On Political Correctness and Clear Thinking | Stephen Fry | COMEDY | Rubin Report

Stephen Fry is an actor author comedian activist and former Twitterer Stephen thanks for joining me it's a pleasure David nice to be you are giving me 10 minutes we're jumping it we're on Larry King said I got a bonus ten minutes with you I'm very excited but you've had a boner is I do have an effect on people but that's right well we'll give me give me a couple minutes okay good start yeah turn your loop down so everything that that you're about that I know about you are the exact things that I talk about on the show all the time about atheism and free thinking and secular values all of these things do you fear for these things right now because I think they're in a very precarious position yes I do David actually and I think I suppose one would bundle it all up and say one fears that the advances of the Enlightenment are being systematically and deliberately pushed back not deliberately by everybody because quite a few people who are doing it don't even know what the Enlightenment was but I mean America is an example of a country that was founded on principles of the Enlightenment by by people who had read Kant and and pain and and and and the philosophers Voltaire and others who had opened up the idea of free thinking and casting off the shackles of ecclesiastes ISM I suppose of being ruled by the church and and an America was the great experiment in which all this was to be it was to be put into the form of a state a state that was benevolent and free and open and not ruled by religion and not ruled by by by enforced thinking and who went horribly wrong yeah I'm not taking America's Winrock I just mean that's you know I mean it went horribly wrong unfortunately in terms of within a hundred years sparking off the the most bloody civil war in human history just as an in tonight's into the zone conflict nothing had been bloody as you well know so that was a bad thing yeah and somehow then crime gang violence started in Chicago New York and of course the West was opened up in the bloodiest way imaginable with genocide and gunfire and and this the beautiful calm marble pillars that you think of the elegant harmonious sort of architecture but the intellectual architecture and physical architecture that that America was supposed to represent became so blood spattered yeah so you're saying we're not a perfect society by no means let are you any less perfect than Britain or or any other yeah but there's an irony at the heart of it and I am as you rightly said an atheist but funnily enough perhaps more than that I'm not a rationalist I'm an empiricist I think there's a very important difference thinking about thought empirical thought is about seeing whether something is true experimenting with it finding out testing it and sometimes rationalism can be superstition you know you you can say rationally that you have this like Pascal had a rational theory of light and it took it took mutant poked a hole and some cardboard right and that's the empirical way of saying that it's just look so that's really just science you're down with science done with science but a very particular view yes empirical science is very important side of it you know I mean of course writing sums on a blackboard is important as well but they've got to be tested so I love the Large Hadron Collider and things like that but um I don't know how we got to this raised that issue well all sort of calorie in in thinking when it clear honking which absolute clear thinking which is a phrase that as you know I value highly from-from Bertrand Russell but and the empirical side of it is this and it's worth thinking countries that have kings and queens which are rationally stupid weird ideas are empirically freer and more socially just than countries don't consider that look at the world now look at social justice happiness freedom and equality in the world and you're thinking Sweden Denmark Norway Benelux countries and Britain which does have very high levels of social justice and and Holland and these countries have kings and queens and they had constitutional monarchies so it isn't that's what I mean by being empirically right that's I'm I'm not saying therefore you must have a king and queen in order to be free but all I'm saying is you having one doesn't stop you from being freer from being opener I mean these are very open societies Denmark and Sweden and annoying particularly open society yeah but they're suffering a little bit from their openness aren't they right now with all this immigration stuff I mean it sounds like some of the underpinnings of it it is it's becoming it is becoming problematic as a good question but that's it and so similarly I am not necessarily in favor of separation of church and state and the reason I'm not is that I come from a country where church and state are absolutely like that mm-hmm and is the most secular society I have ever experienced has the highest level of atheism anywhere yeah and America has separation of church and state and not only they all believe in God they open even bloody angels yeah here 74% of Americans think angels walk on the earth yeah you told me before sorry you told me before we started you're moving here half of the year and yeah what's it really once you really find out what that's about you may push that down a little bit of this country I don't get me wrong I mean you know the you love what you what you mark you love you wouldn't you know I wouldn't mock some of the sides of America if I didn't value America so much it's one of the movies that you've been in that I absolutely love we talked about it a second ago was V for Vendetta