Unlocked: “What will happen?” (asks a 12 year-old)
A special Patreon bonus unlocked episode as we enjoy the holidays with our families and friends.
Matthew got The Question on the morning after the election. At that moment, he came up with nothing but a hug. But then he chewed on it for days, and came up with eleven things to consider.
So here are some notes for possible conversations with tweens about anxiety, bullies, fascism, friends, mutual aid, and love.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I've got an incredible podcast for you to add to your cue.
Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone.
You probably know that I made an appearance recently on this absolutely ludicrous variety show that combines the fun of a late night show with the wit of a public radio program and the unique knowledge of a guest expert who was me at the time, if you can believe that.
Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride of wildly diverse topics, from Paula's hilarious attempts to understand QAnon to riveting conversations with a bona fide rocket scientist.
You'll never know what to expect, but you'll know you're in for a high-spirited, hilarious time.
This is comedian Paula Poundstone and her co-host Adam Felber, who is great.
They're both regular panelists on NPR's classic comedy show.
You may recognize them from that.
Wait, wait, don't tell me.
And they bring the same acerbic yet infectiously funny energy to nobody listens to Paula Poundstone.
When I was on, they grilled me in an absolutely unique way about conspiracy theories and yoga and yoga pants and QAnon, and we had a great time.
They were very sincerely interested in the topic, but they still found plenty of hilarious angles in terms of the questions they asked and how they followed up on whatever I gave them like good comedians do.
Check out their show.
There are other recent episodes you might find interesting as well, like hearing crazy Hollywood stories from legendary casting director Joel Thurm or their episode about killer whales and killer theme songs.
So Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone is an absolute riot you don't want to miss.
Find Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show I'd recommend our listeners check out his Skeptical Sunday episode on hydrotherapy,
as well as Jordan's episode about Tarina Shaquille, where he interviews an ISIS recruit's journey and escape.
There's an episode for everyone, though, no matter what you're into.
The show covers stories like how a professional art forger somehow made millions of dollars while being chased by the feds and the mafia.
Jordan's also done an episode all about birth control and how it can alter the partners we pick and how going on or off of the pill can change elements in our personalities.
The podcast covers a lot, but one constant is his ability to pull useful pieces of advice from his guests.
I promise you, you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life, whether that's an actionable routine change that boosts your productivity or just a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world.
We really enjoy this show.
We think you will as well.
There's just so much there.
Check out jordanharbinger.com slash start for some episode recommendations or search for The Jordan Harbinger Show.
That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hello, everybody.
Happy holidays.
Derek, Julian, and I work really hard on this podcast, and so we're taking a few days off to be with family and found family.
And we hope that you have whatever warmth around you you need and desire and that you are able to store some up to share around in the year ahead.
Every once in a while we unlock an episode from behind the Patreon paywall where you will now find over 600 pieces of sparkling media to inform and move you.
This one got some really good reviews on Patreon and so here it is.
We'll see you soon.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
We are on Instagram and threads, at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just the bonus episodes through Apple subscriptions.
We are independent media creators and we really appreciate your support.
Okay, so today's bonus is called What Will Happen?
asks the 12-year-old and as per the title, it's pretty self-explanatory.
Wednesday morning, after the election, I've been up half the night.
I peek into his room.
He looks up and says, So, do we know the result?
Now, we'd told him the night before there might not be clarity for days or even weeks.
Trump wouldn't concede.
There might be legal battles.
But I told him quietly.
She lost.
He stared at me, stunned.
Really?
Really?
Yeah, she lost by a wide margin.
Later, in the kitchen, he said, What will happen?
I didn't know what to say.
I just hugged him.
But of course, I thought about that question all week as I watched things shudder and burn.
One of the most baffling moments of being a parent is clocking the earnestness with which these questions are asked as if there obviously has to be an answer and since you are the source of so many things you've got to have it in your pocket.
Now, I don't regret that I had nothing to say at first.
It's always better not to make things up.
But since Wednesday, I've been taking some notes.
And now I've got some trial answers here to test drive.
Eleven points in the form of a letter.
I'm definitely not going to lecture him with this whole list.
These are just notes to keep by my side.
Maybe one or two points will come up at a time, naturally, as they need to.
And I just want to restate that my partner and I don't put our kids out there in public.
So while this list is prompted by a question from the home and it will live here in the home, I've also made this list generic.
I'm not using a name.
I'm not saying anything more about him other than he's sensitive and precocious enough that these answers are age-appropriate, but they may not suit every 12-year-old.
But then again, they might have broader appeal.
Who knows?
So, here's the question again.
What will happen?
This is from a 12-year-old who knows there are senseless wars going on, there's a genocide out in the open for everyone to see, and they know that the climate is heating.
What will happen?
Okay, so, first thing.
