Based Camp - The Progressive Pronatalist Book that Broke My Wife ( ＂What Are Children For？＂)

00:00:00.000 hello everybody it's simone collins here and i'm so glad to see you here today i am taking over

00:00:07.520 this podcast oh no it's been taken over yeah because i am going to leave the discussion today

00:00:14.440 i've decided not to phone it in and we are going to talk today about a new pronatalist book that

00:00:20.140 came out called what are children for which is basically the left attempt at pronatalism it is

00:00:29.000 a book that we were just told about by a friend at a conference and she basically explained it as

00:00:34.300 this is the pronatalist argument but from the perspective of a an educated brooklyn elite who's

00:00:40.120 highly progressive but they got like an opinion piece in the new york times for example yeah it

00:00:44.600 got an opinion piece in the new york times it got a write-up in the new yorker obviously and

00:00:48.560 they would never even consider giving us we we have done we've reached out to them before they don't

00:00:54.860 know they don't talk to us but they do talk to them because this was co-written by two of their

00:00:59.280 people and so obviously we're super excited to read this book because oh my gosh maybe because we

00:01:06.280 cannot apparently speak to pronatalism in a way that gets progressives excited maybe two progressive

00:01:12.660 pronatalists could speak to progressives in a way that gets them excited and so they did and so i read

00:01:19.260 the book um and okay let me just start off by giving you the book's description now i want to

00:01:25.960 get your impression because i've read the book malcolm is not let's see what you think so this

00:01:29.660 is what are children for on ambivalence and choice by anastasia berg and rachel weisman it came out on

00:01:35.420 june 11th so right now only like three reviews have been written about it it's very new here's the

00:01:39.980 description becoming a parent once the expected outcome of adulthood is increasingly viewed

00:01:45.460 as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life we seek self-fulfillment

00:01:51.420 we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the home and we wish to protect

00:01:56.780 the planet from the ravages of climate change weighing on the pros and cons of having children

00:02:01.480 millennials and zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in favor with lucid argument and

00:02:07.660 passionate pros on astasia berg and rachel weisman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond

00:02:13.900 uncertainty the decision whether or not to have children they argue is not just a woman's issue

00:02:19.320 but a basic human one and at a time when climate change worries threaten the very legitimacy of

00:02:25.540 human reproduction berg and weisman conclude that neither our personal nor collective failures ought to

00:02:31.960 prevent us from embracing the fundamental goodness of human life not only in the present but in choosing

00:02:37.760 to have children the in the future so what do you think of this description would you like to know more

00:02:43.380 what's your impression here i mean that it is what you said it is it is pronatalism uh and progressives

00:02:51.200 are screwed if they can't figure out a pronatalist cultural sub-faction their entire value system is

00:02:57.700 going to go extinct yeah and a lot of people look at us and they think that we're like secretly trying 0.58

00:03:04.080 to save the progressives or something like that i would like some aspect of their culture to survive

00:03:09.200 but i don't want them to have the cultural dominance they have now i think that they've shown

00:03:13.320 that they basically become nazis whenever they gain cultural power and they start dividing humans by

00:03:18.620 ethnic group i'm going to say a lot of the things that progressives fight for that they they say they

00:03:23.520 want pluralism freedom of lifestyle etc are things that we very much support it's just that in terms of

00:03:31.020 what they actually allow foreign support progressives don't tend to do that in practice today yeah in a

00:03:37.320 way that aligns with our values and that's what you're talking about we actually do care about

00:03:40.600 progressive values but the progressive movement now does not actually support those values that's what

00:03:45.720 you're saying yeah yeah it is it's wild that this has become the case i think the parties have flipped

00:03:51.120 basically with trump but anyway so so the interesting thing as a person like me is hearing you read this

00:03:59.740 and seeing your reaction to this and you guys haven't had to live with simone while she was

00:04:03.140 reading this oh no we're gonna go over all these things and you're gonna react to all my little

00:04:06.440 bits i have all these little things i can share with you about the book but we're just i'm just

00:04:09.480 getting your impression on the the description as provided by the publishers i i feel like i've just

00:04:15.260 been read like miranda writes this is about to like that was a trigger warning for conservatives

00:04:19.900 that entire intro was a trigger warning for conservatives okay all right i'll give you my tldr because you

00:04:26.000 you say you should never bury the lead in these videos i read this book it included things like

00:04:29.960 literary analysis because that's apparently a necessary part of discussion of pernatalism which

00:04:34.460 this is clearly why we're not convincing any progressives we forgot the literary analysis

00:04:39.600 in this context what do you mean huh explain literary analysis i as a listener don't know what

00:04:46.620 you mean by they did okay the authors literally talk about a series of books there's one chapter where

00:04:52.160 they just talk about books on motherhood that were written by various highfalutin fiction authors

00:04:56.420 and then there's another chapter where they talk about books that are about climate change and climate

00:05:01.540 disasters in fact one of the reviews of this book complains about the fact that there were spoilers in the

00:05:08.300 literary analysis that was one of her primary complaints because she cared enough to actually go

00:05:12.440 and read these books which is i think also interesting reading all this literary analysis it actually took me back

