Louise Perry
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Not aroma. I know exactly what word you mean. Miasma. Miasma.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think a Zen pick is great. I think that everything has trade-offs. There probably are some trade-offs down the track with a Zen pick. I don't think they're going to be as catastrophic as the anti-Zen pick people hope they will be. It's really easy to find people on the internet who are like, It's going to make you blind.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's going to cause you cancer or whatever, just because they sort of feel like fat people should be punished for not getting thin the right way. I think that the best comparison in terms of that social response in the history of medicine that I've come across is actually anesthesia. When anesthesia first became available, there were people...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, well, there were people who thought that pain was essential to the healing process, for instance, who thought that if you don't have terrible pain during surgery or, you know, of anything, I mean, like some degree of painkilling has been available forever. People used to chew willow bark because willow actually contains the same...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
chemical as aspirin right so people have always been killing pain to some extent but when proper anesthesia became available in the 19th century um yeah there were loads of people moralizing about it and saying this is going to cause all sorts of problems down the track this you know um that has remained interestingly you know the only area where you're not supposed to use proper painkillers childbirth yeah that always comes back to making babies with you yeah
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
That remains a very moralistic area of medicine.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Epidurals or indeed having C-sections or whatever medicalization of children. And look, I'm a centrist on this. I think that the natural childbirth movement have some sensible things to say on how women can sometimes feel like... over-medicalizing childbirth is frightening and can cause more problems than it solves and whatever, like I get it.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
But I don't agree with the idea that childbirth has to be painful. And actually, I don't really understand why this is the only type of serious medical experience that has to be painful. And I feel like often when you find people having these very
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
deeply held but quite amorphous objections to some area of medical science like a zen pick it's normally got more to do with social stuff than it has to do with the medical objections
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I mean, I think they'd at least have to think about it. Yeah, I really hope it's not true because imagine the psychological toll on a child who knew that they'd been brought into the world in those circumstances, right? And I mean, Lily Phillips is single. Lily Phillips doesn't have a boyfriend. Does Bonnie Blue? Yeah, I think she does.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I think that is one of the things that happens.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think it happens with the early newborn days as well. There is a tendency to just forget how terrible it was.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. And then you like six or 12 months later, you're like, I should have another baby. I'm already, I had the most horrendous pregnancy and my son is almost six months and I'm already like drinking juice again. I'm like, I should have another baby. I think, I mean, it wasn't like that. It's done by design.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, this is a thing as well. The torture that that child would be put through in school because everyone would end up knowing. And imagine your conception being on film. I mean, just everything about it is appalling.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. Um, I interviewed Andrea Hines recently, who is, um, used to be in the sex industry. Uh, really interesting.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Also very interesting. The specific thing that Andrea talks about is, um, how being in the sex industry, like to be more explicit, like being in prostitution, right? Not just camming or whatever. Um, is a bit like being in an abusive relationship, except you're in an abusive relationship with hundreds of men. So it's not...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
it's clearly different, but in terms of the psychological effect, it's very similar. And she talks about the sort of, um, the psychological cycles you end up in, which are very similar to domestic violence. Like you say, that feeling of, I'm not, I can't do anything else. I'm not good enough for anything else.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
But equally, you do also have the highs where you're like, wow, I'm earning so much money or, you know, I've got out of whatever bad situation I was in, which led me to try prostitution. Like, There are ups and downs, but the risk is that you end up in this kind of rut.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And one of the things that she's talked about, and I've heard other women talk about as well, is how actually you can earn really quite a lot of money. I mean, prostitution definitely pays more per hour than almost anything else. And definitely more than like... the realistic other jobs that many of these women could have.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Um, but often the money sort of disappears because often one, you're going to want to spend money to feel better because you feel really dreadful and you feel worse as time goes by. And so you want to, and so you might spend money on drugs, you know, that's one obvious alcohol, but also you might spend money on like expensive stuff you don't need or clothes. Exactly.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Because you want to feel like it's worth it and just putting it in a savings account.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
doesn't make you feel like that there's also a feeling which a lot of women speak about that the money is sort of dirty particularly if it's cash because you know what it's for like you know why you've got it and it has there's almost that compulsion to like just get rid of it which is why I mean Lily Phillips is clearly making loads of money Bonnie Blue is making loads of money I don't necessarily think though that means they're set up for life because one HMRC is going to take half of it
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
assuming that they're paying their taxes, which I'm sure they are. Two, think how much money you actually need to earn in like a two or three year period in order to spend your whole life. Yeah, like that's actually massive, massive sums.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I mean, we've only heard of them for the last few months. They haven't been earning that much money for that long. I think people who say, oh, whatever, this is amazing for them because they just get to do this for a little bit and then this is it for life. I think that's probably not the case, actually. And it will cause lots of problems down the track, not least in terms of relationships.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. Also, generally people, as we've talked about, OnlyFans isn't a very good life decision, right? Generally, people, women, who are going to take the long-term risk of going on OnlyFans are not going to be that good at managing their money.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
