1 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:21,160 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashnski, 2 00:00:21,199 --> 00:00:24,359 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,399 --> 00:00:28,320 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST, 4 00:00:28,559 --> 00:00:31,760 make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the 5 00:00:31,760 --> 00:00:36,520 premium version of our website, the Federalist dot Com as well. I always 6 00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:41,280 love being joined as i am today by Innez Stepman. She's a senior policy 7 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:46,119 analyst of course at the Independent Women's Forum with our friends over there. And 8 00:00:46,159 --> 00:00:51,079 she has a wonderful new essay out that's called Ambitious Nihilism. It's in First 9 00:00:51,159 --> 00:00:54,119 Things. It's in the Fedruary edition of First Things. You can read it 10 00:00:54,159 --> 00:00:59,439 online now. But and as this is the culmination of years of sort of 11 00:00:59,479 --> 00:01:06,280 thinking through your experience growing up in the pale Alto area as the tech industry 12 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:12,680 was exploding, is that a fair description of how this piece sort of came 13 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:18,760 into existence? Yeah, No, it's definitely a fair description. Although I 14 00:01:18,799 --> 00:01:23,719 would add and I write about it, and this was sort of well known 15 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:26,599 at the time. There was an Atlantic article about it, the CDC recognized 16 00:01:26,599 --> 00:01:32,280 it that there was a string of suicides. They kind of became known as 17 00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:34,719 the Pale Alto suicide. There was a what they call a suicide cluster where 18 00:01:36,079 --> 00:01:42,280 you had an extraordinarily high suicide rate copycat I mean, very intense actually method 19 00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:47,519 of committing suicide jumping in front of the train, to the extent that there 20 00:01:47,599 --> 00:01:53,000 were many many years, starting I think when I was either middle school or 21 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:57,560 early high school, and then going all the way through well after I left, 22 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:01,200 there were either one or two suicid sides that way almost every single year 23 00:02:01,920 --> 00:02:07,799 of basically high schoolers, So in a relatively small community that was very, 24 00:02:07,879 --> 00:02:10,479 very high And so I have been thinking about that for a long time because 25 00:02:12,039 --> 00:02:15,639 obviously it did touch me and I knew people who ended their lives that way, 26 00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:22,800 but also because it's so strange, and the community how it tried to 27 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:29,080 respond to that tragedy, and all the ways in which it tried to explain 28 00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:32,560 that, I think revealed a lot about Palo Alto. So that part I've 29 00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:37,919 been thinking about since I've been in high school. But some of the conclusions 30 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:40,120 I draw are more recent ones of mine, maybe in the last few years. 31 00:02:40,120 --> 00:02:44,840 But you may have even teased that you were working on something like this 32 00:02:45,080 --> 00:02:49,159 on Federalist Radio Hour at some point, because it just hit my inbox one 33 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:52,479 day and I was like, finally, and Neez has done it. She's 34 00:02:52,919 --> 00:02:58,400 sort of distilled all of these thoughts into an essay and I have to say 35 00:02:58,439 --> 00:03:00,120 it and as it didn't disappoint at all. I mean, it's just wonderfully 36 00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:05,560 written. And maybe a good place to start is how you use this Malcolm 37 00:03:05,639 --> 00:03:10,599 Harris book as a jumping off point and actually also you use not just the 38 00:03:10,599 --> 00:03:17,599 book, but the sort of crossed paths between your own arc and Malcolm Harris's 39 00:03:17,719 --> 00:03:21,719 arc as a jumping off point. Can you tell us a little bit about 40 00:03:22,199 --> 00:03:25,759 Palo Alto a History of California Capitalism in the World, which was the Malcolm 41 00:03:25,759 --> 00:03:30,080 Harris book. Yeah, I mean Malcolm and I were I would say acquaintances 42 00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:32,960 in high school, like we had we had overlapping friends that I wouldn't say 43 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:36,360 that we were like best friends or anything like that, but we knew each 44 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:38,560 other in high school. He was one year down for me. He dated 45 00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:44,240 a friend of mine. That's how I how I knew him. So I 46 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,000 wouldn't want to like delve into his head or his thoughts or anything. But 47 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:53,400 he's written basically Howard Zinn's History of Palo Alto, that that really is what 48 00:03:53,479 --> 00:04:00,599 he's done. It is a very well researched account, in in the sense 49 00:04:00,639 --> 00:04:02,639 that there's obviously a huge amount of work that went into it. Some of 50 00:04:02,680 --> 00:04:10,120 the interpretations I obviously question a question in this essay, but he really does 51 00:04:10,159 --> 00:04:13,800 sort of build it pal Alto's. The problem with pal Alto is that it's 52 00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:18,160 built on this history of conquest, right, the history of racism, of 53 00:04:18,199 --> 00:04:26,199 conquest, of colonialism, of abuse of labor. And that's not a wholly 54 00:04:26,319 --> 00:04:30,000 incorrect way of framing the history not only of pal Alto, but I would 55 00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:35,839 say the world, which is part of his title. But it doesn't answer 56 00:04:36,279 --> 00:04:41,920 the questions I think, at least that I had after growing up, why 57 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:48,199 Palalto does seem so existentially empty and why the people growing up there, the 58 00:04:48,279 --> 00:04:55,120 kids growing up there, are so full of anks, right to the extent 59 00:04:55,199 --> 00:04:59,680 that almost everybody I knew was on multiple psychiatric drugs, everybody was doing therapy, 60 00:05:00,439 --> 00:05:05,360 everyone was obsessed with their own neuroses. You know, it just doesn't 61 00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:13,279 seem like a model that's really actually working to produce staple happy I can't even 62 00:05:13,279 --> 00:05:17,920 say successful, because they are successful people from the outside. But it's not 63 00:05:19,879 --> 00:05:23,319 It's not a place I would ever want to raise a child. It's not 64 00:05:23,519 --> 00:05:29,519 an environment in which that I think produces people who can really deal with life 65 00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:32,879 in a fundamental way. And none of what Harris wrote about the history of 66 00:05:32,879 --> 00:05:38,160 Palo Alto, true or not to me, addressed that. I mean, 67 00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:44,519 he describes it as haunted because again by this conquest by the Aloney tribe that 68 00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:48,000 used to live there. And although I will say the one part of his 69 00:05:48,040 --> 00:05:51,759 book that I really agreed with is that we should return the land of Stanford 70 00:05:51,800 --> 00:06:00,120 to the Aloney. I'm totally fine with doing that. Like Stanford University. 71 00:06:00,439 --> 00:06:03,480 No, but but the port, the Hoover Institute. Yeah, we can 72 00:06:03,519 --> 00:06:08,240 carve out the Hoover Institute. The one tower that defines the skyline of of 73 00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:14,560 of Stanford University, the Hoover Tower. H No, it just it doesn't 74 00:06:15,399 --> 00:06:19,399 explain a lot about Palo Alto, because the history of pal Alto is not 75 00:06:19,439 --> 00:06:25,439 that different. Although I will say it is a history written almost exclusively by 76 00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:28,720 the right kind of progressives for whatever era it is. I mean, Palalto 77 00:06:28,839 --> 00:06:31,680 was a hotbed of capital p progressivism at the turn of the century, which 78 00:06:31,720 --> 00:06:35,680 meant at that time it was a hotbed of eugenics, among other things. 79 00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:41,600 I mean I went to I went to David Starr Jordan Middle School, which 80 00:06:41,639 --> 00:06:44,879 I think has since been renamed. I mean they said that he was famous 81 00:06:44,879 --> 00:06:47,519 for doing research on dolphins. What David Star Jordan is actually famous for in 82 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:53,800 the scientific community is his work on eugenics. But so there's there is gens 83 00:06:53,879 --> 00:06:58,279 not dolphin. Yeah, yeah, exactly, eugenics. It's a different ethical 84 00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:02,519 question. You got you got to breathe those dolphins for the you want to 85 00:07:02,639 --> 00:07:06,240 give them big brains and friendly and hopefully friendly. You know, you don't 86 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:11,879 want unfriendly smart dolph. I mean, the worst thing is the dolphin welfare 87 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:16,879 just depletes our resources. Yeah, but you know, Palotto has been a 88 00:07:16,879 --> 00:07:20,959 hotbed of progressive politics for each era for a very long time. And that 89 00:07:21,279 --> 00:07:25,240 was the part of I think Harris's book that rang the most false to me 90 00:07:25,360 --> 00:07:29,240 is he almost tries to reconstruct even the pala Alto that we grew up in 91 00:07:29,279 --> 00:07:32,079 as some kind of bastion of conservatism, but in reality, what it was 92 00:07:32,199 --> 00:07:38,879 is a bastion of a series of shifting left wing of American political spectrum, 93 00:07:38,959 --> 00:07:44,120 right from the progressive to the turn of the century to I mean pally High, 94 00:07:44,120 --> 00:07:46,279 where I went, you know, is where the Grateful Dead started. 95 00:07:46,319 --> 00:07:50,160 I think as the Warlocks in the pal Alto Gym. Bob Dylan hung out 96 00:07:50,199 --> 00:07:55,240 there for a while. Joan Biez is a native daughter of the region. 97 00:07:56,439 --> 00:08:01,839 Really hippie counterculture, a lot of that stuff, and then the hard radicalism 98 00:08:01,839 --> 00:08:05,000 of the sixties, the Black Panthers there was, there was a huge presence 99 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:11,519 in Oakland and elsewhere. So the Bay Area more broadly has been essentially quote 100 00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:16,079 unquote on the right side of history the way the left would describe it in 101 00:08:16,160 --> 00:08:22,600 successive eras, And it has always been this sort of left wing place for 102 00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:28,480 the time. But what that's meant has changed obviously over time. But I 103 00:08:28,480 --> 00:08:35,399 don't know. I think the critique ultimately that people like Harris would launch and 104 00:08:35,559 --> 00:08:39,639 he's he's a Marxist and he sees the world of materialistic terms. He thinks 105 00:08:39,639 --> 00:08:46,720 that they essentially he highlights their hypocrisy in making money hand over fist in a 106 00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:54,919 very sort of hyper capitalistic way while putting on this costume of political radicalism. 