Religion is Declining Faster Than You Think
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Summary
On this episode of Thick & Thin, we discuss the growing number of conservative millennials in America and the implications for the future of the country. We talk about the impact of social media and social media, and what it means for the next generation of conservative Americans.
Transcript
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when we're looking at, you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about
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how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly
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going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right? It is not. It is an
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asymptotic change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What
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has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own
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childhood. Culturally speaking, these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really
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different from their parents' generation. And it means that the parents are not passing culture
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intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.
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Yeah. Well, and also, like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that,
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which is not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct. But also, if the parents knew that
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their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they could do?
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A lot of the techniques that people have historically used to pass down these traditions
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intergenerationally are just not working very well. Would you like to know more?
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And in addition to that, could you send yourself a to-do item about emailing her the-
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I already sent her the email. Look at how on top of things they are.
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I'm sorry, Simone. I'm sorry. I don't- You are amazing. This is a great way to start. So people
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Well, no, but you were in the middle before that. We were rudely interrupted by a call. You were telling
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me how Chavez, Castro, and Che were doing with, you know, like AOC and Bernie. Like, are they okay?
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They looked terrified when I first opened it. So two of our chickens after communists,
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and they seemed fine. They seemed fine. They were making, they were complaining a lot. They were
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and in a separate part of the cage. So they were talking.
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Okay. So they're, they're okay. Were they, were they being attacked by AOC and Bernie?
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Well, I don't know. They were in a different part, you know?
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Okay. So they're, they're like, they're, they're, they're clustering together.
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Yeah. I just, I don't know. Like, I'm, I'm worried. I don't want them to be like stressed
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out or anything. And like, they're the friendliest ones. So you are the sweetest chicken mom,
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which I appreciate because we're getting lots of great eggs, which means egg everything these
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days. So you right before this, you know, being ever diligent, sent me some statistics you thought
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I would find interesting. And they were so shocking. I then did a sanity test on them after
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you sent them to me just to be like, come on, this can't be. So first, you know, you're going
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to see the statistics on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube, what it shows is the share of
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Americans. This is Americans, right? I think so. Who believe in God without doubt. And if you look
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at the silent generation, it's around 70% slight decline over time. You look at boomers, it's like
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65% slight decline over time. You look at Gen X actually goes up over time from like just under
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60% to almost around where boomers are now, 65%. Then you get to millennials and it's like things
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drop off a cliff. In the early days, like 1998, they were only around 55%. And now like, well,
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2018, where this recording stops, they're all the way down to like around 45%. Then Gen Z when
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they start recording, they're dropping even faster. They go from like 50% to now, you know,
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I don't know, 33%. It's just plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. And so then I looked and I was like,
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okay, what are religious people saying about this? Right? Like did do do sources that are looking
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into this religiously. So there was this article over half of Gen Z teens feel motivated
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to learn more about Jesus. Now you can tell this was written from a conservative perspective. So
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this data is not going to be skewed, whatever. Right? So they show among U.S. young adults,
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only 17% are committed Christians and 52% aren't Christian at all anymore. And this is of U.S. young
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adults. Wow. And so this is really meaningful to me for a number of reasons. The biggest is
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I think that there's this general perception that the rise in secularity, when we're looking at,
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you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed
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recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly going from the boomers,
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you know, up to modern generations, right? It is not. It is an asymptotic change. It's logarithmic.
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It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What has happened in this last 20 years
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is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood, culturally speaking. Things have
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exploded at a rate like, this is why I just so confidently can make a bet. I often mention this,
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my mom, before she passed, she's like, you know, you're really publicly tying yourself to this
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fertility rate thing. Like, what if this is just a fad? What if fertility rates shoot back up in a
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couple of years? You know, you're going to look really stupid. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I am
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confident from what I am seeing in the data that it is going to get infinitely worse in the near future
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because everything correlated with fertility is collapsing. And one of those things is religiosity,
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right? And that has fundamentally transformed for people of this generation.
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The next thing that I would note, and this is something that, so if you know, Simone and I,
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we are hip with the Gen Z conservatives, right? Like that is the market that we probably speak to
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the most in terms of the nature of our message and in terms of who we're interacting with because of our
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school system, because of who we know. But we also know a lot of really conservative families. And I
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can't mention like who they are because I don't want to give these kids away because these kids feel
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honest being open with us. So a lot of these Gen Z kids, they still identify as very conservative.
