TRIGGERnometry - Does Progress Make Us Miserable? Alex Kaschuta

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Alex Kaschuta is a writer, cultural commentator and host of Subversive Podcast. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a writer, cultural commentator. She's the host of the subversive podcast. Alex Kachuta, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me on. That's a pleasure to be here. It's a great pleasure to have you on the show. We've been meaning to get you on for a long time. Tell us who you are, first of all, because you've got an interesting story, which I think informs a lot of the views that you have as well, which we're going to get to. So tell everybody, who are you, how are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you through life

to be here talking to us? Oh, yeah, a very long story, which involves escape from the clutches of Eastern Europe, living in the West for about probably 12 years in total, and now back in the last year, living in the Corona bunker in my hometown in Transylvania. So it's been a journey I have to say, but that's not the only thing. I mean, I've been a journalist. I've worked in tech. Now I work in finance related to tech. Yeah, it's quite many things have happened in the last 12 years. And like you said, they've informed my view on a lot of things. Well, an interesting piece of your journey is you were part of, I imagine, the sort of brain drain from Eastern Europe, people who are young, bright, well-educated, etc. going over to the West.

and you get here, you lived in London for five years, you get a job, you have a good job, you live in London, and increasingly you find that the sort of promise of everything that the West offers, particularly the way that it's sort of configured at the moment, is not fulfilling your actual needs and wishes and it's increasingly making you feel lonely and unhappy. Yes, I think that's kind of the pattern that I saw in myself, first and foremost, but also in a lot of people around me. There was this prescribed ladder that one must climb up. You know, first you get to the west. Few, you made it. Maybe you go to school there. That's also the next step. And then you climb your way through, you know, whichever corporate ladder you find is as closest to you or most

accessible. The issue that I found was that it's quite an absorbing life, especially if you might have other plans. You know, like as a woman with a female life trajectory, I wanted family and children to be part of that. And it became a bit complex to do that in London. And it seemed to me that, you know, the ladder that was in front of me in terms of career was a little bit at odds with the ladder that I wanted.

Because, you know, you can climb up and you get more responsibility. And, you know, that becomes the major focus point of your life. And, you know, that's what you're paid for. That's what it should be. That's what you're responsible for. But in parallel to that, you know, I wanted to just have a more flexible existence. And that's why I moved back home. And now I work remotely, which is, you know, quite a blessing.

And, yeah, I'm grateful to be able to do that. And, Alex, do you think a lot of these, a lot of women feel the same way as you do in the West, but they can't express it, this feeling that you have? I think a lot of them are, they struggle with dating, they struggle with, you know, figuring out things in time because, you know, men and women typically have different kind of biological timelines that they have to deal with, which is something that it's not, that, you know, isn't really spoken about very clearly in the mainstream. I can understand why people are trying to encourage women to be independent and climb these ladders that are supposedly so extremely amazing that everyone needs to be on them. And I think that the issue is that a lot of them wake up a little bit maybe late and it's a bit complicated to make your bed when you're, let's say, 37 and then you think, oh, should I freeze my eggs? and I'm like, oh, maybe it's a bit late for that, to be honest. It's a complicated thing.

And my issue was that, you know, people didn't really prepare me or my friends or anyone for these decisions or these forks in the road that you have to eventually confront if you're a woman. And if your plan isn't just to, you know, dedicate your whole existence to McKinsey or whoever, you know, wants to pay you, lots of money. And Alex, why do you think it is that we don't talk about this? Why is this a taboo subject? Because the reality is, it's a biological fact. If you want kids, the best time to do it is the earlier, the better, really, you know, past the age of 20, whenever it is. Why are we not talking about it? I think there's kind of an egalitarian assumption at the core of our society, especially in the West, that, you know, you want it, you can have it, you can have it all, you know, you want to increase your

optionality, you want to be, you know, you want to be equal in status to men, obviously. And the main source of status that exists now in the West is, are these hierarchies, are, you know, the corporate hierarchy or academia or wherever, it's a place that will take more than nine to five to invest in if you want the status, you know, in more traditional societies, you know, older women had status through other means. They were, you know, the proverbial wise crone that gave advice or some form of matriarch or something. We don't have those levels anymore. You have Fortune 500 or, you know, pick your, pick your industry or you have nothing. Or, you know, your consumption options diminish if you don't make enough money to consume or continue, I don't

going on trips or getting other status objects that are important. And I think that's a major tension. And so you say that that's a major tension. But ultimately, by women not fulfilling this sort of, I mean, let's be fair, like a biological urge, surely they're denying, number one, a part of themselves, but number two, making themselves miserable in the long term. Yeah, I think for humans, it's hard to tell what's going to make you happy in the long term. term and what's going to make you miserable.

