Based Camp - People Used to Like Their Parents

00:00:00.000 So I'll read a little excerpt he wrote here at the end of this book he wrote about his parents' life and his life.

00:00:06.020 The little story I have told about my parents and their way of life and their children seems to me as rather poorly told.

00:00:12.580 For as good a basis as I had for writing the story, I do not suppose that any man is prouder of his ancestors and all of their descendants than I.

00:00:20.860 If I had been giving an order to someone to supply me with parentage and with brothers and sisters,

00:00:25.800 I would have ordered the very same parents I had and all the brothers and sisters I had.

00:00:31.080 In order to get this education, he would take these odd jobs like digging irrigation ditches for people or doing fences for people.

00:00:39.780 And then he'd take this money and he would use it to pay for like first grade, right?

00:00:44.580 And he would do every, he would pay for it like two, three months at a time, maybe even a few weeks at a time,

00:00:50.680 wherever he would get any sort of a cash windfall, which is very different.

00:00:53.780 You know, when you think about how hard these people's lives were and how much they sacrificed,

00:00:57.860 yet how much gratitude they had for their lives.

00:01:00.440 Why is it these people today who live these indolent lives where the state gives them education,

00:01:04.600 where the state gives them everything, you know, where they're not, yeah.

00:01:08.380 Why, why do they feel this way?

00:01:12.080 You know, why do they feel this level of hatred and entitlement?

00:01:15.160 And I think a key answer here is they're taught to.

00:01:18.420 Would you like to know more?

00:01:19.380 First, I want to tell a little story about you as a parent.

00:01:23.880 So one, you've been like totally stepping up over the past eight days because I have really bad pneumonia, fever, chills, pain.

00:01:32.620 Like this is the worst.

00:01:33.720 I'm finally on medication for it.

00:01:35.640 But you've been really stepping it up with the kids.

00:01:38.660 But then I just discovered like also what you deal with, with like routine kid stuff that we have this, this like routine at night where I, I take our infant Titan, or I guess she's like a twaddler now.

00:01:52.880 And then I take care of her, I give her a bath, I like handle her.

00:01:56.520 But you take the boys after we give them their bath and after dinner, and they go up to your bedroom and hang out with you.

00:02:03.600 And like they watch the little iPads and the educational videos you've queued up for them.

00:02:08.160 And you watch something or play a game.

00:02:10.540 What are you playing now?

00:02:11.440 You really like that Warhammer game?

00:02:12.820 Oh, Rogue Trader.

00:02:13.900 It's fantastic.

00:02:14.540 I like it more than Baldur's Gate, to be honest.

00:02:16.520 It is, it is fantastic.

00:02:18.080 It's a Warhammer fantasy game.

00:02:19.840 And I'm obviously love the universe.

00:02:21.760 Yeah, so, so you, you do that.

00:02:24.560 And I just assumed like most of the times when I peek in, the boys are sitting there, you know, well, always Octavian is under the covers, hidden somewhere, like the little kid reading a book with a flashlight at night.

00:02:35.980 Torsten is sitting there, like on top of the bed, totally normal.

00:02:39.260 Everyone's kind of doing their thing.

00:02:40.860 But I can kind of now, like I take a shower after I get Titan in order, and I can see you from the shower if I leave the bathroom door open.

00:02:49.580 And I was watching as our son, Torsten, would repeatedly crawl up Malcolm's back and then just begin pulling on his hair just until he would like, maybe like move his shoulders a little bit, Malcolm would.

00:03:03.260 And then, you know, our kid, Torsten, would go tumbling off and immediately start climbing.

00:03:07.540 Hacking me with his tablet. 0.97

00:03:09.420 Yeah, like whacking you, pulling your hair. 0.99

00:03:11.800 And I'm just like, and there you are just patiently playing your game.

00:03:17.860 Well, this goes to our parenting philosophy, where a lot of people would be like, why aren't you, you know, why isn't your son better behaved?

00:03:23.620 And I was like, because we believe not in breaking a child's will, but in stoking their will.

00:03:27.660 The most valuable thing a child has is their will.

00:03:29.640 And insofar as they're just goofing around and being boys, like, we don't care.

00:03:33.640 And with tablets, actually, and we'll do a longer episode on this, because I think this is a really interesting point, is people know that generally studies show that screen time is not good for kids.

00:03:43.380 And they're like, why would you give your kids any screen time, right?

00:03:45.760 What they also haven't done is look at the effect size of these studies.

00:03:49.320 Yes, while it is generally agreed across studies that screen time is not good for kids, the effect size, like when people talk about, like, what's going on with Gen Alpha, it's typically below 5%.

00:03:57.880 It's like 3% to 5% on most measures, whether it's behavioral measures or academic accomplishment measures.