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If they're culturally, they, what would we say? They, they, they appear to be conservative and
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Right. But many of them from very religious families are no longer religious. They just
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hide it from their parents because they don't want to hurt their parents' feelings. And they still
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like broadly believe in religious value systems because like, they really don't, I agree was like
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the woke nut jobs. Right. But they are just not religious anymore. And I think that this creates
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a big problem when you look at the statistics, which is a misperception among older conservative
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millennials who are having kids right now or younger conservative Gen X. And that thinks
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that this next generation is just like them. They're like, well, my kids haven't told me they
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Well, and they still go to church even, you know, probably after, you know, they go to school and
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they probably say things, you know, like, you know, God willing or I'm like, you know, they'll,
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they'll do all the, they'll present religious. And so that's also really misleading. Like that. I think a lot
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of secular people, like openly atheist people and openly nihilistic people will go out to dinner
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with or hang out with or see people who like code religious, but yeah, they don't realize that those
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people actually just don't believe. Yeah. So I'd say that when I talk to Gen Z conservatives,
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they really seem to fall into three camps in terms of like ideological identity. One camp is the
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aesthetic conservatives. Yeah. We've talked about them in other videos. Yeah. These are the
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individuals who fall for the aesthetic of conservative more than have an actual like
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philosophical structure behind their beliefs. This is the crowd that Andrew Tate is talking to.
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It is mostly like manosphere diaspora. They are primarily motivated by how unfair society has become
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to them and how weak they see society becoming. These are the two things they care about.
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And this is the largest faction I think of the Gen Z conservatives right now that like,
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like the actually like active ones. The other faction is like our faction. If you want to get
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an idea of what they think, just watch this podcast. Like it's, it's, it's really like the type of stuff
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we talk about is really just indicative of what these guys think. Then the final faction is I call them
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like religious cosplayers, I guess I'd say. Ew. They are not religious in the way that their parents
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were religious. So by that, what I mean is their parents are religious because they were upholding
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the traditions of their ancestors. These individuals are often upholding religion as a shield against
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wokeism and a deteriorating society. And they lean more strongly into religious culture than even their
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parents did. So these are the, the, the, the kids who maybe even were raised in secular households,
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but then are like, I'm going to raise my kid Jewish or Muslim or Christian, and we're going to go to
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church. But at the same time, they don't really believe it. Like my parents, for example, they
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had this moment where they decided to become born again Buddhists. And they were like, okay,
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we're going to send you to Dharma school. And they like, they meant to do it, but then they never
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really followed through with it because they actually didn't really believe. I think like they
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weren't really that into it. Is that what you're talking about? Well, not exactly. I think a lot
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of these people really do believe it, but for their parents' generation, for the Gen X religious
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generation, religion was primarily about the belief. The belief guided all other actions tied to the
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religion. For these individuals, it's 50% belief, 50% structure and aesthetics. So the classic example of
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somebody like this is the person who maybe grew up in a conservative Protestant household and then
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becomes like a trad cat because they think like Catholicism is a more conservative, more
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structured iteration. They're often converting to the more structured iteration of religions.
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So they're much more likely to become Orthodox Christians. So by that, what I mean, I don't mean
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general Orthodox. I'm talking like Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, et cetera, or trad cats or traditional
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Orthodox Jews. Those are the three groups where I see this represented in the most. I haven't seen
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that many Protestants who stayed Protestants doing this. And I think the reason is, is because the
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Protestant faith has less ritual and structure to it. And the point that I'm making here is that for
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many of these individuals, the ritual and structure is 50% of the point. Whereas for the previous
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generation, it was God was a hundred percent of the point and everything else was downstream from
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that. And of course they wouldn't say that it's 50% of the point. But what I mean, when I say this
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is when I look at the fervency with which they adhere to the ritual and in which they signal the
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ritual, they seem, if I'm going to word it in a way, almost, they remind me more of goths from my
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childhood than religious kids from my childhood. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying.
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You know, where the religious people didn't need to constantly be signaling that they were
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religious all the time. They were constantly trying to convert me, whereas the goths needed
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to constantly be signaling how gothy they were. Yeah. But they weren't necessarily, yeah. They
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weren't trying to convert you. And also they were kind of in it to be, just to not be a normie,
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right? Like I feel like half the people who are goths or whatever new subculture there is of the day,
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they're in it to just not be like mainstream society. And that is what I see with one of the
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Yeah. Yeah. Continue. Sorry. Well, that's what I see with a lot of new converts or people who
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are going more hardline from a softer religion. Yeah. And so these, these religious institutions
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are doing well. And I want to point out that I don't mean this disparagingly at all. I actually
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think that all of the rituals and framing and weird dress codes and everything like that,
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weird, where weird is defined from differentiating from mainstream society.
