TRIGGERnometry - Was JD Vance Right About Childless Cat Ladies？ - Konstantin Kisin

00:00:00.000 Was J.D. Vance right about childless cat ladies?

00:00:07.100 Over the last couple of weeks, Donald Trump's running mate and potential vice president, J.D. Vance,

00:00:12.880 has come under heavy criticism for remarks he made in 2021.

00:00:17.280 Speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Vance claimed that we are effectively run in this country

00:00:22.020 by a bunch of childless cat ladies, before adding, 1.00

00:00:25.080 if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is

00:00:30.260 controlled by people without children. Understandably, the resurfacing of these 0.63

00:00:34.280 comments has led to uproar in the media and fierce debate online. I say understandably because his

00:00:40.160 comments were crude and lacked the nuance required to properly discuss such contentious and, in my

00:00:45.240 view, important issues. Why they are contentious is obvious, but why are they important? For a start,

00:00:50.880 the Western world is going through a population crisis. We are not having enough children. And

00:00:55.920 crucially, it's not that mothers are having fewer children, it's that fewer women are becoming 1.00

00:01:01.080 mothers in the first place. If current trends continue, the childless population will keep 1.00

00:01:05.920 growing. What is more, the rapid polarization of Anglosphere politics in the last decade

00:01:10.980 has brought into sharp relief the significant differences in the voting preferences of various

00:01:16.240 ethnic, marital, and sex-based groups. In the course of the usual back and forth about this online,

00:01:21.360 I replied to a tweet by my friend and former trigonometry guest Sydney Watson in which she

00:01:26.520 wondered why people focus on childless women so much, but nobody seems to care about childless men.

00:01:31.840 I attempted to explain that the focus on childless women specifically, while appearing unfair,

00:01:36.800 has an understandable origin. The main thrust of my argument was that we would not pretend that

00:01:41.500 becoming a parent has no impact on your worldview, and therefore by definition, not becoming a parent

00:01:47.300 also affects how you think about the world. Especially if you're a childless woman past 0.99

00:01:52.560 childbearing age, for whom that childlessness is both permanent and irreversible. I don't want to

00:01:57.860 rehash that conversation here. Rather, it was a sarcastic reply to that exchange that caught my

00:02:02.920 attention and sparked the thought process that led to this video. As if parents are enlightened when it

00:02:08.400 comes to politics, said the reply. This really got me thinking. Enlightened is a poor character of the

00:02:13.800 parental worldview. Parenthood does not raise your IQ. But what it does do is put you into full

00:02:19.360 connection with the entire lineage of humanity. It makes you understand that you're merely the

00:02:24.040 intermediary step between the people who came before you and the people who are coming after you.

00:02:28.820 It makes you realize that you're not even remotely the center of the universe. It forces you to try so much

00:02:34.500 harder to be the very best possible version of yourself every single day, because you cannot bear

00:02:39.520 to see the price you will pay for failing. And the fact that despite doing your very best every single

00:02:44.780 day, you fail regularly anyway, humbles you. Any illusion you may have had about your own perfection

00:02:49.720 vanishes rapidly. It also makes you more empathetic in a very particular kind of way. When you see the face of

00:02:55.740 your newborn child for the first time, it imprints in your consciousness the fact that everyone you have 0.99

00:03:00.860 ever met, and everyone you will ever meet, whether they're the worst scumbag in the world or the purest 0.96

00:03:05.880 angel, was once an innocent little bundle too. It makes you more risk conscious. I don't necessarily

00:03:11.500 mean risk averse. You may be one of those parents who really wants to let their kids make their own

00:03:15.920 mistakes. But you are more aware of risk and more aware of vulnerability. Of your child's, of your own,

00:03:22.240 yes, but also of all other things too. Does this make you a better person? After all, this is the

00:03:28.000 implication, right? If you claim there's a difference between people with children and people without, that

00:03:33.420 means automatically that you're saying people with children are morally better. I don't know if it makes you

00:03:38.540 morally better, but does it make you better at some things? It would be absurd to claim it doesn't. We evolved

00:03:45.180 for millions of years in various life forms to ensure that parents were pretty damn good at getting their

00:03:50.560 children to adulthood. Those who weren't died out. So when it comes to politics, I don't know that calling single

00:03:56.920 women childless cat ladies is a winning strategy, but we ought not pretend that becoming a parent is an

00:04:02.700 entirely neutral event when it comes to how you see the world. The characteristics of childless people 0.99

00:04:07.640 are optimized for the first few decades of life. Having fun, meeting new people, work hard, play hard,

00:04:13.560 finding your way in life, exploring new experiences, traveling, personal achievement, ambition, experimentation,

00:04:19.260 etc. Your planning horizon is short because almost inevitably it is limited to the duration of your own

00:04:24.740 life. These are all great qualities and incredibly adaptive for the evolutionary objective of young

00:04:29.700 adulthood, finding a mate to produce offspring. But once someone becomes a parent, other things come

00:04:34.940 center stage. Responsibility, duty, pragmatism, stability. Your job is no longer to find a mate and

00:04:41.540 produce offspring. You're now trying to give your offspring the best possible chance of reaching

00:04:45.960 adulthood and reproducing themselves. These are different postures towards the world. Is one better than the

00:04:51.980 other for some things? Yes. And is the other better than the former for some other things? Yes. Given

00:04:58.880 the choice and all other things being equal, which of those two value sets would I personally want in

00:05:04.300 the leader of the most powerful country in the world? Undoubtedly a parent. I urge you to rewind and

00:05:09.640 listen to what I just said. I didn't say a parent is better than non-parent. I said all other things

00:05:15.680 being equal. You don't get my vote because you're a parent. In the same way, you don't get my vote for any

00:05:21.060 other single reason. But is being a parent a plus in my book? Absolutely. And it shouldn't be

00:05:26.960 controversial to say so. If you enjoyed these videos, please remember they're available on my

00:05:32.240 sub stack days, weeks, or sometimes even months ahead of time. So click the link in the description,

00:05:37.540 head over there now and subscribe.

TRIGGERnometry - August 16, 2024

Was JD Vance Right About Childless Cat Ladies？ - Konstantin Kisin

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