Houellebecq’s 1998 novel Atomised (also known as The Elementary Particles) is prophetic, provocative and absolutely filthy.
This chat covers the first ~200 pages:
On the sexual revolution: Are inceldom and looksmaxxing the inevitable consequences of the intrusion of market forces into every facet of human society? If Clavicular did not exist, would it be necessary to invent him?
Fertility crisis: Can we rely on new technologies to save us from population crash? Rich argues that this time might really be different; Benny is more optimistic. Do any of us really want to RETVRN to forced monogamy? Is liberalism at risk of extincting itself? Which cultures will win the memetic battle?
…and more
Metaphysical mutations and historical determinism
Benny: Okay, we’re doing Atomised by Michel Houellebecq.
Benny: Also called, I think, the atomic particles? Or the particles?
Rich: Say it in French, coward.
Benny: Oh man. No, I think the US version is actually not Atomised, I’ve learned.
Rich: No but in French it’s called Elementary Particles, except in French.
Cam: The Elementary Particles.
Rich: Atomised is the dumbed-down — tells you what the theme of the book is, right?
Benny: Well, so does Elementary Particles.
Rich: No, but Atomised has the connotations of the atomization of society, whereas Elementary Particles is just elementary particles.
Benny: It’s just physics speak.
Rich: Yeah. So which is the US title, Atomised?
Benny: No, that’s the UK, I believe. I believe the US is Elementary Particles.
Rich: Oh, my apologies. They dumbed down the UK one.
Cam: It’s like one of those ones — like the US spelling, with zeds and dropping the U and stuff. Every non-US person is like, oh, they’re so dumb doing that. And then you kind of think about it and you’re like, actually you know, that’s maybe the smart way of doing it. You just assume America is going to be doing it that way.
Benny: Yeah, you’re like, why does “color” need a U? It probably doesn’t.
Rich: Yeah, sorry about that. Sorry, Americans.
Benny: Okay, so the book is broken into — actually, I’m realizing I don’t know as I say it — presumably three parts. Part one is basically just summarizing the upbringing of the two protagonists of the story, these two half-brothers Michel and Bruno who shared the same mother but not the same father.
Rich: Wait, you jumped past the preword bit.
Cam: The metaphysical mutations. I’ll start with the preamble, Rich.
Benny: All right, fine.
Rich: Yeah, I’m going to preamble. This is the best opening five pages of any book I’ve ever read. It’s called Metaphysical Mutations, and it says there exist forces in the world that sweep through society and economies and transform them, that have this inevitability to them. And one of them was Christianity, which took over from the Roman Empire — not when the Roman Empire was crumbling, but when it was still at its peak. And then he sets up that there’s going to be this third great metaphysical mutation in society which is bigger than anything that came before it, and that our hero Michel — or one of our protagonists — is going to be the sort of early prophet or flag bearer for this third metaphysical mutation. What’s it going to be? I’m so excited.
Cam: Damn, I didn’t actually read the prologue. So yeah, tips to readers: read the prologue.
Rich: Wait, are you serious?
Cam: Yeah, I have such a habit now. I think with mainly nonfiction, I always skip the preface.
Rich: Wait, are you serious right now?
Cam: Yeah, my bad.
Benny: It was in the notes, bro.
Rich: You didn’t read — you just skipped past the first bit of the book?
Benny: He’s like, I don’t pick it up until about chapter 10.
Cam: I have a habit now. I always miss the preface. I think I mistook it as like a preface and it’s a prologue.
Benny: Wow.
Rich: You’re an idiot. Benny, did you read it?
Benny: Yeah, of course. I mean, what did you think the first bullet point in the doc was about? You thought Rich was just going to be rambling?
Cam: I was going to be Richard’s metaphysical preamble of the episode. I was looking forward to Richard’s setup.
Rich: I texted you guys in the group chat — I was like, wow, this book’s captured my interest so quickly.
Benny: Yeah, well we just thought that had to do with sexually frustrated teenage boys.
Rich: Yeah, well, that too. No — it’s like, what do you call it, nerd bait or something. It’s designed for us. It’s like, hey, we’re going to be talking about historical determinism and memeplexes and Christianity as a parasitic force, and then we’re going to learn about some radical new era in world history. So I thought that was really cool — just calling your shots.
Rich: I’m a determinist. I don’t believe in human agency. I don’t believe in the power of the individual. And even the individual guy, Michel, he’s not a big hero. He’s like a little insect, but he was the first insect that it happened to, or that the great world spirit moved through, or something like that. So yeah, let’s meet our prophet.
Benny: I mean, do you think he’s actually saying that these are deterministic in the sense that human agency has no role to play here? My sense was he was saying it was more descriptive. It was like, there are these events in human history that radically transform societies. You can acknowledge that those are transformative world events without claiming that they were inevitable or brought about by historical forces that aren’t ultimately cashed out in the agency of humans.
Rich: You motherfuckers did not read the first five pages, eh? Quote: “It tends to move inexorably towards its logical conclusion. No human agency can halt its progress. Nothing but another metaphysical mutation.”
Benny: Damn. So I guess the answer to my question is no.
Rich: I mean, I expect you to disagree with that.
Benny: Yeah, I mean, obviously.
Cam: Michel gets deterministic later as well. He starts to view all human interaction as just deterministic, mechanical, atomic, perhaps.
Rich: I mean, it still has to come from humans. It’s just that the force is best described on the level of abstraction that’s greater than any given individual human. I think that’s still compatible with what you probably believe, right Benny? Do you believe in memeplexes having fitness, that kind of thing? Is it helpful to talk about?
