In this thought-provoking discussion, we explore the Tocqueville Paradox and its relevance to modern society. Discover why people feel increasingly discontent despite significant improvements in living standards and technology. We delve into:
The definition and implications of the Tocqueville Paradox
Historical context and comparisons to modern life
Studies supporting the paradox, including experiments in Pakistan
The impact of social media on our perception of wealth and success
The integration paradox among minorities
Strategies for cultivating gratitude and perspective in our daily lives
The importance of understanding history and appreciating progress
Ideas for family rituals to combat the negative effects of the paradox
Join us as we unpack this fascinating sociological concept and discuss ways to find contentment in our rapidly evolving world.
[00:00:00] as our society has become a more cush, easier to live in the expectations around comfort within life, around lack of challenges within life.
Have risen at a rate much faster than we have actually been able to meet them yeah I can't begin to emphasize how spot on this is because I love watching for example vintage cooking videos and so here I'm going to, I'm going to move further with some actual data on this paradox because it's been studied in real world environments.
Would you like to know more?
Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today. We are going to be talking about the Tocqueville Paradox which is really interesting and related to a lot of the concepts that we discuss on this show.
Interesting. So just as a summary, I'll start with a brief explanation of what it is. Then we can go over some of the data on it. All right. Okay. The Tocqueville paradox describes a phenomenon where, [00:01:00] as the overall quality of life and social conditions improve in a society, People's expectations rise at a faster rate, leading to increased discontent and frustration.
In other words, as things get better, people tend to focus on what they don't have, rather than appreciating the improvement they have experienced. This paradox suggests that there is a gap between the actual improvements in living conditions and people's perceptions of their lives. As societies become more prosperous and egalitarian, people's expectations rise.
For their personal lives and the overall quality of society increase. However, these expectations often rise faster than the actual rate of improvement, leading to a sense of relative deprivation and dissatisfaction, even though the absolute quality of life has improved. Now, for those, for those people listening to our podcast, like me, who have fuzzy memories of American history, do I have it right that Alexis de Tocqueville is the person who inspired this [00:02:00] paradox and that he was the one who essentially first started talking about American status anxiety, writing about his experiences traveling through America as a man from France and seeing things like buildings with false facades that are really just normal squat buildings, but that have those old west town, two story facades that look really fancy.
And just that being indicative of many other examples and observations he made about American's obsession with showing and signaling material wealth. Is that the Alexis de Tocqueville we're talking about? That's the one that we're talking about here. Alrighty. Yeah. You know, this is really interesting. I was just listening to another YouTuber's overview of Joseph Smith, the guy who started the LDS church talking about how at the turn of the American Revolution, you know, around the time that Alexis de Tocqueville was traveling around the United States, only amount around 10 percent of Americans in this newly formed United States attended church regularly.
So this was a [00:03:00] largely godless society. And while I think a lot of the historical education that we got as kids was about the historical revivals and about these creation, you know, like the creation of the LDS church, for example, you know, these, these religious zealots and their advocacy. And work, what was not being discussed with the largely godless society.
Well, it's because it was for two reasons. It was one, because these individuals wrote a lot more. Yeah. It's very similar to how if you're studying European history, you're going to get a lot of history from the Roman perspective and very little from the, you know, Gallic perspective. Right. And people are talking about the dark ages when really those ages weren't so dark.
It was just, they weren't the word cell ages. They weren't the sub stack ages. Yeah, and that was the problem. And so what I was thinking about though, and just the thought I'll end with before you continue, is What I didn't realize around, about this period in American history is, is it is oddly similar to our period now with largely non religious people [00:04:00] and also quite materialistic people.
And that's why this paradox then and now are quite relevant, right? Yeah, well, I don't know if I don't know if I would say that the religiosity aspect, I think it's an interesting thing to bring up, but I don't know if it's directly relevant to this particular paradox because while religiosity does correlate with gratitude for what one has in life, I don't, like, I guess there's like a tangential connection, but I don't see it as a particularly large connection.
However, I do think that the point that you just made is an incredibly important point to elevate is that we have a misconception of a race of religiosity in certain historic time periods within America as being much higher. Now, we should know that individuals believed in God, like the average person would have identified with some religious sect and they would have believed in God, but they wouldn't have it might not have been like the focus of their lives in a academic sense.
Right. Well, just because you don't [00:05:00] regularly attend church doesn't mean you don't believe in God. But I would also argue, and this shows up in anthropological research on people's religious beliefs as well, that if you aren't regularly practicing your faith, you really aren't living it. You're not living those values.
