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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:52
Our guy today got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Carl Truman. So he is an ecclesiastical
0:57
historian and author, but he's not a theologian. So I called him a theologian in the interview
1:02
and he politely corrected me because he's English and he was very, very polite about it. But this
1:06
guy is a big time brain and a big time historian and goes through a lot of great stuff. I really
1:10
enjoyed my time with him. So he actually was the professor of historical theology in church history
1:15
at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he held the Paul Woolley chair of church history.
1:20
And in 2018, he resigned his position at Westminster to become a full-time undergraduate professor at
1:25
Grove City College, where he's serving as a full professor in their department of biblical and
1:29
religious studies as of the fall semester of that same year. But he's also a fellow at the ethics
1:34
and public policy center and a contributing editor at first things. And he is the best-selling author
1:38
of a tremendous book, one of the best books I've read this year. And it's this The Rise and Triumph
1:42
of the Modern Self and also a more accessible and smaller version of some of the same content.
1:47
And it's this one I believe is released this year. And it's called Strange New World.
1:50
So there's a lot of density in this conversation from today. And if you read his books, which I
1:55
highly suggest you do, it will be in the show notes. You can pick up copies yourself. There's a lot
1:59
to talk about on the subject matter of transgenderism on the cultural sexual revolution on the dissolution
2:07
of the family and how we as Christians are to push back when our standing in culture has degraded
2:13
over time. And so we get into a lot of that. We talk about this overall idea of our self and our
2:18
perceived identity and how in years past and our forefathers would have never answered questions
2:23
the way that we answered questions today about our self and our own personal autonomy and all
2:27
these other different things. But about how all of these ideologies are coalescing really on the
2:32
transgender revolution. And guys, I know that could be confusing for a lot of people, but
2:37
this is hitting all of you, right? It's hitting you at your kid's school. It may be hitting you in
2:41
your own household. And this comes from somewhere. We think everything bad came from the 1960s.
2:47
But a lot of the foundations for some of the stupid things that we saw in the degradation of
2:50
culture that we saw in the 1960s started hundreds and hundreds of years before that. So we get into
2:56
a lot of that here in this episode. I really, really appreciate the time with him, but I'm not
2:59
going to keep him from you any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it. Carl Truman, welcome
3:04
to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
3:08
Now, I know you got to catch a plane across the pond here at some point. So we don't have a whole
3:12
lot of time to dig in. So let's just go ahead and get started. But as a way of basic introductions,
3:18
you're theologian. And so most people don't run into theologians in their everyday life.
3:22
And most little kids don't grow up wanting to be a theologian someday. And so I'm assuming
3:25
you had some other plans for your life. But just briefly, as a way of introduction,
3:29
why did you end up becoming a Christian theologian? Well, actually, I'm not a theologian. I'm a
3:34
historian. I had that in your bio as theologian and historian. I've already messed it up from the
3:41
beginning. So I was asked recently, what's the thing that people most say about you that isn't
3:46
true on the internet? And I said, well, the polite thing that most people say about me that isn't
3:50
true is that I'm a theologian. I'm a historian, intellectual historian interested in why people
3:56
think the way they do the background to that. Okay, well, you know what, I'm just going to keep
4:03
calling you a theologian from now on. So actually, I'm not even going to call you Carl. I'm going to
4:06
call you Mr. theologian or something like very, very appropriate works for me works. Okay. Now,
4:11
now the main reason why I wanted to have you on theologian Truman is because of a book that you wrote
4:16
that has really taken a lot of people in my space by storm. If they can get through it, and it's this
4:21
one is the rise and triumph of the modern self cultural amnesia, expressive individualism, and
4:26
the road to sexual revolution. And then actually just this year or last year you released this one,
4:30
it's kind of a smaller, more condensed version called strange new world. So this one might be a
4:35
little bit more accessible to some people. But I do want to talk a lot about the rise and triumph
4:40
of the modern self. But let's start with the very first sentence of the book. It's the origins of
4:44
this book lie in my curiosity about how and why a particular statement has come to be regarded as
4:50
coherent and meaningful. I am a woman trapped in a man's body. So that's how this starts. And that
4:57
is really a through point for the entire work. So I guess give us an idea of what this book is like
5:02
in your own words. Guess what you're trying to get across to the reader. Well, the opening sentence
5:08
is a clue to the whole in that that is what I'm trying to do in the book is try to explain really
5:13
why transgenderism has become so plausible in modern society. So compelling politically
5:20
in modern society. But what I do is is say a sentence like that that is so radical that represents
5:26
such a break with the past that is so counterintuitive. That sort of sentence doesn't become plausible
5:34
all by itself. There's a huge back history to this as a long history leading up to this point.
