Navigating Familial Complexity

In this episode, we explore the impact of bad therapy and redefined concepts of trauma on birth rates through the lens of a National Review article. The discussion references shocking findings from a New York Times article by Michael Leitz, highlighting the cultural shift in how Americans define harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. This shift has led to increasing rates of estrangement between parents and adult children and a nearly impossible standard for parenting. The conversation also dives into the toxic culture of trauma, the role of the mental health industry, and how therapy practices encourage cutting ties with family. We also discuss the implications of these trends on demographic collapse, supported by both personal anecdotes and broader societal observations.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today we are going to be talking about how bad therapy and therapists and bad psychology tanked birth rates, and we're going to be doing it through the lens of an article in the National Review titled Bad Therapy Tanked the Birth Rates, oh, this was

Simone Collins: shared with us from by a fan.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: And it is going to reference a New York Times article. Those are written by Michael Leitz. So we'll be going between their quotes of the New York Times article and their commentary on these quotes of the New York Times article. Okay. Okay. And the New York Times article is like shockingly based.

So if we start with the New York Times article here, over the past few decades, Americans have redefined harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. Expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Yeah, adult. Children seem increasingly likely to publicly even righteously cut off contact with a parent.

This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting. And then the other writer says, potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents and their future children. Mm-hmm. Leitz drives into this was the rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children.

Most of the time it's the offspring, not the parents who initiate the initial instr estrangement. Yeah. As Lebowitz rights in 2019, Carl Piman, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27% of adult Americans reported being exchanged from a family member. They're the true numbers, probably higher. The most commonly severed relationships were . Parent slash adult child. And in most cases it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement. Many psychologists, a physiologists believe this is becoming more common. Mm-hmm. Now note here, I love that they keep calling it the adult child. They don't mean this as an insult. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: Right. But they're not even thinking about it. But we, we've come to infantalize adults so much that we're just like. Ah, is it is a toddler child? Is it a teen child? Is it an adult child? Is it a geriatric child? Everyone's a child. Now, no one can handle themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about like the few points of data that are really highlighted here so far.

Okay? Okay. First is that Americans have come to redefine harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: This is absolutely true to mean things that people used to think were normal. A parent not affirming you for whatever you wanna believe about yourself, that's trauma. A parent not being with you all the time.

A parent allowing you to feel bad. You know, we have been people. Act guilty. Act guilty. We abuse our kids 'cause we use light non-pain. Corporal punishment. Which is absolutely wild considering you know, that we fight with our kids regularly just to get them fight because it's, my cultural tradition is fighting.

And my kids are, are very good. Even the girls very good at fighting. And they enjoy it. Oh, she

Simone Collins: loves it more than anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: A hundred percent. She starts it more than anyone else. And she thinks it's hilarious.

Yeah, she does.

So you get this, this I to pick

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: fight

Simone Collins: with a journalist yesterday.

Remember? What,

Malcolm Collins: what, what does she do? Poking

Simone Collins: her provocatively at dinner.

Malcolm Collins: Laughing, poking her. Oh, she's trying to bait that. Yeah. That was fantastic. That was, that was dur Spiegel, Dury Spiegel coming over to do a piece on us. She was very nice.

Simone Collins: I, I felt bad. I tried to distract her at the end so she could.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the point here is, is that these things, it is really bad that our society has redefined them. And as we've said before, the reason the urban monoculture has evolved to redefine them is because it helps to cut people off from their birth culture. Mm-hmm. And their. Natural support network.

And you see this throughout cults, an easy way to pull somebody from another culture is to convince them that that other culture is something that they should hate. And if you can recontextualize normal parts of growing up as abuse or neglect or trauma you know, you can, you can more easily do that.

Yeah. And, and here, I think more broadly like. I just find trauma culture more broadly so toxic. I think if anyone is ever talking to you about trauma, like for me, that's a huge red flag. Trauma can always be recontextualized. You actually, a journalist was talking to us. I. And they're like, well, you know, it sounds like you lived in like a really, like tough childhood.

