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It Takes a Village to Raise a Child
66 Plays19 days ago
In this episode Patrick and Andrew are joined once again by Kevin Dolan to discuss his latest project Natal Conference, where they'll discuss the current trend of a declining global population and the ramifications of that. You can find out more about Natal Conference at natalism.org
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and slaughter return
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Copybook Headings podcast. You're a new listener, just joining us for the first time. This show is inspired by the poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. And every week we take an old saying, proverb, or maxim, and we break it down to see what we can learn from it and see if there's still any ancient wisdom from these old proverbs that's relevant today.
Guest Introduction: Kevin Dolan
00:00:50
Speaker
I am your host, Patrick Payne, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Andrew Stevens. Andrew, how are you doing, buddy? Yeah, doing great. How are you?
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm doing great too. Why are you doing great today, Andrew? Well, for one, you know, that there's a small amount of sunshine coming through my basement windows, but also because we are joined by our friend, Kevin Dolan. Heck yeah. Kevin's back. How you doing, man? Hey, guys. Good to be here. Yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
And we're recording at a different time, so that's why we have sunshine this time. I'm not used to seeing your windows not black, so. Well, ah yeah, for those of you who don't know Kevin, um shame on you. Yeah, we've ah we've had Kevin on the podcast before. Avid listeners will remember ah early episode when we when we had him on. Kevin is the creator of Exit Group.
00:01:38
Speaker
of which Andrew and I are both members and where we initially connected to get this project started. So ah we owe Kevin a lot for that. And yeah, ah Kevin, you wanna tell the people a little bit little bit about yourself?
Purpose and Growth of Exit Group
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I run exit group. um I was doxed and fired in 2021 and got some guys together to to see what we could build that was robust to to not just that but to all kinds of other systems becoming ah inhospitable to folks like us.
00:02:12
Speaker
and ah been doing that for about three years. We've got 225 guys now and um it's it's it's growing like a weed. We did we did Natalcon last year um in November. We're doing it again in March. and Excuse me. and ah Yeah, that's that's what keeps me busy.
Natalcon Conference and Influences
00:02:31
Speaker
and I'm glad you mentioned that because Natalcon specifically, last time we had you on, we mainly talked about exit um and people can go back and listen to that that episode if you want to know more about that group and how it was formed and everything.
00:02:43
Speaker
but i'd I'd like to talk more about about Natalcon this time, which is what I primarily was thinking about when I had you on. Second time, can you tell us a little bit about what it is? Yeah, so ah a couple of the exit guys actually were watching Tucker Carlson's documentary, The End of Men, which is primarily focused on um the the public health crisis, endocrine disruptors, obesity, diabetes,
00:03:12
Speaker
Um, but they had this, uh, segment on like, like sperm counts and fertility and people just not having babies, uh, on a, like there's, there's the, the fertility side of it. Like, you know, we're trying, we can't have babies. And then there's like the social side of it, which is just like people who are really unhealthy and sick all the time are just not, uh,
00:03:36
Speaker
chasing each other the down, trying to have babies. So, um and it was like, you know, it was, it was Tucker Carlson and RFK and then like a bunch of guys that are friends of mine on Twitter.
Fertility Issues: Causes and Constructs
00:03:50
Speaker
And so we said, what if we expanded the conversation to be not just about um the, the medical side of it, but also like, you know, why is dating so deranged? Why is, why is it so hard to get married, stay married?
00:04:05
Speaker
um just just cover the the the birth rate issue ah holistically. And ah so we had about a hundred people in a room in Austin last year. It was tremendous. It was it was ah this like tech tribe and trad tribe kind of meeting together ah and and bonding over their puzzlement, bonding over their their the fact that we were all kind of stumped by this problem.
00:04:37
Speaker
what you know Is there anything we could do about it? What can we do about it? What would be like you know is' ethical and practical and responsible to do about it? ah and This year, we've gotten a lot more academic involvement. We've gotten a lot more people who have you know made professional studies of this of this issue.
00:04:59
Speaker
And it's going to be more about like, you know, so, so last round was more about like, what's this doing? Like, what is the impact, uh, sociologically, economically, this round is going to be like, let's dig into the wise. Let's figure out why this is actually happening.
Community Solutions for Population Decline
00:05:14
Speaker
So we've got people who are, uh, who are equipped to have, if nothing else, a robust debate about that question. So, uh, so yeah, that's, that's Natalcon.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds exciting. um ah We, as you know, in this show, we always have like a like a proverb to go along with it. This one Andrew had selected for this conversation. Andrew, you wanna talk to us about that for a minute?
