September 15, 2025 • 32 mins
Western culture isn’t struggling with money or freedom—it’s struggling with maturity. In this talk, Aaron Pete explores how comfort made us fragile, how politics turned into therapy, how media became performance, and how leaders lost their courage. This is a call to grow up again—choosing responsibility, honesty, and seriousness over outrage and convenience.
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Aaron Pete (00:32):
There is something hollow at the core of Western
culture today.
You can feel it.
It's in the way we speakcautious, curated, afraid to
offend.
It's in the way we argue not tounderstand but to offend.
It's in the way we argue not tounderstand but to dominate.
It's in the way we leadperformatively,
opportunistically, with littlecourage and even less
(00:52):
consequence.
We've become a culture addictedto convenience, allergic to
discomfort and hostile to truth,the kind of culture that
prefers slogans to substance andoutrage to introspection.
The kind of culture that shamescomplexity and rewards
conformity and, worst of all,the kind of culture that
(01:13):
congratulates itself for doingso.
The West is not facing a crisisof wealth, freedom or knowledge.
It is facing a crisis ofmaturity.
That word maturity has all butvanished from public discourse,
but it's something preciselythat we need right now.
It's what's missing, not justbecause in our politics or
(01:36):
institutions, but in our homes,schools and civic conversations,
we've mistaken adulthood forage, wisdom for credentials and
responsibility for branding.
We've become a people who haveforgotten how to be serious, and
the cracks are showing.
How did we get here?
(01:58):
Some point to the reduction anddecline of religion, others
blame the rise of social media,some say it's the universities,
others billionaires.
But none of these forces existin a vacuum.
They flourished in a culturealready drifting soft,
(02:19):
complacent and seduced bycomfort.
This series is not an attack.
It's a reckoning, an attempt tochart how we lost our cultural
gravity and what we might needto reclaim it, a reflection on
the long descent from theresilience of the World War II
(02:39):
generation to the fragility ofthe Instagram age generation, to
the fragility of the Instagramage, from the Normandy landings
to Netflix burnout, fromuncomfortable truths to
uncomfortable lies.
There will be four parts, fourpillars of our cultural
regression Comfort po litics,media government Politics, media
(03:06):
government.
This isn't left versus right,it's serious versus unserious.
And until we choose to grow upagain, nothing gets better.
Generations spoiled by comfort.
(03:28):
Between 1960 and 2001, the Westexperienced the most expansive
period of economic growth inhuman history Post-World War II.
Reconstruction, industrial boom, suburban development and
globalization brought rising GDP, falling poverty and a sense of
unstoppable momentum, ofunstoppable momentum.
There were no world wars, noexistential enemies, no
conscription, just highways,fridges, pensions and the
(03:51):
illusion that progress was goingto be permanent.
It worked.
Materially, the West flourished, but culturally we softened.
And it wasn't just wealth, itwas the absence of adversity For
the first time in human history, generations came of age
(04:12):
without knowing war, famine oreconomic collapse, and instead
of using that privilege tostrengthen society, we used it
to shield ourselves from thevery idea of suffering.
This is the paradox of moderncomfort.
It gave us more than anycivilization before us, and it
also hollowed us out.
(04:33):
In 2021, pew Research found that59% of Americans believe too
many people are easily offendedthese days over the language
others use.
That number cuts across partylines.
It's not just a generationaldivide.
It's a cultural reckoning.
We've equated discomfort withharm, inconvenience with
(04:56):
oppression.
The shift didn't happen byaccident.
It's the result of anover-parenting, over-protection
and the rise of the safety-firstmentality.
Jonathan Haidt and GregLukianoff, in the Coddling of
the American Mind, describe howchildren raised in affluent
(05:19):
societies were taught thatemotional discomfort is
dangerous, that words can beviolence and that avoiding
conflict is a virtue.
The result An epidemic offragility.
College campuses, once arenasof debates, now counsel speakers
for making people feel unsafe.
Words like harm, trauma andviolence are applied to ideas,
(05:42):
not actions, and resilience isno longer a goal.
It's considered a threat tovulnerable minds.
This coddling extends far beyondacademia.
Consider life skills.
A 2022 YouGov poll found thatonly 35% of Americans aged 18 to
(06:05):
29 feel very confidentperforming basic mechanical
repairs.
Another survey from AutoMDfound that nearly three in four
millennials don't know how tochange a tire.
These aren't just mechanicalfailures.
They're symbolic failures alack of agency competence and
(06:26):
self-reliance.
A generation raised on digitaltechnology and instant
gratification is less likely totake risk, solve physical
problems or develop theresilience that comes from trial
and error.
What was once common knowledgehow to use tools, fix a faucet,
(06:46):
build a treehouse is nowoutsourced to YouTube or avoided
altogether.
Even risk-taking has declined.
Haidt and others havedocumented how children today
have less unsupervised outdoortime than any generation before
them.
Free play, which used to be afoundation of childhood
(07:06):
development, has been replacedby scheduled activities, screen
times and surveillance.
Reality doesn't come withtrigger warnings, but our
institutions do.
Schools, workplaces and evensocial media platforms now
preemptively warn us thatcontent may cause discomfort.
(07:29):
While originally well-intended,this trend is increasingly
criticized by psychologists ascounterproductive, particularly
in the treatment of anxiety andtrauma.
Dr Richard McNally, a Harvardpsychologist, has found that
trigger warnings can increaseanxiety, especially among those
with PTSD.
(07:49):
In other words, shieldingpeople from difficult material
may make them more sensitive,not less.
Exposure, not avoidance buildsresilience, but that's the
opposite of what Westerninstitutions are doing.
From HR policies to curriculumdesign, we're creating systems
(08:11):
that coddle emotion instead ofcultivating strength.
This isn't about romanticizingthe past.
It's about recognizing adangerous pattern.
