Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Nick Llspie on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Nick is a libertarian journalist who is currently an editor
Speaker 1: at large at Reason. A two time finalist for Digital
Speaker 1: National Magazine Awards, Gillespie's work has appeared in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, Time,
Speaker 1: dot Com, Marketplace, and basically any other publication that you're
Speaker 1: ever going to read. The Daily Beast named Nick one
Speaker 1: of Quote the Rights top twenty five journalists, calling him quote, clearheaded, brainy,
Speaker 1: among the foremost libertarians in America. Nick, It's so great
Speaker 1: to have you on the show today. Thanks for having me, Scott,
Speaker 1: It's a real pleasure to be here. The motto of
Speaker 1: Reason Magazine, which you've really spearheaded and been part of
Speaker 1: ourselo for many years, is quote free minds and free markets.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if we could start with you kind
Speaker 1: of explaining what that means, and you know, even just
Speaker 1: our listeners who aren't even familiar with libertarianism at all. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Reason was founded in nineteen sixty eight by a guy
Speaker 1: who was a student at Boston University, and then it
Speaker 1: kind of migrated from him and from Boston to Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara on the West coast to la where it's still
Speaker 1: technically headquartered, and now we have a big office in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. As well as people scattered all over the country.
Speaker 1: And you know, we started out as a monthly politics
Speaker 1: and culture magazine, kind of similar to The New Republic
Speaker 1: or National Review along those lines, and like a lot
Speaker 1: of other publications, we branched at into the web. We
Speaker 1: were early adopters. We have a we've had a website
Speaker 1: since I think nineteen ninety four, and then we created
Speaker 1: a video platform two thousand and seven which I spearheaded.
Speaker 1: I was the editor in chief of the print magazine
Speaker 1: from two thousand to two thousand and eight. Video platform,
Speaker 1: the website at various points. But the free minds and
Speaker 1: free markets concept comes as you mentioned, we're limited or
Speaker 1: we're libertarian publication, which means we believe in kind of
Speaker 1: limited government individualism, and the idea that kind of civil
Speaker 1: liberties and economic liberties are really kind of twin different
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. So you need to be
Speaker 1: free thinking in and tolerant and interested in empathy and
Speaker 1: pluralism as well as also you know, kind of exercising
Speaker 1: autonomy and everything you do and the way that plays out.
Speaker 1: It used to be that we could say to people,
Speaker 1: you know, we're kind of socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Speaker 1: But you know, that made sense in like nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five and maybe even nineteen ninety five. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means because most a lot
Speaker 1: of liberals and progressives are not very tolerant. You know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to shut down all kinds of speech, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to regulate all sorts of lifestyles you know
Speaker 1: that they don't like. And conservatives used to be people
Speaker 1: who would say, you know what, the government should be small,
Speaker 1: and it shouldn't be you know, it should pay for itself,
Speaker 1: and of course that went out the window, you know,
Speaker 1: a long time ago. It's a really good point, and
Speaker 1: everything seems a bit topsy turvy right now in every
Speaker 1: imaginable dimension now. You know, it's interesting because the Daily
Speaker 1: Beast named you one of the rights top twenty five journalists.
Speaker 1: Putting you on the right seems an interesting thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you would agree with that characterization. It
Speaker 1: seems like libertarianism. I mean, you can be libertarian left right,
Speaker 1: you can be absolutely yeah. Yeah. I've known a number
Speaker 1: of friends and actually contributing editors to Reason who were libertarian,
Speaker 1: you know, small l and were members of the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party or the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or
Speaker 1: you know. Gnom Chomsky called himself a libertarian socialist. At
Speaker 1: various points. Bill Buckley called himself a libertarian conservative. You know.
Speaker 1: So depending on you know what what day of the
Speaker 1: week it is, or what time of the year. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes people like using the adjective libertarian because I think
Speaker 1: it connotes in it's, in its best form, a kind
Speaker 1: of interest in innovation and leis a fair in the
Speaker 1: best way possible, not you know, not do what do
Speaker 1: unto others then split, but rather a kind of relaxed, tolerant,
Speaker 1: open approach to thinking about things like philosophy, speech, lifestyle,
Speaker 1: as well as also economic innovation and things like that.
Speaker 1: So it's not surprising that, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: business leaders at various points have called themselves libertarian or
Speaker 1: have been plausibly accused of that. Somebody like Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: of Amazon is an example of that. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: DAILI beasts put me on the right, which you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of chafe at because I'm not socially conservative
Speaker 1: and I'm not I guess I'm fiscally conservative in the
Speaker 1: idea that I think government should you know, we should
Speaker 1: pay for the government that we want. But I also
Speaker 1: as a columnist at to the Lybs for a few
Speaker 1: years after that, so you know, I like to think
Speaker 1: of libertarian as you know, it's obviously on the political
Speaker 1: spectrum somewhere, but it's a little bit different and at
Speaker 1: its best, you know, it takes what's best about being
Speaker 1: a liberal, uh and the best about what's being conservative,
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, mixes it into a nice
Speaker 1: uh you know, blended ice cream code or something. I
Speaker 1: always viewed it as analogous to the Bahai religious faith. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think the only people I know who were Bahi
Speaker 1: were Seals and Croft, the singers of Summer Breeze. So
Speaker 1: can tell me what ba high faith is and all. Well,
Speaker 1: they like to take the They kind of talk about
Speaker 1: how they're every religion. They they they're not into divisiveness,
Speaker 1: but they're into you know, they believe they're peaceful and
Speaker 1: they believe in picking the best of everything, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a universal faith. They consider us of a
Speaker 1: universal faith. So anyway, it seems like a little I
Speaker 1: like the idea of it being attractive. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think libertarians sometimes harken back to a kind of
Speaker 1: what's called classical liberalism or you know liberal liberal political ideology,
Speaker 1: which you know, which which includes people on the right
Speaker 1: and the left in America. But it came out of,
Speaker 1: you know, the end of the age of monarchs and aristocracy,
Speaker 1: and it was the idea that individuals are capable of
Speaker 1: making decisions for themselves, and we should create social and political, cultural,
Speaker 1: economic constitutions that allow individuals more freedom to make choices
Speaker 1: about the things that matter most of them. And I
Speaker 1: think that includes you know, things like, you know, who
Speaker 1: who do you get to marry, or whether you want
Speaker 1: to marry at all? You know, do you do you
Speaker 1: have to ask permission you know, from some kind of
Speaker 1: lord or some kind of you know, authority before you
Speaker 1: get on with your life or not those types of things.