People will have a lot of ideas about what will happen, and no one fully knows what will happen.
Those who speak with real certainty, they are making things up to feel better about not knowing.
And sometimes they really want you to sign on to their ideas, not because they're true, but because they'll feel better if they get validation.
You don't have to buy it.
If you don't buy it, you can slow down on the answer.
You can listen for the more informed, but also cautious views.
And they'll come from people who have some history on board, or who have done close work on what Trump and his flunkies have been saying and doing over the past years.
And because we're talking about the future, I think the best answer is we'll take that question out of the passive voice.
What will happen makes it sound like we're tracking a hurricane and plotting out the pathway of some inevitable damage, but we're talking about people.
So we're really asking, what will people do?
And for everything we know about the MAGA wave, we also know that people will continue to love and care for each other and perform acts of service, and perhaps they'll do it more fiercely with more commitment.
That's the first point.
Second point.
The other side of what will happen is, how did it happen?
And there again, there's going to be a lot of ideas.
Especially with this one, because so much of it is upside down.
So much of it doesn't make sense.
But again, with patience, the more informed views will become clearer, and no single view will hold at all.
Each will be a piece in the puzzle.
Now, looking back on this, how did she lose, why did she lose, has to be handled with care because the focus can easily shift into regret or blame, which is understandable.
I don't think people can avoid these responses.
They're part of learning.
But there's a difference between an angry and instantaneous blame that further shatters relationships and that longer-term consideration of causes and responsibilities.
If you have a really good idea of a mistake someone has made in a situation like this, you might be right.
But you're not going to correct that mistake while you're both at sea and struggling to get back to shore.
Third point, a lot of people will be very scared and others will carry on more or less as before.
That's not just or even mainly about personality or psychology or how tuned in people are or different perceptions of the problem leading them to different attitudes.
Levels of fear are unequal because we live in an unequal society where hardships impact people differently.
The same event is happening to everyone, but the impacts are unevenly distributed.
I know some trans people who are going into hiding this week.
So, one of the best things you can do is to figure out why you don't feel as scared as they do, and then see what you can do with all of those reasons and benefits.
You know, they say check your privilege and it sounds like scolding.
But what it really means is to be aware that some people live in floodplains and you will have very different experiences of monsoon and you can think about how to help them.
Number four, if you are overwhelmed with anxiety, it can be, but it's not always possible to narrow your focus down to the staple things around you, the things that you can actually perceive directly.
Sometimes I just rest my hand on a wooden desk and I think of the tree it came from.
The hands of the carpenter that shaped it.
The hands that shaped the carpenter's tools.
The years of growth in the tree added to the years of experience in the carpenter's body.
And how all this time and growth and care came together to support my hand, which is now warming up the surface.
I could go on.
But the point is that your question is about the uncertainty of violent change.
And I just suggest remembering that there are usually firm and stable objects within your grasp that can reassure you in some way.
Okay, I'll break the fourth wall here to note that these first four points...
They kind of come, I'm noticing, from a neutral dad on the mountaintop wisdom type perspective.
But I'm not just a dad.
I'm also a person.
And I have a bias and a politics that's integral to my life.
And I can't pretend that I'm wise or above it all.
So I also want a kid to know me as someone who stands somewhere, even if it's with an incomplete or flawed understanding, because that's what they'll have to do as well.
So the next few points go a little bit harder.
Fifth point.
Fascism is real.
And it's really good to understand that.
It's not Hitler memes.
It's not Facebook posts with photos of Nuremberg.
It's not in black and white.
It's not dumb quotes from Trump about wanting Hitler's generals and then everyone wondering whether he's joking.
Fascism is a social insanity, a rapid degradation of everything that keeps people boundaried and honest about our shared vulnerability.
This is not some abstract political thing for grown-ups.
It's commonplace and it breaks over us in waves because we have wounds and resentments and sources of primal rage that are harder to understand than they are to vent on other people.
I think you, speaking to a 12-year-old, can feel it and learn about it in familiar domino effect moments of social harassment that unfold so quickly.
Kids ganging up on someone so that they can feel powerful and then getting away with it because there's nobody minding the yard.
It is a focusing and venting of resentments and frustrations and it picks out a scapegoat to dehumanize and then it deposits all of its own experience of dehumanization itself into that scapegoat.
And this happens in classrooms, in the yard, on the playing field, on the streetcar.
And some people are more aggressive than others in the endeavor.
And they can learn how to work this dynamic really well.
And it's tragic for them because it's such a hollow kind of power and it leads to a life without love.
Now, understanding that is helpful, but it takes a long time.
But the more immediate need is to attend and to be friends with the scapegoat and to stand beside them whenever you can, because they are you, but for the grace of God.
Point six.
Who are the scapegoats?
I think it's anyone who reminds the majority of their vulnerability.
