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3MM: Toxic Compassion, Marriage & Novelty
3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, I'm in Australia! Come and see me live this week. Brisbane is sold out, Melbourne 8th & Sydney 9th have limited tickets left - https://chriswilliamson.live/australia See me live in London on Thursday 28th November - https://chriswilliamson.live/london “The latest social science tells us that children raised in single-mother homes are about five times more likely to be poor than kids raised in stably married homes.
That young men raised apart from a stably married home are, according to recent research, more likely to land in jail or prison than to graduate from college.
That the biggest driver of recent declines in happiness is the nation’s retreat from marriage.
And that, at the community level, the strongest predictor of economic mobility for poor children is family structure: Poor kids hailing from communities with more two-parent families have a markedly better shot at moving up into the middle class than poor kids from neighborhoods dominated by single parents.” — Brad Wilcox, The Atlantic
Why then, is it so hard to publicly advocate for the nuclear family? Toxic Compassion. Toxic Compassion is the prioritisation of short term emotional comfort over everything else. Over truth, reality, actual long-term outcomes, flourishing, everything. It optimises for looking good, rather than doing good. This is seen in much of popular culture as the desirable, fair, empathetic thing to do. And it’s everywhere. People would rather claim that body fat has no bearing on health and mortality outcomes to avoid making overweight individuals feel upset. Even if this causes them to literally die sooner or have a worse quality of life over the long run. Parents would rather allow children to play computer games or watch screens and access social media every night instead of dealing with the discomfort of taking it away from them. Even if it ruins their brain development, social skills and self esteem. People would rather say that children growing up in single-parent households suffer no worse outcomes than those from two-parent homes. Even if this misleads parents, children and teachers about why kids behave the way they do. Campaigners would sooner shout Defund The Police as a response to what they perceive as the unfair treatment of criminals. Even if this results in more crimes being committed against people from minority backgrounds due to the abandonment of police officers from those areas. Elon Musk once responded to criticism about his political alignment and contribution to climate change. He identified how big of a shift Tesla had caused in the Electric Vehicle market, and the downstream impact of that on the environment, saying that he’s done more for the climate than any other human in history. “What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it.
And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil.” — Elon Musk
The important tradeoff with all of these examples is between appearing good and actually doing good. Telling people what they want to hear, giving them immediate gratification and avoiding saying anything that could cause distress prioritises the former over the latter. The net effect is often wildly negative. It’s the toddler who wants to eat ice cream every night. Sure that might be what they want in the moment, but it’ll be wildly unhealthy over the long term. I asked Jordan Peterson about this last year. “That’s exactly what the Oedipal situation is.
It’s the prioritisation of short term emotional comfort over long term thriving.
It’s going to hurt now, but the long consequences are positive.
If you give up your children to the world, you will keep them.”
The prospect of appearing bad while doing good is obviously not very enticing. The opposite is Performative Empathy. Saying whatever is required to look good, even if you don’t actually care. And on the internet, the gap between words and actions has never been bigger. You can be the least virtuous, meanest, most dishonest human on earth, but if you say the right things on social media, you look like a saint. No one stress tests the words coming out of people’s mouths. Which means that appearing good becomes more important than doing good. Performative empathy is more rewarded than genuine empathy. Posting about mistreated groups is more incentivised than helping mistreated groups. *puts flag in bio, has never actually donated to a charity* This isn’t me saying that you can’t do good whilst talking about it. But that many (maybe even most) of the people who proselytise about how virtuous and caring they are, and how it’s everyone else who is evil, uncaring and the enemy are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny. “It’s like ‘look at how good I am’
Well if the ‘look at’ comes before the ‘how good I am’, it really wreaks havoc on the claim.” — Jordan Peterson
Beware the people who prioritise saying good things, they might not be doing good things. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. A third of men (32%) are open to the idea of more than one wife or long-term girlfriend. Only 5% of women are interested in forming part of such a relationship. — The Times, h/t Rob Henderson 2. “Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.” — Niccolo Machiavelli (perhaps related to #1) 3. The 13th-century Persian poet Saadi Shirazi described how social comparisons shape our subjective satisfaction in a way that has become famous: “I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” — Saadi Shirazi, h/t Lionel Page LIFE HACKThe best beef in America. All I’m eating at the moment is meat and fruit. I’m not going to pretend like it’s particularly exciting, but honestly it’s been made infinitely better because of Piedmontese Beef. If you’ve ever seen the cows that grow double muscle and look like Arnie, this is them. And if you like beef, you have to try it. I don’t think I can ever go back. MW25 will get you a 25% discount on the best beef on the planet. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
3 Minute Monday
Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
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