You're not digging into it. You don't have that faith. You have to, it's It's something you have to constantly lean into and remind yourself of if you actually are going to not only believe it, but actually achieved through a separate mechanism. Specifically, I think that that can be achieved through a few things more effectively than church attendance.
You're just talking about like crafting a religious system or practicing a religious system. One is some form of regular sacrifice that you're making actively as part of your religion. Specifically a sacrifice that differentiates you from other people around you. And this can include unique styles of dress, names and unique ways of acting.
Anything where you are consciously differentiating yourself from those around you will be even [00:06:00] more effective than church attendance. Yeah. Well, and I think this is why people start comparing things like CrossFit and. Other exercise regimens to a cult or a religion, because they, they Dark to behave in many ways, like religions and cults.
What the Tocqueville paradox is really focused on, if I'm going to word it in my own words, is people in our current society misunderstand how good they have it in a historic context. And as our society has become a more cush, easier to live in the expectations around comfort within life, around lack of challenges within life.
Have risen at a rate out of like, like much faster than we have actually been able to meet them by Realistically solving our ancestors needs. Yeah I can't begin to emphasize how spot on this is because I love watching for example vintage cooking videos about like, oh, here [00:07:00] are some treats that you as a vintage housewife could cook to really impress your neighbors and husband and family.
And they are shit looking meals. They look disgusting. I compare that to what I see when scrolling on Instagram now. I'm just like, this is what I casually threw together as a working mom and they are insane.
so in the 1910s, they had a simple roast beef and Franconia potatoes. The 1920s was chicken a la King, which is just chicken and vegetables in a cream sauce over rice. In the 1930s, they had cream chip beef, buttered peas, and white bread. Yum. In the 1940s they ate fried spam, a baked potato, and lima beans.
Even better. The 1950s was the decade of the TV dinner featuring roast turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes and peas.
Really wish for people who haven't studied, like culinary history, I could emphasize. Just how blend and tasteless food was as recently as something like the 1950s. I mean, I think people are vaguely [00:08:00] aware that humans fought. Wars people died over spices that now we take completely for granted. But if you look even as recently as like the 1950s in the U S , what you would have been eating at a nice dinner, Would have been, you know, steak and potatoes.
And so that would have been. Steak. Maybe seasoned with salt and pepper. And potatoes maybe seasoned with salt and pepper. And when you think about the diversity of food we have today, whether it's being able to go out and have Japanese food or, Thai food or Indian food Or even a modern, nice juicy steak. That's well seasoned
you can look at pictures of states from this period on, , dinner tables. And you can just tell that they are tough and blend in nightmarish. yeah, standards, it's, it's kind of like the Olympics, you know, how people have been, you know, the summer Olympics, it just took place.
And so people have been posting a lot of side by sides of like, this was like the 1930s Olympics tumbling regime. And it's someone like doing a [00:09:00] cartwheel and looking really proud of themselves. And then it's like, and this is, you know, in 2024, it's someone like. Defying gravity and not being human anymore.
Outro Music The quote that we always do from the Martyrdom of Man that I think encapsulates the Toteville Paradox very well is, and helps I think people who read this text regularly reflect and build gratitude for where they are today, is this was a text that was written in the mid 1800s, so the people of that time period lived horrible lives.
Oh yeah, no surgery, very little pain management, aside from maybe alcohol and opium, and yeah. Rampant diseases everywhere, you know, that was, was it Spanish flu around that time? It was around 1915, 1916, [00:10:00] right? Oh yeah, so it hadn't even happened yet. So I'll add in post some horrors that were happening in this time period and what it would have been like.
To give you an idea of just how bad things were when this was written. If you were in the United States, around 30% of births would have ended in the death of the child. Eve somebody was doing surgery on you. It would have been done without anesthesia. This was about 40 years before the jungle was written, which described things like in America's industrial capacity, falling into sausage vats in that sausage being sold, being a regular thing that happened.
If you got cut or something, you were likely to die due to infections. For example, you get appendicitis. You. You die, you get a compound fracture, 50% survival rate. Diseases like diabetes, heart disease. Yeah. You die. You get depression. You get locked up in a mental asylum. Dental problems. , your teeth just rot out of your head. Don't worry [00:11:00] about the pain. In fact, during this period, women lost on average one tooth for every one child they had. And if you're looking at a place like the United States, they would have been having seven children on average. So keep in mind, that means for every woman not getting married at some other woman, with having 14 kids. But a guy writing in this time period trying to build gratitude for his own people, right, was saying, And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago.
