TRIGGERnometry - Does Progress Make Us Miserable？ Alex Kaschuta

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:09.100 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.040 Our brilliant guest today is a writer, cultural commentator. She's the host of the Subversive

00:00:18.760 Podcast. Alex Kashuta, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to

00:00:23.720 be here. It's a great pleasure to have you on the show. We've been meaning to get you on for a long

00:00:27.880 time. Tell us who you are, first of all, because you've got an interesting story, which I think

00:00:33.120 informs a lot of the views that you have as well, which we're going to get to. So tell everybody,

00:00:37.620 who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you through life

00:00:41.200 to be here talking to us? Oh, yeah, a very long story, which involves an escape from the clutches

00:00:48.880 of Eastern Europe, living in the West for about probably 12 years in total, and now back in the

00:00:57.280 last year, living in the Corona bunker in my hometown in Transylvania. So it's been a journey,

00:01:03.700 I have to say, but that's not the only thing. I mean, I've been a journalist. I've worked in tech.

00:01:10.440 Now I work in finance related to tech. Yeah, it's quite many things have happened in the last 12

00:01:17.340 years. And now, like you said, they've informed my view on a lot of things. Well, an interesting

00:01:22.260 piece of your journey is you were part of, I imagine, the sort of brain drain from Eastern 1.00

00:01:27.640 Europe, people who are young, bright, well-educated, et cetera, going over to the West.

00:01:33.620 And you get here, you lived in London for five years, you get a job, you have a good job,

00:01:39.380 you live in London. And increasingly, you find that the sort of promise of everything that the

00:01:44.660 West offers, particularly the way that it's sort of configured at the moment, is not fulfilling

00:01:49.740 your actual needs and wishes, and it's increasingly making you feel lonely and unhappy?

00:01:57.480 Yes, I think that's kind of the pattern that I saw in myself, first and foremost,

00:02:02.580 but also in a lot of people around me. There was this prescribed ladder that one must climb up,

00:02:09.720 you know, first you get to the West, phew, you made it, maybe you go to school there,

00:02:13.700 that's also the next step. And then you climb your way through, you know, whichever corporate

00:02:18.760 ladder you find is closest to you or most accessible. The issue that I found was that 1.00

00:02:25.520 it's quite an absorbing life, especially if you might have other plans, you know, like as a woman

00:02:33.460 with a female life trajectory, I wanted family and children to be part of that. And it became 0.99

00:02:39.820 a bit complex to do that in London. And it seemed to me that, you know, the ladder that was in front

00:02:46.840 of me in terms of career was a little bit at odds with the ladder that I wanted. Because, you know,

00:02:53.500 you can climb up and you get more responsibility and, you know, that becomes the major focus point

00:02:59.360 of your life. And, you know, that's what you're paid for. That's what it should be. That's what

00:03:03.580 you're responsible for. But in parallel to that, you know, I wanted to just have a more flexible

00:03:11.420 existence and that's why i moved back home and now i work remotely which is you know quite a

00:03:17.060 blessing and uh yeah i'm grateful to be able to do that and alex do you think a lot of these a lot

00:03:23.300 of women feel the same way as you do in the west but they can't express it this feeling that you

00:03:29.180 have um i i think i think a lot of them are are they struggle with dating they struggle with uh

00:03:37.620 you know, figuring out things in time, because, you know, men and women typically have different

00:03:44.100 kind of biological timelines that they have to deal with, which is something that it's not that

00:03:49.740 isn't really spoken about very clearly in the mainstream. I can understand why people are trying

00:03:56.460 to encourage women to, you know, be independent and climb, climb these ladders that are supposedly

00:04:01.300 so extremely amazing that everyone needs to be on them. And I think that the issue is that

00:04:08.660 a lot of them wake up a little bit, maybe late, and it's a bit complicated to make your bed when

00:04:16.660 you're, let's say, 37. And then you think, oh, should I freeze my eggs? And I'm like, oh,

00:04:21.560 maybe it's a bit late for that, to be honest. It's a complicated thing. And my issue was that

00:04:28.640 You know, people didn't really prepare me or my friends or anyone for these decisions

00:04:33.640 or these forks in the road that you have to eventually confront if you're a woman 0.94

00:04:38.980 and if your plan isn't just to, you know, dedicate your whole existence to McKinsey

00:04:44.380 or whoever, you know, wants to pay you lots of money.

00:04:48.880 And Alex, why do you think it is that we don't talk about this?

00:04:52.420 Why is this a taboo subject? Because the reality is it's a biological fact.

00:04:56.840 if you want kids the best time to do it is the earlier the better really what part you know

00:05:02.700 past the age of 20 whenever it is why are we not talking about it i think there's kind of an

00:05:11.120 egalitarian assumption at the core of of um of our societies especially in the west that you know

00:05:17.900 if you want it you can have it you can have it all you know you you want to increase your

00:05:22.820 optionality. You want to be, you know, you want to be equal in status to men, obviously. And the

00:05:31.100 main source of status that exists now in the West is, are these hierarchies, are, you know,

00:05:36.160 the corporate hierarchy or academia or wherever. It's a place that will take more than nine to five

00:05:42.440 to invest in if you want the status. You know, in more traditional societies, you know, older

00:05:49.120 women had status through other means they were you know the the proverbial wise crone that gave 1.00

00:05:55.560 advice or some form of matriarch or something we don't have those those levels anymore you have 1.00

00:06:02.180 fortune 500 or you know pick pick your pick your industry uh or you have nothing or you know your

00:06:10.680 your consumption options diminish if you don't make enough money to consume or continue i don't

00:06:16.420 know going on trips or getting getting other status objects that are important um and i think

00:06:22.880 that's a major tension and so you say that that's a major tension but ultimately by women not 1.00

00:06:29.960 fulfilling this sort of i mean let's be fair like a biological urge surely they're denying number

00:06:37.300 one a part of themselves but number two making themselves miserable in the long term yeah i think

00:06:43.320 For humans, it's hard to tell what's going to make you happy in the long term and what's going to make you miserable.

00:06:50.720 And when you're, for example, if you're a young professional in the big city, the whole city is constructed around single life.

00:06:59.420 It's constructed around optimizing your options, you know, for consuming cool stuff, going to cool places, mingling with cool people, which are coincidentally all single.

00:07:10.620 That's the life cell it's built around.

00:07:12.680 And if you want to opt out, because essentially that's what you're doing by having a child, you kind of have to accept that you're nuking this lifestyle and you're moving on to a lifestyle that involves other people, has some constraints, you reduce your optionality by having children.

00:07:31.920 And I can understand why some people either postpone this decision for a long time until they get into hot water for biological reasons, or they just don't want to do it at all.

00:07:44.160 And then maybe they make up reasons like, I don't know, the polar ice caps are melting or something.

00:07:48.940 So, yeah, there are different reasons.

00:07:51.440 But, you know, the reasons to have children are not as many as they used to be.

00:07:57.100 And one of the things I think is a core of the work that you do, your writing, your commentary, etc., is exploring the sort of constraints that human beings place on themselves and almost need sometimes in order to live a happy and fulfilled life.

