The term “culture shock” was introduced by Kalvero Oberg in 1954 to refer to an “abrupt loss of the familiar” or the “shock of the new.” Culture shock is caused by the anxiety that is associated with the loss of familiar signs and symbols that permeated one’s life before reaching the new environment. For years the term has appeared in titles of books written for disoriented newcomers moving to different parts of the world. In the video interview Konstantin Kisin doesn’t use that term, but it certainly applies to the experience of one’s own society losing its social norms and values. Culture shock is also witnessing alien behavior by those (many?) you thought members of your tribe.

For those who prefer reading I provide an excerpted synopsis from the closed captions. I also took the liberty of lacing the text with Jimbob and other cartoons and images that come at contemporary culture shock from different angles.

Introducing Konstantin Kisin

I’m looking forward to my conversation today with Konstantin Kisin.  This will be the third time we’ve talked and I’ve come to regard him as a good friend and a very spirited and insightful man who grew up in Russia. He’s known Britain and recently wrote a book An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, which I thoroughly recommend. It’s a powerful reminder of why we should not take for granted the good things we have.  He’s also a co-host of the very popular social commentary podcast Trigonometry which I know has many viewers in my own home country as well as here in Britain.

So Konstantin thanks for making it back over here and since we last talked you’ve become a dad with Nikolai just after we were together last time.

How has that experience affected your view of the world?

KK: First of all it’s awesome it’s just awesome, Fatherhood is the best thing ever. True, I haven’t slept that well for 11 months now as I did on the trip over. So not getting a lot of sleep but I love it.

Has it changed me yeah, I think it’s it’s softened me a little bit actually, it’s taken some of the edges off. It’s made me aware that it’s really really important to try and communicate in a way that makes it easier for other people to hear. Because before I likely felt the most important thing is to get my opinion out in a way that draws attention. Whereas now I really feel it’s about persuading people.

Part of it is when you see a baby you kind of realize that all human beings were that way once, and they’ve been shaped and morphed into different things by the experiences that they have. But they once were all that pure innocence. So it’s made it easier for me to connect with people as human beings I think.

Parenting in the age of social media.

Tell me about Parenting in the age of social media. It won’t be long he’ll get a bit older and he’ll notice his friends using social media and he’s going to want to use it too. How are you going to handle that what will your attitude be?

The idealistic version of me says he’s not getting the smartphone until at least 16. Oh good luck with that which is what everyone says. The truth is we’ll find out.

We just had you on trigonometry and we talked about the impact social media is having on us. I genuinely think this isn’t a mission for me but anyone who invents a smartphone that allows children to use certain apps and not others is going to make a killing. Because there’s going to be a huge demand from parents for a way that their children are able to still be connected to the world because that’s important you know. We’ve got a a guy that works for us who’s 17 years old and he’s incredible at understanding social media and YouTube and so on. So you don’t want to cut your children off from this new technology and being able to use it for for work and for their lives.

It’s going to be essential on the other hand I think there’s so much darkness and misery and addiction frankly that comes with with being on a phone particularly when your brain is not fully formed. That is definitely something that we have to protect our children against as well. So I guess the truth is we’ll find out.

How women have been brainwashed

You recently said that and I’m quoting: One of the biggest unspoken truths of modern Western Society is that women have been brainwashed into acting in ways that are fundamentally against their own long-term happiness and well-being, in order to maintain the myth that men and women are the same.

You’ll be surprised I’ve got quite a lot of hostile attention online but it got a lot of very positive attention as well. I’m only joking of course, but we all know that I’m not saying anything that people don’t know. And it was sparked by a conversation I had with somebody.

There are different ways to slice that particular statement; I probably regret using the word brainwashed just because that made it harder for people to hear what I was saying. Even people who agree with me generally. But look at what dating on social media or dating on apps has done to the way that men and women connect and have sex and all of these things. Women are increasingly now encouraged to have sex in the way that we think of men being more naturally leaning towards–which is transactional, you know,one-night stands no attachment. The fact is, it doesn’t actually make men happy either, but it really makes women unhappy if you talk to women about it. We’ve had a number of guests on the show particularly Louise Perry and Mary Harrington.

