Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 727: How America Got Mean

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad.

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So please donate. So I want to talk about this story from The Atlantic. This is a long form article. The story is called How America Got Mean in a Culture Devoid of Moral Education. Generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. This is a story by David Brooks,

who I Googled very, very, very briefly. David Brooks is a conservative commentator. Yeah, but he's like a... He doesn't feel conservative... You gotta look at... In the political sense. He's a conservative in some sense because he is, I think,

a fiscally conservative guy. He's a never-Trumper. That's something that's pretty obvious, I think, even in just this article. I think a fiscally conservative guy. He's a never Trumper. That's something that's pretty obvious, I think, even in just this article. I think so. That he's a never Trumper. But I also do feel like there is some sort of conservatism

when I read this and I think about it. Because it is pining towards something that is in the past, right? Yes. This is a make America great again, even if you're not saying that out loud in some ways, he is talking like that. I'm not going to spoil it by saying whether I agree or disagree about the whole thing, because I think it's more complicated than that. But I think genuinely,

this is a guy who's looking back at a time when America did things differently than they do now, and thinks that it was a positive thing from back then that we've lost. Yeah, I think that's the sense by which this article specifically, not David Brooks, I don't know the body of his work, but like this article very specifically

is conservative in that very traditional conservative sense. I don't want people to conflate that with the modern day Republican MAGA conservatism that's based in racism and hate. I don't think this to conflate that with the modern day Republican MAGA conservatism. Yeah, because I think it's different. It's based in racism and hate. I don't think this is based in racism, hate, misogyny at all. I think he goes through great pains not to be that way.

That's exactly it. I think he goes out of his way to talk about how the things in the past that were based on that are bad. Yes. And so I do think that we should give him the benefit of the doubt there. Let's start with the very first thing that pops out at you, how America got mean. Do you think America got mean? Now, he, in the article, gives two anecdotes.

The two anecdotes he gives are a restaurant owner he knows has to throw somebody out like once a week now, and they never had to do it before, and that hospital staff are quitting because the hospitals are full of people who aren't treating nurses very well. And then he talks about some other studies about like how people are a little more sad nowadays,

but nothing, there's nothing in there that's mean except for the two anecdotes. The rest of it's all studies about how people are more isolated, et cetera. Yeah, so this is my just anecdotal feeling, my gut feeling is that certainly since the pandemic, people have gotten mean.

I do think that that is the case. I think that I feel a distinct sense of social distance and separation and underlying bubbling anger that seems to like undergird a lot of the world right now and America specifically, because that's where I live. So yeah, I think that like there is a sense specifically like from 2016 forward, but really exacerbated and like pedal to the metal from 2020 to now. That's my feeling. Yeah. What about you? Do you feel that way? I don't know if I feel that way or not.

I hadn't really thought of it until I listened to the article, right? So I don't, I haven't spent a lot of time really deeply thinking about whether or not America got mean. I just sort of, you know, listened to the article today.

Sure. Right? So I don't, I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about it before I read it. But after reading it, I don't know if that's true or not. I would like to, I mean, I think what I do think is true is that I'm seeing more of it because of social media. So people being mean and that being broadcast to me and seeing it more often is a symptom of social media because that gets clicks, right? So if somebody is fucking going off, and I mean, just look at the very concept of the word Karen,

right? Just look at that over the last, it's evolution over the last few years is something because people have been sort of going off on other people and the camera's out. Do I think that that sort of going off has always been around? Yeah, I kind of do. I think that the fact that a camera's picking it up and showing it to me so I could be outraged about it is new. But I don't think that the people who are interacting is new. I think that sort of thing has always happened. It's just now I'm privy to it happening more often. Yeah, I guess I feel like, because I haven't had any extraordinary situations

in my life where somebody has gone off in front of me. I've been on a, I was on a plane recently where someone was asked to leave, but it was very, very milquetoast. Like they were drunk and they were asked to leave and they left was very, very milquetoast. Right. Like they were drunk and they were asked to leave and they left. And that was the end of it.

It wasn't one of these big long 20 minute TikTok things where somebody's screaming at somebody or screaming at somebody that doesn't exist or whatever in the back. It wasn't anything like that.

It was very, so I haven't seen it in person. I haven't seen it in person, but I discount that because I don't do anything or go anywhere anymore. Okay. So like for me,

I'm not like involved in the world. Right. So like, I want to admit that that creates a bias for me that you're kind of pointing out, right. That, that then my exposure to things is what I see in the news. Right. So when I read the news, when I'm exposed to these events, I see them as probably taking on greater sort of statistical significance than they might have. But I also feel like the rise of Trump, and I really do believe this, is sort of the rise of the machinery of meanness writ large. That meanness has sort of like come into its day as like an acceptable way to have discourse, an acceptable way to live a life, an acceptable

way to treat and abuse other people. And the pandemic, for me, felt like the meanest thing. You know, like our refusal to not because most people did what they were supposed to do. I don't say our refusal, but there was a sizable percentage of America that really had a fuck you attitude when it came to the pandemic. Very much so, yeah. And maybe they always had that attitude, but I feel very much like the rise of Trumpism gave voice to that and allowed that to sort of like fester and amongst a certain cadre of assholes

be a sign of coolness. Yeah. Be something people were willing to wear on their sleeve or as a badge. I want to step forward a touch in the article so I could talk about it. Yeah. But it's where he says in the article,

he says, look, a lot of people have thought about why this is. So we're just taking the premise that America has gotten mean. And I'm not discounting it. And I'm not saying it's not true, but I am not saying like it is, you know, 100% true either. But I do want to say like, I do think you're right. But what he discounts right away is he says, well, some people, there's social people who say, or social people who study social behavior say,

or people who study social behavior say, it's the economy or it's social media. And he names a couple of things. And those are the two that I really want to focus on are those two, right? But he names a couple others. And he says, but I don't think it's that. And he kind of hand waves those away. First off, I think the hand waving those away

is the wrong thing to do. Because when you start talking about, are we more mean today? Because when you start talking about it, are we more mean today? Because when you start talking about like, we've talked about it many times in the show, the people in the niches, the mean niches, right?

