The Future of our Civilisation Depends on Real Marriage - Kirk Durston and Tony Rucinski on JD Unwin — Transcript

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1. 0:02welcome everyone to the coalition for marriage  youtube channel if you're joining us for the
2. 0:06first time let me just mention again that we  are the uk's largest pro-marriage organization
3. 0:11we represent groups and individuals who support  one man one woman marriage and that's not to say
4. 0:18other things don't exist in a liberal democracy  but we think one man one woman lifelong monogamous
5. 0:25marriage has special unique value to society and  i'm really excited to welcome today's guest who's
6. 0:32going to talk to us about that and and why it's  so important uh kirk durston would you like to say
7. 0:38hello to our listeners yes well it's pleasure to  be here tony and a big hello to everybody who is
8. 0:45watching this video or listening to it can i just  say folks as well if you're listening to this and
9. 0:50you think it's useful could you please forward it  to family members to colleagues to friends what
10. 0:55we're discussing today is perhaps one of the most  pivotal things we've discussed so far and the more
11. 1:00people that know about this the better now kirk  you're going to talk to us about the writings
12. 1:06of a 20th century social anthropologist oxford  social anthropologist j.d unwin because he's got
13. 1:13a lot to say about society about the things that  matter to society in terms of whether it prospers
14. 1:18or whether in fact that society collapses first of  all kirk tell us a little bit about yourself and
15. 1:25how maybe you came on to the study of unwin sure  i grew up in central canada on a farm uh raising
16. 1:33beef and grain uh but i guess at the age of 17 or  18 i decided i needed a vacation so i went off to
17. 1:39university and uh did a couple of undergraduate  degrees there one in physics one in engineering
18. 1:45and uh then uh upon completion i moved to montreal  over for pratt awaiting his experimental test
19. 1:53engineer and during that time i met and married  the woman now that i've been married to for
20. 2:00let's see it's four it'll be 42 years this this  july and yeah well it's been it just gets yeah
21. 2:08i'm very thankful and grateful for her and uh  then uh i found working with uh high tech uh very
22. 2:17interesting but not near as interesting as people  and so i began to feel motivated to start working
23. 2:24more with people and i left after a couple of  years of looking at different opportunities
24. 2:32i left that and began to work with people  particularly university students on universities
25. 2:36across canada and eventually i began to um to  speak on issues at universities and not just in
26. 2:43canada but a little bit in the u.s and actually  a few several times in scotland once in the uk
27. 2:50and a little bit in europe but as i interacted  with university students i saw there were two
28. 2:55major problems that seemed to devastate them or  set them back and as a result that's where i did
29. 3:03graduate degrees one in philosophy which was a  master's not a doctorate but then a doctorate
30. 3:09in biophysics for reasons that would equip  me to be better to better interact with the
31. 3:16particular issues that university students  were raising and uh yeah so along the way
32. 3:23i i've always been interested because i  have i've been i was raised in a fairly
33. 3:30um what would you say i don't think the word  strict is particularly appropriate but with
34. 3:37with high moral values when it comes to  what we do with our sexuality but i was
35. 3:43always interested in what if people don't don't  live by those values like what is the difference
36. 3:49how does that affect them and so when i when i  heard about jd unwind's work back in the 1930s
37. 3:58i became very interested in it i went through  that book a couple of times created a summary
38. 4:04and published it on my website and i think the day  i published it there was a professor at princeton
39. 4:12uh robert p george who is internationally  distinguished professor who has i guess taught
40. 4:18on on one and his he was shown my article  and he actually endorsed it said this was a
41. 4:23very good treatment of bunwin but he went on to  say that although unwhen published in the 1930s
42. 4:33his book sex and culture no one since then  has surpassed or even reach the same level
43. 4:43of research as jd unwin did he studied 86  different cultures and civilizations to see
44. 4:51what the relationship was between flourishing of  those civilizations in terms of architecture art
45. 4:57agriculture and literature between that and the  sexual constraints they exercised and when he did
46. 5:07that he found some truly remarkable observations  that he said were consistent and repeat with and
47. 5:15i quote monotonous irregularity but the beauty  of him having published in in the mid-1930s
48. 5:23is that he published before our own  sexual revolution in western society
49. 5:30so what that enables us to do is enable us to look  at unwin his research what the consequences are
50. 5:38of loosening special constraints what the  predictions his research made and then looking
51. 5:44to see to test actually to test the validity of  his conclusions and observations by looking at
52. 5:52whether our own society is following the same  footsteps with and i quote monotonous regularity
53. 5:58and it turns out it is astoundingly so so if i can  summarize what what what i interpret as on one's
54. 6:07thesis is essentially once a society  drops the notion of one man one woman
55. 6:15monogamous lifetime relationships and added  to that keeping sex for that one man one woman
56. 6:23monogamous relationship once society lets go  of that it marks the demise of the culture