00:05:17.860 to my high school days and it i realized that the reaction i had at the end of this book was very

00:05:24.100 similar to the reaction i had after finishing the grapes of wrath where you read that scene with the

00:05:31.040 weird birth in the barn that was supposed to be like analogous to jesus or something and you're just like 0.98

00:05:37.660 what the fuck happened to me everything is terrible and that is where i ended this book what the fuck 0.98

00:05:45.780 happened to me and everything is terrible and before i wanted to bring all my my criticisms of the book 0.98

00:05:51.720 to you and actually air them on this podcast because i am very concerned about leaving a somewhat critical

00:05:55.820 review of this book in video form without being justified in it i went and looked at the other

00:06:00.640 reviews to be like am i crazy did this book basically leaves no reason to have kids so the punchline to

00:06:07.220 what are kids for or reasons for having kids there are none bad because i do not think you can

00:06:14.020 justify above reproductive childbearing rates within a progressive moral framework it genuinely it seems

00:06:21.020 like what children are for is nothing children is a book no but from what you told me it's a book about

00:06:27.200 why you may want one kid that not even that i can't find justification in this book even for one kid

00:06:33.860 but anyway it turns out the three reviews that exist so far there's a total of four but one on amazon was

00:06:38.620 also published on goodreads all of them were by people who were sent the book by a publisher who

00:06:43.640 clearly wanted them to post reviews two of them are from mothers one a mother of six and i'll just read

00:06:50.560 you from the one person who left a review as a member of the actual target audience which is a progressive

00:06:57.460 woman who does not yet have kids shannon whitehead wrote i appreciate the book's premise and liked it

00:07:03.040 overall but it's not the guide it builds itself as the summary describes what are children for as

00:07:09.540 quote an argument with quote-unquote guidance on how to overcome parenthood ambivalence however it's

00:07:15.280 more a collection of various people's thoughts on having children throughout history the authors

00:07:18.960 definitely add to these perspectives but as someone who absolutely is the target audience for this book

00:07:23.180 i don't find much of what i would consider guidance or advice which okay so i'm not crazy because part of

00:07:28.460 me was like oh i'm just too dumb for this educated progressive view like i'm just it's going over my

00:07:33.440 head the literary analysis reading a cultural framework that we are not familiar with and may 0.90

00:07:38.880 not pick up some of the nuances in like that's what i thought like jewish literature i'm not going to

00:07:44.440 necessarily catch everything a jewish person would catch yes but here is i think what the book actually

00:07:50.280 is and i think that you are engaging with it incorrectly okay i think that a progressive woman

00:07:58.160 was thinking about having kids and then decided to do what was essentially a progressive literature

00:08:04.060 review on the subject of having kids now if you think like us like you're some sort of a rationalist

00:08:10.460 nerd and you're doing a literature review you're going over all the research and everything like that

00:08:15.180 if you're a progressive and you're doing what is for them a cultural literature review

00:08:19.500 they are going over all of the thoughts anyone in the intellectual intelligentsia zeitgeist

00:08:26.560 has had in modern times or in history about having kids so this is like a the arts literature review

00:08:34.700 of what the intellectual intelligentsia has to say about the meaning of human life and i think

00:08:42.980 fundamentally what you and this other person took away from it is that they just don't have strong

00:08:50.180 arguments for it because i think that the the larger so when people we say the larger progressive

00:08:56.880 ideology is fundamentally anti-natalist i should probably explain what i mean by that we argue

00:09:01.760 that the urban monoculture which is what progressivism largely is it's this cultural framework that exists

00:09:06.420 around the world mostly concentrated in urban centers it's a modern memetic virus you can look at our

00:09:11.540 video the anatomy of the urban monoculture if you want to go deeper on this but its core draw is

00:09:17.940 come to us and you won't have to experience any in the moment emotional suffering and so this is

00:09:24.700 where like trigger warnings come from this is where the haze movement comes from this is where like

00:09:28.320 we're going to hand out meth meth on the streets comes from like it these things make no sense if

00:09:35.260 you are operating within most moral frameworks that's why i bring them up like the idea of telling

00:09:40.000 somebody that eating too much is going to make them unhealthy and suffer in the long run doesn't make

00:09:45.200 sense in most even like basic utilitarian frameworks so you need this very strange moral set where like

00:09:50.340 in the moment emotional pain is the ultimate negative trigger warnings for example fall into

00:09:53.960 this as well and there is the way that you resolve emotional pain in this framework is clearly

00:10:00.740 remove humans you remove humans you remove emotional pain every additional human is just a being

00:10:07.420 that might at some point experience emotional pain and therefore should not come into exist

00:10:12.860 and you also have this problem downstream of broad utilitarian frameworks it's just less immediate

00:10:19.140 which is say if you take a broad utilitarian framework but then lean heavily on the negative

00:10:25.900 utilitarian side which progressive culture definitely does like it sees the fact that humans suffer as

00:10:32.380 much more of a negative than the fact that they feel emotional good there's not a way that you can

00:10:37.360 motivate when telling a parent if i'm telling them you need to have over x many kids the argument i need to be

