Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing that's just feeding your greed, oh I bet that you'll be fine without it.
You're listening to The Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields -Milburn and T .K.
Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.
Uh -oh. This one is going to be a doozy, yo.
Spicy. Aww, thank you, Malabama.
Hello, everybody. This episode is actually being released the day before the 2024 United States presidential election.
And I'm sure that election, actually I guarantee that election is going to creep its way into our conversation today.
But the topic we really want to discuss is more evergreen than a single election.
Today, we hope to talk about the true cost of political division.
We also want to explore what it means to let go of politics.
Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about how we can minimize political division when we don't agree with other people.
And then we've got a lightning round question about whether it ever makes sense not to vote.
That's followed by our right here, right now segment, and a listener tip.
You can check out the maximal edition of episode 467.
That's the full two -hour episode.
and I've got to say that one was deep.
There were disagreements.
There were debates.
Post -production, Peter came on and we had these conversations.
They became emotional, but I thought it was very productive.
This is one of those topics that's incredibly difficult to talk about, but TK, you did such an amazing job having these conversations.
And I'm really grateful we had the opportunity to talk about that.
That maximal episode is out right now, patreon .com, slash The Minimalists.
We answer three times as many questions.
We dive deep into several simple living segments.
And your support over there on Patreon keeps our podcast 100 % advertisement free because sing along at home, y 'all.
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All right. Let's start with our callers.
If you have a question or a comment for our show, we would love to hear from you.
Give us a call. Our phone number is 4062197839, or email a voice recording to podcast at TheMinimalists .com.
Our first question today is from Nina.
Hi there, my name is Nina, I'm from southern California and I'm a Patreon subscriber!
I was wondering how you feel about the current politics, and the impact that it's having on people, and how we can stay hopeful.
I'm saddened to see all the hate and silencing that is spreading around today.
I know that hate is not a new thing, but I feel like we're going backwards in a way and seeing more and more separation between us.
It feels like as people we have less and less control, some more than others.
I don't understand why simple human rights are being threatened.
Here's just a few examples.
Transgender rights, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the banning of abortion.
And the school libraries in Florida being emptied and removing books that tell the history of the terrible injustice that was sent to the black community.
As a registered voter, I feel that my vote doesn't have that big of an impact on real change, and I'm not sure what I can do to help going forward. I think this is something that we all feel, especially this time every four years.
It could be local elections.
It could just be when we turn on the news or walking through the airport, and all of a sudden you see, as Nina talks about, hate or division.
I think fundamentally, she's asking a few questions.
I do want to talk about what does it mean to let go of politics or minimize politics in one's life.
But before we get to that, let's talk about minimizing political division when we don't agree with other people.
I think it's inevitable.
And one of the things that I absolutely love about this show, I was talking to a good friend of mine recently and she's brilliant, really high IQ, way smarter than me.
And she was telling me that this is the most important election of our lifetimes but I remember hearing that four years ago not from her but from someone else.
Maybe it was a news media, maybe it was a different friend, maybe it was a pundit, maybe it was a politician.
This is the most important election and I heard 12 years ago and 16 years ago and 20 years ago and before I could even vote I was hearing that this is the most important and political election of our lifetime.
And I guess in some sense, that could be true if it becomes slightly more important every four years.
But I don't think that's what we mean by it.
I think we all think it captured by the moment.
We also get captured in our own rightness, our own righteousness, one might say.
And what I love about this show and what I love about my friends that I have, like you and Nicodemus is I know that all three of us voted differently in the last election.
And I told my friend that and she looked at me almost incredulous.
She was certainly shocked like, wait, two of your best friends in the entire world vote differently from you?
And I said, yeah, my wife actually voted different from me in the last election as well.
Okay, which one is the evil one?
And how are you guys still friends?
Yes, speak on that.
Because I think that is almost the implied message there.
Yeah, so one very important distinction that plays a major role in any discussion that we have about differences political or otherwise, is the distinction between a belief and a theory of belief formation.
A belief just refers to any opinion that you consider to be true, any idea that you take to be reasonable.
Your beliefs are the things that you argue for and against when you find yourself in the middle of a debate.
Your theory of belief formation refers to a set of assumptions and inferences that you about why other people believe the things they do.
It's your way of making sense out of people's thought process.
So an everyday politically neutral example, suppose I were to say, I think the Boston Red Sox are the best baseball team in the history of the game.
There'll be an example of a belief and I might have different supporting reasons for that, maybe the aesthetics, the number of hall of famers they produce world series, appearances, et cetera.
And one day I'm at the bar with my buddy and he says, Tiki I hear you say that all the time, But to be honest, man, I actually think the New York Yankees are the best baseball team of all time.
Now what we have is a clash of beliefs.
Here's the interesting part.
The mere existence of a belief clash is not a sufficient condition for any kind of heated conflict.
In order to get that, you have to invoke the second factor, which is your theory of belief formation.
What do I think about the thought process of people who believe this sort of thing?
Suppose my theory of belief formation when it comes to the Boston Red Sox is, is everybody knows that the Boston Red Sox are the best team in baseball.
