Based Camp - The Birth Rate is Collapsing Because of... Therapy？

00:00:00.320 Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about how bad therapy and therapists and bad psychology tanked birth rates.

00:00:11.880 And we're going to be doing it through the lens of an article in the National Review titled Bad Therapy Tanked the Birth Rates.

00:00:17.840 Oh, this was shared with us by a fan.

00:00:20.460 Yes.

00:00:20.780 Thank you.

00:00:21.180 And it is going to reference a New York Times article that was written by Michael Leibowitz.

00:00:27.780 So we'll be going between their quotes of the New York Times article and their commentary on these quotes of the New York Times article.

00:00:32.840 Okay.

00:00:34.440 And the New York Times article is like shockingly based.

00:00:36.980 So we start with the New York Times article here.

00:00:39.120 Over the past few decades, Americans have redefined harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma, expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life.

00:00:51.740 Adult children seem increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously, cut off contact with a parent.

00:00:59.060 This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting.

00:01:05.320 And then the other writer says potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents and their future children.

00:01:13.160 Leibowitz drives into this with the rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children.

00:01:16.980 Most of the time, it's the offspring, not the parents, who initiate the initial estrangement.

00:01:23.720 Yeah.

00:01:23.940 As Leibowitz writes, in 2019, Carl Pilkman, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27% of adult Americans reported being exchanged from a family member that the true number is probably higher.

00:01:34.220 The most commonly severed relationships were parent slash adult child.

00:01:38.300 And in most cases, it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement.

00:01:41.980 Many psychologists and sociologists believe this is becoming more common.

00:01:46.760 Now, note here, I love that they keep calling it the adult child.

00:01:50.900 They don't mean this as an insult.

00:01:52.120 Oh my gosh, right.

00:01:53.100 But they're not even thinking about it.

00:01:54.520 But we've come to infantilize adults so much that we're just like, ah, is it a toddler child?

00:01:59.660 Is it a teen child?

00:02:00.680 Is it an adult child?

00:02:01.760 Is it a teriatric child?

00:02:03.180 Everyone's a child now. 0.97

00:02:04.820 No one can handle themselves.

00:02:06.200 Let's talk about like the few points of data that are really highlighted here so far, okay?

00:02:09.840 First is that Americans have come to redefine harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma.

00:02:15.720 Right.

00:02:16.480 And this is absolutely true.

00:02:18.360 To mean things that people used to think were normal.

00:02:21.340 A parent not affirming you for whatever you want to believe about yourself, that's trauma.

00:02:26.300 A parent not being with you all the time.

00:02:28.280 A parent allowing you to feel bad.

00:02:31.100 You know, we have been guilty.

00:02:33.500 We abuse our kids because we use light, non-pain corporal punishment.

00:02:37.780 Which is absolutely wild.

00:02:42.080 Considering, you know, that we fight with our kids regularly just to get them to fight.

00:02:45.920 Because my cultural tradition is fighting.

00:02:48.060 And my kids are very good.

00:02:49.520 Even the girls are very good at fighting. 1.00

00:02:50.920 And they really enjoy it.

00:02:51.760 Oh, she starts it more than anyone else.

00:02:53.640 Oh, 100% she starts it more than anyone else.

00:02:55.780 And she thinks it's hilarious.

00:02:57.420 Yeah, she does.

00:02:58.000 So you get this...

00:02:59.300 I'm trying to pick a fight with a journalist yesterday.

00:03:02.080 Remember?

00:03:02.840 What did she do? 0.80

00:03:03.460 Poking her provocatively at dinner.

00:03:04.820 Laughing, poking her.

00:03:09.680 Oh, she's trying to bait that.

00:03:11.900 Yeah.

00:03:12.140 That was fantastic.

00:03:13.040 That was Der Spiegel.

00:03:14.400 Derpy Spiegel coming over to do a piece on us.

00:03:17.740 I was very nice.

00:03:18.340 I felt bad.

00:03:19.100 I tried to distract her at the end so she could...

00:03:22.040 But yeah, we had...

00:03:24.420 So the point here is that these things, it is really bad that our society has redefined them.

00:03:29.700 And as we've said before, the reason the urban monoculture has evolved to redefine them is because it helps to cut people off from their birth culture and their natural support network.

00:03:40.160 And you see this throughout cults.

00:03:41.660 An easy way to pull somebody from another culture is to convince them that that other culture is something that they should hate. 0.73

00:03:48.700 And if you can recontextualize normal parts of growing up as abuse or neglect or trauma, you can more easily do that.

00:03:56.960 And here I think more broadly, I just find trauma culture more broadly so toxic.

00:04:03.840 I think if anyone is ever talking to you about trauma, for me, that's a huge red flag.

00:04:08.500 Trauma can always be recontextualized.

00:04:10.520 Actually, a journalist was talking to us and they're like, well, it sounds like you lived a really tough childhood.

00:04:16.720 Why are you so bullish on your parents?

00:04:19.640 And I was like, my parents are who they are.

00:04:22.040 I can choose to feel however I want to feel about them.

00:04:25.500 Why would I choose to internalize those things in a traumatic narrative when that does nothing but hurt me?

00:04:31.780 And when I say this, I left my family at 13 where I went to a prison alternative and I never lived with them again after that.