Benny: Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s just the power of ideas. The memeplex thing is just like, okay, there are ideas, and ideas are more or less powerful on their own, and sufficiently powerful ideas have a certain agency to change people’s minds, which seems quite obvious to me. But I think, yeah, it’s unclear to me — I mean, I think Houellebecq here could be saying that these transformative events could still be brought about by humans. It’s just that once they’re underway, they have a certain logic to them that makes them very difficult to shove aside. So you can make the case for even liberalism being like that. Once a society around the world adopts certain liberal principles, it’s got a certain power behind it because it unlocks a lot of potential in the society, such that that tends to go on and infect other societies around the world and the entire world itself. And you don’t have to say that human agency is being ignored there. You just have to acknowledge that liberalism is in many ways an extremely good idea and therefore pushes other bad ideas — it makes it harder for the other bad ideas to continually thrive.
Cam: So good it just leads to the sexual revolution and the decline of society.
Rich: And humanity extincting itself.
Cam: And the atomization.
Benny: Yeah, exactly.
Rich: Yeah, I think it’s independent of values.
Cam: Yeah, I mean it doesn’t need to be a good idea. Well — should we introduce the squad?
Benny: Yeah, it’s basically following the childhood of these two half-brothers. They shared a mom, Janine. She abandoned them when they were young to go live on a commune in California and to try to seek out her own self-actualization.
Cam: Yeah, I think — quote, she and their husband realized that raising a kid was not compatible with the freedom of their lives.
Benny: Yeah, so it seems like she basically accidentally got pregnant twice very quickly and abandoned both of these projects because it just wasn’t compatible with the freewheeling lifestyle she wanted to live. She’s certainly portrayed as not the ideal mama. Although I will say, this first part is very descriptive. It’s written very descriptively, I mean. There’s actually not much normative language being used. It’s very biographical, very encyclopedic, as opposed to parts two and three, which get a little bit more — or at least part two.
Cam: Yeah. And I’m not sure if you said they’re half-brothers — she got pregnant to two different men. So she gets pregnant, sends one off to Algeria to her mother to live with the grandmother, meets someone else, gets pregnant early, and then that ends up getting a divorce as well, because she’s having an orgy — and I think this was baby Michel was described as crawling around in the attic in his own excrement while she’s having an orgy.
Benny: Oh man, that was a rough scene. God.
Cam: And then they send him out to — maybe he was with the maternal grandfather, my grandmother? But he was with one of the other grandmothers.
Bruno the proto-incel and Michel the proto-asexual
Benny: Yeah, I think Michel was with the grandmother and kind of doted on by her. And he’s this introverted, reclusive kid. Somehow has this absolutely beautiful girl falling in love with him and following him around everywhere. Just basically ignores her for his entire childhood. And eventually becomes this molecular biologist. Bruno is the other kid. He had a much, much worse childhood. He was basically just sent from boarding school to boarding school. Kept being abused and bullied. Had some unsuccessful attempts with women which obviously shaped his attitudes towards them and his sexual proclivities. And at one point they end up at the same school, but for a while they sort of barely know each other, and then they eventually meet.
Rich: Yeah, they have mirrored sexualities, where Michel is desired by a beautiful woman but can’t reciprocate — we assume because of his childhood neglect. He’s not exactly asexual, but he’s kind of close to it. Or maybe he’s aromantic or whatever. And then Bruno is extremely horny and extremely frustrated by his failures to get with women. And as we’ll talk about later, maybe like a quasi-incel. So I think we have the quasi-incel and the quasi-asexual.
Cam: Asexual nerd, yeah. And for Bruno it’s all Caroline Yessayan’s fault.
Cam: This is a school-girl date where she was kind of keen on him — we hear from the narrator — but he put his hand on her thigh, and she wasn’t quite ready for that.
Benny: The thigh instead of the arm.
Cam: The thigh instead of the arm, yeah. And rejected him.
Rich: It’s the determinism once again, right? It’s ascribing so much significance to that tiny little event. It’s like the butterfly that flaps its wings and changes the course of history.
Cam: It was funny as well, because — I mean, he was getting bullied and tortured at school by the bullies, you know, pissed on and stuff like that. And like, obviously, you’d be pretty fucked up. But then it’s like, no no, it was all that one girl’s fault who rejected me.
Rich: Sure. It was very much the male bullies who ruined his life.
Rich: But mind you, he’s obviously going to have mommy issues too, right? His mom is the source of all the evils that have befallen him, because his mom basically just ignored him and maybe saw him later on in life and tried to introduce him to the hippie lifestyle to get him to loosen up.
Benny: Right, because they go to — Bruno, Michel, and Annabelle is the girl that’s in love with Michel, where he’s not really reciprocating. They try to go to a sort of hippie commune of their own, but it doesn’t work so well.
Cam: Yeah, so when they go off to the commune together and Annabelle ends up falling for — well, not falling for, but ends up being attracted to David the Italian, who’s this ultimate player, somewhat of a failed musical artist.
Benny: Described at one point, I think, like sleeping with 500 women in the course of like a year or something. It’s like, what? Those are some record-high numbers.
Cam: Yeah, yeah, centrally in this kind of sexual revolution. And I think it’s even mentioned that Janine actually maybe started off David the Italian’s promiscuity when he was like 13 or something. I think Janine — she didn’t say exactly what she did, but she said, yeah, I introduced him —
Rich: Who’s Janine? That’s the mother, right?
Cam: Sorry, the mother, yeah. On the commune, like introduced David, who turned out to be this total Lothario.
Rich: Yes. And we get the insight that I’ve heard since, but maybe Houellebecq makes it originally — that being a beautiful woman creates a perverse incentive structure where good guys tend not to approach you, but instead you get the skeeviest motherfuckers who’ve got 500 notches on the bedpost and have no intention whatsoever of sticking around.
Cam: Yeah, sounds like modern-day Tinder.
Rich: Yeah, it is really hard being incredibly beautiful, I can affirm.
Cam: Just us devious guys talking to you, no one else.
Benny: Am I just another notch on your bedpost, Rich?
Cam: Yeah, but quick question — what was Michel’s reaction to that?
Benny: Oh man.
Cam: I thought he was kind of sanguine, sort of all right about it.