It's pretty obvious for anyone with half a brain who isn't deliberately choosing to be intellectually lazy.
But here's the truth.
If anybody tells you that they don't think the Boston Red Sox are the best team, they're lying to you, they're lying to themselves just to cover up the fact that they hate people who are from Boston.
If that's my theory of belief formation, that makes it pretty improbable that I'm going to be able to have a non -adversarial reaction to this person expressing a preference for the Yankees.
On the other hand, suppose my theory of belief formation is, you know what, this is a complex topic that doesn't mean there is no right or wrong about it, but it is a debate that has been around longer than the amount of years I've been alive.
And there are intelligent people that have landed on both sides.
There are plausible sounding arguments that could be made on both sides, some of which I have not quite developed my own ability to refute.
And there's something that I have to learn from everybody who believes anything on this position.
And there really are no stereotypes that apply to everyone in a demographic even though, there are some stereotypes that apply to some individuals.
And if I ever hope to change people on this, then I'm probably gonna have to engage them charitably.
And sometimes I don't need to change people, but in order to harmoniously coexist, I'm probably gonna have to engage them charitably.
If that's my theory of belief formation about it, like there's a complex range of factors that determine what people end up thinking about the Yankees versus Red Sox, then that means I'm going to have a reaction that is more charitable, that is more curious, and that is more constructive.
And none of this will be based on effort, it will be the natural outflow of the way I see people who believe in certain types of things.
Part of the problem with political marketing is that it relies on shaming tactics.
We talk about every kind of shaming, we talk about fat shaming, we talk about gender shaming, we talk about race shaming, kink shaming, body shaming.
I mean, but the most powerful and pervasive form of shaming in America is political shaming because we are far more overt, far more explicit, far more comfortable condemning than in any other topic.
I often say that politics in America is the only religion where even the non -believers tell you you're going to go to hell for not practicing it.
And so you take statements like, you don't belong to this demographic if you don't vote in this way.
As a matter of fact, let me just list off some statements.
And I want you to listen for the ones that you feel about other people who vote in a different way than you.
And I'm also going to say that one or more of these statements is 100 % true about you in someone else's eyes.
The fact that you vote that way proves that you hate white people.
The fact that you vote that way proves that you hate brown people.
You vote that way because you hate Americans.
You vote that way because you hate immigrants.
You vote that way because you hate kids.
You vote that way, because you hate trans kids.
You vote that way because you hate people who don't want to have kids.
You vote that way because you hate traditional marriage.
You vote that way because you hate people who identify as LGBTQ.
You vote that way because you hate Muslims. You vote that way because you hate Jews.
You vote that way because you hate truth.
You vote that way because you hate freedom.
You vote that way because you hate America.
You vote that way because you don't care about anybody other than yourself.
One or more of those statements is absolutely true of you in someone else's eyes.
That's how half the country sees you right now.
And there's a good chance that you harbor one of those feelings towards someone else.
And the question I ask is, how the heck does anyone think some kind of charitable constructive discussion is going to be had when you go into it with that theory of belief formation?
And what we have to do is we have to find a way to separate ourselves from the propagandized theories of belief formation that we are instructed to have because this is good for controlling and influencing the way you want people to vote.
It's good for political marketing but it's not good for us.
I would say that that type of tribalism can be a bit lazy.
Now it's necessary to find an out -group when we lived in tribes of 150 people, you know, Dunbar's number or maybe even fewer people than that.
And as soon as you saw someone different, And of course they were the enemy.
You had to otherize them.
And that type of tribalism meant since because it saved your life.
A tribe unites against something.
A community unites around something, and politics, specifically partisan politics, I wanna make that distinction here in a moment.
Partisan politics has become tribal in a way where we're no longer uniting around something.
Sure, we have talking points around the things that we believe, but it's much more a cult of we are uniting against someone else.
And then we make some other group and then we make someone an avatar of that group and then we can hate that person.
And therefore we get to hate everyone else in that group.
There's a particular kind of self -righteousness there that you're talking about.
And I think that type of self -righteousness is insecurity that has metastasized the tribe.
It's so much easier to be self -righteous.
We all want to be right, but we never stop to question whether or not we actually are right.
It just feels good to be right.
It feels good to be self -righteous.
Now TK I'd love to talk to you about this idea of letting go of politics.
What does it mean to let go of politics?
Because that was not Nina specific question, but I almost hear that question behind the question.
She is overwhelmed.
She is maybe feeling anxious about this political season and that anxiety will creep up every election or every time you turn on the news or now you get on social media or YouTube and there's an underlying anxiety there.
When I talk about letting go of politics, what I'm not talking about is the original meaning of politics.
The Latin politics just means the affairs of the people.
If we're talking about the affairs of the people, I'm all for the affairs of the people.
What is great for the community, right?
We're talking about politics now.
It's almost always partisan politics.
Are you Republican, Democrat?
Are you progressive or conservative?
Right? And so, at what point did we go from the affairs of the people to partisan teams for which we root?
Well, I... I want to say that I think sometimes the best form of letting go is making a decision to redefine and recontextualize your relationship to a thing.
