I must confess— I don’t have three screens! Just my outlook email program up on my phone and when I see that email I just go to substack and if I am lucky—- First!
I do not sit in front of a computer with three screens and I do not even have email notifications turned on for these things, so if I get in first I feel like it’s the equivalent of free climbing El Capitan or something compared with all these maniacs.
I am in the same camp as Razib. I think if you removed the women from the equation, cancellation pretty much wouldn’t be a thing. The idea would get laughed out of the room and the guy who brought it up would be called a pussy.
There are a distinct few liberal men who I think are probably true believers, but again, remove the social pressure of the liberal women and the real person comes out. All of this is based on my personal experience. Group chats with only men are so wildly different from mixed groups 😂.
It still keeps surprising me that I get an instant rapport and have more trust with men who I have nothing in common with other than a Y chromosome, versus the women who I went to college with or worked with or lived next to. In a men-only interaction, the uncertainty disappears.
To play the Devil’s Advocate, Stalin’s Soviet Union was big on cancel culture — I mean really big, with purity spirals that led to the gulag. It enforced social orthodoxy with incredible ruthlessness. That said, I kind of agree with the basic observation.
Also, I want to return to my lone crusade to get people to stop using “liberal” to refer to Social Justice people. It kinda made sense to refer to big government New Deal/Great Society Democrats as liberals, because their ideas mutated from the Classic Liberal tradition. But Social Justice ideology is a rejection of that tradition. There’s nothing liberal about it.
I often listen when walking and then can't remember what I wanted to comment on - so I'm commenting now that I'm home, but haven't finisehd yet, so maybe these will be mute points.
1. About kids roaming back-in-the day. I'm older gen x (54 to be exact). We roamed, it was awesome.
My mom was a SAHM so I wasn't latchkey, but summer/after school - pretty much outside all the time. This was a midsized city (St. Paul, MN). But us GenXers - many of do still try to get our kids out there to do that. But one issue you didn't mention is that if both parents are working (more common now than then) once kids are out of daycare into school, they are still quite young and need something to do in summer. So - that is filled with summer day care, and then ages 7, 8 etc moved to camps. Could be a week of art camp, a week of theater, 2 weeks of out door etc. All time is filled with structured activities. Then when maybe they could just hang out, they don't know how AND...if you are of mind to want your kid to do more roaming (many of my friends and myself) you live in neighborhoods where most of the other kids are still in the camps/activities all summer. their school friends are not in walking distance.
2. About how people look older (Meghan I saw that '86 prom one and peoples comments about how they look so old). I think it is hard for us to detach from the cultural and fashion signals that that is an "older people" look. I remember thinking my mom's graduation pic (1961ish), black and white, a sort of bouffant hairdo. She just looked old/mature for 18. Fast foward, the somewhat grainy pics, the big hair, the poofy dresses, it is just too associated with older people (us), so its interpreted as "they look old"
I think this is exactly correct about the helicopter-parenting thing... it's here to stay. It's a cultural shift that is not going to shift back. Not everyone lives in a walkable safe city, either. I was born in 1980 and the youngest I was left alone or went anywhere by myself was 8, and it was a rare thing. Most of my friends had a mom that was home most of the time. As for #2 this is all style/fashion. This was a meme a few years ago.. this video explains it well I think.
Wanted to weigh in on the offhand comment of thinking that the financial crisis is what caused our birthrate, but now that it's passed we're no longer thinking that it was the cause because the birthrate is still plummeting.
It hasn't passed, we're still in it. The financial crisis is still ongoing and, in my opinion, is the primary cause of all of our cultural consternation problems that we're having right now. We left a system of partial capitalism in 2008 and are now in a fully post-capitalistic world and the stagnation is driving people insane.
Stagnation causes little to no hope for the future, so we just obsess on the present. There are no grand visions to build towards for most people, so they just obsess over their current position in life like it's the only position they'll ever be in, because that's probably true now.
I keep getting reminded of an old article, written about 15 years ago (I wish I could remember the name of the author). It was about the fact of 40% of Japanese men over 40 years old being virgins. This was the mid 2000's, so the headline was written in a pejorative way, like "look at those losers! Hahaha!"
