And you're got every right to stand on the street corner and talk all kinds of shit. And everybody else has every right to object to whatever you say. And if you don't like THAT then move to Moscow, Igor.
@@timan2039 I think you're missing the point : diversity is meaningless if it does not connote the freedom to differ ! 'Civility' is often a euphemism for 'sheep like' conformity.
@@Cryptonymicus Yes you can object to people but you cannot silence them. Thats what people dont understand, violence is not a rational response to ideas. If you dont believe that then its more like YOU need to go to Moscow. Bad ideas lose to better ideas not force
@@timan2039 in fairness being gay was once considered to be uncivil so the idea of civility changes with the society. I get what you mean but people are always going to be dicks to one another regardless of the societal pressures and laws. I mean it is illegal to be racist yet people still are. Policing a person's way of thinking and being just doesn't work and probably leads to more people being radicalised to one side or another, like fry said in the video.
You should listen to him talk to Giles Brandreth, that’s amusing. Funniest time was when he spoke at the Oxford Union with a group of Professors and they had to keep correcting him as each “fact” he presented was actually inaccurate or false. In the end he had a hissy fit and left. The man is a pompous ass. He has claimed people have “no right to feel offended” He pursued the line until Professor Duncan, head of the London Neurological Hospital stated this: “If no one has the right to feel offended, no one has the right to feel aroused, no one has the right to feel angry, no one has the right to feel passion, or joy or freedom. But your argument is flawed because no single person on earth can explain why people feel the way they do about different things they can only make assumptions and draw conclusions. Based on nature, nurture, instinct, associative behaviour, cultural or societal norms, learned behaviour, the subject is bigger than your singular misdirected view upon people’s rights” It was hilarious and I kept it on tape!
@@AngelicusImmortus That seems like a very strange argument to be making when the usual argument is that you don't have the right *not* to be offended, as that would infringe on another's right to free expression.
OP, that is a nice comment. But it really doesn't help, time and again you praise the one who does NOT have be praised, if anything it doesn't matters at all. It is cowardice in its finest form.
@@AngelicusImmortus When you state that "he has claimed people have "no right to feel offended", are you referring to when he said that: it's now very common to hear people say, "I'm offended by that." As if that gives them certain rights. It's not more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?" Because this is not stating that people have no right to feel offended, and judging by the second line in this quote, you would have taken it out of context. Or are you referring to something different that Mr. Fry has said?
He’s an example of what people could be if they didn’t suffer oppression and need to survival. His is a privileged background that most of us are denied and one we all should have.
@@stevenredpath9332 He is a gay jew who has been pretty outspoken about finally being able to marry. The sad thing is that you assume a persons life experince and label it "privileged" and therefore it has less meaning without knowing anything about said person. In your mind he is a group and thats all.
Well, I've never liked him at all. Especially as he's right... at least about respecting your opponent and using terms of phrase to set the parameters of any debate in your own favour.
One of the last true Classical Liberals in the West. His love of individual liberty and freedom for ALL people and their opinions is desperately lacking in modern society.
I don't know if you meant to imply that being close minded is an affliction that only strikes at the modern liberal, but it seems to come across as such. Rational discourse is sorely lacking from both sides of the liberal-conservative spectrum. To put it bluntly, no one of any ideaology has a monopoly on bullshit.
Ronnie Crabs you have to pick your enemies in this game. Fry is a lefty who is against the hyperbolic institutional Marxism you find in all educational + media + corporate settings these days. He’s going to win over other lefties IMO. There’s quite a lot of opinions Fry has that I do NOT agree with, but I’ll take the good with the bad.
@@xrpfuture4381 Can't argue with that bro. You make a good point. It's just personal salt as I grew up (as all of us between the ages of 25 and 50 did) appreciating the man's intellect, wit and charm.
It's not only young people, and there is more than one younger generation than boomers. It is that exact type of blaming that is going to turn people back towards hard right wing/authoritarian policies.
Rad Watson lol ok. I’m responding to the notion that left=liberal. In fact, the left is very intolerant regarding diversity of opinion and freedom of speech. My reference about young people is to the university indoctrination that Stephen Fry was talking about.
Stephen Fry is a truly beautiful, intellectual (without ever being patronising), discerning, educated, evolved and all embracing soul as one could imagine. I could listen to these two talk and debate all day long, as I did whenever Christopher Hitchens was 'on air' . Thank you to you both.
He's marvelous. You mention Hitch, as they did in the video; I truly believe Fry picked up his mantle (forgive the religious reference) as the great communicator of the modern day. He's passionate, yet never appears aggressive (aggressive being the default state for debaters now, it seems) and his arguments have a flow that I think his peers fail to fully capture.
“It’s a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. (Orwell 1984). It’s a cruel world.
@@cicolas_nage i'm not sure which book you've read but in the version of 1984 i read there was literally a couple of pages after the actual book where orwell explained how newspeak serves to narrow the things people can think and consequencely express and how one can controll the minds to some degree by controlling the word itself
@@cicolas_nagewhat you are saying seems reasonable in relatively simple concepts and ideas but how can we read and understand the princibles of roman law or the books of Nietzsche with such a reduced language as in 1984? The necesery intellectual accumulation for a counter revolation against the party, needs to have strong and varied literary tools to be rationalized and aplicable.
"His benign, capricious, mischievous, spirit hovers over any debate, I feel." By itself a brilliant sentence, said of my most admired author, it is a jewel. Coming from Stephen Fry, it is transcendent.
He is completely correct. A year or two ago I was that 18 year old going to uni that he is speaking about and was met with these exact ideas. It turned me toward a far more centrist/right way of thinking and still has, purely because of my utter distaste of it all.
What a discovery, what a beautiful gift humanity has been given, in Stephen Fry. There are so many positive adjectives, it’s difficult to choose, but I will go with articulate, extremely well read & educated, funny, talented, master of his profession-and most importantly, he is kind & open minded. I pray that more men and women similar to him will be empowered to speak up, even if it’s seemingly in opposition to one’s core beliefs.