If you are, if you have a problem with overeating, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to let go of food.
It might just mean there's an opportunity to transform gradually your relationship to food, right?
Or maybe if you find yourself getting into arguments with people all the time and you're never able to have a charitable conversation no matter who it is, that doesn't mean you need to let go of arguments or logic or reasoning or disagreement.
It might just means you need to do some recontextualizing about when you argue, how you argue, and how you proceed when you're in a discussion.
So I don't think people need to let go of politics and I like the way you define it, but even based on other definitions, I don't think people need to let go of it, but I think what happens is we find ourselves getting entangled and enmeshed in these teams and we get so absorbed in the weeds and in the details that we lose our ability to think with composure, that we lose our ability to think rationally about basic things.
I gave a sports example about baseball earlier.
I'm from Chicago, and I remember the Chicago Cubs having the meltdown against the Florida Marlins and there being this critical moment where it looks like the Marlins are going to hit a home run ball that is about to be caught by the Cubs outfielder.
The Cubs outfielder looks like he might catch it, but a fan also grabs a ball at the same time and is kind of ambiguous and we're not so sure.
before, that single moment changed that fan's life forever.
It's a moment that's happened a thousand times in baseball history, but the fans of the city blamed that kid for the loss, and it changed his life forever.
He had to have security, escort him out.
He ended up moving and living much more of a quiet life.
In fact, when the Cubs won the World Series years later, they wanted to kind of honor him because of all that he had been through, and I believe give him a ring.
And I don't know the latest if he accepted it or not, but I know that his response, you know, exhibited the sounds of a man that was deeply wounded.
And it was sort of like, hey look, I just would like this to go away.
I would just like to not, for this to not be talked about before.
Does America need to let go of sports?
No, do the Chicago Cubs fans need to let go of baseball?
No, but sometimes we take things too far by losing our grounding, losing our sense of balance.
Everything in life has a place, Even politics, politics affects every area of life.
That does not mean that every area of life needs to be approached as if it's a political debate or a voting competition.
There are some things that are best approached in other ways.
When you're on the dance floor, on a date with your lover, yeah, politics actually affects that.
That doesn't mean that's the best time to be talking about it or that's the best time to be debating about it or that you ought to approach how you dance in a way that is political.
You know what? I think that's spot -on.
I think there is an additional layer here.
And that layer has something to do with the prioritization of what is important.
We're treating the things that are exciting as though they are the most important.
So we see the presidential election and red team versus blue team, you have Trump versus Kamala or Obama versus Romney or whomever, and that is the most sexy version of politics, right?
The affairs of the people.
But maybe the priority is like, do you know who the president of your municipal water district is?
I do, his name's Michael.
And no one in my neighborhood knows Michael very well, but you know what, the clean water that comes to my house is much more important, or if there's lead pipes in my neighborhood, that is going to affect me and my family much more than the presidential election.
It doesn't mean the presidential election doesn't affect me or my family, but it's not nearly as sexy to know who the third member running for city council is in your small old town of 8 ,000 people.
What is much more sexy is what is going on during debate night tonight.
And there's more to it than it just looking sexy to us on an individual level, there's a social incentive as well.
I remember one of the major changes I experienced when I moved to LA where so many people are our models, actors, aspiring entertainers.
And there's just a different health consciousness, a different image consciousness in LA.
And I bought some ice cream and I went to go pay for it.
I'm in a Ralph's and it's the first time in my life I felt self -conscious because the other person was like, hey, bro, you good?
You cool? Like you're depressed?
Like, what are you doing went with that tub of ice cream.
And LA's just a different city.
Anybody who lives here kinda knows what I'm talking about.
But our behavior changes when we see people respond to us differently.
That's why interventions are so powerful when it comes to drug addiction.
And when it comes to politics, here's the social reality of it.
There is no one who is going to change their opinion about you based on you knowing who Michael is or not.
No one really cares.
If you say, hey guys, I know Michael, I had lunch with him today.
Guess what? Everyone who thought you were a bad person still thinks that.
Everyone who thought you're a good person doesn't need that.
Your status in society is the same.
You don't have a bunch of celebrities.
You don't have a bunch of rich people.
You don't have a bunch of Hollywood actors.
You don't have a bunch of teachers.
You don't have a bunch of influencers telling you, you no longer get to identify with this demographic if you don't vote this way.
And so there's a social incentive to make sure that we look like we care and many people that are just taxed and overburdened on this topic, it's because on one end, they know that they might have lost some balance, but at the same time, in stepping back, they want to make sure they don't look like someone who is just this privileged person who is choosing to stuff their head in the sand and ignore really important issues.
Why? Because they know when people see you not worrying, when people see you not anxious, when people see you not saying, hey we gotta save the country from going to hell in a hand basket by making sure that devil doesn't get into office, they start to wonder about you.
Hey, are you on the team or not?
Yeah, and I think that there's also this, if I take it a little bit further there, I don't have to have an opinion about everything.
It doesn't mean I'm burying my head in the sand, as you said there.