And when you're, for example, if you're a young professional in the big city, the whole city is constructed around single life. It's constructed around optimizing your options, you know, for consuming cool stuff, going to cool places, mingling with cool people, which are coincidentally all single. That's the life cell. It's built around. And if you want to opt out, because essentially that's what you're doing, by having a child, you kind of have to accept that you're nuking this lifestyle and you're moving

on to a lifestyle that is, you know, involves other people, has some constraints. You know, you reduce your optionality by having children. And I can understand why some people either postpone this decision for a long time until they get into hot water for biological reasons, or they just don't want to do it at all. And then maybe they make up reasons like, I don't know, the polar ice caps are melting or something. So, yeah, there are different reasons. But, you know, the reasons to have children are not as many as they used to be. And one of the things I think is a core of the work that you do, your writing, your commentary, etc., is exploring the sort of constraints that human beings place on themselves and almost

need sometimes in order to live a happy and fulfill life. And I find out very interesting watching some of the other interviews that you've done. There's a sort of inbuilt assumption that no one in a liberal, quote unquote, society questions, which is the more free you are to be an atomized individual who's free to do whatever they want, the better. And it is automatically assumed that anything that constrains you, anything that shapes your behavior, anything that encourages or pushes you in any direction that is counter to that is automatically wrong, bad, evil, you know, part of the patriarchy in this case or whatever else it might be. So give us your thoughts on that, that sort of struggle between freedom and the constraints that sometimes human beings actually

benefit from. Yeah, I think the misconception of freedom, you know, this kind of rational, liberated individual that we've instantiated in our flavor of liberalism is quite new, historically. Because if you look back at, for example, you know, how Aristotle conceptualized freedom, it was essentially in a way of freedom from the base desires. It was kind of self-control, being kind of cultivating oneself to the point where you become a master of yourself. That conception of freedom, we haven't cultivated at all. Freedom at the moment is freedom from, you know, constrained, freedom from tradition, freedom from any sort of conventional knowledge that, that might have helped our ancestors coordinate or, you know, build a robust society or, you know,

just to just at least understand what's going on in each other's heads. And now I think we're at the point where a lot of the freedom that people ask for is freedom from the body. I think you see this a lot with, you know, kind of these transhumanists, you know, transgenderism. It's the idea that, you know, not only am I not constrained by tradition. I'm not even constrained by, you know, the chains of physical existence. I'm, you know, this is but a skin. that I can change like in a video game because, you know, there's not really any reason for it not to be interchangeable. Like, you know, why would you constrain my freedom? Live and let live, you know, don't tread on me. That's it.

I think that's quite a limited thing because there is wisdom in a lot of these traditions. There is a lot of coordination value. There is value in me understanding what you think and what your moral standards are and what I might be able to expect from you. when we're in society together. That's something that, you know, we don't really put that much value on anymore. But I think, you know, it's something that goes out the window. And I think with this concept of freedom where it's just like, you know, leave me alone, it's also an impoverishment.

Like, for example, if you're an 18-year-old girl and you don't get, you know, traditional instruction in life, you go on the internet, find the easy, source of money, which is probably either, you know, going on seeking arrangement or only fans or something like that, you fulfill your expedient needs to get some money to, I don't know, buy purses or whatever is interesting to you at 18. And these things might have long-term consequences. The idea that because you're 18, you're now a sovereign individual, ready to make choices, you're, you know, the rational human going out and, you know, kicking ass and taking names, I don't know if that's the case. So for me that's...

on something which I think is very important there. And I'm increasingly aware that this conversation might sound like three people from the 1950s having a conversation about morality. Good. But I do actually think this is important because one of the things you touch on there when you talk about freedom and particularly this only fans, whatever arrangement, is the freedom to do whatever you want in the sexual realm has sort of clashed, I would say, with the fact that sex has consequences beyond just, you know, the immediate experience. We've sort of lost touch with that. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. I think people try to mitigate the fact that sex has consequences through the norm

of consent, which is now the big cudgel that comes in and we try to solve everything with consent. And if you had bad sex, oh, it must have been the consent was wrong. You didn't really give consent. The idea, the problem with sex is that it is very complicated and it's, it's something that happens beneath the rational level. There's a lot of negotiation that's, you know, ties into, I don't know, body language, pheromones, implicit cultural assumptions about what's to be expected or not, things that really don't work at the level of a contract. And we've tried to just, you know, force everything into this contractual mold. And it's not surprising to me that young people are confused about sexual norms and that, for example, maybe young women really are having a bad time,

you know, because there's a lot of chat about Me Too and how all of these cases are ridiculous, like, you know, the Aziz Ansari case where there was this ambiguous event that, you know, it definitely wasn't rape, but it was kind of shoehorned into the non-consensual rape mold after the fact. But it was clearly a lot of miscommunication in an area that is fraught with, you know, it's a dangerous thing to have sex, especially as a woman. You know, historically, you were burdened with children. You know, there was also kind of the shame overhang, which people used to use to kind of control these situations.

So I understand why it's confusing. And we're lacking a language to deal with these things because, you know, it's like trying to write poetry in binary code. you know, it's pretty hard to understand if this is your only tool that you have in your toolbox. Yeah, consent. Okay. Yeah, I think we need to get a bit more nuanced about sex. And you say we need to get a bit more nuanced about sex. Isn't part of the problem that we now treat sex as we would treat a sort of an experience? We use it as a way to say, oh, I've done this. I've done this position. I've had this. And actually, what you're getting away from what the act was originally

intended for and also really denying the bonding element of it. Yeah, exactly. I think because we're so used to having, you know, consumption be our main way of interacting with the world, we've reduced this act into the platform of consumption. I think probably porn culture has something to do with it because sex is a consumer product. After all, it's everywhere. I've been, you know, the first time I got on the internet, I was probably 13 years. old. I was a relatively long time ago. I found porn in 20 minutes. So I'm sure it's quite accessible to everyone and everyone's a bit, you know, a bit oversaturated with it. And yeah, it is a product at this point. So I think, you know, with dating apps, we've moved into another realm where people are