like to be blunt because managing your money actually requires you to be very forward thinking and, uh, you know, to, to like win the marshmallow test repeatedly throughout the day. Right. And that's probably not like this, the, the, the idea that you get from the only fans industry or from, you know, sex positive feminists, that this is great for women because it's a source of easy cash.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I just think that I think it's just, it's missing what's really going on here, which is actually a lot of women. setting their lives on fire for not that much benefit.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Good news? Very bad news. I mean, I would bet money that she is not pregnant. I would bet money also that Lily Phillips is not pregnant. What are the chances that the two of them are pregnant at exactly the same time. Come on.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Can I just repeat the take of a different Modern Wisdom guest, which is Lyman Stone, because I interviewed him the other day. And he had a view on this, which I found so interesting and actually really pulled together a lot of the things I've been confused about when looking at marriage rates and fertility and all this stuff that I'm writing about. He doesn't think that actually...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
He basically thinks the only thing that is wrong with fertility rates in the West is, I mean, he's looking at America, but this applies to Britain as well. is people getting married late. He thinks that's the only problem because actually once people are married, they tend to have kids. It's almost like you get married and you're like, well, what else are we going to do?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
He says that actually the number of people who are married and are deliberately not having children, like the dinks, they're quite culturally prominent, but they're actually rare. There aren't very many people who do that. Most people get married and if they can get they will have some children, right?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yes. I did see someone on Twitter saying that actually the most reliable contraception in the world, like the Marina coil has a one in a thousand.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
But, but when people are getting married into like, I think the average age of first marriage now is over 30, definitely. And the average age of marriage in general is quite old because people get married multiple times account for just a number of marriages. So they drag it up. But, um, During the baby boom, the average age of first marriage was so young.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It was like 22 or something, really young. And even in the 80s, I got married when I was 25, which is basically a child bride in my peer group. In the 80s, that was average, right? Yeah. People are basically just skipping the whole of their 20s during which they could have been having children because they're not actually coupling up until later or they're not coupling up at all.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So Lyman's take, and I think it's actually a really interesting one. It's not to do, it's not, well, sorry. People often say, it's just to do with housing. It's just because housing is expensive, or it's just to do with the availability of contraception, or it's just to do with feminism telling women that they're girlbosses and they don't need to have kids, whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
He says, no, it's actually just a coordination problem. It's actually just that people are not getting married sufficiently early so that they then have their whole of their reproductive lives ahead of them and can have 2.5 kids.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
But that is linked to the other stuff in the sense that he thinks, and I think this is really persuasive, that the reason people aren't getting married younger is because men in their 20s are not able to, for various reasons, signal their suitability as husbands in a way they used to.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
because what women are looking for when they're looking for a husband is someone who they know is going to be reliable during moments of difficulty when they have children because when you're pregnant and when you're nursing and you've got young children you simultaneously need more resources and also have less ability to get those resources for yourself so you're in a real pickle and
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
like the person or people who can provide that for you like you i mean you need them you need some you need someone and the obvious person is the father of your children and that's that's what monogamous marriage is basically like legally obliging men to step up during those moments um and so women are looking for a man who will do that and who will who who is capable of providing those resources in that difficult moment and they look for signals in men that
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
that they're up to that you know and wealth is one of them um but there are other ways of showing it as well like um going to an elite university that's pretty good um or uh running your own business or military service that's an interesting example down to about three percent i think compared with 50 in the 1940s yeah I asked Lyman this and he was like, yeah, he thought it was true.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Is it possible that part of the reason there was a post-war baby boom, particularly in America, is because so many men had had military service and had had this opportunity to demonstrate their suitability as fathers and husbands?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Exactly. Yeah. It is harder now for young men to... to do that costly signal and to say, like, it's harder to buy property depending on where you are, but it is generally harder to buy property when you're younger. The nature of everyone going to university actually is kind of, well, not everyone, but
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, the expression that I've used before is that OnlyFans is to the marriage market as a criminal record is to the jobs market. Like, it is forever. And it does make it more difficult to... This is actually something... Have you watched the Lily Phillips documentary? No.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
when lots of people go to university it actually devalues the signal and it also basically extends your adolescence in that you don't you can't start your business buy your property do whatever until you've graduated and this just like pushes further and further into your 20s um yeah military service as you say much less common basically the ways that men could demonstrate
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
