Transcription
Um, the three most common reasons are: you voted for the wrong person, you voted conservatively. These are primarily progressive kids. Second one would be, we disagreed on COVID policy. And the third one is gender ideology, which, in some ways, makes a lot of sense if you are trying to reinvent who you are and reject who you've been. Your parents have a memory of who you were, of your real identity, um, that's even stronger in some ways than your own memory of yourself, because you don't remember yourself.
That's interesting. They want space because they're sort of afraid of what they'll see in their parents' eyes.
[Music]
Welcome back to Psycho Babble, where we expose bad therapy and the liberal trends that contribute to our poor mental health. I'm Hannah Spear. Today, we're going to talk about the new trend of parental estrangement. It's sad that, well, in the US, you have one in four American adults now estranged from their parents. They're going no contact, as you can see. I'm going to show you a picture from TikTok, how widespread this no contact, hundreds of thousands of posts, uh, where people proudly tell the audience how they've cut contact with their parents.
If a parent ever says, "My kid cut me off. My kids won't talk to me, or my kids won't let me see their grandkids," don't feel sorry for them.
If you are a person who is experiencing conflict with your parents, the onus is on them to sustain repair. Children, no matter what age, should not be begging for scraps from their parents. The onus should never be on the child to maintain a relationship with their parent.
I think a lot of people carry a lot of guilt for not speaking to their parents. I just decided I was like, you know, just because you were great for a period of time in my life, and just because I'm your daughter doesn't mean I need to stay in a relationship out of obligation.
Uh, so I'm joined by Noel Maring. She's a fellow at the, uh, Ethics of Public Policy Center, and she's an author, uh, of several books: Theology of Home with our friend Carrie Gress, and Awake Not Woke. And she's having, she's writing a new book now called No Contact. Welcome to Psychobble.
Well, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
So, uh, tell us how, for, we're going to, we're going to listen to some videos later, as we do. Uh, but why don't you start by sort of telling us how you got into this and what's your, what's your impression has been?
Yeah. So, um, well, since Awake Not Woke came out in 2021, and since then, I've been going primarily just all over the, uh, this country in the United States talking to people about the woke movement and about ideology in particular. Um, and of course, you know, one of the main concerns is how it affects family life. Um, and I started noticing at Q&A that every talk I gave, some parents or grandparents would stand up and say, um, "I, you know, my relationship with my adult children has become very strained. It's very fragile, if not entirely fractured." Um, and I just started hearing this more and more. And, uh, you know, I'm, it, it felt anecdotal at first, but then I just started looking into it and, um, trying to figure out how to shore up whatever was happening, uh, to these poor families, because these parents are really, really heartbroken.
Um, and of course, you know, maybe I'd hear a different perspective, I'm sure, and a different side, and some nuances would emerge if I talked to the adult kids. And so, um, I wanted to research it and also interview people. So that's what I've been doing for this new book, No Contact. Should be out next year. Um, and for the most part, you know, you can get a good sense from people. Some, there are a couple of, uh, people who you can tell they're not willing to sort of look interiorly, or they're not, they might be, um, uh, you know, sort of less able to kind of examine maybe where they might have had some faults or some contributions to the demise of the relationship. But for the most part, the parents I talked to, I had the sense that they are caught up in a cultural moment bigger than them, and that, you know, normal family conflicts that every family naturally has, which would have been surmountable in the previous generations, has become insurmountable. Uh, and I do think that's driven a lot by ideology. And so that's what I'm unpacking in the new book.
Do you get a sense from these, these parents that you that you talk to? So it says 14%, around 14% um of the estrangements are due to diagnosis. So these kids, these young adults, label their parents, especially narcissists, uh, or, or sociopaths or psychopaths, and then use that as justification for the estrangements, because obviously, if someone's sick, the, the blame cannot be put on them. It completely alleviates them from any guilt.