00:04:03.840 And not all the studies are even aligned.

00:04:05.600 You know, you'll see studies on one side or the other.

00:04:07.060 I think the broad, probably two-thirds, are on the it's not good, depending on how it's deployed and how kids engage with it.

00:04:14.040 But if you are a parent and you know how much easier it is to sometimes employ screens with preloaded, like, educational shows as part of your parenting technique,

00:04:23.000 and then you look at the studies that look specifically at educational programs for kids and see the effect size there, any sort of negative effect size is very small,

00:04:30.940 you'd be like, oh, yeah, obviously this is the right thing to do.

00:04:33.660 And so much of parenting today has come to this sort of, like, extra curated, every child needs an adult there giving them this perfect environment all the time.

00:04:42.820 And it's like, well, of course you're going to be low fertility if you're doing that, instead of being, like, you know, the Tiger Cubs style parenting,

00:04:48.760 which we've talked about in another video, which is, I think it was when, like, well, if you raise your kids like Jordan Peterson suggests, they'll be simps.

00:04:54.480 Which is to say, you know, we picked this up from a safari, you know, and Simone was talking about how the little kids, like, pulling on me really reminds me of seeing the little Tiger Cubs in the safari, like, playing on their parents.

00:05:06.600 Not, not tigers, just.

00:05:08.440 Or a tiger, yeah, a lion, a lion, you know, like biting at the adult lion and stuff like that.

00:05:13.620 And then just knowing that they get bopped if they cross the line, but the adult will let them know and growl at them first to let them know.

00:05:19.100 But anyway, this all comes to this wider phenomenon that happened to me recently.

00:05:23.440 So I discovered yet another book about one of my family members, which happens sometimes.

00:05:28.300 That's when I found it was, like, publicly available online about one of my ancestors named B.A. Collins.

00:05:33.180 So this would be my great-great-grandfather, and he was in between the ancestor who had all the relatives in the Free State of Jones and who was the leader of the Jayhawkers. 0.59

00:05:41.700 So this was the anti-Confederacy rebellion group.

00:05:46.380 It was, like, anti-slavery, anti-Confederacy rebellion group that was in Texas during the Civil War.

00:05:51.900 So that was his dad.

00:05:53.320 And then this guy won state office.

00:05:56.700 So he was a state representative in Texas that got a bunch of laws changed around.

00:06:00.640 Actually, I have the notes right here.

00:06:01.900 What did he get changed while he was in office?

00:06:04.800 In 1913, he wrote and introduced the worksman's compensation law.

00:06:08.860 Because the measure was regarded as somewhat radical, he couldn't get a co-sponsor, so he handled it alone.

00:06:15.580 He also introduced the law providing an eight-hour day for work on public projects.

00:06:21.360 Oh, he also got the law that prohibited child labor in Texas passed.

00:06:25.000 He led that one.

00:06:27.220 And the law that limited work hours.

00:06:29.000 And I think it was some other one tied to, like, work hour links and stuff like that.

00:06:32.780 All stuff that broadly now we're like, oh, this was all really obvious, like, good stuff.

00:06:37.360 So those are things he fought for.

00:06:38.440 His son was actually the one.

00:06:40.160 We have another video called, like, The True Story of Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

00:06:43.300 that in large part inspired the events of Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

00:06:47.740 But they mix up some characters and stuff like that.

00:06:50.400 But he would be, like, a version of Papio Daniel from the show The Politician.

00:06:54.920 But I'll say, like, the only man in this great state who ain't a music lover is my esteemed opponent in the upcoming, Homer Stokes.

00:07:20.620 Yeah, well, there ain't no taste.

00:07:22.360 It sounded to me like he was harboring some kind of hateful grudge against the soggy bottom boys on account of their roof and rowdy past. 0.98

00:07:31.960 Looks like Homer Stokes and the kind of fella want to cast the first stone.

00:07:39.480 Well, I'm with you folks.

00:07:41.660 I'm a forgive and forget Christian. 1.00

00:07:44.300 Anyway, watch the episode if you want to see a full explanation of that.

00:07:47.680 But what really struck me about this guy's writing was the way he wrote about his family, which was so similar.

00:07:56.460 So I'm sort of dealing with this conundrum.

00:07:58.560 I don't know if it's genetic the way I feel about my family or the way I relate to things like gratitude.

00:08:04.300 Or if it's that society has changed and I just have some sort of, like, old iteration of relating to this.

00:08:13.620 Because when I read it, it felt so different from anything I see in media at all today.

00:08:18.200 So I'll read a little excerpt he wrote here at the end of this book he wrote about his parents' life and his life.

00:08:24.200 The little story I have told about my parents and their way of life and their children seems to me as rather poorly told.