very much kind of tokenized and then commoditized, transforming these experiences into simply, you know, notches or checklist boxes is not surprising if that's kind of the angle that we've taken. And that we always have this kind of market filter between us and the other person with social media as well. Like you're always kind of have this layer of technology intermediating the connection between you and someone else. And the algorithm knows, you know, which one's your best picture. It knows, you know, how to present you in the best way so that you get, you increase your consumption options with the other people on the on the platform. It's, I think this really does skew people

and how they think about their own sexuality and how they think about how they should be relating to other people. These things have become the norm quite fast. Like it's, it's been surprising to me to see how fast dating apps have become normative. And, you know, a lot of people, I've met my husband on a dating app and I think it's, you know, it's a, it's can be a great technology

if you use it judiciously and treat it, treat it the way it is. But I can also see that, you know, it warps the dating landscape quite heavily in many ways because this is not natural. This is not how people interact, you know. It really is terrible for funny people. It's not the best, you know, place to meet funny people. That's okay. Neither of us is funny.

Just proved it there. I did a little joke. She didn't laugh. No. Confirmation. Loll. I'm not crazy about the self-deprecating humor. You guys are obviously funny and yeah.

Sorry. Good. Excellent. That's the kind of response we want. But Alex, listen, we're obviously just joking around. But I find so much of what you're saying really interesting and refreshing. And let me ask you this because I guess historically this whole thing, I'm sure part of it is driven by technology.

but part of it is also driven by a rebellion against over-prescribed, hyper-constraining social norms. You know, girls don't do this. Boys, you know, don't behave like that. This is how we're all supposed to be. Is it sort of like the jumper was a bit too warm, so we've started picking away the threads and now the whole thing is just falling apart? Yeah, I think there's, that's a component as well, because, you know, humanity, and how how people evolved was always under some form of constraint.

You know, like people keep complaining about the fact that, you know, women have hypergamous instincts. And, you know, what does that mean for people who are not familiar? Yeah, it's the idea that, you know, women, in the worst of cases, it's framed as women being gold diggers. But it's the idea that women tend to be attracted to men who are competent, have resources, you know, okay, money. and, you know, have kind of status signals, have show power. They're high status men, and they kind of tend to date up as much as they can across these hierarchies to, you know, to get someone who can secure those resources for herself. But mostly the framing is that it's for her offspring and that, you know, increases chances for survival. That's kind of the Evo-Syke explanation for it.

So the idea that, you know, you have hypergamy. but hypergamy evolved under conditions where women were quite restricted in what they could do sexually. I mean, there are very few societies ever in the history of man where there wasn't some form of kind of like patriarchy or matriarchy that controlled the sexuality of young girls in some ways. And essentially, these things co-evolved. You have these controls that are social controls on sexuality, like, okay, you know, who are you going to marry? you know, we need to make sure that you're a virgin before, you know, these are quite restrictive ways to deal with sexuality. And then you have these kind of hypergamous instincts or, you know, instincts for women to, you know, to seek out dating, you know, these top status guys. And the

problem is once you lift all sexual controls, you know, you lift the lid of patriarchy, you essentially have this very strong urge that women have to date only the apex guys, which now manifests and essentially what we see on dating apps where, you know, a very small fraction of men get to go on all the dates. So women are very, very picky. But back in the day when, you know, you had patriarchy or, you know, insert your control mechanism of choice, controlling who girls got to marry, you know, forming alliances, using kind of gearing a female sexuality in different directions, you know, this instinct existed, but it didn't get to go buck wild. It's interesting to think about, you know, why it's happening. Obviously, it's an increase in freedom. But it's also very destabilizing in terms of, you know, marriage rates,

in terms of people, you know, actually getting to have offspring, who gets married. There's, you know, it's definitely a very novel in the history of humanity overall. Obviously, I'm sure there are some tribes in the Amazon, people can, you know, come in and say, oh, no, no, they had a strange, you know, super sexual matriarchy, but it's a fraction of one. percent of civilizations. Most had some form of control. And Alex, we're talking about this and saying, you know, that women have greater choice than ever before and women. But in many ways, this society and this culture, it's more geared and designed for men than it is for women, because men have abundance of choice, they don't have to commit, you have access to an app which can present

you with literally thousands of thousands of options. Why do you have to commit to one woman? Yeah, it's, you know, they call this the apex fallacy. You know, people say, oh, men, men they have all the choices. It's not all men. It's a small fraction of men at the top, which, you know, tend to win out in, you know, almost all games. And, yeah, I think it's, you know, kind of saying that men have a lot of options is, you know, kind of framing it a little bit. It's just a bit of an exaggeration. He was just talking about himself.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thanks, Alex. Well, you're funny guys. Excellent. Destroyed with your own facts and logic. But if I push back on that, you know, there's a lot of women saying, you know, and quite understandably so, that it's very difficult to meet a guy.

It's very difficult to settle down with someone. There's a lot of women who hit their late 30s. Where are all the good men gone? You see it time and time again on social media. Does that not prove my point? or have I got it wrong? No, I think there are many, many losers in the system. I'm not sure.