00:04:38.220 And a lot of people can be like, well, that sounds horrible.

00:04:41.000 I'm like, whatever.

00:04:41.740 I needed to grow tougher, right?

00:04:45.580 And this is because I choose my narratives.

00:04:50.120 Absolutely.

00:04:51.160 Well, but also I think it's reflective of your techno-Puritan worldview, which is a deterministic worldview where if someone's wretched in some way, it was predetermined.

00:05:04.520 And that was their product of a combination of their genetics and life experiences, neither of which they had control over.

00:05:11.680 Everything they did was out of free will.

00:05:13.360 Absolutely.

00:05:14.360 But also, they are what they are.

00:05:16.600 And so we just have to accept it.

00:05:18.340 And you don't.

00:05:20.180 Yeah.

00:05:20.500 Well, I also find this idea of, I mean, the second point here, which I find really interesting, one is they are who they are, like learn to accept it.

00:05:28.660 Like if your parents, you know, acted in line with who they are as people, I think, you know, you could say, well, I really detest who they are as a person.

00:05:38.420 Or you can just be like, I understand why somebody with these beliefs and these perspectives would have acted in that way.

00:05:42.600 And then you can look to yourselves and say, do you have an aspect of that personality?

00:05:47.960 Do you have an aspect of those?

00:05:48.740 And you probably do.

00:05:50.160 You probably do.

00:05:50.740 I mean, if they're genetically your parents.

00:05:52.980 Well, no, I've noticed this.

00:05:53.820 It's people who bring themselves to hate their parents often hate themselves.

00:05:57.120 Yeah.

00:05:57.700 Because you really can't do one without the other.

00:06:01.020 Well, similarly, parents who kind of actually hate their partners kind of also hate their children.

00:06:06.460 Yeah, I've noticed this a lot too.

00:06:07.740 When parents hate their partners, they hate their children as well.

00:06:10.260 Because they see so much of them in them.

00:06:11.480 It's really sad.

00:06:13.200 The other interesting thing is that this predominantly happens with adult children, i.e. people after they're already adults.

00:06:19.160 This isn't young people in abusive scenarios.

00:06:23.040 This is people who, as adults, recontextualized past scenarios to internalize them differently than they did at the time.

00:06:31.360 Well, I think it's important to highlight that there is teen rebellion.

00:06:34.140 You know, there's, you know, all my parents are so unfair.

00:06:36.000 My parents are terrible.

00:06:37.420 They don't understand me.

00:06:38.300 But there's a big difference between that teen rebellion and what's happening with adults.

00:06:42.600 Yeah.

00:06:44.740 Where they're just going totally no contact.

00:06:47.500 And recontextualizing everything as trauma.

00:06:49.720 And honestly, no matter how progressive and perfect you are by the urban monoculture standards as a parent, you will probably still end up, if your child maintains the urban monoculture, end up being the villain.

00:07:02.620 Because if, let's say that you provide your child with gender-affirming care, and then, you know, of course, the stats indicate that that probably isn't going to go so well for them.

00:07:12.260 Like, they're going to continue to struggle throughout their lives.

00:07:14.140 So it's not unlikely that even then, your child's going to be like, how did you let me do that?

00:07:20.500 Well, I mean, keep in mind, Elon was supportive of his kid going through gender-affirming care when they did it.

00:07:26.020 He took him to the psychologist.

00:07:27.260 He bought the medicine.

00:07:28.340 Yeah.

00:07:28.460 You know, he tried to be as supportive as possible, and the trans kid turned on him before he went anti-trans.

00:07:36.420 You know, the anti-trans thing was he just went on.

00:07:38.280 All this came out after it was published in a book that in court proceedings, she had asked to disavow herself from the last name Musk and disassociate herself from her brother.

00:07:49.220 Before he did anything to wrong her.

00:07:51.860 Yeah, before he started saying, you know, she's dead to me, et cetera.

00:07:56.000 My son is dead, whatever.

00:07:56.740 And this is all downstream of the culture that got their hooks in her with this stuff. 0.98

00:08:01.580 You can never affirm enough.

00:08:03.700 You can never be nice enough to people within the urban monoculture.

00:08:07.280 I have to say, though, of all the trans people in media, she passes pretty well.

00:08:12.400 I'm just saying.

00:08:13.980 Well, she had a lot of, you know, money to work on this stuff. 0.99

00:08:16.440 Yeah, it helps to, yeah.

00:08:17.620 I mean, as a parental support person until everything ended, I guess.

00:08:23.800 The larger point here being is you can't just capitulate enough.

00:08:27.660 In fact, people would be like, oh, like, this is why I would recommend, like, nobody, like, if you're in the urban monoculture, it might even not be worth having kids.

00:08:34.260 Because your kids will eventually hate you.

00:08:36.640 I mean, not necessarily.

00:08:37.560 So, you know, by some reports, children report closer friendships with their parents than ever before.

00:08:42.980 They're living longer with their parents.

00:08:44.760 They're not leaving the house.

00:08:45.820 I mean, they are increasingly infantilized.

00:08:47.580 They'll either hate you or be infantilized.

00:08:50.180 Yeah, they'll either, yeah, they'll either hate you or remain babies for their entire life and be dependent on you and live off you like leeches.

