Why You Have A Moral Imperative To Share Your Story

Unless we speak our truth, our narrative will be created for us. People will believe what they see online, pushed by the curators of their individual echo chambers. Thus, others' perceptions of you, and the people belonging to your groups, will not be correct. Quotes will be mined, small disagreements emphasised and conflicts stoked. All for profit. In this episode of The Reality Check Podcas,t I break down our moral imperative to share our unique stories.

Transcript

I want to posit something to you.

If you have the ability to share your story,

You have a moral imperative to do so.

Let me explain.

There's a lot of stereotypes and stigma and narratives that get pushed forth by society.

This could be a corporate interest sort of thing,

In the sense that if we promote a particular perspective,

If we promote stories that suggest a certain narrative,

Things get sold.

We get clicks on our clickbait articles.

Not many of us have a lot of time on our hands.

We sort of just take things at face value,

And we don't really question what we actually think on a certain topic.

And that can lead to us just leaning back on our prior experiences,

Our past understandings,

And what we're exposed to now.

I mean,

Test it for yourself.

What do you think of when I say vegan,

Or transgender,

Or right-wing,

Or autistic,

Or borderline personality,

Or anxiety,

Or gay?

Pick any sort of group,

And I guarantee you that it will instantly and immediately result in you popping up a certain image of that particular sort of person.

Now,

Even saying this sounds controversial because,

Of course,

Everyone is individual.

Of course,

We are all unique.

But unfortunately,

Unless we have personal experience,

Or we take the time to look into it,

A lot of the time,

We just go back on a default assumption,

Go back on our clichés,

Go back on what we've heard.

Because it's any group.

Pick a religion,

If I say Christian,

Or Muslim,

Or Jew,

Or Hindu,

Or whatever.

All of these sort of groups will immediately trigger an emotional and sort of memory-based response in you.

It's happening now.

And although you want to not feel that way,

Although the sort of logical intellectual part of you is like,

No,

That's wrong.

These people are individuals.

You can't help it if I was to say white,

Or black,

Or Hispanic,

Or Asian.

Pick any topic,

Any sort of area that you can sort of divide humanity up.

And men and women even,

Right?

There's a very strong tendency to fall back to clichés and stereotypes.

And this is only natural.

We do it,

Our brains evolved to lump things into past experiences to stereotype as a way to keep us safe.

If you see something that looks like a snake on the ground,

But it's a stick,

Your brain will be evolutionarily biased towards,

At least initially,

Thinking that snake-looking stick is a snake to keep you safe.

If you hear a dangerous rustle in the bushes,

You run because it might be a lion,

Or a tiger,

Or some other sort of animal is going to kill you.

If your tribe that you grew up in had experienced a bunch of raids from neighboring tribes,

You grew to be wary of neighboring tribes,

To hate them,

To be able to do the thing to keep yourself and your tribe alive,

Right?

It's evolutionary.

But we are no longer in those times.

We are in modern times.

We have modern communications.

We have a whole variety of external influences.

So this led me to the conclusion that if you can,

If you can stomach it,

If you can sort of deal with the mental health ramifications of doing so,

You have a moral obligation to share your story.

This has sort of come about,

Or me wanting to share this sort of line of reasoning has come about from watching Dave Chappelle's most recent special,

And then the responses from varying communities.

And if you're familiar with this,

Basically Dave Chappelle is a comedian who's one of the most successful,

Well-known comedians of all time,

Whose most recent special was basically pushing back and highlighting the impact that the transgender community has had on him and how he's responding.

Basically it's split people down multiple paths,

And there's been a strong pushback against that special,

Against him in general,

To get him canceled.

But then he's pushed back again saying,

Well,

You know,

Like,

This is,

You know,

I'm willing to have a dialogue.

Let's talk,

But let's make sure that we've all,

That we come together with a mutual understanding that we're,

You know,

Like in a time and place that we are able to have a discussion.

