Cancelling Cancel Culture w/ Greg Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott

Greg for quite some time. He first came on my radar when he co authored The Calming of the American Mind with Jonathan Heights. That book was seminole in showcasing how young people are essentially learning the opposite skills of cognitive behavioral therapy. For example, they're learning that it's good to catastrophize, have black and white thinking, and to jump

to conclusions with emotional reasoning. Ricky came on my radar more recently when we all do an event together at the Comedy Cellar along with Greg and Jonathan, in which we discussed the role of truth telling in comedy. Greg and John hold Ricky in high esteem, and I see why. As you'll see in this interview, she is quite wise and nuanced in her thinking about such an important topic. And yes, this is a very important topic in America. At the moment, things seem to be getting worse and

worse when it comes to cancel culture. And we're not just talking about canceling conservatives. Everyone seems to be stepping on Eggshelsey's days, scared to speak their mind or real opinion. As Greg and Ricky argue in their book and in which you'll see in this episode, they argue that cancel culture is not the right path forward for democracy. Thankfully, they offer solutions to get us back on track. So

let's get into it. I bring you Greg Lukianov and Ricky Schwat Greg and Ricky, thank you so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast.

met John Hype through. But I actually met Greg through a separate article that I wrote for The Post, which was also one of my like first four there, where I thought, you know, maybe we could uncoddle gen Z with the pandemic and it would be a fortifying, generation defining event. And I contacted Greg and we talked about that possibility, and I still think it's wishful thinking. Greg's a little more optimistic that maybe some of us will

come out for the better as a result. But yeah, so that was that was how we first crossed paths, and then that became a fellowship, and then the fellowship at Fire became writing a book together and really leaning into our intergenerational common values. And I think that's an interesting and unique perspective that we've been able to kind of like meld our minds into this book together.

self censoring your political point of view? And you know, sixty percent of Americans. I can't remember what the actual stat was, but the New York Times, you know, published this say yes in our article where they said, oh, by the way, cancel culture is real. All the data

indicates that it is the sort of lazy response. And there's so many lazy responses to cancel culture, included kind of like well, self subship it's a good thing, you know, and it's like no, when fire asked this question, in particular, in most places, they're actually not asking like are you

telling little white lives to not be rude. They're asking, are you withholding your authentic political opinion in a lot of these cases, And that's not very healthy for a democracy, and that existed already on campus, even just by social force. But when you add into it even the slightest possibility that you might lose your job or get expelled or otherwise just have a horrible, horrible year, you know, become a pariah. Have her heard, for example, or some nightmare

stories about that. That leads to a situation where people are less authentic, less willing to say what they really think, less willing to engage in thought experimentation, devil's advocacy, all these things that make thinking better. And it's utterly toxic, particularly to academia. But it's also not good for democracy either.

their college acceptances. That preemptively makes you self censor to the point where you never even were authentic in the first place, which is something that I experienced myself having gone to n YU, showed up there, was terrified by the concept of being canceled by the people that I needed to live with and in a new city, and nervous and socially anxious, and so I was hiding books

under my bed, like quite literally because I was. I was self censoring and fearful of the potential consequences of being politically authentic.

on the right as well. And it's also very worthwhile to explain that a lot of the professors, a lot of those professors who are getting punished are on the left, and about one third of the of the punishments are initially encouraged by you know, Fox News, by off campus, you know, right wing institutions. A turning Point, USA is horrible professor watch list like this. This stuff actually does happen.

But of course, when it comes to who actually does the firing on campus, it's usually someone who's more left leaning. But a lot of the professors who are targeted by the left are on the left. They're just not sufficiently so according to some of the activists. And most importantly,

people miss this. Yes, one of the reasons why cancel culture got so intense and why so many professors have lost their jobs over the last ten years is partially because this big uptick around twenty seventeen of student petitions to get people to get professors fired. But your audience needs to understand a lot of times those are encouraged, by, facilitated,

by cheered along by administrators. So a lot of the reason why it's gotten so bad on campus is not just that administrators were bad on free speech since my career started in two thousand and one, and suddenly students became bad on free speech in twenty fourteen, it said in a lot of cases that administrators are actually cheering some of the stuff on and making it possible to cancel people with things like bias related incident programs where

you can literally report your professor and your friends for that matter, sometimes anonymously on a hotline.

