Peak Trans: What Hyper-Individualism Is Doing to Us

Nathan (00:01)

Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.

Cameron (00:06)

and I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister. In this episode, we talk about the supposed fact that the peak trans movement is over. Is it? Because it seems to us that the underlying condition of hyper individualism is still around and that it's not going anywhere anytime soon, but that there are some very real, hopeful signs that we may be trying to move past it. Stick around. This will be helpful to you as you think through.

some of these pervasive habits of mind and life frankly that have shaped all of us. As always, like, share and subscribe. And if you want to support the work that we're doing and get behind us financially, you can do that by going to www.toltogether.com.

Nathan (00:08)

I think the best way to jump into this conversation is with a sentence, something like, I don't believe that peak trans is real. And the reason that I'm phrasing it in that way is that there has been a number of articles, news stories, podcasts, you know, the normal where people are chattering about things, statements of looking at a significant drop between 2022 and 2025 of the number of people who are identifying as non-binary. Some of that's been

Misconstrued to say that there's a drop in the rate of transgenderism or gender dysphoria That's not exactly what the study was measuring but in 2022 you had about 7 % I think of certain collegiate Populations saying that they were non-binary and that's now 4 % in 2025 So maybe almost a 50 % drop there some people are gonna say it's because we've kind of hit peak of that as an ideology Others are going to say well, no, we're now just living in a time in which people who are non-binary

are less confident to say those sorts of things out loud because they might feel like they're persecuted or punished in some way. ⁓ Or you'll have other people say, no, that the trans gender category has now swallowed up a lot of those who would previously have said they're non-binary, but now they've chosen a gender to live with as they've fully transitioned one way or the other. So all of that to say, ⁓ you can go Google around and find all sorts of interesting commentary on

that of, you know, that's why I use the word peak trans sort of is like, you know, is this a, is the gender politics, gender ideology, gender identity stuff fading away? And the reason that I'm saying no is because of this. And, and this is a distinction that needs to be made. And for those of you who've listened along for a while, it also makes it a distinction in the way that thinking out loud engages with not just culture, but what we're shooting for is understand deep culture as Christians and

Cameron (01:37)

Hmm

Nathan (02:03)

If you think for a second, Cameron, that we're looking at, let's talk about non-binary, transgender, gender dysphoria, pick your category, the very small sliver of a deeper cultural impulse, which is that I define reality and reality conforms to my wishes. ⁓ Years ago, was a joke or comic Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin tells his mom, I choose to reject your reality and insert my own. ⁓

You and it's kind of a chuckle line coming from Calvin, but there's a sense in which the reason that I don't see any rapid cultural changes here is because the I do it my way. do what I want. I am the individual. am the master of my own destiny. That is our cultural mantra. That's not liberal. It's not conservative. It's not left, right, up. That is the world that we live in is maximizing individual expression and defining

Cameron (02:34)

.

Nathan (03:02)

reality, creating our own meaning. All of that is alive and well. And so that's the deeper cultural issue that may be some forms of gender dysphoria or transgenderism or non-binary identification spring out of. But those are three categories of a much larger array of ideas and ideologies and practices that are alive and well in the hearts of every person, particularly in the West. And so I don't see a deep change happening in our cultural structures that make us think

Cameron (03:21)

Thank

Nathan (03:31)

you know what, maybe a ⁓ deeper connection to nature and culture and religion and a more collective understanding of letting the community define who I am. ⁓ I don't think we're trending in that direction anytime soon. So that's me. I've laid my cards on the table. I might be right, might be wrong, just throwing out that out there to take a part. But if we look at the deep cultural issues here, I don't see any big changes.

Cameron (03:49)

Thank

Yeah, if you look at some of our basic American stories so many of them center on somebody born into a community and the whole drama involves them breaking away from that community and defining who they are who they want to be you can do this with you know, this this works in Disney movies, of course usually you can even everything from a princess who had us, you know has expectations surrounding her who

doesn't want to conform to those standards and wants to do what she wants to do, no matter how culturally anachronistic. Yeah, there you go. Well said, Nathan. Another good cultural reference and another point for you on that one. It also works with Westerns. Although interestingly enough, this is a total sidebar, so I won't bring it in here, but Western is one of those categories that was once wildly popular and really isn't anymore. And that's really interesting. Not that you don't have the odd Western that comes out every now and then, but it's not.