Speaker 1: And that government should be representative and it should be limited.
Speaker 1: You know, I do believe, and I guess this is
Speaker 1: you know, part and parcel of the liberal project. Properly
Speaker 1: understood that there are certain rights that the majority doesn't
Speaker 1: get to minimize simply because it's the majority. You know,
Speaker 1: nobody should be forced to worship, you know, a god
Speaker 1: that they find false. Nobody should be forced to you know,
Speaker 1: be a slave, Nobody should be forced into the army,
Speaker 1: things like that unless there are really you know, particular
Speaker 1: and short lived circumstances that require stepping on people's you know,
Speaker 1: freedom to to basically live how they want. So there's
Speaker 1: probably not too many libertarians in afghan stand right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a real you know, this is a real problem
Speaker 1: the libertarian movement, and I would say it has been,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most vocal and consistent critics
Speaker 1: of American foreign policy in terms of interventionism into places
Speaker 1: like Afghanistan and Iraq. And I think, you know, we
Speaker 1: can point to the twenty first century, you know, as
Speaker 1: twenty one uninterrupted years of terrible foreign policy that has
Speaker 1: failed to deliver on the objectives that it laid out.
Speaker 1: You know, we did not nation build in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: we did not nation build in Iraq. Yet there's no
Speaker 1: question there's a you know, a real taste of ashes
Speaker 1: when you look you know at the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: the the US deposed the Taliban, which is you know,
Speaker 1: a medieval, horrible you know, you know, terrible authoritarian regime.
Speaker 1: We put our own people in, uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: we forestall an inevitable you know, reture learn of the
Speaker 1: Taliban and actually helped to bet it where we spend
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars. We lost thousands of American lives plus
Speaker 1: you know, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan
Speaker 1: lives without really accomplishing anything. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a sign I think that the government, you know, a
Speaker 1: government in America which struggles to vaccinate people that are
Speaker 1: you know, directly here and under you know, within our culture,
Speaker 1: it's not that good at that and that it would
Speaker 1: you know, it was ruinous when it goes into places
Speaker 1: like Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the world
Speaker 1: and says, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna fix everything, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna make everything, uh you know, people, you know,
Speaker 1: into a better world. Yet you know that being faced
Speaker 1: with the evidence of that failure is still really stunning.
Speaker 1: And I think not to spend too much time on
Speaker 1: a psychology podcast of that foreign policy. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that's truly disturbing is that the United States
Speaker 1: is really being cheap and miserly with the amount of
Speaker 1: refugees from Afghanistan that we are willing to kind of
Speaker 1: process and bring to the country. The very least we
Speaker 1: could do is to really make sure that we get
Speaker 1: all of the people who are on our side, who
Speaker 1: cooperated with us, who are trying to build a better
Speaker 1: and more modern and more pluralistic Afghanistan, you know, get
Speaker 1: out if they want to. It's just it's a it's
Speaker 1: a horrible debacle. Oh yeah, it's so horrible. And what
Speaker 1: you're saying sounds just like a humanitarian approach. It doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be labeled as a particular political approach. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a humanitarian idea. No, absolutely, I'm with you on that,
Speaker 1: very much, with you on that. You're an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to segue into this, but you're
Speaker 1: just like a fun guy to like party with. Robert
Speaker 1: Draker of The New York Times magazine writes that you
Speaker 1: are quote to libertarianism. What we'll read is to rock
Speaker 1: and roll. The quintessentience, the quint essence of its outlaw spirit.
Speaker 1: Now is this like, you know, and I do this
Speaker 1: with all my guess I did this with them, Chaldsky,
Speaker 1: I did this with your childhood. Let's talk about your
Speaker 1: childhood for a second. Were you like, did you have
Speaker 1: a leather jacket when you were ten years old? Were
Speaker 1: you like, what is tell me about the precursor of
Speaker 1: modern day nick Leespie? Well, okay, and let me just
Speaker 1: start with the reference to lou Reid, as you know,
Speaker 1: one thing in my childhood, Unlike lou Reid, I did
Speaker 1: not receive electra shock treatment. Thankfully. I grew up He
Speaker 1: grew up in Long Island. I grew up in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and New Jersey, I guess was a little bit
Speaker 1: more tolerant. But my I grew up lower middle class.
Speaker 1: My parents were uneducated people. They were the children of
Speaker 1: immigrants and they participated both in you know what that
Speaker 1: meant to grow up poor. My father was of Irish extraction.
Speaker 1: My all of my grandparents were from Europe. He was Irish,
Speaker 1: my mother was Italian group, speaking Italian until she went
Speaker 1: to grammar school. And you know, they worked hard and
Speaker 1: they participated in that incredible, you know, kind of journey
Speaker 1: of the greatest generation of going from you know, poverty
Speaker 1: and World War two real privation to you know, doing
Speaker 1: well after the war. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that they passed on to me was a, you know,
Speaker 1: a sense that you can always be doing better or
Speaker 1: that the world should always be getting better. And it
Speaker 1: was odd because in many ways they were depressive, and
Speaker 1: they had a lot of issues that I think were
Speaker 1: linked to how they were raised, but also or the
Speaker 1: circumstances under which they were raised. But they also believed,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think they got this from their
Speaker 1: their parents, my grandparents, that you know, the world should
Speaker 1: keep getting better and that you can work and have
Speaker 1: a better life, and that your kids will have a
Speaker 1: better life. I have two kids. I divorced, but I
Speaker 1: have two sons who were one's twenty seven and one's
Speaker 1: twenty and I certainly hold forward for that as a kid,
Speaker 1: I would say in terms of personality and temperament, I'm
Speaker 1: the youngest of three. I really appreciate being the youngest
Speaker 1: child because my parents who were old when they had
Speaker 1: kids to begin with, but they were kind of tired,
Speaker 1: and I had an older brother and an older sister
Speaker 1: who kind of, you know, they were the heat shields
Speaker 1: they took up. They soaked up all of the expectations
Speaker 1: that the first son and the only daughter had, and
Speaker 1: so I was given more free reign, and I was
Speaker 1: I'd say I was a contrarian. I was a you know,
Speaker 1: kind of you know, kind of anti authority from the
Speaker 1: get go, but it was i'd say I was actually
Speaker 1: less anti authority and more questioning of authority. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, on the one hand, I was kind of
Speaker 1: a cut up in school and kind of annoying to
Speaker 1: my teachers because I asked why a lot. But I
Speaker 1: also was you know, I was an Eagle Scout. I
Speaker 1: joined the Boy Scouts and became an eat I was
Speaker 1: the captain of my high school soccer team. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I like to do a lot of different things, and
Speaker 1: I'd like to try and master whatever I'm doing, or
Speaker 1: I did. I gave up Catholicism. I was raised Catholic.