107 00:08:56,039 --> 00:08:58,399 And I think that's it. I think that's a fair critique. I think 108 00:08:58,399 --> 00:09:01,919 that is a fair critique of the sort of hyper distilled near liberalism of Palo 109 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:05,639 Alto. And this also gets into an extremely salient question of definitions, which 110 00:09:05,679 --> 00:09:11,039 is that is the and you can tell me what you think of this, 111 00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:20,360 the almost Nietzschen sense of nihilism and ambition sort of put together, and that's 112 00:09:20,360 --> 00:09:22,360 a huge can of worms, I know, so I'm curious what you think 113 00:09:22,399 --> 00:09:28,440 about that. But is it fundamentally conservative or leftist? And it's really hard 114 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:35,399 for me as a conservative, especially as a religious conservative, to hear that 115 00:09:35,440 --> 00:09:43,279 sort of talk of Nietsch and ambitious nihilism being attributed to conservatism or being categorized 116 00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:46,720 as conservatism. But it does seem to me that's where Harris is coming from, 117 00:09:48,519 --> 00:09:56,840 that this lust for power is fundamentally a conservative one because it doesn't come 118 00:09:56,919 --> 00:10:01,279 with big government essentially, And that's a very st formulation. I think there's 119 00:10:01,279 --> 00:10:05,759 something to that in terms of how he views it. I view it very 120 00:10:05,799 --> 00:10:11,399 differently. So I would say the extent that he like what you're saying would 121 00:10:11,399 --> 00:10:16,360 be true just from a kind of Marxist perspective, is because Palo Alto really 122 00:10:16,399 --> 00:10:24,440 does embrace hierarchy, and it does embrace extreme value, and it puts extreme 123 00:10:24,519 --> 00:10:30,799 value on intelligence and especially like being able to so that this is where I 124 00:10:30,799 --> 00:10:35,080 would say it's not Nichean at all. It is much more I call it 125 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:37,559 in a line that got cut from this piece. And by the way, 126 00:10:37,639 --> 00:10:41,440 like first things, incredible editors that they the version that they came up with, 127 00:10:41,480 --> 00:10:43,879 that this essay was so much better. I had all this extraneous stuff. 128 00:10:43,919 --> 00:10:50,159 But this is one line I wish they hadn't cut, which is I 129 00:10:50,159 --> 00:10:54,159 would describe the Palletto system much more as like the Chinese Imperial system of examinations 130 00:10:54,200 --> 00:11:01,440 with American characteristics, and in that sense it's very anti Nichschean. It actually 131 00:11:01,519 --> 00:11:05,279 doesn't. There's this whole ethos in Silicon Valley, which maybe was true at 132 00:11:05,279 --> 00:11:07,120 some point. And my father, who was a programmer, right that's why 133 00:11:07,120 --> 00:11:11,320 we were in pale Alto, he thinks that it was true at some point 134 00:11:11,399 --> 00:11:16,120 when he early on in the eighties, when and nineties when he was working 135 00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:20,360 in that environment, that they're the athos at least how they present themselves is 136 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:24,879 like, this is where anyone can have like one fantastic idea and three smart 137 00:11:24,919 --> 00:11:30,840 guys can get together in in you know, in the garage right start the 138 00:11:30,879 --> 00:11:37,600 next apple. And it's very disregarding of pathways or of you know, doing 139 00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,399 the required number of years or anything like that, where like pure genius is 140 00:11:41,399 --> 00:11:46,039 what matters, and my experience in Palelto was exactly the opposite. It's an 141 00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:52,960 extremely unhospitable climate for anybody. Uh And I'm not I'm not describing myself, 142 00:11:52,960 --> 00:11:54,960 so don't get me wrong. I actually, you know, perform pretty well 143 00:11:54,960 --> 00:11:58,799 in the selective system, but it is very very much like you you have 144 00:11:58,879 --> 00:12:03,759 to advance to each level, and it's very very based on careful attention to 145 00:12:03,799 --> 00:12:07,759 what the teacher says, whether that's political or whether that's just doing the required 146 00:12:07,799 --> 00:12:13,240 four hours of homework. It's it's sort of inhospitable to actual, real eccentrics, 147 00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:16,039 out of the box thinking. And in that sense, I think it 148 00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:20,559 is very anti Michian as well. I in this essay, I say basically 149 00:12:20,639 --> 00:12:24,120 because the second thing I think you rightly pointed to is as a religious conservative, 150 00:12:24,159 --> 00:12:28,200 if you look at this and you say something is missing, I think 151 00:12:28,200 --> 00:12:31,679 that Palelto falls in this unfortunate middle. And the reason I think this is 152 00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:35,960 relevant because who cares about my childhood? But like I think this describes the 153 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:43,559 American elite written large increasingly over time, is that it's neither based on kind 154 00:12:43,559 --> 00:12:46,639 of a Pagan Nietzschean uh you know, these are the best, the strongest, 155 00:12:46,679 --> 00:12:50,399 the smartest, and in the state of nature and they have the will 156 00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:56,720 to power. It's neither that, nor does it have some of the virtues 157 00:12:56,759 --> 00:13:01,320 of essentially Christian Western civilization. Right. It doesn't have the kind of answers 158 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:07,279 that religion gives to people about life's meaning. What you have instead is a 159 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:11,559 series of like essentially winnowing a class down. You start with a bunch of 160 00:13:11,600 --> 00:13:18,840 people that tests into a program based on some kind of raw intelligence, and 161 00:13:18,879 --> 00:13:22,919 then you select them down and down on the basis of this characteristic or that. 162 00:13:22,919 --> 00:13:26,960 But what you actually end up with at the end is not world shaking. 163 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:30,639 You don't end up with Napoleon at the end, or Caesar or like 164 00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:35,960 even the Roman legions, right. You end up with people who are smarter 165 00:13:35,039 --> 00:13:39,759 than average, for sure, who work hard, but are actually very shaped 166 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:46,039 by the kind of four corners of a system. And again it does remind 167 00:13:46,039 --> 00:13:48,559 me of the Chinese imperial system in that way. It's very much a like 168 00:13:50,039 --> 00:13:52,159 say yes to teacher, learn how to take the test, learn how to 169 00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:56,759 sit and do your four hours of homework. And that does leave out not 170 00:13:56,799 --> 00:14:01,000 only the the Chian qualities of being able to just make things happen through sheer 171 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:09,480 charisma, for example, or sheer genius, but also on the flip side, 172 00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:16,120 doesn't give any Christian or religious comfort or sense of self to people who 173 00:14:16,159 --> 00:14:20,120 are selected out. And that's ultimately that has been over the years where I 174 00:14:20,200 --> 00:14:26,639 think a lot of the suicide comes from. Because the explanation is always, 175 00:14:26,639 --> 00:14:28,279 while we push these kids too hard, and it's true they do push the 176 00:14:28,320 --> 00:14:33,279 kids really hard. But on the flip side, I think if they were 177 00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:37,480 offering any sense of meaning that didn't involve getting to the next level of the 178 00:14:37,519 --> 00:14:41,120 selective system, that didn't involve getting into the ap class, and then didn't 179 00:14:41,159 --> 00:14:43,559 involve getting into Stanford, and then didn't involve going directly into Google. Right, 180 00:14:45,519 --> 00:14:48,480 it's not that any of those things are bad. They're achievements that are 181 00:14:48,600 --> 00:14:52,320 worthwhile, but there's nothing to fall back on in Palo Alto. So if 182 00:14:52,360 --> 00:14:54,759 you don't get that job at Google, like I think, people have nothing 183 00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:58,360 left to hang on to because they don't have any other way of defining themselves. 184 00:15:00,039 --> 00:15:03,960 As you know, I think a more like traditional Western ethos or Christian 185 00:15:03,960 --> 00:15:09,159 ethos would give them, but they don't have that. So when you failed 186 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:13,879 to meet the next level of selectivity, it's like, who am I? 187 00:15:13,919 --> 00:15:18,159 Now? What do I do with my life? Well, if you're a 188 00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:22,799 regular listener to this program, you know I talk a lot about the gaps 189 00:15:22,879 --> 00:15:26,080 I feel like are in my knowledge from my public school education to my secular 190 00:15:26,159 --> 00:15:31,679 college education, things like history, economics, the great works of literature, 191 00:15:31,759 --> 00:15:35,679 even the meaning of the US Constitution? Did you study these things in school? 192 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:37,519 In many cases you may not have, or if you're like me, 193 00:15:37,799 --> 00:15:41,679 A you might need a refresher and b you just might not think your education 194 00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:46,759 was that good to begin with. Time and technology have changed a lot of 195 00:15:46,799 --> 00:15:52,000 things, but they have not changed basic fundamental truths about the world and our 196 00:15:52,039 --> 00:15:54,799 place in it, no matter how badly today's teachers might want to act like 197 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:00,600 it's otherwise. That's why I'm so excited that our friends at Hillsdale College are 198 00:16:00,639 --> 00:16:07,159 offering more than forty free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects you 199 00:16:07,159 --> 00:16:10,120 can learn about the works of C. S. Lewis, the stories in 200 00:16:10,159 --> 00:16:14,000 the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and 201 00:16:14,039 --> 00:16:18,120 the Fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church. 202 00:16:18,399 --> 00:16:22,399 With Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. 