Why Christians Don't Have Babies in East Asia
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Summary
Why does Buddhism have a higher fertility rate than Catholics? And why does Christianity have a lower fertility rate? Simone and I discuss the numbers and offer some theories on why this might be the case. Simone: Why is Buddhism so much more likely to have more kids than Catholicism? Why does Christianity seem to have the lowest fertility rate of all the religions?
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. Today is going to be an interesting and controversial discussion focused on the
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question of why doesn't Christianity work for Asians? Typically, when I say why doesn't it
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work here, I mean at increasing fertility rates, because these numbers are going to shock you,
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and I'm going to lead right in with the numbers. So I think a lot of people know that, okay,
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you're a Christian, you're a conservative Christian, you're going to have more kids if
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you're in a Western country, if you're in Europe, something like that, right? You know,
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this is a broadly known thing about fertility rates, and it's also broadly known that Buddhism
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has the lowest fertility rate of all of the religious systems, right?
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And also, like, the end game of Buddhism is, like, genocide all conscious beings.
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Well, yeah, we'll get into why Buddhism has a low fertility rate, but I think the on-the-ground
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fertility rates of these religions may surprise you. And another thing you'll note here,
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surprisingly, is generally, as we've noted, if you are in Europe or you are in the United States,
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if you are an average Catholic, you are going to have a lower fertility rate than the average
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Protestant at the same level of income. Pretty dramatically lower, you can see our episode
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on this. But it's the exact opposite in Asian population. So we'll also be talking about this,
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because Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate there. So if you go to Japan,
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if you are a Protestant, when this sample was captured, okay, you had an average fertility
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rate of two, but if you were a Buddhist, you had an average fertility rate of 2.1. Now,
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keep in mind, this is an older sample, so the numbers are much lower now, but this is, you know,
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when this, this is the data I have, okay? So if you were a Buddhist in Japan, you had a higher
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fertility rate than if you were a Protestant. Now, if you were a Catholic, you'd be involved
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with a fertility rate of 2.5. What is also interesting here is that in Japan, the no religion
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was two and the Protestant was two. So no religion and Protestant had the same fertility rate at this
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time in Japan. Korean, if you were a Protestant, you had a fertility rate of 1.99. If you were a
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Buddhist, you had a fertility rate of 2.35. Why? Yeah. And if you have no religion, it's 2.96. So
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about the same as Protestant. Catholics here are actually in Korea are beaten by Buddhists. In
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Korea, the Catholic fertility rate is 2.32, where the Buddhist is 2.35. Now let's go to Taiwan here.
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All right. In Taiwan, if you're a Protestant, you have a fertility rate of 2.5. This is the one where
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they have a big jump over no religion, which is only 2.06 when this sample was taken. Keep in mind,
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these are older numbers. They're way lower now. Note, these numbers are limited to women in their
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first marriage. And this study was published in 2016. You are a Buddhist in Taiwan. You have a
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fertility rate of 2.7 to the Protestant 2.5. And if you are a Catholic, it's 2.8. So slightly higher.
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Now, this is from a different study here that is looking at these over time for various religions.
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Okay. So if you were a Buddhist in 1985, you had a fertility rate of 2.71. If you were a Catholic,
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it was 2.14. So much lower. If you were a Protestant, it was 2.27. So again, much lower.
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And if you were not affiliated, it was 2.47. So not affiliated in 1985 Korea beat both Catholic
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and Protestant. What is going on there? Could it be? Okay, wait, wait, wait. I have a theory. I want
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to come in with hypotheses because then you can make me look wrong. My guess is that because
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Christianity is a minority religion in these countries, that you are narrowing your population
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and creating additional barriers to marriage and coupling that ultimately delay childbirth and
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therefore reduce lifetime fertility. Minority populations, when they are persecuted, almost
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always have higher fertility rates. In some circumstances. Native Americans and stuff like
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that. But generally, being a minority population and feeling persecuted increases your fertility rate
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because you have a reason to exist. Yeah, but maybe it's just hard as a Japanese Christian
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woman to find a Japanese Christian husband. I imagine you'd have more default in common with them,
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but maybe. But that doesn't seem to be with the data. Well, especially if your local Christian
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church does not have a really robust dating infrastructure set up, which I haven't. I've
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toured one Christian community in Japan in my life. It was kind of weird. And to my knowledge,
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it had absolutely no infrastructure for young couples. Nothing. Fascinating. So we'll get into why
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that might have been the case in a second. Okay. Okay. Onward. 2005. So this is a bit further
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forward from the 1985 sample. Okay. Have things begun to change. The not affiliated fertility rate
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has crashed. Remember it used to be 2.47. Now it is 1.40. So this is for not affiliated, but the
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Buddhist fertility rate has also crashed to 1.59. Okay. But also the Christian fertility rate has crashed.