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, I figured, you know, since we wanted to talk about, um, you know, raising kids, uh, and, and, uh, we know like, yeah, you like to troll Kevin. So, uh, I thought this one would be fun one. Uh, it takes a whole village to raise a child. Um, I think a lot of people, especially our age and older ah associate this one very strongly with, with Hillary Clinton and like her book back in the nineties, it was, it was a, um,
00:06:07
Speaker
you know, a fought over title, I think, because people associate, well, that means, you know, it takes the government to raise a child, right? That's kind of the implications being coming from the coming from the Democrats. so um So this, I think, has been abandoned by ah people people on the right, um or just otherwise written off as as a political slogan. um and And as far as origins go, we like to look into that. um This is another one, it's kind of a black hole. it Um, some people will say, Oh, it's like an African proverb and, and in the, in the proverb world, that's kind of a code for, we don don't know where it comes from, you know? Um, and so we've seen those before. Yeah, we've seen them before. So, so yeah, the origins of this one are un unclear, even NPR like wrote up an article about looking for it and they couldn't find a ah clear precursor to this one. So it's just, uh, just unknown, but yeah, so we kind of wanted to have that be kind of the backdrop for our conversation here.
00:07:06
Speaker
um And I imagine there are some, you know, social and and communal and community solutions, solutions or at least ah things that you're talking about with with the Natalcon.
00:07:23
Speaker
it If the intrepid shoe leather journalists at NPR can't find it, then I don't know. yeah I don't know if anyone's going to find find the answer to that. The Google search failed. yeah um but we will so i guess when i've For those of you who haven't heard Kevin's opening speech at Natalcon, the first one, ah you posted it online, Kevin. and i I think we should probably repost it on our on our page, on Twitter. ah you should You should watch that one. it kind of kind of I thought that was a great speech. Thank you. I posted on my personal pages and everything too, because I thought it was important to hear for people to hear. When I talk to people about this issue of you know
00:08:02
Speaker
population decline and everything like that. One, people oftentimes don't know that it's happening. And then if I can, once I do convince them that, you know, showing them data, like, yes, this is happening, typically the next response is, so what? Like the population goes down a little bit, you know, what's the problem with that? Do you think you could speak to that a little bit, Kevin? Absolutely. Yeah. So when people imagine population decline, they're genuine, they're generally imagining the same number of people, the same kind of people just like sort of cut by 10%, right? But that's not what happens. Basically, ah so population decline, particularly ah this kind of population decline, where it's just, you know, people are living to a ripe old age, but they're not having babies. um There was a there was a picture, I can't remember what celebrity it was, I think it was Ariana Grande. And she was posting the Christmas party that she went to. And it was like,
00:09:02
Speaker
her and ah two young gay guys and like a nursing home. It was just completely aged, this ah this Christmas party. And that's more what it looks like. It looks like, you know, all of the the big um the big bulge in the population pyramid, but all in the nursing home and all being supported by, you know, a handful of young, childless people.
00:09:30
Speaker
And the problem with that, ah well, among the problems with that is that the burden of caring for the elderly interferes with the ability to care for children, to raise a family. So this is a problem that gets worse as it gets worse, it accelerates.
Economic Impact of Depopulation
00:09:49
Speaker
And um um among the ramifications of that, obviously, is the fact that ah you You look at cities like Detroit, which have been emptied out for for other reasons, not related to population decline, but but approximately within Detroit, if you look at like what's going on in Detroit primarily, it's it's depopulation. It's people abandoning the tax base, abandoned or no longer being a tax base, abandoning the infrastructure. And it's like, well, if ah if I live on a street and
00:10:26
Speaker
Three of the houses are like, you know, trap houses now. They're like boarded up and and like inhabited by, you know, drug dealers. And then like all the others are like just sitting vacant. My investment in my home, even if I choose to keep it up, my investment in my home essentially goes to zero. And I'm still having to pay for water, sewer, electric, you know, all of the pipes, all of the infrastructure, the roads,
00:10:56
Speaker
Everything that my home needs, ah that every home needs is now like spread across, you know, a tenth as many houses. And so my tax bill goes through the roof, my property value goes through the floor. And, you know, you essentially, what what what will essentially happen under those conditions, which is what happened in Detroit, is ah flight and consolidation. so um A lot of people in the suburbs had to make a choice, like do I move in closer to a place that's more sustainable, or do I move further out into the exurbs where ah you know where the where the the higher cost of infrastructure is baked in, but there aren't kind of the social pathologies of living in the city.
00:11:44
Speaker
and so um You know, and you can, you can, you can talk about that in kind of bloodless terms, but, but essentially these are people who, you know, the, the, the average middle-class American household, like your, your home is your primary investment. Like that's people need that home to retire, uh, in terms of it retaining its value. And, uh, that was a lot of people who got completely wiped out, who got, who got their, essentially their life savings wiped out by
Global Demographic Challenges
00:12:16
Speaker
depopulation.
00:12:17
Speaker
And in Detroit, you can, you can look at that as, as a pretty bad case, but actually, you know, the Michigan state government was still solvent. The federal government was still solvent. So like there was, there was like federal funds and federal resources that could be brought to bear. But if you imagine this happening everywhere, all over the country, all over the world, um, it's a lot more serious and.
00:12:42
Speaker
And so that's just the in i mean then you've got social security. You've got the fact that you've got the fact that just in in the macro, every every stock, you know every Fortune 500 company is is leveraged, meaning they're they're in they're in a lot of debt because they have expectations of of secular long-term economic growth, which just can't be sustained under conditions of population decline. You just can't have it. There's not enough customers.