The working man enjoys more luxuries today than did the king of England in Anglo Saxon times. And, at his command are intellectual delights, which, but a little while ago, the most learned in the land could not obtain all this. We owe to the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude.
Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind, let us pay to the future, [00:12:00] the debt, which we owe the past. And so what he's, you know, remarking on here is even back in the 1850s, you know, they had a lot to be grateful for. Yes. They had already forgotten it.
Just like people today don't realize he's saying our lives today are better than the lives of the people. You know, several hundred years before now, a couple hundred years from then and it's, if this is important, I think for general mental health to read history even recent history, like, Expectations. When you talk with young people about the things that give them despair in life, right?
Yes. When you're talking about how hard their lives are, you will often get statements like, Well You know, I can't have the phone I want, you know, I'm stuck using technology. I'll never be able to own a home. I'll never be able to own a home. [00:13:00] I'll, you know, and, and then you point out, it's like, well, you know, historically most Americans lived with their parents.
If you go a couple of hundred years ago and they're like, oh, I was unaware of this. When they, when they got married, they did. I think it was even up until like the early 1900s, it was, I think 36 percent of people when they got married were still living with their parents. Or, you know, like. If you look at cell phone rates among, for example, among homeless Americans, and I'll add the exact number in post,
It's 76%.
it's really high.
If you look at in poverty line American households now, if you look at refrigeration, refrigerator owner rates, really high.
It's 99.9% and I think people misunderstand how much of a revolution the refrigerator was in terms of quality of life. When my grandmother got a refrigerator, how stoked was she? Yes.
Yeah. Or. Or how recent it was. So when you're looking at 1950s stuff and you're seeing things like, you know, like those fruit jello mold things that people would [00:14:00] give to their neighbors and stuff. Yeah. That was popular. The height of gastronomic enjoyment. Yes. Predominantly to show off that you owned a refrigerator.
Oh, really? That was, Oh, Oh, how intriguing. I did not know. It could only be made with a refrigerator and not a refrigerator. And so it was a way to be like, look at my refrigerator. I have a fancy things. And even in my dad's generation, I mean, if you talk about something like television, they were the first ones on their block to get a TV.
And all the other kids would come.
Now contrast that with today, we're 76% of Americans living in poverty, have a television in their household. I feel young Americans don't understand just how grueling things were without a screen. I grew up in the generation where every weekend we would drive two and a half hours. To the, to the family farm and
in that ride in the car because I'd get car sick. If I tried to read. You just had to sit there and stare you didn't have. You may have like a music track that you could listen to. , if the [00:15:00] rest of the family would agree to it. But other than that, , there was nothing. , it was often the same with plane flights.
You know, you're stuck on that plane for four hours, just staring at the seat in front of you. It is almost hard to convey to somebody who grew up with cell phones with screens, just how dreadfully boring the world was before them. I just realized is, is When you give someone sourdough bread because it shows you have and can maintain a sourdough starter, which is a big flex because it takes a lot of time. Yeah. So, we've got little flexes like this today, but interestingly, the core flexes that I think people engage in today, which Shows I think a true post scarcity world is stuff like you giving out eggs from our backdoor chicken coop.
It's stuff like that. Okay. That's my point. Or sourdough bread or something that, you know, you cooked and made at home. They're flexes at which demonstrate that you don't need to rely on the industrialized economy. Yet we cannot forget how much easier the industrialized economy has made [00:16:00] our lives. Yeah.
And here I'll add some rate, some stats about absolute poverty rates in, in places like the United States, as well as starvation rates,
So if we're looking at poverty rates in the United States, In the early 19 hundreds, poverty was extremely widespread affecting between 40 and 60% of Americans. If you go to the 1960s, it was already down to only 22.4% of Americans. If you go to modern times, Like 2012, only 9.1% of Americans lived in poverty. And well, starvation rates are surprisingly hard to find. We do know that by the 1940s, approximately 25% of military draftees showed evidence of severe malnutrition. I E they were starving.
because I think people don't realize, like, they just don't realize how many people used to starve or die of exposure. We were recently on the Jim Rutt Show. And you were talking about like, he's like, Oh, it doesn't really matter if we do a Jubilee or we have some level of economic collapse.