Wow, real footage of the vanishingly rare and critically endangered _Liberalis Conventius!_ Such beautiful, noble creatures. Sadly they still face intense competition from a certain invasive species, leading to their continued decline and extirpation throughout most of their natural range.
My favorite comments on the issue I have heard so far. Bravo. 12:07 “The best thing that could ever happen for the tribalism … is an invasion from another planet.” I think a global pandemic is a close as we can get to that in the real world. Eerily prophetic.
Stephen Fry seems to be thinking that ‘The Right’ are the same as they were back in the day, not realising that to some he’d be considered ‘on the Right’ simply for being prepared to take the same side of a debate/share the stage with Jordan Peterson! Don’t even get me started on the wigs that flipped when he tweeted a photo of himself doing the ‘ok’ hand sign in order to ‘reclaim’ it...
Coming from the actual debate. I was just personally wishing it would have just morphed into an open discussion with fry and pederson. I immagine the conversation backstage was infinitly more interesting than the one that happend onstage. Both of them are such interesting people.
@Real Aiglon The sound engineer isn't there to provide a realistic tonal balance. Ever listened to people shouting whilst guns and explosions are going off in war films? If someone isn't speaking up vis-a-vis someone else, then their speech can always be amplified.
Thanks Stephen Fry. That's what we need, 'a wider cause to belong to'. Well, we have one already, it's just that the corporate sector is doing its utmost to ensure we don't talk about the state of the planetary environment and increasingly chaotic climate. It even exceeds the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere combined. It's bigger than WW1 and WW2 together. We just haven't fully realised it yet. When we do, who can predict what heights humanity might ascend as it grapples with its own mortality?
Steven is such a treasure. It's a SHAME how that debate devolved into flinging .... at Peterson for having the gut to utter a different opinion than the narrative.
Its entertaining too watch so many people who think trump is on the right. Happened across fry in a peterson debate and was surprised. Very well spoken in regard to life decisions being more complex than yes or no. Very respectable.
I often wonder why people like Stephen Fry don't go into politics and make a real difference, but I assume that he knows already that he won't be permitted to make any meaningful changes as the powers that be won't allow him, which really does doom all of us including our great grandchildren to centuries more of corruption and greed.
He answered this in an interview, he said he would be far to uncomfortable not being liked. He likes pleasing people and it wouldn't sit well with him to not be liked.
"that's what we really need is a wider cause to belong to" There was a point where the coronavirus really looked like it was going to be that.. then people decided that facemasks were offensive to their freedom
+[David Miatke] I could just as easily reverse this: you can catch the Coronavirus from a BLM protest, but not from a Trump rally? Now, of course, there are a couple of key differences between BLM protests and Trump rallies. Most of these have to do with the fact that most BLM protesters do in fact take the virus seriously, but feel that protesting is important enough that it should still happen in some form; while Trump supporters generally think the whole thing is just a scarily named version of the flu _[which, just to be clear here, it _*_definitely_*_ isn't]_ . As a result, Black Lives Matter protesters tend to wear face masks, while Trump supporters tend not to wear them. Plenty of BLM protests maintain a rigorous 6 feet distance between protesters throughout the entire event, although admittedly quite a few of them don't. _[And to once again be clear here, the protests that ignore the 6ft rule are run by fucking idiotic organizers and are to be held in contempt for that reason alone.]_ Trump rallies, meanwhile, are *without exception* tightly packed affairs (even the ones where not a lot of people show up; the people that do show up tend to group themselves tightly together because they're all idiots). So, yes, the chances of catching Coronavirus at a BLM protest is somewhat lower than at a Trump rally, because the other people at the first event *_generally speaking_* care about both their own and your health, whereas the people at the other event don't because they are too idiotic to do so. Still, if one were to go to a BLM protest, it pays to make sure that the organizers are taking the virus into account and also that they generally know what they are doing.
@@AhsimNreiziev There's also the fact that the BLM protests happened when states were starting to reopen and also after most people figured out that our government, both parties, weren't going to do hardly anything to help the average American get through the shutdown. I knew we were going to somehow turn the virus into a partisan issue and we did. Mother nature is kicking our ass and instead of dealing with it we are arguing over whether or not we should let it kick our ass.
@@kingy002 what's happening is what always happens. person A is telling person B that Person C has wronged them, and that they should redress their grievances with person C, and while that is happening Person A is running away with the valuables. meanwhile person C is shouting at Person B that they haven't done anything, and person B isn't believing them, and is reiterating what Person A told them, meanwhile person D is confused and wants to help, but doesn't want to risk his hide. finally Person E comes in and says, hey i just saw Person A run away, why is he doing that?
@@kingy002 no. I am frustrated by how stupid everything is, and how no leader can seem to actually improve or even care about the common man's life. Last president I believe to do so was jimmy carter.
@@kingy002 your right. but their irrelevant. further democratization is still possible, to the point where citizenship and voter ID is the only requirement for directly voting on issues. a nationwide ballot initiative process if you will. that way you wouldn't have to care about persuading this official, or that mayor, all you would have to worry about is what the masses thought about. such as in the united states, mandatory police body camera's are polling at 81%.
Only Stephen Fry can say "fuck' and make it sound like an intelligent word. I love listening to his utterly sensible and common sense arguments that are delivered in such an eloquent manner.
I'm not interested in where you come from, what colour you are, or who you sleep with. All I'm interested in is what you say, what you do and why. Make your argument, persuade on the strength of that. Telling me you 'win' just because you're white or gay or a woman and you've been 'historically opppressed' isn't going to wash. Human beings are hardwired to be tribal, to seek power and to establish in and out groups. Minimising the reality of that and taking the extreme edges off should be our goal. We can't all be the same and we shouldn't all think the same. PC is about deciding what is and isn't in or out. But who decides that? By definition PC is the tool of those in the position of power to make that decision and therefore I am against it on principle.