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The Catholic is still below the Buddhist at 1.48. And the Protestant in this moment was actually
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above the Catholic at 1.50. So what? Could this be a selection thing? It could be an aesthetic thing
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too. The people who are attracted, like sort of an outsider in Asia being attracted to Catholicism is
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more like they're attracted to the asceticism and maybe even the asexuality. Because there are big
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factions of Catholicism that are very asexual. Nuns and priests are asexual. Could it be that
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there's a weird selection effect taking place that like the hooks that are attracting people
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and the aesthetics that are attracting people are the non-fertile subsets? I think you got part of it
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here, but not in the way that you were thinking. Okay. Okay. Well, let's just lay it out here before
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we go to 2015. I'm dying for this. Come on. What else would Christianity be associated with,
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especially in like the 80s, to somebody in Korea or Japan? America?
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Modernization and Western values. Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's just increasing the
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adoption curve of the anti-natalism. Yeah. So we'll get to all that. I want to go to 2015 because
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people can be like, okay, is this trend reversing? Because I've heard some people argue that the
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trend is reversing based on anecdotal data. Unfortunately, the actual data does not agree
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with them that strongly. If we go to 2015, for the not affiliated, it's down to 1.13. So, okay. Not
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good. Are Buddhists above unaffiliated? Yes, they are. 1.33. Okay. What about the Catholics? How are
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they doing here? Are they beating the Buddhists yet? No. 1.16. Almost as low as the not affiliated
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at 1.13. Guys, guys, guys. If we go to the Protestants here, where are they? 1.28. So
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they're getting stomped by the Buddhists. So let's get into what some of the papers that have been going
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into this have been saying because I just find these numbers fascinating. Yes. Like, it's not
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an interesting question. Why is Christianity lowering rather than raising fertility rates
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in East Asia? Right. Because, I mean, in Scott Alexander's long and fascinating blog post
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reviewing a book about the rise of early Christianity, his end conclusion was kind of like,
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well, maybe Christianity rose because the memes are just better. Like, it just imparts more fitness
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to people. And you and I have argued in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion that in
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the end, religions that spread really well impart fitness to their adherence. And fitness is in large
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part reflected in birth rates. So why would a religion that has imparted quite a lot of fitness to
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adherence in Europe, especially parts of the Middle East, not be working in Asia? Why?
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Why? Well, one of the hypotheses you put out there is they are extreme minorities that might have
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trouble dating because of that. So I'm going to put a chart on the screen here so you can get an
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idea. Are these groups extreme minorities? You might be surprised by the actual data. So by 2015,
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what percent is Buddhist? 14.1%. What percent is Protestant? 20.7%.
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What? So they should have an advantage. What is going on?
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Now, what if you go to the past? What do you go to the past? Okay.
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Okay. Let's go 1985 here. Okay. What percent is Buddhist? 27.5%. Back then for Catholics,
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it was 5.9% and 18.7% for Protestants. So you can see a change. The Christian groups have grown
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Well, yeah, clearly. But I guess they're growing through conversion more than birth rate.
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And Buddhism has lost like half of its participants over that period.
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Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, could it be also, I think I, you know what, I think what you said
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about this being more correlated, not with an adoption of the actual religious values, but of
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us, of the aesthetics to really hold weight. And here's why in Japan, when I traveled through there
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as a teen, there were like lots of Christian looking chapels. They were just used for weddings. Like
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people weren't really Christian, but you might have like your traditional Shinto ceremony.
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And then you'd like do photos and maybe a wedding in like a building that was purpose-built to kind
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of have like show weddings that looked like they were in chapels. And that it was really about the
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trappings of the aesthetic. And the aesthetic was Western. I mean, this was at the same time when a
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lot of, a lot of women were dyeing their hair, the sort of auburn chestnut color and, you know,
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dressing in Lolita clothing. It was largely like sort of inspired by like frilly European dresses.
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And there was sort of this idealization of Westernization and riffing on it, but it wasn't
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full adoption of the means. And that's something that like, for example, Japan, and I think South
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Korea is also really good at this, but like, I've always thought of Japan as being a master at this,
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of like taking foreign ideas and just making them cooler, but also kind of abstracting them from
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So the studies do, there's a lot of studies on this because I read them. I was like, okay,
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They do show that in the eighties, Christian churches were seen as being uniquely pro things
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Many of these concepts they saw as like Western and forward.
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So this is a Western thing. It's not a Christian thing.
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Right. But they saw the two as a combined entity in the eighties.
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Now this has dramatically changed. If I'm going to read a passage here from one of the studies,
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Christian churches have not up with recent radical transformation of the notions of sexuality,
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marriage, and childbearing. For example, studies have shown association of Christian affiliation,
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especially with Protestant churches with more conservative orientations in matters such as dating
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and sexual partnership, e.g. Lee, Joe and Kim, 19, or in more general, social and political views,
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e.g. Jang, 2018, Kang, 2004, Kang, 2012. As a result, Catholicism and Protestantism, which were once
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the vanguard of Korean modernization, are increasingly seen as symbols of traditionalism in today's Korea.