00:13:09
Speaker
um And so you're you're talking about the stock market, the real estate market, the bond market, as as you know, country's tax base evaporates, they can no longer keep up with their with their sovereign debt. um So it's like every every every normal financial instrument that people would use to save and invest and and provide for themselves um is going to be severely severely harmed by demographic decline.
00:13:40
Speaker
And so what's interesting about that is it is it it takes people who like us maybe have more of a spiritual approach to this problem and see it more as ah as a as an aesthetic, a moral, a spiritual crisis. And it gives us something in common with the sort of utilitarian tech people who are just like, you know, they're just sort of like inveterate problem solvers.
00:14:08
Speaker
And they're like, oh, this is a real serious problem. Just just in terms of like making the books balance. um Yeah, good. Yeah, I mean, I recently saw that, you know, probably, I mean, probably 10, 15 years ago, it was Elon was saying that he thought climate change is the biggest threat to mankind. And now he says he thinks his population collapse. And he's a he's not a spiritual or like a religious guy. He's just he's a tech guy. Right, right, right. and And yeah, for him, it's very much like,
00:14:38
Speaker
we need to become interplanetary while we still can. um And yeah, for him, it's and what's it's just like so many other things, the even the even the political situation, the election, like Elon was able to make common cause with a bunch of people just because like, whatever you care about, this issue is going to affect it. Like if you care about science, if you care about art, if you care about your your religious tradition, if you care about the country, if you care about like the yeah even if you care about the climate, like People talk about this being like good for the the environment, but like some of the most ah environmentally disruptive periods in world history are when sort of big, efficient, relatively efficient methods of taking care of people break down and then everybody has to go like, it's like the equivalent of, of you know, if if we all had to go, if if the foods, if the, the the
00:15:37
Speaker
the food supply and the and the the the the power grid broke down. Like, all of a sudden, yeah, we wouldn't be burning coal. And we wouldn't have all these trucks on the highway. But people would be like, yeah essentially strip mining their neighborhood for like, squirrels and deer just killing all the wildlife. And they'd be burning like, you know, the number one trees, but
Bureaucratic vs. Individual Incentives
00:16:00
Speaker
like their furniture, like they'd be burning things to stay alive. And that's In this case, that's an analogy, right? But like that's what happens when people no longer able to sustain these complex, ah more more or less fine-tuned delivery methods and have to go fend for themselves. You saw that in like after the Colombian exchange. i mean ah you know as as As the Native American depopulation occurred, they like
00:16:29
Speaker
mowed down massive forests ah because because that's that's the product of these things breaking down.
00:16:38
Speaker
and you you And when you were talking about Detroit, you mentioned, you know imagine that on a large national scale or global scale. And we are seeing that on kind of a national scale and some in some countries worse than others already. It seems like Asia has been particularly badly hit by that. um is ah Maybe you could speak to that a little bit if you know know about that. Yeah, absolutely. ah Korea and Japan in particular are are in pretty deep. Well, and China too. china China, you know, they they sort of made their bed with it with the one child policy. Um, and they, they, they kind of thought they could, you know, policy their way in and policy their way out. But it turns out like it's a lot harder to get people to have kids than just to, you know, prevent them disincentivize. Um, because having kids is a, is a, it's a big investment yeah in,
00:17:33
Speaker
in your future, in your society, it's ah it it requires ah at least hope, if not optimism, about the future.
00:17:47
Speaker
and um yeah so The Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans, are their their fertility rates are absolutely in the tank. and what is What is interesting about that in Korea, so ah but one of my friends, Malcolm Collins, who's going to be attending the conference with us, is um he was a VC in Korea. And he tells the story of how like he would go talk to you know people whose job it is to follow trends and make money off those trends. And he would ask them, like what are we doing about the fact that ah you know Korea is essentially just not going to exist in 100 years?
00:18:25
Speaker
and And universally, they were like, well, yeah, so just to put that in perspective, ah for with current fertility rates, like if they don't get worse, which they are currently getting worse, but if they don't get worse, there will be four great grandchildren for every 100 living Koreans. So that's essentially extinction for the Koreans. Four great grandchildren for every 100 Koreans. That's right. That's right. If it doesn't get worse.
00:18:55
Speaker
That's a shocking statistic. Yeah. So, so, and that's the kind of thing that like, if you were running a big, you know, let's say insurance company or investment bank, or like, that's very relevant. But they would all just be like, Oh, we don't really worry about that. We don't really, we don't really price that in anything we're doing. And he was puzzled by that. But then I remembered conversations that I would have in the defense industry.
00:19:23
Speaker
ah in my wage job where i would I would, we'd be talking about, you know, South China Sea and the radars and the airstrips and the artificial islands and all the nitty gritty of what it would take to prosecute a war over over Taiwan, essentially. And nobody would ever say the N word, which is nuclear in this case. And they would never,
00:19:49
Speaker
ah acknowledge the possibility that we could like completely go up in smoke. And I think what what that means or or why that happens in both those cases is the same phenomenon. If you've got a giant bureaucratic institution and they are not capable of, if an internal constituency like some internal project manager is not able to like place a bet on a particular outcome and win. And like, you know, if I'm right about this, then I get X, right? Because if, if, uh, if there's a global thermonuclear war over Taiwan, like all bets are off, like, like, yeah you know, it doesn't matter if you were right about that in in terms of the internal, like status hierarchy at a defense contractor. Likewise in Korea.