there that they are up to being fathers and husbands have become scarcer and it's it's no good if you start like if you gain those costly signals in your 50s right because at that point like you're outside of the reproductive window it has to be really in your 20s or maybe in your early 30s and that is exactly i think what we are missing right now and maybe that's maybe that's the key thing maybe that's why like birth rates are falling off a cliff
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I thought it was actually really good and really interesting and well done. And this is one of the things she talks about, like how am I going to, she doesn't have a boyfriend, she doesn't really have any friends, right? How is she going to find a husband?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. And also, for all of these reasons you described about women being great highlight of girls, basically, women earn more than men do in their 20s. And that's a catastrophe, actually. That's actually a catastrophe because it's precisely what women do not want in a partner, someone who earns less than them. So unless those women are then
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Coupling with significantly older men, which most people don't actually do. I mean, I think that the average age gap between couples is only like two years. It's not that big. A lot of women are just going to be like, why would I... Why would I saddle myself to some guy who I don't think can actually be relied upon? I'm just not going to do that.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And the overwhelmingly most common reason that women give when asked, why don't you have children, is not because I'm a girl boss or because I don't own my house or whatever. It's actually, I can't find the right man.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think she says at one point, like, oh, maybe I'll find a husband who wants to, I can't remember the expression she uses, but basically who has a cock fetish, right?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's one of the reasons why, do you remember Princeton Mom? No. This is this woman who wrote, this was quite a few years ago now, who wrote in the Princeton Student Magazine or the Alumni Magazine maybe, advice to women at Princeton, which is, you will never be around so many eligible men ever in the rest of your life.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
The most important thing you can do at Princeton is find a husband, not get your degree. And this used to be the old phrase that women used to use, or everyone used to use as women would go to university to get their MRS, right? And actually... it's quite a lot to be said for it.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
which doesn't sound like a very good basis for marriage. I mean, it's a really serious problem. And I always think with these women, like really good-looking OnlyFans women, if they want to have easy money, why don't they just find rich husbands? That seems like a much better lot. It's calculating and materialistic, fine, but it's a much more long-term strategy rather than...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
If you do go to university, one of the advantages of just marrying your university boyfriend, which is what I did, is that you, neither of you have had any career success yet, right? Like you've been selected for your suitability for that institution, but you can't do this like fine grained stressing about who earns more, whatever, because no one earns anything.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, and obviously you want to be making a pretty good bet, but I can see how you could get into a real problem if you're one of these Soho House girls, women, sorry, I should say, who, yeah, has quite a lot of career success, absolutely does not want to date down. And you probably also get to that point where you're like, I've waited this long, I've got to find the perfect person.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
The comparison I've heard as well, which I like, is with buying a lamp for your house. So if you have just bought a house and there's nothing in it and you need to buy a bunch of stuff, you need to buy a lamp, you can be like, oh yeah, cool, I'll just get whatever lamp looks sort of nice. If, however... You have perfectly designed your house.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Every element of it has been really carefully thought through in terms of decor. And then you need to find a lamp that just perfectly fits that house. It's going to be much harder to find a lamp because you're going to have much more picky criteria.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Indeed, right. That is kind of what it's like when you're looking for a spouse later in life. You've already kind of set up your life. You know where you're living. You know what your career is. You have really strong preferences. You've probably kind of structured your daily schedule around exactly what you like and whatever. All of your life is designed around you.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And then you have to find someone who fits into that. Whereas if you get married young, you kind of just develop it together and you end up... Your lives as a joint thing are formed around each other. And obviously that does sometimes go wrong. But I think that is part of the reason why there's this age. Basically, if you get married somewhere in the medium kind of age range between like...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
20 and 35, maybe something like that, like not too young, not too old, you're less likely to get divorced. And I think it probably has something to do with that. It's that sweet spot in terms of you're not so young that you make really stupid decisions, but also you form your life around your partner, not the other way around.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Well, I could say that they shouldn't think that because basically all societies are interested in the fertility of their people. And there are loads of examples of definitely not fascist at all countries having pronatal policies, like South Korea would be an example. France has had all sorts of pronatal policies for years, whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think that would be slightly dodging the question though, because I think what people mean there is like, Why does it matter if countries die out? Like, why do you care so much is kind of the question that's been invited there.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I think so. And to push back against any kind of in-group pushback.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
preference um which is yeah i mean that's like a fundamental difference between right and left like do you think you know the concentric circles heat map thing i'm sure you've seen that shared online i've seen it i've seen it shared online and i i've never actually understood what it was so it's one of those memes that just went kept going over my head and i prefer i said grinned in the corner and was like yeah yeah sure heat map sometimes it gets misrepresented as people on the left literally care more about trance
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
blowing up your reputation by earning not even that much money on OnlyFans. I mean, the thing is that most women on OnlyFans earn a pittance. It's the massive hitters like- The power users. Yeah. And the creator distribution is wild. It's worse than podcasts, right?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