Benny: He seemed pretty indifferent. At one point it describes him — they’re at a dance and Annabelle tries to get him to dance and he refuses, and he’s just hanging out leaning against this tree. And then she begins to dance with David, and then Michel is described as having a slight sort of smile on his lips, as though he’s sharing an inside joke with himself. And then he just disappears into the night. So he’s aware of what’s going on and doesn’t seem at all disturbed by it. He just seems either mildly amused or totally indifferent.
Rich: Would you feel jealousy if you don’t have a sex drive or a romantic drive? Like, presumably you wouldn’t, or it’d be a lot less.
Cam: I thought he potentially would, but maybe Michel’s so unique that he sort of doesn’t feel anything. I think a lot of guys who would struggle with inadequacy or impotence or something would feel strong jealousy, but Michel might not really be that. Like, as you said, I think it’s not technically asexual. I think he even has sex or something. He just doesn’t seem interested in relationships at all.
Rich: He was really proud when he managed to have sex with a woman and actually come at one point in the book. It was like a first. But not proud like it was a huge triumph — more like surprised, like oh, okay, I’m capable of that.
Benny: Yeah. And he said — I think he’s capable of it without feeling attracted to her at all was the important thing. Like, almost like you could just do it mechanically.
Mother nature is Bad, Actually
Rich: Yes. We should say a bit more about what we know about Michel’s character. So he’s very gifted at science in particular and very interested in the natural world. But I wanted to get a sense of his worldview. I thought this passage about him watching nature documentaries on TV was very illustrative, because it’s quite an unusual view, especially for a kid. He’s watching the French equivalent of David Attenborough videos, where you have lions chasing down gazelles and all that kind of thing, and you’ve got this grand sweeping music and it’s all about the beauty of the planet and isn’t nature wonderful and we’ve got to protect it and so on. At least for the Attenborough stuff, it’s very tied up with environmentalism and the Anthropocene and things like that. And Michel’s take on it is so different. It’s like this more Werner Herzog take, or it’s even a modern thing in EA — wild animal suffering take — where he’s like, yeah, nature is not only savage, but a repulsive cesspit. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. Parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground for viruses. He’s got this beautiful fractal cruelty through every layer of the animal kingdom, which I think is kind of true.
Rich: I’ve looked into this a bit. I heard an interesting lecture from an EA — an effective altruism person — who was interested in this. He was making the point that directed panspermia, which is this idea of seeding life amongst other planets or asteroids or whatever, could be an absolutely terrible idea if you care about net global suffering. Because it’s possible that nature, especially outside of humanity, is massively net negative — in the sense that evolution doesn’t optimize for the good at all, which is a mistake that naive environmentalists tend to make. So whether you agree with nature on whole being a net negative — which is a super edgy take — I think it’s undeniable that what he’s hammering home here is that evolution is the same blind relentless optimizing force as capitalism or anything else, and it’s absolutely not equated with the good. It leads to lots of horrible outcomes. So yeah, just adds another little layer of blackpilling. The typical track, I think, for a lot of people is: you get blackpilled on society, you think humans are terrible for some reason, but then you go, oh, but nature is wonderful and beautiful and humans are the problem. But not Michel — he’s like, yeah, we should do a holocaust on nature. We should wipe it all.
Cam: Yeah, and then in the surrounding chapters we also see Bruno at the boarding schools, and it’s this Lord of the Flies, Hobbesian war of all against all, which is maybe somewhat similar.
Benny: He feels less complicated in some ways — at least insofar as Michel actually feels complicated, which is maybe not so much. But Bruno seems like a fairly straightforward case of abuse becomes introverted and just has absolutely no confidence in himself.
Rich: Former-fatty Cam, want to weigh in on that?
Cam: No.
Benny: Though later on, when he’s 40, I think he says he’s satisfied with his looks and he’s gone to get some hair transplants and stuff.
Cam: He’s kind of looks-maxxed a little bit, it sounds like.
Benny: He’s been punching himself in the face, Clavicular-style, and it’s all happening.
Rich: Oh — you know who Clavicular is? I just heard about this guy.
Benny: That’s horrible, yeah.
Cam: Oh yeah, of course.
Benny: Cam’s been listening for years.
Cam: Oh no, I just knew who it was.
Rich: I want to talk about Clavicular later. Actually, carry on with Bruno for a bit.
Benny: Extremely different people. Or maybe not so much. Unclear, actually.
Clavicular and the sexual marketplace
Rich: Well, I think this is sowing all the seeds for modern incel, looks-maxxing culture. Because this book is — when did this book come out? ’90s?
Cam: I think like ‘98.
Benny: ‘99, I think.
Cam: Yeah, late ’90s, ‘99.
Rich: Yeah, ‘98. And there’s a bit in there where he’s like — well, I’m jumping ahead now — but he says something like, the sexual revolution was to destroy the last unit separating the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day. And then things have very much continued in the direction that he imagines here. So that’s impressive.
Cam: Yeah, I mean, we might as well talk about this actually. Just quickly — Bruno is totally obsessed with sex. That’s all he thinks about all day. And he’s largely unsuccessful — not completely, but you know, he’s really deviant. Like he’ll be on trains wanking in the back of trains, and there are young girls —
Benny: Flashing them sometimes.
Cam: Yeah, yeah. And he goes to a commune, and it’s kind of like a sex new-age commune, but the whole thing — he’s just trying to figure out how to get girls. And sometimes it backfires. He’s in this group session where they’re all going to massage you. The reason he goes to the commune is, he’s like, it’s like 65% women or something, you know, this is going to be great. And he goes to this one massage session, and you have to get partnered up, and he’s a bit slow off the gun and he ends up with this hairy man, and he’s just seeing everyone else get the massage, and he leaves.
Rich: I think you see — like, you look around at the start of the massage and there’s nine penises slowly becoming erect as they’re getting massaged by their female partners. And he’s got this hairy little dwarf man, and just rage-quits.
Cam: Yeah. And even when he gets there, he sets his tent up next to the clothesline hanging panties and stuff, because it’s all planned — I want to be near whoever’s hanging these panties up.