And you were pointing out, well, he's like, well, [00:17:00] it wouldn't be so bad if, you know, like old people just had to move back in with their kids. And I'm like, hold on, you're like, A lot of them won't have kids to move back in with at this point. And two if you look at the Americans right now who are living on social services.
They have a huge amount it's something like 80 percent of them live paycheck to paycheck, which means if they lost their social services, which often make up around 60 percent of their daily expenses, including things like food and Housing, childcare, healthcare for our kids they're literally starving.
Well, and, and as it stands, these people do not have the ability to handle an unexpected thousand dollar expense out of nowhere. And then suddenly way more than a thousand dollars in routine, monthly basic survival expenses. Yeah. So when he's like, Oh, it doesn't matter if these systems collapse, because in the 1900s, we didn't have these systems.
It's like. In the 1900s, people starved to death regularly, you know, like, yeah, [00:18:00] I was just listening to Planet Money did a little thing on the Great Depression. That, that podcast by NPR and they were taught, they were reading a first account from someone about their experience just seeing whole families out on the street with their babies.
All of their possessions, like newborn babies because they could no longer pay for rent. They lost absolutely everything and just couldn't, there was no, there was absolutely nothing for them. The government had absolutely no way to support them. You can bet a lot of people died and a lot of very, you know, helpless children and babies, which I, I can't.
We're not we're going to move on quickly because I cannot think about this change of the subject. Okay, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, it's it's the the situation. We can go back to earlier economic system types, but we have to set up the social infrastructure for that. For example, churches used to have the social infrastructure required to support.
At least people, part of their religious communities in these ways when there were hard [00:19:00] times, that's gone. Now that's not set up. Well, and, and so here I'm going to, I'm going to move further with some actual data on this paradox because it's been studied in real world environments. So a 2006 study conducted in Pakistan directly tested Tocqueville's thesis using a survey experiment.
The researchers manipulated participants perceptions of their economic well being and social mobility, as predicted by the theory, they found , that political discontent often increased the most when declining personal well being coincided with high perceived social mobility. So, to explain a bit how this experiment worked, the key manipulation involved presenting different income brackets to each group when asking about their household income.
The treatment group saw income brackets with higher ranges, making their own income seem relatively low. The control group was shown income brackets with lower ranges, making their own income seem more typical. For example, the middle income bracket for the control [00:20:00] group was only 4, 000 to 6, 000 R's, while the middle bracket for the treatment group was much higher.
Findings, the results supported Tocqueville's theory, political discontent was found to increase most significantly when individuals perceived a decline in their personal economic well being. So basically they were able to manipulate an individual's beliefs about how they were doing in society and people would present.
Both lower levels of personal. So keep in mind the actual person's experience, like their physical experience day to day, no different than saying, right. They had the same gadgets. They had the same property. They had the same education. They had the same spouse and yet they would report more discontentment if they believed that there were other people that had more than them.
Cause it's all relative. We're always looking at how we compare to other people. And this led to political discontentment in their answers as well. Now [00:21:00] this creates a big problem when you are considering the way the online algorithm presents things to you, right? What you are getting served. Often is to like friendship.
What pornography is to sex? Yeah. Super stimuli, the super stimuli of, of affluence and hyper consumption. So the people that you see, whether it is on YouTube. Or Twitter, or well, really anywhere TikTok stuff like that, like any of these things where you're consuming content, these individuals are going to be dramatically wealthier than the average individual.
Not just because people click more on wealthy content, but the content that individuals get served the most is often the super influencers. Because you know, they just touch so many people and these systems are not as built for the micro influencers where it's really hard to get out of that micro stance.
But once you become the super influencer position, you're just making astronomical amounts of money from the platform itself, which means now [00:22:00] you are showing off a lifestyle and making suggestions about a lifestyle that someone could lead that is completely unrealistic for the average American. And also people like stuff that's aspirational.
We don't want to see what we have already. We want to see something different, something novel, and that often is something unsustainably expensive. Well, and you know, and this really messes with people in dating markets as well. So if you look at something like women, there's all these things where they're like, Oh, what, what income do you want?
The guy you're dating to have and the incomes that they throw out there are completely unrealistic. And there's been some great shows that have been like, what do you think the average person in America makes? Right?
What would you want his income to be? I feel like this is going to sound bad. I feel like, like, 300, 000.
