Iran's Mass Deconversion： An Atheist Theocracy？
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the rapidly declining rate of religious belief in Iran, and why this is happening. We also talk about how the Islamic theocratic state is driving a mass deconversion of the country's population, and how this could be the root cause of the problem.
Transcript
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life after death only 30.3 percent of people in iran believe in life after death heaven and hell
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30.1 percent when they asked religion so to give you an idea of how much disgust they have for
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organized religion in the country even if they identify as a muslim only 27.8 percent believe
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in religion more broadly so like less than the percent that are shia even the state religion
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in force there are people who answered on this survey i am a shia muslim i don't believe in
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religion that happened yes maybe because they consider themselves ethnically shia muslim or
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maybe yeah that makes sense yeah yeah yeah yeah they just have so much like which i guess goes to
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show like making the religion the rule kills the religion an overwhelming majority 90 percent
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describe themselves as hailing from religious families so this happened within a generation
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they lost like when people like how quickly could we really lose kids that quickly this isn't like
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a oh you do this and they control the country for a few generations you went from 90 percent coming
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from a religious family to a 27.8 percent saying that they identify as religious would you like to
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know more hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today in today's episode we're going to be talking
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about two things one is how iran has rapidly been losing its rate of religiosity with mass
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deconversions we're talking like 40 only 40 percent of iran's population identifies as muslim now
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oh my gosh okay so and this is in a religious theocratic state then we're going to be talking
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about their crashing fertility rates like all of the efforts that they've been trying to do to
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reverse this okay and i want to couch all of this in this idea that people have that if only their
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religious group controlled the government of the country that they were in that they would be able
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to do more to keep their religion alive and this in the united states this is an instinct i hear so
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frequently from catholics and i point out that catholic majority countries have some of the lowest
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fertility rates in the world they have some of the quickest deconversion rates in the world
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and they're like well they're not enforcing their rules strictly enough if they enforce them even
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more strictly it would fix these problems and i'm like well great counter example is iran so iran is
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enforcing them more strictly than any of the catholic countries and it appears to have an increased
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level and an increased rate of deconversion because of this in fact i will point out that it's not just
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they're leaving islam fewer people in iran believe in god than in the united states oh my gosh okay so
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they're not just converting out of the hard culture they are just nothing matters anymore nihilism
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oh yeah and this is this is this is concentrated among younger populations as well so it's only got
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to increase and the problem here and people get it through your head if you take control of a
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government and try to force people to follow the tenets of your faith it causes mass deconverts
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this is the core reason this inclination to do this by catholics is the core reason why their culture
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is completely falling apart right now in terms of the areas where it has power right do not try to
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force your pornography bans do not try to force your bans on whatever like all of these weird like
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religious bans and everything like that and it's like oh if we can just ban all of this stuff we
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can just ban gay people from getting married if we can ban you know it's like this actually causes
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mass deconverts because yeah i think forcing people not the right thing when when when leaving
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means death or social rejection yes but forcing it well no you know in iran if it's public it can mean
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death but you're just not following the rules because there's a difference what there's a
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difference between deconversion and not following the rules in islam deconvert is considered like
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really really bad i'm pretty sure that you can you're supposed to be killed if you're deconvert by
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sharia law it's not the same as being like a normal acs or a normal non-muslim i don't know why
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are people responding that they are no longer religious because that's how much they disrespect
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the space the the the the state we're going to go over this is like 40 000 people in this study
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so you know not a small population sample either as a note here while it is not specifically illegal in
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iran to deconvert the way iranian law works is wherever something isn't specifically in the legal code
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judges are allowed to refer to sharia law so it is functionally both illegal and the death penalty
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to deconvert in iran and i just think that what you're seeing here is a mass knowledge that yeah
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well nobody really believes that anymore and i think it's really easy to see why and i want to get
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people in this mindset before we go into the data because it's going to be very data heavy okay
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you're a kid you grew up in a state right your parents don't feel the need to really
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in one teach you how to resist people trying to deconvert you teach you why your traditions are
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valuable teach you why all of the restrictions of your traditions are valuable because the state does
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that right like this is the thing that the state does this is the thing that your local mosque is
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going to do this is the thing that you're so then you get online because you have access to the internet
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and you see all of these arguments against all of this and all of this to you it doesn't just feel
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silly like it feels bureaucratic to you the reason why you wear the veil the reason why you do the x
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it's because it's the law of the government it's lost any sort of like religious magic it is now