plants and trees and they do about their own families, which I don't think is true and doesn't pass the sniff test, does it? But what it does describe is
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
is that people on the right tend to be quite happy and confident in just saying like yeah I care most about my family and then and then about my extended family and then my community and then my country and then whatever fine like I don't I'm not embarrassed to say that that's my preference whereas people on the left tend not to do that and to say no actually I have like universalist aspirations I should care just as much about a child on the other side of the world as a child in my own
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
neighborhood. And this can lead to some quite perverse preferences. I think that in practice, people actually normally don't really behave like that. I don't think that anyone really does care as much about people on the other side of the world as people close to them. But it is a sort of problem within leftist thought that you're sort of not allowed to care more about people close to you.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Universalism is the ideal.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I think also what often happens in practice is actually, this may be a bit cynical, but I think sometimes commitment to the far out group, as Scott Alexander has called it, can be a stick with which to beat the near out group, right? So if, say, you're an American Democrat and actually the people that you feel the most animosity towards are American Republicans, right? Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They're your near out group. They're the people who you actually are most preoccupied with in terms of the people that you dislike. Whereas your far out group might be, I don't know, people who live in China who actually don't really think about very much and sometimes expressing, China is probably a bad example, Haiti. Okay.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Sometimes expressing a really, really like fierce loyalty with the people of Haiti might be a little bit insincere and might actually just be a stick with which to beat the rednecks down the street that you don't like.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I think that might be part of it. I think there's also an element of like, These are just status competitions and people will use all sorts of tools in their status competitions because they're deeply important to us.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Probably. Yeah. And so much worse because you don't trash your reputation by putting out a podcast or a book.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
depends how shit the book is true whereas with only fans like you carry the same reputational risk but you earn a tiny fraction of the money that the really successful ones do and i mean there are so many horrible stories as well about women having like photos sent to their families or to their employers or just yeah it's it's a it's a crazy thing to do and yet nonetheless i have heard that something like one or two percent of young american women are on only fans it's massive
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. So I guess it's plausible. Um, but, uh, I really hope it's not true. I mean, I, yeah, I, I think it would be very likely that social services would get involved in all seriousness.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's a really big and interesting topic. And yeah, I mean, you're right. The reason we have conferences is because actually there's a lot of contestation about what's going on. I'm trying to write a book about this and I keep having kids, which is pushing back my ability. I'm walking the walk so effectively that I can't talk the talk. Look, I think that...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I find it tiresome, obviously, when people are really silly about this. I mean, sometimes people can be really, really antinatalist to the extent of being really anti-children, really hostile to mothers and families. I mean, there's a whole world of political objections to antinatalism that are basically disgusting. They don't worry me that much because you know what?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They're not going to be selected for within the coming decades. I actually don't get that worried about kind of crazy progressivism, the sort of really outlandish blue-haired sort of stuff. Because honestly, I think it's kind of self-limiting in the sense that the people who are most committed to that kind of politics, they don't have children. They don't want to have children. If you...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And similarly, I mean, a culture that thinks that you have no obligation to look after the elderly. Another thing I learned from Lyman Stone recently, the average American spends more time looking after pets than they do looking after elderly relatives, right? I mean, the whole point of pets is to like simulate that caring relationship with children.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Sorry to sound anti-pet, but that's the point.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They are, like the reason people are attracted to them is because they're mimicking human relationships, right? And the fact that we're using them as, I mean, Malcolm Collins is much harsher on this. He says that having a dog as like your baby replacement is like using pornography. Like it really is like... It's social, sorry, emotional pornography.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, it's like socially acceptable pornography use, but it's simulating...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I haven't heard that take before, but it doesn't surprise me. In a fake way, yeah. So getting away from that, that is going to get clipped and it's going to get used.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
But I don't worry too much about this runaway progressivism because it is self-limiting. The people, genetically and culturally, who are currently being selected for
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
are people who are basically capable of forming societies which are pronatal right like one way or another we're going to come out of this the other end with whether that be people who just have the genes for thinking babies are really really adorable or people who are just really good at forming like cohesive cultures that are really good at supporting young families that's what's getting selected for and it might be that getting there is painful but
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
The welfare state is definitely going to die. Democracy might die as well. There are all sorts of really, really difficult political challenges presented by this problem. But I'm not a doomer about it. I don't think that the human race is going to die out. I think what's happening is we're going through this almighty bottleneck.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
very, very fertile people have selected for so aggressively, which is I think what's happening right now, that actually you see this massive explosion when they get to the next generation.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
