What this World Needs Now with Reese Gabriella Starling

In this podcast episode, Reese Gabrielle Starling interviews State Representative Alex Finkelman. They discuss various topics, including equality, deforestation, climate change, and financial problems in schools. They emphasize the importance of kindness and respectful conversations, even when there are different political ideologies. They also talk about the negative impact of social media, including cyberbullying and how it can harm mental health. They suggest the need for regulation to limit young children's access to social media. Additionally, they discuss the divisive nature of media and the importance of treating others with respect and understanding. They share personal anecdotes and highlight the importance of empathy and considering others' perspectives. Overall, they stress the need for kindness and respectful dialogue in order to make progress and find common ground. Hello, my name is Reese Gabrielle Starling and this is the podcast What the World Needs Now. Today with me I have State Representative Alex Finkelman. Thank you for having me. Yes, of course. Thank you for coming. It's great. You know, I'm excited to chat because What the World Needs Now are many things, right? Yes, indeed. We've talked with a few teens with us and they've talked about equality, deforestation, issues of climate change. They've talked about some of the problems, some of the financial problems the schools have been facing lately have been discussed. We've covered a lot of different topics, even just simple things like just being kind to other people. I like that one. Yes. And, you know, probably should have asked you before we started so I don't have too much overlap with some of the other guests on here. Right. Even if there's a bit of overlap, though, it's always good to cover all the bases. To me, What the World Needs Now is kindness. I think that is the most important thing that we can do amongst people. In the political world, there are many different areas of political ideology. But if you can talk to one another, like you're people, then you can get places and accomplish things. Because you're right, climate change is something you mentioned. That is important. But there are two sides fighting with one another, and really three, four sides. There's different ideas on the entire political spectrum. Right. And so to have a conversation with someone, to put yourself in their shoes and tell people you don't know what someone's going through in a day. So it's almost impossible to put yourself in someone else's shoes. But to treat them with respect and kindness will get you much further than being rude. Exactly. You want to treat them kindly so that you can come to an agreement. Even if you maybe don't have the same views on something, having that good attitude will still get you farther than being rude, being mean. That's right. That's right. And we look at it in a lot of different areas, like media, for example. There's different forms of media. There's media on TV, which is designed to be divisive. That's how the media companies, the news companies, they make money when they have ads and clicks. And they get more clicks when they're divisive. It's a sad and unfortunate thing. Yeah. Right? If they were kind to one another and one side talked about how great the other side is, not a lot of people are going to watch it, unfortunately. There's another big issue, which I see in this world. I'm going to be a young person, so you can probably tell me a lot more than I can tell myself, but social media. Oh, yeah. Social media and cyberbullying is a huge issue. That's right. I've seen it so much at the high school and stuff. Now, if you don't mind me asking, what social media apps do you use? I've never really been allowed to use social media. So I have very limited social media. I have just like Instagram and YouTube, really. But I have my friends that have been exposed to social media since they were really young. And they faced a lot of mean people on there. It means kind of an understatement for some situations. But there's a lot of toxicity that can be found. It wouldn't make me happier that you told me that you're limited on social media. And I say that because you clearly have done such a wonderful job. Thank you. I'm so sure of where you're going to go in life. And I'm sure a lot is attributed to you. But that's a little bit of a case study for me, seeing the limitations of social media. Oh, yeah. And like for kids, especially with COVID and when they were exposed to so many, like they had to depend on their devices in order to be in contact with other people. There would be things that would fall through the cracks and were really hurtful to younger minds and even just like some adults as well. There were some hurtful things that could be found on the Internet. It's everywhere. It's everywhere on the Internet. It's Facebook. It's Twitter. It's Snapchat. You do see it on Instagram a little bit. Yeah. Now, me, I don't use my social media. I do have accounts. I do use it to follow news. Sometimes I like to see my friends' kids post it on Instagram. But I don't post much. It's time consuming. I have a conversation with a lot of people that it's an addiction. The scrolling of, you know, monotony of just flipping and you guys have TikTok, right? Oh, yeah. And TikTok's a big one. And I know Instagram and Facebook, they all copy each other. They get caught up in the