57. 6:32is that largely a summary of his analysis of  86 cultures um over time well it's actually
58. 6:40uh that let's talk about the tipping point the  tipping point between a culture ascending this
59. 6:47curve of flourishing and well-being that  reaching the tipping point of sexual
60. 6:52um freedom or the relaxing of sexual  constraints and then the deterioration
61. 6:59what he found is that the tipping point actually  occurred before the abandonment of what he called
62. 7:06absolute monog or absolute monogamy  absolute monogamy defined by unwin
63. 7:13is the one man one woman for life and that  means that includes specifically their sexual
64. 7:22relationship is only between those two the man and  the woman for life that was absolute monogamy but
65. 7:29the tipping point occurred in a culture before  that the tipping point occurred when prenuptial
66. 7:36chastisty was no longer required that is he called  it prenuptial because he was referring to many
67. 7:44different civilizations that didn't use the term  marriage necessarily they had all sorts of customs
68. 7:49for marriage that we would translate as marriage  but he used the term nuptial so when sex before
69. 7:56marriage became acceptable in a culture that was  the tipping point and three things happened one
70. 8:02of which after that would be the loss of absolute  monogamy once pre-nuptial chastity was abandoned
71. 8:12then that affected marriages because marriages  lifelong marriages between a man and a woman
72. 8:20became well basically began to be replaced with  serial relationships and that's uh pretty much
73. 8:30where our culture is today as far as the middle  age to older people now would be well especially
74. 8:37the middle age there'd be serial relationships but  that is rapidly being degenerating even further
75. 8:44in western culture amongst the younger people  to what we might call complete sexual freedom
76. 8:51now that is devastating to a culture i know that  people get excited about sexual freedom but they
77. 8:59are unaware totally unaware of what the long-term  consequences of that are and j.d unwin nailed that
78. 9:07down it is the collapse of that culture within  three generations which he defined as roughly
79. 9:14one century a hundred years so when he's  looking at that um that collapse of the culture
80. 9:21tends to be lost from the culture he refers  to something uh this notion of energy doesn't
81. 9:27he which is uh reason reflection and creation and  it's almost like or is it almost like you tell me
82. 9:34it's like once people start thinking about  who they can have sex with and who they
83. 9:38what their own sexual desires are they stop  thinking about all sorts of other cultural issues
84. 9:43and in fact they might start tearing down the  culture in order that they can focus on nothing
85. 9:48but their own sexuality and who they want to  have sex with and that's strikingly similar to
86. 9:53what we might see is is possessing our society  today yes uh no one when unwin made a lot of
87. 10:00observations and recorded his observations but he  was also interested in the question why does that
88. 10:08society collapse and his theory was kind of  as you described is that this sexual energy
89. 10:15if there is a culture that has restraints on  that that sexual energy has to be diverted to
90. 10:21other more productive things or if it is not  it can become a major distraction away from
91. 10:27being productive and i would say that but he  didn't know for sure he just suggested this
92. 10:34but as you have observed and and i too  have observed that um unbridled sexual
93. 10:42constraints um our unbridled sexuality can  be a mass of distraction in a person's life
94. 10:49for example just the number of people  in our society today who spend let's say
95. 10:55to a minimum of two hours watching online porn per  week in the evening when their discretionary time
96. 11:04they have to work during the day so they have  to you know behave themselves and be productive
97. 11:09but our discretionary time has enormous potential  to do things that are positive and constructive
98. 11:14but so much now of our discretionary time it  would be well for many people many people a very
99. 11:22significant percentage of society there's  different percentages i see one is uh 75
100. 11:28percent of men spend more than two hours watching  illicit things online or and women are involved
101. 11:34at least 25 percent and but those  percentages depend on the survey or the study
102. 11:39but it is an enormous distraction but there's  something that is also devastating about this
103. 11:46and i think it is even more devastating  than simply uh wasting time and energy on
104. 11:54things that are not so productive in the area of  sexuality the devastation i think was outlined by
105. 12:00mary eberstadt more recently when she looked at  why is there such a massive increase of people who
106. 12:08are struggling with mental health and what about  the mass killing she was in the united states
107. 12:15and uh what about all this identity politics and  so she began to work backwards and she pinned
108. 12:21it down to the sexual revolution so something  about increased sexual freedom has resulted in
109. 12:29a massive deterioration in mental health amongst  particularly the younger people who are more
110. 12:36involved in this and eventually bottom line is is  that the section loosening the sexual constraints
111. 12:47decimates the family so for example  absolute monogamy as that deteriorates uh
112. 12:55the children are left in single-parent  relationships even blended family are better than
113. 13:00single but even blended family cannot cannot reach  the same level of well-being with the children as
114. 13:09uh children who grew up with the same dad and mom  all their lives for all their growing up years