Um, so, so I've written about this quite a bit, and then the backlash is always, "Well, you don't know them, and they are so sick, and they are this and that." Um, I mean, from personal experience, I've had a lot of young adults, and I mean, I, I worked with people from 18, sometimes 17, up, where they have, where they cut off contact with their parents, and, um, they'll say this, that the parents are narcissists or disorders. The label varies from session to session. Um, and then I, I was always surprised because this happened quite a few times, and then, then I would invite the parents to the session, and then, uh, there would be a complete mismatch between what I'd heard for over several sessions from the patient, and then what I saw in reality. And then, yeah, of course, you can't, you can't tell. I mean, I, I think I have a good judge of people, but of course, you can't diagnose someone as a narcissist by meeting them once. But what was your sense, uh, of these parents that you spoke to?
Yeah. No, I appreciate all your insights. You, of course, I interviewed you for the book, and I'm grateful for you bringing a lot of insight into this topic in particular, um, as well as many others. But, um, yeah, so the sense that I, the, the layered part is that often times there are some underlying wounds, right? That, you know, maybe there was a divorce, um, and then ideology is kind of the reason that the kids go no contact. They'll say, um, the three most common reasons are: you voted for the wrong person, you voted conservatively. These are primarily progressive kids. Um, second one would be, we disagreed on COVID policy. And a third one is gender ideology.
Um, which, in some ways, makes a lot of sense. If you are trying to reinvent who you are and reject who you've been, your parents have a memory of who you were, of your real identity, um, that's even stronger in some ways than your own memory of yourself, because you don't remember yourself.
Interesting. Yeah.
That's very interesting that they, they, um, they want space because they're sort of afraid of what they'll see in their parents' eyes.
That's right. Their parents are a reminder of an identity that they want to die. They want to kill this identity, you know, they, they want it to be dead. And so it just won't die as far as they have their parents, um, gaze upon them, you know, and, and that intimate knowledge. So I think that that is, uh, just sort of goes along with, uh, self-rejection that is accompanies gender ideology. So the parents are really, you know, a threat to that in particular. But a lot of these kids, you know, I think that they have, um, I think that they have really unstable identities for multiple reasons. Um, but one being that the ideology has done, in particular, is that they've told a generation of kids that they have all sorts of power and autonomy over things that they don't really have any power over at all. They have power to define what sex means, what marriage means, um, what their bodies mean, who they are in defiance of bodily reality. All these unwieldy, sort of godlike powers that they've, uh, you know, given to themselves or try to advocate for themselves that they don't actually have. At the same time, we've told them, "You're also a victim. You are at the mercy of sort of systemic forces that are beyond you, and your successes and failures in life are not attributable to your efforts, to your virtue, to your, um, weaknesses, if they're in the case of failures." Um, that there's no real ownership or internal locus of control that you have in your daily life, but you have all this godlike power in other ways. So I think that creates a real instability in their identity where, um, you know, it's understandable if you define yourself according to those two terms, radical autonomy and radical victimhood, that you're going to be really anxious and, um, insecure and unstable.
Right. But they also confuse identity with what they are, feelings and feeling and their whims of the moment.
Right.
It's not sort of who, who are you to other people.
Um, and they definitely don't want their parents involved in that. It seemed, it's like a, uh, when I listened to them, and it seemed to me like a sort of prolonged teenagehood.
Mhm.
And that we've, we've, they don't manage to, because what happens in the teenage years, and that's normal, you separate yourself, you become a separate entity from your parents, and so you need that rebellion. So that's fine. But it seems like they never settle after that.
Right. Yeah. And I think because, you know, maturation requires sort of the, the hard work of self-examination and virtue and, um, understanding, you know, how much, you know, we need to work on ourselves, and then that gives us kind of more mercy to look at the faults of others, because we realize sort of our own faults. And I think a lot of times when you are sucked into like a deeply victim narrative, you don't really know how to examine yourself. You don't really know how to look at yourself with clarity or with truth. Um, and so it's really hard. You start to become merciless. I think, um, of course, every victim has to be also an accuser. So if you're a young adult and you're trying to, we've incentivized them to find a victim identity in themselves, it, your parents are an easy place to target because if you, you know, you haven't lived that long, probably, and, um, childhood wounds are something that people talk about increasingly more and more, almost to the point of it can become a fetish, you know, that, uh, we're just coddling our childhood wounds. Um, so I think the parents are sort of going to be naturally vulnerable. Now, another thing I think is happening is that the ideology always wants to disintegrate relationships, right? Um, so man and woman become disintegrated from one another, mother and child disintegrated. And I think this is just another version of that, that the parent is now put in the sort of power position, the child is the vulnerable one, which, you know, there's some truth to that. But in the reductive lens of ideology, power narratives are all relationships are reduced to. And so they don't see, you know, the, um, the, uh, accompanying responsibility and the accompanying nobility of the role of parenthood, that this sacrifice that goes into it, that, um, sort of leads us to, and has led Judeo-Christian societies to understand that there is something owed to our parents. You, it's the only,
Um, relationship that we are told to honor, you know, in a way that connects us to civic unity as well. And, um, I think that's really telling. So, um,
Exactly.