When comfort becomes aworldview, not just a condition,
we begin to expect the world tobend to us.
We assume we deserve ease, wemistake every obstacle for an
(08:35):
injustice and we demand that ourinstitutions, leaders and
systems never make usuncomfortable, even when
discomfort is necessary.
That mindset doesn't staycontained in our homes or
classrooms.
It bleeds into how we vote, howwe protest, how we engage with
the truth and power.
(08:55):
It shapes how we framedisagreement not as difference
but as danger.
It teaches us not just to seeksafety but to weaponize it.
And that brings us to thesecond fault line in our
cultural immaturity politics.
Because when a fragile cultureencounters complex problems, it
(09:17):
doesn't look for solutions, itlooks for enemies.
Material progress withoutcultural maturity doesn't make
us wise, it makes us complacent.
And when crisis hits, as it didduring COVID-19, with lockdowns
, mandates and institutionalfailure, we saw just how
unprepared the comfortableclasses really were.
(09:40):
We panicked, we blamed and wemelted Politics, how
partisanship infantilized theWest.
Politics is supposed to be thearena where adults hash out
difficult trade-offs in public,but today it feels more like a
therapy session for thechronically offended, where
(10:01):
ideology is a personality,disagreement is betrayal and
nuance is dead on arrival.
The modern political landscapeisn't just polarized, it's
childish.
We don't debate policiesanymore, we trade memes.
We don't challenge ideas.
We shame each other intosilence and in that vacuum, the
(10:23):
loudest, angriest and mostemotionally reactive voices win.
We've turned democracy, oncethe domain of stoic statesmen
and principled dissidents, intoa theater of tantrums, and the
result isn't activism, it'sregression.
(10:44):
Once upon a time, you could be aliberal and still believe in
free speech.
You could be a conservative andstill criticize corporate power
, but in the current climate,what you believe matters far
less than who you're alignedwith.
Partisanship has morphed intotribalism.
A 2022 Pew study found that 72%of Republicans and 63% of
(11:08):
Democrats say they have veryunfavorable views of the other
party Levels not seen since theCivil War.
These aren't just politicaldisagreements, they're moral
condemnations.
In Canada, we are moving slowlyin the same direction.
The Centre for Media Technologyand Democracy found that
(11:29):
Canadians were increasinglyfeeling negative emotions to
those who didn't share theirview.
We don't ask what's the bestway to fix this.
We ask whose side are you on?
This is what Haidt calls moralpolarization of public life.
People no longer hold positionsbased on reason or evidence.
(11:50):
They inherit them from theirsocial group, then treat any
contradiction as a personalattack.
Today's political discourse runson vibes, not values.
Policy analysis has beenreplaced with the emotional
venting, especially on platformslike X, where outrage is
(12:12):
rewarded and complexity ispunished In the Righteous Mind.
Jonathan Haidt explains howpeople tend to form emotional
judgments first, thenrationalize them after the fact.
This means that most politicaldebate isn't about truth.
It's about affirmation, andpoliticians know it, which is
(12:34):
why so many of them campaign noton detailed plans but on
outrage now dabbles in emotionalmanipulation because it works.
Rhetoric like build the wall orbelieve all women isn't meant
(12:56):
to be debated.
It's meant to be repeated.
It's meme politics, not policypolitics.
But here's the darker side.
The system treats us likechildren because we started to
act like them.
We demand the government fixevery problem instantly,
(13:16):
painlessly and perfectly, nomatter the financial cost.
We punish politicians forhonesty and reward them for
saying what we want to hear.
We ask for security, notliberty.
Entitlement not responsibility.
In a healthy democracy, votersare expected to wrestle with
trade-offs Freedom vs safety,growth vs equity, rights vs
(13:40):
responsibilities but in ourcurrent culture, trade-offs are
offensive.
Any attempt at compromise istreated as betrayal.
Look at how leaders are nowpunished for even modest nuance.
Justin Trudeau said he wouldn'tbring in vaccine mandates and
then reversed course, triggeringmass protests and the
(14:04):
invocation of the EmergenciesAct.
He didn't just lose trust, heexposed how reactive and binary
our politics have become.
In the US, anthony Fauci washailed as a saint by one half of
the country and a tyrant by theother, regardless of his actual
record.
People didn't evaluate what hesaid.
They evaluated what herepresented.
(14:26):
We want our leaders to beperfect symbols, not flawed
humans, and that is a deeplychildish demand.
When a culture becomes fragile,it stops taking responsibility.
Instead, it searches forvillains, and modern politics is
awash with scapegoats theunvaccinated, the woke, the
(14:50):
Trumpers, the elites, thetruckers, the media, the
immigrants, the billionairesPick your enemy.
What matters isn't whether theycaused your problem.
What matters is whether they'reconvenient to blame.
As Yuval Levin writes, in A Timeto Build institutions used to
form people.
Now they perform for people.
(15:13):
Politicians don't lead.
They brand Parties, don't offerplatforms.
They offer slogans and votersdon't deliberate.
They perform outrage, usuallyonline, and call it democracy.
They perform outrage, usuallyonline, and call it democracy.
When comfort eroded ourresilience, politics became the
(15:34):
first casualty Because once apopulation expects ease, safety
and affirmation, politics stopsbeing a civic duty and starts
being a therapy session.
We don't want leaders, we wantemotional surrogates.
We don't want leaders, we wantemotional surrogates.
We don't want arguments, wewant echo chambers.
And when we finally do face areal crisis geopolitical,
(16:04):
economic or environmental wewon't know how to argue or build
correlations or change course,because we won't trust anyone
who disagrees with us.
Which leads us into the thirdfracture in Western maturity
Media, because if politics isbroken, it's not all alone.
The fourth state broke with itMedia.
How journalism becameperformance.
(16:24):
If politics is where publicimmaturity is most visible, then
media is where it is mostamplified.