115. 13:14so just explain blended family to uh yeah when  let's say uh absolute monogamy begins to break
116. 13:21down and people move split apart and marry someone  else often the children are are then blended
117. 13:30with the children of another with the  other spouse that's the second spouse
118. 13:34that's being made that they're married  to but there's an identity that children
119. 13:40acquire from their siblings and from their  immediate extended family cousins aunts uncles and
120. 13:49the sexual revolution really destroyed that larger  identity that children get from an extended family
121. 13:57because extended family meetings then become very  awkward once a marriage has broken up and so they
122. 14:04tend not to happen near as much the number  of cousins is greatly reduced because people
123. 14:10they break up after maybe one child or so so um  there is two factors involved in the destruction
124. 14:19of a civilization i think one of them is uh  the wasting of energy on the whole pursuit of
125. 14:27over sexualization of a society and we're  definitely our culture is way over sexualized
126. 14:34and secondly there are the consequences  on the relationships in the family
127. 14:38for the children uh that grow up in a in a  state where absolute monogamy has been destroyed
128. 14:46i should mention uh there were the  the three immediate consequences of
129. 14:52crossing the tipping point first of all i should  say i was shocked when i read that the tipping
130. 14:57point was pre-marital sex yeah like i i had  expected that the loosening of sexual constraints
131. 15:04that you would go pretty far down the road and  then they really start bothering culture but no
132. 15:09i was shocked because that's about the highest  standard a culture if there's prenatal chastity
133. 15:16the uh chances of lifelong marital relationships  is greatly increased greatly increased and uh so
134. 15:26figures figures today support that yes oh  yeah for sure i mean if you look at how long
135. 15:31marriages last today and plot that with um the  acceptance of premarital sexual relationships
136. 15:40uh you'll see a direct correlation we had we had  um uh dr pat fagan uh interviewed recently and uh
137. 15:47he was going through uh the u.s keeps some very  good figures on those sorts of things and and the
138. 15:52indications are very clear you know um one sexual  partner success in marriage it drops immediately
139. 15:59as soon as you go by one sexual partner yeah  and people think that you know we can soar
140. 16:04wild oats so to speak we can have a good time  before marriage but i have uh my my career was
141. 16:12literally thousands of hours in talking with  university students and and even young married
142. 16:18couples and so forth and those relationships  that they had before they were married
143. 16:24they don't just get deleted they don't the  memories don't just delete those come into the
144. 16:29marriage and it has a huge effect but for there  were three effects for that tipping point one was
145. 16:36i already mentioned the abandonment of absolute  monogamy the one man one woman for life secondly
146. 16:43uh abandonment to belief in god no all cultures  didn't just necessarily have a monotheistic belief
147. 16:51but as they increased and flourishing they  at least had a deistic or a theistic belief
148. 16:56belief in a god or gods that govern nature and  was were maybe active in human history and life
149. 17:04well that belief in god without the window once  that tipping point was crossed and we see exactly
150. 17:11the same thing today in our culture say in the  last hundred years since the sexual revolution
151. 17:17the belief in god has really declined now the  third thing that went that was that was lost
152. 17:22was rational thinking rational thinking like  the ability to think logically and rationally
153. 17:28and arrive at conclusions that are based on  well-reasoned uh well-reasoned process with
154. 17:34propositions and a logical conclusion  that gradually increased as the culture
155. 17:40incorporated sexual restraint but when the tipping  point was crossed there was a very rapid loss of
156. 17:48rational thinking in that society and again being  involved heavily involved in the academic world
157. 17:55of this this began to become very visible even  a couple even shortly after um premarital sexual
158. 18:04relationships became totally accepted university  many universities just are appalled at the lack of
159. 18:12critical thinking skills that today's young people  have in fact it's more important to today's people
160. 18:18younger people to believe what they want to  believe and insist that's true versus anything to
161. 18:25do with rational thinking and logical conclusions  so those were the three victims three signs
162. 18:33that unwin said that a civilization has crossed  the tipping point and is now on a decline and
163. 18:39we have seen those remarkably clear in our culture  today since the sexual revolution so it looks like
164. 18:48unwin's research is going to come true again today  for western culture in fact it's not just western
165. 18:54culture anymore the internet has connected us  globally so not all cultures are at the same place
166. 19:01when it comes to sexual restraint but when we look  at the figures let's say for online pornography
167. 19:09there is a remarkable similarity between the  cultures around the world even ones we would say
168. 19:14are are are officially part of behind closed doors  they are rapidly plummeting in this area as well
169. 19:22can we spend a moment cut exploring that a little  bit through the the lens of female emancipation as
170. 19:29uh as anyone calls it because he looks at these  cultures and says well there's there's a pattern