00:08:55.960 Which, you know, I think I would prefer an estranged child who didn't speak to me anymore.

00:08:59.440 Yeah, I wouldn't prefer an estranged child who, yeah.

00:09:01.420 Because, I mean, at least they're probably more likely to be thriving.

00:09:04.160 And they're not going to thrive if they live off the parental dole for their lives.

00:09:09.180 Yeah, there is no good outcomes within that culture.

00:09:12.080 Well, also keep in mind that the culture's Overton window is always moving.

00:09:15.780 So, you know.

00:09:16.400 Yeah, what is good and moral today?

00:09:19.020 Maybe evil tomorrow.

00:09:20.240 Tomorrow, right?

00:09:21.040 You know, like, you know, it used to be good and moral to say you're colorblind and now that's racist, right?

00:09:25.420 Like, what?

00:09:26.060 Like, these things change.

00:09:28.000 And so you just can't win.

00:09:29.720 And they forget that they ever changed.

00:09:31.180 They forget that they were ever anything else.

00:09:32.980 They, like, completely culturally erased that.

00:09:35.640 Well, of course, there are cases of real abuse where the child ought to cut off the parent relationship.

00:09:40.440 The rising trend should astonish us.

00:09:42.260 Laboussi notes that many of today's adult children often cut parents off what a generation ago would have been viewed as venial sins.

00:09:52.620 Anna Russell, who interviewed estranged families for The New Yorker, found that reasons for estrangement included that people, quote,

00:09:59.380 felt ignored or misunderstood by their parents or believed that a sibling had always been the family's favorite.

00:10:06.100 Several described a family member as a, quote, unquote, classic narcissist or, quote, unquote, toxic.

00:10:11.680 Now, I would note to you, though they're not reasons to cut a family off at all,

00:10:15.980 and all of those are perceptual issues that rely on your individual perception.

00:10:20.460 Well, if children also, if they acted as logical economic actors, unless a parent actively did damaging things,

00:10:26.700 like take out debt in your name or demand money from you, there are plenty of instances of parents being a net drain.

00:10:33.580 I think for most kids, it is better to maintain a relationship, even with a mediocre parent,

00:10:38.180 because they may be more likely to distribute resources to you in some form at some point in the future.

00:10:46.460 Yeah. So the point I'm making here is, sorry, I know that you're being like, well, you could get something out of them,

00:10:54.120 but I'm just saying, like, this is a really crazy reason to cut family off.

00:10:58.080 And keep in mind that if you cut off your parents, your kids are astronomically more likely to cut you off.

00:11:04.540 Oh, yeah, I guess, yeah, you're normalizing it, aren't you?

00:11:07.120 This is also what I said to the reporter, like, why would I ever normalize contextualizing my relationship with my parents in a negative light,

00:11:15.540 where if I do that, my kids are going to do that? 0.87

00:11:18.960 Like, why would you ever do that? 1.00

00:11:20.960 Like, that seems very stupid unless your parents obviously crossed a major line. 1.00

00:11:26.160 Point, yeah. 1.00

00:11:26.940 Not that this hasn't happened within my family.

00:11:29.140 Like, I've mentioned that my dad had his grandfather take out a million dollars of debt under his name,

00:11:35.080 and this was in the 1980s.

00:11:36.940 And he never disavowed him.

00:11:38.700 Never disavowed him.

00:11:40.100 He really just dealt with it, it seems.

00:11:42.420 There aren't stories of major confrontations, even.

00:11:44.600 Well, he ended up becoming quite wealthy because of it.

00:11:49.180 I mean, he never gave me money, and I don't care, you know, like, I'm fine with that.

00:11:53.360 I don't need, like, even if he could have, he could have given us money, that would have been great.

00:11:57.800 But he didn't.

00:11:58.680 And I appreciate that part of our family tradition, this, like, really anti-nepotism tradition.

00:12:04.160 And at least he didn't take out debt in my name, right?

00:12:06.440 Like, that's where I really lucked out with my dad.

00:12:09.340 I had no big pile of, oh, my God, you took out a million dollars of debt in my name and invested it in your company.

00:12:15.880 But, oh, well.

00:12:16.840 But it worked out for my dad, by the way.

00:12:18.460 He ended up growing the company a lot.

00:12:20.240 And he never had a big salary at that company, but he made a lot of money with the money that had been invested in it.

00:12:25.700 Love a happy ending.

00:12:27.060 Right.

00:12:27.340 Love a happy ending.

00:12:28.100 Well, and the idea of, like, a classic narcissist, I think, here's what I'd say. 0.78

00:12:32.020 If you believe you know more than, like, one classic narcissist, you are the narcissist.

00:12:38.380 The classic narcissists are not particularly common.

00:12:41.260 And I find that narcissistic people are very common to see other people as narcissistic because they don't understand how anyone could not be centering them in every single thought another person has.

00:12:52.500 Oh, interesting.

00:12:53.840 Very interesting.

00:12:55.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:12:55.600 That's why you see it so frequently.

00:12:56.580 Well, I was talking with one of our friends about, like, oh, you know, I hope your kids are incredibly respectful to you in the future, given everything you do.

00:13:06.260 Because this person goes way above and beyond.

00:13:08.100 She's incredible as a mother.

00:13:10.140 And she's like, man, like, I'm really afraid of parental estrangement.