00:20:44
Speaker
It doesn't matter if you're right about this population decline because it's just going to sink your company. like There's no there's no ah smart way to handle it other than abandon ship. and so it's That's why these big bureaucratic institutions don't talk about it. Now, what's what's what's kind of what's an opportunity there?
00:21:09
Speaker
is that because these big institutions are not pricing this in, there's opportunities for individuals who are smart to you know kind of kind of pick up pick up the dollar bills that are lying on the ground. and so One of the things we want to talk about at the conference is, like how would you invest for this? how would you you know How would you hedge against this? How would you make sure that you were positioned to to do well because like the the people that the people that have families, the people that are that are that are going to make it through this bottleneck, they're gonna need all the advantage they can get. They're gonna need ah to be able to to sort of ride this wave. So that's gonna be among the things we're gonna bring to the conference. That's fascinating. I wanted to give ah Andrew a chance to jump in here. We've been talking a lot. Yeah. yeah What do you got, Andrew?
Family Dynamics and Economic Roles
00:22:00
Speaker
Well, yeah. I mean, some of that, it seems a a little bit about um
00:22:04
Speaker
Kind of, kind of, uh, these companies and stuff, trying to outrun the bear, that, that metaphor, right? Like I, I don't have to, I don't have to run faster than the bear. I have to run faster than you. Um, and, and just, um, I guess hoping, you know, hoping by the roll of the dice that, you know, if you have four major cell phone companies or something that when, when things, when things go south, that yours is the one that's standing.
00:22:29
Speaker
And I don't know. Yeah. Like, I don't know if they're actively doing anything to position themselves to be, to be the winners in a, in a situation like that, or just hoping, hoping things shake out. I don't know, but it seems like there's a little bit of that going on too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know enough about the details to know, you know, what, what sort of machinations are happening. But like, I would assume if it's anything like the big bureaucratic monsters that I've been inside.
00:22:59
Speaker
Uh, people are not actually thinking about the company. They're thinking about themselves and, uh, they're thinking about, you know, how does this not, not, you know, what does this mean for, you know, I never worked at Raytheon, but not, what does this mean for Raytheon? But what does this mean for like my particular missile program? Like, right. What does this mean for my, my team? And, uh, you know, it's like.
00:23:28
Speaker
And you can see that with, uh, not to get too far afield, but you can see that with the, um, banging the drums on these other like military engagements that the U S has been involved in. It's like, uh, yeah, a global thermonuclear war would be really bad for business for everybody really, but like.
00:23:49
Speaker
this one escalation of selling this one rocket system to this one NATO ally in the middle of that escalation. you know that That potentially makes me a lot of money. And so but there's a lot of things like that where where the the the systems incentivize quarter to quarter thinking. And this is not, you know, this is something that you could have heard like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren say in like 2004, right? Like these corporate systems incentivize quarter to quarter, you know, like what makes the most profit from in the next three months. And then you've got, but I mean, what, what those, is what the commies get wrong is they'll like the, the political system incentivizes thinking from four years to four years, you know? So it's, yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
There's nobody in the state or in the private sector that is really incentivized to think about the long game ah except basically parents. Parents have to think about the long game. None of these big managerial systems have to think about the long game or or can.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good segue because if you think about any company or or um you know government that does have an have and interest in the future, it's you know the monarchies and the family-run businesses, right? like Those are the ones who might have a long view and have an incentive to have a long view.
00:25:20
Speaker
and right it is is along family lines. So when um so I guess coming of coming back to what you have discussed in in the Natalism Conference and what you're hoping to in this next one, like what what are the the big you know family ah topics that you're you're interested in wanting to explore? Yeah, so I kind of divide it into why is it hard to find a spouse Why is it hard to get married, stay married? Why is it hard to conceive? And then why is it hard to raise kids? Because those seem like the the basic sort of steps in the life cycle. And um that's,
00:26:10
Speaker
and I think it does have a lot to do with the fact that our, the the sort of decision making architecture of our country and our economy and all these things, ah it's it's built to make use of raw materials in a very short-term sense. And so, for instance, ah the two income trappuses, I mean, back to Elizabeth Warren, you know, back when she was an economist, she actually did some pretty interesting work. She wrote this book about how ah women entering the workforce
00:26:48
Speaker
was great for capital, was great for the corporations because it doubled the labor supply, made labor cheaper. it was and and And women you know are are smart and can do these jobs. And so it's like, you know they have all this all this talent that that's available to them all of a sudden. you have It's good for the government because the government you know basically doubles the tax base. And instead of all of these services that used to be provided kind of ad hoc and illegibly within family units. Now all of those products have to be like outsourced to businesses. So there's just more economic activity, more taxable activity, more legible ah activity to the state. ah and what And what suffers and what is sacrificed
00:27:44
Speaker
is all of the social building and inculcation of values and sort of deep rootedness that having women around to socialize their kids, to socialize with each other, to build their communities, um all of that is what gets sacrificed. And because it doesn't have a dollar or value on it, it's like it's not even recognizable as a problem.