Nathan (04:32)

You could just let it go.

Cameron (05:00)

It doesn't have the level of cultural dominance that it had as a genre at one point.

Nathan (05:04)

Louis Lamour and Zane Gray could

no longer sell thousands of Western novels, that what you're suggesting?

Cameron (05:12)

yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't think so. And I like Louis Lamour, by the way. But anyway, so this runs deep, it's not just our movies. mean, this goes to the heart of people who have been born in the world shaped by the enlightenment mindset. And the enlightenment mindset to a significant degree, know, obviously this is an overgeneralization. If somebody's an academic, they're going to say,

Nathan (05:18)

Cultural change.

Cameron (05:40)

Which enlightenment, Cameron? Well, let's just, I'm speaking in broad terms, not the radical enlightenment, right? The common sense enlightenment. We get it. You're very smart. Thank you. But just the idea that human beings are at the center of the universe, that we're rational men and women who shape our destiny. Blank slates, right. Now it doesn't matter if you wouldn't put this down on paper. This is

Nathan (05:58)

blank slates.

Cameron (06:09)

this is the default position for most of us. is what you just, if you don't think carefully through where you stand and work through where you stand, this is where you will drift into a position not unlike this. And so that type of rugged individualism, does it have a foothold in the church? Well, of course, of course it does. Absolutely it does. So,

Part of what you're saying, Nathan, this is where you and I are just, no matter what, we're going to be the killjoys. We're going to, we're always going to be the wet blankets. We're always going to. So somebody comes to us and says, good news. The trans movement is fading. It's over. It's reign of dominance is over. Thank God the nightmare is over. Well, in a sense, there's some truth to that maybe. And, but Nathan and I would probably say, yeah, but the deeper you're describing the trans thing is a symptom of a much deeper underlying condition.

Nathan (06:38)

Yeah.

Cameron (07:02)

And that underlying condition is a kind of hyper individualism that is so deeply internalized by all of us. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. It's been with us for a long time. We've been developing it. Now it has different weird mutations and different pathologies and weird outworkings and those express themselves differently and they can get increasingly radical at times. But that hyper individualism, it's not going anywhere.

All that to say, yes, Nathan, I'm with you. I think you're right. I didn't make anything better.

Nathan (07:37)

Well, this is our shortest episode

ever. We just came to an agreement on something. The, so can we say for a second here though, or like, are some of the ways in which I could be wrong? So let me argue against myself now. right. Turn. We've made our, I've made my position. Cameron has agreed with me. So I feel like, know, we're in fairly solid footing here, but are there cultural markers, Cameron of, so, so, so think of it like this.

Cameron (07:51)

Yeah, there you go. Be a character guard.

Nathan (08:06)

The thing of it is that hyper individualism always destroys culture because a culture is a way of life shared together or, you know, something generally in that, or this is the way things are done around here. It's a collective statement. And when you hyper individualize, you can't form a culture out of that. And so you can have networks, but you can't have cultures. You can have groups, but you can't have community. It's a lonely category to find ourselves in a hyper individualized world. Where do you see the...

Are there actual changes or pushbacks happening that people are maybe starting to want their... I'm going to have a hard time arguing against myself because I think we all have always had that longing for a more communal local thing, but at the same time, the efficiency and the freedom that comes from the individualistic alternative is always higher. So I don't know. Help.

Cameron (09:05)

Okay. think, yeah, I'll try, I'll try to help here. I think a phrase that from our Lord is really helpful here. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So I think a lot more people want that, Nathan. think a lot more, well, people are just intensely lonely. So two things, they're lonely and let's, let's, let me use we language. We're, we're lonely as a culture and we feel starved for real meaning, intrinsic meaning. And I think on an, on an instinctive and just common sense level.

there's wide recognition that the rugged individualism or the hyper individualism isn't enough and people are exhausted with it and we need others. We need community. mean, community is a buzzword right now, for heaven's sakes. Local movements, these are buzzwords too, but they're also indications that people want a deeper, a shared sense of meaning, a shared story.