00:13:15.300 And, you know, the urban monoculture just seems to be the primary driver of it.

00:13:18.540 But she pointed out that she was calling an insurance company about some issue this morning, and they were telling her that there's this concept called mental health parity that was created under Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act in the United States.

00:13:35.720 And what it does is it expands mental health and substance use disorder coverage, requiring that starting in 2014, all new individual and small group health insurance plans have to cover mental health and substance use disorder services at parity with medical and surgical benefits.

00:13:52.580 So, suddenly, in 2014, it was possible to get a lot more mental health care.

00:14:00.620 And I'm sure that this increased the number of people who went through the process of getting diagnosed with problems because they knew then that they would get coverage for treatment.

00:14:08.960 And probably a lot more people were encouraged to seek out diagnosis.

00:14:12.400 And I think part of this is...

00:14:13.500 Well, I mean, it's an industry.

00:14:14.880 Yeah.

00:14:15.480 And it probably funded the industry a ton more.

00:14:18.420 So, it's not just that we've seen this cultural shift in how people are contextualizing parenting and trauma and how therapy is playing out.

00:14:25.980 I think that also in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act, there was this shift in funding, insurance funding, for mental health services that enabled us to grow.

00:14:36.940 What I've noticed with therapists is that they will often search for conflict with family.

00:14:43.800 They will look for areas of conflict with family to sort of grow because that creates dependency from the client.

00:14:50.860 The more trauma they can build in you, the more you're going to want to consistently see them.

00:14:55.360 You know, any...

00:14:56.500 From my perspective, any, you know, psychologist who has regular permanent clients is not doing a good job.

00:15:03.640 You know, you're supposed to be fixing them, right?

00:15:06.100 And, you know, Rubiard talks about this, where he had to go to a conservative psychologist to get anything done.

00:15:13.600 The conservative was like, okay, here's what you need to do.

00:15:15.560 Here's the list of blah.

00:15:16.500 The other one, the progressive, he was like, just looked for conflicts.

00:15:19.980 Looked for conflicts between him and people.

00:15:21.940 And validated them.

00:15:23.200 And it's a very feminine versus masculine way, right?

00:15:25.480 Like, the constant advice given to boyfriends is when your girlfriend presents you with a problem or grievance, do not try to solve the problem.

00:15:33.820 You're going to want to try to solve the...

00:15:35.180 Don't do it.

00:15:36.220 Don't solve the problem.

00:15:37.060 Don't make suggestions.

00:15:38.080 What you do need to do as a doctor is solve the problem.

00:15:40.340 Like, you don't want to be like, oh, wow, yeah, that cut looks really bad.

00:15:43.240 Not if you want to...

00:15:44.660 Well, I mean, as a medical doctor, yes.

00:15:46.160 But as a mental health doctor, if you want to maintain a good...

00:15:49.100 Well, I mean, as a medical doctor, if you want recurring revenue, you just, you know, physically disfigure somebody and then so they have to keep coming back to you.

00:15:55.880 It's not like...

00:15:56.520 Well, if you're a mental health doctor, if you find new traumas that need more investigation, more work, and if you help the client directly identify with their mental illness, which in turn also requires more work.

00:16:07.840 A huge amount.

00:16:08.380 It was something like 70% of, like, Gen Z primarily identifies with a mental illness or are considered a core part of their character.

00:16:15.460 We went over this survey in another episode, and it was really chilling.

00:16:19.660 I forget all these stats because they're too distressing.

00:16:21.720 I'm like, no, no, I'm just not going to believe in that world.

00:16:24.620 We're going to make it better, and it's just not going to be a problem anymore.

00:16:27.060 That's the solution.

00:16:28.580 Well, I mean, I think with estrangement, the thing to focus on, and this is the thing about the insurance, as soon as insurance covers it, well, now you can go all the time, right?

00:16:35.360 Like, now you can make this a part of your routine, and now you're around somebody who is going to, you know, hugely...

00:16:40.460 I mean, I would, with our kids, given where the mental health industry is today, just strongly warn them against not engaging with it at all.

00:16:47.860 Because I think that that's where a lot of this parental estrangement starts.

00:16:51.680 Yeah, agreed.

00:16:52.720 Dr. Coleman, who counsels families experiencing estrangement, has seen children cut parents out of their lives because of financial conflicts, political differences, or negative comments about the child's partners.

00:17:06.780 There's a lot of estrangements that actually happen to decent parents, end quote, he told me.

00:17:11.360 I have actually seen that.

00:17:12.500 I have seen parents who warned kids rightly do not marry that person, and the kids cut their parents out over it.

00:17:18.660 Yeah, that's a really tough move, because I appreciated your mother's magnanimity toward me, and the way she just instantly accepted me understanding that dynamic.

00:17:28.140 But a major problem in the birth rate crisis is that families have stopped taking an active role on their kids' dating, which includes passing judgment on partners.

00:17:36.520 And I don't know the best way to navigate that.

00:17:40.240 Yeah, well, I mean, I think you just need to actively help them find partners.

00:17:43.820 Yeah, well, yeah, and create expectations, too, of like, hey, we're going to judge them.

00:17:48.120 This is a normal thing that we do, and this is what we value.

00:17:51.560 I mean, if you're judging every partner as negative, then clearly you're not doing a good job as a parent because you're not actually adding anything to the conversation, right?