Rich: It’s not exactly that he hates women, which we’ll also get to later, but he’s very contemptuous of women. And you know, they’re very much a means to an end. Again, very much the proto-men’s-rights-activist, or red-pill, or whatever that community is called in C-sally, I suppose.
Cam: Yeah, and I think there’s some controversy when this came out that Houellebecq was condoning a lot of this stuff, but I read it as very neutral — just capturing the mindset of this, and also what he views the societal consequences of a lot of these things and ideas.
Rich: Well, let’s get to this observation about the sexual revolution, because I think that’s the heart of the book really — or at least this first part of the book. That’s the big idea, and it’s becoming ever more relevant year by year, it seems to me.
Cam: Yeah, so these kids are born in the ’70s, I think.
Enforced monogamy and slut shaming
Benny: Sure. I mean, I think this will just take us for the rest of the time, because there’s probably lots to dive into here. Maybe two main theses that would be interesting to discuss. One: the consequences of sexual liberation for family structure. And this is directly reflected in their upbringing, as their mom left when they were young. So what has sexual liberation done in terms of communities and family and cohesive family especially, and what are the consequences of that? And then also there’s this aspect of sexual liberation creating a marketplace, basically. And marketplaces have winners and losers. And then we’re looking at basically two different ways to cope with loss. One is the Michel route, which is to try and opt out of the game. And then one is Bruno’s route, which is to be obsessed with the game but continually lose at it, basically. Like, continually be frustrated and unsuccessful and just sort of drown in your own incompetency. And yeah, there’s arguments to be had about to what extent this is his fault, but also to what extent you’re going to have these sorts of outcomes just because there’s no reason that female sexual preference is going to be uniform over the male population. Clearly, that’s not the case. And so as soon as you acknowledge that, then you have to deal with the fact that you’re going to have a substantial number of men sort of at the bottom of this distribution who are going to have more trouble getting women than they would in a world where it was much more expected that people couple up early, they couple up once. And you have this — what’s the word — this sort of enforced-monogamy cultural norm that I think Jordan Peterson got in trouble for saying a couple of years ago. But the idea is just that if you’re in a culture with norms that promote early marriages, people not just sleeping around together especially when they’re young, and promoting family, et cetera, then you’re going to have fewer men who are unable to find women to partner up with for the rest of their lives. And so now you just have to deal with the consequences of some fairly large percentage of the male population that is having trouble dating. Like, what does that do to a society?
Rich: Yeah, I’ll just add one thing for the listener to clarify Michel’s framing of it. Which is not really the authoritarian enforced-monogamy angle, but more so almost coming from the opposite angle — like, I think he calls it a primitive or naive communism. The last vestiges of communism in a market or an individualistic society is the family and the home, where you were married to the person that you met at the building down the street or whatever. You didn’t have to constantly compete after that point. You get married, you stick with this one person, and that’s that. And it’s in line with the idea of “to each according to their need, from each according to their ability,” right? Like, you get married and you don’t have to looks-max, you don’t have to swipe through a million Tinder things, you don’t have to constantly fight to justify your own existence, because of those social norms that you mentioned. So I really like Houellebecq because he’s not some partisan hack. Traditionally someone making this point would be a trad conservative, saying the sexual revolution was a mistake and we need to go back to enforced monogamy and so on. But in this case he’s criticizing it more because of the commodification, and turning it into a marketplace — which, again, traditionally the right-wing people would like. So it’s not a traditional left-right criticism. It’s more interesting than that.
Cam: I like this line. Essentially what you’re saying around this total sexual liberation — it’s often sometimes mistakenly thought of as pairing up with communism, we’re all revolutionaries — but actually he said it’s the ultimate ends of individualism. Just being totally obsessed with the self. I can’t remember where I first came across that, but it seemed like largely right to think of things as marketplaces. And if you liberalize a marketplace, whether it’s economic or sexual, you’re going to have more — it’s going to be less egalitarian, and it’s going to be more free. And there’s trade-offs with those things. And usually, traditionally, left-leaning people are worried about economic winners and losers, and the right-wing people are saying, yeah, but it’s more free, and it’s best. And then it’s kind of the opposite.
Rich: Was it Robin Hanson who said we should redistribute sex, or something like that?
Cam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rich: Or at least pointed to the inconsistency there.
Cam: Yeah. And he was too autistic to realize that saying “redistribute sex” kind of implies —
Benny: But was he saying that tongue-in-cheek, I forget, or —
Rich: He knew what he was playing. Come on.
Cam: No, no, he was just saying, we should — and everyone’s like, you can’t, we can’t make people rape others. And he’s like, brings up the dictionary definition: redistributing, it’s just changing the composition of resources. Like, why is everyone confused about what I’m talking about?
Rich: Well, I think someone in there mentioned, oh, well, we should pay prostitutes to have sex with lonely men or something like that, and people were really mad about that as well. This is such a hard topic to talk about, for all of these reasons. But it is — I mean, because as you say, Cam, it’s undeniably true. And even so, I was listening to this Clavicular interview, because he’s popping up in my algorithm or whatever, and so I was like, what the hell are these kids on about? I need to get a sense of it. And they literally use the term “sexual market value” to describe your prospects as a mate. And they’re talking about men in particular, which is sort of the sum of your money, attractiveness, and status, basically. And then talking about the theory of hypergamy, that women tend to partner up — they can go higher — and men have to go down, kind of thing. And the thing is, this guy’s not an idiot. He was a smart kid, and driven and all the rest. But at the same time he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about, and it’s really sad. Assuming it’s not just some joke that I’m too oblivious to notice — that I’m taking something seriously that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously — but it’s so sad, because it’s true to a degree, but it doesn’t at all determine it. Like, I guess kicking back against determinism — none of this stuff is deterministic. Only a super-sperg-y economist type person would think that this model perfectly captures reality, because having relationships is ineffable, and partnering with people is ineffable, and compatibility is ineffable. And these kids are just going to meme themselves into inceldom or whatever this Clavicular version of it is, where you’re surrounded by hot girls but you don’t have a girlfriend, or you’re trying to get your body count up, or whatever it is that his goal is. He said in the interview, oh, I can’t really have a relationship because that would get in the way of my project, and I’m streaming 15 hours a day, and it’s a lot of work. I’m like, you’re a fucking idiot, you know nothing. You don’t understand, you don’t know anything about women, in spite of all of your autistic videos about the correct jaw-eyebrow ratio or whatever.