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just what you have to do you don't not use porn because you don't use porn and that's a thing that
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you do for god and to be a good person and you don't do it because it's the law all right and then
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when you're breaking that you're not breaking a religious rule you're breaking a legal rule
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and it's much easier to start breaking legal rules from an individual moral perspective than
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religious rules yeah i think it's a lot like the that study that they did with parents and preschool
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pickup times where they thought oh it really sucks that parents aren't picking their kids up from
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preschool on time so let's just charge an extra fee per minute that they're late kid and then what
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happens suddenly everyone is super late picking up their kids because now it's not a moral i'm a
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shitty person for picking up my kid late kind of thing it's a oh there's a fee i'll just pay the fee
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and yeah you're right i think making it statutory making it unromantic making it less about your
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self-image and your morality and who you are as a person and more about these are the rules
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and these are the costs of breaking them ruins it yeah yeah so let's and to give an idea of what
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this has had on their fertility rate by the way in 2022 iran's deputy health minister warned that the
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country could fall into a quote-unquote demographic a black hole was it doesn't sound good
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in 2024 projections indicated that iran's population could potentially have by the end of the century
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was nearly half of the country classified as elderly by then gosh this is not good
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who's gonna be supporting them they're gonna they're gonna need to go full logan's run like
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this is people who don't know logan's run and logan's run it's a world where they have to kill
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everyone after a certain age because you cannot support a population where half of it is on social
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security yeah all right so this is from a piece uh really interesting piece because they really
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struggled to get an idea of what iranians actually believed because the government says 99.5 percent
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of the population is muslim and they're like that doesn't seem right and you can't exactly knock
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door to door and so they developed this sophisticated system for actually getting really you know good
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data on what people of iran sought through a survey mechanism that ended up recruiting 40 000 people
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over the age of 19 and they used a number of demographic variables to assure that they were collecting
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a representative sample of the country i don't want to go into all of that just know that like
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they are doing that in terms of the big thing that has changed it's been the growth of internet
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with 70 of adults in the country now using at least one social media platform so ideas that are
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completely permissive in society here and another thing i note here is we want to talk about why and
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what i want to investigate here is why at the end why in israel are people staying so strong to the
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face when iran they're leaving the face you know if you have two semi-theocratic governments
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why does islam suck so much when compared to judaism at retaining membership and it appears it sucks even
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more than catholicism when it's in control it appears that muslims really only work when they're a minority
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population in an environment or an incredibly poor population poorer than iran
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do you think they would do better in as a small group within a hostile environment i mean that's
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part of why we think maybe i do i do yeah i mean when when you feel like there's something to fight
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for when you feel like there's some pride in you being you because it's not the default it's the
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exception it's what makes you exceptional and special right yeah 100 but i think that some
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religions are like built for the fight and when you don't have the fight they fall apart islam requires
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an enemy to work it i won't say it's kind of like nazis but like sometimes a government is set up where
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it's an ideology that really requires a consistent battle and fight to stay healthy and the version of
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islam that they are practicing iran it worked really well when it was fighting against the shah when it
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was fighting against a you know it doesn't work well when they control everything and it's only
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fighting outsiders who most people see as like a more conceptual threat than real threat it's not like
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iran has been seriously attacked by outsiders in a very very long time in fact the government might do
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well by letting outsiders attack it and have a war there instead of you know don't shouldn't they be
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able to leverage what's happening geopolitically in the area to do that i guess not because they're
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more acting as the aggressor in all cases the u.s are going to attack you for decades half a century
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at this point people are like yeah sure like you've been telling us the u.s is a great satan forever
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like it really does not feel like they care that much and israel has done a very good job while it
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attacks iran's nuclear scientists regularly it doesn't do much to terrorize the average person to make
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them feel like israel is really their existential enemy yeah a great example of this is how religious
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ireland was during the times of conflict but after those were settled how quickly religiosity began to
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drop pretty dramatically so um oh sorry for people who might not know for a long time ireland was
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basically a hot war between a catholic and protestant population with the catholics being the majority group
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that were being in their mind oppressed by uh protestant outsiders and a protestant minority
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population so if you go back to 2006 90 percent of ireland identified as catholic and now 2022
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it's only 69 percent so you get a rapid drop and i have actually noticed this that the forms of
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catholicism that come out of regions where they had consistent and persistent conflict with protestants