um very sweet and one of the things that I concluded from watching the documentary with her is that she's actually really quite vulnerable she says things like she says really poignant things like oh I'm only good for one thing me and yeah and talks about not having any friends and feeling like she does this sort of diffident thing where she says oh I don't care about being judged but it's obvious that she actually massively does care about being judged because she keeps talking about it you know
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. I mean, the big question there though, I wrote an essay about this recently for First Things, is is whether or not modernity can survive as such. Because if you look at the groups right now that are doing really well in terms of fertility, it's people like the Amish, it's ultra-Orthodox Jews, it's people who actually have not embraced modernity, really.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, they're living within modern societies and to some extent they get to piggyback off some of, for instance, the health infrastructure of modern societies. Like the Amish actually have very low infant mortality rate, even though they basically have 19th century babies.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
technology but they don't have 19th century infant mortality and I think that must be because they live in America which has low infant mortality and so there isn't a lot of communicable diseases that they're vulnerable to I don't know if they vaccinate but you know they're not at risk of waves of smallpox and bubonic plague and stuff because the rest of America is keeping a check on that exactly
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
However, are the Amish actually capable of maintaining that kind of medical infrastructure long term? If the entire country, not because of their intelligence or whatever, but just because that's not what they're minded to do. If the entire country was composed of Amish people, would America still have great health infrastructure? And would you still have really low child mortality? I don't know.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So it might be that the two things that keep a lid on population explosion, one is mortality, the other is fertility. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
the the magic combo is the group that can do both right that can be highly fertile and keep their children alive because we like we must not forget that in most times and places the child mortality rate is almost 50 so and that's the great miracle of the modern world and i as a mom that is the thing i do not want to let go of like sometimes people will be very um
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
flippant about tech and say oh you know smartphones are rubbish oh you know yes there are all sorts of things about tech that we don't really like you know what no one wants to get rid of and that's c-sections and antibiotics and all of this miraculous i mean i would be dead my son would be dead if we hadn't had modern medical technology in my most recent my most recent pregnancy
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
like this is serious stuff and that's the thing of all the stuff that worries me about the fertility crash it's not it's not losing the welfare it's not the numbers it's the technology that yeah it's whether the people who come out of this bottleneck are capable of maintaining the kind of the type of medical tech which i really want to be maintained that's that's my biggest worry about this
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Although on the plus side, right? Like if there is a group at the moment, Israel is probably in the lead for this, right? If there is a group that can manage to be both fertile and high tech, they will dominate the world. They will have the world at their feet.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So envious. Classic men.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And I strongly concluded from that that actually she's doing this more as a kind of self-harm than anything else. Bonnie Blue, I'm not so sure about. She might be one of those unicorn women. I've always said there probably are some women The world is big enough. There are some women who actually really like having sex like a man and really mean it. Bonnie Bloom might be one of them.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think it's a massive factor. And that is really interesting about nieces and nephews. I hadn't really thought about it in that way. Because yeah, it's hard to overstate how magic it is. When you have a baby, you don't just have a baby, you have your baby, right? And your baby is different from all other babies because your baby looks like you. It's the most amazing thing.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
My eldest has my eyes, exactly. And it's such a strange and amazing feeling to look at this person that you love more than anything. And they have your eyes, right? There's just nothing like it. And I can see how if you can get an echo of that through having nieces and nephews or cousins or whatever, which could be very motivating. Or indeed, your friends have children as well.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think there probably is a kind of vicious cycle and a virtuous cycle where... When you live in a low fertility culture, it becomes harder to have children because nothing is really set up for children. And the expectation is that you won't have them. Just things like I'm taking my kids on a plane for the first time. And not just on a plane, but on a plane to Australia in like two weeks.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
One of the reasons I'm nervous is not because I actually think they'll be quite good, but The thing that makes me nervous is actually other people on the plane being unpleasant to us because they don't think children belong there. And they're not used to seeing children in public spaces, let alone on airplanes.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And yeah, there are so many issues you encounter when you have children and very few other people do, where people are just... not even necessarily hostile, but just clueless. And it just makes life more difficult in all sorts of ways. And I think the flip side, so I hear from people who live in very fertile societies is it becomes super normal and the infrastructure is there.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And there's always kind of waiting pair of hands to hold your baby if you need them to. And yeah, I think that there's definitely a sense in which what other people are doing makes a massive impact on what you do and what's easy for you to do.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Optimal parenting. I think. So going back actually, interestingly, to like the doomerism about say environmentalists who don't want to have kids because they're massive doomers. I've been thinking recently about the role of neuroticism in parenting because, you know, you'll know that women are more neurotic than men, like quite a lot. And that difference only comes on at puberty.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And it seems likely that the reason women are more neurotic than men is mostly to do with the fact that women are mothers who are primarily responsible for little children. And actually, Jordan Peterson likes to talk about this painting. I can't remember the name of the painter, which is of the Virgin Mother holding the infant Christ.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Is it with the snake on the floor?
