النص الكامل لحلقة Sith-Pilled Zoomers [The Pugcast]

was, well, he makes a good case. I think that Lucas was trying to describe the sort of counterculture in the rebels. He actually said at one point that the empire was the United States and the rebels were the Vietcong. Okay. He was very much anti-US involvement there. Well, that, but that was an answer. That was where the first thing that came to mind is that in one sense, you're seeing with them a rebel, you know, well, it depends on how you're reading it, but it is kind of like the kind of think of late certain aspects of boomer culture that was critical of what they saw as the plasticity of empire of the previous generations, family, you know, kind of traditional family life, traditional church life. And so they were the ones that were kind of into, you know, promoting this Bohemian counter, the norms of the culture. And then when they become the norm of the culture, you know, it kicks back. But it kicks back in a different direction than they expected. They thought, well, maybe with the millennials, you'll get a more radicalization of their own dispositions. But with some of the next move, there is a suspicion of that whole counterculture as being likewise part of the empire that is not. Well, yeah. And that, I think that's a good observation time. But I also think those of us who have been around a little while and Zoomers are getting to see it, they're seeing how it ends. So, you know, they're looking at the debris left behind via these idealists and they're saying, are you serious? You know, you grew up in a world that I wish I had grown up in, that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, and the anti-establishment of boomers in the 70s are the establishment today. Yeah, well, that was, yeah, that's what I was onto. But you're right, the outcome of it is what has hurt. Yeah. So, so I've known lots of Bohemian people and seen them die. And without exception, they've died miserably. And bitterly. So, all of the ideals that were espoused as being kind of the new sort of alternative to that plasticity that you were talking about, ends grubbly and badly. And I'm talking about family members. I'm not just talking about, you know, somebody that I heard about. So, there, I think there's a lot of that. But I guess, get it back to the point that they are the establishment, but they're an establishment that's uniquely hypocritical. Yeah. I mean, we've never seen an establishment that's hypocritical. Yeah. Well, maybe that's a hard, it's too hard. But it's certainly inconsistent. So, it doesn't think, it still thinks it's hip and rebellious. That's what I'm using about it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that hypocrisy is part of what these pro-Anakin memes and this article are going after. You know, don't trust anyone over 30. Well, what do you do now? Yeah. When you're in your 80s and you're running things. And yeah, they point out, he points out that, you know, when you look at the Jedi order in the prequels, he refers to some of the movies that I didn't

see. But what is it that they don't like about Anakin? Well, number one, well, he's more talented than any of them are. Number two, he is, he's too old to be trained. He comes in at nine. So in other words, they didn't get him young enough to brainwash him. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. They object to the fact that he is, he is upset and avenges his mother's torture and murder. Uh, they are upset at the fact that he is married and has children. These are the things that are Anakin sends. Yeah. Now, when you look at it that way, you got to really wonder, are the Jedi's really the good guys? Well, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's good. That's a good question. Now, when I, when I've thought about the Jedi, I've always compared them to the Templars. There's that kind of Templar code. And the Templars were done in for some of the same reasons that Jedi are done in the film. They're too powerful. They're everywhere. They're an independent military organization. I mean, they're armed and they do stuff. And, and we know this story of the Templars how they were betrayed, simultaneously across Europe, attacked. And so that I always kind of connected the, the demise of the Jedi and the, and their, you know, obliteration with that. But that's just an, maybe it's just a coincidence. Yeah. Now, another thing that he talks about in the article, which again is one of these things we've heard about a lot, is the idea of a post-war consensus and how this post-war consensus is, you know, now breaking down. There are problems with this. So, for example, in the article, he says that everybody, you know, all the boomers viewed every conflict as being against Hitler. Right. Okay. Now, here's the problem with that. I'm a boomer. Okay. And when I was growing up, we defeated Hitler. He was dead and gone. The real threat were the communists, the Russians, the Soviets, excuse me. Or maybe the Chinese. The war for my generation was not World War II. It was Vietnam. Right. Okay. And we didn't see Vietnam as being a replay of World War II. Right. So this entire idea of the post-war consensus being, you know, part of it is viewing everything as Hitler, being anti-nationalism and all of that, not at all my experience is a boomer growing up. And I suspect that's true of most people in my generation. So this entire idea just sort of flattens what the experience of people going through this war and frankly mistakes their basic ideas. I guess the context in which they grew up. My guess is the reason they read it that way is because the left accuses everybody of being Hitler. So there's this kind of, well, if that's who you really hate, that's who we're going to embrace kind of problem. But because I agree with you, I grew up in the 60s. And I lived in the world of, you know, you know, bomb drills and you know, films that were about nuclear holocaust. And it was always the commies. It was never that was never the Nazis. No, the Nazis were an historical, you know, you still had films about World War II

