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00:00:30.000are we facing the collapse of society the case for the common good hi brian lilly here uh welcome
00:00:38.000to the full comment podcast today we are talking to uh etienne alexander borgard he is the author
00:00:43.560of the new book anti-civilization the collapse of society and the case for common good um etienne
00:00:50.120what do you mean by anti-civilization that seems like a a pretty bold statement like we're all in
00:00:57.160favor of civilization, aren't we? Yeah, it is a bold statement. But if you want to get the meaning
00:01:03.460of anti-civilization, you actually have to get what civilization is, right? And so the definition
00:01:09.860of civilization that I based myself on for this book is Norbert Elias, a German sociologist,
00:01:14.780who says that civilization is essentially when individuals learn to repress their own
00:01:21.240desires and impulses that can be antisocial to subordinate themselves to just standards and
00:01:28.700norms that make it possible for us to live together. Essentially, that's the essence of
00:01:32.900civilization and of society. But when you look at the course of Western civilization over the last
00:01:38.740decades, it's actually the reverse process that we see, hence the anti-civilization. Because if you
00:01:45.820look at the way that we treat the link between individual and society, ever since the 60s and
00:01:52.04070s, it's pretty much the reverse of Elias' message that we hear all the time, right?
00:01:57.660When we talk about individuals today, it's about how can I be free myself without constraints,
00:02:04.580what Isaiah Berlin calls negative freedom. And many of our policies, many of the cultural
00:02:11.960visions that we hear about what it means to be an individual is actually set against society,
00:02:17.980against these norms that actually shape us and help us make sense of our life and the society
00:02:23.960that we live in. And so this book is indeed a warning of what happens if we focus too much
00:02:30.020on the individual, not enough on community, on nation, on family, and all of these institutions
00:02:35.580that are actually necessary if we want to have a good life as individuals.
00:02:39.640Now, it's funny that you are raising this at this point because there is a real divide between or within the conservative movement at this point politically within Canada between stark individualism and what some might call communitarianism or a civilizational approach.
00:03:04.440and that is that, okay, well, yes, you may want to engage in XYZ, but that is bad for us as a
00:03:14.720community. Therefore, you shouldn't do that. You should not be antisocial. You should not
00:03:20.660engage in violence. You should not treat women in certain ways. There used to be norms, and I think
00:03:28.960that's a big part of what you're getting at within your book, correct? Yes, yes, that's exactly it.
00:03:36.240And funny that this divide, if you can say within what you could call the right or the intellectual
00:03:43.220right, it is also an age divide sometimes, right? The generational question is never too far from
00:03:49.200that. And my own personal reading of this is that this shift that I describe in the book towards
00:03:54.600a more individualistic vision actually happened somewhere in the 60s and 70s, but before it
00:04:01.520really materialized. So before my time and well before yours. Exactly. But these things take time.
00:04:08.220Before the society that this kind of ideology suggested actually materialized, you could argue
00:04:14.940there was almost 50 years, because if you stop transmitting something, it's not going to stop
00:04:42.560But then the actual problem that this brings
00:04:45.100is that you need a compass at some point.
00:04:48.100But if no one in the culture, in the school system will tell you this is what a good life looks like, this is what you inherited, this is the nation that you are a part of, this is the history that you should embrace and then shape for the future generations, you just end up at this point where you wonder, okay, well, what does it mean to be a Canadian?
00:05:13.960What does it mean to be a part of a family?
00:05:15.540What does it mean to be part of society?
00:05:16.820And if no one will give you an answer, obviously, you're going to look for this rootedness, for this counterbalance, actually, to the individualism that maybe we have pushed too far.
00:05:26.760It's always a balance between the two.
00:06:07.000What do we want from our individual lives?
00:06:10.040And you seem to be reflecting on, well, your generation feeling that you are de-socialized, that the connections are not the same as they used to be.