171. 19:34so as the culture begins to get a little bit  more liberal you've got this idea of female
172. 19:41emancipation that that women want the same rights  quite rightly as men and that that ends up turning
173. 19:48into sexual emancipation meaning that they can  have or that they want to have sex with whoever
174. 19:53they want to have sex with and not be restricted  to one man and um unwind's a recommendation there
175. 19:59is actually it would be good to to have a society  which is uh absolutely monogamous but where women
176. 20:08have equal rights to men because he sees that  as as a potential um solution and i wonder if
177. 20:15he could maybe discuss that and also discuss that  in the context of our society maybe being a little
178. 20:20bit different to ones that have come before  because we have things like um contraception
179. 20:27and we have things like technology which which  does allow people to explore things on their
180. 20:32own that they normally wouldn't have been able to  yes this was a a very this was another observation
181. 20:38unwin made that just prior to the tipping point  what he observed in these various cultures like
182. 20:46we tend to think today that emancipation  let's say the equal rights for men and women
183. 20:52is a modern thing but it's not there  were other cultures that had that as well
184. 20:57uh that were that arrived in greek culture for  example in roman culture but what he observed
185. 21:03is that something unfortunate first of all  is that women tended to be treated often
186. 21:10with not the same in not the same way as men and  that was unfortunate and eventually a culture as
187. 21:16it began to flourish reached a point where the  emancipation of women occurred now he used the
188. 21:23term emancipation basically what he meant is that  the same rights that men had would be what women
189. 21:30have as well which unwin regarded as a good thing  and i i i personally regard as a good thing and i
190. 21:37think many people intuitively think well that's  that's good you know that's good that we that we
191. 21:43see this equal equality here but unfortunately  what he also noticed is that when this occurred
192. 21:53uh shortly afterwards the sexual revolution  occurred and again we saw that happen the feminist
193. 21:59movement began well actually began early 1900s  there's different stages that they've talked about
194. 22:07but it really reached the forefront of the  mid-1960s in western culture and uh very shortly
195. 22:15almost immediately after that or even with it  began the sexual revolution and what why is
196. 22:21this why is this so unwin thought wouldn't it be  somehow somehow it would be great if we could have
197. 22:32both the emancipation of women but retain high  sexual moral standards he said in that case the
198. 22:42flourishing would increase exponentially  the flourishing of a civilization but that
199. 22:47never occurred actually in every case so what  does that tell us it tells us that uh prior to
200. 22:55that emancipation of women because they were  not treated equally uh there was a certain
201. 23:01holdback of sexual freedom in that the men  there was a huge double standard in other
202. 23:07words often the men would be more free than the  women and the thing that restrained men or who
203. 23:13was a big restraint was not just sexual rules  but the unavailability of women to participate
204. 23:20sexually and freely but that really disappeared  for example in our culture with with the invention
205. 23:25of contraceptives i would so the question is how  can we have both and and i i actually think there
206. 23:34is a solution and it would be that the the moral  values that we have when it comes to sexuality
207. 23:43i think need to be intrinsically held  not externally imposed on ourselves
208. 23:48if they're externally imposed there's a lot  of people are very creative there's a lot of
209. 23:52cheating going on behind the scenes but when  they're intrinsically held by both the man and
210. 23:59the woman you can have both men and women treated  completely equally with equal freedoms and rights
211. 24:07but both of them hold an intrinsic  high moral standard when it comes to
212. 24:13sexuality that is sexuality should be constrained  within that union of marriage for life
213. 24:21and uh i i i mean i i i would not i've  been married for 40 almost 42 years now
214. 24:31and the older i get in and the more i can look  back and i could appreciate certain things that
215. 24:38when i was young i didn't appreciate i  have enormous value i've seen the value
216. 24:45of being committed to one another and only one  another like just it's a total just that for life
217. 24:52that that provides a context of where love  can flourish it provides a context where trust
218. 25:00could absolutely flourish i neither of us ever  have to worry you know wonder when somebody's
219. 25:05on a road trip somewhere about what might be  happening there's absolute trust built earned
220. 25:12over the course of years there's no baggage  from our past that we brought into our marriage
221. 25:18so um and consequently we have six children who  have all they're all grown up they're all married
222. 25:25now and they seem to be doing quite quite well  and uh i think the me a big reason for that is
223. 25:35that they were able to grow up within a loving  relationship provided by their dad and mom
224. 25:42who first of all loved each other and loved  them and it's just a beautiful context
225. 25:46and they watched that and they saw that yeah  in fact i would say they they learn more they
226. 25:52pick up more by watching and seeing and living in  that environment then by me giving them a lecture
227. 25:58on the on the topic i'm sure to a degree that  that's it is self-sacrificial in the sense that