A number of years ago, Andrew Delbanco, know, English professor at Columbia University brought out a really interesting book called The Real American Dream, A Meditation on Hope. And he's talking about this very thing. Now this came out in 1999. So my goodness, have things escalated since then? You know, think of that meme, well, that escalated quickly. Kind of, kind of, that would be the response to that book. He wrote it in three parts. It's a short book, Harvard University Press. I would recommend it by the way, guys.

I'm just, from now on, I'm done making apologies. I'm gonna unapologetically recommend books. And it has some big words in it and you'll be just fine. You should read it. It's short, it's great. But he has it in three movements, God, Nation, Self. And so he's looking, now he has a kind of a unique way of coming at culture. He argues for culture, a way of life lived in common, yes, but culture also for him is a unifying story that binds us together.

And so a coherent narrative that gives shape to our lives and makes sense of where we're at. We're in desperate need of that, by the way, right now. So the beginning chapter, yeah, go ahead.

Nathan (11:07)

Well, let me connect.

Well, I was going to say, a good example of this, and then don't forget where you're going there with the outlay, but, um, in Paul King's North book against the machine, you remember that story where he's in Indonesia and they're sitting around the campfire with all these people from different countries and somebody says, Hey, you know, sing a song from your village. And so, you know, you have the Indonesian's and the Germans that are all singing, you know, a folk traditional, like what's the song of your village? And they say it to

Cameron (11:18)

Now it's already gone, just kidding. Yeah.

Play an English song.

Yeah, it's great.

He played a Bob Dylan

song, right?

Nathan (11:37)

Yeah, like

all the English people looked at each other like we don't have a national like what song instead they all sing it, but he was saying that like, he wasn't saying that jokingly. He was like, that is messed up that we don't have a traditional song. Like that is a sign of a brokenness of community that we don't have a traditional song or that we couldn't even look at each other and come up with something like here's a song that we all know that, you know, symbolizes something of, of our

Cameron (12:01)

Now, you know what he could have done.

Nathan (12:05)

Amazing grace.

Cameron (12:05)

Yeah, he's right. His point is well taken. No, but you know, he could have played an English drinking pub song, but he didn't know one because the point is he was out of touch with his, because I mean, England and Ireland do have those songs, but, actually Bob Dylan's a fairly apt guy to, because Bob Dylan is a sort of troubadour drawing from a larger tradition, but your point is really well taken there. Yeah.

Nathan (12:15)

Right, exactly.

But the feeling

that he takes away from that is one of homelessness. So when you're talking about longing for a story or longing for a collective way in which we see ourselves fitting into a communal narrative or a history or a future,

Cameron (12:31)

Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Nathan (12:41)

Homeless is a good phrase, think. Culturally homeless.

Cameron (12:42)

Exactly. Homeless, nomadic.

absolutely. Well, so the first chapter, God provides that coherent binding story. He's not arguing that, remember, Andrew Delbanco is a, remember, you don't know who he is, he defines himself as a secular Jew, sympathetic to Christianity, he's a literature professor, so obviously Christianity nourished some of the texts he absolutely cherishes. But he says, he's not arguing that

America was a Christian nation, he's arguing that its Christian heritage played a major role in shaping the American imagination. That's hard to argue with. But then as that begins to lose coherence, what really begins to undermine that is the Civil War. I'm not going to make all of his arguments for him, but the Civil War was largely, was also in some ways a theological crisis. I'll recommend another book.

the Civil War as a theological crisis by Mark Knoll. Very good, worth reading. But that begins to undermine the authority of God's word. And so then nation begins to coalesce as the story that binds us together. And then, you know, it's America as this kind of sacred nation, this wonderful political experiment in freedom and liberty. And the key figure there is Abraham Lincoln. He becomes the sort of symbolic head

of that story. But then when that begins to break down, and again, just in case you're interested, he argues that it's another war, no surprise. The key war that undermines that is the Vietnam War, which was catastrophic for so many different reasons, but also culturally catastrophic and undermined trust in the government in a way that few things had until that point. then comes his final section, which is where we're at now, which is self.

