00:08:06.340City of Calgary has posted the three green line options
00:08:10.100that will trundle through the Beltline.
00:08:14.540There's a young Edmonton dance troupe called Acro Canine Crew.
00:08:20.560They were on America's Got Talent last night, did very well,
00:08:24.820and they'll find out tonight if they make the semifinals.
00:08:28.380So we joined Premier Smith in wishing them good luck.
00:08:33.160The son of a former vice president of Iran living in Edmonton
00:08:39.240and got $2 million in Canadian military contracts.
00:08:43.580that's got to you know it's got to cause some concern i would think you would think i mean
00:08:48.140again i i was already been online about that you know we've got enough of a trade war going on
00:08:52.620already they haven't even moved into the security risk aspect of it when we see stuff like this i
00:08:56.540hate to say it but the orange man is going to have a point exactly he will uh we've got video
00:09:01.900of a woman fast asleep as she's zipping down highway one in her tesla telza tesla tesla tesla
00:09:09.660So the Ontario government has started a new teacher's portal.
00:09:14.820They gave each teacher $750 to go to Staples and get stuff for their classroom.
00:09:21.840But teachers are finding that in this portal, things like notebooks and pencils are four times the price that they are if you just go to a regular store.
00:14:16.700Likewise in BC and Toronto, the other two, they went down.
00:14:21.540Polyev is really in some serious trouble.
00:14:24.840I think that's going to be the news story we're going to see for the next six months.
00:14:28.400You know, the political operatives, the opportunists, the rest, they are circling.
00:14:33.460They're looking and they want him out of the way so they can get their preferred candidates in.
00:14:40.020The same old story in politics and particularly in conservative ones.
00:14:43.660so we'll see what happens there but you know what's happening he needs a victory he can't seem
00:14:49.460to buy a break i i don't know uh you know well i mean it's up to him i guess if he's got to find
00:14:53.860the formula the policy whatever it might take to turn things around and he hasn't been able to
00:14:58.480identify it yet so we'll be watching that in time to come all right looking at the long game like i
00:15:02.760said it was an interesting read and uh from a younger person and you know this is somebody
00:15:08.220like i said we're going to be leaving this country to him and he's got concerns and he's written about
00:15:12.700them at length. I found it interesting and a bit dark, though. And again, the title of his book
00:15:18.780says it, you know, Anti-Civilization, the Collapse of Society. And perhaps you'll correct me, I'm
00:15:23.800awful with French names. Etienne-Alexandre Beauregard, thank you very much for sharing the
00:15:30.660book with us and joining us today. Oh, my pleasure to be here. And you got the name right.
00:15:35.100Oh, okay. Well, great. I'd just like to apologize in advance because I'm afraid I can be awful
00:15:39.400with those at times. So, I mean, getting right to the meat of the issue, your book has kind of a
00:15:48.120very negative premise to kind of begin with, with where things have devolved towards and how they're
00:15:52.440looking, though you get a little more solution-based farther up. What inspired you to write this
00:15:57.200in the first place? Well, I think it's really about what kind of society we're living in today,
00:16:05.960And especially from a younger perspective, you said it, I think it's certainly a part of the diagnosis, the fact that I'm myself a member of Generation Z, 25.
00:16:16.480And now, like many people who are starting to have their political voices heard, I'm just growing up in this society where you kind of feel like all these cultural, moral, and traditional norms
00:16:34.860that used to guide our social lives together
00:16:41.280And so it's really an essay on what happens
00:16:47.300when individualism goes too far, essentially,
00:16:52.480and about the necessary return to a kind of balance
00:16:56.800between these collective roots that we need to find again.
00:17:03.420Yes. So we're seeing a trend, there's no doubt about it, that you've identified of social introversion almost. You mentioned that on people having smaller social circles, fewer friends, they don't have the networks they used to, and it's coming with a cultural cost. But how much of this, I guess, can be attributed, say, to the advent of social media? That didn't exist as well. I mean, I'm certain there's a number of factors, but people are retreating inwards and to their phones and computers rather than meeting face to face.