228. 26:05you know from a from a humanist animalistic  perspective you know the temptation for
229. 26:11sex wherever you can get it you can see how  people want it but actually that sacrifice leads
230. 26:16to something greater and i know unwin um refers to  uh the the the error of treating women as chattels
231. 26:24if you like in society and that's the thing that  promotes the desire for emancipation quite rightly
232. 26:30but there's a degree to which i belong to my wife  just like you i am hers i'm not somebody else's i
233. 26:38am hers and she is mine and that any uh anything  outside of that there is an aspect of theft too
234. 26:46because we belong to each other and that means  something and that has implications down the line
235. 26:51yeah absolutely like for example you might notice  i have a sort of a bit of a stubble here why do
236. 26:59i have this stubble i would much rather have  a full beard it's because my wife prefers me
237. 27:05like this and you know i as you said i  feel that i belong to her you know i mean i
238. 27:12i want to please her there is a sacrifice i mean  it's not like um people are no longer notice other
239. 27:21women or other men but um i don't actually i guess  on the short term it can seem like a sacrifice
240. 27:29especially if there's an opportunity to maybe  experience something sexually that um normally
241. 27:37might not be there and it's very attractive  there's a short-term attraction here and it
242. 27:42seems like a short sacrifice on the short term but  on the long term there is enormous reward at least
243. 27:48i've experienced that in our own life enormous  reward the love just continues to flourish and
244. 27:55grow when when that rather small sacrifice is made  now there's a lot of small sacrifices you know
245. 28:03because there's a lot of times we may be attracted  to or tempted in some way but the long-term payoff
246. 28:09there is no comparison and it kind of i i know  carl truman in his work um rising trump the modern
247. 28:15self and his his latest book kind of summarizing  that he talks about the way um our approach
248. 28:22or or the the modern man or woman's approach to  life has been what do i want and what do i need
249. 28:27as opposed to what's my role in society so it's  much more self-centered as opposed to i'm a member
250. 28:33of society how can i best contribute but picking  up on a another video you recently did with um
251. 28:39critiquing something that sam harris had put  out and sam harris in that video had said um sam
252. 28:45harris people who who don't know is uh one of what  you might call the new atheists if you like um but
253. 28:50sam harris said well what's so bad about hell it  might be quite nice and picking up on that thought
254. 28:56um what's so bad about a collapsed society it  might be quite nice oh it's never nice according
255. 29:03to unwind's research what happens is okay so  first of all in he said it collapses within three
256. 29:10generations of that society crossing the tipping  point which is when pre-marital sex becomes
257. 29:16fine there's no restrictions on that  so there's three generations which he
258. 29:20roughly translates to one century 100 years  the first generation after that tipping point
259. 29:27is uh there's very little change actually in the  first generation so our tipping point it's not a
260. 29:32particular day on the calendar probably not even  a particular year but for us it was probably some
261. 29:37time it started in 19 mid 60s but i would say  that pre-nuptial sexual relationships didn't
262. 29:46become perfectly fine and normal maybe until the  1980s somewhere in there so the tipping point was
263. 29:51somewhere in the 90s so the first generation is  roughly 33 years and we're at the end of that now
264. 29:57and you will see not a whole lot of change  normally in all the cultures they looked at
265. 30:02because it's running on the momentum of the  past and still there will be older people who
266. 30:08still hold to a higher sexual moral standard  than say the younger people and so that has
267. 30:15a stabilizing influence for the first generation  and then the older people start dying off and the
268. 30:21younger people start come becoming of age where  they're having families and you enter the second
269. 30:26generation and unknowns research so that's where  you really start seeing a decline in rational
270. 30:32thinking lifetime monogamy and um deism or theism  or basically religion see decline in those three
271. 30:41areas in the second generation now remarkably  we've seen that huge in the first generation
272. 30:47already but i think it's because of the internet  so the second generation starts to decline and by
273. 30:52the time you hit the third generation so let's  let's do some projections here uh roughly 30
274. 30:59years from now would be 20 let's say in the mid  2050s we should enter the third generation at
275. 31:06that point unwin says it goes into free fall  now remember what he's valuing or measuring
276. 31:12civilizations on is in terms of flourishing  agriculture art literature uh architecture
277. 31:19all those things rapidly decline in the third  generation to the extent that the society either
278. 31:28there's a just a complete complex collapse of  how that society works even in the production of
279. 31:33food of housing uh usually at that point you can  either break out in a civil war where it's just be
280. 31:41anarchy and it's every person for themselves  which is not fine or that culture is invaded
281. 31:47by another culture that has higher sexual  standards higher higher capabilities greater
282. 31:54flourishing and it's at a higher stage in what  you would call flourishing it's invaded so we've
283. 32:00seen that throughout history today it's a little  bit different because of a global maybe decline