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So you can say, oh, this is good. And we'll get to, in a second, numbers on how, actually,
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I'll just get to them right now. Why don't I just throw them up right now? How actually
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traditional are these different religious traditions? And so I'll read something about
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the study that was done here. So the EASS also contains 18 questions on individuals' attitudes
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towards marriage in general, e.g. it is all right for a couple to live together without intending to
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get married. Gender roles, e.g. a husband's job is to earn money. A wife's job is to look after the home
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and family. Relationship inside the family, e.g. the authority of father in a family should be
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respected under any circumstances and familial piety, e.g. children must make efforts to do
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something that would bring honor to their parents. On a scale from one to seven, they either strongly
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disagreed or strongly agreed. And so in answering questions like these, where did people of different
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religions come up in sort of their conservative scale? Okay. And here, we're going to look at
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Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. All right. So if you were a Buddhist, you would come up as quite conservative
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In Korea, it was a 25.7%. In Korea, it was 29.77%. And in Taiwan, it was 25%. For context,
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if you were a Catholic, you would come up as 0.28% in Japan, 11.05% in Korea, and 0.83% in Taiwan.
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Okay. I'm realizing something here, which is when I think about sort of the inverse of this,
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and I think about Americans who adopted Buddhism or other Eastern religions,
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they often have very, very low birth rates and are unmoored from their traditional cultures.
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And it's, they're, they're like, it's almost like a proxy for them being taken over by the
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urban monoculture. And I wonder if there's some element of this where it's about being unmoored
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from your ancestral culture and like making a concerted decision to abandon it.
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Well, rather than just adopting our belief system with technopuritanism to work on their
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ancestral culture, if they have a strong connection to it, because it might be the only way that they
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have out of this. Let's, let's go to some of these other countries here. Remember I was just going
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through, okay, how bad is this for Catholicism? Let's look at Protestantism. So in Japan, where
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Buddhism is at 25.7% very conservative attitudes, Protestants are 0.14% very conservative attitudes.
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It really seems that adopting a foreign religion is more about rejecting your ancestral religion.
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Exactly. In Taiwan, where Buddhism is at 25.08%, Protestantism was at 3.99%. Keep in mind,
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much more than Catholicism, but still like not that high. The only country where it's high,
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very interesting here is remember how Protestantism had been in Korea for a long time. Even if we go back
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to the eighties, we're looking at 18% of the population. Well, in Korea, while Buddhists had
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a 29.77% very traditional attitudes, Protestants had a 25.67% very traditional attitudes. So almost
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the same as Buddhists, whereas Catholics were only 11.05% very traditional attitudes.
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And your argument there is that at that point, it had become more of a historical and traditional
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religion. Exactly. So Christianity does work within these countries if it's been working within a
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community for many generations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep in mind that we argue that these things
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co-evolve together. So there's two things. One is, is adopting a new tradition a rejection of your
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ancestry? You know, like if you're in India and Christianity has been there almost since the
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time of Christ, and you're from the Christian community, you are rejecting your ancestry and your
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heritage by believing anything else. So one is, does this disconnect you from pride in your
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ancestry? But then the second is, does this, did you co-evolve with this? And by this, what I mean
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is we can see that historically, if you look at like a Korea, right, Protestants have lower fertility
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rates than Buddhists. And it's likely because some elements of this culture, people who would have been
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bred out of the culture due to personality elements, like maybe being overly obsessed with it,
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or something like that, are not bred out in Korean culture. And so you see this lower birth rate at
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first, but after those people are bred out of the population, then you get a population where the
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software package, this Protestantism, is designed to work with this new sort of strain of Korean
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identity and culture and genetic line, which is why it's hard to just paste one religion onto a group
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that has no connection historically to that. And so I think that where you see people coming out of
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this in like Korea, let's look at the fertility rates here to see if this, this backs was what we're
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seeing. So if we look at the more modern fertility rates in Korea for Protestants, how far is that below
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Buddhists? It's not as far below as it used to be. So in 2015, Buddhists were at 1.33 for Protestants,
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it was 1.28. So really almost as high as the Buddhist rate. If we go back to 1985, was it different?
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Yeah, it was quite different. For Buddhists, it was 2.71. For Protestants, it was 2.27. So we see the gap
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there decreasing as time goes on. Now, if we look here, and keep in mind, this may not be like pure,
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like evolutionary pressure. It may be the culture better adapts to this new environment over time,
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or this new population with different predilections, different ways of relating to authority.
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Like Koreans relate to authority in a different way than people from the Western world relate to
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authority. And they're like, why? Well, how would that change their relationship with God? And it's
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like, oh, okay, obviously, that's going to change their relationship with God. So I think that they,
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you know, if this religion has been honed for an audience that is an anti-authoritarian audience,
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like, like, suppose you have like an Appalachian, more like Protestant, like a
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reflexively anti-authoritarian population, and you had a religion that was
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not designed, but co-evolved with that, and then you put it on a pro-authoritarian population,
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This is probably also why in these East Asian, more authoritarian cultures, Catholicism significantly
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outcompetes Protestantism in terms of fertility rates, because it better harmonizes with their
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But I wanted to go into a piece by Mercantor. Do you have any thoughts on this before we go further?
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Mercantor, big fans of this, this guy's work, really fun. One of the first people to write on us,
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and he, he mentions us in this particular piece as well on Korea's fertility rate.