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think this is a painting rather than sculpture, but I can't remember the artist. She's holding the infant Christ because there's a snake on the floor and she's like got her foot on the snake and it's basically protecting her infant from the snake. And he always holds this up as like the archetypal image of the protected mother.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And it can confirm you get super neurotic when you're, you know, a friend of mine warned me before I had my first you will behave in ways as a new mother that would have you diagnosed as OCD in any other circumstance. But in this instance, it's actually fine and it's normal and you'll get over it. But the neuroticism is adaptive.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's not very pleasant, but it is adaptive because neurotic mothers historically were the ones who spotted the snake on the ground or took whatever protective measures necessary in order to protect their children. I now wonder if neuroticism might be doing the opposite. I wonder if actually neuroticism might be discouraging people from having children.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
either like the super neurotic people who are so worried about climate apocalypse that they don't have children at all. But also even, I mean, I noticed in myself, I'm quite a neurotic person. I just worry about things.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
One of the differences between me and mums I know who have lots of kids close together is that they are generally much more chill and much more willing to just kind of let their kids get on with it and not be constantly following them around and not be just not worrying too much, just kind of not being helicopter parents, just being chill.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And I recognise in myself that I find that really difficult to do. And I would really struggle to have say three under three because you just have to, like in reality, if you've got three kids under three and you don't have loads of nannies or whatever, you just have to let the kids go on with it and just, and not fuss too much and, and certainly not be too worried about your house being too tidy.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And, you know, like actually the sort of personality that I wonder if, is now being selected for in terms of people who are willing to have kids are people who are actually quite chill and quite... Ah, well, just do it.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Exactly, who don't get themselves all so wrapped up that they're too worried to just go ahead and do it. And then when they do have children, they're like, oh, we'll have another one. We'll make it work, whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, exactly. I wonder if neuroticism is now being selected against.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, it's just my hypothesis and my impression from looking around at people.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They probably have higher, but I mean, I... like every crazy neurotic mother, I read every news story that crosses my eye about something terrible happening to a child. And I got to say, like the vast majority of cases where you read about some terrible accident that's happened to a child, I'm like, I would never let that happen. Like the negligence.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. I mean, often it's just people being just silly. And I read that and I'm like, I would literally never do that. This is not, that's more crazy. But then I think, The chance of your child dying? is still really, really low, right? Even properly quite negligent parents, the chance of their child dying in some kind of accident is still really low.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's probably still the case, therefore, that neuroticism is being selected against because actually you're moving from like one in a 10 million chance to one in a million chance kind of thing. And so it's probably actually fine. Like if you live in a really safe environment like we do with vaccines and all this good stuff, whereas being like, eh, let's just have another baby, that makes,
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
pretty big impact on how much genetic material you leave behind when you're when you're gone yeah how much gender neutrality can there be in parenting now that you've got a full two split tests to be able to compare uh what have you learned about gender neutrality um i think that male children are really different from female children i mean i don't have a girl i've got two boys right so i don't have a girl yet um uh
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I have definitely learned that I can completely see why little boys are diagnosed more with ADHD than little girls are. Because actually the normal way that little boys behave is much further towards the ADHD type of behavior than the normal way that little girls behave. I'm amazed when friends bring around their little girls, like two-year-old girls who just sit at the table quietly coloring.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
My son does not do that. Other little boys I know do not do that. They are much, much more rambunctious and actually is really difficult sometimes fitting the character of little boys around the demands of modern life. I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that ADHD diagnoses go up. at the same time that we're expecting little boys to sit quietly on the mat all day in school.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's just not what they want to do.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
that's not me saying that bonnie blue is a the berserker of the she might be she says that she is like it's possible that she is i don't know i can't see into her mind um i do think i think lily phillips almost certainly isn't like that um and
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
It's non-trivial. It's like 20%, something like that I've read. What we have basically done is we just cut off the most rambunctious 20% of the male bell curve and just give them drugs. And I don't think it's very good for the boys. I think it would be much better if we had an education system that was better suited to boys' normal behavior. But it's kind of difficult.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, a lot of what's being done at school is crowd control. Yeah. Which is why I used to think maybe I should homeschool the children. And now I actually don't think I have the personality. Why is that? For multiple reasons. Because it's incredibly hard work, actually. Because the problem is, it's a coordination problem.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
If we all lived like people used to live for most of human history, where you live around your extended kin, and you live in a walkable environment, and you're constantly hanging out with other people who have children, that would be one thing. But the reality of living in a low-fertility society...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