There is such a thing as blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm ignoring you. I don't want to hear it.
But also I don't have to have an opinion about everything.
Even on a local level I'm thinking I live in Ojai, California and there's this measure on the ballot, all these signs all over town, vote no on issue O or vote yes on issue O.
And I look it up and I'm like, okay, what's going on?
And it's about the local pickleball courts that are going on there.
And the people who don't want the pickleball courts there, they're saying, be a good neighbor, vote no on issue O because these pickleball courts weren't supposed to be there permanently and I guess they're there now permanently or semi -permanently.
And the people who live next to the pickleball court, they're really frustrated because pickleball is kind of loud and you just hear the going back and forth.
Exactly. Just like that.
Thank you, Malabam Sheshe is our local soundboard here.
And so I get it. If I lived right next to that pickleball court, I'd be frustrated about it and I wouldn't want that court to be gone.
But also, you know what, if I lived on the other side of town and I went to that pickleball court every day and it was my access to pickleball, I would feel like, well, no, I need to vote yes on this because yes, I want this pickleball court there.
But guess what? I don't have an opinion about it either way.
I don't live next to that pickleball court.
And also I'm not someone who goes there to use that pickleball court.
So why do I need to have an opinion about something like that?
That's right. And as an added layer to that, even when you do have an opinion about something, it doesn't mean that every context within which that opinion can be shared is a relevant context, a valuable context, or a necessary context.
As an example, my wife and I, Saturday mornings, we teach a course on the Eucharist, the Jewish roots of the Eucharist, Brent Petra, two -hour course.
I never talk about that course here.
I just mention that I teach it, but I never talk about any of the details, probably won't.
Is it because I'm ashamed of what I believe?
Is it because I'm scared of all the non -catholics?
No, it's just not the context for it.
no one's calling asking any questions about the Eucharist. If you want to know my thoughts, send me an email.
I'll happily schedule a call with you and we can discuss it, right?
But it's context and an appreciation for it.
Now, part of the problem when it comes to the context for political discussion, what social media has changed, is that it has shifted the context for what you have to do and where you have to state your opinion in order to truly be someone that is responsible.
Before social media, most of us were not journalists.
We were not professional political commentators.
We did not have a platform or an illusion of a platform.
Our sphere of influence was family life, work life, church life.
And when you're talking with people face to face and in person, you have to be sensitive to context, sensitive to timing, sensitive to where we can have a conversation that's fitting for where we want to take things.
Now that we have social media, it's like, hey you need to be on there using your profile picture for this.
You need to be condemning this person this way.
Like there are people who want to see all the celebrities condemn P Diddy right now, right?
Social media changes the game in that regard. And so if you are not arguing about politics on social media, are you really on the team?
Do you really believe that?
Maybe you're a coward. And I think there are a lot of people who genuinely wrestle with that.
They feel like I'm not doing enough because I'm not attacking these people or criticizing these people on social media, because that has entered into people's minds as the dominant place of influence.
And by the way, I think there is much room to debate whether or not the things we put on social media are having the impact that we think they have. We can measure the likes, we can measure the retweets and the shares and so on but there's room for some healthy debate and discussion about whether or not that's even in the top 10 for the average person on how you can have impact.
We know that social media is an amplifier of insecurity.
You look at the statistics around, especially teenage girls who are exposed heavily to social media.
There's a lot of insecurity around that, right?
Because there's a lot of comparison.
And if you go back to what I talked about earlier with self -righteousness being, and it's insecurity metastasized, well, then social media is also an amplifier of self -righteousness.
And so when I'm talking about letting go of politics, I think what I'm really talking about is not the political affairs of the people.
It's not about letting go of voting necessarily.
Although we have a question about when it makes sense to vote and not vote coming up here in a moment.
What I'm talking about is not holding on or clinging to that self -righteousness, not standing up on a pedestal and looking down on other people because they happen to have a different belief or different opinion or a different worldview from you.
I'd like to end this question for Nina with some hope TK.
So if I read into this correctly, she's asking about the political division, the hatred, and she said, how can I feel hopeful?
And you said something to me before we recorded this episode.
You said you will never vote your discomfort out of existence.
And I think that's something that we often think if I make the right choice, if I vote for the right thing, the right person gets elected, the right ballot is passed.
If the right Congress is in office and they're passing the right bills, then all of a sudden I will have voted my discomforts out of existence.
Why is that not true?
Because I think voting is really your initiation process or your first step in a lifestyle where you are committed to using your personal power to bring about the changes that you want to see in the world.
Unfortunately, voting is often treated like a religion, whereby you go to church on Easter Sunday so that you can clock in and tell God, hey, I came to church on the big day.
And then you just go and you leave and you never think about those beliefs again.
You never think about the demands that what you say you believe makes on your life and how you ought to treat people and respect them and love them and serve them and sacrifice for them and so on.
There's a story about a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Protestant pastor and they all had trouble with bats being in their respective places of worship.
And they were trying to discuss, you know, how they could get rid of them.
And the Catholic priest ended up getting rid of them successfully.
And they were having a conversation and the Protestant pastor says, I tried everything.