Like, why are you like so bullish on your parents? And I was like, I, that my parents are who they are. Like I can choose to feel the however I wanna feel about them. Like why would I choose to internalize those things? I. A traumatic narrative when that does nothing but hurt me. And, and when I say this, you know, I, I left my family at 13 where I went to like a prison alternative and I never lived with again after that.

And a lot of people can be like, well, that sounds horrible. I'm like, whatever. Like I needed, you know, to, to, to grow tougher, right? And this is because I choose my narratives.

Simone Collins: Thought. Absolutely. Well, but also I think it, it, it's reflective of your tech puritan worldview, which is a deterministic worldview.

Mm-hmm. Where like if someone's wretched in some way, like that was, you know, it was predetermined, you know, that they, that was their product of accommodation, of their genetics and life experiences. Neither of, you know, they, which they had control over. Everything they did was out of free will. Absolutely.

But also, you know, they are what they are and so we just have to accept it. And you know, you, you don't,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, I also find this idea of the, I mean, the second point here, which I find really interesting yeah. One is they are who they are. Like, learn to accept it. Like, yeah. If your parents you know, acted in line with who they are as people.

Mm-hmm.

I, I think. You know, you could say, well, I really detest who they are as a person. Or you can just be like, I understand why somebody with these beliefs in these perspectives would've acted in that way. Mm-hmm. And, and then you can look to selves and say, do you have an aspect of that personality?

Do you have an aspect of those beliefs? And you

Simone Collins: probably do, because they probably do. I mean, if they're genetically your parents.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I've noticed this is people who bring themselves to hate their parents often hate themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And because you, you, you really can't do one without the other.

Well, and

Simone Collins: similarly parents who kind of actually hate their partners kind of als also hate their children.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I've noticed this a lot too, when, when parents hate their partners, they hate their children as well

Simone Collins: because they see so much of them in them. It's, it's really sad.

Malcolm Collins: The other interesting thing is, is this predominantly happens with adult children, IE people after they're already adults.

This isn't young people in abusive scenarios. This is people who, as adults, recontextualize past scenarios to to, to internalize them differently than they did at the time.

Simone Collins: Well, I think it's important to highlight that there is teen rebellion. You know, there's is, you know, all my parents are so unfair and my parents are terrible.

They don't understand me. But there's a big difference between that teen rebellion and what's happening with adults.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're just going totally no contact which is

Simone Collins: and recontextualizing everything as, as trauma. And honestly, no matter how progressive and perfect you are by the urban, urban monoculture standards, as a parent, you will probably still end up if you're child maintains the urban monoculture end up being the villain.

Nice. Because if, let's say that you provide your child with gender affirming care. And then, you know, of course, you know, the stats indicate that that probably isn't gonna go so well for them. Like, they're gonna continue to struggle throughout their lives. So it's, it's not unlikely that even then your child's gonna be like, how did you let me do that?

How could you? Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: keep in mind, Elon was supportive of his kid going through gender affirming care when they did it. He took him to the psychologist. He bought the medicine. Yeah. You know, he tried to be as supportive as possible. Yeah. And the trans kid turned on him before he went anti-trans.

You know, the, the anti-trans thing was, well, all this came

Simone Collins: out after it was published in a book that in court proceedings. She, she had asked to disavow herself from the last name Musk and, and disassociate herself from her father before he did anything to wrong her. The this, yeah. Before he started saying, you know, she's dead to me, et cetera,

Malcolm Collins: my son is dead, whatever.

And, and this is all downstream of the culture that got their hooks in her whiz. This stuff you can never affirm enough. You can never be nice enough to people within the urban monoculture. There is no, I have to say though

Simone Collins: of, of all the trans people in media, she passes pretty well.

Malcolm Collins: I'm just, I'm just saying, well, she had a lot of, you know, money to work on this stuff.

Yeah. It helps

Simone Collins: to, yeah. I mean, a, as a parental provider, a, a parental support person, until everything ended, like guess you did a, the point

Malcolm Collins: being is you can't just capitulate enough. In fact, people would be like, oh, like this is why I would recommend like nobody, like if you're in the urban monoculture, it might even not be worth having kids because your kids will eventually hate you.