Also what really sparked that was a couple of conversations I had with women and one of which was after my Oxford Union speech. I was invited to do a number of things and one of them was unherd hosting an evening that I was a part of. Freddie who hosts that show told me: There’s something different about you since you since you had a son, something is going on. And I said, The future is no longer an abstraction. He has a face and it has a name and we talked about that and how my view of the world has changed and you know that that’s generally what I think.

And then I was standing outside and a woman came over to me she said thank you so much for that. It’s really changed the way I think about things particularly about children. I never thought about children, never thought that’s what I wanted, but this is what I want now. And I said how old are you and she said 43. Wow. And I hope to God that they’re able to to have a child and and get what they want, but the truth is that’s unlikely. There are many many people who are in that position in our world who’ve been, maybe brainwashed is the wrong word, but who’ve been encouraged to forget about the things that actually matter.

I’m not saying every woman should have a child. There are no shoulds in what I’m saying. And actually I think that’s one of the places people often have gone wrong and one of the reasons people resist “Traditional Values” is that they’ve been imposed with a sort of Iron Will. That’s instead of being told that if you want meaning and fulfillment in life, that’s what everybody wants, the path to that for you, not for everybody but for most people, is going to involve family and children.

Just you know I have so many conversations with women who don’t want to say this in public because it’s uncomfortable and you get attacked and whatever. Who say, you know I was obsessed with my career the whole time and then I had a child and it literally changes your brain, it literally changes you. And it does and I I think we’ve got to start talking about it. You know as well as I do, we are demographically speaking in a really dark place and if we continue down this path it’s not going to end well.

But more importantly, it’s not about asking people to have children for the sake of the nation. What we can do is say to people what do you actually want, that meaning that you crave that every human being craves, that purpose that fulfillment, human beings have known for Millennia where that comes from.

You know this existence that we live in now has necessarily put a lot of people into a mental health crisis. Well the answer to mental health is quite often meaning and purpose. And for some people that is going to be work, for others it will be the contribution they make to others. For many people it’s going to be their own family.

The depopulation bomb

Some people are now referring to the depopulation bomb because we’ve had decades since the club of Rome saying, echoing Malthus earlier saying the world can’t support this population. We’ve got to cut it back and not many people have really realized that outside of Africa or some parts of the Middle East what’s happening is actually a depopulation bomb. China is leading the way and it won’t be long;  The maths are fascinating on this. Before long it will be unusual for somebody to have siblings and aunts and uncles, so that most basic of family communities is contracting.

And I suspect we’re starting to see the beginnings of a different pandemic, a pandemic of loneliness. We’re already live in this atomized society, and you know it’s not just about culture. There’s an economic Dimension to it as well, which is how hard it is for young people to pair up and get together. It’s not by any means the only reason but that’s also part of it.

Look at the bunch of atomized individuals on their cell phones, on the internet, on social media. That’s not a recipe for a happy society and so the downstream impacts of that way of being are going to be tremendous and not in a good way.

Modern dating and the problems with dating apps

So let’s trace that through. Firstly the impact of social media on the way we date now. There’s a bit of research around showing actually that it’s disastrous. You’ve got a narrow group of men who are very attractive via social media dating apps, much more attractive than they might be if you’ve met them at the pub or you know in the park the way you might have once. And they get all the attention and that’s not good for them, and then when they’re bored will cruelly just dump somebody in the ways you can with social media. So it’s not working for women either

What impact is that sort of social media role now in people meeting and forming relationships?

Well they’re not forming relationships, a lot of them. And you say dump cruelly when actually a lot of them don’t need to because that very top strand of men quite openly are saying to women now: Oh I want an open relationship, you know, I don’t want to commit. And women are in a position where because they want a guy who is you know attractive, successful and high status, financially secure and all of that. They will hope that they are the one girl that can convince this guy to settle down with her.

But he’s got no incentive to do that, and the impact on that is bad for both men and women by the way. This isn’t good for men in many different ways. For a start most men actually also feel the same disgust after a one night stand that women do. But on top of that it’s not good for men because a stable relationship is something that makes you ten times the man that you are. that’s certainly been my experience you and I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for my wife.