I’m a woman, and I really like a good discussion where I can use all my mental powers. Sometimes I’m able to convince the other person, sometimes I change my mind if I’m presented with data I didn’t know before, different kinds of things may happen. I get really angry when someone tries to intervene when my interlocutor is a man, accusing him of “mansplaining” or anything like that. I usually make the person regret the intervention. I don’t need special treatment, because I don’t believe I’m in an inferior position to start with. But of course, if a bigger person, man or woman, attacks me physically, I welcome any intervention, because for sure I’ll be in a much weaker position. :)
Agree with everything fry says except he doesn’t separate the right from the far right. Being right isn’t about homophobia and bigotry and hatred. The far end of both spectrums are the problem and as fry says pc culture is a recruiting tool for both.
Absolutely right on. I'm more conservative than liberal, but it depends on the issue. It's incredible how every conservative is lumped in with racists and homophobes. It's obviously a ploy to make people distance themselves from conservatives for fear of being labeled that way. There are liberals who are genuinely embarrassed about the far left's insanity too. And the further one side goes to the extreme, the further others are drawn to the opposite extreme.
I think people see through the labelling of the right these days and actually probably now turns left leaning people right. The fascists of the future will claim to be fighting it.
As a center-right ideologist, I couldn´t agree more with Mr Fry. Absoloutly correct in his words, in all aspects. Despite being on the opposite side of the spectrum I must admit, he is a very clever man.
2 years after painfully watching a 2h "debate" where Peterson and the two others decided to go rogue and make it a debate about politics, although thank fuck Stephen was there to give some on-subject insight; I find this interview ! Much better !
Peterson sort of had too - the other two were attacking him and attempting to smear hin rather than make a point themselves. And besides - what Peterson ended up causing the other two to do was demonstrate He and Stephens side of the debate in action. Rather than attempt to defend political correctness, they attempted to smear Peterson using Political Correctness and as a result they lost the debate by looking like rambling fools - because with Stephen there, they had no argument. He's exactly the type of person people like Dyson and Goldberg would claim PC is there to protect and he's outright telling them it doesn't work. Peterson distracted them merely by defending himself from their smear attacks while Fry used their ramblings to illustrate his points. Alot of people see it a disastrous debate and while if compared to the original concept of a debate that's true - it demonstrates there is no defense of political correctness that holds up in the face of either the intellectual Right or the Intellectual Left. In otherwords - Smart People spot bullshit and tear it to pieces one way or another regardless of which end of the political rollercoaster they are on.
The other person I so wish to speak about this is George Carlin. He was against PC culture and saw where this was going already in the very early 90s...
This is what reasoned, informed and rational debate sounds like. This is not what you see when the finger wagging liberals are preaching at you about being offended...so what. The utterly and effortlessly intelligent reasoning of Stephen Fry
It’s the citizens that become offended by how words are used, which doesn’t have anything in common with politics. Case in point as follows. From the book … Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician … author Matthew Franklin Sias As a new EMT and thereafter, I was taught to use the word “death” and “dead” when I had occasion to break the news to a family. To use euphemisms such as “passed away” would leave some doubt in the loved ones’ minds, I was told, as to whether or not the person really had died. Directness was best. I was taught the extreme opposite when I became involved in the funeral business, maybe because the mortuary industry is much more customer service oriented, and maybe because it was so completely obvious that because we, as funeral directors were involved, someone was dead. I learned this distinction between the languages of my two professions the hard way. When working at the mortuary removal service, I completed a residential call, representing Bonney-Watson funeral home. We were removing the body of an elderly man who had died peacefully in bad in the back hallway of his house. Before we had moved him to our stretcher, I needed some information for the form I was to bring back to Bonney-Watson. I asked the new widow, “What time did he die today?” It seemed an innocuous question, and a necessary one. The next day, I was informed by a supervisor that both the family and Bonney-Watson funeral home had complained that I had used the word “die.”
It always boils down to the ancient conflict between individualism vs collectivism. Regardless of the language used, the question remains: Is the individual more important than the collective or is the collective more important than the individual?
@@michaelmanning5379 and what do you think they look like? I don't really think about it like that, it's nothing to do with appearance. Did you know the country with the highest muslim population is Indonesia? Probably not, you probably just assumed otherwise and thought I did too.
@@w8m4n Actually, yes, I did know that. Hiding bigotry behind atheism is a rather sad ploy. Yes, yes, you are soooo much smarter than the great unwashed with limited vocabularies. The fact that you felt compelled to relate that snigger-worthy anecdote tells us more about you than you intended. Why don't you just joint Sandy Jones and put on a white hood?
Dear Stephen Fry, Why would you say "they take it out and put it on a post" and then not add "quite literally posting it"? Way better than the tweet reference.
Words are a way to convey ideas, if you take the words from people, but not their reasons for wanting to express those ideas, they will just find new words, and society will soon find that those new words now convey the old ideas. Banning a word, just changes how its spelled!
Sorry to post so much. The Rev says there was no debate about who was in power when it was all white men? Heck, we've not only been debating, we've had debates that devolved into war since history began in Europe. And it was the same on the other continents back in the days when they had homogenous skin colors too, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Asia (I'm not sure about Australia). And when you get past history, you've got archaeological evidence of warfare. When everyone has the same color skin you divide by language, religion, height, whatever. All white, all black, all yellow, all red, it doesn't matter. We all go to war. All our ancestral groups did it. And vengeance for past misdeeds has always been one of the prime excuses for making war. *Nelson Mandela knew that,* USA's black activists don't. The people who replaced Nelson Mandela when he died don't either. We must all struggle to do better than that. We must all try to rise above our one-sided views of history. We must all try to rise above vengeance and bigotry.
A shame Peterson couldn't resist bringing his new found faith into the proceedings. I liked Peterson more when he was less predictable. Nowadays, all he ever brings up is Bible. It kind of makes him an ideologue/zealot. Which in itself is ironic.