Speaker 1: I realized that if I really wanted to legitimately critique Catholicism,
Speaker 1: might have to become pope, because I felt like you
Speaker 1: needed to know something and master something before you could
Speaker 1: critique it. So I was like, okay, done with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everything you just describe sounds like it's almost
Speaker 1: inevitable that you would resonate with the libertarian party. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this interesting combination. I see a lot of people
Speaker 1: who identify as libertarians, and that's just kind of what
Speaker 1: you described, the combination of this individual's spirit with a
Speaker 1: drive for doing good or a morality in some sense,
Speaker 1: or wanting to you know, like you said, your an
Speaker 1: eagle scout. You know, I think some people I have
Speaker 1: this misconception of libertarians that like individualism, you know and Rand,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like everyone for themselves, who cares
Speaker 1: about others. But I mean my own personal experience with
Speaker 1: a lot of people who identify the libertarian libertarianism is
Speaker 1: that they you know, a lot of them are in
Speaker 1: like the the rational altruism movement for instance. You know,
Speaker 1: they they want to do in a maybe in a
Speaker 1: very utilitarian sort of way, but the greatest good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I you know, I think, uh, there's the whole
Speaker 1: Ein Rand kind of tradition and kind of dogma and
Speaker 1: canard you know, and Iron Rand, I guess was you know,
Speaker 1: extremely influential in post war America in general culture. And
Speaker 1: it's always interesting when you read that people like Angelina,
Speaker 1: Angelina Jolie and Oliver Stone and Brad Pitt are all
Speaker 1: like big iron Rand fans, and they're all dying to
Speaker 1: bring Attla Shrugged or the fountain Head to the to
Speaker 1: the big screen or something. It kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: because she was, you know, big on like great individuals
Speaker 1: and all of that kind of stuff. But that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with me growing up or you know,
Speaker 1: or how I got into into kind of libertarianism, and
Speaker 1: it was really for me. I always, and I always
Speaker 1: like to say, by the way, that I'm Rand pronouns,
Speaker 1: you know, because people announced their pronouns. Now, her pronouns
Speaker 1: would be I, me and mine, but I'm I am,
Speaker 1: you know, Like for me, it was more, always, more
Speaker 1: about empathy and autonomy. It's you know, I I know.
Speaker 1: I also consider myself a postmodernist in a very you know,
Speaker 1: literal sense or or you know, definitional sense of what
Speaker 1: Jean Francois Leotard called. He said that postmodernism is characterized
Speaker 1: by incredulity towards meta narrative. It's not a it's not
Speaker 1: saying that truth and authority cannot be legitimate or exist,
Speaker 1: but rather that we should always be skeptical towards it
Speaker 1: because truth is partial, it's provisional, and it's always changing.
Speaker 1: And for me that resonates very strongly with my own
Speaker 1: limits of knowledge and a political philosophy. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why government, I think, or authority should not be
Speaker 1: able to just do whatever they want is because we
Speaker 1: need to have, you know, some epistemological humility in the world.
Speaker 1: And I know I don't know very much, but for
Speaker 1: me it's always you know, empathy and autonomy are are
Speaker 1: kind of the guiding lights of a contemporary libertarian sensibility
Speaker 1: for me, as well as curiosity and comfort with pluralism
Speaker 1: and being tolerant and also just being curious and interested
Speaker 1: in the world around you. We had talked about this actually,
Speaker 1: when you were gracious enough to have me on your podcast.
Speaker 1: We're talking about that sounds a lot like Abraham Maslw's philosophy,
Speaker 1: you know, the humanistic psychologist. I'm very interested, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read your book about Maslow, you know, with great interest,
Speaker 1: because I think this is uh, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think about this a lot where I'm you know, basically
Speaker 1: two generations removed from peasants stock in Europe, where my ancestors,
Speaker 1: both on my father's side and my mother's side, have
Speaker 1: been raised to be you know, surfs and peasants for
Speaker 1: you know, millennia and you know, God like I you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the most amazing thing is to be born
Speaker 1: in the twentieth or the twenty first century, and for
Speaker 1: all of the horrible things that are going on in
Speaker 1: the world, there are fewer of them, and there is
Speaker 1: more hope and more you know kind of you know,
Speaker 1: possibility of movement towards self actualization, you know, than ever before,
Speaker 1: I think, and you know, we would be fools to
Speaker 1: blow that opportunity. But I find Maslow, you know, interesting
Speaker 1: because it is about you know, it's about the individual
Speaker 1: realizing his or her potential, but always in a social context,
Speaker 1: always in historical context. But it really is that mix
Speaker 1: of individuals and groups and kind of movement towards some sense,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of creating a horizon and then moving
Speaker 1: towards It is extremely interesting. And I think that the
Speaker 1: institutions that kind of flow in and out of libertarian ideas,
Speaker 1: and that includes limited government, but it also includes freedom
Speaker 1: of speech and freethinking and about fluidity, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's gender fluidity or ideas, mixing of different types of
Speaker 1: people and ideas. All of this stuff, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of wraps together in a way that is, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's both attractive but also actually has really
Speaker 1: good effects in the world. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: I have a lot more say to that, but we
Speaker 1: discussed that on your podcast actually with direct listeners to
Speaker 1: go to Nick's podcast and check out that conversation. That
Speaker 1: was a really interesting conversation. I enjoyed it. What is
Speaker 1: your relationship to mister m x y z pt lk oh,
Speaker 1: mister Mitchelpitolic? That was I wasn't sure how to pronounce
Speaker 1: his name. Yeah, So, mister Mitchelpittolic is a Superman super villain.
Speaker 1: He's a imp from I think the fifth dimension, and
Speaker 1: he was one of the few people because he traded
Speaker 1: in magic he could kind of run circles around Superman.
Speaker 1: And in the nineties I wrote on a regular basis
Speaker 1: for an early website called suck dot com, which was
Speaker 1: not pornographic despite its name. It was, you know, suck
Speaker 1: dot com in the sense of like everything sucks. And
Speaker 1: it was an early website that started out making fun
Speaker 1: mostly of the tech world and of Silicon Valley and
Speaker 1: the kind of emerging digital culture of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and then broadened out into, you know, a general critique
Speaker 1: of kind of internet culture and consumer culture and all
Speaker 1: sorts of things were going on in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: And I wrote a particularly kind of mean but funny,
Speaker 1: I hope piece that was about Christopher Reeve, the Superman actor,
Speaker 1: who had become crippled after having a horse riding accident
Speaker 1: and a horse jumping accident. And I had written a
Speaker 1: piece with the basic idea of which was that getting
Speaker 1: crippled was the best career move Christopher Reeve had ever made.