But in the power lens, it is no longer honorable. It's really, uh, sort of a selfish choice. So, one of the things I hear a lot from the kids who go no contact is they'll say, "You chose to have me. I did not choose to be born, and so you owe me. I don't owe you."
Oh, yeah. That's a common thing that they'll say. Um, and the implication is, "My life is not a blessing. It's a burden." And, you know, one therapist I even was listening to, who is a best-selling author, actually, but he said, "You know, if you inflict consciousness on unsuspecting flesh, you owe it a lot." Uh, which sounds a lot like assault to me. In other words, recasting the role of a parent as someone who has assaulted you.
That makes sense because we tell, um, we tell adults, they're adults now, but we started telling people this a long time ago, that, um, having children is, uh, is selfish.
Yeah.
I just, that, um, children are, are sort of an accessory. It's a luxury that some people have, and it's not something that you're going to want or not want. It just is something that you then choose. And so the logical conclusion will then that that child is owed a lot by this parent who chose to have them as a, as a necessity.
Yes. And of course, you know, certainly parents obviously do owe their child. I mean, we, you, that is what parenthood is, is you give, you sacrifice, you're sacrificing yourself all the time for your child. But I think it's a different, um, what you're talking about, what I'm talking about is a different framing of that. It's not a sacrifice out of love and nobility and, you know, um, that then kind of also becomes something that is reciprocal as the child gets older. Um, but rather it is something that is, uh, you know, entitlement. I'm, you know, I'm entitled to this, and I'm, you're entitled, but there's no, nothing that I owe you. So it really is an inversion of that fourth commandment. Um, and it leaves a lot of, you know, a lot of the older parents that are going through this, sometimes they, they, you know, parent as you age, you become vulnerable again. You know, you, you don't necessarily have all of, um, your physical abilities. You might get grow very sick. You might hit a crisis yourself. And I think it's really beautiful to have that sense of, you know, as parents are aging, it gives adults something to give back to them, and also a way to, you know, love people as they're growing into that sort of very vulnerable stage. Um, and so, you know, in so far as it's, it requires its own sort of sacrifice, we have really, um, disincentivized, um, these kids to become parents themselves, right? Because, um, if you might enter into this, you know, life, choose to become mother or father, and it's no longer considered noble, sacrificial, and beautiful, but rather sort of selfish and, um, and ignoble, and then you might end up isolated and alone at the end. You know, why would any young adult with that mindset want to enter into that role in their own life? And I think it's, you know, in other words, there's other consequences, which include contributing to the, the birth, you know, the, the lack of young adults becoming parents themselves.
Mhm. Yeah. They don't, uh, also they're not able to think more than five years ahead, if that. This is my experience with them, and that they don't, they cannot make long-term plans. And so obviously, they don't think what they're going to need in 10 or 20 years, that it's no longer going to be fun to live this jet-setter, you know, student life, uh, when they're 40, 45, you know, it's going to get lonely. It's, uh, people aren't going to accept me in the same circles where they, they find me fun and charming now. They're certainly not going to find me fun and charming when I'm 45 and still visiting the clubs, but they, they just won't. It's so difficult to get them to realize that, and, you know, when they do, and I have had these conversations in therapy, and they just, it's like a denial, just like a block goes down, and they just won't listen to it, and they would understand it, but they're in complete denial of a future where they're going to want or need something else.
Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I, it, it makes sense too, that it is all sort of short-term concerns, right? Um, and, you know, one of the other things that you hear a lot in this movement is, you know, "I'm going to have a chosen family." That's one of the things people say a lot. Um, you know, and chosen family can be innocuous and even wonderful if you're really in a crisis, and, you know, you need friends. We all have the experience of good friends feeling like family, and that can be a beautiful thing. But there is something different happening with, um, the rise of the that language, which is really rooted in ideology. And just to your point, I was reading about this one man who, you know, he entered into the chosen family life in his 20s and was living sort of a really alternative and wild life, and just had fun, and it was great. And then as he got older, now, I think he's in his 50s, and he was saying, you know, "It doesn't work as well when you're not, you've lost your looks." You know, he, he had a lot of money, he was good-looking, he was charming, you know, to your point, in his 20s. And now he finds that the people who were his chosen family, they've moved on. They've kind of established their own real families, and, um, they've, he's, he's not prioritized anymore, and he really is rethinking, you know, "I don't know why I thought that that would last." Having those that chosen family, I now I'm vulnerable, I'm getting older, I'm getting a sick here and there. He's worried about his mortality, and he's thinking, "I need people who are obligated to me."
You know, relationships built only on choice are unstable. Now, relationships built only on obligation are impersonal. So, you know, the trick is that in life is that we want to build, find what our relationship should be, have duty and a choice. You know, we choose the people who are given to us. You know, you choose a sibling, I wasn't, didn't choose a sibling, you know, say, but you tell your children, you know, "Be kind to your sibling, include your sibling." You didn't choose them. Your friend seems more exciting, but also you have an obligation to your sibling. So choose to include them too. Choose, and but that magic of choice plus duty is, I think, where you really find love. And this idea that we can reduce all of our relationships to autonomous choice makes things very unstable for people in ways that I think they don't anticipate.
Right. Right. They're very unstable. I listened to Graeme Linsday this week, and he said, uh, that these, because he's very involved in trans, in the gender ideology problem, and he said, when these kids, they go away from their chosen, from their, um, their family of origin, as they call it, to their chosen family, and they go and live with them, then very often they're kicked out quickly because these are kids with mental disorders, and they don't want anything to do with them. So that just shows how easily these bonds are broken. It's just right what you say. You have to have, you have to have an obligation. And you have to also think, I just noticed. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about before. Um, things become more permanent once you have kids and once it's about them and not you. So that's what I noticed in my own life. That once my kids were, and we, it was difficult during COVID, we also had, you know, points of tension and very different, you were conservatives, and so we were getting all these different information, and relationships within the family got difficult during that period. Uh, but then going out of that, then the question is, uh, how do you find back to each other? And that also, the question with this non-contact movement, like, how, how do you find back to each other? And I found thinking about the kids, what is best for them, has such healing power. And for them, they need the family. They want their grandparents. They don't want my friend from high school.
Right.
Right. They don't want the, the, the chosen family. Um, so I think, and that's when kids aren't, because kids aren't really involved in this. What do you think about that? Are they?
Yeah. I oftentimes, when an adult child, or not oftentimes, but it can be the case, when an adult child becomes a parent themselves, that they start, they return to, they want to return to contact, return to, uh, that relationship with their own parents.
It makes sense for one thing, having a child can be a great way to mature. Um, for another thing, you start to look with more compassion, maybe, on the humanity of your own parents, because you realize how hard it is, and so you're more sympathetic to maybe things that you kind of, uh, thought were just grievances before.
Um, I, I interviewed one woman who she had gone no contact with her parents at some point, and she had a, she had, when she had a baby, she just really needed her mom. She just needed help and needed her mom, and she reached out. And her mom came, and her mom did a great job. She didn't require, demand a big apology, no long conversations about what had gone wrong. They just sort of gave each other grace and resumed contact. Yeah.
And it was really beautiful. And, you know, and, you know, she even talked about with her in-laws, that, you know, there's this, she entered, married into this big family, and sometimes those relationships can be really hard too.
