00:00:00.000Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.
00:00:09.100And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:14.040Our brilliant guest today is a writer, cultural commentator. She's the host of the Subversive
00:00:18.760Podcast. Alex Kashuta, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to
00:00:23.720be here. It's a great pleasure to have you on the show. We've been meaning to get you on for a long
00:00:27.880time. Tell us who you are, first of all, because you've got an interesting story, which I think
00:00:33.120informs a lot of the views that you have as well, which we're going to get to. So tell everybody,
00:00:37.620who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you through life
00:00:41.200to be here talking to us? Oh, yeah, a very long story, which involves an escape from the clutches
00:00:48.880of Eastern Europe, living in the West for about probably 12 years in total, and now back in the
00:00:57.280last year, living in the Corona bunker in my hometown in Transylvania. So it's been a journey,
00:01:03.700I have to say, but that's not the only thing. I mean, I've been a journalist. I've worked in tech.
00:01:10.440Now I work in finance related to tech. Yeah, it's quite many things have happened in the last 12
00:01:17.340years. And now, like you said, they've informed my view on a lot of things. Well, an interesting
00:01:22.260piece of your journey is you were part of, I imagine, the sort of brain drain from Eastern
00:01:27.640Europe, people who are young, bright, well-educated, et cetera, going over to the West.
00:01:33.620And you get here, you lived in London for five years, you get a job, you have a good job,
00:01:39.380you live in London. And increasingly, you find that the sort of promise of everything that the
00:01:44.660West offers, particularly the way that it's sort of configured at the moment, is not fulfilling
00:01:49.740your actual needs and wishes, and it's increasingly making you feel lonely and unhappy?
00:01:57.480Yes, I think that's kind of the pattern that I saw in myself, first and foremost,
00:02:02.580but also in a lot of people around me. There was this prescribed ladder that one must climb up,
00:02:09.720you know, first you get to the West, phew, you made it, maybe you go to school there,
00:02:13.700that's also the next step. And then you climb your way through, you know, whichever corporate
00:02:18.760ladder you find is closest to you or most accessible. The issue that I found was that
00:02:25.520it's quite an absorbing life, especially if you might have other plans, you know, like as a woman
00:02:33.460with a female life trajectory, I wanted family and children to be part of that. And it became
00:02:39.820a bit complex to do that in London. And it seemed to me that, you know, the ladder that was in front
00:02:46.840of me in terms of career was a little bit at odds with the ladder that I wanted. Because, you know,
00:02:53.500you can climb up and you get more responsibility and, you know, that becomes the major focus point
00:02:59.360of your life. And, you know, that's what you're paid for. That's what it should be. That's what
00:03:03.580you're responsible for. But in parallel to that, you know, I wanted to just have a more flexible
00:03:11.420existence and that's why i moved back home and now i work remotely which is you know quite a
00:03:17.060blessing and uh yeah i'm grateful to be able to do that and alex do you think a lot of these a lot
00:03:23.300of women feel the same way as you do in the west but they can't express it this feeling that you
00:03:29.180have um i i think i think a lot of them are are they struggle with dating they struggle with uh
00:03:37.620you know, figuring out things in time, because, you know, men and women typically have different
00:03:44.100kind of biological timelines that they have to deal with, which is something that it's not that
00:03:49.740isn't really spoken about very clearly in the mainstream. I can understand why people are trying
00:03:56.460to encourage women to, you know, be independent and climb, climb these ladders that are supposedly
00:04:01.300so extremely amazing that everyone needs to be on them. And I think that the issue is that
00:04:08.660a lot of them wake up a little bit, maybe late, and it's a bit complicated to make your bed when
00:04:16.660you're, let's say, 37. And then you think, oh, should I freeze my eggs? And I'm like, oh,
00:04:21.560maybe it's a bit late for that, to be honest. It's a complicated thing. And my issue was that
00:04:28.640You know, people didn't really prepare me or my friends or anyone for these decisions
00:04:33.640or these forks in the road that you have to eventually confront if you're a woman
00:04:38.980and if your plan isn't just to, you know, dedicate your whole existence to McKinsey
00:04:44.380or whoever, you know, wants to pay you lots of money.
00:04:48.880And Alex, why do you think it is that we don't talk about this?
