Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this episode, we are joined by Spoon, the YouTube personality known for his monarchist leanings. We dive into topics like the relevance of democracy today and possible alternatives. Spoon discusses his journey into politics, influenced by changing cultural and political landscapes, and how he arrived at his unconventional views. We also explore the dynamics between left and right-wing ideologies, the role of church and state, and the challenges of modern governance. This engaging dialogue bridges historical perspectives with contemporary issues, making for a thought-provoking session.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. We're so excited today to be joined by a very special guest, spoon, the aristocratic utensil on YouTube as well as on X. Although your handle on X is at Aris.

Malcolm Collins: And what I wanted to talk about today was voting ooh and democracy and is it relevant anymore? And where would, how could you construct better systems? And I thought that you'd be a great person to have on with this, especially talking with us because I know that you had like monarchist leanings, people have called our political beliefs.

Plu Tists. I'm interested to hear more from you.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Hmm.

Oh, basically, how did I get to my views?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, did you, were, did you grow up? Why do you think it's better? Why you think it's, you know, a, a good structure, what a perfect country would look like?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Hmm.

Okay. So it's kind of weird how I even got into politics in general because if I, if I were to look at like my 6-year-old self and my 30 5-year-old self and go, you are gonna be on YouTube one day talking about [00:01:00] politics, I would go, okay, what, what the hell happened in my life that made me take an interest in politics, let alone monarchy?

How, how did I get to that? That's just bizarre. I don't how and it was ba it was basically because a friend of mine several years ago this was like back in early 2010s, I wanna say. Hmm. Before Bernie Saunas really hit the scene, but she was also a Bernie fan. The, this, this is show you how long the culture has shifted for, and just a very short amount of time actually is that she was a.

Californian girl who was let's just say she was built in a very feminine way. She's from California, but lefty perspectives, but she control like, an absolute a*****e right? Winger, which by today's standards makes no sense, an extremely lefty person, but they, but they spit right? Rightwing insults.

Yes. Like she would drop slurs in a way that would get you banned on Twitter within 30 seconds which is not a human being that exists today. Standard. And she got me into [00:02:00] Bernie Sa as, as as a political figure. And then right about the time he said a couple of things that made me as a South African go, that's just factually not true.

Hmm. He said,

white people don't know what it's like to be poor. And I went mathematically, that doesn't even add up. That's just, that is not true. And the way he spoke about certain. Racial policies made me go. Okay. Were you,

Malcolm Collins: were you a a like Bernie supporter at this point? Like you liked him as a political candidate?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, I think, okay, so I said this in one of my streams and I think this is what makes you go further left leaning and what makes you right wing.

Mm-hmm. Is that from the, the old liberal perspective, I do think it is based upon a lot of people can look at the system and go, there is a lot of corruption. There is a lot of unnecessary government control in places they shouldn't be. And they sort of just look at the, the current paradigm and go, [00:03:00] this is not a moral system.

And the problem is they look at this situation and go, there should be state intervention. What they're really looking for is morality in the state.

Hmm.

Whereas if you are a right winger, you'll recognize this doesn't work.

Right. And

so you'll, you'll tend to go from more libertarian perspective, which is just these institutions are beyond repair because they incentivize a certain behavior that you cannot generate just through powering through the institutions.

You have to structure them in a way that actually make the. Political class want to benefit the citizenry and the way that they want the system to work just does not gel with human nature.

Hmm.

And when you go from that perspective, you can go, okay, now you have to shift libertarian or go completely insane and advocate from monarchy in the 21st century.

That's more the route that I took, whereas the opposite end of leftism, they are just moed motivated [00:04:00] purely by envy. It's just that I cannot compete in this system, and so I must smash it to b***h in the hopes that whatever comes next will appeal to me. And I've seen the people who go for that, and I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's not a brain cell in those people.

Like really, they are completely driven by this fantasy idea of an idealized bureaucracy. It's kind of weird. They, yeah. This is the way I'm describing these people is whatever I wish to see in a king. They wish to see an entire bureaucracy that abides by their morality.

Simone Collins: That's a great way of putting it.

Yeah, because what, what I feel differently about what you were saying is you were saying that like the sort of the leftist leaning is smash what exists and then rebuild it. Whereas I think that was how it was for a while and then it turned to just have the government fix it. Like fix the, yeah, because they're Taiwan.

Fix the, yeah, fix the market failure. And then this assumption that the entire government can suddenly. Oh, trust

The Aristocratic Utensil: me. Do that on a whim. Yes. I,

Malcolm Collins: I really like [00:05:00] a point you made here and I'd elevate it as I think that this is distinctly part of what makes the new Right. Quite different from the old, right, which is the new right.

Isn't particularly sold around one government ideology. It's more just that they actually want to fix things and they have multiple hypotheses about how that can be done. And there is like active debate and active attempts to implement this. We even see with like Elon and Trump's government right now or JD Vance you know, talking about like economic issues that would typically be outside the normal, right.

Whereas the left just wants to not have to worry about money and that can be achieved through printing money or taking money.

The Aristocratic Utensil: They're basically materialists. I would say the biggest problem that the right has, and this is gonna sound a bit strange, but there is an aspect that the left, this makes no sense if I say it out loud, so I have to explain this, unpack this a bit, is the left understands humanity and the right does not.[00:06:00]

Which I'm aware that Yes. Here's what I mean by that. The the Harry on the Lotus, he has pointed this out as well, 'cause him and I were having a conversation about this is that the way that the, the left operates is they claim the champion egalitarianism and equality equal rights and all this stuff, but the way they behave when power is militantly hierarchical,

Malcolm Collins: yes,

The Aristocratic Utensil: there's control from the top and anything down below, there's no dissent.

It's one man follow, like a general in an, in an army. It's why they make such powerful roads because they actually abide by how humans actually function. The problem with it is the ideas they implement don't work 'cause they don't abide by human nature. What the right doesn't recognize is this is how your opposition plays the game, is they will make you abide by their rules and they just hack the system because they know that as long as you play by those rules, you will lose and they can do whatever the hell they want.

That's something that the right needs to learn is that if you wish to get in [00:07:00] power, is that your opposition just gets power and imposes their will. What you have to do is getting power and force your worldview down their throat. This is the same way they do to You don't this, this thing, this, this is an idea of No, no, no.

Ideas must be challenged and ideas must be debate and like yet that's a nice ideal if everyone is playing the same game.

Yeah.

However, if you're not playing the same game, then it's, I have the biggest stick and I'm gonna beat the crap outta you with it. And people think this is oppressive, but this is how the world works.

Malcolm Collins: Structurally, how do you do that? Like if you were giving advice, I mean, I feel like right now when I look at what the Trump administration is doing this cycle, I'm like, wow, like this is exactly what I've always wanted to see a president do. Like would you be telling them to do something different or do you think they finally like figured it out?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I think if you were to just get, okay. I would think America's biggest problem is separation of church and state is, I don't think, I don't think that is a good idea. I think [00:08:00] any sane civilization. The church and state must be wielded if it's gonna survive

Malcolm Collins: because, oh, here's an area where I would disagree really strongly.

I think combining the church and the state always ends up watering down the church was more progressive or secular ideals, as we've seen happen to the church in the uk.

Simone Collins: Well, but we also have that America, we're moving in in more spoons direction because the domestic policy in America, Haley is part of broader, broader efforts to reshape domestic policy, including the establishment of the White House faith office.

Which was established via executive order on February 7th, and it aims to pretty badass into faith based perspectives.

Malcolm Collins: That is pretty badass. Yes. No, but hold on, hold on, hold on. Because I actually believe this very strongly. I think that in the US and in the uk, some churches have liberalized, but within the uk, like the church that always ends up liberalizing, one of the most is whenever you have, at least to my knowledge, pretty much in every country where you have a church and state integration and that church and state integration is a Christian one rather [00:09:00] than a Muslim one.

The state ends up corrupting the church and making it very progressive. So if we had a state-based version of Christianity in the US, it would be one of the most progressive versions. I was just watching a great video with the dean. It would be

Simone Collins: Univers, Unitarian Universalist. Yeah. Yeah. And he

Malcolm Collins: was the oldest churches in the us are always the most progressive, and the newer churches are always the more conservative.

What are your thought thoughts on that?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I wonder if that's more an American phenomenon.

Hmm.

Ooh. Because I don't, I think that scales depending on the culture around them. The reason I say this is because I actually think it's, it's about the competing sex of Christianity. Because the reason I say this is because I've had conversations with American Protestants and the Protestants back home, and what I find interesting is that South Africa's Christian sect comes from like the French Huguenots that were trying to escape Catholic persecution in France, and you have Germans and you've got Dutch Mix, and there's no other competing sect of [00:10:00] Christianity.

It's just Protestants. Mm-hmm. So there's no like Russian Orthodox or, I mean there is now, I suppose, but there's no, there's no like mixture of competing ideologies. And so there's just the one, and I get the feeling that if it's just like this one that everyone relies on, then okay. Yeah. It is more, I suppose it is easier to change the culture if you happen to permeate the.

The church and change it from the inside, but it is also more protective because everyone knows like, yeah, this is the only entrance you can go. The change is through this one institution, like there's no other entrances. So I'm wondering if the competition of many also makes it easier to spread the ideology in ways, like what you just said is like age is a variation that you just brought up.

I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just wondering if if that might be. Yeah, we, we actually

Malcolm Collins: have talked about this a lot on the show because it's something that we study to try to understand how to like, keep cultures protected. And a really common phenomenon you see across religions is if a religion is connected to the state, like if, or, or even the majority of the population, like if a Catholic majority population in a [00:11:00] country the Catholics in that country will be very, very loosey goosey Catholics.

But if they are a minority, particularly a oppressed minority, then they will be much more conservative and rigid in following their beliefs. And I can understand why that would be the case.

The Aristocratic Utensil: That's probably why. It's because if they're, if they're a minority, they feel threatened. If they feel threatened, they will take whatever is closest as a defensive mechanism and bolster it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: And once, once something becomes more mainstream, it becomes more watered down. I.

Malcolm Collins: That is a question I had for you based on what you were saying earlier. Is aligning government worker incentives with sort of like, like what is good for the people? I've written extensively on this particular subject because I think it's really interesting.

The way that, like I wrote is probably the best you could do that is to separate the different incentives that you would want for a state and then build voting patterns based on each of those incentives. IE like the amount that you're paying in taxes determines [00:12:00] your vote within one branch of the government.

How many kids you have determines your vote within another branch of the government. I'm wondering how you look to do this within a monarchist system, or was it any sort of a system that, that you would think of? Like how do you align the government bureaucrat's incentive with the people?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I quite like what you just pitched there, like, almost like a scoring based system for your sway in power.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of cool actually. But my, my only problem, so, okay. I can

Malcolm Collins: explain how my government system works. No, no, no. I wanna hear

Simone Collins: his only problem with that comment. Okay.

The Aristocratic Utensil: My, my, my only problem that I have with, with democracy in general, and I was reading a, a short stint by a book by James, I think it was James Brennan the case against, or like Against Democracy.

And one of the other things that, that he points out with is that there is an idea of democracy in a sort of idealistic way, is that if you give people information, they will vote in a certain direction that is more in line with their interests. That makes sense on paper. The problem is you can have the [00:13:00] smartest people in the world, but if everyone you vote for is a corrupt a*****e, the geniuses of your population goes nowhere.

I actually asked this on Twitter. I said, if you could have a smart population or moral politicians, what would you have? Like 90% said moral politicians. Like the intelligence of the population did not matter because they said those who are in the state are the ones who make the policy, and those are the people that matter.

The voice of the people in the grand scheme of things does not matter if everyone that you can vote for is a prick, which is like, oh God. Yeah. Like I, I was, I was listening to some of the people that are like outspoken democrats today. Yeah. And I said to a friend of mine, did you realize the most rational Democrat right now is probably John Fetterman?

Malcolm Collins: Honestly, the best. Yeah. I, I like John Fetterman. He's, he's, he's local to us, and I'm like, if John Fetterman won and then ran in the next election cycle for president, I think he'd be a really hard person to beat.

Simone Collins: Yep.

The Aristocratic Utensil: That's the guy with like a literal brain injury is the most functional one. That it's like an SNL skit.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, [00:14:00] no, no, no. We've been on SNL skit mode since 2016. This has been great. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: It's, yeah. It also kinda makes me embarrassed when I just look at human civilization. I sort of look at this and go find what

Simone Collins: we, the interesting timeline. Don't you wanna be in the interesting timeline?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I'd rather be in a functional timeline.

Simone Collins: Lame. I disagree. I'm,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I'm very boring. I'm a guy. This is where I may

Malcolm Collins: disagree the most with you because I love people. I, I was on, I don't know, one, some show on, on, on, I Dunno, Fox or something. And they were like, oh, aren't you tired of being the rebellion? And I was like, no, no. Being the rebellion's the best, this is awesome.

I am fighting a big, bad evil. I have my, my collection of, of Rudy Tootie. Like in fact, in fact, I almost think if we won and we began consolidating power I may feel an instinct to switch sides because I feel like, am I just like a voice of the state now?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That, that is a, a, a way to view it. [00:15:00] But I would say.

There's a certain kind of monotonous thing about it is that you're just constantly cheering for your side. And I, I do understand the aspect of it. It is more fun to be the rebel that punches, whereas there's a certain element of, how can I say this? Like aristocratic haughtiness of just like, oh, we're in power now and we get, dictate what we want.

Maha ha ha. And you come across like an evil villain. But then I also look at my opposition and go, when you are in power, this is what you did to me. I'm going to enjoy crushing your soul for the next four years.

I mean, and I'll

be very villainous about it because I have the accent for it. So, haha.

Simone Collins: I, I,

Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, if you got it,

Simone Collins: flaunt,

Malcolm Collins: I worry as well.

I mean, I see this instinct on part of the Right, right. But they haven't been successful in influencing the, the, at least the Trump administration and the position of power right now. And I think that this is enormously good. If you look at where the Trump administration is actually counting its wind right now.

And Trump is even said this in some of his speeches. He focuses only on 90 10 issues. [00:16:00] And I think, yeah, that this is really smart because we don't want to have happened to us. What happened to the wokes in the culture war, which is we let our version of like trans activists that are pushing things that like wouldn't even win was in our own party as our mainstream message and then get the general public to hate us.

And I think Trump has been, while he has been like absolutely brutal on the stuff that every American agrees on, like Doge and USAID and everything like that, and the trans people in sports, he hasn't pushed over the line. And there was actually an issue, Simone, where you wanted him to push over the line and then you were like, oh, I actually appreciate, what was the issue?