00:08:15.180 And I find that very interesting watching some of the other interviews that you've done.

00:08:19.620 There's a sort of inbuilt assumption that no one in a liberal, quote unquote, society questions, which is the more free you are to be an atomized individual who's free to do whatever they want, the better.

00:08:33.200 And it is automatically assumed that anything that constrains you, anything that shapes your behavior, anything that encourages or pushes you in any direction that is counter to that is automatically wrong, bad, evil, you know, part of the patriarchy in this case or whatever else it might be.

00:08:49.000 So give us your thoughts on that sort of struggle between freedom and the constraints that sometimes human beings actually benefit from.

00:08:58.580 Yeah, I think that this conception of freedom, you know, this kind of rational, liberated individual that we've instantiated in our flavor of liberalism is quite new historically.

00:09:10.440 Because if you look back at, for example, you know, how Aristotle conceptualized freedom, it was essentially in a way of freedom from the base desires.

00:09:20.640 It was kind of self-control, being kind of cultivating oneself to the point where you become a master of yourself.

00:09:28.700 That conception of freedom, we haven't cultivated at all.

00:09:32.140 Freedom at the moment is freedom from, you know, constraint, freedom from tradition, freedom from any sort of conventional knowledge that, you know, might have helped our ancestors coordinate or, you know, build a robust society or, you know, just to just at least understand what's going on in each other's heads.

00:09:49.480 And now I think we're at the point where a lot of the freedom that people ask for is freedom from the body.

00:09:55.240 I think you see this a lot with, you know, kind of these transhumanists, you know, transgenderism.

00:09:59.380 It's the idea that, you know, not only am I not constrained by tradition, I'm not even constrained by, you know, the chains of physical existence.

00:10:08.100 I'm, you know, this is but a skin that I can change like in a video game because, you know, there's not really any reason for it not to be interchangeable.

00:10:17.300 Like, you know, why would you constrain my freedom? Live and let live, you know, don't tread on me. That's it. I think that's quite a limited thing because there is there is wisdom in a lot of these traditions. There is a lot of coordination value. There is there is value in me understanding what you think and what your moral standards are and what you might might what I might be able to expect from you when we're in society together.

00:10:42.800 That's something that, you know, we don't really put that much value on anymore.

00:10:47.880 But I think, you know, it's something that goes out the window.

00:10:50.800 And I think with this concept of freedom, where it's just like, you know, leave me alone, it's also an impoverishment.

00:11:00.020 Like, for example, if you're an 18-year-old girl and you don't get traditional instruction in life, you go on the Internet, find the easiest source of money, which is probably either going on seeking arrangement or OnlyFans or something like that.

00:11:15.540 You fulfill your expedient needs to get some money to, I don't know, buy purses or whatever is interesting to you at 18.

00:11:22.280 And these things might have long-term consequences.

00:11:24.980 The idea that because you're 18, you're now a sovereign individual ready to make choices. 0.99

00:11:30.840 You're, you know, the rational human going out and, you know, kicking ass and taking names. 0.95

00:11:36.180 I don't know if that's the case. 0.96

00:11:38.120 So for me, that's kind of...

00:11:39.820 Alex, you touched on something which I think is very important there.

00:11:42.440 And I'm increasingly aware that this conversation might sound like three people from the 1950s having a conversation about morality.

00:11:49.280 Good.

00:11:49.380 but but i do actually think this is important because one of the things you touch on there

00:11:54.340 when you talk about freedom and particularly this only fans whatever arrangement is the freedom to

00:12:00.600 do whatever you want in the sexual realm has sort of clashed i would say with the fact that

00:12:08.600 sex has consequences beyond just you know the immediate experience we've sort of lost touch

00:12:15.660 with that is that fair to say yeah yeah i think people try to mitigate the fact that sex has

00:12:22.020 consequences through the norm of consent which is now the the big cudgel that comes in and you we

00:12:27.680 try to solve everything with consent and if you had bad sex oh it must have been the consent was

00:12:32.520 wrong you didn't really give consent um the idea the problem with sex is that it's it is very

00:12:38.120 complicated and it's it's something that happens beneath the rational level there's a lot of

00:12:43.180 negotiation that's, you know, ties into, I don't know, body language, pheromones, implicit cultural

00:12:49.840 assumptions about what's to be expected or not, things that really don't work at the level of a

00:12:56.160 contract. And we've tried to just, you know, force everything into this contractual mold. And

00:13:00.600 it's not surprising to me that young people are confused about sexual norms and that,

00:13:05.900 for example, maybe young women really are having a bad time, you know, because there's a lot of

00:13:10.680 chat about Me Too and how all of these cases are ridiculous, like, you know, the Aziz Ansari case

00:13:15.680 where there was this ambiguous event that, you know, it definitely wasn't rape, but it was kind

00:13:21.360 of shoehorned into the non-consensual rape mold after the fact. But it was clearly a lot of

00:13:27.580 miscommunication in an area that is fraught with, you know, it's a dangerous thing to have sex,

00:13:33.700 especially as a woman. You know, historically, you were burdened with children. You know,

00:13:39.280 there was also kind of the shame overhang, which people used to use to kind of control these

00:13:45.380 situations. So I understand why it's confusing. And we're lacking a language to deal with these

00:13:54.380 things. Because, you know, it's like trying to write poetry in binary code. You know, it's pretty

00:14:01.120 hard to understand if this is your only tool that you have in your toolbox. Yeah, consent. Okay.

00:14:07.220 yeah I think we need to get a bit more nuanced about about sex and you say we need to get a bit

00:14:13.280 more nuanced about sex isn't part of the problem that we now treat sex as we would treat a sort of

00:14:18.600 an experience we we use it as a way to say oh I've done this I've done this position I've had this

00:14:24.800 of it and actually what you're getting away from what the act was originally intended for

00:14:30.520 and also really denying the bonding element of it yeah exactly i think um because we're so used to

00:14:38.980 to having you know consumption be our main way of interacting with the world uh we've we've reduced

00:14:45.920 this this act into into the platform of consumption i think probably porn culture has something to do

00:14:50.820 with it because sex is a consumer product after all it's all everywhere i've been you know the

00:14:56.480 first time I got on the internet, I was probably 13 years old. That was a relatively long time ago.

00:15:01.640 I found porn in 20 minutes. So I'm sure it's quite accessible to everyone and everyone's a bit,

00:15:07.580 you know, a bit oversaturated with it. And yeah, it is a product at this point.