00:10:42.780 presenting them with and i think that the good book that does this is selfish reasons to have more

00:10:47.020 kids brian i think that's the book that has actually convinced a number of progressives and he's

00:10:52.800 actually been yes and he's responsible for like at least a hundred people that exist in the world

00:10:56.940 today or more but these are like the ones pretty cool um because selfish reasons to have more kids

00:11:04.460 engages with progressive culture as it really exists which is a woman asking how will having kids improve 0.94

00:11:10.620 my life the problem is that the kids often don't improve your life that's not the point of kids

00:11:16.820 it's to give them a good life and so when you have kids to improve your life you end up with all of the

00:11:24.800 stuff we talk about in our video about the parents who regret having kids and why this is a rising trend

00:11:29.240 i feel like the people who would be convinced by this book would end up regretting their decision to have

00:11:36.100 kids and you mentioned that at the end of the book even the author seems to regret her yeah one of the

00:11:40.760 two authors has has a kid at the end of the book and describes her experience as a mother and she sounds

00:11:47.520 like a genuinely miserable mother who regrets having kids and is still extremely ambivalent about the

00:11:53.940 choice to have kids and is trying to just be like but it's meaningful which is crazy and i think what

00:12:00.800 you're saying is right about them just doing a literature review of the experts when trying to

00:12:06.600 evaluate this but then not really finding anything that justifies it like one mother who wrote a

00:12:12.880 review says this book has a lot of references to feminist texts often citing works uh the works of 0.97

00:12:18.020 rachel kusk and sheila hetty um this provides the reader with additional materials to seek out and

00:12:23.180 read more about direct experiences with motherhood and ambivalence i don't necessarily think this book

00:12:27.780 would be a directly helpful guide to those struggling with the decision to have children

00:12:31.560 while there is an exploration of different arguments including climate change not finding a

00:12:36.480 suitable partner financial concerns and self-interest there is perhaps obviously no direct path to coming

00:12:41.620 to a conclusion for yourself i would also say that the author's perspectives on motherhood seem to

00:12:46.300 skew slightly negative which is obviously not everyone's experience who chooses to have children

00:12:51.340 so even like other reviewers of the book who've been given free copies presumably because they will

00:12:56.660 write positive reviews are kind of like it's clear these women don't want to have children 1.00

00:13:01.160 which is crazy and yeah i actually think that what this book is and i think it's something we're

00:13:07.400 going to see increasingly as a culture wars shift in the direction of pronatalism is there is a faction

00:13:14.300 of progressive women who will recognize that having kids is a moral good like that their worldview that 0.99

00:13:22.220 everything we say their worldview their perspectives on reality are going to die out

00:13:25.860 this progressive cultural framework that they champion is slated for extinction right now and

00:13:31.280 therefore from their perspective it is a moral good to have kids and now they need to come up with a

00:13:37.840 logical structure that can motivate this decision that they've reached at from a logical deduction from

00:13:43.820 their higher order moral framing the problem is that there is no real or good logical framework that

00:13:51.060 motivates kids in a progressive world view i think something else at play is that intuitively

00:13:56.100 i think a lot of progressive women really want to have children and yet the culture they've adopted 0.99

00:14:01.180 prevents them from enjoying it and the lifestyle that they choose and the approach to parenting that

00:14:06.120 they feel they have to take prevents them from enjoying it when i read the final chapter where one of

00:14:10.440 the authors describes her experience as a parent of a young girl it's clear that she could have had a good

00:14:15.860 experience as a mother but the way that she chooses to raise her daughter and the fact that she only has

00:14:19.960 one child actually makes it just really hard and stressful and a fairly miserable experience but

00:14:26.360 let's let's go ahead i wanted to discuss with you because i think this is something interesting

00:14:29.440 some of the central themes and claims of the book there are three so i'm gonna read them off to you and

00:14:35.040 then you can tell me what your thoughts are on them because i think that these are the core things

00:14:39.340 with which you and i would probably disagree and i found it quite interesting so one central claim and

00:14:44.860 theme is that that either going back to or creating a hard culture is impossible that's a big thing and

00:14:53.060 of course clearly we're of a very present this argument i this is obviously it was um it was

00:14:58.480 explicitly discussed but in a very offhand and of course we can't go back and we also couldn't create

00:15:04.560 a new one that was it basically just said like that oh so they just offhandedly are like you can't

00:15:10.760 recreate yeah they're just like offhand of course you couldn't just go back and create a new culture

00:15:14.300 it was that explicit so i thought that was really interesting that just basically zero and that the

00:15:19.340 pithiness with which that was expressed demonstrates the extent to which they've given very little

00:15:23.860 thought i actually think that this is really important because you need to ask like why didn't

00:15:28.220 they say that could be a solution like altering their cultural framework and the answer is because

00:15:33.340 you could not stay within the urban monoculture if you created a a side cultural group that wouldn't

00:15:39.920 seem to be a threat to it so they literally can't like if they struggled herself to sleep by the 1.00

00:15:46.180 way oh no you're awake again sorry carry on if that is so sweet if she did present it god i don't