Cam: Yeah, he’s a funny character because he’s coming from — there are some truths around society and how society values looks and how the sexual marketplace works. And then he’s just like this person who’s — and he is relatively high-IQ compared to the early days of people doing this, probably on bodybuilder forums. But yeah, he’s like, what happens if you take some of these ideas with truth to them to the logical extreme and just kind of totally corrupt them? Yeah, he’s like a character straight out of a Houellebecq novel for sure. That would fit well with Atomised, where he loses sight of what a lot of men find beautiful in women as well. He starts talking about, you know, eye tilt and stuff like that, but certainly not in connection with another —
Rich: It must be hard to write fiction these days because reality is so weird. I couldn’t, and I don’t know if I could invent Clavicular, you know?
Cam: Yeah, no, he’s a good character. But it’s amazing how prescient Houellebecq is, with all that’s happened, and just to the nth degree.
The fertility crisis and population crash
Rich: Yeah, where does this train stop? One question I have is, presumably this ties into the fertility crisis somewhat — that people are so reluctant to settle, or close their options, because they’re constantly overthinking everything. And the fact that you can just go on Tinder and swipe and swipe until you find the perfect person for that night or whatever, presumably that does cut against long-term monogamous relationships, which are probably somewhat necessary to actually perpetuate the species. So this stuff could be quite dangerous, I think.
Cam: Oh, definitely.
Rich: We do need to maybe change — I think where I’m at with the Houellebecq thing — well, I mean, I want to ask your guys’ opinion. In terms of the sexual revolution, my stance on it is, I wouldn’t change anything. I can’t think of a single policy that I’d wind back. Are you going to ban contraception? Because by the way, Michel Houellebecq ties it to the passing of the certain Act that allows for free or widespread contraception, broad access to society. Would I wind that back personally? No. Would I make abortions illegal? No. But I understand the wistfulness, and I understand the collective-action problem, or whatever you want to call it — the fact that we might all be better off if we could shift to a different equilibrium at the same time. So I think there’s a case to be made for reasserting some social norms around — what would be some good norms? Like, bully men who don’t propose to their girlfriends after a certain period, or shame them, or give them kids if they want kids — things like that.
Cam: Why don’t you go both ways as well, which in a more sort of feminist culture now is more taboo.
Rich: I’m just not aware of that as a trope, but I guess it must happen — women who just hold on to a boyfriend that they have no serious intentions with but can’t be bothered —
Cam: No, no, that’s the male — that’s the male type. I think with modern dating, it’s women sleeping around in the kind of hypergamy style thing in their 20s. Not starting a family early. And then the male side of it is often not settling down — especially these quote “higher-status, high-sexual-marketplace” guys. Sometimes men are kind of incels for sex, and maybe women are like incels for marriage. Which — I mean, this is overstating things, because sort of everyone I know is getting partnered up and having kids. There’s selection effects.
Benny: Shots fired, mate.
Rich: Come on, dude. Come on.
Cam: Whatever, David the Italian with us. No, but you know what I mean — we know a lot of healthy relationships. So it’s not like — but I also know people that — I used to work with this woman who’s in her early 30s, and she’s really struggling to get this guy. She’d get all these dates and then sleep with them and stuff, and then the guys wouldn’t want to continue it. And then eventually she found someone. So like — even in this book, Annabelle — I mean, I don’t think she was that interested in David, but she knew David wasn’t interested in her, she was just like another girl, but she was still attracted to him.
Rich: Yeah, well, I mean another element of it is, I’m at the age where all of my friends — well, not all of them, but most of them — are having kids or trying to have kids, and fertility problems are just rife. Almost every couple is having a problem, whether it’s on their first child or trying to have a second child. And they’re all somewhere in their 30s, pretty much. I think probably more relevant forces for why that happens could be related to economics — like studying and getting into the workforce — rather than dating around endlessly. But the fact that that has changed — it’s not only bad for human society, it causes a lot of heartache and suffering for the actual people who’ve made those choices. Which, again, you could presumably somewhat push back on at the level of social norms, by trying to make motherhood seem really cool and glorious again, and a high-status thing, rather than a failure compared to becoming a partner at PwC or whatever. I don’t actually know how you change those norms, but the argument can be made that maybe you should.
Cam: One funny Houellebecq-ian theme might be like — you don’t go back, and you go through. You just stay in an artificial womb somewhere, so women can get their PhD by the time they’re 30 and then don’t need to have kids biologically.
Rich: I would call that the Deutschian view, maybe, more than the Houellebecqian, because that’s quite optimistic. I would have thought you’re just like — your new technology creates new problems, and then you solve the new problems. That would be the Deutschian stance, right? And we’re very much in the new-problems phase.
Cam: Yeah, well I think — one of Houellebecq’s themes often is like, yeah, but these things are bad that they happen, but you can’t return necessarily.
Rich: Yeah, but would you return? I wouldn’t.
Cam: Yeah, I mean — it’s hard. I don’t know, I gotta go in a few minutes.
Rich: Oh, cop-out, cop-out.
Benny: Trying to escape the conversation.
Cam: Return spelt with a V.
Rich: Dude, don’t be a fucking pussy, man.
Cam: I mean, I’m — what do you want me to say?
Benny: To defend the Deutschian view a bit, I think I actually am somewhere closer to that. One: I’m actually not convinced about how big of a problem this is. I think eventually most people actually do realize the value in a long-term partnership and do want to couple up. Whether that comes about in your later 20s or early 30s, fine, sure. Maybe 50 years ago that came earlier, probably not from your own desire, but just from some sort of cultural enforcement that this is the thing you do, you couple up early. I don’t really want to go back to that world of just forcing people to couple up when they don’t necessarily want to. I think it’s much better to —
Rich: There must have been a lot of bad outcomes there, right? Like horrible relationships.