Like the incels, they don't know each other if it isn't for social media. A hundred percent. They wouldn't know. They wouldn't have the opportunity to be mean in a group. If it wasn't for social media, they wouldn't have the opportunity to tune each other up. If it wasn't for social media. And so like have the opportunity to tune each other up if it wasn't for social media.

And so his hand-waving of that and then to say, to get to his point later on, we'll get to it, but his hand-waving of that to say that's not the real reason, and it's not also a contributive factor,

it doesn't seem right to me. Because I think economics and social, like art, the way in which we interact socially is heavily influencing all the things he goes on to list in this article. Yeah. And I want to circle back to one thing real quick and say that I think like, I think I would say America got mean. I do think that it has. But I think one of the, like a lot of the statistics that he cites focus not just on the meanness, but about the loneliness and sadness problem.

The sadness and the isolation. And I think those things, sort of in my mind, I kind of stick them all in the same pile, right? So like there's mean and there's sad and there's isolated and they're all kind of the same. Because you're a guy

and you only have one emotion, which is to be angry. That's it. So if I'm sad, I'm angry. And if I'm lonely, I'm angry. And's it. So if I'm sad, I'm angry. And if I'm lonely, I'm angry. And if I'm hungry, I'm angry. Hungry, I'm angry. So I do think he kind of points those things out, and I think they're really important.

I really think they're important. No, I don't disagree. I don't disagree. And I think he does a nice job of sort of saying, like, there are some studies that show that this shit is real. of sort of saying, like, there's some studies that show that this shit is real. Now, I do think that he acknowledges the impact of social media,

of economic factors, but I think he says, if I remember the article right, he says something like, and I think those things are all factors, but they're not the most important. They're not explanatory enough, in his view. And so, I'm like, yeah, I mean, like, in my mind like he lists like

four or five things and then he's like these things aren't explanatory enough i'm like yeah not any one individual not a single one but if you aggregate you throw them all together i felt like they're fairly fucking explanatory i feel like the same way too and one of the things right away that jumped out at me was when he said something like, well, you know, like he was talking about the suicide thing. Yeah. We're talking about suicide and how people are talking about,

you know, maybe, you know, there's a lot of people have to deal with that now more than ever. And he's also talking about the mental health crisis, how there's people in like, that are feeling isolated and alone. And there's a lot of mental health crises that are going on.

And he's saying, and that's not worldwide. And I'm like, yeah, well, other countries have universal healthcare. Like, like, you know what I mean? Like he's, he's pointing to this as an American problem. And he's saying, you have an American problem, but then he throws out economics. Well, economics is the thing that drives our healthcare system. And that's the thing that makes it so it's so hard to get mental healthcare in this country without paying for it out of pocket. And now you're like, OK, well, cool. But, you know, you're throwing out these things because, again, conservative, I think also fiscal conservative.

So he doesn't want to think about those things as a negative. Right. The economy is a negative. But the economy, I think, and the and the difficulties that people are having in the economy, you can't overlook that. No, you can't. And I guess I read that a little bit differently. So I read like, okay, he's acknowledging that these four or five things are factors. He's saying they're not explanatory enough. And he's saying that this other hypothesis, which we'll get to in a second, is maybe a better umbrella. But in my mind, those things still live under that umbrella. Sure, absolutely.

I agree wholeheartedly too. So like, and like when, and one of the things that he says, like his hypothesis is really that we have stopped in America, we have stopped trying to be morally cohesive. Yeah. I'm trying to start summarizing. We do not do moral formation anymore. Yes, that's right. That's right.

And I do think that there's something to be said for that argument that perhaps if we did a better job being more morally cohesive and doing more moral formation work that we would then vote

for universal healthcare, for example. Like, one of the reasons we don't have universal healthcare is that we're too fucking mean to help other people, right? Like, I really believe that that is part of it. It's like, like, do I think America, yeah, like, like, we didn't want when Obama, you know, was like, hey, like, here's this fucking Obamacare bill.

And people were like, fuck that. I don't want to pay to help other people. Like, hey, like, we'd maybe do Medicare for all. Fuck that. I don't want to pay to help other people. Like, hey, like we'd maybe do Medicare for all. Fuck that. I don't want to pay to help other people. There's a meanness. A selfishness. A selfishness. Yeah. There's a cruelty to that, you know? And like, if we're going to get to the point where we get enough people in power to fix that problem, we have to train people out of being selfish and cruel and mean. I love the people who currently have insurance say dumb shit like that, where you're like,

you already pay for other people's stupid. Thank you. I know. Insurance is an aggregation of risk. Insurance literally already does those things. Like, what are you talking about? It's also, it's open enrollment at my company. And like, every time it's open enrollment,

I'm like, Jesus, this is so expensive. Like, what were you going to tax me? What did we get? What did we get? $700 a month. That's insane we get? $700 a month. That's insane, dude. $700 a month. And that's like, it's not like $700 a month and then everything's paid for.