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Did he's talking about like, are they building their own Quiverful movement?
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Quiverful is a Christian movement, which first caught the eye of the mainstream media with 19
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Kids Accounting, a reality show starring the Duggar family. It was going strong until sex scandals hit
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the founder and the Duggars themselves. In recent years, the American pronatalist movement has taken
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a techno-optimist turn. Its best known representatives are Simone and Malcolm Collins, who feature frequently
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on news sites and TV shows, and it starred at recent pronatalist conference. They describe
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themselves as atheists, which not really anymore, maybe in some of the earlier stuff about us.
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Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has fathered 11 children with three women, is a fertility evangelist
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and is not known to be religious. A couple years ago, a promoter of pronatalist values emerged
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in South Korea, Lee Byung-chung, a missionary from Kianto Church, a small missionary sending church
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in Busan in the country's second largest city, found a new calling. He calls his campaign the 303
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Project. The aims of the 303 Project are to encourage marriage before 30, having at least
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three children. So it's, oh, I think he maybe means here 33 Project, to mean have kids before 30 and
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It's really important, have kids before 30. Lee was inspired by Eastern European and American
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Protestant missionaries in China who often had six or seven children. These are probably migrant
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Ukrainian and Russian Pentecostal or Baptist churches in the USA. Lee and his wife have four
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children who have already pledged that they will marry and have children early. He then started the
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303 Club in which couples as well as single people pledged to strive towards 303 goals or 33 goals.
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He frequently quotes the biblical verse, which gave the quiverful movement its name,
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like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose
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quiver is full of them. When I actually read that line, I was like, that's remarkably good advice from
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the Bible. If you notice here, it's saying children born in a man's youth, which is pointing out that for
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most of your life, you are not going to be able to have healthy kids. You get a short window in your
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youth to have kids. Children and childbearing are activities of youth, not activities of
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middle age. Yeah. His campaign seems to be getting traction. Hundreds of searches are promoting his
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message and pastors and young couples have become activists. According to the newspaper Kukiyom Imbo,
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Pastor Lee's congregants at the Kento Church had an average of 2.4 children last year,
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triple the national average. Wow. He's getting the number up, but 2.4 ain't gonna
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save anyone. I mean, we're, we're, we're only at four now ourselves, right? Like the recent slate
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please bemoaned how few kids we had. Why are they the pronatal? Yeah. How pathetic. Listen,
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hopefully we haven't had a sex scandal yet. Okay. Maybe that's why. So I'm, Simone, am I going to get in
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trouble for, well, the sex scandals they had were from their kids. So we've got to work on that.
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I really am not concerned about our kids. You do not know me as a kid. Oh. Especially if our kids
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are famous. I don't know how you get away without a sex scandal if you're famous on the internet and
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like a 17 year old horny guy. I hope we will train our children well. Yeah, I hope so too. Maybe
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get some true believers out of them. However, he then here notes another thing called the
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Dengjing Donggil Church. Li Bejong Chong has some competition. For more than 20 years,
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the Dengjing Donggil Church in the country's world southwest has provided daycare and afterschool
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childcare services at half the standard cost. Unlike municipal daycare centers, they are open
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until 10 p.m. There are several in the city, according to TV interviews with the pastor at Donggil Church.
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According to a recent news report in April 2024, the mayor of Donggil, Sanghuan, a city of 100,000,
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estimated that 12.4% of all newborns are from members of the Donggil Church. They account for
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the fact that Donggil had the highest TFR in the South Chaijong province at 1.03. This is the highest
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fertility of all of the districts of the province. Well, isn't this just the message we've been sharing
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that you may say, okay, well, South Korea is boned, but all you need is a small number of families with
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a very high fertility rate. And theirs isn't crazy high, but still, and they will just inherit the
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future. This is not an everyone has to get involved problem. This is an only people who make children
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their autistic special interest problem thing or religion. And that's why we all hold hands as a
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united team. Now, keep in mind this 1.03 number, which is the average for their province can be
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compared to a, at the time of this national average of 0.72. Now he notes here, of course, 1.03 is still
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abysmal, but in South Korea, anything above one is high. Donggil Church has inspired other Korean
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churches to provide budget childcare for members at reduced costs by making use of church facilities,
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which usually stand idle during weekdays. As Korea continues to sleepwalk towards extinction,
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some Korean Christian leaders are stepping up and taking action. These two initiatives are only a
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drop in the bucket, but they offer hope that increasing fertility rates is not impossible even
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in South Korea. So. That's really encouraging. That's, that's super encouraging. That's also the sign
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that, okay, I'm taking away a couple of things. One, letting go of tradition and especially letting go of
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hard culture is the death knell to you inheriting the future. Either you can lean into your hard
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culture and, or adapt it for the present day, or you can create a new hard culture. Um, but
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to just give up and, or adopt some foreign religion or culture kind of as a cop-out to just be like,
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well, I'm not my mainstream nation's religion. I'm this hipster version, but also like not really
00:25:24.040
leaning into the ideology of it. It's just not, not going to work. But what's also helpful in this
00:25:30.020
is that it's really not about any failure of Christian doctrines or values here. It's about,
00:25:36.820
this wasn't really Christianity being adopted. It was traditionalism and hard culture being
00:25:42.520
rejected. Right. I disagree to an extent here. I mean, if you know, Korean Christians or Taiwanese
00:25:47.480
Christians, there's some of like the most devout Christians I know. Oh, performatively. Yes.
