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I&I - Gratitude and civic virtue, part two · A New Angle

• 0:00
  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: This is A New Angle, conversations about how we're doing and where we're going.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Justin Angle.
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  SPEAKER_01: This show is supported by the Headwaters Foundation,
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  SPEAKER_01: First Security Bank, and the University of Montana College of Business.
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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: Hey, folks, welcome back, and thanks for tuning in.
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  SPEAKER_01: Today is our August edition of Incentives and Instincts,
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  SPEAKER_01: a recurring series in which I speak with economist and friend Bryce Ward about some
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  SPEAKER_01: of the broader challenges facing our society.
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  SPEAKER_01: Last month,
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  SPEAKER_01: we began a conversation about gratitude and civic virtue,
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  SPEAKER_01: and today we bring you part two of that conversation.
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  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy it.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we can go around and around trying to...
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  SPEAKER_01: Diagnose why this is happening.
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  SPEAKER_01: The truth is probably like there's a bunch of reasons and they're all part of
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  SPEAKER_01: the stew that is leading to this moment we're living in.
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  SPEAKER_01: How do we cultivate some of this virtue that you're talking about?
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  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we can start with gratitude.
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  SPEAKER_00: I do feel like people are hungry for it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like we know how to do it, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Particularly, we had institutions that, you know, like Rotary.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: the fact that so many of the greatest generation had to endure military service,
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  SPEAKER_00: they learned a lesson from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: James Burroughs, you know who James Burroughs is?
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  SPEAKER_00: The TV director, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I was reading an obituary of James Burroughs.
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  SPEAKER_00: He died a couple weeks ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking about how he specialized in creating shows about families outside of family.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: About places where, you know, whether it's a workplace or- Cheers as that.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, or a bar or whatever it is.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about people who come together.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what you see in those characters is-
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  SPEAKER_00: They're a family.
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  SPEAKER_00: They will sacrifice for each other, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, all of that kind of stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: A whole generation of men did that in World War II.
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  SPEAKER_00: You had to come together with a bunch of people from all over the country
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  SPEAKER_00: and you became,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: a band of brothers,
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  SPEAKER_00: to cite the HBO show that I watch at least once a year,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, where you were sacrificing for each other, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And you had to think in the collective sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that infused itself into society.
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  SPEAKER_00: I do not know, I don't want to go through World War II again.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's been some academic work on this postulating that this period
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  SPEAKER_01: of relative world peace that we've had since World War II.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's not to say there hasn't been plenty of wars and violence,
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  SPEAKER_01: but like this shared collective consciousness of a war and participation in
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  SPEAKER_01: that war has somehow stripped away our collective capacity for some of this virtue.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that is better is we don't have wars like we used to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the tensions when we talk about virtue, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And when we're talking about these declines,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're talking about the decline in bonding social capital, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: So these kind of small or physical relationships, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Robert Putnam, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: There's this big decline in bonds amongst small groups, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like your physical neighborhood or community.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: But over the same period, who we extend our empathy towards has expanded greatly.
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  SPEAKER_00: And part of that benefit of that is, yeah, we don't have wars like we used to.
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  SPEAKER_00: These other countries aren't as other to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're not as gung-ho to go off and start killing them.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's because, yeah,
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  SPEAKER_00: we look at people who we're never going to meet there on the other side of the globe
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  SPEAKER_00: and we still understand that they're human.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the key,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think,
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  SPEAKER_00: is it's when we're in physical space with each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: that's when you start to be able to kind of Cultivate virtue.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can't cultivate virtue sitting at home, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: I have to cultivate it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't learn justice and I have to be just.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have to go out into the world and be virtuous.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I can't just sit and I can't learn that from a book, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: It has to be something.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have to practice it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you're connecting this to the decline in social connection and time spent
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  SPEAKER_01: with neighbors,
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  SPEAKER_01: time spent with friends, all this social capital work that you've done.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a precondition.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I think a precondition for fixing it is we have to get people back into physical space.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then once we get them into physical space,
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  SPEAKER_00: you have to then make sure that those physical spaces are reminding people
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  SPEAKER_00: that it is important to be virtuous.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because look, we're going to fail, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: We're all going to fail to be virtuous, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: But you know what helps is being constantly reminded that you should be virtuous
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  SPEAKER_00: and these are the right things to do and get back on the horse and keep trying
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  SPEAKER_00: to be better.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, and related to this,
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  SPEAKER_01: we've sort of started to adopt purity tests more and more In our politics,
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  SPEAKER_01: in our society,
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  SPEAKER_01: in our classrooms,
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  SPEAKER_01: on our campuses,
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  SPEAKER_01: whatever it is, purity tests rule out the embrace of imperfect allies.