There's probably more like really hardcore winners that are men overall in the system. I mean, it depends what you think winning is. If you want to build a sustainable harem and retire maybe at 50 with, I don't know, a cohort of women at one point, that probably is winning for some people. But I think even for the men who, you know, get to go on all these dates and they, you know, get to, you know, yeah, be the top guy. They probably at one point, you know, would want to, you know, have a more stable existence, maybe want to have offspring as well, you know, have a legacy, have more baby chads or whatever

they imagine their legacy to be. So it is hard even for them because the problem is if you, if this system essentially is feeding off the insecurities of women because they don't. get to have the relationships they want. They don't get to go on, you know, on the dates with someone who wants to date them for, you know, a long-term relationship. You know, the women on the apps at one point, they, you know, have some issues. Like, it's, you know, it really does mess up your, I don't know, your self-esteem in a way when you really, you know, you can go on many dates. That's no problem. People will date you. But if the guy you want to date doesn't want to be in a

relationship with you, it does kind of scar you mentally. And especially if, you know, if, for example, 10 years ago, you were, I know, in college and you, you know, you met some guy at a party and, you know, two weeks later, he was your boyfriend, this doesn't happen anymore. And now you have, you know, a very contractual type of relationship. And then maybe after two months, they're like, oh, should we be exclusive and, you know, layers upon layers of commitment that didn't used to exist in the past, it does kind of leave you a little bit like, okay, you know, it's very hard to get to that level of commitment, even to be someone's girlfriend. And this is kind of a change that happened, felt to me quite suddenly, like maybe six or five or six years ago, the standard shifted from you meet someone in real life and, you know, things are a bit not traditional, but you get to have a boyfriend at one point to you kind of get to interact with the algorithm and the algorithm will serve you, whoever is. it wants and then you kind of have to go through this very contractual, you know, stress, stressful

situation. But yeah, I think the women are losing out here, obviously, they're not getting what they want. The men at the bottom, you know, forget about it. Yeah, they're not, you know, they should just delete the apps. And some men are having a really good time. That's what I could say for a while. So we sort of diagnosed the problem in that if I can sum it up succinctly, we've got too much of the wrong kind of freedom, which has resulted in all of this. So to put it very clearly, so what's this, I mean, there'll be people watching this going on. So what are you saying? You're saying women should be back in the kitchen. That's how you, you know, get back to the way that things ought to be. It's a really tough one because obviously once you've lifted the lid on freedom,

it's quite nice. It's an enticing proposition. You know, you don't want to put the lid back on. I do think that women would be best served, and I think men as well, to understand these dynamics, to understand that, you know, these apps are not matchmaking apps, to understand the nature of the two markets that are clashing there, the market for long-term relationships and the market for sex, and that not all dating is dating. And I also wish that women, if they were more, you know, relationship-oriented, to make that clear. and to understand that, you know, most men probably will not want to date you or some, you know, some kind of guys that you might find attractive will reject you if you state that you want a long-term relationship or even, God forbid, that you want to get married or have children or something, you know, there are very subtle ways to phrase this. You don't need to be very, like, crazy explicit. But, you know, if you, if you, for example, try to, you know, paint a picture of the life that you'd like to lead with, you know, in the future. and maybe include that, I don't know, you want, you want to have children or something like that. You can do that in a tactful way and then maybe attract the type of people that are interested in

that and share your values. But, you know, just using the apps on their own terms is a sole grinder. I do not recommend it. So you can, you can use the apps, but you should, you know, you should kind of understand what you're getting yourself into. And, you know, the more people understand about these dynamics in general, the more they can maybe cultivate more of the, you know, the Aristotelian type of freedom where they kind of understand that the world has constraints and that it's probably wise for them to set constraints on themselves to be able to navigate the world. Because if you're just going whole hog on the, you know, live and let live thing, bad things might happen, just saying from experience, but also from what I've seen around me.

And Alex, how much responsibility do you think femininity, needs to take for this issue because, you know, feminism, you know, at the start, very, very positive. But where we are now, you know, you can be anything, you can do anything you want, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we are where we are now. Yeah, I think, you know, feminism is, third, fourth way feminism is essentially an outgrowth out of that, of that same idea of, okay, you are the, you know, homunculus behind the eyes, you know, pulling the strings, being super rational, you know, making decisions. you're not tied to your biology.

You shouldn't be tied by, by, you know, tradition or any sort of constraint. I understand the impulse, you know, it's the idea that you want to be free. That's great. But as I said, you know, you've thrown out the baby with the bathwater here, and it was a pretty precious baby. And it was also a baby that coordinated everyone. And, you know, you can see a lot of consequences of, of, of, this move towards kind of 100% individualism in the idea that, you know, we don't really see marriage rates are plummeting, fertility rates are plummeting across the West or across,

you know, kind of places that adopted this vision of the individual. So to me, feminism is just one flavor of this, the same philosophy that says, okay, you know, the body, society, whatever is outside of this almost metaphysical nucleus that, makes the decisions is, you know, is an imposition. I don't need. You can dispense with that. And you actually studied gender studies? Yeah, I have a degree. My undergrad was in economics, but it was in diversity management, gender and diversity management. So it's kind of gender studies in a business suit, you know, it had a bit of a, you know, economics flair to it. But it was essentially just not so, Judith Butler and a lot of scientific papers. And yeah, it was quite a

hard exam to pass. I was very surprised because I thought it was going to be something easy because it sounded a bit fluffy. No, they really wanted to keep up the appearance that this is science. And they essentially made us learn, you know, social science papers by heart and then know, you know, everything from the abstract to the CODA to who participated, study design, and all sorts of things. of course, after the replication crisis, probably about 97% of those papers that I learned for college were scrapped. But it's, you know, that's what they're trying to do, to sell the science in it. Were you quite bored into it at the time? You weren't there to sort of study with a critical eye.