00:17:58.060 Yeah.

00:17:58.640 It should, from a child's perspective, feel like 70% you like, 30% you hugely warn against.

00:18:05.040 Yeah.

00:18:05.280 I think that would, as a kid, make me feel safe.

00:18:07.940 Yeah, more positive than negative interactions or experiences on that front would make a huge difference.

00:18:11.920 Yeah, but the idea of, like, cutting conflict, and we've seen this with a lot of the far left, cutting ties to your support network and your family over political differences is absolutely insane.

00:18:25.180 You know, my family has both, you know, conservative and Democratic politicians.

00:18:30.180 Like, for example, my grandfather was a conservative congressman, but my uncle ran the Fed and ran for, I want to say, Congress or the Senate as a Democrat.

00:18:40.080 And, you know, obviously we're conservative.

00:18:42.540 Well, and my brother's family is conservative, and my dad's family is conservative.

00:18:47.280 So we're all conservative now.

00:18:48.500 But at various points, I was progressive when I was younger, and my family didn't cut me off at all.

00:18:55.160 Like, they didn't, like, it would come up in, like, debates, but, like, I can't imagine.

00:19:00.200 I think that this is mostly progressives cutting off conservatives because the progressive, like, the original.

00:19:04.620 That's what the research says.

00:19:05.680 The conservatives are willing to maintain friendships with progressives, and often do, often in a closeted way.

00:19:11.060 Because, in turn, it's clear in the polling data that most progressives feel that if a friend turns out to be a conservative, the friendship is over.

00:19:18.960 If they voted for Trump, the friendship is over.

00:19:21.020 If a husband – I mean, I've watched various podcasts of people being like, I just found my husband voted for Trump.

00:19:26.280 Should I divorce him?

00:19:27.620 What?

00:19:28.220 Well, the region and the culture evolved this is because the urban monoculture cannot stand up to scrutiny.

00:19:33.140 If somebody within the urban monoculture is talking to somebody outside, it's very quick to see how imperialistic it is and how aggressive and colonial it is in its desire to eradicate cultural differences and sort of enact a global cultural genocide so that everyone has the same views of gender norms, has the same views of sexuality, has the same views of, you know, their relation to the environment.

00:19:56.500 And this is self-destroying because it frames itself as good in opposition to colonialist and imperialist systems without admitting that it is itself a European colonialist.

00:20:07.800 So it's so self-defeating as soon as you think about it.

00:20:10.880 So how does it protect itself?

00:20:12.660 Well, the iterations of it who were open to engaging with people who still talk to conservatives, mostly they went to the right.

00:20:19.420 I mean, that's us and everyone, you know, and a lot of people we know on the new right.

00:20:22.640 Where the iterations who just had this, well, cut off any contact with anyone who thinks differently, they were able to stay.

00:20:29.380 And so through cultural evolution, it developed this strategy of cutting people off and not talking to anyone with a different perspective.

00:20:40.000 Yeah.

00:20:40.580 Which is, you know, sad to see, especially when it's kids and parents and everything like that, right?

00:20:46.000 Now to go to the other author again.

00:20:47.360 In other words, millennials were inundated with a lot of bad therapy.

00:20:52.680 Unfortunately, Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been steeped in it even more.

00:20:56.640 As Abigail Schreier has relentlessly reported, most of this bad therapy isn't coming from the mouths of licensed therapists or psychiatrists, but from school counselors, podcasters, and Insta influencers.

00:21:07.100 The people you should trust most.

00:21:09.300 Can you give me one second?

00:21:10.640 Indy's crying and she's really sad and I'm just going to feed her milk and make her feel better.

00:21:14.620 I'll be right back.

00:21:15.300 Look at how, like, she was, she, like, desperately wants to sleep, but she refused to eat, so she slept until she got too hungry to sleep.

00:21:24.100 And now she's, like, both tired and hungry.

00:21:27.260 Yeah.

00:21:27.920 Too cool for school.

00:21:29.240 All right, I'm.

00:21:30.940 So I'm actually really going to disagree with the writer of this here.

00:21:34.540 I think that she is hugely underselling how much of this is coming from actual licensed therapists and psychologists.

00:21:42.280 And not just influencers and.

00:21:43.840 This is a really long podcast I listened to about somebody who's currently in school to become a psychologist and they were like, or a psychotherapist specifically, and they were like, I cannot believe.

00:21:53.220 They're like, eight out of ten of my classes is just woke nonsense, right?

00:21:55.720 Like, they are teaching things that we know are wrong.

00:21:59.880 They are constantly trying to culturally convert us.

00:22:02.840 This is just a litmus test in a factory for breeding far woke culture because the woke culture learned it could use these industries for conversion.

00:22:13.920 If you ever go to, like, a Scientologist, a Thetan reading, it's going to feel very much like a modern therapist meeting.

00:22:21.000 Yeah, let's go back in time and find your traumas.

00:22:24.800 Yeah, let's find ways to split you from your family and your birth culture. 1.00

00:22:27.740 Katie Woodman wrote about the rise of therapy speak for the New Yorker in 2021.

00:22:35.960 If we are especially online or roaming the world of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present.

00:22:46.980 We practice self-care and shun toxic acquaintances, Tara Isabella Burton wrote, how this slipsome masquerading as self-care destroys relationships, community, and ultimately are very human.