where everyone sends their kids to school, is who are the kids going to hang out with during the day? And I know that there are homeschooling co-ops, but in reality, it can be quite hard to actually coordinate with other parents.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah. So yeah, the really high agency thing to do would be like, I'm just going to move to Texas and I'm going to find my, I'm going to find my people and I'm going to, you know, educate children exactly how I want them to be educated. All right. Maybe we'll end up doing that. But you can't really, I always, I think of this as being a unilateral trad life when you're like,
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I'm just going to go and live in the woods and I'm going to homeschool my children. And I'm going, you know, and it's like, yeah, except that it's actually very difficult to do that on your own. Trad life involves other people.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
you know that's what proper trad life is pan-generational housing yeah it's you've got a friend who is a teacher and you help out a little bit some days and you take the class another day that's proper trad life and you have a dozen cousins around you who all have kids of the same age right that's actual trad life and you've always and you can't read and you all live in the same place as opposed to this solopreneur trad life equivalent yeah yeah it's like one of my friends an irish catholic friend she always likes to say that actual trad caths
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They don't go to Latin mass several times a day. They go to mass twice a year. They can't read and they believe in fairies. Similarly, actual trad life does not look like Instagram trad life.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I mean, not just that, but it's the loneliness actually of it. I think unilateral trad life is actually a lot more like frontier life. I think that's part of what's being recreated. It's the little house on the prairie kind of lifestyle where you go out as the nuclear unit and you live in difficult conditions in the middle of nowhere.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think actually that's the sort of cultural memory that has been appealed to. And actually frontier life was very, very difficult, particularly for women, which is why there was this... contagious mental illness called prairie madness.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
If you ever heard of this, where women living, you know, in the, in the, um, on the Western frontier would literally go completely crazy through loneliness and stress. Like unilateral trad life is hardcore and most people are not suited to it. But the problem is that trying to recreate that, non-unilateral trad life requires the involvement of other people. There's a coordination problem.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I just have always had a problem with the idea that just because a woman says she wants to do something, or indeed a man says he wants to do something, that means that he's definitely doing the thing that's in his best interest and everyone just needs to step back and be like, oh yeah, great, go for it, mate.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think it's also hard when you're not related to each other. Because to some extent, when you're related to each other, as you would be in an actual multigenerational setup, you're genetically invested in each other. And also, you can't really opt out. Only in extreme circumstances can you just ditch your family. You sort of have to make those relationships work.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Whereas the issue with these chosen connections is Everyone knows you can kind of opt out and no one really has that much genetic investment in each other's lives, children, whatever. So interestingly, I have a friend, Elizabeth Oldfield, who she has written about doing this. It's not really, it's not a commune, but she and her husband bought a house with another couple.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And Elizabeth and her husband have children. The other couple intend to have children. And they're facing London property prices, you know, nightmare. And so they did economy of scale by buying this one house together. And they share the kitchen, but then they have other separate areas and whatever. I've been to the house loads of times. And they've done really well.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, it solves a lot of problems. And when more children come along, there'll be like childcare sharing. And there's a lot of... sense to it but they also went into it really really clear-eyed about problems and they do all sorts of stuff to try and smooth issues like they have a weekly house meeting where they talk about any issues people are having
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
They have like carefully mapped out exit plans if ever anyone wants to get out of the situation. Like it takes actually so much work to make these relationships function. And it's what really jumps out to me is that when you're not related to people, it's much harder to make these things work than if you are related to people.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And you sort of have to, which is not to say that you don't have issues with families. But yeah, I mean, there's sort of a reason that people have historically grown these households and communities around actual genetic relationships.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
You know, the real nightmare scenario actually in really traditional cultures. I'm really interested in some of the differences between patrilocal and matrilocal societies. What's that? Which is a very like nerdy anthropology thing. But patrilocal societies are where when a couple gets married, they move to where the husband is from. Like they move into his home.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
family's house or uh just to be nearby them matri local is the other is the other flip side so that's when you move to the mothers good to guess that the matri local is rarer Well, not necessarily. So interestingly, English working-class culture is traditionally matrilocal.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And one of the consequences of that is that you'll be familiar with all these old-style comics who complain about mothers-in-law. Often the reason they complain about mothers-in-law is because they actually live with their mothers-in-law because it's a matrilocal society.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And when you've just got married and you don't have enough money to set up your own house, you'll go and have to live with your... the woman's parents for a bit. And there's also all sorts of stereotypes around Cockney women in particular being very like brassy.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I mean, that's the traditional term, like being quite like strong-willed, like mum, the mum being actually quite a dominant figure in the family. Like there's lots of ways actually in which English working class culture, British working class culture is actually empowers women quite a lot. Women have quite a lot of power.