00:15:57.540 remember what i was saying there if they did develop a hard culture they by definition wouldn't be

00:16:02.540 progressive anymore which is a big deal yeah it's funny that's basically what we did we were

00:16:06.900 who'd been ended up developing a hard culture and are like okay now we are more of the framework

00:16:11.560 yeah yeah so here's another very pervasive theme and i think this is especially crucial which is that

00:16:18.340 the readers sorry the authors and the readers of this book and basically every woman whose perspective 0.91

00:16:24.720 they mention in their literary analysis in all their other references lack an objective function

00:16:30.720 we define an objective function as basically a few or just one thing of inherent value that you

00:16:36.960 yourself have chosen to optimize your life around it is the thing you're seeking to maximize and it

00:16:41.920 could be the well-being of all humankind it could be the well-being of all sentient animals and beings

00:16:46.040 it could be serving god it could be having fun it could be whatever right no one reading or writing this

00:16:53.700 book has an objective function and this is the very source of that ambivalence about parenthood because

00:16:59.640 as soon as you have an objective function and then ideology on how you're going to maximize that

00:17:04.160 thing or those things that you're going to maximize in your life you have an answer as to whether or not

00:17:08.100 you're going to have kids period because i like this is what i'm optimizing for by the way if you don't have

00:17:12.980 an objective function and you are interested in developing one yourself without a lot of bias

00:17:17.480 read the pragmatist guide to life we wrote that during a time in our life where we were much less

00:17:22.740 ideologically biased than we are now and i think it is as close as a true neutral resource for

00:17:28.860 finding an objective function exactly yeah to clarify objective function in other words as to

00:17:35.160 what you're saying it is a moral framework for interacting with reality i.e this is what i think

00:17:40.520 is good this is what i think is bad and at what measures do you think those things are truly good

00:17:45.760 and bad and then you can just use that to plug into a moral equation when you're making individual

00:17:51.180 decisions should i have kids but i also would say the answer if you're like how do i if you're genuinely

00:17:57.100 like how do i morally justify having kids like you're in this progressive culture the actual

00:18:02.400 argument i would most use is to say you're doing it for them and not you don't think about you or

00:18:10.100 society or anything like that this is an entire human who's going to live a hundred years or 80 years

00:18:16.480 who knows what technology being what it is now who's going to experience an entire life and you can

00:18:22.280 create this multiplicatively based on the level of sacrifice you're willing to make how much are

00:18:28.500 you willing to sacrifice to give other humans the chance to live and then you could say oh what but

00:18:34.500 then i could take the money into whatever and just give it to people in africa or whatever right

00:18:39.700 yeah but those people are different from you they're culturally different from you they're

00:18:44.140 genetically different from you they're not going to experience the same type of life

00:18:48.220 your child would be experiencing so you are exchanging one of those lives for another one of those lives

00:18:54.400 here is where progressives can't come up with an answer to this they would then say yes but all lives

00:19:01.880 are exactly equal and i might be like that might be true from a universal perspective but that is not

00:19:06.660 true from a parent's perspective your child's life as a parent is not equal to every other child on the

00:19:13.580 world um i'm telling you that in absolute sense you're you the parent who says that my child's life

00:19:21.500 is equal to a random child growing up in another country i'd say nope and there's probably something

00:19:27.560 emotionally wrong with you if you think that because even if at a universal perspective all human lives

00:19:33.560 may be equal we do disproportionately value ideologically even the lives of those who are closer to us than the

00:19:42.280 lives of those who are further from us and it is one of those lives that you are creating was the

00:19:46.600 sacrifice but the progressive moral framework doesn't allow them to say that so you can't really

00:19:52.920 pierce with this argument anyway continue so the third element and core premise of this book is that

00:20:01.240 the authors and pretty much everyone that are describing as well are raised by parents who are in soft or

00:20:08.380 super soft cultures or even parents who themselves were raised by parents of soft cultures so we are

00:20:14.300 seeing either one or two generations in to soft or super soft cultures and i think that's also really

00:20:20.480 important is that these people predominantly were raised by also people who were not from hard cultures

00:20:26.600 and that definitely shows there are some there are just a few exceptions in the book but i think that's

00:20:30.580 important to note is that at this juncture in society it's not that like people for the first time are going

00:20:36.280 soft it's that we're seeing multiple generations into soft culture yeah well when we abandoned the

00:20:41.540 religious systems that we co-evolved with a lot of people i think expected the majority of the effect

00:20:47.100 of this abandonment to happen in the generation that was abandoning these systems exactly but it turns

00:20:52.220 out it most of the there's a certain amount of inertia yeah there's inertia but also i think most of the

00:20:58.000 benefits of these systems are actually uh transmuted during childhood so even if for example and i see this

00:21:06.740 with mormons we've talked about in other videos even if a mormon leaves the faith if i interact with them

00:21:12.480 and they were raised in a mormon household i can immediately tell that they were raised in a mormon household

00:21:16.260 like the way they interact is very different than the way other people interact and it's generally more

00:21:21.720 emotionally healthy than the way other people interact whether they stayed in the face or stayed out of the face