I can't remember. You are like, why won't he go over on this? Oh,

Simone Collins: no. Daylight savings. Yeah, sorry. Daylight

Malcolm Collins: savings. Yeah. You wanted him to abolish daylight savings. Yeah. I guess most rationally people do an issue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He, he points out that this a

The Aristocratic Utensil: surprisingly popular issue to abolish daylight savings. And I don't, is there a particular reason why I'm, I'm, I've just seen a lot of people do it.

I go, why is this like an issue saving? 'cause

Simone Collins: an hour is [00:17:00] stolen from your weekend once every year. It is the worst holiday of the year

Malcolm Collins: weekend. But Simone, you, you, the specific argument you laid out for me is specifically,

Simone Collins: so it has been scientifically shown that on Daylight Savings Day because of the schedule change, 'cause not everyone is on board in that organized there is a spike in hospitalizations and heart attacks and, and I think strokes as well.

Because of the stress associated with the time change. Now, I would argue that simplifying the tax code with the IRS would probably save a lot more lives because I think that causes way more stress than like a, like a time change being, oh, I'm late for work. But it's still. A fairly la

The Aristocratic Utensil: I I had a horrible Don joke now where that went because like, no, tell the joke.

That's our audience

Malcolm Collins: right here.

The Aristocratic Utensil: That's like the difference between the male and female. My, my interaction was, my God, if daylight savings time causes you hot takes, maybe you're supposed to die calls the week. Yes. We can just call it

Simone Collins: gentle purge day. Happy gentle purge day.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

Simone Collins: God. Oh [00:18:00]

The Aristocratic Utensil: God. Well it not that your death coming.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Yeah. We talk about this on this channel a lot as like the prenatal list people, people are like, oh, you must want these selfish dink couples having more kids. And I'm like, no. Like it is great that they're being removed from the gene pool. Nature is healing.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I, I tend to have a more, higher genetic variation in the population, primarily because I've seen what bad genes do to people, and I've seen how people with shitty genes behave like this. Something that I like about the right wing is it is becoming much more aggressive with the physionomy checking.

Simone Collins: Oh God,

The Aristocratic Utensil: it's fantastic.

Yeah, it's, it's great because I think, yeah, I think

Simone Collins: aporia just released a, a long essay on like, is physio gonna be real like this? It's become so trend. What on earth is the

The Aristocratic Utensil: obvious answer? Like this? There's certain people I can just look at and go like, you're just evil. I can just tell like my soul is looking like, oh no.

So b****y resting face is

Malcolm Collins: just, you're a b***h face. I.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I can't really say much 'cause I myself look quite evil. [00:19:00] Oh no. Yes. I mean, you're

Malcolm Collins: very clever in, in putting. Yeah, no, it's actually something that we noticed when we were in San Francisco last and we were looking at like old protest marches and stuff like that, and we're like, oh my God, these people actually, we see this.

So there's like

The Aristocratic Utensil: humans in the sixties, they

Malcolm Collins: look

Simone Collins: like mutants. They, they, the one at the, at the protests did not look like humans. And, and yeah, when you normally, when you look at pictures in the sixties, you're like, wow, this is before everyone got overweight. They, they look like the background from like Rocky

Malcolm Collins: Horror

Simone Collins: Picture Show.

They look like that cast. Yeah,

The Aristocratic Utensil: they do.

Simone Collins: It was notable. Yeah. You can see this, if you go to the Harvey Milk terminal at SFO they're big, like wall sized pictures and it's just notable. Yeah, I

The Aristocratic Utensil: have seen some pictures of like, the rainbow hippie matches and like. Okay. God, if you want to flood the world again with these people, I would not be opposed.

Just give me a floating route. It'll be good.

Simone Collins: Alternate theory. It could just be the intense amount of drugs they were all on. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: no. Simone, that's true. Was it a discount bin? [00:20:00] Discount bin Love? No, wait. Where I really saw this loudly was we go to this conference where like the, I dunno if you've heard of like the effective altruist movement, but like our branch of it, the right wing branch of it ends up mixing with the other branch and the right wing branch.

It's a group that I generally call like the bio bros and everything like that. And every single one of them looks like a fraternity guy. Like, that's, I don't know if you've seen like Johnny Anomaly or like, Matt Archer who runs seia or we saw REU in, in person from from X and he looks exactly like a character from like Animal House.

Like, and it's, and and then the other side all actually looks like mutants.

Simone Collins: Well, or as, as, the jelly heretic calls them spite. What? Spiteful mutants.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, yes. I should get an interview with him. Actually, he messaged me a while ago.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. If you want us to like warm intro you or something, just, just let us know.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Because I, I, I, I do find him interesting and I feel like he can draw out like my spiciest behavior and I can probably say some real s**t with him. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't want the topic to discuss with [00:21:00] him.

Malcolm Collins: Come up with anything. He's more spicy than us, I'll tell you that. Like he is,

The Aristocratic Utensil: yes, yes.

I've, I, I've, I've I have some friends who've met him and he is like, he is really, really based, like I can deal with that. I can, I can say I have some horribly spicy opinions that I'm he is the dude, dude that

Malcolm Collins: he's, I wanna say I'm, I'm and he was, was filming a documentary at our house and he actually offered, he's like, I'm gonna cut out some of what you guys said because it was too spicy.

And I was like, what did I say that was so spicy? And then I realized what it was. I went on a rant against the German people and Oh, I'm glad they're going extinct.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, okay. Yeah, I, I would, I would take the opposite position. Probably 'cause I have some German a and I'm like, I do too. I do too. But I mean,

Simone Collins: look at Germany right now.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, I, I kind of want their, their current elite class and return to the Kaiser because that, that to me was just where it all went really, really wrong. Like even the Kaiser said application was not a good idea. It did not produce what I wanted. And that, that's, that's a whole thing I kind of want tell to people.

Just be very careful [00:22:00] about who you wish to get rid of, because I can guarantee you the person that you wish to prop up is not the cure that you think it is. Yeah.

Yeah. You just see the

currentness is evil and everyone that you like is, is good, and everyone that you hate is bad. And that is very simplistic binary that is not historically speaking accurate by any means at all.

Like take a look at what happened when you knocked off Gaddafi.

Mm-hmm. Or Sadan

Husain. Or literally anyone that America's intervened with in the last, oh, I don't know, about 125 years since the Monroe Doctrine. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe give that a second thought.

Simone Collins: That was actually this really underrated element when, when I studied technology policy, the whole thing was basically about when and how you should intervene when there's a market failure, that the only purpose of the government is to step in and intervene when there's a market failure.

And then there was this one, one day in one class in the entire course where they were like, well, and I guess we should sometimes question whether or not the government is actually capable of. Sufficiently resolving market [00:23:00] failures. Like can they actually fix it or do they make things worse when they intervene?

This

Malcolm Collins: Cambridge, by the way, for people who are wondering where she was studying this,

Simone Collins: and they, they brought this just once and it was, it was never like, oh, well here's a statistical, a, a statistical analysis. Statistical analysis of every time there has been an intervention of this type and whether it has worked or not.

There was, there was no like, okay, well let's try to figure out if it's on average worth it for the government to intervene. It was just, I mean, maybe, maybe it doesn't always work when the government intervenes, so maybe we should be asking that just one

The Aristocratic Utensil: lone moment of dissent.

Simone Collins: Yes. This like, this, like one little, like, maybe that's the question guys.

Maybe we shouldn't be, how do you think

The Aristocratic Utensil: the art,

Simone Collins: why, why, why would intervene? We

The Aristocratic Utensil: actually expanded the bureaucratic states and basically paved the way for the government America's suffering under now that has a load of gunk that needs to get rid of.

Simone Collins: Okay. Here's my thing though about monarchies, right?

There's a lot of monarchies out there right now of varying degrees of actual [00:24:00] monarchies and, and varying degrees of like shadow democracy taking place. Are there any countries or even experimental city states out there where you're like, that's a model that I like that, that it exists today? Or would you need to Or in history?

Malcolm Collins: Or In history?

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. First today, then history. See,

The Aristocratic Utensil: this to me is, is always kind of an interesting question to ask because I feel like if you look at historically speaking at, at monarchies, it very much depends on how the people themselves want to be governed rather than the sort of individual kings of the time.

Because you can always look at history and go see. When people look at historically, they sort of look at the modern perspective of. If this person was alive today with my politics, how would I rate their reign? Hmm. It's very difficult to sort of look at history and go, what does a king in this period of time is considered like a noble or good king?

Because you can look at history and go, your [00:25:00] Richard, your lion arts, your, your king Alfred, your Catherine, the Greater Peter, the great of Prussia, and sort of say like, well, they expanded economic opportunities during this time, or your enlightened monarchs, or desperate, you know, and I, it's always, for me, the case of, if I was gonna look at a, a modern day sort of state, the main thing that everyone is concerned with in, in modernity is materialistic gain and really not much else.

Uhhuh.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And to what end.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, there you go. Is is to what end. And I, I've said to people, the biggest problem of, of modernity is not capitalism. It's consumerism. Yeah. That there's no problem with, with private property and, and free markets. That's all fine. The problem is that if you only live to consume, you're just a mammal.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But how do you, how do you think about this? I mean, so you, to the point you're making is that you would judge the monarch by their ability to increase the material wealth of the [00:26:00] people. How does that affect your thoughts? Or do you think that that's a bad way to judge a, a good monarch?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I, I would say like, if, if somebody were to ask me like, what would a monarch do in today's society, I feel like it would be very difficult to answer that question.

When I look at the problems of our society today, like, like for, except the, the separation of church and state is in my head, is, is a better idea than what we have now. Because like you, you can say that. Well, if you look at you, you, you consider it. The acceleration of progressivism. If you were to wed it today based on what you see, which is maybe a good case to make, but then you might also make the case of, well, if we tried in a monarchy in today's society, might it be different because the structure's different.

We don't know the experiment with that. So that's kind of the thing that I would say the main thing that I would like to see a monarch be able to do, or just any state in general, is just you need to find a way to actually flex power and also do it in a [00:27:00] non-Democratic way and just say, yeah, well I'm taking the reins and you can piss off.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Well

Simone Collins: that's always been such a delicate interplay, right? Because when you look at the most famous monarchs, half of their story. Is them trying to rest control from the nobility, which in turn is trying to undermine them at every turn and maybe subvert and take them over. You're right. They, they, they don't, yeah.

That you can't think of a monarch out of context. They didn't fall out of a coconut tree. They exist in a context in which all in which they live and what came before them.

The Aristocratic Utensil: There's a really great quote I wish I could find another, 'cause a friend of mine posts me this it was from a guy called et Ledine.

Mm. A very long name. Name. He was an Austrian Noble. Yes. He was a, an Austrian nobleman of the, of the early 20th century. I think he was born the late 19 or late 18 hundreds. Incredibly bright individual. I think he could speak something like nine languages

Simone Collins: of Well, classic European nonsense.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Classic of Austrian aristocracy. Mm-hmm. I think he could, he actually taught Ja Japanese in Japan, which [00:28:00] to me Yeah. Classic individual. Beautiful. Yes. And he and mentions Mobu. I think he was read him as well because, well, I know we'd read 'em because it was through unqualified reservations that I discovered the name reading.

There you go. Works. Yeah. And he makes a case of in the old world, the function of the king was to unite with the peasantry against the aristocracy.

Simone Collins: Ooh, that's good. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But here's, and I know Moog also made the point of the three Aristotelian forms of government is rule of the many rule of the few rule of one.

Mm-hmm.

And typically speaking the two outta three can, or two uniting can knock out the third. So in our timeline, it would be the people uniting behind the monarch to get rid of the aristocracy. Yeah. Which is basically what you have now is because I was watching M-S-N-B-C or CNN, why was I doing that?

But there's, there was a guy on there who basically said that I. The bureaucracy exists to impede the executive. And in my head I went like, [00:29:00] you just gave the game away right there. You just, wow. Literal. You just said the bureaucracy exists to impede the monarch. That's what you just said. Yeah. And at no point do these people ever discuss, I call it the procedure.

And what I notice on television, all I see is them discussing what should the state be allowed to do? Not what is good policy, not is what is good statecraft. I just say, yeah, this person is doing something that is illegal. I'm like, the reason why politics bores the s**t out of me nowadays is 'cause everyone television just discussed this.

Hmm.

And nothing else. It's the reason why everyone is so dull and boring. 'cause they don't know what good statesmanship looks like. 'cause it isn't discussed anywhere. All they discuss is the legalese. But if you want to discuss what's good statecraft, you have to go back to previous century 'cause we don't see it.

In our timeline.

Malcolm Collins: So the, the by the way, when he, when he talked about bu he's talking about Curtis Jarvin, who's been on the show before. Friend. Yeah. Good, great guy. We, we should have him back on. I sent you an email telling you to ask him back on Simone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I wanted to ask how you prevent, like, this is my [00:30:00] fear around monarchies and why I've generally been more antagonistic to them is you end up like what you had with the Roman Empire where you can get like truly atrocious monarchs that are purely self-interested.

When you look at like, even I'd say average monarchs of the Imperial period of the Roman Empire, what are your thoughts on how you deal with that?

The Aristocratic Utensil: I don't actually think you can. I think that's just a function of history.

Hmm.

And you just have to weather the storm because like, this is someone, this is the common question that you always get asked is what do you do when the corruption gets too hot?

And in our timeline, I. The corruption is not touched through the democratic process. It just grows indefinitely behind the scenes. You're just changing the management, but you're not changing any of the people that pull the strings. So you make a surface change, but nothing actually changes. And so you get to the point where you just invest a whole lot of money and time into this thing that inevitably steals and grows from me to the point where we [00:31:00] don't know how this ends in our timeline because we're not there yet.

Mm-hmm. And I fear the collapse comes. It's gonna be really, really bloody and gory. And I eventually, the imagine bloodshed will arise at some point in our lifetime. I don't wanna go that way. Interesting. But I, I think that is inevitability. 'cause I don't see the permanent bureaucratic class in our timeline willingly give our power.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I don't see them. So I'm like, my take on this is and this is where I push back and stuff like, well, I mean, there could be a rebellion. And I've talked to Simone about this where I'm like, she's like, could there really be a rebellion? And we, and I'm like, well, all you need for a real rebellion to happen in this country is for one party to deny the election results of the other party.