The small margins aren’t even the problem. It’s media acting like these small margins are somehow relevant. Outrage sells and even once trusted news sources are doing anything to get more likes and clicks and views. People get outraged about the outrage as well. It’s a madhouse.
Interesting reference to an attack by aliens bringing the people of Earth together. In high school in the 70s, my best friend and I (both science and science fiction nerds) thought the same.
I'm so glad they provided this video. Fry is a beautiful man, but having to listen to Kermit the Frog to hear this debate through was not possible for me.
I think Bertrand Russell said that the ardent fanaticism for democracy is, ironically, not democratic.
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"....its just dumb..." there it is. No truer words could be spoken regarding PC. And right on the heels of that, add intellectually dishonest, to its core. Inclusion by false and flabby premises is not inclusion AT ALL. To quote Fry, 'FUCK THAT....'
Totally right Mr Fry. PC only turns away potential supporters. I have found my political opinions stray further away from left wing liberalism because i'm tired of PC trying to tell people what they can and can't say and branding people who oppose it with all the isms under the sun. I still hold true opinions of equality being preferable and i still long for a day when we can live happily side by side, but because of PC, i could never see myself supporting let alone joining any movements such as feminism or BLM because i cannot abide those significant few who use it as a means to spread hate and not togetherness.
@@b9y no, that's why I said, the significant few. Sometimes it can take a few extremists to compromise the integrity of a group. And sometimes they can rub of (even if a little) on the majority. Any movement that would do bad things, even if only done by a select few is still stained by those bad things. I don't want to be associated with those groups.
I agree with Stephen Fry, but I also agree with Stewart Lee, and I would pay to watch them debate this point, and I hope they see this comment and make that happen.....
Stephen Fry's absolutely right, but his way of thinking depends, unfortunately, upon everyone being intelligent and thoughtful, and sadly, they are not...
"Diversity includes diversity of opinion. And if it doesn't, it's meaningless."
And you're got every right to stand on the street corner and talk all kinds of shit. And everybody else has every right to object to whatever you say. And if you don't like THAT then move to Moscow, Igor.
@@Cryptonymicus But is it license to be purely uncivil. I wish that we could define PC as Polite & Civil.
@@timan2039 I think you're missing the point : diversity is meaningless if it does not connote the freedom to differ !
'Civility' is often a euphemism for 'sheep like' conformity.
@@Cryptonymicus Yes you can object to people but you cannot silence them. Thats what people dont understand, violence is not a rational response to ideas. If you dont believe that then its more like YOU need to go to Moscow. Bad ideas lose to better ideas not force
@@timan2039 in fairness being gay was once considered to be uncivil so the idea of civility changes with the society. I get what you mean but people are always going to be dicks to one another regardless of the societal pressures and laws. I mean it is illegal to be racist yet people still are. Policing a person's way of thinking and being just doesn't work and probably leads to more people being radicalised to one side or another, like fry said in the video.
Mr Fry, has the rare ability to voice common sense in a most singular intellectual & practical manner, glorious.
You should listen to him talk to Giles Brandreth, that’s amusing.
Funniest time was when he spoke at the Oxford Union with a group of Professors and they had to keep correcting him as each “fact” he presented was actually inaccurate or false. In the end he had a hissy fit and left.
The man is a pompous ass.
He has claimed people have “no right to feel offended”
He pursued the line until Professor Duncan, head of the London Neurological Hospital stated this:
“If no one has the right to feel offended, no one has the right to feel aroused, no one has the right to feel angry, no one has the right to feel passion, or joy or freedom. But your argument is flawed because no single person on earth can explain why people feel the way they do about different things they can only make assumptions and draw conclusions. Based on nature, nurture, instinct, associative behaviour, cultural or societal norms, learned behaviour, the subject is bigger than your singular misdirected view upon people’s rights”
It was hilarious and I kept it on tape!
@@AngelicusImmortus That seems like a very strange argument to be making when the usual argument is that you don't have the right *not* to be offended, as that would infringe on another's right to free expression.
@Sir Les Patterson Indeed so ; well said, and in a 'nutshell'.
OP, that is a nice comment. But it really doesn't help, time and again you praise the one who does NOT have be praised, if anything it doesn't matters at all. It is cowardice in its finest form.
@@AngelicusImmortus
When you state that "he has claimed people have "no right to feel offended", are you referring to when he said that:
it's now very common to hear people say, "I'm offended by that."
As if that gives them certain rights. It's not more than a whine.
It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that."
Well, so fucking what?"
Because this is not stating that people have no right to feel offended, and judging by the second line in this quote, you would have taken it out of context.
Or are you referring to something different that Mr. Fry has said?
Stephen Fry is one of my favorite human beings on this planet. Never met him, but his wit and charisma is mesmerizing even on screen.
No doubt he was close to Hitchens....Fry is a treasure
@Truth God You gonna elaborate why he's the devil?
He’s an example of what people could be if they didn’t suffer oppression and need to survival. His is a privileged background that most of us are denied and one we all should have.
@@stevenredpath9332 He is a gay jew who has been pretty outspoken about finally being able to marry. The sad thing is that you assume a persons life experince and label it "privileged" and therefore it has less meaning without knowing anything about said person. In your mind he is a group and thats all.
Well, I've never liked him at all. Especially as he's right... at least about respecting your opponent and using terms of phrase to set the parameters of any debate in your own favour.
This man is a treasure
One of the last true Classical Liberals in the West. His love of individual liberty and freedom for ALL people and their opinions is desperately lacking in modern society.
We're still here, only we are shy
I don't know if you meant to imply that being close minded is an affliction that only strikes at the modern liberal, but it seems to come across as such. Rational discourse is sorely lacking from both sides of the liberal-conservative spectrum. To put it bluntly, no one of any ideaology has a monopoly on bullshit.
@@mcmosfet2856 No idea how you figure it comes across as such. You are adding far more to his words than is actually present.