5:40
And it impacts that that history has an impact on more than just gender. What really lies behind
5:46
that sentence becoming plausible is a fundamental transformation in what we as a society think it
5:53
means to be human. A fundamental transformation in the authority we grant to our inner feelings.
5:59
A fundamental transformation in authority to the authority which we grant to our bodies. So
6:07
although there's a very specific question the book starts with, it's really a general history of
6:14
why do we think the way we do about what it means to be a human at this point in time and what has
6:19
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6:52
I'm glad you kind of you know set me straight like I'm not theologian Kyle you idiot I'm a
6:57
historian because that's helpful when you're reading through this book because there's another
7:01
quote earlier in the book and it's this the sexual revolution did not cause the sexual revolution
7:06
nor did technology such as the pill or the internet. Those things may have been may have
7:10
facilitated it but its causes lie much deeper in the changes in what it means to be authentic
7:16
fulfilled human self again that's in the title of the book but self and those changes stretched
7:21
back well before the swing in 60s. Now I'm like most people my age I'm in my mid 30s we kind of
7:27
think that history started when we were born roughly right or we look back maybe 10 20 years
7:32
before then maybe when our parents were growing up and so we look at the 60s and we all like to
7:37
lament the 60s as the time you know the cheese fell off the cracker as it were and that's when
7:41
things really went crazy but this book is a deep dive into all the stuff that happened
7:45
beforehand but also this whole concept of the self wouldn't have made sense to someone you would
7:51
have had a conversation with hundreds of years ago right yeah yeah well I mean if you think let's say
7:56
if if you're growing up in the Middle Ages and I would say let's say you're a medieval peasant in
8:01
in Europe as my ancestors would have been probably your ancestors would have been as well and you
8:06
were to ask somebody you would just wander up to medieval peasants say who are you they're the
8:11
answer they're going to give you will be very much located in terms of the village that they've
8:16
lived in all of their life the people they've known all their lives the work that they knew they were
8:24
going to do from the moment they were remotely self-conscious i.e if your dad's a peasant farmer
8:29
guess what you're going to be a peasant farmer too think about that and then think about how we
8:34
think about identity today if you know we might still give an answer in terms of well i'm an
8:40
american or i'm british we might we might give some answers that that touch on externalities but then
8:45
quite often we will pivot to things that really depend upon our choice you might say well i'm a
8:50
graduate of such and such a college or i chose to be a cpa yeah this is the work that i do these
8:57
are the hobbies i have we might even get on to just instead of talking about religion say well i'm
9:03
a spiritual person these are the feelings i have when you think about the the contrast between
9:08
how the medieval person thought about their identity which was i would say fixed and given
9:15
to them our identity today is is far less fixed and far less given and this is where sort of
9:22
transgenderism is fascinating because what might have said 20 years ago well everything else in
9:28
my life is a matter of choice and flux and change but my sex is given to me my body
9:34
it's give i have no power over what body i'm born with i'm born a boy or i'm born a girl
9:40
not anymore now you're able to choose your gender so we can see that the rise of the modern
9:46
self is intimately connected to the fluidity of the world in which we live and therefore the
9:52
fluidity of the people that we think we are and facts can become fluid as well here just recently
9:58
like that this will you know come out a couple of weeks afterwards but the big breaking news a
10:01
couple of days ago was pop star Demi Lovato is now going back to she her pronouns after last year
10:06
declaring her truth which is that she was non-binary and she was going to use they/them pronouns and
10:11
so it's like it's a very very postmodern view of truth in that there is not truth or there's your
10:16
truth in my truth no absolute truth but a lot of the things that you're talking about there Carl
10:20
kind of dovetail with this concept that is really a through point of the entire book which is the
10:25
social imaginary which is a concept that i had never really heard of before i read your book so
10:30
i guess tell us give us kind of the spark notes version of what that is and kind of why it's
10:33
important to this discussion yeah social imaginary it's a term used by the Canadian philosopher Charles
10:39
Taylor when he's thinking about what it means to be a modern person it's a slightly awkward term
10:45
because he's using imaginary as a noun and we tend to think of it as an adjective you know imaginary
10:50
creatures etc etc we tend to think imaginations the noun imaginary is the adjective but he's
10:56
using the adjective as a noun which gives it an awkward feel but really the idea is is relatively
11:02
straightforward and the idea is is essentially this that the way we actually operate in the world
11:07
the way we we we live and move and have our being in the world is is not generally grounded in first
11:16
principles in other words you know take a very simple example after we finish this podcast i'm
11:21
going to leave this room through the door to my left well i really have no idea how atoms and molecules
11:29
and solids and liquids and you know or architectural principle i just know that doors work it's an
11:35