00:28:14
Speaker
And you know to be clear, like ah I actually think that the the pure single income family where like dad goes into the office all day long and mom stays home with the kids all day long and dad performs all of the generative economic activity and mom does like almost all of the consumption activity, I think that's recent, artificial, unnatural. That's not necessarily how families you know must be organized. But you know it it is very clear that we traded a lot of social cohesion, a lot of culture transmission ah so that so that women could could do spreadsheets. And
00:29:11
Speaker
you know Basically, what I'm looking for in part in the conference is like, is there is there a way to you know look past the 1950s and look for look for paradigms that that are more natural, that that make more sense for men and women? um Because like you know like a lot of right-wing people It's the classic, yeah you ever heard that saying like, if if if your if your plan for society is is starts with, if everyone would just X, then it's it's completely useless because everyone's not going to do X. That's just never going to happen. um A lot of sort of right wing commentary on this topic is like, well, you know, we just need to restore patriarchy and we just need to be in charge again. And we just need to like tell our wives what for. And it's like,
00:30:04
Speaker
That's just not, that is not the world we live in and it's it's delusional, it's fantastic. And so um so um I'm interested in like, are there other paradigms of arranging a family's economic life that that are more in line with the way that we have lived throughout history and that and that allow a lot of this
00:30:34
Speaker
illegible, informal, ah very important, but very difficult to quantify productive work that allows that work to be done and allows that work to be ah rewarded and and and and high status.
00:30:53
Speaker
um So yeah, it's it's it's We have to find
Spiritual Motivations for Family Growth
00:30:59
Speaker
something, right? It's like it's like we took an imperfect and easily critiqued model of male and female interaction and we replaced it with like nothing, the law of the jungle. And it's like, I'm not saying we need to go back, but we need to have something.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, i in even once you kind of recognize this problem, like a lot of the, like you mentioned, the tech guys who are problem solvers, they might recognize this, but there's a big jump, it seems in my mind, between, yeah, this is a problem too.
00:31:37
Speaker
I'm going to have three more kids, you know because people don't make decisions on their own family based on you know ah the the the tax base, or right if there's going to be enough electrical engineers to run the power plant, you know or if it's going to fall into crumble. So that seems like a big problem, which I'm sure you've thought about. um what what What can be done about that? Well, I think you've you've nailed the problem, which is that nobody feels any ownership.
00:32:04
Speaker
nobody feels like You know, it's, it it would be one thing if it was, you know, the, the tax base for my family, you know, like, like, like my family needs this to survive my, my, you know, it's connected to ownership, to sovereignty. Like, nobody owns the tax base. Nobody owns ah the, the, the,
00:32:35
Speaker
electrical engineers at the power plant. like it's Everything is so big and so much so much more than ah and human scale that it's very difficult for people to like get emotionally invested in it. And i one of the things that I am trying to accomplish with exit, and this is one of the ways that it sort of connects to the natalism issue, is trying to put guys in a position where they're actually in control of of their environment, their lives, they can take ownership of of of the places they live and work, and they're therefore it like actually makes sense to invest in them. like ah I talked about this with with my buddy Drew a couple days ago, but like
00:33:23
Speaker
So I was talking to my buddy drew that that basically it's, it's like, it's like breeding in captivity. And you, you observe all these like deranged behaviors from animals in captivity, like the whole, the whole alpha wolf paradigm that was developed by a guy looking at wolves in like a zoo in Switzerland or Austria in 1947. And so it's like, this is not how wolves behave. It's how wolves behave in prison. Hmm.
00:33:48
Speaker
And it's it's very much the way humans behave in prison. It's these very brutal hierarchies between people who have no you know no meaningful connection, nothing other than force. And that is sort of that is sort of what I see as like the the bad future that awaits a lot of people is is this this life of total atomization where where you know you know might makes right because Nobody has any attachment to one another. Nobody has any any reason to give each other a break. It's just this completely, you're you're alone in the world. And and so ah family, I see as like the the antidote to that, stewardship within a family. And and you see this in in ah wolves and and any other any other like complex life in the wild.
00:34:46
Speaker
ah wolf packs are just families. And there are there are conflicts, but there's also affection and cooperation and and it's it's nothing at all like it is in a in a tight, you know, 30 foot enclosure at a zoo. And so ah so yeah, I see our project is sort of like restoring humanity to its natural habitat, to getting it out of this really profoundly unnatural position of of atomization.
00:35:25
Speaker
So i have I have a big family and Kevin, I know you do too. And um you know i the I'm trying to think back of the why. you know Why did I decide to continue to have kids when we could have put a stop to it? And for me, it was it was very spiritual and it was a sense of kind of you know colored by my my faith and my religious views and also kind of a sense of duty of this is what I do and this is what I'm supposed to do.