00:06:25.700absolutely absolutely i think the word you just used desocialized is the best way to talk about
00:06:32.280unfortunately uh generation z because i i feel that and you just look at the numbers mostly
00:06:38.140american numbers but often it's not different for the rest of the west or the tendencies are
00:06:42.900just going to catch up the amount of friends the americans do stats better than we do yeah
00:06:48.000but like the amount of friends that people my age have the frequency where they see their friends
00:06:54.000the amount of love relationships that they will have, all those things are really down
00:06:59.720compared to what our parents and grandparents used to have. Membership in clubs, all of these
00:07:05.780measurable signs of socialization are down. And this is an enormous problem. And I'm not sure
00:07:13.280that this is really divorced from how we view the place of the individual in society. Because
00:07:18.780when everything you hear is that individual autonomy is the most important thing you can have
00:07:24.140that every time you link your fate to that of someone else or whenever you subordinate your
00:07:30.300own will to a bigger community whether it's a family whether it's an association whether it's
00:07:35.280a nation you lose in freedom and so you become less of a person obviously this is going to affect
00:07:41.280how you live your life and to this you can add also technology which really allows us to live
00:07:46.520more and more insulated lives. But I think that there is a cultural shift behind that. And this
00:07:51.940idea that individuality must exist against society rather than through it. And yeah,
00:07:57.180I think this is extremely dangerous. And this explains maybe a lot of the problems that my
00:08:01.720generation has today. You cite Robert Putnam quite a bit in your book, which is a bit surprising for
00:08:09.700me uh given that you're someone that was born after putnam and for people that don't know him
00:08:17.560he is american sociologist uh writer um his most famous book is bowling alone
00:08:24.600that started with an essay back in the mid-90s developed into a book in 2000 non-fiction book
00:08:33.620where he talked about the decline of belonging to groups,
00:08:39.940belonging to the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, the Elks,
00:08:45.580you know, go through the list, bowling clubs,
00:08:48.600and there's thus the name Bowling Alone.
00:08:52.120And it seems like, are you pining for a time
00:08:57.840of your grandparents' or great-grandparents' age?
00:09:01.580Why are you looking to someone like Robert Putnam to say, you know what, there was something there?
00:09:09.260And I know you don't just cite Bowling Alone.
00:09:11.500I know you cite his other books, his other writings, etc.
00:09:20.080Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Putnam.
00:09:22.060It's been a huge influence over my own intellectual journey.
00:09:24.940And he released a more recent book called The Upswing, which is also very interesting about the course of social capital in the United States over the last century.
00:09:35.380Another one of his works that really inspired me is his study on the impact of immigration and diversity on social cohesion.
00:09:43.080And I think that this is probably more relevant today than it was when he first wrote it in the middle of the 2000s, right?
00:09:50.040I want to get to that in a bit, but let's just talk about this idea of belonging to something.
00:10:00.060I feel that maybe he was actually ahead of his time because this decline of, you could say, institutionalized social life through associations and all of this, it did happen over the second half of the 20th century, so before I was born.
00:10:15.560but again these things take time and when you live in a i don't want to say a post-social world
00:10:21.500because this is too much but you get my drift like when you when you come at the end of this cycle
00:10:27.080you really feel like you're you know you're in the middle of ruins you're like okay what is social
00:10:31.560life like what people do i know in my neighborhood beyond my family uh where do i belong and i think
00:10:37.860that these questions are maybe more acute than they are today because even if i look at my
00:10:41.820grandparents you know sometimes like my grandmother has a more active social life than many of my
00:10:46.820friends so i i'm not even joking uh but yeah so it's a thing i call and try and uh book time with
00:10:54.340my parents and it's always like oh no we have this we have that we have this it's like they have
00:10:59.760they do have more social active lives uh than i do at times yeah yeah and even though i think when
00:11:06.520you're kind of involved in politics and all this it's it's a bubble it's very different because
00:11:10.640it's a very like pro-social industry and i know the media is the same right you have to talk to
00:11:14.400people all the time so it's it's not the exact same but when you look at the numbers for like
00:11:18.360the the average joes today it's it's really scary honestly and that this is something that i discuss
00:11:23.880with you know younger people in their 20s and intellectuals or not whenever you talk about this
00:11:29.680aspect of social cohesion this aspect of of liquid modernity like bauman says like this idea that
00:11:35.680you know nothing feels solid around us it's like we're we're kind of a bit lost we don't know
00:11:39.600like what what network we're a part of what community we're a part of this will set young
00:11:44.600people off and they can talk uh about this for hours really so i feel that this is really kind
00:11:50.160of like if you you're looking for the malaise in generation z i think it's there really you could