They're, I mean, not necessarily. So, you know, by some,

Simone Collins: some reports children report closer. Friendships with their parents than ever before. They're living longer with their parents. They're not leaving the house. I mean, they are increasingly infantalized, so Oh, they, they'll

Malcolm Collins: either hate you or be infantalized.

Yeah. The they'll either,

Simone Collins: yeah, the other hate you or remain babies for their entire life and, and be dependent on you and live off. You'd like leches. Which, you know, I, I think I would prefer an estranged child who, yeah. I would prefer to Strange shout too. Speak me more. Because I mean, at least they're, they're probably more likely to be thriving and they're, they're not gonna thrive if they.

Live off the, the parental doll for their lives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. There is, there is no good outcomes within that culture. Well also keep in mind that the culture is, Overton Window is always moving. Yeah. So yeah. What, what is good

Simone Collins: and, and, and moral today. Maybe evil tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Tomorrow. Right. You know, like, you know, it used to be good and moral to say you're colorblind and now that's racist.

Right? Like what? Yeah, like the, these things change. And so you, you just can't win and they forget that they ever change. They forget that they were ever anything else. Mm-hmm. They like completely culturally erase that.

Mm-hmm.

Well, of course there are cases of real abuse where the child ought to cut off the parent relationship.

The rising trend should astonish us le notes that many of today's o adult children often cut parents off what a generation ago would've been viewed as. V Venial sins. Anna Russell, who interviewed estranged families for the New Yorker found that reasons for estrangement included, that people quote, felt ignored or misunderstood by their parents, or believed that a sibling had always been the family's favorite.

Several described a family member as a quote unquote classic narcissist or quote, unquote, toxic. Now, I would note to you though, they're not reasons to cut a family off at all. And all of those are perceptual issues that rely on your individual perception.

Simone Collins: Well, if children also, if they acted as logical economic actors, unless a parent actively did damaging things like take out debt in your name.

Or demand money from you. There, there are plenty of, of instances of parents being in a net drain. I think for most kids it is better to maintain a relationship even with a mediocre parent because they may be more likely to distribute resources to you in some form at some point in the future.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the, the, the point I'm making here is, is, sorry, I know that you're being like, well, you could get something out of them, but I'm just saying like, this is a really crazy reason to cut family off. And keep in mind that if you cut off your parents, your kids are astronomically more likely to cut you off.

Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. I guess, yeah. You're normalizing it, aren't you? This

Malcolm Collins: is also what I said to the reporter. I was like, why would I ever normalize. Contextualizing my relationship with my parents in a negative light. Huh?

Where if I do that, my kids are gonna do that. Why would you ever do that? Like that?

That seems very stupid unless your parents obviously crossed a major line. That's a good point.

Yeah. Not

that this hasn't happened within my family. Like I, I've mentioned that my dad had his grandfather take out a million dollars of debt under his name, and this was in the 1980s. Mm-hmm. So, but he never disavowed him, never disavowed him, never.

He, he

Simone Collins: really just dealt with it. It seems there, there aren't stories of major confrontations even. It's kind of wild. No.

Malcolm Collins: Well, he ended up becoming quite wealthy because of it. I mean, he never gave me money and I don't care. You know, like I, I, I'm fine with that. I don't need, like, even, even if he could have, he could have given us money, that would've been great, but he didn't.

And, and I appreciate that part of our family tradition. This like really anti-nepotism tradition. And at least he didn't take out debt in my name. Right. Like that's the, that's the where I really lucked out with my dad. No big pile of, oh my God, you took out a million dollars of debt in my name and invested it in your company.

But oh well. It worked out for my dad, by the way. He ended up growing the company a lot. And, and he never had a big salary at that company, but he made a lot of money, was the money that had been invested in it.

Simone Collins: Love a happy ending,

Malcolm Collins: right? Love a happy ending. Well, and the idea of like a classic narcissist, I think, here's what I'd say.

