Nick Gillespie || Libertarianism, Soft Parenting, and Cancel Culture

ever going to read. The Daily Beast named Nick one of Quote the Rights top twenty five journalists, calling him quote, clearheaded, brainy, among the foremost libertarians in America. Nick, It's so great to have you on the show today. Thanks for having me, Scott, It's a real pleasure to be here. The motto of Reason Magazine, which you've really spearheaded and been part of ourselo for many years, is quote free minds and free markets.

I was wondering if we could start with you kind of explaining what that means, and you know, even just

our listeners who aren't even familiar with libertarianism at all. Yeah. So, Reason was founded in nineteen sixty eight by a guy who was a student at Boston University, and then it kind of migrated from him and from Boston to Santa Barbara on the West coast to la where it's still technically headquartered, and now we have a big office in Washington, d C. As well as people scattered all over the country.

And you know, we started out as a monthly politics and culture magazine, kind of similar to The New Republic or National Review along those lines, and like a lot of other publications, we branched at into the web. We were early adopters. We have a we've had a website since I think nineteen ninety four, and then we created a video platform two thousand and seven which I spearheaded. I was the editor in chief of the print magazine from two thousand to two thousand and eight. Video platform,

the website at various points. But the free minds and free markets concept comes as you mentioned, we're limited or we're libertarian publication, which means we believe in kind of limited government individualism, and the idea that kind of civil liberties and economic liberties are really kind of twin different

sides of the same coin. So you need to be free thinking in and tolerant and interested in empathy and pluralism as well as also you know, kind of exercising autonomy and everything you do and the way that plays out. It used to be that we could say to people, you know, we're kind of socially liberal and fiscally conservative. But you know, that made sense in like nineteen seventy five and maybe even nineteen ninety five. In twenty twenty one, I don't know what that means because most a lot

of liberals and progressives are not very tolerant. You know, they're trying to shut down all kinds of speech, and they're trying to regulate all sorts of lifestyles you know that they don't like. And conservatives used to be people who would say, you know what, the government should be small, and it shouldn't be you know, it should pay for itself, and of course that went out the window, you know,

a long time ago. It's a really good point, and everything seems a bit topsy turvy right now in every imaginable dimension now. You know, it's interesting because the Daily Beast named you one of the rights top twenty five journalists. Putting you on the right seems an interesting thing. I don't know if you would agree with that characterization. It seems like libertarianism. I mean, you can be libertarian left right,

you can be absolutely yeah. Yeah. I've known a number of friends and actually contributing editors to Reason who were libertarian, you know, small l and were members of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or you know. Gnom Chomsky called himself a libertarian socialist. At various points. Bill Buckley called himself a libertarian conservative. You know. So depending on you know what what day of the

week it is, or what time of the year. You know. Uh, sometimes people like using the adjective libertarian because I think it connotes in it's, in its best form, a kind of interest in innovation and leis a fair in the best way possible, not you know, not do what do unto others then split, but rather a kind of relaxed, tolerant, open approach to thinking about things like philosophy, speech, lifestyle, as well as also economic innovation and things like that.

So it's not surprising that, you know a lot of business leaders at various points have called themselves libertarian or have been plausibly accused of that. Somebody like Jeff Bezos of Amazon is an example of that. But yeah, the DAILI beasts put me on the right, which you know, I kind of chafe at because I'm not socially conservative and I'm not I guess I'm fiscally conservative in the idea that I think government should you know, we should

pay for the government that we want. But I also as a columnist at to the Lybs for a few years after that, so you know, I like to think of libertarian as you know, it's obviously on the political spectrum somewhere, but it's a little bit different and at its best, you know, it takes what's best about being a liberal, uh and the best about what's being conservative, and kind of you know, mixes it into a nice uh you know, blended ice cream code or something. I

always viewed it as analogous to the Bahai religious faith. Okay, I think the only people I know who were Bahi were Seals and Croft, the singers of Summer Breeze. So can tell me what ba high faith is and all. Well, they like to take the They kind of talk about how they're every religion. They they they're not into divisiveness, but they're into you know, they believe they're peaceful and they believe in picking the best of everything, and it's kind of a universal faith. They consider us of a

universal faith. So anyway, it seems like a little I like the idea of it being attractive. And you know, I think libertarians sometimes harken back to a kind of what's called classical liberalism or you know liberal liberal political ideology, which you know, which which includes people on the right

and the left in America. But it came out of, you know, the end of the age of monarchs and aristocracy, and it was the idea that individuals are capable of making decisions for themselves, and we should create social and political, cultural, economic constitutions that allow individuals more freedom to make choices about the things that matter most of them. And I think that includes you know, things like, you know, who who do you get to marry, or whether you want