intuition that hey that's the hole in the wall that i want to leave through rather than smashing
11:40
myself up against the solid in the hope that hey the solid will let me through well that kind of
11:47
intuitive way we relate to the world that way we imagine the world to be doesn't just connect to
11:52
to things like doors it also connects to often to say moral principles most of us most human
12:00
beings have some moral vision of the world we have some sense of right and wrong we may disagree
12:05
over what should be categorized as right and wrong but by and large we we have some sense of right
12:11
and wrong and we know that certain things belong in one column and certain things belong in the
12:15
other why is that is that because we have read Immanuel Kant and been utterly convinced by Kantian
12:22
ethics or we've read John Stuart Mill and we've become convinced of utilitarianism no typically
12:29
it's because we were brought up in a certain way and our mum and mum's and dad taught us that
12:34
to behave in certain ways and we internalize that it's not something we think about we may not be able
12:40
to if pressed prove to somebody by argument that a particular position is right or wrong we just
12:47
intuitively know it's so and so what Taylor's getting up there is when he talks about the social
12:52
imagination he's saying you know in order to understand how we we think of what it is to be a
12:57
human think what is to yourself we can't just look at the the great heavy textbooks of philosophy
13:03
we have to look at the way people live their lives we have to look at the stories they tell
13:08
each other we have to look at the TV programs they watch we have to look at all of the things
13:13
that shape our intuitions about the way the world is and that's where for example in in my book I
13:22
think I make the point talking about gay marriage I make the point that very few people change their
13:28
position from a traditional view of marriage to a pro-gay marriage position because they'd read
13:34
a book on it and because they'd read arguments and been compelled to change their position most
13:40
people maybe they had gay friends gay neighbors they watched Will and Grace they watched sitcoms
13:45
and soap operas and their intuitions were were refashioned by these experiences and that's what
13:51
the social imaginary is getting at really saying that to understand the self and how we think about
13:56
the self we can't just look at the great philosophers we have to look at culture in general and how
14:04
it shapes the way we behave within this world starting a business can seem like a daunting task
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trial at Shopify dot com slash special offer when it's also the positioning of culture in
14:38
reference to the church because I think it's fair to say in broad terms that the church used to be
14:43
upstream of culture but now the church is downstream of culture but you also got into this in your
14:47
discussion of first second and third worlds so you know to put it briefly the first world as
14:52
you describe in the book are moral codes based on myths so think like ancient Sparta and then
14:56
second world is moral code based on faith you know something like Christianity but there's a quote
15:01
from the book here I thought this was really important first and second worlds thus have a moral and
15:05
therefore cultural stability because their foundations lie in something beyond themselves to put it
15:10
in another way they do not have to justify themselves on the basis of themselves third worlds by a
15:17
way of stark contrast to the first and second worlds do not root their cultures their social
15:21
orders their moral imperatives in anything sacred they do have to justify themselves but they cannot
15:27
do so on the basis of something sacred or transcendent instead they have to do so on the basis of
15:33
themselves now I mean it's hard to know where to go with with a question like that because I think
15:38
everybody feels like that is true like what you're saying the problem is is if you have a
15:43
second world view based in a faith something like a Judeo-Christian ethic how in the world do you
15:48
have a productive discussion with somebody that has a third world view that is literally like
15:53
having your I forget who I'm stealing this quote from where your feet are planted firmly in mid-air
15:57
yeah it's very hard and I think we see that in the public square that
16:03
theist arguments based on some kind of theism are you know to use the social imagining idea
16:08
they're intuitively implausible within the general social imaginary with which most people
16:13
intuitively operate today I would say this means that certainly well two two things one I think
16:21
Christians need to do a good job of teaching Christians how to think Christianly about things
16:26
in the church we can use faith faith premises and I think it's important that we do and we
16:32
categorize people well in the faith when we move into the public square I think we need a different
16:38
we need a different strategy I'm not here saying that theistic arguments aren't legitimate in the
16:44
public square they are legitimate it's just they're not plausible or powerful in the public square
16:50
and this is where I think we should not be afraid of using arguments from if it's one of the other
16:57
would nature if you like to make a case if you were to say to me well on what basis do you do you
17:07
argue that monogamy between one man and one woman for life except in the most extreme of
17:11
circumstances is the best way to organize a family or to think about marriage what I'd want to do
17:18
is go to some statistics that would seem to bear that out when chatting to to gay students sometimes
17:25
I want to direct them to well you know look at the statistics for the damage done to the physical
17:33
body into physical health by living a very promiscuous gay lifestyle and ask the question does that