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Yeah. I think it's all useful in maintaining their culture and passing their culture down
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intergenerationally. I think that these young people recognize something about religion that
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their parents had forgotten because their parents didn't have as strong an enemy constantly
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battering at their doors. And so they had forgotten all of the purposes of all of the
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defensive structures and fortifications that had been built up over the year. They're like,
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oh yeah, that pile of old guns. We don't need those anymore. That pile, you know, this old wall.
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Well, I mean, I understand it was a castle wall, but nobody ever attacks this castle anymore. So
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let's tear it down to put a road there. You know, and now these, this younger generation is like,
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build it all back up, you know, restore the guns, everything like that. Right. So
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Why this is interesting to me is every one of these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z
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is really different from their parents' generation. And it means that the parents are not passing
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culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.
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Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that,
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which is not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct. But also if the parents knew that
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their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do? Because I don't think
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there is. I just think that they're screwed. No. Well, and this is an interesting thing because
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parents can be like, well, why don't the kids tell me when they're rebelling in this way? Right.
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Right. And a very interesting thing about Gen Z, and it's something that I will constantly say
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is the woke iteration of Gen Z has just completely lost their minds. They're basically in this big
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society-wide cult. But when I talk to non-woke Gen Z, like mentally healthy Gen Z, they are
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dramatically more emotionally mature and mentally healthy than the mentally healthy, like average
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person of our generation. Yeah, that's fair. Well, and I would say, I mean, to go back to sort of
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what I always originally thought woke was all about, like sort of just being, they seem more
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woke than woke people and that they're like genuinely aware of what's going on with society,
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how things are playing out, the dynamics at play, how the cards are stacked against them,
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what their benefits are, et cetera. Like they seem to be extremely, what's the word? Savvy, shrewd.
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I mean, I admire. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. They're savvy and shrewd and they get a lot less
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of the pleasure that previous generations did from sticking it to their parents.
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And also they're not delusional. Yeah. Like they're, I think they're just like, well, that's.
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They see their parents as people. And this is one of the things that we often advocate for the most,
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which is really interesting. So among our Gen Z friends or people who were mentoring and stuff
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like that, we're always like advocating to, I know you're nice to your parents, but seriously,
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all of these beefs you think you have with them, you really don't have with them. I've heard all of
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the terrible things you think you suffered in your childhood. They're really not that bad.
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It seems like they were just trying to do what was best for you. And many of them since have like
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reached back out to us and they're like, I'm really glad you encouraged me to try to patch
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things up with my parents because I, I, now that I've like left the house and typically they're only
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able to patch things up after they leave the house. Like I have a great relationship with them
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and I recognize that they actually were trying to do what was best for me. But anyway, so all of this
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is really interesting because a lot of the techniques that people have historically used to pass down
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these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well. And you as an individual
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don't have the same mechanisms that you would have had historically to know if they're working very
00:15:58.540
well. So what do I mean by that? Right? So if you're looking at like transference of, let's say,
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Christian values intergenerationally, I know some conservatives, I tell them this and they're like,
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oh, my kids know not to, to, you know, do that or they'll be, you know, punished in some way. Right?
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And it's like, well, what you're telling me is if they didn't still believe they wouldn't tell you.