and stuff. Oh, yeah. But those were situated in the past. That's a present threat. Yeah, the resurrection of that whole kind of fascism is definitely a product, a lot of a product of the left creating scare tactics to anyone who has a hint of stronger nationalism is going to be lumped in that category. It works against there because similar. I grew up in the 70s and 80s. But we had bomb drills. But again, it was Cold War. It was, you know, everything, but there was a certain fascination. What's what's going on behind those closed walls, you know, and I think it was going both ways. But the, you know, I think just just I'm thinking intuitively growing up in those times, I mean, and I grew up in Virginia. So I mean, the left left at that time were, you know, kind of looked at largely as a bunch of loonies. They just were. And now they kind of morphed and they took over the narrative of the universities completely. That's that's where to, so I guess that's what I'm getting at is is that these zoomers have grown up in a world that has the story that it tells itself that is the product of these left wing, you know, intellectuals, academics. And so they've been subject to this their entire lives. I mean, they've they've gotten it first fed in high school in junior high and social studies class and just history class. And so I think there's a there is, I guess, a an understandable I guess what best way to put an understandable reaction to that. Now the question is is whether or not it's the right reaction and whether it's constructive and that kind of thing. Yeah. And you know, on one level, the question is whether you can actually view that as the consensus for the boomers because for most of us that was not the consensus. It was the one that that ended up because of the the Rudy Dutchke's along March through the institutions. It's the one that ended up dominating education media increasingly long things like that. Well, but that was a self-conscious effort on the part of a small number of people to take control of those things. So let me let me let me let it it's hardly it's hardly I mean, even in the democratic party until the last election, it wasn't really mainstream. Yeah, I guess the thing I would like to also present as in a sympathetic way is the boomers do have a tendency to not retire. They just keep hanging on in every part of the world every they just don't you know, you just see these you know, octogenarians in the Senate, you know, just like they're almost comatose. And you're looking at this literally. Yeah, just just retired, dude, leaves some space for somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. Now, yeah, now that that's the thing about this. I think the entire notion of the post-work consensus in viewing everybody has said learn all that is not true in general of the boomers. So it can be true of the left at least in their rhetoric. But there is a legitimate complaint that is that these pro-Annecann memes and such are pointing to. There's a legitimate gripe here. Yeah. And that's something that I think that we we don't I don't think either side the left or the right is actually really addressing that problem. And you know, it is a real problem. I see it with my kids. You know, my son is under employed. The only way he could afford a house was with some special programs because he's under employed. So he's eligible for them. You know, and so on. There are real problems facing that generation. And frankly, yes, it's the boomer's hanging on forever is a big part of it. Making them for others. I mean, heck, that was one of that because I mean, the generation I'm from, I mean, as soon as you got out, there were still very young boomers in places. They didn't move. There was no mobility. Very few, especially in the academic world. And they hold onto those chairs all the way again. Yeah, they're crippled at certain points and and have obvious dementia, but they're still able to do what they do when you get what else you know, again, you can do 600 different things, but you, no matter what you invest in, the options get thinner and thinner with so many and the boomers were a lot of a lot of people. So and it's amazing that it's already they've stayed in long enough to affect large scale the ex generation. And then, you know, then, then the one that follows kind of the millennials, they have nothing to do, but kind of go back through protest and give a meaning in life because not many places the land there and they're not equipped to do much. And this next generation, I have kids in it and the like and a lot of them, too, they want to work, they want to they want to make their way, they want to start already because they've seen what happens when they rely or depend on people that are not dependable in institutions. And yeah, it's not there for them and it for them, it's very frustrating and it makes them wonder, what do I do? Yeah, I think I've got mixed feelings because I agree that, you know, the present moment is it's a very challenging environment and I think partly we need to recover an older way of thinking about how families work and what I mean by that is intergenerational sort of cooperation between you know, people who are older and who are younger, you know, you still have and this does characterize a lot of boomers, a kind of blindness which goes, hey, no one helped me, you know, in fact, my parents didn't even know where I was half the time. And so consequently, I went out and made my own way and I'm a believer in, you know, individual responsibility and, you know, the complaint you guys have, you're just whining, that kind of thing. So, but the problem with that is there's enough truth and that, you know, they can go on saying that kind of thing, but what they don't see is that there's some things that are no longer the case, that really is different in the lottery respects now. And so because it's different, you know, younger people do need the extra help that maybe some