You thought this was going to be valuable to you. Yeah, I thought it was an interesting field. I was kind of interested in feminism since I was a teenager because, you know, growing up in Romania being kind of this, a bit of an outsider girl, you know, interested in a lot of, you know, kooky things. I was kind of a militant atheist and atheism at that point, like new atheism online kind of started to get a bit social justicy. I don't know if anyone remembers atheism plus and things like that. So I kind of was like, oh, this is interesting. And that was kind of when I was in college as well. So I was like, oh, okay, this is, this is an up-and-coming field. They were selling it to me hard. It sounded like it's going to be an easy exam. I was mistaken. So, you know, a confluence of factors let me to have that as my undergraduate degree. Also, a lot of confusion in college. I had no idea what I was doing. I got into, like, economics uni, and I was like, okay, cool. Now I'm in the West. I'm learning Western science stuff. This is good. This is status-enhancing,

and it's going to be great for me if I just, if I finish this uni. But yeah, I was completely rudderless. So, you know, feminism came to embrace me and it's warm, comforting embrace. And you say you talk about you're a militant atheist. Where are you now on that? Because to me, a lot of what we have now in the West, with our crises, with our refusal to settle down,

is tied to a lack of religion. Do you still, are you still a militant atheist? or have you gone somewhere different with your thinking? Yeah, I'm a lapsed militant atheist. I'm definitely not militant, definitely not an atheist. I wouldn't say I'm extremely religious, but I am kind of a return to the Catholicism that I rejected. It's a journey.

I mean, after you've been marinating and, you know, the four horsemen for 10 years, you know, you kind of have to, you have to kind of make yourself a very to the metaphysical in a very forceful way because, you know, I've seen, I've kind of marinated in these arguments for a long time. But I am much more connected to the world of the spiritual. And I think it's less so that I'm, you know, I've read, you know, a book in Catholicism and I was like, well, I'm struck by the truth of the word of God. It was more that I've started to doubt rationality.

I kind of started to doubt because essentially what new atheism is, it's kind of has a religious component. It's essentially the cult of the homunculus, you know, the rational individual behind the eyes, making all the decisions, you know, going ahead, doing, you know, kicking ass, taking names, all that stuff. And I started to doubt that figure or that entity as being, you know, as good as I thought it was or at least being the measure of all things and enough to rule the world through.

And then, you know, I've kind of become a bit more interested in tradition. You know, I've tried on to see what it feels like to not have to, I don't know, reinvent the wheel every time, you know, got married and now and I'm going to have a baby, all sorts of, you know, weird old school stuff that people used to do back in the day. And it feels really nice, I have to say. So in a way, kind of I'm just, you know, riding blind through this whole, you know, kind of almost traditional lifestyle, you know, pickling and making bread. There we go sorts of old school stuff.

And it's pretty nice. I don't know. I'm probably not doing it correctly or I'm larping or whatever. But the closer I got to to the lifestyle of my, I don't know, my ancestors in a way, like my grandma used to live, the calmer and better I feel. So I don't know. I'm just empirically testing this day by. day. Well, that's one of the things I found quite interesting about your personal story because I think I would include myself on this, a lot of people go through the sort of 20s, early 30s period of

their life. And they're doing things that aren't making them happy, but they don't necessarily know what they're supposed to be doing. And in the modern society, they're being sold a whole bunch of narratives about what they should be doing and what should make them happy. And quite a lot of those things they then find out don't make them happy, aren't contributing to a better life or a better future. But you had, whether, I don't know, is it the presence of mind or whatever it might be to go, actually, I'm not, this is not good. This isn't working for me. And maybe I should try my grandma's lifestyle. Like, how did you, how did you know that you actually need to change up? Yeah. I think of, it was, you know, empirical experience.

I realized at one point that I was completely incapable of making good decisions about what would make me happy. It was just like almost completely the opposite of what I thought was going to do it. You know, it was good to go the other way. In my case, I just, I don't know, I was a bit disillusioned by what I was seeing around me. And, yeah, I said, okay, you know, there is a reason for tradition. And, you know, putting on my economist hat, I just realized that, you know, tradition is a heuristic. It's, you know, it's what people do because it works because it's been robust throughout time. And, you know, things like, I don't know, just working with your hands or having a garden or things like that that are just, I don't know, sound like what old people do to my generation.

they really they it's very hard to describe but it's you know they fulfill fulfill a need in me that is it's hard to you know if i had to put all my needs in a spreadsheet i would not necessarily know how to describe it in words or you know to assign weights or values to it but it does something you know and you know also pregnancy like when i when i was younger i couldn't even conceive of the idea of having children it seemed absolutely clear to me that I would never have children. It's absurd. I don't like babies, whatever. But now, you know, being going through this process, it's one of those things where you don't know what you don't have until it's there. And yeah, I think that's probably the issue with people being able to predict what's going to make them happy. You really don't know until it happens. And then, you know, until you make a commitment to something as well, I think that that's also an important dimension because like I said, a lot of modern living is about optionality. It's about increasing

how many options you have. Okay, what can I consume today? What's going to be status enhancing for me? What am I getting out of this? But a lot of the interesting things in life, a lot of the things that are hard to put into words happen when you give up on options, when you commit to something, when you commit to doing this show, to having a family, to building something more long-term with someone to a friendship or something like that. So I feel like we tend to optimize for the things that we feel, you know, at an expedient level, are going to make us happy, which anything from sweets to, I don't know, impulsive sexual encounters are going to fit the bill.

