Independent author, filmmaker and right-wing provocateur Lauren Southern was notably absent from the public eye this past year.
On June 19, however, Southern put her unexplained career hiatus to an end with a YouTube video revealing the deeply personal grounds for her departure as well as her current intentions to continue parting ways with a firebrand public image, instead pursuing “meaningful, sane” political conversation through long-form documentary production.
In the closing minutes of an hour-long interview with The Western Journal on that surprise return, Southern expounded on the ways in which faith and family had refocused her perspective on the virtue of selflessness.
“I don’t believe true happiness can exist in this world — or true joy — without a sense of selflessness,” the filmmaker said. “There is nothing that has made me more happy than serving my son and being good to him and raising him and my family.”
“I do not believe you can find happiness in selfishness and I don’t think you can find happiness outside of community or outside of other people. You think of a world where you have all of the cars and mansions and fancy sound speakers, all the alcohol you want. And if you’re alone in that house with all your fancy cars and there’s no one to see them or observe them or live it and experience it with you, you will be a miserable human being,” she added.
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“And if you do everything for yourself, I don’t think you’ll be happy either.”
This was not the same Lauren Southern known in media spheres for controversial political stunts, “Allah is Gay” flyers and incendiary sloganeering on-scene at radical-left demonstrations and rallies.
In her year away, the filmmaker had been met with a series of seismic shifts to her personal life — fresh nuptials and the birth of a baby boy chief among them.
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The experiences seemed to have softened Southern, who grew teary-eyed when discussing the impact motherhood was having on her personality and worldview.
Even before her June 19 return to the political landscape, however, Southern had signaled dramatic life changes, breaking her social media silence for a brief moment on Jan. 29, writing on a then-private Instagram account that she had not only started a family but had also rediscovered her Christian faith.
“Humans, we need something greater than ourselves to aspire to and believe in. Because if we are our own gods, we will forever disappoint,” Southern told The Western Journal, later disputing modern notions that atheist intellectuals can live their lives by science and logic alone.
“We all have our religions and our belief systems,” the filmmaker said. “And I think belief systems that aren’t based on something greater than yourselves are always doomed to fail no matter what.”
“They will always disappoint. Man will always disappoint. It’s why they’ve got the quote, ‘Never meet your heroes.’ I used to make heroes out of men, and then I met a lot of my heroes and was shockingly disappointed. And I think a lot of people probably had the same experience with me. If you made me a hero in your life, you’ve probably been shockingly disappointed by me because I am just a human being. I have flaws and I fail at things,” she added.
“So far, I have yet to be disappointed by God. I’ve yet to have him fail me.”
Southern went on to point out that the modern culture’s elevation of science, politics and academia has on many occasions risen to the point of deification, resulting in a dangerously amoral and unquestioning faith in those institutions.
“The problem with science is it can tell us how to do these phenomenal things,” Southern said. “It can tell us how to cure disease. It can tell us how to build skyscrapers. It can tell us how to go to space. But it doesn’t tell us whether we should do them or not. It is a god that doesn’t issue down any edicts of what to do with the powers we have.”
“We aren’t given any system of morality by a god of science or technology. We are simply told we can do these things,” she added.
“And when man has no reason to not do evil, I don’t see why he wouldn’t, when evil can bring you such great wealth and such great power.”
To see more from Lauren Southern’s interview with The Western Journal, click here.
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