scrolling. It's also the judgment when they post and, like, the overthinking. Like, what are they going to think about my post? Stuff like that. And it can hurt kids' mental health. And just some people can be mean, like, oh, you look so stupid. Yeah. It's really hurtful. It's an awful place. I have little kids. And so I have two boys. They're seven and five. Hi, Oliver and Andre. And it scares me. It scares me because while I restrict it similar to how your parents clearly did with you, I know their friends are going to be on social media and I know they're going to beg me to be on it. But I really view social media and phones, unfortunately, in general, as blue cigarettes. Yeah. It's really disruptive to your growth, to your mind. You know, I've had a lot of conversations with my colleagues at the statehouse about what we do about it. It's tough to do at the state level. But I'd love to see regulation to limit young children on social media. Yeah. I think that's a good thing to do because there's been so many issues with it. Yeah. Different states have taken steps to limit it in certain ways, but I think it probably needs to be done at the federal level. Yeah. You know, I look at it as you probably can't walk into an R-rated movie unless you're over the age of 17, I think it is. Yeah. Right? But you can go on social media and certainly see R-rated content. Social media is something that really concerns me for the future. Because, like, devices and technology can be used as tools, like they're supposed to be, but sometimes they are often misused. And it can be damaging for a young child. They're tremendous tools. Yeah. We accomplished so much before I think we started. We were talking about artificial intelligence, right? Technology is a great tool when used properly. And it's funny that the word divisive and divisive are kind of similar words. Yeah. Right? And the devices cause divisiveness, especially on Twitter. I know Instagram just launched a new version called Threads and I'm sure it's going to be the same way. Right? And it's that anger and hate towards one another. There's so much fighting and there's people that just can't show that kindness. Like, even if they don't agree with another person, they can't just be respectful. That's right. So I just recently returned from the University of Virginia's campus where we had a forum on leaders from around the country, one from each state. And one of the things we talked about is contempt, hatred for one another, and the need to not have contempt no matter where you stand. And we read a book. It's called Love Your Enemies. Pretty simple book. Well written. But the theme is love your enemies. Even if you have predisposition, if you're on one side and you think the other side of the aisle is the worst person in the world, don't have that contempt or you're going to go nowhere. You're not going to accomplish anything together. Yes, exactly. I totally agree. So you've got to find... And it's okay to disagree. Right? People do have different ideologies and there's nothing wrong with that. I may not agree with something that you'll agree with. And I have no problem with that. But the important part is to find what you do agree with. And also have the discussions about what you don't agree on. Having those intelligent discussions, not just arguing. It shouldn't be an argument. You should be able to just talk with the other person and feel safe with that person. You should 100% feel safe even if I say something that I wouldn't mean to. I should never try and offend anyone, right? Right. And we witnessed it in some of our seminars over the last four days of a very controversial topic of Roe v. Wade. Right? And you had people on both sides of the argument and a couple of them kind of take a step back and say, you know, I may have said something or presented it in the wrong way that it was probably wrong to say. You can't take someone's feelings away. You've got to lose the contempt. You've got to lose the contempt or the hatred for the other argument and just look at, you know, the facts. And, you know, you've got to consider their feelings. I had a conversation with someone the other day and they were so mad at someone who was getting off a plane and someone jumped out of the aisle to get off the plane before their turn and they were ahead of them on the plane. Right. And one turned to the other and they yelled at it and said that this lady said, you don't know what was going through that person's mind at that given time. They could have lost a family member. They could have lost a child. Someone could be sick. They could have had a diagnosis of something terrible. So you don't know what's going through other people's minds all the time and you should take a step back and just be kind. Right? Say it's okay and if you have to get off the plane, don't worry about it. Obviously there was an urgency. She does an excuse and maybe it wasn't their turn, but considering that you don't know what's going on, you shouldn't respond to that with anger and yelling or anything like that. That's not the proper response. Right. You know, she didn't probably intend to be rude, right? We talked about intention versus impact, right? I didn't intend to upset you if we had a conversation, but I may have impacted you where you did get offended and there's something that you got to look at and say, well, Alex's intention smarts are upsetting. Exactly. You need also that communication. If something