Religion is a Mental Illness

Eric Kaufmann: You know, women are more likely, in general, to back whatever is the hegemonic community norm. When it was religion, they were more conservative. And they were. I mean, freshman undergrads in 1970, the females were more conservative than the men by a little bit.

But since 2004, it started moving the other way, and now it's, there's quite a big gap and women are a lot more to the left. And I think they're just reflecting the dominant messages that they're getting in institutional settings. Whereas the boys are a bit more rebellious and have always been more contrarian in a way, rebellious, and I think they're getting more from the internet that's countering what they're receiving in school, university, corporations, so on.

Mike Nayna: If you follow that line of thinking, the purple-haired woke woman is the Bible-basher of the 50s in some sense.

Kaufmann: Yeah, like, an extreme version of the communal values. Like, it's almost like if you're in a Muslim society or a Christian society, the religious fundamentalist exemplifies communal values. Everyone's a pious Muslim, they're a fundamentalist. It's tough to argue against them, but they're exemplifying the values of the system. And I'd say probably, that's what these blue-haired people are doing. And they're just exemplifying the values that everyone should have in the system.

Nayna: I think in the first-person experience is, they are countercultural in some ways.

Kaufmann: They think they're countercultural.

Nayna: They think they're countercultural, and it's a really weird paradoxical thing.

Kaufmann: But this whole thing, you know, it requires a sort of artificial reality. Like, it's always 1933 with Hitler about to rise to power, or we're always back in 1950s Alabama, you know. Or one step away from slipping back into it.

So, by sort of ginning up this artificial atmosphere of white supremacy or misogyny or whatever it is, against that backdrop and that sort of fabricated and invented, sort of establishment, you're a rebel, right?

But the reality is of course, yes, you know, this is just a matter of providing a backstory for what is effectively an elite actor in a way. Or a representative of an elite value system.