boomers didn't get. You know, when I was a kid, it wasn't that unusual for a blue collar worker to be a single fan, you know, single earner in the family, have, you know, four kids or whatever, own their house and have a boat or some sort of vacation home on one income blue collar. Yeah, you cannot compare what the current generation is facing with those conditions. It just, yeah, no. I think another dimensionist, this or feature to it is a kind of scripting that a lot of younger people have received through media that idealizes kind of the Silicon Valley tech life. And more or less ignores the other possibilities. So, you know, an example that we are kind of seeing unfold right now or sort of the situation as is unfolding right now is a lot of people who maybe 20 years ago would have been readily employed or quickly employed right at a college because of their abilities in coding and so forth can't get a job. I've got enough views in that situation. Right now, there's just nothing. And then AI is taken away a number of the entry level positions. The stuff that used to be done by young people is now being done by machines. Well, I have a friend who is an engineer who specializes in a very, very, very precise area in industry and he is just thrilled to death because he can use AI tools to do some very complex programming that would take him a very, very long time to try to do himself. But it can do very complex programming and have it right the first time. I mean, so AI isn't just hitting entry level things. Now, now this friend is happy about that, but he recognizes what the problem is going to be. I read an article that in law, AI assistants are going to basically wipe out entry level positions for lawyers. But in 20 years, what does that mean? You don't have any experienced lawyers. Right. Let's say figured out a way to extend their life spans. That's the other sort of creepy prospect. What let's say the boomers just don't die for 150 years. Transhumanist hell. That's right. You know, basically the music will just never change. It'll just be the 1970s and early 80s for the next 200 years on pop radio. You know, but more seriously, so today, I had a young man of show at the house to take the moss off the roof here. So one of the big things that's a problem here in the northwest is moss on roofs, right. And it's because we get a lot of rain and all that kind of stuff. So, but anyway, this guy, this guy, he must be right out of high school. He's real young. He was up on the roof. You know, he's doing the sort of work that I think there are a lot of positions out there that to fill. So I was looking at an article in Wall Street Journal and when it came to the labor shortage with the trades, the new strategy is let's get the girls to do as much as we can because the guys aren't showing up. So here's so some of these zoomers need to wise up at least in this respect. So I have a friend back in Connecticut and his oldest son went to trade school and I

think there were 15 guys in the graduating class and they were all hired by electric boat. So this is, you know, electric boat makes nuclear subs. And so there's a huge build out right now in nuclear subs. He was the only guy that passed the drug test. Dude, if you are like doing drugs, shut up. Don't complain. Get off it. Get your life together. Show up to work on time. Sober. That's it. You need to get your act together. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, that that whole, you know, we know who we know who helped provide the culture for that. Oh, sure. That boomers. That's right. That's right. So, you know, we got, yeah, here's a fun of the end of the Pacific Northwest. You know, it's okay for you to do Ghanja, but if you try to smoke a cigarette, you're, you're a really bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so many things that just have leveled badly, but it's, you know, and they're, I mean, there's always the side of, you know, of learning virtues and being able to exercise them, they're always going to be on the side of your benefit, no matter how challenging your situation is for whatever reason. And, and things like that. I mean, living responsibly. Yeah. Not, you know, not doing the obvious destroying your brain and your body through drugs and any kind of addictions and abuse. And yeah. And by the way, this, the story I just told about electric boat, I've got other stories like that. It's not the, it's not like a one off or like an, an, an, an unusual situation. One of my sons works at a very large steel firming in Connecticut and he says, the big problem is getting sober guys. Yeah. And that's a, you know, and that's a highly distracted world. And, and you know, it's, it's, I'm not in the mind. I mean, I don't just talk to enough of them. They're, they're kind of closed generation. You, my sons generation, they don't like to sit around and talk to old dudes. And I know that can be almost every generation, but they, it's almost like a secret world. And there, there is a kind of suspicious of older