00:11:54.720say social isolation maybe well you know you've got fewer friends you're having less sex you're
00:12:01.820having less fun uh scott galloway uh you know on the american side from a democrat a progressive
00:12:08.280democrat point of view um talks about this extensively it's like people don't want to
00:12:15.340take risks they don't want to go out there because there's no reward for it yes and also an interesting
00:12:22.580uh take on this is uh gene twenge you know the californian psychologist when she talks about
00:12:28.180actually we grow up slower right like the the metrics of or like the goalpost of adulthood
00:12:35.420whether it's getting married having children owning a home uh starting full-time work all of
00:12:41.360those are happening later than they used to and i think that this also has an impact on what it's
00:12:46.640like to grow up uh in your 20s today like it's really a strange time to be alive and sometimes
00:12:52.360you kind of feel that this this experience that we live through right now previous generations
00:12:56.700have really no idea what it's like and you know we we talked a lot in canada about the whole
00:13:01.960cost of living crisis to explain kind of the the the anger around uh the whole um the whole
00:13:09.560owning uh owning owning of a home but i i feel like it's also it's also this idea of you know
00:13:16.060when will my life actually begin when will i kind of graduate into the the adult world but if the
00:13:21.480whole the whole system right now takes it that you're gonna be you're gonna have your like long
00:13:27.00020s that are gonna last up until you're 30 before you can actually get settled and get on with
00:13:31.820your like proper adult life that's really that's a revolution compared to what even your generation
00:13:36.780had and moreover like your parents my grandparents so i bought my first home in my very early 30s i'd
00:13:45.120have to do the math to figure it out but like 31 32 around there uh my parents who were immigrants
00:13:52.040to this country bought their first home when they were about 27 about five years after getting to
00:13:57.980Canada, that's hard to do now. And, you know, thankfully, my oldest son has been able to do
00:14:07.480that and more, but he's an anomaly for his generation. It is, as you say, growing up
00:14:16.700slower for your generation. And there's a lot of problems that come with that, correct?
00:14:23.440yes absolutely there's a lot of problems that come with it because well you know another of my
00:14:30.300my topics that i love to study whether at cardis or in these kind of books is the whole question
00:14:34.960of fertility and when you look at family formation today i i feel like yes there's an economic aspect
00:14:41.120to it but then again the cultural factor of like when are you in this position that you're settled
00:14:47.120you have a job you're kind of in this serious mindset that you're like okay now it's time to
00:14:51.180have children i feel like it's later than it's ever been and often it's not what young people
00:14:56.340actually want you know i have the numbers for quebec i don't know if it's the same for the rest
00:14:59.660of canada but you look at the the age when people become uh mothers or fathers for the first time
00:15:06.340for mothers it's about 31 used to be 25 in the 70s for fathers it's uh 33 so always a bit later
00:15:14.460but when you ask young people uh in quebec the ministry of family does these polls all the time
00:15:19.760they ask, when do you think is the best moment to have a first child? People still respond between
00:15:24.38025 and 30. So what's also happening with this growing up slower, it's not just like we're
00:15:29.520partying all the time, we're having the time of our lives, we want it never to end.
00:17:03.040Sadly, it becomes more difficult the older that you get, especially for women.
00:17:07.880And that is not fair for women, but that is the reality.
00:17:11.580and and then if someone raises it it becomes why are you talking about women's biological clocks
00:17:19.260why are you talking about issues you have no business talking about when really what they're
00:17:24.860saying is we should make it easier for people who are 25 to 30 to be able to form families to have
00:17:31.420children yeah that's absolutely right and you know this kind of all goes back to uh the relationship
00:17:38.280between the individual and society, like we were discussing before. I really feel like there is,
00:17:43.280you know, in some elite and media circles today, a certain anti-family ideology. I have no better
00:17:48.260word for this. But whenever a politician talks about these issues, it's always treated as if
00:17:54.280it's anti-liberty, whether for women or just for individuals, like you want to tie people up to a
00:18:00.660family. And like, that's a bad thing. Like for most people, and you know, I'm well suited to0.93
00:18:05.840No, because family is one of the big topics that I work on for Cardus.
00:18:09.500And whenever I talk about that in the media in Quebec, I get two reactions.
00:18:14.400I get people in the media or in like university graduate circles gasping, saying, oh, my God, how dare you say these things?
00:18:22.340And then I get all these people who are often not very political reaching out to me on social media saying, finally, someone's talking about that.
00:18:31.180My family is what matters the most to me.
00:18:33.360And how come no one's talking about this?
00:18:35.400So again, like there's such a difference between like the ideas that we hear around, but that do have an influence on how we see our life, how we see what is desirable and what people actually think and what does give meaning to our lives.