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The course is also 212 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:06,200 self paced, so that you can start whenever and wherever and role now in 213 00:17:06,279 --> 00:17:10,880 C. S. Lewis on Christianity to discover Lewis's core lessons regarding the truth 214 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:15,119 and the goodness of the Christian faith. And how you can apply those lessons 215 00:17:15,279 --> 00:17:19,240 to your own life. Go right now to Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist to 216 00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:25,039 enroll. There is no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale 217 00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:33,240 dot edu slash Federalist. To register Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist. And say 218 00:17:33,279 --> 00:17:38,200 you do get that job at Google, and you grow into adulthood and sort 219 00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:45,480 of become a cog in this vast global machine. You also start butting up 220 00:17:45,480 --> 00:17:48,519 against those questions of a lack of purpose. And I guess, and as 221 00:17:48,519 --> 00:17:51,359 I think, at the heart of this is the incoherence. And that's what 222 00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:56,119 ambitious nihilism, the sort of oxymoron or paradox of the title itself, really 223 00:17:56,119 --> 00:17:59,960 gets that. It's fundamentally in incoherence. And when you say it does a 224 00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:04,440 produce the person of nietzsch and Fever dreams, it's so interesting because what it 225 00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:10,039 does produce is Sam Bankman Freed. Quite literally, what the Bay Area produces 226 00:18:10,079 --> 00:18:17,920 is Sam Bankman Freed. And in that you have this constant nagging question of 227 00:18:18,440 --> 00:18:27,160 why if if all of these sort of foundational principles of Western civilization, uh, 228 00:18:27,839 --> 00:18:33,480 they're they're ultimately relative, they're only true as and as much as they 229 00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:37,839 can serve an individual. We all have our different versions of what happens in 230 00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:41,720 the world, then then why be charitable? Why maximize? And when you 231 00:18:41,759 --> 00:18:48,359 get into those questions, you end up not maximizing your your altruism. Where 232 00:18:48,400 --> 00:18:53,839 would you and Harris depart on Bankman Freed? Oh, I can't speak too 233 00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:57,039 much for Malcolm, but just you know what I mean, sort of like 234 00:18:57,319 --> 00:19:03,880 I critique. So to me, the distilled ethos of Silicon Valley is less 235 00:19:03,880 --> 00:19:11,680 Sam Bankman Freed, although it's not an accident than Brian Johnson, who make 236 00:19:11,759 --> 00:19:15,079 it I think hit exactly. I think you do get a lot of people 237 00:19:15,119 --> 00:19:19,119 who do make it to the top of all of the selectivity tiers. Either 238 00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:26,440 they end up working you know, in devs for Microsoft, or they start 239 00:19:26,480 --> 00:19:30,720 their own company and they become the billionaires and they hit it rich and there 240 00:19:30,799 --> 00:19:37,079 is that sense of well what now. And that's that's why I think you 241 00:19:37,160 --> 00:19:42,680 do get these these sort of productivity hackers, like these life hackers coming out. 242 00:19:42,720 --> 00:19:47,200 So as you're trying to advance to these tears, you're taking drugs not 243 00:19:47,279 --> 00:19:52,200 for fun, not for like release or pleasure even, but to see whether 244 00:19:52,319 --> 00:19:56,839 you can tweak your brain to get slightly more productivity out of it, and 245 00:19:56,920 --> 00:20:00,920 then you end up at the end of that selectivity tier, like Brian Johnson 246 00:20:02,880 --> 00:20:04,559 thinking well, okay, well, what's the goal here. I've done all 247 00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:08,920 all the things and the tiers, and now he, you know, is 248 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:15,480 essentially trying to preserve his body for upload to the cloud like at some point, 249 00:20:15,559 --> 00:20:18,880 right, that's why he's obsessed with slowing and reversing aging. Because the 250 00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:25,000 ultimate goal that they've come up with, that the like when they hit that, 251 00:20:25,559 --> 00:20:30,720 what they've come up with is essentially transhumanism, and that just isn't that 252 00:20:30,759 --> 00:20:36,640 appealing to a lot of people. And I've noticed that with these sort of 253 00:20:36,759 --> 00:20:41,079 tech dreams of overcoming completely humanity and the limits of nature, you do get 254 00:20:41,079 --> 00:20:47,880 people who that really excites them and it gives them meaning. And I've come 255 00:20:47,920 --> 00:20:51,279 to realize it's maybe a personality difference or some kind of you know, so 256 00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:56,640 alesque conflict of visions or something like that. But it does not give me 257 00:20:56,720 --> 00:21:03,160 a sense of excitement and meaning to imagine merging with Circus Tree. And I 258 00:21:03,279 --> 00:21:07,519 can see why for a lot of people if they hit that wall, and 259 00:21:07,599 --> 00:21:12,319 that doesn't appeal to them for whatever reasons, as a purpose in life. 260 00:21:14,119 --> 00:21:18,160 They check out, They check out a life, and so what if the 261 00:21:18,160 --> 00:21:22,279 many many people who have checked out of life but not so literally? You 262 00:21:22,319 --> 00:21:26,880 know, the I'm just anticipating a counter argument would be, so you're zeroing 263 00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:36,079 in on these, this this smattering of very tragic suicides, and yet the 264 00:21:36,119 --> 00:21:41,960 beating heart of Silicon Valley goes on and is here till today, and these 265 00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:48,559 are still you know, massive growing corporations, and people still desperately want to 266 00:21:48,599 --> 00:21:51,880 work at them. You know. My answer that question, just very simply 267 00:21:51,880 --> 00:21:56,519 would be they're working, they're not happy. They don't realize that they're not 268 00:21:56,640 --> 00:21:59,640 happy, they don't realize why they're not happy. But what would you say 269 00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,400 to that argument? It does, I mean, it isn't. And this 270 00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:06,519 is really where I do depart from the book is I don't see any of 271 00:22:06,559 --> 00:22:08,920 these things as bad in themselves. I don't think I mean, I am 272 00:22:08,920 --> 00:22:15,240 a capitalist. I think it's fine to to just push yourself and to strive 273 00:22:15,319 --> 00:22:19,720 in this way, and there is something admirable about it. But I have 274 00:22:19,759 --> 00:22:25,759 a kind of twofold objection. One on the national level, we will suffer 275 00:22:25,799 --> 00:22:30,160 if we have an elite of strivers. Only, right, where are our 276 00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:33,640 great generals? They're not coming from They're not going to come from Silicon Valley. 277 00:22:33,799 --> 00:22:38,400 Right, Where are our real sort of titans of industry? I mean, 278 00:22:38,559 --> 00:22:44,200 the US used to have a bunch of different bases and industrial bases in 279 00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:51,200 different geographic parts, and those were spinning out elites and wealthy people and success 280 00:22:51,200 --> 00:22:55,400 stories in very different ways. And so you had a mix of people within 281 00:22:55,480 --> 00:23:00,039 the elite. And increasingly the American elite is the elite that is selected the 282 00:23:00,039 --> 00:23:03,720 Silicon Valley way, even if they have nothing to do with tech. Right, 283 00:23:03,039 --> 00:23:06,960 you are the person who pays attention to teacher in class, You do 284 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:10,759 your homework, you get strade a's, you hire an SAT tutor, you 285 00:23:10,799 --> 00:23:12,920 do all the things, and you're if you're you know, white straight guy 286 00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:18,480 and life is rough. Getting accepted to Harvard, then hopefully your parents are 287 00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:21,759 rich enough to donate to put their name on a building, right, and 288 00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:30,240 then you advance n through. Yeah. But but it is that that type 289 00:23:30,279 --> 00:23:34,000 of I would say, almost like there are elements of sort of bourgeois middle 290 00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:40,759 class sensibility to it, and we're using those to a select an elite that's 291 00:23:41,599 --> 00:23:48,680 increasingly taking the powers of an aristocracy, and I I really don't think that's 292 00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:51,880 going to do well for the country. I think that this is one type 293 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:56,400 of person. It's a type of person who's done really well and increasingly a 294 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:02,920 managerial, bureaucratic economy, and I mean a real bureaucratic culture that we are, 295 00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:08,839 but that itself is a product of enormous wealth in America that I don't 296 00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:15,119 think is going to last if we rely exclusively on these kinds of people to 297 00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:18,400 make up our elite. So that's sort of a consideration. And by the 298 00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:23,599 way, this elite is exactly the people who don't view themselves as attached to 299 00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:29,759 nation They think that, you know, they think that patriotism is xenophobic and 300 00:24:29,839 --> 00:24:33,839 chauvinistic and worse than that, they seem like, like a bygone age, 301 00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:38,519 the nation state is irrelevant. Right as they look at the world, they 302 00:24:38,559 --> 00:24:42,440 realize they have a lot more in common with elites in other countries, and 303 00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:48,640 they then they have ties to the country that first of all birth the cat 304 00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:52,000 you know, that the system that allowed them to gain this much wealth. 305 00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,519 So that I have those those critiques as I guess as an American, as 306 00:24:55,559 --> 00:25:00,960 somebody worried about who is making the decisions that will ge eyed this country. 307 00:25:00,079 --> 00:25:03,799 I don't think we're producing an elite enough elite in many ways, or at 308 00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:11,240 least not I diversified enough elite. And then on the personal level, growing 309 00:25:11,319 --> 00:25:15,880 up in all of this, I mean, I really object fundamentally to the 310 00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,240 idea that this is the group of people who's gonna wield power, because I 311 00:25:19,279 --> 00:25:26,640 find them so weak, both physically in the sense that you know, these 312 00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,359 are these are essentially this is revenge of the nerds. These are all lactose 313 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,799 intolerant. Yeah, they're they're all like, they're all neurotic. They have 314 00:25:33,839 --> 00:25:37,319 a thousand you know, things that they want to call up their therapists and 315 00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:41,279 talk about. They're, like I said, they're taking drug even drugs neurotically 316 00:25:41,319 --> 00:25:47,119 in a way to try to sort of calm down their various anxieties. They're 317 00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:52,079 not superistically strong, and I'm sorry they're they're not nichean uberminsch. But but 318 00:25:52,839 --> 00:25:59,160 they behave as though they are, and they wield enormous power, especially as 319 00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:03,240 you are always taughtalking about Emily with you know, the hyper novelty and the 320 00:26:03,599 --> 00:26:07,759 rate of technological change. They're wielding enormous power, and they're making decisions that 321 00:26:07,799 --> 00:26:14,640 are going to take not just the country but the human race in a trajectory 322 00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,559 chosen by this group of people. And I just don't think, I don't 323 00:26:18,599 --> 00:26:22,519 see that they're up to that task. Maybe I would feel more confident if 324 00:26:23,319 --> 00:26:27,240 I looked around me, you know, growing up, and saw strong, 325 00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:33,599 confident, brilliant people who