How America Fell Into the Identity Trap | Yascha Mounk

Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the crisis of democracy and the defense of philosophically liberal values. His new book “The Identity Trap” traces the origins of identity politics and how it’s rapidly transforming the modern world. He joined Rep. Crenshaw to discuss how identity politics grew out of postmodernism and Critical Race Theory. They talk about how postmodernists and populists are rejecting the history, institutions, and core values that make for a healthy democracy. And Yascha gives some sage advice on how to persuasively engage in debates with your political opponents.

Yascha Mounk is the author of five books, including the forthcoming “The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.” He is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds appointments in both the School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. Yascha is also a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Persuasion. Follow him on Twitter at @Yascha_Mounk.

[steveladner]

A senior fellow on the council of foreign relations is all I need to know.

[amyb.]

1:07:00 in some sense, it's like the corruption of the value of renewal, or re/creation in the cycle of life and death.

[andrabook]

10:00 - "My experiences" -- ok, let's do an exercise...A current trend in society is that young men are harming themselves bc society is kicking them down. But when young women were/are saying the same thing, most men decide to start a ''battle of the sexes" instead of backing off and no longer trying to blame women for stuff which is not the women's fault. Objectively, just beyond the control of women.

Why are women supposed to respond with empathy but men with aggression, towards the same set of issues/complaints? Put yourself in the shoes of a woman and tell me how I feel. Go for it!

Real world example: what do you think a hypothetical female FEELS (gonna talk about emotions, trigger warning :P) when the streets have gotten more violent, the society around her has gotten more violent, her ability to defend herself against threats is on average lower than the men's ...and society keeps insisting (like a demented loonatic) that she's NOT allowed to respond to the threat with an increase in aggression, but instead must respond via more and more attempts to empathize?


What do you think women feel when they're told that (Dr P loves this line): "women crave love and men crave respect"....

Can you have love without respect? I can't even love my dog without respect... I know that bc the last time someone tried to casually insult my dog, I immediately got pissed off. And my dog can't speak English. But no one gets to insult him randomly in my presence, bc I love him....see? No, that's not possible. Objectively speaking is this line true? No. I listened to a story about this old super general dude who shot a guy for implying his wife was easy. Just like that. He was from the US, about 1800s I think. Bc respect matters and it matters equaly to BOTH sexes. We all knew that prior to modern idiocracy trying to brainwash us into believing otherwise. So is that line true? No. Yet, everyone repeats it ad nauseam in certain academic circles despite zero proof of it's validity. They just repeat it over and over and over again. How many men look up that line to see if it's true vs just jumping on the bandwagon bc it appeals to their misguided superiority complex?

A healthy approach would be for us all to try to understand that we all need love AND respect, and a lot of other things too.... Tell me how many conversations you've heard in recent years actually stating that or even proposing it? And you guys wonder why there's a bit of a war of the sexes going on right now?

Another example: "we don't know how to break the cycle of domestic violence, it's such a complex subject, we just cannot figure it out " .... Look up the statistics for how many kids which witnessed DV growing up, end up committing abuse themselves vs not. You won't find it. I tried just months ago.

Everyone is happy making fun of those situations, fetishizing them in certain circles (both in psychology and in the porn industry and it's amazing how much overlap there is between these 2 categories, btw), but no one managed to find much time to actually study the people who did recover from this type of domestic violence and what methods they used to get better. Odd, huh? This example is in referrence to the last podcast I saw which stated that the military and the SEALS community actually has a lot of people who joined the military to escape a domestic abuse situation. Apparenly, it's a super high percentage.

Podcast episodes where these individuals are talking about still struggling with the trauma years later: 100%, Podcast episodes where people go over methods of recovery, point out that most people recover, and exchange tips and tricks to recover from such trauma: 0% <---- that's pretty grim.

But everyone wonders why they're depressed like it's a mystery and not a direct consequence of their actions or inactions. You know what does wonders for trauma? A healthy community with a solid grasp of right and wrong and the value of mutual respect. Food for thought.

[landofthesilverpath]

Identity is a gift handed to us by nature and the divine. One either embraces it, embraces life, or rejects it, and embraces death.

If the west is to survive, western people have to survive. And I mean that in a racial and ethnic sense. Every other group asserts themselves as a group snd cooperates as a group. This gives them strength, purpose, meaning, and a will to live and to pass down a legacy to their children. The nation is an extended family, we(white people/European's) need to remember this if we are to survive in a multiracial state.

Your career, your possessions, these are meaningless in the end. They are a means to live. Not the meaning of life itself. Family is a reason to live, community gives meaning to life. And family and community are inextricably bound into what is known as a nation.

[SardiniaTrinity]

I appreciate Rep. Crenshaw presenting such relevant issues, with such expert & ethical speakers on his podcast, like Mr. Mounk. Thank you Sir for discussing what is shocking, but critical for citizens to understand, what 6:24 the difficulties we are facing today as a People, as a nation, & as a World today. ✊☝️🌎❤️

[andrabook]

Why do some women think it's impossible for you to understand their experience as a man?
Brutal honesty: they think you lack imaginations, will to understand and wllingness to do anything about their strugles bc they are not your struggles. You have no personal stake in resolving them. They think you're selfish, short sighted and incapable of making a difference in their lives for the better.

They just don't want to tell you that bc they're afraid you'll just respond by retaliating in some way, instead of doing things differently. Most men would rather get aggressive to stop the complaining than change the things causing the complaining. Aggression comes easier than change.