Once, journalism was a tool tohold power accountable, a sober
civic institution, but today itis a stage.
Performance has replacedreporting, sensation has
(16:46):
replaced scrutiny and narrativeshave replaced reporting.
Sensation has replaced scrutinyand narratives have replaced
nuance.
Journalism was once blue-collar, gritty, grounded.
The journalist used to be theoutsider, the inconvenient voice
, the one who poked holes in theofficial story.
Think of Seymour Hershuncovering my Lie, bob
(17:08):
Woodwardward and Carl Bernsteintracking Watergate.
Even Peter Mansbridge calmlynarrating the world into
Canadian living rooms.
But that class of journalisthas been replaced by something
entirely different the celebritypundit.
They don't investigate.
They perform Not for truth butfor tribes.
(17:32):
Let's start with the numbers.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 32% of Americans say they
have a great deal or a fairamount of trust in the media,
down from 72% in 1976.
That's not a dip, that's a freefall.
Why?
Because people aren't stupid.
They see the game.
(17:53):
They see journalists parrotingthe same language as politicians
.
They see coverage that cherrypicks facts to fit the narrative
, whether it's on immigration,covid, war or gender.
And they see corporate sponsorsbig pharma, big tech, defense
contractors shaping what'sreported and what isn't.
(18:16):
This is something Holly Doan,publisher of Blacklock's
Reporter and a past guest on theshow, laid out bluntly.
She is one of the few reportersstill reading government
reports word for word.
She described how mostjournalists don't attend
committee hearings or analyzebudgets.
They wait for press releasesand then rewrite them.
(18:37):
She also noted a critical truthMany Canadian news outlets are
subsidized by the verygovernment they're supposed to
scrutinize.
According to a report from theHub as of 2023, over $595
million has been spent,committed to support Canadian
news organizations under variousgovernment programs.
(19:00):
That creates a chilling effect,not through censorship but
through dependency.
How can a media outletinvestigate the hand that feeds
them?
We used to ask what's true.
Now we ask what does my sidesay?
This is the death of journalismand the birth of infotainment
(19:24):
content tailored not to informbut to reinforce identity.
If you're left wing, you watchMSNBC.
If you're right-wing, you watchFox News.
If you're young anddisillusioned, maybe it's
Breaking Points or the YoungTurks, but regardless of the
platform, the formula is thesame Find a story that activates
outrage, flatten the complexityand deliver it with certainty.
(19:47):
This is not journalism, it'semotional affirmation.
And it's dangerous becausecomplex problems like inflation,
climate change or housing don'tfit neatly into soundbites, but
our media system demands thatthey do, and when journalists
prioritize virality oververacity, we all become dumber.
(20:10):
There's also a generationalshift.
Journalism used to attractcurious, skeptical people.
Today it increasingly attractssocial climbers and activists.
They don't want to be invisiblenote-takers.
They want to be voices, and notin the old Edward R Murrow
sense.
They want to be invisible notetakers.
They want to be voices, and notin the old Edward R Murrow
(20:31):
sense.
They want to be seen.
They build brands, growplatforms and trade journalists
to credibility.
For Twitter clout.
They chase virality likeinfluencers do, and in many ways
they are influencers, just withpress credentials.
Even the tone of reporting haschanged.
Compare how journalists coveredthe Cuban Missile Crisis to how
(20:53):
they covered Joe Roganinterviewing Robert Malone.
One was grave, disciplined,restrained, the other breathless
, reactive and moralizing.
And while traditional outletsare bleeding readers,
alternative media is rising.
Some of it is excellentLong-form interviews, data
(21:13):
journalism, deep reporting butmuch of it is just the other
side of the same coinPerformance in a different
jersey.
Covid exposed just howperformative journalism has
become.
Instead of asking hardquestions about the origin of
the virus, lockdown, trade-offsor vaccine mandates, many
(21:34):
outlets simply repeated whatgovernment and pharmaceutical
spokespersons said, word forword.
Dissenting voices weren'tdebated, they were discredited
or deplatformed.
Dr Vinay Prasad, a professor ofepidemiology, platformed.
Dr Vinay Prasad, a professor ofepidemiology, warned that this
style of coverage underminedtrust and turned journalism into
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stenography.
But few listened.
Why?
Because performance was safer,easier and more profitable.
And again people noticed.
Even those who complied beganto feel uneasy about how little
scrutiny the press applied topublic health policy, and once
trust is lost, it's nearlyimpossible to regain.
(22:20):
When journalism becomesperformance, democracy becomes a
stage play.
We're not engaging with reality.
We're reacting to a script, andthat script is written by
algorithms funded bycorporations and performed by
people too scared or toodependent to challenge power.
We need a media culture that'sbrave, skeptical and humble, one
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that doesn't just report what'spopular but investigate what
matters, one that serves thepublic, not the brand, because
without serious press, we becomea serious threat to ourselves.
And nowhere is that moreobvious than in how governments
now behave, knowing they'rerarely held accountable.
(23:11):
Government when leadership lostits spine Once upon a time,
public office came withexpectations of seriousness.
Leaders were expected to beadults in the room.
They had to make hard decisions, tell uncomfortable truths and,
when they got things wrong,step down.
But that era is gone.
(23:32):
What we have now are brandmanagers in suits, figures, who
campaign on authenticity andgovern by calculation.
They pose, they pivot, theyrarely admit failure and they
almost never pay a price for it.
We don't elect leaders anymore,we elect marketers.
And when things go sideways,their instinct isn't to lead,
(23:55):
it's to perform damage control.
In a mature democracy, failuremeans consequences, but not
today, failure means nothing.
Take Canadian Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau In 2021, he
insisted that vaccine mandateswere not on the table.
He introduced one, helpeddivide the country by rhetoric.
(24:16):
They don't believe in science.