It's $700 a month. And then I still pay, but now I just pay less. That's what, so I lost my job over the summer. Right. But I was able to do what they call COBRA. Right. was able to do what they call COBRA, which is where you basically, your old company has to offer you an insurance thing for a limited amount of time because you were on their insurance for a while and they expect that you're going to go get off their insurance, but you need some time to do

that. And so the government gives you an opportunity to stay on that insurance. And because I worked there for 23 years, I got six months. I got the maximum, right? I got the maximum that my company allowed. But then you get a chance to see how the fucking sausage is made once you do that. Because you don't really pay attention as much when it's coming out of your paycheck.

It's like, it's one of those line items, those million line items that you have on your paycheck. So you don't pay as attention as much. But once you get a chance to look at it, you're like, what the fuck? I'm paying what now? And then like you say, it's not like I'm paying

and I'm like, guess that's free for six months. No. I gotta pay a bunch of other money too. It's the dumbest system. But you're right.

It is. I agree with you. So I think that's the problem. So I feel like the problem he's trying to solve is how do we fix the moral problem so that people will do the right thing and vote for things like universal health care? His premise is that we don't treat each other with respect and consideration and we are more selfish.

And he says that moral formation does three things. It restrains our selfishness. It teaches ethical skills and it helps people find a purpose in life. Those are his three premise that he lays out at the beginning of the article to talk about why this is important, why we should do moral formation, why we should do more moral formation. And I am reminded of a conversation we had out of college. Now this is decades ago. You and I, I remember we're walking around a park by my house, it was late at night.

Both of us having to go to work in the morning and we were talking about how we didn't feel like we had a purpose. I remember having this very specific conversation with you and saying, I just graduated from college and my whole life I thought I would have a goal. And once I finished college, I don't have a goal now. And I remember you saying the same thing, like, I don't have a goal either. And college, in college, I felt a lot more idealistic than once I graduated from

college. And I was less idealistic after I graduated from college. So I recognize and in my own life can point to parts in my life where I felt a little bit adrift to. Sure. Yeah. So, and very specifically about like the final piece that he's talking about, about like how to live a life that is fulfilling. Yeah. I remember conversations like that too. I don't know if I remember that exact one, but it's a theme that we've talked about many times in our lives. And I remember conversations like that too. I don't know if I remember that exact one, but it's a theme that we've talked about many times in our lives. And I remember many times in my life, like I was a young person who was very idealistic

and I very much wanted my life to be imbued with meaning. I wanted to live a life where I could be like the best version of myself possible and offer to the people around me, some service or value. Me too. And I remember like when you're in school, you read, at least for me, and especially like, and he talks about like the great books and literature and the value of literature and the value of like spending time thinking about the idea of purpose and thinking about

the idea of your moral responsibility to society. And as a liberal arts major, I did a lot of that. Me too. As a liberal arts major, I did a lot of that. Me too. As an English lit major, I did a lot of that. As a philosophy major, I read almost all the ethics that he lists in this. Right. So like I spent time doing that work

and then was thrust into a world that didn't value that. Didn't care about it. Right. And I agree with the premise that that's a fucking problem because I can't solve that if it's just me worrying about purpose, right? Like if it's just me as an individual worrying about my life's purpose and wanting to be a good man and thinking about what it means to be a good man and like

really pondering over how to spend my life in ways that like were meaningful to other people and meaningful to myself in return. That was all stuff you and I were both really like, I remember we would talk about that shit and it mattered to us and it still matters. Still matters. And I still haven't solved it at 45. Yeah. Like I'm 45 and I haven't figured any of that shit out. I remember worrying about like, or lamenting, I should say, that the ways to offer yourself to make yourself of service are religious or military.

Those are the big ways that you can live a life of service. There's not a civilian version. That's like a non-secular. Right. Or a secular, not non-secular, secular way. Yeah. And I think all of that is true and right and a problem.

And I, so I'm very sympathetic to this argument, I guess. Like I am very sympathetic to the idea that we as a society need to spend more of our time doing that same kind of work that you and I were trying to do. Because that's the way we're going to build institutions and structures that help to buttress that problem. Because if it's just me and you doing it, it's nothing. But if it's me and you and 7 million other people that do it, that's something. That's something. That's something. We have to institutionalize the idea of moral formation is a good. And one thing that I really think he points out that I've been thinking about and thinking about

and thinking about my kids with is college and education now is this hyper-specialized job training skills, right? Like my stepson's going, he's a senior. He's going to go away. He's going to go to school. He's going to be a computer science major. Cybersecurity is going to be his focus.

