Wilk Wilkinson
speaker
63 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Wilk Wilkinson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's a real honor, man. I appreciate being here. Thank you so much. You betcha. So first tell us about Derate the Hate. So Derate the Hate is a podcast I started back in 2020 with the mission statement of bettering the world one attitude at a time.
It's one of these things where I saw the toxicity in the world just getting out of hand, knew that through personal accountability, through personal mindset, we could start to rebuild our way of doing things. And it's been quite a ride.
So my background, Drew, is actually in transportation. I was a truck driver for several years and now I manage truck drivers by trade and do this thing, the mindset work, the depolarization work, the conducting of civil conversations work on the side. It's more of a passion project for me to volunteer in this depolarization space and Like I said, try to better the world in which we live.
So it's definitely been something.
Well, the resistance comes from people who obviously just don't want to have conversations. They don't want to step outside of their silos. People have found themselves, especially in the age of COVID, becoming far more comfortable in their own bubbles, in their own silos. And not wanting to have discussions, especially about contentious issues.
It's something that we face across the spectrum when it comes to issues, whether it be the class divide or the racial divide or the COVID divide. We've become all too comfortable in the age of social media with attacking those we don't agree with, but not having actual conversations with those we disagree with.
Well, it's really about, Drew, it's really about convincing people of the importance of a conversation. One of the things that I've done is gone out and sought out some of the most diametrically opposed figures in our society today.
The biggest example, obviously, is Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the NIH, and then my friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is obviously now, as some people will understand, especially some of your viewers and listeners, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is on the short list to become the head of the NIH.
Trying to, you know, bring these people together has become, like I said, one of the biggest projects of my life. And to do that, it's really about stressing the importance of the conversation. Because as my friend Monica Guzman from Braver Angels says, those who are underrepresented in our life will be overrepresented in our minds and our imaginations.
When people are not having that conversation, Drew, they start to make up things in their mind about who this person is, what this person thinks, what their motivations are. And that's where we get into that ugly place, right? That ignorance is a self-perpetuating cycle. And with that ignorance comes fear. And that fear then develops into hatred. And that hatred eventually can end up in violence.
And that's what we're trying to stem. We want to get away from that ugliness. and promote these conversations. Just because it's a contentious topic does not mean it has to be a contentious conversation. And that's how we stem the tide of fear. That's how we stem the tide of hatred. And that's how we stay away from these ugly, ugly battles. I mean, we've seen, everybody's seen it.
Anybody who's on social media, anybody watches the news, there is a... A concerted effort on so many people's part out there, whether it be those in the media, whether it be those in politics or those outrage entrepreneurs that are just out there trying to keep us divided. Well, they do it for a reason. Number one, it sells soap, right? Division sells soap. It's an old saying, but...
But I'm just a guy out here, Drew, who's trying to make civility cool again, right? I'm just trying to show people that our conversations, and by starting those conversations, we can get away from a lot of that ugliness.
Well, I was a very toxic person for a very long time. I was a very angry person for a very long time. I had a lot of personal animus from things that happened in my childhood and the things that I had, didn't have, wanted, couldn't get. And I spent a lot of my time miserable.
And then I went on this personal accountability journey and really started to realize that I had the tools within me to get beyond all that anger, all that animus.
Well, personal accountability means I have the ability within my brain, as Stephen Covey said, the ability to choose my response, my personal responsibility. I have the ability to choose my response. So it's not about what happens.
I would say all of the above, right? I read a lot of books. I mean, it was no standard therapy, no 12-step program, though I've studied the approaches of Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous, Codependence Anonymous, things like that. You know, I've gone through a lot of that stuff and studied a lot of that. And then a spiritual guy, I'm a conservative Christian guy, Drew.
And so, you know, read the Bible and have gone through the Bible. And then books like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Man's Search for Meaning or Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. These things were all instrumental in my journey to...
So that moment of change for me came when I saw the ramping up of toxicity in the social media atmosphere. I'm not somebody who had ever paid attention to politics in my early adult life, but as I started to see things after 9-11 and I started to see the animus between parties and then I saw that ugliness growing.
And then when the onset of social media or the popularity of social media started growing in, you know, the teens, the 20 teens or, you know, and then I started seeing this, this anonymity, the ability to be outraged in an anonymous way and say the most ugly of things to people, I started getting caught up in that. And I started feeding on that anger and that ugliness online.
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