00:35:52
Speaker
um is Is that, I mean, do where you was yours the same way? And if and if so, um but how do we how do we kind of replicate that on ah on a scale that's larger than just a few pockets of religious people? Well, to be totally frank, I'm not certain that you can. um I think that our metaphysical beliefs about the meaning of life and the meaning of family and like the the fact that you know for Latter-day Saints, that's your family in a meaningful sense like is your heaven. It's it's what your
00:36:39
Speaker
It's what God is building with you and it's what you are supposed to inherit. And so I don't know that you can just hot swap that for some other metaphysical beliefs and and and maintain the power of it. I think you have to actually believe that.
Valuing Family and Personal Sacrifice
00:36:57
Speaker
Having said that, I think most people instinctively resonate with the idea that family is what really matters.
00:37:08
Speaker
and go ahead um I would agree with that, except or I so i so constantly see this disconnect where people will pay lip service to families, the most important thing. And kind of the analogy that i I'll always draw is if you if you were to tell somebody, you know just a friend or coworker or or neighbor or something, hey, my business doubled in size this last year, it would be nothing but congratulations. Despite the fact that having a twice the size of business does come with more work, more headache, more payroll, more taxes, more everything,
00:37:41
Speaker
there's a lot of downsides to having a larger business because it comes with more work, but there they'll all it'll all be congratulations. If you were to tell your neighbor, oh, I doubled my family over the last year, it's despite the fact that your neighbor would tell you, oh yeah, family is the most important thing, it's more important than business. the the The reaction would be very different. Yeah, I think we're i think we are very accustomed to
00:38:10
Speaker
thinking of life in quantifiable, legible terms. And and I think like you know it's actually like explicit in the way that we're educated. It's like ah what' what's what's real and what matters is the things that you can quantify and verify and replicate. And um and part of the problem with that, both for for individuals and the society is that number one, ah it it does teach us to ignore things that are complex and hard to quantify like like the way you feel when your kid asks you to pick them up or ah you know shows you something they built or a drawing or like things that you can't put a price on.
00:39:08
Speaker
And also internally in your own kind of thinking about thinking, it causes you to doubt and discount all of the experiences like like religious experience, like love, that are powerful, but that you could not explain. And so a lot of people have I mean, I think everyone has the same types of religious experiences that you or I have had, but because they are taught to discount them or not take them seriously, ah they don't have the same kind of life-changing impact. And I think kids are just like one casualty of this much deeper pathology.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, if that's an interesting point. And in if that is the case, then maybe there's some room for optimism here because I do kind of see a spiritual revival happening in society right now. um Yeah. For a number of reasons, and and it seems more common for people to be willing to talk about faith ah and spirituality, whether it be overtly religious and in an organized sense or not. um So if that's the case, then then maybe these,
00:40:39
Speaker
maybe it does have to be spiritual and some in some sense to get people to, to i mean I mean, after all, what is love if not some sort of spiritual thing and it's not something you can measure? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's it's also like meaning is not like, meaning is not something that you can quantify in the sense because like, sometimes the meaningful thing to do is die. Sometimes the meaningful thing to do is to suffer.
00:41:08
Speaker
Uh, often that's the case, right? Often the the the meaningful thing is not the easy thing. And so, uh, if, if you're, if you're a pure utilitarian and it's like, uh, you know, I want people to, to have like positive hedonic experience and minimal negative hedonic experience.
00:41:32
Speaker
and I want them to be, comfort I mean, this is this something that like Nietzsche talks about in um Zarathustra, is this idea that like, everything is about sleep, everything is about oblivion, everything is about your belly. It's about, um you know, like heaven is a full belly, heaven is heaven is satiation, it's comfort, it's contentment. And that translated to this utilitarian uh, calculus is like, like the effective altruist guys. Like they, they, they, they, they so they look at like the numbers, they look at the data and they're like, how can we, you know, maximize quality adjusted life years or like all these different statistics they have to measure people's, you know, essentially comfort and is sort of hedonic, uh, satisfaction. And that, that precludes.
00:42:32
Speaker
heroism great or small. That precludes ah taking 20 years off from your own consumption so that you can raise another little consumer. like That's incoherent. no one No one would or should do that.
00:42:48
Speaker
um It has to be about something else. and you know um There have been other answers to the question of meaning that have historically inspired people to have babies. like this is't This is a relatively new problem.
00:43:09
Speaker
um
00:43:11
Speaker
But I do think you got to have an
Finding Meaning Beyond Family
00:43:13
Speaker
answer. you got to have it's it's It's got to go beyond the yeah the utilitarian argument.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, um all three of us are are you know served missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it as it would you know as i had it, but um it's weird because when you explain what that experience is like, that two-year experience, on paper it sounds awful, but doesn't it? It's just like you can't do anything, and yet when you are in service of others, when you are um
00:43:52
Speaker
talking about God, talking about Jesus Christ every day, doing service projects and working for other people, working hard every single day, not watching TV, not consuming anything that's more than what's necessary to consume. It ends up being a really good experience for most people.