offends you, you should talk about it, not yell at the person. They might not have been aware. You don't know what their background on it was or anything. You should be able to just talk to them and say like, hey, that offended me, that wasn't kind to me, that didn't feel right, and be able to talk it out with that person. Act with kindness. It's a message that really should be spread and talked about, I hope, by you and your friends. Remember that you don't know what everyone else is going through. Hopefully everyone listening to this will take that same message back with them of, you know what, it's okay, I'm not going to have contempt for the other person. I'm not going to have hatred for them just because I don't agree with them, just because I don't look like them, right? Just because I don't talk like them because I don't have the same interests as them. You don't know what they're going through. And they're people too. We're all people. We're trying to live our lives to the best. We're trying to get along. We're trying to be happy. We want to grow up and be happy how we want to be happy. And your happiness may be different than my happiness. What makes me happy? I'm happy with my kids, right, with my wife. That makes me happy, and I'm trying to help people understand that, yeah, everyone's different, but be kind, and you'll get a lot of good things done. That's very well said. But I believe it, right? I truly believe that if you really look at Twitter and the algorithms are designed to surface ideas that look like yours, right? So if you start looking at one item, you're going to see a lot of tweets, and that's with all the algorithms, about that same item. That doesn't help you recognize the other side of the argument. It doesn't help recognize what's out there to learn about that other side and then to have a conversation. And again, it's perfectly fine to disagree. I'll go back to the pro-life and pro-choice argument. I have tremendous friends who are pro-life, and they're wonderful, wonderful people, but they have deep religious beliefs behind why they're pro-life. I can respect that. I can understand it, whether I don't happen to agree with it. That's okay. They're wonderful people. I've had my colleagues on the floor give a speech about why they believe that way. And when they're done speaking, I've gone up to them and said, that was a wonderful speech. I still don't agree with you, but I feel for you. I think that's cool. I wish more people would take that approach of, you know, it's okay to disagree, but be kind about it. You'd probably be a lot happier in life. Exactly. Twitter scares me. Instagram, it's the same way. I've done an experiment where you can, you know, kind of manipulate the algorithm, the algorithms, right, to golf a little bit. So I'll try and watch the golf one and see if I can get more golf things to pick up while I scroll. Like the cat memes. The cat memes always bring them up. Exactly. Right? So, you know, while it's great and entertaining and you'll find yourself scrolling for hours, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble. And if you get in that same mindset of, you know, not looking at, you know, golf, right, who are we competing for? And I don't know how great tennis is because I'm always looking at golf. And so, you know, you've got to have both sides of an argument and you've got to respect the other side, whether you agree with it or you don't. Exactly. I agree with that completely. Because no matter what your opinion is, everyone deserves their own opinion. But, like, just with your opinion, you wouldn't want someone to attack you because it's your opinion. So you should never do that to the other person. You should always respect their opinion just like you expect that back to you. That's right. That's exactly right. You know, there's a saying, you know, don't throw stones if you live in a glass house. Right? I teach my kids. I teach them a lot, I hope. But a couple of main things I teach them, which are very common things. Number one, first and foremost, is the golden rule. Oh, yeah. I was just thinking about that. Like, it's always taught to get the golden rule. And it's as important as anything you learn, right? Do unto others as you want done to yourself. It couldn't be more important and I wish people recognized that. And the second one, it goes back to my original answer, and it started with a shirt, now my younger I have it. It's cool to be kind. Right. It's cheesy and geeky and foolish. But it's true. It is. Right? We've read this whole book, this forum about love your enemy. People ask that. Hey, how was the forum? How was the seminar? And I summed it up in one phrase. It's cool to be kind. It's okay to be kind and not hate the other side. That's just fine. There's smart people on the other side of the aisle, on the other side of the argument. They're not dumb. I tell my kids not to use the word dumb. Because that doesn't sum it up. I hate when people call other people dumb. And the argument might not be dumb. Right? It's just a different perspective. Exactly. That's exactly it. And we did a case study recently on Coke and Pepsi, how there was back in the 90s, there was massive Coke-Cola wars, they call them, about them arguing and the spending of advertising back and forth of which one's better, which one's worse. And I don't know about you, but I can't tell the difference. I can't. Coke person. And I'll tell you what. We were about 50 people and we did a blind taste. 