Podcast Transcript | Ep. 39

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword | Ep. 39

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward back with another episode of order within episode number 39 today. Today's topic of the show is going to be covering the concept. The pen is mightier than the sword. We're going to talk about what that theme is, what that concept is. We're going to define it. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of it.

[00:01:15] We're going to discuss the importance of free speech. The dangers of censorship. And then also look at some examples of how this is illustrated and in film and in novels, and then conclude the episode. All right. So January 20, 23. That's crazy. 2023. Third millennium. It's just wild to think about.

[00:01:42] All right, y'all. So the pen is mightier than the sword is not a new concept, but I think in our culture, It becomes more and more relevant. I mean, it's been relevant throughout all of history, the ability to freely speak. That's one of the reasons why the. United States of America and its governing experiment. It's youthful experiment relative to all the nations of the world.

[00:02:11] Is unique. In that there's a bill of rights that individuals have. And the focus on speaking freely. And using our freedom of speech as a means to live the lives that we desire. So the phrase, the pen is mightier than the sword is ultimately communicating that there's more value in communication, languages, writing storytelling. It can be a more effective means to a chain achieving change and resolving conflict oppose to military force. Which this is an old term, as you can tell the sword is representative of military force violence, aggression. Physical actions that we can take against. Enemies or ideas.

[00:03:01] And so that, that phrase was attributed to Edward bulwer-Lytton an English novelist, playwright, and politician who wrote. In his play, Richelieu or the conspiracy in 1839. He wrote beneath the rule of men entirely. Great. The pen is mightier than the sword. So it's. Alluding to there. Is that our ideas are more powerful than any type of force could be. And that's actually how we motivate people. That's how we inspire people is through our ideas.

[00:03:36] Our words, our stories. This is the way we impact the world. That we're a part of is by communicating our ideas and sharing them freely. It's also the bedrock of a democratic society is the ability to share ideas, to disagree with one another, to, to counter ideas, to share new ideas and to challenge the things that we believe are true or false.

[00:04:01] This is the essence of how we go about having a democratic society is our ability to freely speak. With one another. And it goes into getting into the role of language and communication. In our lives. And this is how we use. We use words and stories and language to persuade, to motivate, to inspire, to educate.

[00:04:26] It's the essence of how we live our lives in the world today. The world is so driven by information now. And the ability to have a nimble, strong, flexible mind that can express and communicate its ideas, the vision that it holds. Is crucial. It's a crucial skill to have in today's world. And without it, we can often be left behind.

[00:04:51] And forcing us to do more of these older kind of brutish type tactics, fear, force, aggression, physical aggression. They are in many ways, representative of older ways of dealing with conflict or disagreements. We're evolving. We're maturing. As a society as a species, as, as humanity, and this is becoming less and less relevant. Now there's still wars that are happening in the world. There's a lot of violence that happens in our globe. I'm not trying to act like.

[00:05:21] Things are kumbaya here. But the while our modern technology has advanced militarily wise. The need for wars has subsided. We haven't had a world war. Since the early 20th century. And I guess, mid and close to the mid 20th century. And since then has been more technologically advanced wars now.

[00:05:45] Again, this is going to be a part of our culture, probably for quite some time. We have a lot of work and evolution to do in terms of how we engage with our conflicts and disagreements. But. Leveraging language and communication as a means to educate, to inspire. And to inform individuals.

[00:06:02] Is a much more constructive way to make change. It's also sustainable. And doesn't have to do with destroying the enemy or the opposed person. Physically. To get ideas across or to disagree with someone. So it's an evolution. Of our species and it's also far more effective to inspire others and make change. And it's one of the things that I think.

[00:06:31] If you have a vision or you have inspirations and goals. Writing and communicating and telling your story, finding your voice is an incredible means to share what lives within you with the world. And it's. An amazing way to influence and impact those around us. And it can be done at a small scale. It can be done at large-scale.

[00:06:54] But the ability to communicate clearly and use language as a means to influence others. Is, and has been a very known and powerful known. Bit for a long time, but it becomes more and more relevant in the world today. And when you layer in. The tools that are developing around AI and how technology is enhancing our abilities to create targeted.

[00:07:19] Intentional content. Now, there is the other side of that, where when you have tools like this, There's going to be a lot of. I think cookie cutter generated content and replicated like that, but there's already a lot of that happening anyway, based on how. We create content as humans. There's a lot of repetitive.

[00:07:40] Recycled content anyway. So I'm not, I actually am on the, probably in the less side here in terms of the AI tools. I think this is going to help us write better content. I've been using it in my own writing process. It's a way to, uh, find clarity and create unique information, leveraging tools so that we don't have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. I think ultimately that's what this is going to come down to. But what this does is it gives us the ability.