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Right? Because you just told me you, you were going to punish them. And, and that's a very difficult way
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in this world today. Historically that worked. You could punish people into following a faith when
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they had nowhere else to turn. The problem is, is that in our current society, it's very easy to leave
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your parents or leave your parents' tradition once you're of age. And this, I am going to force them
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with punishment. This is what happened, I think, with Ayla, for example, right? Her father, Calvinist
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tradition, you know, similar to ours, tried to get her to follow the tradition with punishment. And that
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just backfired spectacularly, like an atomic bomb in his face. And I think it's a very, very bad strategy
00:17:02.520
in today's environment. Yeah. Second strategy I hear people saying is, or that we would have seen
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historically, is you would have had the community sort of monitor to know when they were falling from
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their faith. Right? So a really important thing about intergenerational faith transfer in a historic
00:17:22.740
context is that you as a parent would get feedback if your kid didn't believe your faith. Right? Like
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even me, I mean, I was clear from a young age that I did not believe in the traditional Christian
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religion. And my parents, no, I do consider myself a Christian, but like a weird Christian. And most of
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that has been built up since then. When I was in middle school and high school, I was one of those
00:17:46.760
hard atheist type people, you know, caught up in like the new atheist movement and stuff. The new way I
00:17:51.700
thought they were kind of, you know, pussy-ish. I didn't like them. But with the atheist movement
00:17:59.020
more generally, right? And the various offshoots, like the subgenius and stuff like that. Those are
00:18:03.160
the ones who I thought were cool. But it was known. Like this was something that was reported
00:18:08.600
to my parents. Now, my parents were not Christian either. You know, they had left the Christian faith
00:18:13.740
a long time ago. But it got all the way back to my grandparents, who were still of the Christian
00:18:19.360
group within my family, right? Like, so if you're in Texas or something like this, in middle school,
00:18:25.220
this is stuff that would have been reported to your family. That is not happening anymore.
00:18:30.700
And well, because there's not these networks of people trying to ensure cultural fidelity, which
00:18:36.520
exists naturally. I mean, actually, they do exist now. They're just on the woke side.
00:18:41.520
Right. Yeah. I was going to say, if anything, teachers are helping it along these days, not
00:18:46.200
Well, they, I mean, they would report to the family of some, the kid said something non-woke.
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They'd say, don't you know that little Jimmy is not of the dominant cultural group? He said
00:18:54.000
something non-woke. He should be punished for this. I hope he's punished at home and not
00:18:57.360
just at school. He said, blah, blah, blah. And this is not an approved fact. So, you know,
00:19:03.240
you are really working with a completely different, not an incrementally different, not a linearly
00:19:08.380
different world than, than existed when you were growing up. It is completely structurally
00:19:14.720
different. And if you try to go into it with, you know, slightly more padding around you
00:19:23.220
or something like that, you are going to be, or slightly more padding around the next generation,
00:19:28.280
they're going to be fucked. You know, this requires really intentional structuring and
00:19:36.280
rebuilding. And there's different ways you can do that. I mean, this is why we wrote the
00:19:39.280
pragmatist guide to crafting religion. This is why we've recorded the audio book for it,
00:19:42.520
everything like that. We did all of this and just, you know, if anybody wants it, if we sell
00:19:46.240
it for like 99 cents or $2 or something, like all of the money goes to charity, like, and the charity
00:19:51.920
goes to trying to create a school system to compete with a public school system, which I think most of
00:19:55.820
the people who would want the book would find compelling. But anyway, we wrote the book to try to
00:20:00.760
give you the scaffolding to augment these historic traditions, to be more resistant, to, to, you know,
00:20:10.360
go out there with your cyborg instead of your, you know, slightly beefy guy to fight this, this
00:20:16.160
horde of, of Xeno scum that's coming to erase us. But yeah. Um, what else was I going to say on this
00:20:27.060
topic of the other strategy is the one that we use. And this is something that, you know, people
00:20:32.300
ask, why do you have such a weird structure? Like, why don't you just go back to the historic
00:20:37.900
traditions of your family? Right. And we're like, those historic traditions couldn't even hold for
00:20:43.060
our parents' generation. You know, we come from the Calvinist cultural line, which is basically
00:20:48.080
extinct in the United States today. If we're going back to our ancestors, I can say it didn't work.
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It didn't work. It like, just did like, like objectively it didn't work. And then they say,
00:20:59.080
well, why don't you convert to one of the other Christian traditions that you see as broadly
00:21:04.500
aligned with yours? And the answer is, is I, the ones that are most broadly aligned with ours
00:21:11.860
are the ones that have collapsed the most. Uh, so, you know, you're looking at stuff like
00:21:18.440
evangelical Protestants and stuff like that. Right. The Calvary church is, is, is my favorite.
00:21:22.860
Like if I went back, that's the iteration of, of Protestantism that I really like, but, uh, yeah,
00:21:29.280
it's, it's, it's not doing well. It's not healthy, you know, demographically if we're saying, and so
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no, I'm not going to go back to a beast that I see as sick. If I can try to do something different
00:21:41.960
for my kids. And so that's why we are trying to restructure things in the spirit of our ancestral
00:21:48.880
traditions. But in the context of modernity. Yeah. Well, and in a way that it cannot be with,
00:21:55.900
with any sort of modern science be disproved, like the idea that a God is something that will
00:22:00.680
come to exist in the future, like a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from
00:22:04.600
now, our descendants, as they're still alive, would they be more like humans or more like
00:22:07.500
gods? This is what we tell our kids. And we say, who's to say they're going to relate to time the
00:22:11.040
same way you do. And they're more likely to, they might be rewarding you and watching over you for when
00:22:16.940
you do things that increase a prosperous future for humanity. We've done many other videos on this.