maybe they're wrong sometimes as we all are, but 326 00:26:33,759 --> 00:26:37,319 like who are I would feel comfortable sort of turning over the trajectory of the 327 00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:41,640 country to fundamentally in some way, even if I was not concerned about small 328 00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:47,000 de democracy, right, But that's not what I saw. I saw really 329 00:26:47,039 --> 00:26:52,599 fundamentally weak people, like psychologically weak people, fragile, unable to deal with 330 00:26:52,880 --> 00:27:00,279 some basic tragedies in life, unable to deal with relating with other time types 331 00:27:00,279 --> 00:27:06,559 of people. Just undeserved power, just fundamentally undeserved powered. I think part 332 00:27:06,599 --> 00:27:10,720 of the problem of Silicon Valley is a lot of these kids feel that they 333 00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:15,640 that their power is undeserved. Somewhere, there's that like nub of insecurity that 334 00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:22,279 they're wielding a level of wealth and power that is that they don't deserve, 335 00:27:22,319 --> 00:27:29,400 that they haven't proven themselves worthy of you know, there are a million places 336 00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,920 that we could go from here, but that was a I think helpful on 337 00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:37,720 the question of ambition. As we were talking, I was picturing like a 338 00:27:37,799 --> 00:27:41,279 house of cards, and you know, each achievement, you're you're adding a 339 00:27:41,359 --> 00:27:45,440 layer to the house of cards, and one day you realize that it's not 340 00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:49,279 a house. It is indeed a house of cards. That it's it's built 341 00:27:49,279 --> 00:27:55,839 on absolutely nothing. And that's the nihilism portion of this. Can you speak 342 00:27:55,880 --> 00:28:02,839 to where the nihilism comes from and how people, if they do sort of 343 00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:06,400 end up realizing it. You know, what brings people to that realization or 344 00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:11,119 what keeps them from confronting it, from confronting that realization? Is it? 345 00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:18,400 You know, brave New World? They're all sedated? What is it? 346 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:25,160 I So, I think it's not an original observation obviously to say that Nietzsche 347 00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:30,000 and Ostievsky were probably the two thinkers in the nineteenth century who best understood the 348 00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:37,400 I guess the existential problems of modernity. And people quote the death of godline 349 00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:41,799 oftentimes wrongly, you know, sort of as a gloating like placing the flag 350 00:28:41,839 --> 00:28:45,799 down and saying, you know, great God is dead. We can do 351 00:28:45,839 --> 00:28:51,000 whatever we want, and that's obviously not the way it was meant. I 352 00:28:52,160 --> 00:29:02,839 would say that it's difficult enough that problem of modernity and of of not just 353 00:29:03,039 --> 00:29:10,200 the lack of organized religion or religious faith, but the lack of understanding deeply 354 00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:14,559 as it becomes a mass phenomenon that people realize, you know, the altar 355 00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:19,039 in the Catholic Church was made by man. It doesn't reflect heaven, right, 356 00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:26,480 that the king is just a guy and not the emperor. Wears no 357 00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:34,920 clothes. So no, but that realization has caused enormous problems for so called 358 00:29:36,039 --> 00:29:40,920 modern man. Right. But I would say that in Paloelto, that realization 359 00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:45,000 is so baked into the cake that nobody even thinks about it anymore as a 360 00:29:45,079 --> 00:29:52,240 problem or something to be overcome or replaced. It's just the background hum of 361 00:29:52,759 --> 00:29:56,880 that like sort of class of people, right, It's not even something to 362 00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:03,039 be considered, it's just the background assume that they're all they're all materialists in 363 00:30:03,079 --> 00:30:06,759 their assumptions, which, by the way, I think, to the extent 364 00:30:06,799 --> 00:30:11,599 that pal Alto has people on the right, I would classify them as libertarian. 365 00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:18,119 So you end up with this neoliberal versus libertarian dynamic where they're both materialistic. 366 00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:22,799 They agree on the stakes, and they agree that the stakes are materialistic. 367 00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:32,000 But what you don't get is a kind of conservatism or you know anyway, 368 00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:34,039 You just you don't get a real left and a real right in a 369 00:30:34,039 --> 00:30:41,680 certain sense. You only get to have a materialistic whole politically. And I 370 00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:45,319 don't think that's an accident. It's the fact that this question is no longer 371 00:30:45,359 --> 00:30:49,000 a question. I'll give you actually a really good I'm sort of scattering around 372 00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,640 here, but I'll give you a really good example of how the role of 373 00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:59,319 religion. It's not just that religion is reviled or something because being aggressive New 374 00:30:59,359 --> 00:31:04,559 Atheists or or something to that effect would actually, in my view, demonstrate 375 00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,839 that the religion still holds some kind of transgressive power, right, that transgressing 376 00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:17,039 against Christianity or Judaism or Slam still held some kind of value or power. 377 00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:23,799 Instead, it's so passe that I didn't realize that. Do you remember in 378 00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:27,400 the new atheist stickers and this is deep cut, but I mean you might 379 00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:32,759 be too young for it, actually, but it was very popular right around 380 00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:36,519 the late nineties, early two thousands into the mid two thousands to have these 381 00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,640 stickers on the back of your car that had the fish with legs and it 382 00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:44,680 said Darwin. Right, you'll still see him on a Subaru everyone. Yeah, 383 00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:48,680 exactly. It's very much of that era. I didn't know that that 384 00:31:48,839 --> 00:31:52,880 was a response to the Christian fish on people's cars. I had never seen 385 00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,119 anybody with the Christian fish, so I just thought it was a weird, 386 00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:02,119 quirky thing that people really liked Glockpa Ghost Islands, you know, and they 387 00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:07,079 were just really into Darwin. I didn't realize that it was in It was 388 00:32:07,119 --> 00:32:12,160 a response to something. That's how absent religion is. And I'm sure there 389 00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:15,680 are religious people in Palo Alto, but it's not something that you talk about 390 00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:22,319 in public. It's not something that anybody discusses with their friends. It's quiet. 391 00:32:22,359 --> 00:32:27,000 I think what I wrote was quiet and apologetic and no pretenses to answer 392 00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:31,759 any great questions. It's not just that it's anti religious, it's that it's 393 00:32:31,799 --> 00:32:37,240 post religious. Yeah, and I think that that is that's where that nihilism 394 00:32:37,279 --> 00:32:42,039 comes from, I think, and people would, again, thinking of the 395 00:32:42,119 --> 00:32:45,599 counter argument, would say this is a sort of the ambition is really a 396 00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:52,039 Western chauvinism, and the Western chauvinism produces the nihilism, and I think you 397 00:32:52,079 --> 00:32:57,200 have a dramatically different take on that, which is the materialism that is produced 398 00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:00,880 by that that kind of and we are getting we are going straight into like 399 00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:06,119 Catholic integralist territory right here. And I'm really not trying to I don't need 400 00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:10,039 to debate the printing press right now, as but the chicken or the egg 401 00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:16,480 here seems really strong. Does the ambition in the Western chauvin is capitalism engender 402 00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:23,680 the nihilism or does the nihilism engender the ambition in a nietzsche sense where except 403 00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:29,359 in this weird sense where it's like I'm not going to be strong and a 404 00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:36,680 mass conqueror slash murderer. I'm going to be the effective altruist who just happens 405 00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:40,960 to not be so effective or altruistic because it ultimately just becomes about my own 406 00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:47,039 interests. Where do you see that dynamic. It's a good question which direction 407 00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:52,839 it goes. I tend to think as someone who isn't a Catholic and take 408 00:33:52,839 --> 00:34:00,240 a list. I tend to think capitalism is a good, but it has 409 00:34:00,279 --> 00:34:05,880 its limits. It can't answer some of these questions. And to some extent, 410 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,800 I do think the nihilism springs up because Palo Alto, and I do 411 00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:15,239 write this in this essay, has maxed out what capitalism can offer. This 412 00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:22,079 is so capitalism has been so incredibly good to these people, right in terms 413 00:34:22,119 --> 00:34:28,639 of making them more money than God, all right, And so I do 414 00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:35,400 think it engender is a kind of nihilism when you get all of those blessings 415 00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:40,039 and yet they don't answer what you need it to answer. I do think 416 00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:45,840 that opens up the abyss in front of people in a very direct way. 417 00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:51,760 Whereas when you are striving, when you're on that striver path and you're always 418 00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:57,800 looking to the next thing, you can forget about that. And so I 419 00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:00,199 think that abyss opens up in sort of two directions. For so I do 420 00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:04,800 think, I guess I think the ambition precedes nihilism because I think it opens 421 00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:12,199 up in two directions. In this post religious not really nichean environment, I 422 00:35:12,199 --> 00:35:17,119 feel like both pagan sources of meaning and Western traditional sources of meaning are non 423 00:35:17,119 --> 00:35:23,440 existent. So when you're you're on the rat race, the abyss opens up 424 00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:29,039 in both directions. If you fail and you don't get selected for the next 425 00:35:29,119 --> 00:35:32,639 race, right the next tier of racing. Then the abyss opens up because 426 00:35:32,679 --> 00:35:37,679 you're like, well, what do I do? I've failed. The people 427 00:35:37,679 --> 00:35:42,079 who will go on without me, they'll they'll understand what life is about. 