17:40
look like flourishing does that look like something that is is a good thing so I think in the public
17:47
square you're absolutely right that yeah we are now in a in the tough spot but there are some things
17:54
that society still values such as bodily health for example or psychological health that are perhaps
18:03
areas where we could mount something of a of an argument within the public square pointing towards
18:09
traditional resolutions well carl I know I know this to be the case sometimes that makes christians
18:15
very uncomfortable because here recently I made a very short comment on how I think young earth is
18:19
this kind of a silly idea you know why would god create the appearance of age only to give us the
18:25
tools to determine the age of something only to switch it and be like ha gotcha it's only 6,000
18:30
years old like I don't find that entirely compelling and I'm bastardizing their argument but I think
18:35
people get very very concerned with if they glean wisdom from outside the bible but again the bible
18:40
can't you know tell you what to have for lunch today the bible can't tell you who the 14th president
18:44
was the the bible can't tell you whether to leave out of your neighborhood left or right today that
18:49
that kind of thing so I do think christians do need to be a little bit more comfortable with using
18:52
things that god gave us understanding that god is sovereign overall not just over his scriptures
18:58
but to take a wild left turn from that subject to this one there's something you brought up in
19:02
the book and I wrote in the margins and I circled it in ex you know exclamation point because every
19:06
time I I bring this up carl it makes people uncomfortable but I think I'm right about it okay so it's a
19:10
very short quote you say this even now in our sexually libertarian world certain sexual taboos
19:16
remain in place pedophilia being perhaps the most obvious now in my discussion I discussed
19:22
the overton window which I know you're familiar with and a lot of people are familiar with a couple
19:25
of years ago on the show and I said the overton window will shift in the near future to include
19:30
pedophilia as a reasonable way of operating in the world and be in my main argument is that if
19:37
children and we'll get into a deeper discussion on children and gender and sex and all that if a
19:42
child seven eight nine ten twelve thirteen year old can choose their gender then why can they not
19:47
choose their sexual partner you don't have to be like a deep you know philosophical person to
19:52
understand how that's the very next step not the slippery slope but the very next step is that
19:57
argument do you feel like I'm crazy for saying that because some people say I'm crazy until they
20:01
see other things in culture that are like oh man Kyle you might be right no I think I don't think
20:06
you're crazy at all and I think we're already beginning to see signs that that kind of shift
20:10
is taking place there was the recent kerfuffle surrounding the professor who talked about minor
20:16
attracted persons right there are I am at the moment involved in a project looking at various
20:25
angles at cultural and social attitudes to child pornography in the United States and there is
20:31
certainly anecdotal evidence that sentencing is beginning to shift on these kind of cases and
20:40
issues so I do think we are beginning to witness signs that could legitimately be interpreted as
20:49
shifting us towards the normalization of sexual relations with minors and and also
20:55
pedophilia now societies don't always follow through sometimes societies go to the brink on
21:01
something and then pull back the the problem is you can't tell what a society is going to do and
21:06
till it actually does it so I would say you know is the is the argument that pedophilia could be
21:13
the next thing on the agenda is that an argument that would only be made by somebody wearing a tin
21:18
foil hat no that is not tin foil hat territory I think that is a perfectly rational position to
21:26
hold and for which to argue even if and we hope this is the case even if it doesn't actually come
21:34
to pass well it goes back to the discussion of first second and third worlds in terms of our
21:38
moral codes because if nothing is sacred in a third world and the majority of culture and society
21:44
is pulling us into a third world there is nothing that's off limits right and people are like oh
21:48
you're being alarmist it's slippery slope but it's like it's always a conspiracy theory until it's
21:52
proven right and if we've seen anything from 2020 till today how many things were we set like again
21:59
if I had said a week ago if I had referred to Demi Lovato as she on her Twitter I would have been
22:05
banned from the platform and yet this week if I refer to her as they then I would be banned
22:11
bravely it's like again the shifting sands are crazy but again when you get to sacred
22:16
there's nothing that should be more sacred to a culture than marriage right and obviously you
22:21
brought up gay marriage earlier there's another quote from the book because I think this expounds
22:25
and guys again in this book like in this interview we can't get into like literally 1/100th of the
22:30
content of the book you're gonna have to go get this book for yourself it will be in the show
22:33
notes but let me read this quote here marriage is therefore not to be understood as a lifelong
22:37
monogamous relationship for the purposes of procreation mutual companionship and exclusive sexual union
22:44
rather it is for the mutual pleasure and satisfaction of the consenting parties and that is all
22:50
so if you use the latter definition there Carl obviously any number of different definitions of
22:55
marriage are appropriate right yeah gay marriage uh throuples uh you know marriage between a bunch