00:22:58.580 And this is all true, right?

00:23:00.140 Like, there are words that you can use as sort of like, when I hear them, I'm like a massive red flag.

00:23:07.420 These words are things like trauma or toxic or, you know, normal people don't say that.

00:23:13.880 That's not a word that normal people say.

00:23:16.380 This isn't a word that comes downstream of real psychology.

00:23:18.860 This is a word that comes downstream of individuals attempting to implant within you things they can use to control you and create dependency.

00:23:28.620 Absolutely.

00:23:29.440 Yeah.

00:23:31.280 And then back to the New York Times piece.

00:23:33.020 Now, I disagree with the second part, but I love the first part of this, which is to say that you, the truest parts of you are your desires and not your obligations.

00:24:00.900 The truest parts of who you are are your obligations, your obligations to the future of humanity.

00:24:08.360 Your desires are largely irrelevant because you didn't choose them.

00:24:12.460 But if you look at it.

00:24:13.120 It's like your hindbrain versus your prefrontal cortex.

00:24:15.700 What do you want to identify with more?

00:24:17.080 Yeah, but if you look at the urban monoculture, you know, with the whole concept of pride, pride parades, everything like that, is your desires, things like your arousal patterns that define identity rather than your obligations.

00:24:30.500 As we always say, you know, the point of prenatalism is we have to pay to the future the debt that we owe the past.

00:24:34.880 We have to pay for the sacrifices our ancestors made so we can have the privilege of existence to the future.

00:24:41.260 Right. Like, that's the way that you pay them back.

00:24:44.160 But individuals who don't do that are fundamentally just stealing.

00:24:47.580 They are stealing from their ancestors' sacrifices.

00:24:50.580 And I find it to be quite grotesque.

00:24:55.320 Yeah, I mean, the punishment for that, because people have done this throughout the history of humanity, is they're snuffed out.

00:25:03.260 They don't inherit the future.

00:25:05.540 Like, there is justice for this.

00:25:07.100 It's just a lost opportunity and a waste.

00:25:11.160 So it's disappointing.

00:25:12.560 Because there are lots of people who I think are brilliant and funny and interesting and insightful and intelligent who have been overtaken by depression and anti-needalist philosophy who decide that they're definitely not going to try to inherit the future.

00:25:31.380 And I don't want that to be the case.

00:25:34.660 I think that they, you know, they don't, I don't agree with everything they say, but I love their takes.

00:25:40.140 And I love to see someone continue to have these takes in the future because someday they are going to be useful and we're losing them.

00:25:47.380 Oh, absolutely.

00:25:48.400 Yeah.

00:25:48.620 This kind of therapy, which chalks up negative emotions to quote-unquote trauma or quote-unquote toxicity, encourages clients to Marie Kondo anything and anyone in their lives that has bad vibes, even mom and dad, and even their future children.

00:26:05.820 And I've seen this as well.

00:26:07.140 Yeah.

00:26:07.400 Anything that you need.

00:26:08.260 Her, her rule with objects, Marie Kondo is a Japanese influencer and organization and her rule with objects is, is it useful or does it spark joy?

00:26:16.680 And if it doesn't, then you thank it and you get rid of it.

00:26:20.480 The most are often trans individuals.

00:26:24.600 I see this a lot with like trans women who had kids back when they were men and they very frequently, I'd almost say normalistically cut off their kids so that they, because it allows them to more, you know, authentically live this new identity, which is often just about his sex and self, you know, getting off as frequently as possible. 1.00

00:26:44.120 But I mean, obviously the, the positive thing about all of this is there is, you know, justice in the end, these individuals are not truly happy.

00:26:51.740 You can see our, the life of a Cenobite episode about Anna Balins, the nice reporter who went after Kershah, about how sad her daily life is.

00:27:00.180 This is not a, a, a recipe.

00:27:02.720 Like the great thing is all of this stuff, like, oh, do this to chase after self-affirmation better.

00:27:07.220 Do this to chase after pleasure better.

00:27:09.160 It gives you the exact opposite of everything that's on the lid.

00:27:12.420 Right.

00:27:12.960 Ultimately, you know.

00:27:14.120 But in the short term, you know, it's easy to see how people are like drawn into this, right?

00:27:18.400 Like, oh, well, my parents don't affirm me for what I want to believe.

00:27:21.060 Therefore, they must be evil.

00:27:22.680 And it's like, no, they're trying to protect your long-term mental health.

00:27:27.300 But by urban monoculture standards, they are neither useful nor do they spark joy.

00:27:32.200 So they must be disconned.

00:27:33.140 Yeah, they do spark joy.

00:27:34.080 You must Marie Kondo them. 0.92

00:27:36.240 Neither duty nor obligation nor reconciliation nor forgiveness holds water in this therapeutic model.

00:27:42.020 If your family makes you feel icky, sometimes just leave.

00:27:45.720 Dad voted for Trump.

00:27:46.900 No need to answer those phone calls.

00:27:48.800 Mom is upset about your lifestyle choices.

00:27:50.600 Easy.

00:27:51.080 Just never talk to her again.

00:27:52.840 Does the idea of having kids make you feel overwhelmed?

00:27:55.360 Then just don't.