If, if you believe, you know, more. Then like one classic narcissist, you are the narcissist. The, the, the classic narcissists are not particularly common and I find that narcissistic people, they cluster are very common to see other people as narcissistic because they don't understand how anyone could not be centering them in every single thought another person has.

Simone Collins: Oh, interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you see it so frequently. Well, I was

Simone Collins: talking with one of our friends about like, oh, you know, I hope your, your kids are in incredibly respectful to you in the future, given everything you do. 'cause this person goes way above and beyond. She's, she's incredible.

Some mother, and she's like, man, like, I'm really afraid of parental estrangement. And, you know, the urban monoculture is just, it seems to be the primary driver of it, but she pointed out that she was calling an insurance company. About some issue this morning. And they were telling her that there's this, this concept called mental health parody that was created under Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act in the United States.

Right? And what it does is it, it, it expands mental health and substance use disorder coverage requiring that starting in 2014, all new individual and small group health insurance plans have to cover mental health. And substance use disorder services at parody with medical and surgical benefits.

So suddenly what, in 2014 it was possible to get a lot more mental health care. And I'm sure that this increased the number of people who went through the process of getting diagnosed with problems because they knew then that they would get coverage for treatment and PR probably a lot more people were encouraged to seek out diagnosis.

And I think part of this is, well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's an industry.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and it probably funded the industry a ton more. So it's not just that we've seen this cultural shift in how people are contextualizing parenting and trauma and how therapy is playing out. I think that also in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act, there was this shift in funding, insurance funding for mental health services that enabled us to

Malcolm Collins: grow.

What I've noticed with therapists is that they will often search for conflict with family. They will look for areas of conflict with family to sort of grow because that creates dependency from the client. Yeah. The more trauma they can build in you, the more you are gonna want to consistently see them.

Mm-hmm. You know, any, any, from my perspective, any you know, psychologist who has regular permanent clients is not doing a good job. You know, you, you're supposed to be fixing them. Right. And, and you know, the. ARD talks about this where he had to go to a conservative psychologist to get anything done.

The conservative was like, okay, here's what you need to do. Here's the list of blah. The other one, the progressive, he was like, just looked for conflicts, looked for conflicts between him and people like, like, and in validated them.

Simone Collins: And it's a very feminine versus masculine way, right? Like the, the constant advice given to boyfriends is when your girlfriend presents you.

With a problem or grievance. Do not try to solve the problem. You're going to want to try to solve the don't do it. Don't solve the problem. Don't make suggestions. Well, but we, what

Malcolm Collins: you do need to do as a doctor is solve the problem. Like you don't wanna be like, oh wow. Yeah, that cut looks really bad.

Simone Collins: Not if you wanna, well, I mean, as as a medical doctor, yes, but as a mental health doctor, if you wanna maintain Right.

A good book. Well, I mean, as

Malcolm Collins: a medical doctor, if you want recurring revenue, you just you know, physically disfigure somebody and then so they have to keep coming back to you. It's not like, well, if you're a mental health

Simone Collins: doctor, if you find new traumas that need more investigation, more work. Yeah.

And if you help the client directly identify with their mental illness. Which in, in, in turn also requires more work, a huge amount.

Malcolm Collins: It was something like 70% of like Gen Z primarily identifies with a mental illness or are considered a core part of their character. We, we went over this survey in another episode and it was really chilling.

So anyway, if we get all

Simone Collins: these stats, 'cause they're too distressing, I'm like, just no, no, I'm just not gonna believe in that world. We're gonna make it better and it's just not gonna be a problem anymore. That's, that's the solution.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I think with estrangement the thing to focus on, and this is the thing about the, the insurance.

As soon as insurance covers it, well now you can go all the time, right? Like, now you can make this a part of your routine. And now you're around somebody who is going to, you know, hugely. I, I mean I would with our kids, given where the mental health industry is today just strongly warn them against not engaging with it at all.

I. Because I think that that's where a lot of this parental estrangement starts.

Simone Collins: Yeah, agreed.