and institutionalizing it demonstrates that there's an institutional apparatus that is willing to respond to speech, and apparently people are so aggrieved on campus that that's necessary, which I actually think sen's a really terrible message. It's one of the most progressive schools in the country, I think, where I've had an overwhelmingly welcoming and open minded class of peers and students around me. I don't think that bias is

a mass issue at a place like NYU. Of course, if it pops up, I would I would hope that an administrator would respond to that adequately. But the idea of a hotline and that we need it plastered on the back where I d cards around the back of bathroom door stalls is really chilling, I think, in my opinion, because who knows what one person might think bias is.

And internal reports from n YU showed that some of the examples of things that people had called in included someone saying that the photos of students used in promotional material for n YU did not reflect the diverse student body enough. Apparently that's something to call the hotline about.

So now, if ideas can make you unsafe, then you know, that's obviously the extension that that that's their logic, that's their logic. But where do you this This is so tricky in trying to really logically and compassionately think through

the lines. Where are the lines between ideas that can that can generally we devile against people like you, you know, whatever group you're part of, and ideas that make you feel unsafe, where everyone or out on the outside is like that is overreacting, but on the inside it doesn't feel like you're overacting. It really does make you distressed. How do you sort through that swamp?

that I really want people to understand. And this is where the combination of my First Amendment specialization and also my obvious intense interest in social psychology, you know, which you could see in Coddling the American Mind. I've I'm obsessed with that stuff really kind of come together because in First Amendment law there was this idea that you should allow even odious opinions to be aired, because otherwise

they go underground, they fester. And the reason why I don't love that analogy is because it's not strong enough. Because we know about group polarization. We know about group polarization, you know through lots of studies that essentially if you tell people to go to places where because first of all, no censorship changes nobody's minds. Nobody's like, oh, you're saying it's illegal to have this opinion, Well, I guess I

don't have that opinion anymore. Bs they realize that they should talk to people they agree with, but we all know and the research is strong on this. If you end up in a group of people who are all on your political fence, and I think we've had this experience too, that you know, you get together and you talk political issues and you leave much more radicalized in

the direction of the opinion, and that this replicates. But one cool thing about the book that I probably should mention more we got some really interesting data from the National Contagion Research Institute about what happen when people were kicked off Twitter for being offensive or being pro Trump or whatever. All these different sort of mass expulsions from Twitter resulted in and it meant that they all went to GAB and the research also indicated they all got

much more out of touch, much more radicalized. So there's an actual danger to society from the naive belief that we can actually deal with bad ideas by shutting people up. As I often say that you are, the most important thing about freedom of speech is that we're engaged in the project of human knowledge. And part of the project of human knowledge is knowing the world as it is.

But you can't know what the world as it is unless you know what people really think and if you believe you're safer for knowing less about what people really think, you're deluding yourself.

bad if you're not a fan of Trump's. I mean, all that that really did kicking him off of Twitter is gave him his own little echo chamber of people who only agree with him and the rest of us, I mean, or at least I can speak for myself. I don't really know what he's truth socialing unless I see a screenshot from somewhere else. And yet he's the front runner candidate of one of the two major political parties in this country, and the censorship did nothing to

actually stop that. If anything, it just insulated him from criticism and insulated everyone else from actually understanding what a large faction of the country believes. At this point in time.

going to a guru who gives us terrible advice. And this came out of a point when Height and I were working together and we're getting so in the weeds on hers actionality. I told them, we're starting to write a book that I don't want to read, and that's a bad story. So I like allegories, and I know that they don't always work, but in this case, I like, I help, but I think it helps bring people in, you know, by having a story that actually encapsulates the

whole idea. So the idea is that there is a society in which the Sorceress Pandora, that that's that's dysfunctional. The sorces Sorceress Pandora takes away everybody's ability to make ad hominem arguments to to to to avoid the topic. Everybody actually has to be truthful and everybody has to be engaged in like the rules of argumentation where you address, you know, the actual topic. And this society absolutely explodes successfully like it becomes you know, the most innovative place