00:15:13.400 So I think, you know, with dating apps, we've moved into another realm where people are very

00:15:20.020 much kind of tokenized and then commoditized transforming these experiences into into simply

00:15:26.640 you know notches or checklist boxes is not surprising if that's kind of the the angle

00:15:32.120 that we've taken and that we've always we always have this kind of market filter between us and the

00:15:37.560 other person with social media as well like you're always kind of have this this layer of technology

00:15:43.960 intermediating the connection between you and someone else and the the algorithm knows you

00:15:49.180 know, which one's your best picture. It knows, you know, how to how to present you in the best

00:15:54.100 way so that you get you increase your consumption options with the other people on the on the

00:15:58.640 platform. It's I think this really does skew people and how they think about their own sexuality

00:16:06.360 and how they think about how they should be relating to other people. These things have

00:16:12.220 become the norm quite, quite fast. Like it's it's been surprising to me to see how fast dating apps

00:16:17.980 have become normative. And, you know, a lot of people, I've met my husband on a dating app,

00:16:23.720 and I think it's, you know, it can be a great technology if you use it judiciously and treat

00:16:29.980 it the way it is. But I can also see that, you know, it warps the dating landscape quite heavily

00:16:36.960 in many ways, because this is not natural. This is not how people interact, you know.

00:16:41.900 um it it really is terrible for funny people it's it's it's not the best you know place to

00:16:48.860 meet funny people that's okay neither of us is funny

00:16:51.640 just proved it there i did a little joke she didn't laugh 0.58

00:16:57.860 i'm not crazy about the the self-deprecating humor you guys are obviously funny and uh yeah

00:17:07.100 Sorry.

00:17:08.620 Good.

00:17:09.080 Excellent.

00:17:09.540 That's the kind of response we want.

00:17:11.220 But Alex, listen, we're obviously just joking around, but I find so much of what you're

00:17:16.020 saying really interesting and refreshing.

00:17:17.840 And let me ask you this, because I guess historically, this whole thing, I'm sure part

00:17:24.940 of it is driven by technology, but part of it is also driven by a rebellion against over

00:17:30.700 prescribed, hyper constraining social norms.

00:17:35.360 You know, girls don't do this. Boys, you know, don't behave like that. This is how we're all supposed to be. Is it sort of like the jumper was a bit too warm? So we've started picking away the threads and now the whole thing is just falling apart.

00:17:49.280 yeah i think there's that's that's a component as well because you know humanity and and how

00:17:57.180 how people evolved was always under some form of constraint um you know like people keep keep

00:18:03.540 complaining about the fact that you know women have hypergamous instincts and you know what does

00:18:08.000 that mean for people who are not familiar yeah it's the idea that you know women in the worst 0.97

00:18:12.880 of cases it's framed as women being gold diggers but it's the idea that women tend to be attracted 1.00

00:18:18.120 to men who are competent, have resources, you know, aka money, and, you know, have kind of

00:18:25.100 status signals, have show power. They're high status men, and they kind of tend to date up

00:18:30.240 as much as they can across these hierarchies to, you know, to get someone who can secure those

00:18:36.360 resources for herself. But mostly the framing is that it's for her offspring, and that, you know,

00:18:42.140 increases chances for survival. That's kind of the evo-psych explanation for it.

00:18:46.520 And so the idea that, you know, you have hypergamy, but hypergamy evolved under conditions where women were quite restricted in what they could do sexually.

00:18:59.740 I mean, there are very few societies ever in the history of man where there wasn't some form of kind of like patriarchy or matriarchy that controlled, you know, the sexuality of young girls in some ways.

00:19:10.900 And essentially these things co-evolved.

00:19:13.020 You have, you have these controls that are social controls on sexuality, like, okay, you know, who are you going to marry? You know, we need to make sure that you're a virgin before, you know, these, these are quite restrictive ways to, to deal with sexuality.

00:19:24.700 And then you have these kind of hypergamous instincts or, you know, instincts for women to, you know, to seek out dating, you know, these top status guys.

00:19:34.220 And the problem is once you lift all sexual controls, you know, you lift the lid of patriarchy, you essentially have this very strong urge that women have to date only the apex guys, which now manifests in essentially what we see on dating apps where, you know, a very small fraction of men get to go on all the dates.

00:19:52.900 So women are very, very picky. But back in the day when, you know, you had patriarchy or, you know, insert your control mechanism of choice, controlling who girls got to marry, you know, forming alliances, using kind of gearing a female sexuality in different directions, you know, this instinct existed, but it didn't get to go buck wild. 0.99

00:20:15.360 So it's interesting to think about why it's happening.

00:20:20.420 Obviously, it's an increase in freedom, but it's also very destabilizing in terms of marriage rates, in terms of people actually getting to have offspring, who gets married.

00:20:32.160 It's definitely very novel in the history of humanity overall.

00:20:36.980 Obviously, I'm sure there are some tribes in the Amazon.

00:20:39.260 People can come in and say, oh, no, no, they had a strange, super sexual matriarchy. 1.00

00:20:44.140 but it's a fraction of one percent of civilizations most had some form of control

00:20:49.300 and Alex we're talking about this and saying you know that women have greater choice than ever

00:20:54.480 before and women but in many ways this society and this culture it's more geared and designed

00:21:02.560 for men than it is for women because men have abundance of choice they don't have to commit

00:21:07.920 you have access to an app which can present present you with literally thousands of thousands

00:21:12.200 of options why do you have to commit to one woman yeah it's you know it's they they call this the 0.99

00:21:19.600 the apex fallacy you know people say oh men men they have they have all the choices it's not all

00:21:25.300 men it's a it's a small it's a small small fraction of men at the top which you know tend to tend to

00:21:30.140 win out and and you know almost all games um and yeah i think it's um you know it's kind of saying

00:21:37.220 saying that men have a lot of options is, you know,

00:21:39.940 kind of framing it a little bit, you know,

00:21:42.620 it's just a bit of an exaggeration.

00:21:44.020 He was just talking about himself then.

00:21:45.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:46.500 Yeah.

00:21:48.200 Thanks, Alex.

00:21:49.800 Well, you're funny guys.

00:21:53.940 Excellent.

00:21:55.700 Destroyed with your own facts and logic.

00:21:58.120 But if I push back on that, you know,

00:22:00.840 there's a lot of women saying, you know, 1.00

00:22:03.100 and quite understandably so, that, you know,

00:22:05.240 that it's very difficult to meet a guy.

00:22:06.900 it's very difficult to settle down with someone there's a lot of women who hit their late 30s 1.00

00:22:11.720 where all the good men gone you see it time and time again on social media does that not prove

00:22:16.020 my point or have i got it wrong no i think i think there are there are many many losers in

00:22:20.840 the system um i i'm not sure there's probably more like really hardcore winners that are men

00:22:27.960 overall in the system i mean depends what you think winning is if you want to you know build

00:22:33.500 a sustainable harem and, you know, retire maybe at 50 with, I don't know, a cohort of women at 0.61

00:22:39.860 one point that probably that is winning for some people. But I think even for the men who, you know,

00:22:44.360 get to go on all these dates and they, you know, get to, you know, yeah, be the top guy, they

00:22:50.160 probably at one point, you know, would want to, you know, have a more stable existence, maybe want

00:22:55.480 to have offspring as well, you know, have a legacy, have more baby chads or whatever they

00:23:02.380 imagine their legacy to be. So it is hard even for them, because the problem is, if this system

00:23:11.860 essentially is feeding off the insecurities of women, because they don't get to have the 1.00

00:23:17.140 relationships they want, they don't get to go on, you know, on the dates with someone who wants to

00:23:21.720 date them for, you know, a long term relationship. You know, the women on the apps at one point,

00:23:27.620 they, you know, have some issues. Like it's, you know, it really does mess up your, I don't know,

00:23:34.980 your self-esteem in a way when you really, you know, you can go on many dates. That's no problem.