00:04:52.420Why is this a taboo subject? Because the reality is it's a biological fact.
00:04:56.840if you want kids the best time to do it is the earlier the better really what part you know
00:05:02.700past the age of 20 whenever it is why are we not talking about it i think there's kind of an
00:05:11.120egalitarian assumption at the core of of um of our societies especially in the west that you know
00:05:17.900if you want it you can have it you can have it all you know you you want to increase your
00:05:22.820optionality. You want to be, you know, you want to be equal in status to men, obviously. And the
00:05:31.100main source of status that exists now in the West is, are these hierarchies, are, you know,
00:05:36.160the corporate hierarchy or academia or wherever. It's a place that will take more than nine to five
00:05:42.440to invest in if you want the status. You know, in more traditional societies, you know, older
00:05:49.120women had status through other means they were you know the the proverbial wise crone that gave
00:05:55.560advice or some form of matriarch or something we don't have those those levels anymore you have
00:06:02.180fortune 500 or you know pick pick your pick your industry uh or you have nothing or you know your
00:06:10.680your consumption options diminish if you don't make enough money to consume or continue i don't
00:06:16.420know going on trips or getting getting other status objects that are important um and i think
00:06:22.880that's a major tension and so you say that that's a major tension but ultimately by women not
00:06:29.960fulfilling this sort of i mean let's be fair like a biological urge surely they're denying number
00:06:37.300one a part of themselves but number two making themselves miserable in the long term yeah i think
00:06:43.320For 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.
00:06:50.720And when you're, for example, if you're a young professional in the big city, the whole city is constructed around single life.
00:06:59.420It'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.
00:07:10.620That's the life cell it's built around.
00:07:12.680And 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.
00:07:31.920And 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.
00:07:44.160And then maybe they make up reasons like, I don't know, the polar ice caps are melting or something.
00:07:48.940So, yeah, there are different reasons.
00:07:51.440But, you know, the reasons to have children are not as many as they used to be.
00:07:57.100And 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.
00:08:15.180And I find that very interesting watching some of the other interviews that you've done.
00:08:19.620There'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.
00:08:33.200And 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.
00:08:49.000So give us your thoughts on that sort of struggle between freedom and the constraints that sometimes human beings actually benefit from.
00:08:58.580Yeah, 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.
00:09:10.440Because 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.
00:09:20.640It was kind of self-control, being kind of cultivating oneself to the point where you become a master of yourself.
00:09:28.700That conception of freedom, we haven't cultivated at all.
00:09:32.140Freedom 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.
00:09:49.480And now I think we're at the point where a lot of the freedom that people ask for is freedom from the body.
00:09:55.240I think you see this a lot with, you know, kind of these transhumanists, you know, transgenderism.
00:09:59.380It'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.
00:10:08.100I'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.
00:10:17.300Like, 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.
00:10:42.800That's something that, you know, we don't really put that much value on anymore.
00:10:47.880But I think, you know, it's something that goes out the window.
00:10:50.800And I think with this concept of freedom, where it's just like, you know, leave me alone, it's also an impoverishment.
00:11:00.020Like, 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.
00:11:15.540You fulfill your expedient needs to get some money to, I don't know, buy purses or whatever is interesting to you at 18.
00:11:22.280And these things might have long-term consequences.
00:11:24.980The idea that because you're 18, you're now a sovereign individual ready to make choices.
00:11:30.840You're, you know, the rational human going out and, you know, kicking ass and taking names.
00:17:11.220But Alex, listen, we're obviously just joking around, but I find so much of what you're
00:17:16.020saying really interesting and refreshing.
00:17:17.840And let me ask you this, because I guess historically, this whole thing, I'm sure part
00:17:24.940of it is driven by technology, but part of it is also driven by a rebellion against over
00:17:30.700prescribed, hyper constraining social norms.
00:17:35.360You 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.