in the country, in the world. All the scholars go there. It's able to solve problems because people don't dodge around, they just get right to the point. But after like a hundred years of this people her magic starts waning, which is our image of like that it kind of like people missing the point, you know, like to a degree, and the city starts to be divided against itself. We call it Nossopolis, which is city of knowledge because we're

you know, and and on either. So her two granddaughters, you know, one represents like the east side when the the west side that are at each other's throats, and she tries to encourage them to bring the people together, and they're like, no way, Granny, Like, we we want those weapons back. We want we want the ad hominems, we want the things that let you win every argument, because I want to own you libtards, but I want

to you know, get you groomers. And so we just like in in colleague in the American mind, we sort of like introduce a little bit of humor to it. But it's a way of saying that's kind of where I feel like we are. If you can't argue towards truth. You're wasting tremendous cognitive energy on cancel culture, cat videos and just figuring out a way to not actually hear what the other side saying.

the right. But cancel culture is the most extreme version of of a dodge, because if you can scare someone out of saying what they really think, or get them punished for saying what they really think, you might not ever have to have that argument with anyone again because they don't. Actually, I don't want to be the next person who gets fired for that, So cancel culture. We try to make people understand that they should see it as part of only the most dysfunctional part of a

dysfunctional way to argue that we've known is dysfunctional. Going back centuries, like we had rhetorical you know, ideas of what a good argument looks like, going back well before the ancient Greeks, probably but definitely you know, back with the ancient Greeks and Romans and cancel culture, you know, like what kind of like with the allegory of Nososopolis, kind of what what we're saying is we're regressing to these these habits that are very predictable in human nature,

and if we let people use them, they'll use them like crazy. But they get you nowhere, they get you less than nowhere.

would hear all the time people preface their arguments almost as a way to like buttress themselves against criticism by saying as a woman X y Z, or as a

person of color or whatever it might be. Because we've we so fundamentally know that we will get attacked based on our characteristics, or that our characteristics have something to do with the ideas that we're presenting, that we try to like buttress ourselves at the same time, which is like almost the inverse of the ad hominem attacks in a kind of funny way.

And I can attest even back when I, you know, started law school back in nineteen ninety seven at Stanford kind of like you can dismiss somebody like that was well established, Like arguing someone's conservative was kind of the same thing as arguing that they were wrong. And we still do this very much, you know, on Twitter. It's embarrassing and ninety nine percent of people can be accused

of it. I mean, it's one of the reasons why you started seeing the ACLU being accused by some activists of being right wing or in that New York Times it's like, well, it's worked on everyone else before. They hate being called this. But then we go down what we call the demographic funnel, which we had some fun with.

Height actually encourage me not to not actually put the demographic numbers on it, but I insisted, in part because most Americans don't understand what the demographics of the United States actually looks like, so we go through all the race dismissial, gender identities, dismissals, et cetera, et cetera. And by the time you're done, you get down to about point nine percent of the population of the country. But

here's the trick, here's the kicker. If you're in that point nine percent, like so like a trans, non white person, and if you have the wrong opinion, you're still wrong, and actually you might get even greater frustration because people say, you have internalized transphobia, you have internalized misogyny, you have internalized depression, et cetera, et cetera. You actually might be up for greater hate. So like basically, and we've got

examples and quotes of people saying this. It's like, there's a great quote that we have in there from Coleman Hughes of a black independent thinker who sometimes called dismissed his conservative but he's an amazing, amazing, thoughtful dude, and he says he makes the point that it's like, I'm often being told that essentially the color of my skin is the most important thing to give me credibility on any number of topics. But as soon as I have

the wrong opinion. I get told that I'm not really black, So you see, it's perfect, like either I have the right opinion or I'm not really black. John mcwardar said the same thing. Well Will for Riley, Like every black conservative and most black moders we talked to, he said, they've been told, and I think often by white people

they're not really black for their opinions. And that's what makes the rhetorical fortress perfect because it's kind of like there's no way to get out of it, you know, being legitimate.