Anyone who embodies the disowned part.
Anyone who can be blamed because of difference.
anyone whose vulnerability provokes this knee-jerk guilt and shame because their needs obviously require accommodation that the majority does not want to provide.
If they thought to provide it, they would have to admit the fundamental injustice of their own privilege.
Before you make the scapegoat a scapegoat, they prove for all to see that capitalism is cruel and unsustainable.
So, fascism, like bullying, comes from something in human nature, but it's ratified and exacerbated by capitalist conditions.
If standing by the scapegoat is an immediate corrective, that should tell you something about the conditions part.
The more equal your culture is, the less anyone will even think about looking around for a scapegoat.
So, in terms of the vulnerable, we're talking about neurodiverse people, disabled people, trans people, queer people, immigrants, black and brown people, and women.
Why are women targeted?
There's a ton of feminist writing on this.
There are psychological theories that say women are targets of resentment because most of us are so dependent on maternal care.
Translated into political terms, women provide the most visible, obvious evidence of the power inequalities of our society, and that evidence therefore must be denigrated and punished.
The labor of birth and early care is at the very foundation of human society, and capitalism is designed around never having to pay for it, but always assuming it simply is just going to get done.
And so misogyny is a way for that basic crime to be justified.
If women are devalued, you don't have to think about how much you owe, how you would be dead without their labor.
So you, as a 12-year-old boy, really have to smash misogyny into dust.
Now, why are people from the Global South targeted?
Same reason.
If you dehumanize someone, you don't have to think about what you stole from them.
Okay, part seven.
What if the bullying gets worse as you get older?
After all, this guy just got a second term.
Now, I'm glad you're not old enough at 12, at least in this country, for us to be talking about what you should do when that harassment and violence overflows into the streets and into your neighborhood.
Trump was elected after provoking a violent coup attempt in which otherwise normal people rampaged through the Capitol, and it was sheer luck there weren't massive casualties.
The country is armed to the teeth.
And that's where that schoolyard chaos leads to.
Led by the bullies who won't stop because they haven't been opposed.
Their behavior was normalized.
Now, here's where I can put a bug in your ear about normalizers for a moment.
You're going to start to recognize a certain type of person in charge of things, especially in schools.
They are primarily driven by wanting you to adjust to the demands of the world, regardless of whether they're arbitrary.
They will intervene on injustice only to the extent of protecting individual rights and freedoms.
They are not there to change the culture of the school or the world because its basic hierarchy is fine by them because they're at the top of it.
Their primary strategy is to tell you to toughen up.
They will not go out of their way to protect anyone, because they trust the general system to do that, knowing all the while it ultimately won't.
And they console themselves with being moderately protected within it.
Bullies thrive under their watch, because they know an unfair system is something they can exploit.
But when you're older, you may have to make choices about how you will use your energy and intelligence and maybe even your body to keep the vulnerable safe, to lay down boundaries for what you'll accept around you.
You might choose an absolute commitment to nonviolence, as many others have.
Or you may remember Nemec reading out of his journal in Andor, and it will suddenly be far more than a Star Wars story you once watched as a kid.
He wrote,"'Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.' And remember this.
The imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural.
Tyranny requires constant effort.
It breaks.
It leaks.
Authority is brittle.
Oppression is the mask of fear.
So as you think about this conundrum of what to do and how to do it, you should know that you're not alone in history, that many generations have gone before you and they've thought very carefully about the practice and the consequence of everything from pacifism to self-defense to sabotage and property damage to physically rebelling against fascism and And how best to go about it.
They emphasize group love, mutual aid, recognizing different tolerance levels for risk within the group depending upon what responsibilities people have.
When fascists organize armies, they train long and hard and with a lot of discipline.
But anti-fascists have philosophy and intergenerational knowledge.
So, don't jump into direct actions or protests or street protection movements without reading a lot of books and going to a lot of meetings and really thinking about how much you can bear.
You don't want to be surprised.
Learn about how people older than you have faced this question of how much you can put on the line.
Number eight.
That brings me to friends.
People are throwing a lot of big words around like organize and community and it sounds honestly a little abstract.
Real friendship already doesn't scapegoat.
It already makes people think of equality, of sharing power, of making decisions together, of standing side by side in hard times.
And it makes all of those things pleasurable.
You just learn to do that with friends.
I don't think there's any magic to it.
If you have friends, you're practicing all of that already, especially if you spend time with them outside of school.
But I don't think those bonds are enough on their own.
Which brings me to nine.
What are good things for friends to do and learn in these times?
Well, if we're thinking of four years of Trump and then whatever follows in the wreckage, maybe you want to think about training your algorithm just a little bit towards showing you things that are entertaining but also really useful, like gardening and maker culture stuff and first aid and sewing and plumbing and small engine repair and hand tools, carpentry and other hands-on things.