00:23:40.060 People will date you. But if the guy you want to date doesn't want to be in a relationship with

00:23:45.120 you, it does kind of scar you mentally. And especially if, you know, if, for example, 10

00:23:50.300 years ago you were, I know, in college and you, you know, you met some guy at a party and, you

00:23:54.880 you know, two weeks later, he was your boyfriend. This doesn't happen anymore. Now you have, you

00:23:58.940 know, a very contractual type of relationship. And then maybe after two months, they're like,

00:24:02.940 oh, should we be exclusive? And, you know, layers upon layers of commitment that didn't used to

00:24:08.580 exist in the past. It does kind of leave you a little bit like, okay, you know, it's very hard

00:24:14.420 to get to that level of commitment, even to be someone's girlfriend. And this is kind of a change

00:24:20.680 that happened, felt to me quite suddenly, like maybe six or five or six years ago, the standard

00:24:26.340 shifted from you meet someone in real life and, you know, things are a bit not traditional, but

00:24:31.780 you get to have a boyfriend at one point to you kind of get to interact with the algorithm and

00:24:37.340 the algorithm will serve you whoever it wants. And then you kind of have to go through this

00:24:42.380 very contractual, you know, stress, stressful situation. But yeah, I think the women are losing 1.00

00:24:49.300 out here obviously they're not getting what they want the men at the bottom you know forget about

00:24:54.200 it yeah they're they're not you know they should just delete the apps um and some men are having

00:24:59.620 a really good time that's what i could say for a while so we sort of diagnosed the problem in that

00:25:05.420 if i can sum it up succinctly we've got too much of the wrong kind of freedom which has resulted

00:25:10.900 in all of this so to put it very clearly so what's what i mean there'll be people watching this go

00:25:16.860 So what are you saying?

00:25:17.660 You're saying women should be back in the kitchen. 1.00

00:25:19.380 That's how you, you know, get back to the way that things ought to be?

00:25:24.480 It's a really tough one because obviously once you've lifted the lid on freedom, it's quite nice.

00:25:31.140 It's an enticing proposition.

00:25:33.120 You know, you don't want to put the lid back on.

00:25:35.400 I do think that women would be best served, and I think men as well, to understand these dynamics,

00:25:42.240 to understand that, you know, these apps are not matchmaking apps,

00:25:44.920 to understand the nature of the two markets that are clashing there, the market for long-term

00:25:49.860 relationships and the market for sex, and that not all dating is dating. And I also wish that

00:25:57.140 women, if they were more, you know, relationship-oriented, to make that clear and to understand 1.00

00:26:03.160 that, you know, most men probably will not want to date you or some, you know, some kind of guys

00:26:08.780 that you might find attractive will reject you if you state that you want a long-term relationship

00:26:13.200 or even, God forbid, that you want to get married or have children or something.

00:26:17.520 There are very subtle ways to phrase this.

00:26:19.780 You don't need to be very crazy explicit.

00:26:22.040 But if you, for example, try to paint a picture of the life that you'd like to lead with in the future

00:26:31.440 and maybe include that you want to have children or something like that,

00:26:35.420 you can do that in a tactful way and then maybe attract the type of people that are interested in that

00:26:40.140 and share your values.

00:26:42.020 But, you know, just using the apps on their own terms is a soul grinder.

00:26:47.860 I do not recommend it.

00:26:49.220 So you can you can use the apps, but you should you know, you should kind of understand what you're getting yourself into.

00:26:56.880 And, you know, the more people understand about these dynamics in general, the more they can maybe cultivate more of the, you know, the Aristotelian type of freedom where they kind of understand that the world has constraints.

00:27:09.540 and that it's probably wise for them to set constraints on themselves

00:27:12.760 to be able to navigate the world.

00:27:15.040 Because if you're just going whole hog on the live and let live thing,

00:27:19.440 bad things might happen, just saying, from experience,

00:27:22.300 but also from what I've seen around me.

00:27:25.220 And Alex, how much responsibility do you think feminism needs to take 1.00

00:27:29.320 for this issue?

00:27:30.440 Because feminism, at the start, very, very positive. 1.00

00:27:35.480 But where we are now, you can be anything, you can do anything you want,

00:27:38.860 blah blah blah blah blah and we are where we are now yeah i think you know feminism is third 1.00

00:27:46.720 fourth way feminism is essentially an outgrowth out of that of that same idea of okay you are the 1.00

00:27:52.380 you know homunculus behind the eyes you know pulling the strings being super rational you

00:27:57.300 know making decisions you're you're not tied to your biology you shouldn't be tied by uh by

00:28:03.740 you know, tradition or any sort of constraint. I understand the impulse, you know, it's the idea

00:28:10.980 that you want to be free. That's great. But as I said, you know, you've thrown out the baby with

00:28:17.020 the bathwater here, and it was a pretty precious baby. And it was also a baby that coordinated

00:28:22.320 everyone. And, you know, you can see a lot of consequences of this move towards kind of

00:28:31.400 hundred percent individualism and the idea that, you know, we don't really see marriage rates are

00:28:37.300 plummeting, fertility rates are plummeting across the West or across, you know, kind of places that

00:28:42.760 adopted this vision of the individual. So to me, feminism is just one flavor of this, the same 0.93

00:28:48.960 philosophy that says, okay, you know, the body, society, whatever is outside of this almost

00:28:56.300 metaphysical nucleus that makes the decisions is, you know, is an imposition. I don't need,

00:29:04.020 you can dispense with that. And you actually studied gender studies? 0.99

00:29:09.000 Yeah, I have a degree, my undergrad was in economics, but it was in diversity management,

00:29:15.500 gender and diversity management. So it's kind of gender studies in a business suit, you know,

00:29:20.500 it had a bit of a, you know, economics flair to it. But it was essentially just nonstop Judith

00:29:27.080 Butler and a lot of scientific papers. And yeah, it was, it was quite a hard exam to pass. I was

00:29:34.220 very surprised because I thought it was going to be something easy because it sounded a bit fluffy.

00:29:38.740 No, they really wanted to keep up the appearance that this is science. And they essentially made

00:29:43.320 us learn, you know, social science papers by heart and then know, you know, everything from

00:29:48.420 the abstract to the coda to who participated, study design and all sorts of things. Of course,

00:29:55.040 after the replication crisis, probably about 97% of those papers that I learned for college were,

00:30:01.220 yeah, were scrapped. But it's, you know, that's what they're trying to do, to sell the science

00:30:08.500 in it. Were you quite bought into it at the time? You weren't there to sort of study with

00:30:13.400 the critical eye, you thought this was going to be valuable to you? Yeah, I thought it was an

00:30:19.740 interesting field. I was kind of interested in feminism since I was a teenager. Because, you 1.00

00:30:25.880 know, growing up in Romania, being kind of this, a bit of an outsider girl, you know, interested in

00:30:33.660 a lot of, you know, kooky things, I was kind of a militant atheist. And atheism at that point,

00:30:39.000 like New Atheism Online kind of started to get a bit social justice-y. I don't know if anyone

00:30:44.640 remembers Atheism Plus and things like that. So I kind of was like, oh, this is interesting. And

00:30:49.700 that was kind of when I was in college as well. So I was like, oh, okay, this is an up-and-coming

00:30:54.500 field. They were selling it to me hard. It sounded like it's going to be an easy exam.