I didn't agree with him on everything that he said, but there's certainly that accusation that even if I can participate in the conversation because I am a woman, but then even if I have a different or more heterotopus opinion on some things and not the expected opinion as a woman, then i've I must have internalized some sort of external bias, which is I don't believe to be the I just might think about it a little bit differently regardless of my my immutable characteristics.

to make it clear it's about cancel culture. But we have a chapter called Gaslighting of the American Mind, and it's talking about this absolute blow up on Twitter of just people freaking out, Keith Oberman getting really mad, former and New York Times reporters saying that they wouldn't work for that organization anymore if they if they were there, they'd quit right away.

It's the New York Times, and people flipped out. And by the time that even the New York Times, can't you get completely roasted for saying something that's obviously true by people are saying this can't possibly be true. I'm like, no, that's that's called gaslighting. You're telling the whole rest of the country that were not actually seeing what we're seeing with their own eyes.

any generation, so they completely break that pattern. And I think there's a lot of gaslighting with young people in particular because we grew up so mired in cancel culture. And like, if you're a young person trying to explore yourself, figure out who you are, where you want to fit in, go to a new college, start a new job, like, there's so many places where you can fumble and screw up. And I think growing up with no grace or forgiveness

on that front really fundamentally shaped a generation. I think there's a massive authenticity crisis with young people that I felt myself for a long while, and so I would say young people are particularly gas lit.

cancel culture infiltrating psychotherapy? Let's start there.

they're they're one of their nights mercenaries. Is what if it turns out I'm treating someone who's like a Trump supporter, What if I actually find out that they're actually kind of right wing? Like what do I do? Like do I just immediately cancel it? And of course, you know the people I know are kind of like, well, then you treat them, you help them, you know, like you're like you're supposed to. And we've heard this from multiple sources.

But also there was a therapist talking about Sam Barry Weiss and Camille Foster talked to us about this too, about being in a therapy session and having your therapist correct your point of view on something like take time out of the thing you're paying for, which makes it even worse. But to correct to point out like, oh, that might be internalized racism, And I think about, you know, the thing that led me down this entire road was

that led to coddling in the American mind. And this whole weird adventure i'd been on was you know, getting ready to kill myself back in two thousand and seven because I got clinically terribly depressed, partially because of the Culture War, which is one of the reasons why I

actually take all this stuff so seriously. And I think about, what if at the time I went in to talk to to my therapist and they started judging me on the observations that I was having that were just true coming out of constantly being in the culture world all the time, Like I'm literally not sure i'd still be here,

and that's no exaggeration. So the expansion of some of this sort of like I have to correct your thoughts or I don't have to treat people who are you know, fifty percent of the population if I don't like them. That's dangerous stuff for the mental health of the country, and it certainly creates horrible ethical dilemmas for the profession. But actually, have you heard any stories about this, Scott? Oh?

immediate without even knowing their life story. You know, certain like like oh my gosh, you know, I'm treating this person of color, so therefore I need to treat them more delicately and show them more compassion, you know, just pre judging things without which I thought the sort of aim of psychotherapy lest the car Rogers unconditional positive regard. Humanistic psychology approach that I take is that you care

about the individual experience more than anything else. You know, you want to get to know a whole person, you know, and not pre judge them. So it seems to go be the opposite of that. You know, there seems to be a lot of implicit bias in the field, is what I've noticed. Shall we talk about comedy? Should we lighten things up a little bit? This is this is a heavy topic. You know, you guys wrote a heavy book. You know you know it.

mid routine due to sensitivities that people have. I think one of my favorite examples was Constantine Kissing at one point in the UK was invited to do some sort of charity event I think, and he was doing stand up there and I asked him to preemptively write or sign a contract that would say that he wouldn't offend people based on race, religion, gender, etc. Before you even showed up, which I then he pulled out of the event. I don't blame him, because that's certainly, I mean, you

have to risk being offensive if you want to be comedic. Frankly, I mean, I think it's a place where or a cultural space where we can lean into some of the most controversial and uncomfortable reality is in a kind of cathartic way and share of laughs, and this is one. But this definitely is one that gave me a little

bit of in the course of writing it. It's like, uniquely probably the only case study in our book where I feel like there is maybe light at the end of the tunnel, because it's so egregious to see cancel culture in this area that I think I think some people who might be more sympathetic to it creeping up in other crevaces of society are more allergic to the idea of censoring comedians. Because there's two examples that I think we're heartening. One was the Dave Chappelle Netflix protest.