Benny: Think how many super-depressed women were just having to pump out kids and hated it. Like, I certainly don’t want to go back to that world. I think it’s much better to be in a world where you can experiment and do stuff and learn about other people in your 20s, in your early 20s. And then typically the average person realizes, yeah, I do want some long-term fulfilling relationship. And then they have kids later on. Fertility problems are interesting, but I do think one of the main culprits there is not necessarily the sexual revolution but just women’s liberation in general — which I certainly want to roll back.
Cam: No downsides.
Benny: Like, I think it’s good to have women able to go to school.
Rich: Certainly want to — or what did you say? All right.
Benny: No, I certainly wouldn’t want to roll back. Yeah, so I think the relationship between sexual liberation in particular and fertility issues is actually pretty tenuous. I think it’s just economic empowerment, basically. And that’s something I certainly wouldn’t want to roll back.
Rich: But do you think the species is going to just shrivel up and die?
Cam: Well, potentially it’s Darwinian and it solves itself. But maybe it’s going to decline.
Benny: I mean, that’s the other thing, right? The people — the Claviculars of the world who never want to couple up with people — okay, well, they last one generation and then their moronic genes are out of the gene pool. So I’m not too concerned about people like that, honestly. You might hit some sort of stabilization, but is that worse than forcing people to have more kids than they ultimately wanted? Yeah, I don’t think so. There’s a difference between hitting stabilization with respect to population rates and actually having declining population rates, right?
Rich: I want to go further with this. But Cam, before you go — do you want to get off the fence and say something?
Cam: Well, I mean, I’ve got too much liberalism in my core to roll it all back. But at the margin, I think — I’m in conflict around it. I’m sympathetic to this kind of Houellebecqian critique that there’s a lot of bad outcomes for all involved. And we need to find some new equilibrium somehow. And some of the clearest ways are pretty hard to swallow. So how can we do it, at the margin, somewhat more non-coercively?
Rich: Yeah, and that’s my question, I guess. Houellebecq seems to give very accurate descriptions of the problem, but I don’t see him giving prescriptions of what the hell we’re meant to do about it. I mean, we’re only halfway through the book, but I’d be surprised if he had any actual positive vision for getting out of this mess. It’s still useful to diagnose the problem, and especially getting this conversation started 20 years ago — or more, actually. What were you saying? More than — maybe closer to 30 years ago.
Cam: Yeah, yeah. No — also, I liked his idea of the precursor, where he called the boys’ mom a precursor, who was getting involved with the sexual revolution. Like, she wasn’t a leader, she was kind of a follower, but she was very early to it. Just reminded me of, I suppose, some people I know, or even the rat-sphere or something — just people early to it and driven by this kind of freedom and especially sexual freedom. And then — I mean, we didn’t even talk about the impacts on family formation, right, of this sort of stuff. Sorry, I didn’t say much there. I gotta roll though, unfortunately.
Rich: Yeah, well, we might be able to talk about it again next time.
Cam: Yeah. Cool.
Rich: But then, can we continue for a little bit after Cam goes?
Benny: Yeah, we can continue.
Rich: Yeah, so Benny, on the population point — I think for one thing it would be fine if we stabilized, but that’s not where the numbers are going. We’re at the point where the population will just keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller. It won’t stabilize, because stable is like 2.1 birth rate. And some countries are at like 1.3, or — you know, Japan and China are absolutely horrible. South Korea is the worst of all. And the West is not that much better. But then the other point is, like as you say, some groups will select themselves out, so that’s kind of a self-resolving problem. But another way of saying that is that groups with better memetic fitness will become all of humanity. So based on the Amish birth rate, I think, and maybe Orthodox Jews, and maybe a few other super-high-fertility groups —
Benny: Evangelicals in the US, I think.
Rich: Yeah. So that is the future of humanity. And again, they win — it’s more like their memeplex wins than the people themselves win through agentic desires. And that’s value-neutral again. Like, they would think it’s good, right? And we might think otherwise, if we are more in favor of the liberal memeplex surviving and being the future of humanity. And this is all sloshing around in my head with the idea that the liberal memeplex seems to be under threat. You know, the time is ripe for disruption — for something else to take over. I don’t know what.
Benny: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple of things to say there. The first is that ideas do have power. So it’s not with 100% faithfulness that the child of an evangelical Christian is also an evangelical Christian, right? There’s now, especially with the internet, lots of material on other and better ideas out there. And one would hope that insofar as those ideas just are better, that will have some sort of persuasive ability for the next generation, regardless of the views of their parents. And in fact, that’s what history has been, right? It’s been generations improving, modifying the ideas of their parents — otherwise, we wouldn’t have made progress. Things wouldn’t be different than they were. The vast majority of the world was religious 200 years ago, and now there’s a wave of atheism that admittedly is receding at the moment, but still it shows you what’s in principle possible. So I’m less concerned about the point that, well, the demographics of those who are having kids is not exactly what we’d want it to be. Because I think it’s pretty hard — even Brian Caplan and some other economists have made this point — parents have a pretty hard time inculcating certain views in their kids. Views are much more shaped by friends and social situations and stuff than they are by their parents. You can see this by looking at the attitudes of immigrants. You look at first- and second-generation immigrants and you ask: do their kids hold the values of their parents, or more the values of their new country? And typically it’s much closer to the values of their new country. And oftentimes they’re somewhat embarrassed by any what we might view as regressive views of their parents.