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  SPEAKER_01: And they just seem to be really disastrous.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like the Democratic Party right now is hurtling toward one with Gaza.
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  SPEAKER_01: They don't need to get sidetracked too much into that particular issue,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it's sort of becoming this issue where if you don't Align with those
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  SPEAKER_01: who say what's happening is a genocide,
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  SPEAKER_01: then you are going to be cast aside by the Democratic Party.
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  SPEAKER_01: That seems like just an own goal waiting to happen at epic proportion in the next election.
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  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is where because we've lost so much virtue, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't see like what's the...
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  SPEAKER_00: Where's civility and where's the reasonable disagreement?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's also the fact that we have too much information, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, they go together.
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  SPEAKER_00: But like,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's hard to tolerate somebody's difference of opinion when everything,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: when everything seems so heightened because of,
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  SPEAKER_00: and you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: and look,
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  SPEAKER_00: The share of people who are pursuing purity tests I don't think is actually
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  SPEAKER_00: that high.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, but their salience is high.
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  SPEAKER_01: But their salience is high, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a massive struggle to tamp down
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  SPEAKER_00: the forces that are pushing against
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  SPEAKER_00: the conditions that are going to be necessary
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  SPEAKER_00: Get us to the best of the imperfection, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: The perfect imperfection, you know, the perfect balance of imperfection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Aristotle was onto something with the golden mean, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, taking something to excess is not virtuous, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Purity tests are an excess.
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  SPEAKER_00: Despite my Puritan heritage, I'm not trying to encourage people to be puritanical, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And be rigid about certain things, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: But I do want to try and Create the conditions for which,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, yeah,
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  SPEAKER_00: we should probably be encouraging virtue and we should be intolerant of vice,
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  SPEAKER_00: particularly vice that keeps us on this downward spiral towards less prosperity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Corruption is bad, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Crime is bad, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: All that is bad and we shouldn't tolerate that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we have to figure out how to police it in a way that isn't extreme.
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't create purity tests or standards that go so far
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  SPEAKER_00: that they start straining the individual in ways that are incompatible with
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  SPEAKER_00: the modern mindset.
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  SPEAKER_00: So again, that's what I mean.
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  SPEAKER_00: It requires a new...
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to create our new version of virtue and the institutions that support it
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  SPEAKER_00: because I don't think the ones from the past are going to work.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the answer is, but I know that we have to figure it out.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So let's bring it to the level of our families.
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  SPEAKER_01: How are you thinking about it in your own life and how you're interacting
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  SPEAKER_01: with your children and what you're trying to do in your own home?
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  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, my kids are not as interested in civics as I was.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dinner table conversation at my house growing up was-
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  SPEAKER_01: Your father was in government, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: He was a school board member.
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  SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about Politics and policy.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was what dinner table conversation was.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not the same level at my house.
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  SPEAKER_00: Occasionally we get there.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're more in the personal virtue, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more of that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Should kids all do team sports where I think that's an area where you can learn virtue?
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  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to team sports, my message is
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  SPEAKER_00: your job is to figure out what your role is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And if that role is just being a cheerleader on the bench, that's your role.
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  SPEAKER_00: When you say role, I assume you mean...
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  SPEAKER_00: Find out how you can make a contribution.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the contribution is the word that I use.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for reminding me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, you know, your job is to be a contributor.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know,
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  SPEAKER_00: in a team setting and in society,
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  SPEAKER_00: the point of childhood is for you just to kind of come to better understand the way
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  SPEAKER_00: that you can be a contributor.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: What can I contribute?
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  SPEAKER_00: But that's also what can I not, how do I not detract?
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's both sides.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the virtue side of a lot of it, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Is how do we make sure that you're not a bad roommate or a bad member of society?
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  SPEAKER_00: There's some discussion of politics and whatnot at my house,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it tends to kind of bump along, only come up intermittently.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that maybe only one and a half of them really want me to do the whole lecture.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's enough to add.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, how about you?
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  SPEAKER_01: My daughters have some hot feelings around what they sort of see in the world of politics.
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  SPEAKER_01: I try to help just talk that through.
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  SPEAKER_01: Why are your emotions so exercised about this?
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  SPEAKER_01: What are you feeling?
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  SPEAKER_01: What are you thinking?
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  SPEAKER_01: And then asking them, is that the world you want to live in?
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  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to live in this world where These abstract,
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  SPEAKER_01: to them, national political issues are...
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  SPEAKER_01: Conjuring such emotion.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then I also ask them their source of news, which tends to be TikTok from time to time.