[00:08:04] To communicate in a more effective manner. It allows us to create more content in a more efficient manner, thus reaching more people. Influencing more of our audience and making more of an impact with the content that we can create or the stories that we have to share and each of us have a story to share. Each of us have something within us.

[00:08:22] To communicate to the world. It's just the scale with which that may be, that may not be some public, socially driven communication or story that we're seeking to tell, but in our families and our communities and our friendships and our relationships. We all leverage these things in our day-to-day lives. And so understanding the role that they play and how we can improve our ability to communicate and use written language can help us as a species overall and communicate at a higher level.

[00:08:54] Looking at the next piece here is going to be the importance of free speech. And this is a big topic of contention right now. Particularly in the United States. It has been for quite some time with the election cycles, really since 2015. In 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. There's just been a lot of challenges, disruption, all this stuff happening in the media.

[00:09:18] And then in particular with the social media platforms, especially as information is continuing to come out. As I said earlier, this is in January of 2023. So there's a lot of information that's still coming out about how. The federal government in the United States has been coordinating and working with a lot of these social media platforms to censor speech that wasn't.

[00:09:39] Really the approved narrative from a federal government perspective. And that's a dangerous place to be because at the end of the day, all of us need to know.

[00:09:50] The different perspectives that people are offering. We need to be able to look at information and data. Whether we agree with it or not, whether it goes against a narrative that the government is pushing or not. As citizens of a free country and the world for that matter, we need to be able to look at information and make those decisions for ourselves. If somebody is going to be filtering.

[00:10:11] Communicating or suppressing information and not allowing us to make those decisions ourselves. We're going to find ourselves in a dangerous position because ultimately if others control the flow of information and what we can look at or not look at. Then we're only seeing a slice of reality, and that means someone's controlling our version of reality, which is not an ideal place to live in.

[00:10:34] I don't want to be in a place like that. And there are countless examples throughout history where suppression and censorship of speech is. Not a good thing. Now, if you're inciting violence that's an edge case in terms of free speech here in America, you can't incite violence, but you can speak freely.

[00:10:54] About your ideas. Even if those ideas are controversial and I'm a huge believer in the fact that the best way to defeat an argument or an idea is to openly debate it, do it out in the out in the open transparently and engage. With the information at hand, not character attacks and assaults, but the ideas themselves. That's how we overcome ideas and improve our ability.

[00:11:18] To communicate and work together, but we're sliding heavily into a more censorship. Driven society. With the tools that are available to us today. And it's. Creating problems in a lot of ways, ultimately because of the fact that it's becoming more easy to do. And that's what we're seeing here, particularly with social media platforms.

[00:11:43] If they are willing to play ball. And I think that's the contention with what's happening at Twitter is with the acquisition by Elon Musk. He. Apparently values, free speech, at least his version of it, whatever that may be. I'm not going to say I'm in or against that perspective. I do hope Elon Musk is.

[00:12:03] Truthful and honorable in his approach with free speech and his desire to have a free speech platform. But that will be. Determined here as things continue to unfold, but. It has sparked a lot of change there. A lot of information is coming out and you can see the influence that our federal government has had in the social media platforms. And by doing so.

[00:12:25] You steer the direction that we had as a society. And that's the danger of this is if we are censoring or limiting or changing information, then we are going to be shaping and manipulating our society at a cultural level. This is going to create problems for us. If. An, especially when you're looking at what's happened since 2020.

[00:12:46] Relative to pandemics and health and all of these things, that type of stuff. If we don't have access to all the information, particularly around what's being injected into us. Supplements we're taking. Vaccines we're taking whatever it may be. If we don't have access to information. Then things can be hidden and that can create massive problems for us as a society. That's not that complicated.

[00:13:09] To understand. I know many of us are grappling with these ideas and these thoughts. Relative to what free speech means and how much we need to be spent censoring people. But the danger of this is that whole full-blown narratives can take place when censorship is allowed to spread its ugly roots into society. And that's where we are finding ourselves is ultimately the battle against censorship.

[00:13:40] And it's going to be interesting to see where things go. From here.

[00:13:46] I'm of the belief that speaking freely. And sharing information freely will always be the best path forward. Bringing light awareness and consciousness to all information is the path forward. I'm a believer in that I've seen it work in my own life, and I know that it's critical for us to leverage. If we are serious about growth and evolving as a species, we have to hit information head on regardless of how hard or tough it may be to accept or embrace it's our responsibility to look at information as it is. And.