Now the story gets narrowed, funneled all the way down to the level of the individual. And this is where we live now. We are all our own little authors. We are the authors of our lives or the captains of our ships. Pick your metaphor. And we define the world as we like it. And now we also have all this technology arrayed around us that helps us to customize our own vision of reality. So it's just digging us further and further in.

To your point, Nathan, the question that you asked me all the way at the beginning there, I think this whole experiment of self is getting, we're at a level of exhaustion with it because it's hollow. It's thin on meaning. We're not up to the task of creating our own meaning, like you said. And so people are suffering very seriously because of it. I do see some real hope here. I always see hope because I'm a Christian.

But I do think post COVID in particular, I COVID played a very remarkable role in bringing people to a level of spiritual introspection that they hadn't been at for a while, where they were asking some of those really hard questions. Why am I here? What's the point of all this? mean, how do we live well? I one of the key questions of our moment is, what does it mean to live well? Also, I want your opinion on this, Nathan, too. There's this AI hysteria on the one hand.

But it very much looks to me like people are not really drinking the Kool-Aid on AI. mean, there'll always be the tech bros who are out there singing its praises, you know, ushering on the singularity. most regular people I'm seeing are fed up with it and they're just not buying it. And they don't see it as this amazing salvation that it's being marketed as.

Nathan (16:24)

Well, so,

so, so one of my, ⁓ actually I went down this rabbit hole last night. ⁓ if you go look at a, so just, just type in YouTube, like, you know, popular AI songs, you know, the best part about an AI song on YouTube is the comment section. People are hilarious. mean, just, and so there's, there's almost like

Cameron (16:49)

I bet.

Nathan (16:51)

Value of which we've taken this thing. We've put on a pedestal and now that we put on this pedestal We can all mock it relentlessly And so I think there's a there's a whole lot if you just look at how much has changed in the AI world in the last three years And then you do that another three years. It's hard to say what will come out of that. But at this point, yeah, I think very much there We do find some common humanity by mocking the things that aren't As much fun as it is to watch, you know, Stephen Hawkins do a backflip in a wheelchair

You it's not really fundamentally changing our economy or our relationships. But that being said, this, this idea of the self and where I'm, I'm looking for glimmers of hope of, people having a more expansive view than just themselves. I, I, and I'm just thinking about this. If anybody knows of any research on this, please send us an email at info at tolgether.com. ⁓

I would love to see some sociological study on like the formation of clubs and groups and cliques within high schools right now. Cause cause I wonder how do you, there enough, has everybody truly atomized into their own individualistic perspective or is it a, are there still groups that form in meaningful ways of, you know, when we were in high school, you could have had the golfs and the rednecks and the emos and the band kids and the soccer, like there was a

You kind of found your tribe and I don't know if tribes are formed in the same way socially. ⁓ but I can sense, even though like my oldest, ⁓ child is soon to be 13, I can sense in her a longing to be part of a culture. Like there, there is something in us that wants to be part of something bigger, ⁓ to have a group and she's not finding that through the school, which I'm fine with, but, ⁓

There does seem to be an innate human desire in there to... like we were crafted to live in a meaning that's bigger than the one we construct.

Cameron (18:55)

I remember feeling that so deeply because when I was 14, we uprooted and 14 is not a great age anyway. Then we moved from Austria to the United States to the Bible Belt South. I went from a school of 126 kids, grades one through 12, to a high school of nearly 4,000 kids. I remember just

It was a driving question at first for me. Where are my people? Who are my people? What am I supposed to be? That was a big one. mean, who am I? Now, in some ways, that's also just a teenager's question. Who am I? Who do I want to be?

Nathan (19:34)

Yeah, well, let me push it.