He'll do very well and he'll love it. But I'm like, fuck, man. Is he ever going to ponder those big questions? Or is he just training for a job? Are we just like capitalistically churning people out to train for a job? Is that what these four or five or six years of our lives are for? or six years of our lives are four. So I just finished my career as a person who worked at a liberal college

for 22 years, 23 years. And while I was there, one of the most important things that the department I worked for and that many departments in that school were interested in was not doing what you're saying. Yeah. Not just

making someone who's going to just be like, they had a nursing program, but they had very specifically, you know, I have a lot of disagreements with the place that fucking let me go. Don't get me wrong. Right. But I think the things that they did right were that they very much instilled a sense of service and a sense of purpose and a sense of helping the underprivileged in a way that I think is important for people who are getting a liberal arts education. They tried to round out those educations

by requiring a great deal of liberal study stuff as well as experiential work study stuff that brought them into the communities around Chicago to reach out to those communities and work with underprivileged kids. So like if you were an education major, very often you would be sent out to some of these underprivileged kids

for afterschool activities for a semester or two, and that would be the class that you had. You got college credit to go work with kids after school. And so like they did a lot of this work and they did a lot of this sort of experiential stuff. And I think that there is a place for that. But I also see that like there's a big push in our society now, and he mentions it too, that what we're trying to do

is say, well, maybe college isn't for you. Maybe college isn't for you. Maybe you need to get into a training program where you learn how to weld. And that's not wrong, but then you've got to expect that they're going to go out and read something deeply on their own and not have a liberal arts education, which would veer them off the path of these things, very specialized things that they're learning into something else that is less specialized, but more worldly. And I think that's something that you won't get as an associate. That's something you won't get as a job training type program. You only get that in a

four-year liberal arts school. You won't get that anywhere else. And to come back to your first complaint about this article and this thought process, which I agree with in many ways, is like, you know, I've read a number of articles that, you know, the trust and faith and attendance rate in colleges is plummeting. It's plummeting. It's absolutely being, it's falling off the fucking map. That's the reason I lost my job. And I know nobody knows that better than you. And like, part of the reason for that is that people are looking at the economics of it. Yeah. And they're saying, well, a college degree costs this and a trade school costs this.

And the job I'm going to get is going to be X versus Y. And it just doesn't make dollars and cents for me to go to college. We've made, like on the one hand, you and I both, I think, believe that we're saying here that like

there is a value to this idea of moral formation, of wrestling with big questions. My college degree was valuable. Yeah, man. It was valuable. I learned a lot and met a lot of people and I pushed and pulled my own arguments with other people

and formed myself around sharp edges of other people. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, like there was so many times where I might've thought something going in that I don't think now because I thought about it more deeply because I had someone else to talk through, talk it through with. So, and that, that changed my perspective on life. Yeah. I think it's very valuable. It was to me, it might not be to somebody else, but it was to me. And so, but I think it's very valuable. It was to me. It might not be to somebody else, but it was to me. And so, but I think that there is something to be said. He even says in here that there used to be an answer when they would ask kids to go to college, why are you going to college? A lot of people said is so that they conform themselves and figure out what they think and what they want to

believe and how they want to live their life to, well, I want to be wealthy. I want to make money. Yeah, well, and I don't blame people for having that approach because we've made college so expensive that if you don't go into college, if you go in saying, I'm going to outlay $110,000 for a bachelor's degree, you've got to say,

I've got to get something out of that. I've got to get more than $110,000. I'm going to pay all this student debt. I'm going to be settled with this for years. I've got to go in. I've got to make something out of that. I've got to get more than $110,000. I'm going to pay all the student debt. I'm going to be settled with this for years. I've got to go in. I've got to make this make dollars and cents make sense. There used to be a time, and I hate this sort of like,

you know, back in the day-ism, but it is true economically that going to college was something that was affordable for regular people to do at one point. And we've made it this like fucking Sisyphean economic task to get a fucking degree.

So I don't blame people for saying, look, I'm going to school to make money because school costs so much money. We hit it just at the beginning of when it started to become really, really obscenely expensive. It was expensive when we went to school. It was very expensive.

But it wasn't as expensive and as prohibitively expensive as it is today. Yeah, it's insane right now. And I think that there's a very big difference between when we went to school 20 years ago and when this sort of stuff was happening. You know, this also to me screams why this is an American

problem again. Yeah. And it's because other countries say, you want to go to university, mostly you can, right? Yeah, qualify for it. Mostly you can. And this also to me says, that's why this sort of thing in other countries might be something that they're dealing with and contending with less than we are because they care about their people who live there. Yeah. And, you know, I want to talk about the isolation problem in America too, because Haley and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. Like, I will say, we feel intensely isolated in the way that like, like modern life is structured,

especially as a secular person. Like, I wake up, I work from home, I don't go anywhere. Like, I talk to people on the phone. There's no church to go to because we're not church-going people. Like, our interactions get boiled down to a tiny handful of, like, face-to-face, in-person interactions a week. It's next to nothing. And that's real easy to do in America. That's real, real easy to do. And that's not a good thing. That is not a net positive for our feelings of social connection and our building of community and our empathy for other people and our desire to not other others, right? All of that stuff is easier to do when you live in isolation. And I think that if we have more and more people skipping the relationship building portion of

college, skipping the relationship building, going right to, I got out of school, I went to a trade school or whatever, or I didn't, I got a job. Now I wake up, I go to work and come home. I wake up, I go to work, come home. That is the more isolating, that's a cycle of isolation. Sure. And I think that we are going to, I think we're already paying a price for building a society that really values people for being cogs in a machine. Yeah. And that doesn't like value our community building. We don't value community building anymore. And it's real easy to not have any community at all and to just wake up and be like,

God, I haven't seen another person in weeks. You know, that's an easy thing. I, in my life, very much like, you know me, I'm kind of an introvert, right? I'm not a guy who's like a very social guy. But I have outlets in my life that are extremely social. I game every other week.