I wouldn’t be half the man I am if it wasn’t for my wife and that’s because we built a life together in which she had a massive stake in my success and I had a massive stake in her success. A series of transactional relationships isn’t going to do that for you. It also strikes me that for the boys and girls, if I can put it this way, who are not terribly appealing via social media if that makes sense. So if you meet someone in the pub you get the full sort of feel for their relationships so maybe they’re somebody who doesn’t look particularly interesting on social media but when you meet them there’s a great sense of humor, there’s chemistry, there’s warmth it’s a very different thing. And they potentially can miss out good decent honest people who are looking for a respectful and meaningful relationship missing out all together.

Maybe that’s partly why we’ve now got this extraordinary thing right across the West with men on their own not forming relationships living at home late into their lives with their own parents. And on top of that we have a whole series of things that give men an opportunity to experience the illusion of success without actually having to work for it.

I’m someone who’s who spent a lot of my childhood playing video games and I’m not someone who thinks video games as the root of all evil or whatever. What they do is they give you a fake sense of accomplishment and if you’re not properly socialized, if you don’t spend time around other people, if you’re stuck in that world, you can get the sense that you’re doing well that doesn’t match up to how other other people actually perceive you.

The link between housing and conservatism

Back on the loneliness and the family formation side of it, it’s one of the economic problems that in my view are rising out of the economic mismanagement of most western economies over the last 15 years. Namely that young people can’t get a start on the economic ladder, they can’t get into a house which are two obvious amongst many other implications. It delays relationship and family formation and it also means that those young people don’t have an investment in our culture.

You know the old saying that if you’re not a socialist at 18 you’ve got no heart if you’re still a socialist at 30 you’ve got no brains, But there’s evidence showing that now through their 20s and 30s they’re drifting further to the left because they don’t feel invested in the system. This isn’t a terribly Happy story and you know this is a particular problem here in the UK where people are locked out of the opportunity to live in a home that they can call their own. We see that the average age of a house purchase I think is mid-30s onwards, the first time you buy your own place. Of course a lot of people who don’t buy their own place are stuck renting probably now forever because they’re just never going to catch up.

The average age of having the first child for a woman is going up at the same time.  A good example is my wife and I having our first child, our son at 39 and it’s partly for many of the same reasons. You know it was only when we had our own place and it took my wife a few years to settle down and to feel comfortable before that conversation opened up. I think if we’d if we’d done that earlier we would have had children earlier and we would have had more children by now.

So yeah it’s a big big problem and people don’t seem to understand the reason this issue isn’t getting solved is like the fact that we’re endlessly printing money to indebt our children and grandchildren.  The housing problem isn’t getting solved in this country because too many middle class people who are already on the housing ladder are invested in the price of housing always going up. And they will refuse and punish any politician who offers to solve the housing problem. Part of solving it is reducing the price of housing, there’s no way around that, It is a real social, political and economic problem that is not going away.

We also know that vast numbers of people in the west will say: My only chance of ever having a home, a roof over my head, is through inheritance. I think that sets up unhelpful family Dynamics as well. Since the parents are dying later now, you might be in your 50s or 60s by the time that happens. Do we want to have a generation of people who are still sort of children because they’re not fully an adult until they have something that they’re really responsible for. And your house, your family are things that really force you to mature quickly. A generation of people in their 50s who’ve never had that? I don’t think that’s a recipe for a good Society.

The west? A mixed bag

I know you’ve written a book called a love letter to the West. So you enjoy your life here, while at the same time I must say you make a great contribution to the community. And you’ve seen the alternative because you grew up in Russia. We’ll come back to this later in terms of what’s happening in Russia and the Ukraine. But in the short term you’ve got a particularly clear vision of all of this because you had difficulties imposed from on top. What we’re doing in the west, we’re doing to ourselves; it doesn’t have to be like this. It must strike you as a great irony.

it is I I think I always try to caution people I think those of us who are frustrated with many of the things that are happening in the West can sometimes overdo the comparison with the Soviet Union in which I grew up in. It’s important to have a sense of perspective. I talk about some of the issues that we’ve got going on because they they need to be addressed. But we are still the freest. most prosperous, most comfortable, stable most safe and secure Societies in the world.