And she just, to, to your point again, she was saying, um, "I'm doing, I, when sometimes it feels hard to be around them, there's strain and there's differences and all these things, but she realized, you know, I'm doing this for my kids. I want my kids to know their quirky sense of humor, and, you know, that where they came, you know, that they, they're wonderful Italian cooking, and, um, and have these sort of relationships that can be tricky where you, you know, bump up against each other, and there can be discomfort, but you learn the resilience of, um, loving people when sometimes it's not pleasant, you know? And that's an important skill to to learn. And if we think that we only love people when it's pleasant for us, that's not really love, you know, that's just a self-regard or self-interest. Um, that real love requires that sometimes you get through uncomfortable and unpleasant parts of the relationship, um, and give each other grace, receive grace, and give it. Um, and so that's what it seems like is, uh, new thing that's accompanying this movement is there's a sort of mercilessness to it. Um, and certainly the, the tricky thing about it is that, you know, there are some, there are good reasons that some people have gone no contact. You know, if your cases of abuse and addiction and instability and, you know, threats and all of these things, there can be legitimate reasons. But oftentimes these forums, no contact forums will kind of conflate and put together all these different situations. One person is talking about how they were sexually abused, another person's talking about how their father voted for Donald Trump or something. You know, these things are not the same. Um, but in that conflation, we've kind of bestowed a narrative of infallibility to the adult child that you can never, this is another part of the thing that you hear a lot in the no contact movement, you can never question the decision of the person who's decided to go no contact, that it's an, nobody would choose that unless they absolutely had to. Um, so there's, they're sort of given this air of infallibility, which is, um, simply not human. It's not taking into context the complexity of of human decisions. The way that especially when we feel wounded, we can make, we can err in judgment. We can make bad decisions. Um, and especially when it's accompanied by this, you know, immense, you know, rise in like TikTok psychologists talking about cutting off your toxic parents, #toxicparents, #narcissisticparents. And they've got millions of views, and they're, you know, kind of quizzing their their their viewer saying things like, "Was your parent not there for you in a particular time?" Or did, was your parent concerned with, you know, how the neighbors thought of them more than how what..."
Yeah, very leading. The Barnum effect, you know, where it's, you interpret it like a fortune cookie. It feels like it's personal. It's a broad statement. So, um, when you take into account all this rise and all these other things that are happening surrounding this movement, and it starts to become clear that no, we absolutely, it's, we absolutely should be thinking deeply about whether or not it was right to cut contact. To just assume that you are right and to make that decision isn't helpful to you or to the parents, to anyone, really, you know, that we need to allow some scrutiny when we're making such an important decision.
Yeah. So, how many parents did you interview for the book?
Oh, gosh. Um, upwards of 50, around. Yeah, somewhere around there. Um, and not everyone is in the book. Um, and I changed details. So, the parents were universally kind of just nervous about,
Yeah.
Yeah, about, you know, preventing any future, uh, reconciliation by having spoken to me. So significant details are changed without losing the core of their story.
Yeah. And were they all because of ideology or religious views?
They were, uh, yeah, the, the three main were were politics, COVID policies, and gender stuff. Um, yeah, or LGBTQ stuff. Um, so, yeah, but there, there were some parents I talked to who, you know, a couple of them had gone through a divorce as well, and so they, you know, I, they had the recognition that, you know, there's probably deeper wounds here too. So, or maybe some attachment issues and, you know, when the child was young. So oftentimes, it's far more layered than just kind of a totally perfectly normal, healthy family life, and then, then the politics comes into play, and then they cut each other off. Although, you know, that happens too. A lot of the, oftentimes it was a kid going off to college, getting kind of radicalized, uh, in school, and then, just that relationship deteriorating. And then, you know, things in 2020 really shifted, like things, ways in which relationships that had previously been able to withstand those sorts of differences suddenly no longer could. I mean, that was my experience with certain friendships too. You know, that all of a sudden, you know, very progressive friends, you know, that we'd been lifelong friends, it was very much much more difficult, um, because, you know, the world was anxious and isolated, and, um, that's a bad, uh, combination for,
Uh, for maintaining stable relationships. So, um, a lot of these families, things escalated a lot after 2020. And between 2020 and now is when they found that the, the ruptures really began. Interesting. Did you also interview, um, interview some of the people who had gone non-contact, who had done the, the cut?