Speaker 1: And then I kind of worked through that, and mister
Speaker 1: Mitzel Pittolick was a good name for that. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of indicative of the sorts of things that people
Speaker 1: wrote a suck and it has an interesting history of alumni.
Speaker 1: Among the better known alums of suck dot com or
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper of CNN and James ponnewisic who is now
Speaker 1: the New York Times television critic. So it's an interesting
Speaker 1: group and a throwback to a simpler America. I didn't
Speaker 1: know Jake Capral was funny, Yeah, he was his non
Speaker 1: the plume, if I'm remembering correctly, was James Bong. Are
Speaker 1: you serious? Is this something he wants to be resurrected?
Speaker 1: This knowledge? He does not run from it. He doesn't
Speaker 1: offer it up, but he doesn't shirk from it when
Speaker 1: it comes up in conversations or interviews. Now, Nick, were
Speaker 1: you under any substances when you came up with the
Speaker 1: name mister missus got a book? No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I as you know, I am a I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of psychedelic drugs for a variety of reasons, but because
Speaker 1: I think they're enjoyable. But they also are, you know,
Speaker 1: increasingly being used for medical uses for treatment of PTSD
Speaker 1: and things like that. A substance is ranging from m
Speaker 1: D m A to psilocybinto LSD, which itself has a
Speaker 1: long history of being used to treat alcoholism and other
Speaker 1: kinds of issues. But no, I was. I was stone
Speaker 1: cold sober when I wrote as mister Mitzel pitolic and
Speaker 1: you just did deemed the name just came to you. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a you know, if you're making fun of Superman
Speaker 1: or an actor who played Superman, it's kind of obvious
Speaker 1: and it's uh, he's you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good character because he's kind of an imp and a
Speaker 1: troll and superman he had. The way that you defeated
Speaker 1: him was by tricking him into saying his name backwards somehow,
Speaker 1: and then he would kind of disappear and go back
Speaker 1: to his own dimension. But I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for telling with me about that. These there
Speaker 1: are Brian questions I had. Now you look in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, you wrote a cover story for a Reason
Speaker 1: called Childproofing the World, which is really really anticipated a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's going on now in the world,
Speaker 1: such as free range parenting and Chonthaan Hight and Greg Wlukianos.
Speaker 1: But calling of the American mind, Now, where do you
Speaker 1: think we are now compared to the ninety seven Do
Speaker 1: you think I thinks are even worse? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating question. And the story childproof in the World, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, grew out of my experience raising my older
Speaker 1: son who was in who was born in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: But it was basically looking at at the time in
Speaker 1: the nineties and it's kind of hard to remember this,
Speaker 1: but especially in the late nineties. There the rhetoric and
Speaker 1: discourse about children in America, especially coming from people like
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and Marion Wright Attlman of the Children's Defense Fund,
Speaker 1: was that kind of against all you know, observed trends.
Speaker 1: They insisted that children were at higher risk for all
Speaker 1: sorts of problems. They were having more kind of breakdowns,
Speaker 1: that they were having more medical problems, that you know,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to school, et cetera. It was very
Speaker 1: odd and very much at odds with everything that was
Speaker 1: going on. In fact, children in the nineties were doing
Speaker 1: drugs less, they were having less sex with fewer people
Speaker 1: at older ages, you know, which was perceived as being
Speaker 1: a good thing. You know, younger children went, you know,
Speaker 1: had more enrichment programs both before and after school. I mean,
Speaker 1: every kids volunteered in numbers and in a way that
Speaker 1: was just unimaginable. I was born in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: I'm at the very end of the tale of the
Speaker 1: baby boom, and you know, like nobody in my generation
Speaker 1: like compared to just you know, fifteen years earlier, and
Speaker 1: now we were raising these angels in a much safer
Speaker 1: world where things like child abuse, crimes against children, children
Speaker 1: dying young. All of that had declined almost to the
Speaker 1: point of being you know, you know, really rare when
Speaker 1: it happened. But we were talking about kids as being
Speaker 1: threatened by all sorts of things, and I chalked it
Speaker 1: up in that story to a wide variety of things,
Speaker 1: including the fact that we were much wealthier as a
Speaker 1: society in general and having fewer kids, so each kid
Speaker 1: kind of counted for more. That parents had higher and
Speaker 1: higher expectations for their children. They were treating their children
Speaker 1: as kind of markers for their own success, and this
Speaker 1: is something that I think often happens, you know, where
Speaker 1: parents kind of project all of their desires onto their kids.
Speaker 1: But there was also a recurring kind of psychology that
Speaker 1: I think came out of the doctor Spock's Infant in
Speaker 1: Baby or Baby in Childcare, which was this kind of
Speaker 1: weird perversion. I'm actually not sure if it was a
Speaker 1: perversion or an accurate read of a kind of water
Speaker 1: down Freudianism of the idea that like, you know, be
Speaker 1: careful with your kids, like have authority, you know, more
Speaker 1: than you're doing. The books as famously at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but it's like, you know, relax and do a good
Speaker 1: job raising your kids, because you can really screw them up.
Speaker 1: So there was this sense of children as kind of
Speaker 1: like China dolls who could be cracked and shattered by
Speaker 1: you know, the wrong look or a single incident early
Speaker 1: in their lives or whatever. And so you know, that
Speaker 1: was the starting point. And I ended that story, which
Speaker 1: is online at a Reason's website, you know, saying like,
Speaker 1: given all of this, like our you know, kids, and
Speaker 1: I was talking about millennials and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: looking towards gen Z, are kids going to become you know,
Speaker 1: risk taking daredevils or are they going to become kind
Speaker 1: of withdrawn and scared of their own shadows and incapable
Speaker 1: of really kind of transitioning into an adult world where
Speaker 1: they might get knocked around a little bit because we
Speaker 1: had been spending so much time child proofing the world
Speaker 1: to make sure that they never had a bad experience,
Speaker 1: that they never suffered any kind of anxiety, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we we kind of have
Speaker 1: an answer to that, which is that we have we
Speaker 1: now live in a world where children and people like
Speaker 1: John Hight and Geene Twin or Twangy I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: sure how to pronounce her name. Have just published a piece,
Speaker 1: a study about how, you know, the level of anxiety
Speaker 1: and loneliness in children is at record high levels, and
Speaker 1: things like that, and books like The Coddling of the
Speaker 1: American Mind, Fleshes at leonor Skenese's Free Range Parenting and
Speaker 1: Free Range Childhood point to this. And you know, so
Speaker 1: in a way, I think we are reaping, you know,
Speaker 1: the we're reaping the whirlwind of how we parented in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and it's you know, it's understandable, it's totally human.