I worry and you also worry that if we don’t appreciate that, and don’t celebrate that, we can throw it away. And that’s really why we’re talking about these young people who are locked out of Housing and so on. If you don’t have a stake on your Society why would you appreciate it, why would you celebrate it, why defend it you know.

So of course it’s important to remind people not to throw away the baby with the bath water when it comes to criticizing our societies. But of course we have a lot to do as well to understand now.

Adults are afraid of children

You put together some very very convincing words in an Oxford Union debating performance. It was quite recent yet I understand it’s been viewed over a hundred million times online, and maybe a lot more we don’t really know. Why do you think what you said had such an incredible impact because you did it quite sympathetically actually; you were careful in the way that you assertively attack the comment.

I think that’s one of the reasons why is that we live in a society in which adults are afraid of children. So when you see someone speaking to young people on their turf at a college or a university and who’s prepared to speak truth to them, but do it in a way that’s got a bit of humor, a bit of levity that tries to meet them where they’re at. It’s saying: Look I know this is what you think, here are some things you probably haven’t thought about. I think that’s quite appealing to people because as I say we live in a society where we’re fearful of telling young people what we think and what perhaps they need to hear.

That’s another of the reasons I tackle very directly the Doomsday narrative about climate change and Net Zero. And I explained to people the reality of that issue and how that isn’t isn’t going to be addressed, The fact no one has ever told these people in the UK who glue themselves to roads and throw soup on paintings and whatever, that this country produces one percent of global emissions and is responsible for another one percent so two percent. The idea of killing pensioners every winter with fuel poverty doesn’t seem as appealing if you recognize that it has absolutely no impact on global warming whatsoever.

Hopefully if I say so myself, someone trying to use logic along with some sensitivity to other people , we don’t have a lot of that going on lately. But to say look here are some things, here’s some rational arguments where you may want to modify your thinking.

That’s actually one of the most gratifying things that has happened since. I’ve had a lot of contact with a lot of people who reach out to me and say: I can see that you’re trying to win people over. Let’s talk. I’m really really keen to get past the culture war we’ve got ourselves locked into. Once you start calling something a war, it’s very difficult to see the humanity of people on the other side. I always try to make this point: I don’t know about you, maybe this isn’t true for you, but I know that when I was 20 years old I was stupid and arrogant and thought I knew everything and I had the solutions to everything. So we’ve got to remember that you know young people are like that and some of them are persuadable, some of them not all of them of course. But let’s try and persuade them.

It does tell you something about the way we now raise and educate our young people. In a sense you put up an alternative moral proposition. You’re really saying: if you pursue policies single-mindedly thinking the only challenge before us is climate change and we’ve got to turn ourselves inside out. Well what happens if that results in people in the rest of the world starving, becaus that’s a moral Dimension as well, but it’s also a practical one isn’t it. Because starving people won’t care about the environment.

That’s one aspect of it. There are alternative moral perspectives for young people who are idealistic and care about moral issues but then there’s a very hard-nosed practical one. If you really want to ensure that climate change policy is demolished break down the liberal Global Order and allow the autocrats what they want which is domination of global politics.

I mean if the Russians and, now meaning the Russian people and the Chinese people, but the people who run those countries; if they have say well you’re not going to advance arguments about climate change very effectively and that is at stake now because they are plainly seeing us as degenerate as lost as ineffective divided ill-disciplined and they’re right we should be aware that.

Thomas Sowell – “There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs”

Why it’s important but in terms of the the moral Frameworks and all of that I think it’s really much simpler than that in some ways. The the single line that has made the greatest impact to my understanding of the world is from Thomas Sowell who to me is one of the greatest modern thinkers. “There are no Solutions, only trade-offs. You’re not gonna solve climate change, you’re not going to solve anything. You can make adjustments, and you know this much better than I do from being in government, every policy has a trade-off and very often the reason that issues become difficult and controversial is precisely because the trade-offs are as bad as the solution. So you have to pick very carefully how exactly you calibrate your solution to avoid causing a lot more damage than you’re trying to prevent. We’ve completely lost the ability to see that Nuance yeah

You know we have this conversation in this country all the time: if labor is in the reason the NHS is broken is because Labor’s broken it; if the conservatives are in it’s because the conservatory Tory Cuts or whatever. No one seems to understand that like all of these problems are Eternal they’re gonna go on forever they’re not solvable no one’s going to solve the NHS, no one’s going to solve climate change. What we can do is Tinker at the edges and improve certain aspects of it at the cost of others.