00:22:22.080
The one on demons that we've released recently is the one I'd suggest because we were trying to
00:22:25.460
create demons for our kids, which I really like, you got to do that. But that's why we take that path.
00:22:30.940
And that's why, and people were like, yeah, but that path is likely to fail. And again, you look at
00:22:36.580
Puritan spotting, you look at the Calvinist tradition. Yeah, but constantly reinventing our traditions is
00:22:40.940
something that Calvinists were known for historically doing. So it's just a nature of our
00:22:46.640
branch of the hardest Calvinist historically, like hardest cultural Calvinist were the ones who
00:22:53.780
constantly tried to reinvent their tradition, because that was the most Calvinist thing to do.
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The ones who practice the culture in different ways were the ones who spun out the fastest.
00:23:03.380
Whereas the ones who went into it was like this weird sciency, like going through their Bible and
00:23:07.680
crossing out everything that they didn't think aligned was modern scientific data. You know,
00:23:12.300
we've been doing that since the founding of the country, right? But so I want to hear your thoughts.
00:23:17.560
Well, one question I actually wanted to ask you, because I'm not sure how important this is, but I
00:23:22.960
think it could be. How much do you think actual belief in God matters here? Like, if someone has a
00:23:31.440
really strong culture, but they were to answer this survey saying, no, I don't believe in God, but they
00:23:37.000
also happen to have a really long, strong culture, would they be mentally resilient, likely to inherit
00:23:42.760
their future, holding an intergenerationally durable culture? Or do you believe that to be
00:23:48.200
intergenerationally durable and strong and to impart a competitive advantage, you actually have to have
00:23:53.560
some kind of metaphysical faith that, that nihilists and atheists theoretically don't have?
00:24:02.760
I think the rituals alone can achieve this. So even if, if zero belief in God or a higher power or
00:24:10.260
anything like that, cause we like, despite being like technically secular, we say we're secular,
00:24:16.660
we have a metaphysical reality. We have gods. We have, we, we practice descendant worship. Like
00:24:22.260
we fall in the God category and I think it does play a role in our faith. So, so here's what I'd say,
00:24:29.640
because we have friends who fall into this category and you know, the people I'm talking
00:24:32.980
about, the ones who we know who fall into this category are what we call secular ultra Orthodox
00:24:37.580
Jews. And by that, what I mean is they are ultra Orthodox Jews in the way they dress, in the things
00:24:44.300
that they practice, in the number of kids they're having, but they do not believe in God. And we're
00:24:49.120
like, why, why all of this other stuff if you don't believe in God? And what's really funny is that the
00:24:54.920
way I'd put it is they believe in religion. They don't believe in God. They believe that all of
00:25:01.460
these religious things help their, their mental health, their kids, their family. They believe
00:25:06.940
in an intergenerationally family culture and tradition. They just don't believe in God.
00:25:11.540
They're just like, well, I don't believe the metaphysical part, but I believe in all of the
00:25:15.700
structure. And you can say, well, does this work? Well, they have tons of kids, all the ones we know
00:25:22.440
who are doing this. In fact, they have more kids than most of the actual ultra Orthodox Jews I know.
00:25:31.160
And I think it's because they're being so intentional about it all.
00:25:34.320
So you think, yeah, it's the intentionality, it's the structure, and it's the discipline. It's not so
00:25:38.380
much whether or not there is faith. So faith is not the core of this. The discipline and dedication
00:25:44.460
is. Well, it's another thing. It's pride in who you are and what you are passing down to your
00:25:50.740
children. So we take a lot of pride and they take a lot of pride. The reason they stay with their
00:25:56.520
traditions instead of shedding them, even though they have lost the core belief, is that they believe
00:26:03.500
and have pride that those traditions matter, that they're good for the world, that they, that they're
00:26:07.560
glad to have them. And that alone, I think does a lot to pass things on to a kid. When I am telling
00:26:15.320
my kid, and this is why I think this new iteration of Christian that I talked about earlier here is
00:26:20.820
going to do so well in the future. If I'm telling my kid, well, you need to follow all of these rules
00:26:26.340
because it's what God said to do, right? That's, that's not, that's, that apparently didn't work.