00:25:54.720
No, they believe in like young earth and stuff like that. Like they're really traditional. Well,
00:26:01.260
these are the immigrants to the U S who I've met now that I remember the statistics that show how
00:26:05.360
non-traditional they are within their own countries. Okay. I might be wrong here. Yeah.
00:26:09.400
Keep in mind that the Koreans who immigrate to the U S have higher birth rates after immigrating.
00:26:15.000
Yeah, about 20% higher than the Koreans. So like, yeah, I mean, how, how is that super?
00:26:18.880
Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah, they're just like the true
00:26:24.880
believers. They're the ones that I'm interacting with. And in Korea, it might be more of an aesthetic
00:26:28.080
choice as you mentioned, especially in a society that is this hierarchical, I can really see the choice of,
00:26:34.720
as you've mentioned, it's like, are we getting a Western marriage or are we getting a Korean
00:26:38.840
marriage? Are we getting a Western Japanese or Japanese? Many of the aesthetics of Christianity,
00:26:44.940
especially in like a highly structured hierarchical culture could probably feel very rebellious and
00:26:51.340
refreshing to an outsider who just wants to reject the traditionalism because keep in mind,
00:26:55.440
Christianity is about breaking down the hierarchy. You know, this is not about like, you know,
00:27:04.460
Well, a lot of anime has actually bemoaned that they're anime like this, making it. So I think
00:27:10.920
this was specifically the case was Evangelion. But I know it's the case with some like classic
00:27:15.160
anime, where if you look at older classic anime, they would put Christian tropes throughout the
00:27:21.200
anime of like crucifixions of savior narratives of stuff like this.
00:27:25.820
But not to, without overtly saying, this is like Jesus, just kind of putting it in.
00:27:31.300
Putting it in because they thought it was like edgy and cool. Like to them, keep in mind,
00:27:35.840
this is a religion about a guy who died after like being tortured and like, you know,
00:27:40.940
so they're like, oh, for them, Christianity felt edgy, profane, gothy, maybe a little like,
00:27:50.340
you know, you go to Christian churches and they got all that.
00:27:52.200
So they, they're seeing Christianity in this way and they're adding it to their works in maybe the
00:27:58.540
way that like, you know, Avatar, the last airbender might've added Buddhist elements to try to be
00:28:03.540
like edgy and philosophical. And I've heard interviews in the past with the creators and
00:28:07.900
they're like, yeah, if we'd known how popular this would get in the U S we might not have done that
00:28:12.040
because some of these shows get really popular with like Christian groups that see them as like
00:28:16.220
Narnia or something, you know, like, like, you know, that has explicit and intentional
00:28:20.200
Christian narratives to push a Christian agenda where they didn't mean to do that.
00:28:24.360
They were just trying to be like edgy and gothy and, and, and like just sort of like choose a
00:28:29.440
foreign philosophy, which I find pretty interesting.
00:28:32.920
Like no, no reason behind it. Just kind of liking the aesthetics. Like there,
00:28:35.980
there was that issue of a lot of cosplayers in some Asian countries just wearing Nazi uniforms
00:28:42.180
because they looked cool and they had no idea, like just no idea because the, I don't know,
00:28:46.900
they've gotten, not, I don't think they care as much if it's Japan. I'm going to tell you that much.
00:28:51.180
Um, they, they don't have the same memory of that time period that we have.
00:28:55.640
Well, it was, I mean, yeah, there, there were other things happening at that time, but no,
00:28:59.840
but also think about like how cool, like, okay, I'm making an anime and I can, you know,
00:29:04.100
put characters in like preacher outfits and stuff like that. And this isn't a thing for my culture
00:29:09.340
or my history. They have been much, they, they've done this in really big levels that like Western
00:29:14.980
studios don't anymore, but where like they're coded as like the good guys, because for them,
00:29:20.780
this is like weird and out there. And a good example of this recently is fire force. I don't
00:29:26.380
know if you've seen anything. You should Google fire force. It has some of the coolest outfits
00:29:29.560
I've ever seen where it is a, a world that is a combination of firefighter outfits.
00:29:35.940
What? Is this the one with the ghosts that you've watched?
00:29:39.760
No, it doesn't have ghosts and Catholic preacher outfits.
00:29:42.720
Wait, hold on. I'm looking at fire force anime.
00:29:46.140
Anime. What? What? Like none firefighter. What is happening?
00:29:52.680
Yeah. Like none firefighter outfit and everything.
00:29:57.660
Do they use like holy water when they're dousing the evil demonic fires from building?