She's said,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no. I disagree. June's point starving people. Yeah. People have to like literally starving people doesn't

Malcolm Collins: create rebellion. Venezuelas have starving people for a long time and they didn't get a rebellion

Simone Collins: things. It is not on the ground. I think they, no, I think, I think they're fed. They may not have electricity for days.

Malcolm Collins: But they're fact, if [00:32:00] you look at the British Empire, it was the wealthiest part that rebelled first.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Ah, yes. Juche has made that point that the Aris, the aristocracy is always anarchists.

Simone Collins: They are the, they, they do seem to be the most dangerous ones, to be fair. Yes. He said

The Aristocratic Utensil: because the, the anarchists, the, the aristocratic class, they have no interest in good government because they can always leave.

They have money. It's the poorest people that have the most interest in good government because they don't have any other option.

Mm-hmm.

Which is probably why poor people like a strong executive.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Oh, that's a, a really strong tie together here. Okay. Well here's question interesting I have for you. How do you pull all this together?

So like when you look at like crashing fertility rates and what that's gonna do to like the global economic and tax system, sort of, how do you see, what's your past to chart forward into the future? What's your hypothesis for your family, for example?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, good god. So how would I institute, like basically how would you make traditional values Cool.

Mm-hmm. I would say, do you know what I think is honestly missing [00:33:00] from not just the, the right wing? Okay. I'll use an example. And I'm gonna piss off a whole bunch of people saying this 'cause this is sort of where I deviate and annoy a lot of people is, is take for example, Andrew Tate.

Okay.

Now, Andrew Tate is a contentious figure because of what he's done outside of it.

Now my issue with him is I can listen to him and find him an interesting figure despite what he's done. Because the way that I look at him is can he say something interesting and thought provoking? And the answer is yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. And I can look at somebody and ignore the bad things because I'm only looking for the good things.

Like I can separate the art from the artists and this kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And what I, what I f*****g detest about so many people who claim to be right wing is they look at people like that and they see a face, and all they see is the villainous actions.

Hmm. And

the, the thing that I want to tell these people, do you understand that there's people like me who don't care for the bad things because they're looking at him as a positive role model?

Mm-hmm. When all you see [00:34:00] is the bad. You can't go to somebody else who sees the good and go stop listening to these people because you are looking at the bad and you are trying to impose the bad on them and ignore the good that he is done.

Mm-hmm.

All you see is the face of evil because that's your morality.

And you can't just impose that on somebody and shred the good that he is done because they're looking at going, why are you imposing your evilness on me? I've like, this person did something good for me, and you are chastising him and making me feel like an a*****e for it. That doesn't work. So what you need to do is you need to prop up, Andrew Wilson said this, it's not enough to destroy somebody's worldview.

You have to replace it with something.

Yes, absolutely.

Right wing. The right wing does not have an answer to Andrew Tate's popularity because Andrew Tate is a popular person for the material world.

Mm-hmm.

And you, and if you are trying to impose traditional values, you don't have, you are trying to use a currency that is not currently in circulation.

Simone Collins: But we have to get people off that currency. It's such a toxic currency. Yes. And the right wing

The Aristocratic Utensil: [00:35:00] doesn't know how.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I,

The Aristocratic Utensil: that is the, that's the biggest problem.

Malcolm Collins: I think you point to something really important here that I've seen really positive moves on, which is the idea of cancellation prevents, like the sort of intellectual diversity you see with someone like Andrew Tate and JD Vance has been the biggest hero on this with big balls saying stuff, you know, racist against Indians, like within a year.

Right. And, and consider, even though JD Vance is married to an Indian and has Indian kids and JD Vance was like, f**k off, like, rehired this guy. Like, why, why did you let him quit? Just because it came out that he was a racist. And I think that, like, I remember that.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, that was based.

Malcolm Collins: That was so base we need, like, as this continues, and I saw that as like a a, we had one of our fans reach out to us recently and they're like, actually, like I had been, like, had trouble getting jobs in the corporate world for a long time.

And me and my partner applied to jobs and like, we were hired this year and like, we were shocked and like, the, the partner's working at like a university now. And he's like, like [00:36:00] vulnerable young minds are seeing his potentially conservative worldview. And I think that, that we're beginning to see a sea change on this, but we have to be really fastidious around, like personally not allowing like, cancellations to prevent us from you know, having people on and stuff like that.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I'm, I'm not kinda surprised by his, his choice of, of ladies. Because one thing that you kind of joke about, all white supremacists don't ask them the race of their girlfriends. Yeah, yeah. Which is good because, and people have asked me like, why is that a thing? I said, well, it's very simple because if you are the, if you're the colonial empire, you colonize, oh Lord.

Then they're women.

Malcolm Collins: No, hold on. This is a problem for black supremacists as well. Go to the far left, like, look at any far lefty, like racist. The politician, like a OC or something like that. But they

The Aristocratic Utensil: all have white men.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, usually Jewish white men too.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But like, that's what the power is and women are attracted to power.

Like, that's just like the, the one thing that annoys the crap about Moderna is there's so many things that is natural that we just [00:37:00] ignore.

Hmm. Like, yes, there's, there's those that will go with the Aryan Princess and reproduce their children and then those are like, your genes are s**t you must make with better genes. That's how they're wired.

People

think that's like a controversial thing to say, but that is how they actually look at the world.

Yeah. Whether

you like it or not, you can say it's memetic. 'cause it's, it is funny. But that is how they see things. '

Malcolm Collins: cause we've, we've, we've created f*****g insane ideas of what a racist is. People will be like, if you recognize that there may be any sort of a difference between populations that have been genetically separated for potentially thousands of years, that makes you a racist.

And therefore, a lot of people who are quote unquote, like Johnny Anomaly, who we really like, you know, he's married to like a South American woman or, or you know, JD Vance is married to an India. These people don't have f*****g problems with different races. Like, that's not the thing they're

The Aristocratic Utensil: reading with them.

That's, that's kind of a good indication than not.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I love, there was the one thing where, where the, the left got mad at this guy who had like black kids and like called him racist and he's like, what are you [00:38:00] talking about?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That's happened

Simone Collins: quite a few times. That is a, a very common,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I will say, I can kill the accusation of racism in like a civilizational state in two paragraphs and just would like two questions.

The one that I always like to go to is how is segregation and nation state borders not the same thing, if not scale,

Malcolm Collins: segregation and nation state borders. Yeah, I, I guess I don't understand what, what do you mean by this? Like, yeah, explain this in more detail. I don't get it.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Well, let's see. If you're segregating, you are suggesting that only a certain amount of people should enter a given territory. Yeah. A nation state is exactly the same thing.

It's just the, the legal bounds to enter is different.

Simone Collins: Oh, I see. Oh. But I don't know, like I, I always thought segregation was about only allowing a certain criteria, people certain criteria in an area. Yes,

The Aristocratic Utensil: yes. Yeah. But exactly. It's the use of force.

Malcolm Collins: Like you are born with your national identity because of where you happen to be born.

It's complete chance, Simone. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And it's complete chance. [00:39:00] But you what like ethnic group you're born into. Okay. That's okay. Okay, that makes sense.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But you are still prohibiting the entry into a certain territory through the use of force.

Yeah. Okay. Which is what you do in

segregation as well. Mm-hmm.

And as far as that is concerned, I would just say to say that to anybody. 'cause I know I've noticed leftism loves blood and soil when it's native population, except when it's Europeans, then everyone else must be allowed to enter European territories. It's funny how that one works. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There's no indigenous people's

Simone Collins: day

Malcolm Collins: in

Simone Collins: the United

Malcolm Collins: Kingdom.

No, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on. It's Europeans. Or where they really hate it if it's blood and soil. Jews. I'm like, yeah. One population in this world where they were displaced by an imperial group, they then took back their native land and are fighting to defend it and you guys want them erased.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But I, I would say.

Say that I conquered a territory, like any tribe or whatever, and somebody comes to me not of that tribe and says, give me access to your land, your people, your capital and its markets, or [00:40:00] else I will call you, insert label X.

Hmm. Yeah.

Why should I listen to that person and capitulate to their demands and grant them everything?

Malcolm Collins: That's a a great point. Yeah, no, because it is a lot of a capitulation. And I think that the way this works within leftism is the intuitive belief in the superiority of their culture. By this, what I mean is leftists believe. They're like, oh, yes, well, like these Muslims may come to our country today and say that they want, you know, gay people should be illegal and everything like that, but eventually our cultural values will erase their own.

And what we have seen is this belief in their superiority is as delusional as anything

The Aristocratic Utensil: else they believe,

Malcolm Collins: anything else they believe, but also, you know, a lot of the historic racists. You know, it's, it, one of those things I always joke is, is, is, you know. You'll see in, in certain populations where they'll be like, oh this is where you get like [00:41:00] delusional racism when you start claiming like every historical figure was actually part of your ethnic group.

Like Oh yeah, the, the, the Greeks were actually Northern Europeans. Yeah. I

The Aristocratic Utensil: I do like that. It always makes me laugh because they also claim our history is evil. But you also, no evil

Malcolm Collins: was of white people.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. And it's like, ah, I so wanna make fun of you all damn day long, because there's just no consistency at all.

It's good stuff.

Malcolm Collins: All right. All right. It's wonderful. Well, I've had oh yeah. Any pass through this? Any path through this that you see for yourself? You mentioned elevating people like Tate, but like how do you, how do you make this, this cool Erta Farms? Is that it?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, dear God, no. I would say it's one thing I don't like about like the Christian worldview is it's very, the, specifically the Protestant wing is, it's very focused on forgiveness.

'cause that whole like equality doctrine is very based on a sort of perverted Christian [00:42:00] perception of almost like the white man's burden

in

a sense. And I, that just ignores all of reality. I've heard a lot of people just say, oh, look like it's our job to like civilize the world. I'm like, okay, well, you do realize that.

Okay, that's kind of imperial, which is kind of based, I'm not gonna lie, but yeah, you, you also, you also want to tell people they should behave like you, but you don't have any reason other than you are telling them this is how they should behave. And that's not how human beings work. People don't like it when other people tell 'em how to behave with no reason other than I told you so.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, when there's no hold on, they give them lots of money. Look at usaid, that's what it was all about.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. And considering USAID was given to my country and it hasn't made a dent in making people say, and I'm not really a believer in that money theory

Simone Collins: exactly though. Exactly. Yeah. So,

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, it tends to, what was it someone said recently?

International aid is taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor, or giving it to rich people in poor countries. That is so, so freaking accurate. Oh my [00:43:00]

gosh. Oh yeah. I

act, I actually had a conversation with with a girl earlier today, and she seemed to be more lefty leaning.

I found her like in a very right wing, like you are an unusual person in a very right wing place. I, I, she, she's not stupid, definitely not, but she's, she hasn't really examined her perceptions of the world. She was very adamant and research into how she sees the world. But I tried to tell her, this is a nice ideal, but you have to look at the world for what it is, not how you wish it to be, especially when it comes to people.

And that is something that I've noticed. A lot of, particularly American right wingers clinging to with like immense f especially when it comes to the Constitution. And there's a really good clip by do you know Judge Politano?

Simone Collins: The name's familiar, what we know. We, you

The Aristocratic Utensil: guys should check him out.

So he had on Lionel Mason both sort of, you know, legal experts and he, Lionel asked them, is the, the US Constitution still valid? And he gives a very interesting answer. He says, it depends on how you look at it formally and [00:44:00] functionally.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. He says formally it still establishes, you know, a three branch of government that is the law of the land.

You know, three branches of government, the separation of powers, yada yada. But he says, functionally it has been an abysmal, abysmal failure. It has failed to retrain powers. It has failed to balance. Like the checks and balances don't work. Congress just passes whatever the hell they want. They tax something.

And he said the best way to sort of rewrite the ship is to appoint governments or appoint judges that will chain the government down. Mm-hmm. And at the end, Lionel says, so the, the problem is isn't the constitution, the Constitution still works it, the problem is it isn't being followed. And I thought. It is kind of weird to me that you suggest the way to fix this is to apply the Constitution, but also people don't listen to it.

Like that makes no sense to me.

Malcolm Collins: People aren't listening to it now. Why would they listen to it then?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Right? Yeah. So I just like, okay, so you are admitting the document has failed because Michael Malice had a good quote. He [00:45:00] said if you think anyone in government now is gonna listen to the whims of dead men from two 50 years ago, that is more utopian than communism.

Like, damn malice has a way of just like cutting through the grain and just like hurting your soul. Like

that's good.

That's good. That is very accurate. And I've noticed some of the Americans that I've spoken to that I can sort of break free from this sort of spell of constitutionalism is my God, they, they start hating their own countrymen.

'cause they, once they realize that, oh. Oh, I can't unsee this. And they come to me and go, I can't speak to anybody else about this because they all look at me like I'm insane.

Hmm.

Like, yeah. If you can tell me how you fixed that, please tell me. 'cause I don't know how to, I don't know how to answer that question.

'cause I also look at these people and go, I'm gonna get hated for exposing the truth. And then like the, the few that agree with me go like, yeah, welcome to the club. Thanks for ruining us. Like, I'm sorry about that. Not much I can do about that.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Not a nice perspective to tell people horrible truths about reality as of people, especially when [00:46:00] it's growing novel.

I don't know, like

Simone Collins: I think if you told that to young people who were just learning about the formation of. The United States. Yeah. They'd be like, oh yeah, this was, it was always, yeah, early draft mode. This was not, do you

The Aristocratic Utensil: know, do you know what's really interesting about that? Now you mentioned that because Aiden is also American, she's a monarchist, and we were looking at perceptions of monarchy mm-hmm.

Across the demographics. And it's really weird when you look at them across the United States and the uk

Oh.

In the, in the uk the younger people hate the monarchy, but the older people have reverence for it, which is understandable. I mean, they grew up in the Elizabethan era, so that's, yeah.

Yeah. Whereas

in the US up to like 25% of Gen Z favor monarchy.

Simone Collins: That makes sense. Really. Yeah. That makes sense.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Like the, there's like, and it's the reverse for the older age, obviously. Yeah. It's like the older people like uphold monarchy because, well, you know, they're older, they're boomers. Whereas the younger generation sort of look at the con, I think it's because they just look at like their chances of actually getting, I.

Like a house is basically impossible for them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So they look [00:47:00] well smaller government. I I, I see to the people like this, this is the pitch I always tell Americans to with, and they always think like, huh? I say to them, think of Trump. If you gave Trump complete control of the government, okay, but say 90% of government is removed, how much damage could he actually do?