to marry at all? You know, do you do you have to ask permission you know, from some kind of lord or some kind of you know, authority before you get on with your life or not those types of things. And that government should be representative and it should be limited. You know, I do believe, and I guess this is you know, part and parcel of the liberal project. Properly understood that there are certain rights that the majority doesn't

get to minimize simply because it's the majority. You know, nobody should be forced to worship, you know, a god that they find false. Nobody should be forced to you know, be a slave, Nobody should be forced into the army, things like that unless there are really you know, particular and short lived circumstances that require stepping on people's you know, freedom to to basically live how they want. So there's

probably not too many libertarians in afghan stand right now. Yeah, it's a real you know, this is a real problem the libertarian movement, and I would say it has been, you know, one of the most vocal and consistent critics of American foreign policy in terms of interventionism into places

like Afghanistan and Iraq. And I think, you know, we can point to the twenty first century, you know, as twenty one uninterrupted years of terrible foreign policy that has failed to deliver on the objectives that it laid out. You know, we did not nation build in Afghanistan and

we did not nation build in Iraq. Yet there's no question there's a you know, a real taste of ashes when you look you know at the idea that you know, the the US deposed the Taliban, which is you know, a medieval, horrible you know, you know, terrible authoritarian regime. We put our own people in, uh, you know, and we forestall an inevitable you know, reture learn of the Taliban and actually helped to bet it where we spend

trillions of dollars. We lost thousands of American lives plus you know, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan

lives without really accomplishing anything. So it's you know, it's a sign I think that the government, you know, a government in America which struggles to vaccinate people that are you know, directly here and under you know, within our culture, it's not that good at that and that it would you know, it was ruinous when it goes into places like Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the world and says, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna fix everything, and

we're gonna make everything, uh you know, people, you know, into a better world. Yet you know that being faced with the evidence of that failure is still really stunning. And I think not to spend too much time on a psychology podcast of that foreign policy. But one of the things that's truly disturbing is that the United States is really being cheap and miserly with the amount of refugees from Afghanistan that we are willing to kind of

process and bring to the country. The very least we could do is to really make sure that we get all of the people who are on our side, who cooperated with us, who are trying to build a better and more modern and more pluralistic Afghanistan, you know, get out if they want to. It's just it's a it's a horrible debacle. Oh yeah, it's so horrible. And what you're saying sounds just like a humanitarian approach. It doesn't need to be labeled as a particular political approach. You know,

it's a humanitarian idea. No, absolutely, I'm with you on that, very much, with you on that. You're an interesting guy. I don't know how to segue into this, but you're just like a fun guy to like party with. Robert Draker of The New York Times magazine writes that you are quote to libertarianism. What we'll read is to rock and roll. The quintessentience, the quint essence of its outlaw spirit. Now is this like, you know, and I do this with all my guess I did this with them, Chaldsky,

I did this with your childhood. Let's talk about your childhood for a second. Were you like, did you have a leather jacket when you were ten years old? Were you like, what is tell me about the precursor of modern day nick Leespie? Well, okay, and let me just start with the reference to lou Reid, as you know, one thing in my childhood, Unlike lou Reid, I did not receive electra shock treatment. Thankfully. I grew up He

grew up in Long Island. I grew up in New Jersey and New Jersey, I guess was a little bit more tolerant. But my I grew up lower middle class. My parents were uneducated people. They were the children of immigrants and they participated both in you know what that meant to grow up poor. My father was of Irish extraction. My all of my grandparents were from Europe. He was Irish, my mother was Italian group, speaking Italian until she went

to grammar school. And you know, they worked hard and they participated in that incredible, you know, kind of journey of the greatest generation of going from you know, poverty and World War two real privation to you know, doing well after the war. And you know, one of the things that they passed on to me was a, you know, a sense that you can always be doing better or

that the world should always be getting better. And it was odd because in many ways they were depressive, and they had a lot of issues that I think were linked to how they were raised, but also or the circumstances under which they were raised. But they also believed, you know, and I think they got this from their their parents, my grandparents, that you know, the world should keep getting better and that you can work and have a better life, and that your kids will have a

better life. I have two kids. I divorced, but I have two sons who were one's twenty seven and one's twenty and I certainly hold forward for that as a kid, I would say in terms of personality and temperament, I'm the youngest of three. I really appreciate being the youngest child because my parents who were old when they had kids to begin with, but they were kind of tired, and I had an older brother and an older sister who kind of, you know, they were the heat shields

they took up. They soaked up all of the expectations that the first son and the only daughter had, and so I was given more free reign, and I was I'd say I was a contrarian. I was a you know, kind of you know, kind of anti authority from the get go, but it was i'd say I was actually less anti authority and more questioning of authority. And so, you know, on the one hand, I was kind of a cut up in school and kind of annoying to my teachers because I asked why a lot. But I

