Latest / Randy Unscripted / We’re Not as Broken as We Think—But We’re Looking in the Wrong Place

Transcript

We’re Not as Broken as We Think—But We’re Looking in the Wrong Place · Randy Unscripted

• 0:01
  Adam Curry: Randy Black.
• 0:02
  Salty Crayon: Randy Black.
• 0:03
  David Medus: Randy Black.
• 0:04
  Kevin Bae: Randy Black.
• 0:04
  Leila Medus: Randy Black.
• 0:05
  Adam Curry: Randy Black.
• 0:06
  Kevin Bae: Randy Black.
• 0:07
  David Medus: Randy Black.
• 0:07
  Adam Curry: He's a troublemaker.
• 0:08
  Randy Black: Welcome to Randy Unscripted.
• 0:10
  Randy Black: I'm Randy Black,
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  Randy Black: and this is the podcast where I just kind of talk about whatever comes across
• 0:15
  Randy Black: my mind whenever it happens to come up.
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  Randy Black: And today I wanted to share something that I came across today.
• 0:21
  Randy Black: It just came out yesterday.
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  Randy Black: There are interviews that you listen to, And then there are conversations that stay with you.
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  Randy Black: I recently listened to an extended interview with Ben Sasse.
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  Randy Black: And what struck me wasn't just what he said about politics.
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  Randy Black: It's how clearly he talked about what actually matters.
• 0:47
  Randy Black: Because this wasn't a political interview. Not really. It was a conversation about priorities.
• 0:55
  Randy Black: About community. and honestly, about how we're living.
• 1:01
  Randy Black: This comes from an extended 60 Minutes interview by Scott Pelley,
• 1:05
  Randy Black: and I'll put links for it in the show notes for you.
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  Randy Black: SAS is speaking from a place that most of us avoid thinking about,
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  Randy Black: and that's a terminal diagnosis.
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  Randy Black: And whether you agree with Ben SAS politically or not, that kind of reality
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  Randy Black: tends to strip things down to what's true.
• 1:26
  Ben Sasse: Having a terminal diagnosis isn't really that unique. We're all always on the clock.
• 1:32
  Randy Black: That's uncomfortable, but it's accurate.
• 1:35
  Randy Black: We live like time is something that we control. Like meaning is something we can get to later.
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  Randy Black: But if that statement's true, if we're all on the clock, then the question becomes,
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  Randy Black: what are we actually doing with the time that we've been given?
• 1:55
  Randy Black: And maybe more importantly, what are we putting off that actually shouldn't wait?
• 2:02
  Randy Black: From there, he makes a shift that I think a lot of people aren't ready to hear.
• 2:07
  Randy Black: He argues that our biggest problems aren't political, that they're relational.
• 2:14
  Ben Sasse: People are incredibly rich at a material level, statistically,
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  Ben Sasse: and yet we're pretty impoverished spiritually and communally in that we don't have thick community.
• 2:24
  Ben Sasse: We don't know our cousins. We don't know the people who live two rows away from
• 2:29
  Ben Sasse: us, and we don't feel like we're in a common cause with people right now.
• 2:32
  Randy Black: That's a diagnosis, not of government, but of culture. And if we're honest, it tracks.
• 2:40
  Randy Black: We can name national leaders. We can argue policy.
• 2:45
  Randy Black: We can scroll through endlessly through the opinions that are out there.
• 2:51
  Randy Black: But a lot of people couldn't tell you the name of the person living right next door.
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  Randy Black: That disconnect matters more than we probably want to admit.
• 2:59
  Randy Black: Because when that kind of disconnect becomes normal, it quietly reshapes what
• 3:05
  Randy Black: we expect from life and from each other.
• 3:09
  Randy Black: That doesn't mean that politics don't matter, but Sass reframes it.
• 3:15
  Randy Black: He suggests that we've made politics carry weight it was never meant to carry.
• 3:21
  Ben Sasse: Politics wants to trivialize that by screaming there's some bad political actor
• 3:26
  Ben Sasse: somewhere, and if only that person were ripped out of the public square,
• 3:30
  Ben Sasse: Politicians could fix all this. Now neighbors are going to have to fix this.
• 3:33
  Randy Black: That's where this gets challenging. Because it's easier to believe that the problem is out there.
• 3:38
  Randy Black: It's harder to accept that the solution might start with how we live,
• 3:42
  Randy Black: how we show up, and whether we're actually engaged with the people around us.
• 3:48
  Randy Black: That's not a voting issue. That's a responsibility issue.
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  Randy Black: And responsibility isn't something we can delegate. It shows up in the small,
• 3:57
  Randy Black: consistent choices that we make every single day.
• 4:03
  Randy Black: He also points to something deeper that's shaping all of this,
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  Randy Black: the digital world that we're living in.
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  Randy Black: And this part is easy to overlook because the benefits are obvious.
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  Randy Black: But the trade-offs, man, they're real.
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  Ben Sasse: But at the level of human meaning and production, it's pretty scary to not know
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  Ben Sasse: what you're going to do to add value for your neighbor 10 or 25 years from now.