284. 32:07although some cultures are still higher up than  western culture as far as their capabilities so
285. 32:15but even then they're they're declining too so i  don't know what it's going to look like probably
286. 32:19something more akin to anarchy uh city-states um  civil wars um survival of the fittest it's it's
287. 32:31never ever pleasant how much of this um kurt do  you think is the balance between natural slippage
288. 32:38let's say so as a liberal democracy kind of  progresses uh it wants to give more people freedom
289. 32:46and what that does is end up restricting some  people's freedom and saying well in order for some
290. 32:51to be free this is what you now must believe and  sorry but that's going to restrict your freedom
291. 32:58and that's you could say that's that's almost like  a natural slippage in liberal democracy and where
292. 33:03it always tends to how much to think is that and  how much do you think is there's almost like an
293. 33:08agenda being pushed by something or someone is it  just natural slippage or is it more than that well
294. 33:15that's a very good question and a very good point  you raise because we are observing that as well in
295. 33:20our in our western western culture and not just  in western culture but okay so um let's say as
296. 33:28a society becomes more progressive um what tends  to happen is that it wants to make people behave
297. 33:36so the the the incentive for behaving now becomes  more and more external because people want more
298. 33:42and more personal freedom to do whatever  they want so the laws have to be increased
299. 33:48and you have to have more constraints on freedom  uh the kind of freedom that progressive society
300. 33:55doesn't want to see let's say freedom of speech  for example has to be more tightly constrained
301. 34:00in sort and you have to have a lot more laws  to make people behave because they're not
302. 34:04operating from an intrinsic moral standard anymore  for example a friend of mine recently retired as a
303. 34:11police officer he had been a police officer for  about 30 years and he said that when he retired
304. 34:18he had approximately three times as many laws to  enforce as he had 30 years earlier when he joined
305. 34:26the police force that he worked for three times  as many laws and so we we absolutely see that now
306. 34:34and that restricts our  freedom that i mean eventually
307. 34:38it becomes a gigantic daycare center i suppose  where there are strict rules about how everybody
308. 34:44has to behave in order so we can get along as  opposed to uh when everybody has a high internal
309. 34:52intrinsic moral standard and that includes i  really want to get along with my neighbor and do
310. 34:58you mentioned earlier what are my moral  obligations to other people to my society
311. 35:04that's a high moral value when you think of your  life in terms of what are my moral obligations to
312. 35:09other people but as you pointed out our society  has swung away from that too what do i want
313. 35:16what are my rights and as that happens then  because everybody has different ideas of what
314. 35:22they want what the rights are then you have to  have more government more restraints more rules
315. 35:28more laws to kind of kind of try and rein in  the ano the personal anarchy that's happening
316. 35:34and that leads to a collapse of society as well  one it can really lead to one of two ways a lot
317. 35:41of times maybe even most of the time it reaches  a point where people just say enough of this
318. 35:48and you have a civil war or if you have a brutal  government and north korea is an example and i've
319. 35:54been there two times i've seen with my own eyes  if you have a brutal government you can enforce
320. 36:00the ultimate in a progressive society where  it's all about you know let's all work together
321. 36:07theoretically and here are all the rules to  make sure that everybody behaves and it becomes
322. 36:13absolute it's like living in a penitentiary really  in a prison our government and i'm not talking
323. 36:19about uh necessarily political parties but our  governments uh in canada and in the uk generally
324. 36:26they're not comprised of completely silly people  but people with knowledge and understanding who
325. 36:32realize the significance to a society to a stable  society of of real marriage of one man one woman
326. 36:39monogamous marriage why is it being abandoned i  mean they know what they're doing what's going on
327. 36:45first of all there are some like i'm thinking  of canada here i know canada politicians there
328. 36:50there are some who personally in their own life  they seem to believe that absolute monogamy is
329. 36:56the way to go but in the kind of legislation they  introduce it's totally contradictory to what they
330. 37:02do and i think a lot of it has to do to at least  two things one one is is a cultural brainwashing
331. 37:10let's say a culture-led mentality where we want  to fit in with our culture our culture seems
332. 37:15to be going in a particular direction and it can  influence a person we're influenced by our culture
333. 37:22every day we actually have to work i have to work  and intentionally evaluate why do i think of these
334. 37:29things why do i believe what i believe and the  second thing that happens is that goes along okay
335. 37:35that influences the academic world and  right now i would say the academic world
336. 37:39is almost front and center in leading the charge  into the complete collapse of our civilization
337. 37:45very much with the things that they're doing  but the second thing that happens is that
338. 37:51the politician even if they believe in say maybe a  higher moral standard is heavily influenced by the
339. 37:59polls and by the temptation to want to get elected  in the next term and so consequently they are