The point that I'm dwelling on here is,

And I'm not going to give my opinion on Dave Chappelle or the controversy.

I want to talk a little bit about more the meta responses here.

There's a risk that the conflict that someone like a Dave Chappelle,

And I'm only using that because it's current in the media now,

But he says some potentially controversial things that impact a group,

A minority group.

And there's a,

There is legitimate reasons for that group to feel offended,

But there's a problem in which if the corporate news media,

If people on social media,

If people that can profit from pushing a conflict,

People that can profit from causing derision,

Highlighting issues,

Quote mining,

Sort of picking a side and pushing it,

People are making money off causing hatred,

Right?

So if you're down the path that is,

You know,

More against Dave Chappelle in this,

You know,

The transgender,

The sort of quote left,

Whatever that sort of side of it is,

You're seeing clickbaity articles,

You're seeing quotes taken out of place.

You're probably not even watching the original source material.

You're seeing people that you know sharing things from news sources that are anti Dave Chappelle that are pushing against him.

And by reading those articles,

You are now making them money.

You know,

They put advertisements on,

They sell you stuff.

Conversely,

If you're on the other side of things,

You're seeing the people pushing the other side of the narrative.

And it's not necessarily,

And it's definitely not Dave Chappelle's narrative,

But they're sort of jumping on board and look at using him as a platform to talk about the fragile left and,

You know,

Over the top political correctness and all that sort of stuff.

And they're making money off those views.

The point is that the true stories get lost.

The actual reality,

You know,

Dave Chappelle's side of things gets lost because people will quote mind him and sort of just talk for him or just point out little bits.

People that are offended by him get lost in the narrative too,

Because it becomes this sort of screaming majority,

Not majority,

Screaming sort of mob mentality of people just yelling back saying it's wrong,

You know,

Cancel this,

Change that.

And that becomes this overwhelming force of just noise.

The problem is that those sort of curated and narrated explanations of our experiences are not real.

Now,

Once again,

I want to highlight this beyond just the Dave Chappelle thing and put it into talking about mental illness,

Talking about sexuality,

Talking about religion and race and gender and age and all of the different things that I mentioned before.

The media,

Social media,

Clickbaity,

All of that sort of stuff,

Just the way sort of society is set up,

Tends to drown out our actual stories.

I know a couple of transgender people.

I have experience with sort of down that way myself.

I have had issues with gender myself.

I wouldn't consider myself transgender in any sense,

But I've had gender fluidity concerns,

Debates with myself.

That's beside the point.

I've had issues with mental health and mental illness.

I'm obviously the gender and age and race that I am.

The point is my story is unique,

Just like yours is,

But there is no way that if someone was to take even this podcast or take anything that I've put online and summarize it and say like,

Zach believes this thing,

They would be wrong and it would be a misappropriation,

Misunderstanding,

A misreporting of how I actually feel.

If you're a part of any of those communities that I've listed and you are,

You've got a unique story and I feel like it's your moral obligation to share the actual nuances of how you feel because it's very easy to get caught up with and identify with the screaming masses.

The screaming masses say,

Hey,

Dave Chappelle is X.

You're like,

Well,

I'm a part of that,

So I better believe that.

The thing is if you don't,

Then that group or at least certain extreme members of that group start beating on you and sort of push you out,

Polarizing you.

It's happening right now in my home country,

Australia.

We're sort of being strongly encouraged,

Some would say forced,

Mandated to get a vaccine and this is causing people to pull multiple directions.

If you don't choose a side,

People are literally saying,

Hey,

Choose a side,

Get vaccinated or,

Hey,

Choose a side,

Don't get vaccinated for these reasons.

It's very easy to look at people that are vaxxed or aren't vaxxed and judge them based on what we're being told by the media,

Based on the stereotype that is being projected.

This is a friend of mine highlighted this analogy.

Back in the day,

She was quite an adamant feminist,

But then she didn't quite agree with the absolute extremes that some of her cohort was saying.