I do agree that the avoidace of the arguments tends to degenerate into blatant stupidity, though, of course, but that's not just women doing that...

I don't know if I agree or disagree with those women. It depends on the man and on the circumstances usually. On average, they're right though. If we were to place bets and I would bet optimistically I'd lose most of the time. To be fair it would be the same if I asked men to put in any extra effort for any reason, not just women's issues. I don't think it HAS to be that way, but on average most people choose that vs the alternative.

I have about the same odds on the women's side, but bc they're not in charge, their own selfishness has less impact in society. If I asked 100 women to go out of their way a little bit to do something which makes the lives of men collectively better (again, outside their regular routine), about 90% would decline. A few might put in a token effort but then stop as soon as it gets too inconvenient. Like ditching a new diet. A lot of people are lazy and selfish in most circumstances. It usually takes something like a natural disaster to make them move outside their comfort zones.

They're just too used to convenience, too selfish and too unaware of how it feels to actually make a difference, and why they should even try. It's like asking someone who's never run to do an ultra-marathon. It's too alien to them. Since they've never really overcome anything, it's hard for them to understand why they should even try, so they opt to not try.

Btw, I've never seen you ask a woman that question on a podcast. So, to me it seems like the issue is definitely on both sides of the divide. Something will have to give if you want to actually make progress on this issue, otherwise we'll keep being stuck in this rut.

[robertaaugustini]

Even identifying as Millennial irritates me.

[andrabook]

Group identity: great for accomplishing tasks which require multiple people working in sych to get them done. Example: fire fighters, military, police, synchronized swimming, music bands, etc
The group identity supercedes personalities while the members of the group are engaging in the common group tasks.

Individual identity: all the characteristics which are personal to you, and different from other people; uniquely yours. If the group identity is the top of the iceberg which everyone sees, the individual identity is the bottom; you have to dig deeper to see it, and it's generally a lot larger and more complex. Professions which focus primarily on individual identity: therapy, arts, relationships in general and all associated fields which focus on 1-on-1 relationships. Also, people's personal lives (outside the profession), everything you would not want your boss to stick their nose into, basically, falls in the individual identity category.

Real life SEALS example:

I watch podcasts. I recently watched one with a dude talking to an actual female therapist. There are literally points in the video I could break down where she's maintaining rappor with the individual guy, but breaking rappor with the larger audience bc she's doing it online.

That is a fine example of why therapy typically happens in private, and also why it's hard to navigate individual issues within a group context. I aggree with most of her positions regarding the theory and the recommendations. I LOVE the fact that she's not pushing inneffective drugs. She had lots of positive reviews from all her clients due to her not pushing drugs all the time.

But about half way through she's annoying the crap out of me due to a mean joke (imo) about jarheads. On a personal level, I wouldn't want to talk to her bc of her attitute towards ''jarheads", and the way she's delivering that message. It sounds like she's talking down to most of the military AND me (bc I would be on the jarhead side, of this debate, if we were to take sides).... and she accidentally insulted one of my favourite childhood books by using a similar line in her put down. But if you were to ask her, she'd probably say she was trying to maintain rappor with the dude in front of her, not insult anyone.

And now I kinda feel the need to write some type of paper on property therapy techniques bc I am loosing any and all hope that anyone is actually getting it right. Even the best of the best, it seems, keep stumbling. I don't think anyone is really trying to do better either....it seems ppl are happy to just drift along on the currents in these departments. There seems to be no one trying to one-up the status quo.

Don't get me wrong I would still rip the heads off (methaphorically) any so called jarhead who wants to pop pills which don't work bc he's too much of a knuckle-dragger to read information on a piece of paper. That is LAZY! (I'm still on the same academic debate side at the lady in the video. I still agree with like 80% of what she's saying....but the personality insures we can never agree 100%. )

In a real world scenario I'd have like an insane amount ways to make them read it tho >>>:)....so...I'd get there eventually. And online I am very restricted. And to be honest most jar heads I've met hate that stuff anyway. Your jarheads are the exception, not the rule.

Also, in a fair world, people would just let me be all awesome and impressive with my alternative solutions to all the problems, and we'd no longer need to go about this stuff in the least interesting and most boring way imaginable. I do prefer to be subtle if possible, in my persuasion attempts. But life is extremely annoying right now, so clearly pieces are just refusing to align.

Personal characteristics vs Group characterists. There you go.

Conclusion: Identity politics needs to go. Because identity politics helps us focus on the personality DIFFERENCES, and not the common goals. I can honestly say that literally all the arguments I've ever had happened bc *someone* tried to make me talk about my personality too much, and then got annoyed that it doesn't match their personality. But they never match...It is an exercise doomed to fail.

Humanity works best when we do NOT try to blur lines between personal and professional. Identity politics blurs those lines by definition. And I am quite allergic to it, in general, bc it's so disfunctional. Historically, every time we had government forget it's place and try to blur those lines we ended up with nightmare totalitarian regimes.

[andrabook]

I have a great idea, wait for it...: You get government OUT of people's personal lives. You respect personal boundaries and privacy. And then our problems go away! ...magical, right?

[JenniferKelly]

Elder millennial...I try to say I'm Gen X or I'll say on the cusp.

[byrontownsel]

On a high horse aren't you? Eddie Gallagher has honor, you don't.