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Because it's very common for children to be taken away from mums if they are in prostitution. And the thing is that I think what social services are normally worried about is children being exposed to punters, like if they're coming into the home, which isn't happening with...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Whereas patrilocal societies tend to be the opposite because you end up with the new bride moving into her husband's family and often getting... dominated by them, like being actually in a very weak position and having to be very subservient to them. And often patrilocal cultures tend to have norms where women are more demure and more quiet and more willing to be passed around by other people.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, I choose matrilocal every time. But then maybe I would say that.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So my podcast is called Made by the Matriarch. It's on all podcast platforms, YouTube, et cetera. I mostly talk about sexual politics, although I'm increasing it. I've been thinking to myself, what are the things that I'm generally interested in? Um, and I decided that what I'm interested in is, um, birth, sex, violence, and death.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So if you want to hear about any of those themes, um, and, uh, my first book was the case against sexual revolution. And I actually have a, a new edition of that book coming out, which is a young adult edition. So it's been edited down to be shorter and simpler and less grim for young adults. So it's intended for sort of 14, 15, 16, 17-year-olds-ish.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
No, that one's actually called A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. But it's the young adult edition of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. And it is basically the same book.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
95% positive responses actually to my book. I thought I was going to get cancelled and I didn't. Hopefully the same thing will happen in the young adult edition. Although I think that some of the young adults themselves might be a bit. We did run it past and when we were doing the editing process, we got some teenagers to read it and give anonymous feedback.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And there was more than one that was absolutely scantled by my gender-exclusive language and stuff like that. So some of them might be a bit bolder.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I think a family should do that.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Well, it's like society does. So I think increasingly that agency is more like a personality trait than it is like an essential quality of human beings. I think that it's on a bell curve. I think it's probably actually a combination of different personality traits. It's probably a combination of like industriousness. Disagreeability. Disagreeableness.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Probably there's some intelligence in there as well. I think there's like multiple things going on. But I think that some people are naturally more agentic than other people are. Elon Musk, I think, is an amazing example of the most agentic person you can imagine. He's just like, I'm going to go to Mars. He just decides, you know, age 30, I'm going to go to Mars, I'm going to die on Mars.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And he's just making it happen, right? And he's just like done everything in his power to make it happen. Similarly, he's like, I'm going to have, you know, gazillions of kids, etc. He's just, he's one of these people who bends the world around his will, not the other way around, right? And most people aren't like that.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Most people take life as it comes much more and are much more passive and just basically go along with what other people are doing and kind of follow life scripts and hope for the best. And things don't always work out for them, but they get on with it. That's the normal way that people behave. And I honestly think that's probably for the best.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
I don't think we want my entire world to be Elon Musk's. I think it would be chaos.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
Yeah, it's not even just... Cleverness is important. It's not even just that. It's also wisdom. It's just like what guardrails do is that they understand human beings better than human beings generally understand themselves. And there will sometimes be some people who break the guardrails and it's for the best, you know. But in most cases, you should basically do what...
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
most other people do because there's a reason.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
So I think the reason that the average American is divorced, obese and has less than one, it's like a tongue tie, I can't do it. Anyway, is because our society is set up in a maladaptive way for human nature, right? The reason that people are obese is because there is a
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
abundance of cheap calories available and no real need to do exercise and this is kind of like kind of a great thing right like we don't have to worry about famine in the way that our ancestors did but it clearly is terrible for people's waistlines similarly the reason that divorce is so prevalent is because of all the stuff that i've written spoken about for so many years you know we don't encourage people to make good relationships decisions and the institution of marriage was actually really good and throwing out the window was a mistake and so basically i think that if um
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
We should be making, so I think one of them is a lot of people who are in positions of authority in all sorts of ways, whether that be in media or politics or whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
tend to be really really agentic people they tend to be intelligent yeah but they also tend to be very good at basically bending life to their will right and those people often find it very difficult to empathize with people who aren't like that particularly because we just not really something that we talk about right it's not like a i mean i've basically kind of made up the word agentic it's not it's not really something that people are familiar with as a concept um
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
That means that they can find it really hard to, you know, for instance, I'll just say, oh, just eat less and move more. You know, why are people struggling with their weight? Like, this is ridiculous. I'm fine because I have exceptionally good self-control and I'm really conscientious and I just design my life such that I'm not tempted by empty calories.
Modern Wisdom
#911 - Louise Perry - Has Modern Society Set Women Up For Failure?
And it doesn't occur to them that most people aren't like that and aren't really capable of being that way. willful. And these are exactly the same people who will dismiss a Zen pick or something and say, oh, we don't need any of this stuff because people can just eat less and move more.