But it's very hard to predict the longer-term stuff. And Alex, do you think a large part of this was brought on by COVID? Because I'll tell you from my experience. So when I was doing comedy, I was gigging six nights a week. I was gigging in, you know, the best clubs. And, you know, it took me a long time to get to that point. I thought I was happy. I thought this is what I wanted to do. Then overnight, life literally stopped like that. And then you're left with me. Exactly. And what you actually realize is that you've been dedicating your life to a career, but the reality is that isn't fulfilling. It's nebulous. It's something, it doesn't anchor you like a family, you know, a relationship, etc., etc. Was that part of the process for you? I think I was definitely on the path before COVID,

but it has cemented it much, much more because, for example, I mean, I was, I was engaged before COVID and we got married during COVID in one of these ridiculous ceremonies, but, and we wanted to have a child before that. And I was kind of, you know, I was pickling before COVID, I have to say. But it did really, it strengthened my relationship a lot, you know, to be in a bunker with someone for, what is it now, 14 months and to feel like, you know, you still kind of like them. It's quite cool. So there's a reassuring vote of confidence for your husband. that you still kind of like him. Yeah. Yeah, he's okay. He still kind of likes me, it seems. So, yeah,

we're tolerating each other well. And, you know, I've moved back to Romania where we live in kind of a duplex thing with my mom's my neighbor and, you know, I see her every day. And we've had quite a rocky relationship, but it's really improved things. And I don't know, it's kind of refocused me a little bit on the, as I said, the longer term stuff, the, the, stuff that I have more skin in the game in, you know, like family and yeah. And in a way, it's also given me a lot of freedom, like, you know, the podcast and, you know, coming on to shows like this. It's quite cool. I'd never thought I'd be in the situation where, you know, people would ask me to respond to questions. It's fun. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a transformative time.

Obviously, it's been, it's not been great in many other respects, you know, it's been rocky. but I think for me and a lot of people, I know so many people who are pregnant now who are just, you know, decided to have COVID babies and, you know, the media says, oh, no, it's a, it's a sink. But I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to believe my lying eyes to think that, you know,

there's quite a few COVID babies popping up. So, yeah, I think, you know, it's been a mixed blessing for sure. Do you think as well that, and I don't know that because, so you grew up in a Catholic country, Romania's Catholic, My mother's orthodox. Sorry, orthodox, my apologies. But my family is Catholic. Yeah. Your family is Catholic. Do you think part of the problem where we see in the West is we don't talk about death. Death is a taboo subject. We don't mention it. We don't talk about it. And therefore, we live these lives as if we believe that it's going to go on forever. Yeah. Yeah, the denial of death is really strong in the West. I think it's mostly because you just, you don't get confront.

confronted by deaf so much. Modern medicine, you know, really did pretty good job with, you know, averting, you know, childhood mortality and things like that, which were rampant or deaths from, you know, infection and things like that. So you really don't get to see people dying as much. You don't have as many family members as you used to. So just like statistical chance of people dying around you is lower because there's just fewer people. And I think it's also the way we you know, because we've gotten rid of rituals, you don't really make a big fuss when people die as much as well. You know, you put them in the box, you have a day and that's it. You know, cremation. Also, you know, it's just kind of like the self-cleaning oven of getting rid of people. It's, you know, it's not,

we don't really integrate this into our rituals. I mean, what rituals? You know, if you're not extremely religious, you're probably don't even have a ritual related to death. And the stories around death are just, you know, typically you see them on TV and they're just statistics or you hear that someone died. Oh my God, that's incredible. Like it's some, some cosmic occurrence while, you know, the truth is that people, people die every day and, you know, you're going to die. And it's, you know, this, this memento-mory aspect of life is not, it's not highlighted at all. And I mean, I can understand why it's unpleasant and we want a pleasant life with a pleasant, you know, things to watch and have a comfortable everything.

But I think it's really valuable for people to be confronted with death. And to be honest, you see this with COVID. Like how fast the narrative flipped from, I don't know, we need to protect the NHS to we need to conquer death, which is just absurd. And I think maybe 100 years ago people would have known it's absurd. They'd be like, yeah, you know, this is not the way you mitigate this type of event because, you know, people will die.

The idea that, you know, even if you save someone who's, you know, what was the main cohort for COVID, you know, 80 years old, you saved their last two years. That's, I don't know, I don't know exactly what type of economy that is, but it's not, it doesn't work like that. And what's interesting there as well is we're really trying to save, we were trying to prevent deaths happening on television. That's what's really happened, right?

Because we've gone after protecting that cohort. which is very reported and completely ignored. And there's quite a lot of evidence that our government hasn't even looked at the negative impact ahead of time of, you know, cancer, heart disease, all of that stuff. Because they're not happening on television. And it's that sort of showy aspect of it as well, isn't it? Yeah, it's a showy aspect. And it's also what, you know, if you're a state, you're going to optimize stuff that's

visible to you as a state, you know, things that are legible and things that people care about in the moment that will lead to political pressure. So what people care about in the moment is case rates, which is a random number, very much dependent on how many, you know, yeah, tests are made, death rates, that's interesting. And also what's very important is anecdotal evidence in video form. That's what leads politics at the moment. If you see someone, you know, a crying nurse or a desperate Italian physician or someone, a corpse being swept up by strange, you know, apparatchiks in Wuhan, then, yeah, that's going to be very important in terms of how much heft it has and, you know, the direction of politics. So, yeah, in a way, all the negative space behind this,