Rich: Yeah, but you’re still looking at it as if it’s like — these small groups within the body of some larger culture, and the kids assimilate to the larger culture because that’s who their peers are. But that’s very much not going to be the case. There’ll simply be a critical mass — the memeplex will be strong enough that that won’t happen. Like, the Amish have crazy good retention rates. So it’s not the case that the Amish are failing to reproduce because their kids grow up and go out on whatever that thing’s called — where they go and find out about the world — and then they’re like, yeah, this rules and I see the light now and I’m never going back. That’s not what happens. It’s probably a bit of an extreme example, because of the way that the Amish are set up to insulate themselves so thoroughly from the rest of society. But if you do the numbers, the rest of society just becomes more like these groups.
Benny: Well, I mean, exactly — the threat of being shunned, it’s hardly a fair game.
Rich: Sure, the internet still exists and stuff. But like, mostly their peers — I’m pretty sure the research says that your peers are who influence you essentially, not so much your parents — at least when you reach your teen years and so on, your parents have very little influence, but your peers will also be Islamists or Amish or evangelical or whatever. So it doesn’t expose you to the broad marketplace of ideas, just because the numbers tip so that you’re now the majority, and everyone else is competing themselves out of existence. And that’s also — is this different to previous situations where you have a group that is actively extincting itself in some ways? It has anti-natalist norms and ideas. Does the logic still hold that the best ideas will win, when the groups holding certain ideas are in some sense deliberately reducing their own numbers over time?
Benny: Well, I just — I don’t understand how this logic would explain how the world went from being highly religious 200 years ago — you know, every one of your neighbors. Or even go back further than 200 years, go 500 years, a thousand years. Everyone you knew was a Mongol raider. Okay, well then, how did we ever get to the Enlightenment? It’s because ideas have a certain power, and good ideas have even more power. And there are just huge benefits of modern secular societies. People will find out about those benefits just by trying to solve problems. Like, okay, how are we supposed to set up our communities to accomplish tasks A, B, and C? Okay, that’s a question of political economy. We’ve tried lots of experiments with respect to political economy, and some things work better than others. And yeah, I feel like I’m just optimistic that people will reconverge on better answers to those questions. For the actual fertility trends — yeah, that I am more nervous about. I can’t help but thinking there will be some sort of self-correction here. But it’s obviously not inevitable. It could just be that every educated couple’s ideal number of kids is 1.5, and so then everything just starts disappearing. But yeah, I mean, there are still lots and lots of people who want to have kids. I think a big issue is the age problem, which is basically a problem of science and technology. If you can have people able to have kids later on in their life — which doesn’t seem impossible in principle, it just seems like a limitation of current biology — then that would solve a lot of those problems. And similarly with things like artificial wombs, etc. That seems perfectly possible. I don’t know how far we are away from something like that, but it seems like the solution there can be technological, and I would be optimistic we can figure stuff like that out. If you imagine a world with artificial wombs, it seems not at all crazy to me that everyone has like one or two more kids in that world, because you’re reducing the risk of pregnancy, you’re reducing how annoying it is, you’re reducing the time commitment, the investment, et cetera.
Rich: I’m all for that. And I’m sure that’s possible. It’s just that it seems to me we actually have a limited window of time for that to happen. I don’t know what that window is, but maybe it’s like 20 or 30 years. It’s certainly not guaranteed that we’ll have that technology — and we probably won’t, to be honest. So the thing that’s not analogous here compared to every other period of history is that you always have a growing population, basically. So you always have more people to think new ideas, and more people to come up with new technologies and drive GDP growth, if not per capita, just in absolute terms. It seems like that’s not going to be the case. So that’s extremely different to every other period. And I think that’s what makes me — I’m not saying I’m pessimistic, exactly, I’m just like — this seems like a really important, unusually important problem. And it is — maybe doesn’t have a technological answer this time. It has a narrative, meaning-making, memeplex-type answer. Or at least you can diagnose the problem from there, which is: what kind of pathetic culture is talking itself into extinction? And this is why the Bronze Age Nietzschean vitalists are coming to the fore again, I think — because they correctly recognize how sickly and pathetic that is. And yet they also carry with them all of these other values, which I don’t like and I wouldn’t want to become dominant. I don’t know if they represent an actual serious successor or not. But anyway, that’s just my — maybe I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, but I feel like this might be more of a cultural problem than a technological one for the moment, because of the limited time window.
Benny: Yeah, I mean, just in terms of our ability to solve problems — how much time we have to think about those problems. It’s true that if you have higher birth rates, then you have more people. In the past most people’s lives were taken up with drudgery, basically. The average person now has significantly more free time and is significantly more educated than they were in the past. So just in terms of our ability to actually collectively solve big problems, I’d be more optimistic about our chances now than I would have been even 50 years ago, when, you know, people working 80-hour weeks not by choice is significantly more common, and the average person knows significantly less about science and everything.
Rich: Yeah, I think that’s true. And the only point it becomes not true is if population actually starts cratering, and you have big demographic problems of basically quality of life getting worse, and time and resources getting more scarce, because you have this huge aging population that has to be supported with an increasingly tiny bunch of youthful people. So I’ll look into the demographic stuff a little bit more. Maybe world population doesn’t peak for quite a while. You can import lots of Africans, or get the Nigerians on the job or something like that. But it’s basically — Africa is the last source of young people in the world.
Benny: I think India is still also above replacement, and some other places, but yeah.
Rich: Yeah, is it? I don’t know. Yeah, it could be. It’s taken over from China as the biggest country now. Okay. Much to think about.
Benny: Yeah, I know. Population is interesting though. But I’m also aware — I always have this voice in the back of my head, like, so many people were so worried about overpopulation for so long, by just drawing lines through population trends. And that doesn’t mean — you know, it’s a fallacy to say, well, because they were wrong, we also might be wrong if we’re worried about underpopulation. But there are so many variables that go into this.
Rich: But you’ve got to think about why they were always — why are doomers always wrong, at least up until now? It’s because you can’t predict — you can’t make — what does Deutsch say?
Benny: Can’t predict the future growth of knowledge.
Rich: Prophesize.
Benny: Yeah.
Rich: Yeah, exactly. You don’t know what new knowledge will come along that will solve your current problems. And so is that the case for this type of problem? Maybe, in the sense that maybe artificial wombs plus AGI or whatever, right around the corner. No, I guess actually, you know what, it is the same thing, isn’t it? Yeah, okay.