Right. When most of the bureaucracy is gone and there's no taxes to pay for this s**t. Yeah. And they go, huh, I get to pay significantly less tax and I can see the one person doing everything. They're like, that doesn't sound so bad. Like, yeah, I can maybe get on board with that. 'cause the moment you appeal to their pocketbook and like this one person, but they can't do much 'cause the bureaucracy is gone.

Yeah.

Suddenly they look at it like, oh, now my materialism is, I pay less tax.

Simone Collins: Well, it's kind of been like this since the beginning too. I mean, even after we voted in our first president, there was this huge struggle to. You know, n not have him,

Malcolm Collins: you know, it's your ancestors, your, your yeah. They're like, come on man.

Simone Collins: Just, just just be the king. Can you just

Malcolm Collins: talk of, of

The Aristocratic Utensil: George? I've heard some [00:48:00] people just say that. You're like, oh, just Washington. Why didn't you just take the crown and we can be done with this? They were

Malcolm Collins: so ready for it. They were like, okay. Simon, by the way,

you are the descendant of one of George Washington's siblings, and he had no kid.

Yeah. He's a

Simone Collins: great, great, great, great. So you would be

Malcolm Collins: of the monarchy family right now if it existed? Oh,

Simone Collins: yes. I would be in American. I wouldn't dy Yes or Duchess or something. I

Malcolm Collins: would've married into a monarchy. Oh, see? Yeah. Oh, well, what a, what a jack as he was for not accepting it. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: It is really curious to me that there was 12 years when they had the article of Confederation and that's been totally airbrushed out of history.

Malcolm Collins: Right.

The Aristocratic Utensil: And nobody knows much about America's first government. Like if you ask Americans, who was the first king? They'd all say, oh, George Washington. Like, no, that wasn't the first king or the first the first president. Yeah. It was oh, I can't remember his name now. It was, I think it was

Simone Collins: Don't, yeah,

The Aristocratic Utensil: it was, it was,

Simone Collins: that's because it's airbrushed out of history.

You've literally been brainwashed to not know this.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And it's John Han,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I think was the president of the Congress. [00:49:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I think he was the first one that was appointed. And I think there was problem with, with with currency regulation was like one of the biggest ones about they just realized that, okay, this, this doesn't actually work.

There's too many com com competitions. Yeah. Around And you need the central figure. Central, yeah. Remember them saying like, yeah. Like, oh, but if we give birth to an executive, this is gonna be like the fertile grounds of monarchy. Like, oh yeah. If only we can hope. Because you need the central, you need the sovereign.

Yeah. You need the one person when everyone is fighting. I remember I, I spoke to this one girl and she's like very quite lefty leaning and she was in favor of co-ops. And one day she came to me and she said, I'm kind of reconsidering your position. And I said, why is that? And she said to me, well, we have a bunch of people, but they're all fighting.

Like, we just need one person to tell everyone to shut up and what to do. Like Yeah. I wonder why that is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Daddy needs to stand up and just be like, shut up. We're doing this now. Like

The Aristocratic Utensil: the amount of people who look at Trump as like a father figure when they're [00:50:00] just like. The meme was like, oh, look, daddy's home.

Yes. And now you all have to behave. I'm like, you realize all of you look at Trump like he is a monarchical figure. You look at him like, like the great man. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it's very different than the way Milo used to call him Daddy.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But it's, it is curious to me that if you ask most Americans, who's your local representative, they have no idea.

Yeah.

But if you ask him who's in the White House, everyone knows, because the perception even with Americans is that that guy is actually in charge and he's the one that can like, do anything through executive orders. Mm-hmm. And there's service. He can, but the, the problem with that is, is that Congress is like, Congress is a long-term fix for short-term problems.

And executive orders is supposed to be a long-term fix for like really short-term gain.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's. You need to, that needs to be in reverse, but to get people in Congress to do things in the long term, especially when they're there for impossible. Yes. Yeah. Because they're not [00:51:00] interested in governing the nation through long terms, because there's no benefit to them when they leave office.

Mm-hmm.

Like they're there for short term stents to basically loot the place and then get the hell out. Exactly. Other people, you have to think of voting as garbage collection day, as in while they're in office, they can pile on as much corruption as humanly possible. And that little speech of like, oh look, we can just shorthand.

And the, the garbage goes out, disappears, supposedly, but it goes into a landfill and then just the whole process starts all over again. And this, this, this, this little button, reset button that basically stops you from killing politicians because there's no physical repercussions. Like you don't hold the politicians to account ever.

And that's how the bureaucracy goes. And like, do you realize. Voting benefits the elites more than it benefits you. You get the veneer of being in control while somebody else props him on the ballot and which is what they're beholden to. And you don't actually, your process is just like yay or nay. And that's really it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I mean, not, not to mention even that in the United States, it was never supposed to be direct as it is now. But this [00:52:00] thing was a huge mistake. And your

The Aristocratic Utensil: accounting fathers were violently opposed to democracy for of these reasons.

Simone Collins: Yes, they were. They were, yeah. For very good reasons. I mean, first they were like, Hamilton

The Aristocratic Utensil: is like crazy when it comes to democracy.

Like, gee, Hamilton.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it's

The Aristocratic Utensil: we like him. He's a, he's, I remember Moberg said like he was America's first monarch. 'cause he's the one who really run the treasury

and ran it

like a proper executive. Like Washington is the face, but like the brains of the operations, like Hamilton is really running the show.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, interesting.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: the original Elon the original,

The Aristocratic Utensil: yeah, yeah. Sort of in a sense. And, and, but you know, all of these people have kind of shady, honest backgrounds, especially like. Especially when it comes to sex, like my god, like blackmail in the government. I imagine. I think it was someone had said like the way that China's bureaucracy gets any rank is they need to do some shady s**t to like advance, which is why they're all like sleeve.

Oh, so they

Simone Collins: they have dirt on each other.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. So basically the reason why it's all like militant organized is because they can't step outta balance 'cause they know they'll get screwed if they try. I

Malcolm Collins: love that on this [00:53:00] where we explore how you know, PDF files ever became, like, this is one of the crazy things when we talk about like conspiracies in the US there was a conspiracy that there was a.

Cabal of PDA files who controlled reigns of power within our country or had a great deal of power within our country. And then we found out that was real with Epstein, and now everyone is like, well, we got rid of Epstein, so it must be gone now. Like that's a done thing.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah, that's the, that's sort of like, oh look, we can just depose the head of the mob.

And like, no, he's got like capos and a whole bunch of henchmen underneath him. Like the way to topple the hierarchy is to start from the freaking bottom until he is alone. It's, it's not by just capping off the head of the hydra. 'cause then the hydra grows another head.

Mm-hmm.

So what someone on my podcast suggested something interesting, they said that the reason they're not releasing the Epstein files is because the people in government Trump can use them to leverage them and get what he wants.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that's a fun take. I, I don't think Trump's doing that. I just

Simone Collins: figured it was because I wish he

The Aristocratic Utensil: was based enough to actually do that, but I don't think [00:54:00] it's within him to be that kind of cutthroat as much. Honestly, he's a nice

Simone Collins: person. Like he, he doesn't, he, he wants to. He doesn't want people to hurt or suffer.

He, that's,

The Aristocratic Utensil: that's one thing that's his kind of detriment is that I think Trump is actually too nice. Too,

Simone Collins: too pathetic. I don't think

The Aristocratic Utensil: he is this like ruthless cut road a*****e that everyone thinks like I've, something I thought was very interesting is I've seen like the left try to mean Trump and they always make him sound way more dangerously based than he actually is.

I'm like, can you just give me the Trump that the leftist think he is? It would be fantastic.

Malcolm Collins: He needs to be more.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I said to a friend of mine, there is a, there is a reason why they're like that. Why they look at him as this great evil. It's because it triggers the response mechanism. If he is not this horrible, evil person, then it induces complacency.

Hmm.

They need to him to be this radical figure because if they realize, oh my God, he's not actually gonna like take away my right to, you know, kill my own child in this kind of crazy s**t. He's just like a regular, like [00:55:00] 1990s American democratic dude.

Mm-hmm. Because

if they realize that then they might not radicalize and they might actually become right wing and therefore that would thin their ranks.

So there's, there's functionality in there. Absurdity.

Simone Collins: 100%.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. Alright, well we can't have the episode go on forever, so we gotta stop. We'll let you go.

Simone Collins: Also, it's so late. So thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate. It's actually only

The Aristocratic Utensil: seven 30 here.

Simone Collins: That's, you don't understand. That's like when we're asleep.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, do you, are you like really early bird rises?

Simone Collins: Yeah, we are. I try to wake

Malcolm Collins: up at around two every day. Yeah. So we're, Jesus,

The Aristocratic Utensil: how do you give respect? How do you function?

Malcolm Collins: Wait, are you in the UK right now? No. Yes. Oh, you are in the

uk?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. Yes. I mean, yeah, I'm in green. I

Malcolm Collins: am. I, I am. Are you thinking about a movie like most of the people I know in the UK are looking at getting out at this point?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Well, my family wants to go back to South Africa and that's probably not

Malcolm Collins: fun.

The Aristocratic Utensil: No. Well, they said to me like, do you wanna go home? And I looked at 'em [00:56:00] like, well, I don't have any other family here. Mm. And if I go back home, they said to me, well, you can stay like here close to us. 'cause basically my my aunt and uncle are rather well off and they have like a guest house and they said, well you can stay there.

And I saw the guest house because I hadn't, it's kind of weird the last time they showed it, it was like 2010 Google and there wasn't completed yet. Still in process mode. And I saw it recently 'cause it got updated when like, that's where you want me to stay. And it's like a stone story from a beach. Oh.

In probably a like more safer area when like, I don't actually oppose this.

Malcolm Collins: Look, you, you stack of generators in the UK right now. Like one of the lotus eaters. Right? They got pulled over by like the passport control or something, right?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Callum did for terrorist activities, which was like, oh,

Simone Collins: good heavens.

Yeah. Really? Were you by?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Not as far as I'm aware. No.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. There's a recent conference they had there that a lot of the little see guys rip. But anyway. Yeah. So they I was so afraid of [00:57:00] being like, passport pulled over. Like, I'm like, the UK is getting scary, man.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. I would rather be in South Africa than the uk That's

Malcolm Collins: saving a lot.

That's, that's dire. Yes.

Okay.

I, I don't know if you heard, but Trump's administration is like letting people in for visas from South Africa as like a discriminated group. Yeah. I,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I will, I will say, because I, I sort of see a lot of crazy s**t in South Africa from like my Twitter feed, and a lot of it involves Julius Moer and to the people who have this perspective.

Can I just say this, Julius Moer in South Africa's politics is like a OC to you.

Simone Collins: Oh.

The Aristocratic Utensil: He has no institutional power.

Simone Collins: Okay. And he

The Aristocratic Utensil: never will. He's, he's the crazy person that says insane s**t to be relevant. That's, well, to be fair, like our

Simone Collins: only experience of South Africa was like just going through the townships outside of Johannesburg.

So we, we probably don't have Oh, okay,

The Aristocratic Utensil: okay. Yeah. So you saw like the roughest of it. Yeah, yeah. Like whereas Western Cape is where like, no, f**k up my s**t. Let's, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. There's a thing of like basically [00:58:00] the white of the area, the safer it is, which is reality. Yeah. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: Like the, what we use to de what, when we try to explain to people how demographic collapse is going to play out, we're like, just look at South Africa.

Like,

Malcolm Collins: yes,

Simone Collins: there, there, there're going to be walled gardens that are incredibly nice and that's where all the wealthy people with resources are gonna go. And then there's gonna be the townships, and that's where everyone who is not wealthy and resource is gonna be, you're gonna have brownout, you're gonna have blackouts, you're gonna have crime, you're gonna have rapes.

And that's what it's gonna be.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I will say it's, it's, it's so that is kinda a weird place because we essentially have three capital cities.

Hmm.

Which is quite strange that like, I have a, as far as I'm aware, like keep in mind I left South Africa as a child when I was about, just on the verge of 11 years old.

Oh, okay.

So like my, if, if I were to go home now and describe politics, like it's very difficult for me. And we also have a rule, don't discuss politics with people who are not South African

Fair because they

don't understand the reality of demographics. And like, like everything is like, what, [00:59:00] what do you think of like an actual South African thing?

It's like, yeah. All of that. And way more based than any Americans can possibly.

Malcolm Collins: That's what we gathered when we were there. We're like, okay, yeah. I think one of the things in South Africa is that a lot of people are like, oh, it's like white people versus black people.

And it's like, that's not really the way South Africa is tribe. It's, it's corruptly. Everyone else, each other, and the tribes will f**k each other even before they care about if you get one, one tribe elected to power, it's like, okay, let's loot from all the other tribes.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. That's, that's, it's like how any civilization works.

Yeah. South Africa is not unique. It's just unique in our timeline. But if you look at it from like a historical perspective, like if I tell people this if you look at how South Africa's demographics came about, the South Africans, the Africans who are nature of that land, they've been there since 1652.

It predates the American state.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. They've been there for, I didn't realize it was 16 hundreds. That is.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. It's really, really old.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): To put that in context, you know how now we're all, oh my gosh, I can't believe the Jews would [01:00:00] displace the historic Muslims who lived in Israel. Well, Israel only became, or the place we call Israel today, Muslim majority in the 12th century, so not that much earlier than this group moved to Africa.

Malcolm Collins: We do have to, this is, oh my gosh, so long at this point. So, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's fun. It's so fun talking with you.

Spoon. Thank you so much for going on.

Great. Having you on.

The Aristocratic Utensil: How did you guys actually, how did you guys actually discover my channel?

Malcolm Collins: I watched Aiden's channel first. I, I then watched some of your content with her. I then watch some of your content.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, okay.

Simone Collins: I'm gonna say algo for me.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I, oh my goodness.

Yeah. YouTube is actually quite nice to me, which is bizarre. 'cause I've been told, like you say, a lot of spicy things, but YouTube tends to recommend me for some. I think it, it

Simone Collins: just, it just assumes, you know, it, here's your, you know, it must, it must process your accent and be like, oh yes. I just noticed, have you

Malcolm Collins: noticed that YouTube has started suppressing?

I we recently did an and an episode and there were two lowest episodes. And I think YouTube is suppressing both topics.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.