00:21:26.060 and i say this as a non-mormon so this is me just elevating also true with jews i've met jews who grew

00:21:32.200 up in religiously observant households even if they've left typically have that vibe as adults and are more

00:21:38.980 emotionally healthy and stuff like that you don't begin to see the mental breakdown that comes from

00:21:45.480 leaving a hard tradition that you were raised in until you get to the generation that was raised in

00:21:53.480 their childhood without even that tradition that's right in what these people look like from the 0.79

00:21:59.520 perspective of society when you see them when you interact with them is like a robot that's like

00:22:04.380 short-circuited the book feels from what simone was telling me in terms of reading it is like the active

00:22:12.340 breakdown of progressive culture in real time so derived from any sort of hard cultural framework that

00:22:19.340 makes demands of an individual that puts that expects discipline whether it is external discipline

00:22:25.580 or self-discipline on an individual that's why progressives freak out at us as we've said that's

00:22:29.720 why they freak out at starship troopers this world you should watch our starship troopers videos that is

00:22:34.440 totally equal ruled by a black african female sky marshal tahatma rule the entire planet is where the 1.00

00:22:41.820 all the genders are the same in the shower what's the one thing that's different what's the one thing 1.00

00:22:46.240 that makes it the fascist dystopia to them that you are expected to do something you are expected

00:22:51.380 to sacrifice something yourself for the rest of humanity if you are going to take on a role in

00:22:59.060 terms of deciding the future of that society i.e voting and when you completely remove discipline

00:23:05.160 from individuals lives and the expectation of sacrifice from individuals lives and you do this

00:23:10.540 intergenerationally you get this short-circuiting and static which i think is what this book is and i

00:23:18.060 would encourage if our words end up being remembered in the future because i don't think this book's

00:23:24.640 going to end up doing very well given the number of reviews it has so far and stuff like that when

00:23:29.400 we're doing our best to promote it right now by the way we're doing our best to promote it i know for

00:23:33.680 example that at least one of the listeners listeners of this podcast was present with me

00:23:38.360 at manifest when we were told by another woman a friend of ours that you know about this book

00:23:44.400 and she said this is great this is exactly what i need because she herself is progressive

00:23:50.280 and she wanted to hear this argument so even people watching this podcast are the target audience for

00:23:57.080 this book and i am here to promote it we were going to have the authors on but that that the follow-up

00:24:02.840 and connection never took place y'all are welcome by the way to come on and talk about this but hold on

00:24:07.900 i have to finish this statement when you future anthropologists are trying to understand

00:24:13.600 how progressive culture how the dominant culture in the world the first culture that basically ruled

00:24:19.920 the entire world through the u.n through the american government how did it suddenly kill itself

00:24:26.260 within one generation this book will hold the keys to their way of seeing reality that you in the

00:24:32.960 future are no longer able to model yeah anyway some positives i learned some things that i didn't

00:24:39.620 expect from the book for example they cited one study which i had not come across they found that

00:24:47.260 many women freezing eggs are not in highly paid careers they just needed to separate fertility 1.00

00:24:53.380 constraints from finding the right partner and i think that's quite interesting we might even do a

00:24:57.520 whole podcast on this because they pointed out that one of the major constraints of course is

00:25:01.840 actually finding the right partner and someone who listens to this podcast to point it out to you

00:25:06.100 malcolm i think that really what we should be promoting isn't having kids but just actually

00:25:10.920 having a wholesome healthy marriage because that is the bottleneck in so many of these cases i think we

00:25:16.000 do that through our interactions as we show and we model a possibility that i think a lot of people are

00:25:21.420 just unaware of and i would say for the women who are doing this is the problem because i've talked to

00:25:26.080 these women okay and they're not finding good partners there are a lot of good men out there

00:25:31.380 looking for a wife right now they are not finding good partners because two they are using as a 0.99

00:25:37.680 benchmark for the type of partners that they can get as the type of partners who while polyamorous

00:25:43.520 will date them look lady let me tell you what if a guy is dating four other women and he's also dating

00:25:51.440 you or he's dating you but he's saying i'm not going to be exclusive with you of course i'm going

00:25:55.180 to be dating other women that person is going to be a much higher quality male than you can secure

00:26:02.120 within a monogamous market that's just clear like you will not get that you need to be dating like

00:26:08.260 three or four and also if you have a child with that man his value on the market will plummet and

00:26:14.600 suddenly sometimes secure him so do be aware of that that is a pretty good gambit that we've mentioned

00:26:19.300 in another podcast the other thing i'd say is a lot of these women are looking for progressive men 0.99

00:26:26.340 and there are two progressive women for every one progressive man you i do not think that most

00:26:32.360 progressive men are emotionally healthy they're generally like psychological wrecks who are like

00:26:36.580 seeing a psychologist every week so yeah sorry i know we're not supposed to shame seeing a psychologist

00:26:42.640 anywhere but the modern iteration of psychology is just so harmful so to these women you gotta

00:26:49.100 break out of that you gotta break out of the that that mindset because that is not where you're

00:26:53.860 gonna find the good guys i also did not know that weapon they're sorry that women try to weaponize 1.00