I go to fencing practice every other week. I go to, you know, these medieval recreation events, the SCA that I do. I go there like once or twice a month and go see hundreds of people at these things that I know at least four or five dozen of them by name, right? I know these people for 20 years. I've created a hobby for myself of the thing that I do and I've kept with it for years because of this. But without that, I think about the exact same

things you're saying. Like, what would my interactions be? My interactions would be going to the store and like maybe talking to somebody at a store or something. Like, I think you very much need to be intentional about, you know, making those hobbies, doing those things, joining a dance club or a pinball club or whatever it is, you know, the things that you're interested in to do those things and be part of a community, something there, because without a church, without a thing that's, that's undergirding your own social structure. You need to create that social structure on your own. And again, to your first point, part of the problem here in America is

that economically that can be very difficult to do. Absolutely. 100%. That is a position of privilege I speak from to be able to not have two jobs. Yeah, exactly. So many people, they're working, their spouse is working, they're taking care of the kids. Maybe they're working more than one job. Everyone's grinding so hard. We have this rising grind culture. It grinds so hard that like, because I'll be honest,

if I don't see you in the studio, it's very easy for me not to see another face that isn't part of my home for weeks. This is oftentimes the only social interaction that I have unless I have work meetings, which don't count. That doesn't count. It doesn't count.

And that's a lie. That's not community. That's a lie. That's a lie. And it doesn't count. That's a lie that they use to trick you to think you belong and to trick you to think you're part of this and to trick you to do more shit for less. That's what that is.

It is. That sense of like, we're family, we're a community, like all that's nothing. But I'll say that like things have become so isolated that like I oftentimes will be excited and a little like, oh man, the meeting's over. Cause I'm like, fuck man, I haven't seen another face in two weeks. Sure. You know, like I haven't been out of my house for not shopping. Yeah. You know, in like a month. Yeah. So like that sense of isolation, I think is real. Yeah.

And I think it's deep. And like, I think that it is a solvable problem. I really do. I think that it is a solvable problem, but it's a problem that has to get solved writ large. Right? Like we, it's not, this is not like a self-help book. This isn't like you solve it.

Like you, we are not individually going to wake up and change something and solve these problems. I think the solution that he comes up with is we need to sort of basically teach some of this stuff to young people is one of the solutions that he comes up with. And that solution to me seems, it seems difficult in a lot of ways.

And it's not that I don't think it's possible to teach children this stuff. In fact, I think every good parent should be teaching their children how to be a moral kid, how to be an ethical kid. I think that those things are not only easy, but also something that, you know,

you should try to spend time on. One of the things that he talks about in the article is that you don't learn how to be a good person, just sit down and learn it. You learn it by repetition. And I think that's true. I think, you know, teaching your kids to say please and thank you,

teaching your kids to be nice. And when they're shitty, you got to point it out and got to be like, don't do that stuff. You got to be nice to people, et cetera. You know, teaching your kids how to be nice. And when they're shitty, you got to point it out and got to be like, don't do that stuff. You got to be nice to people, et cetera. You know, teaching your kids how to be moral takes time and effort and it's difficult. And it's a repetitive process that has to be done over and over and over again.

But I think like, how difficult would it be in our country if we were to entrust that to a teacher in a government run institution? And I say that to a teacher in a government-run institution. And I say that as somebody who is looking around the country at a bunch of states who just made it illegal for women to get abortions. What do you think those school systems are like? Yeah. You know, do I entrust somebody in the middle of Arkansas to teach my kid how to be a good person? Because they might come out hating trans people,

right? You know what I mean? Like these are virtues to a certain group of people who decides what they learn. You know, I think it's really easy. And when I thought about it, I just listened to this article. One of the things that struck me so much was like, yeah, I think it's really easy to say this stuff when you're a white guy and you're not, and your rights aren't in question every day. It's easy to think this and say this when your rights aren't being constantly attacked. But I start thinking about like who's in charge and what they want to teach. And I think that this is a really difficult thing to just be like, well, we should just teach it. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? It does. It does make sense. And like, I don't know. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It does make sense. And like, I don't know, I don't disagree with you. And I also don't know what a better solution is, is the problem. You know, like, I do think that like, we have to do, we have to think about collectively having some amount of collectivism. having some amount of collectivism, you know, some amount of like, like a sense that we are all a part of a society and that we might have, you know, differences in terms of like, one of the things he talks about is that it used to be like,

that one of the things that the things we differed on was like how to distribute wealth or how to distribute resources, that the distribution of resources was like the primary difference between political parties. That was the economic difference. That was really it. And like,

I think that that was true. I think like a big difference between the political parties was for a long time distribution of resources. But now it's like we have differences in terms of like

who is valuable, who counts as a person. You know, change that. It's a civil rights movement. And yeah, I know. And like, because before nobody It's a civil rights movement. And yeah, I know. And like,

because before nobody cared about black people. Before nobody cared about women. And now that suddenly they're in the thing and be like, oh, those are also people, by the way. Now suddenly there's a whole group of people that are like, oh, the economics,

but fuck those people. And because there's a lot of people who are like, fuck those people. LGBT, people of color, women. there's a lot of people who are like, fuck those people. Yeah. Yeah. LGBT, people of color, women,

there's a lot of people out there that are like, fuck them in the face. I don't care about that. Yeah. And like, it's crazy because like, you add that up and it's like,

that's most people. That's most people by like, by a lot. By a lot. By a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

America is run, you know, by and for a tiny minority of people that looks just like me. Yeah. Yeah. America is run, you know, by and for a tiny minority of people that looks just like me. Yeah. Like, I totally recognize that. I think that this article is a call for how do we build the kind of institutional empathy that is required in order for us to see people?