340. 38:05pressured by the culture to draft certain  laws bring certain things into effect
341. 38:12and often that culture if it's on the decline  that pressure is negative on the moral values of a
342. 38:17politician or a government leader and that's just  two possibilities there that second one is a tough
343. 38:24one i don't know how many times i've referred to  this but in 2018 here in the uk there was a comres
344. 38:31uh anonymous poll of of our politicians and  of those who responded over half said they
345. 38:36were too fearful to speak their mind uh on  certain lgbt issues for fear of backlash
346. 38:43and you think hold on if our law makers are too  afraid to speak and presumably vote with their
347. 38:50true feelings well that's a problem that's what  it is it's a significant it's kind of like an
348. 38:58unofficial coercion or restriction of of the free  discussion of ideas like i can i can um personally
349. 39:06i'm not going to stand up and say hateful things  about people i want to build bridges with people
350. 39:11but i also want the freedom to have a sincere  thoughtful discussion on any issue any issue
351. 39:20at all but as you say the same situations here in  canada polls have been done on universities here
352. 39:26and most the vast majority of university students  are afraid to say anything in class for fear
353. 39:33they somehow cross a line and get disciplined or  expelled or reprimanded so there's this fear and
354. 39:42and living in a culture of fear is another sign i  think that we're on a on a collect heading towards
355. 39:49a collapse of civilization and unwind forecast  now i should point out that unwin observed that
356. 39:55many of these cultures and civilizations thought  they would be the exception he said this was
357. 40:00hubert like he just observed this and he says no  there were no exceptions ever a lot of cultures
358. 40:07thought they would be it and i know our culture  probably thinks the same thing that oh we won't
359. 40:12collapse although i don't know i i see a lot of  pessimism especially amongst the younger people
360. 40:20that they're not sure the future's looking all  that rosy and they're worried about it and i think
361. 40:25rightfully so because there are larger things that  are slowly grinding to a halt that should go into
362. 40:31free fall you're right and not only that but you  look at the the global population and what you
363. 40:35might call the western world is about two billion  people out of seven billion people so we're not in
364. 40:41the not in the majority you know there's there's  a lot more people who think and feel uh culturally
365. 40:47very different to us exactly so we need to protect  and preserve that we do i know uh in fact i see uh
366. 40:55like here i hear a lot about how i hear  a lot about colonialism and how terrible
367. 41:00it is because north america of course was  colonized by the british and the french but um
368. 41:06and so they they're the the lab the  liberal left of the progressives would say
369. 41:10uh you know all the colonialism is terrible but  what i am observing is that when they're looking
370. 41:17at some of these other cultures in developing  countries that maybe have more concern of moral
371. 41:21values with regard to sexuality they actually  think they're wrong they actually want to
372. 41:28let's say practice a a cultural colonialism on the  developing world and convince the developing world
373. 41:35they need a sexual revolution revolution as well  that theirs they're backward and so forth so it's
374. 41:40a large double standard in our western culture  that we think our views of sexuality and sexual
375. 41:48freedom are the proper ones or the correct ones  and we need to basically colonize the rest of
376. 41:54the world with our ideas there's this concept of  uh liberal hegemony you know taking our views and
377. 41:59liberalism and almost like imposing it on other  other countries because we know it's better
378. 42:06um can i just touch i i know you you're a busy guy  and i could i could literally spend the entire day
379. 42:11talking to you um but a little bit of criticism of  um unwin in fairness we need to look at those who
380. 42:17and the criticisms will will involve things like  yeah but um correlation is not causation and um
381. 42:25you know actually uh if unwounded looked at japan  for example he would see that japan has become a
382. 42:32a lot more liberal over the years and that its  liberalism has coincided with its prosperity
383. 42:37so how would we deal with things like that yes  well first of all it is true that correlation is
384. 42:43not necessarily causation and i do mention some  my own reservation of that in my article that
385. 42:51although i think there is something to be said for  sexual energy and diverting that into something
386. 42:56more constructive i wasn't sure that that was the  cause of the collapse of civilizations but when
387. 43:03i read about the effect of the sexual revolution  on the family and on marriage i think we're much
388. 43:10closer to the cause of that collapse onward of  course wasn't didn't have a faith himself did he
389. 43:15he was i don't i don't see any evidence whatsoever  in fact when i read his book looking for that um
390. 43:23i saw the way he described say christianity for  example was um i don't think he ever mentions
391. 43:30jesus for example he does talk about  christianity but i think he refers to it uh
392. 43:36the galilean as a term that he used the galilean  he never uses and it refers to christianity in a
393. 43:42very um just completely as if it's no different  from any other religions pagan or otherwise so i
394. 43:50i would suspect uh based on my reading of  unwind that he was probably maybe an agnostic