428 00:35:42,079 --> 00:35:45,079 But I've just kind of shunted off. And I think that's a lot of 429 00:35:45,079 --> 00:35:51,519 the story of the Palatto suicides. But on there's kind of the flip side 430 00:35:51,559 --> 00:35:53,960 on the other side, where the people who do then make it to the 431 00:35:54,159 --> 00:35:59,639 end and do get selected into a smaller and smaller and smaller tier, and 432 00:35:59,679 --> 00:36:05,239 finally they are the billionaires of Silicon Valley, and that's when they get that's 433 00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,039 when things get really weird. Then that's when they start experimenting with you know, 434 00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:13,679 extending their life for two hundred years and you know, merging with the 435 00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:20,760 singularity and merging their consciousness with the cloud. Right, because there isn't ultimately 436 00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,519 that calculust treadmill, which I don't have any problem with, unlike Malcolm Harris. 437 00:36:23,559 --> 00:36:27,199 I think it's fine. It's good. It's produced a lot of wealth 438 00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,360 for not only for America but for the world. It's you know, given 439 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:36,480 humanity great things. But this question, it won't answer for you. It's 440 00:36:36,519 --> 00:36:40,159 not enough to answer this question or or I hear there's a guy who once 441 00:36:40,159 --> 00:36:44,400 said, man does not live by bread alone, and the bread and Silicon 442 00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,760 Valley is about as good bread as you can get. You have mountains of 443 00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:52,119 bread, but at the end of the day, you don't live by bread 444 00:36:52,119 --> 00:36:59,360 alone. You just gave me goosebumps. So how's that for non Christian Is 445 00:36:59,559 --> 00:37:02,639 exactly where I was going to go next. In fact, is I saw 446 00:37:02,679 --> 00:37:09,519 today an Institute for Family Studies report putting, you know, more data, 447 00:37:09,599 --> 00:37:15,719 adding more flesh to the bones that we really knew about for a long time. 448 00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:19,280 It's a very obvious point, which is that as religiosity declined in the 449 00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:23,480 Soviet Union, so too did marriage and fertility. And I'm asking that question 450 00:37:23,519 --> 00:37:29,559 to you because your experience is as a child of immigrants. As you mentioned, 451 00:37:29,599 --> 00:37:32,360 your dad was a programmer in Silicon Valley, and I think you would 452 00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:37,559 be the first to say you're sort of very heavily shaped by your parents' cultures 453 00:37:38,159 --> 00:37:43,119 that you know they brought with them, like so many wonderful immigrants to the 454 00:37:43,159 --> 00:37:49,320 States. From that vantage point, what was it like watching this play out 455 00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:53,079 as the child of people who left the Soviet Union? You got out of 456 00:37:53,079 --> 00:37:57,719 the Soviet Union So, first of all, technically Poland wasn't in the Soviet 457 00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,079 Union. It was behind the Iron Curtain, but I wasn't in the of 458 00:38:00,679 --> 00:38:09,239 the warsaw let's let's let's get into this. Uh No. So I'm laughing 459 00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:13,320 only because my husband once said, oh, my wife's family is from the 460 00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:15,440 Soviet Union, and my parents have never let him forget it. By the 461 00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:17,360 way, yeah, yeah, and he it was a slip of the tongue. 462 00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:22,119 He totally knew that. But my parents have never let him forget it. 463 00:38:22,199 --> 00:38:25,880 Everything. It's like remember when when our son in law said, we 464 00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:30,960 were from the Soviet Union anyway, Actually, I don't know what I actually 465 00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:36,639 forget your parents were specifically Polish. But that's my fault as a Russian, 466 00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:44,880 Yeah, always from a Yeah, my people always think my dad's xcent as 467 00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:49,320 Russian. So it's it's it's fine. It's part of the great American melting 468 00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,440 Pot. I definitely think it's Soviet melting pot. Sorry, I'll let you 469 00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:58,079 go. That also had uh that one, That one was bought with a 470 00:38:58,079 --> 00:39:01,519 little more blood than the American melting pot. But no, I mean I 471 00:39:01,559 --> 00:39:07,639 do think it influenced me a lot. In part, I think it it 472 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,519 kept me sane in a certain way. I didn't not that my teenage years 473 00:39:12,519 --> 00:39:16,800 were without honest I was a complete, like lunatic for at least five years. 474 00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:25,599 Sorry Mom, sorry Dad. But I think ultimately like their attitude towards 475 00:39:25,639 --> 00:39:30,119 some of the stuff, some of the like the therapeutic culture, the you 476 00:39:30,159 --> 00:39:37,000 know, the complaints of these essentially very privileged kids, I do think that 477 00:39:37,079 --> 00:39:42,440 kept me more sane and grounded, knowing that, you know, there is 478 00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:47,280 a life outside of these things. And in fact, many people would from 479 00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:52,719 other countries would be very very pleased to be on the bottom tier of Palo 480 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:58,440 Alto and be very happy and satisfied with that life. But also, I 481 00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:05,559 mean, I really like my parents are still married, and that was that 482 00:40:05,599 --> 00:40:10,519 was very much not the case for almost all of my friends. I had 483 00:40:10,599 --> 00:40:15,960 one friend whose parents were still married by the time I got to high school 484 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:19,559 in my little circle. And it's funny, I mean, that is fascinating. 485 00:40:20,039 --> 00:40:24,880 It's funny because when I was reading Coming Apart about Belmont and fish Town, 486 00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,519 it's interesting to me because in these super zips, marriage is still very 487 00:40:29,559 --> 00:40:34,920 much a thing, and it's correct to say that family breakdown in the US 488 00:40:35,119 --> 00:40:39,400 is disproportionately a lower class phenomenon, and that it's really hit the working classes 489 00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:45,559 of America much harder than it's hit the elites. But there's still an enormous 490 00:40:46,039 --> 00:40:52,079 level of conscious uncoupling among especially and I don't know, just observed, like 491 00:40:52,159 --> 00:40:58,320 observing in Palo Alto. There most of my friends had divorced parents, some 492 00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,239 of them in very ugly ways, some of them in ugly ways, and 493 00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:07,119 there was this It was something I remember being contemptuous of very young, because 494 00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:13,079 that's another way in which I thought these especially for some reason, the men, 495 00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,239 I thought they were very weak. I thought they were sort of controlled 496 00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:20,360 by their wives in many ways and then controlled by their girlfriends. They seem 497 00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,400 to jump, and that did again sort of knock down that if I was 498 00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:29,320 ever inclined to consider the Titans of Silicon Valley to be e Chian giants. 499 00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,000 Right, I'm not going to name names because that would be unfair, but 500 00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:37,960 I had a friend whose father was, I mean, he's a household name 501 00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:42,280 in Silicon Valley, one of the first, like enormous billionaires invented exactly the 502 00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:45,920 way that Silicon Valley is supposed to go. Had a great idea you know, 503 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:49,280 turned it into a company, sold the company for a billion dollars whatever, 504 00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:54,360 right, the inventor of toaster strudle yes behind the American embassy anyway. 505 00:41:54,599 --> 00:41:59,679 Uh no, no, no, So this guy was like extremely successful, 506 00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:05,639 even Silicon Valley terms. And just the the weakness that he displayed and defending 507 00:42:05,719 --> 00:42:12,679 his children, the weakness that he displayed his child actually in towards his like 508 00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:15,360 ex wife, and then the like the new girlfriend, and how like it 509 00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:20,960 was just it was. It was all this very sort of warmed over sixties 510 00:42:21,119 --> 00:42:24,480 free love stuff that by the time you get to the nineties and two thousands 511 00:42:25,079 --> 00:42:30,719 doesn't even have the prison of actual sort of pleasure or rebellion. In other 512 00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:37,719 words, these uncouplings happened not because somebody fell madly in love with their secretary, 513 00:42:38,199 --> 00:42:47,039 but because they're splunking into their own psychological problems and sort of it just 514 00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:52,199 happened in not even the kind of like dynamic way where you would expect in 515 00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,840 the sixties, or at least in the you know, movies and stuff in 516 00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:58,960 the sixties, or or the art that came out of the sixties, this 517 00:42:59,119 --> 00:43:04,039 kind of follow your path. It was because they couldn't determine their own passions, 518 00:43:04,079 --> 00:43:07,599 and I just I found it all very lame, frankly, like warmed 519 00:43:07,599 --> 00:43:13,760 Over, not really transgressive in any way. You're not really shocking anyone at 520 00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:16,599 this point. But it had an enormous psychic tole on their kids, and 521 00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:20,440 that was all papered over by this, well, you know, your kids 522 00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:23,719 will be happy if you're happy. You need to follow