She highlighted that and then they just took her to town,

Basically demeaning her for not being on board as much.

It was just this slight nuance of opinion.

This has happened multiple times with multiple people I know actually.

That sort of attack made her realize that,

Oh my God,

These people aren't thinking for themselves.

They're sort of jumping on this bandwagon and just sort of going in the train.

The train's on the tracks,

But there's no driver.

Then she realized that it's sort of like we're being shown one side of a thing.

If I should hold a picture up to you and on your side,

It's a picture of a family and on my side,

It's blank.

I don't realize there's another side to that picture.

I might go my entire life just thinking that all pictures or that picture,

Sorry,

Is blank.

You'll go your whole life thinking that there's a family on board.

The point is we need to start realizing that we're all seeing things from a different perspective.

Our pasts,

Our experiences,

Our genetics,

Our everything will cause us to interpret reality differently and have different experiences.

I saw a post recently highlighting the looks effect or the prettiness effect,

Basically highlighting the people that,

Quote,

Used to be ugly that got plastic surgery or lost a bunch of weight at the gym or whatever and we're now seen as,

Quote,

Pretty,

Have a lot of an easier time in the world.

They're sort of highlighting that the world treats ugly people a lot differently to how it treats,

Quote,

Pretty people.

That's something that I was unaware of,

Right?

The point I'm trying to drive at is no matter where you find yourself,

What issues you have,

Your demographics,

What you've experienced.

It's your moral imperative to share that,

To share it widely,

To say,

Hey,

This is the reality.

If you're a transgender person,

If you don't identify as transgender or anything on the LGBTQ plus spectrum or however you refer to it,

Then it feels like a moral imperative to say,

Hey,

This is the reality of what I'm experiencing.

Yes,

Some of the things that are shown in the media are true.

Some of the victimization is true,

But not all of it or that's a very rare case.

Yes,

That's tragic that this thing happened to this person in this country at this time,

But on the whole,

This is the reality.

This is the reality of the issues that I'm facing.

If you've got a mental illness,

If you're depressed,

If you're anxious,

If you've got borderline,

If you're autistic,

Whatever you've got,

This is the actual issues that we face.

This is how my life actually is.

Because if we don't speak up,

If we don't share our actual story,

We're letting other people do the talking for us.

We're letting people that want to make money off conflict do the talking for us.

That whole conflict structure of the dialogue is not going to change easily.

If you are passionate about your issue,

It's quite important that you do share that nuance because I tell you what,

If you're on one side of the argument and you're trying to talk to someone on the other side of the argument,

People very,

Very,

Very quickly clam up and will very quickly say like,

Oh,

That's just another crazy whatever.

Compare the whole Trump supporters.

I've had many discussions like this,

People saying Trump supporters are crazy,

They're this,

They're that.

But if you speak to the Trump supporters,

They're saying that the non-Trump supporters are crazy for different reasons but with the same further.

The point is unless we have an open and honest dialogue,

Unless we share our stories,

Unless we express how we're actually feeling and put a human real face to discussions,

There's a risk that we're just going to be yelling past each other and that the extremes or the people making money off the conflict will be speaking the narrative for you.

Is every vegan the same level of crazy that you see in the memes?

Right?

Now,

No offense to vegans,

I know a bunch of you and you're all great but I've met a couple that feel that stereotype quite well.

Same for extremely Christian people,

Right?

Same for any of those demographics that I mentioned before.

I've seen the majority actually of almost every group,

Every group,

Don't match the stereotypes,

Don't match what we see in the media,

Don't fall into the conflict that we see projected.

There are a few,

Of course,

But there's outliers and crazies in every group,

Right?

There's people that will push it to the extreme that seem to sort of identify as this trait of me is my defining characteristic because it feels like if someone's transgender,

That that's their entire personality.

That's the one thing that matters.

It feels like if someone is black,

That's the entire thing that matters.

If someone's a vegan,

That's all that they care about.