Malcolm Collins: Dr. Coleman, who counsels families experiencing estrangement, has seen children cut parents outta their lives because of financial conflicts, political differences or negative comments about the child's partners.

There's a lot of estrangements that actually happened to decent parents. In quote, he told me, I have actually seen that. I have seen parents who warned kids rightly do not marry that person. Mm-hmm. And the kids cut their parents out over it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's a really tough move. 'cause I, I appreciated your mother's magnanimity toward me and the way she just instantly accepted me understanding that dynamic.

But a major problem in the birth rate crisis is that families have. Stopped taking an active role on their kids dating, which includes passing judgment on partners and I, I don't know what the best way to navigate that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, I think you just need to actively help them find partners. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: and create expectations too of like.

Hey, we're gonna judge them. This is a normal thing that we do. Yeah. And this is what we handle. Do. I mean, you're

Malcolm Collins: judging every partner is negative. Then clearly you're not doing a good job as a parent because you're not actually adding anything to the conversation. Right. You know? Yeah. If it should, from the child's perspective, feel like I.

70% you like 30% you hugely warn against. Yeah. I think that would as a kid make me feel safe. Yeah. More positive

Simone Collins: than negative interactions or experiences on that front would make a huge difference.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, but the, the idea of like cutting conflict, and we've seen this with a lot of the far left, I.

Cutting ties to your support network and your family over political differences is absolutely insane. Agreed. You know, I, my family has both, you know, conservative and democratic politicians in it. Like for example, my grandfather was a conservative congressman but my uncle ran the Fed and ran for, I wanna say Congress or the Senate as a Democrat.

And you know, obviously we're conservative. Well, and my brother's family's conservative and my dad's family is conservative, so we're all conservative now, but at one, at various points. I was progressive when I was younger, and my family didn't cut me off at all. Like they didn't, it, it, like, it would come up in like debates, but like, I can't imagine.

I think that this is mostly progressives cutting off conservatives because the progressive, like the original, that's what

Simone Collins: the, that's what the research says. The conservatives are willing to maintain friendships with progressives and often do, often in a closeted way because in turn, it's clear in the polling data that most progressives feel that if a, a friend turns out to be conservative, the friendship is over.

If they voted for Trump, yeah, the friendship is over. If a husband, I mean, I've watched. Various podcasts of people being like, I just found my husband voted for Trump. Should I divorce him? Like

Malcolm Collins: what? Well, the region, the culture evolved. This is because the urban monoculture cannot stand up to scrutiny.

If somebody within the urban monoculture is talking to somebody outside it, it's very quick to see how imperialistic it is. Mm-hmm. And how aggressive and, and, and colonial it is. Mm-hmm. In its desire to eradicate cultural differences in, in sort of. Enact a global cultural genocide so that everyone has the same views of gender norms, has the same views of, of sexuality, has the same views of, you know, their relation to the environment.

And, and th this is self destroying because it frames itself as good in opposition to colonialist and imperialist systems, right. Without admitting that it is itself a European colonialist and approved. So it, it, it is so self-defeating as soon as you think about it. So how does it protect itself? Well, the iterations of it who were open to engaging with people who still talk to conservatives. Mostly they went to the right. I mean, that's us and everyone, you know, and a lot of people we know on the new right. Were the iterations who just had this well cut off any contact with anyone who thinks differently.

They were able to stay. And so through cultural evolution developed this strategy of cutting people off. And, and not talking to anyone with a different perspective. Yeah. Which is you know, sad to see, especially when it's, it's kids and parents and everything like that, right?

Mm-hmm.

Now I'm gonna go to the other author again.

In other words, millennials were inundated with a lot of bad therapy. Unfortunately, gen Z and Gen Alpha have been steeped in it even more as Abigail Schreyer has relentlessly reported. Most of this bad therapy isn't coming from the mouths of licensed therapist or psychiatrists, but from school counselors, podcasters and Insta influencers, the people that you should

Simone Collins: trust most.