I found this spray that's supposed to, you know, produce these chemicals that they don't like." And the bats just still kept coming to the church. And the Jewish rabbi said, you know, I tried this frequency that I found where if you play this sound, it's supposed to irritate the bats and they just kept flying around the synagogue and it just didn't work.
And they said, so what did you do?
And the Catholic priest says, oh, I just baptized all the bats, made them Catholic and I never saw them again.
And... something to be said about an approach to a belief system that says, oh yeah, I'm gonna come in and get my baptism and then I'm gonna leave and I'm not gonna worry about anything that my beliefs demand of me in terms of being a better person.
And I think when it comes to voting, voting is not a way of saying, hey, I try to get the right person into office.
Now I can relax and put all the pressure on them to do what is good in the world.
I did my part. I throw my hands up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not about getting the baptism and then leaving.
Voting is about saying, hey, I'm a part of some philosophy of how the world should work.
And that's just what I do once every four years.
And that's a small part, compared to the pressure that is now on me for the next 364 days where it's not as easy to just go around saying, make sure you show up and vote.
Now, how does that affect my lifestyle?
How does that affect what I study?
How does that affect the way I show up for work?
How does that affect the way I treat my family?
How does that affect the way I embody the principles that my political philosophy are grounded on in my actual lifestyle?
Nina, I hope to see you at our next Sunday symposium since you are in Southern California.
Although we have people come from all over the world, different countries like Mexico and Canada and Germany and Switzerland and Iowa.
That's a country, right, Bama?
Totally. We've been doing these monthly Sunday symposiums in Los Angeles fewer than 200 people if you are 200 seats so get your tickets before they sell out.
We usually do the final Sunday of each month, but because November is a little strange, we're actually doing it on November 17th this year.
You can find tickets.
They are free by the way.
Sundaysymposium .com and we're only doing two more in Los Angeles this year.
We've got November and we have December and then we're gonna start switching it up a little bit.
We're gonna do Santa Barbara in January.
It looks like we'll probably do Orange County in February.
So get your tickets while you can, sundatesymposium .com.
It's a lovely little event that we have. We do a talk, we do an audience Q &A, a sound bath.
We get to have hugs.
We interact with the audience.
What's so special about this that you don't get from a screen, TK?
The opportunity to make contact.
That's where Virginia Satir talks about the art of making contact.
And in our digital world where we're interacting with screens, through screens, sometimes not even knowing if there's a human being on the other side.
We get to experience that aspect of ourselves that can only be invoked when another person is asking our question, or when another person laughs with us in a way that is healing.
When another person gives us a hug, or when another person says, I'm good on the hug, but let's stand here and look each other in the eyes and talk about life together.
It's human contact.
we call it a simple gathering for simple people.
Man, this is the epitome of community, this type of gathering.
It's not uniting against something, it's uniting around something, this idea of simple living or living intentionally, living a meaningful life with less.
We hope to see you at the next Sunday symposium.
It is November 17th, sundaysymphosium .com for all the tickets.
Before we get back to our callers, Malabama, what time is it?
You know what time it is.
It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chats, question of the week.
Yes, indeed. Now, during the lightning round, we each have sixty seconds to answer your question with a short shareable minimal maxim.
You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists .com slash podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims .com We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox including seven new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists .email.
We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity.
What's the question of the week this week?
Does it ever make sense not to vote?
Ooh. Does it ever make sense not to vote?
Let's agree about this or let's disagree about this TK, but before we get to our pithy answers, let's hear how some of our listeners answered this question.
Sean said politics is not something I do.
I don't vote not because there's no reason It's just that I don't ever see anything happen from my vote now TK when someone like Sean Says I don't vote.
He tends to get criticism right away from pretty much everyone right in fact, right home Once again, this is the only religion where even the non -believer tells you that you're going to hell for not showing up to service Right Democrats that's, want you to vote, Republicans want you to vote everybody, just vote, even if it's for the other guy.
Well, and that's the fascinating thing.
I told you about the brilliant woman who I was talking to last week and she was surprised that you and I vote differently in the last election and we'll probably vote differently this time as well.
And she said, but it's just so important, this is the most important election, we should all get out there and vote, and I think the response to that is, well what if that person vote wants to vote for the person you don't want them to vote for.
Are you still going to encourage them to vote then?
I think that gives people pause, but I think the script kicks in and they still have to say for the sake of consistency, well, I certainly wouldn't wanna see you vote for that person, but I do think you should vote.
I do think you should vote, yeah.
Right, and that's different from saying you have the right to vote as well.
And by the way, I don't preach to people that they shouldn't vote.
I just think it's interesting the first thing that when someone says they don't vote, there is often very little consideration for the possibility that it might be proactive rather than passive.
They might actually have a philosophy about the nature of our political system, which has definitely been true of other governments, just never our own, right.
That might cause them to believe that it's actually a bad thing.
Well, in fact, Pontus, one of our other patrons, responded directly to Sean and he had this to say.
If you don't vote, you have no right whatsoever to complain about the way things are.