your your you to 523 00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:30,840 find yourself right, And what I saw was something that made be contemptious, 524 00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:37,320 which is that adults not behaving like adults, not being capable psychologically of pulling 525 00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:43,159 themselves together enough to give the next generation a kind of solidity and a kind 526 00:43:43,159 --> 00:43:49,519 of stability and a kind of authority that would make them feel safe and grounded 527 00:43:49,639 --> 00:43:55,880 and not crazy. And that was a sacrifice that just almost universally they seemed 528 00:43:55,880 --> 00:44:01,000 incapable of making. Whereas this was the baseline for my parents, like not 529 00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,320 saying they're perfect people and not saying their marriage was perfect. You know, 530 00:44:04,519 --> 00:44:09,519 they're human beings. But like that was all very much not given to me, 531 00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:14,400 right, Like they gave me a sense of stability at home, a 532 00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:19,400 sense of like safety, a sense of order because they did, you know, 533 00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,079 maybe maybe not as much as they should, but they did discipline me. 534 00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:24,199 They did have limits on what I was supposed to do or what I 535 00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:28,800 was allowed to do. And that when you asked that question about the immigrant 536 00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:30,840 background, to the extent that I think that factors in that, that's I 537 00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:36,000 think different. My parents are boomers, but they're not American sixties boomers, 538 00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,920 so they didn't pick up a lot of that self esteem movement. You know, 539 00:44:40,519 --> 00:44:44,760 you're gonna hurt your child's feelings if you act like a parent. You 540 00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:46,719 know, they didn't have that mentality, and that was big in Palo Alto. 541 00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:52,679 Again, a lot of warmed over like sixties stuff that had become which 542 00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,480 is bad enough in the sixties, but by the time you get to the 543 00:44:55,519 --> 00:45:02,599 two thousands and you're talking about nerds and grind and selective system people pretending that 544 00:45:02,639 --> 00:45:09,599 they're free spirited, that they're you know that they're they're going to the Summer 545 00:45:09,679 --> 00:45:15,079 of sixty seven, Summer of Love in nineteen sixty seven right in in uh 546 00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,679 Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and and you know, doing a bunch 547 00:45:17,679 --> 00:45:21,239 of drugs and having a bunch of sex like it wasn't even that, It's 548 00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:27,440 just a bunch of like neurotic nerds who don't have the strength to just make 549 00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:31,159 carve a path for themselves and stick to it. And the only thing that 550 00:45:31,159 --> 00:45:38,199 they're actually good at is that that like advancement phase within a very structured system, 551 00:45:38,519 --> 00:45:42,039 and the rest of it they're very weak on. And again, like 552 00:45:42,119 --> 00:45:45,119 I, this doesn't apply to everyone. There's tons of great people. I'm 553 00:45:45,159 --> 00:45:52,519 sure anywhere. I'm sure even in Wisconsin. I'm laughing, I'm just livings, 554 00:45:52,639 --> 00:45:59,079 just giving a little no. But there's there's there's great people already. 555 00:45:59,199 --> 00:46:02,920 So I don't these our generalizations necessarily their generalizations, but they are generalizations that 556 00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:07,679 have some truth to them that I observed over and over again as a teenager. 557 00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:15,559 That really again make me very worried that this is the elite of the 558 00:46:15,639 --> 00:46:22,440 United States now, because these people are not strong enough to, you know, 559 00:46:22,639 --> 00:46:25,199 make the kind of calls. Forget about some of our actually great presidents, 560 00:46:25,199 --> 00:46:30,440 forget about George Washington. These people are not making capable of being JFK. 561 00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:34,440 I was gonna say you would, so you would take Carnegie over Zuckerberg. 562 00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,760 Yes, there you go. Yes, so this is actually right where 563 00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:42,679 I was I was going to go. Next, is you actually and you 564 00:46:42,679 --> 00:46:45,000 know you said earlier, you know, not that my childhood matters, blah 565 00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,559 blah blah. But I actually think your personal arcs as you wrote it into 566 00:46:47,599 --> 00:46:52,159 the story and wove it into the story, is very interesting because our listeners 567 00:46:52,159 --> 00:46:57,639 man and not know that you did not enjoy the district of Columbia here in 568 00:46:58,159 --> 00:47:05,840 sunny Washington, d C. And you fled for the freedom and open space 569 00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:14,639 Manhattan of New York City. And you know to the extent that these generalizations 570 00:47:14,679 --> 00:47:17,360 are useful it because you're describing culture, and culture is always generic. And 571 00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,840 I'm just so curious, actually, how you how you sort of think of 572 00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:28,800 all of these three areas, Bay Area, Washington, D C, and 573 00:47:29,039 --> 00:47:31,559 New York City, having spent so much time in all of them, and 574 00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:37,400 how their cultures each can be looked at through this lens that you applied to 575 00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:39,920 Silicon Valley. So, first of all, this is the reason I wrote 576 00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:44,239 this essay. I mean, I've been thinking about it for more than a 577 00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,840 decade decade and a half now, but it didn't seem relevant until the last 578 00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:52,960 few years to me because Silicon Valley was Silicon Valley, and do you see 579 00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,519 in New York were different than Silicon Valley, and I thought, okay, 580 00:47:55,559 --> 00:48:00,039 you know, maybe this is this is exactly one of the sub elites of 581 00:48:00,079 --> 00:48:05,440 America. And that's okay, right. I can I cannot enjoy being around 582 00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:08,920 this culture. I can have escaped it for other places and left it behind. 583 00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:15,440 But the reason that I did write this essay is because I think it's 584 00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:20,639 spreading and I see it everywhere, not sometimes literally right where they just opened 585 00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:23,800 up in outside of Washington, d C. And in northern Virginia. There's 586 00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:27,760 now like what it is Amazon that's out there. I can't remember which big 587 00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,519 tech company. Yeah, well, I mean there are a lot. They 588 00:48:30,519 --> 00:48:32,400 are in your Google, Tesla, Microsoft, They all have a lot of 589 00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:36,960 people out here. There was an influx of tech people into d C. 590 00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:44,159 There is an influx of tech people into New York. So I do really 591 00:48:44,159 --> 00:48:47,920 feel like this culture is chasing me, which sucks personally for me because I 592 00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:53,719 didn't like it. But you're going to end up like in a peenthouse apartment 593 00:48:53,800 --> 00:49:00,000 in Bismarck, just more like like you know, abbit hole in Edinburgh or 594 00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:05,079 something like escape. But that's the point with America. There's no there's no 595 00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,519 Reagan was right, I think when he said this is the last best hope. 596 00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:15,119 I don't see uh I don't see a counter to this rising anywhere else. 597 00:49:16,079 --> 00:49:22,079 I do think that European some European countries have certain commitments to the good 598 00:49:22,119 --> 00:49:29,079 life that are missing in America. But they're not going to replicate themselves. 599 00:49:29,119 --> 00:49:35,079 They're mausoleums to their past in many ways. Anyway. That that's a longer 600 00:49:35,079 --> 00:49:38,559 discussion. But in terms of of uh DC and New York, I mean, 601 00:49:38,599 --> 00:49:43,960 obviously the cultures are are very different. D C I think is kind 602 00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:47,800 of similar to what people don't like to think about in Silicon Valley, and 603 00:49:47,840 --> 00:49:53,599 that it is a sort of midwitch driber culture. It has its its upside. 604 00:49:53,599 --> 00:49:55,639 I mean, I had a good time in DC for many years. 605 00:49:57,679 --> 00:50:00,239 But they're just this is this is personal. I don't know that anything that 606 00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:05,119 this is anything like worthwhile for our listeners. I just I don't like talking 607 00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:07,880 about politics all the time, and I like New York because the cultural stuff 608 00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:12,280 is better. It's more walkable, you know. I think the med is 609 00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:14,719 awesome, and I'm one of the people who actually goes to the Harmonic, 610 00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:19,320 So those those kinds of things you can only get in New York. There's 611 00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:24,679 also something very American in New York. That It's funny because people from outside 612 00:50:24,679 --> 00:50:28,880 of the US they think immediately of New York, and then Americans are like, 613 00:50:29,599 --> 00:50:31,320 don't think of New York as emblematic of the United States, And it 614 00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:37,920 isn't. It isn't representative or even emblematic of America. But what it is 615 00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:44,800 is probably the only real, like huge city, global city, if you 616 00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:49,159 will, that is heavily American that doesn't have Actually New York has less of 617 00:50:49,159 --> 00:50:52,960 that generic feel now than many European capitals that like sort of generic globalists. 