Can you gimme one second? Andy's crying and she's really sad, and I'm just gonna feed her milk and make her feel better. I'll be right back. Look at all like she was, she like desperately wants to sleep, but she refused to eat. So she slept until she got too hungry to sleep. And now she's like both tired and hungry.

Yeah, too cool for school.

Malcolm Collins: All right. I am so, I'm actually really gonna disagree with the writer of this here. I think that she is. Hugely underselling. How much of this is coming from actual licensed therapists and psychologists? Mm-hmm. And not just influencers

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: really long podcasts I listened to about somebody who's currently in school to become a psychologist.

Oh. And they were like. Or a psychotherapist specifically, and they were like, I cannot believe they're, like, eight outta 10 of my classes is just woke nonsense, right? Like, mm-hmm. They're, they are teaching things that we know are wrong. They are constantly trying to culturally convert us. This is just a litmus test in a factory for breeding far woke culture because the, the, the woke culture learned it could use these industries for conversion if you ever go, yeah.

To like a, a Scientologist, a theme reading. It's gonna feel very much like a modern therapist meeting. Um hmm. Yeah. Let's go,

Simone Collins: let's go back in time and find your traumas.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let's find ways to split you from your family and your birth culture. Katie Woodman wrote about the rise of therapy. Speak for the New Yorker in 2021.

If we are especially online or roaming the world of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present. We practice self-care and shun toxic acquaintances, Tara Isabella Burton, wrote how this slip some masquerading as self-care destroys relationships, community, and ultimately our very humanity.

And, and this is all true, right? Like, it, it. There are words that you can use as sort of like, when I hear them, I'm like, massive red flag. These words are things like trauma or toxic or, you know, normal people don't say that. That's not a word that normal people say. This isn't a word that comes downstream of real psychology.

This is a word that comes downstream of individuals attempting to implant within you things they can use to control you and create dependency.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then back to the New York Times piece. The idea that we are, quote unquote, authentic only in so far as we cut ourselves off from another, that the truest or most fundamental parts of our humanity can be found in our desires and not our obligations.

Risk cutting us off from the most important truths about being human. We are social animals. Now, I, I disagree with the second part, but I love the first part of this, which is to say that, that you. The truest parts of you are your desires and not your obligations. The truest parts of who you are are your obligations.

Yeah, your obligations to the future of humanity. Your desires are largely irrelevant because you didn't choose them, but if you look, yeah, it's, it's like your

Simone Collins: hind brain versus your prefrontal cortex. What do you wanna identify with more?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if you look at the urban monoculture, you know, with, with the whole concept of pride, pride parades, everything like that.

Mm-hmm. It is your desires, things like your arousal patterns that define identity rather than your obligations. As we always say, you know, the point of tism is we have to pay to the future, the debt that we owe, the past. We have to pay for the sacrifices our ancestors made so we can have the privilege of existence

Yeah.

To the future. Like, that's the way that you pay them back. And individuals who don't do that are fundamentally just stealing. They are stealing from their ancestor sacrifices. And, and I find it to be quite grotesque. But yeah, I mean,

Simone Collins: the punishment for that, because people have done this throughout the history of humanity is they're snuffed out.

They, yeah. They don't inherit the future. Like there, there is justice for this. It's just. A lost opportunity and a waste. So it's, it's disappointing because there are lots of people who I think are brilliant and funny and interesting and insightful and intelligent, who have been overtaken by depression and Analist philosophy who decide that they're definitely not going to try to inherit the future and.

I don't, I don't want that to be the case. I think that they, you know, they don't, I don't agree with everything they say, but I love their takes. Yeah. And I'd love to see someone continue to have these takes in the future, because someday they are going to be useful and we're losing them.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. This kind of therapy, which chalks up negative emotions to quote unquote trauma or quote unquote toxicity, encourages clients to marry condo, anything and anyone in their lives that has bad vibes, even mom and dad and even their future children. And I've, I've seen this as well. Yeah. Anything that, yeah, her,

Simone Collins: her rule with objects.