00:30:58.680 I was mistaken. So, you know, a confluence of factors led me to have that as my undergraduate

00:31:05.460 graduate degree. Also, a lot of confusion in college. I had no idea what I was doing.

00:31:10.360 I got into economics uni and I was like, OK, cool. Now I'm in the West. I'm learning Western

00:31:15.120 science stuff. This is good. This is status enhancing. And it's going to be great for me

00:31:20.940 if I finish this uni. But yeah, I was completely rudderless. So, you know,

00:31:26.680 feminism came to embrace me in its warm, comforting embrace. 0.55

00:31:31.060 and you say you talk about you're a militant atheist where are you now on that because to me

00:31:37.740 a lot of what we have now in the west with our crises with our refusal to settle down

00:31:44.180 is tied to a lack of religion do you still are you still a militant atheist or have you gone

00:31:49.460 somewhere different with your thinking yeah i'm a lapsed militant atheist i definitely not militant

00:31:57.340 Definitely not an atheist. I wouldn't say I'm extremely religious, but I am kind of returned to the Catholicism that I rejected. It's a journey. I mean, after you've been marinating and, you know, the four horsemen for 10 years, it's, you know, you kind of have to, you have to kind of make yourself available to the metaphysical in a very forceful way.

00:32:22.820 because, you know, it's, you know, I've seen, I've kind of marinated in these arguments for a long

00:32:27.340 time. But I am much more connected to the world of the spiritual. And I think it's less so that

00:32:36.860 I'm, you know, I've read, you know, a book on Catholicism, and I was like, wow, I'm struck by

00:32:41.260 the truth of the Word of God. It was more that I've started to doubt rationality. I kind of

00:32:50.200 started to, because essentially what new atheism is, it kind of has a religious component. It's

00:32:56.320 essentially the cult of the homunculus, you know, the rational individual behind the eyes, 0.99

00:33:02.000 making all the decisions, you know, going ahead, doing, you know, kicking ass, taking names, 0.99

00:33:06.660 all that stuff. And I started to doubt that figure or that entity as being, you know, 0.92

00:33:12.420 as good as I thought it was, or at least being the measure of all things and enough to rule the

00:33:19.080 world through. And then, you know, I've kind of become a bit more interested in tradition, you

00:33:24.680 know, I've tried on to see what it feels like to not have to, I don't know, reinvent the wheel

00:33:31.600 every time, you know, got married, and now I'm going to have a baby, all sorts of, you know,

00:33:36.420 weird old school stuff that people used to do back in the day. And it feels really nice, I have to

00:33:41.960 say. So in a way, kind of, I'm just, I'm just, you know, riding blind through this whole, you know,

00:33:47.260 kind of almost traditional lifestyle, you know, pickling and making bread and doing all sorts of

00:33:53.060 old school stuff. And it's pretty nice. I don't know. I'm probably not doing it correctly or I'm

00:33:57.760 LARPing or whatever, but the closer I got to the lifestyle of my, I don't know, my ancestors in a

00:34:05.580 way, like my grandma used to live, the calmer and better I feel. So I don't know. I'm just

00:34:10.460 empirically testing this day by day. Well, that's one of the things I find quite interesting about

00:34:15.520 your personal story, because I think I would include myself in this. A lot of people go through

00:34:21.780 the sort of 20s, early 30s period of their life. And they're doing things that aren't making them

00:34:28.560 happy, but they don't necessarily know what they're supposed to be doing. And in the modern

00:34:33.300 society, they're being sold a whole bunch of narratives about what they should be doing and

00:34:37.240 what should make them happy. And quite a lot of those things they then find out don't make them

00:34:42.480 happy aren't contributing to to a better life or a better future but you had whether I don't know

00:34:49.100 is it the presence of mind or whatever it might be to go actually I'm not this is not good this

00:34:56.020 isn't working for me and maybe I should try my grandma's lifestyle like how did you how did you

00:35:02.620 know that you actually need to change up yeah I think of it was you know empirical experiment I

00:35:10.660 I realized at one point that I was completely incapable of making good decisions about what

00:35:15.320 would make me happy. It was just like almost completely the opposite of what I thought was

00:35:20.200 going to do it. It was good to go the other way. In my case, I just, I don't know, I was a bit

00:35:30.820 disillusioned by what I was seeing around me. And yeah, I said, okay, there's a reason for

00:35:39.120 tradition. And, you know, putting on my economist hat, I just realized that, you know, tradition is

00:35:45.880 a heuristic. It's, you know, it's what people do because it works, because it's been robust

00:35:51.020 throughout time. And, you know, things like, I don't know, just working with your hands or

00:35:56.900 having a garden or things like that, that are just, I don't know, sound, yeah, sound like what

00:36:02.000 old people do to my generation. They really, they, it's very hard to describe, but it's,

00:36:10.040 you know, they fulfill a need in me that is, it's hard to, you know, if I had to put all my needs in

00:36:18.100 a spreadsheet, I would not necessarily know how to describe it in words or, you know, to assign

00:36:22.120 weights or values to it. But it does something, you know, and, you know, also pregnancy. Like

00:36:29.140 when I was younger, I couldn't even conceive of the idea of having children. It seemed absolutely

00:36:34.500 clear to me that I would never have children. It's absurd. I don't like babies, whatever. But now,

00:36:40.140 you know, being going through this process, it's one of those things where you don't know what you

00:36:44.960 don't have until it's there. And yeah, I think that's probably the issue with people being able

00:36:50.920 to predict what's going to make them happy. You really don't know until it happens. And then,

00:36:56.180 You know, until until you make a commitment to something as well. I think that that's also an important dimension, because, like I said, a lot of modern living is about optionality. It's about increasing how many options you have. OK, what what can I consume today? What's going to be status enhancing for me? What's what what am I getting out of this?

00:37:15.720 But a lot of the interesting things in life, a lot of the things that are hard to put into words happen when you give up on options, when you commit to something, you know, when you commit to, you know, to doing the show, to having a family, to building something more long term with someone, to a friendship or something like that.

00:37:36.900 So I feel like we tend to optimize for the things that we feel, you know, at an expedient level are going to make us happy, which anything from sweets to, I don't know, impulsive sexual encounters are going to fit the bill.

00:37:53.980 But it's very hard to predict the longer term stuff.

00:37:58.440 And Alex, do you think a large part of this was brought on by COVID?