I would have to say 127, 000. Probably 150, 000 to a quarter of a million a year. 500, 000? Is that bad? 150, 000 maybe to 250, 000 a year. It would be [00:23:00] Okay. I was just having this conversation with a friend, and she was like, You have to manifest a husband, girl. Ideally, my husband needs to be making like 650, 000.
So you said you want 500, 000, but what do you think the median income is for a 30 year old? 60, 000? 70, 000? Yeah. I think it's 250, 000. And right now, so you know that median salary well, in 2022 in America was 37. 5, 000.
Okay. Um, And then the if you go just a few years ago to 2012, it was 26. 5, 000. Wow. Most of that is actually inflation right now. 2012, 26. 5, 000 is what the average, the median American was making. And so when people are making these comparisons to the social media people, to, to, et cetera, They think, and I've even noticed this among people like who I know, they think like the average American is making like around 50 K per year, even people who are trying to like [00:24:00] low ball it.
And I've seen estimates, you know, sincere estimates that the average American is making like 80 K per year, which is actually. So when I now look at the amount of social services you get when you live at or near the poverty line, I feel like there's this really weird bump in society or someone making a A certain like making money around the poverty line.
has about the same amount of wealth as someone who lives maybe at the 50k level, weirdly. I, I, I'd say that that, that is about right, given the way that we structured our system at this point, which creates a lot of intergenerational negative incentives. It creates incentives to work more or get more educated because in the end, like when you leave, when you enter the workforce, for example, but like you put your family into a higher tax bracket and then you lose all these services.
And why would you do that? When you have a lot more flexibility with your family and have government services. Yeah. It's a, it's not great. So I I'll move to another study here. Do it [00:25:00] in 2022, a study examined the relationship between basic and enhanced capabilities as defined by the 2019 human development report and social attitudes over time.
The researchers hypothesize that if the correlation between basic needs and position And positive social attitudes declined while the correlation with enhanced needs rose, it would indicate a shift consistent with the Tocqueville effect. It investigated possible reasons for the global deterioration of social attitudes despite greater economic prosperity, wider dissemination of technology, and reductions in poverty.
The deterioration manifests as deeper political polarization. Lost interest in organizations and lower tolerance for dissenting views and opinions. Key findings suggest that the deterioration in social attitudes could be linked to perceived increases in corruption, administration and efficiency, the perceived disinformation through information technology and economic inequality and gender disparities that, that may not really exist.
And I think this is also interesting if you talk about social progress [00:26:00] is the Tocqueville paradox can be explained can be used to explain things like women's rights as well. A lot of women today seem to have a complete misunderstanding of what women historically actually lived like and the level of rights that even American women lived without until fairly recently, right?
And also you've got the problem with the feminist movement where it's kind of this machine that has no solution. Hmm. Yeah, good point. Before I go further. No, go on. So this is actually a really interesting side part of the Tocqueville Paradox. And it's called the integration paradox among minorities.
So this paper called called the integration paradox, a review and meta analysis of the complex relationship between integration and reports of discrimination examines a counterintuitive phenomenon where more integrated immigrants report higher levels of perceived discrimination. Here are the key points about this research.
The study is a meta analysis, combining data from 42 different studies across [00:27:00] various countries. To provide a comprehensive look at the integration paradox. The integration paradox refers to the finding that well-educated and socially well-integrated in I immigrants and their descendants are more likely to report experience of discrimination than less integrated immigrants.
One key finding is that better integration, including higher education levels and improved language skills, seems to correlate with increased reports of discrimination and feelings of exclusion. So, thoughts on this? I mean, part of that just seems intuitively to make sense, because if you're not around people who are different from you, you don't really have an opportunity to feel like they're treating you differently, if you know what I mean?
Well, Like, if I were around Chinese immigrants, for example, I wouldn't think that people, like, I wouldn't have an opportunity to think I'm discriminated against. Well, I think a key angle of this as well is that the type of immigrants that do not integrate with society understand non integration, i. e.
they understand the motivations for the [00:28:00] society to not want them to integrate as well. Oh, I see. Yeah. So they're less, they're less they're actually more likely to maybe discriminate themselves and be cool with it. Yeah, well, to understand, they, they are more likely to, I imagine you know, if somebody is like, well, you know, we're American here and you're not American over there, like, you're not acting like an American.
So, you know, I'm not going to invite you to my barbecue. And they'd be like, well, yeah, of course I wouldn't want to invite you to my like cultural event either, because I don't want you polluting it with your Americanism and making it less, you know. Hataka. Hataka is a made up culture. I'm not like making fun of the, the, the Hataka religion.