00:08:30.760 For as good a basis as I had for writing the story, I do not suppose that any man is prouder of his ancestors and all of their descendants than I.

00:08:39.040 If I had been giving an order to someone to supply me with parentage and with brothers and sisters,

00:08:44.240 I would have ordered the very same parents I had and all the brothers and sisters I had.

00:08:49.200 There would not have been a change made if I had been making the order before I had known them, as I have.

00:08:54.940 I think our family is one of the most remarkable families I have ever known.

00:08:58.660 In the first place, I had a very remarkable father and a very remarkable mother.

00:09:03.620 They might have been distinguishable in some respects,

00:09:07.200 but they were both endowed with the character and intelligence that made them superior in my estimation.

00:09:13.060 My father was a man of remarkable intellect.

00:09:15.620 Of course, taking my estimate for his intellect, he was first among all people I knew.

00:09:20.900 My mother was also well endowed intellectually, but the greatness of her character even exceeded her intelligence.

00:09:27.360 I do not say that my father was faulty in any regard in the rearing of the family,

00:09:31.800 but he seemed to be less adapted to the high responsibility of raising a family than was my mother.

00:09:37.320 In providing for a family, one thing very essential to consider is making proper provision in the mental, direction, and physical care.

00:09:44.440 My father was entirely adequating a family mentality,

00:09:48.520 but he was rather inefficient in managing his affairs to promote their great physical care.

00:09:53.340 I have often thought that their contrast in character and intelligence was just the contrast that a couple should have to raise a great family.

00:10:01.380 And if I needed proof of that fact, the family they raised would be sufficient evidence to prove to me

00:10:07.300 that nature made just the right contrast in giving us our parentage.

00:10:12.420 Ours is a great family, not in the large number of members of the family, but also in their characteristics.

00:10:18.700 Of course, we would admit that we are just common people, but that does not remove the elements of greatness in family character.

00:10:25.360 I do not know how many descendants my father and mother have living, how many have passed on,

00:10:30.140 but I have lived long enough to know every descendant of theirs from the time of their firstborn on to the present.

00:10:35.900 And I saw it was a great deal of pride that I have never known a criminal in the family.

00:10:40.920 I do not mean to say that we are faultless people and that possibly some of our family have not been guilty of violating small, immaterial rules of government.

00:10:49.700 But I've never known or heard of one of them being called before the courts to answer for a crime by society which he lives.

00:10:56.700 I thank God for our heritage, yours and mine, and for our parentage he gave us.

00:11:02.320 And then after that in the book, there's this huge section that is just page after page.

00:11:07.800 I do like a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da in the YouTube video here of just all of the living offspring that he knew about.

00:11:14.840 Because these people had 11 kids or 14 kids.

00:11:18.380 All of them had 14 kids.

00:11:20.060 Always the same woman, of course, who, you know. 0.53

00:11:22.780 So enormous amount of work there and just seeing this level of reverence for family, you know, which is something we don't have.

00:11:32.960 And if you read the story, you also see this level of reverence was not necessarily because his family was incredibly rich or anything.

00:11:39.160 In fact, they were very poor.

00:11:40.780 He did an inventory at one part of the story of all of the things they owned.

00:11:44.180 And it was the hut that his dad had built and a spinning thing for weaving.

00:11:50.140 I forget what those are called.

00:11:51.260 Spinning wheel?

00:11:51.680 The spinning wheel.

00:11:53.220 And that was it.

00:11:54.480 And he actually bemoans a bit of all of the investments his father could have made if he was a bit more ambitious a person in that regards.

00:12:02.460 But he clearly, you know, does not hold that against him.

00:12:05.060 He believes that all of the events of his life were necessary to make him into the person he was and his siblings into the people they became.

00:12:11.640 And I read that.

00:12:12.880 And something that really struck me is that's exactly the way I feel.

00:12:15.640 You know, while I may have had some trials in my childhood, if I had had anything else, I wouldn't be who I am today.

00:12:22.180 And I absolutely love who I am today.

00:12:24.500 And if I could choose from all of the humans I'd ever met, and I mean this very seriously, like, individually, when I look at my parents, I'm like, there's this thing they could fix.

00:12:32.480 Or this thing that could have been better.

00:12:33.840 Or my brother, you know, there's this thing.

00:12:36.060 If I could choose anyone in the world as alternatives for them, no, not a single human being I would choose instead of them.

00:12:43.340 And when did we start thinking, like, I hate my parents.

00:12:48.660 Like, this has become, like, a big thing in society today. 0.85

00:12:51.400 Or my parents traumatized me, or my parents were narcissistic, et cetera, et cetera.

00:12:58.280 Yeah, yeah. 0.98

00:12:59.260 I mean, and his father, one of the stories there was that he had gotten a bunch of pigs, right?