90% of the room were Coke people. And they could all say, I can tell the difference. And we did three. It was Coke, Pepsi, and there was a fake one in there. It was RC-Cola. And no one got all three right. Wow. So the question was raised, you know, who won the Coke wars? And people said, well, Coke. I love Coke more. What it actually did in the quote-unquote Coke wars is they made one another better. Right? They made them work harder in their advertising, in their marketing, in their branding, in their distribution, whatever it was. Because having two sides isn't a bad thing. Having two sides is actually a good thing. They actually work pretty well together, Coke and Pepsi. Right? There are higher ups at Coke and Pepsi. They like each other. They don't hate each other. But having two sides of the coin, two sides of an argument, to help with the perspective, as long as it's done with mutual respect and kind, is a good thing. I think that's a really good analogy to draw that all together. Any other questions you may have? Is there anything else we can talk about to relate with the kindness needed in the world? Well, kindness for the planet is one. Right? You were talking about when you mentioned some of the other things that other guests have said. Right? We do have to be good to our planet. Change is a huge issue. We talked about the deforestation that's happening. Or we've seen recently, because of climate change, there's been those massive floods in, like, Vermont and Spain. All over the world, there's these huge changes in the climate. It's very, very scary. It's scary. It's something that has two sides of an argument on. In Rhode Island, we talk a lot about the wind turbines. Nature can learn more about wind turbines since they've been elected. Seemingly, they're great. Right? They're going to help produce energy. They're going to be efficient. We're going to get off gas and oil. But there's another side to the argument. And they're not anti-climate people. So I don't want to say they're anti-climate people when they oppose the wind turbines. The argument they make is, well, it may destroy the fisheries or hurt the whales or the birds. There is an argument for that. And I've gone to my most pro-environment friends, who are big advocates for wind turbines, and wind from offshore wind, I should say. And I keep getting presented this argument. I receive a lot of emails and calls about the other side of the coin. What is your response to it? Because I want to give everyone a voice. And her response was, well, Alex, at the end of the day, we truly hope that the whales and the fisheries will adjust. But if, God forbid, something does happen to them, that would be terrible. They're very pro-environmental people. Yes, they're good. But if we don't do something about climate change, what's going to happen to us as humans in the future? As a whole. As a whole, we'll be gone. Earth will be gone. For my kids and my grandkids and generations beyond. It'll be a problem if we don't do something. So I appreciated both arguments. And I appreciate the fisheries. We did something pretty good. You mentioned deforestation. A bill was passed here about solar siting to really prevent some of the big solar companies from wiping out trees that are very valuable carbon capture, right? Yes, exactly. And making sure that our solar fields and our solar panels are situated in the proper areas, right? What great areas over parking lots, right? Big box store parking lots and roofs, where we're not taking away our trees, right? There's plenty of those to build solar. I talked a little bit, nothing formal, about putting them over roads. Right now it's very expensive to do. I had a conversation last weekend actually with a civil engineer. There's no legislation I presented, but I wanted to run it by him and say, what do you think here? And we talked about the cost of putting them over all major roads, high enough so trucks could pass and anything that needs to go through could pass. I said, oh, there might be something to it. I think the cost is high. Again, we talked about there's a cost of not transitioning to clean energy. And then I made the argument, you know what you're going to save money on? You're going to save money on snow plowing. Exactly. There's so many things where it will bounce out eventually. It might be a lot of money now, but it will save money in the future. It generates more power because the solar panels generate a lot of power. And then, like you said, the snow plowing. There's other things that it will cover. Getting rid of trees, lay down those fields, saving space by putting it on top of buildings, on top of roads, like you're saying, it saves space. I've heard a lot of people make arguments that it's so disruptive to our communities and stuff. But if you put it in a space where it's not disruptive, quote-unquote disruptive, on top of a roof where nobody's really going, if that makes sense. Does that make sense? Yeah. Make it so it's easy for everyone but still gets that impact. Yeah. That's right. And so there are a lot of great ways to do it. And you've got to be aware of unintended consequences. And we've made a push for solar. And yeah, there was unintended consequences. Some fields have been cleared and trees have been cleared. Actually, a lot in western Rhode Island, in the more rural areas of the exodus. And those were the folks that really said, look, we need to sit down and look