@Sandy Jones Now now, don't be stupid.
@Sandy Jones Well no, I'm afraid it's a bit late for you not to be stupid now, isn't it?
Young people, this is what a liberal sounds like. A respect for diversity of opinion and ideas. Open-mindedness!
Bro, Fry is a virtue signalling fraud. He's still happy to brand Tommy Robertson a raysist with not one shred of evidence. A weak man.
Ronnie Crabs you have to pick your enemies in this game. Fry is a lefty who is against the hyperbolic institutional Marxism you find in all educational + media + corporate settings these days. He’s going to win over other lefties IMO. There’s quite a lot of opinions Fry has that I do NOT agree with, but I’ll take the good with the bad.
@@xrpfuture4381 Can't argue with that bro. You make a good point. It's just personal salt as I grew up (as all of us between the ages of 25 and 50 did) appreciating the man's intellect, wit and charm.
It's not only young people, and there is more than one younger generation than boomers. It is that exact type of blaming that is going to turn people back towards hard right wing/authoritarian policies.
Rad Watson lol ok. I’m responding to the notion that left=liberal. In fact, the left is very intolerant regarding diversity of opinion and freedom of speech. My reference about young people is to the university indoctrination that Stephen Fry was talking about.
This pre-debate interview was more interesting and enlightening than the debate itself.
Stephen Fry is a truly beautiful, intellectual (without ever being patronising), discerning, educated, evolved and all embracing soul as one could imagine.
I could listen to these two talk and debate all day long, as I did whenever Christopher Hitchens was 'on air' .
Thank you to you both.
He's marvelous. You mention Hitch, as they did in the video; I truly believe Fry picked up his mantle (forgive the religious reference) as the great communicator of the modern day. He's passionate, yet never appears aggressive (aggressive being the default state for debaters now, it seems) and his arguments have a flow that I think his peers fail to fully capture.
They're both neo atheists and unfortunately look down on theists or God. They're also liberalists with no confinements to living.
@@OsidiustheEmphatic Well said.
@@007kash007 Didn't know it was a bad thing to be an Atheist.
Stephen Fry is an absolute hero. To have such knowledge, yet display such compassion whilst exercising common sense is a rare thing indeed.
“It’s a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. (Orwell 1984).
It’s a cruel world.
Love this. Thank you for sharing :)
@@cicolas_nage i'm not sure which book you've read but in the version of 1984 i read there was literally a couple of pages after the actual book where orwell explained how newspeak serves to narrow the things people can think and consequencely express and how one can controll the minds to some degree by controlling the word itself
@@cicolas_nage interesting, do you by any chance have any key names so i could look into the latest findings of thought and speech?
@@cicolas_nagewhat you are saying seems reasonable in relatively simple concepts and ideas but how can we read and understand the princibles of roman law or the books of Nietzsche with such a reduced language as in 1984? The necesery intellectual accumulation for a counter revolation against the party, needs to have strong and varied literary tools to be rationalized and aplicable.
Fabulous suit and tie, which speaks volumes about the man.
These are basically all the points that should have been discussed in the actual debate, but they weren't, because the debate was shit. Fry is king!
Because Dyson kept whining about being oppressed
@@frunzefilip6743 And also devoted his time to ridicule and gesticulating instead of reasoned argument. Would have been worth watching otherwise.
Pizza Boy I agree. Though Fry and Peterson made it worthwhile anyway for me :)
He actually made that point . Huckstering snake oil pulpit talk. A bloody classic.
Thats because initial issues get hijack for political gain
Mr fry and the prof should have debated each other. it would have stayed on the rails and been a proper debate.
I thought dyson was a sports personality lol.
@Concerned4 USA
To be honest, Fry isnt even close to being a conservative.
That would’ve been amazing
Rare voice of reason and courage!
Everytime I listen to this man speak I only end up admiring him more.
... and in your admiration you swallow things that are demonstrably untrue.
I love you Stephen. Consistently a reminder that humanity can be retained in reason.
This should be mandatory to watch in schools. A voice of reason in the time that everybody is offended
What a beautiful man Stephen Fry is. Truly. We need more like him in this difficult world.
"His benign, capricious, mischievous, spirit hovers over any debate, I feel." By itself a brilliant sentence, said of my most admired author, it is a jewel. Coming from Stephen Fry, it is transcendent.
Word salad doesn't make you clever. 'Transcendent'? Transcending what, clarity and economy of thought?
@@michaelsvoboda1024 What part of my post didn't you understand? One is tempted to say, all of it since you disparaged it with slang for, no meaning.
Bit over the top.
@@tomoliver2112 If it's worth doing, it's worth over doing.
man i wish i had the vocabulary he has, he says things so well.
lemonlimelukey But ‘fuck’ is one of his favourite words
I have the vocabulary, but I simply cannot use it the way he does. He is a virtuoso of words.
He is completely correct. A year or two ago I was that 18 year old going to uni that he is speaking about and was met with these exact ideas. It turned me toward a far more centrist/right way of thinking and still has, purely because of my utter distaste of it all.
Great vocabulary. ...wonderful to hear.
I could listen to this man speak for the rest of my life.
I live around the corner from this awesome man. Would love to listen to him more.
What a discovery, what a beautiful gift humanity has been given, in Stephen Fry. There are so many positive adjectives, it’s difficult to choose, but I will go with articulate, extremely well read & educated, funny, talented, master of his profession-and most importantly, he is kind & open minded. I pray that more men and women similar to him will be empowered to speak up, even if it’s seemingly in opposition to one’s core beliefs.
Wow, real footage of the vanishingly rare and critically endangered _Liberalis Conventius!_ Such beautiful, noble creatures. Sadly they still face intense competition from a certain invasive species, leading to their continued decline and extirpation throughout most of their natural range.
My favorite comments on the issue I have heard so far. Bravo.