00:30:02.740
No, no, no, no. They, they create fires themselves and like fight other fire things. Anyway, it's,
00:30:10.120
Um, like honestly, the anime, the plot, not that strong, but the, the aesthetics are so
00:30:16.580
beyond top tier that I'm like humbled by, look at, look up fire force nun.
00:30:21.960
But how? He's so steadfast in his faith. He's always in prayer.
00:30:26.580
I'll take care of it. Please keep back sister. The prayer.
00:30:31.620
Right. Of course. Um, the flame is the soul's breath. The black smoke is the soul's release.
00:30:44.700
And yet it's like this like metallic reinforced preacher's collar. What is happening?
00:30:56.780
Oh, well, I mean, well, it had better light on fire. Of course. I love the, the barefoot
00:31:01.580
flaming footed firefighter because it's great to run into a burning building when you're
00:31:07.700
barefoot, but his, his feet make flames, sweetheart.
00:31:14.680
He can do like fly stuff. It's, it's, it's pretty awesome.
00:31:22.640
I mean, like you wouldn't get a positively coded faction in Western media being dressed
00:31:27.520
like preachers. By the way, in the game world that we're building right now, so many of the
00:31:32.280
positive factions are descended from religious extremists. Like one is Catholic religious extremists,
00:31:38.780
one's Mormon religious extremists, but we've got Amish, we've got, you know, and, and we
00:31:43.680
really go heavy into the aesthetics and the traditional stereotypes of these communities
00:31:50.860
to build something awesome because that was something that I loved from the anime I used
00:31:58.040
As I always mention, one of my favorite characters in old anime is Wolfwood from Trigun, who's
00:32:03.620
Catholic preacher themed. And I just like, so cool looking. And, and you don't get this
00:32:10.080
in Western media anymore. You used to, in like the eighties, you'd get, you know, Catholic
00:32:14.620
vampire hunters, which I always thought looked so cool, but you, you don't, you know, you know,
00:32:20.620
I haven't seen done, which could be cool. Maybe I should work on doing this. I have not seen
00:32:25.920
somebody really make, uh, Orthodox Christianity look cool. And I don't know if it's because
00:32:32.240
it's like too bedazzled, but like, there's gotta be a way to do that.
00:32:35.740
Come on. There's no such thing in anime as too bedazzled.
00:32:39.700
You know, you know how you make them look cool. Okay. You got to combine them with, and
00:32:45.640
if you guys haven't seen this, you should watch it. It is so much better than the new Dune.
00:32:48.780
The new Dune is like bad. Like I haven't even watched the second one. It's, it's gone.
00:32:52.600
It just, why did she become a walking eye roll?
00:32:56.380
The Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries that was made for the Sci-Fi Channel. It is God-tier
00:33:01.780
cinema because they made it like a, a theatrical play instead of like, like if you watch.
00:33:07.080
That's the, that's the one where, um, um, what's his face? Just like.
00:33:10.600
Many people call it the Ministry of Silly Hats.
00:33:14.040
A show. But anyway, if you, if you watch the aesthetics of that Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries
00:33:20.780
from the Sci-Fi Channel, uh, and you combine this with Eastern Orthodox outfits.
00:33:26.520
Oh, so like Benny Jezzeret meets Eastern Orthodox.
00:33:29.960
Yes. I think you could create, well, well to like, because what you would do is you take
00:33:34.440
the Eastern Orthodox outfits, but you'd have them do the sort of like hand actions that
00:33:38.560
like the guild does when they're talking to people that are like over the top or the
00:33:42.280
Benny Jesuit. Like they have all of these like actions they're supposed to do that like signal
00:33:46.860
stuff. And you can. Oh yeah. They're like secret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Secret like code
00:33:55.160
talking to each other all the time while they're having a conversation. And you, and you combine
00:33:58.940
this with like the swingy incense things. I don't know. Like Catholics do that too, but
00:34:02.660
like the, the Eastern Orthodox. You can get some really cool, cool stuff.
00:34:06.980
I want to see an anime character who uses a swingy incense thing as a weapon, you know,
00:34:11.160
like, Oh, this has gotta be a thing. There's gotta, there's gotta be a thing. It's gotta
00:34:14.700
be a thing. And I'm sure that the number of times in history that one of those has been
00:34:19.100
used as a weapon is not zero. So we can rest easy tonight.
00:34:23.720
Actually, I like that. That'd be a great weapon for this faction. Like to wrap it around your
00:34:28.300
hand to have like a, that, Oh, that'd be so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I love that as a
00:34:33.380
weapon or like a great weapon combined them with like, you know, monks, you have like
00:34:38.220
the Shaolin thing was like the, uh, yeah. Incense thing. And then you have on the side
00:34:42.580
of it, like spikes. So it's like a flaming mace. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You got the fire. You
00:34:46.500
got the spikes, you know, red, red, hot flaming incense thing. Yeah. You have a tax action that
00:34:53.800
they, they're leaving the building. Cause it's like burning down and they got those like over
00:34:58.240
the top outfits was like the swinging things that that'd be cool looking for post-apocalyptic
00:35:03.220
like in an emergency, you like explode it into a smoke bomb or something. But yeah, there's
00:35:08.100
just so much you can do. How did we get, what are we, what did we get here?