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up until recently are typically stronger than the forms of catholicism where the catholics controlled
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everything this is generally northern europe catholicism versus southern europe catholicism
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and it's the same with forms of protestantism the forms of protestantism where they were in conflict
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with other religious groups and you needed to define yourself as protestant against some alternative
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that's where you got stronger sort of channels of the protestant tradition but again this all seems
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intuitive to me as to why this would be the case i mean i'm just considering myself growing up if i knew
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there was an active war between protestants and catholics in my area i'm gonna spend a lot of time
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figuring out what it means to be either a catholic or a protestant and invest in that if i know that
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everyone in my area is just by default x well then if my teen rebellion phase i'm gonna rebel against x
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because that's just the authority that's what everyone does and i will intergenerationally lose
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my faith really quickly so in contrast with state propaganda that portray iran is a shia nation
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only 32 percent explicitly identified as shia while five percent said they were sunni muslim
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three percent sufi muslim another nine percent said they were atheist along with seven percent who
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prefer the label of spirituality among other neglected religions eight percent said they were
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zoroastrian which we interpret as a reflection of persian nationalism and a desire for an alternative
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to islam rather than a strict zoroastrian face well 1.5 said they were christian and some people
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know we consider zoroastrianism as one of the true face i i note here like this means that if you're
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looking at the atheist plus spiritualist plus zero astrian face there it's almost as big as the
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shia muslim population that is really crazy because you're i always thought of iran as
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shia that's crazy okay hold on it's bigger yeah no actually if you include agnostics let's see i i can do
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the math here yeah it might be bigger than the shia population which is crazy oh oh none none is huge
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sorry atheist is 8.8 percent none is 22.2 percent oh just just none plus atheist plus agnostic is
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bigger than shia oh they they are really losing god okay that's that you think a lot of this is just a
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lack of hope for the future i it's hard for me to say the the only iranian person i've met
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that woman we met through renaissance weekend who were super like iran is great i love iran
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i mean she also was in the united states and not planning to go back to iran i'm not exactly sure
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it was going on there maybe she kind of came from an iran that is gone now but no because those
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iranians typically are like not i mean they're not pro-iran in the way that you're thinking so
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there's like modern iranians who are pro-iran and i know this group okay i have friends in this group
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but i also have persian friends persians are the earlier immigrant group who we've joked about them
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in previous episodes culturally they are very different from what you would think of as other
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muslim populations and they are a very secularized population they are very consumerist secularized
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mercantile not like you typically would stereotype most muslims and i think that islam as a religion
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you almost could argue it might have converted this region but it was never really optimized for
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this cultural or ethnic group and so as soon as they leave an environment that is you know forcing
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it on them they leave or or as soon as they have access to external technology they leave their
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religion i just think that there isn't a strong harmony between the persian ethnicity and the islamic
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religion jahar my friend there are a lot of beautiful women out here today
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karim my friend you speak the truth i do what i can
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they don't look persian sure they do just have to gel the hair
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put on a silk shirt some gold chains and tons of cologne
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persian see wow i almost feel like actually like zero astrianism like zero astrianism seems to work
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for persians and i'm talking about like a harmony between a a religious system and an ethnic group
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the the audaciousness of all the fire stuff and all that like come on it's very let's get my gold
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curtain rod all they want is to make the place really nice we're going to put down some lovely
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blue carpet and gold curtain rods i know it i know it we often argue that trump is is is is a persian
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he's a he's a persian soul that somehow yeah persian aesthetics yeah he's trans trans persian
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if i walked into the house and i and you showed me you're like if you show me like okay
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he walked through his house and you were like what is the ethnicity of the person who owns this abode
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no not even i mean i walked into a trump house right okay and there was a persian guy there and
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there was a white guy there and the white guy said this is my house a guy who looked like trump
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said this is my house i'd actually start laughing i'd assume it was a joke i'd be like you you cannot
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be serious this is obviously this guy's house but anyway as i said trump is our first persian
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president i really yeah i i love i've never seen this i've seen plenty of biographies of trump
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i've never seen any analyses of the trump interior decorating aesthetic which is really a thing
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you know it's it is a distinct thing he has a sense of style it's consistent his choice
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version too his wives act like persian girls who i've seen before yeah but where so where did this
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aesthetic come from because he was i would not be surprised at military high school i mean you'd
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think it'd be very waspy very ralph lauren very you know like a sort of classic kennedy american like
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he grew up in new york adjacent to the real estate industry okay and okay how do i say this without
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coming off is so the real estate industry when contrasted with other industries attracts a lot