Yep. I, not as many of them. Um, and, you know, I, I certainly couldn't, I would love to have talked to the, the, the adult kids of the parents, but because it was anonymous, I couldn't reach out to them. But I did get to interview, um, some people who had gone no contact and then, um, and then were able to reconcile. Uh, I also found some interesting people just, um, telling their stories online about having gone no contact, and, um, I got, I did, I do some research into left-wing authoritarianism, which is a really fascinating thing. There's one young woman in particular, she was very much a social justice warrior, and she has a fascinating story. She talks about that world, that she, you know, it was a really unstable, her all her relationships felt very unstable because you could turn on each other on a dime. Everyone is worried about being like called out or canceled. And so they were very quick to kind of call out and cancel each other to sort of get that, that off of them themselves.
Um, and to not associate with somebody who had misspoken or had, you know, been pro, considered could be cast as problematic, you know, no matter how progressive they were, if they had a misstep. Anyway, it just was a very harsh and, um, uh, unwieldy, uh, unyielding world. And she just grew increasingly isolated, anxious, and emotional. And she writes about how, um, this one night, out of the blue, sort of, she doesn't know, you know, where this came from, but she just, she was crying and felt anxious and angry, and she was enraged about, you know, all of the things going wrong in the world. And she, out of sort of without prompting and without a deliberate thought process, sat up in her bed and wrote on a sticky note, "What in what way do I contribute to my own misery?" And then she put that on the wall and just started contemplating that. And it was the beginning of a shift. Um, so in other words, you know, even the most radical person can start to get pulled out of it and start to sort of break, the spell can be broken. I think, um, and it was fascinating to me that for her, it was by just having an instinct of what kind of ownership can I take in my own life? Beautiful. That that was the seed that helped her to sort of pull away from that. Now, she's still on the, certainly on the left, but she's not, that she doesn't have that social justice warrior sort of zeal, um, that she she was so possessed by previously. Yeah, I think that's, um, you know, the emotional immaturity, which a lot of these, uh, these people have, which is also what leads to this, uh, taking on the, the left-wing authoritarianism. And the antidote to that is starting to take account to, to take accountability, to take to take responsibility for one's own actions, and see things, then starting to see things in a more nuanced sense, that you're not, that you are also as forgiving to others' faults as you are that you are to your own. You see, um, the world in a more sort of pixelated manner, that comes with with maturity. Absolutely. So, one of the interesting things is that, um, well, one phenomenon is that parents, when the relationship gets strained, the parents tend to externalize the faults from the child. So they'll say, you know, some, it's that, that relationship they're in, or that they have a bad therapist, or they got caught up in this ideology, whereas the children of the parents tend to universalize the problem. "Their parents, my parents are toxic. My parents are narcissistic." It's so deeply, um, a, a universal castigation upon the parents, that it's really hard for them to come back from. But part of the, part of the, uh, through researching left-wing authoritarianism, part of the fascinating, um, aspect of this is that, you know, in social psychology, there's been a phenomenon called the Loch Ness Theory, where, um, there, there's been a disbelief that there is such a thing as left-wing authoritarianism. So that the left-wing ideology is by definition, they say, "We are, you know, anti-fascist, and anti, you know, authoritarianism." By definition, we want, you know, equality, equity, egalitarianism. And so they've understood that the idea of left-wing authoritarianism is a figment of the right's imagination, that it just simply doesn't exist. It's like the Loch Ness monster. You can think that they identify it, but it's not really there.