What's going on? You might want to rephrase it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [01:01:00] Okay. I won't say anti, I'd say an issue related to the gender people. Gender people you know,

The Aristocratic Utensil: contemplating the rainbow hippies.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. The rainbow hippies. Yeah. No, actually I, I have a question for you because this, it is pretty interesting. When I look at you, you are really much in like the social circle of, I think like the old YouTube conservative group. Or, or like, like questioning woke group. Do you know when we talk about things like Aporia or Johnny Anomaly or Ew, do you know who any of these people are?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Some of the names do do surface. Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. So

Malcolm Collins: you

Simone Collins: do know a job? Yeah. Okay. You're, you're on, you're on X way more than we are, I think. So that yeah,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I, I mainly, I mainly use X to s**t post. I've, I've, I've had some people like. Come to me especially women, and say to me like, you're very aggressive with how you are with women.

And my immediate response is, have you seen my content? Like, yes. I, I am very much against like any people voting and I don't think women should have a say in polls. I'm very [01:02:00] vocal about that. I will openly say that I don't care who gets offended. The thing of it is that I find very fascinating about that is the women who are traditional are more traditional than the men.

Oh yeah. Why that is

Malcolm Collins: so people don't dunno this, but during suffrage in the United States, the primary anti suffrage group was the women. Women, yeah. Dude. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. And I, I said to them as well, like, if you look at my audience and my timeline, I always tell people what irks me. It's not just like, I hate women today, and then just like ramble, like, no, no, no.

I will give you an example of this thing that is currently pissing me off. And when it comes to like, women, it was probably a woman who DMed me in the first place,

right?

Because they come to me and go, spoon, look at the stupid s**t that my sex is doing. Yell at them. I basically, yeah, they, they're the, they're the police.

Malcolm Collins: They're the, the secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Because I, I tell guy, I tell guys this, like, be the guy that can openly talk about women in like in a bashfully, well, in modern day sexist kind of ways, because [01:03:00] women cannot talk about other women to women because it just escalates into a fight. I. Yeah.

So they will

go to a guy and say, this is the stupid s**t my sex is doing.

I know this annoys you as well. It's one of the, one of the few times, 'cause I know women has this tendency of don't actually solve my problem, just listen.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no. Yeah. No. But there's a bigger problem of like, the guys who are feminists are always the worst guys to women. Yeah. It's also true recently, you know, like yusof that put out like the, you know, this one where they, they have the Johnny Somalia simulator.

Where you go around as a black guy and kill random Japanese. Great phrase by the way. You know, great. I heard that I was, as soon as I heard Johnny Somali simulator, I was like, yeah, yeah. I was like, that's

The Aristocratic Utensil: brilliant actually.

Malcolm Collins: That's what this game is. But anyway, so they're now in a lawsuit in France.

And the things that their executives were doing to employees are horrifying. One of them yeah, I wouldn't be surprised of, would play porn so loud. Everyone in the office could hear it. And he made a woman do a handstand so he could see her skirt in front of the entire office. And then at [01:04:00] another time you had other employees holding down, very progressive woman so he could kiss her at a party.

Like when somebody's doing feminist s**t, this is the s**t they're doing behind closed doors.

Simone Collins: That sounds about right. Yeah. Well, Malcolm, you found the solution. You, you, you didn't marry a woman, you married an artist and that is the only safe way you hold it, but Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But the, the, the point that I was trying to make is that this is one of the few times where you can actually listen to a woman explain her problems because the issue that is, is not one that can be solved.

The issue is just like her own annoyance that her own sex.

Hmm.

Yeah. So that's one of the things that you can listen to and like sympathize with, because I can guarantee you what annoys her also annoys you and you'll become friends. Because the one thing is mutual hatred.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And there, and there's nothing, nothing that can be done about it.

So Yes. That's, there's no solution that you're like dying to present.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But they just want you to say can, like, can this. That must be so

Simone Collins: frustrating. I'm so sorry. Yes. Tell me more. I have How did that make you feel?

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Yes, I have, I have one female friend when she streams with other streamers, like when they're women, she just like messaged me like, oh my God, these women are annoying.

The crap [01:05:00] outta me. And then she comes to things with me. Partner

Malcolm Collins: streaming is a woman, right? Yes,

The Aristocratic Utensil: I know. And I also have a, another girl that I stream with on Rumble vex Electronica. It's a bit of a different stream with Aiden. 'cause Aiden is very prim and proper and she like organizes everything ruthlessly.

And Vex just messaged me and goes, I'm annoyed. Let's stream. And then we just make five hours disappear with no prep at all. Yeah. So it's just like a rambling And we, yes. Yeah. 'cause we get to say game of words and just like, this is the dumb s**t that is currently wrong with the world, especially culturally.

Mm. Because

we are there's a lot of sort of like cultural anti woke people that we don't like because they're, they're just liberals.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they just

The Aristocratic Utensil: disgruntled with liberals that went to fond a slippery slope and they don't know how to pull it back other than just yelling.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. But I'm trying to do a better job like myself.

'cause earlier asking like how we found you if connecting with other conservative streamers one of the things we've been looking at doing forever, we've talked with the Heritage Foundation about doing this. When we get together, we should talk about putting the first steps into this. Simone is putting together a conference to connect conservative influencers with conservative [01:06:00] policy makers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Like there's, I think the problem though is,

Simone Collins: is again, de spoons repeated references. What would ever incentivize a conservative lawmaker? To do anything that isn't in their immediate best financial, the Heritage Foundation are

Malcolm Collins: good guys who wanna make the world a better place. The heritage.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Heritage. But they are not themselves, the policy makers. They have to find ways to connect the short term and often financial incentives of the policy makers. The policy, long term best interest

Malcolm Collins: affect elections. The Democrats have been using the influencer class to affect elections for ages without any reciprocation.

At the very least, we can try to create some reciprocation where the influencers can affect policy.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. I, I would say the sort, the sort of, the real problem with appealing to a right wing base is that is it's, it's very cruel, like right wing politics, like left wing politics is very fairytale and idealistic and it's why it appeals to women.

Hmm. Whereas the right wing sort of Chad [01:07:00] aggressiveness really appeals to men, but like. That worldview is very difficult to sell to men right now because it is more than just materialism.

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna disagree here every right wing conference and you know, I go to a lot of Rightwing events and one of the funny things is whenever I meet somebody who used to go to left wing events and now they go to right wing conferences and they're like, oh my God, everyone is so nice and accepting at right wing conferences.

Yes, that's true. And everyone at the left wing conferences was so judgy and hateful. I didn't, and there's no, no, no, there's a

Simone Collins: spectrum. So the, the. Old guard, conservative right-wing conferences feels very cliquey and very like, Hmm, you're not,

The Aristocratic Utensil: yes, you're not quite right. I have heard as well. And then

Simone Collins: the like, farthest, farthest, farthest left American ones are like, Hey, come here.

I need to tell you my conspiracy theory. I, I'm a sovereign citizen and here's how it works. And you should never pay your taxes. And like, these

Malcolm Collins: aren't the lefty right wing conferences. These are the more right wing, the more right wing It is. Like the more, the more open it is. Yeah. The more welcoming it is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: it's so funny, these people I'm talking about who are like lefties, I don't mean like normal lefties, I mean like obvious [01:08:00] trans people. They'll be like, oh yeah, the right wing conferences have been so much nicer than the left wing conferences.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They, they, I think, yeah, I think they enjoy hanging out at the, the right wing office.

There

The Aristocratic Utensil: was a, there was a point that I saw someone say that it was interesting. They said like, the right wing is full of gay is. Strip people, they're actually gay. Whereas the left wing people are all straight people pretending to be gay. It's,

Malcolm Collins: it's funny you say that Maddie is

The Aristocratic Utensil: so freaking accurate.

Like, holy s**t, I know so many people who fit this paradigm. Like

Malcolm Collins: it's not even funny making a population. That's a strategy in animals where you pretend to be the other gender to the force.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But it, it disturbs me. Like why is that a thing with the right, because I've noticed there's a lot of like, there is, there is, there's so much sexual degeneracy in the right wing.

It's like I, when I look at some of the people, 'cause I know some of them behind the scene. No, it's only

Simone Collins: degeneracy because it's on the right wing. It would just be normalcy if it were on the left wing.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Whoa. Okay. I never, I grew up on the hard

Simone Collins: left, so I know this.

Malcolm Collins: So, so I recently was at a Heritage Foundation conference and [01:09:00] this was on like gender being realistic about gender issues.

And it was so funny, the conference was like, I'd say 25% lesbians and people at the, this is the Heritage Foundation and lesbians at the conference joked that this was the main lesbian dating event of the year. That's so, because it was the only place they could go where it was still all real women.

The Aristocratic Utensil: No, no. Can, can I read something interesting? This, this pulpit? I actually, 'cause a while ago, GR three came out on Twitter. That's so good. It's amazing. Yes. And yeah, it said it has some better views. So I, I threw it a curve ball. I said to them, can you give a cultural critique that you would employ to persuade women to give up the right to vote?

Okay. Okay. And it's was

really, really good.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, give it to us. Give it to us. It

The Aristocratic Utensil: said it said, okay. Let's dive into this with a thought experiment. I'm assuming you're looking for provocative cultural critique and not literal policy proposal. I'll channel [01:10:00] a mix of historical perspective, social theory, and a dash of contrarian flared to craft and argue.

It sounds like me actually. Here's how we might go. I. Imagine a cultural critique rooted in the idea of modern democracy with its obsession and over individual rights has eroded something deeper, communal harmony and natural division of labor that once held societies together. Mm-hmm. You could argue that voting as a symbol of atomized power pulls women away from a more primal, influential role, the stewards of family and culture.

The pitch might lean on a romanticized pass. Think pre-industrial tribes or even Victorian ideals where women's authority wasn't diluted by a ballot box, but concentrated in the home, shaping the next generation's values directly. The critique would borrow from thinkers like Rousseau, who saw excessive individualism as a societal rot and twisted women's suffrage.

While soulless empowerment actually traps them in a masculine game of power struggles and abstract debates disconnecting them from their supposed true strength. Nurturing [01:11:00] intuition and moral grounding at a modern swipe. The chaos expos in 24 7 news cycles shows how voting fuels division not unity, and women as the civilizing force might reclaim the influence by rejecting the circus altogether to persuade you'd frame it as liberation, not loss.

Ditching the vote isn't subjugation, but a bold opt out from a broken system, a return to a sphere where influence isn't diluted by partisan noise. It's a hard sell, obviously, but I would lean heavily on nostalgia and gender essentialism, which plenty would call out as bunk, but that is a cultural angle dialed up to 11.

Okay,

Simone Collins: I love it. No, no, no, no. It's, it's there. That's it. I mean, between, between the the four Bs movement and trad wives and stay at home girlfriends. This is very much something that appeals to all ends of the political spectrum of female.

Malcolm Collins: But hold on. I wanna read something that was posted in our discord in relation to this topic that I found really compelling.

And I'm like discord, by the way. Because modern feminism is a [01:12:00] movement that serves the male sexual imperative. It tells women that we should accept a man fornicating with us with no commitment. If we say no, he will go watch porn of women being beaten and trafficked and demeaned. If we say yes, he will demand that we mess up our body and hormone cycle was a pill.

If the pill doesn't work, he won't support us, and authority figures will encourage an abortion. No wonder so many women are rabidly abortionists when the alternative is grim for them, which will traumatize you if we date. He will eventually have you move in and perform domestic labor while having you pay rent and not giving you the benefits of marriage.

And if you marry, you will bear children while working full time and doing most of the housework. Basically, the feminist movements are huge simps for Chad, and then wind up unhappy and miserable if they have children at all. I mean, I don't agree with all that, but that's compelling.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I don't think any of that is true.

Malcolm Collins: You don't.

The Aristocratic Utensil: No.

Malcolm Collins: About [01:13:00] feminists.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Oh, okay. It's okay. Whenever I hear feminist in the word marriage, it's, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, beer on ice don't go together.

Malcolm Collins: I am a feminist. Right. And, and because I'm a feminist, while my wife does the housework, she also makes the family's money. Money.

It's empowering. It's empowering. I'm a feminist. Yes.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Right. It's a

Malcolm Collins: feminist. But

The Aristocratic Utensil: like

they, they, I kind of wanna say to them, like, what do you, to those women, what do they think their role in society actually is? Because a friend of mine said something horrible said to me like, women's own values basically sex.

If you strip that away, like everything else can be done better by men.

Simone Collins: Well, making babies. It's not sex, it's, it's childbearing.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes. But that is directly correlated to sex. I mean, I'm not necessarily necessarily their ways, I would say, but that, but that is, that is their role in basically human civilization.

Is to reproduce nice offspring.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, no, no. We, we are the, we are the agar, we [01:14:00] are the stable substrate of civilization and men are the high risk, high reward, disposable propagators of good software updates.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah. Thank you for causing us disposable. That's very kindly. You're

Simone Collins: welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Third, thank you.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.

Simone Collins: I called me a stable agar. All right. It's, it's fine.

The Aristocratic Utensil: But there's, there's utility instability, so that's kind of thing where it's like there's utility in pushing software update.

Simone Collins: Okay. It's just that only the good software updates get pushed.

The Aristocratic Utensil: I would say it's only compatible hardware that can receive the good software.

That's kind of my

comeback. Shauna,

Simone Collins: you really don't need to write your stuff, man. It's, it's there. I,

Malcolm Collins: in the beginning. This is, this is a good intro. Okay. Anyway, I

The Aristocratic Utensil: have I have used that argument for a lot of the things that I think is, I think it's because Moog writes like, everything is a computer program.

Mm-hmm.

And because I'm a guy and I also have this like input process, output function, whenever I analyze things I kind of like that. So I said to [01:15:00] people, the way that the globalists look at human beings, they look at them like they're pieces of, of software that just, or a hardware that can be updated.

I'm like, sure. That's not how humans work. They're not just, Hey, look, here's just the hardware that can be updated. Like if you ever worked with an actual computer, you can't just upload any software to the hardware, especially if it's old.

This is true with a

computer. You can throw it away, you can upgrade the hardware, but not all hardware upgrades are compatible.

That's where you're running the freaking problems. Like, Hey, look, we're gonna make like a freaking Pentium two run Windows 11. Like, no, you are not. That's, that's not gonna work. So good luck with that. I actually wrote a bit about free speech using that, and I'm curious how it's gonna go because I, I said a horrible thing with regards to free speech that it's gonna make free speech has explode.

I try to reframe it as an argument that free speech is not just like speech. It's actually like a consumable.

Oh yeah. That's interesting. That's fair.

Yes. In the sense of, in the real world, if you look at something like drugs and [01:16:00] alcohol, that is regulated because it can alter behavior.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sure.

The Aristocratic Utensil: And I said speech has the same effect. It can also radically alter people's behavior and make them believe in insane things like trans people are real. Mm-hmm. Which is not f*****g true.