So here are kind of the solutions that it comes up with. And I don't think any of these are bad ideas. Sure. Mandatory social skills courses. I think that's a terrific idea. There's a show that I watched, which was far more interesting than it had any right to be. It's a Netflix show. And I forgot what it was called, but it's like, there's a Chinese woman who teaches people etiquette, like teaches people how to be polite. Okay. I forgot what the fucking show is called. And the reason it was super fascinating is that her theory on etiquette is that etiquette is about making other people

feel comfortable around you. That learning these sort of social rules is a way for you to make other people feel at ease. And like when you embody it in that way, it's not just learning which fork to use, right? It's learning this series of rules so that everybody knows what to expect and everybody feels comfortable.

And it fucking works. And I think that like, and this is something I've been thinking about on my own anyway. Like, I think that we don't do a good job. We do some basic social skills stuff. We do sex ed, for example, but we don't do a good job. We do some basic social skills stuff. We do sex ed, for example. But we don't, like, teach people how to have a conversation with a stranger.

That's a skill you can learn. That's a skill we should learn. Social skills courses can and should be taught, I think. You know? Like, maybe everybody ought to read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's a great book. You know? Great book.

Because that's about shutting up and listening. It really is. I will say, and this could be just me being really old. Yeah. Right. So understand. I'm old too, brother. Understand I am prefacing this by saying like,

fuck, I'm old when I say this out loud. But kids these days, can I start like that? Does that make it sound older? With their TikToks. I just want to say like, my childhood was very different from how kids live today. Yeah. I was forced to be very social at a very young age and had to learn a lot about being social. I think more than most kids have to learn nowadays. I think like the playground

after school or the hell, the playground, your mom goes to visit a friend, right? Right. And you get in the car with her to another city and down the street, there's a playground and she's like, go play at the playground. I'm nine or 10 or whatever, go play at the playground. So I did. And then I would meet a brand new person and have a new conversation and have an interaction that I don't think a kid today would ever have.

You wouldn't have that ability to do that because a lot of stuff is sort of pre-planned and there's not that sort of like free form, go out and sort of be in the world sort of thing. There's a packaging of context now. Yeah, for sure. And I feel like I was forced into a lot more social situations as a kid that I had to learn how to navigate on my own. I didn't have anybody there and sort of, and they're not hard to learn because you learn by how other people are acting, right?

I mean, it's really easy. Like we're just apes. We get it. We understand how to be social. The moment someone else, you just mimic them, right? And so like, you just have to learn how to do that. But if you're never in those situations or in those situations,

rarely like he says, you have to repeat it a lot. Maybe you don't get that as much as like sort of we did. Yeah. You know, this is something I thought about. I wrote, I wrote for my blog for my boys. I wrote an article called how to be likable. And it's a lot of this kind of stuff. It's a lot of like, Hey, there's a 70, 30 rule, you know, listen, 70% of the time speak

30% of the time. I got a whole bunch of this stuff that I put in there because I was watching my older son struggle to make friends and build connections. And part of it is because, just to your point, he's had less opportunities by the same age than you and I have had. And because that's a truth of American life, like, one of the ways to, like, solve for that truth is to teach these things as skills. There's skills that can be taught. Like there's nothing like that. We don't know about this. We've been writing books, like how to win friends and influence people for a hundred years. Sure. Maybe not, but it's close. I mean, that guy wrote it in like the forties or something. Yeah. So like,

like people have been thinking about and writing about this topic for a very, very long time. These are skills that can be taught. I think we should teach them. And I think we should teach the why. Whenever we teach something, we should teach the why. Here, here's why these skills are important. It's like that etiquette lady on that show I can't remember the name of. When she said, hey, etiquette is about making other people feel comfortable around you,

my ears immediately perked up. And I'm like, this is actually valuable. Yeah. There's actually, and I learned from it. Yeah. There's value there. And the stuff that he talks about too, you know, like how to disagree with respect, how to ask for forgiveness, how to patiently cultivate a friendship, how to sit with someone who's grieving, how to be a good conversationalist. All those things are, they're not hard to do, but they take practice and they take a sense of understanding that you need to learn from someone else how to do it. Yeah. And these are beautiful things to learn.

Absolutely. They're invaluable. They genuinely are invaluable. They are. So I'm a fucking on board for this. A new core curriculum. I thought this was good too. And again, this sort of like flies in the face of what you might think of as a conservative. Because what he says is, look, the old stuff we used to read was pretty racist and sexist. So we need a new core curriculum that has, that respects a diversity of views,

but we need to have more stuff from more views to build deeper empathy across a wider spectrum of people. That's really hard to argue with. No, I don't disagree. And I read that and I was like, yeah, I agree. But again, like, there's a lot of me that keeps on going,

okay, but how? And I don't expect that somebody who points out a problem and has in some ways an idea on how to fix it, I don't think he should be able to have to fix everything in it. Right. But I am still wondering. Yeah. Well, I mean, one way to do this would be to adopt a national standard for like, these are, this certain set of books, for example, are like required reading at a national level. Sure. Yeah. You know, that would be a way to

start down that road. Still runs into the problem of who picks it. Yeah. It still runs into that problem. The two biggest textbook people are Texas and California. Who's the one, right? If it's California, half the nation hates it. If it's Texas, half the nation hates it. Right. And I know that's a big problem. So like, yeah. Intergenerational service. I, you know, this is something we talked about years ago where there isn't a thing that doesn't feel non-religious that you can just go and do for like a year, right?