also was you know, I was an Eagle Scout. I joined the Boy Scouts and became an eat I was the captain of my high school soccer team. So, you know, I like to do a lot of different things, and I'd like to try and master whatever I'm doing, or I did. I gave up Catholicism. I was raised Catholic. I realized that if I really wanted to legitimately critique Catholicism, might have to become pope, because I felt like you needed to know something and master something before you could

critique it. So I was like, okay, done with that. Yeah, I mean everything you just describe sounds like it's almost inevitable that you would resonate with the libertarian party. You know, there's this interesting combination. I see a lot of people who identify as libertarians, and that's just kind of what you described, the combination of this individual's spirit with a drive for doing good or a morality in some sense, or wanting to you know, like you said, your an

eagle scout. You know, I think some people I have this misconception of libertarians that like individualism, you know and Rand, you know, sort of like everyone for themselves, who cares about others. But I mean my own personal experience with a lot of people who identify the libertarian libertarianism is that they you know, a lot of them are in like the the rational altruism movement for instance. You know, they they want to do in a maybe in a

very utilitarian sort of way, but the greatest good. Yeah, I I you know, I think, uh, there's the whole Ein Rand kind of tradition and kind of dogma and canard you know, and Iron Rand, I guess was you know, extremely influential in post war America in general culture. And it's always interesting when you read that people like Angelina, Angelina Jolie and Oliver Stone and Brad Pitt are all like big iron Rand fans, and they're all dying to bring Attla Shrugged or the fountain Head to the to

the big screen or something. It kind of makes sense because she was, you know, big on like great individuals and all of that kind of stuff. But that had nothing to do with me growing up or you know, or how I got into into kind of libertarianism, and it was really for me. I always, and I always like to say, by the way, that I'm Rand pronouns, you know, because people announced their pronouns. Now, her pronouns would be I, me and mine, but I'm I am, you know, Like for me, it was more, always, more

about empathy and autonomy. It's you know, I I know. I also consider myself a postmodernist in a very you know, literal sense or or you know, definitional sense of what Jean Francois Leotard called. He said that postmodernism is characterized by incredulity towards meta narrative. It's not a it's not saying that truth and authority cannot be legitimate or exist, but rather that we should always be skeptical towards it because truth is partial, it's provisional, and it's always changing.

And for me that resonates very strongly with my own limits of knowledge and a political philosophy. One of the reasons why government, I think, or authority should not be able to just do whatever they want is because we need to have, you know, some epistemological humility in the world.

And I know I don't know very much, but for me it's always you know, empathy and autonomy are are kind of the guiding lights of a contemporary libertarian sensibility for me, as well as curiosity and comfort with pluralism and being tolerant and also just being curious and interested in the world around you. We had talked about this actually, when you were gracious enough to have me on your podcast. We're talking about that sounds a lot like Abraham Maslw's philosophy,

you know, the humanistic psychologist. I'm very interested, you know. Yeah, I read your book about Maslow, you know, with great interest, because I think this is uh, you know, and I think about this a lot where I'm you know, basically two generations removed from peasants stock in Europe, where my ancestors, both on my father's side and my mother's side, have been raised to be you know, surfs and peasants for you know, millennia and you know, God like I you know,

I mean, the most amazing thing is to be born in the twentieth or the twenty first century, and for all of the horrible things that are going on in the world, there are fewer of them, and there is more hope and more you know kind of you know, possibility of movement towards self actualization, you know, than ever before, I think, and you know, we would be fools to

blow that opportunity. But I find Maslow, you know, interesting because it is about you know, it's about the individual realizing his or her potential, but always in a social context, always in historical context. But it really is that mix of individuals and groups and kind of movement towards some sense, you know, kind of creating a horizon and then moving

towards It is extremely interesting. And I think that the institutions that kind of flow in and out of libertarian ideas, and that includes limited government, but it also includes freedom of speech and freethinking and about fluidity, you know, whether it's gender fluidity or ideas, mixing of different types of people and ideas. All of this stuff, you know, kind of wraps together in a way that is, you know, I think it's both attractive but also actually has really

good effects in the world. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I have a lot more say to that, but we discussed that on your podcast actually with direct listeners to go to Nick's podcast and check out that conversation. That was a really interesting conversation. I enjoyed it. What is your relationship to mister m x y z pt lk oh, mister Mitchelpitolic? That was I wasn't sure how to pronounce his name. Yeah, So, mister Mitchelpittolic is a Superman super villain.

He's a imp from I think the fifth dimension, and he was one of the few people because he traded in magic he could kind of run circles around Superman. And in the nineties I wrote on a regular basis for an early website called suck dot com, which was not pornographic despite its name. It was, you know, suck

dot com in the sense of like everything sucks. And it was an early website that started out making fun mostly of the tech world and of Silicon Valley and the kind of emerging digital culture of the nineteen nineties, and then broadened out into, you know, a general critique of kind of internet culture and consumer culture and all sorts of things were going on in the nineteen nineties.