00:17:49.280yeah i think there's that's that's a component as well because you know humanity and and how
00:17:57.180how people evolved was always under some form of constraint um you know like people keep keep
00:18:03.540complaining about the fact that you know women have hypergamous instincts and you know what does
00:18:08.000that mean for people who are not familiar yeah it's the idea that you know women in the worst
00:18:12.880of cases it's framed as women being gold diggers but it's the idea that women tend to be attracted
00:18:18.120to men who are competent, have resources, you know, aka money, and, you know, have kind of
00:18:25.100status signals, have show power. They're high status men, and they kind of tend to date up
00:18:30.240as much as they can across these hierarchies to, you know, to get someone who can secure those
00:18:36.360resources for herself. But mostly the framing is that it's for her offspring, and that, you know,
00:18:42.140increases chances for survival. That's kind of the evo-psych explanation for it.
00:18:46.520And 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.
00:18:59.740I 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.
00:19:10.900And essentially these things co-evolved.
00:19:13.020You 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.
00:19:24.700And 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.
00:19:34.220And 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.
00:19:52.900So 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.
00:20:15.360So it's interesting to think about why it's happening.
00:20:20.420Obviously, 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.
00:20:32.160It's definitely very novel in the history of humanity overall.
00:20:36.980Obviously, I'm sure there are some tribes in the Amazon.
00:20:39.260People can come in and say, oh, no, no, they had a strange, super sexual matriarchy.
00:20:44.140but it's a fraction of one percent of civilizations most had some form of control
00:20:49.300and Alex we're talking about this and saying you know that women have greater choice than ever
00:20:54.480before and women but in many ways this society and this culture it's more geared and designed
00:21:02.560for men than it is for women because men have abundance of choice they don't have to commit
00:21:07.920you have access to an app which can present present you with literally thousands of thousands
00:21:12.200of options why do you have to commit to one woman yeah it's you know it's they they call this the
00:21:19.600the apex fallacy you know people say oh men men they have they have all the choices it's not all
00:21:25.300men 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
00:21:30.140win out and and you know almost all games um and yeah i think it's um you know it's kind of saying
00:21:37.220saying that men have a lot of options is, you know,
00:21:39.940kind of framing it a little bit, you know,
00:26:49.220So you can you can use the apps, but you should you know, you should kind of understand what you're getting yourself into.
00:26:56.880And, 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.
00:27:09.540and that it's probably wise for them to set constraints on themselves
00:27:30.440Because feminism, at the start, very, very positive.
00:27:35.480But where we are now, you can be anything, you can do anything you want,
00:27:38.860blah blah blah blah blah and we are where we are now yeah i think you know feminism is third
00:27:46.720fourth way feminism is essentially an outgrowth out of that of that same idea of okay you are the
00:27:52.380you know homunculus behind the eyes you know pulling the strings being super rational you
00:27:57.300know making decisions you're you're not tied to your biology you shouldn't be tied by uh by
00:28:03.740you know, tradition or any sort of constraint. I understand the impulse, you know, it's the idea
00:28:10.980that you want to be free. That's great. But as I said, you know, you've thrown out the baby with
00:28:17.020the bathwater here, and it was a pretty precious baby. And it was also a baby that coordinated
00:28:22.320everyone. And, you know, you can see a lot of consequences of this move towards kind of
00:28:31.400hundred percent individualism and the idea that, you know, we don't really see marriage rates are
00:28:37.300plummeting, fertility rates are plummeting across the West or across, you know, kind of places that
00:28:42.760adopted this vision of the individual. So to me, feminism is just one flavor of this, the same
00:28:48.960philosophy that says, okay, you know, the body, society, whatever is outside of this almost
00:28:56.300metaphysical nucleus that makes the decisions is, you know, is an imposition. I don't need,
00:29:04.020you can dispense with that. And you actually studied gender studies?
00:29:09.000Yeah, I have a degree, my undergrad was in economics, but it was in diversity management,
00:29:15.500gender and diversity management. So it's kind of gender studies in a business suit, you know,
00:29:20.500it had a bit of a, you know, economics flair to it. But it was essentially just nonstop Judith
00:29:27.080Butler and a lot of scientific papers. And yeah, it was, it was quite a hard exam to pass. I was
00:29:34.220very surprised because I thought it was going to be something easy because it sounded a bit fluffy.