If someone's Christian,

That's all that they want to think about,

Right?

The reality is that for the vast majority of people in all of those groups,

That's not the case.

It's one aspect of their personality.

Just one,

And oftentimes just a small aspect.

Yeah,

That's just me.

I've got all these other cool things that I do,

Right?

You want to talk about it?

Fine.

If you don't want to talk about it,

Fine.

It literally doesn't matter.

But if we don't share our stories,

If we don't sort of open up and be like,

Hey,

This is the reality for someone in my position,

Someone with this condition,

Someone with this sexuality,

Someone of this race,

Gender,

Whatever,

We're going to have our narrative spoken to us.

Then the general population will see you and judge you based on how you're being represented in the media,

How you're being represented in memes,

How you're being represented in a way that is just distinctly unfair.

Not only will that be doing a disservice to you and your entire community,

But it will also be doing a disservice to the world because it will cause groups to fall into silos,

Into different patches where it's like,

Well,

This is us and this is them.

If you're not one of us,

You're against us.

You're my enemy.

You're the tribe that I need to defeat to sort of kill.

I am very hesitant to share my personal opinion on any of the topics.

I like to talk meta in this podcast because for me to be able to actually have an opinion,

There's so many caveats.

It's like,

Well,

I think this,

But I'm not that smart and I don't know the full topic and I'm not a member of the group.

I just don't know.

What I want to hear from,

What I want to speak to,

What I want to read and listen to is your real stories.

I just want to finish with an example of Jocko Willink.

He is one of my favorite digital mentors,

Someone online that I've learned a lot from,

A lot about discipline,

About willpower,

About leadership,

About life.

For whatever reason,

It makes sense.

He's a military man,

An ex-navy SEAL commander.

He gets a lot of right-wing supporters and extreme right-wing supporters.

I've seen them quote mining and taking Jocko's word out of hand and twisting it to form their narrative.

But because I've listened to literally hundreds of hours of his podcasts and read his books and stuff,

I have a pretty nuanced view of what he feels,

At least what he's projecting.

Obviously,

You don't know someone like that,

But compared to what people say he believes,

Compared to what he's actually saying that he believes,

What he's been doing,

What he's demonstrating,

There's a clear difference between those two.

But by being able to listen to his story,

To read his works,

To listen to the podcast,

All of that sort of stuff,

I can actually,

With confidence,

Say like,

Yeah,

I do think you're hitting the money with when you say what he's like or no,

I disagree and you might need to do a bit more research on this topic.

So if it's an example of one person,

But apply that across the board to entire groups of people and you're starting to see my point,

I don't like the idea of misrepresentation,

Of stigma,

Of any of that sort of stuff.

So if you have a story you want to share,

I encourage you to do so.

Write a blog,

Do a podcast,

Speak.

I've got a thing on my website called the Share Your Story Project where people can write and I'll write in and basically share an aspect of their past,

Exactly what I'm talking about on this podcast.

I'll put a link down below so you can check it out,

Check out the stories that are up and potentially can contribute your own story if you want.

This is what it was like growing up with this mental condition.

This is what it was like with this sexuality.

This is what it was like.

This is my story and I'll share it.

But basically,

I just want to suggest just speak up because otherwise there's a chance that you'll be misrepresented.

Anyway,

Cheers.

I am Lors

Reviews

I loved this. Yes. So true that you have to believe all or you're out. I don't like one political party ok. That's ok. But the other one lies and does bad things with good manners. It's not ok to call out. Or question. Matt Taibbi wrote Hate,Inc to illustrate the contrived divide in our views and now our lives. Heck, I can't even be interested in UFOs 😂

Hi Zachary, thanks for sharing this very interesting topic and ideas! Joe

Beautifully stated and woven together message that has me thinking and doing some self reflection about where I have been and what I growing into. Appreciate this showing up in my life at this moment in time. Looking forward to following Zachary more. Keep creating.