So like there's plenty of religious outlets for people who are in that in-between year between college and getting a job and they go out and they live a year of service. That's very common for religious people to do. In fact, when I was in college, when I was teaching, when I was in college as a professor, and when I was working in a college, I flew out to Colorado to teach a group of people who were in a religious group of people. That religious group of people,

they, every week, they lived in a house in a community. And every day they went for free to work at a nonprofit that basically paid a stipend to this house so they could all live this communal life while they did a year of service. And every week they would get together and they would have a meal and they would talk about it.

It was also framed around their religion, but they would have these big conversations about like, how does this help me as a person? Now they would say something like, how does this nurture my soul? But you know, I'm just changing it to a humanist idea, right? How does this help me as a person? Now they would say something like, how does this nurture my soul? But you know, I'm just changing it to a humanist idea, right? How does this help me as a person? How do I grow as a person by doing this sort of thing?

And like, that's a real valuable thing. Now I don't agree about the framework, right? Because I think the framework's garbage. But genuinely, like if there was something out there for like me after that time, I might've taken somebody up on it. And there was a hot moment in our community when there was one group who was starting to do this.

I don't know if they continue to do it, but when we first started podcasting years ago, there was a humanist group. I think they were relatively local. One of the guys wrote a book about child rearing too, like secular child rearing. And he was running this group of people who they would fly over to like Africa and spend a year in service, but they were collecting

donations so they could- Do this work. Do this work and live there, right? So like there was an administrator who picked all the resumes out and then they sent them over. That's great. That sort of thing would be amazing. It just doesn't exist for most people it might exist as like the Peace Corps I don't know if the Peace Corps is not religious or anything I think the Peace Corps is not religious

the problem with the Peace Corps is that and this is another problem too that I think needs to get fixed there needs to be more open access the Peace Corps is hard to get into there's an application process and they take very few of the applicants.

And then there's like a super small sliver of time where you get to do that. And then that's it. And now all of a sudden you're 30 and like your life is going to stretch for 50 fucking years in front of you. And if you have any opportunities to be of service to other people

in a non-religious way, you got to make them up yourself. You got to find a way to do it. And that sucks. And we've talked about on this show before that like there really should be a branch of the American service that is not the armed service.

That is a branch of American service that goes out and uses diverse skills from people of all kinds of ages and ability levels and educational levels to do things that are essential for the infrastructure of this country. I don't know why that doesn't exist. There was a point in my life where I definitely would have been like, look, I don't want to join the fucking Air Force, the Marines, the Navy, or the Army.

That doesn't interest me. But if there was like an American like works program where like I can dedicate my life to like traveling around this country, helping to build dams, or you know, like do other important work across this country that needs to be done, in a second, I would have done it. I'd have signed up.

I'd have been a career guy. I'd have been a career guy in a heartbeat. Like we spend all this money institutionally building these armed forces. We don't have an unarmed force of service. Yeah. No, I don't understand. I don't, I think, I think it's a great idea. I don't know if there's any ever or any will to do that, but I love the idea. The one thing I want to touch on with this is this again reaches back into economics for me. And it's like we create these opportunities for people to go out and help the underprivileged, but we don't fix the underlying problem of their being underprivileged. Sure.

We don't ever build a good enough safety net. Instead, we bandaid that shit with charity and with years of service. Yep. Whereas we could, you know, have people go out and do the things you're suggesting, which are like big projects and things like that, where it's not dealing with someone who is underprivileged. But instead, we have to do the triage of helping people who can't make it in our society because we won't let them. Yeah, absolutely.

So like, again, I think there's systemic problems with our society that make it so there's people that need that help. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we're not, I don't know how we're going to get through those at this point. Like there's a, I have a real worry. I think you share it. I have a real worry that like America's too mean to fix.

That like to do it to fix. That individualism is too much for fix. That individualism is too much for us. It's too much part of our ethos and it makes us feel like we can reject other human beings for our own selfishness. Right.

And it happens so often in our society. It's a value for some people. It is. You're not wrong. It is a value. You're not wrong. It's a fucking value.

So the next one is moral organizations. So, you know, this was really trying to pull apart the capitalist venture from the altruistic venture. Yeah. That there really needs to be organizations which exist outside of capitalism. Sure. I don't disagree. Again, I don't know how they start though. Right. You know what I mean? Like, like how do you, and you said too,

when you were texting back and forth, you're like not with shareholders, you don't. Yeah. And that's just true, right? You can't do this if you fucking, you're a publicly traded company that they would immediately throw you out.

They'd be like, no, get rid of that person and get somebody in there who's going to make us fucking money. Yeah. They would literally have pay me. Yeah. They would let like most companies are written. They have their chartered. They're written in such a way that, like, if the activities of senior management don't enhance the share value, then that person has to be ejected from the company.

So, like, you can't actually run a publicly traded company in many organizations where you say, you know what, this year we're going to make a little less money because we're going to do the right thing. Like, that would actually run against the charter of the company. You would get ejected as a matter of course from that company. I think that there's other countries out there that do some things to limit business and limit profits. They have, you know, maximum wage, for instance,

in some places in the world. A maximum wage is something that limits that sort of thing. And I feel like those types of things are put in by people who care about society. That's a thing that for people who care and they don't want to see, you know, the capitalistic hellscape that we live in, which is genuinely the bottom line for the next three months. If it's not the next three months, I don't fucking care about it. And like windfall taxes, like windfall taxes are a very straightforward way to be like, look, all right, you know, fucking BP, you can't actually have record profits at the same time that oil prices have skyrocketed and everybody's paying $5, $6 at the pump. You're not allowed to have record profits during that time. If you do, you got to pay back into the social kitty, right? We just don't do that. It flies in the face of that individualism. It flies

in the face of this idea that we have this weird conflation in America that our economic system, which is capitalism, is also a virtue system. That it is also a moral good instead of just the economic system. Yeah. That is so fucking weird to me. Yeah, I know, I know. But it is 100% the truth.