You and I talked exactly about this last time what happened over covid. People forgot that safety has trade-offs, freedom has trade-offs. No one wants to say, yes freedom of speech has the consequence that some guy is gonna be insulting to someone else online and someone might get upset. But that is the price we’re willing to pay because we want to live in a free Society. Yes not locking down the country may, we don’t know, may have caused more people to die, but locking down the country also caused more people to die. So which one of those do we want? How do we calibrate that policy?

We’ve completely lost the ability to have those conversations, which is why I think it’s really important that we we try to bring that idea back: There are no Solutions there just aren’t.

The other great problem though is that a good government reflecting a good Society recognizes not just that there’s no absolute answer to anything, but that you actually have to be able to manage many difficult issues at any given time. You and I have to do that in our own personal lives and so do governments. Instead we’re reducing politics to a series of one-trick Pony shows, where there’s a crisis here and that’s the only thing we’ll talk about. It’s not just that there are trade-offs, we’re ignoring a whole lot of other problems which will swamp that one.

Why you should express your opinions

You talk about how we communicate and as I understand it, you got a lot of opportunity to communicate, I’m guessing, it was overwhelmingly on conservative shows because others don’t want to engage.

That proved to be a bit of a problem and now I’d like to break out of it because what I’m saying isn’t only conservative. I certainly have some conservative views but it’s frustrating to me because I’m just trying to express my opinion, The only left-wing publication that did interview me about it was a guy who came in here and then lied about me repeatedly to the point that they had to take whole chunks out of his article afterwards. That was the only left Winger, well he I don’t even know he’s left wing. He writes for electron publication and everybody else was somewhere in the center or right leaning and that’s because they’re afraid of what will happen if they “platform” someone who who said the things that I said. It’s a sad State of Affairs, but that’s what it is.

You came from a country where there must have been a lot of fear because Russia was autocratic for so long and people’s lives were closely surveilled and you could get into a lot of trouble saying the wrong thing. it seems to me that we’re becoming surprisingly bound up by fear in our culture now as well.

You know people say to me, oh you’re so brave. And I’m thinking, what are you talking about? What is brave about expressing your opinion in public. I don’t get it, I don’t understand why people are so afraid.  And look it’s easy for me to say because when Francis and I started trigonometry for example we didn’t have a huge amount to lose; we were two comedians operating on the British comedy circuit you know there was not a huge amount for us to lose even though if it may have felt like it. There are other people, JK Rowling is a good example of somebody who had a lot potentially to lose. She’s not going to lose her wealth or status or whatever, but you’re gonna end up you know getting a bunch of death threats and hate stuff and whatever else that’s unpleasant.

But I just I just think we give way too much importance to other people’s words and opinions. We’ve got to a point where people are fearful of a Twitter backlash. Well turn your phone off, you know, it’s not real that stuff. Sometimes people will introduce me as controversial. Yet in my entire life not one person has ever come up to me on the street other than to say, Well done congratulations keep going.

Now that’s a really interesting point because there’s that disconnect. They try to box you in with the idea that they’ll be fearful consequences but we’ve been talking about this and now find friendly people everywhere wanting to engage you. People very much they need to strap on a pair; it’s not as scary as you think, not as dangerous as you think now

Look I understand some people work in in institutions and organizations where if they do say something they’re going to lose their job, but that in itself is horrendous. And that’s why woke corporations are not good. They were once leaders in defending our values, yet so often now they’re pursuing values that turn out to be very narrow and inappropriate.