00:44:11
Speaker
yeah And so I think that kind of proves right there. So people who've had an experience like that, it doesn't have to be specifically through through our faith tradition, but you know when you've had an ah an experience where they where they really kind of forget themselves and and and and work for some something some meaningful thing that's bigger than themselves, they end up exceptionally happy. Yeah, the the the issue with kids on that question specifically,
00:44:40
Speaker
is that it's recursive. And so if you think that your kid's life, like, if you think that your life is just about your kids, well, then it's like, what am what are my kids' lives about? Are their kids, their lives just about their kids? And like it's like, it has to, you cannot, I don't think, I don't think you can offload the question of meaning onto your kids. I think people do that sometimes and it it can be, it can be a problem. Uh, cause they live vicariously through their kids and they, they, they need their kids to go a certain way because that's what they've built their whole life around. And I would say, I think that there's something to, well, I think, I think number one, uh,
00:45:36
Speaker
dads who make their whole life about being a dad, their sons tend not to find that particularly sexy. Like like the the the dad bod and the man cave and the like, you know, I have my little hobbies, but mainly I'm just about my kids and my wife.
00:45:58
Speaker
um I don't I don't think that I don't think that most young men find that compelling. I don't think most women don't either. You're right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so even by its own standard, it kind of fails um because it doesn't lead you where you where you want to go. So I would say, you know, and but that but that's like a a really, really deep question, which is like, what is a man supposed to be? What is a man supposed to do? And yeah, I guess I guess I would say that that you can you can definitely go beyond the scope of ah of the natalism issue and and and where we're trying to cover with this, but like, it cuts to some pretty deep questions. And that's why
00:46:49
Speaker
So many bright people find it both frustrating and kind of irresistible as a problem because it touches the heights and the depths.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I was laughing a little bit as you were saying that because I'm like, man, I don't envy you to like solve these problems because it's like touching on those deep questions like what is what does it mean to me ah to be a man? Like that's not a <unk> that's no small task. But I think it's outstanding that we have your we have smart people who are trying to at least think about this and solve this problem um because it's it's a big one.
00:47:29
Speaker
um Andrew, do you want, do you have anything?
Family as a Unit Against Atomization
00:47:35
Speaker
ah Yeah, I kind of want to talk a bit about like, you know, family and the the family unit and um as as a kind of escape from this atomization, the social atomization.
00:47:50
Speaker
um Because even, you know, even you know the the family guys, it's it's still Fairly atomized, right? It's still at at the family level, the the nuclear family. um And for anyone who start who is has an eye to start ah a multi-generational endeavor to to be the start of something, um that's where you're starting from, right? You're starting from, ah for at least for most people, maybe maybe they're a couple of generations in already.
00:48:19
Speaker
but you're kind of starting from, well, it's me and my wife and my kids and trying to build something for my kids and grandkids and great grandkids. Like having that, that vision, um, when you have no real experience with it yourself, right? Um, and you know, kind of what have you thought about, um, that vision and, and building, you know, beyond yourself, beyond your life? Yeah. I mean, fundamentally it's, it's,
00:48:50
Speaker
You have to, you have to own your family. Like it has to be yours and you have to belong to it. And, uh, in order, in order for this, in order for this, like.
00:49:10
Speaker
in order for it to make sense to to perpetuate it into the sort of infinite horizon, right? It has to be something that you and your wife and your kids are building together for yourselves. And and and it belongs to you and you belong to it. And so ah i think that that I think that that has a lot to do with
00:49:37
Speaker
just the structure of our economic system as a whole. It has to do with the fact that it's with the kind of you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. like that that model really i mean That is sort of the final destination of of managerialism, ah which is the sort of the type of regime that we've all lived under for the last 100 years or so.
00:50:02
Speaker
and ah when when you own nothing and when you have no meaningful attachments, like there are the attachments of sentiment, right? Like people still love their kids, they still love their wives, et cetera. but But they are not engaged in a project, a multi-generational project that in which they all participate and all are essential. Like your kids,
00:50:31
Speaker
If you work a standard W2, your kids don't ever see what people find like powerful and admirable and essential about you because you essentially come home and consume. They see you consume. And, uh,
00:50:51
Speaker
And your, you know, your wife doesn't see it either. And your, your kids don't learn what it takes to be a man because what they see you do is not that thing. What they see you do is what is, is like when you're ready to take a break from all that. And, and, you know, uh, everything's compartmentalized. Everything is separate. And, uh,
00:51:18
Speaker
and like you it it's, it's.
00:51:23
Speaker
It's not surprising under those conditions that people view the sort of treadmill of human life, life for its own sake, as kind as kind of like tedious, like, you know, why would I, why would I keep that flywheel spinning? Why wouldn't I just, you know, sort of enjoy myself and, and, you know, go to Bali and surf and then get old and die.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't, when you when you were talking about how, you know, it might not be ideal to have that 1950s style of of structure of family where the dad works and the mom stays home. and And as you were saying that, I didn't exactly understand what you meant, because I was like, well, you know, what's wrong with that? You know, if it's if that's how this family wants to be structured. But now I think it makes a little bit more sense with that point you just made. And it made me think,
00:52:23
Speaker
It makes me think about what am I showing to my kids? Are they just seeing me come home tired after work and land on the couch? Or um maybe there's maybe there's a some way that I can...