00:26:33.840
Like that's the kids who are falling out of the tradition, right?
00:26:36.880
Once we're staying in the tradition are the ones who, who are being told by, I don't know,
00:26:40.300
their, their communities or who have come to the conclusion themselves or by their parents.
00:26:44.160
Well, you need to follow these traditions because your life will be better if you follow these
00:26:48.160
traditions. These traditions are part of who you are and they make you a better person. You know,
00:26:54.040
take something like Lent, right? Like you can do Lent to try to, you know, glorify God,
00:27:00.280
or you can say, actually fasting is an important thing to do for my mental health and my emotional
00:27:07.260
and mental fortitude. And I will be a better person for doing it. Um, and, and that creates
00:27:14.920
a logical reason to not abandon these traditions. And it is an easy argument. You know, it's like the
00:27:19.460
larger thing is when I'm talking to Gen Z, if, if I go to them and I'm like, you should believe in God
00:27:25.840
because of traditional religious argument. These arguments are incredibly ineffective on this
00:27:31.720
generation. They have you, well, we should do another video on converting people because I think
00:27:36.920
that would be a great video. Like how, like what arguments actually work well on me as a secular
00:27:41.940
person and what arguments don't work well on me as a secular person, but, or when I was more secular,
00:27:48.460
I suppose, right? Like, like, uh, but when you go to Gen Z and instead of saying, you know,
00:27:53.280
you should believe in God for these like biblical arguments, right? Like in the historic age of,
00:27:59.580
uh, Christian apologetics, that was the way you would convert people. Now you go up to them and
00:28:03.180
you show them statistics on mental health issues, progressivism, you show them rising rates of
00:28:07.940
suicide. You show them the crazy shit that's happening in pop culture right now. And you're like,
00:28:13.660
doesn't seem to be working, does it? And this argument is actually very compelling to Gen Z.
00:28:20.000
Um, which is really interesting to me, or at least the Gen Z that's open to this sort of stuff. Like
00:28:25.240
this is the key path into that generation. And it's why it's important to, if you come from a
00:28:32.680
cultural tradition that has left most of your traditions, like, like, like actual rituals and
00:28:38.460
traditions and stuff like that, it can make sense to rebuild them for your family, whether that's
00:28:42.020
creating new holidays or reviving old holidays that bring that cultural pride and continuity into
00:28:49.580
future generations. That's, that's interesting. So you start out with a stat about belief in God,
00:28:56.540
but in the end, you're like, nah, it doesn't matter. Different kind of thing.
00:29:00.180
Well, I mean, I think that is capturing how much things have changed.
00:29:03.480
It does. Yeah. It does capture it because right now, like that, I guess that's one of the reasons
00:29:08.060
why you wrote the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion is you wanted to say that you can have a
00:29:12.780
strong religion without faith in God, but presently, quite frankly, it's not a thing. There aren't
00:29:18.940
strong religions without some kind of belief in God. So you're trying to say it's possible. You
00:29:23.600
don't think it really matters, but yeah, now it is sort of the thing that correlates. So that makes
00:29:28.280
sense. Well, I love you, Simone. I found another little, like endangered bunny out there in the
00:29:32.680
world. You know, that's, that was, well, I'm from an endangered cultural group. It's very rare
00:29:37.600
that I met someone like, you know, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a rare to have a cultural group
00:29:44.040
that is both intellectualist and rural specialist and anti-authority is a pretty rare combination in
00:29:51.080
the world today. So it's not like it's easy for me to just piece somebody with this value set together
00:29:56.940
out from the environment. Right. And technophilic, right. Which, which, yeah, I'm just so glad to have
00:30:03.640
met you. I, it was, it was a one in a million chance and we made it work by continuing to roll
00:30:09.800
the dice. As we said somewhere in, in one of the other recent videos we did on, on persistence
00:30:15.120
is intelligence is like having higher stats on a dice roll, like getting to add a number to a dice
00:30:21.220
roll after a dice roll, whereas persistence is rolling with advantage. It's getting to roll over and
00:30:25.740
over and over again. And I appreciate that you did that and that, that I took the time to do that
00:30:30.380
because you are an amazing person. I'm just glad you exist. Even, even if you hadn't chosen to spend
00:30:36.560
your life with me, I'm just glad you were out there. So thank you.