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  SPEAKER_01: So then I think like, who's actually twisting the dials on this emotion?
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  SPEAKER_01: And that leads me down a whole nother rabbit hole.
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  SPEAKER_01: I focus on the contribution,
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  SPEAKER_01: whether it's my younger daughter's involved in dance,
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  SPEAKER_01: my older daughter is with your daughter on the flag football team and thinking
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  SPEAKER_01: of ways to sort of find her way with team sports.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're active in student government and starting to find their way and contributing
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  SPEAKER_01: to the community that is their high school.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a really positive way to learn that.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons why I love high school.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love large public high schools.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think Hellgate in particular and other schools in Missoula and in Montana do
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  SPEAKER_01: a really nice job of that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think personally,
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  SPEAKER_01: I've got a little bit of a different approach to gratitude in particular,
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  SPEAKER_01: a little bit more of an energetic approach.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think I've drawn this from a lot of just difficult experiences,
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  SPEAKER_01: whether it's
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  SPEAKER_01: difficult athletic experiences, long endurance events, or...
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  SPEAKER_01: I famously missed the last second shot to win the state championship in high school basketball.
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  SPEAKER_01: And my kids often ask me, how often do you think of that?
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  SPEAKER_01: And I say, at least four times a day.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's- It's really that much?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is.
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  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm grateful that I had that experience.
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  SPEAKER_01: That is the point.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that haunts me.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is something that I'm like, wow, what an amazing moment to just have.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was having a big real experience and I'm grateful for that.
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  SPEAKER_01: When I was in the depths of the hardest moments of my divorce,
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  SPEAKER_01: it was like, this is an experience, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: This is a big experience and I am grateful to be having it and to be able to get up
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  SPEAKER_01: and put my feet on the ground
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  SPEAKER_01: and keep walking forward no matter how difficult it is.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's still an experience and it's still way better than the alternative.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know,
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  SPEAKER_00: that's one of the things that,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: going back to kids,
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  SPEAKER_00: right, is, you know, yeah, all these kinds of messages you try and give them, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is temporary.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: This will be a great story.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're funny stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: but sometimes even if it's not going to be a funny story, it's a story.
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  SPEAKER_00: And life is just a collection of stories.
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  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you can be grateful for the fact that you just added another chapter to
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  SPEAKER_00: the little book of stories that you get to carry around...
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a healthy way of looking at life.
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  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back to my conversation with Bryce Ward after this short break.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: A New Angle would not be possible without the generous support of
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: the Headwaters Foundation,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: working side by side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: of our communities.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't do that sort of work without access to capital and education.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Two critical catalysts offered by First Security Bank and the University
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: of Montana College of Business.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is John Bennion and you're listening to A New Angle.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to A New Angle.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with Bryce Ward talking about gratitude and civic virtue.
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  SPEAKER_01: This whole conversation reminds me or makes me think of one of my favorite poets, David White.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've read any of David White's work.
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  SPEAKER_01: I would suggest reading it but also listening to it because he reads it in
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  SPEAKER_01: a way that's a little bit detached from the actual text
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  SPEAKER_01: and his voice is just beautiful.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he's got this riff on gratitude and I'll recite part of it here.
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  SPEAKER_01: Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together
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  SPEAKER_01: and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us
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  SPEAKER_01: to take even one more breath of air,
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  SPEAKER_01: that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living,
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  SPEAKER_01: participating human being is a privilege that we are miraculously part
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  SPEAKER_01: of something rather than nothing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair,
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  SPEAKER_01: we inhabit a living world with real faces,
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  SPEAKER_01: real voices,
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  SPEAKER_01: laughter,
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  SPEAKER_01: the color blue,
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  SPEAKER_01: the green of the fields,
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  SPEAKER_01: the freshness of the cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.
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  SPEAKER_01: So the point being is like,
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  SPEAKER_01: yeah, be grateful for what you have because it's better than the alternative.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about your personal gratitude.
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  SPEAKER_00: Your personal gratitude has spillover effects for everybody else.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that, I think, was the larger point.
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  SPEAKER_00: You need to have proper perspective.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not to say that you shouldn't see problems, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a tension between, I'm just grateful for whatever I have.
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  SPEAKER_00: And no, I'm grateful for whatever I have, but things should be better.
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  SPEAKER_00: That can be something that exists in tension with each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: But, you know...
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  SPEAKER_00: We've gotten so good at identifying problems and marinating in problems
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  SPEAKER_00: and becoming really worked up about problems that I think sometimes we lose sight of
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  SPEAKER_00: the big picture of gratitude, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you might be grateful for whatever your current personal circumstances,
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  SPEAKER_00: but if you don't have a good perspective on...