23:00
of different people you could extrapolate that out into marriage with children marriage with
23:04
animals I know people get real uncomfortable with that that talk as well but those are decent ways
23:08
of extrapolating out that overall mindset but again if you look at it from my perspective I studied
23:13
this way less than you have but you look back at totalitarian regimes or any regimes that came out
23:19
of the the mini tributaries of Carl Marx or something like that one of the things that they
23:23
always try to destroy is marriage they try to destroy the system by destroying marriage destroying
23:30
one man one woman for life with children loving and all pointed towards the father god go well
23:36
yes I mean you're absolutely correct and of course one of the reasons why marriage is such a target
23:43
is families create strong bonds of loyalty exactly there is a bio you know we don't fully understand
23:51
I think that the the ties that bind relative to families but families create alternative spheres
23:58
of authority and loyalty over against the state or over against whoever is pushing whatever
24:04
agenda at any given moment in time so the family is you know the destabilizing of the definition of
24:11
the family or the weakening of the family has to be a significant part of any any agenda that seeks
24:20
to to to take total power for for itself or to increase its own share of power you're absolutely
24:28
right it's why I mean you've seen this you don't just have to go to Marxism we could look at
24:32
Iran in the 1980s where teachers would go into class and hold up bottles of of scotch and ask the
24:41
kids do any of you see mummy and daddy you know using one of these at home there the the the idea
24:48
that the family is a sovereign space had to be cracked in some way so yeah the the the dilution
24:58
and dismantling of the family is is key I think to making individuals vulnerable to totalitarian
25:07
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absolutely and to make them that was the thing that I was always concerned about with the c-word
25:42
that we're not allowed to say out loud thus we get docked um the whenever the government
25:48
and your local magistrates were pushing so far in all these areas to where the next time they push
25:53
like everything's going to see normal up to a different point because the line has been pushed
25:57
so far out into the future and in one way that you talk about the family and again like hopefully
26:02
you're not you know awkward about me reading your own quotes to you because there's so many
26:05
quotable things from this book but you were discussing Reich's the sexual revolution and you
26:10
were talking more about the patriarchal family so let me read this quote to you here while asserting
26:14
that the patriarchal family is the single most important unit of ideological control for an
26:18
oppressive and totalitarian regime Reich also believes that the state must be used to coerce
26:24
families and where necessary actively punish those who dissent from the sexual liberation being
26:29
proposed. In short the state has the right to intervene in family matters because the family
26:34
is potentially the primary opponent of political liberation through its cultivation and policing
26:39
of traditional sexual codes. So Carl we're seeing this now we're seeing this not just in
26:44
we're not seeing this just in Canada we're seeing in the United States to wear families that do not
26:50
gender their children properly based on the child's understanding of their gender that day
26:55
or in that moment they could lose their children there was a mother I believe in Ohio that was
27:01
losing her rights to her child but the the I guess the the negotiation from the state was is if you
27:07
give up all rights to your daughter we will ensure that you have to they have to get permission from
27:13
you before she can go forward with transition surgery and so this mother made the impossible
27:17
decision of saying it's so important that my daughter not get the surgery to become a boy which
27:22
is not actually possible so I'm going to give up my rights to my to my my kid right we're seeing
27:28
that now how did how did we get here I know that's a big question but how did we get to the point
27:33
where the state is using the sexual revolution to destroy families from the inside yeah well again
27:39
if we go back to Reich Reich's point there really is he's wrestling with why aren't the working
27:44
classes rise up in revolution and his answer is well it's because kids are being trained to follow
27:50
an authoritarian figure as a child and when they grab he's thinking in a German context of course
27:56
when they when they become adults they look for the the strong authoritarian figure to follow they
28:01
they add off Hitler there he is you know the big father figure so Reich's Reich's view is in
28:07
order to stop that happening we need to we need to smash the family and what is it that the most
28:14
defines families well it's sexual codes it's codes about incest it's codes about when it is and is
28:22
not appropriate to to have one's first sexual encounter etc etc all of these things lie at the
28:28
heart of what a traditional family is so Reich's view is we need to smash that fast forward to the
28:35
present day I think what has come to grip it's it's sort of Reichianism shawn of its Marxism I
28:41
think what grips the imagination of people today is this is that we at base we are fundamentally
28:48
our desires and we are most fundamentally our sexual desires that means that anybody who interferes
28:55
with their sexual desires is preventing us from being who we truly are now think about that relative
29:03
to family who are the people who police our sexual desires who who train us up in sexual behavior
29:10
morality it's its parents right well if you have a if you have a view of the world where