618 00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,920 Everything is the same, it's the same shops, it's the same. There 619 00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:58,880 is some of that, of course in New York. But when you're in 620 00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:04,079 New York, you feel you're in America. Even the architecture is you know, 621 00:51:04,199 --> 00:51:10,320 art Deco is an American art form. And the ostentatiousness and the brashness 622 00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,440 and directness of New York, I think are very American. Anyway, I 623 00:51:14,519 --> 00:51:17,639 love New York, so that's that's something that I enjoy. But I do 624 00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:22,559 worry. I don't want our elite even in places like DC and New York. 625 00:51:22,599 --> 00:51:25,679 And I'm sure actually, you know, in Cincinnati and in in you 626 00:51:25,679 --> 00:51:30,800 know a bunch of other cities. The elite increasingly is tied into this tech 627 00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:36,519 culture, and even if it's not related to tech, because I think of 628 00:51:36,559 --> 00:51:40,559 the same forces, right, the ambitious nihilism forces. As religion falls away, 629 00:51:40,559 --> 00:51:45,320 and you see this in polls, recent polls of Americans over time, 630 00:51:47,159 --> 00:51:52,400 where you would think, so you see organized religion as a priority going down. 631 00:51:52,519 --> 00:51:58,800 You see family formation as a ideal or life goal falling pretty precipitously, 632 00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:01,199 as in, people are not even saying in nearly as high numbers as they 633 00:52:01,199 --> 00:52:06,079 were even ten or twenty years ago that getting married and starting a family is 634 00:52:06,079 --> 00:52:09,159 a priority for them. What they are saying is a priority is make a 635 00:52:09,159 --> 00:52:13,760 lot of money, get a good job. And I think those things go 636 00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:16,280 together. So you just mentioned two actually really interesting and salient things, which 637 00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:22,360 is the met and the Philharmonic, which if you juxtapose with the best art 638 00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:29,280 that Silicon Valley has to offer, I imagine, or the popular art in 639 00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:34,239 Silicon Valley, I mean, New York still is this bastion of Western culture 640 00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:38,920 in a way that places that are more bastions of Western postmodern culture just don't. 641 00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:43,760 And I think it's very clear that Silicon Valley is much more a bastion 642 00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:47,559 of postmodern Western culture. And that's a wonderful thing about New York City. 643 00:52:47,599 --> 00:52:52,400 I mean, one of the saddest moments like that I ever had in terms 644 00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:55,239 of like my patriotism was like many people in DC used to go back and 645 00:52:55,280 --> 00:53:00,639 forth to New York a lot before the pandemic, and when I went in 646 00:53:00,679 --> 00:53:07,119 the middle of the pandemic, the empty streets of Midtown were, I mean 647 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:13,840 truly repulsive. It was incredibly depressing because as much as New York is awful 648 00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:19,480 in so many ways, it is also just the pinnacle of everything America did 649 00:53:19,599 --> 00:53:23,039 right, and so many people living in a confined space with so much opportunity 650 00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:29,679 and so much success. I mean, it's just incredibly depressing to see New 651 00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:34,760 York down. But I think your point is a really salient one that in 652 00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:39,159 New York there's still life in a way that there isn't other places. I 653 00:53:39,199 --> 00:53:42,599 mean, I agree with that. I know a lot of people on our 654 00:53:42,639 --> 00:53:46,679 team do not agree with me on this one, but I will actually crystallize 655 00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:52,159 what you said in one perfect example. The Anti Chamber of the Met right 656 00:53:52,199 --> 00:54:00,960 now is advertising the first AI exhibit AI Art exhibit so that is the direction 657 00:54:01,039 --> 00:54:07,000 we're headed. That is the And there is an aspect to tech which is 658 00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:15,480 probably unavoidable to a certain extent, but destroys particularity because it's because it's digital, 659 00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:19,639 because it's over the Internet, because it's global. In many ways, 660 00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:28,159 it destroys the particularity of places. It makes the place you're in less important, 661 00:54:28,639 --> 00:54:32,119 and it assimilates everything sort of culturally into the tech bork. Now that 662 00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:39,000 tech itself and that tech culture and that Internet culture is then splintered into thousands 663 00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:44,360 and millions of subcultures. But those subcultures are no longer tied to a place. 664 00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:47,440 That's why I get really sad at quite a part room. I mean, 665 00:54:47,559 --> 00:54:53,239 I think, obviously, I think that it's an act of political revolution 666 00:54:53,880 --> 00:55:01,079 and regime change to take down the Confederate statues in the South has happened since 667 00:55:01,119 --> 00:55:05,719 twenty twenty. But there's also like a different aspect of it that makes me 668 00:55:05,800 --> 00:55:10,119 sad. There's an esthetic sameness to it. You used to really feel that 669 00:55:10,159 --> 00:55:13,159 you were in the South, and the statues were part of that, but 670 00:55:13,199 --> 00:55:15,320 a part of it. Right, did you read the story recently? It 671 00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:19,280 started interrupt but there was a fascinating story recently, I think it was in 672 00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:23,679 the Los Angeles Times somewhere like that about the Washington Posts about how young Georgians 673 00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:29,760 do not have accents anymore for a lot of different reasons. But it's fascinating 674 00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:34,519 how quickly that has happened. They do not have Southern accents at the same 675 00:55:34,639 --> 00:55:37,840 level of proportionality at all. That's happening in New York too, Right, 676 00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:42,239 It's pretty rare that you actually interact with somebody who has the old School in 677 00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:45,599 New York accent, right, that came from Italian waves of immigration, Jewish 678 00:55:45,639 --> 00:55:49,320 waves of the immigration at the turn of the century. I mean, there 679 00:55:50,599 --> 00:55:53,119 we are losing a sense of place, and I think that's probably to some 680 00:55:53,199 --> 00:55:59,039 extent inevitable. But again, my point in this essay and even my sort 681 00:55:59,079 --> 00:56:01,599 of personal antipathy towards this culture, is not to say that there's nothing good 682 00:56:01,599 --> 00:56:06,280 about it or nothing worthwhile about it, or that we should stamp it out, 683 00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:10,719 but to the extent that this becomes the culture of our elite, I 684 00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:15,239 don't see that, first of all, that the America that we love survives, 685 00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:23,639 the particularities about America survive, But also I just I don't think it 686 00:56:23,679 --> 00:56:30,920 offers a very compelling vision for life, for humanity, and it does start 687 00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:38,400 to feel very dystopian when you think about these tiers of selection basically determining your 688 00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:42,719 fate in the way that they do in China, which by the way, 689 00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:47,239 also had a very high suicide rate around these tiers of selection, and as 690 00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:52,239 my like, also really wild stories about some of the people who get de 691 00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:57,239 selected and what they do end up doing and in terms of the society, 692 00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:04,039 but more fundamentally, people who are smart and do well on tests and do 693 00:57:04,199 --> 00:57:09,559 well in a regulated environment are only one type of person. Charisma matters. 694 00:57:09,599 --> 00:57:13,280 We see that with you know, Donald Trump, I wanted Rondasantis to win 695 00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:20,400 because I'm like an uncharismatic nerd, not even close to elite. Like I'm 696 00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:22,400 just you know, I'm one wonky. I'm like, what do you want 697 00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:27,920 from me? I guess that's the part of my soulf But no, But 698 00:57:28,119 --> 00:57:31,559 you see how much Trump's personality matters in all of this, how much charisma 699 00:57:31,559 --> 00:57:36,639 matters in all of this. And there used to be a route for people 700 00:57:36,719 --> 00:57:38,639 like Trump to the elite right. Forget it for a moment about the fact 701 00:57:38,679 --> 00:57:44,000 that he was elected president and the democratic angle. He was able to make 702 00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:49,719 a ton of money right on the New York real estate market. I worry 703 00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,880 how much less now the way to make Pep Buddha Judge's yeah, now, 704 00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:59,719 it's yes. Pete Bota Judge is the quintessential American elite now, and I 705 00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:02,039 think that is not a good thing. I think it is better to have 706 00:58:02,199 --> 00:58:12,679 your carnegiese and you know, your Trumps and the old fashioned American sort of 707 00:58:13,199 --> 00:58:17,920 wildcat businessman and to have different And then also we haven't even touched at all. 708 00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:22,920 We touched on the South, the American cavalier culture. That's fading too. 709 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:25,440 So you're no longer going to have a military elite in the way that 710 00:58:25,719 --> 00:58:30,440 we used to. Their sons and grandsons for a whole variety of very good 711 00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:32,559 reasons, are not going to go into the military. And by the way, 712 00:58:32,559 --> 00:58:37,239 they weren't getting promoted in the military when they weren't, So you have 713 00:58:37,519 --> 00:58:43,280 no military elite to speak of anymore. And I feel very comfortable saying that, 714 00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:46,559 because you know, look at who didn't. Nobody with medals on their 715 00:58:46,639 --> 00:58:52,760 chests resigned for the disaster of withdrawing from Afghanistan. In terms of operational forget 716 00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:58,159 about the political decision to withdraw or not. But like operationally, no one 717 00:58:58,199 --> 00:59:00,599 fell on their sword. There's no like culture of doing that. There's no 718 00:59:00,679 --> 00:59:07,320 martial honor anymore. Those people in the Pentagon probably went through a selective system. 719 00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:13,679 But that's not the only type of leadership that matters. In fact, 720 00:59:14,039 --> 00:59:16,599 in many ways, that's not a type of leadership at all. That's that 721 00:59:16,719 --> 00:59:21,719 is your bureaucratic class, your scribe class, if you want right, but 722 00:59:22,079 --> 00:59:25,400 you need monks and you need warriors, and this class gives us neither. 