Mm-hmm. And the

other argument that I have is that. Speech is not information in isolation. It needs a base where those ideas will actually gel.

Yeah. And the argument from free speech absolutes is that the way to be bad speech is more speech. And I fundamentally disagree with that 'cause it's not true. In fact, the way that I characterize it, and I will, I will basically power through this 'cause I think this is probably the smartest thing that I've ever said is that the idea that the best way to compare bad speech is with better speech is like saying the antidote of fat people is better food.

You have to understand why they eat the bad food. Yeah. It's not that better food doesn't exist. [01:17:00] It is that they want the bad food because it makes them feel better. It is not an issue of being factually correct. It is about an emotional appeal.

Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.

The Aristocratic Utensil: That is a difficult thing to sell to people that is like, Hey, look, you can have, like, on the one hand you can have broccoli and steak or whatever, and that's really good, but other end is pizza.

And pizza is a hell a lot better than the former.

Mm-hmm.

Unless you're me who eats it every damn day. Pizza or broccoli. I, I eat, eat pizza literally every single day.

Malcolm Collins: Oh.

Simone Collins: What are we having

Malcolm Collins: for dinner? It has all the food groups know, I send you down to make food. I've got a, yeah, I've

Simone Collins: got a surprise for you.

Actually tonight, let's just say it has something to do with my dubious heritage. Your devious. Is it my dubious heritage? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Jewish.

Simone Collins: You'll find out. No, don't look. It's all, all, we'll see. It

Malcolm Collins: is good to have you on and have a spectacular day.

Simone Collins: Yes. This was a pleasure. You are so clever, so fun.

Everyone. Definitely make sure you check out. We

Malcolm Collins: doing

Simone Collins: okay. Sorry. Okay. Bye [01:18:00] Bye. Bye.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Cheer

Malcolm Collins: on. I'm hitting end recording. I'm hitting record now and we can throw this at the end, but Yeah, I, no, I'm sorry. I have to talk. What, what are they thinking? Like why intentionally be an a*****e when you're trying to get support? We were talking about the DDoS attack by Ukraine on, on X.

Simone Collins: Well, allegedly, you know, still not confirmed. Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They, the left is pretending likes, that's, that's what Elon

Simone Collins: Musk said is, is it appears to be Ukraine related. So

The Aristocratic Utensil: yeah, who

Simone Collins: knows? He's

The Aristocratic Utensil: got some good social capital to believe, I suppose.

Simone Collins: I imagine his information sources are pretty good. So

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yes, considering he is working with the, the state, so Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And Elon Musk allegedly is a lot more value

Malcolm Collins: than Trump is buying a Tesla tomorrow.

And is telling all his supporters to buy them to support Ellan? No, a cyber truck. That's so

Simone Collins: sweet. Aw. I hope it's a gold cyber truck because otherwise I. All that's

Malcolm Collins: wow.

Simone Collins: Oh wow.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I thought that was really sweet of Trump to do for Elon. You know, it shows a [01:19:00] lot of support from him. Yeah, and I think one of the benefits of this, like recent slew of Elon Attacks has been that it has made specifically Trump incredibly sympathetic to Elon.

Mm-hmm.

And I think a lot of Trump's inner circle who maybe previously would've been more cold on Elon better understand, you know, just how much he's taking for this. That's a really good point. Which further embeds him within the administration, sort of loyalty department.

Yeah.

Hmm. Okay.

And there was the, well I think, you know, we're also beginning to see sort of who the slimy guys are. Like it was Mark Rubio who Elon was dressing down. And Mark Rubio was just being completely like an a-hole. Elon was like, you literally have fired no one. And Mark Rubio apparently reported you know, shot back.

Oh, what about all those people that accepted Layaways, like those 1,500 people? Like, does that not count? Oh,

Simone Collins: for the [01:20:00] love?

Malcolm Collins: And it's like, obviously that doesn't count. You, you, what are you talking about? That is what Elon did. That is what happened automatically. You were supposed to be doing something to make your own apartment more efficient as well, like everyone else.

Simone Collins: Yeah. As if he was like exempt from it.

Malcolm Collins: For those literally

Simone Collins: the lowest effort option meant that he did anything. So, wow.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That he didn't actively fight other people helping him. I, you know, my little brother is on Doge now. So that's really cool. So he hopefully gonna go in, fix all of this, but it, it, it, I think showed that, that Rubio has no future in the Republican party where it's going that he would resist the efforts of Doge is just, you know, this is something that's like not just a Republican winner, but has like 70% like broad approval among Americans.

Like, it shows a complete alliance with deep state slime over you know, the American people. Which I guess I should have guessed, like Mark [01:21:00] Rubio does have a face that sort of looks like deep state ally type. Do, do you get that impression when you look at him like, I. If I went to like a bureaucrat party, I'd expect him to be like king bureaucrat.

The Aristocratic Utensil: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wonder what I come off as to people, 'cause people say like I code specific ways. I don't think it's as a generic lefty, but mm-hmm. But certainly not conservative. Like they see it, they say you code like a dominatrix librarian.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What's right? I mean, we, we typically hear soy boy with you, but which that's like, that's the most common word.

That is common. Yeah. It's

Malcolm Collins: a common word. And it's, it's like obviously non-descriptive because I have, you know, fairly defined cheekbones, jaw, everything like that. So I don't know.

Simone Collins: I don't, I think soy is, is not a physiology thing exclusively. It's, I, I really don't know. I really don't [01:22:00] know. Maybe it has to do with your voice too, because you don't have a deep booming voice.

Kind of how with the animatronic Abraham Lincoln, that, well, they made his

Malcolm Collins: voice deeper to, to they,

Simone Collins: they intentionally changed his voice. They had a historically inaccurate voice because Lincoln too did not have a low booming voice. And therefore,

Malcolm Collins: oh, by the way, on the, on the episode on gay conversion stuff, I don't know if you saw the title I came up with for it.

I love

Simone Collins: your title and I am excited, which is,

Malcolm Collins: does electrocuting gay people turn them straight? We have to at least try. This is gonna be. The episode's actually pretty good prepped because I went into it. Like AI was like really resistant to say that any of it might work. And so, and obviously like I'm not gonna trust if there's like a bunch of studies saying it doesn't work because, you know, you'd lose your job if you said it didn't work.

So I decided to try to understand better when the specific types of treatment that they're using within conversion therapy were used in other aspects of psychology, [01:23:00] like for phobias and stuff like that. Did they work? And the answer is broadly no. Like most of the stuff used in conversion therapy does not appear to work.

It's not that there are like nothing would work. I, I suspect some medication stuff aimed at reducing libido would be fairly effective. But you cannot create arousal where previously none existed. Oh, for sure. All of our understanding of. Of sexuality. Yeah. So you, yeah. Like you can't

Simone Collins: give someone a foot fetish.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You can't give someone who doesn't have a foot fetish. A foot fetish.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not contagious. You can't catch gay. You can't catch straight. It doesn't work that way. I mean, although I don't know though. So here's where I'm like, not so sure. Because this whole issue when I worked at hub pages was what the moderation team referred to as auntie porn.

Like auntie, like someone's

Malcolm Collins: aunt. Oh yeah, yeah. You mean the Indian thing?

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was like normal Indian woman and I, I mean normal because normally when you see a, a [01:24:00] picture of an Indian woman, she is a 10 out of 10 gorgeous woman. This was like sixes, fives, right? So, so not an online, like even mid person.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And it was things like armpits and that I was extremely culturally specific.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I, I think you know, different cultures of ethnic, okay. But there may be ethnically linked fetishes or ways of looking at things.

Like, if you're talking about people who present phenotypically oh, so you just,

Simone Collins: you think it's genetic, the just that it happens

Malcolm Collins: to be yeah, for example. Does, does Japan have a higher prevalence of that than other regions? I would guess it probably does. In terms of No, no. Like you don't think that they have a high really, that would astonish me.

Simone Collins: We've, we've seen so much hint eye at this point. And also like when I was in Japan, I collected as a teen, I would collect all of the little, sex [01:25:00] worker cards. They had like little sticky notes that they would put all over, like rails of bridges and stuff. So that, like, you'd call them, like, you'd pick up, it's like a, a business card, but also sticky notes.

Right. But, and like none of them emphasized armpits and pictures. That was

Malcolm Collins: not a silly point. What are you, how are you confused? I said phenotypically young. I am trying not to say a word that gets this demonetized

Simone Collins: that, that No, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: Obviously.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So that, that is a, a, a greater tendency. I don't know though, in,

Malcolm Collins: in Japanese look, it would be weird if arousal patterns did not code into ethnic and regional groups.

That would be No, no, I

Simone Collins: agree

Malcolm Collins: with you

Simone Collins: on that. But I think that being into really responding to youth sexually is a pretty universal super stimuli that people respond to. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But this Indian thing I do not think is cultural. I think it's genetic.

Simone Collins: You just think it's genetic. So there is variation, but you just don't think it's cultural.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think it's cultural.

Simone Collins: I, I could see that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, okay, so what would be the argument here? Like let's think through this. Okay. Okay. If it was [01:26:00] cultural, yeah. You wouldn't expect so many cross-cultural and cross timelines wise, unusual fetishes. Mm-hmm. As I've pointed out, typically, if you can find it unusual fetish today, you can find it mentioned somewhere in a history book as well.

Mm-hmm.

Which we've gone into on, on some episodes. There are, e except for ones that they maybe lacked the technology to create in the past or something like that. But generally speaking which implies to me that this is not a cultural phenomenon, even though people believed it to be the one.

Like for example, the one instance where there was a belief that I'm thinking of even historically in cultural fetishes was the English vice, was the idea that English liked being spanked because they were exposed to it, like in their school system. Ah. And so, you know, getting spanked with a paddle was like more common that I wouldn't say as cultural.

That I would say is exposure, potentially alerting them of a fetish they may have that other people don't have. But I, I, I, so I think that, [01:27:00] you know, you have some cultural like exposure, like I, you know, but I'm exposed to normal looking women and like armpits and like navel, I would know do nothing for you.

If that was arousing to me, like, oh, I

Simone Collins: don't think I've, I've never seen belly buttons actually, so. But

Malcolm Collins: changing what arouses you, I just think is incredibly difficult. Or, or making a new thing arouse you that doesn't previously arouse you. No,

Simone Collins: totally. I agree. I agree.

Malcolm Collins: I, in fact, I've never heard of somebody being like really grossed out by something and then later it becoming one of their fetishes.

Um Mm. Like a sign flip. Like a sign flip in like adult life. I've never heard of that.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: haven't

Simone Collins: either though. I do wonder if the sexual proclivities of the guy who had a rod shot through his head,

Malcolm Collins: like, oh, Finnis gage.

Simone Collins: Yeah. 'cause Phineas Gage had a lot of personality shifts. I wonder if his sexuality was also, apparently he

Malcolm Collins: became much more sexually aggressive after that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [01:28:00] But that's, that could just be grouped with overall aggression, you know, like maybe the, the sexual or just, or worse

Malcolm Collins: or worse inhibition centers.

Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah. I don't, I don't see that as, as compelling. But I don't know. Finney Gage what a name too. It sounds like a very steampunk name. If you had to just think of a Steampunk name, you'd be like, oh, oh, Finney Gage.

Malcolm Collins: I like that too. Yeah. Yeah. Just have to choose it. Not even knowing who he was. Goodness gracious.

And what else did you learn anything today?

Simone Collins: What have I learned? Oh I, I've been working with Emma Waters on finding points of contact to reach out to. I will give you email drafts to review tomorrow morning for five people or so, asking for 30 minute meeting.

Simone wrote some

Malcolm Collins: executive orders for the Trump administration and we're trying to find people to give them to

Simone Collins: well prenatal

Malcolm Collins: list org. [01:29:00] Did,

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: I'm, I'm prenatal list org did through you. It's not like they paid you.

The Aristocratic Utensil: No. So

Malcolm Collins: you did. I wish they did. We, we don't accept any money from our foundations right now.

We're like super lean which, you know, whatever, maybe, maybe we won't be super lean forever, but right now, you know, it's a, it's a one directional cash flow into the orgs, not out of the

Simone Collins: we, we give it money and work. But yeah. So I will send you those email drafts to see if we can.

In this episode, we delve into research papers exploring how political ideologies affect empathy and understanding between left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon where conservatives seem to display more empathy towards liberals than vice versa. Studies like 'Empathetic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals' provide insights into this asymmetry. We also touch on dehumanization, cultural narratives, and real-world examples from gaming communities. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on political empathy and cultural dynamics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be an episode where we're gonna go over a few research papers that explore lefty and righty brains. Again, really interestingly, but with a focus on a persistent phenomenon that has been found, which is that people on the right politically.

Have a much easier time modeling how people on the left think than people on the left able to model people on the right.

Simone Collins: That is so strange. That is so strange. Yeah. The people I grew up thinking as someone on the left, that we were the empathetic ones, that we understood everyone better and we knew what everyone we needed.

Malcolm Collins: How can we get this so wrong? Oh, it's not just that we're gonna go into other things. So like, just speaking of them not being empathetic, just to give a little sure thing away here. So there were four studies with nearly 4,800 participants in the UK and the us Okay. To look at how much empathy each side had for their political opponents.

Yeah. This was called empathetic [00:01:00] conservatives and moralizing liberals. Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment.

So what it showed is that liberals have less empathy for conservatives than conservatives have of liberals. This actually

Simone Collins: makes a lot of sense too, because I remember being on the left, growing up. Having empathy for the entire world, but still seeing conservatives as this inhuman boogeyman. Yeah, so that actually checks out.

That's wild.

Malcolm Collins: Conservatives do not dehumanize lefties. But lefties do dehumanize conservatives. They do. They do. And, and this is, this is seen in the data, like this study was like, surprisingly, conservatives showed more empathy for liberals than liberals showed of conservatives. This asymmetry was found across studies and was statistically reliable.

Why is it surprising? Maybe it's surprising because of your own biases going into the study. And I love the way the study explained this away. It's like, well, this is actually justified because [00:02:00] lefties beliefs, conservatives want to kill them, and conservatives don't think lefties wanna kill them. And I was like, well, but conservatives don't want to kill them, so it's not, this is like saying the Nazis were were justified because blood libel.

They're like, yeah, well they did think the Jews were murdering their babies. And it's like, yeah, but the Jews weren't murdering their babies. That doesn't make their ideology justified. What? What are you talking about? Now I note here that there was a great study done on the nature of the dehumanization, which I think can help.