Marie Kondo is a Japanese influencer and organization, and her rule with objects is. Is it useful or does it spark joy? And if it doesn't, then you thank it and you get rid of it way, or,

Malcolm Collins: well, in the most are often trans individuals. Mm-hmm. I see this a lot with like, trans women who had kids back when they were men, and they very frequently, I almost say normalistic, cut off their kids.

So that they, because they, it allows them to more, you know, authentically live this new identity, which is often just about sex and self, you know, getting off as, as frequently as possible. But I mean, the, obviously the, the positive thing about all of this is there is, you know, justice in the end.

These individuals are not truly happy. You can see our, the life of a Cina Byte episode about Anna Valen, the vice reporter who went after Keisha about just how sad her daily life is. This is not a, a, a recipe. Like the great thing is all of this stuff, like, oh, do this to chase after self affirmation.

Better do this to chase after pleasure better. It, it gives you the exact opposite of everything that's on the lid. Right. Ultimately, you know, but in the short term, you know, it's easy to see how people are like drawn into this, right? Like, oh, well my parents don't affirm me for what I wanna believe.

Therefore they must be evil. And it's like, no, they're trying to protect your long-term mental health.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. But by urban monoculture standards, they are neither useful, nor do they spark joy. So they must

Malcolm Collins: discard you,

Simone Collins: muston them.

Malcolm Collins: Neither duty nor obligation nor reconciliation nor forg ness holds waddle in this therapeutic model.

If your family makes you feel icky sometimes just leave. Dad voted for Trump. No need to answer those phone calls. Mom is upset about your lifestyle choices. Easy. Just never talk to her again. Did the idea of having kids make you feel overwhelmed then just don't. Just don't. Like the infamous divorce story, I, this is all true, right?

Like, if, if, if somebody is just like, ah, whatever, like I don't wanna deal with it. I don't wanna deal with any, this is like trigger warnings. I don't wanna be exposed to anything that makes me feel anything other than pleasant. Right? Right. I, I, and that's what you, that's how you self-improve, right? You, you, you expose yourself to those things.

You learn how to deal with those things.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Are constantly avoided around those things, unable to develop resilience and, and therefore extremely brittle as a person, which is not gonna produce good outcomes. Not good,

Malcolm Collins: Which was, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really sad to see.

But it's, it, it is the core tenant of the urban mono. Don't expose yourself to anything that's emotionally challenging. Yeah. Family doesn't work when you do that. Although I will say I've been surprised how easy family has been for me. Like I remember growing up and I do remember like conflict and everything like that.

I mean, my parents did end up getting divorced and everything. And, and so I thought of all that as normal in a relationship. And I just don't, I have almost none of it was my wife. And I've seen this in our friends as well, who I just don't see them have the same conflicts. That is interesting.

Simone Collins: Everyone in, in.

Like our age cohort that we know that's married seems to have a very, very functional marriage.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I never hear of conflict or fights than talking down about each other.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think we're more mature. I mean, every generation to an extent improves upon the last and, and, and, and in some way.

And I think that. You know, emotionally the iteration of our generation that's going to survive. I mean, yes, there's a part of it that's totally fallen into the urban monoculture, but they're not gonna survive. They're not really relevant as like active generational players, but the ones who are having a lot of kids seem to be out much more emotionally healthy than their parents generation.

Yeah. Especially if they also had a lot of kids. Oh, she is being so sweet. She's just looking at daddy.

Simone Collins: She loves seeing you. Always lights up.

Malcolm Collins: And I do think that this is contributing to demographic collapse. I, I, I know that as well. I think that there are absolutely no point here. Like the infamous divorce story published in the Atlantic a few years back.

Empowerment means pulling the plug on family ties. The author Honor Jones wrote a 3000 word essay about why she decided to end her marriage after watching her children's drum and fantasizing about kitchen renovation. And then this is what this author said. I wanted and, and just when you're hearing this, you just hear the entitlement, right?

Like the, this is a vile, vile person. If she thought this was normal, and then that sharing, this would earn her praise, which it did was in the urban monoculture. I wanted to be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy. How much of my life, I mean, the architecture of my life, but also his essence, my soul, my mind.