A lot of their employees protested a special on which he made jokes about transgender people. But the company in the end changed their entire policy and kind of like workplace manual to say, you know, we're going to say things in publish things that you're not going to like because we're a publishing platform, and if that's a problem for you, then this is not the company for you, which I think is a really great standard to put forth because it requires everyone to put their own personal

politics and sensitivities aside. Then the other example that was really heartening was Andrew Schulz had to run in with a major streamer. I don't think he ever said publicly which one where they wanted to cut out a few jokes in a special that they bought from him, and he bought it back and sold it on his own and actually ended up making a ton of money on it.

I mean, of course, these are people who already had very well established platforms, which puts them in a much better position to be able to fight back against the cancel culture versus someone who's up and coming. But I do think this is one place where it's just like a lot more people have been willing to say no, like not not here.

that all this stuff as a joke. And then I kind of like I saw this kind of look at looking back, you know, offense archaeology stuff that we talk about in the book, the idea of like looking backwards in time to try to find something that was wouldn't be acceptable today, to for example, get Sarah Silverman in trouble for her for some of the racy bits that she did in her in her short lived comedy Central

piece and getting her canceled. Meanwhile, I watched that show, and the whole joke was that, you know, because she was constantly making out of herself. The joke was that Sarah is a horrible person and she's selfish and narcissistic and does offensive things and doesn't even know they're offensive.

Like so it was actually really funny. But sometimes you get the sense, when critically from younger people looking back, it's like you didn't know that there were multiple levels of things going on in this, Like we knew this was offensive. That was part of the joke. But the joke wasn't that, haha, this is offensive, It was what kind of idiot would actually say something that stupid?

on their own side. And then all of a sudden, once in a blue moon, there will be some degree of self awareness or like a political joke that pokes fun at the left, and that'll be the thing that goes viral because we make fun of the right pretty constantly in forums like that, and I think from time to time it's a little bit of like self referential comedy has become something that we've also pulled away from as well, in fear of being politically incorrect. Yeah.

book that could be perceived as controversial. And she gives this really compassionate explanation of you know, you should use trans people's pronouns. You should be respectful, you should be empathetic, you should be compassionate. But biological sex is real, and we can't pretend it's not real. It's real, and it's important, it has medical implications. And she did it. She did seemed to do her best to really be the brilliant but also compassionate person she actually is. And immediately a

DEI administrator at Harvard, you know, starts calling her out. Immediately, students start organizing, and often times could be clear often the student organizing is very much encouraged by administrators as well, you know, to sign petitions, you know, to punish her. So eventually nobody would be her ta, which Harvard should have came in and said, no, we're not gonna you know,

get we stand by this professor. But the only person who really did that was actually Steve Pinker, who's on our board and as you know, a champion of back at mcfreedom free speech. And she felt very isolated and she got very depressed. She talks about in the book about for the first time actually having suicidal ideation. And she left Harvard. She came back to work for a Pinker for a bit, and she's going to AI now.

And how does this relate to trust and expertise? It relates to trust and expertise because if you're someone in the public and you see this happen and you're like, wait a second, someone just said something that is best I can tell is always in a biolog that has been a scientific fact for my entire life. She says something that I think should be kind of uncontroversial, and

Harvard students and administrators ruined her career. So I don't think science is owning enough how much it's done to undermine its own credibility in the past ten years.

to a really dismal low. Like I think back to the two weeks to Sow the spread sort of time period where I almost everyone I knew was a fan of Anthony Fauci and trusting him and trusting institutions, and yet we saw instances where people who had differing opinions on whether it was Jay Bodatariev pointing out lockdowns or Jennifer say out a school closures being an issue, or you know, Vina Persod I think just recently had a speech of his or a conversation that he was supposed

to have somewhere get canceled because he's had like heterodox COVID opinions as well, and or the lab week theory. I mean, that's pretty much probably, I guess, the lowest hanging crew on something that seemed evident or very potential to potentially possible to people, and yet there was a total cancel culture teardown of anyone who had a heterodox

view on any of these issues. Plus you add in the fact that people had more time than ever on their hands in lockdown to actually analyze some things for themselves and hold competing ideas in their head. And then you have a one way or the highway sort of public discourse, which I think is just one way to just totally and almost irreparably, in my opinion, devastate trust and voices of authority in a way that I mean,

I feel that way personally, but I don't. I'm not reddling in that I don't think that's a positive in any way, shape or form.

psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. Aldus Huxley in Chrome Yellow. I feel like I'm seeing this everywhere right now. Yeah, And I mean everywhere. I will this will left right up down, you know, that's everywhere.