00:38:03.220 because I'll tell you from my experience so when I was doing comedy I was gigging six nights a week

00:38:08.780 I was gigging in you know the best clubs and you know it took me a long time to get to that point

00:38:14.340 I thought I was happy I thought this is what I wanted to do then overnight life literally stopped

00:38:20.600 like that and then you're left with me exactly and what you actually realize is that you've been

00:38:29.000 dedicating your life to a career but the reality is that isn't fulfilling it's nebulous it's

00:38:35.660 something it doesn't anchor you like a family you know a relationship etc etc was that part

00:38:41.460 of the process for you um i think i was definitely on the path before covid but it it has cemented

00:38:48.840 it much much more because um for example i mean i i was i was engaged before covid and we got

00:38:57.280 married during covid and one of these ridiculous ceremonies but uh um and we wanted to have a child

00:39:03.080 before that and i was kind of you know i was pickling before covid i have to say but uh it

00:39:09.160 did really um it strengthened my relationship a lot you know to be in a bunker with someone for

00:39:14.200 what is it now 14 months and to to to feel like you know you still kind of like them it's quite

00:39:20.060 cool um so there's a reassuring vote of confidence for your husband that you still kind of like him

00:39:25.080 Yeah, he's okay. He still kind of likes me, it seems. So yeah, we're tolerating each other well. And, you know, I've moved back to Romania, where we live in kind of a duplex thing with my mom's my neighbor. And, you know, I see her every day. And we've had quite a rocky relationship, but it's really improved things. And I don't know, it's kind of refocused me a little bit on the, as I said, the longer term stuff, the stuff that I have more skin in the game.

00:39:55.080 game and, um, you know, like family and, um, yeah. And in a way it's also given me a lot of

00:40:02.500 freedom, like, you know, the, the, the podcast and, you know, coming onto shows like this,

00:40:06.060 it's, it's, it's quite cool. I'd never thought I'd, uh, I'd be in the situation where, you know,

00:40:10.160 people would ask me to respond to questions. It's, it's fun. Um, so yeah, it's, it's been,

00:40:16.980 it's been a transformative time. Obviously it's, it's been, it's not been great in many other

00:40:21.980 respects, you know, it's, it's been rocky, but I think for me and a lot of people, I know so many

00:40:27.280 people who are pregnant now who are just, you know, decided to have COVID babies and, uh, um,

00:40:32.580 you know, the media says, Oh no, it's a, it's a, it's a sink, but I don't know. I've, I've, I don't

00:40:37.280 know. I'm going to believe my lying eyes to think that, you know, there's quite a few, a few COVID 0.98

00:40:41.280 babies popping up. So, um, yeah, I think, you know, it's been, it's been a mixed blessing for

00:40:45.960 sure do you think as well that and i don't know that because so you grew up in a catholic country

00:40:52.520 romania is catholic i my mother's orthodox oh sorry orthodox my apologies but my family's

00:40:58.780 catholic just yeah yeah family is catholic do you think part of the problem with we see in the west

00:41:04.480 is we don't talk about death death is a taboo subject we don't mention it we don't talk about

00:41:10.700 it and therefore we live these lives as if we believe that it's gonna go on forever

00:41:15.180 yeah yeah the the denial of death is really strong in the west um i think it's it's mostly

00:41:22.340 because you just you don't get confronted by death so much you know modern medicine you know

00:41:26.500 really did pretty good job with uh you know averting uh you know childhood mortality and

00:41:32.620 things like that which were rampant or deaths from you know infection and things like that so

00:41:38.000 you really don't get to see people dying as much uh you don't have as many family members as you

00:41:43.900 used to. So just like statistical chance of people dying around you is lower because there's just

00:41:48.280 fewer people. And I think it's also the way we, you know, because we've gotten rid of rituals,

00:41:55.880 you don't really make a big fuss when people die as much as well. You know, you put them in the

00:42:00.660 box, you have a day and that's it. You know, cremation also, you know, it's just kind of like

00:42:06.120 the self-cleaning oven of getting rid of people. It's, you know, it's not, we don't really integrate

00:42:13.120 this into our rituals. I mean, what rituals, you know, if you're not extremely religious,

00:42:17.420 you're not probably don't even have a ritual related to death. And the stories around death

00:42:22.860 are just, you know, typically, you see them on TV, and they're just statistics, or you hear that

00:42:27.500 someone died, oh, my God, that's incredible. Like, it's some cosmic occurrence, while, you know,

00:42:33.520 the truth is that people die every day, and, you know, you're gonna die. And it's, you know,

00:42:38.860 this, this memento mori aspect of, of, of life is not, uh, it's not highlighted at all. And I mean,

00:42:45.800 I can understand why it's unpleasant and we want a pleasant life with a pleasant, you know,

00:42:52.440 uh, things to watch and, uh, have a comfortable everything. Um, but I think it's, it's really

00:42:58.440 valuable for people to be confronted with death. And to be honest, you see this with COVID, like

00:43:03.120 the, how, how fast the narrative flipped from, I don't know, we need to protect the NHS to

00:43:08.760 we need to conquer death, which is just absurd. And I think maybe 100 years ago, people would

00:43:14.240 have known it's absurd. They'd be like, yeah, you know, this is not the way you mitigate this type

00:43:20.660 of event, because, you know, people will die. The idea that, you know, even if you save someone

00:43:26.240 who's, you know, what's the main cohort for COVID, you know, 80 years old, you save their last two

00:43:31.900 years. That's, I don't know. I don't know exactly what type of economy that is, but it's not,

00:43:36.480 it doesn't work like that and what's interesting there as well is we're really trying to save

00:43:41.980 we were trying to prevent deaths happening on television that's what's really happened right

00:43:48.100 because we've gone after protecting that cohort which is very reported and completely ignored and

00:43:54.720 there's quite a lot of evidence that our government hasn't even looked at the negative

00:43:58.040 impacts ahead of time of you know cancer heart disease all of that stuff because they're not

00:44:04.020 happening on television. And it's, it's that sort of showy aspect of it as well, isn't it?

00:44:09.960 Yeah, it's a showy aspect. And it's also what, you know, if you're a state, you're going to

00:44:14.600 optimize stuff that's visible to you as a state, you know, things that are legible,

00:44:19.460 and things that people care about in the moment that will lead to political pressure. So what

00:44:23.640 people care about in the moment is case rates, which is a random number, very much dependent on

00:44:29.600 how many, you know, yeah, tests are made. Death rates, that's interesting. And also what's very

00:44:35.920 important is anecdotal evidence in video form. That's what leads politics at the moment. If you

00:44:41.260 see someone, you know, a crying nurse or a desperate Italian physician or someone, a corpse

00:44:47.960 being swept up by strange, you know, apparatchiks in Wuhan, then yeah, that's going to be very

00:44:54.380 important in terms of how much heft it has and, you know, the direction of politics. So, yeah,

00:45:01.160 in a way, all the negative space behind this, like you said, cancer deaths are people who don't even

00:45:06.160 get treated or even diagnosed. It doesn't even exist because it's hard to narrativize. There are

00:45:13.800 no videos of cancer deaths. It's going to be very hard to get empathy out of that.