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  Randy Black: We've built systems that make life more efficient, more convenient, more immediate.
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  Randy Black: But at the same time, a lot of people are quietly asking, where do I fit? What do I contribute?
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  Randy Black: What actually matters about what I do?
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  Randy Black: That's not a small question. And when those questions go unanswered,
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  Randy Black: people don't just feel uncertain. They feel unnecessary.
• 5:01
  Randy Black: And then there's the everyday reality that we've all seen as pointed out in
• 5:06
  Randy Black: this interview by Scott Pelley, who was conducting it.
• 5:10
  Scott Pelley: You walk into a room full of people these days. They're not talking to each other.
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  Randy Black: That's not an exaggeration. We've normalized being physically present,
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  Randy Black: but relationally absent.
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  Randy Black: And over time, that kind of disconnection doesn't just affect friendships.
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  Randy Black: It shapes how we think, how we listen, and how we understand each other.
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  Randy Black: It's hard to build anything meaningful if we're not actually engaging with people.
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  Randy Black: And if we're not engaging well, we also lose the ability to disagree well.
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  Randy Black: Well, that creates even more distance.
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  Randy Black: So if the problem is deeper than politics, then the solution has to be deeper
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  Randy Black: too. and what he points to isn't complex.
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  Randy Black: It's just costly.
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  Ben Sasse: We are meant to hug. We are meant to make babies. We are meant to break bread together.
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  Randy Black: That's a picture of real life. Relationships.
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  Randy Black: Presence. Shared time. The kind of things that don't trend, that don't go viral,
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  Randy Black: and that don't scale easily.
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  Randy Black: But they're the things that actually hold everything else together.
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  Randy Black: And they require something we don't always like to give.
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  Randy Black: Our time without distraction.
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  Randy Black: And this is where the conversation turns from a critique to a direction.
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  Ben Sasse: So I'm not optimistic about Washington, D.C., but I am optimistic about what
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  Ben Sasse: a free people and a republic can build if they start with the little platoons
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  Ben Sasse: of their family, their extended kin network,
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  Ben Sasse: their neighborhood, their workplace, and their place of worship.
• 6:54
  Randy Black: That's a very specific kind of hope. It's not institutional.
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  Randy Black: It's not abstract. It's practical.
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  Randy Black: It's the belief that what we build in our homes, in our communities,
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  Randy Black: in our daily lives, all still matters.
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  Randy Black: And that kind of hope doesn't depend on outcomes. It depends on participation.
• 7:18
  Ben Sasse: Mortality is not news, right? Like, we're all mortal. We're all on the clock.
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  Ben Sasse: We're all going to be pushing up daisies eventually. And I think wisdom requires
• 7:28
  Ben Sasse: us to grapple with our death.
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  Randy Black: If that's true, then wisdom isn't just knowledge.
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  Randy Black: It's alignment. It's living in a way that reflects what actually matters.
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  Randy Black: Not eventually, but now.
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  Randy Black: So here's the question I've been thinking about since I heard this.
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  Randy Black: Am I investing more time in reacting to the world or actually contributing to
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  Randy Black: it? because maybe the biggest problems that we see aren't just problems to debate.
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  Randy Black: Maybe they're problems that require
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  Randy Black: participation and participation starts closer than we usually think.
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  Randy Black: I hope this episode has made you think and I hope that you take the time to
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  Randy Black: share it with someone and maybe you actually take the time to sit down and talk
• 8:21
  Randy Black: through some of these ideas.
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  Randy Black: I'm Randy Black. And join me next time on another episode of Randy Unscripted.