generations. And, and there is, on the one side, there's kind of, you know, you get this sense of nihilisms, effects. But on the other, I, I, I, you know, I'm impressed by the fact that a lot of them haven't given up. A lot of them are returning to churches and want families. Yeah. But by the way, do you hear that noise in the background? I don't know if you hear that. That's the guy using a vacuum. Yeah, yeah, yeah, shop back to clean out the gutter after he just cleaned it up the roof. And then, so I'm serious. I think this kid is like 19 years old. Yeah. Well, that's, and I, you know, I've seen it a couple of my sons friends started a thing where they do window cleaning. And there, they're not even, I think they're, you know, 19 years old. And then there's a young girl here. We just ran into her dad. She's got into remodeling old furniture and selling it. She's in high school still. Now the business has taken off. She's still finishing high school. But her dad has stopped his job and he's renovating and doing furniture. There's that much, you know, look for it. So there are ways people can craft in and find things. It takes some imagination and some, you know, trial and error, but not everything is closed down. Right. Now this connects in with an idea. I forgot who came up with this, but the idea of overproduction of elites. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you have people who have gone off to college who've done all of the things that we told them they should do. Yeah. And they have these expectations that they're going to move into, you know, at least solid career tracks in whatever area. Now some of them are, you know, some of them expect to get the corner office right out of college. I mean, you do have that problem. But most of them, I think, are just just understand, okay, yeah, they're, they're, I'm going to have to work my way up. But they find their way in completely blocked. And, you know, so we overproduce people who have these high expectations for where they're going to go, what their career is going to be. And then they're blocked off from doing it. Yeah. Partly by the boomers, partly other things. So the reason why that becomes important is historically that group is the group that becomes revolutionaries. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so just think about what everybody's worried about in Europe. You have a bunch of people immigrating into the continent who are military age men. They're not, we're not talking about lots of little children. We're not talking about lots of girls. We're talking about, you know, men between the ages of like 20 and 35 in mass. And it's created a huge problem. So, you know, we're, we're in effect creating a generation of younger men who at the, in the prime of their life where they can do the most violence and are most likely to resort to violence. When you get older, I mean, you're just like, yeah, I don't want to do that. It would be like a lot of work. I just want to rest. Yeah, give me a beer. But when you're young, you know, and you got all this energy and you got this, this sense of grievance, you know, somebody's, you know, if I were like a black midget, I would be hired by now. You know, that kind of thing. I'm using, you know, the way these guys think. And it's not entirely erroneous either. You know, they're just so obvious that, you know, there's preferential treatment. So, you know, you get stuff like in Seattle. I just saw that the mayor there, this chick who, you know, again, is, you know, you're just your stereotypical left wing liberal woman kind of thing who just doesn't seem to have any common sense. And, you know, they want to revitalize the downtown because their policies have essentially made it a really difficult place to do anything. But what they said is we're going to provide preferential treatment for, you know, all of the, you know, categories. Essentially meaning that all these people get help except you, young white man. And, you know, young

white men are like saying, well, okay, I wasn't like a slave owner in like 1834 in South Carolina. I'm just, you know, 19 years old here on the West Coast. I've, you know, lived in this super liberal environment entire life. And I've even paraded all the things you wanted me to say. But it doesn't seem to help. You know, and so you just started against me. Yeah. I said years ago that that kind of thinking, that kind of practice. Is a recipe for creating white supremacists? Yeah. What we see it. It's happening. It's happening. Yeah. Well, that's the, you know, and that's one I, you know, it's like I said, it can either be healthily oriented or it's going to find its way into kind of just, you know, those passions, you know, unpurified can go in bad places. And, and, you know, again, I'm encouraged by the large amount of time. I'm going, you know, I've been visiting a church that a friend is a minister at. And the young, the amount of young men coming on their own early is impressive. And they, they are, and so that is a much better direction of getting a hold of those, those passions than, you know, wandering and bitter. And then, you know, connecting with other people that are bitter too and then starting to, to basically, yeah, that's, that's the downside of the internet and social media. And, you know, it's wonderful when you connect with people who are in that positive when it comes to your life and thinking. But it's just awful when they just, you end up with this downward spiral, the sort of this grievance sort of, you know, sort of, I don't know, um, world-poil that you're just getting sucked into. Yeah, getting blackpilled. Yeah, right. Well, and the, you know, the other issue is, is the, you know, what, what other generations and, you know, thanks to late 60s and the sexual revolution ruined a lot of these people don't even have relational. Yeah. They want to a lot. I talk to them. They want to have relationships, but it's, it's a closed door. Most of the people that they want to aren't the kind of people that are the kind to have a relationship with, you know, and they just, on both on one side, very loose morals, but on the other people aren't even interested in really relationships, much less anything solid. So, so you're, you're looking at a big mess that no social philosophy is going to fix or political, um, hanging. Yeah, he's, he's now got the blower going. So I'm going to, I'm not hearing it. So, boy, it won't, won't come across on the recording. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, the whole dating thing is, is just a total mess. Right now, more men want to get married and have kids than women. Yep. Um, I've, I've read about guys who, you know, talk about, I'm, I'm never going to ask a woman out because if, if she doesn't want to go out, I may end up being on a TikTok or Instagram video being mocked. Yeah. Why should I take that kind of risk? Or why should I take a risk being married? Women initiate most of the divorces and then they get

custody of the kids and, and, and half of everything I make. Um, you know, it's just not worth the rest. And they're used to a grieve or culture. Yeah. But they're used to divorce culture too and they've a lot of them been affected by it and they don't want the extra paying. It's the protected trying to protect themselves. So there is a, there is a, you know, a soup sitting there that is, uh, is easy to be exploited. Um, and yet also easy to probably morph into very dangerous territories. Yeah. And, you know, uh, Rod Draer talks about, he's been regularly talking about in his sub-stack, the problems that young men are facing. And he says, look, you know, if, if, if you're an old and he calls himself an old, even though he's a generation or two behind me, um, if, if, just hurts. Um, but if, if you're, you know, if you're one of these older generations, you don't actually appreciate what the zoomer men are going through and you have no idea just how mad they are, how really angry they are. Um, he talks about, um, um, groipers, uh, who are followers of Mick Fountaise, who, uh, you know, they, they end up being anti-Semitic. They're all kinds of other problems attached to them. But, yeah, but, um, apparently, they're a big constituency within young, among young Republicans. Uh, yeah, at least according to, uh, Rod's informal questions. And he says, a lot of these guys don't want to fix the system. They just want to tear the whole thing down. Right. Yeah. So once again, we're at Anakin. Well, and, and this, the thing about that is, uh, you know, when you've never built anything, you don't have any sense of the value of something that has been built, nor do you have any sense of what it takes to build something. So this idea that you just tear something down and start from scratch, um, that's the problem that left has been, you know, as a thing that left has been guilty about, you know, of forever. And that's why I know it's such a, an awful thing when the left requires power and starts tearing through institutions and destroying them. And it's that, but I think indefinitely it's worth qualifying. I think their kind of tearing down is not what the left in its endless innovations is up to. Um, there's this just as much, I think, oriented to the left and its agendas and its consequences, whether that articulated that way. Now, I think it's more nihilistic. Um, I, I think that the tearing, I don't even know that it's a constructive, they're looking for constructive alternative. For them, I think they're hurt and the tearing down go together and, uh, you know, get rid of, you know, tear down and you get rid of that kind of, you know, sword that's sticking in you. Um, that's the sense I get because you don't hear much in terms of what they would do. You know what I mean? It's not, whereas the left they're always going to tell you what they're going to do. Oh, we're going to dismantle this and then basically take everything from people who have built it. And

then you don't have that. It's not even that kind of, uh, that kind of, uh, almost, uh, it's different. There's a different vibe going on between the two. That's not utopian. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So anyway, so I've seen these memes too, you know, with Anakin and stuff. So does this author end on any sort of, uh, with any, any recommendations or is it just a kind of a, a bathos, you know, where they're just, it's like we're bathing in the, our, our misery. Oh, no, no, he definitely has suggestions. So what are they? Yeah, I didn't get all the way to the end. Yeah. He says that, young, the, the boomers are only able to maintain power because people think they have power. Much like the Jedi in the movies. And so his recommendation is to do what Anakin did to bring down the system and to put yourself in power. It's as simple as that. I mean, it's very niche in a lot. Yeah. That's what I was. It's what it sounded like. Yeah. It's, it's basically all right. Get rid of the older generation. Stop sending them their retirement checks. We're social security's in Canada, I believe. Uh, yeah, he's a Canadian. So whatever they've got, you know, you don't stop paying them. Just cut off, cut off, don't sign the checks. Um, and take control and reorient everything around yourself, just like Anakin did. So when it comes to like the nuts and bolts of how a political system works, uh, it doesn't strike me as this is an L.A.K. way