They're often misogynists andracists and invoked the
Emergencies Act against theconvoy protest, a tool never
before used in Canadian history.
Was there accountability?
Not really.
In fact, mainstream medialargely ran cover.
No apology, no reflection, justa continuation of a brand
(24:40):
Empathy on the surface andcoercion underneath.
In the United States, anthonyFauci told Americans in early
2020 that masks weren'tnecessary, only to later reverse
course and defend the lie bysaying he didn't want a mask
shortage.
To reverse course and defendthe lie by saying he didn't want
a mask shortage.
When the lab leak theory gainedtraction, he dismissed it
publicly, even though internalemails showed that it was a
(25:02):
possibility.
He acknowledged privately.
Again, no accountability.
He was hailed as a hero by halfthe country and demonized by
the other.
Truth was secondary.
What mattered was which sideyou thought he was on.
When leadership loses its spine,it begins to behave like public
relations.
(25:23):
The goal is no longer to tellthe truth or make things better.
It's to manage perception andin the end, we get politics that
feels like advertising, notgovernance.
We now live in an era ofsymbolic governance.
It's not what politicians dothat matters, it's what they
(25:45):
signal.
They kneel, they wear flags,they tweet, but when it comes
time to legislate or leadthrough a crisis, but their
instincts are to deflect, delayor delegate.
Consider the housing crisis inCanada Minister after minister,
report after report, and yetaffordability continues to
(26:06):
worsen.
Why?
Because serious reform likezoning overhauls or municipal
accountability.
It's politically risky.
It alienates mayors and voters.
So sometimes politiciansposture, hold summits, make big
announcements but avoid thestructural change we're required
to fix anything.
(26:28):
As Brad Viz, a conservative MPand a recent guest on the
podcast, pointed out, mostpoliticians are too tightly
bound by party discipline tothink independently, let alone
act with courage.
They fear their leaders morethan they fear the public.
Failure, that's not leadership,that's obedience.
Another hallmark of ourimmaturity is the
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bureaucratization of governance.
Decisions aren't made byelected leaders anymore, they're
made by sprawling,unaccountable agencies.
You saw it during COVID, whereprovincial health officers, not
premiers, shaped public life.
You see it with federal climatepolicy, where departments
issuing sweeping regulationswith minimal parliamentary
(27:12):
debate, regulations with minimalparliamentary debate.
You see it in education,housing, health, where
bureaucracies manage complexitythat politicians don't even
understand.
David Eby, premier of BritishColumbia, spoke to this on the
podcast how governments functionmore like landlords or giant
systems than active stewards.
The complexity is so vast, thefiles so technical, that most
(27:36):
politicians simply rubber stampwhat senior bureaucrats or
consultants hand them.
That's not inherently evil, butit's not democratic either.
And when things go wrong, whenhousing collapses, healthcare
buckles or students fall behind,no one takes responsibility.
Everyone points sideways.
That's immaturity at thehighest level.
(28:00):
There was a time whenresignation was an act of honor.
It meant I failed and I'll stepaside so others can lead better
.
That idea is nearly extinct.
The UK, oddly enough, still hassome tradition of it.
Matt Hancock, the UK healthsecretary, resigned in 2021
(28:21):
after breaking lockdown rules hehelped impose.
But in Canada and the US, youcan lie, break laws, violate
ethics and stay in office solong as your base is loyal and
your comms team is competent.
That's not strength, that's rot.
And when leaders don't modelintegrity, why would citizens?
(28:44):
Conclusion None of this existsin a vacuum.
Our leaders reflect us.
We tolerated these leadersbecause we stopped demanding
more.
We wanted comfort, not courage,performance not principle.
We mocked anyone who admitteddoubt.
(29:04):
We punished anyone who stoodalone and we rewarded whoever
could act confident while doingnothing.
Government has become a theaterand we, the audience, are
complicit.
If our leaders are weak, maybeit's because we're no longer
serious enough to choose betterones.
(29:25):
Maybe, just maybe, leadershipwon't grow a spine until the
public does.
We've built a civilization thatcan put a satellite into orbit
but falls apart when Twittergoes down for an hour.
We conquered disease, povertyand war in ways our ancestors
(29:46):
could have never imagined, andyet we seem unable to hold a
conversation without meltingdown.
We are more prosperous, moreconnected, more educated than
any society in history and lessserious than ever.
In this conversation, we'velooked at four pillars of that
(30:07):
collapse In comfort whichsoftened us.
We raised generations inunprecedented safety and
affluence and forgot how toteach them how to suffer, how to
persevere, how to endurediscomfort without falling apart
.
In politics, it infantilizes us.
We traded dialogue for division, traded civic duty for tribal
(30:30):
identity and replaced the adulttask of negotiation with the
childlike demand to be agreedwith In our media sphere.
It betrayed us.
Once a tool to challenge power,it became a performance
industry, more interested inclicks than in truth, more loyal
to narratives than to facts andmore complicit than courageous.
(30:53):
Our government, which lost itsspine.
We stopped asking for wisdomand started asking for branding.
We stopped rewarding integrityand started rewarding theater.
And when leaders no longer fearaccountability, they stop
acting like leaders at all.
But this isn't just aboutinstitutions, it's about us.
(31:15):
The media didn't become shallowbecause of some external
conspiracy.
It did because we clicked onthe shallow stuff.
Politicians didn't becomecowardly in a vacuum.
They did because we rewardedcowardice over complexity and
fragility didn't rise out ofnowhere.
It rose because we chose easeover depth every single time.
(31:38):
We are not victims of thiscultural immaturity.
We are its authors.
But that also means we canchoose differently.
We can choose depth overdopamine debate, over dismissal
principle, over performance.
We can stop asking for safetyand start asking for the truth.
We can stop demanding comfortand start cultivating courage.
(31:59):
We can choose to grow up,because we don't just need
better leaders.