29:17
freedom is equated with sexual freedom or personal authenticity is equated with sexual freedom
29:25
then anybody who stands in the way of sexual freedom stands opposed to freedom and opposed
29:30
to authenticity and the most likely targets in this are the family are the parents and that's
29:38
why I think sexual education has become such a big part of the schooling system and why it is being
29:44
used as a a weapon against parents you know either conform or lose your kids I think it's it's a
29:53
perfectly logical development if you like from the sort of thinking of Reich in the 1930s it's
30:01
unfortunate unpleasant but it is not logically unexpected absolutely not and you also in the
30:09
book you're talking about Freud you're talking about future of an illusion and it said today's
30:13
education as therapy exhibits these two pathologies and you mentioned them here a liberation from
30:18
traditional sexual codes and given its role in maintaining traditional sexual sexual codes
30:23
liberation from religion and we see this all throughout the schools that's why we advocate
30:27
you know constantly for people to homeschool their kids or they vet a private Christian school
30:31
because just because there's a cross on the door before you walk into the main lobby that does not
30:36
mean that this stuff is not pervading into those different areas but I do want to read a quote here
30:41
surprise that's perhaps the crux of the entire book and you've mentioned transgenderism several
30:45
times but I think this is the one that encapsulates it overall and why we should all talk about it
30:50
so let's read it here finally perhaps the most significant social aspect of transgenderism is
30:55
the way it provides the latest and most potent reason for the discussion of the traditional family
31:00
by the beginning of the 21st century the psychologizing of the self the sexualizing of psychology
31:06
and the politicizing of sex had all played significant roles in the abolition of the
31:12
pre-political if sex is politics and children are sexual then children's sexuality is political
31:20
too that for me that that was one of the most important sentences in the entire book for me
31:24
carl because you address the pre-political because we live in an age where everything
31:30
including business including the military including sports everything is politics it's
31:36
inescapable we used to have escapes when we would go to entertainment we would go to the theater
31:41
we would go to the ball field but no more there are no places that are safe to be away from politics
31:47
is that is that really the main demon I guess in all this is this movement towards the abolition
31:54
of anything that's pre-political yeah i'm whether it's the main demon i don't know but it's certainly
32:00
part of the toxic brew that we're we're having to drink at the moment i think that you know the
32:05
pre-political has always provided part of a better term i hate to use the sort of the language
32:11
of it but pre-political always provided safe places right to help people to to disagree for
32:17
people to come together you know back home in in the uk the local pub was somewhere where people
32:23
could go and and and share a drink their village green was somewhere where people would play cricket
32:29
together there were these what we sometimes the the english philosopher Edmund Burke calls them
32:35
little platoons sometimes we call them mediating institutions there were these organizations
32:40
that were that stood between the individual and the the political arena and provided significant
32:49
joy significant forms of life we just don't have those anymore they have all been colonized by
32:56
politics and it's unfortunately it's it's impossible to resist because i make the point in the book
33:02
that as soon as one side decides to make something political everybody has to play the game because
33:10
particularly in america where everything defaults to litigation very very quickly and soon as somebody
33:16
decides to sue the boy scouts from the right or the left everybody is suddenly involved politically
33:23
and in engaging with the boy scouts so it's become a very unfortunate part of of modern culture and
33:30
and i think the biggest casualty of this i don't mention this in the book actually but i think
33:35
the biggest and most significant casualty is we've lost traditional notions of friendship
33:41
that now friendship is mediated through political and sexual categories i was talking to a youth
33:49
worker recently working one of the schools uh and this is we're talking western pennsylvania this is
33:54
pretty rural this is conservative territory culturally but telling me how 80 percent of the
34:02
girls at this middle school he was going to be now identified as bisexual well first of all in my
34:08
day i don't think i'd have identified by myself by my sexuality at any point during my high school
34:14
it just wasn't how we thought but secondly i i asked him what you know those statistics are
34:20
staggering what why do you think that is and his answer i thought was was simple but profound his
34:26
answer was this we don't teach kids about friendship anymore so when teenagers have strong feelings of
34:32
affection for a friend we don't give them any vocabulary to understand that affection other
34:40
than the sexual and then of course you know so they have to translate what to me would have been
34:46
an intense friendship they have to translate into the language of sex and sexual orientation
34:52
so the loss of the pre-political i think is also reflected in the loss of
34:58
the traditional notion of friendship which wasn't just built upon
35:02
totally agreeing with each other on everything it was built upon more than that it was built
35:08
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own the dream well and carl like it's like we've moved from friends to comrades like here are