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  SPEAKER_00: How much better your life is than some alternative.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that counterfactual thinking is hard.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a form of that, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a form of counterfactual thinking.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's the most intuitive form of counterfactual thinking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just imagine yourself in some other world, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of other infinite worlds that you could have landed in.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you are listening to this podcast in the United States of America,
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  SPEAKER_00: You've landed in a pretty good world.
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  SPEAKER_01: Pretty good world.
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  SPEAKER_01: Not a perfect one.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think mapping this concept of gratitude
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: onto our current political framing could be useful.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the biggest problems with progressives is that they are often unable
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: to acknowledge progress and articulate where we have progressed as a society and
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: to deny that progress has occurred.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just ignorant to the historical record.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: conservatives don't do a good job of articulating what exactly are we trying
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: to conserve.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are some important things that we should be trying to conserve,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: but we rarely hear an articulation of it framed that way.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So connecting these dots I think
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: is hugely
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: important.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: No,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: we have to get to the point where we have pride in where we are and gratitude for
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: where we're at and an acknowledgement of what's good about it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then also be able to then see the flaw and say, okay, well,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: these are the problems and this is going to be our process for trying to solve them.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to have an orderly process to do that one that embraces all
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: of those virtues of civility and respect and honesty and all that kind of stuff.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not...
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: A zero-sum battle that we just have to win and any kind of vice is tolerated.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that's a good place to land it.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of orderly processes,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: we didn't necessarily follow one in this conversation,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: but I think we hit some rich terrain and important terrain.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Want to do a parent trap?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Parent trap,
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: just before we get into it,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: this is where Bryce and I get to commiserate about our disadvantages in parenting.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Bryce, why don't you take it away?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I'm gonna start with a question for you again.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, geez, okay.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're putting me on the spot a lot this month.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to reflect on your own childhood.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So get yourself back into young Justin mode.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: How often were you accompanying an adult in the adult's world?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So like going with your mom to the grocery store,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: maybe you were at your parents' place of work,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: maybe you were at just their, you know, whatever event they were at, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, for me,
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: it was like,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's pickup basketball games or his softball games or whatever it was.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Was that a common thing in your childhood?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was pretty common.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I would tag along for errands or, you know, my parents are pretty active in a yacht club.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds really obnoxious to say.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Small town, New Hampshire.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yacht is a pretty generous term.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: sheepishness aside,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I often, you know, yeah, we'd be tagging along at social events for that.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to think about your own children.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: How often are they tagging along in an adult world?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I'm conflating two ideas here.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: My instinct is to say, oh,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: quite a bit,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: and that I feel like I have a closer,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: more familiar relationship with my children than I had with my parents.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a different phenomenon than just tagging along for social stuff.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: The point I'm trying to get is I think we've made a mistake in modern parenting.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: As parents, we go to our kids' world.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: We don't bring them into ours.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I spend a lot of time with my kids, but it's usually on their terms.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Driving around to their stuff, going to their events.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Their stuff, their events.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: When I reflect on my childhood,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: honestly, most of my memories of my childhood are I'm with an adult in their world.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with my grandmother who are running errands.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm slightly different in that I was able to go to my parents' place of work.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And often be demanded to do work while I was there.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it were at church, right?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had the little kid areas,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: but a lot of church was me just standing around hopping from square to square
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: from actually octagon to octagon to octagon.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Outside of the sanctuary in the church, well, my parents talked to other adults.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are children's areas and churches, but it feels like an adult world.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you still had to go to the big service.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of my childhood is me just sitting there in
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: the confined space having to behave and do all the things that were expected
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: of everybody in that room.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've erred.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pendulum has swung.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's great that we have this relationship with our kids and all that kind of stuff.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's some passive learning that just comes from being forced to go
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: through the adult world.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's assume this new way of being is as you describe it, what are the costs and benefits?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, to a kid, being forced to tag along is boring.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're also putting somebody else as a priority over your own needs, which is useful.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: some kids act out in those things,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is part of the reason why parents stop doing it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is God, I want to bring my kid along to this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want them here.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have to manage them and maybe they're going to act out.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's much easier to go to the grocery store without my kids.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and, you know, let me just do it at a time when they're not around.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or plug them into a screen so I can
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: do this thing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I understand why we stopped doing it.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I think how far we've pushed it may be an error because it means
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: that kids are not being forced to just kind of come to grips,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: A, with their parents as adults acting in an adult world, right?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like they don't have to see me interact with people that aren't just people coming
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: to my house that we know socially, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're not watching me interact with kids.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just other people in the community, right?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some value in that.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you're modeling social engagement,