like you said, cancer deaths or people who don't even get treated or even diagnosed doesn't even exist because it's hard to narrativeize. There are no videos of cancer deaths. It's going to be very hard to get empathy out of that. Let me ask you something just changing subject a little bit. We've got about 15 minutes left. We're talking a lot of the things that have come as a result of what you might describe as liberalism. Where has the forces of conservatism been? Because you would have think, you know, the dissolution of rituals, the endless freedom to do whatever you want. All of those things historically have been held in check by people who are a little bit more socially conservative who say, well, maybe you should, you know, have a relationship before you have sex,

or maybe, you know, there's some things that you just do. Like, if a grandma dies, you go to the funeral and you're supposed to have a funeral with the whole family there. Like, all of these things that are gradually evaporating, like, what have conservatives been doing? How, you know, what have they conserved? Not much. Not much. I mean, the conservatives are, what was it, like liberals, you know,

progressives driving the speed limit. That's essentially been the truth about most conservative movements in the press. I mean, obviously there are some conservative intellectuals like Roger Scruton or people like that who represent a different tradition. But the mainstream of conservatism has just, you know, tracked the liberals or labor by maybe five or ten years in terms of social values. They're always on the back foot. The thing is in the, in the kind of the secular liberal consensus, you know, the egalitarian assumption is not really that much of an argument to be made that, you know, you shouldn't live and let live. You shouldn't

expand freedoms. You shouldn't expand, you know, welfare and things like that because you need a safety net. What they've been really good at is, is making space for the market to, you know, to create, you should try to, you know, reduce taxes. I'm all for it. You know, create more, more freedom in the market, reduce regulation, all this type of stuff, which has been kind of the main kind of libertarian wing of especially U.S. conservatism. The UK has a different flavor, but that's kind of the main idea is that, you know, you need to liberalize the markets. And that's, you know, through some magic through libertarian economics, things will fall into place and people will just, I don't know, be socially conservative for one reason or another.

But the problem with that is that, for example, if you have completely globally liberalized markets, that's a bit of a solvent to socially conservative ideas as well. Like, for example, if you, for example, you can't get a job in your hometown because, you know, most of the jobs have been exported to China because it's a cheaper market to produce. Or, you know, the liberal market of labor demands that you leave the place where you are to find the, the, perfect job for you somewhere else. Or did you go to college to get the skills that you need to climb up in the hierarchy? All this stuff is, you know, is a solvent. It's as, you know, if you can't be socially conservative, if you don't respect the fact that people may want to live in a certain locality, may want to, I don't know, have a, have a more legacy-style job or be home to take care of their children, you know, because the liberal market wants people to

to produce. So women being in the marketplace, working full-time is a big aspect of libertarian economics as well. And, you know, people want to increase their labor force participation. So there's all of these things that are geared towards the market. And if something's geared specifically towards increasing productivity, GDP, whatever type of measure you want to bring in, it's obviously not geared towards protecting the things that are not the market, which many times consist of these more traditional institutions, which, you know, kind of are left by the wayside. So I think, in a way, conservatives of, you know, with all good intentions, they've shot themselves in the foot on social issues with this strategy, because you need to have a priority. If social

conservatism is your priority, well, then that is a value that's higher than the market. And it has never been higher than the market in the last, whatever, 50 years. And isn't it the problem as well that, you know, all these values that you talk about, which you associate with social conservatism, you can't monetize them. And in a consumerist society, they therefore get ranked down in the pecking order. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's the value of taking care of a sick relative? You know, what's, you know, who's going to pay you for that? If you can't, if you can't get Jeff Bezos to pay you to do that on, you know, from as a nine to five, then is it even happened, you know, did it even make a sound?

So, yeah, like you said, if it's not reflected in the main ladder of value that we have, then, you know, it doesn't exist, it's valueless, therefore it will disappear eventually. So what's the answer, Alex? What's a political position that you think is healthy as a response to all of the things we've been talking about for the last 50 minutes? Yeah, this is a, this is tricky one. you know, a lot of people have a lot of ideas of how to do this. It's, it's a hard one because, you know, what we're living on in the West is kind of the scaffolding of kind of this Judeo-Christian

value system. And, you know, it still works. It's got some holes. But, you know, there is, there are some core values that exist there, even though we pretend that they don't exist and we're eroding them with every step. I don't think you can have a political system that doesn't have a value system behind it. How, where that value system needs to grow out of, you know, there's schools like, you know, Catholic Integralism where you kind of have, you know, Catholicism as that value system, which, you know, we used to have in Europe, you know, in this heyday, you know, there are good things about it, bad things about it.

But at the same time, the idea that, okay, we're just going to have a value of society and see how that goes. The problem with that is that it gets taken over by people who have values and what. woke is a very strong moral system. And it's essentially come into a space that said, oh, you know, our value is that we have no values. Well, these guys have values and they will come and trample yours to the ground because, you know, don't tread on me. Cool. But how about this, you know, this millenarian cult that wants to, to, you know, show you that, you're fallen and, you know, it has all the, all the trappings of an old school, hardcore cult. And it's, you know, it's

It offers a really powerful vision and offers very powerful morality. And it will take your system over. So, you know, I don't exactly know what type of morality we need to, you know, instantiate in our political system, but I really don't think you can go without any. So, I don't know, pure libertarianism, I think, just collapses because the game theory of it doesn't work. Something will come in to fill the void.