00:18:50.140I'll tell you, Echen, when I was your age and I would go out to small towns, you would still see people who were your age having kids, having lots of kids.
00:19:39.960But, yeah, you probably get judged today if you have kids too young.
00:19:43.860And it's like, oh, you didn't take time to live out your individuality, your freedom, and all of these buzzwords that often are quite meaningless if they don't have an anchor in something true and meaningful.
00:19:57.060But yeah, it's a reality that's different today.
00:20:03.480When we come back, we'll talk more about issues surrounding immigration.
00:20:08.140We'll talk about building societies, homogeneity, all of that.
00:20:14.520We'll talk about that when we come back.
00:20:16.260But first, we have merch, postmedia.store.
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00:20:28.480You can find hats, tote bags, sweatshirts, anything that you want that will support the local journalism that you love and desire.
00:25:24.320This is, you know, to an extent, this is why I'm a conservative. And yeah, I think that today we're seeing kind of the limits of the model that Florida advocates for as we're living in it more and more, because what we see that freedom cannot really be realized without belonging to because we live, you know, we live in democracies where we live together.
00:25:47.180We have to debate the future of the polis. We have to have this kind of common mind. But if we're more and more polarized among different lines, whether they're identity based, that's the case most of the time, it becomes harder to agree on a common vision of the good.
00:26:05.620And I think that this is something that we lack more and more. And it does affect how connected we feel to our country, to our city, to all of this. And it does affect, like Putnam demonstrated, how willing we are to join in our social life.
00:26:19.180And so, essentially, my argument is that we shouldn't see things backwards. You know, like, our differences are not what unites us, like some liberals say. It's, you know, it's a paradox to say that. You can't be united by something that divides you. It's actually the reverse. You need a common understanding.
00:26:38.340There you go. There you go. As one, I don't want to say philosopher, because that would be giving him too much credit, as one of our former prime ministers says.
00:26:46.460As one home hardware dancer in Montreal recently said.
00:27:53.080We have been intermarrying, sometimes, you know, doing worse things.
00:27:59.380But there has been connections between various groups for millennia.
00:28:04.580And that has been going on. That doesn't mean that we, in terms of how we view how society should be shaped, isn't there. And you talk about communitarian conservatism. I would argue that there's a communitarian aspect of the left as well, though, isn't there?
00:28:23.680There is a sense of, whether it's on the left or the right, that we need to come at things from a community point of view.
00:28:37.300I would say, though, that having a foot in the Francosphere and the Anglosphere, I feel that maybe this more communitarian, patriotic left is much more represented in France than it is in the Anglosphere.
00:29:45.800And I feel that as politics centers more and more around culture wars, for lack of a better word, working classes become more conservative because these people actually have stronger communitarian attachments than, you know, elites, creative class or whatever you call them.
00:30:03.560And progressives become more focused on the individual, on particularisms rather than what unites us.
00:30:11.640And the right kind of has this shift where it's less libertarian maybe on some issues because its voters are now more communitarian.
00:30:20.200And what they want is to talk about what ties us together.
00:30:23.100So I think it's a tremendously interesting time to live in as you look at these political coalitions that are changing just right before our eyes.
00:30:30.140Before we get into the changing political coalitions, let's talk about, you mentioned class, or sorry, culture wars. And you've got a whole chapter that says culture wars are class wars.
00:30:41.560absolutely what do you mean by that i i thought culture wars were just like the far right of the
00:30:48.340american spectrum coming into canada like sophie cunningham at the end of anna fever showing up at
00:30:55.140scotia bank saying well you know should only be women in women's sports i thought that you know0.66
00:31:01.340we just have culture wars are just american aren't they well no they're dirty are we breathe
00:31:08.360today because if you look at how political discourse has changed and this is something
00:31:14.320that putnam explains really well in the upswing uh we moved on from an era where what we emphasized
00:31:22.200first and foremost in culture was what ties us together and we're becoming ever since the 60s
00:31:28.700and you know many movements who had very positive outcomes on equality in society they still they
00:31:34.600They still shifted the lens from a more, you know, communitarian, patriotic in the inclusive sense of the term, by the way, lens to a more like identity focused, you could say a zero sum game between subgroups in society.
00:31:50.140And this is really the core of the message of the book, that we're not helping society if we frame every issue as men versus women, as white people versus racialized people, as gays versus heterosexual.
00:32:03.980And if we see the world through this adversarial lens, then what remains to tie us together?