35:43
the people that believe the exact same way that i do and like that used to be the most fun is like
35:48
your buddy liked this team and you liked this team and you would make fun of each other and you
35:52
would poke fun at each other but again that in modern society you can't do that because you know
35:56
poking fun and being sarcastic like that isn't a microaggression that's just an aggression aggression
36:01
right and so that's kind of the world that we found ourselves in and it's certainly a detriment
36:05
to our children and that's one of the concerns that that we have in modern culture is our kids
36:09
aren't learning how to deal with one another like whenever you go to a store now and you see someone
36:13
from the younger generation not know how to communicate with you not know how to walk you through an
36:18
issue or get you to the point where you can be helped it's like somebody failed them and it
36:23
wasn't just mommy and daddy like there is a greater culture around them that that goes into
36:28
that now one thing i did want to discuss from your book as well and you know comedians have talked
36:32
about this and plenty of political pundits have have you know made inroads into this but it's a
36:36
hard subject to talk to but when you talk about the lgbtq lobby or revolution or whatever
36:42
if you were to break it down it makes no sense whatsoever why the l's the g's the b's the t's and
36:50
the q's are on the same team working together because each of those individual group
36:55
all you know aside from the fact that they're made up of individual people that have the image
36:59
of god and they're not part of this homogenous group that all thinks and does things the exact
37:03
same it doesn't make sense foundationally why all those people would be advocating as part of the
37:08
same flag you spend a lot of time in the book and i'm giving it short shrift here but why is it just
37:15
in general that the l's the g's the b's and the t's and the q's find it and you know advantageous
37:19
to work together well it's interesting question i think uh if you were to go back to the 70s you'd
37:25
find significant tension but it really was just the l and the g in those days significant tension
37:30
between lesbians and gay men partly because lesbians feminists tended to see gay men are still
37:36
enjoying male privilege even though they were homosexual what changes is change that is aids
37:43
aids makes gay men victims and and and pulls that the first l and g centers start to arise in the
37:50
wake of the aids crisis when uh the the l's begin to see the g's as victims the question is to have
37:58
the the t and the q get involved that's interesting because both the l and the g of course and indeed
38:03
the b assume the importance of biological sex for identity uh you know lesbians are attracted
38:11
sexually attracted towards people who are biologically female gay men are attracted towards
38:17
people who are biologically male that's not the case for for the for the q or the t he in the q
38:25
you have much more fluid sexual categories in the t of course you know it's not the t is interesting
38:31
because the the t is not actually a movement of sexual desire in the way that the l the g and
38:36
and the q are the t is i think more of a body dysmorphia so and also of course the t
38:44
emphatically denies the importance of biology for identity which is why you know somebody like
38:53
Andrew Sullivan the gay the gay journalist gets into trouble because he says you know i i'm not
38:58
sexually attracted towards women who've transitioned to being men they're not really men he's now
39:03
transpho because as a gay man he doesn't find a woman pretending to be a man sexually attractive
39:09
so the the question then because well how does the t get bolted into this if it's not a if it's not
39:17
a binary movement and it's not movement of sexual desire i think it's it's iconoclastic
39:24
it's it's a question of the enemy of my enemy is my friend the enemy of my enemy is white straight
39:30
men and that's ultimately what bound the alliance together interesting enough i think we're beginning
39:38
to see the alliance starting to fracture the the the trans exclusionary radical feminists being hated
39:44
by the trans affirming famous we're seeing that alliance starting to fracture and i think that's
39:50
a result of the fact that white straight men are no longer deemed to be the threat you know they're
39:58
sort of marginal now they're no longer a big enough threat to keep the alliance together so i think
40:04
the next five or ten years will be interesting and what we will see it may surprise some listeners
40:09
but what we will see is a a dramatic fragmenting of this movement in a way that's actually entirely
40:16
predictable well it's predictable if you just look at their flag right every time you go and google
40:22
the flag there's a new stripe there's a new design i saw the babylon b they made a kind of a funny
40:26
thing they put like a monkey pox symbol on the flag right and it was just kind of like yeah i mean
40:31
that that you know it sounds silly but how far are we away until that that's the norm now there's
40:37
so much more left to talk about on this unfortunately we're we're running short on time so i'll make
40:41
this the last question of the day uh our mission at undaunted life is equipping men to push back
40:46
darkness okay that that is what we do and we try to do that by giving guys information again the
40:51
example i always use is if you're mad about CRT and in your kid's school but you don't know
40:55
what CRT stands for and you don't know that it comes from critical theory or critical legal studies or
41:00
the frankfort school or Karl Marx or Satan or whatever like it's going to be a hard conversation
41:04
for you to convince people to come to your side of things but whenever i was finished reading this