interestingly in V for Vendetta the it was the affair authoritarian right that was coming after everyone's rights and everyone's speech and there's an amazing scene with you and you have this Koran that you're talking about it you say you love the imagery of it all this but it's the right that's coming effort and I find in America right now it's the left what people referring to as the regressive left that seems to be coming after language and speech to you do you see that does that is that happening across the pond - I suspect it is we fear that it's going to happen more and more because American leads and and Britain follows in all kinds of ways and I think it started to happen in Britain with the removal or the attempted removal of statues of people who are considered unlikable that were once very beloved one sided and have become in a very 1984 way unperson 's and suddenly someone because they were an imperialist Cecil Rhodes is the example I'm thinking of who was a who is probably best known in America because the Rhodes Scholarships that Americans take to carry Oxford and he founded the country called Rhodesia Hansbrough hence its name which is now Zimbabwe of course and he was the founder of De Beers and various diamond things loser it was a real Empire Builder and he was I'm sure a monster he once said to being born British was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life right this is a guy yes I think there's a big statue of him or sculpture a little something in it is Oxford College and there's a movement because we were offended by this because he stood for you know he stood for values that we now regard rightly I think as terrible in her stealing other people's countries right now particularly a degree not a good thing to do and raiding although their mineral wealth but to remove his statue it strikes me as being stupid I mean the way to fight colonialism and the ideas behind that is not to is not a pull down statues yeah it is it is to actually to reveal to say who he is this is who this man was look at him you yeah so this is occasionally throw negative yeah and this is like when in America we now don't they won't show repeats of the show Dukes of Hazzard because I had a confederate flag on it or I'll even here you know Thomas Jefferson people say well you know it's known that he was sleeping with one of his slaves and people say well he was a rapist and we should know but he also he also probably freed the slaves yeah I know it's the good life is complicated and nobody wants to believe that life is complicated yeah this is the problem I suppose you might call it the infantilism of our culture you know the food people eat is Pappy soft food that barely needs a knife and fork to be equal if you look like that and it's sugary drinks the grown-ups have with baseball cap wear a baseball cap on a baseball field right no where else all right you understand and don't drink these drinks once you're over 12 years old there just don't and above all when you go for the cinema don't go and see superheroes eat each other that's the children do you understand Oh sounds like somebody didn't get the bad guy role yes I'm a man did I know it does weird seriously you know there is deep infantilism in the culture and and that extends you know it's loved in in terms of what people wear and what films they see but in terms of where they think they can't bear complexity the idea that things aren't easy to understand that there's a mmm but there's a are you have to think there are gradations there are you know that no one wants that they want to be told or they want to be able to decide and say this is good this is bad I'm saying so anything that in any way conflicts with that is not to be borne and on student campuses this idea of them oh yeah trigger warnings there are many great plays in which contain rapes and the word rape now is even considered a raid what rep is to rape yeah well it's it's an it has an interesting Latin roots and the word wrapped all comes from the same root rape island there all kinds of words from it violate you know these with their terrible things and they have to be thought about clearly but if you say you can't watch you come on this play you know you can't watch Titus Andronicus no you can't read it in a Shakespeare class you can't lead men Beth because I've got children being being been killed in it and and you might trigger something when you were young that upset you once because uncle touched you in the nasty place well I'm sorry yeah it's a great shame and we're all very sorry that uncle touched in that nasty place but you get some of my sympathy but your self-pity gets my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity get rid of it because no one's going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself the irony is will feel sorry for you if you stop feeling sorry for yourself just grow up yeah all right I love that hopefully you'll come back we'll do a proper hour go crazy yes or no am I gonna get you back on Twitter I'd love it yeah great love it I got on that but your Twitter coming back here hold up Twitter maybe I gotta maybe all right well you know where to find it'll be at Stephen Fry if he ever does return on Twitter you you

Channel: The Rubin Report

Views: 2,801,193

Keywords: rubin report, dave rubin, idw, current events, free speech, intellectual dark web, critical thinking, rubin, the rubin report, david rubin, comedy, politically incorrect, political correctness, comic, humor, stand up comedian, Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry interview, v for vendetta, twitter

Id: eJQHakkViPo

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2016