We need better citizens, weneed better parents.
We need better students, bettermen, better women.
We need better parents.
We need better students, bettermen, better women.
We need seriousness again.
There is something hollow at the core of Western
culture today.
You can feel it.
It's in the way we speakcautious, curated, afraid to
offend.
It's in the way we argue not tounderstand but to offend.
It's in the way we argue not tounderstand but to dominate.
It's in the way we leadperformatively,
opportunistically, with littlecourage and even less
(00:52):
consequence.
We've become a culture addictedto convenience, allergic to
discomfort and hostile to truth,the kind of culture that
prefers slogans to substance andoutrage to introspection.
The kind of culture that shamescomplexity and rewards
conformity and, worst of all,the kind of culture that
(01:13):
congratulates itself for doingso.
The West is not facing a crisisof wealth, freedom or knowledge.
It is facing a crisis ofmaturity.
That word maturity has all butvanished from public discourse,
but it's something preciselythat we need right now.
It's what's missing, not justbecause in our politics or
(01:36):
institutions, but in our homes,schools and civic conversations,
we've mistaken adulthood forage, wisdom for credentials and
responsibility for branding.
We've become a people who haveforgotten how to be serious, and
the cracks are showing.
How did we get here?
(01:58):
Some point to the reduction anddecline of religion, others
blame the rise of social media,some say it's the universities,
others billionaires.
But none of these forces existin a vacuum.
They flourished in a culturealready drifting soft,
(02:19):
complacent and seduced bycomfort.
This series is not an attack.
It's a reckoning, an attempt tochart how we lost our cultural
gravity and what we might needto reclaim it, a reflection on
the long descent from theresilience of the World War II
(02:39):
generation to the fragility ofthe Instagram age generation, to
the fragility of the Instagramage, from the Normandy landings
to Netflix burnout, fromuncomfortable truths to
uncomfortable lies.
There will be four parts, fourpillars of our cultural
regression Comfort po litics,media government Politics, media
(03:06):
government.
This isn't left versus right,it's serious versus unserious.
And until we choose to grow upagain, nothing gets better.
Generations spoiled by comfort.
(03:28):
Between 1960 and 2001, the Westexperienced the most expansive
period of economic growth inhuman history Post-World War II.
Reconstruction, industrial boom, suburban development and
globalization brought rising GDP, falling poverty and a sense of
unstoppable momentum, ofunstoppable momentum.
There were no world wars, noexistential enemies, no
conscription, just highways,fridges, pensions and the
(03:51):
illusion that progress was goingto be permanent.
It worked.
Materially, the West flourished, but culturally we softened.
And it wasn't just wealth, itwas the absence of adversity For
the first time in human history, generations came of age
(04:12):
without knowing war, famine oreconomic collapse, and instead
of using that privilege tostrengthen society, we used it
to shield ourselves from thevery idea of suffering.
This is the paradox of moderncomfort.
It gave us more than anycivilization before us, and it
also hollowed us out.
(04:33):
In 2021, pew Research found that59% of Americans believe too
many people are easily offendedthese days over the language
others use.
That number cuts across partylines.
It's not just a generationaldivide.
It's a cultural reckoning.
We've equated discomfort withharm, inconvenience with
(04:56):
oppression.
The shift didn't happen byaccident.
It's the result of anover-parenting, over-protection
and the rise of the safety-firstmentality.
Jonathan Haidt and GregLukianoff, in the Coddling of
the American Mind, describe howchildren raised in affluent
(05:19):
societies were taught thatemotional discomfort is
dangerous, that words can beviolence and that avoiding
conflict is a virtue.
The result An epidemic offragility.
College campuses, once arenasof debates, now counsel speakers
for making people feel unsafe.
Words like harm, trauma andviolence are applied to ideas,
(05:42):
not actions, and resilience isno longer a goal.
It's considered a threat tovulnerable minds.
This coddling extends far beyondacademia.
Consider life skills.
A 2022 YouGov poll found thatonly 35% of Americans aged 18 to
(06:05):
29 feel very confidentperforming basic mechanical
repairs.
Another survey from AutoMDfound that nearly three in four
millennials don't know how tochange a tire.
These aren't just mechanicalfailures.
They're symbolic failures alack of agency competence and
(06:26):
self-reliance.
A generation raised on digitaltechnology and instant
gratification is less likely totake risk, solve physical
problems or develop theresilience that comes from trial
and error.
What was once common knowledgehow to use tools, fix a faucet,
(06:46):
build a treehouse is nowoutsourced to YouTube or avoided
altogether.
Even risk-taking has declined.
Haidt and others havedocumented how children today
have less unsupervised outdoortime than any generation before
them.
Free play, which used to be afoundation of childhood
(07:06):
development, has been replacedby scheduled activities, screen
times and surveillance.
Reality doesn't come withtrigger warnings, but our
institutions do.
Schools, workplaces and evensocial media platforms now
preemptively warn us thatcontent may cause discomfort.
(07:29):
While originally well-intended,this trend is increasingly
criticized by psychologists ascounterproductive, particularly
in the treatment of anxiety andtrauma.
Dr Richard McNally, a Harvardpsychologist, has found that
trigger warnings can increaseanxiety, especially among those
with PTSD.
(07:49):
In other words, shieldingpeople from difficult material
may make them more sensitive,not less.
Exposure, not avoidance buildsresilience, but that's the
opposite of what Westerninstitutions are doing.
From HR policies to curriculumdesign, we're creating systems
(08:11):
that coddle emotion instead ofcultivating strength.
This isn't about romanticizingthe past.
It's about recognizing adangerous pattern.
When comfort becomes aworldview, not just a condition,
we begin to expect the world tobend to us.
We assume we deserve ease, wemistake every obstacle for an
(08:35):
injustice and we demand that ourinstitutions, leaders and
systems never make usuncomfortable, even when
discomfort is necessary.