00:29:38.740No, they really wanted to keep up the appearance that this is science. And they essentially made
00:29:43.320us learn, you know, social science papers by heart and then know, you know, everything from
00:29:48.420the abstract to the coda to who participated, study design and all sorts of things. Of course,
00:29:55.040after the replication crisis, probably about 97% of those papers that I learned for college were,
00:30:01.220yeah, were scrapped. But it's, you know, that's what they're trying to do, to sell the science
00:30:08.500in it. Were you quite bought into it at the time? You weren't there to sort of study with
00:30:13.400the critical eye, you thought this was going to be valuable to you? Yeah, I thought it was an
00:30:19.740interesting field. I was kind of interested in feminism since I was a teenager. Because, you
00:30:25.880know, growing up in Romania, being kind of this, a bit of an outsider girl, you know, interested in
00:30:33.660a lot of, you know, kooky things, I was kind of a militant atheist. And atheism at that point,
00:30:39.000like New Atheism Online kind of started to get a bit social justice-y. I don't know if anyone
00:30:44.640remembers Atheism Plus and things like that. So I kind of was like, oh, this is interesting. And
00:30:49.700that was kind of when I was in college as well. So I was like, oh, okay, this is an up-and-coming
00:30:54.500field. They were selling it to me hard. It sounded like it's going to be an easy exam.
00:30:58.680I was mistaken. So, you know, a confluence of factors led me to have that as my undergraduate
00:31:05.460graduate degree. Also, a lot of confusion in college. I had no idea what I was doing.
00:31:10.360I got into economics uni and I was like, OK, cool. Now I'm in the West. I'm learning Western
00:31:15.120science stuff. This is good. This is status enhancing. And it's going to be great for me
00:31:20.940if I finish this uni. But yeah, I was completely rudderless. So, you know,
00:31:26.680feminism came to embrace me in its warm, comforting embrace.
00:31:31.060and you say you talk about you're a militant atheist where are you now on that because to me
00:31:37.740a lot of what we have now in the west with our crises with our refusal to settle down
00:31:44.180is tied to a lack of religion do you still are you still a militant atheist or have you gone
00:31:49.460somewhere different with your thinking yeah i'm a lapsed militant atheist i definitely not militant
00:31:57.340Definitely 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.
00:32:22.820because, you know, it's, you know, I've seen, I've kind of marinated in these arguments for a long
00:32:27.340time. But I am much more connected to the world of the spiritual. And I think it's less so that
00:32:36.860I'm, you know, I've read, you know, a book on Catholicism, and I was like, wow, I'm struck by
00:32:41.260the truth of the Word of God. It was more that I've started to doubt rationality. I kind of
00:32:50.200started to, because essentially what new atheism is, it kind of has a religious component. It's
00:32:56.320essentially the cult of the homunculus, you know, the rational individual behind the eyes,
00:33:02.000making all the decisions, you know, going ahead, doing, you know, kicking ass, taking names,
00:33:06.660all that stuff. And I started to doubt that figure or that entity as being, you know,
00:33:12.420as good as I thought it was, or at least being the measure of all things and enough to rule the
00:33:19.080world through. And then, you know, I've kind of become a bit more interested in tradition, you
00:33:24.680know, I've tried on to see what it feels like to not have to, I don't know, reinvent the wheel
00:33:31.600every time, you know, got married, and now I'm going to have a baby, all sorts of, you know,
00:33:36.420weird old school stuff that people used to do back in the day. And it feels really nice, I have to
00:33:41.960say. So in a way, kind of, I'm just, I'm just, you know, riding blind through this whole, you know,
00:33:47.260kind of almost traditional lifestyle, you know, pickling and making bread and doing all sorts of
00:33:53.060old school stuff. And it's pretty nice. I don't know. I'm probably not doing it correctly or I'm
00:33:57.760LARPing or whatever, but the closer I got to the lifestyle of my, I don't know, my ancestors in a
00:34:05.580way, like my grandma used to live, the calmer and better I feel. So I don't know. I'm just
00:34:10.460empirically testing this day by day. Well, that's one of the things I find quite interesting about