00:45:20.000 Let me ask you something just changing subject a little bit. We've got about 15 minutes left.

00:45:24.380 we're talking a lot of the things that have come as a result of what you might

00:45:28.840 describe as liberalism. Where have the forces of conservatism been? Because you would think,

00:45:36.060 you know, the dissolution of rituals, the endless freedom to do whatever you want,

00:45:42.420 all of those things historically have been held in check by people who are a little bit more

00:45:46.760 socially conservative who say, well, maybe you should, you know, have a relationship before you

00:45:51.340 have sex or maybe you know there's some things that you just do like if a grandma dies you go

00:45:56.640 to the funeral and you're supposed to have a funeral with the whole family there like all

00:46:00.680 of these things that are gradually evaporating like what have conservatives been doing how

00:46:05.460 you know what have they conserved um not much not much i mean the conservatives are what was it like

00:46:14.600 liberals you know progressives driving the speed limit that's essentially been the the uh the truth

00:46:20.300 about most conservative movements in the press.

00:46:22.480 I mean, obviously there are some conservative intellectuals

00:46:24.820 like Roger Scruton or people like that

00:46:27.180 who represent a different tradition,

00:46:28.960 but the mainstream of conservatism

00:46:30.440 has just, you know, tracked the liberals or labor

00:46:33.320 by maybe five or 10 years in terms of social values.

00:46:37.660 They're always on the back foot.

00:46:39.620 The thing is, in the kind of the secular liberal consensus,

00:46:43.300 you know, the egalitarian assumption,

00:46:46.340 there's not really that much of an argument to be made

00:46:48.980 that, you know, you shouldn't live and let live. You shouldn't expand freedoms. You shouldn't

00:46:53.500 expand, you know, welfare and things like that because you need a safety net. What they've been

00:46:58.200 really good at is making space for the market to, you know, to create, you know, to try to,

00:47:05.500 you know, reduce taxes. I'm all for it, you know, create more freedom in the market,

00:47:09.480 reduce regulation, all this type of stuff, which has been kind of the main kind of libertarian

00:47:14.180 wing of especially US conservatism. The UK has a different flavor, but that's kind of the main

00:47:21.560 idea is that, you know, you need to liberalize the markets. And that's, you know, through some

00:47:25.420 magic, through libertarian economics, things will fall into place and people will just, I don't know,

00:47:31.320 be socially conservative for one reason or another. But the problem with that is that,

00:47:38.400 for example, if you have completely globally liberalized markets, that's a bit of a solvent

00:47:42.820 to socially conservative ideas as well.

00:47:46.700 Like, for example, if you can't get a job in your hometown

00:47:51.080 because most of the jobs have been exported to China

00:47:54.900 because it's a cheaper market to produce in,

00:47:57.400 or the liberal market of labor demands that you leave the place

00:48:03.180 where you are to find the perfect job for you somewhere else,

00:48:06.540 or you go to college to get the skills that you need

00:48:10.020 to climb up in the hierarchy,

00:48:12.820 All this stuff is a solvent. You can't be socially conservative if you don't respect the fact that people may want to live in a certain locality, may want to, I don't know, have a more legacy style job or be home to take care of their children, because the liberal market wants people to produce.

00:48:35.440 So women being in the marketplace, working full time is a big aspect of libertarian economics as well. And, you know, people want to increase their labor force participation. So there's all of these things that are geared towards the market. 1.00

00:48:47.740 And if something's geared specifically towards increasing productivity, GDP, whatever type of measure you want to bring in, it's obviously not geared towards protecting the things that are not the market, which many times consists of these more traditional institutions, which, you know, kind of are left by the wayside.

00:49:06.800 So I think in a way, conservatives have, you know, with all good intentions, they've shot themselves in the foot on social issues with this strategy, because you need to have a priority. If social conservatism is your priority, well, then that is a value that's higher than the market. And it has never been higher than the market in the last, whatever, 50 years.

00:49:28.640 and isn't it the problem as well that you know all these values that you talk about which you

00:49:34.200 associate with social conservatism you can't monetize them and in a consumerist society

00:49:39.100 they therefore get ranked down in the pecking order yeah absolutely i mean what's what's the

00:49:45.640 value of taking care of a sick relative you know what's you know who's going to pay you for that

00:49:51.340 But if you can't get Jeff Bezos to pay you to do that as a nine to five, then does it even happen?

00:50:01.720 Did it even make a sound?

00:50:03.860 So, yeah, like you said, if it's not reflected in the main ladder of value that we have, then it doesn't exist.

00:50:11.880 It's valueless.

00:50:12.860 Therefore, it will disappear eventually.

00:50:14.520 So what's the answer, Alex?

00:50:16.100 what what's what's a political position that you think is uh is healthy as a response to all of

00:50:24.320 the things we've been talking about for the last 50 minutes yeah this this is a this is a tricky

00:50:29.220 one you know a lot of people have a lot of ideas of how to do this it's it's it's a hard one because

00:50:35.780 you know what we're living on in the west is kind of the the scaffolding of kind of this

00:50:40.560 Judeo-Christian value system. And, you know, it still works. It's got some holes, but, you know,

00:50:46.640 there are some core values that exist there, even though we pretend that they don't exist and we're

00:50:51.760 eroding them with every step. I don't think you can have a political system that doesn't have

00:50:57.660 a value system behind it. How aware that value system needs to grow out of, you know, there's

00:51:03.880 schools like, you know, Catholic Integralism, where you kind of have, you know, Catholicism

00:51:07.800 as that value system, which we used to have in Europe in this heyday. There were good things

00:51:13.580 about it, bad things about it. But at the same time, the idea that, okay, we're just going to

00:51:19.080 have a value of society and see how that goes. The problem with that is that it gets taken over

00:51:25.640 by people who have values. And woke is a very strong moral system. And it's essentially come

00:51:32.080 into a space that said, oh, you know, our value is that we have no values. Well, these guys have

00:51:37.600 values and they will they will come and trample yours to the ground because, you know, don't tread

00:51:42.440 on me. Cool. But how about this, you know, this millenarian cult that wants to to to, you know,

00:51:50.040 show you that, you know, you're you're fallen. And, you know, it has all the all the trappings

00:51:54.280 of an old school, hardcore cult. And it's it's it's offers a really powerful vision and offers

00:52:01.160 very powerful morality. And it will take your system over. So, you know, I don't exactly know

00:52:07.340 what type of morality we need to, you know, instantiate in our political system. But I

00:52:12.860 really don't think you can go without any. So I don't know, pure libertarianism, I think,

00:52:19.000 just collapses because the game theory of it doesn't work. Something will come in to fill

00:52:23.680 the void. And, you know, now we know in a way we're all talking here because something has

00:52:28.940 come in to fill the void and it's absolutely bonkers. So, yeah, I don't know. But also on

00:52:36.640 on a personal level, because I think, you know, politics is one level, but I think, you know,

00:52:41.340 people can live good lives in the current regime if they just kind of try to look at reality a

00:52:48.720 little bit closer, you know, like we were talking about, how do you want your life to be? You know,