And I wrote a particularly kind of mean but funny, I hope piece that was about Christopher Reeve, the Superman actor, who had become crippled after having a horse riding accident and a horse jumping accident. And I had written a piece with the basic idea of which was that getting crippled was the best career move Christopher Reeve had ever made. And then I kind of worked through that, and mister

Mitzel Pittolick was a good name for that. And that's kind of indicative of the sorts of things that people wrote a suck and it has an interesting history of alumni. Among the better known alums of suck dot com or Jake Tapper of CNN and James ponnewisic who is now the New York Times television critic. So it's an interesting group and a throwback to a simpler America. I didn't know Jake Capral was funny, Yeah, he was his non the plume, if I'm remembering correctly, was James Bong. Are

you serious? Is this something he wants to be resurrected? This knowledge? He does not run from it. He doesn't offer it up, but he doesn't shirk from it when it comes up in conversations or interviews. Now, Nick, were you under any substances when you came up with the name mister missus got a book? No, I don't think so. I as you know, I am a I'm a fan of psychedelic drugs for a variety of reasons, but because

I think they're enjoyable. But they also are, you know, increasingly being used for medical uses for treatment of PTSD and things like that. A substance is ranging from m D m A to psilocybinto LSD, which itself has a long history of being used to treat alcoholism and other kinds of issues. But no, I was. I was stone cold sober when I wrote as mister Mitzel pitolic and

you just did deemed the name just came to you. Yeah, Well, it's a you know, if you're making fun of Superman or an actor who played Superman, it's kind of obvious and it's uh, he's you know, it's a it's a good character because he's kind of an imp and a troll and superman he had. The way that you defeated him was by tricking him into saying his name backwards somehow, and then he would kind of disappear and go back to his own dimension. But I love it. I love it.

Thank you for telling with me about that. These there are Brian questions I had. Now you look in nineteen ninety seven, you wrote a cover story for a Reason called Childproofing the World, which is really really anticipated a lot of stuff that's going on now in the world, such as free range parenting and Chonthaan Hight and Greg Wlukianos. But calling of the American mind, Now, where do you think we are now compared to the ninety seven Do you think I thinks are even worse? Yeah, it's a

fascinating question. And the story childproof in the World, which was, you know, grew out of my experience raising my older son who was in who was born in nineteen ninety three, But it was basically looking at at the time in the nineties and it's kind of hard to remember this,

but especially in the late nineties. There the rhetoric and discourse about children in America, especially coming from people like Hillary Clinton and Marion Wright Attlman of the Children's Defense Fund, was that kind of against all you know, observed trends. They insisted that children were at higher risk for all sorts of problems. They were having more kind of breakdowns, that they were having more medical problems, that you know,

they weren't going to school, et cetera. It was very odd and very much at odds with everything that was going on. In fact, children in the nineties were doing drugs less, they were having less sex with fewer people at older ages, you know, which was perceived as being a good thing. You know, younger children went, you know, had more enrichment programs both before and after school. I mean, every kids volunteered in numbers and in a way that

was just unimaginable. I was born in nineteen sixty three. I'm at the very end of the tale of the baby boom, and you know, like nobody in my generation like compared to just you know, fifteen years earlier, and now we were raising these angels in a much safer world where things like child abuse, crimes against children, children dying young. All of that had declined almost to the point of being you know, you know, really rare when

it happened. But we were talking about kids as being threatened by all sorts of things, and I chalked it up in that story to a wide variety of things, including the fact that we were much wealthier as a society in general and having fewer kids, so each kid kind of counted for more. That parents had higher and

higher expectations for their children. They were treating their children as kind of markers for their own success, and this is something that I think often happens, you know, where parents kind of project all of their desires onto their kids. But there was also a recurring kind of psychology that I think came out of the doctor Spock's Infant in Baby or Baby in Childcare, which was this kind of

weird perversion. I'm actually not sure if it was a perversion or an accurate read of a kind of water down Freudianism of the idea that like, you know, be careful with your kids, like have authority, you know, more than you're doing. The books as famously at the beginning, but it's like, you know, relax and do a good job raising your kids, because you can really screw them up.