Employers are scared of their employees

I made earlier a point about being a society as in which adults are afraid of children because that’s really what’s happening in corporations. It’s the 50 60 something white straight male CEOs who are afraid of either their grandchildren or their kids at home or the people at the lower rungs of their own organizations. And frankly I understand it because we you know we’re trigonometry we now employ people who are great, but nonetheless you know young people now expect to have the input on many things from a fairly low level position within the organization. If I had the cheek to try getting involved in high level stuff at their age like that, I wouldn’t have had a very easy career, let’s put it that way. We tolerate a lot from young people and I think that’s part of it as well. People are scared of their own employees which I I you know I don’t think that’s the way it should be I think people need to show a bit of metal.

Elon Musk, Bill Maher and journalists running out of questions

I understand there was a very interesting conversation between a BBC journalist and Elon Musk recently.

Yes, the journalist said that Twitter had a hate speech problem but when he was challenged by Musk couldn’t name a single example. It seems to me this strikes at this very problem now. Where people will put up a feelings based, prejudice-based perspective and not worry about whether it’s backed by the evidence. Moreover this is particularly true in journalism where I think there’s more than just that going on. If I’m honest I think what you have now is journalists increasingly playing to the crowd of other journalists. They have stopped trying to seek the truth or to cover the issues fairly. Instead they’re trying to make sure that other journalists see them having asked the right questions. So if you are the tech editor of the BBC and you’re interviewing Elon Musk, you have to be seen to challenge him. Because in the BBC’s conception Elon Musk is this evil right-wing billionaire who’s ruined Twitter. And so you have to ask that question.

The other thing it shows is how terrible they have become at their jobs. The worst thing about that interview isn’t even what you’ve just raised. What then happened was the guy ran out of questions. How do you run out of questions when you’re interviewing the guy who says that he wants to preserve Humanity by extending it over several planets. How do you run out of questions when you’re interviewing a guy who’s built one of the most successful breakthrough Innovative companies in the world in Tesla. No questions for a guy who spent a huge fortune and overpaid in order to buy Twitter because he believes that changing the way we’re having our conversations is essential to changing the way our society is going. Running out of questions in that situation is a dereliction of Duty.

Is curiosity declining?

Richard Dawkins said he was distressed and expressed dismay at the lack of curiosity amongst young people, and made the comment that it’s only these pesky Christians amongst young people that seem to have any great interest in exploring ideas. Have we lost our curiosity.

I think some people have. You and I still have it I think and the fact that people listen to your show and to mine shows that a lot of people still have it. No one can measure any of these things really. I could sit here and make a very strong argument for how our society’s lost its curiosity or could make a very good argument for why it hasn’t. It’s the glass half full half empty thing.

America and the Culture War

How do you feel about America? What are your key observations about the future of the so-called culture wars there? Because it seems like a nation divided from top to bottom although maybe the upside of that is that at least they are engaged in a full throttled exchange of ideas whereas I sometimes think in other Western countries the battle’s over

It’s interesting I think there’s truth to that. I also think there’s truth to the argument that they’re not actually engaged in the Battle of ideas. Now it feels like it’s not ideas that are being lobbed over the barricades anymore, there’s a kinetic element starting to come through. We were in DC and our team actually were out and about and they were filming stuff and they went to a protest about trans rights. There were a lot of people shouting and our guys couldn’t tell which side of the argument people were on. One of the people who was most profoundly present, let’s say shouting and whatever, and they asked can you tell us what this is about what you’re doing, and he said no. How if you’re protesting for something why wouldn’t you want to persuade a single person what you actually believe in.

It’s become very tribal and so you know, here’s my placard and here’s your placard. I feels like there’s not much of a Battle of ideas going on, only a Battle of power. I wrote a piece on my sub stack actually on the plane back I couldn’t sleep so I just typed it out on my phone. It’s called the American anti-woke Coalition, and I talk about the split between the conservatives and the old school liberals about some of these issues. The dynamic is very interesting because I think the the the path to addressing many of these radical Progressive ideas lies through uniting conservatives and the old-school liberals around the things that they all agree on.