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of people who like the type of industries that attract let's say mercantile people like car sales
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okay let's say okay i'll put this differently if you look for example at real estate reality tv shows
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it is known for ostentatiousness it is known for the over-the-top brand designer outfits and spending
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and i guess there's a high correlation you're trying to say between the most ostentatious way
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that someone could show their wealth and persian aesthetics and there just happens to okay that is
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not what i'm saying i am saying that persians would disproportionately be in industries that are
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low-tech high mercantilism like real estate car sales stuff like that that's generally what i've seen
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rug sales is something they're known for like persians seem to do really good at low-tech
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mercantile industries and that is the industry that donald trump cut his teeth in that is the
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industry he was raised in i would not be surprised if he had a lot of persian uh or farsi or whatever
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you want to say formative friends in his life where he developed his aesthetics in both the women that
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he chose great dinner parties and was like where'd you get this table and they're like that is my read
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of where because i cannot like genuinely it is baffling to me like you're like oh you had a boarding
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school if i was invited to a friend's house and it looked like this you'd be making fun of them for
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weeks right so i went to an ai and i first put in wealthy wasp interior design and this is what it
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looked like and then i put in wealthy persian interior design and here is what it looked like
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like even look at the accents on the chairs and stuff like that they are exactly coded to trump's
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taste and i'd say that for me just the real sin trump's interior decorating and how i know that he did
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not grow up coding to waspy culture is there are no random pictures of boats or cottages or horses
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or overly expensive model boats and by the way i am joking here i i as little as i get the golden
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curtains that you see in persian interior design i also do not get the pictures of boats and horses
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and random cottages that you see in waspy interior design it makes why are you doing that did you did you
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live on this boat no you didn't why boat is it just like the safe thing to have a picture of
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yeah i wonder what the houses he grew up in looked like as well because i doubt that they looked
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like the the houses that he paints now but anyway it's interesting yeah but anyway the point here i'm
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making is i'm pretty sure or i would be genuinely surprised if this wasn't directly picked up from
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persian because like if you look at persian women like you know i i obviously i have a lot i've had
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a lot of in college farsi friends because it was like a common thing at saint andrews this big group
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and anyway uh they're very big in dc they have a pretty big presence there and anyway so their women
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are hyper sexualized often in terms of like when you see it on the reality tv shows and stuff like that
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when you see a persian woman right you know a very new jersey fight i guess i'd say but like a little
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higher class than that which really looks like the women who donald trump goes after
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uh and attractive i'm not gonna lie like they're they're an attractive group they're definitely not
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a an issue there but i think many people are like how can you say that his women are persian in
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aesthetics and not european when they are european women and i'm like okay well they're eastern european
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women and they one and two they would not be seen as high class for example if you took your kids
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home from boarding school and they met women who looked like most of his wives again they they you
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get made fun of right like if i took my friends to my house and i had a mom like his his wife um i'm
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actually thinking of that scene in legally blonde where el woods is looking at like a yearbook or
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something of the the kind of woman that her ex-boyfriend is is trying to date because he's trying
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to become like a waspy politician yeah just like you know more more unfortunate looking women and
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she's like dumpy looking and like yeah unfortunate yeah yeah yeah you are if you're dating in these
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waspy circles which i learned to code switch to at a young age right like growing up in one of these
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political families that scene is very accurate as to what you are told to look for right not this
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ostentatious ultra feminized version of of a woman right right because that's who you have your
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affairs with not yes very yeah he's marrying the people he's supposed to be having affairs with
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no well i think he's just like i think he's a businessman he's like why can't i have my
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pay can eat it too i'm gonna marry the person i want to have the affair with and i'm gonna have
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affairs with additional ones because why would i want to have one that's not also hot right that's
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logical and again i i pass no i'm just talking like cultural normativity i i refuse to believe
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that he got this from like wasp culture in a boarding school there was some other influence
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in this man's life but anyway it definitely did not come from wasp culture because there's no way
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that that could come from wasp culture we can all agree that it didn't come from wasp wasp culture
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i mean even like benjamin franklin who loved hanging around versailles right is is is inventing the
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highly practical things like the franklin stove you know he's you know he's not out there
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making gilded devices he's making highly practical money saving devices it's not an american thing
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actually if anyone in the comments has any ideas here i would love to hear them where did donald trump
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pick up his persian aesthetics anyway where were we iran anyway which of the following do you believe
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in we're going over some stats here okay okay so 78.3 believe in god compared to the u.s which dipped to
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a new low of 81 percent recently so many more americans believe in god life after death only 30.3