So there was this sense of children as kind of like China dolls who could be cracked and shattered by you know, the wrong look or a single incident early in their lives or whatever. And so you know, that

was the starting point. And I ended that story, which is online at a Reason's website, you know, saying like, given all of this, like our you know, kids, and I was talking about millennials and you know, kind of looking towards gen Z, are kids going to become you know, risk taking daredevils or are they going to become kind of withdrawn and scared of their own shadows and incapable of really kind of transitioning into an adult world where they might get knocked around a little bit because we

had been spending so much time child proofing the world to make sure that they never had a bad experience, that they never suffered any kind of anxiety, et cetera. And I think, you know, we we kind of have an answer to that, which is that we have we now live in a world where children and people like John Hight and Geene Twin or Twangy I'm not exactly

sure how to pronounce her name. Have just published a piece, a study about how, you know, the level of anxiety and loneliness in children is at record high levels, and things like that, and books like The Coddling of the American Mind, Fleshes at leonor Skenese's Free Range Parenting and

Free Range Childhood point to this. And you know, so in a way, I think we are reaping, you know, the we're reaping the whirlwind of how we parented in the nineties, and it's you know, it's understandable, it's totally human. I know, I went out of my way to protect my kids from what I imagine would be negative situations in a way that my parents either didn't want to

or didn't you know, couldn't. And I think socially, you know, there's a lot of negative, negative issues that come out of that, because I think children are less resilient, or young adults are less resilient than they might have been otherwise, and that that's a real problem for society. People. People, you know, they feel like even mild incursions on their personal space or their sense of self are you know, become traumatic, and that's just that's not a good way

to get through get through life or even childhood. What is what is this? What is this described as soft parenting? Is that what soft parenting is? Yeah? Well, you know, I think when people talk about hard versus soft parenting, you know, that's kind of like, you know, Benjamin Spock versus Bruno Bettelheim, you know, or kind of the classic sides in Bettleheim, you know who who life ended under, you know, a cloud of plagiarism and a variety of

other kind of bad behavior. But you know, he was like kind of you know, like you know, treat your kids as a little adult and really kind of be tough on them. Spocks seem to be much more kind of lucy, goosey and loving, and you know, obviously the answer is something in between. It is amazing to me as much as I might say, you know, my generation's parenting, and I think this is true of Gen X as

well as many of the baby boom parents. You know that we might have tended to go a little bit too far and being friends with our kids or or refusing to be authority figures in a way that helps structure early childhood and its people. Gives kids a kind of framework to push back against and test limits and understand where they are as they're at figuring out who they are psychologically. And you know, as a person, we might have been a little too mushy on that part.

But then when I think back to my parents' generation or older generations where parents are just almost completely emotionally unavailable for their children, you know that's bad too. So I think what we're seeing is a weird form of soft parenting in that we are trying to make the world, you know, a kind of feather bed so that if our kid falls, they don't break their teeth or anything like that. By the same token, though, you know, one of the things, and this is especially true of upper

middle class people. And you know, more and more people are educated, more and more people are upper middle class, and these are the people who are driving discussions about parenting, and these are the kids that we listen to, you know, kids who are in college complaining about this or that.

You know, there's a real passive aggression in all of that parenting where it's like, you know, I'm doing all of this for you, and you better produce results as a kid, you know, like you know, the Eiger mom type mentality is you know, uh, it's it's you know,

overt in what it demands from its children. But there's something like that even in the you know, even in the parent who is your best friend you know, and is sending you to thirty different camps you know in a year and giving you in Richmond programs all the time. You know, they they're expecting something, you know, in return for that kind of parental and emotional and financial investment.

And that's that's tough on kids. I've written a lot in the period since the Childproof in the World story came out about millennials because you know, I also think generationally, you know, millennials are the single largest cohort. Now Gen Z will in a short period of time become bigger than the Baby boom itself as Baby Boomers start to die off, and they're you know, in many ways, the

millennial generation and Gen Z are really great. They're you know, they're much smarter, you know, they're healthier, they have a better future in front of them. I mean, I dislike it when older people just kind of hate young people because they're you know, because they're young or anything like that. But I did. I wrote a piece for Reason co author to piece for Reason, and I think like twenty fifteen, which was talking about how I thought that the millennials

were kind of the first generation in America. They were more ethnic, more multi ethnic, more multi racial, They had more opportunities, they were moving into positions of power, and they were kind of the you know, one version of the American dream that I think about a lot is the idea that you you know, kind of America is kind of a Maslovian country where everybody can self actualize, everybody can become the individual that they want to be.

This is the promise of America. And I thought the millennials were inheriting that they were the first generation of really feel that. And then I realized a couple of years later, and I talked with a lot of millennials. You know, a lot of them are very sour, and in the wake of you know, the financial crisis, in the wake of COVID, they're kind of bitter. And I think part of the problem is is that we expected them to, you know, have jobs that they loved and

that expressed something meaningful and deep to them. And like, you know, if you're twenty one years old and you've just graduated college or you're coming out of high school and things like that. You know, that's a hell of a you know, a hell of a requirement to put on people, not only to find a job in an economy that is rapidly transforming, but to find a job that is meaningful, pays the bills and expresses your deep commitments as a human being. You know, that was You

know that that's a bad expectation. It's too much. And I think a lot of millennials have, you know, have not been able to deal with that for understandable reasons. Yeah, I to someone who teaches millennials about well being in purpose and hearing their concerns and fears, and yeah, I think that that's really quite spot on. But there's also and this I guess is my way of transitioning into

a different topic. Yeah, but there's a lot of millennials, I mean, they feel like they're especially you know, people that have an alternative gender so to speak, feel very marginalized, even though at the same time it seems like acceptance for it is everywhere. If to me it seems paradoxical.