Speaker 1: I know, I went out of my way to protect
Speaker 1: my kids from what I imagine would be negative situations
Speaker 1: in a way that my parents either didn't want to
Speaker 1: or didn't you know, couldn't. And I think socially, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of negative, negative issues that come out
Speaker 1: of that, because I think children are less resilient, or
Speaker 1: young adults are less resilient than they might have been otherwise,
Speaker 1: and that that's a real problem for society. People. People,
Speaker 1: you know, they feel like even mild incursions on their
Speaker 1: personal space or their sense of self are you know,
Speaker 1: become traumatic, and that's just that's not a good way
Speaker 1: to get through get through life or even childhood. What
Speaker 1: is what is this? What is this described as soft parenting?
Speaker 1: Is that what soft parenting is? Yeah? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think when people talk about hard versus soft parenting,
Speaker 1: you know, that's kind of like, you know, Benjamin Spock
Speaker 1: versus Bruno Bettelheim, you know, or kind of the classic
Speaker 1: sides in Bettleheim, you know who who life ended under,
Speaker 1: you know, a cloud of plagiarism and a variety of
Speaker 1: other kind of bad behavior. But you know, he was
Speaker 1: like kind of you know, like you know, treat your
Speaker 1: kids as a little adult and really kind of be
Speaker 1: tough on them. Spocks seem to be much more kind
Speaker 1: of lucy, goosey and loving, and you know, obviously the
Speaker 1: answer is something in between. It is amazing to me
Speaker 1: as much as I might say, you know, my generation's parenting,
Speaker 1: and I think this is true of Gen X as
Speaker 1: well as many of the baby boom parents. You know
Speaker 1: that we might have tended to go a little bit
Speaker 1: too far and being friends with our kids or or
Speaker 1: refusing to be authority figures in a way that helps
Speaker 1: structure early childhood and its people. Gives kids a kind
Speaker 1: of framework to push back against and test limits and
Speaker 1: understand where they are as they're at figuring out who
Speaker 1: they are psychologically. And you know, as a person, we
Speaker 1: might have been a little too mushy on that part.
Speaker 1: But then when I think back to my parents' generation
Speaker 1: or older generations where parents are just almost completely emotionally
Speaker 1: unavailable for their children, you know that's bad too. So
Speaker 1: I think what we're seeing is a weird form of
Speaker 1: soft parenting in that we are trying to make the world,
Speaker 1: you know, a kind of feather bed so that if
Speaker 1: our kid falls, they don't break their teeth or anything
Speaker 1: like that. By the same token, though, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things, and this is especially true of upper
Speaker 1: middle class people. And you know, more and more people
Speaker 1: are educated, more and more people are upper middle class,
Speaker 1: and these are the people who are driving discussions about parenting,
Speaker 1: and these are the kids that we listen to, you know,
Speaker 1: kids who are in college complaining about this or that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a real passive aggression in all of
Speaker 1: that parenting where it's like, you know, I'm doing all
Speaker 1: of this for you, and you better produce results as
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, like you know, the Eiger mom
Speaker 1: type mentality is you know, uh, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: overt in what it demands from its children. But there's
Speaker 1: something like that even in the you know, even in
Speaker 1: the parent who is your best friend you know, and
Speaker 1: is sending you to thirty different camps you know in
Speaker 1: a year and giving you in Richmond programs all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, they they're expecting something, you know, in return
Speaker 1: for that kind of parental and emotional and financial investment.
Speaker 1: And that's that's tough on kids. I've written a lot
Speaker 1: in the period since the Childproof in the World story
Speaker 1: came out about millennials because you know, I also think generationally,
Speaker 1: you know, millennials are the single largest cohort. Now Gen
Speaker 1: Z will in a short period of time become bigger
Speaker 1: than the Baby boom itself as Baby Boomers start to
Speaker 1: die off, and they're you know, in many ways, the
Speaker 1: millennial generation and Gen Z are really great. They're you know,
Speaker 1: they're much smarter, you know, they're healthier, they have a
Speaker 1: better future in front of them. I mean, I dislike
Speaker 1: it when older people just kind of hate young people
Speaker 1: because they're you know, because they're young or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But I did. I wrote a piece for Reason co
Speaker 1: author to piece for Reason, and I think like twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: which was talking about how I thought that the millennials
Speaker 1: were kind of the first generation in America. They were
Speaker 1: more ethnic, more multi ethnic, more multi racial, They had
Speaker 1: more opportunities, they were moving into positions of power, and
Speaker 1: they were kind of the you know, one version of
Speaker 1: the American dream that I think about a lot is
Speaker 1: the idea that you you know, kind of America is
Speaker 1: kind of a Maslovian country where everybody can self actualize,
Speaker 1: everybody can become the individual that they want to be.
Speaker 1: This is the promise of America. And I thought the
Speaker 1: millennials were inheriting that they were the first generation of
Speaker 1: really feel that. And then I realized a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, and I talked with a lot of millennials.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of them are very sour, and
Speaker 1: in the wake of you know, the financial crisis, in
Speaker 1: the wake of COVID, they're kind of bitter. And I
Speaker 1: think part of the problem is is that we expected
Speaker 1: them to, you know, have jobs that they loved and
Speaker 1: that expressed something meaningful and deep to them. And like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're twenty one years old and you've
Speaker 1: just graduated college or you're coming out of high school
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, that's a hell of
Speaker 1: a you know, a hell of a requirement to put
Speaker 1: on people, not only to find a job in an
Speaker 1: economy that is rapidly transforming, but to find a job
Speaker 1: that is meaningful, pays the bills and expresses your deep
Speaker 1: commitments as a human being. You know, that was You
Speaker 1: know that that's a bad expectation. It's too much. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of millennials have, you know, have
Speaker 1: not been able to deal with that for understandable reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I to someone who teaches millennials about well being in
Speaker 1: purpose and hearing their concerns and fears, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that that's really quite spot on. But there's also
Speaker 1: and this I guess is my way of transitioning into
Speaker 1: a different topic. Yeah, but there's a lot of millennials,
Speaker 1: I mean, they feel like they're especially you know, people
Speaker 1: that have an alternative gender so to speak, feel very marginalized,
Speaker 1: even though at the same time it seems like acceptance
Speaker 1: for it is everywhere. If to me it seems paradoxical.