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percent of people in iran believe in life after death less than 40 percent of people in iran believe in
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life after death that is wild like out of all the religions they're like it's probably no life after
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death heaven and hell 30.1 percent less than a third interesting when they asked religion so to give
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you an idea of how much disgust they have for organized religion in the country even if they
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identify as a muslim only 27.8 percent believe in religion more broadly so like less than the
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percent that are shia even the state religion there are people who answered on this survey
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i am a shia muslim i don't believe in religion that happened yes maybe because they consider
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themselves ethnically shia muslim or maybe yeah that makes sense yeah yeah yeah yeah they just
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have so much like which i guess goes to show like making the religion the rule kills the religion
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now now people lose their religion because it's the rule it's i'm like i'm you know i'm a democrat
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but i don't believe in any democratic policies you know because it's a like technical thing and
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yeah i get yeah but the point being is like i tell people you don't want to enforce this porn ban
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and they're like oh you're doing this for your own degenerate means i'm like fucking look at the
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data stop being i'm trying to help you you you will lose everything if you do this stop trying to
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enforce your you do not want to ban gay marriage no no no this isn't about allying with gay people
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even though i don't have a problem with gay people i'm just saying and i wouldn't want my kids to be
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gay like that's okay right like you can have you can have a cultural expectation for your own
00:26:17.940
family that doesn't apply to other people's families okay but when you attempt to apply
00:26:23.420
to other people's families that's when you lose your own family in your entire culture
00:26:26.980
i would note here that this didn't used to be the case this specifically emerged as a case because of
00:26:32.660
the internet and the ease of finding alternate social environments if you are feeling ostracized from
00:26:40.300
your birth environment and the aggressive memes which spread online which will attempt to actively
00:26:48.420
deconvert your children but here's something i find really interesting here jen so jen is like
00:26:53.860
ghosts or like genies 25.7 believe in them so only a little less than believe in religion so you still
00:27:00.280
get the folk tales and everything like that it's the organized religion that dies first not a people's
00:27:04.460
willingness to believe in the supernatural when you would try to force these values on people
00:27:08.660
becoming a mankind savior 25.6 percent um but yeah now these numbers demonstrate that a general
00:27:18.020
process of secularization known to encourage religious diversity is taking place in iran
00:27:22.200
an overwhelming majority 90 percent describe themselves as hailing from believing or practicing
00:27:27.580
religious families so this happened within a generation they lost like when people like how quickly
00:27:34.120
could we really lose kids that quickly this isn't like a oh you do this and they control the country
00:27:39.460
for a few generations you went from 90 coming from a religious family to a 27.8 saying that they
00:27:47.320
identify as religious 47 report losing religion in their lifetime and 6 said they changed from one
00:27:54.860
religion to another in their lifetime with younger people reporting higher levels of irreligiosity and
00:27:59.560
conversions to christianity than older correspondents um and here i'm putting a a graph on screen that
00:28:05.480
talks about some of this and so you can see that this is a phenomenon that is primarily among young
00:28:10.680
people i went from being religious to non-religious and yeah what's interesting here is that it's not
00:28:16.760
that much bigger in university educated people versus non-university educated people in iran
00:28:21.080
and i think that that's the danger of state control which is to say that for university educated
00:28:27.000
people is 51 percent non-university educated it was 45.2 percent also here urban versus rural not as
00:28:34.060
big as you'd think urban 48.3 percent left religion rural 41.1 percent left religion so if you're like
00:28:41.360
oh well if i live rurally they'll be safe 41.1 percent rural left religion and here you also see the
00:28:47.180
trend that we see historically is it much more likely for men to leave religion than women but 49.9
00:28:52.120
0.1 percent of men 0.1 percent away from 50 percent of men left their religion if they were raised
00:28:58.200
religious whereas it was women it was 43.4 percent is that wild
00:29:03.660
this is just hard for me to believe it it's so much worse than i could have imagined if you if you
00:29:11.760
had me at the beginning of this conversation make some broad guesses as to how bad it is i wouldn't get
00:29:18.680
to this level i'd be like well maybe half half are not religious yeah no it's it's it's it's shocking
00:29:25.580
and it shows how apocalyptic it is to attempt to enforce religion through a state it does not work
00:29:33.900
especially in the age of the internet or it might be exclusively in the age of the internet i don't
00:29:38.160
know but you know one of my ancestors oliver cronwell learned this and it's one of the reasons
00:29:42.720
why i'm so fastidiously against it is i feel that we need to intergenerationally learn from our
00:29:47.500
mistakes and yes i mean yes art should be sinful yes music should be sinful yes video games are
00:29:54.280
sinful and if we had a state that banned all of these and everyone agreed with that and it worked
00:29:58.740
to just ban them all we'd have a more moral state and he tried that you know he tried to ban
00:30:03.080
art and music and singing and plays and all of that and christmas and all of these sinful things
00:30:11.340
right um but what we learned is that that causes an opposite effect to the effect you expect it to
00:30:17.720
have and that we need to learn to live in harmony with sin and just not aggrandize it instead of
00:30:24.700
banning it that appears to lead to very negative effects but anyway a third said they occasionally
00:30:30.800
drink alcohol in a country that legally enforces temperance wild it's so hard to get alcohol in
00:30:35.820
muslim countries too how do they yeah i wonder if it's just moonshine or something else some black
00:30:42.900
market over 60 said they do not practice their obligatorily daily muslim prayers um synchronous
00:30:49.880
was a 2020 state-backed poll in which 60 reported to not observing the fast during ramadan the majority
00:30:56.340
due to being quote-unquote sick but but the state-backed poll shows that this data is likely accurate
00:31:01.820
right because it's it's matching numbers here in comparison a comprehensive survey conducted in
00:31:07.440
1974 before the islamic revolution over 80 said they prayed and observes the fast
00:31:13.440
the very last thing you want is for your religion to take over
00:31:20.360
to the integralists out there you will fail even harder than you're failing right now
00:31:27.300
for sure we found a societal secularization was also linked to a critical view of religious
00:31:34.860
governance system 68 agreed that religious prescriptions should be excluded from legislation
00:31:40.360
even if they hold a parliamentary majority so okay around 70 percent of people in iran
00:31:46.840
presumably a theocracy said that even if the religious side holds a majority they should not
00:31:52.960
be able to post religious laws do you see how crazy that is but i also think this shows you
00:32:01.720
the nature of the persian people as well where i'm like persians and islam there never has been
00:32:06.920
like a well-matched ethnicity and religion here and 72 percent oppose the law mandating all women
00:32:13.920
wear a hijab the islamic veil 72 percent oppose that so you get what 28 who are for this law
00:32:22.240
like nobody yeah what's it gonna take then for that to be reversed i mean obviously there were