The conservatives in America know America is a very radical country. When we spoke to Ben Shapiro actually he made this point and I think he’s absolutely right. People there are pretty intense about what they believe, and so it makes it difficult for them to work with others where there’s disagreement. The trans debate for example is a very good example of this where many conservatives have taken the position which alienates a lot of people. Namely, that the libs are transing the kids and everything else follows from that. And a lot of the old school liberals who also are concerned about gender ideology in schools, the transitioning of children, the medicalization of children. They’re quite uncomfortable with all this stuff. So what you see is a rather precarious temporary Alliance that’s not really as strong as it could be.

But America is a beautiful place, I think I am really inspired by the mindset there. There isn’t a tall poppy syndrome in America you know. If you say to somebody in Britain, I want to build a great business or I want to create a massive YouTube channel or I want to be you know hugely successful in this or that, there’s look like who do you think you are? In America it isn’t like that at all, it’s more like great go for it what can I do for you, how can we work together? And that’s inspiring for someone like me who always wanted to do great things and build things and employ people and create opportunities for others and make an impact in the world.

It’s fascinating, it also has a shadow, as anything does, there are no Solutions only trade-offs. But it’s it’s a wonderful place in many ways. When I’m in America it gives me like fuel for the rocket in in a way that no other country I’ve ever been to does.

Regarding full throated American exchange of cultural ideas,
here is the current #1 Itunes song in USA:

Free speech only gets us so far

Those who are not “Progressive” (the perverted term progressives apply to themselves) need to positively stand for something. You get the impression that people are just interested in fighting a battle to win some points rather than build towards a more coherent Society where there are greater opportunities for freedom and human flourishing.

In that context appeals to preserve free speech and to talk about freedom and liberty and so forth are not enough. I’ve always said that freedom of speech is a defensive value. It’s like saying: please can I have a fair playing field for my ideas. It’s not unimportant but it’s not something you can really unite around. Once you’ve got free speech, a Level Playing Field for ideas, What ideas do you believe in?

And that’s where everyone falls out. What is the positive vision of the future that we’re offering people? That’s why hope is so important, All of us who believe free speech is important to achieve our objective: Where’s the hope since in and of itself it just means we can now have a conversation or at least we’re now allowed to speak now.

Increasingly ‘m asking people: What is it that you want to say? Because we have to start thinking about what we’re offering people. Why should you be one of us other than the fact that you’re not allowed to say what you want at work or at school or whatever.

Trying to work this for myself, I can chart one or two things that I think are going to be part of that. Jordan Peterson and I talked about the most important one. First and foremost it has to be Invitational. We have to say to them what is it that you want. what are the things that are going to give you meaning and fulfillment.

We talked about it already, for many people there’s going to be family. For a lot of people even before you get there is it’s going to be about things like mental resilience. is it good for you to think that you’re a victim?

Why we need a positive narrative

Even if you are a victim, let’s say you’ve experienced difficult things and you and I both have and so has everybody else by the way. Is it good for you to say I’m a victim, but you’ve you’ve had it easy?
Because it’s often simply not true. The vast majority of people you meet, if you actually talk and listen to them, you’ll find out that everybody’s experienced some things that were really difficult for them. And by the way for some people growing up in a really wealthy privileged environment with parents who didn’t care about them, which often happens, is just as traumatic as growing up in poverty. People don’t want to admit that but that is true.

Most people have experienced some kind of trauma or difficulty or challenge. Then what is the right approach if you want meaning and fulfillment, purpose and happiness. I don’t believe being a victim works especially if you’ve had a hard life. This is why I’m so frustrated with this ideology because the worst thing you can teach people who are victims of life is to wallow in their victimhood.

Part of giving people a path to resilience is telling them that that’s the destination you want. Everybody should be trying to get there, to subfamily resilience. and then you have to you know

Look around look around for the Societies in the world that actually offer you an opportunity to do those things: to be successful, to be free and be prosperous. It’s Western societies it’s the anglo-sphere and a portion of Europe. That’s got something to do with their values. So which of those values do we need to preserve and celebrate? We should be focusing on that, which is way bigger than different political perspectives. If we can agree on that framework we can offer people that meaning and purpose and then we can say to them this is what we believe in come and join the team.