00:34:15.520your personal story, because I think I would include myself in this. A lot of people go through
00:34:21.780the sort of 20s, early 30s period of their life. And they're doing things that aren't making them
00:34:28.560happy, but they don't necessarily know what they're supposed to be doing. And in the modern
00:34:33.300society, they're being sold a whole bunch of narratives about what they should be doing and
00:34:37.240what should make them happy. And quite a lot of those things they then find out don't make them
00:34:42.480happy aren't contributing to to a better life or a better future but you had whether I don't know
00:34:49.100is it the presence of mind or whatever it might be to go actually I'm not this is not good this
00:34:56.020isn't working for me and maybe I should try my grandma's lifestyle like how did you how did you
00:35:02.620know that you actually need to change up yeah I think of it was you know empirical experiment I
00:35:10.660I realized at one point that I was completely incapable of making good decisions about what
00:35:15.320would make me happy. It was just like almost completely the opposite of what I thought was
00:35:20.200going to do it. It was good to go the other way. In my case, I just, I don't know, I was a bit
00:35:30.820disillusioned by what I was seeing around me. And yeah, I said, okay, there's a reason for
00:35:39.120tradition. And, you know, putting on my economist hat, I just realized that, you know, tradition is
00:35:45.880a heuristic. It's, you know, it's what people do because it works, because it's been robust
00:35:51.020throughout time. And, you know, things like, I don't know, just working with your hands or
00:35:56.900having a garden or things like that, that are just, I don't know, sound, yeah, sound like what
00:36:02.000old people do to my generation. They really, they, it's very hard to describe, but it's,
00:36:10.040you know, they fulfill a need in me that is, it's hard to, you know, if I had to put all my needs in
00:36:18.100a spreadsheet, I would not necessarily know how to describe it in words or, you know, to assign
00:36:22.120weights or values to it. But it does something, you know, and, you know, also pregnancy. Like
00:36:29.140when I was younger, I couldn't even conceive of the idea of having children. It seemed absolutely
00:36:34.500clear to me that I would never have children. It's absurd. I don't like babies, whatever. But now,
00:36:40.140you know, being going through this process, it's one of those things where you don't know what you
00:36:44.960don't have until it's there. And yeah, I think that's probably the issue with people being able
00:36:50.920to predict what's going to make them happy. You really don't know until it happens. And then,
00:36:56.180You 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?
00:37:15.720But 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.
00:37:36.900So 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.
00:37:53.980But it's very hard to predict the longer term stuff.
00:37:58.440And Alex, do you think a large part of this was brought on by COVID?
00:38:03.220because I'll tell you from my experience so when I was doing comedy I was gigging six nights a week
00:38:08.780I was gigging in you know the best clubs and you know it took me a long time to get to that point
00:38:14.340I thought I was happy I thought this is what I wanted to do then overnight life literally stopped
00:38:20.600like that and then you're left with me exactly and what you actually realize is that you've been
00:38:29.000dedicating your life to a career but the reality is that isn't fulfilling it's nebulous it's
00:38:35.660something it doesn't anchor you like a family you know a relationship etc etc was that part
00:38:41.460of the process for you um i think i was definitely on the path before covid but it it has cemented
00:38:48.840it much much more because um for example i mean i i was i was engaged before covid and we got
00:38:57.280married during covid and one of these ridiculous ceremonies but uh um and we wanted to have a child
00:39:03.080before that and i was kind of you know i was pickling before covid i have to say but uh it
00:39:09.160did really um it strengthened my relationship a lot you know to be in a bunker with someone for
00:39:14.200what is it now 14 months and to to to feel like you know you still kind of like them it's quite
00:39:20.060cool um so there's a reassuring vote of confidence for your husband that you still kind of like him
00:39:25.080Yeah, 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.