12:07 “The best thing that could ever happen for the tribalism … is an invasion from another planet.” I think a global pandemic is a close as we can get to that in the real world. Eerily prophetic.
That would not stop tribalism.We would all band together as one tribe to fight the tribe coming from another planet.
Humor has never been greater than in your presence. long live hitchins and fry xxx
Now more than ever we need the calm, sensible voice that Stephen Fry brings.
Thank you Mr. Fry for your courage!
Stephen "intergalactic war may just be our salvation" Fry
😂😂😂
That moment when Stephen Fry predicts Trump's Space Force....
It's true, though. Humans just love to hate the outsiders. Until we have an outsider to humanity, uniting together probably won't happen.
Any species capable of waging intergalactic war would have no problem defeating us no matter what...
He’s right. Look at history. Common enemy. It’s how England was formed.
Stephen Fry seems to be thinking that ‘The Right’ are the same as they were back in the day, not realising that to some he’d be considered ‘on the Right’ simply for being prepared to take the same side of a debate/share the stage with Jordan Peterson!
Don’t even get me started on the wigs that flipped when he tweeted a photo of himself doing the ‘ok’ hand sign in order to ‘reclaim’ it...
So lucky to have him.
Stephen Fry is brilliant! very elegantly explained
Coming from the actual debate. I was just personally wishing it would have just morphed into an open discussion with fry and pederson. I immagine the conversation backstage was infinitly more interesting than the one that happend onstage. Both of them are such interesting people.
Taking the moral high ground and talking down allways has the adverse effect.
Good listen - but I really had to. The sound engineer should be put on a refresher course.
Yes, being Dutch, I needed subtitles but there were none.
@Real Aiglon The sound engineer isn't there to provide a realistic tonal balance. Ever listened to people shouting whilst guns and explosions are going off in war films? If someone isn't speaking up vis-a-vis someone else, then their speech can always be amplified.
Thanks Stephen Fry. That's what we need, 'a wider cause to belong to'. Well, we have one already, it's just that the corporate sector is doing its utmost to ensure we don't talk about the state of the planetary environment and increasingly chaotic climate. It even exceeds the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere combined. It's bigger than WW1 and WW2 together. We just haven't fully realised it yet. When we do, who can predict what heights humanity might ascend as it grapples with its own mortality?
Steven is such a treasure. It's a SHAME how that debate devolved into flinging .... at Peterson for having the gut to utter a different opinion than the narrative.
May I say what fine choices of suit and tie colour those are?!
It's slightly ironic that for someone so staunchly anti-religion he is the closest thing to a deity this world knows.
Its entertaining too watch so many people who think trump is on the right. Happened across fry in a peterson debate and was surprised. Very well spoken in regard to life decisions being more complex than yes or no. Very respectable.
I often wonder why people like Stephen Fry don't go into politics and make a real difference, but I assume that he knows already that he won't be permitted to make any meaningful changes as the powers that be won't allow him, which really does doom all of us including our great grandchildren to centuries more of corruption and greed.
Stephen Fry has far too much integrity and honesty, and also is he far to intelligent, rational, logical and reasonable to be a politician.
He doesn't have any solutions to offer. He's just very aware of the problems.
He answered this in an interview, he said he would be far to uncomfortable not being liked. He likes pleasing people and it wouldn't sit well with him to not be liked.
The powers that be are the average people. Thats the problem.
Fry has some psychological problems. The grind of politics would be too stressful for him, I think. So he does what he can - picking his battles.
The fantastic Stephen Fry ,all most as brilliant as Christopher Hitchens.
@@wolfganghendery8298 it would seem someone didn't get enough hugs. Curious. What do you bring to the table? I've never seen any of your work.
"that's what we really need is a wider cause to belong to" There was a point where the coronavirus really looked like it was going to be that.. then people decided that facemasks were offensive to their freedom
+[David Miatke]
I could just as easily reverse this: you can catch the Coronavirus from a BLM protest, but not from a Trump rally?
Now, of course, there are a couple of key differences between BLM protests and Trump rallies. Most of these have to do with the fact that most BLM protesters do in fact take the virus seriously, but feel that protesting is important enough that it should still happen in some form; while Trump supporters generally think the whole thing is just a scarily named version of the flu _[which, just to be clear here, it _*_definitely_*_ isn't]_ .
As a result, Black Lives Matter protesters tend to wear face masks, while Trump supporters tend not to wear them. Plenty of BLM protests maintain a rigorous 6 feet distance between protesters throughout the entire event, although admittedly quite a few of them don't. _[And to once again be clear here, the protests that ignore the 6ft rule are run by fucking idiotic organizers and are to be held in contempt for that reason alone.]_ Trump rallies, meanwhile, are *without exception* tightly packed affairs (even the ones where not a lot of people show up; the people that do show up tend to group themselves tightly together because they're all idiots).
So, yes, the chances of catching Coronavirus at a BLM protest is somewhat lower than at a Trump rally, because the other people at the first event *_generally speaking_* care about both their own and your health, whereas the people at the other event don't because they are too idiotic to do so.
Still, if one were to go to a BLM protest, it pays to make sure that the organizers are taking the virus into account and also that they generally know what they are doing.
@@AhsimNreiziev There's also the fact that the BLM protests happened when states were starting to reopen and also after most people figured out that our government, both parties, weren't going to do hardly anything to help the average American get through the shutdown. I knew we were going to somehow turn the virus into a partisan issue and we did. Mother nature is kicking our ass and instead of dealing with it we are arguing over whether or not we should let it kick our ass.
@@kingy002 what's happening is what always happens. person A is telling person B that Person C has wronged them, and that they should redress their grievances with person C, and while that is happening Person A is running away with the valuables. meanwhile person C is shouting at Person B that they haven't done anything, and person B isn't believing them, and is reiterating what Person A told them, meanwhile person D is confused and wants to help, but doesn't want to risk his hide. finally Person E comes in and says, hey i just saw Person A run away, why is he doing that?