00:27:00.340 their fertility tell me about this by saying that they'll refuse to have kids or out of protest 0.62

00:27:05.980 because others such as family members are not doing enough to fight climate change or that they're

00:27:11.060 like not voting democrat and there are groups like birth strike and no future children that

00:27:16.460 oh we need to look these up i know i need to yeah we need to maybe do a whole episode on those i did

00:27:21.760 learn some interesting things the reasons that they presented for not having kids are pretty much

00:27:26.700 all the typical reasons you'd expect being forced to compromise their careers which is totally fair i

00:27:31.020 think that's a huge reason to not have kids that's why i said i wasn't gonna have kids not finding a

00:27:35.080 suitable partner high cost concerned about not being able to give the kids the same upbringing they

00:27:40.320 received like going to college without going into debt then of course there's just the typical

00:27:44.280 negative utilitarianism climate change and then just misery being apparent and i think that's due

00:27:49.320 to the unreasonable expectations this is actually really interesting is the idea of a fertility strike

00:27:55.100 so fertility strikes only work on your genetic relatives and yet progressives don't seem to

00:28:02.860 understand this there was that case in canada that we did the joke on that i'll play here

00:28:06.800 oh good look your friends are here hey you're supposed to want to have children and this is your

00:28:11.980 ultimate goal in life it is a very archaic idea an old idea and representation of a woman 0.98

00:28:18.680 you you're getting people to sign a pledge basically saying that they will not have children until the

00:28:31.360 canadian government takes serious action on climate change is that your blood what no no it's college

00:28:38.040 kid blood and how many people have signed on so far 1381 as of right now i know what this is

00:28:45.780 this is a suicide pact oh my god that makes so much sense we have got to hide all of the sharp 0.99

00:28:51.380 objects if only i was born with a vagina 1.00

00:28:53.420 holy mother of god some kid he just hooked himself right into the wood chipper what head first right 0.99

00:29:06.900 into the wood chipper it looked like it might have been one of the college kids where they tried to do

00:29:11.140 a fertility strike for climate change like a bunch of young women and i'm like okay me as somebody who 0.99

00:29:16.640 doesn't care about climate change i'm glad you're leaving the gene pool right like the people who already 0.52

00:29:21.180 care about climate change they're the people who you're appealing to is this right and so

00:29:26.480 presumably you can't get them to vote more democrat than they're already voting right so they don't

00:29:33.960 matter like the metric of similarity to yourself that you are demarcating here is the metric that

00:29:40.820 decides your enemies and allies so you're not really pushing anyone so why would women think that this 0.95

00:29:46.220 would work and it is because they view the world with a completely socialist mindset they genuinely

00:29:52.540 believe that all children belong to the state and not to the family not to the cultural group and

00:29:59.240 because of that they believe that a progressive woman threatening to not have kids is going to 1.00

00:30:05.680 motivate a for example conservative man to change his perspective when i'm just like okay good riddance

00:30:12.600 i would be the worst noah i've ever said the fairies and the unicorns they're like i i hate you and i'm 0.91

00:30:18.600 not getting on the raft and i'd be like give him the bird and go on the raft i'm like i don't care you

00:30:23.900 guys can drown and that's really where we are right now is a lot of groups react angrily when you point

00:30:29.540 out the truth that if people like them cannot motivate fertility they're going to disappear in the

00:30:34.660 future yeah there was also some butt hurt in the book that just got me angry they were complaining that 0.91

00:30:40.520 egg freezing and ivf is tough because there are needles and you can't have sex during the egg

00:30:46.080 freezing round and i'm like like just the sheer amount of and they also didn't point out they

00:30:53.280 pointed out a little bit how expensive it is but it just it bothered me and then they also argue of

00:30:58.180 course that women can't have it all and i think that goes back to this major issue of people who read

00:31:04.940 this book and wrote this book did not have objective functions because you can have it all

00:31:08.680 if you know what you care about you can have all that you care about if you choose what you care

00:31:15.100 about because then you know there are two different versions of having it all there's having it all

00:31:19.000 with an objective function where i literally have it all but i have many of the things that

00:31:23.680 people would want if they don't have an objective function that they don't have for example we don't

00:31:30.880 do a ton of travel internationally anymore obviously because we have kids we don't eat out

00:31:35.320 i i don't buy a lot of stuff so i don't have it all in those ways but also those are not things i

00:31:41.260 care about i literally have everything that i care about and that's great and i think that's how

00:31:45.720 a lot of other mothers feel who have objective functions is they know exactly what they want they

00:31:49.640 know exactly what doesn't matter to them and they're able to have everything that they want

00:31:54.160 because it's actually not that much and that's why i think it's so important to have an objective

00:31:57.480 function but yeah so to the point of literary analysis it was actually within the literary

00:32:02.620 analysis portion of the book that i inadvertently came across what i thought was their most clever

00:32:09.620 way of convincing progressive women who tell me to want to have children i told you this when i just

00:32:15.600 listened to that portion of the audiobook they described this one it sounded like a complete

00:32:20.600 nightmare of a book about a it seemed like partially or mostly trans polycule and like their journey into