to get elected. Uh, if there are enough enough of those people, right, um, then they'd already be in power. So this is still, there's still, you know, unless you're wanting to rescind the voting rights of older people and boomers and stuff like that, that's still a huge, uh, electoral, you know, uh, power base, uh, for the status quo. Yeah. It's, but I think this is where the kind of, the Nietzschean thing plays in. It's kind of the Uber bench, the beyond caring about the consequence and even whether or not playing by the political rules, and I think you're right, they don't have, they don't muster up the power, but they are a lot of men who have a lot of power if they'd realize it and that unite with it. And so there is kind of, I mean, they're, they were the ones, you know, they're, they're, they're extension of a lot of what built the world. And so, um, in a sense that it, let's take away, you know, the people who are invested in the cultures they want to tear down. Let's just take that, that side out of it for a minute and just think about, you know, where they're going with it. I mean, what they're basically saying is they don't have options left. They've been hurt by this by people who didn't care how they don't have anything, how they haven't had a secure world or get to any of the real advantages, whether they have or haven't from the world that was built. And so, you know, basically beyond good and evil, um, they're, they're, it's, it is Mike makes right. And if they can muster up the, the, the might, which in principle, at least historically, they could then they don't mind taking down everything else, but they would not win on a political platform that way, at least not yet. But you know, what? National socialism, I hate to go back to that one because I don't want to play blame Hitler and everything, but National socialism played on some of that kind of stuff to develop. The strong niche in disposition of, of ethics that, you know, we are at the forefront of guist. We are evolution at its highest stage. And so anything less than fully what we are can go. We can vermin. We can get rid of it. Um, and so, uh, there, there are probably niche intemptations there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no doubt. This, uh, this, uh, this, uh, that's exactly where this article is going. Basically, saying that that the, the, uh, the, the Xermer Man should just simply basically take over because the only way the boomers stay in power is because we let them. They actually are weak. They have no, no, they, you know, they have no real power except through the illusion that they have power. That's the only power that they have is basically what the guy says. So just stop living under the illusion. Just you reject it and take, take it over. That's the guy's essentially the guy's, uh, prescription. And well, in a certain sense, obviously, when you get older, you don't have the physical strength or even the kind of the strength of will sometimes, uh, to do the things that, uh, need to be done. Yeah. Well, I'd like to remind you there, I forgot the law school, but one of their, the alumni associations of, of a law school's motto is youth and skill is no match for old age and treachery. Yeah. Well, there's that, you know, there is the ability that older people have to, to, uh, think about things and, and sort of, uh, pursue their interests in a crafty way. Sure. Yeah. Well, that, that was supposed to lighten the mood, but I guess I didn't. Yeah. Um, yeah. So the, the, um, the thing that, that really struck me about the article, I mean, aside from my, my basic gripe about, you know, the whole idea of the post work consensus and the boomers treating the boomers as a whole as if they were this, you know, as if they were the radicals that really took over the institutions and now are, are, uh, firmly and sconstant them. I mean, aside from that, the thing that really struck me is the, the level of, um, sheer will to power. Yeah. That, that, I mean, this is straight, Nietzsche and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, you know, you, you brought out earlier Tom, it's something I've noticed. And that is there is a much more constructive response that we see happening in certain pockets of Christianity. Um, you know, I know that in, uh, you know, at the eastern orthodox, if there's a lot of young guys, you know, in, in, in the, in the, in the world, there's a lot of young guys in the reform, there's a lot of young guys, yeah, right. Catholics grow in. Yeah. Yeah. So we have these pockets, you know, I, you know, it,

it's not happening at all in mainstream, you know, sort of mainline Protestantism. Um, I doubt if it's happening much at all in, say, big box, you know, sort of, um, entertainment style evangelicalism. I think that, yeah, the people who were in that world are the people who are going to these other places. They're, they're, that's right. We're all coming to, so like in my church, we've got a lot of people are coming out of that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they, they're discovering catacasins for the first time in their lives. They've been Christians for, you know, they've been attending church and tar lives and they didn't even know what the word catacasum meant. Yeah. So they came to be with us. Um, so there's, there's a lot of like vitality that is bleeding away from those big box entertainment centered churches, into these other more historic expressions of Christianity. Yeah. And there's, there's a masculine vibe. I mean, these guys often are married and do have kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's important to, to note that just like I think this article, um, you