00:27:57.060 Just don't.

00:27:57.960 Like the infamous divorce story.

00:28:00.240 This is all true, right?

00:28:01.920 Like if somebody is just like, ah, whatever, like I don't want to deal with it.

00:28:06.300 I don't want to deal with any.

00:28:07.260 This is like trigger warnings.

00:28:08.360 I don't want to be exposed to anything that makes me feel anything other than pleasant,

00:28:11.520 right?

00:28:12.000 Right.

00:28:12.780 And that's what you, that's how you self-improve, right?

00:28:15.160 You, you, you expose yourself to those things.

00:28:16.800 You learn how to deal with those things.

00:28:18.040 Mm-hmm.

00:28:19.740 Are constantly avoidant around those things, unable to develop resilience and therefore extremely

00:28:25.000 brittle as a person, which is not going to produce good outcomes.

00:28:29.260 It's not good.

00:28:32.140 Which, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really sad to see, but it's, it is the core tenet

00:28:38.260 of the Urban Monocles.

00:28:38.980 We don't expose yourself to anything that's emotionally challenging.

00:28:41.600 Yeah.

00:28:43.200 And family doesn't work when you do that.

00:28:46.080 Although I will say I've been surprised how easy family has been for me.

00:28:50.100 Like I remember growing up and I do remember like conflict and everything like that.

00:28:53.840 I mean, my parents did end up getting divorced and everything.

00:28:55.600 And, and so I thought of all that as normal in a relationship.

00:28:59.260 And I just don't, I have almost none of it with my wife.

00:29:01.560 And I've seen this in our friends as well, who, I just don't see them have the same

00:29:05.420 conflicts.

00:29:06.120 That's interesting.

00:29:06.960 Everyone in, in like our age cohort that we know that's married seems to have a very,

00:29:12.620 very functional marriage.

00:29:14.540 Yeah.

00:29:14.740 I never hear of conflict.

00:29:16.200 So aligned and professional.

00:29:19.100 Yeah.

00:29:20.100 That's interesting.

00:29:21.980 Well, I think we're more mature.

00:29:23.140 I mean, every generation to an extent improves upon the last in, in, in, in, in some way.

00:29:27.680 And I think that, you know, emotionally, the iteration of our generation, that's going

00:29:32.800 to survive.

00:29:33.840 I mean, yes, there's a part of it that's totally fallen to the urban monoculture, but

00:29:36.860 they're not going to survive.

00:29:37.780 So they're not really relevant as like active generational players, but the ones who are

00:29:41.520 having a lot of kids seem to be a much more emotionally healthy than their parents'

00:29:45.460 generation.

00:29:46.360 Especially if they also had a lot of kids.

00:29:47.960 Oh, she is being so sweet.

00:29:49.240 She's just looking at daddy.

00:29:50.740 She loves seeing you.

00:29:52.260 It always lights up.

00:29:53.220 And I do think that this is contributing to demographic collapse.

00:29:56.680 I know that as well.

00:29:58.100 I think that there are absolutely no point here.

00:30:00.100 Like the infamous divorce story published in the Atlantic a few years back, empowerment

00:30:04.300 means pulling the plug on family ties.

00:30:07.280 The author, Honor Jones, wrote a 3000 word essay about why she decided to end her marriage 0.52

00:30:13.540 after watching her children's homes and fantasizing about kitchen renovation. 0.74

00:30:18.660 This is what this author said.

00:30:20.120 And I wanted, and just when you're hearing this, you just hear the entitlement, right?

00:30:25.220 Like the, this is a vile, vile person.

00:30:27.780 If she thought this was normal and then that sharing this would earn her praise, which it

00:30:32.280 did was in the urban monoculture.

00:30:35.180 I wanted to be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy.

00:30:40.680 How much of my life, I mean the architecture of my life, but also his essence, my soul, my

00:30:45.620 mind, had I built around my husband?

00:30:47.640 What could I be if I wasn't his wife?

00:30:50.320 Maybe I would microdose. 1.00

00:30:51.900 Maybe I would have sex with women. 1.00

00:30:53.740 Maybe I would write a book. 1.00

00:30:55.280 I had caused so much upheaval, so much suffering.

00:30:58.060 And for what?

00:30:58.700 He asked me that at first again and again, for what?

00:31:03.080 So I could put my face in the wind so I could see the sun's glare.

00:31:07.760 I didn't want to say it out loud.

00:31:10.380 Like he's like, for what?

00:31:11.620 Like there's no reason for you to be doing this.

00:31:14.380 And then it's this, when I talk about this search for self-affirmation, this isn't just

00:31:18.260 code for the trans people.

00:31:19.600 This is everything.

00:31:20.920 What she just wanted was self-affirmation, which she will not find.

00:31:25.800 Real self-affirmation is only found in obligation and duty.

00:31:29.700 Yeah, clearly her cry for help is I just want to feel something.

00:31:35.720 But she, in choosing to believe that her life as a mother and a wife didn't have any

00:31:42.520 value whatsoever, she felt like she couldn't feel anything like that.

00:31:44.940 No, she wanted sex and art. 1.00

00:31:47.340 Having sex with women and microdosing. 1.00

00:31:50.020 You can do all that while being married and a mother. 1.00

00:31:53.240 No one's stopping her.