00:13:04.900 And he had raised these pigs.

00:13:06.620 And then his father decided that he needed to go and slaughter all of his pigs so that they could sell them to pay for the family's yearly expenses.

00:13:14.300 And this, he doesn't, like, say anything negative about his father, but this was right before he stopped living with the family.

00:13:20.380 So this was clearly a very traumatizing event for him.

00:13:24.940 But it's also interesting the way that he approached it.

00:13:27.360 It was traumatizing to him because they would have been worth so much more the next year.

00:13:33.320 Oh, so it wasn't the act of slaughtering a very intelligent animal.

00:13:37.000 It was the act of...

00:13:39.300 It was the economic inefficiency of it all.

00:13:41.580 Don't you see, Simone?

00:13:41.920 What would be your investment?

00:13:43.400 Yeah, like selling your Bitcoin when it's low.

00:13:45.480 Oh, my God.

00:13:46.440 Yes, yes.

00:13:47.280 He should have been able to make that economic choice.

00:13:49.680 And then act on that choice.

00:13:51.940 And also speaking about the economics, another thing that really surprised me about this story was I had a very different picture of what it was like living in the Old West back then.

00:14:00.700 So he was obsessed with educating himself.

00:14:02.940 This was his, you know, every...

00:14:04.680 The father.

00:14:06.440 No, this guy was obsessed with educating himself.

00:14:08.020 Oh, the author, okay.

00:14:09.660 Not his dad.

00:14:10.720 His dad was not...

00:14:11.580 His dad was all involved in the revolution stuff and was known as being a really famous anti-big government guy, anti-big corporation guy.

00:14:20.460 You know, as one of the leading...

00:14:22.880 The guy who wrote the leading Texas socialist newspaper at the time wrote of him, may the Collins bloodline pour over this great country like Clearwater bringing socialism.

00:14:31.980 Was it?

00:14:32.360 How far have we moved from that?

00:14:33.880 But I think if you look at what he meant by socialism, it was the type of things that, you know, VA was pushing and, you know, like no child...

00:14:40.800 Like child labor laws and like restrictions on work hours, which are all things that we broadly support. 0.58

00:14:45.920 So I think that it's, you know, very in line with our existing political philosophy.

00:14:49.780 It's just that the powers that be have changed.

00:14:52.340 But anyway, and this was during the time of, you know, Robert Barron's and all that, right?

00:14:55.340 So his father was completely consumed with that and helping...

00:15:00.140 You want to get a broad idea of what his life was like?

00:15:02.420 The movie, The Free State of Jones, did a fairly good job because he ran the equivalent project in Texas and his brother was one of the founding members of that.

00:15:09.480 And 15 of his relatives were of the 50 founding members of that.

00:15:13.460 So that was basically his family back in Georgia before he migrated.

00:15:17.460 I'm tired of it.

00:15:19.100 You, me, all of us.

00:15:20.940 We're all out there dying so they can stay rich.

00:15:26.020 Tax collectives coming around here, taking everything.

00:15:29.280 We have nothing for the winner. 0.91

00:15:31.100 Girls, you know how to shoot one of these? 1.00

00:15:34.220 It's quite normal you got there. 0.99

00:15:36.220 Last time I checked the gun, don't care who's pulling the trigger.

00:15:42.440 You know they shoot deserters, don't you?

00:15:45.140 They runaways.

00:15:48.680 They too. 0.99

00:15:50.120 They're gonna die so they can get rich and sell any cotton. 0.97

00:15:52.840 That's why we left them.

00:15:53.900 No man ought to tell another man what he's got to live for or what he's got to die for.

00:16:02.500 I don't have the patience with five or six deserters hiding out in the swamp.

00:16:06.500 You ready? 1.00

00:16:12.460 Just hang him. 1.00

00:16:13.360 See anything? 0.99

00:16:22.820 He's out there.

00:16:25.640 He won't miss this.

00:16:26.960 This fight's for our children and their children's children.

00:16:43.700 In this day forward, we declare the land north of the Pascagoula Swamps to be a free state of Jones.

00:16:49.500 They're poor farmers, deserters, who frankly, sir, don't have much to lose.

00:16:59.220 The winds are shifting.

00:17:02.780 And you can't fight with this guy.

00:17:10.520 There's plenty left to fight for.

00:17:13.780 But, but, so he wasn't that interested in education.

00:17:16.060 Now, his son was so interested in education, which was really interesting to learn about,

00:17:20.000 because he would go out and, and in order to get this education,

00:17:24.140 he would take these odd jobs, like digging irrigation ditches for people,

00:17:27.780 or doing fences for people.