Speaker 1: That's my perception. That's my perception. What do you think
Speaker 1: about that I you know, I think it's I think
Speaker 1: you're onto something where you know, and this is something
Speaker 1: if if you're over forty, you know what what it
Speaker 1: was like to be gay or lesbian or buy excuse me,
Speaker 1: your trans queer or or you know, just a non
Speaker 1: conforming heterosexual. You know, twenty years ago it was it
Speaker 1: was better than forty years ago, but it's nothing compared
Speaker 1: to now where you know, gender and sexuality have been
Speaker 1: you know, the using those as barriers to acceptance or
Speaker 1: barriers to living, to getting married or to holding jobs
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, that has effectively been eradicated,
Speaker 1: which is a major triumph. I think I would say
Speaker 1: it's a libertarian victory. You know, this is one of
Speaker 1: the great libertarian victories, among various other things, which many
Speaker 1: of which kind of cohere around lifestyle choices where it's
Speaker 1: like you can you can live and dress and eat
Speaker 1: and marry and you know, whatever the way you want,
Speaker 1: as you know, and it's pretty much accepted. It's oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's legally you know that equality is
Speaker 1: legally mandated. It's like a great time and yeah, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think a lot of younger people.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is because they're experiencing it
Speaker 1: for the first time. You know, everybody's adolescence is discombobulating,
Speaker 1: and everybody only experiences their adolescence, and I think, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lack of history that is endemic
Speaker 1: to youth, but is probably getting worse. It's a real
Speaker 1: You talk about paradoxes, you know, the modern world, the
Speaker 1: contemporary world is rife with paradoxes, and one of them
Speaker 1: from me is that we now live in a world
Speaker 1: where virtually every book, every piece of music, every TV show,
Speaker 1: every movie is available you know at you know, with
Speaker 1: a mild Google search, and yet people seem less interested
Speaker 1: in the past than ever and kind of creating genealogies
Speaker 1: of meaning and tradition that are hyper individualized to explain.
Speaker 1: You know, I do this all the time. I look
Speaker 1: back at you know, what made me the thing? You know,
Speaker 1: what are the influences on me? And I can fill
Speaker 1: in all the gaps in a way that I couldn't
Speaker 1: thirty years ago because it was you know, the information
Speaker 1: just wasn't there. But we're less interested in that, and
Speaker 1: I think that feeds into some of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Where people, weirdly, we live in a world where race, class,
Speaker 1: and gender are less of barriers and sexual orientation than
Speaker 1: they ever have been, and yet that becomes the focal
Speaker 1: point of feeling ostracized. I think we need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to that. I think we need to also address
Speaker 1: it with more and better history. And I also think that,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to recognize that we live in
Speaker 1: a society where there's kind of psychological economy where being
Speaker 1: saying that you are an outsider, saying that you are
Speaker 1: being discriminated again, saying that you are not allowed to
Speaker 1: fully participate in the established you know, fruits of society.
Speaker 1: You know, demanding and saying you are being ostracized is
Speaker 1: a very It's a move that gets rewarded very quickly
Speaker 1: in contemporary society at the university level, also in the
Speaker 1: corporate level and things like that. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if you incentivize people to you know, say they are out,
Speaker 1: you know they're being demonized, they're being discriminated against. I
Speaker 1: think you're going to get more more of that kind
Speaker 1: of behavior and that thought. Yeah, but you know, there
Speaker 1: has been an enormous progress. It just it perplexes me.
Speaker 1: I suppose when people like Stephen Pinker points to progress
Speaker 1: and then people are like, oh, he's in the far right,
Speaker 1: and it's I mean, progress is a thing of Wasn't
Speaker 1: that a liberal thing at one point? Yeah? Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: you know, and of course they I guess part of
Speaker 1: the fear is, you know that if you say, look,
Speaker 1: things are better than they were ten years ago, so
Speaker 1: you know, then the next line is shut up and
Speaker 1: just you know, each horridge or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but you know, yeah, by the same token. There's a
Speaker 1: weird kind of I think, kind of psychological or psychic
Speaker 1: emotional arbitrage that's going on. And you see this in
Speaker 1: many discussions about race relations or race positions as well
Speaker 1: as things you know, like trans writes and whatnot, where
Speaker 1: people will you know, call they'll they'll use writings or
Speaker 1: observations by somebody like James Baldwin writing, say in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five about a country that was still you know,
Speaker 1: rife with dasiray segregation, and they'll kind of conjure him
Speaker 1: up to talk about what's going on now, as if
Speaker 1: there hasn't been you know, sixty years or more seventy
Speaker 1: years of change and progress. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: think we need to we you know, you always need
Speaker 1: to listen to what people are saying, especially people who
Speaker 1: are saying I am not participating fully, I am being
Speaker 1: discriminated against, I don't feel part of the group. Those
Speaker 1: are real, you know, meaningful, you know kind of words
Speaker 1: and emanations and feelings that we need to take seriously.
Speaker 1: But we also need to not constantly be you know,
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, is America more racist now than
Speaker 1: it was sixty years ago or one hundred years ago. No,
Speaker 1: it isn't. And we've had progress along these lines. How
Speaker 1: do we identify that, how do we recognize that? And
Speaker 1: then how do we kind of keep that moving forward?
Speaker 1: And I feel like we're in now in a world
Speaker 1: where people are not interested in moving forward. People are
Speaker 1: interested in kind of settling scores or assuming that all
Speaker 1: of the resources that are ever going to be available
Speaker 1: are on the table right now, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a land grab to see who gets the most of
Speaker 1: what's on the table. And that's not really the way
Speaker 1: that societies can and should work. We need to be
Speaker 1: thinking about how do we expand opportunities? How do how
Speaker 1: do we create a world that we can barely envision
Speaker 1: now in which in visuals and groups that they voluntarily
Speaker 1: form can do whatever they want. I think it's a
Speaker 1: really odd moment for in many ways, over the past
Speaker 1: twenty five years, you know, I've been a reason for
Speaker 1: coming up on like twenty seven years. My professional career
Speaker 1: has mostly been a reason. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that has happened in many parts of our lives,
Speaker 1: we've been getting more and more individualized. When you think
Speaker 1: about the types of food you buy, or when you
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant, the clothing you buy, everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: Everything is more individualized. And yet we are when we talk,
Speaker 1: when we talk about social and cultural identities, we've gone
Speaker 1: through this phase now where we are we are returning
Speaker 1: to the crudest abstractions to talk about who we are
Speaker 1: as individuals. We're either black, or we're white, or we're Asian.