Given that we are living in 2024. I had to go back in post. And just to make sure that the word I made up for a meetup cultural group was not an ethnic slur or something like that. And it appears I got away with it this time. It is dangerously close to.
Haka the ceremonial practice. In Maui culture and dangerously close. Two. Taka [00:29:00] a concept in Hinduism, but that wouldn't have been a cultural group. So it couldn't be taken if they flirt in this context.
, so I, I got, I got away with it. This time got away with making up a word, a random word, and it didn't happen to have been an ethic flirt at some point. And you would be really messing it up with all your Americanness and lack of cultural understanding. And yet the individual who strives for complete integration, they would take that as a slight. And I love that they were also like, it's not about whining. They, they made that clear, but I think part of it probably is about whining because What the person is integrating with when they're integrating is the urban monoculture.
And given that the urban monoculture has in part a status hierarchy based around discrimination, it socially and emotionally rewards individuals who claim to have experienced discrimination and thus individuals would intrinsically anything that socially and emotionally rewarded is going to be a talked about more and ironically experienced more.
So when an individual [00:30:00] wants to gain status within these societies, they don't ever want to feel like they're lying about their discrimination. Nobody, like, goes at this feeling like they're the bad guy. So they actually create moments of discrimination for themselves to experience and it feels as bad as real discrimination.
What else is a microaggression other than a created Discriminated experience that wasn't really an experience of discrimination. It's funny because it's so male versus female. And I wonder if this is a more broad natural law around collectivism or social integration versus individualism because, you know, men sort of by design are a little bit more on the individualistic end of the spectrum.
Go big or go home. I'm not old. Can get to reproduce. You know, male lion get thrown out by the pride and have to figure their own shit out when they hit adolescence. And men are more likely to stand around and, and say things like, I'm the best I'm, you know, I'm doing great. Even when they're not. Whereas women, you know, [00:31:00] the classic trope is girls, like in from mean girls, you know, they're all standing in front of the mirror.
And being like, oh, I hate my legs. Oh, I hate my nose. Oh, I hate everything. Oh, and then they look to, you know, that one girl, and they're like waiting for her to say how she hates herself and how, you know, everything's horrible with her. And there, there needs to be this shared misery and unhappiness with how they are.
And like, I, I wonder it, it's just, it's weird that there's that pattern, this sort of feminine victimhood or self-hatred versus masculine confidence in individuality. Yeah, well, I know, and we're, we're also seeing more of a divide between the genders and which party they're working with, which could Yeah.
represent in relation to this. But I think what I take from this is that it's important to have daily rituals. Yes. Of, in whatever tradition you're creating, of appreciating what you have that your ancestors didn't have, and that's something that we should build. into our family maybe once a week at dinner or something like that for the kids.
Perspective. We have a [00:32:00] specific day where we go over that. And two, the individual study history from the perspective of knowing what it was like to live during those times. Yeah. When you know who does this really well is Jews and Mormons. Yeah, the, the Jews, a lot of their holidays are basically around this. And just look at how hard our ancestors had it during this time period. And for Mormons, for people who don't know, you have like your pioneer trip where you've got to go out and live like the ancestors who are coming up.
And it's considered quite a grueling experience. And a lot of modern kids are like, it was the hardest time of my life. We didn't have enough food. I had to pull a wagon. And it does suck. It does suck. But their whole lives used to be like that and, and reflecting on that is really important. So yeah.
Respective is so helpful. Yeah. Those are two really useful ceremonies and you and I need to talk about like building a holiday like this for our kids or building a regular thing for our kids that we can build into like, the techno Puritan family religion. I [00:33:00] agree. And I, I, I also, I feel that there's also kind of a mindset in terms of.
The way that a family can set a healthy precedent about how we normalize to societal standards. Because while I would expect myself as a, an avid consumer of Instagram to be subject to this status anxiety, because I look at a ton of content by especially families and parents. So people like us, people living like us, but who have way more money.
I mean, think about ballerina farms, but then there are a bunch of other parent influencers who live in these. very expensive mansions and have all the best clothes for their kids and take them to these insanely expensive places and do all these things for them that I can't do because, you know, we're financially constrained and apparently they're not, but it doesn't bother me at all.
