Why I Fear the Future - Konstantin Kisin
Episode Stats
Words per minute
160.1595
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Toxicity
3
sentences flagged
Hate speech
3
sentences flagged
Summary
In New York, Frances and I were invited to see a musical about the artist Tamara de Lempicka. The wife of a Polish noble, flees the Russian Revolution and ends up in Paris. With her husband struggling to adjust to his loss of status and wealth, the family lives in poverty until Lem Picka gradually finds her feet and eventually thrives in the rapidly changing world of the 1920s.
Transcript
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In New York, Frances and I were invited to see a musical about the artist Tamara de Lempicka.
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Lempicka, the wife of a Polish noble, flees the Russian Revolution and ends up in Paris.
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With her husband struggling to adjust to his loss of status and wealth,
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the family lives in poverty until Lempicka is discovered as an artist.
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She gradually finds her feet and eventually thrives in the rapidly changing world of the 1920s.
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Convinced that the unimaginable horrors of the past can never be repeated,
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Parisians cope with the trauma of World War I by what we would now call living their best lives.
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Lempicka thrives in this capital of hedonism, maintaining her marriage while also falling in love with a female prostitute
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Celebrated as a female artist who finally gives voice to the power of the feminine through her work,
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This entire period is depicted in the musical as a time in which the boring old ways are abandoned
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and favour exploring variety, or as we would now call it, diversity.
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the proprietor of a lavish lesbian and transgender bar that Lempicka frequents,
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opens it with the words fraternité, égalité, lesbianité.
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Parisian socialites do not just accept these minority sexual practices,
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they celebrate them as the antidote to the staleness of the old order.
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An order which put unity and social cohesion above the unlimited freedom of the individual.
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Until I found myself sitting in the audience of Lempicka,
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I never really understood why Jordan Peterson spent so much time
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Regular readers of my substack will remember that in the exchange I hosted there
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between James Orr and Stephen Hicks about conservatism versus liberalism,
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James Orr explained that the primary concern of conservatives is the preservation of order.
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We also know from evolutionary psychologists like our former guest Diana Fleischmann
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that societies which experience an increase in disease become more conservative with a small c.
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A statement which hardly needs explaining to anyone who was alive during a COVID pandemic.
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Put simply, as we ratchet up the amount of chaos, order rises to the top of people's concerns.
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As Lempicka's story unravels, fascists and communists fight over the future of Europe,
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replacing the joys of chaos with the enforcement of order.
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Instead of celebrating variety and diversity, they detest and punish it.
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Instead of embracing difference, they suppress it.
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Instead of worshipping the strong, independent woman,
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they produce grandiose masculine art in architecture
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and put the woman back in her rightful place of wife and mother.
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They have no tolerance for individual differences.
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On the contrary, they believe that a nation can only function
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if people submit themselves to the good of society.
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Anyone who refuses must naturally be eliminated.
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People on the left frequently accuse me of being a conservative.
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Conservatives, on the other hand, claim me as one of their own
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and are inevitably disappointed when they discover that I am not.
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First, I am not averse to chaos. In fact, I like it.
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I am in favour of decriminalising cannabis and psychedelics which I have never taken,
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precisely because they allow us to transcend the rigidity of our thinking.
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I am not threatened by the existence of sexual minorities.
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I do not believe that the institution of marriage is materially undermined
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that is not explicitly based on merit and competence and them alone.
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What I fear is a lack of order and an excess of chaos.
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Like a bird with one wing, a society that fails to strike a balance
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between the forces of empathy on the one hand and pragmatism on the other
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Western culture is increasingly based on the idea that one of its wings is good
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Whichever wing you personally favour is irrelevant.
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If we do not work together, we will not survive what is coming.
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