00:17:31.860I think you mentioned that with people with phone calls, even things like that.
00:17:36.080So is it a social thing or is it a technological thing?
00:17:39.720Well, I think it's really always a multi-factor phenomenon, right?
00:17:44.260But when you look at social withdrawal, if you want to say it like this, social scientists like Robert Putnam have been warning us about this ever since the 2000s.
00:17:54.800So way before the smartphones, as we know them, were there.
00:17:58.580But this kind of withdrawal really from clubs, association, smaller families to maybe a devaluing of tradition and a certain vision of the nation, it's a global phenomenon that we've seen for about 50 years now.
00:18:15.340And so it certainly is a wider thing. And although I suppose you could say that technology is certainly a part of it, but isn't technology always the reflection of a culture because only a certain kind of culture could give you this kind of technological innovation that kind of pushed it further.
00:18:33.340So to me, it's more complicated than just saying it's the phones.
00:18:36.880Like there's an ideological component to it.
00:18:38.820It's a different vision of how we see the individual related to the wider community and the wider institutions that shape us.
00:18:46.480Yeah. And then you mentioned the individualism.
00:18:49.060And that sounds, again, I mean, I kind of attribute the warrior definition, though, as into an introversion.
00:18:53.620A bit of a trend I see, though, is people also, they may not be going out.
00:18:57.440They may not be socially expanding their networks.
00:19:00.480but there's more of a dependency and expectation for government to fix everything around them or
00:19:05.520to take care of things for them uh like the kind of individualism in a libertarian point of view
00:19:10.600that i held traditionally as the older guy though saw that as more maybe you might disconnect from
00:19:15.160society but you also want to disconnect from the state and i'm not seeing perhaps that
00:19:18.460that tendency to leave the state uh blanket oh that is true because like objectively the state
00:19:26.420has gotten bigger in the last 50 years so i couldn't argue that this has retreated that's
00:19:30.420for sure but what an interesting trend too is that the weaker our actual communities and families
00:19:37.220become the more demand there is for state intervention so it's not always just a binary
00:19:43.220individual or state often when you have a weakened community and a weakened social fabric
00:19:49.300there are still some needs that are going to be uh they're going to have to be taken care of and
00:19:53.620often it's a state that is going to step in but it's it's really more of a philosophical book i
00:19:59.620would say it's not a very policy centered book although i do a lot of policy work at cardis
00:20:03.780obviously as a think tank researcher but it there is really something to be said about how we see
00:20:09.700the individual related to uh community and that's that really is the core argument and i i'm sure
00:20:14.740you've seen it like what what is freedom right is freedom the pursuit of higher goods or is it just
00:20:21.780not to be interfered with and this second definition which i do not think is right and
00:20:28.100which i criticize in the book uh is shared by some on the libertarian right and if i want to be fair
00:20:33.060i kind of have to critique it too of course everybody's open to critique it and i mean
00:20:38.900something we're hearing from most i think political commentators or people looking at the philosophy
00:20:43.460we've seen a dramatic change in the family unit particularly in the western world we don't have
00:20:48.980those connections the kids are expected to be out of the house on their own when they're 18 we have
00:20:53.140a lot of broken families unfortunately divorce is you know uh higher than ever and and we don't see
00:20:59.860extended family groups uh staying in communication with each other like they used to that that's uh
00:21:06.740definitely it must be a part of this trend but i mean how could we change that yeah that's always
00:21:12.820it's always a question right because doing the diagnosis is i don't want to say the easy part
00:21:17.380but you have to get the problem right before you you go for solutions but i think that there's
00:21:23.300always a policy element to it but there's also just like an individual and also collective
00:21:29.140cultural vision of what the individual is related to the family and i think this is one of the most
00:21:34.820interesting areas where it kind of manifests because especially when you're my age you grew up
00:21:39.860in a in an era where it's all about autonomy right it's always like oh uh how free are you
00:21:47.300as an individual and watch out if you rely too much on someone else whether it's your family
00:21:53.300or whether it's your romantic partner uh are are you going to lose uh out of this as an autonomous
00:22:01.300atom but to some extent we have to go beyond this and just recognize and it's always been the case