00:31:54.740 Yeah, no one's stopping her.

00:31:56.400 She's just being lazy. 1.00

00:31:57.380 I really, actually, I almost want to do a follow-up on whatever happened to this woman.

00:32:03.100 Honor Jones, did her life fall apart?

00:32:06.700 I mean, I'm sure it did.

00:32:07.440 Like, that's always the end of all this, right?

00:32:09.220 Like, your life ends up falling apart and you end up hating yourself because it's a horrible

00:32:14.660 mistake, the advice that the urban monoculture gives you.

00:32:17.700 But it gives it to you so that you become more dedicated to it and more reliant on it and

00:32:21.800 the state.

00:32:22.200 Any thoughts?

00:32:28.140 I think we're starting to see a sea change in the direction away from this, not just because

00:32:31.500 of these two articles that you're citing here, where they're like, hey, this is a problem

00:32:35.120 and we need to do something about it.

00:32:36.840 But I think there's just a lot of stuff where people are recognizing, like, the whole post-Trump

00:32:42.020 era.

00:32:42.300 Like, we have to rethink what the left is and what woke is and actually focus on outcomes

00:32:52.060 that are positive.

00:32:53.820 And I think we're going to see a memetic market correction on this front.

00:33:00.080 I don't know how much it can really happen, though, with therapy, because these codependent

00:33:05.000 relationships are extremely strong.

00:33:07.000 And we've spoken with people who see a therapist multiple times a week and know that they have

00:33:12.680 a codependent relationship and talk with their therapists about the codependent relationship,

00:33:16.380 but have absolutely no plan or intention to do something about it, which is really disturbing.

00:33:23.020 So I don't know if that's going to change, but I do imagine that public discourse around

00:33:27.320 it may change as long, though, as there's this mental health parity regulation in insurance

00:33:35.060 funding in the United States.

00:33:36.020 So I think we are going to see higher levels of this kind of pathologization of family

00:33:41.640 discomfort, because where there's money, there will be an industry. 0.98

00:33:48.100 You know, there will be incentives to create these narratives.

00:33:51.620 Yeah.

00:33:52.380 Well, I love you to Desimone.

00:33:54.040 What are we doing for dinner tonight?

00:33:55.080 I am on death's door.

00:33:57.860 I can barely move.

00:33:58.980 So I'm just going to do...

00:34:00.040 Why don't you just reheat that other night thing that I have in the fridge?

00:34:02.440 Yeah, I'm going to do the Burmese mint chicken with pineapple.

00:34:07.480 Simone, Simone, Simone, I think you didn't register what I said.

00:34:10.580 I have a lot of leftovers from another night in the fridge right now.

00:34:13.980 Oh, with rice.

00:34:15.080 And it won't be good for another day.

00:34:16.380 So just reheat my leftovers.

00:34:18.480 It's not very much food.

00:34:19.400 Have you eaten anything else today?

00:34:21.520 And then you can make me some gyoza, so it's enough food.

00:34:24.240 That's extra work, but okay, great.

00:34:26.400 Wait, then don't make me gyoza.

00:34:28.720 Don't reheat it.

00:34:29.800 Just, I guess, make curry from another night, and I'll reheat that during the day.

00:34:34.220 You are an amazing woman.

00:34:35.940 I love you.

00:34:36.560 Thank you.

00:34:37.220 I love you, too.

00:34:38.020 You're so inspiring, and I'm so glad to live with you.

00:34:41.340 Now I'm going to take Tylenol, and...

00:34:44.240 This will pass.

00:34:47.720 I'm so glad to feel this way.

00:34:52.680 Not much I can do about it, I guess.

00:34:54.460 No.

00:34:54.740 I love you, too.

00:34:58.060 I want cotton candy because I didn't touch anything.

00:35:03.320 You didn't touch anything.

00:35:04.600 So you want blue cotton candy, and Tytan, you want blue cotton candy?

00:35:08.400 Or do you want pink cotton candy?

00:35:10.360 I want pink cotton candy.

00:35:12.100 Okay, so Toasty, you're going to have a blue stick, and Tytan, and Octavian, you're going

00:35:16.960 to have pink cotton candy.

00:35:18.660 Yeah.

00:35:19.300 And Toasty, you can have pink cotton candy on a blue stick.

00:35:21.620 Does that sound good?

00:35:22.380 I want pink. 0.72

00:35:23.480 No, I like blue.

00:35:25.140 I like pink.

00:35:26.520 Blue, blue.

00:35:27.660 Well, we'll see.

00:35:28.620 I like pink.

00:35:30.120 We'll see, my friend.

00:35:31.500 I like blue.

00:35:32.660 You like blue.

00:35:33.340 Yeah.

00:35:33.740 Okay.

00:35:33.840 Okay.

00:35:34.340 Okay.

00:35:34.840 Okay.

00:35:35.340 Okay.

00:35:35.840 Okay.

00:35:36.340 Okay.

00:35:36.840 Okay.

00:35:37.340 Okay.

00:35:37.840 Okay.

00:35:38.340 Okay.

00:35:38.840 Okay.

00:35:39.340 Okay.

00:35:40.340 Okay.

00:35:40.840 Okay.

00:35:41.340 Okay.

Based Camp - June 04, 2025

The Birth Rate is Collapsing Because of... Therapy？

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