It's really good to recognize when you're just consuming things passively and how that feels if you're also really curious in the thing.
But I really don't want to be too intrusive with my internet advice because over your lifetime, you're going to hear a lot of bullshit from older people about what your screen time should be and what the internet is doing to your brain.
They're going to be worried about how it affects your self-image, your attention span, your ability to form relationships, and whether you'll ever figure out that Mr. Beast is not a reliable news source because they think you're very stupid, a lot of them.
You were born during a misinformation crisis and your brains will be squishy forever.
That's kind of what they think.
But I don't buy it.
Because unless they're looking over your shoulder and having conversations with you and figuring out who you are and what you need, they don't really know anything.
And if they're really anxious about your online life, but they don't know anything about it, there's a good chance the concern is mostly about them.
That it's all about their worries, and their shame, and their sense of being lost and inadequate.
There's a lot of people my age and older who are still dealing with the shock of having grown up in a pre-digital world and now living mostly online.
For us, the world has changed in unfamiliar ways we can't understand.
And then we look at you and fear that you're missing something, that you're growing up in a world that will never be contrasted with or grounded in reality.
But that just doesn't make sense to me.
In general, older people have no idea how you and your other 12 year olds are using this thing for your own purposes.
The internet is as much a real part of your world as the playground or the woods or the gym or the swimming pool and there's no reason to believe you won't be able to tell the difference between those spaces.
If you have adults in your life who actually talk with you and listen to you, you'll get the help and the balance that you need.
You'll be able to hold the paradox of the internet being a terrible place that tries to exploit you and the internet being a source of endless wonder that allows you to find your people.
There's no reason to believe you won't be able to tell fact from fiction when it really counts.
Because you didn't create the misinformation crisis.
Boomers posting QAnon on Facebook did.
Okay, that was a bit of a digression.
Here's number 10. I'm actually going to go back to Dad on the Mountain mode to finish up.
I would keep my eyes and heart open for things that feel transcendent.
A type of music or poetry or religious teaching.
Something that makes you overflow or completely empties you out, leaving nothing but space.
There are many forms of that and I honestly at this point in my life don't know how people manage without it.
It's something to lean into without shyness or irony.
Now, here's something that personally gets me from a writer who always gets to me.
His name is Thomas Merton.
I grew up Catholic, and I thought that being a monk who dies suddenly while doing anti-war advocacy was a very cool story.
Now, there's some God language in this passage, so you can put that on mute if you need to.
I don't think that language is necessary.
But I also think that because a lot of the current madness around us is fueled by religious extremism, I think it's good to know that that space and that language and that orientation to life is not completely colonized.
So, here's Merton.
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives.
This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
It is, so to speak, his name written on us as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship.
It's like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven.
It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.
I have no program for this seeing.
It is only given, but the gate of heaven is everywhere.
So what's most important to me about that is that he's saying that when you are at your lowest, when you feel nothing, when you are absolutely humbled and can really own how small and vulnerable you are, that is something.
It is tangible and real.
It is some starting point of care and love for yourself and then outward from that.
Last one is number 11. This might sound like a strange one, but I think it's good to get clear on what you mean when you say you love something.
I think we rarely are.
And given how central love is in our lives, clarity might be helpful.
Now, often love is complicated by debt, guilt, and habit, the commitments of nuclear families.
And in heteronormative societies, it's tangled up in property rights, which is why marriage is such a political issue.
So these standard and inherited forms of love are hard to work out.
And there might be wisdom to be gained by doing so, probably with the help of therapy, if you can afford it.
But I've come across a definition of love that may not necessitate therapy, because it's not based on debts and exchanges.
I heard this talk by a guy named Richard Gilman Opelsky, who's a political scientist at University of Illinois.
And I'm reading his book now called A Communism of Love, An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value.
In the talk, he defined love as the desire to participate in the process of a person becoming who they can be.
The desire to participate in the process of a person becoming who they can be.
And I think we can extrapolate that to loving friends, a political project, and a world.
Like, we know we are in love because we're excited to find out what the potential of others is.
We see something in them they may not see in themselves.
And we're excited to see the unexpected ways in which it will show itself.
And we'll do what we can to help that along.
So I don't know, guys.
That was a lot.
I'm sure it'll take many car rides and walks to let these ideas percolate and then come up in response to questions maybe over many months.
Maybe it'll take a year or something like that.
I'm not sure.
I definitely am not going to deliver this as a lecture at the kid because that's...
That would be super cringe and totally mid.
So not going to do that.
But that's what podcasts are for.
So thank you for listening.
And I hope you keep safe.
And I know that all of us here at Conspirituality Podcast are hoping that you have resources of comfort and resilience during what will certainly be a trying time.