00:32:27.720
major protests about this and then nothing happened most opposed government needs to be replaced and
00:32:34.260
and they're getting scared now they're getting scared because of trump and a lot of people they
00:32:37.560
they consider trump like because he's actually hard on them he actually like and they've gotten
00:32:41.300
to a state now where peter zaihan you know fervent anti-trumper was doing a piece on iran is
00:32:46.820
seriously at risk of collapsing like their current government if they can't figure out a way to do
00:32:50.940
deal with trump yeah and they're panicking apparently about this well they should be i
00:32:56.000
mean china's also sort of preemptively i think starting to hurt i mean it's hurting from trump's
00:33:01.560
last policies i've been somehow youtube discovered in my algorithm that i'm interested in what's going
00:33:09.340
on in china and i'm just getting constant recommended videos about how the middle class can no longer
00:33:15.940
support themselves that people with designer bags are doing gig work on rented e-bikes and people
00:33:23.400
aren't able to afford their rental properties anymore they're going bankrupt and you know a lot
00:33:30.240
of this is is sagging demand due to a growing old population that just doesn't consume as much
00:33:35.000
but a huge amount of this as well is that still china exports more than it imports and
00:33:41.180
they're gonna have even more trouble with trump's tariffs so yeah a lot of countries that have been
00:33:49.500
gaming the system are gonna have a tough time of it with trump because he actually enforces this
00:33:54.720
shit and people are beginning to freak out uh in a lot of countries and could this lead to
00:33:59.660
government's changes i mean i hope i want the ccp to change i want iran's government to change
00:34:04.660
i think iran actually from a disposition perspective has a if you like pulled the average iranian you're
00:34:12.600
going to get a country that would be an amazing ally to either the united states or israel right so
00:34:18.320
if iran just had a a bloodless revolution and basically the will of the people as we understand
00:34:28.340
it though who knows if our understanding is accurate was actually executed upon and it became a more
00:34:35.480
we'll say socially open and zoroastrian leaning culturally i i'd love a zoroastrian theocratic state
00:34:44.600
but but not by rule just by theme not by rule yeah and and they they became allies suddenly
00:34:52.000
israel and the united states they would thrive can it happen no because nothing ever works out that
00:35:01.060
nicely well what what would have to happen for that to happen i i guess the entrenched bureaucracy
00:35:07.180
the entrenched leadership they would all just have to be killed suddenly they will have to suddenly die
00:35:13.860
because you can't yeah there's no way they're going to let go a grip of power no there's no way
00:35:20.120
right um and there is no way simone simone i mean if we're talking logically here right it's not like
00:35:29.260
that there's some other country they would have a vested interest in all the leaders of iran randomly
00:35:35.020
dying on one day that has shown the capacity to achieve feats like that in the past that that
00:35:41.640
that wouldn't happen right they're not all going to suddenly get window cancer like in pager cancer
00:35:47.200
you know i'm just saying stranger things have happened to the enemies of this particular country
00:35:55.280
then then randomly oh it's so weird they all were dead one day and zoroastrian bob found himself in
00:36:03.040
the capital what was that keep in mind the zoroastrian population is only like one third the size of the
00:36:09.760
shia population and a persian nationalist zoroastrian iranian regime i think would be very interesting
00:36:16.440
from a geopolitical perspective because i think it would find a lot of common alliance with
00:36:21.640
many of the the power but but again they're shrinking so let's go into their fertility situation
00:36:26.960
here right okay oh but before we go into that in terms of religious diversity 43 said that no religion
00:36:33.280
should have the right to proselytize in public oh sorry almost half of people in a theocratic
00:36:39.180
dictatorship said that almost no that no one should be legally allowed to proselytize in public
00:36:44.300
wait and 41 percent believe that every religion should be able to proselytize in public so that
00:36:53.560
the group that thinks that only muslims should be is what like like five percent there or something
00:36:58.120
yeah yeah not great so iran implemented like very strict fertility restrictions in 1989 they
00:37:09.760
implement a bunch of antinatalist policy yeah they're they're a great case study in why it's
00:37:14.820
extremely hard to reverse antinatalist policies after they've been heavily implemented so for
00:37:20.440
at least a decade they basically like read the population bomb and were like oh my god we've got
00:37:26.680
to do something about this and they did and they were very effective and now they're discovering you can't
00:37:31.060
just turn that around yeah in context so from 1968 to the country doubled its population from 27 million to
00:37:38.140
55 million and they were like how are we going to keep feeding these people if we keep doubling like
00:37:42.980
this right because again population bomb it all made sense and at the time i don't believe people
00:37:46.740
were being stupid and the uh specific measures that they put in place here i find pretty interesting
00:37:52.580
uh they had a family planning program reintroduction in 1989 where they that had been dismantled after
00:37:59.220
the islamic revolution actually so this is after the islamic revolution when all this stuff was put in place
00:38:03.240
they built a two-child family model the government began promoting a two-child family model and a
00:38:08.260
slowdown of population group growth they began to increase the the the availability of contraceptives
00:38:15.900
the ayatollah komemi in 1980 issued a fatwa or religious edict that declared islam permits the use
00:38:24.160
of contraceptives providing religious backing for family planning support they were in a media campaign
00:38:30.120
the government launched a media campaign encouraging women to limit their number of children
00:38:33.320
and space out their pregnancies by three to four years to avoid pregnancy under 18 and over 35 so
00:38:39.760
basically really limiting the number of kids they could have can you imagine limiting pregnancies
00:38:45.200
at three you'd be so sad well also it's just it leads to poor family dynamics if you have kids that
00:38:52.840
are so far apart in age it's so much better to feel like back to back even if you're having only two
00:38:57.660
you're better off back to back well i'm just glad that you're autistic and this is your special
00:39:02.460
interest so this led to a fertility crash so in 1980 they had a genuinely unsustainable number of
00:39:08.780
children 6.58 average children per per woman in 1988 it had fallen to 5.5 by 1996 it had fallen to 2.8
00:39:17.940
in in 2000 it had fallen to 2.1 and now it's at 1.6 but by what's not counted here is by 2012 it had
00:39:28.000
fallen to 1.6 so a long time ago by 2012 like more than a decade ago at this point it had already fallen
00:39:34.340
to this disastrous level of fertility and what's interesting about iran is they were one of the
00:39:38.960
first countries to recognize this and so they tried to reverse this all right so what did they start to
00:39:45.320
do they started to and i i think that this is really interesting they reversed the anti-natalist
00:39:51.400
policies but they also do you know in iran you get free land for families with three children or more
00:39:57.040
so like two acres and a mule but for having babies for house construction and childbearing and marriage
00:40:03.680
loans adjusted for economic conditions so so yeah i i've asked more about this free land thing i'm like
00:40:08.900
wait whoa whoa what yeah as of 2024 approximately 80 000 families have taken advantage of this
00:40:17.440
so this is a widely implemented policy yeah they're going for it in cities with under half a million
00:40:22.640
people couples who have their third child are allocated land given half to the mother and half
00:40:29.020
to the father so they're allocated land in the city for cities with over half a million people
00:40:33.880
people with over three children are given land in a nearby area or a smaller city or a new city
00:40:40.160
so maybe you could build a rental property on it i guess what why would you have a rental property in
00:40:45.760
a city that hasn't been developed yet it's yeah that seems kind of in the area well i also understand
00:40:50.360
you can't afford to give them land in the city that they yeah but i mean again this isn't it's not