That's my perception. That's my perception. What do you think about that I you know, I think it's I think you're onto something where you know, and this is something if if you're over forty, you know what what it was like to be gay or lesbian or buy excuse me, your trans queer or or you know, just a non

conforming heterosexual. You know, twenty years ago it was it was better than forty years ago, but it's nothing compared to now where you know, gender and sexuality have been you know, the using those as barriers to acceptance or barriers to living, to getting married or to holding jobs and things like that. You know, that has effectively been eradicated, which is a major triumph. I think I would say

it's a libertarian victory. You know, this is one of the great libertarian victories, among various other things, which many of which kind of cohere around lifestyle choices where it's like you can you can live and dress and eat and marry and you know, whatever the way you want, as you know, and it's pretty much accepted. It's oftentimes it's you know, it's legally you know that equality is legally mandated. It's like a great time and yeah, and at the same time, I think a lot of younger people.

I think part of it is because they're experiencing it for the first time. You know, everybody's adolescence is discombobulating, and everybody only experiences their adolescence, and I think, uh, you know, there's a lack of history that is endemic

to youth, but is probably getting worse. It's a real You talk about paradoxes, you know, the modern world, the contemporary world is rife with paradoxes, and one of them from me is that we now live in a world where virtually every book, every piece of music, every TV show, every movie is available you know at you know, with a mild Google search, and yet people seem less interested in the past than ever and kind of creating genealogies

of meaning and tradition that are hyper individualized to explain. You know, I do this all the time. I look back at you know, what made me the thing? You know, what are the influences on me? And I can fill in all the gaps in a way that I couldn't thirty years ago because it was you know, the information just wasn't there. But we're less interested in that, and I think that feeds into some of what you're talking about.

Where people, weirdly, we live in a world where race, class, and gender are less of barriers and sexual orientation than they ever have been, and yet that becomes the focal point of feeling ostracized. I think we need to pay attention to that. I think we need to also address

it with more and better history. And I also think that, you know, we need to recognize that we live in a society where there's kind of psychological economy where being saying that you are an outsider, saying that you are being discriminated again, saying that you are not allowed to fully participate in the established you know, fruits of society.

You know, demanding and saying you are being ostracized is a very It's a move that gets rewarded very quickly in contemporary society at the university level, also in the corporate level and things like that. And so you know, if you incentivize people to you know, say they are out, you know they're being demonized, they're being discriminated against. I think you're going to get more more of that kind of behavior and that thought. Yeah, but you know, there

has been an enormous progress. It just it perplexes me. I suppose when people like Stephen Pinker points to progress and then people are like, oh, he's in the far right, and it's I mean, progress is a thing of Wasn't that a liberal thing at one point? Yeah? Absolutely, And you know, and of course they I guess part of the fear is, you know that if you say, look, things are better than they were ten years ago, so you know, then the next line is shut up and

just you know, each horridge or something. I don't know, but you know, yeah, by the same token. There's a weird kind of I think, kind of psychological or psychic

emotional arbitrage that's going on. And you see this in many discussions about race relations or race positions as well as things you know, like trans writes and whatnot, where people will you know, call they'll they'll use writings or observations by somebody like James Baldwin writing, say in nineteen fifty five about a country that was still you know, rife with dasiray segregation, and they'll kind of conjure him up to talk about what's going on now, as if

there hasn't been you know, sixty years or more seventy years of change and progress. And so you know, I think we need to we you know, you always need to listen to what people are saying, especially people who are saying I am not participating fully, I am being discriminated against, I don't feel part of the group. Those are real, you know, meaningful, you know kind of words and emanations and feelings that we need to take seriously.

But we also need to not constantly be you know, saying that, you know, is America more racist now than it was sixty years ago or one hundred years ago. No, it isn't. And we've had progress along these lines. How do we identify that, how do we recognize that? And then how do we kind of keep that moving forward? And I feel like we're in now in a world

where people are not interested in moving forward. People are interested in kind of settling scores or assuming that all of the resources that are ever going to be available are on the table right now, and it's kind of a land grab to see who gets the most of what's on the table. And that's not really the way that societies can and should work. We need to be

thinking about how do we expand opportunities? How do how do we create a world that we can barely envision now in which in visuals and groups that they voluntarily form can do whatever they want. I think it's a really odd moment for in many ways, over the past twenty five years, you know, I've been a reason for coming up on like twenty seven years. My professional career has mostly been a reason. And you know, one of the things that has happened in many parts of our lives,

we've been getting more and more individualized. When you think about the types of food you buy, or when you go to a restaurant, the clothing you buy, everywhere you go. Everything is more individualized. And yet we are when we talk, when we talk about social and cultural identities, we've gone through this phase now where we are we are returning to the crudest abstractions to talk about who we are as individuals. We're either black, or we're white, or we're Asian.