That's my view and I find it insane how many avoid voting and don't realize that everyone together Could literally swing anything in their favor if they just went to the polls and voted thoughts on that TK I Once heard it said that if you do vote you can't complain I mean, I think I agree with the that you have no right to complain whether you vote or you don't vote, right?
my toe or I get into a fender bender, there are ways to go about it to fix the thing or to heal, but complaining doesn't ever heal me.
In fact, it often exacerbates my suffering.
Yeah, well, you know, that there's a sentence in here that reminds me of the earlier question where it says, I don't see how people can disagree with certain basic human rights.
And that sentence here is, I find it insane how many avoid voting?
I think that's okay as a starting point.
But I think part of the problem with contemporary American political discourse is that we often allow that to be the end.
Man, I think people who believe like this, are insane.
That's totally okay as a starting point, but that's only going to change.
If instead of addressing human beings as demographics who vote a certain way or look a certain way, we start addressing human beings as individuals and we take the time to look at our neighbor, to talk to the people in our family and be like, I'll be honest with you.
Your position sounds insane to me.
I can't even imagine how somebody would vote in the way that you do, but I have a whole lot of evidence from other ways in which we've interacted that you're clearly not insane.
Can you help me understand what is your logic for this?
Whether you're talking to conservatives, progressives, Christians, Muslims, atheists.
One of the things you will find is that you can take a thousand people from the same religious, political, ethnic demographic and ask them about a single topic, even when they believe the same thing, they often hold those beliefs in different ways that even conflict with each other, which is why Christians argue with each other, atheists argue with each other too, Muslims argue with each other too.
Everybody has inner arguments.
That's because we don't hold our beliefs the same way, even when we believe the same thing.
And so we have to start having these conversations where we say, I'll begin with saying, I don't see how you can deny something so obvious and good, but I do want to understand.
And if I have to talk to 100 different people who share your position, I'm going to understand.
We have to learn to see that when I say I don't get people who do this, that's not a strength.
That's an honest reflection of something we have not yet figured out, but it's not a virtue to not get it.
It's a virtue to get it.
I think there's also this component of like, I'm just dissatisfied with who my choices are in this particular election.
Now, it could be this election here in 2024, or maybe you're listening to this four years from now and it's 2028.
And Hulk Hogan is going up against Macho Man Randy Savage for president.
And you may not like those two options either.
I really wish I got to a point.
You know what, here's one thing I've never heard during this election cycle.
I've never had someone come up to me and say, I'm just having a tough time to figure out who to vote for.
We just have like these two great options.
I love Donald Trump, but I also love Kamala Harris.
I think it'll be great either way, but I just can't figure out which one would be best for our country.
I haven't heard a single person say that, but we know that there's a world in which that's possible where you could have two people where you feel like, oh wow, there's a great choice and there's an even better choice.
There's an outstanding choice.
And here's why I think there's an outstanding choice.
But we've created, as Nina was talking about earlier, or we've created this division where it's so, so different now that you are either part of the team that unites against someone and that's where the you must vote sort of thing happens is you know what?
You must vote against this evil person or against this bad ideology.
And you know, it's interesting because we do not have that same level of boldness or urgency with other things you know, And like I think about every single show without exception that we've done on nutrition.
We've gotten some messages that are like, hey, this really changed the game for me.
I appreciate it. But there's always some messages that go beyond, hey, I disagree, but are like, I'm really disappointed in you for even having that conversation.
I think that is just irresponsible, like some strong moral judgments.
And none of these guests with different or alternative or controversial nutritional philosophies ever say things like, I think people who eat potatoes are evil.
They might say things like, I actually think potatoes are bad for you and we've been lied to about them.
And then they'll give their argument that we're free to think about how everyone want to think about it.
But they don't say things like, I think people who eat potatoes are evil and yet there's a great controversy.
Why? Because deep down aside, what we know and what we believe is that when it comes to personal change, whether it's nutrition, whether it's marriage, whether it's increasing health in your relationships, improving your finances, there's a certain way you have to approach people if you want to influence their behavior.
And shaming usually creates a certain measure of alienation.
This is how we actually behave when you change the discussion to anything else other than politics, with maybe religion being the exception here, but even with religion, we tread lightly.
And if I give too many Catholic examples on this show, I will get a message about, Hey, this is about religion on minimalism, right?
Like you have to be sensitive about making sure you don't sound like you're preaching.
But when it comes to politics is because there is such a strong culture of shaming that we haven't figured out as a culture how to disentangle ourselves from, we approach influencing other people in the opposite way of what we know when it comes to other things.
And we say, if you don't do this, you don't get to be a good person, a person who loves the poor, a person who loves brown people, a person who loves women, a person who loves white people, a person who loves America, and so on.
And as a way of actually influencing sustainable behavior and getting people to do the right things for the right reason.
That just doesn't seem to work with anything.
And we have a lot of evidence for that.
I don't know why we think it would work with politics.
Well, you can read dozens of other listener responses in the Patreon community chat.
How about you listeners, does it ever make sense not to vote?
Let us know in the comments.