Yeah, yeah. Politics as a moral enterprise. We've talked about this on the show. Yeah. So much. I genuinely feel, though, that he downplays the fact that there are people out there

who want to literally strip the rights of other human beings away. It feels downplayed in this article. Yeah. Especially here. Yeah, I don't disagree. He feels like he's saying, like, well, come on, politics,

it's a big deal. You shouldn't treat that as your, you know, there's a feeling there that he talks about it in a way that it's sort of flippant. And I'm like, no, man, it's a genuine, like there are people out there in the world that want to strip the rights away from women. They want to strip the rights away from people of color. And they want to strip the rights away from people who have a different, like might not have gender conformity like they do, might not

have the same sexual conformity that they do. They want to strip the rights away from those people. Yeah. And this is a point where, you know, you and I have talked on the show before that it is impossible right now to see your politics as anything other than an extension of your personal moral values. Sure. Right. So I've been asked on the dad show, you know, how do I handle talking about politics with my kids? And I'm like, I talk about politics all the time with my kids

because I talk about my values with my kids. There's no way to talk about your values without talking about politics anymore because politics now is not a matter of distribution of resources. Yeah. And that would be a moral issue anyway. Sure.

But like, it's not a matter of that. It's a matter of like, politics now is deciding who's people. Yeah, right. And deciding who matters. Right. That's what politics are.

So you can't separate politics from your morals anymore. They are the same thing. They are simply an extension of your moral values that you want to write onto society. So I don't see how you can pull them apart. I feel like I would love to see

moral institutions that are secular for young people pop up. I think like, I think a lot of secular, there's going to be a growing, in the next 15 years, there's going to be a way growing secular base in this country.

Absolutely. And I think like, there's a moment now where those types of things that you're talking about that aren't, they're not steeped in religion because so many people

get their morality from religion. Yeah. Pull that out of that and have a secular club of some sort, child-rearing place where the kids get a chance to be, not only be social with each other, but also get to learn about these things. Yeah. Secular Sunday school, man.

Sunday school in some way. You know, that's what I was thinking too, is, you know, there's so many religious ties because that's our framework, but we can, you can copy that sort of thing. And to see that something like that grow would be absolutely amazing for this country. Because I do think that the way to fix this is education. I just don't know that I trust the government to do it. Yeah. And I don't know that I can trust the government in all places to do it either. The problem is the places that are already, the governments that would already be trustworthy to do this, they already have a handle on some of this stuff to start with.

Sure. Yeah. You know, like this is necessary in like the shithole states. This is the most necessary, I should say, in the shithole states. Yeah. Well, they're learning, they're not only learning incorrect information in their textbooks and not able to talk about some things that are, you know, fact in their textbooks. They're also stuck not learning about this stuff or learning, like I said, incorrect things, learning things that could be otherizing other humans and hurting other humans.

They're learning those things. That's a virtue to them. Yeah, yeah. These are values. Those are values to them. So it's a big, this is, while I like, I like the pointing out of some of these things, I am one of these people who's always just like,

but how does it happen? And I know that it's not his responsibility, but I do feel like it made me think a lot about how it happens. And that's a tough, that's a real tough nut to crack. It is, like what I, look, my central frustration with this article is exactly the same thing, is that I read this article and I'll, I'm not going to lie. You'll hear it when the recording, I read this article and there's a pointy article where I got a little choked up because like,

I just agree so deeply with how important this is. And then I finished reading the article and I'm like, I don't know what to do different. Yeah. Like I am isolated, right? Like I do feel a deep sense of isolation personally. I don't know how to fix that institutionally, you know?

I don't know how to like tap into something larger. I don't know how to fix the problem of like, I don't know where to squeeze more hours in order to like join a community organization, even if I wanted to, because like I've got this capitalist pressure to keep going. Like, I don't know how to fix

anything. So like, I feel like I am the most privileged person. I'm everything America wants to be like, right? Like I'm a middle-aged cishet white guy. I'm an upper middle-class middle-aged cishet white guy. You know, like, so I'm all those things and I don't know how to fix it. Yeah. So like, I read this and I'm like, yeah, I fucking agree and I don't know what to do with it.

Yeah. I fucking agree and like, I finished reading this article and I'm like, well, that's a bunch of true shit I don't know what to do about. You know what I mean?

It's so frustrating. It's like, it's like when you're poor and like your car breaks and they're like, it's the alternator and you're like, I don't care.

You could have said anything. Yeah. It's broken and I'm broke. And I can't do anything about it. It's a rock made of metal right now. I'm busing to the work for the next six months. So I just felt so like, it's frustrating. I don't think it's wrong and I don't know what to do about it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we hope that you got frustrated today and we hope you listened to this article. If Tom read it to you, you can also read it on The Atlantic. The Atlantic lets you have like five or six free articles. They're actually really good about that.

They're really generous about it. Pretty generous about it. So go check it out on The Atlantic. You can check out this week's show notes to go read the article on your own. All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Please continue to donate for Vulgarity for Charity.

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