@@kingy002 no. I am frustrated by how stupid everything is, and how no leader can seem to actually improve or even care about the common man's life. Last president I believe to do so was jimmy carter.
@@kingy002 your right. but their irrelevant. further democratization is still possible, to the point where citizenship and voter ID is the only requirement for directly voting on issues. a nationwide ballot initiative process if you will. that way you wouldn't have to care about persuading this official, or that mayor, all you would have to worry about is what the masses thought about. such as in the united states, mandatory police body camera's are polling at 81%.
Salt of the earth!
We have been attacked by a global pandemic, and if anything the world appears more divided as a result
So smart, so true.
I love Stevens talks especially about religion, but im sorrry the volume is too low to listen on my phone.
Always loved Stephen since Jeeves and Wooster, and I must say he should have been knighted years ago
Only Stephen Fry can say "fuck' and make it sound like an intelligent word. I love listening to his utterly sensible and common sense arguments that are delivered in such an eloquent manner.
This was SO MUCH BETTER than the actual debate which was sadly a complete disaster...
This was more insightful than the debate itself.. 🙄🙄🙄 wtf, Munk Debates?
I'm not interested in where you come from, what colour you are, or who you sleep with. All I'm interested in is what you say, what you do and why. Make your argument, persuade on the strength of that. Telling me you 'win' just because you're white or gay or a woman and you've been 'historically opppressed' isn't going to wash. Human beings are hardwired to be tribal, to seek power and to establish in and out groups. Minimising the reality of that and taking the extreme edges off should be our goal. We can't all be the same and we shouldn't all think the same. PC is about deciding what is and isn't in or out. But who decides that? By definition PC is the tool of those in the position of power to make that decision and therefore I am against it on principle.
mogznwaz Agree with all you say 100%
I’m a woman, and I really like a good discussion where I can use all my mental powers. Sometimes I’m able to convince the other person, sometimes I change my mind if I’m presented with data I didn’t know before, different kinds of things may happen. I get really angry when someone tries to intervene when my interlocutor is a man, accusing him of “mansplaining” or anything like that. I usually make the person regret the intervention. I don’t need special treatment, because I don’t believe I’m in an inferior position to start with. But of course, if a bigger person, man or woman, attacks me physically, I welcome any intervention, because for sure I’ll be in a much weaker position. :)
mogznwaz You've said it all 👌
Brilliant man
Agree with everything fry says except he doesn’t separate the right from the far right. Being right isn’t about homophobia and bigotry and hatred. The far end of both spectrums are the problem and as fry says pc culture is a recruiting tool for both.
Absolutely right on. I'm more conservative than liberal, but it depends on the issue. It's incredible how every conservative is lumped in with racists and homophobes. It's obviously a ploy to make people distance themselves from conservatives for fear of being labeled that way. There are liberals who are genuinely embarrassed about the far left's insanity too. And the further one side goes to the extreme, the further others are drawn to the opposite extreme.
I think people see through the labelling of the right these days and actually probably now turns left leaning people right. The fascists of the future will claim to be fighting it.
So true!
As a center-right ideologist, I couldn´t agree more with Mr Fry. Absoloutly correct in his words, in all aspects. Despite being on the opposite side of the spectrum I must admit, he is a very clever man.
He has big brain
12:56 "Oh, fuck that!" Stephen, you are my hero, not only because I agree, but because your timing is impeccable.
Fry came to debate. The other two Muppets came to shout at Peterson almost as if to make Fry's point - you are only recruiting for the right.
A prodigious intellect and true master of extracting the micturate!
2 years after painfully watching a 2h "debate" where Peterson and the two others decided to go rogue and make it a debate about politics, although thank fuck Stephen was there to give some on-subject insight; I find this interview ! Much better !
Peterson sort of had too - the other two were attacking him and attempting to smear hin rather than make a point themselves.
And besides - what Peterson ended up causing the other two to do was demonstrate He and Stephens side of the debate in action.
Rather than attempt to defend political correctness, they attempted to smear Peterson using Political Correctness and as a result they lost the debate by looking like rambling fools - because with Stephen there, they had no argument. He's exactly the type of person people like Dyson and Goldberg would claim PC is there to protect and he's outright telling them it doesn't work.
Peterson distracted them merely by defending himself from their smear attacks while Fry used their ramblings to illustrate his points.
Alot of people see it a disastrous debate and while if compared to the original concept of a debate that's true - it demonstrates there is no defense of political correctness that holds up in the face of either the intellectual Right or the Intellectual Left.
In otherwords - Smart People spot bullshit and tear it to pieces one way or another regardless of which end of the political rollercoaster they are on.
The other person I so wish to speak about this is George Carlin. He was against PC culture and saw where this was going already in the very early 90s...
Lilliputian hermeneutics! Fantastic!!
God how I wish more people in power were as enlightened as Sir Fry… especially these days …
This is what reasoned, informed and rational debate sounds like. This is not what you see when the finger wagging liberals are preaching at you about being offended...so what. The utterly and effortlessly intelligent reasoning of Stephen Fry
It’s the citizens that become offended by how words are used, which doesn’t have anything in common with politics. Case in point as follows.
From the book … Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician … author Matthew Franklin Sias
As a new EMT and thereafter, I was taught to use the word “death” and “dead” when I had occasion to break the news to a family. To use euphemisms such as “passed away” would leave some doubt in the loved ones’ minds, I was told, as to whether or not the person really had died. Directness was best. I was taught the extreme opposite when I became involved in the funeral business, maybe because the mortuary industry is much more customer service oriented, and maybe because it was so completely obvious that because we, as funeral directors were involved, someone was dead.
I learned this distinction between the languages of my two professions the hard way. When working at the mortuary removal service, I completed a residential call, representing Bonney-Watson funeral home. We were removing the body of an elderly man who had died peacefully in bad in the back hallway of his house.
Before we had moved him to our stretcher, I needed some information for the form I was to bring back to Bonney-Watson. I asked the new widow, “What time did he die today?” It seemed an innocuous question, and a necessary one.