395. 43:57maybe an atheist but certainly no evidence  whatsoever that he was a religious man because
396. 44:02you would expect religious people to be biased up  here but he he just doesn't seem to have that at
397. 44:07all if anything may be biased against slightly  slightly against i wouldn't say a bias but just
398. 44:14and of those of those who do criticize you know  they they pick up and say well his definition
399. 44:19of civilized versus uncivilized you know  that's not right but they don't actually
400. 44:24undermine his basic premises which is which is  once you lose that notion of lifelong monogamy
401. 44:30um and and keeping sex for marriage that's  the beginning of the end for any culture it is
402. 44:36yeah because of the consequences that unfold from  that so um i'm um i was i was once um criticized
403. 44:44as being a pathological optimist which which i  took as a compliment as a pathological optimist
404. 44:50would of course um so i'm not i'm not willing to  think this is the end of our society and this is
405. 44:56the end of our culture and many people have said  actually we do a massive correction at some point
406. 45:02and and that could be painful if not managed  properly i wonder in your view how do we look at
407. 45:10you know you can never go back in time of course  you can't but in terms of uh and i don't think
408. 45:16anyone's looking for top-down imposition of of  these things to to get back to where we need to be
409. 45:22what's the route forward from here would you  say well i'll just give you my thoughts on that
410. 45:28and that is a very important that question you've  asked i think okay let's say if we want to be an
411. 45:35optimist here the way forward for me personally is  i think intrinsic moral values are very important
412. 45:43i don't want imposition of moral values like what  they have in north korea for example which is the
413. 45:48extreme it has to be intrinsic so what is that i  i think that i might not be able to do a whole lot
414. 45:56about the where our civilization is going but what  i can do is first of all look to myself how am i
415. 46:04doing personally and for example the emancipation  of women i thought like how is that working out
416. 46:10in my marriage i very much i totally see my wife  as my number one advisor for example i i don't
417. 46:19think i've ever made well i've never say pulled  rank as a husband say well i'm the man you know
418. 46:24we're gonna do this ever in 41 years of marriage  we talk about these things and if i ever did that
419. 46:31i would see that as a failure on my part a loss  and consequently the the relationship between a
420. 46:39man and a woman when they see each other is their  number one advisors and confidence and partners
421. 46:45that's the first step i think in producing the  next generation that will not be going downhill
422. 46:52but also will those values that they'll hold so  that's one step the second thing is well at least
423. 46:58maybe i can somehow influence others to maybe  think a little more carefully about their own
424. 47:05um intrinsic state of affairs their intrinsic  values and so that's why i have my website for
425. 47:13example kirktursten.com that's why i'm doing my  videos it's it's the with the hope that i can
426. 47:18motivate others and so even though clinton's  research said there were no exceptions in
427. 47:25the collapse that doesn't mean i throw up  the hands of despair and say okay i'm just
428. 47:30we're we're going downhill no i think we have  a moral obligation every one of us to first of
429. 47:36all look to ourselves what are my obligations  to my society personally i'm not interested
430. 47:41in my rights and freedoms well i i let me  let me say that i'm not interested in my
431. 47:47my rights freedoms is a different category  i'm very interested in that but rights i think
432. 47:55i'll say i'll trust god to look out for my  rights what i have to do is to look at myself
433. 48:02as basically a servant to my civilization and  to the people around me and my neighbors and so
434. 48:09i it's had it's about looking around me and  see what positive contribution can i make
435. 48:15coming out of my intrinsic love for what is right  and good and beautiful and true that's you know
436. 48:21kirk that is absolutely beautiful and that's  something we need to get back into our culture
437. 48:25is that it's not just about you and and the best  way of of producing the best environment for you
438. 48:32is for you to think about other people and if  everyone did that sounds a bit twee but actually
439. 48:37things might be an awful lot better than they are  now and that that's never more embraced than in
440. 48:43in the you know the marriage relationship uh the  context of sex within marriage all those things
441. 48:49that unwin says are absolutely ins essential  to a a prospering flourishing culture well yet
442. 48:55kirk it's been a privilege you mentioned your  website uh kirkdirsten.org was it dot com kirk
443. 49:02thurston.com that's kirk as in the scottish word  for church kirk durston d-u-r-s-t-o-n oh we'll pop
444. 49:09it on the screen uh can i recommend this uh this  video will be going out to or we'll be notifying
445. 49:14uh tens of thousands of people i want them to all  if they can go to your website have a look go and
446. 49:20watch your videos but most of all to take your  advice which is let's be examples to society let's
447. 49:25encourage others to do it too and let's get it  back and let's make it the society that it could
448. 49:30and should be based on real marriage and the  value that that gives kirk thank you so much
449. 49:35for your time i wish you well in all your work  as you're going forward and uh it's a pleasure
450. 49:40to talk to you oh it was a pleasure as well  tony thank you for this excellent conversation