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: community, but you're also modeling this is the sort of things that you have to do to keep
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: a family and a household operations going.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a modeling component.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had to work in these spaces, which was a privilege.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, you think of it as a But as an adult, I view it as a privilege.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I was forced to work.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I got paid for that work, but a lot of times I did not.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: But again, you just learn this is part of your role in the family.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of what we do in the family.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is being done not at home.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't do a poor job.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: So my dad was a builder.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I can remember going right before the people would move in.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: We would go clean the building.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So like, you know, yeah, you have to vacuum the floors.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do a good job vacuuming the floors.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Reflects on us as a family.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know, there's just value in having to, you know, kind of exist in adult world.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the passive learning component to it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's just, you know, then there's some real stuff that you actually learn.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's the observation of the modeling effect,
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: but the current frame,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: to the extent that it exists, puts the child at the center of operations.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: They are the unit of focus, if you will, and I think that builds a sort of self-centeredness.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not to call current-day modern children self-centered,
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that's an incentive to see yourself more as the center of the universe.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Kids are going to do that regardless.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it amplifies it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it also robs them of the chance to really understand who their parents are
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: as people and not just people who exist in the service of them.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well put.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Not sure we have a solution, but I like the observation.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a cultural observation, right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is the essence of Parent Trap.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the solution is kind of go old school and just start basically saying,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: okay, how do I bring my kids into this world and force them into doing so?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly at a young age when they can adapt to it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, my parent trap,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, is adjacent this time around, and it needs a little bit of a setup.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't thought of a framework for if you like your job or not, I think that's useful.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've landed on three variables as sort of central to if a job is tenable for me.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you make a reasonable wage?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find meaning in the work?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have control over your own time?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell students that those are my three values for work and you got
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: to figure out your own three.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a job with any two of those, you can sustain.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you only have one out of those three, you're probably not going to make it very long.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you can get three out of those three, you've hit the jackpot.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like my job here at the University of Montana,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: pretty darn close on all three of those variables.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful for that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So worked pretty hard to get to that point, had a lot of good fortune and so forth.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm in this phenomena where both my kids have summer jobs for the first time.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Those jobs do not have all three of those variables.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly the control over the time.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I put myself in a position to be able to be very agile in the summer.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: if we want to go on a trip or do something or whatever the case may be,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: like, let's go do it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden we're making contact with a phenomenon
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: that I should have seen coming, but never expected.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, I can't, dad, I have to work.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was the bane of my spring.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I want my oldest to get a job.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: The job has to be limited to the hours that don't interfere with my life.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just pay you a wage to be available when I need you available?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's not- This is
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: the window.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to start interfering with my plans.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So please find a job that only requires you- So
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I am grateful that both my kids have
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: the ability and the interest in getting a job and have been able to get jobs
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: and they're excited about them.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited about them,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: but they're putting some- Constraints on our operations in ways
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: that I didn't quite anticipate.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now that I'm in it, I'm like, oh yeah, you should have seen that coming, dummy.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the point of youth jobs is that they're not supposed to satisfy all three
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: of your criteria.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to help you figure out what those criteria are by forcing you
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: to go, oh, I don't like this.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like this.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like this.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the experience that When I think about why I want kids to work,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to go through those things so that when they get a little older,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: they have some like, oh, this is what I want.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Again, don't have to be your three, but they have to know what they want out of a job.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is their framework?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think a big part of figuring that out can only be achieved by going through
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: the opposite.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: You got to struggle some.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think another thing to keep in mind as parents is like, Things change really fast.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I might be lamenting this tension that exists,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: but in just a couple of short years, they're going to be gone out of the household.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll have this abundance of the freedom
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: that I think is being constrained now will be completely different.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I will miss the days where I had to navigate tensions like this.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, they're cramping your weekend plans.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it landed the ship on this parent trap with gratitude, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just grateful for it is how it is,
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, Bryce, as always, a lot of provocative thought in this one.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate listeners for sticking with us.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next month.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to A New Angle.
• 27:46
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• 27:48
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• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: A New Angle is recorded at Studio 49, a generous gift from UM alums Michelle and Lauren Hanson.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Our presenting sponsor is the Headwaters Foundation,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: working side-by-side with Western Montanans to improve the health
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: of our communities.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: We are also supported by First Security Bank and the University of Montana College
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: of Business, with additional help from CED, Drum Coffee, and Montana Public Radio.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Keely Larson is our producer.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: John Brownell, Jeff Ament, and John Wicks made our music.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next time.