[00:14:21] And work through it, whatever that may mean. And a lot of times there are ugly truths that we have to accept as a society, as a culture, as a people. And the dangers of censorship. Prevent us from growing. They prevent us from evolving from moving forward and they put out potentially even more damaging truths or falsehoods, or half truths in the world that is not connected to reality. And that's where we are now. As you, you're seeing this split.

[00:14:49] In reality where people are living in two different realms or multiple realms, I guess if you will, depending upon the version of reality that they are willing to accept. And this is all happening because of all the censorship and all the misdirection and the desire to control narratives and change and withhold information. So there's a lot of deep rooted problems that can rise from this. If we're not careful. And we're standing at the precipice, staring down some of these challenges right now, as you see what happens when you start getting governments involved.

[00:15:23] In the game of censorship of limiting information and particularly around leveraging technology and social media, like we've seen. This is a dictators really wet dream in a lot of ways though, the world we're living in now, but also. The best of times in the worst of times. So there's so much opportunity for us to create challenge.

[00:15:45] And press forward. And this time as well.

[00:15:48] All right. So now we've discussed the importance of free speech. We looked at the dangers of censorship and how we can slide into. Dystopian world pretty quickly. If we're not careful. The last piece we're going to look at here. Is going to be some examples, and we're gonna look at a few movies and we're going to look at a few novels and then we're going to wrap the episode here.

[00:16:12] So starting off. Is. This movie. And the speech from this movie.

[00:16:20] Is incredible. Uh, the first movie that I'm listing here is called the great dictator. It was released in 1940 and it's a comedy drama film. It was written, directed and starred Charlie Chaplin. He sat tire. Uh,

[00:16:36] oh my goodness. I'm saying that wrong, but satirizes Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in the movie. It explores the danger of censorship and the importance of free speech in a democracy. I'm going to link to that speech. I've linked to this speech before on Twitter. I've actually written a thread about it on my website. I don't think it's up yet. I need to get that up.

[00:16:56] But it's one of the most incredible speeches. I've ever heard. Truthfully in my life and it's so motivating and inspiring, and it's challenging these ideas of censorship. Of dictators. And how. They're always seeking to mislead us with their words and their language in their narratives to serve them, whether it's good for us or not. The dictators only care about themselves and they're going to manipulate.

[00:17:23] And mislead us with whatever words or stories they need to get what they want. And ultimately that's what that movie is about. But there's a gentleman in the. The character in the movie. Get swapped in to this role. It's a good film. And he gives this speech because he looks like the main dictator he's not though. And then he gives us incredible speech to the people watching it.

[00:17:46] And it's very inspiring and uplifting. And, but it goes to show the power of words over dictatorship. So he's actually in the role of a dictator pretending to be that dictator and he has this incredible speech. And he shares, it's literally called the speech. He shares all this wonderful vision that he has for humanity, and it helps set them free and then break free from the dictatorship, all built around the simple concept of sharing ideas of freedom, of expression, of creativity, of love, of connection.

[00:18:22] And our life and in our world. So that's a very powerful example of the power of the pen is mightier than the sword. The next one is going to be V for vendetta, which came out in 2005. Really great film. It's a dystopian action film. It's set in the future where the government is taking control and suppress the freedom of expression.

[00:18:41] The protagonist V use the power of words and ideas to inspire and motivate people to rise up against their oppressive rulers. And so throughout the whole film V is dropping in these messages and these stories to disrupt those dictators, they're trying to control the narrative. It's always the same the dictators are always trying to control the narrative, trying to censor specific information or speech to dominate the world that they want to create the world that they desire.

[00:19:09] And then the enemy of that is the people that are seeking to expose that to share differently, to say. To show a different world or perspective. And V is the, he's the freedom. Seeker, if you will. And so he uses language stories, moments throughout the movie to help wake people up, to help break them free of this.

[00:19:32] Trance they've been put under. Because of that. It's an, it's a beautiful dance of. Of language and freedom and battling, if you will like the powerful government versus the people. So the whole movie's built around that idea. But during that. Film. He shares these ideas that motivates them and eventually rallies the citizenship to overturn this oppressive power and expose what's happening all through his words and inspiring language.

[00:20:06] All right. The next one here is going to be a movie called. Spotlight.

[00:20:14] This is a biographical drama that tells a story of the Boston Globe's spotlight team. Which uncovered widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic church. It illustrates the power of investigative journalism and the importance of holding those in power accountable for their actions. Now, this. Almost all of us are aware of the Catholic church and the corruption.