Speaker 1: I mean, people aren't even talking about, you know, the
Speaker 1: subgroups that make up Asian Americans. And this strikes me
Speaker 1: as profoundly wrong, because people are more mixed than ever
Speaker 1: and that is a good thing, and it's a positive thing.
Speaker 1: And I wish that we were willing to talk more
Speaker 1: about a kind of what I consider a glorious mongrelization
Speaker 1: of race, class, gender, sexual orientation. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: so many more possibilities Now everything is like Baskin Robbins
Speaker 1: or you know, a Starbucks, where you can have an
Speaker 1: infinite number of combinations, and as you become interested in something,
Speaker 1: you can recombine in all sorts of new ways. Where
Speaker 1: I wrote an essay years ago about how the X
Speaker 1: Men were the model for what everybody wants to be.
Speaker 1: You want to be a mutant, you want to be recombined,
Speaker 1: you want to be a shape shifter and changing all
Speaker 1: the time. And this is a really good thing. And
Speaker 1: yet in many ways, you know, over the past you know, decade,
Speaker 1: maybe we seem to be going back into cruder and
Speaker 1: cruder kind of tribal sensibilities. And you know, that's very troubling,
Speaker 1: and I think it helps explain why we have, you know,
Speaker 1: it helps explain a lot of the negativity and public discords.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. And it relates to cancel culture
Speaker 1: and kind of that drive. You have a cover story
Speaker 1: coming out in October and the issue of Reason magazine
Speaker 1: called self Cancelation, deplatforming, and censorship, a taxonomy of cancel culture,
Speaker 1: which outlines libertarian concerns over suppressing speech at various levels.
Speaker 1: Now you open up this article talking about how we're
Speaker 1: living in an age of cancel culture. Now, can you
Speaker 1: explain a little bit how you define cancel culture? What
Speaker 1: are the parameters you put around a phenomenon that you
Speaker 1: would describe as cancel culture? Yeah, you know. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I use a definition that Jonathan Roush,
Speaker 1: who's a writer who years ago he wrote a book
Speaker 1: about called Kindly Inquisitors, the New attacks on free thought
Speaker 1: or free thinking and free speech, which anticipated a lot
Speaker 1: of the world we're living in. And he has a
Speaker 1: new book out called The Constitution of Knowledge, and he
Speaker 1: distinguishes canceling from mere criticism, and he says that, you know,
Speaker 1: canceling has to do there's a social media component to it,
Speaker 1: but a public It isn't always you know, social media,
Speaker 1: but there's a public dimension to it, and that it's
Speaker 1: you know, people who are into canceling, people into cancel
Speaker 1: culture are seeking to organize and manipulate social and media
Speaker 1: in a social or media environment in order to isolate,
Speaker 1: deep platform or intimidate ideological opponents. And it's different than criticism.
Speaker 1: Criticism is about engaging somebody's arguments and rebutting it. We're
Speaker 1: reframing it and saying, you know what, this is a
Speaker 1: better way of thinking about things. Cancel culture. And you
Speaker 1: see this all the time where people will say, I'm
Speaker 1: not even going to read the work or engage it.
Speaker 1: This person should lose their job, they should lose their standing,
Speaker 1: they should be deep platformed, off of Twitter, off of YouTube,
Speaker 1: out of a university job, out of a corporate job.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what cancel culture is really about. And
Speaker 1: it's a kind of sensorial mindset, which is saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, if I don't agree with something and I
Speaker 1: don't like something, I'm not just going to ignore it
Speaker 1: or or you know better yet debate it. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to strike it from the known universe of
Speaker 1: discourse and conversation. So I think, you know, that's one
Speaker 1: way of getting a cancel culture. We can you know
Speaker 1: exactly how you measure, you know, what's you know, the
Speaker 1: volume of cancelation, et cetera. But you know, there is something.
Speaker 1: I think most people would agree there is something going
Speaker 1: on which is new and different. It's not that it's
Speaker 1: completely unique to the current moment. Or something. But you know,
Speaker 1: earlier in the year, one of the people I talk
Speaker 1: about in the story is the the Banjos from the
Speaker 1: band Mumford and Sons, who self canceled after he had
Speaker 1: he tweeted out a you know to Andy know, a
Speaker 1: controversial journalist who's a kind of right wing you know people.
Speaker 1: Some people call him atrol, other people say he's a
Speaker 1: good investigative journalist. But he wrote a book about Antifa
Speaker 1: in Portland, and this banjoist said, you know, that was
Speaker 1: a fascinating book, an interesting book. And then like, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple hours later after you know, he got a
Speaker 1: lot of negative press and his bandmate's gone on his case.
Speaker 1: You know, he was like, I realized I've made you know,
Speaker 1: I said horrible things that I'm taking a break from Twitter.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very cultural revolution, you know, from Maos
Speaker 1: China of like, where people are not only being punished,
Speaker 1: but they are being kind of forced or cajoled into
Speaker 1: admitting the errors of their ways and silencing them. That's
Speaker 1: something that I think anybody who believes in kind of
Speaker 1: liberal discourse, free thought, you know, and free and free
Speaker 1: expression really should be worried about this kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote quote you. This is life today
Speaker 1: in the United States, where a seemingly infinite supply of
Speaker 1: such incidents appears on a seemingly hourly basis, like automated
Speaker 1: bursts of super concentrated air freshener and airport bathrooms. There
Speaker 1: is this idea of, uh, it's very biblical owning your sins. Ye, Now,
Speaker 1: there's this idea of owning your sins is very important.
Speaker 1: And only particular people you know in our society are
Speaker 1: are are on the hot seat right now, you know,
Speaker 1: to atone those sins and others aren't. To me, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like it takes an account the full complexity
Speaker 1: of being human. To me, from a humanistic psychology perspective,
Speaker 1: it doesn't acknowledge that there's good and bad in all
Speaker 1: of us, no matter what side you're on. You know,
Speaker 1: do you agree? I yeah, you know, I think I would.