00:17:30.700 And then he'd take this money, and apparently there wasn't like public school or anything,

00:17:34.320 and he would use it to pay for like first grade, right?

00:17:37.560 And he would do every, and he would pay for it like two, three months at a time,

00:17:41.980 maybe even a few weeks at a time, wherever he would get any sort of a cash windfall.

00:17:46.060 Um, and then he would use that in order to, by the time he completed first grade,

00:17:51.360 he then went to the, you know, far away to the local state house to get certification

00:17:55.840 so that he could teach first grade.

00:17:57.260 So he can be around school materials all the time and just spend all the time educating himself.

00:18:03.040 Um, which is very different.

00:18:05.120 You know, when you think about how hard these people's lives were and how much they sacrificed,

00:18:09.120 yet how much gratitude they had for their lives.

00:18:11.460 Why is it these people today who live these indolent lives where the state gives them education,

00:18:15.880 where the state gives them everything, you know, where they're not, yeah.

00:18:19.200 What, why, why do they feel this way?

00:18:23.340 You know, why do they feel this level of, of a hatred and entitlement?

00:18:26.420 And I think a key answer here is they're taught to.

00:18:29.340 So I mentioned this theory a number of times.

00:18:31.560 I think a big part of it actually came out of Floridian psychology to begin with.

00:18:34.840 I think this is where we begin to see this shift.

00:18:36.800 Because Floridian psychology, what's the joke?

00:18:38.680 You're laying on the couch, they're like, what did your parents do wrong?

00:18:41.900 Right?

00:18:42.580 But this has come back into psychology.

00:18:44.300 It was pushed out of psychology for a while because everybody realized how evil it was.

00:18:47.520 What you're essentially doing is like all cults.

00:18:50.220 You are separating a person from their support network and then replacing that support network

00:18:54.680 and saying, okay, now you have this problem, this trauma, and that to relieve it, you need

00:18:58.540 to come see me.

00:18:59.380 A person's closest support network is always going to be their birth culture and their family.

00:19:02.400 And so they insinuate this trauma into a person's life and create dependency on them.

00:19:07.000 And it's a very effective strategy.

00:19:09.080 And so it's been able to economically out-compete other forms of psychology, the efficacious

00:19:12.820 forms of psychology, which used to be much more prevalent.

00:19:15.280 And obviously not all psychologists practice this.

00:19:17.180 Some are still actually good guys, but a lot of them do.

00:19:20.140 And I think that the ones who are out there teaching people in Hollywood, teaching the people

00:19:24.920 who are writing our cultural narrative, a lot of them have this framing of a sort of parental

00:19:32.420 hatred as being an important part in anyone's life story.

00:19:35.900 But then in addition to that, I also think that this twisted American narrative, which

00:19:44.060 I do not think was early American narrative.

00:19:46.020 Early American narrative was I'm from an honorable family, even if they are from a hard background

00:19:51.080 and I am going to do what I can to incrementally improve the situation of my family.

00:19:55.060 It then became this narrative of intra-generational.

00:19:58.800 So within a generation, nothing to wealth, rags to riches.

00:20:04.160 But part of the rags to riches narrative is the denigration of the circumstances of your

00:20:09.500 birth, which can combine, like if you believe, one, you need to be liked by society, you

00:20:16.700 need to tell this rags to riches narrative, right?

00:20:19.820 Well, this comes with a few implications, right?

00:20:21.860 Like one, you need to find a way to convince everyone that you grew up in a very trying environment

00:20:26.720 and convince yourself of this to have this level of self-worth.

00:20:28.860 But also believe that it is because of your own effort that you escaped this environment,

00:20:33.820 which meant that your parents, to have let you grow up in that environment, must not have

00:20:38.660 been great, must not have done a good job with their own decisions in their own lives, and

00:20:43.460 therefore have been worthy of contempt.

00:20:46.620 And so I think within both the conservative mindset, where you have this rags to riches

00:20:52.040 narratives, and within the progressive mindset, you have these two forces, which create this

00:20:56.820 wedge between, and that's a narrative wedge between individuals and their parents and

00:21:03.440 families.

00:21:04.480 Do you have thoughts on this, Simone?

00:21:07.240 I do see it happening.

00:21:08.620 I mean, I think despite this, one thing that is encouraging is there are a lot of people

00:21:12.180 who do really have good relationships with their parents.

00:21:14.820 And I'm curious to hear your commentary too.

00:21:16.500 I can try to dig it up after this, but when it comes to satisfaction with their parents,

00:21:22.100 at least like vis-a-vis the 60s or 70s, satisfaction with parents is actually much higher.

00:21:28.360 When you're seeing this with like higher rates of kids not moving out, you know, staying at

00:21:32.620 their parents' house and sort of failing to become real adults.