00:32:28.900 motherhood and although maybe not motherhood maybe there was an abortion in there it just sounded like

00:32:33.720 the ultimate progressive fiction book but they described this one character who was a trans woman who

00:32:41.580 desperately wanted to experience true motherhood and it really brought across the privilege that women 0.93

00:32:51.780 experience and being able to be mothers and the fact that there are all these trans women who would 1.00

00:32:59.380 genuinely if you're a real trans woman right and like you just desperately want to be a woman you desperately

00:33:04.820 want to be a mother and you can't you can just feel the entitlement the the spoiled rottenness of women in their 1.00

00:33:13.780 ability to carry children and then just complain about it and be like how dare you expect me to have children when there are

00:33:19.780 children when there are people both infertile women and like me right and trans women who take the same

00:33:28.360 amount of estrogen that i do apparently who just desperately want to have children and that was the 0.94

00:33:33.680 one time reading this book where i was like oh shit yeah like that argument would work on progressives that 0.98

00:33:39.100 actually would work on progressives and it's interesting yeah like how dare trans women would die to be where 0.96

00:33:44.200 you are that was the most pernatalist argument in the entire book so i thought that was very interesting

00:33:48.380 wanted to point that out wrote oh my god these authors are overthinking themselves into abject misery no

00:33:53.700 wonder university educated women are not having kids yeah that's really how i fall through a lot of 0.94

00:33:58.120 this i think overthinking is a central theme here and especially in the literary analysis there's these

00:34:03.560 descriptions of either books describing yeah i think it's books describing this with feminist authors 1.00

00:34:09.300 saying oh when i was breastfeeding my child i like felt this miasma of whatever and they're just these

00:34:15.960 women who are overthinking it so much and they clearly don't have anything else that they're doing 1.00

00:34:20.880 and this is why you shouldn't take maternity leave because you're just going to go completely crazy 0.99

00:34:25.420 and it just it bothers me how much overthinking there is in this process and they also argue in the book and

00:34:32.000 this is a big thing that bothers me about progressives and conversations around pronatalism

00:34:37.740 is that girls are taught from a very young age that motherhood is their destiny and that we live in a

00:34:43.320 pronatalist world and that women are pressured to have children because i until i met you and you 0.96

00:34:49.580 talked with me about children was antinatalist i planned on never having children and i was never

00:34:56.420 shamed for that i was never questioned for that so they claim that women are being shamed for yeah 0.85

00:35:01.340 they claim and i've seen this done before by people who make antinatalist arguments that women that 0.99

00:35:07.040 we live in this pronatalist world where they're shamed for being child free and they're shamed for not

00:35:11.180 having kids but i was in their position i never felt questioned and actually i felt quite judged

00:35:17.360 when i wanted to have kids even by my own parents who were oh you're gonna be they were like what are

00:35:23.040 you guys doing why are you having so many kids oh no but at least my mother was like oh malcolm

00:35:27.600 you're gonna be such a great parent and then she like turned to me and was like

00:35:30.780 yeah to one kid your mom was very clear we're gonna have one kid yeah after fertility my mom 0.80

00:35:39.080 began because your mom died before we had more than one kid but my mom started freaking out at

00:35:45.020 two kids she's you need to stop you need to stop then she gave up though she got zen about it

00:35:51.540 no she said four was the perfect number and we needed to stop at four i know she's a fan of the show and

00:35:56.280 everything like that and the first fan of the show really who really was watching it daily but i don't

00:36:01.440 think she could deal with the press we're getting these days no um emotionally she wouldn't be able

00:36:06.340 to deal with it and i would likely have to pull back or something like that agents of providence act

00:36:11.240 as they act right we are able to move as far as we can we actually saw that in her like notes after she

00:36:19.120 died that one of her dreams was that we got famous but that couldn't happen in a world where we also

00:36:25.440 weren't so attacked that they you just can't be famous without being hated these days yeah if you

00:36:31.380 look at younger celebrities that are up raising through the ranks and that's one of the problems

00:36:34.700 with this progressive mindset is it is a desire to conform at the same time as to have pride in who

00:36:44.160 you are and what makes you different and that's especially where those things aren't from progressive

00:36:50.440 culture i.e the random things that turn you on but your cultural background you know your family's

00:36:58.100 background and pride in anything that is not granular in the progressive world is sin which is

00:37:06.020 so interesting that you are allowed to be as prideful as you want about the random things that turn you

00:37:12.720 on but having pride in your culture or your religion or your ethnicity those things are seen as core sins

00:37:25.200 in progressivism and they must do that because all of those things represent alternate cultural

00:37:30.500 frameworks that could compete with their own yeah so anyway i came away from this book feeling

00:37:36.560 pretty disheartened because i thought okay clearly we're not getting through to progressive groups

00:37:43.060 in terms of making a strong prenatalist argument actually you know what i'm going to take that back

00:37:48.540 progressives don't think we're getting through to them but we are because i'm noticing for example

00:37:55.080 when we've gone viral twice in british publications for whatever reason young turks has done a segment on

00:38:02.280 the piece that goes viral and the first time they went in on us to attack us they're like wow like