Had I built around my husband, what could I be if I wasn't his wife? Maybe I would microdose, maybe I would have sex with women. Maybe I would write a book. I had caused so much upheaval. So much suffering, and for what? He asked me that at first again and again. For what? , So I could put my face in the wind so I could see the sun's glare.

I didn't want to say it out loud. Like, he's like, for what? Like there's no reason for you to be doing this. And then it's this. When I talk about this search for self-affirmation, this isn't just code for the trans people. This is everything. What she just wanted was self-affirmation, which she will not find real self-affirmation is only found in obligation and duty.

Simone Collins: Yeah, clearly her, her cry for help is, I just want to feel something that she in, in choosing to believe that her life as, as a mother and a wife. Didn't have any value whatsoever. She felt like she couldn't feel no,

Malcolm Collins: she wanted sex and art and having sex with women and microdosing like she could do Well, you can do all that while being married and a mother.

No one's stopping her. Yeah. No one stopping her.

Simone Collins: You know, she's just being lazy.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I really actually, I almost wanna do a follow up on whatever happened to this woman. Honor Jones did, did, did her life fall apart? I mean, I'm sure it did. Like that's always the end of all this, right? Like, your, your life ends up falling apart and you end up hating yourself because it's, it's a horrible mistake, the advice that the urban monoculture gives you, but it gives it to you so that you become more dedicated to it and more reliant on it.

And the state.

Any thoughts?

Simone Collins: I think we're starting to see a sea change in the direction away from this, not just because of these two articles that we're citing here where they're like, Hey, this is a problem and we need to do something about it. But I think there's just a lot of stuff where people are recognizing, like the whole post-Trump era, like we have to, we have to re rethink what the left is and what woke is, and.

Actually focus on outcomes that are positive. And I think we're going to see a mimetic market correction on this front.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: I, I don't know how much it can really happen though with therapy because these codependent relationships are extremely strong. And we've spoken with people who, who see a therapist multiple times a week and know that they have a codependent relationship and talk with their therapists about the codependent relationship, but have absolutely no plan or intention.

To do something about it, which is really disturbing. So I don't know if that's gonna change, but I do imagine that public discourse around it may change.

Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. As

Simone Collins: long though, as there's this mental health parity regulation in insurance funding in the United States, though, I think we are gonna see higher levels of this kind of pathologization of family and discomfort because.

There where there's money, there will be an industry, you know, there will be incentives to create these narratives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I love you Deone. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: I am on death door. I can barely move, so I'm just gonna do, just reheat

Malcolm Collins: that other night thing that I have in the fridge.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm gonna do the Burmese mint chicken with pineapple. Simone.

Malcolm Collins: Simone. Simone. Yeah. I think we didn't register what I said. I have a lot of leftovers from another night in the fridge right now. Oh. With rice. And it'll be good for another day. So just reheat my leftovers. It's not very much

Simone Collins: food.

Have you eaten anything else today?

Malcolm Collins: And then you can make me some gza. So it's enough food.

Simone Collins: That's extra work, but, okay. Great.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, then don't. Okay, then don't make me za. Don't reheat it just. I, I guess, make curry from another night and I'll reheat that during the day time.

You are an amazing woman. Love, love you.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

I love you too. You're so inspiring and I'm so glad to live with you. And I'm gonna take Tylenol and

this will pass. I

Malcolm Collins: feel this way. Not much I can do about it, I guess.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: it does. I love you too.

Speaker: I wanna go pink candy because I want blue cotton because I didn't touch anything. You didn't touch anything. So you want blue cotton candy and Titan. You want blue cotton candy? Or do you want pink cotton candy? I want pink cotton candy. Okay, so toast. So you're gonna have a blue stick and, and Titan and Octavia.

Speaker 2: You're gonna have pink cotton candy. Yeah. And toasty. You can have pink cotton candy on a blue stick. Does that sound good? I want pink. No, I like blue, blue, blue. Well, we'll see. I want, we'll see my friend. I like blue. You like blue?