know, stereotype and flattened out the whole boomer thing, particularly by ignoring stuff like the Cold War and, you know, how, how that played out. I think that that we have to be careful not to do the same thing with the zoomers. Yeah. To say that, that they're all, they're all Anakin light, you know, or something like that. Um, we, you know, they're, you know, you do, you do have the guys who are going into the traits who are working who are, um, guys going to college and succeeding there and all that. We do need to recognize that they're facing some, some pretty unique challenges that are different from anything we've seen before. But by the same token, we also, I think, need to communicate to the ones that have been black who say that, you know, this is the worst it's ever been. No, it isn't. Yeah. You, you, you, you aren't living through hyperinflation in Germany or any number of other countries. You're not living through the Great Depression. You're not living through the World War. You're not, you know, I mean, there were a lot of periods you're not living through the Black Death to go with my, my area. So, you know, there, there are things aren't good. Okay. Yes. But we also have to be careful not to exaggerate how bad they are. And further, we have to be careful not to completely flatten out the zoomers as if they're all one thing. They're not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, it's just like, like you said, there's moods. I think that's what where this article's picking up on. There are these moods that are showing up in these generations that, you know, that that can stick around and do damage. And yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, I think oftentimes people, especially young people when they're dealing with frustrations for the first time that they're much more consciously aware of it. I mean, they probably knew it growing up. But now they're at an age of reflection. And what do I do? And yeah, we have a tendency to say, you know, gosh, no other generations had to deal with it as bad as we are. But they're really just measuring that experientially from maybe their parents or their grandparents or something like that. And yeah, this is, it's, you know, not to minimize the real struggles and challenges they have because they are real and they are challenges. But on the flip side, to turn to such a nihilistic alternative and not have something hopeful, that's a sad thread in this. And I think this is where as a Christian, we have something to to not just offer. It's something there for them. I hope that I think some of these people are finding and and they're anchoring themselves too. And I think that's going to be a much healthier place for these people to land rather than something so destructive. Yeah, the irony is that one of the accusations, which I think is reasonably accurate about the boomers is, yeah, they remember their parents generation of fought in the world or two, but they really think that history really modern history begins with them. Yeah. Okay. There's this, there's 10, this tendency to make, culturally, to make themselves sort of the center of everything. And the odd thing is that the Zoomers make exactly the same mistake by thinking that everything that history begins with the boomers. And so they can say things are worse now than they've ever been because they're only looking back to generations, regenerations, you know, to, you know, to the 60s and 70s. Now, again, we can make an argument about whether or not, you know, I mean, there were bad times during this as well. I remember in the mid 70s, no, excuse me, not the 70s. I remember in the 90s, mid 90s, when inflation was higher than it is now. And I thought I would never be able to buy a house. You know, so there've been bad times before too, but they are facing real problems. And again, it's a mistake not to acknowledge that and not try to do what is right to remedy that. Yeah, one thing too to think about is when we look at sort of like the cultural milieu, there are certain places that are more dank and dark than others. So, academia, of course, is just awful when it comes to this stuff, regarding young men and so forth. There's certain professions where you can just more or less assume that's the case. You know, if you were thinking about maybe some kind of career aspirations to be in like mental health care or in the arts community, you know, in that kind of thing. So, there are those pockets where it just really is a bad place to be if you're a young white man. But there are other places where things are still pretty good. And two, I would like to propose that if you are really sharp, it's still the world is your oyster. And what I mean by that is I do know that if you score high in the SAT and you're a white guy, you will get a lot of positive attention. There is so much need in academia right now to even things out,