Benny: Yeah, it’s the exact same situation, right? It’s just like, of course you can’t imagine what the solution will be. I mean, this is where his laws-of-physics thing is useful. If it’s not against the laws of physics, then there is a solution.
Rich: Yeah. Off the rails just like — being really demeaning about any type of statistical inference or trend projection. It’s like, no, we have mechanical ideas about why this is happening. It’s not a mystery. So what is going to change? You say, oh, a technology that we can’t imagine right now will change that. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t, and there’s absolutely no historical law — no contingent law — that says we’re going to find it just because we did in previous times. Maybe we just won’t. And also, maybe by talking about the problem we change resource allocation, incentives, people’s ideas of what they want to work on, to make it more likely that we do get to the problem. You know, there’s plenty of cases of that in the past too — like, getting rid of CFCs to help heal the hole in the ozone layer or whatever. Like, just actually identify the problem and turn our powers towards trying to solve it. Rather than being like — to me, it’s just as naive, I think, to say “trend goes up” or “trend goes down” therefore it always will. I also think it’s naive to say problem gets solved because humans are creative therefore it will. Again, it’s like, well, maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
Benny: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re misunderstanding Deutsch here. His point is not just faith that we’ll always solve every problem that comes our way, right? He repeatedly says there’s no bounds on the size of error we can make, and there’s no guarantee that we solve the next problem. The point is to open the door to start talking about solutions. Why were the doomers so unhelpful? Precisely because they’re doomers — they think with certainty we’re screwed, and there’s no way to overcome this problem, whether it’s climate change, whether it was overpopulation in the ’70s, whether it was acid rain, whether it was the problem of dictatorship, whatever it happened to be — whether it was civil rights, et cetera. They were wrong because they refused to imagine that it was even possible to try and find solutions. So the point is not to say that with 100% certainty you will find solutions, and therefore you can be sanguine in the face of the problem. The point is that you absolutely should diagnose the problem and start thinking about solutions, because if the solution is not contravened by the laws of physics, then it does exist. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be handed to you on a platter, but it means if you are creative and energetic and industrious enough, in principle there actually is something to do here. So it’s a catalyst for action, not a reason to ignore the problem and just assume it’s going to get solved.
Benny: But I think, to your credit, this attitude actually does pop up, especially in sort of online crit-rat Deutschian circles, and especially with the problem of climate change, where I repeatedly hear people just basically mocking any sort of proposed solution to whatever the problem happens to be. You know, mocking renewable energy, or pushes towards renewable energy, et cetera. And I think they’re missing the part of the picture where it’s like, well, we actually have to solve the problem. It’s not just enough to stand back and make fun of doomers and claim that problems are soluble. You can’t just say that — you actually have to fucking solve the problem.
Rich: I’m imagining a meme format where they’re like, don’t worry, some new knowledge will solve this problem. And then someone’s like, here’s some new knowledge. And they’re like, not that new knowledge.
Benny: Yeah, exactly, dude. It’s like the — I’m sure you’ve heard the joke of the guy on his roof in a hurricane. He continually says, oh god will save me. At some point a fire boat shows up and offers to take him, he says no no, god will save me. And then they send in a helicopter with a rescue pad and a rope dangling down, he says no no, god will save me. And eventually he dies, and he asks god, why didn’t you save me? He’s like, I sent a fire boat, I sent a helicopter — what else did you want? It’s just similarly with the problems. Like, yeah, I mean, I was sending you — we had renewable energy that we could move into, and all this stuff. Those were the solutions.
Rich: Yeah, no, totally. And just to be fully clear, I’m not — on this population stuff, I mean, for one thing, I don’t know all that much about it. But I’m not a full doomer, and I think humankind will be fine. It’s just that to me right now it seems that it’s going to be played out in the memetic battleground, and so a type of memeplex will survive that is not one that I particularly love and relish and would have chosen to be the future of humanity. And that’s what I feel sad about. I don’t think humans will extinct themselves, but I think liberalism is at danger of extincting itself. And I feel like a modified version of it somehow could survive, because it has so much to recommend it. And because what I love in this book is Houellebecq pointing out that it is valueless. You can have ideas that perpetuate themselves because they’re really useful and good, or you can have ideas that perpetuate themselves because they are anti-rational, or because they tell their followers to have lots of kids and then inculcate their children in the memeplex. It’s the same way that all God’s creation is not beautiful and good — it’s actually absolutely horrifying in the minutiae and in the details of how species live. There’s no reason to think memes should necessarily be any different. Yeah, anyway, enough about that.
Benny: Dude, Houellebecq really gets us going on a lot of stuff. We should just go through his whole canon at this point. I feel like — it gets juicy for us, I like it. It’s awesome.
Rich: Yeah, totally. We just can’t do the Islamic one, because we will never be able to release that.
Benny: Might get assassinated. Yeah, that would be rough. I don’t know. Yeah, that was fun. I think there’s still actually lots to touch on that we didn’t get to. So the final half of the second half of the book will be fun, I’m sure.
Rich: Yeah, cool. All right, should we leave it there?
Benny: Sure.
Rich: We do have some listener mail, but I’ll wait until we have Cam back, so maybe we can do that next week if we have a bit more time. And then if anyone else wants to write in, we would love to hear from you. You can contact us at doyouevenlit at gmail dot com — d-o-u, just the letter U, lit at gmail dot com. Questions, comments, criticisms, arguments about population ethics.
Benny: Wait, is it doyouevenlit at gmail.com or do-you-lit? Because it’s “do you even lit.” Well, you spelt it “do you lit,” but it’s “do you even lit,” right? With just the letter U.
Rich: Oh, sorry, yeah, do you even lit. Yeah. Going to say what — you don’t know the name of the podcast after two years? Yes. Just making it maximally confusing. It’s a small intelligence test you have to pass if you want to make it into our inbox. I’m doing it on purpose.
