Girls Crave Teen Dystopias Because They Don't Live in One: Suffering is a Privilege

In this enlightening episode, Simone shares insights from her grandmother's memoir, "Memoirs of a French War Bride," which recounts her experiences living in occupied Paris during World War II. Malcolm and Simone discuss the hardships endured by civilians during this time, from food shortages and air raids to the constant fear of informants. They explore how these experiences shaped the post-war generation, instilling a sense of purpose and resilience that seems to be lacking in modern society. The conversation delves into the allure of teen dystopias, the dangers of dwelling on trauma, and the importance of opting into hardship to build the mental fortitude needed to overcome adversity. Join them as they reflect on the lessons we can learn from our ancestors and the need to cultivate a strong sense of purpose in the face of contemporary challenges.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] I think there may be this deep, subtle craving in the generation that really got into teen dystopias because there's this desire to live this life of deprivation and desperation, but more importantly, striving to survive, because given that opportunity.

You do have motivation again. You do have a reason to believe and. I feel like there's this desire for that, When we think about everything that our ancestors went through and everything that they sacrificed to create a better world, because they did incrementally contribute to a better world, no matter how small it may have been, they did contribute.

How can we complain about what we

Malcolm Collins: have? like, if you're a cult and you're trying to break someone psychologically down, that's what you target for.

First is their pride in who they are to make them think that they're nothing so that then you can brainwash them. And it's a naturally evolved mechanism. It's not like this was maliciously chosen by the left, but just the leftist traditions that did this ended up recruiting more people than the ones that didn't.

And so now it's become the predominant strategy of the left within the [00:01:00] educational system within everything like that.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am very excited for this one. We did an episode called Kids Used to Like Their Parents. And it actually did fairly well. I strongly suggest people watch it. It is on a, a diary or autobiography I found of one of my ancestors.

And today we are going to be diving into the autobiography of one of Simone's ancestors and the things that it has taught us about our modern society. So Simone, take it away.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I my, my, I've read it before, but not since I was a teen. My grandmother wrote a book, an autobiography, or at least a portion, she read about a portion of her life in a book called memoirs of a French war bride, which had a limited publication release.

And Doesn't it's difficult to get, but it's actually quite interesting. Because what she does is recounts her experience as a late teens. So [00:02:00] we'll say 18 to early twenties living in occupied Paris during world war two. And it really. Has made me think differently about everything from teen dystopias to dating in a way that I quite like.

So I thought it might be fun to talk about. But the first thing that really did strike me was just how, how bad it was for, for people, even in just occupied areas of a nation. You know, this wasn't, this wasn't people You know, just dealing with a new regime suddenly coming in and being kind of mean it was people fleeing Paris in cars running out of gas and then driving along on roads that were constantly being bombed by planes.

So my grandmother. And her, her two parents and her aunt fled Paris in an attempt to not die. When the Nazis came [00:03:00] in, they didn't know what they were going to do. But nearly died quite a few times because Italians and Germans would bomb the roads, major roads leading out from Paris, even though this was civilian traffic which is insane.

I had no idea that that was happening. But imagine just trying to leave your city. And. Lying in ditches by the side of the road and having cars be bombed. At one point, a horse cart flipped over on top of her and she would have died. Had she not been in a depression under the road, they were machine gunning, civilians running into wheat fields from the road.

So I just had forgotten how, because we mostly read in high school about frontline experience where we look, we see movies about what soldiers were experiencing when fighting in the war. I don't think we realized what it was quite like for civilians.

Malcolm Collins: What I really like about this, what it reminds me, both writing my own ancestors accounts of the period right before this in history, and your ancestors accounts of this period in history, [00:04:00] is How history in the U.

S., like secular U. S. education, has become so focused on the sins of, basically the sins of the white man. Like that is what the history is these days. It's just over and over again that, and then some stuff tied to frontline battles but very little on the average lifestyle of the average white man.

Going through many of these events whether they were civilians or like, what was it actually like to just live as a normal person in the old west? Right? Like that's, that's what I was reading was in my family's account. Her family's account. What was it actually like to be a teenage civilian in. Paris during the

Simone Collins: occupation.

Yeah. Like what was it like to dance? What was it like to like, try to date?

Malcolm Collins: Dancing

Simone Collins: was a really, yeah. So in occupied France, you could not convene with, with two, more than two people on the street, basically. So any sort of social [00:05:00] gathering for college students, which is what she was throughout this period.

was completely out of the question, but that didn't stop anyone. So what they would do is pack themselves into a small Parisian apartment and dance with a record playing very softly and someone would wait at the door. And if anyone heard footsteps and they would all just immediately freeze, turn off the record and wait.

And of course all the windows are blacked out. All of the windows are closed. No one has air conditioning. It's, it's, it's, typically like dead of heat in the summer. So these people are sweating like pigs. I, I, I don't know why you would bother dancing at all, but they really, really wanted to. And they would sometimes when she spent some time in the countryside outside Paris, there would be barn dances that were similar.

Someone would be waiting outside and looking to see if any Germans were on patrol. So to think that people it's, it's funny now that like, people cannot be bothered to date at all. And yet here are these people in occupied Germany, risking their lives just so they could dance. No, we can't. Now we're [00:06:00] going in a totally different direction of Hikigomori.

You know, people are not leaving their apartments. The internet has changed a lot in that respect. But what I also read about dancing during this period as a. We'll say sexual signalings, sexual display and and social compatibility tool is way underrated. And I didn't quite think about that until this book, even after the war.

My, my grandmother ended up marrying. A lieutenant in the U. S. Air Force that she met while he was on a five day leave in Paris. And that is because the Red Cross would host these dances for soldiers and for local French women who spoke English just to kind of, I don't know, boost morale or something.

And she described because she would go to these mostly to smuggle home donuts because she was really h