[00:20:40] And abuse, particularly with little boys, younger boys that's been happening. This story covers that team that breaks out. Exposes that at a high level, how deep it goes and just documents their journey there. But journalism, investigative journalism. Really the original aim of journalism was to hold powerful people to account. It's become the opposite of that. Now.

[00:21:05] Media and journalism is simply the mechanism to enforce. These government accepted narratives, and they've become the arm of enforcement now for our governments globally. So media and investigative journalism has really now just hit pieces. And doxing and all this crazy stuff that they do now.

[00:21:25] It's not the same principled investigative journalism that used to happen at these companies, these larger companies like Boston globe. Now there are tons of investigative journalists in our world today, but they're doing an independently. Many of them are on sub stack and on Twitter and on various platforms.

[00:21:43] Locals is another, I believe that a lot of. Uh, journalists are using. To set up their own. Their own businesses and do the work that they're doing directly to their audience. Thank goodness for that, because it's unlocked a lot of these investigative journalists, but this movie highlights the power of.

[00:21:59] Genuine investigative journalism and what that can look like when we are doing it in an honorable way, aiming to find truth and uncover what we find and share what we find, regardless of how hard it may be for us to accept. So in those movies, there's a few characters. And as I was talking about Charlie Chaplin's character.

[00:22:20] Adenoid Henkel and the great dictator. He's a satirical portrayal, Adolf Hitler who uses his power to suppress free speech and oppose those who disagree with him. So he it's the same concept of Hitler basically is that's who they're making fun of. But as I'd mentioned earlier, adenoid gets dropped into this situation where the dictator is giving this crazy speech towards the.

[00:22:41] It's in front of the whole country, but it's actually not the dictator it's adenoid. And then he has the chance to share this beautiful speech. To then move the nation with his words, which is what ends up happening. So it's a really beautiful thing. It was written, it was made in 1940, which makes it.

[00:22:58] I think that much more powerful. Seeing that it's still relevant today. Over 80 years later. So, if you haven't seen it, I would check it out. At the very least. You got to watch the speech I'll link to it. Great character. To model after. Charlie Chaplin was a classic. He is, he's a legend in the acting space. He's the silent actor. And then this was if I believe correctly, this was his first non silent film. So anyway,

[00:23:24] Very well done. Very strong character there. Now V who's played by Hugo weaving. In V for Vendetta, he's the revolutionary. He used the power of words to inspire those people. To rise up against their oppressive rulers. And at the end, the very end of the movie, they all are wearing.

[00:23:43] The masks that he's wearing throughout the videos and throughout the segments that he's sharing. Again, it goes to show the inspiration of words and also those visuals, the impact that having that visual, that. Hugo weaving. In V for Vendetta, he's that represented. The people and what they stand for.

[00:24:00] Those types of things are very powerful. And when we have that in favor of our mission, our vision that we're working towards, and we can rally that around something like truth and freedom and honesty. And living good lives, it's motivating and inspiring. And I think this movie and this character really exemplifies that it's one of my all time favorite movies.

[00:24:20] Natalie Portman's in it as well. She's really good in that. There's some. Just really interesting scenes and I love the language in it. It's a very high quality language driven movie. So again, if you haven't seen that one, I would check it out. It's a very good one. And then last we're looking at the spotlight team, which is made up of an all-star team here. Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, mark Ruffalo, and others where the spotlight team.

[00:24:42] And they use their platform to investigate and expose the widespread sexual abuse that's happening in the Catholic church now. Again, this was in 2015. When this movie came out. This has been happening for a long time, but it's, it goes to show you what can be done when investigative journalists and journalism in general is leveraged and used in the way that it was meant to be, which is holding powerful organizations to account.

[00:25:08] That means governments. That means media. That means social platforms. That means churches and religions. The whole purpose of freedom of speech in leveraging information is to be able to share truthful bits of information, regardless of what it means. That's the only way we move forward in our society. And as a people is by being truthful with our information and being honest about what we're looking at.

[00:25:31] If we don't do that, it makes things very, very difficult. And I'm hoping that we can return. The days of honest, investigative journalism to hold people and powerful people account. There are people out there doing it and I come in them. It's just nice to see more of that happening, but it's just a bummer that the large media groups have just become arms of propaganda for a lot of these large, lot of large federal governments all around the world.

[00:25:56] And we're kidding ourselves. If we think that this is limited to one country. This is a global thing. And I hope that as a people, we can start to recognize that this is a common battle that we all face as humans. And the moment that we can all realize that there are basically the rulers and the rest of us will come together and realize that the unified approach that we take as humans versus these rulers.