00:21:36.740 They actually have really close friend-like relationships with their parents.

00:21:40.040 So I wonder how you would contend with this dichotomy of, on the one hand, kids seeing

00:21:48.420 their parents as narcissistic, abusive, you know, evil, terrible parents who've left them

00:21:56.420 traumatized, et cetera, et cetera.

00:21:58.540 And on the other hand, their parents are their best friends.

00:22:00.960 They're never going to move out or grow up or, you know, whatever, because it's just frankly

00:22:05.380 quite easier when you are really close with your parents, you like them, they make you

00:22:10.760 food, they do your laundry, they don't make you pay rent, and the real world is hard.

00:22:16.400 So I think there's a confluence of two things going on here, which are worth talking about.

00:22:20.700 One is, I think if you look at the boomer generation, they really were pretty awful as 1.00

00:22:24.540 parents.

00:22:25.240 They did not take the responsibility seriously.

00:22:28.000 They viewed kids as a status item.

00:22:30.120 A lot of them did.

00:22:31.060 And that was because society was framing kids that way to them.

00:22:33.680 So they didn't engage, like when I say a status item, it was part of living like the

00:22:39.480 standard American identity, but there wasn't this drive and desire for intergenerational

00:22:44.680 improvement, which existed in earlier, especially immigrant groups within the US, which really,

00:22:49.420 I think, defines our nation's character.

00:22:51.680 It's this immigrant idea of intergenerational improvement and coming either to the country 1.00

00:22:56.700 or moving to, you know, the West or moving to new settlement areas where life is hard for

00:23:02.500 this opportunity for intergenerational improvement.

00:23:04.460 And they sort of had a, I've got mine, now let's just put all this debt on the next generation 1.00

00:23:08.340 and not really care about what happens.

00:23:10.260 So there was some motivation for that contempt, but also there was no mechanism for them to

00:23:16.260 earn a team in their kids' eyes because society had begun to tell kids, you know, you don't

00:23:22.640 respect your parents for doing like good parenting, right?

00:23:27.320 Like, like from, from setting an example.

00:23:30.400 Yeah.

00:23:30.560 Which is sometimes tough love, right?

00:23:32.940 Yeah.

00:23:33.200 And compassionately helping you reach that example.

00:23:35.460 In fact, a lot of media, when it was portraying, what does a good parent look like?

00:23:40.000 You know, a lot of even children's media, you see this these days, because it's coming

00:23:42.660 from this ultra progressive mindset where these people never really grew up.

00:23:45.880 And, and, and they, when they are writing about the relationship between a child and a

00:23:49.980 parent, instead of historically, when people were doing that, they were often thinking

00:23:52.760 from the position of a parent, like, what does a good relationship like this look like?

00:23:56.400 They were thinking from the position of a child and they were writing these, like, what

00:23:59.620 do I wish my parents allowed me to do without telling me you can be better, you can do better.

00:24:05.240 You know, it's more like what, like good has been replaced by indulgent.

00:24:09.400 What does an indulgent parent do? 1.00

00:24:11.340 And that seems to be what defines-

00:24:12.680 Yeah, and then parents begin to adapt to this, right?

00:24:14.760 And this is where you get this Gen X parent mindset.

00:24:17.900 But also, you know, when I talk about this, let's, let's, I want to read another passage

00:24:22.460 that I wrote in his book, which shows like the type of thing that he saw as giving his

00:24:28.180 parents a high regard in his estimation and what made them good parents.

00:24:33.320 So in another chapter, he's talking about all of the hardship that his mother went through

00:24:38.340 to raise the family.

00:24:39.440 And he goes on to say, this daily and hourly routine of my mother working to keep her family

00:24:46.060 closed and fed her, kept her very busy.

00:24:49.560 Did she ever complain or think her task hard?

00:24:51.800 No, she did not think so.

00:24:53.720 She was providing for her family.

00:24:55.500 Her husband was her hero and she would do anything to make him happy.

00:24:59.340 Her children were her angels and she did not want to see them need anything.

00:25:03.400 Instead of being unhappy, she was happy doing something to relieve the needs of her loved

00:25:07.640 ones.

00:25:08.320 She was a happy woman.

00:25:10.000 No greater blessing ever befell any man or his descendants than when my mother stood at the

00:25:15.240 marriage altar with my father and plighted face with him that she would become the mother

00:25:20.240 of his family and the business manager of his household.

00:25:23.660 I will not consider her to your mother or the mother of some friend or stranger.

00:25:27.700 I will not say that I had the best mother in the world, but the way I think of her now,

00:25:33.060 I think she was the best mother in the world.

00:25:34.880 I think instead of being burdened with her various duties, she got real pleasure out of them

00:25:40.800 and doing something for her loved ones at home.