I mean, people aren't even talking about, you know, the subgroups that make up Asian Americans. And this strikes me as profoundly wrong, because people are more mixed than ever and that is a good thing, and it's a positive thing. And I wish that we were willing to talk more about a kind of what I consider a glorious mongrelization

of race, class, gender, sexual orientation. I mean, there are so many more possibilities Now everything is like Baskin Robbins or you know, a Starbucks, where you can have an infinite number of combinations, and as you become interested in something, you can recombine in all sorts of new ways. Where I wrote an essay years ago about how the X Men were the model for what everybody wants to be. You want to be a mutant, you want to be recombined, you want to be a shape shifter and changing all

the time. And this is a really good thing. And yet in many ways, you know, over the past you know, decade, maybe we seem to be going back into cruder and cruder kind of tribal sensibilities. And you know, that's very troubling, and I think it helps explain why we have, you know, it helps explain a lot of the negativity and public discords. Oh yeah, for sure. And it relates to cancel culture

and kind of that drive. You have a cover story coming out in October and the issue of Reason magazine called self Cancelation, deplatforming, and censorship, a taxonomy of cancel culture, which outlines libertarian concerns over suppressing speech at various levels. Now you open up this article talking about how we're living in an age of cancel culture. Now, can you explain a little bit how you define cancel culture? What are the parameters you put around a phenomenon that you

would describe as cancel culture? Yeah, you know. And one of the things I use a definition that Jonathan Roush, who's a writer who years ago he wrote a book about called Kindly Inquisitors, the New attacks on free thought or free thinking and free speech, which anticipated a lot

of the world we're living in. And he has a new book out called The Constitution of Knowledge, and he distinguishes canceling from mere criticism, and he says that, you know, canceling has to do there's a social media component to it, but a public It isn't always you know, social media, but there's a public dimension to it, and that it's you know, people who are into canceling, people into cancel culture are seeking to organize and manipulate social and media

in a social or media environment in order to isolate, deep platform or intimidate ideological opponents. And it's different than criticism. Criticism is about engaging somebody's arguments and rebutting it. We're reframing it and saying, you know what, this is a better way of thinking about things. Cancel culture. And you see this all the time where people will say, I'm not even going to read the work or engage it.

This person should lose their job, they should lose their standing, they should be deep platformed, off of Twitter, off of YouTube, out of a university job, out of a corporate job. You know, that's what cancel culture is really about. And it's a kind of sensorial mindset, which is saying, you know what, if I don't agree with something and I don't like something, I'm not just going to ignore it or or you know better yet debate it. I'm going to try to strike it from the known universe of

discourse and conversation. So I think, you know, that's one way of getting a cancel culture. We can you know exactly how you measure, you know, what's you know, the volume of cancelation, et cetera. But you know, there is something. I think most people would agree there is something going on which is new and different. It's not that it's

completely unique to the current moment. Or something. But you know, earlier in the year, one of the people I talk about in the story is the the Banjos from the band Mumford and Sons, who self canceled after he had he tweeted out a you know to Andy know, a controversial journalist who's a kind of right wing you know people. Some people call him atrol, other people say he's a good investigative journalist. But he wrote a book about Antifa in Portland, and this banjoist said, you know, that was

a fascinating book, an interesting book. And then like, you know, a couple hours later after you know, he got a lot of negative press and his bandmate's gone on his case. You know, he was like, I realized I've made you know, I said horrible things that I'm taking a break from Twitter. I mean, it's very cultural revolution, you know, from Maos China of like, where people are not only being punished, but they are being kind of forced or cajoled into

admitting the errors of their ways and silencing them. That's something that I think anybody who believes in kind of liberal discourse, free thought, you know, and free and free expression really should be worried about this kind of thing. Yeah, I'm going to quote quote you. This is life today in the United States, where a seemingly infinite supply of such incidents appears on a seemingly hourly basis, like automated bursts of super concentrated air freshener and airport bathrooms. There

is this idea of, uh, it's very biblical owning your sins. Ye, Now, there's this idea of owning your sins is very important. And only particular people you know in our society are are are on the hot seat right now, you know, to atone those sins and others aren't. To me, it doesn't feel like it takes an account the full complexity of being human. To me, from a humanistic psychology perspective, it doesn't acknowledge that there's good and bad in all of us, no matter what side you're on. You know,

do you agree? I yeah, you know, I think I would. I would put it a little bit differently. There's definitely a you know, a racial dimension to this, where it's like if you are you know, a cisgender white man, particularly you know, but not always I if you're over fifty, you are much you know, you are in you know the hot seat to be you know, you have more

things adding up to that. But I don't think it's primarily racial because also, you know, consider, you know, one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, after it came out that she had purchased a wide variety of homes, of expensive homes in a lead neighborhood, stepped down, she stepped away from the organization. So this type of stuff comes,

you know, comes for everybody. And as I point out, it's a good point, as I point as I point out in the story, I mean one of the kind of you know, it's it's somewhat comical, but it also hopefully, you know, shows that this stuff has a certain shelf life. But where you know, a podcast that Gimli Media, which was designed to kind of do a deep dive on how awful it was to work at Condi Nass Bon Appetite.