particularly when it comes to the number of female students to male students. If you are in the top 5% in the SAT, you can pretty much count on a lot of schools having some strong interest in you. And so, and there are lots of reasons for this. There are a few institutions that are more hypocritical than the recruiting arm of Ivy League school. Yeah, they say one thing and they do a different thing. It's economics in a lot of it for universities. They realize if they they keep going down the path they go, they're not going to sustain their salaries in their tenure track. But let's also just think about another feature to this. So, who are the who are the entrepreneurs? Who are the most likely people to become billionaires and multi-millionaires? It's guys. Let's just be perfectly frank about it. And they know that. So, a lot of the women who pursue degrees in higher education are looking to work in areas where there's a pretty firm cap on what they're going to earn in life. And when it comes to what's going on in say Silicon Valley, it's just one example, but it's just all over the place, you know, an energy and so forth. The further away you get from say established corporate life or established, say institutions and you know, education is so forth and you get into like the cutting edge part of the economy, the more the testosterone level goes up. And you find yourself almost exclusively serenity by other men. And these guys are often incredibly smart. And they also have a number of other characteristics that we normally associate with masculinity. In other words, high risk tolerance and ability to live with ambiguity and ability to kind of to lead and be forceful when necessary an ability to be cutthroat and negotiations. All these different kinds of things, which if so if you are that kind of guy. And that's a that's a minority. Let's be honest, you know, there's just only so many guys who are cut out for that world. But if but I've I've met a lot of young guys who are doing really well and they tend to be super bright, really good with say, you know, sort of the technical side of things, they're opportunistic, they've got high risk tolerance. And they really think well on their feet and they know how to communicate. So you're talking about an a-lister. So if you're an a-lister, it's still the world is still a great place. You know, but if you're not one of those guys and you maybe looking over there and saying, man, I could never do that. It seems as though kind of the stuff that had been there for for other sorts of guys to do is drying up. Particularly if you're not willing to get your hands dirty, work outside or things like that where there's still a lot of opportunity. And I know guys who are you know, doing really well plumbing and working in the trades, I mean, six figure guys. But you know, again, that's a different kind of again, if you're not, you know, there's some guys out there just I just couldn't do that and just not cut up for

that. So it's sort of like it's sort of like the dumbbell, you know, at the extremes, you know, where it's like the trades and entrepreneurial sort of endeavors, that's still really open. Those places still really open. But it's in the kind of like the middle area that a lot of guys in the past would find a lot of opportunity and that's dried up. Yeah, I think that that's a reasonable summary of the situation, but the fact of the matter is most guys are in that middle. That's right. Yeah. And again, going back to the year for production of elites, this is this does not look good. There's a military historian specializing in civil wars that Rod Draer talks about a fair amount and he says that, you know, when you take a look at the the conditions that lead to civil war, you know, there are something like six of them that he names. Every single one of them is in place. Yeah. You know, and a lot of it has to do with well, you know, with immigration with again, over production of elites and a whole host of other things. So this is actually a very dangerous situation. And those guys who say they just wanted to hear the whole thing down, we got to take that really seriously and we've got to we've got to give them hope. We've got to give them we've got to give them a way that they can actually see working for them to get them closer to where they want to be. Because otherwise, this whole thing looks like it the heads know we're good. Yeah. Yeah. So we're getting to the point we should start wrapping up. Anything that you want to say as we wrap up, Tom? No, man, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot going on there. And I mean, I think probably the mixture of this situation with the fragmented world of relationships is what intensifies the kind of frustration. And I think that is something that we've all been trying to minister into in some way. And it's not it's not easy to, you know, it's not there's no easy fix. But definitely keeping these reflections that hope out there definitely, I think, is part of what we can give to to Cara souls in this time. Yeah. Anything you want to wrap up with there, Glenn? No, I think I've I pretty much said what I wanted to say. So we're good. Okay. Well, we thank you for listening to this episode of the Theology Podcast. We will have a link in the show notes to the article that Glenn has referred to throughout the show. And it's fairly lengthy article. So when it when it don't be surprised when you see just how long it is because it and it'll take you a while to get through it. But also, if you like the kinds of things we talk about, you know, or we like the conversations that we have on the podcast and you'd like to help us out, we would really appreciate it. You can go to the link in the show notes and check out our Patreon page. One last thing, Tom and I are probably going to be doing a live podcast in the North Shore of Boston near Gordon College in early January. We we've got a lot to we there's the person we're working with. We need to iron things out with. And so there's nothing in particular to announce in terms of time and day and stuff like that. But it is coming. And if you're on the North Shore of Boston, you'd like to hang out with us. Keep your ears open. We'll be saying something about that soon. Okay, that's enough for now. Thanks a lot and bye-bye. Bye-bye. Theology podcast is a ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Battleground, Washington. The Theology podcast is produced and edited by a Wileycraft Productions of Nashville, Tennessee.