And, you know, now, you know, in a way we're all talking here, because something has come in to fill the void, and it's absolutely boggers. So, yeah, I don't know, but also on a personal level, because I think, you know, politics is one level, but I think, you know, people can live good lives in the current regime if they just kind of try to look at reality a little bit closer, you know, like we were talking about, how do you want your life to be, you know, maybe look a bit back at tradition. it can be helpful. There are certain things that you don't know,

maybe defer to other people or maybe to faith traditions or traditions in general in some directions. So, yeah, I don't know, a bit more humility at the personal level can be quite helpful. Let me just ask one follow up. See, the thing with that thinking,

and I am increasingly convinced as well that the answer to this needs to start with the individual where you live a life that actually works for you, seem to be doing and, you know, pursuing a purpose and family and community and contributing and, you know, challenging yourself and, you know, cleaning your room and all that great stuff, right? But at the same time, you know, you've got a baby on the way, and congratulations, by the way, that baby's going to be born seven years from now, that baby's going to go to school

where they're going to be taught that they don't have a gender and all of that other stuff. I don't think that's going to be taught in Romania, man. I'm going to be honest with you. Maybe it's catching up. You'll be surprised. Yeah. Really? Right.

It's all downstream. Yeah. So, but that's why I've always thought about it. That's why I've always made a stand against it because it's going to spread. Right. So, you know, you've lived your perfect life. You've taught your child up until the age of seven, you know, this is right, this is wrong. This is how you do.

This is how you do that. This is how you think about this. Don't have sex before then. Whatever. All of that great stuff. And then they go to school and they clash with a completely different institutionalized culture, which is, as you said yourself, bonkers. Now, what do you do then? Because it's no longer about you. It's about your family. Yeah, yeah. Believe me, I've, you know, I've thought about this

from, from every angle. Sorry, I don't want to put you off having the baby, by the way. It's a bit late. It's a bit, it's a bit too late. Exactly. You've made your bed. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's, yeah, I've definitely thought about this and I've written about it as well. I'm You know, it's a, it's a hard time, especially because my, my baby is going to be male and he's going to be white. You're going to bring a straight white male into the, how dare you? Let's cancel you. Actually, we don't know if it's going to be straight yet. Exactly. We don't even know if it's going to be male. We need to wait until it's 18th birthday. That's when you do the gender reveal party.

Exactly. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a hard thing. The issue is, you know, no parent ever could, you know, completely control the worldview of their child. You know, my plan, my tactical toolkit is to provide a stable, calm, you know, good nature at home, hopefully if I'm, if I don't, you know, change personalities overnight if I have a baby. But, and, and also kind of just, just model a good life to the child. I feel like a lot of people, especially in my generation, have had parents that, you know, came from quite disorganized environments. You know, everyone talks about boomer parents and things like that where, you know, children of divorce, you know, people who are really enthrall with the, with this idea of the individual, you know, of, you know, constantly choosing, choosing maybe to divorce your spouse or, you know, having affairs and then being, you know, quite a, quite a, I don't know, you know, trying to optimize. yourself quite a bit too much if you have if you try to build a stable family. So that's something I will try very hard not to do and to, you know, to provide a, yeah, a good background for for the

child. And yeah, he will have to deal with reality at one point. And in a way, I feel you can't do much better by your child than to, you know, just set, set the, put the seeds right and set, set the background for him to grow and, yeah, exist in a stable way. And also, I'm going to let my husband teach him about, you know, being a man and all the manly things. And I'm not going to try to interfere with his skateboarding or whatever one should not do with boys. So, yeah, I think, you know, I'm kind of a pro-natalist. I think, you know, it's good to have children. the world's, I didn't expect the world to be the way it is now, and I probably can't make any predictions about how it's going to be in five years. I think technology really is a bit of a kerosene

that exists in these cultural spaces, and I feel like, you know, you can have things cascading one way or the other quite suddenly. So I'm just going to try to prepare him as much as I can, you know, without trying to, you know, fill his head with dogma or whatever. But, but also now trying to strengthen him for, yeah, whatever might come. Alex, well, those are very, very powerful words to end the interview on. We always end our interviews with one final question, which is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society, but we really should be?

Yeah, I think one thing that people aren't talking about is migration and kind of migration of intelligence. and kind of strip mining the world for very intelligent people, moving them to cities, and also kind of putting them in this issue that I just laid out at the beginning of the show, the idea that, you know, it's not a good place to have children. So essentially, you know, you're creating these fertility sinks in cities. Cities have always been fertility sinks, but now they've, you know, they've really made a machine out of it. And you're taking some of the most brilliant people from around the world and put, putting them there and, yeah, kind of not creating the conditions for this intelligence to

perpetuate. And I think, you know, intelligence is quite charitable and it would be nice to have some left in a few generations. And I think this might be a bigger problem than people think. So, I mean, I haven't heard many people talk about this. I think it's a tough one. And I think, you know, it's like kind of like antibiotic resistance. It's like, oh, you don't deal with it until you have to. So I think we'll see a little bit of this on the horizon maybe in 50 years. Great. A generation of stupid people. Something that we can all look forward to. Yeah. Idiocracy is proving to be quite prophetic. It is. Alex, a great chatting to you. Thank you for coming on the show. People can follow you on Twitter. They can read your,

is it substack your monies, mostly putting stuff out? Yeah, that's where my writing is. And also my podcasts. The subversive podcast. Yeah. Make sure you check it out. And thank you for watching at home. We will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one. And they always go out as well as our Raw Shores, Raw Shores, Raw Shores, Raw Shows at 7pm UK time.

Well done, mate. Thank you. I nailed it. Take care and see you soon, guys.