Speaker 1: I would put it a little bit differently. There's definitely
Speaker 1: a you know, a racial dimension to this, where it's
Speaker 1: like if you are you know, a cisgender white man,
Speaker 1: particularly you know, but not always I if you're over fifty,
Speaker 1: you are much you know, you are in you know
Speaker 1: the hot seat to be you know, you have more
Speaker 1: things adding up to that. But I don't think it's
Speaker 1: primarily racial because also, you know, consider, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, after it came
Speaker 1: out that she had purchased a wide variety of homes,
Speaker 1: of expensive homes in a lead neighborhood, stepped down, she
Speaker 1: stepped away from the organization. So this type of stuff comes,
Speaker 1: you know, comes for everybody. And as I point out,
Speaker 1: it's a good point, as I point as I point
Speaker 1: out in the story, I mean one of the kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it's it's somewhat comical, but it also hopefully,
Speaker 1: you know, shows that this stuff has a certain shelf life.
Speaker 1: But where you know, a podcast that Gimli Media, which
Speaker 1: was designed to kind of do a deep dive on
Speaker 1: how awful it was to work at Condi Nass Bon Appetite.
Speaker 1: Two episodes into that podcast, the people the producers of
Speaker 1: the podcast canceled themselves because people who worked with them said,
Speaker 1: you're just as bad as the people at Conde Nass.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, you get into this thing
Speaker 1: where the revolution eats its own and all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I think what we're witnessing. Also
Speaker 1: is you know, what feeds into cancel culture. Apart from
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of free floating sense of you know,
Speaker 1: of people feeling injured and aggressed by you know, random
Speaker 1: and stray thoughts that you know, in the past might
Speaker 1: not have risen to the level of you know, of
Speaker 1: anger and public public shouting. There's also a generational dimension
Speaker 1: going on. You know that this is a way of
Speaker 1: clearing out the top of the pyramid. And you know,
Speaker 1: and again, the millennials are coming, you know, the older
Speaker 1: older millennials are now in their early forties, them and
Speaker 1: Gen Z Dwarf, you know, baby boomers and Gen X
Speaker 1: and and you know, they want to move up and
Speaker 1: out into the world. So that when you see people
Speaker 1: like you know, Senator Al Franken is a good example,
Speaker 1: the you know, senator democratic, senator, liberal progressive. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who worked at Air America and
Speaker 1: made you know, his biggest best selling books were attacking
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh for being a big fat idiot, you know,
Speaker 1: and a liar and things like that. You know, he
Speaker 1: got canceled, and I think you know, it's you know,
Speaker 1: looking back now, it's kind of hard to believe it's
Speaker 1: not even clear what he exactly he was canceled for,
Speaker 1: but he got squeezed out. And it's kind of generational,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like you're looking at who are
Speaker 1: the people in power positions? How do you get rid
Speaker 1: of them? And that way, you know, it frees up
Speaker 1: some space to move up. So I think that's a
Speaker 1: big part of this and it and it kind of
Speaker 1: ds with that sense of, you know, kind of what
Speaker 1: we were talking about, people feeling very uncomfortable with conflict,
Speaker 1: feeling very tender to the world. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you grew up believing that, you know, the world was
Speaker 1: kind of simultaneously the world was your oyster. Because you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a millennial or Gen Z, you're growing up
Speaker 1: in a world where you're constantly being told, here are
Speaker 1: all of the things that are in front of you,
Speaker 1: here are all of the things that are available. But
Speaker 1: then you have parents or a society which is also
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that you never encounter, you know,
Speaker 1: some kind of reality that tells you you're not that special,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I think when you combine that, the sensibility
Speaker 1: that grows out of that kind of child proofing, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of generational childproofing, plus a real desire in a
Speaker 1: sense that you know what, like old people. You know,
Speaker 1: baby boomers aren't going anywhere. You know, at least the
Speaker 1: greatest generation by the time they were sixty, they were
Speaker 1: dying to retire. You know, we have a president who's
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred years old, and he beat a
Speaker 1: guy who was like ninety five years old, who beat
Speaker 1: a woman who is ninety years old. You know, like
Speaker 1: it's you know, there's a weird kind of gerontocracy at
Speaker 1: work culturally, economically, politically in America, which I think is
Speaker 1: also fuel in cancel culture in a very real way. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sort of end on another quote of
Speaker 1: yours that I like. I liked a lot of these things.
Speaker 1: I liked a lot of things you said in this article.
Speaker 1: You said, contemporary cancel culture can take on left and
Speaker 1: right flavorings, and it can be enforced by governments, corporations,
Speaker 1: or individuals, but it all works to reduce our ability
Speaker 1: not just to talk freely, but to live freely. And
Speaker 1: that is reason enough to contest it at every level.
Speaker 1: That's a very compelling argument. If you believe in free speech.
Speaker 1: If you believe in in human freedom, of the spirit
Speaker 1: of autonomy, self actualization, it seems like it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue with that, regardless of where on the political lines
Speaker 1: it falls. So thanks for writing that article, Nick, and
Speaker 1: and thank you for being on the podcast day and
Speaker 1: for dare I say, being my friend. It's been great
Speaker 1: get to know you personally as a human. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: same here. I appreciate it. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: one of the things I you know, and I think
Speaker 1: that we definitely kind of overlap or intersect on in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way, is thinking about the human potential movement
Speaker 1: and kind of positive psychology. I guess you would call
Speaker 1: it more. And you know, this is like an incredible moment.
Speaker 1: It's you know, there are so many possibilities and we
Speaker 1: can do so many things, and it's you know, I
Speaker 1: worry that, you know, it's it's kind of like we've
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've reached escape velocity from so much
Speaker 1: of the crap of the past that is, you know
Speaker 1: about racial, gender, sexual discrimination and things like that, and
Speaker 1: you know, where we can do whatever we want. And
Speaker 1: you know a lot of us, I think are shrinking
Speaker 1: from that freedom and kind of going back to older
Speaker 1: forms of identity and regulating other people's lives. That is,
Speaker 1: it would just be horrible to miss this opportunity to
Speaker 1: kind of actually create a twenty first century which is
Speaker 1: just fantastically better than anything that we you know, that
Speaker 1: our parents or grandparents might have imagined. That's the same
Speaker 1: thing is the potential is there if we want it.
Speaker 1: You know, the post traumatic growth that I think is
Speaker 1: going to come about from this pandemic, I think we
Speaker 1: at least I could say, the potential there is huge.
Speaker 1: You know, whether or not we sees it, sees it
Speaker 1: or not or get drawn into the muck of arguments
Speaker 1: over who should wear masks or not is up to us.
Speaker 1: But thank you Nick, thank you, thank you Scott. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.