Yeah, but is it? I mean, it is a teenager question, but is it only a teenager question? That's what I think is more interesting. And I think it's not.

Cameron (19:44)

Well,

now it's our culture's question. Yes. And it's a picture of a state of a culture in confusion. But yeah, I also remember another very interesting incident. And at the time I was confused by the strong response from my father. Now, all these years later, I get it. 9-11 had just happened. You know, one of the defining events of our childhoods, certainly, right?

Nathan (19:47)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (20:14)

And it changed the world. remember in the, in, in the days after 9 11. So two big things that happened in my childhood that I remember very vividly. One was Columbine. I, we had just moved to America and then the other was 9 11. So in the wake, in the wake of, of 9 11, my dad says, said something to the effect of if I were a young man, no, he said, no, this was much more confrontational. He said, if I your age pointing at me, I think I'd enlist.

Well, I wasn't, it couldn't have been my age because I was too young, but if I were, you know, if I were young, then I think I had list. There are some things worth dying for and instinctively instantly without even a thought. said, I, I, I wouldn't. And he, he was, he was quite angry and there was this huge, but I, couldn't articulate it at the time, but there was a chasm fixed between the two of us. And what that chasm was was was a radical form of individualism.

that I had imbibed by osmosis as a young guy growing up in America. Because to me, the notion that I would enlist in any cause that would jeopardize my life for any cause was just unimaginable to me at the time. And that's a sign of where we were at as a culture. I couldn't imagine, now I wanted to be a part of a group, but the notion that I would give my life

Nathan (21:34)

Mm-hmm.

Cameron (21:43)

for some grand cause was inconceivable to me. that's exactly, and that's a picture of how, just how far we'd come. Think about my dad growing up in post-war Britain, you know, in Scotland. He was shaped by visions of the Second World War. You know, the films that he loved, like the guns of the Navarone, the Battle of Britain. And his, parents' generations, his dad had been a navigator in the Second World War.

Nathan (21:46)

You ended up being part of the group on your terms.

Well, in his parents' generations, yeah.

Cameron (22:13)

you know, that was a, but that was something that was completely foreign to me. It wasn't part of my imaginative landscape. And frankly, I was just, you know, bratty, selfish, typical American teenager. So now, I mean, of course, from the standpoint of where I am now, I can look back on that. Now I have, I have, I have some reservations about warfare that are, that I've come to in recent.

you know, in years as I've grown and, you know, developed theologically. But I can look back on that and I can see there's that gulf fixed between us and I can feel that hyperindividualism. So I've known it from the inside out. I fight a battle against that in my own life all the time. It's a present tense battle for me, Nathan. So that's why I'm sympathetic here because I could

This is so deeply ingrained in our culture. And that's also why I'm at pain sometimes when something like the trans movement comes up or whatever it is. I wanna say as Christians, need to take our share of ownership here as well, not to self-flagellate or to virtue signal, but to recognize that this hyper individualism that so defines our culture, that we are a part of it in our own ways as well.

Nathan (23:36)

And the beauty of the, or the proposed beauty of it is if you don't like it, you can change. So if you don't like this podcast, you can go listen another one. If you don't like your church, you can go to a different one. If you don't like your spouse, you can get a different one. If you don't like your job, you can get a different one. If you don't like the radio station, turn to another one. If you don't like that brand of pickles, get another one. If you don't like that brand of car tires, get, I mean.

Cameron (23:57)

And then we're surprised

that we're lonely. Yeah. But yes. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a recipe for chronic loneliness that you just outlined there, but it's also the consumer approach to culture. Yeah.

Nathan (24:00)

Yeah.

Yeah, but I know we're agreeing, but I'm trying to say, do we not, how do we not sit here

and wallow in a puddle of like, well, yeah, this is just the way it is. Like we're all kind of doomed to be lonely because we're the only ones who are right in our own little worlds. There has to be a.

Cameron (24:23)

Because human beings, ⁓ well, like you just said, Nathan, because human beings can change. We are transformable and that is the wonder of, of human life. And yeah.