And increasing, there's new research over the last, uh, decade, one out of Cornell, and another, uh, from a, a social psychologist named Luke Conway from the University of Montana, and I think he's at Grove City College now, that really disproves that, you know, that, um, that there's, you know, there's a blind spot on the left, and in so far as they don't think that there is an authoritarianism on their side, be, they think that their beliefs sort of baptize their behaviors, and so they're, they're not going to be able to see it when it's done in the name of of progressivism. So, you know, all the, the, the antics of Antifa, for example, which are absolutely authoritarian, it's harder for them to identify that. Now, the, the hopeful part of that is that an honest progressive, once they see it, they're very motivated to correct it. Um, so once, you know, so someone like Barry Weiss, or even like a Bill Maher, the comedian, you know, increasingly you'll see people who have been lifelong progressives start to say, "What has happened to my side?" You know, there's, uh, all sorts of authoritarianism. It just doesn't look like what it looks like on the right. Like, so the right will be the signs that they'll say that are symptoms of authoritarianism are really just pathizing the conservative temperament. So it'll be things like respect for fatherhood, respect for hierarchies, um, you know, holding fast to traditional or conventional values. These are supposedly symptoms of authoritarianism. Well, on the left, it's just sort of the inversion of those things. So it's wanting to destroy all hierarchies. It is, um, wanting not to preserve kind of traditional morality, but to trans, to, um, transgress it. Um, fetishizing of transgressive behavior. Um, and, you know, an elimination of free speech. So, you know, even free speech has become supposedly a dog whistle for authoritarianism, at least in the United States. If you say you're pro-free speech, that in some people's minds, that means that that's just an excuse to spread hate, to spread fascism. So, so in other words, it's an inversion on their side too, that it's not, you know, that's not the sign of symptom of authoritarianism for the left. It's the elimination of free speech that is the symptom of authoritarianism. So, so it's good that all this research is being done, and that is, you know, it's what's been obvious to probably most of us, that of course you can be a left-wing authoritarian, is now becoming, you know, more exposed and backed and supported by, um, in the field itself. But, um, but the, uh, the hopeful sign is that, you know, once they see it, it can be a real imp, they could have a real internal impetus to correct it. So I think we're seeing that more and more now, where, you know, there's a lot of people who are kind of left-wing heretics, or at least in the states, you know, that they've, they've seen,
How, how, uh, how authoritarian their side has become, and so we have new allies, I think, in ways that we didn't maybe before.
Are you seeing that?
I hope so. I mean, they're still, to, um, they're still very socially, uh, progressive. They're still very, you know, like Bill Maher is still, will say things about having kids, and he's still sort of against the family. It's so, so in terms of how does he really want to reconstruct the hierarchies? You know, I think not. So,
Um, and I think the real concerning issue is that people are not having kids, people are not building families.
Yeah. No, that's right. And in some ways, the Bill Mahers of the world, it might not even be that, that he's going to have a radical transformation, so much as I think it just gives enough of a crack in the facade that other people, sort of observing Bill Maher, can, it gives them sort of a permission to also say, "Yeah, this doesn't seem right at all." And maybe those people are,
Someone has to say the emperor is not wearing any clothes. The emperor is right.
Yeah.
Right. So, and there is a return, uh, to sort of, um, young, young, it's interesting. Gen Z is really fascinating to me because it seems to me they've sorted in really different ways. That some have really gone all-in on ideology, and the other, there's another cohort that is seeing a new the beauty of family, oftentimes of faith, you know, religion, um, more traditional, uh, lifestyle. So, you know, those people will become our peers, to the people who think very differently, uh, and could potentially be another catalyst for some sort of self, some sort of new, um, recognition and spell-breaking that happens, uh, with the ideology. But, um, but they,
Split, but they're very polarized.
They're very polarized. And I think, you know, one of the, one of the jobs now for older people also, parents who have been estranged, is to really start to become mentors. Because I, I think this new shift is going to, it needs to be deepened and directed. Um, and these people don't oftentimes don't have models for what that life should look like. And so sometimes it can be reactionary, and, you know, done not artfully enough or something. But, um, you know, parents who are estranged now, I often will encourage them to get really involved with, you know, if it be at their church, or, you know, in their community, in the school, whatever avenue you have, with nieces and and nephews, perhaps, and helping to deepen and direct what is, what is good that is happening in Gen Z.
Yeah. Good. Okay. That concludes the free episode. We're going to go over to our members exclusive section, and we're going to take a little look behind the scenes, what's going on here. We're going to react to some, some videos. So I hope you join us over there. If not, then, uh, have a good Wednesday, and I'll see you next time.
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