Okay, give me something pithy TK, does it ever make sense not to vote?
There's a difference between making sense and making sense to others.
There's a, Peter Daniels tells a story of a man who was asked to take over a very corrupt organization that just had all kinds of issues and scandals.
And so he went before the board and they said, we want you to come clean up this organization.
And he says, well, if I step on as a leader of this organization, I'm going to have to make a lot of tough decisions and so on.
He says, so I need to make sure that I have full control.
And they were like, well, we can't give you full control.
He was like, well, I can't help the company, you know, achieve its potential.
So, and so they thought about it, and he says, okay, we give you full control.
And he says, alright, great, you're all fired.
And it was a powerful illustration of the fact, because he says, it all starts at the top.
It all starts with leadership.
And this organization is a reflection of your own character.
You guys gotta go, and it's the first step to making this place better.
There's a difference between being a good person and being seen as a good person.
Between being reasonable and being seen as reasonable.
Between doing things that are loving and that makes sense, and being seen as someone who does things that are loving and that makes sense.
And sometimes you have to make a choice.
Sometimes those things go hand in hand, but every life presents us with moments where a choice has to be made.
Do I want to look like a saint or do I actually want to become one?
Do I want to make sense or do I want the social rewards of doing the things that will predictably make people think I'm a sensible person?
We just talked about the research last week about how people tend to think that if you're cynical or pessimistic, that you're smarter.
And so if you want to be seen as smart, you might not want to sound too optimistic because people will think you're naive.
But do you want to do what's right and acknowledge what's true and orient your life around it?
What do you want to be seen as a good person?
Those are two very different things.
There's always a cross to bear and a cost to pay for doing the right thing.
And sometimes it's social.
Yeah. If you vote for Donald Trump, I love you.
If you vote for Kamala Harris, I love you.
That's a controversy.
If you vote for RFK Jr. I love you.
If you vote for the Libertarian party or the Green party, I love you.
If you write in Ryan Nicodemus like I do every four years, I love you as well.
That last part was a joke but the the rest of it's true.
I love you regardless of who you vote for.
And by the way, if you don't vote, I love you as well.
For the person who is saying, look, is there actually a way?
Is there actually a good reason to avoid voting?
What is your philosophy behind that, TK?
Hmm. Well, you know, when we had our discussion about this before, I used an example that I personally think was darn good.
And my folks at fee didn't like that example.
I don't even know if they understood it, but I think that the language that I used around it was just too controversial for many of them to pay attention.
And while they should have been praising me for using a great example, they were chastising me for using that example.
But I will invoke it here and I'll try to make the language a little more PG -13 for those who can't hear a truth if the semantic surrounding it are distracting for them.
Suppose you went into a restaurant and they had two things on the menu, a urine milkshake and a feces sandwich. And you looked at those things on the menu and you said, this looks gross, but a urine milkshake is more palatable than a feces sandwich, so I'm just gonna go with that.
I would say, bro, hold up!
You have a third option here.
The third option is to not eat anything at all and say, I reject the options.
I don't like this, this is nonsense.
Give me a third option, or I'm not playing this silly game." And I think the philosophy of the lesser of two evils.
It's not only a false dichotomy because there is always a real third option besides not voting.
That just doesn't get talked about.
Or people get guilt tripped into not voting for a third option because they are conditioned to believe that it is a waste of vote.
And the ironic part about it is if people were more people were willing to waste their vote on third parties, it would actually break up the binary system that we now have that everybody is actually unhappy with.
Everybody says, ideally it would be better to have three options.
Ideally, it would be better if we didn't have this system where only two products get to be on the shelf.
We don't even get to see what the third option is.
We don't even get to hear them on the debate.
So like you think about the first debate when Biden and Trump are just lost in golf, right?
They're lost in talking about their golf game.
And it happens as two human beings kind of getting caught up in the ego, wouldn't it have been amazing if a third person would be like, Hey, while these two kids over here talk about golf, let me go ahead and talk about my economics policy, my economic policies.
That would have been a great moment that everybody would have loved and it reminded those two guys to, hey, hey, hey, get back on the topic.
There's nothing like a third person to come into the discussion and change the dynamic.
If more people are willing to waste their vote on a third party and not fall prey to the guilt trap, we'd actually be able to get to a system because that improves their ability to get funding and exposure.
And so there are good reasons to say no to these false dichotomies and to these binaries.
The real question is, is there anyone that's going to be willing to pay the social cost of doing it?
Because like most things that are really necessary to save the world, not things like pretending to be a Christian when you're not just so you can get an office because you're smart enough to know that we're not at a point in this country yet where you can get into office without pretending to love the Bible more than you actually do.
If you really want to change the world, you gotta do things that are going to make you, for a time, look like you don't care about changing the world.
That is the story of history for so many saints, for so many great people, who lay down their lives for future generations.
At that time, they were called bad people.
This idea that Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero is only a matter of retrospect.
That man was considered a rabble rouser.
That man was considered controversial.
He was demonized during his actual lifetime.
we made him a hero after he was martyred.
He was martyred for a reason, because he was hated.
He was considered a threat.