Two episodes into that podcast, the people the producers of the podcast canceled themselves because people who worked with them said, you're just as bad as the people at Conde Nass. So it's like, you know, you get into this thing where the revolution eats its own and all of that kind of stuff. But I think what we're witnessing. Also

is you know, what feeds into cancel culture. Apart from you know, this kind of free floating sense of you know, of people feeling injured and aggressed by you know, random and stray thoughts that you know, in the past might not have risen to the level of you know, of anger and public public shouting. There's also a generational dimension going on. You know that this is a way of

clearing out the top of the pyramid. And you know, and again, the millennials are coming, you know, the older older millennials are now in their early forties, them and Gen Z Dwarf, you know, baby boomers and Gen X and and you know, they want to move up and out into the world. So that when you see people like you know, Senator Al Franken is a good example,

the you know, senator democratic, senator, liberal progressive. I mean, this is the guy who worked at Air America and made you know, his biggest best selling books were attacking Rush Limbaugh for being a big fat idiot, you know, and a liar and things like that. You know, he got canceled, and I think you know, it's you know, looking back now, it's kind of hard to believe it's not even clear what he exactly he was canceled for,

but he got squeezed out. And it's kind of generational, you know, and it's like you're looking at who are the people in power positions? How do you get rid of them? And that way, you know, it frees up some space to move up. So I think that's a big part of this and it and it kind of ds with that sense of, you know, kind of what we were talking about, people feeling very uncomfortable with conflict,

feeling very tender to the world. And you know, if you grew up believing that, you know, the world was kind of simultaneously the world was your oyster. Because you know, if you're a millennial or Gen Z, you're growing up in a world where you're constantly being told, here are all of the things that are in front of you,

here are all of the things that are available. But then you have parents or a society which is also trying to make sure that you never encounter, you know, some kind of reality that tells you you're not that special, et cetera. I think when you combine that, the sensibility that grows out of that kind of child proofing, you know, kind of generational childproofing, plus a real desire in a sense that you know what, like old people. You know,

baby boomers aren't going anywhere. You know, at least the greatest generation by the time they were sixty, they were dying to retire. You know, we have a president who's you know, one hundred years old, and he beat a guy who was like ninety five years old, who beat a woman who is ninety years old. You know, like it's you know, there's a weird kind of gerontocracy at work culturally, economically, politically in America, which I think is

also fuel in cancel culture in a very real way. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to sort of end on another quote of yours that I like. I liked a lot of these things. I liked a lot of things you said in this article. You said, contemporary cancel culture can take on left and right flavorings, and it can be enforced by governments, corporations, or individuals, but it all works to reduce our ability not just to talk freely, but to live freely. And that is reason enough to contest it at every level.

That's a very compelling argument. If you believe in free speech. If you believe in in human freedom, of the spirit of autonomy, self actualization, it seems like it's hard to argue with that, regardless of where on the political lines it falls. So thanks for writing that article, Nick, and and thank you for being on the podcast day and for dare I say, being my friend. It's been great get to know you personally as a human. Yeah, yeah,

same here. I appreciate it. And you know, this is one of the things I you know, and I think that we definitely kind of overlap or intersect on in a meaningful way, is thinking about the human potential movement and kind of positive psychology. I guess you would call it more. And you know, this is like an incredible moment.

It's you know, there are so many possibilities and we can do so many things, and it's you know, I worry that, you know, it's it's kind of like we've you know, we've we've reached escape velocity from so much of the crap of the past that is, you know about racial, gender, sexual discrimination and things like that, and you know, where we can do whatever we want. And you know a lot of us, I think are shrinking from that freedom and kind of going back to older

forms of identity and regulating other people's lives. That is, it would just be horrible to miss this opportunity to kind of actually create a twenty first century which is just fantastically better than anything that we you know, that our parents or grandparents might have imagined. That's the same thing is the potential is there if we want it.

You know, the post traumatic growth that I think is going to come about from this pandemic, I think we at least I could say, the potential there is huge. You know, whether or not we sees it, sees it or not or get drawn into the muck of arguments over who should wear masks or not is up to us. But thank you Nick, thank you, thank you Scott. Thanks

for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.