Nathan (24:34)

⁓ but we're transformable into

an external standard.

Cameron (24:39)

For better

or for worse.

We can transform, we can also mutate. So for better or for worse, we're spiritual creatures, but we can change. And again, for better or for worse. So this is why it's so important. We always hammer on about the fact that you need to go to church, but you do not just because it's a biblical command, but also because we need to have our hearts

set right and we need to be able to see the world clearly. And we can't see the world clearly.

Nathan (25:17)

You need to be committed to people who inconvenience

you.

Cameron (25:21)

That's it. We can't see the world clearly unless we are banding together with fellow believers who inconvenience you, yes, and who are invasive and also, you know, worshiping the Lord together in spirit and in truth and sharpening one another as iron sharpens iron, all those biblical metaphors. But we need it to see things clearly. Otherwise, there is a kind of, there's a sense that, oh, this is just our fate. This is our destiny. There's no escape.

You know, we can't get away from this. It's so pervasive. The answer is it is so pervasive and you can't do it on your own. That's true. But with God's help, his word and his people, you can. You really can.

Nathan (26:06)

So that seems to me to be the glimmer that I do see in this is I think there I mean markedly is an increase in interest in in church. Now some of that is political, you know, political revolution interest, but I think a lot of it is spiritual hunger and desire to say ⁓ I'm ready to participate in something in a vision that's bigger than one that I can generate. And so I I don't want to sound too pessimistic because I do anecdotally see these shifts and changes. ⁓

But the point of this podcast is to point out that some of the things that we see happening, whether it be to your political right or left or up or down or sideways or good or bad, sometimes these aren't changes. They're just different forms of the same manifestation of a hyper individualistic way of trying to cast reality in our own image. so celebrate and rebel against that. But at the same time, don't overly narrowly select and say, well, these forms

of self-definition are out of bounds, but these forms of self-definition are okay. Well, if self-definition in and of itself has some inherent theological, like let's deal with it at the root of it, maybe not always at the symptom of it. And that's not to say that you can't critique and make suggestions about symptoms and manifestations, what's helpful and what's not. I'm not saying all of that. I'm just saying every time I, maybe this is the best summary of my feeling on this Cameron is I like to tell people, since my middle name is David, I have the conflicting prophet and king all in one name.

Nathan and David right, you know the story of how they go together But so there's that sense in which anytime that I see something somewhere else I'm about to point that out or morally condemn it I get this little you know smack in the back of my head and says out of Hayesh you you're that man You do this you do the so David's about to critique somebody for doing the exact same thing that he did in the prophet Nathan points it out to him and so let's have the ⁓ Integrity and ask the Lord for conviction in our own lives of when we see something that is other than what we would

desire to see in the life of somebody else or in culture to remove the plank from our own eye first and to say, what are the ways in which I'm participating in a vision of hyper individualism while I'm critiquing that vision of our version of hyper individualism and let the Lord work on us first. And it doesn't say, don't get the speck out of your neighbor's eye. It just says, get the plank out of yours first. And so it is not a call to quietism or to sit back and do nothing and not make any moral judgments or, you know, suggestions that are helpful, but it's to say,

shred carefully lest you too fall because we are all porous in the boundaries that we set and ⁓ it's permeable and we're likely to I think Cameron gave a beautiful testimony there of like hey I swallowed all of this by osmosis because if you're not thinking about it this is the default position so for my part Cameron this is more of a challenge and a reminder to myself and a reflection that hopefully is stimulating and serves as a bit of a ⁓ prebiotic

to other people listening to this podcast who might be tempted to wonder in the ways in which we have in the past.

Cameron (29:12)

Well, thanks for thinking along with us on this topic of the one. mean, one of the things we try to do here is we try to the, to the best of our abilities, look at underlying conditions rather than symptoms. And we've tried to model that in this podcast by focusing on the hyper individualism that is so pervasive. And we hope it's been helpful to you. Thanks as always for listening in. And in case you missed it somehow in all of this, you are listening to thinking out loud.

podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.