00:39:55.080game and, um, you know, like family and, um, yeah. And in a way it's also given me a lot of
00:40:02.500freedom, like, you know, the, the, the podcast and, you know, coming onto shows like this,
00:40:06.060it's, it's, it's quite cool. I'd never thought I'd, uh, I'd be in the situation where, you know,
00:40:10.160people would ask me to respond to questions. It's, it's fun. Um, so yeah, it's, it's been,
00:40:16.980it's been a transformative time. Obviously it's, it's been, it's not been great in many other
00:40:21.980respects, you know, it's, it's been rocky, but I think for me and a lot of people, I know so many
00:40:27.280people who are pregnant now who are just, you know, decided to have COVID babies and, uh, um,
00:40:32.580you 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
00:40:37.280know. I'm going to believe my lying eyes to think that, you know, there's quite a few, a few COVID
00:40:41.280babies popping up. So, um, yeah, I think, you know, it's been, it's been a mixed blessing for
00:40:45.960sure do you think as well that and i don't know that because so you grew up in a catholic country
00:40:52.520romania is catholic i my mother's orthodox oh sorry orthodox my apologies but my family's
00:40:58.780catholic just yeah yeah family is catholic do you think part of the problem with we see in the west
00:41:04.480is we don't talk about death death is a taboo subject we don't mention it we don't talk about
00:41:10.700it and therefore we live these lives as if we believe that it's gonna go on forever
00:41:15.180yeah yeah the the denial of death is really strong in the west um i think it's it's mostly
00:41:22.340because you just you don't get confronted by death so much you know modern medicine you know
00:41:26.500really did pretty good job with uh you know averting uh you know childhood mortality and
00:41:32.620things like that which were rampant or deaths from you know infection and things like that so
00:41:38.000you really don't get to see people dying as much uh you don't have as many family members as you
00:41:43.900used to. So just like statistical chance of people dying around you is lower because there's just
00:41:48.280fewer people. And I think it's also the way we, you know, because we've gotten rid of rituals,
00:41:55.880you don't really make a big fuss when people die as much as well. You know, you put them in the
00:42:00.660box, you have a day and that's it. You know, cremation also, you know, it's just kind of like
00:42:06.120the self-cleaning oven of getting rid of people. It's, you know, it's not, we don't really integrate
00:42:13.120this into our rituals. I mean, what rituals, you know, if you're not extremely religious,
00:42:17.420you're not probably don't even have a ritual related to death. And the stories around death
00:42:22.860are just, you know, typically, you see them on TV, and they're just statistics, or you hear that
00:42:27.500someone died, oh, my God, that's incredible. Like, it's some cosmic occurrence, while, you know,
00:42:33.520the truth is that people die every day, and, you know, you're gonna die. And it's, you know,
00:42:38.860this, this memento mori aspect of, of, of life is not, uh, it's not highlighted at all. And I mean,
00:42:45.800I can understand why it's unpleasant and we want a pleasant life with a pleasant, you know,
00:42:52.440uh, things to watch and, uh, have a comfortable everything. Um, but I think it's, it's really
00:42:58.440valuable for people to be confronted with death. And to be honest, you see this with COVID, like
00:43:03.120the, how, how fast the narrative flipped from, I don't know, we need to protect the NHS to
00:43:08.760we need to conquer death, which is just absurd. And I think maybe 100 years ago, people would
00:43:14.240have known it's absurd. They'd be like, yeah, you know, this is not the way you mitigate this type
00:43:20.660of event, because, you know, people will die. The idea that, you know, even if you save someone
00:43:26.240who's, you know, what's the main cohort for COVID, you know, 80 years old, you save their last two
00:43:31.900years. That's, I don't know. I don't know exactly what type of economy that is, but it's not,
00:43:36.480it doesn't work like that and what's interesting there as well is we're really trying to save
00:43:41.980we were trying to prevent deaths happening on television that's what's really happened right
00:43:48.100because we've gone after protecting that cohort which is very reported and completely ignored and
00:43:54.720there's quite a lot of evidence that our government hasn't even looked at the negative
00:43:58.040impacts ahead of time of you know cancer heart disease all of that stuff because they're not
00:44:04.020happening on television. And it's, it's that sort of showy aspect of it as well, isn't it?
00:44:09.960Yeah, it's a showy aspect. And it's also what, you know, if you're a state, you're going to
00:44:14.600optimize stuff that's visible to you as a state, you know, things that are legible,
00:44:19.460and things that people care about in the moment that will lead to political pressure. So what
00:44:23.640people care about in the moment is case rates, which is a random number, very much dependent on
00:44:29.600how many, you know, yeah, tests are made. Death rates, that's interesting. And also what's very
00:44:35.920important is anecdotal evidence in video form. That's what leads politics at the moment. If you
00:44:41.260see someone, you know, a crying nurse or a desperate Italian physician or someone, a corpse
00:44:47.960being swept up by strange, you know, apparatchiks in Wuhan, then yeah, that's going to be very
00:44:54.380important in terms of how much heft it has and, you know, the direction of politics. So, yeah,
00:45:01.160in a way, all the negative space behind this, like you said, cancer deaths are people who don't even
00:45:06.160get treated or even diagnosed. It doesn't even exist because it's hard to narrativize. There are
00:45:13.800no videos of cancer deaths. It's going to be very hard to get empathy out of that.