In fact, I look at what they do and how they live and I'm like, Oh my God, like that costs so much money. Oh my God, the size of their, Oh my, you know, and I just, I kind of, well, I think it's because you and [00:34:00] I have created an internal family culture That really finds opulence to a degree repellent.
Yeah. And I think that we've talked about this in other podcasts also shaming opulence or having our own internal form of, Oh, we haven't, we're not going to run this podcast, but our own internal form of sumptuary laws where we kind of shame excessive consumption. Talk quickly because we're not going to run this.
I'm sure you are. It's podcast. What are our internal family rules around that? It's internal family rules that we decided around would be that you never go into debt unless you are buying one a used car or two way house, but you don't even go into debt for school. You don't take any other form of personal loan and you don't even take business loans.
And then we would also You can't take business loans if it's like a large private equity thing, but not for like your first business. Yes. Don't, don't take like a personal loan to buy a bunch of equipment, to start your food truck business, et cetera, because a lot of people do that and it does not work out well.
And most first businesses fail [00:35:00] and then you're stuck with debt. And typically because you know, you're starting, it's a high interest personal loan. It's the one that I love of your, of your rules was no luxury branding. Yeah, on your clothing or any, if there's any consumer products where there is a generic or different brand that is widely available of similar quality, you, you should not, and should be shamed for buying you should not buy, and you should be shamed for buying the branded version.
So any sort of designer purse, any sort of thing like that is, is something to be shamed because for example, these days, like a Louis Vuitton purse, even a Nermes purse, Handbag they're not really made at the level of quality that is significantly better than something made by a really good Etsy seller who is also making it by hand, who is also making the best materials possible, but at a fraction of the price.
And it will last longer. So, and then you also had a rule around closing. Is it the closing had to be made with durable material? Yeah. So none of this clothing, because we, we looked through the stats that, you know, clothing is, is [00:36:00] worn. on average seven times. And the average piece of clothing in the EU and US is, is like under two years, really insane.
And then we only wear 10 percent of the clothing that we buy regularly. So huge curtailing of the type of clothing that we buy and the variation and outfits that we buy, because it is just incredibly wasteful. And then the final rule you had was, was dress was intentionality, which was to say that your outfit is designed not to fulfill some sort of fashion goal, but some goal that you have in society, like you live for X reason, what sort of, public persona is best going to be able to achieve that, which means that for most people, they will be wearing a personal uniform that they decided on with their spouse.
But this is all to say, I don't think it's just about getting historical perspective and building in holidays and routines around that. I think it's also about having an internal culture in which you say, we are different. We do not hold ourselves [00:37:00] to the standard of the Joneses and therefore we have no desire to keep up with the Joneses because we're too busy shitting all over the Joneses and that's more fun anyway.
Honestly though, I think it's super understated how much fun it is to make fun of other people. In fact, it's so much more fun than trying to keep up with them. So I feel like this is the easier and much lower stress solution. And it's bizarre to me that more people don't come to it. I agree with you a hundred percent.
And I am so lucky to have such a based and delight, delightsome. And Demure. That's the new term among conservatives that's being mocked by progressives. Demure? I like delightsome. It's a Mormon term. Delightsome. It sounds very Mormon. Yeah, I love it. They they have it a few times in their tags.
After I read it the first time, I was like, oh, that's just such a great way to describe my life. You want to make delightsome happen? You're delightsome, Simone. Is that anyway so, so, I'll say, you know, we've got a lot of new fans right now. We really appreciate you guys coming, watching the show.
We've got it in some other places as well. If you want to go to like the podcast version, always like and subscribe. [00:38:00] It helps us especially liking those podcasts. Like if you can give us a five star review on Apple podcasts, that would mean a lot to us. And it would mean a lot to us. If you subscribe what's that other podcast platform we're on?
Well, we're on Spotify. We're on all the major platforms, but five star reviews on Apple podcasts have the most impact because that's where you can actually see like review counts on Spotify. You can only see number of subscribers. Oh, I was unaware. Anyway. Love you to Desimone. Have a spectacular day. Bye.
Love you. Cha cha cha. Goodbye. Cha cha. No, you hang up. I treasure these times of day. Oh, well that's a new type of beer. What's up with that? Where's the cores? What's going on? So I have right now, it's extra light. It's half the alcohol. Oh, extra light. [00:39:00] Intriguing, very intriguing. Oh, All right.
Okay.
The Tocqueville Paradox: Why Does Discontent Rise as Societal Conditions Improve?