That mindset doesn't staycontained in our homes or
classrooms.
It bleeds into how we vote, howwe protest, how we engage with
the truth and power.
(08:55):
It shapes how we framedisagreement not as difference
but as danger.
It teaches us not just to seeksafety but to weaponize it.
And that brings us to thesecond fault line in our
cultural immaturity politics.
Because when a fragile cultureencounters complex problems, it
(09:17):
doesn't look for solutions, itlooks for enemies.
Material progress withoutcultural maturity doesn't make
us wise, it makes us complacent.
And when crisis hits, as it didduring COVID-19, with lockdowns
, mandates and institutionalfailure, we saw just how
unprepared the comfortableclasses really were.
(09:40):
We panicked, we blamed and wemelted Politics, how
partisanship infantilized theWest.
Politics is supposed to be thearena where adults hash out
difficult trade-offs in public,but today it feels more like a
therapy session for thechronically offended, where
(10:01):
ideology is a personality,disagreement is betrayal and
nuance is dead on arrival.
The modern political landscapeisn't just polarized, it's
childish.
We don't debate policiesanymore, we trade memes.
We don't challenge ideas.
We shame each other intosilence and in that vacuum, the
(10:23):
loudest, angriest and mostemotionally reactive voices win.
We've turned democracy, oncethe domain of stoic statesmen
and principled dissidents, intoa theater of tantrums, and the
result isn't activism, it'sregression.
(10:44):
Once upon a time, you could be aliberal and still believe in
free speech.
You could be a conservative andstill criticize corporate power
, but in the current climate,what you believe matters far
less than who you're alignedwith.
Partisanship has morphed intotribalism.
A 2022 Pew study found that 72%of Republicans and 63% of
(11:08):
Democrats say they have veryunfavorable views of the other
party Levels not seen since theCivil War.
These aren't just politicaldisagreements, they're moral
condemnations.
In Canada, we are moving slowlyin the same direction.
The Centre for Media Technologyand Democracy found that
(11:29):
Canadians were increasinglyfeeling negative emotions to
those who didn't share theirview.
We don't ask what's the bestway to fix this.
We ask whose side are you on?
This is what Haidt calls moralpolarization of public life.
People no longer hold positionsbased on reason or evidence.
(11:50):
They inherit them from theirsocial group, then treat any
contradiction as a personalattack.
Today's political discourse runson vibes, not values.
Policy analysis has beenreplaced with the emotional
venting, especially on platformslike X, where outrage is
(12:12):
rewarded and complexity ispunished In the Righteous Mind.
Jonathan Haidt explains howpeople tend to form emotional
judgments first, thenrationalize them after the fact.
This means that most politicaldebate isn't about truth.
It's about affirmation, andpoliticians know it, which is
(12:34):
why so many of them campaign noton detailed plans but on
outrage now dabbles in emotionalmanipulation because it works.
Rhetoric like build the wall orbelieve all women isn't meant
(12:56):
to be debated.
It's meant to be repeated.
It's meme politics, not policypolitics.
But here's the darker side.
The system treats us likechildren because we started to
act like them.
We demand the government fixevery problem instantly,
(13:16):
painlessly and perfectly, nomatter the financial cost.
We punish politicians forhonesty and reward them for
saying what we want to hear.
We ask for security, notliberty.
Entitlement not responsibility.
In a healthy democracy, votersare expected to wrestle with
trade-offs Freedom vs safety,growth vs equity, rights vs
(13:40):
responsibilities but in ourcurrent culture, trade-offs are
offensive.
Any attempt at compromise istreated as betrayal.
Look at how leaders are nowpunished for even modest nuance.
Justin Trudeau said he wouldn'tbring in vaccine mandates and
then reversed course, triggeringmass protests and the
(14:04):
invocation of the EmergenciesAct.
He didn't just lose trust, heexposed how reactive and binary
our politics have become.
In the US, anthony Fauci washailed as a saint by one half of
the country and a tyrant by theother, regardless of his actual
record.
People didn't evaluate what hesaid.
They evaluated what herepresented.
(14:26):
We want our leaders to beperfect symbols, not flawed
humans, and that is a deeplychildish demand.
When a culture becomes fragile,it stops taking responsibility.
Instead, it searches forvillains, and modern politics is
awash with scapegoats theunvaccinated, the woke, the
(14:50):
Trumpers, the elites, thetruckers, the media, the
immigrants, the billionairesPick your enemy.
What matters isn't whether theycaused your problem.
What matters is whether they'reconvenient to blame.
As Yuval Levin writes, in A Timeto Build institutions used to
form people.
Now they perform for people.
(15:13):
Politicians don't lead.
They brand Parties, don't offerplatforms.
They offer slogans and votersdon't deliberate.
They perform outrage, usuallyonline, and call it democracy.
They perform outrage, usuallyonline, and call it democracy.
When comfort eroded ourresilience, politics became the
(15:34):
first casualty Because once apopulation expects ease, safety
and affirmation, politics stopsbeing a civic duty and starts
being a therapy session.
We don't want leaders, we wantemotional surrogates.
We don't want leaders, we wantemotional surrogates.
We don't want arguments, wewant echo chambers.
And when we finally do face areal crisis geopolitical,
(16:04):
economic or environmental wewon't know how to argue or build
correlations or change course,because we won't trust anyone
who disagrees with us.
Which leads us into the thirdfracture in Western maturity
Media, because if politics isbroken, it's not all alone.
The fourth state broke with itMedia.
How journalism becameperformance.
(16:24):
If politics is where publicimmaturity is most visible, then
media is where it is mostamplified.
Once, journalism was a tool tohold power accountable, a sober
civic institution, but today itis a stage.
Performance has replacedreporting, sensation has
(16:46):
replaced scrutiny and narrativeshave replaced reporting.