00:40:55.480
going to change a family's decision on having kids that's not going to boost fertility as we have
00:41:02.040
pointed out you cannot get fertility up with handouts yeah it has to be religion and that's
00:41:08.260
what they lost was faith because you tried to force it on them rather than giving them a reason
00:41:13.720
to believe which is what this channel is all about the exact opposite approach of iran okay health care
00:41:21.500
support they gave free insurance coverage to rural mothers with three or more children increased the
00:41:26.580
number of infertility treatment shindlers 90 of insurance coverage for infertility treatments
00:41:31.380
in government centers that's a great policy by the way legal and social measures and nine months
00:41:36.760
of maternity leave for wonder for women efforts to prevent illegal abortions promoting easy marriages
00:41:43.060
and they've done media campaigns and they've done education initiatives and in 2021 they outlawed
00:41:50.640
sterilization they banned free distribution of contraceptives they restricted access to abortion
00:41:56.560
and they mandated collection and sharing of patients fertility and pregnancy histories
00:42:01.700
in 2023 to 2024 the population use bill partial penalties for abortion criminalization of providing
00:42:09.340
abortion services or related information discriminatory workplace practices favoring men so now they're
00:42:14.580
like actively discriminating against women and this is what we tell people cannot find a way
00:42:19.200
to make gender egalitarian cultures they will not exist in the future and we will see
00:42:24.360
a rapid erosion of women's rights in our generation the only and most feminist thing you can do is have
00:42:31.140
kids lots lots of kids not like two kids like a reasonable number like eight kids okay if you're
00:42:36.740
really if you're having less than five kids can you call yourself a feminist anymore i don't think so
00:42:42.020
you're a grifter who is who is writing on the petticoats of previous women who did the actually
00:42:48.900
challenging stuff so that you could surf on it right now these measures have significantly impacted
00:42:55.840
uh women's reproductive rights anyway your thoughts simone
00:43:00.880
we need to remember when looking at pernatalist policies that there people have different definitions
00:43:09.620
of pernatalism some people hear pernatalism and they think family friendly and that's fine and
00:43:15.360
valid when we talk about pernatalism we talk about that which increases birth rates there are lots of
00:43:21.260
policies that we would love personally that are very family friendly i would love to be given free land
00:43:26.460
for each kid we have i would love to be given tax breaks and handouts and free child care and all
00:43:32.540
sorts of benefits but it that isn't going to increase birth rates and i think that that's a really
00:43:38.460
important thing is is just because something is family friendly doesn't mean that it will make
00:43:42.420
families bigger or help families become bigger yeah well i think that that honestly the only
00:43:48.720
solution is culture and religion but that is not done through forcing your religion on people people
00:43:55.180
who think oh we just forced harder if we just pushed harder it's like no it's the exact opposite effect
00:43:59.940
what you need to do is you need to as your religion has done historically like i mentioned catholics
00:44:06.480
here right like catholics are like but our religion never updates and i'm like well this life begins
00:44:10.840
the conception thing is something that you started about 200 years ago as pope pius the ninth it was
00:44:14.960
not something your historic thinkers thought and people are like nitpicking they're like well they
00:44:19.680
were definitely anti-abortion even if they thought life began at conception or they weren't sure about
00:44:24.160
that i'm like yeah but it wasn't a hard policy this is a new thing but it was created if you look
00:44:29.760
at the early thinkers because somebody you know was telling me they're like well you know while they
00:44:34.600
were anti-abortion but they thought these dates and i was like okay if you told thomas aquinas or
00:44:38.840
that's just a hippo there's this technology now called ibf and if you don't use it children are
00:44:43.400
not going to exist and parents who want children if you understood the way that they viewed fertility
00:44:47.880
and insolvent you obviously they'd be pro anything that increases the number of children that are coming
00:44:52.840
into the world especially if you're denying children that a family intended to have but wasn't able to
00:44:57.080
have because you denied them technology like this but the point i'm making here is that so many of
00:45:01.900
these policies where people are like oh i can just push this on people and it will work it doesn't work
00:45:07.080
and so the alternative is to work on continuing to evolve and update your religious traditions
00:45:15.640
to one resist the challenges of our time but also to harmonize with reality as we understand it
00:45:22.980
and unfortunately a lot of religions that were i say predicated on the average believer not having
00:45:29.740
access to modern information about like earth isn't the center of the solar system earth isn't the center of
00:45:35.220
the solar system isn't the center of the universe you know they they they worked because the average
00:45:40.460
person didn't know that stuff and then as the average person learned more and more and more
00:45:44.380
people begin to move away from this and we can do a separate episode on the mass conversions away
00:45:48.800
from islam that we're beginning to see where if we look at religions that are like uniquely harmed by
00:45:55.600
access to information islam unfortunately is one of the top unfortunately i'm saying i don't know like
00:46:01.700
maybe not unfortunately but is islam unfortunately just doesn't harmonize very well with our current
00:46:10.020
understanding of reality and i don't think that that's because the text of islam doesn't as we
00:46:14.720
have pointed out from a lot of the text of islam stuff we've gone over the text of islam is very
00:46:20.440
different from what your average uh muslim religious leader right now is trying to enforce on the muslim
00:46:27.020
population to get them to believe the text says as we pointed out the text is pretty clear that
00:46:32.420
islam is a religion is only meant for arabs it is only meant for people who have the arab language
00:46:36.920
i i it says things like i put this religion down for you in arabic uh because that's the language you
00:46:44.340
you speak you being the people who this religion is for it's pretty clear it was meant to live alongside
00:46:50.380
other true religions like christianity and judaism not antagonistic to them but it it has morphed from
00:46:58.260
that into something that is not islam into some alternate bastard religion that some of the religious
00:47:05.540
leaders push and this is leading to its fragility and so i'm not saying that like islam needs to go but
00:47:11.260
like the the the iteration of islam that is commonly practiced today is obviously not going to survive
00:47:18.400
because it's not what the texts say and it doesn't harmonize well with reality as like
00:47:22.680
the facts or the science understands it and i think what's interesting here is you're seeing even a
00:47:28.440
faster conversion away from islam than you are from other religious traditions which struggle with
00:47:33.560
this harmonization as well like mormonism for example struggles with history but the the the the thing
00:47:42.340
is is at least with mormons you have two real advantages right one is as mormons can iteratively
00:47:48.140
update their religion and it's like a weirdly futurist religion in many ways so they're like
00:47:51.740
yeah well if the church doesn't say this now they'll be saying it in 10 years so i'll just
00:47:55.920
believe it now i mean that's well and history has always been a creative pursuit it's just that right
00:48:00.580
now it's way too easy to fact check and it hasn't been throughout most of human history yeah and it is
00:48:08.140
wholesome in a way what i'd say is a lot of people will castigate mormons for oh you have all these
00:48:13.740
bans on x y and z and yeah i don't agree with a lot of the mormon bans right like the ban on
00:48:18.600
masturbation is buffoonery but it's it's it's generally a wholesome movement right and i think
00:48:27.700
that a lot of muslims do not feel this way they feel that people are trying to force them to live
00:48:33.040
this way in a really aggressive and authoritarian and violent fashion and so there is more to be gained
00:48:40.340
from exploring and subverting these religious beliefs which i think is yeah it's it's not gonna
