're like, I'm going to make my life my argument. It's like, no, this is probably going to take a good amount of time for you to begin to really solidify and understand what your values are. But for me, it created a direction of my life, will be my argument. And I will start to live and continue to live in a way where people know my values based on how I act, based on how I choose and I decide and I show up in the world. And so my invitation, friends, today, is make your life your argument and begin on that journey and on that process be well.