But the actual article went into depth on it, and the author found that, time after time in interviewing these men they would say something like "I just don't feel like I've got my life together yet" and "I don't feel like I can be in a relationship right now." Basically, they had no confidence that they would be able to support a wife and kids, they felt like they had nothing to offer. So they just abstained from trying.
The Japan example is important because they've experienced an almost pure stagnation since their stock market crashed in 1992 and the subsequent political polices of "saving the economy." By 2007, they had felt 15 years of it. Their past is our future as long as we maintain course.
Not having children because of economic stagnation is a cultural issue, not a financial. Generations before us with less material wealth had more children, many of them, and learned to prosper. Stagnation does not cause despair; Hope is an internal i.e. cultural issue. A loss of confidence can't be blamed on economics. American cultural elites are in despair because they don't believe in themselves. Immigrants to the US will hopefully infuse vitality and teach elites how to regain confidence in our culture. Look at Sarah and Razib-- they understand Western and more specifically American Culture and its virtues and vitality way more than a third generation Harvard grad from the Northeast.
Yeah the absolute wealth is not the issue with stagnation, it's the trajectory. Do people feel like their heads are above water now? Do they feel like they will be in the future? In a stagnating and backwards sliding society the answer is usually "kind of" and "it doesn't look like it."
Economics is not quite the root cause, but it's a major signpost of where we are as a society, and that is a society that does not look to the future with hopeful anticipation. It's also a major input into people's working psychology of how their life is going.
American cultural elites have been taught to despise their culture. It's not a "lack of confidence," it's just disdain. They will never be a source of vitality for American values and vitality. The only course of action is to replace the elites. The problem then becomes: Are the new elites better or worse than the old?
Air pollution is still a massive and under appreciated problem. It contributes to 7M deaths per year, roughly the same number of people who have died in the Covid pandemic.
Seven million in the US? And what does "contributes" mean? If I die of a heart attack at 89 rather than 90 because of hypothetical air pollution, does that count?
Every time I see something like this, I think about the math required here: how many childless women does it take to cancel out the one woman who had 12 in order to get the TFR down below 2? (The answer is six).
Because in my (educated, professional, effete) circles, there’s no way that the median woman has even one child.
Adipose tissue (fat cells) does indeed produce aromatase, which converts androgenic steroids into estrogens. All the steroid hormones are related and men and women have some of all of them, but obviously more estrogens tend to have a feminizing effect. This can have some significant health implications, particularly with regards to cancer risk and fertility (e.g. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2021/6612796/).
The soul of the left-leaning man does include quite a lot of “internalized misandry”. But we are still men, so I divide it sharply into reality-based concerns and the new era of postmodern woke social justice whatever. Being on the left means orienting yourself towards the interests of the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden. But to apply that to feminism means that you are treating women as if they are weak, oppressed, and downtrodden.
So it’s easy for men to see that women might be terrified of physical violence. It’s easy to see that they might have an inferiority complex by virtue of being smaller and weaker. It’s easy to see that they might need a little extra care and attention.
But conversely, it undermines the whole model to say that there’s no difference between men and women. Or to say that women are secretly great at everything and don’t need any extra help. Or to acknowledge all the areas of life in which women are not disadvantaged at all.
Terrific episode. If you did a shot every time Razib said "retarded" you'd be disabled. I'm not sure why, but the thought of trad-Caths wanting to put Diana Fleischman in a cage in the town square made me laugh out loud. And was this a partial reunion of the Intellectual Brown Web? Is the IBW still up and running, or did it hang up its spurs? It wasn't even mentioned in the episode. Sore subject? Anyway, enjoyed it very much.
OMG. DAMN YOU!
Honorary First!
No! Do or do not! There is no try.
On your own ep 💀
I must confess— I don’t have three screens! Just my outlook email program up on my phone and when I see that email I just go to substack and if I am lucky—- First!
I do not sit in front of a computer with three screens and I do not even have email notifications turned on for these things, so if I get in first I feel like it’s the equivalent of free climbing El Capitan or something compared with all these maniacs.
No one should be allowed to pull out of the pronatalist conference
Well played, good sir. Well played.
First!!!!!!
Raised Mormon here, youngest of 7.
I am in the same camp as Razib. I think if you removed the women from the equation, cancellation pretty much wouldn’t be a thing. The idea would get laughed out of the room and the guy who brought it up would be called a pussy.