00:35:14.360
We were talking about how in East Asia, the Christian stuff was seen as like edgy and weird.
00:35:18.820
No, an aesthetic, an aesthetic flourish. Right. Yeah. Sort of cool foreigner stuff.
00:35:23.900
And I need to make their stuff cool. What else could I do that's cool? You got me thinking
00:35:29.020
here for the game world. You know, something I haven't, I was thinking like what in the East
00:35:33.120
hasn't been done well in Western media? Cause everybody's tried the like Buddhist-y nonsense.
00:35:38.420
I actually think that's super weak sauce to like include. Everyone's tried the, you know,
00:35:42.640
Shinto stuff. You know what I haven't seen done? And, and a lot of old stuff did Muslim
00:35:46.940
inspired. All Dune is Muslim inspired. First of all, right? Like that's like, okay, how can
00:35:50.640
we make that edgy? Seek. Go for an over the top, like Seek warrior faction. Like the old
00:35:58.400
Sikhs that are, you know, they, they, gosh, they were so cool. If you read like old accounts
00:36:04.920
of them, like one of the ones I remember really vividly is they were hired disproportionately
00:36:10.140
to when the British were fighting Muslims. So I don't want to say that like some parts
00:36:16.120
of Seek culture were really specialized to fight against Muslim culture, which was the dominant
00:36:21.540
alternate culture against them. And was quite a martial culture within those regions.
00:36:25.140
When the British would recruit people to, to go out and fight with them, they would recruit
00:36:30.900
Sikhs for a lot of the senior positions and everything like that. And there was one account
00:36:35.860
where they're walking through a battlefield and one of these guys jumps up. He'd been playing
00:36:41.180
dead from the Muslim side and the Sikh like sort of sidekick to like the main British general
00:36:50.220
You know, they've got those giant swords on them and Sikhs even have like some unique
00:36:56.540
weapon types. I can't remember, but I think the, the, not just do they have the knife thing,
00:37:01.900
but I think the circular blades might be unique to Sikhs.
00:37:06.480
Okay. Yeah. No, chakrams. So they're not unique to Sikhs, but they're strongly associated
00:37:11.520
with Sikhs. They are basically like a, a frisbee, like a modern frisbee, like a circular thing
00:37:16.560
with a hole in the center, but the whole side around it is a blade and you hold it in your
00:37:22.420
hands, like two circles. And they would fight with these up close and throw them like a frisbee
00:37:27.780
at someone, you know, like odd job might have one of these.
00:37:31.960
And they'd, uh, come on, this is like, I don't think this is in video games.
00:37:36.800
Yeah. It seems to me like the least practical weapon in the world because there's a reason
00:37:41.460
why this isn't pervasive. Okay. Let's just be clear about that, but that doesn't mean it's not
00:37:47.840
I think that they like built them into their like big hair things, which is why they were
00:37:57.600
Well, yeah. Build it into your outfits, right? You know, um, love you to Desimone. This went
00:38:04.240
way off the rails. What's, what's in East Asia. That's cool. What could I be picking up from them?
00:38:08.440
That's cool. We have a faction that is descended from Koreans, by the way, that I love, I love them.
00:38:13.960
So this faction, what we did with them is one of the Korean corporations, when they started having
00:38:18.640
fewer and fewer people, they decided, well, we'll just make our own people using, you know,
00:38:23.500
tanks that age people. Uh, so, so it's sort of like artificial wombs that create people at older
00:38:28.560
ages because they don't want to deal with kids. You know, they want to create workers, but what
00:38:32.420
they ended up doing was creating people who are genetically specialized for roles within the
00:38:38.420
company to create sort of a, a version of like the horror of like the worst version of a Korean life
00:38:45.420
without certain proteins. So they can't easily leave the company. And the entire company is
00:38:50.120
structured sort of like an ant colony was like casts and everything like that. And you have like
00:38:54.580
the management cast who is created for this. You have the worker cast. But my favorite thing about
00:38:59.300
this world is one of the casts is the cast that does all public facing stuff, which is a teen female
00:39:06.960
idol cast. Um, which is all of the females and there always have to be like signaling and they dress like
00:39:12.880
in super cute outfits all the time. And so they're constantly like, if you go to like a reception desk,
00:39:18.220
that's who's going to be there. And like workers for like every meal, they get like shows of like
00:39:23.680
Korean, like pop diva type things with the understanding that they're all euthanized when
00:39:29.160
they hit the age of like 27. Of course, of course. Yeah. Because they're, you know, that's their
00:39:33.700
purpose and they're super okay with this. They're like, if you as a player, because I like discussing
00:39:37.780
interesting philosophical concepts. If you discuss like, isn't this horrible? They're like,
00:39:41.900
you want me to be old? Yeah. Burn bright, die young. Yeah. I mean,
00:39:46.600
why would you do that to me? Um, and if you're like, well, what do you want to be like a mom?