at this. Because I don't care what side you're from. Anyone I talk to says they care about their environment. And I believe them. It's just we might have different ideas of what to do. And perhaps there's some truth to it. We've got to be careful about where we put solar panels. But we should. Right. Right. And the more things we have, I go back to basic economic factors of supply and demand. And we need more supply of energy, right? Green energy is better than natural oils. Oh, yeah. The more energy we have, the lower the cost is going to come down for everyone. Because that's a major concern, right? We'll talk about inflation around here and the cost of housing. That's a big concern that we have. In energy, if we can get more energy supply into the system, we can drive down the cost, which is good for everyone. And lower the cost of that, we'll bring down the cost of inflation, which will bring down the cost of housing. Everyone will be happy. Yeah, that's correct. It all gets tied together. And there's a lot more to go into it than to bring down inflation. But it doesn't hurt. And if you can make that argument to both sides in a kind way and show them that, yeah, you guys are right, and the other side is right. So each side gets that benefit. Then good things get done. But if you start out and say, you're a crazy person, right? Great start. Like you're going nowhere. You're going nowhere. You will absolutely have no good progress in life if you start out by calling names or influencing, oh, but you're someone who watches this news channel versus that news channel. You're not going to go anywhere. You're not going to get anything done. So it goes back to being kind and accomplish good things that are big problems, right? The big problems that you listed is school budget, right? That's been a huge problem that's been stressing everyone out. It is. And I've spent a lot of time doing work with the state house to hopefully continue to improve it. And they've just got some firm numbers. And Middletown's got a long way to go. But I hope the work will continue, and I hope we can continue to raise the funds for Middletown at the state level. Taxes don't need to be raised for everyone else who's already dealing with what we just talked about, high costs of life. I think that is a major issue that needs to be dealt with. I hope this upcoming year I'll have some real impact on that. It's one of my goals. I think you will. I hope so. All of these huge issues, all of them can be tackled by just responding in the right way, with that kindness, with that open mind. Because without that, you're not going to get anything done. You're not going to be able to work with other people and communicate with other people if you can't respond to things correctly in an open and approachable type of way. That's fine. You said what's the most important when you open this conversation? That's going to be the whole solution to anything. You'll get nothing done. You can't fix those problems. Climate change, the budget. What were some more? There were things about animals, treating animals right. There was discrimination against people. Kindness. Exactly. There's an overall theme. I've said it now for the third time about Twitter and social media. It breeds contempt. Exactly. That's why it's been mentioned so many times, because that's one of the main sources of it's normalized on there. That's correct. That's correct. I hope federally I'll continue to work and talk to our delegation. There has been talk at a federal level of some restrictions, certainly starting at older ages. There is value to it. It's about the value of the devices and the value of unfortunately Twitter or threads or whatever source you may use of news. There is good news that you can get from it, but it's got to be used properly. Exactly. And hopefully without contempt and hate. I think it's just that open-mindedness and kindness. That's all you need. It's pretty simple. You think it's simple. You think it is. I think it's simple, but unfortunately it's not. In little amounts. Everyone can show little amounts of kindness in their everyday lives. It's building that habit, because a lot of people sometimes they don't even realize that sometimes they're not being the kindest. They don't see it as wrong unless you bring it to their attention. And you don't know what happened to them that day. Exactly. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know what caused them to react in the way that they did. They could have a bad waiter or waitress, and their boyfriend or girlfriend might have dumped them just before they came on the show, right? And you're going to say, I'm never going to that restaurant again, because that waitress or waiter was terrible. Blame it all on that person. They could be a wonderful person, a wonderful waiter or waitress. You just don't know what happened to them that day. So give them another chance. If they continue to be awful, well, then sit at a different table. Yeah. I really thank you for having me on here. I'm so glad you came. Thank you for coming. Always happy to show up. What is to be taken away from this is that the only way to tackle obstacles, overcome challenges, and change our world for the better is to approach it with an open mind, positive attitude, and kindness to others around you, regardless of either of your backgrounds. Thank you for tuning in to What Our World Needs Now. This is Reese, signing off. What Our World Needs Now