00:45:20.000Let me ask you something just changing subject a little bit. We've got about 15 minutes left.
00:45:24.380we're talking a lot of the things that have come as a result of what you might
00:45:28.840describe as liberalism. Where have the forces of conservatism been? Because you would think,
00:45:36.060you know, the dissolution of rituals, the endless freedom to do whatever you want,
00:45:42.420all of those things historically have been held in check by people who are a little bit more
00:45:46.760socially conservative who say, well, maybe you should, you know, have a relationship before you
00:45:51.340have sex or maybe you know there's some things that you just do like if a grandma dies you go
00:45:56.640to the funeral and you're supposed to have a funeral with the whole family there like all
00:46:00.680of these things that are gradually evaporating like what have conservatives been doing how
00:46:05.460you know what have they conserved um not much not much i mean the conservatives are what was it like
00:46:14.600liberals you know progressives driving the speed limit that's essentially been the the uh the truth
00:46:20.300about most conservative movements in the press.
00:46:22.480I mean, obviously there are some conservative intellectuals
00:46:24.820like Roger Scruton or people like that
00:48:12.820All 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.
00:48:35.440So 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.
00:48:47.740And 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.
00:49:06.800So 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.
00:49:28.640and isn't it the problem as well that you know all these values that you talk about which you
00:49:34.200associate with social conservatism you can't monetize them and in a consumerist society
00:49:39.100they therefore get ranked down in the pecking order yeah absolutely i mean what's what's the
00:49:45.640value of taking care of a sick relative you know what's you know who's going to pay you for that
00:49:51.340But if you can't get Jeff Bezos to pay you to do that as a nine to five, then does it even happen?
00:54:46.020You've made your bed, do you know what I mean?
00:54:49.020Yeah, it's, yeah, I've definitely thought about this
00:54:52.200and 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
00:54:58.020time especially because my my baby is going to be male and he's going to be white you're going
00:55:03.300to bring a straight white male into the oh how dare you let's cancel you see actually we don't
00:55:09.440know if it's going to be straight yet yeah exactly we don't even know if it's going to be male we
00:55:13.200need to wait until it's 18th birthday that's when you do the gender reveal party exactly um
00:55:21.260Yeah, 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.
00:55:46.780But and and also kind of just just model a good life to the child.
00:55:52.260I feel like a lot of people, especially in my generation, have had parents that, you know, came from quite disorganized environments.
00:56:00.100You 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.
00:56:16.780and then being, you know, quite a, quite a, I don't know, you know, trying to optimize
00:56:22.080yourself quite a bit too much if you have, if you try to build a stable family.
00:56:25.900So that's something I will try very hard not to do and to, you know, to provide a, yeah,
00:56:35.180And yeah, he, he will have to deal with reality at one point.
00:56:38.660And, um, in a way I feel you can't do much better by your child than to, you know, just
00:56:45.640set, set, set the, um, put the seeds right and set, set the background for him to, to, to grow
00:56:53.480and, and yeah, exist in a, in a stable way. Um, and also I'm going to let my husband teach him
00:57:00.580about, you know, being, being a man and all the manly things, and I'm not going to try to
00:57:05.380interfere with his skateboarding or whatever, whatever one should not do with boys. Um, so
00:57:12.100So 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.
00:57:40.960So 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.
00:57:50.900But but also now trying to trying to strengthen him for, yeah, whatever might come.
00:57:56.820Alex, well, those are very, very powerful words to end the interview on.
00:58:00.920We 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?
00:58:08.720Yeah, 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.
00:58:32.540the idea that it's not a good place to have children. So essentially, you're creating these
00:58:39.900fertility sinks in cities. Cities have always been fertility sinks, but now they've really
00:58:45.600made a machine out of it. And you're taking some of the most brilliant people from around the world
00:58:50.740and putting them there and not creating the conditions for this intelligence to perpetuate.
00:58:58.120and I think you know intelligence is quite
00:59:00.620heritable and it would be nice to have