So, this was the study, political meta dehumanization in mental representations, divergent emphasis in the minds of liberals versus conservatives. And this study found that liberals and conservatives differed in how they dehumanize the other, at least in the framing of this static. Okay. So what this study found was that.

Conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, while liberals see conservatives as savage. Which is true. But one is like a pitying, like if you had more information. Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: You're just misinformed. You're [00:03:00] just, you're not exposed to the world as it's, I, I

Malcolm Collins: like that's dehumanization. It's not dehumanization.

That's just like. Actually the way it is. If, if I believe that, if they, if, if you actually empathize with someone and see them as human, you're going to think that the reason they hold these views is they just don't have access to as much information as you Yeah.

Simone Collins: That you must know something that they don't know and then that's why you view what you view.

Yes, yes. Which, which is framed as, that's how I remember viewing conservatives as. A leftist young lady.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I remember, Hey, I was a leftist at one point too, and I remember conservatives are the savages who live in the woods and are religious extremists and don't know any. Yes, scary

Simone Collins: Bible. Thumping.

Cultist. Monsters who don't care about other people at all and just want you to live like them. And

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So I wanna talk about like what creates this phenomenon. Yeah. And, and I should note the first study that I was mentioning that led to all of this I heard one guy, I. Point out this was short phyto, Taku [00:04:00] say that in one study it was actually that lefties were three x worse the rate of conservatives in terms of modeling them.

Oh my gosh, I blind that exact study, so I don't know where exactly he was getting that from, but it seems believable given what I've seen. And we recently, oh wait,

Simone Collins: no, no, no. This was What if all test Who said that? While we were driving. Oh yeah. It's one of our hits.

Malcolm Collins: You said that. Yeah. Not short fighter ta.

And, and this was a great video by would've called his, by the way, he's totally back. He's got some fun videos. The one that you missed that I thought was really good was on, and you should check it out was on the anti civilization, looking at how the steps. Kept producing people in groups that went out and destroyed all of this various civilizations of the world.

Whether it was the Chinese, whether it was the Europeans, whether it was the Indians. Wow. And this one region of the world, like in civ, like a, a sponsor reefers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Just kept spotting the things that destroyed civilization. Yeah. Wait, the reefers, how do you know mass effect? '

Simone Collins: cause Well, in, in, in. In [00:05:00] Serenity, there were, oh, this is the different, oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, this is different universe, whatever.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway yes. Very interesting. And we might do a, a different video on that. I idea, because I think it's really interesting the idea of an anti civilization uhhuh. Although I'd go further and I'd say that their civilization is the anti Jews. They are the exact antithesis of Jewish history.

IE Oh, because they're,

Simone Collins: they're, well. If Jews represent order and process, if leaving

Malcolm Collins: urban centers, these, these

Simone Collins: represent anarchy in distribution. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And having a vested interest in maintaining a stable status quo. Mm-hmm. These individuals mm-hmm. They are entropy, entropy incarnate. They lived almost entirely outside of cities, almost entirely with the benefit of the status quo being destroyed.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: they're very, very interesting to go into. But that's for another episode. But anyway, so, yeah, he, he pointed that out and I don't think that Rudyard lies about stuff. He seems to know his stuff, so he got it from somewhere. But what I was getting from short fatty taco oh, [00:06:00] was a really interesting instance of this that happened recently.

Okay. Where an individual named Bonni or Bunny or something who is a trans game maker. So one of our friends, stuttering Craig, who does Side Scrollers which is a conservative leaning video game podcast, the number one video game podcast, I think. He did this like just focused on like video game news.

Yeah. He put together a reward show called The Real Gamer Awards and, and Bunless Game, nightmare Cart ended up winning. People would pay to vote and the idea was to build an award show without any of the political bias. Nice. And they really wanted to do that. They wanted one that didn't have the lefty bias.

It didn't have the righty bias. It was just like, these are games that we love. And this person because they were so bad at modeling. The, the modern right. And what the modern Right. Is striving for. Yeah. Did some treat or just game

Simone Collins: enthusiasts

Malcolm Collins: based on merit, how they Well, I mean, he is a genuine righty, but the, the genuine righties [00:07:00] today are just fighting for a fair playing field for everyone.

And they were unable to see this, so they reached out and they said because the general readies don't have control of our culture right now, our culture is controlled by the urban monoculture, which attempts to impose itself on everyone through media, through news, through leftist policy and the right just wants everyone to be treated equally regardless of your gender, sexuality, skin color, et cetera.

You know, we've had reporters do double takes on us where I was like, yeah. I believe that someone should only be promoted based on meritocracy. And they were like, are you sure you want? Don't wanna rephrase that. And I was like, no. I comfortable with that, like famous racist who said, I believe that we should judge people on the content of their character, not the, the color of their skin.

You know, that's, that's who I agree with. But anyway, so this person bonus they ended up winning one of the categories and of course. The people knew that they were trans. Nobody cared that they were trans. They had made a good game that didn't have a lot of politics in it. Mm-hmm. It was a racing game.

It was called Nightmare Cart. And it was like a redo of like other, other racing games. So [00:08:00] anyway, they won. This individual said, oh, I'm gonna go have gay trans sex, was my like, great gay trans girlfriend furry sex or whatever. And they expected the people running this to be like. I hate you. How could you do that?

How could you, oh no, we screwed it up, giving this to a transfer. And they were like, no, cool. Like, do what you want. Like, we're just trying to, you know, award you for your work. And they then freaked out about this. And they it was clear that they didn't understand the, the people who were hosting this award show at all, that the, the, the work show just wanted to genuinely help them and didn't care what their gender was.

And so then they were like, I. Won't take the award even though they had already accepted the award. Okay. And like, you didn't ask me for permission to give me this award. And this was, you know, and then a lot of people started hating 'em because they were basically being a, a jerk. Right. And even in their own internal understanding of the story, even still, they believed that the people hosting the show were like upset or didn't know that they were trans, which [00:09:00] just wasn't the case.

They just don't care.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They were voting on the game.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they were voting on the game, right? And so we need to ask why aren't they capable of seeing this? Like why aren't they? And I think it's because the left has a big problem right now. If they admitted the political reality was in which they find themselves.

A core part of their narrative begins to dissolve in a way that makes it hard to continue to support the left. Mm-hmm. And this is why they're so bad at modeling the right, yeah. Which is they genuinely believe that the right is a group fighting to culturally oppress them or imposition them, and they.

Cannot see that the right, just wants to be able to live life the way they wanna live life, to just do what they want. To be able to work at jobs without being discriminated against. To be able to play [00:10:00] video games without them having gone through some sort of counsel that makes them, you know, obviously not produced by the best writers.

Obviously not produced by the best game makers or they'd be good. You know, and we know this, like video games used to be good before you guys took over, right? Like, if you made games that were woke and good as we have repeatedly seen, like, okay, you're like, oh, the right won't buy a game that's woken good.

What about Boulder's Gate three? Like, that was the wokes I've ever seen. And you could, you could choose to play. You know, did a trans character who hadn't gone through gender reassignment yet, you know, like, that was such a woke game and I loved it. The rest of the right loved it. We talked positively about it on our shows, what we hate.

Isn't trans individuals, it's trans individuals who make shitty games, who use our money from like previous games we supported before these individuals started ruining them to destroy the quality of something that [00:11:00] we care about.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Whether it's, you know, acolyte or you know, veil guard and, and as we've, you can look at our um, Wachowski effect.

With Veil Guard, you can be like, well, these individuals were involved with the previous games. And it's like, yes. But after people become infected with the urban Monocultural Mind virus, they get really bad at everything. Often, not always, but often part with like narrative storytelling is why, why was Nightmare Cartt able to still be good?

It's because I think you could be heavily infected with the urban monocultural mind virus and still be a good engineer or still be good at like non-narrative based games. You're just very bad at like creating narrative experiences often because you struggle to understand what people who aren't like you see in the world, and that's why games within that category are so rare.

Simone Collins: Hmm. I, I guess I could see that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it's, it's understanding because if they could put their mind in somebody like stuttering Craig Right. They would understand that what he [00:12:00] wants is just the best games to win.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He just likes games. Well, that's that. I mean, I was under the, I don't, I don't know him as well as you do.

I was under the impression that he was. Only right in so far as Gamergate pushed a bunch of people to the right and also anyone who actually cared about games became opposed to the urban monoculture was, which was actively killing good games.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and I think that this is something we're seeing across the board here with the modern, right, which is.

The, the urban monoculture created them by taking the things they care about and making them terrible. Mm-hmm. A lot of the, the left thought in the urban monocultural thought that if it could gain control of Star Wars, if it could gain control of the Assassin's Creed series, if it could gain control of these studios, that it would be able to use that control.

To finesse or sort of impose their cultural ideology on the people who were consuming that product. Mm. And that may have [00:13:00] worked had they focused on also making those games. Good. But no, because. Gaining control of the studios also became affiliated with their sort of DEI promote people based on their beliefs, not based on their or their beliefs or their race, or their sexuality, or their gender presentation, and not based on their competency.

Okay. It was associated with bad products. And as the oh, what's he called again? The, the troll guy, we have a big overlap with him, Bri or whatever. He, he, he said if they had only not come for our games, like we were happy if you had just knocked with our games.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We wouldn't have cared.

And this is the way, like all of nerd culture was like nerd culture used to be a solidly lefty thing. 100%. Now nerd culture is solidly right wing, pretty much across the board except for the people who still control like the the, the, the conventions and stuff, because these are the large bureaucratic boards.

And it really was

Simone Collins: the gaming that did it too.

Malcolm Collins: It really was [00:14:00] the gaming, like, did, did you? Not with gaming, but it, no, the more I think about it, it's wild. It wasn't just gaming, it was the Star Wars nor Nerds. It was the Star Trek nerds. It was the, you know, everybody who liked this stuff for its quality and who like had a genuine attachment to it feels genuinely betrayed.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That's so bad. That's so bad. Oh my gosh. What, what are your thoughts? I mean, do you have a different take on why the left can't model the right?

Simone Collins: I, I, I think that it, a lot of it comes down to isolation. That for whatever reason, and you see this in graphs of friendship, that people and especially women who are left-leaning, are actively uncomfortable with having friends who are on the right. And they actively shun friends who are on the right.

And when you look at the [00:15:00] same rates of exchange, people who are, who report on surveys as being conservative also report as having a few progressive friends. So for some reason there's this selective cultural isolationism whereby. A lot of conservatives are perfectly happy to be friends with progressive people, which would give them more ability to model them.

The more time you spend around someone, the more you're able to model them, right? Mm-hmm. And there's just a lot less willingness on the part of progressives to be friends with conservative. Now, the question would be, when you look at these, these graphs, well, how is it. That you have conservatives who are friend with friends with progressives and progressives who have no friends who are conservatives.

I think that maybe there are just some progressives who are friends with lots of conservatives and they're unusual, but I think what's more likely is there's a lot of conservatives that just hide the fact that they're conservatives. And are therefore friends with? Well, this is like a

Malcolm Collins: known thing. Like I, I, well, [00:16:00] until I got famous, I had lots of friends who didn't know I had conservative views even after my views had started to grow.

And well, we

Simone Collins: know plenty of people who are like, yeah, I totally agree with you, but I would never say that in public. So I guess that's what's going on is that there are a lot of sneaky conservatives or closet conservatives that. Are able to model progressives really well because they're friends with a bunch of them and progressives just can't.

And,

Malcolm Collins: and this is a fascinating point when we talk about cultural imposition being the hallmark of modern progressivism is the very fact that people need to be closeted shows which direction the cultural pressure is going in the same way you need to be like a closeted gang in the nineties or something like that.

You knew you would face cultural repercussions for, you know, and, and today you knew you would face cultural repercussions if you wanted a game show that was. Completely meritocratic. You know, and, and so you hide that. You know, I, I see this was the message thread was my class. You know, people f*****g crazy like, they're like, oh, all these Nazis and [00:17:00] everything like that.

And I'm not, not even replying, right? Because I'm like, I seem to remember you guys like marching through the streets, starting from the river to the sea. Like you guys actually supporting the people who want to exterminate the Jews. And this isn't like. A fringe thing. This is like Claudia Gay, the woman who literally ran Claudine gay.

Claudine Gay, the number one like educational institution being like, well, you know, we shouldn't punish people for saying stuff about Jews. Like obviously you know, this, this is a dehumanization of the Jews on the left. This is a breaking society into an ethnic hierarchy. Within the mainstream of the left and the people who are fighting against us genuinely want a meritocratic society.

Yes. IE what Martin Luther King was fighting for. And I think that the left still tells itself that that's what it's doing. Like that, it's unable to see that its actions no longer do that. And therefore the people who actually wanted that but are free of it oppose them. [00:18:00] And I think that this also comes down to a question that I have had for a long time, which is why is it the, the right.

And right-leaning influencers seem more prone to audience capture than left-leaning influencers.

Simone Collins: Ah,

Malcolm Collins: so if, if you are not familiar with audience capture, this is where an individual may start as a centrist and then become more and more in lines, whichever political direction they were leaning, because they end up developing an audience that is more extreme than them was in that political direction.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: And this happens much faster towards the right people who, influencers who are centrist, moving towards the right than influencers who are centrist moving towards the left. And I think that the reason for this is actually due to the, a false narrative of their opponent that the left relies on to maintain its followers or its supporters.

Which is to say that once you begin to challenge the [00:19:00] narrative that is normal and allowed was in society, and you see that they have been lying to you, it is much harder to go back. Whereas if you start as a centrist and you begin to challenge. Things in a left-leaning direction, you are not gonna see as many.

Oh, here's all of the places. The right lied to me about this because the right is, honestly right now, j because it's not the right of the past. It's not like a religious right. Like yeah. When you see people go, for example, anti-trans they're not doing that for like religious reasons anymore. The, the main activist, whether it's like JK Rowling or Elon or whatever.

Right? Mm-hmm. It's because they gained access to more information. And you also see a pattern of. When people entertain the right, specifically influencers or right-leaning ideas, they are pushed further right by anyone on the left. And Joe Rogan is a great example of this. Oh yeah. Like the left was like, we need a lefty Joe.

We need Joe

Simone Collins: Rogan of the left.

Malcolm Collins: Joe [00:20:00] Rogan was Joe Rogan of the left. You guys made him right wing by attacking him whenever he talked to somebody on the other side. Yeah. And the question here, is this gonna happen to Gavin Newsom? He's gonna talk to some right wing individuals and he's eventually gonna be like, wait a second.