41:09
book you know and i i kind of mean this as a compliment i kind of just put my head my hands
41:14
and i'm like god we're so screwed like we can't even have a conversation about the things that are
41:19
so important even if we have the information which this book does a great job of giving us that
41:23
information so i guess it you know sheepish is way as i'm going to ask it what in the world are we
41:28
to do as men to to be able to push back against this darkness that we're seeing yeah well i think
41:34
first of all we need to have a realistic view of what the possibilities are and i think you know
41:39
the possibilities in the short to medium term are very limited so first of all i think we we
41:45
we should not set ourselves the back-breaking task of turning this all around by next wednesday
41:51
it's not going to happen i think we have to have a a a vision of the long game that i think we need
41:58
to think well what we're doing today i i said to my wife within the last job and said you know i've
42:03
come to inclusion i'm pretty much going to lose every cultural issue i engage on during my own
42:09
lifetime i said but that's okay i'm still going to engage on them and what i'm going to do is i'm
42:14
going to try to leave something behind for the next generation to stand on and to build on i've
42:21
used in class the example of medieval cathedrals medieval cathedrals typically take hundreds it took
42:25
hundreds of years to build so the guys who laid the foundation stones on day one of construction
42:31
knew they would never worship in the building but they still did it anyway because they weren't
42:35
doing it for them the story was not about them the story is about god and so we got to play
42:40
the long game i think we can take confidence in that because we know that the church wins at the
42:45
end of the time we may not live to see that victory in our lifetime but that's okay we need to play
42:50
our part here and now faithfully and that brings me to the other part of what can we do
42:54
the place where we can have most impact in the place where the lord has put us
43:00
in the local communities the local churches the local neighborhoods where we are
43:04
so i think it's important to vote it's important to to to be involved in the broader work of society
43:12
if you like we should all rejoice when the right people get elected when we get a good supreme court
43:19
verdict but we shouldn't think of that as our main responsibility our main responsibility
43:24
is being part of the community in which the lord has placed us loving people talking to people
43:31
that we really encounter day by day and although dialogue is broken down at the national level
43:37
in significant ways i still think that one on one one human being looking into the eye of another
43:44
human being confined some way to talk so play the long game trust the lord be faithful where he's
43:54
placed you those would be the three ways i would say push back i absolutely love that and the other
43:59
thing i would say that really ties into those three is just obedience overall obedience like
44:03
if you hear the lord's prompting so again that that example of someone laden the foundational stones
44:08
knowing they'll never worship in the cathedral it's the same thing that we love absolution in our
44:12
culture we love to know the answer and we like to know that if we go up and give a guy a sandwich
44:17
on the street or we ask a stranger if we can pray for him we want we want to know in that moment that
44:21
their life has changed and that they've turned to the lord and all those different things but that
44:25
may not be the case that may be a seed that you planted that's going to get watered a decade from
44:29
now and the whole point was you being obedient to christ and obedient to god's the prompting in
44:35
that moment now carl we could go a lot of different other places but i know you got a plane to catch
44:39
so for right now that's all for me is there anything else you want to get off your chest
44:42
no thanks very much i thoroughly enjoyed our time together carl trueman thank you for coming on
44:47
an indaunted life a man's podcast there you go guys i hope you enjoyed my time with carl trueman but
44:51
before i let you go we are going to do a quick resilience boost add an indaunted life our mission
44:55
is equipping men to push back darkness with content that for just spiritual mental and physical resilience
44:59
so i've got a couple links to books so the rise and triumph of the modern self there's a link to
45:03
that and then also there's a link to strange new world and then a link to some other places where
45:07
he contributes so that's uh what i mentioned the intro the ethics and public policy center and first
45:12
things all right guys thanks so much for listening to the show we do appreciate it wherever you're
45:15
listening to this please subscribe right leave us a positive five star of you if you want to come
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speak live at your event or on your podcast you shoot me an email to info at undaunted.life
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that's i-n-f-o at undaunted.life follow us on instagram and like us on facebook and check out our
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website for everything else including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way
45:31
just go to www.undaunted.life and as always we want to thank the band august burns red for allowing
45:36
us to use their music for our content the music on this podcast is our song cutting the tides
45:40
which is off their tenth anniversary re-recording of their album leveler the links are in the
45:43
description i'm your host kyle tomsen remember keep pushing back darkness keep forging spiritual
45:50
mental and physical resilience keep seeking the lion of juda
46:13
you