00:38:08.860 these monsters they did not acknowledge demographic collapse as an issue second time they're like 0.99

00:38:16.020 obviously demographic collapse is an issue and pronatalism is important but like these motherfuckers 1.00

00:38:21.880 are doing it in a super evil bad way like they're terrible people and i think the important thing is that we 0.97

00:38:26.940 are raising awareness and we're getting a subset of progressives to be like oh yeah it's an issue and i

00:38:34.660 hate these guys but i care about this and i'm going to do something about it i actually think our advocacy

00:38:39.800 is doing a good job i think doubling down on the reasons not to have kids which is what this book does

00:38:47.320 is quite as much as it speaks to the antinatalist sentiment of the progressive movement it's not solving the

00:38:54.080 problem and as the other reviewers stated it's not giving a real practical framework now i welcome

00:38:59.140 either or both of the authors to come on and talk with us about this and give a defense for the book

00:39:05.360 and perhaps because i'm too low iq to actually catch the message that is inspiring women who read this

00:39:11.780 book to have kids explain what i missed and dumb it down for what's the specific arguments that's what

00:39:16.920 we want to know like it's dumb it down for me a meditation on children and motherhood and i

00:39:22.460 actually think this is the core thing where progressives fail at this is when they focus on

00:39:31.520 children they narcissistically focus on motherhood instead of focusing on humanity

00:39:38.660 oh and actually that is what when when our friend told me about the book that's what i thought it

00:39:46.100 was going to be about because the way that she explained it to me was that it tries to take all the 0.99

00:39:51.780 arguments that progressives are using for not having kids such as the environment such as negative

00:39:58.620 utilitarianism and just allow people to look at the inherent question of should i have kids but that's

00:40:07.740 not what it ultimately was about so either she had not yet read the book or that's what i assume

00:40:12.480 yeah maybe it had just come out so i think she had an advanced copy she literally had a physical

00:40:17.440 hard copy with her it was before she anticipated that it would address those issues but maybe but

00:40:22.620 yeah i but i don't think that those issues are like we address each of those in turn in the

00:40:26.480 pragmatistic crafting religion which is our pronatalism book we have a section where we just go through

00:40:31.240 every one of the progressive arguments environmentalism antinatalism etc and we give a logical counter to it

00:40:36.380 but the problem is that those are logical counters and from first principle perspectives which do not

00:40:42.140 register with progressives i think you could also argue it's a very masculine take right so the approach

00:40:47.280 that we take to problems is what the boyfriend does when he's not being a good boyfriend when the girl

00:40:53.840 comes to him and he's can she or she says i'm with this terrible thing happened to me at work and can

00:40:58.440 you believe what he said in the boyfriends obviously what you should do is this here's how to solve the

00:41:02.560 problem and then she gets mad because what he was supposed to say was oh my gosh that's so horrible

00:41:08.900 you must feel terrible oh so this is more this book is a feelings circle i think that's what they're

00:41:14.700 going for here is yes it's so expensive and your career is hampered and you're gonna be miserable

00:41:21.240 you are heard you are heard valid yes and maybe actually you know what i think we just figured it out

00:41:27.800 i think we just figured it out that's what this book is doing it is doing the good boyfriend it is 0.99

00:41:33.440 being the good boyfriend of prenatalism we are the bad boyfriend we're like okay shut up bitch this is 1.00

00:41:38.700 how you handle it we gotta we're like no don't worry i'll fix it for it we mansplain okay we are 0.96

00:41:43.360 mansplaining and this book is listening and acknowledging and the readers are heard they're

00:41:51.500 definitely heard like all of the progressive female concerns are aired ad nauseum in this and 0.94

00:41:58.220 that's it that's it and but i think here's the problem here's the problem is mansplaining and

00:42:03.780 problem solving is still the correct pathway and listening and saying oh this is so terrible you must

00:42:09.000 feel so terrible the boyfriend who does that is enabling a girlfriend to develop more neurosis to not

00:42:16.300 solve her problems to establish learned helplessness that good boyfriend behavior is toxic and ultimately

00:42:23.620 abusive i love you to death you are the best wife any man could hope for it's true though right and tell

00:42:30.480 me i'm wrong no you but i'm the guy here you're saying you're you are so right that i've never even

00:42:38.360 a scene somebody as right as you you are the pick me of the already chosen and i am the chosen

00:42:46.260 i am not a pick me i am chosen i'm not a pick me i am the chosen oh that'd be great if there's a new

00:42:51.980 group of women who call themselves the chosen oh my god yeah you're like i've already been chosen 1.00

00:42:57.580 i already have the kids yeah i won this game i'm in the post game yeah love you to death would you mind

00:43:07.640 getting the kids and then locking the fence and then i'll make dinner while they play outside

00:43:12.040 will do thank you all right little one let's get you changed and get your dinner

00:43:18.380 you're awake now you're awake now

00:43:22.880 you're awake now

00:43:22.900 you're awake now

Based Camp - July 12, 2024

The Progressive Pronatalist Book that Broke My Wife ( ＂What Are Children For？＂)

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