00:52:53.440 maybe look a bit back at tradition. It can be helpful. There are certain things that you don't

00:52:59.600 know, maybe defer to other people or maybe to faith traditions or traditions in general

00:53:05.040 in some directions. So, yeah, I don't know, a bit more humility at the personal level can

00:53:11.420 be quite helpful. Let me just ask one follow-up. See, the thing with that thinking, and I am

00:53:18.180 increasingly convinced as well that the answer to this needs to start with the individual where

00:53:22.300 you live a life that actually works for you, as you seem to be doing, and, you know, pursuing a

00:53:29.040 purpose and family and community and contributing and you know challenging yourself and you know

00:53:35.360 cleaning your room and all that great stuff right but at the same time you know you you've got a

00:53:41.220 baby on the way and congratulations by the way that baby's going to be born seven years from

00:53:45.800 now that baby's going to go to school where they're going to be taught that they don't

00:53:50.180 have a gender and and all of that i don't think that's going to be taught in romania

00:53:53.800 i'm gonna be honest with you maybe it's catching up you'd be surprised yeah really right it's all

00:53:59.720 it's all downstream yeah so but that's that's why i've always thought about it that's why i've

00:54:04.700 always made a stand against it because it's going to spread right so you know you've lived your

00:54:09.800 perfect life you've taught your your child up until the age of seven you know this is right

00:54:13.900 this is wrong this is how you do this is how you do that this is how you think about this don't

00:54:17.780 have sex before then whatever all of that great stuff and then they go to school and they clash

00:54:23.320 with a completely different institutionalized culture, 0.99

00:54:25.820 which is, as you said yourself, bonkers.

00:54:28.620 Now, what do you do then?

00:54:31.300 Because it's no longer about you, it's about your family.

00:54:34.940 Yeah, yeah, believe me, I've, you know,

00:54:36.660 I've thought about this from every angle.

00:54:39.720 Sorry, I don't want to put you off having the baby, by the way.

00:54:42.480 It's a bit late.

00:54:43.000 It's a bit too late, yes, exactly.

00:54:46.020 You've made your bed, do you know what I mean?

00:54:49.020 Yeah, it's, yeah, I've definitely thought about this

00:54:52.200 and uh i've written about it as well i'm you know it's it's a it's it's a hard it's a hard

00:54:58.020 time especially because my my baby is going to be male and he's going to be white you're going 0.99

00:55:03.300 to bring a straight white male into the oh how dare you let's cancel you see actually we don't 0.99

00:55:09.440 know if it's going to be straight yet yeah exactly we don't even know if it's going to be male we

00:55:13.200 need to wait until it's 18th birthday that's when you do the gender reveal party exactly um 0.70

00:55:21.260 Yeah, it's, you know, it's a hard thing. The issue is, you know, no parent ever could, you know, completely control the worldview of their child. You know, my plan, my tactical toolkit is to provide a stable, calm, you know, good natured home, hopefully, if I don't, you know, change personalities overnight, if I have a baby.

00:55:46.780 But and and also kind of just just model a good life to the child.

00:55:52.260 I feel like a lot of people, especially in my generation, have had parents that, you know, came from quite disorganized environments.

00:56:00.100 You know, everyone talks about boomer parents and things like that, where, you know, children of divorce, you know, people who are really enthralled with the with this idea of the individual, you know, of, you know, constantly choosing choosing maybe to divorce your spouse or, you know, having affairs.

00:56:16.780 and then being, you know, quite a, quite a, I don't know, you know, trying to optimize

00:56:22.080 yourself quite a bit too much if you have, if you try to build a stable family.

00:56:25.900 So that's something I will try very hard not to do and to, you know, to provide a, yeah,

00:56:32.560 a good background for, for the child.

00:56:35.180 And yeah, he, he will have to deal with reality at one point.

00:56:38.660 And, um, in a way I feel you can't do much better by your child than to, you know, just

00:56:45.640 set, set, set the, um, put the seeds right and set, set the background for him to, to, to grow

00:56:53.480 and, and yeah, exist in a, in a stable way. Um, and also I'm going to let my husband teach him

00:57:00.580 about, you know, being, being a man and all the manly things, and I'm not going to try to

00:57:05.380 interfere with his skateboarding or whatever, whatever one should not do with boys. Um, so

00:57:12.100 So yeah, I think, you know, I, I, I'm kind of a pro natalist. I think, you know, it's, it's good to have children, you know, the world's, I didn't expect the world to be the way it is now. And I probably can't make any prediction about how it's going to be in five years. I think technology really is a bit of a kerosene that exists in these cultural spaces. And I feel like, you know, you can have things cascading one way or the other, quite suddenly.

00:57:40.960 So I'm just going to try to prepare him as much as I can, you know, without trying to, you know, fill his head with dogma or whatever.

00:57:50.900 But but also now trying to trying to strengthen him for, yeah, whatever might come.

00:57:56.820 Alex, well, those are very, very powerful words to end the interview on.

00:58:00.920 We always end our interviews with one final question, which is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society, but we really should be?

00:58:08.720 Yeah, I think one thing that people aren't talking about is migration and kind of migration of intelligence and kind of strip mining the world for very intelligent people, moving them to cities and also kind of putting them in this issue that I just laid out at the beginning of the show.

00:58:32.540 the idea that it's not a good place to have children. So essentially, you're creating these

00:58:39.900 fertility sinks in cities. Cities have always been fertility sinks, but now they've really

00:58:45.600 made a machine out of it. And you're taking some of the most brilliant people from around the world

00:58:50.740 and putting them there and not creating the conditions for this intelligence to perpetuate.

00:58:58.120 and I think you know intelligence is quite

00:59:00.620 heritable and it would be nice to have

00:59:02.600 some left in a few generations

00:59:04.220 and I think this might be

00:59:06.480 a bigger problem than people think

00:59:08.180 so I mean I haven't heard many people talk

00:59:10.500 about this I think it's

00:59:11.860 it's a tough one and I think you know

00:59:14.260 it's like kind of like antibiotic resistance

00:59:16.280 it's like oh you don't deal with it until you have

00:59:18.560 to so I think we'll see a little

00:59:20.500 bit of this on the horizon

00:59:22.360 maybe in 50 years 1.00

00:59:24.120 great a generation of stupid people 1.00

00:59:26.640 something that we can all look forward to yeah idiocracy is proving to be quite prophetic 1.00

00:59:31.240 it is uh alex great chatting to you uh thank you for coming on the show uh people can follow you

00:59:37.840 on twitter they can read your is it stop sub stack your uh mostly putting stuff out yeah that's that's

00:59:44.440 where my writing is um yeah and also my podcasts and yeah the subversive podcast yeah to make sure

00:59:51.260 you check it out and thank you for watching at home we will see you very soon with another

00:59:55.620 brilliant interview like this one and they always go out as well as our raw shows raw

01:00:01.160 raw shows raw shows at 7 p.m uk time well done mate thank you i nailed it take care and see you soon guys

TRIGGERnometry - May 26, 2021

Does Progress Make Us Miserable？ Alex Kaschuta

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