He was considered to be a bad man.
This is documented.
People wrote about it, people talked about it.
We now talk as if everybody loved him.
Republicans and Democrats alike claim the man as their own.
It's amazing, but to be a hero you might have to suffer some martyrdom and that's just a different thing.
In fact one might argue that he wouldn't be a hero if he had not been hated.
He wouldn't be liked as much as he is today had he not been hated so much at a time when his Positions when his opinions when his thoughts were controversial.
Yeah, here's my pithy answer for you You vote every day with your time your attention your energy and your money You don't just vote every four years or every year when you're voting for the mayor or the local ballot issues You can vote for those things and that is one type of voting but you're also voting every time you give up any precious resource, whether it's your time.
This is how I'm spending my time right now.
Whether it's recording a podcast episode or sitting down to write or to exercise or to donate time to a food bank.
I am voting with my time.
I'm voting with my attention.
I'm voting with my energy.
And I'm voting with my wallet as well.
Whether I'm supporting a major corporation or a local business or saving that money, I'm choosing what to do with my limited resources." TK on page two, we're going to talk about the surprising downsides of democracy.
This one is also, this might even be more controversial than choosing not to vote.
Are there downsides to democracy?
Well, our founding fathers certainly thought so and so did Winston Churchill and my favorite philosopher, Dracula.
Yeah. We'll get there, but we're just at the end of page one right now, and we're just getting started.
We have an entire switchboard of colors to talk to on pages two and three.
But first real quick for right here, right now, there's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. We've been talking today about your opinions and your beliefs, but what about your values?
Do you understand what your values are?
Quite often we talk about voting your values, but that's impossible if you don't know what your values are.
I would say that it's much better to know your values than it is to simply be informed.
Turning on the news and absorbing more information or infotainment, yes, that can be entertaining, but it's not necessarily instructive.
What can be instructive is sitting down and figuring out what your values are.
We have a free values worksheet you can download on our website over at TheMinimalists .com, just click the resources page there at the top.
We have a bunch of free resources over there including this values worksheet It identifies the four different types of values you have there's really only three and then there's this fourth category of Imaginary values the values that get in the way the being informed might be one of those Fake values or imaginary of values the minimalist calm You can download the values worksheet there on our free resources page.
Just click resources at the top, Malabama What else you got for us?
Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners Hi.
This is Anita from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I am a Patreon subscriber, and one tip I have to minimize stress is to review power of attorney documents that you have. The situation I ran into was my parents created their POAs when they were in their 60s.
However, they lived well into their 90s.
And the last four years of their lives, they lived with me.
And what happened was I did not hold the title of power of attorney.
My sister did, but my sister had several health issues at the time.
So, since they were with me, I had to do some workarounds to try to handle some of their banking and insurance work.
We were able to get through it, but it was a lot more stressful than it needed to be.
My suggestion is, if you notice your parents physically declining and there's a probable chance that they may be moving in with you, to just review the powers of attorney and make sure the right person holds the title.
Also, I would suggest going through any banking documents, insurance documents, to streamline paperwork so that they don't bring unnecessary old, invalid documents into your household that they might've had from 50 years ago.
Just try to keep things easier and simpler.
The dynamic when you're taking care of your parents in your home changes and whatever you can do and make things a little less stressful will help you all out in the end.
Anita, thank you so much for that considerate comment.
We actually have an essay on our website called Scared to Death of Death.
I talk about all of the documents that I have filled out so I've prepared for my own death.
We're scared to death to talk about death, but it's something we're all going to do.
It certainly gave me a peace of mind to be prepared for that.
For anyone else who has a listener tip for us or an insight about this episode or any other episode, you can leave a comment on Patreon or YouTube or better yet send a voice memo to podcast at the Minimalists .com so we can feature your voice on the show.
Alright, that's like the first 29 % of episode 467 we'll see you on patreon for the full Maximal edition which includes answers to a bunch more questions questions Like, what are the effects of social media on the political landscape?
How can I stay politically informed without disturbing my peace?
What are the surprising downsides of democracy?
Plus, our favorite political pundit post production, Peter, will join us on page three, all that and a million more questions and simple living segments over on The Minimalist's Private Podcast. We also have an outstanding home tour from one of our listeners.
We have a hundred home tours now on our Patreon from listeners.
How amazing is that?
You can check those out, patreon .com slash The Minimalist or click the link down in the personal link so that our weekly maximal episodes play in your favorite podcast app.
You'll also gain access to all of our podcast archives all the way back to episode 001.
By the way Patreon is now offering free trials so if you'd like to test drive our private podcast you can join for seven days for free.
And that is our minimal episode for today.
Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space on behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, T .K.
Coleman, in Malabama, post -production Peter, Spire Jeff and Spire Dave, A.
B. on the couch over the, over there, and Savvy D.
on the board over there, and the rest of our team.
I'm Joshua Fieldie Milburn.
If you leave here with just one message today, let it be this.
Love people and use things because the opposite never works.
Thanks for listening, y 'all.
We'll see you in the voting booth.
Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing that's just feeding your greed Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it