There are a distinct few liberal men who I think are probably true believers, but again, remove the social pressure of the liberal women and the real person comes out. All of this is based on my personal experience. Group chats with only men are so wildly different from mixed groups 😂.
It still keeps surprising me that I get an instant rapport and have more trust with men who I have nothing in common with other than a Y chromosome, versus the women who I went to college with or worked with or lived next to. In a men-only interaction, the uncertainty disappears.
To play the Devil’s Advocate, Stalin’s Soviet Union was big on cancel culture — I mean really big, with purity spirals that led to the gulag. It enforced social orthodoxy with incredible ruthlessness. That said, I kind of agree with the basic observation.
Also, I want to return to my lone crusade to get people to stop using “liberal” to refer to Social Justice people. It kinda made sense to refer to big government New Deal/Great Society Democrats as liberals, because their ideas mutated from the Classic Liberal tradition. But Social Justice ideology is a rejection of that tradition. There’s nothing liberal about it.
I often listen when walking and then can't remember what I wanted to comment on - so I'm commenting now that I'm home, but haven't finisehd yet, so maybe these will be mute points.
1. About kids roaming back-in-the day. I'm older gen x (54 to be exact). We roamed, it was awesome.
My mom was a SAHM so I wasn't latchkey, but summer/after school - pretty much outside all the time. This was a midsized city (St. Paul, MN). But us GenXers - many of do still try to get our kids out there to do that. But one issue you didn't mention is that if both parents are working (more common now than then) once kids are out of daycare into school, they are still quite young and need something to do in summer. So - that is filled with summer day care, and then ages 7, 8 etc moved to camps. Could be a week of art camp, a week of theater, 2 weeks of out door etc. All time is filled with structured activities. Then when maybe they could just hang out, they don't know how AND...if you are of mind to want your kid to do more roaming (many of my friends and myself) you live in neighborhoods where most of the other kids are still in the camps/activities all summer. their school friends are not in walking distance.
2. About how people look older (Meghan I saw that '86 prom one and peoples comments about how they look so old). I think it is hard for us to detach from the cultural and fashion signals that that is an "older people" look. I remember thinking my mom's graduation pic (1961ish), black and white, a sort of bouffant hairdo. She just looked old/mature for 18. Fast foward, the somewhat grainy pics, the big hair, the poofy dresses, it is just too associated with older people (us), so its interpreted as "they look old"
Just an idea.
I think this is exactly correct about the helicopter-parenting thing... it's here to stay. It's a cultural shift that is not going to shift back. Not everyone lives in a walkable safe city, either. I was born in 1980 and the youngest I was left alone or went anywhere by myself was 8, and it was a rare thing. Most of my friends had a mom that was home most of the time. As for #2 this is all style/fashion. This was a meme a few years ago.. this video explains it well I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqt8T3tJIE&t=895s
Wanted to weigh in on the offhand comment of thinking that the financial crisis is what caused our birthrate, but now that it's passed we're no longer thinking that it was the cause because the birthrate is still plummeting.
It hasn't passed, we're still in it. The financial crisis is still ongoing and, in my opinion, is the primary cause of all of our cultural consternation problems that we're having right now. We left a system of partial capitalism in 2008 and are now in a fully post-capitalistic world and the stagnation is driving people insane.
Stagnation causes little to no hope for the future, so we just obsess on the present. There are no grand visions to build towards for most people, so they just obsess over their current position in life like it's the only position they'll ever be in, because that's probably true now.
I keep getting reminded of an old article, written about 15 years ago (I wish I could remember the name of the author). It was about the fact of 40% of Japanese men over 40 years old being virgins. This was the mid 2000's, so the headline was written in a pejorative way, like "look at those losers! Hahaha!"
But the actual article went into depth on it, and the author found that, time after time in interviewing these men they would say something like "I just don't feel like I've got my life together yet" and "I don't feel like I can be in a relationship right now." Basically, they had no confidence that they would be able to support a wife and kids, they felt like they had nothing to offer. So they just abstained from trying.
The Japan example is important because they've experienced an almost pure stagnation since their stock market crashed in 1992 and the subsequent political polices of "saving the economy." By 2007, they had felt 15 years of it. Their past is our future as long as we maintain course.