00:48:49.520
work it's not gonna work and it's it's likely going to lead to now do i think that we're gonna
00:48:53.640
see like a massive muslim fertility crash no but i think that we will see a a unique fertility crash
00:49:00.500
around muslims who are open to challenging authority who are educated who are economically
00:49:07.380
productive and this leads to a lot of challenges but as we've seen even in iran apparently there's
00:49:12.500
been a huge growth in the christian community and the zoroastrian community which i even prefer more
00:49:16.780
because i think that that harmonizes more with their ethnic background as people know i i generally think
00:49:21.180
you shouldn't just choose a religion that hasn't been in your people for centuries but anyway what are
00:49:26.660
your thoughts i i largely agree with you i it's just i'm i'm just shocked by
00:49:33.780
what has happened in iran i i hope though that this is signs of that that a a sea change will come
00:49:43.480
and that iran is about to see a new golden age because it is clear that where they are from a
00:49:50.560
demographic standpoint and geopolitically and now religiously that they are not in a sustainable
00:49:56.420
position that means that something is fundamentally going to change quite profoundly and that's cool so
00:50:02.520
hopefully things will change for the better and i'm just going to try to be optimistic about this
00:50:09.260
i love you simone i love you too what are we doing for dinner tonight a pasta with pesto
00:50:15.900
pasta with pesto i'm also going to make some karai spiced fried chicken for you but in the air fryer
00:50:22.100
that's all right spiced is it pre-cooked where is it from breaded breaded and fried it's from you
00:50:34.880
you've had it before and you like it and i did both oven and air fryer and you preferred air fryer so
00:50:41.940
that's what i'm going to do you are a lovely wife i am very lucky you are a lovely husband and i love
00:50:50.560
you so much and i love our kids and they're little nerds so oh actually can't should i try to deep fry
00:50:59.260
things occasionally again it's such a waste of oil and it it messes up because it just covers
00:51:07.200
everything in oil maybe we can just a little bit until the kids like like it too you know because
00:51:14.120
then then we have the whole family getting in on it looks i can justify it with the kids okay
00:51:19.600
two-string fries he used to make you know yeah i mean there was a world good yeah there's a world in
00:51:27.760
which this needs to happen but the world isn't here yet because we have three children who hate eating
00:51:34.380
all right i'll make more children simone dang you don't have to twist my wrist on this
00:51:38.900
twist your arm i will not i will just go ahead and do it you know oh you'll just keep producing them
00:51:45.620
just keep well hopefully we'll see i'm so nervous about january
00:51:49.800
you do the betting poll in one of the betting sites about us there are two manifold has two
00:51:56.640
different markets regarding how many kids we're gonna have by what year i bet on both of them of
00:52:03.180
course the the big question is when will i physically be unable to have more kids this is
00:52:10.900
not a mentally thing so i think people should be making bets based on their knowledge of where i am
00:52:17.160
from a uterine strength standpoint you know they're they're they're betting here when we say this is her
00:52:26.220
autistic special interest i'm being serious here they are betting here on the autistic man not having
00:52:30.920
more trains in a few years they are they're saying he has 50 trains he couldn't possibly need more
00:52:38.180
yeah the question then is how financially constrained will he be how much you know when who will he
00:52:43.320
and i've never i don't think it's a question of space the autistic man find space so he couldn't
00:52:50.080
possibly spit more trains and trains find a way trains find a way this bedroom will be the train room next
00:52:56.920
you know he'll sleep in the closet yeah did you remember the time when we did sleep in the closet
00:53:01.180
in one of our houses because it was just like more reasonable than the bedroom i felt uncomfortable
00:53:06.540
sleeping in that large of a bedroom and the closet was so cozy it's perfect it was so it was amazing
00:53:12.920
plus texas has huge closets we like we be we do not have closets here
00:53:19.680
this is insane do we we have two closets no you have closets you have closets the only room in the
00:53:29.920
house was closets that's crazy but why what's the point you know you only need one outfit why would
00:53:36.200
you have a closet well it is interesting that the house is built in the 1700s didn't have running water
00:53:42.160
so there were no bathrooms and then they didn't have i guess a lot of stuff so where would there would
00:53:47.960
be no need for closets and now people are like literally i imagine imagine the the the the pilgrims
00:53:56.220
confusion upon hearing that there's entire history i'm sorry an entire industry dedicated to
00:54:02.280
storage units and you have to explain to you know silence do good that there are people of all
00:54:11.860
economic levels who have so much stuff that they pay a monthly rent to to hold the stuff
00:54:20.420
that they don't want to let go of so we in one of our episodes the one title people used to like
00:54:27.600
their parents which i think is one of our better episodes check it out if you haven't where i go
00:54:30.980
over the diaries of my great great grandfather and he does an inventory in it of everything they own
00:54:38.720
and it is they have a shack they have an outhouse and the thing he was really proud of or thought of
00:54:44.380
as very expensive was a a flywheel for spinning the fabric or something a spinning wheel a spinning
00:54:52.780
wheel yeah a loom did they have a loom or a spinning wheel no no no not a loom a spinning wheel only
00:54:56.980
okay the rest they had to do themselves and that was that was their assets nothing else they had pigs
00:55:03.780
which he got mad at spinning wheels were the 3d printers of their age i mean that was pretty cool
00:55:08.300
we don't have right they actually were it's like oh i don't need to go to the store to get thread
00:55:12.620
i can just make it really cool yes that's something to be proud of yeah so i i get you're right they
00:55:19.760
were the 3d printers we don't think about that yeah spinning wheels were the 3d printers of their age
00:55:25.300
oh i made a component that i can use to make other things yeah but just the the the you'd have like a list
00:55:32.540
of property i have a spinning wheel well what else well we dug a hole out there and we have like a
00:55:38.320
little shack around it and they're like what else and i've got a place where we all sleep together in
00:55:42.900
the same room right there and it's like what else it's like well my dad sold the pigs a bit early
00:55:49.360
last year i love it his his huge rant about his dad selling the pigs too very much the bitcoin of his
00:55:56.140
generation yeah he sold early oh oh my gosh that's it my dad had some bitcoin at least i had a swine
00:56:05.120
market yeah anyway love you to death i love you too i'll go start dinner
00:56:15.600
he strides through hallways decked in gold so bright like a sultan's palace glowing day and night
00:56:30.040
marble pillars glimmer echoing his name a persian king or president one and the same
00:56:39.580
and shimmering drapes plush rugs under each foot a fortress of bling that no one can refute
00:56:51.600
gold leaf on the ceiling mirrors everywhere he's bold he's brash who else would even dare
00:57:01.300
where are the paintings of horses so rare random cottages and frames why aren't they there
00:57:10.820
and where the model ships decked out in their coats we're asking our first persian friends
00:57:21.540
he bedazzles ballrooms each corner ornate like something out of ancient lore or so we state
00:57:33.780
halls paved in splendor shining under the light surprise surprise he's got style though it's quite a sight
00:57:42.980
he claims he's classy with flair unmatched a thousand chandeliers perfect be dispatched
00:57:55.220
grand turrets big fountains exotic mystique all hail our persian prez so lavish unique
00:58:04.580
where are the paintings of horses so rare random cottages and frames why aren't they there
00:58:14.400
and where the model ships decked out in their coats we're asking our first persian friends
00:58:25.220
every corner gilded every surface gleams like sha era fantasies fresh out of dreams
00:58:37.320
marble upon marble a treasure trove of hue yes it's gaudy but hey it's trump through and through
00:58:47.760
where are the paintings of boats of horses so rare random cottages and frames
00:58:56.380
and where the model ships decked out in their coats our gilded persian president please bring on