The next day, I was informed by a supervisor that both the family and Bonney-Watson funeral home had complained that I had used the word “die.”
It always boils down to the ancient conflict between individualism vs collectivism. Regardless of the language used, the question remains: Is the individual more important than the collective or is the collective more important than the individual?
I've just been labelled an "islamophobe" for saying Islam isn't a race. 😂
@Sandy Jones how dare you spread such disgusting hatred. You racist islamophobic bigot! 😉😂
No, it ain't a race. It's just a happy coincidence that the vast majority of its adherents are people that don't look like you.
@@michaelmanning5379 and what do you think they look like? I don't really think about it like that, it's nothing to do with appearance. Did you know the country with the highest muslim population is Indonesia? Probably not, you probably just assumed otherwise and thought I did too.
@@w8m4n Actually, yes, I did know that. Hiding bigotry behind atheism is a rather sad ploy.
Yes, yes, you are soooo much smarter than the great unwashed with limited vocabularies. The fact that you felt compelled to relate that snigger-worthy anecdote tells us more about you than you intended. Why don't you just joint Sandy Jones and put on a white hood?
@@michaelmanning5379 what anecdote? Who said anything about atheism? Why do you think I'm a bigot? And when did I say o was smarter than anyone else?
Dear Stephen Fry,
Why would you say "they take it out and put it on a post" and then not add "quite literally posting it"? Way better than the tweet reference.
Maybe because he speaks ENGLISH properly! Just a thought!
Words are a way to convey ideas, if you take the words from people, but not their reasons for wanting to express those ideas, they will just find new words, and society will soon find that those new words now convey the old ideas.
Banning a word, just changes how its spelled!
Sorry to post so much. The Rev says there was no debate about who was in power when it was all white men? Heck, we've not only been debating, we've had debates that devolved into war since history began in Europe. And it was the same on the other continents back in the days when they had homogenous skin colors too, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Asia (I'm not sure about Australia).
And when you get past history, you've got archaeological evidence of warfare.
When everyone has the same color skin you divide by language, religion, height, whatever. All white, all black, all yellow, all red, it doesn't matter. We all go to war. All our ancestral groups did it.
And vengeance for past misdeeds has always been one of the prime excuses for making war. *Nelson Mandela knew that,* USA's black activists don't. The people who replaced Nelson Mandela when he died don't either.
We must all struggle to do better than that. We must all try to rise above our one-sided views of history. We must all try to rise above vengeance and bigotry.
Darkness at noon is a must read if you haven't. Couldn't recommend more.
I loved the podcast he did with Peterson. It's without a doubt in my top 3 listens
A shame Peterson couldn't resist bringing his new found faith into the proceedings. I liked Peterson more when he was less predictable. Nowadays, all he ever brings up is Bible. It kind of makes him an ideologue/zealot. Which in itself is ironic.
I’m left wing. I don’t agree with how it’s going and not do most of us. Small margins always makes loud noises
The small margins aren’t even the problem. It’s media acting like these small margins are somehow relevant. Outrage sells and even once trusted news sources are doing anything to get more likes and clicks and views. People get outraged about the outrage as well. It’s a madhouse.
Interesting reference to an attack by aliens bringing the people of Earth together. In high school in the 70s, my best friend and I (both science and science fiction nerds) thought the same.
This wasn't the debate, Fry was great in the actual debate, I am so happy I found him.
Superb interview. Stephen Fry’s remarks are more relevant than ever, (unfortunately).
Stephen Fry is an perfect example of reasonable leftist.
The pigs are wearing the trousers - Orwell Wow !
"A wider cause to belong to". Be careful what you wish for.
I'm so glad they provided this video. Fry is a beautiful man, but having to listen to Kermit the Frog to hear this debate through was not possible for me.
To transgress just for the sake of transgressing, as a matter of pride? That is stupid Mr Fry.
"fuck that" - The absolutely incomparable Stephen Fry.
The difference between you must be this or do this, as opposed to you can be this or can do this, the right to express
I think Bertrand Russell said that the ardent fanaticism for democracy is, ironically, not democratic.
"....its just dumb..." there it is. No truer words could be spoken regarding PC. And right on the heels of that, add intellectually dishonest, to its core.
Inclusion by false and flabby premises is not inclusion AT ALL. To quote Fry, 'FUCK THAT....'
These 13 minutes were more full with a debate on PC compared to the 2 hours one
Nice how they are colour coordinated!
About content: I totally agree with Stephen Fry!
Calling the other side the enemy is wrong.
The crazy little children are jangling the keys to the kingdom!
Stephen: "PC is a way of shutting down debate." - Thanks for a sanema clear statement.
thats poggers bro
Totally right Mr Fry. PC only turns away potential supporters. I have found my political opinions stray further away from left wing liberalism because i'm tired of PC trying to tell people what they can and can't say and branding people who oppose it with all the isms under the sun. I still hold true opinions of equality being preferable and i still long for a day when we can live happily side by side, but because of PC, i could never see myself supporting let alone joining any movements such as feminism or BLM because i cannot abide those significant few who use it as a means to spread hate and not togetherness.
Yea but those PC nuts are not the entire left. So if you're straying, that's on you buddy.
@@b9y no, that's why I said, the significant few. Sometimes it can take a few extremists to compromise the integrity of a group. And sometimes they can rub of (even if a little) on the majority. Any movement that would do bad things, even if only done by a select few is still stained by those bad things. I don't want to be associated with those groups.
I agree with Stephen Fry, but I also agree with Stewart Lee, and I would pay to watch them debate this point, and I hope they see this comment and make that happen.....
Stephen Fry's absolutely right, but his way of thinking depends, unfortunately, upon everyone being intelligent and thoughtful, and sadly, they are not...
4:14 nailed it
Jargon doesn't serve the purpose of the protest but protest is critical
Diversity of opinion, only diversity that matters