723 00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:30,039 Palo Alto is never going to spin out monks and warriors. It's only going 724 00:59:30,119 --> 00:59:35,679 to spin out the guy who fixes his glasses with tape and like hunches over 725 00:59:35,719 --> 00:59:40,360 the computer and works eighteen hours a day. That's who's being spat out by 726 00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:46,079 our elite system. And that's not all that a country needs. Remind me 727 00:59:46,119 --> 00:59:51,199 if I'm wrong, Correct me if I'm wrong. Is your husband Jared's family? 728 00:59:51,239 --> 00:59:58,119 Were they Okie's They're from Oakland, from the sort of Oklahomans. Yeah, 729 00:59:58,159 --> 00:59:59,519 yeah, I know what you're talking about. No, no, I 730 00:59:59,519 --> 01:00:02,599 don't think okay, I was thinking of so that was interesting to me because 731 01:00:02,639 --> 01:00:07,920 he's also from the Bay Area. But another person from the roughly from the 732 01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:12,239 Bay Area from Sacramento would be Joan Didion, who was a descendant of OKI's 733 01:00:12,440 --> 01:00:19,760 and who was incredibly prescient and critical of the boomerism of Joan Baez as you 734 01:00:19,840 --> 01:00:24,039 mentioned earlier and others. And that's what's so sad about California. I just 735 01:00:24,119 --> 01:00:30,559 got back from California. I was at the Reagan Ranch, which is crystallizes 736 01:00:30,599 --> 01:00:34,119 it ranch adl CLO's about seven hundred eight there's the top of a mountain, 737 01:00:34,599 --> 01:00:39,639 super humble, little Adobe ranch house. But that's why California depresses me more 738 01:00:39,679 --> 01:00:43,880 than any place, more than New York. Because if you watch like the 739 01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:47,119 beginning of La Confidential, you have this voice over by Danny DeVito talking about 740 01:00:47,119 --> 01:00:52,880 how California is like the golden land of opportunity for the for America's middle class. 741 01:00:53,039 --> 01:00:58,719 And that's what California was, the frontier, and then California became about 742 01:00:59,159 --> 01:01:04,760 both free love and safety ism, and that is I think one of the 743 01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:07,199 interesting things about the point you're making is like it's the Canary and the coal 744 01:01:07,239 --> 01:01:15,239 mine, because it's a very concentrated in that area. It's just this very 745 01:01:15,320 --> 01:01:22,400 concentrated existence of all of these problems that in our you know, Davos dominated 746 01:01:22,400 --> 01:01:25,280 world are eventually not just going to be relegated to Silicon Valley. They're going 747 01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:29,599 to be in Brussels. They're going to be in all the places outside of 748 01:01:29,599 --> 01:01:35,000 Brussels where people are farming and getting screwed over by the same people that are 749 01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:42,400 thrusting AI Art into the met Yeah, there is this really bizarre sameness to 750 01:01:42,559 --> 01:01:44,440 all of us. And I guess I shouldn't say bizarre, as we just 751 01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:49,280 went through why it might be so. But yeah, the destruction of California 752 01:01:49,360 --> 01:01:52,320 is a tragedy. I know people like to spike the football on, but 753 01:01:52,559 --> 01:01:57,480 California was the middle class dream. It was the American dream within the dream. 754 01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:00,440 And yeah, Didion was very precedent in right about the press, prescient 755 01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:07,199 in writing about this. She would have been president. Yeah, because she 756 01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:09,719 saw early on, even in the first iteration of some of these ideas, 757 01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:15,320 how hollow they are and how you know how they will end up. But 758 01:02:15,440 --> 01:02:22,920 there's something even more pathetic about being that the pale echo of that, like 759 01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:27,159 the nerdy pale echo of that, and that really is the culture now of 760 01:02:27,199 --> 01:02:30,440 the Bay Area. It's the idolization of the sixties. I used to call 761 01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:34,840 my classmates. I used to say they had selma envy, right, because 762 01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:39,039 they wanted to be the generation of the sixties that broke these barriers for good 763 01:02:39,079 --> 01:02:44,079 and for ill. But there were no more barriers to break by the time 764 01:02:44,119 --> 01:02:51,400 they came around, and so it became this pale, weird exercise of narcissism, 765 01:02:51,519 --> 01:02:58,079 of like nerotic self examination of and then of course on the political end, 766 01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:05,599 spitting out this very obvious creation of the man that doesn't exist. Right, 767 01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:10,880 they really want to believe they still live in an America of Bull Connors, 768 01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:15,639 and they really crave Bullcannor, but he doesn't exist because it was a 769 01:03:15,639 --> 01:03:20,360 foil in the same way that for conservatives the Soviet Union was a foil in 770 01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:24,639 ways that are making them under us undergo this identity crisis about what we believe. 771 01:03:25,360 --> 01:03:29,559 Yeah, but there's just something like, it's the same thing that's happened. 772 01:03:29,559 --> 01:03:30,880 This is really bouncing around, but it's the same thing that's happened with 773 01:03:31,360 --> 01:03:37,800 modern art, the early part of the modern art and the total abstraction. 774 01:03:38,119 --> 01:03:45,679 It still meant something to transgress away from form or for example, Right, 775 01:03:46,559 --> 01:03:52,000 but they're kind of now stuck for the last fifty years doing a lot of 776 01:03:52,039 --> 01:03:54,719 the same things, like the found object thing that Duchamp did. I'm probably 777 01:03:54,760 --> 01:03:59,639 mispronouncing that, but like he already did that, right, whatever you think 778 01:03:59,679 --> 01:04:03,239 about it, he already did it. And it's just this grinding of the 779 01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:10,679 wheels over and over and over again because there's nothing more to transgress, and 780 01:04:10,719 --> 01:04:14,320 it's more pathetic, just like it's you know, I judge people who are 781 01:04:14,800 --> 01:04:21,239 communists after you know, understanding what happened in the Soviet Union, after what 782 01:04:21,320 --> 01:04:27,079 happened there happened, more than I judge somebody for being excited about communism in 783 01:04:27,159 --> 01:04:30,320 nineteen seventeen, right, even though I hope I would have been able to 784 01:04:30,400 --> 01:04:36,039 judge correctly that that was a bad idea on paper. There is something worse 785 01:04:36,079 --> 01:04:41,480 about somebody who doesn't update how it actually you know, look at how this 786 01:04:41,599 --> 01:04:44,679 idea actually worked, and then update it. And I feel the same way 787 01:04:44,719 --> 01:04:48,039 about the sexual Revolution and about a lot of these sixties ideas. In Paloelto, 788 01:04:48,159 --> 01:04:56,039 it's it's not novel anymore. There's no there's no barrier to break, 789 01:04:57,280 --> 01:05:02,960 and so it is very anti creative in a certain sense. It's very backwards 790 01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:11,039 looking, and it becomes dogmatic, and it becomes completely devoid of to the 791 01:05:11,079 --> 01:05:15,960 extent that the sexual revolution had any virtues to begin with, right, they're 792 01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:21,880 gone now. And it's the inability then to like actually strike away from the 793 01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:26,000 set path to do something new. And I'm not even saying like, oh, 794 01:05:26,039 --> 01:05:28,719 conservatives or the new rebels or whatever, that's not my point, but 795 01:05:29,079 --> 01:05:32,159 like even to do something new, even if it was wrong, like you 796 01:05:32,199 --> 01:05:38,760 know, to actually have the courage and the genuine creativity to do something new. 797 01:05:39,280 --> 01:05:43,320 Instead they're just rehashing. It is like, you know, it is. 798 01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,199 What you're saying, is that Charles Manson made great music. Yeah, 799 01:05:46,239 --> 01:05:49,119 no, it's so like now I have a really good example of what I'm 800 01:05:49,119 --> 01:05:53,840 talking about. You know, we all knew people in high school or in 801 01:05:53,880 --> 01:05:57,719 college who you know, were big partiers and did a lot of drugs, 802 01:05:57,719 --> 01:06:01,199 and like a lot of them were fun and dynamic people. And most people 803 01:06:01,239 --> 01:06:04,679 sort of move on from that stage of life at some point. But the 804 01:06:04,719 --> 01:06:09,960 ones who don't have a time they hit their forties, they no longer seem 805 01:06:10,119 --> 01:06:15,039 fun and dynamic. They seem pathetic and weak in thee I think there is 806 01:06:15,280 --> 01:06:20,400 some element of this in the culture as well, where this pale rehashing of 807 01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:27,599 sixties ideas in Silicon Valley as though they still had transgressive power, as though 808 01:06:27,599 --> 01:06:34,400 they hadn't you know, demonstrated major failure points over the years, and then 809 01:06:34,519 --> 01:06:44,480 especially coupling it with this very very attentive to teacher and neurotic mentality where if 810 01:06:44,519 --> 01:06:48,000 you take one step off the aff the pathway to success, like your life 811 01:06:48,079 --> 01:06:53,079 is valueless. Like in a sense, it's very weird for somebody like that 812 01:06:53,239 --> 01:06:57,360 to idolize Jimmy Hendrix, who legitimately lived his life in a crazy way and 813 01:06:57,400 --> 01:07:00,800 died at twenty seven. Right, But none of these people are actually living 814 01:07:00,880 --> 01:07:06,880 that way, but they espouse these ideas as though in doing so themselves, 815 01:07:08,239 --> 01:07:12,480 in espousing sixties ideas, they're doing something radical and they are, you know, 816 01:07:12,559 --> 01:07:16,559 transgressive and whatever. And they're not. They're nerds who are following what 817 01:07:16,559 --> 01:07:21,519 their teachers tell them. Right. It's it's posting about polyamory instead of joining 818 01:07:21,559 --> 01:07:28,480 the Manson family. Both bad. One. You have to admire the healthier 819 01:07:28,559 --> 01:07:33,920 society, how to admire the commitment. This is a wonderful essay. I 820 01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:38,559 am so glad. I was just when it hit my inbox. I couldn't 821 01:07:38,559 --> 01:07:42,800 believe it because I was. I actually wrote it, because you're acting about 822 01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:45,920 writing. You're a busy person and as we should mentioned, is also the 823 01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:48,800 host of a wonderful podcast called Hi Noon, which you can get wherever you 824 01:07:48,880 --> 01:07:54,039 download your podcasts. Again, this essay is called Ambitious Nihilism. It's out 825 01:07:54,079 --> 01:07:58,760 in the February edition of First Things. You can also access it online and 826 01:07:58,880 --> 01:08:01,639 as thank you. As always, it was a wonderful to chat. Thanks 827 01:08:01,639 --> 01:08:04,199 so much, Emily, It's always great to chat with you. You've been 828 01:08:04,199 --> 01:08:08,360 listening to another edition of The Federalist for radio hour. I'm Emily Kashinski, 829 01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:11,719 culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until 830 01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:28,880 then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fry.