I mean just completely right. You know, I think this is one of the things that we're trying to actually establish that Cancel culture should be understood as this historical period, partially because every historical period has its own weirdnesses, you know, like and one of them is the massive reliance on social media changing the entire way we argue, you know, in some ways much for the much much worse. And that you know, that's why we are definition of has

a historical like beginning date. But these instincts, you know, that lead to it, they're part of us. They are hardwired. But righteous indignation, I mean it just like Huxley says, I mean it's calling yourself a hero, you know, just for the way you feel and how much you disapprove and how much disgust you can muster. And it's so tempting. It's so tempting to feel that superiority over someone, particularly

when you think your cause is righteous. And it's one of the reasons why humility and checking yourself and one of those things both Ricky and I repeat all the time, taking seriously the possibility you might be wrong on this, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt you're wrong about an awful lot of stuff, So you know, before you go decide to campaign to burn that which you know, to have a moment of being like, have I been

wrong about stuff before? And if your answer is no, you never have been, well, I don't think I can help you very much.

with an analogy in the book about slouching. And I think it's really important to realize that it takes a degree in the same way that like you need to be purposeful in standing up straight and actually realize when your shoulders are slagy. It does take a degree of of buy in and and and personal discipline to make sure that you don't indulge those instincts. And I don't think that's something that we really teach anymore. I have those the idioms of live and let live and to

each their own. I think those have really gone to the wayside with my generation and and I mean not just my generation, but in the past couple of decades in our culture, and we're seeing now the consequences of that.

what canceling really is versus those who claim canceling. But really, you know, when you look deeper, some of them actually even use it as ways of increasing their money, getting money in platform. They scream, you know, I've been canceled, support me at Patreon, you know, and then they become

richer than anyone else. But there are some people where I feel like they they could easily have made the choice to not have a victim mentality over it and move forward with their lives very productively in a way that they weren't really actually technically canceled. But what are some of your thoughts. I know you have strong opinions about this.

because they're canceling me. And I definitely, for a period of time assumed that you know, anything that might have been negative or ambiguous directed towards me was for that reason, and in retrospect, I remember just like one morning I woke up and I was like, hey, oh gosh, I totally have a victim mentality over this right now, and like, yes he did lead some friend, but certainly not everything bad that's happening is because they wrote not bad in the New York Post's that's for sure.

arguments this silly. The reason why we tie it to First Amendment is because it brings in a lot of complexity and nuance to a short definition it recognizes, for example, you know, incitement is not protected, defamation, it's not protected, true threats or not protected. Except it allows you to have a lot of complexity in a short definition, introduces a tremendous amount of nuance to it, and your company has the right of freedom association to decide I don't

want to work with this person. I don't want this person representing me. But here's the problem from a culture free speech, from a national and a perspective. If every employer decided that they're both a widget factory and by the way, they have a right or left political point of view that if you disagree with you can get fired. That may be something technically they can do, but it's

terrible for our democratic republic. It's terrible for democracy because you'd have a situation where technically you have a First Amendment right, but you can't actually say anything because because you can't, you won't be able to work. So I like having that as part of the definition. It doesn't it's not too hard to explain. But as far as like the actual objection, that's why I ended up in the appendix.

middle school at this point in time? And I mean, there's just so many instances of random people here and there just being torn down by mobs since the beginning of cancel culture, and across all age groups and demographics. I think there's a certainly a misunderstanding that it's minority

groups teaming back power or only attacking the privilege. The chair downs have been pretty indiscriminate if you ask me, and I think the case studies that we have throughout the book demonstrate that fact for sure.