Sensation has replaced scrutinyand narratives have replaced
nuance.
Journalism was once blue-collar, gritty, grounded.
The journalist used to be theoutsider, the inconvenient voice
, the one who poked holes in theofficial story.
Think of Seymour Hershuncovering my Lie, bob
(17:08):
Woodwardward and Carl Bernsteintracking Watergate.
Even Peter Mansbridge calmlynarrating the world into
Canadian living rooms.
But that class of journalisthas been replaced by something
entirely different the celebritypundit.
They don't investigate.
They perform Not for truth butfor tribes.
(17:32):
Let's start with the numbers.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 32% of Americans say they
have a great deal or a fairamount of trust in the media,
down from 72% in 1976.
That's not a dip, that's a freefall.
Why?
Because people aren't stupid.
They see the game.
(17:53):
They see journalists parrotingthe same language as politicians
.
They see coverage that cherrypicks facts to fit the narrative
, whether it's on immigration,covid, war or gender.
And they see corporate sponsorsbig pharma, big tech, defense
contractors shaping what'sreported and what isn't.
(18:16):
This is something Holly Doan,publisher of Blacklock's
Reporter and a past guest on theshow, laid out bluntly.
She is one of the few reportersstill reading government
reports word for word.
She described how mostjournalists don't attend
committee hearings or analyzebudgets.
They wait for press releasesand then rewrite them.
(18:37):
She also noted a critical truthMany Canadian news outlets are
subsidized by the verygovernment they're supposed to
scrutinize.
According to a report from theHub as of 2023, over $595
million has been spent,committed to support Canadian
news organizations under variousgovernment programs.
(19:00):
That creates a chilling effect,not through censorship but
through dependency.
How can a media outletinvestigate the hand that feeds
them?
We used to ask what's true.
Now we ask what does my sidesay?
This is the death of journalismand the birth of infotainment
(19:24):
content tailored not to informbut to reinforce identity.
If you're left wing, you watchMSNBC.
If you're right-wing, you watchFox News.
If you're young anddisillusioned, maybe it's
Breaking Points or the YoungTurks, but regardless of the
platform, the formula is thesame Find a story that activates
outrage, flatten the complexityand deliver it with certainty.
(19:47):
This is not journalism, it'semotional affirmation.
And it's dangerous becausecomplex problems like inflation,
climate change or housing don'tfit neatly into soundbites, but
our media system demands thatthey do, and when journalists
prioritize virality oververacity, we all become dumber.
(20:10):
There's also a generationalshift.
Journalism used to attractcurious, skeptical people.
Today it increasingly attractssocial climbers and activists.
They don't want to be invisiblenote-takers.
They want to be voices, and notin the old Edward R Murrow
sense.
They want to be invisible notetakers.
They want to be voices, and notin the old Edward R Murrow
(20:31):
sense.
They want to be seen.
They build brands, growplatforms and trade journalists
to credibility.
For Twitter clout.
They chase virality likeinfluencers do, and in many ways
they are influencers, just withpress credentials.
Even the tone of reporting haschanged.
Compare how journalists coveredthe Cuban Missile Crisis to how
(20:53):
they covered Joe Roganinterviewing Robert Malone.
One was grave, disciplined,restrained, the other breathless
, reactive and moralizing.
And while traditional outletsare bleeding readers,
alternative media is rising.
Some of it is excellentLong-form interviews, data
(21:13):
journalism, deep reporting butmuch of it is just the other
side of the same coinPerformance in a different
jersey.
Covid exposed just howperformative journalism has
become.
Instead of asking hardquestions about the origin of
the virus, lockdown, trade-offsor vaccine mandates, many
(21:34):
outlets simply repeated whatgovernment and pharmaceutical
spokespersons said, word forword.
Dissenting voices weren'tdebated, they were discredited
or deplatformed.
Dr Vinay Prasad, a professor ofepidemiology, platformed.
Dr Vinay Prasad, a professor ofepidemiology, warned that this
style of coverage underminedtrust and turned journalism into
(21:54):
stenography.
But few listened.
Why?
Because performance was safer,easier and more profitable.
And again people noticed.
Even those who complied beganto feel uneasy about how little
scrutiny the press applied topublic health policy, and once
trust is lost, it's nearlyimpossible to regain.
(22:20):
When journalism becomesperformance, democracy becomes a
stage play.
We're not engaging with reality.
We're reacting to a script, andthat script is written by
algorithms funded bycorporations and performed by
people too scared or toodependent to challenge power.
We need a media culture that'sbrave, skeptical and humble, one
(22:46):
that doesn't just report what'spopular but investigate what
matters, one that serves thepublic, not the brand, because
without serious press, we becomea serious threat to ourselves.
And nowhere is that moreobvious than in how governments
now behave, knowing they'rerarely held accountable.
(23:11):
Government when leadership lostits spine Once upon a time,
public office came withexpectations of seriousness.
Leaders were expected to beadults in the room.
They had to make hard decisions, tell uncomfortable truths and,
when they got things wrong,step down.
But that era is gone.
(23:32):
What we have now are brandmanagers in suits, figures, who
campaign on authenticity andgovern by calculation.
They pose, they pivot, theyrarely admit failure and they
almost never pay a price for it.
We don't elect leaders anymore,we elect marketers.
And when things go sideways,their instinct isn't to lead,
(23:55):
it's to perform damage control.
In a mature democracy, failuremeans consequences, but not
today, failure means nothing.
Take Canadian Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau In 2021, he
insisted that vaccine mandateswere not on the table.
He introduced one, helpeddivide the country by rhetoric.
(24:16):
They don't believe in science.
They're often misogynists andracists and invoked the
Emergencies Act against theconvoy protest, a tool never
before used in Canadian history.
Was there accountability?
Not really.
In fact, mainstream medialargely ran cover.