Russia-Ukraine war

What are your views on why Russians supported their president in the special military operation? Don’t call it War otherwise you’ll get arrested in Russia and put into prison for 10 years.

Well I’ve said from literally day one what the likely outcome will be. There are a lot of people understandably in Ukraine who are not necessarily that happy about me saying it this way, even though I’ve obviously been a big supporter of their cause. Likewise there are lots of people in Russia who wouldn’t be happy hearing this eithe.

Look, what Ukraine needs is to make sure this never happens again. Of course coming from a Ukrainian perspective particularly, you’ve got to remember 2022 wasn’t the beginning of this process. This started in 2014 when Russia bit off chunks of Ukraine with no repercussions. Ukraine wasn’t given long-term Security in the way that it needed and so it happened again. And if the war ends somehow without Ukraine having long-term security, this will happen again in the future.

So there’ll be people who disagree but the number one goal for Ukraine in my opinion, is not actually to preserve every tiny bit of land. A much better outcome for Ukraine would be long-term security and there are only two ways to do that: NATO membership or UN peacekeeping force on the border. Personally I don’t see U.N peacekeepers there, it could happen but unlikely. So that means one thing only: Ukraine needs NATO membership now.

On the other hand, what do you have to do to get there with minimum casualties, because Ukraine is losing a lot of its people and a lot of its economic base is being destroyed even though they are fighting extremely well and courageously and I have huge admiration for them. The solution would be in my view likely that Russia gets to keep Crimea and pieces of the Donbass, NATO accepts Ukraine and this essentially ends that standoff. Because Russia is not going to invade NATO and Ukraine becomes NATO so that’s the end goal. Obviously Putin isn’t going to be happy with Ukraine joining NATO, given that the very reason he claims to have started this war. His goal is to prevent Ukraine becoming a hostile NATO force on its border.

But if ukrainians can can continue to give Russia a bloody noise which is what I’ve said from the beginning that will be in my opinion the most likely outcome. We’re sitting here on the 9th of May Victory Day as as we call it in Russia and the ukrainians are about to mount a counter-offensive which no one knows how that will go. So far Russia has lost a huge number of men wounded and killed in this war. So has Ukraine, though probably not as many. And this has been a serious blow to Russia’s military and clearly to the reputation of its military as well.

And so in terms of the end goal we we have to wait and see how the counter-offensive plays out and where that takes us. Frankly it depends on what happens and then the response from from both sides

How fatherhood has changed Kisin

To round this out, you’re now dad and obviously enjoying it immensely. It gives you great drive to try and make sure he’s got a secure future. What’s taking priority in your mind in terms of trying to ensure he can enjoy a secure and good life?

We talk a lot about societal issues and they are very important. But the the more I go through this journey of my life, the more I realize how the personal is essential. So the number one goal for me is to be the best man that I can be. The best guarantee of my son having a good life is me being the best husband, the best father. And to the extent that I am a public figure being the best version of that that I can be, to try and bring people over, to let go of my natural tendency to enjoy irritating people. These are parts of life but I’m trying and I hope to be more responsible with the way that I communicate.

So first and foremost you have to start the change within yourself and then in terms of society.  Look , I stand for the things that I believe and support. I believe the the West is great, I believe it it’s worth preserving. I believe that we are in a good place still but presently we are moving in the wrong direction. Maybe my son has come along at a time when he’ll still have a good life, but you know is Western civilization in a terminal decline. I mean it remains to be seen and it also depends on what people do. I mean there there is always the hope that we can change the downward trajectory, but it remains to be seen.

More than anything I’ve let go of the attachment to societal outcomes because I know that I can’t change them. I can do my best I can to shape somewhat the conversation that happens in this area. And I’m I’m doing my best but that’s really all that anyone can do. Maybe if you were Deputy Prime Minister of a country, you’ve had more impact directly in that way. But even so I don’t imagine you feel like you you were able to revolutionize Australia in in the image that John Anderson would want it to be or to change Western Society for the better.

We’re just small people, all of us trying to do our best and I think for my son the best thing I can be is just a good example, Trying to be that is a noble aspiration.

Last Blast from JimBob