[00:26:20] Will be a huge shift in our society and culture but, we're not quite there. All right. So I got two books that I wanted to talk about. And then we're going to wrap the episode because ultimately. When we understand this, this is a statement that's been around for a long time. The pen is mightier than the sword. We can realize the power of our ideas, why learning to write, why communicating our ideas, why sharing our stories is so crucial and important, and it doesn't matter.

[00:26:50] If we do that at a small scale or a large scale, if it's locally, if it's offline, it's just the importance of communicating and sharing our ideas. It can be the most powerful means to change the world ideas, transform the world. And great ideas have transformed the world throughout time. One of my all time. My go-to.

[00:27:12] The king of all Kings. Jesus himself shared two very powerful ideas that have changed my life forever. Is that one, we are all children of creation. Therefore the heavenly father is our creator. And second, we all come from a human family because we have one common creator. Therefore we are brothers and sisters of life. Those two ideas have radically changed my life.

[00:27:33] They are ideas though, and ideas can change our world. The same thing with the inner bonding process that I've learned. And also growth mindset. These concepts can change our life. Ideas, change our lives when we take them and we apply them and language writing, communicating allows us to share the power of ideas with one another. All right. So the last two examples here.

[00:27:57] 1984. Most people are very well aware of this, that book by George Orwell. It's a dystopian novel set in the future where the government controls every aspect of people's lives and censors free thought and expression. The main character, Winston Smith. Uses the power of words to rebel against the oppressive regime and fight for his freedom.

[00:28:18] There are a lot of examples like this, or? Well, 1984 is commonly. Mentioned in our society today. I think there's a lot of common things that are happening in that novel. That novel was turned into a book as well. But. These concepts are not new. But dealing with oppressive dystopian governments and people vying for freedom of expression is such a core tenant to a life on earth. And it shows the stage and phase we are at as we free ourselves from tyranny and become sovereign beings of existence.

[00:28:53] And then the last book here is to kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Now, this is a classic novel that tells the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer who defends a black man falsely accused of rape in a small Southern town. Atticus uses the words, the power of words, and his moral conviction to advocate for justice in the face of racism and discrimination. You want to talk about doing something very difficult. He does this at the height of.

[00:29:17] Segregation and racism and all these things that are happening. There's all this, there's all this.

[00:29:22] Ignorance and bigotry going against Atticus, but his power, his story, his conviction, his morality. His words. Are what ultimately. Free the man to allow him to, to live as a free man and set him set him to live a life of freedom. All with the power of words and ideas.

[00:29:44] Ideas and words are how we change the world. Y'all that's the whole concept of this. Episode. Is that through our words, through our intentions. Our stories we can truly influence and change the world. It's just dependent upon us and our ability to share those things. And whether we will. Have the courage to take the leap and to share our stories, to share our ideas, and to also embrace ideas that we don't agree with, that we don't necessarily feel the same with seek to learn, to grow, to expand our minds.

[00:30:16] Explore ideas. That make us uncomfortable or push us. So we can expand our minds to create more of that mental agility, more of that mental flexibility, looking at things that we don't necessarily believe or agree with. Can help stretch the mind, can push it to see what is out there. Maybe there are components of those things that we can see or open up to that can be helpful or effective to us. Maybe there are pieces of that, that we can apply in our lives or begin to work towards.

[00:30:47] Based on what we're learning about. Ultimately our ability to be open to information. And lean into that information will dictate. Our ability to learn, grow, and communicate the ideas and vision that we carry within us and that skill to, to communicate vision and ideas from within, through written language.

[00:31:08] And podcasts like this and using our ability to create and communicate ideas can truly transform our lives and leverage it wherever we need. In our world that can be at our job that can be with our kids. That can be in relationships that can simply be to start a new business. But there are many ways that we can leverage the power of our words, our ideas, and our stories that are waiting to be unlocked.

[00:31:33] Within. All right, y'all. That's all I got for. Today's episode. We're approaching the 40th episode of order within next. Week's going to be the 40th episode. I'm very excited about that. For those of you who are new welcome for those of you who have been sticking around, I do appreciate your support.

[00:31:53] I launched a men's coaching service a few months back. Effectively it's life coaching with the focus on men, the things that I talk about and teach and my content and my coaching can be applied to just about anyone. But the focus for me is around helping men with these very same things. Building, self-esteem building confidence.

[00:32:12] Finding fulfillment in their lives. And making the life. That they want for themselves. So if you're interested in that, You can hit me up. Um, on, uh, at @BrandonLeeWard is my Twitter handle. I'm on LinkedIn as well. My is Brandon L. Ward on there. And my website is BrandonLeeWard.Com.

[00:32:34] So with that being said, Until next time y'all.

[00:32:40] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.