00:25:43.740 But hold on.

00:25:45.640 One more quick thing I want to read here about her because this describes part of her sort

00:25:50.580 of daily routine, right?

00:25:51.700 And the way that he thought of her and what he thought it meant to be a good mother.

00:25:55.640 This was actually the passage I thought I was reading, but the other one's a great passage

00:25:58.100 too.

00:25:58.740 She had not lived there long until she had some chickens and we each had egg for breakfast.

00:26:03.600 Every two or three mornings, we always had some first class cornbread cooked just right

00:26:08.660 and some good steam fried bacon, which she had previously prepared in the smokehouse.

00:26:13.580 She saw to it that every meal that went to our table was a well-planned meal.

00:26:18.500 A superior chemist could not have analyzed a breakfast that was on our table and found

00:26:23.040 anything lacking in our meal to make healthy, rosy-cheeked children.

00:26:27.900 She did not raise a weekly family of children pale faces or hookworm victims.

00:26:32.980 She raised a husky bunch.

00:26:35.440 Her girls were strong and healthy and her boys were the strongest boys in the whole community.

00:26:40.400 And then he goes on to talk about various, I don't know, like wrestling and sports competitions

00:26:44.480 that the boys had won and how strong and hearty the girls were.

00:26:48.920 And this estimation of what was expected of her, it wasn't, oh, she was nice to us.

00:26:55.120 It was, she cared about our emotional states.

00:26:57.660 It was very obvious that our happiness was important to her and our health was important

00:27:02.240 to her and she did everything was in her means to provide for those things while also obviously

00:27:08.520 throughout the entire journey is the sacrifices the family made for his education.

00:27:13.200 And a really interesting part, and I'm not going to read the whole thing here again, that's

00:27:17.800 another quote, but this is a quote about his siblings.

00:27:20.460 So he had a lot of siblings and he talked about how the, the thing that made a lot of money in

00:27:25.420 the community was going to work at the sawmill and that, and then he called these, you know,

00:27:29.180 mill boys and they had more money than the other, other people.

00:27:32.000 And two of his older siblings who were now too old to get educated, they dedicated all

00:27:36.940 of their time to this higher earning profession so that they could put some money towards helping

00:27:43.640 educate where they could, the younger kids.

00:27:46.020 And that, you know, the, this family value that his mother had instilled in them made him

00:27:51.980 so proud of his family.

00:27:53.420 And, and they ended up being successful.

00:27:55.740 He ended up caring for these, these older brothers of his and the, in today's society,

00:28:00.720 when you hear kids like this forced parentage, like even you have complained about this, like

00:28:05.240 having to take on the role of the family or having to support other members of your family

00:28:09.400 was your own income.

00:28:10.440 Parentification.

00:28:11.560 Yeah.

00:28:11.980 It would be a form of abuse, right?

00:28:13.940 To these two older brothers.

00:28:15.240 And, and yet, no, that is what it is to raise good children.

00:28:21.480 That, that is what it is to be a good parent is to instill caring about your family members.

00:28:27.600 You know what, actually, I'll just read the paragraph here because it is interesting and

00:28:30.200 it is sweet.

00:28:30.880 You know, my oldest brother, E.W.

00:28:33.180 Collins had married several years before that and had his own family responsibility.

00:28:37.220 Morg and Phil were still unmarried and they had both become high priced sawmill men.

00:28:41.880 Morg was a tram engineer.

00:28:43.220 And then he goes on to talk about their jobs that paid almost as much as Long's job, all

00:28:48.040 of them for the time I had been going to school.

00:28:51.020 And even after I began teaching, my mother and the youngest sisters needed help, which

00:28:55.420 one could not give them without giving up my studies.

00:28:58.000 So he's saying that he would have to leave his studies to support his family.

00:29:02.520 Have it said to the credit of my brothers and be it known that my gratitude to them will

00:29:07.200 last forever.

00:29:08.280 Morg and Phil helped my family very liberally and kept my youngest sisters and mother from

00:29:13.060 being and want for anything and always encouraged me to go to school and get an education.

00:29:17.880 They knew they could not go back and get an education and they would not hear of me stopping

00:29:22.900 and going to work in order to help my family.

00:29:26.380 You see these set of values that's instilled in them.

00:29:30.380 And he was not when he talks about how great his parents are, when he talks about how great

00:29:35.160 his family is, this is not because they didn't demand sacrifices from some of the kids.

00:29:39.680 It's because when the kids were forced to make sacrifices, they understood that they were

00:29:44.480 all in this together, that they are all working together for this cycle of intergenerational

00:29:50.040 improvement, this cycle of community improvement, and for the best interest of the wider family

00:29:54.640 and cultural group of which they found themselves members.