00:32:13.940If every issue becomes this culture war with no possible ending that is happy for all, and if it's always one against another, then we just lose this common understanding of what it means to be citizens of the same country.
00:32:32.620You know, I feel that we live in a society that's more and more conflict prone for this reason.
00:32:37.200And this is why I emphasize norms and civilization so much, because when you advocate for the nation, when you advocate for the family, when you talk about community, it's not about one group oppressing another.
00:32:49.300When you're a member of a family, you lose yourself as an individual.
00:32:52.700It's an institution that shapes you as you shape it.
00:32:56.180It is common norms that define a set of rules for all.
00:33:00.820And so there's never a situation where one individual is the absolute winner in this and one is the absolute loser. It's just like a new rulebook that helps us live together. You could say the same thing about a nation. It's about adopting a set. I mean, you could say language, you could say values, you could say history, like a common set of references that will give us meaning in our common life, give us previsibility in the way that we interact with others and just help us have this compass to navigate our common life.
00:33:30.820And if we lose that to just go full-on, zero-sum game, adversarial between
00:33:35.980identity groups, I think we really don't want to live in that society, even
00:33:40.100though we start living into it more and more.1.00
00:33:42.520You know, there's so many immigrants to this country that I know who wanted to
00:35:03.080I don't think that his political career is over.
00:35:06.400He's someone I've known and watched for 20 plus years.
00:35:09.800But how does all of this play out in a country where we've been told for 10 plus years, diversity is our strength, that there's no core identity in Canada, that we are the world's greatest hotel?
00:35:31.380Yeah, 10 plus years, I would say ever since 1982 or even more.
00:35:36.480That's my great nationalist take on it.
00:35:38.520Yes. So I feel like this issue is really brewing in Canadian politics. And, you know, I kind of have this like outsider insider vision on it, you know, being a Quebecer, like it's a different, it's a different thing on our side.
00:35:52.480But whenever I give talks in English, happens once in a while, on the whole question of national identity, multiculturalism, and all of this, I get a very, very, very strong reaction from every young person under 40 in the room.
00:36:09.640like these are typically the people who are going to come up to me after and say geez why don't we
00:36:14.380ever hear that and where have people like you been to talk about patriotism and how we don't have to
00:36:20.240be you know ashamed of our history ashamed of being a part of a nation and how we should emphasize
00:36:24.740that even more so i i feel that there this is really like that then maybe the next big thing
00:36:30.340in canadian politics and especially in conservative politics because as you say it's really
00:36:35.140it's really a swing back of the pendulum after uh 11 years of justin trudeau just going the
00:36:40.840opposite direction and you know making us wonder if canada even exists uh so yeah i feel like this
00:36:47.480is really big thing and funny you were talking about uh immigration before if we're talking
00:36:51.780canadian politics i don't think it's an accident that the theoretician of um the theorist of one
00:36:58.640canada was john defen baker you know our first non-french non-english prime minister uh because
00:37:04.980what people often forget is that norms are actually pretty helpful for weaker members of
00:37:12.100society or for people who don't belong because if the cultural concept of a nation doesn't exist
00:37:19.460now how do you integrate to a nation it's only like or it becomes a blood thing that's what it
00:37:25.220was before nation it becomes like tribal and this is not what we want but this is what happened
00:37:30.200before nation actually existed as a cultural community that is able to, you know, foster unity
00:37:36.280from pluralism. And, you know, if you look at current politics, to me, it's no accident that
00:37:41.540one of our, you know, strongest speakers in favor of this brand of national conservatism is Jamil
00:37:46.960Giovanni, who also has an immigrant background. I feel that especially for people who are not like1.00
00:37:53.520old stock integration and actually belonging is is more important and it's never them that you hear
00:38:00.780talking against uh the concept of nation it's always going to be people who kind of take it
00:38:05.600for granted you know you could call it a luxury belief like rob henderson says like if your own
00:38:11.220identity as part of the nation is not threatened sure you can say nation doesn't matter but what
00:38:16.020if you want to join that it has to exist if you want to join it you can't be a canadian if there's
00:38:20.240know Canada, right? Jim O'Giovanni, who I've known for a long time, his father was Black American.
00:38:27.660His mother came from parents of Scottish immigrant background. You mentioned Diefenbaker.
00:38:36.160There is a great statue revolving around a great story of Diefenbaker being a young boy
00:38:43.620and selling newspapers on the streets of Saskatoon. Have you heard this story, Echen?