00:39:50.780
They're like the company makes the people and they'd make people better if they could,
00:39:54.360
because they've been adapted to not question the company. It's like a child, like a horrifying,
00:39:59.300
like chival thing. And I thought this was a really fun faction. That's a very fun concept. I like that.
00:40:04.980
Yeah. Okay. All right. Love you to death, Simone. I love you too.
00:40:08.240
Are you okay with Dan Dan noodles tonight? Yeah. Dan works for me. Would you like me to saute
00:40:14.080
along with the ground pork peppers and garlic? I'm assuming that would be a plus.
00:40:19.560
Absolutely. Yes. I would like you to saute that along with the noodles. You are my princess and
00:40:26.440
I love you and you're perfect. I love you too. Thank you for being married. And I am totally whipped
00:40:30.880
guys for those guys who think I'm too nice to Simone. Some people come say you're too nice to Simone.
00:40:34.300
Some people say I'm too mean. I feel bad when people say I'm too mean, but they say I'm too nice.
00:40:37.260
I'm like, I, I should be like, what, look at all the stuff you did for me just today.
00:40:43.760
What did I do for you today? You, you got the chicken. Did you get the chickens? Did you give
00:40:47.760
them water? I did go to the chickens. I did give them water and I got my hand pecked by one of them.
00:40:54.300
Bitch. Oh, who was it? It was a black one in the, the, the more crowded, you know, ghetto side of town.
00:41:01.220
And it went for my finger when I was pouring the water and I had to like close the gate.
00:41:07.240
I, because I wasn't able to lure them to the other side with scraps this time.
00:41:10.720
Oh, I'm sorry. I should have showed you where the big scraps bowl is.
00:41:14.360
Well, I couldn't have put them outside today anyway, because it was all muddy.
00:41:19.900
Well, I bet that was Che. One of the, the black chickens is Che and they're like very friendly,
00:41:25.120
but I'm sorry about that. No, it's, there's this one midnight Moran that always goes for me.
00:41:31.560
And that is back to me a bunch of times. Cause she thinks my fingers, little sausages and she's
00:41:35.080
like that midnight Moran are the black ones, right? They're the ones. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm,
00:41:40.380
I'm talking about the green Eggers. Yeah. Sorry. The, the, the brown ones. There's a great
00:41:44.340
brown ribbon. Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway, love you, Dad.
00:41:54.800
Hey, you want to make a bit of money? You see that? It's made of chicken. It's actually
00:42:03.320
made of chicken. You kill it. You got free chicken. You can sell it to people or don't kill it.
00:42:10.600
Fucking eggs come out of their arses. Fucking hell.
00:42:15.820
I love them so much. They are wonderful. They're wonderful, beautiful birds. And they're so friendly
00:42:20.000
and sweet. And I want to be a better bird mother.
00:42:23.680
That's why we can lock our kids in with them to entertain our kids.
00:42:28.100
But I want to make, I want to make an egg, sorry, a chicken tunnel for them. I've seen all
00:42:32.420
over Instagram now, chicken tunnels. So they can run around your property protected from the eggles.
00:42:37.540
Because we need to. I'm okay with making a chicken tunnel. If you want that to be a major project,
00:42:41.220
I think that'd be a lot of fun. I think, yeah, I'm, I'm very much in favor of this so that they
00:42:45.140
can explore the world. They yearn, they yearn for freedom. But also we have so many predatory
00:42:54.000
birds. The chicken tunnel though is just another avenue for a fox to break in.
00:42:57.580
Oh my God. Well then maybe we can, it's just that the, the, um, like the hamster balls for chickens
00:43:02.760
are really expensive. Like the good ones are $60 plus each. Yeah. You're not even going to get
00:43:08.640
time to have them all run around. I know each one has to take a turn and like, who has time to like
00:43:13.660
switch that. There's also, we could theoretically construct a mobile coop that you can like wheel
00:43:20.080
around. So it's just like a chicken wire. Simone, I'm going to tell you something that you may not
00:43:26.560
know. They don't care. They're chickens. They're made of chicken. Your heart is too big. Your heart
00:43:36.740
is not too big. It is just, it is the size of a chicken, small chicken, a small chicken, juvenile
00:43:45.400
chicken. All right. Have a good day. Bye. Bye. God. You know, it really breaks my heart about the
00:43:53.920
fact that like the babies laugh when you tickle their neck is I like fear that it's this evolved
00:44:00.100
trait of babies to like look extra cute whenever someone's trying to choke them to death.
00:44:06.420
Could be. I'm like, I don't like it. I don't like it, but it's also really cute. And,
00:44:12.660
but they don't seem scared. So you try to choke our baby. That's what a progressive report is. No,
00:44:17.420
I'm just trying to make her laugh. Simone frequently tries to choke child. No,
00:44:20.800
it just, I tickle her. But only like when I touch her on her neck, does she think it's tickling.
00:44:26.360
And see, look at how cute she's being. Cause you know, I don't know. You're trying to kill her
00:44:30.860
with your murder gloves. I see those assassin gloves you're wearing. I'm trying to hide the,
00:44:35.840
obviously like completely ruined hands I have right now.