No apology, no reflection, justa continuation of a brand
(24:40):
Empathy on the surface andcoercion underneath.
In the United States, anthonyFauci told Americans in early
2020 that masks weren'tnecessary, only to later reverse
course and defend the lie bysaying he didn't want a mask
shortage.
To reverse course and defendthe lie by saying he didn't want
a mask shortage.
When the lab leak theory gainedtraction, he dismissed it
publicly, even though internalemails showed that it was a
(25:02):
possibility.
He acknowledged privately.
Again, no accountability.
He was hailed as a hero by halfthe country and demonized by
the other.
Truth was secondary.
What mattered was which sideyou thought he was on.
When leadership loses its spine,it begins to behave like public
relations.
(25:23):
The goal is no longer to tellthe truth or make things better.
It's to manage perception andin the end, we get politics that
feels like advertising, notgovernance.
We now live in an era ofsymbolic governance.
It's not what politicians dothat matters, it's what they
(25:45):
signal.
They kneel, they wear flags,they tweet, but when it comes
time to legislate or leadthrough a crisis, but their
instincts are to deflect, delayor delegate.
Consider the housing crisis inCanada Minister after minister,
report after report, and yetaffordability continues to
(26:06):
worsen.
Why?
Because serious reform likezoning overhauls or municipal
accountability.
It's politically risky.
It alienates mayors and voters.
So sometimes politiciansposture, hold summits, make big
announcements but avoid thestructural change we're required
to fix anything.
(26:28):
As Brad Viz, a conservative MPand a recent guest on the
podcast, pointed out, mostpoliticians are too tightly
bound by party discipline tothink independently, let alone
act with courage.
They fear their leaders morethan they fear the public.
Failure, that's not leadership,that's obedience.
Another hallmark of ourimmaturity is the
(26:51):
bureaucratization of governance.
Decisions aren't made byelected leaders anymore, they're
made by sprawling,unaccountable agencies.
You saw it during COVID, whereprovincial health officers, not
premiers, shaped public life.
You see it with federal climatepolicy, where departments
issuing sweeping regulationswith minimal parliamentary
(27:12):
debate, regulations with minimalparliamentary debate.
You see it in education,housing, health, where
bureaucracies manage complexitythat politicians don't even
understand.
David Eby, premier of BritishColumbia, spoke to this on the
podcast how governments functionmore like landlords or giant
systems than active stewards.
The complexity is so vast, thefiles so technical, that most
(27:36):
politicians simply rubber stampwhat senior bureaucrats or
consultants hand them.
That's not inherently evil, butit's not democratic either.
And when things go wrong, whenhousing collapses, healthcare
buckles or students fall behind,no one takes responsibility.
Everyone points sideways.
That's immaturity at thehighest level.
(28:00):
There was a time whenresignation was an act of honor.
It meant I failed and I'll stepaside so others can lead better
.
That idea is nearly extinct.
The UK, oddly enough, still hassome tradition of it.
Matt Hancock, the UK healthsecretary, resigned in 2021
(28:21):
after breaking lockdown rules hehelped impose.
But in Canada and the US, youcan lie, break laws, violate
ethics and stay in office solong as your base is loyal and
your comms team is competent.
That's not strength, that's rot.
And when leaders don't modelintegrity, why would citizens?
(28:44):
Conclusion None of this existsin a vacuum.
Our leaders reflect us.
We tolerated these leadersbecause we stopped demanding
more.
We wanted comfort, not courage,performance not principle.
We mocked anyone who admitteddoubt.
(29:04):
We punished anyone who stoodalone and we rewarded whoever
could act confident while doingnothing.
Government has become a theaterand we, the audience, are
complicit.
If our leaders are weak, maybeit's because we're no longer
serious enough to choose betterones.
(29:25):
Maybe, just maybe, leadershipwon't grow a spine until the
public does.
We've built a civilization thatcan put a satellite into orbit
but falls apart when Twittergoes down for an hour.
We conquered disease, povertyand war in ways our ancestors
(29:46):
could have never imagined, andyet we seem unable to hold a
conversation without meltingdown.
We are more prosperous, moreconnected, more educated than
any society in history and lessserious than ever.
In this conversation, we'velooked at four pillars of that
(30:07):
collapse In comfort whichsoftened us.
We raised generations inunprecedented safety and
affluence and forgot how toteach them how to suffer, how to
persevere, how to endurediscomfort without falling apart
.
In politics, it infantilizes us.
We traded dialogue for division, traded civic duty for tribal
(30:30):
identity and replaced the adulttask of negotiation with the
childlike demand to be agreedwith In our media sphere.
It betrayed us.
Once a tool to challenge power,it became a performance
industry, more interested inclicks than in truth, more loyal
to narratives than to facts andmore complicit than courageous.
(30:53):
Our government, which lost itsspine.
We stopped asking for wisdomand started asking for branding.
We stopped rewarding integrityand started rewarding theater.
And when leaders no longer fearaccountability, they stop
acting like leaders at all.
But this isn't just aboutinstitutions, it's about us.
(31:15):
The media didn't become shallowbecause of some external
conspiracy.
It did because we clicked onthe shallow stuff.
Politicians didn't becomecowardly in a vacuum.
They did because we rewardedcowardice over complexity and
fragility didn't rise out ofnowhere.
It rose because we chose easeover depth every single time.
(31:38):
We are not victims of thiscultural immaturity.
We are its authors.
But that also means we canchoose differently.
We can choose depth overdopamine debate, over dismissal
principle, over performance.
We can stop asking for safetyand start asking for the truth.
We can stop demanding comfortand start cultivating courage.
(31:59):
We can choose to grow up,because we don't just need
better leaders.
We need better citizens, weneed better parents.
We need better students, bettermen, better women.
We need better parents.
We need better students, bettermen, better women.
We need seriousness again.
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