00:52:37
Speaker
I can show them what I do or building things, creating things, doing doing something productive. that's that's good that's ah That's an interesting thought. Yeah, well, and I think this this maybe ah also gets to the the actual proverb that it takes a village to raise a child. Like, ah my my sons, I have four sons, my sons will not be just like me.
00:53:06
Speaker
they're not going to they're not going to do exactly what I do. And so I want them exposed to, like for starters, I have several kids who are just way more athletic than me and way more intrinsically motivated by that. And um I really want to get them around guys who are wired the same way so that they can learn from somebody who is really passionate about it and and gets it.
00:53:31
Speaker
um And that's part of, you know, one of the things that I want from, from exit, from the, from a lot of these projects that I'm doing is just admirable people to surround my kids with good examples and, uh, good examples of, of all the different ways to be a man so that they can kind of, uh, I don't think you really pick, but, but, so they can identify which one is, is them, you know, what, what sort of, uh, archetype, what direction they want to build in.
00:54:04
Speaker
um so So yeah, it's it's it's not so much about like the the patriarchal or not character of of the family organization. It's about the fact that you are
00:54:24
Speaker
alienated from, well, your family is alienated from the productive life that makes the family possible. Like you read, that you read Proverbs when they describe a virtuous woman. And she's like, she's like running a business, she's like doing productive economic activity. And and you know, you you can, there's like a really facile, stupid feminist reading of that, which is like, you know, a girl boss thing.
00:54:53
Speaker
But the real way to read it is like everyone was involved in the productive life of the family. Everyone was, it it was, I mean, the family proclamation, right? The family is the fundamental unit of society. When when when when people say that in church,
00:55:14
Speaker
you can tell that generally what they mean is like the family is really, really important or it's like really, really good. But that's not what it means to say the family is the fundamental unit of society. What that means is the individual is not the fundamental unit of society, the family is. And so when we are thinking about welfare, including our own welfare, when we're thinking about like how do we how do we decide what's good for the society, we need to be thinking about what's good for the families of that society. And and those and those families should be ah sort of independent in their sphere, sovereign in their sphere, able to able to make decisions that ah basically able able to steer their own ship.
00:56:08
Speaker
And that's that's sort of the battle that that everyone is fighting over the trans thing and the you know the books and the libraries and what your kids are being taught. It's all about who decides, like who's in charge of your kids.
Defending Family Sovereignty
00:56:21
Speaker
And those of us on our side of the argument, we say, you know we should be in charge of our kids.
00:56:28
Speaker
And that the problem with that or the, uh, the, the reason that's complicated is because, you know, a lot of people are bad parents. And so the state can like always make this really persuasive argument that like, no, no, no, we need to be able to interfere because some of you are real animals. And it's like, well, but some of those guys are real animals too, you know, in the government. And, and, uh, and so the,
00:56:57
Speaker
we have to We have to be able to defend these boundaries and defend these little sovereignties, defend these these spheres in which we are independent.
00:57:08
Speaker
um And one way that I, this is this is getting a little bit far afield, but like, I think a lot of Christians in general, but Latter-day Saints in particular have
00:57:25
Speaker
gotten into their heads the idea that abandoning their principles ah or or deferring to you know authority is humble and Christ-like and that it's it's what Jesus would want. And that to me seems insane. It's like
00:57:56
Speaker
your Your relationship to your stewardship should be that it's not yours to abdicate. You don't you don't have a right to not hold this line. like It's not your wall that you're guarding.
00:58:10
Speaker
and and so yeah basically i think I think whatever survives this bottleneck, whatever makes it through to the other side,
00:58:25
Speaker
Uh, it'll certainly be religious in some form, uh, because it was, it's sort of like, you know, the way you construct that question is interest or the way you construct that statement is interesting.
Natalism Conference Details
00:58:36
Speaker
Like religious in some form, yeah basically just, it's not going to be the global liberal secular materialist monoculture. It's going to be something besides that. So to say that it'll be something religious, isn't really to narrow it down much to say, not that. Yeah. And, um,
00:58:56
Speaker
And I think it will have to be a religious tradition that has figured out how to how to identify boundaries that it's actually willing to fight over.
00:59:11
Speaker
Well said. Well, hey man, this was a fantastic conversation. um We're coming up on time, but um where can people find out about the NATO conference?
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, natalism dot.org. If you can use offer code natalism for 10% off, ah yeah, come check it out. It's gonna be in Austin, March 28th and 29th, 2025. Okay, wanna tell anybody about anything else you're pushing or where they can find you?
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:59:39
Speaker
Yeah, you can get me on Twitter at extradeadjcb or exitgroup.us.
00:59:45
Speaker
Hey, man, Kevin, thank you so much for this. This was ah this was a great conversation. We had appreciated you on the first time. this I think this this one was even better. So thank you so much for for your time. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks a lot, fellas. Yep. See ya. There are only four things certain since social progress
01:00:14
Speaker
and that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sin, as surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of the copy will hit us, with terror and slaughter at earth.