00:22:07.380in human history before that being a part of an institution whether it's a family or nation or
00:22:12.260community it helps us grow we change it and it changes us and it's never just a zero-sum game
00:22:17.700between the individual and the institution whether it's the family or another institution but i feel
00:22:22.820that today our treatment whether it's in the media in the academia or just the broader vision that we
00:22:28.580have in a family today is just a vessel that has to be in pursuit of our individual aspirations
00:22:34.340but from the moment it contradicts it then it becomes harder to defend but that is fundamentally
00:22:39.780a misunderstanding of what a family is or should be right yeah well and and the north american or
00:22:46.900perhaps even a bit of european culture has become different like i use an anecdotal thing i i walk
00:22:51.940to the office uh downtown to save money and parking i go through a pretty rough part of town
00:22:56.180there's a lot of people in in terrible condition they're addicted uh they're homeless uh i mean
00:23:02.740there's a solid pattern that just about everybody i see on the street tends to be either
00:23:06.420unfortunately indigenous black or white we have a high indian population a higher population of1.00
00:23:14.980east asian individuals and you never see them in that condition now they're not immune to1.00
00:23:20.500addiction and mental health issues and challenges but somehow their networks keep their their their0.99
00:23:26.500families from ending up on the streets like is there stuff we could learn from other cultures
00:23:30.100while we're uh adopting things because it seems to me that that some seem to be avoiding some of
00:23:34.580the fallout absolutely absolutely i really believe there is there is an indian asian difference if
00:23:41.700you can see and you know many books on family for example i'm thinking of brad wilcox from
00:23:48.500institute for family studies yeah he says that there is like a very uh important statistical
00:23:53.700difference in like the rate of being and staying married if you are from an asian background or if
00:23:58.420If you just look at the treatment of parents and grandparents, like the fact that it's more culturally accepted than normal to kind of stay with your parents at home, have them when they're older versus just parking them in a care home.
00:24:12.060And I think, yes, there is maybe a more holistic approach to the family that we could learn from today, because, you know, this the whole question of care homes is so interesting because it is like the quintessential example of what happens when individualism drives state spending up.
00:24:28.800Because especially when you have a population that is growing older, all these questions we have to ask today.
00:24:35.760And maybe, yes, there is a more place that a family could take in this so that we don't just offload all of our care duties to the state.
00:24:43.920So you talked about perhaps things, though, being ripe for return.
00:24:47.400The term you used is cultural normalcy.
00:26:48.540People took part in just amateur sports or a chess club or a book club or just something that got them out of the house and around other people.
00:26:55.940Do you think perhaps there could be a resurgence of that?
00:26:58.160Like we're coming into this world of, again, just being in our houses far too much, but maybe it would turn around.
00:27:04.900we can see a trend where people realize they have to get out and socialize yeah i mean i would love
00:27:10.340it and as you mentioned these things are extremely cyclical and you know in the conclusion of the
00:27:16.740book i really talk about generation z's experience of the world and like i mentioned previously
00:27:22.100i think that when you grow up in a in a de-socialized world to say it this way i don't
00:27:27.220think it's too much of a stretch to describe our world today as de-socialized you crave what you
00:27:33.220don't have and whenever i talk to people my age people who are in their 20s whether they're
00:27:38.980intellectuals or not when you talk about this kind of disillusion with what bauman calls liquid
00:27:44.820modernity this idea that we've kind of lost our collective compass our sense of cohesion and that
00:27:51.220we kind of lack guiding principles like we used to have this is really pretty uh much of a consensus
00:27:58.020even when you're on the left and when you're obviously when you're on the right and you're in
00:28:02.100in your 20s but it is something that people might try to tackle from different angles but i do think
00:28:08.280it is the central malaise of our era and that some things you got to give so it has obviously
00:28:13.480ideological and political answers but it also has to come with a more uh vibrant civil society
00:28:18.460that's for sure yeah well and your book has a nihilistic flavor to it in a sense and i mean that
00:28:24.520but as you said i mean you have to identify the problems before you can move towards a solution