00:29:58.500 And this is something that today, the centers of power in our society, our kids are constantly

00:30:03.480 being brainwashed and even ourselves to judge our parents by metrics, which are bad metrics

00:30:10.640 to judge parents.

00:30:12.020 And I would encourage our listeners, especially if you're younger, and this has always been a

00:30:16.100 big task of ours, if you haven't told your parents how much they mean to you in a while,

00:30:20.500 if you haven't taken the opportunity to reframe the way you see your parents recently, really

00:30:26.260 give it an effort.

00:30:27.500 Your parents having a different value system than you is not a reason to have any animosity

00:30:34.060 towards your parents.

00:30:35.200 If your parents did the best by their own value system, then you should do what you can to

00:30:41.460 show your parents' appreciation.

00:30:43.080 Now, I would also say this was in the context of the Wynwood Reed quote, you know, the person

00:30:47.240 who we sort of look to for philosophical advice, which is, you know, a person may live according

00:30:53.480 to their conscience, but a person living according to an untrained conscience is the same as living

00:30:59.140 according to no conscience at all, because it can still lead you to sin.

00:31:01.920 But the reality is, you know, you look at these people's lives, his father lived basically

00:31:06.740 as an outcast in society, having to give up everything he had.

00:31:10.240 You know, when you turn against the Confederacy in the South, you're having to constantly

00:31:16.660 having assassination attempts against him, having to constantly run away.

00:31:20.080 You know, he had no land.

00:31:21.500 He had no anything.

00:31:22.320 He had to give all that away just to fight for what he believed was right.

00:31:26.460 And he died being hated by many people in his community for what he did.

00:31:29.580 And I think that's something that I'm glad that the Free State of Jones, it wasn't like,

00:31:32.080 you know, was a lot of people say, oh, the people who stood up to the Nazis, the people

00:31:36.480 who stand up to Confederacy, they were loved by their communities.

00:31:38.660 No, they were hated by their communities until the day they died.

00:31:42.520 But they were loved by their family because they did the right thing and they were people

00:31:47.000 of character.

00:31:47.940 And I think that this is a thing that is important to do.

00:31:50.860 And this is what it means to be a family of character, to know that so long as you follow

00:31:55.000 the family traditions and you raise them within this, you know, humble yet elitist environment,

00:32:02.820 that you will be rewarded as well.

00:32:04.780 So I do encourage you to go show respect to your parents for the things that they sacrificed

00:32:09.860 so that you could have the life that you have.

00:32:12.900 And I hope that you can instill this with your kids and that we can work to build a

00:32:17.020 culture in terms of like the summer camp and the school and stuff that we're building

00:32:19.880 for our kids.

00:32:20.860 It helps isolate them enough from these toxic mimetic viruses in our environment that thrive

00:32:27.600 in the same way cults have always thrived by peeling people away from their birth cultures

00:32:33.640 and their families and their parents who sacrifice everything for them.

00:32:37.480 And this to me is particularly hard to reach when I see it happen to immigrant groups where

00:32:40.640 I know these people sacrifice everything.

00:32:42.600 The urban monochrome, it just doesn't care.

00:32:44.320 You know, it brings them over with the goal of erasing their family's culture because

00:32:49.680 it's the only way it can survive.

00:32:51.180 And it teaches them to have this hatred for their parents who gave up everything to come

00:32:54.960 here and gave up everything just to give them a better life.

00:32:57.840 And not just them, but their descendants, their family line.

00:33:00.100 That's the point.

00:33:00.720 That's the reason you did all this.

00:33:01.900 It wasn't just so your kid could go party in clubs all day, every day.

00:33:06.520 But anyway, I love you to death, Simone.

00:33:09.280 I love you too, Malcolm.

00:33:10.300 And I like that it's clear that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, even when

00:33:15.860 there are like multiple trees in between.

00:33:19.280 It's hilarious.

00:33:20.760 So it's a cultural group, you know, and I hope that we can spread in any way that we

00:33:25.880 can, that this is a stable cultural strategy intergenerationally.

00:33:29.360 And it's clearly been stable for many generations.

00:33:31.480 I mean, the stuff that he said about his family, I think sounds very similar to stuff you guys

00:33:34.900 have likely heard me or my wife say on this show.

00:33:37.580 And it is possible to actually be appreciative for the things in your life and to live in

00:33:42.240 a community that, that affirms you and gives you, says that you, you deserve affirmation

00:33:48.480 and status for saying those things instead of only affirming people who have this really

00:33:53.040 toxic and negative mindset.

00:33:54.520 And yeah.

00:33:55.620 Anyway, love you to death, Simone.

00:33:56.800 Love you too.

Based Camp - January 09, 2024

People Used to Like Their Parents

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