Not having children because of economic stagnation is a cultural issue, not a financial. Generations before us with less material wealth had more children, many of them, and learned to prosper. Stagnation does not cause despair; Hope is an internal i.e. cultural issue. A loss of confidence can't be blamed on economics. American cultural elites are in despair because they don't believe in themselves. Immigrants to the US will hopefully infuse vitality and teach elites how to regain confidence in our culture. Look at Sarah and Razib-- they understand Western and more specifically American Culture and its virtues and vitality way more than a third generation Harvard grad from the Northeast.
Yeah the absolute wealth is not the issue with stagnation, it's the trajectory. Do people feel like their heads are above water now? Do they feel like they will be in the future? In a stagnating and backwards sliding society the answer is usually "kind of" and "it doesn't look like it."
Economics is not quite the root cause, but it's a major signpost of where we are as a society, and that is a society that does not look to the future with hopeful anticipation. It's also a major input into people's working psychology of how their life is going.
American cultural elites have been taught to despise their culture. It's not a "lack of confidence," it's just disdain. They will never be a source of vitality for American values and vitality. The only course of action is to replace the elites. The problem then becomes: Are the new elites better or worse than the old?
I think you are right about disdain, rather than lack of confidence.
Air pollution is still a massive and under appreciated problem. It contributes to 7M deaths per year, roughly the same number of people who have died in the Covid pandemic.
Seven million in the US? And what does "contributes" mean? If I die of a heart attack at 89 rather than 90 because of hypothetical air pollution, does that count?
You forgot about Orthodox Jews, I'm the oldest of 12.
Every time I see something like this, I think about the math required here: how many childless women does it take to cancel out the one woman who had 12 in order to get the TFR down below 2? (The answer is six).
Because in my (educated, professional, effete) circles, there’s no way that the median woman has even one child.
Is the real lesson here that anybody who manages to comment "First" often enough gets their own episode?
Get Ernie on
Adipose tissue (fat cells) does indeed produce aromatase, which converts androgenic steroids into estrogens. All the steroid hormones are related and men and women have some of all of them, but obviously more estrogens tend to have a feminizing effect. This can have some significant health implications, particularly with regards to cancer risk and fertility (e.g. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2021/6612796/).
The soul of the left-leaning man does include quite a lot of “internalized misandry”. But we are still men, so I divide it sharply into reality-based concerns and the new era of postmodern woke social justice whatever. Being on the left means orienting yourself towards the interests of the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden. But to apply that to feminism means that you are treating women as if they are weak, oppressed, and downtrodden.
So it’s easy for men to see that women might be terrified of physical violence. It’s easy to see that they might have an inferiority complex by virtue of being smaller and weaker. It’s easy to see that they might need a little extra care and attention.
But conversely, it undermines the whole model to say that there’s no difference between men and women. Or to say that women are secretly great at everything and don’t need any extra help. Or to acknowledge all the areas of life in which women are not disadvantaged at all.
In other words, slave morality.
Terrific episode. If you did a shot every time Razib said "retarded" you'd be disabled. I'm not sure why, but the thought of trad-Caths wanting to put Diana Fleischman in a cage in the town square made me laugh out loud. And was this a partial reunion of the Intellectual Brown Web? Is the IBW still up and running, or did it hang up its spurs? It wasn't even mentioned in the episode. Sore subject? Anyway, enjoyed it very much.
And to combine the themes of this episode, if you are a pregnant woman and you do a shot every time Razib says “retarded”, your baby will be disabled.
This video explains it all. "Did People Used To Look Older?" VSauce youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqt8T3tJIE&t=895s
Re: asking to kiss — a trick I learned from Neil Strauss is to ask “do you want to kiss me?”
Razib, phenomenal hair.
Is that a goatee?
got rid of the facial hair. lots of feedback. but i kept the hair :)
Razib, you need a haircut.
Also, try to remain within the view of the camera. The constant in and out of frame is distracting.
Other than that, brilliant discussion. Some of it was laugh-out-loud funny, but it was also very insightful.
not cutting my hair for a while. you jealous that i'm a norwood 0?
I might be if I knew what that was!
I did enjoy the discussion, despite the shaggy hair.
Are you divorced or polyamorous? I need to know.
Former
Thanks! Second question. How would I reach you to discuss a startup connection/advice?
Msg me on LinkedIn
The divorce question was just out of curiosity. Don't #metoo me!!!