Were they right All along? Like

Simone Collins: I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. Well, he's definitely getting points for hosting a podcast in which he has active deep conversations with people who are on the right.

Malcolm Collins: And if anyone knows how to contact him, let us know. 'cause I would love to chat with him.

Simone Collins: But it's, I think that's one reason why he.

Is, is winning over so much respect from the world, right? Like, oh my gosh, this, this progressive mainstay, this staple is actually listening to us. This is insane. But because conservatives are never listening, I don't think so. I don't think so because he is playing a very, very, very long game, and he is the slickest of [00:21:00] slick political operators, and he's going for president.

And he's not going to leave his party and he knows he is. He what he cares about more than the truth is winning. And he. He wants to win as a Democrat, a Democratic candidate in the next presidential election.

Malcolm Collins: I will say that this is like an interesting phenomenon as well, that when Lefts learned to empathize was the right, they often become the right.

So there was like the case of the people who went to make like the Red Pill Community documentary and seemed pretty hostile to it at first, and then they learned about it and became like, so Red Pill, like it was like a group of women too. Play the woman who decided she would try to be a guy, just to show how easy guys have it.

Oh yeah. And have it much harder and ended up, you know, unliving her, is herself. Yes. Yeah. Thi this, this is an interesting, and it's a phenomenon people have when they're talking to us, like lefties have when they're talking to us and, and like the prenatal stuff. Mm-hmm. And they come to us. They expect to think that we are absolute demons, and then they're like, why [00:22:00] are you being so reasonable?

Is this a trick? Where, where is the trick? We just did an interview as Mother Jones. We'll see how that goes. But they were very much like, yeah, it seems reasonable the positions you guys are pushing. And I think that this is the challenge. It's that the lack of empathy is sort of core to staying on the left.

And it's also core to, like, even even the old version of the left, I remember I thought of righteous as being just completely illogical and animal-like, like savages. They were like literally like a different species. I was like, I, yeah, like

Simone Collins: ending up on an island full of cannibals. You'd, you'd be very scared.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, left. I have empathy for everyone. Horrible. And you're like, well, what about the, like, what about me working poor America? Like the, the right, you know, the, the factory workers, the coal miners, they're like, well, there's so much

Simone Collins: distaste. Everyone,

Malcolm Collins: you know, you know, you know what I mean by

Simone Collins: everyone? I don't know.

I, I think it's a major blind spot. It's, it's a blind spot. Like they, [00:23:00] maybe part of it too is that they're seen as not counting. Because they're seen as coming from a position of privilege and cumulative wealth. Even if they're not, even if they're not wealthy, like even if they're the disenfranchised Appalachian poor described in JD Vance's, hillbilly Elegy, they're seen as still being.

No, I think they say this, but they,

because they know this isn, they're not, they're not black because they're white. Because they, they

Malcolm Collins: know this isn't true. I think the lefties like in, I don't think so. No. They know that there are poor, disenfranchised white people out there, but they do not see them as human.

When they think of the people who are opposing them, they break them into two classes. One, a group of white wealthy elites who keep them down. Hmm. And then the subhuman, tri Luddites, who mine work in the mines, who work on the farms, who this other group, they understand this other group doesn't have power.

They're just beneath [00:24:00] hearing about or relevancy.

Simone Collins: Or they're, maybe it's that they are expected to have views that are so repugnant lifestyles and views that are so repugnant to. The educated elites that they see them as subhuman but not deserving subhuman. Like you grew up in America. You should have had the good sense to be progressive and educated and to live like me.

And you don't, therefore

Malcolm Collins: you had, you should. No, it, it's like you should have had the good sense to be born

Simone Collins: to a rich family

Malcolm Collins: like

Simone Collins: me. How, how did this not happen to you? No. You know what, but like the thing is like there are view, there are people in other countries who live lives of poverty and have cultures that ultimately are repugnant to.

To progressive leftists, and yet the poor morally repugnant white people in America are seen as irredeemable, I think because they should have known better or something. That they, they're us. They, they, how, how dare they have those views, like those people who [00:25:00] practice genital mutilation? Well, I may not agree with that, but you know, once they, once we give them our culture and our assistance, they will become enlightened and know better.

Oh, okay. So what, you see what I mean? What you're

Malcolm Collins: arguing is they see them kind of like apostates.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think they see them like apostates if I'm modeling my old way of viewing things. I think that that's, it's like they should have enough money. They had, they had a chance to be a civilized good person and progressive, and they chose, they chose not to be.

Therefore, they are fallen. We do not need to protect them. They don't count. And we view them as less than human because they had a chance they could have been baptized, they could have been serious. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: we're okay with supporting, you know, the gays for Gaza stuff we're okay with supporting these people who throw gay people.

'cause once we

Simone Collins: help them and save them, they will see the light and they will be just like us, us they'll be able to

Malcolm Collins: erase their cultural practices. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's, that, that's the, but that's the plan. That is 100% the plan.

What would happen to a gay couple [00:26:00] in Gaza?

Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not

Malcolm Collins: And they don't believe that the plan isn't working. Like fundamentally, there is a disbelief that the plan may not be working within any different.

No. Got of them. Wait, the plan will work. This is why you can take them like directly to like one of these individuals in the US and they'll be like, yeah, we plan to kill the gays. And they're like, we need to give you more assistance. Know. 'cause when

Simone Collins: you, and a lot of this is like the USAID thing, like when we give you more assistance.

You will see that our ways are better. And I think this happened a lot in Europe too, that like, don't worry, once they experience our European social services and see our enlightened European systems, they will drop these, these savage views and they will be just like us. They will [00:27:00] assimilate by choice, but we will never obligate them to assimilate because that is not our culture.

And then I, I think, but they're cultural nationalists.

Right for the urban

monoculture. Right. But they do that through the provision of services. The, the, the ization is by wealth distribution. We do not expend our energy attempting to change your mind because that is wrong. We accept all, rather, we will take someone else's money and spend it on you and then you will love us so much for doing so that you will be just like us.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and well or your culture will naturally evolve in this direction when you get in access to our information or more information. Yeah. Your kids

Simone Collins: will go to our schools, your kids will. Become like us.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is also what we see in so I was reading some posts on ask Liberals, right?

And it was somebody saying, Hey, so like, here's the data showing that liberals have lower amounts of mental health than conservatives. Here's the amount [00:28:00] the polls showing, you know, liberals have, et cetera, right? And anyone who looks at liberals can tell they have way more mental health problems than conservatives.

This is just like a really obvious thing. And what people said was, oh, this is actually just an artifact of conservatives being liars. That's why liberals are more open and honest with themselves and that's why you have more mental health problems. Mm-hmm. And I think that, that, this is broadly what we see.

Like conservatives are all liars. Conservatives aren't honest about themselves. Even though like any rational person can look at the two communities and be like, you guys aren't mentally healthy though. Like you see that, like I always note that the Natalus Convention, one of the interesting things about it is everyone there seems to be happy to be alive and excited about the future.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And it's

Malcolm Collins: rare for me to be around a community like that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even if they don't have, you know, everything in the world. Yeah. They, they're happy with what they do have and that's key and so unusual, but delightful.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Simone, any [00:29:00] closing thoughts from you?

Simone Collins: This has just been somewhat mind blowing for me because even though it's been a long time since I've had that progressive cult mind space, it's still, I can still go back to it and it's kind of shocking to realize that I wasn't this enlightened, empathetic person that I.

And I still sometimes have this feeling like, well, I'm the evil conservative now. Ha ha. Like, I don't care about people. And then I actually realized that the reason I switched over to this is I actually do, I, I do care about people and I care about evidence-based solutions and outcomes, and I can't, I can't do that.

And also still be on the left. Yeah. And there were many instances in my life in which I had to encounter that in environmental advocacy and then in [00:30:00] policy and then in tism it just keeps coming back. So the, it's, it's just crazy. 'cause I, I still in kind of brainwashed a little bit in the cold to believe, but of course.

This makes me evil to wanna, you know, save. Yeah. I, I'm the, I'm the one who's not empathetic. I'm the one who can't model other people. I'm the tone deaf one. And, and to realize just how not true that is, is, it's not the satisfying thing I hoped it would be. I'm, now I'm just like, well, what do they have, Malcolm?

What do they, they had, they, they don't have good empathy. They can't model the other side. Well, they don't have really great evidence-based solutions. Their mental health sucks. They just lost.

Malcolm Collins: Come on. They need something. I think this is why they can't, when everyone's like the left is lost. Right now, I think it's, it, it, like nobody knows, like the leftists are all internally talking.

They know something is wrong. They're trying to fix it. And the reason why they're struggling so much is it requires seeing [00:31:00] that they are the cultural imperialists. That they want everyone to follow their way of life, their cultural practices, whether it's the immigrants or the conservatives or anyone else.

And their entire party is built around enforcing that.

Simone Collins: And the thing is, I feel as though if they actually owned that, yeah, it would go better because, for example, they would require assimilation from immigrant groups.

Mm-hmm.

Or only let in immigrants who were willing to assimilate, which would. Which would go better, you

Malcolm Collins: know, it would go better than the, the, the Hispanics coming here and then voting more than 50% for Trump, the male ones at least.

And the, the, the females, you know? Well,

Simone Collins: yeah, but I mean, the, I feel like they're qualified to, to say that because like Mike Solana has said, would, you know a minimum requirement for coming here should be that you, you like America and you wanna be an American?

Malcolm Collins: The, the, the, and that's a Trump view there being is that [00:32:00] these, these Hispanic immigrants came here and the left just assumed that they would be converted to the urban monoculture and they haven't been.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a serious miscalculation. And they have adjusted on that. They've become incredibly anti-Hispanic. They've become incredibly racist against Hispanic people. You see them talking about it all the time. They're like, oh yeah, let's. Get rid of them all now because they didn't follow what I wanted, you know?

But anyway. Hey Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight? Curry again.

Simone Collins: I Curry night number two. And I will not burn your non tonight, I apologize.

Malcolm Collins: Would you put in a, a little bit of chili oil and a little bit of the chili flakes?

Simone Collins: The red ones?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the little red chili flakes. Or if we have any chilies that we haven't used yet, put them in.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I don't know if you roasted some that we haven't used.

Simone Collins: Roasted. Oh, I haven't roasted. Yeah, those if they're still good 'cause we were, we were out of town for a little bit. You think they're still good?

Malcolm Collins: I would imagine so. Okay. Yeah, I can chop, I can just

Simone Collins: chop them up fresh and [00:33:00] then simmer them.

No, that's

Malcolm Collins: nicer.

Simone Collins: Okay, then I will do that. How about that instead of the chili oil and flakes? 'cause those are pretty strong. No, that plus chili oil. You really wanna hurt tonight, don't you? Chili oil isn't spicy. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't know. Or not particularly. It's incredibly mild actually. It just sort of adds to the,

Simone Collins: to the what? If not, I don't know the the, okay. The thing that Cal shows, the qua that possess. I will make sure you have it. And well, I'm gonna

Malcolm Collins: go hang out with are we gonna, we gonna do NPR soon? We got a BBC. We got Ireland. We got a lot of news, news coming up in the near future. So for those of you who still read the mainstream media, they're gonna be freaking out about us for a while.

Which I'm excited about. I love throwing s**t at the s**t at the, at the, the fan because I'm in their house

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: I [00:34:00] just watch it splatter on everything. They, they're, they're all covered in it. It's hilarious.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: love you.

Simone Collins: I love you.

Malcolm Collins: You don't have to, I mean, you're fine.

Simone Collins: I don't have to, but I do.

Malcolm Collins: I love you.

But too, by the way, you're, you're an amazing mom and wife. Yay. And I am extremely lucky for this life that I live, mama.

Simone Collins: I feel the same way. Mama. So does Indy. She's, she's ready. She's ready, mama. All right. I will see you downstairs shortly. Bye.

Bye.

Speaker: What did

Speaker 3: you bopped him with? A soccer B Dusty. You gotta get him back.

Speaker 4: I stronger. Oh yeah. Oh, Josie, you gotta power up. Power up. You gotta boost [00:35:00] your power. Bam, bam, bam.

In this episode, we delve into the philosophical and psychological aspects of pessimism, nihilism, and antinatalism. The discussion begins with the exploration of Emil Cioran's ideas and the allure of pessimism and nihilism. We then touch on how adopting such mindsets can act as psychological protection and social dominance hacks. Throughout the episode, we contrast these perspectives with more optimistic and proactive approaches to life, personal responsibility, and earnest enthusiasm. Includes a critique of C. S. Lewis's argument from desire and the importance of avoiding nihilistic tendencies in personal relationships.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today is going to be an interesting and philosophical episode, but also focused on psychology and sort of best mental health practices for living. I was listening. to a podcast diving into the philosophy of Emil Kairon, who wrote Better Not to Have Been Bored.

He, the Romanian philosopher. And he exhibited many traits that I think that all of us are susceptible to, which is the protective shell of dumerism, pessimism. And this feeling of suffering. And I think that if we investigate this, we can understand why it feels so comfy to go to this place

Speaker 9: That's cool. I guess you can join up with us

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Antinatalists.

Speaker 9: if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go to the graveyard [00:01:00] and write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: Thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Antinatalist.

Speaker 9: kid. We'll see you, Stan.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, fairytale.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and just as a, a bit of a preview here, I think there's a few things that play I think one is, it removes some degree of responsibility for one's own failures or states, so there is less need for self judgment or self motivation two is I believe that it looks chic, like it, it, it looks sophisticated.

Yes. Sophisticated. Three is it makes you much more difficult for other people to attack. It's a very lazy position to hold intellectually speaking, because [00:02:00] when people attempt to attack you. You know, you're just like, yeah, you know, life is terrible. Yeah, et cetera. And like, you can't hurt me. Like I'm, I'm at rock bottom.

Where are you going to push me? Exactly.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: I found a video of some real Americans running across a far left voluntary human extinction rally.

Speaker 7: Are these the Nazis?

Speaker 6: No, Donnie, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: My first world life has involved some degree of suffering and I didn't consent to being born.

Speaker 7: It's not fair!

Speaker 6: Fair? Who's the f*****g nihilist around here, you bunch of f*****g crybabies? This guy's gonna hurt us, Walter. No, Donnie. These men are cowards. I f**k you!

Speaker 7: F**k

Speaker 6: you!

Speaker 7: I f**k you! I f**k you! Ball, man. Hey, dick. Oh.

Hey, dick.

Speaker 6: I

Malcolm Collins: so let's go over all of these through the framing of this individual. All right. So this individual is really important to antinatalist philosophy where I [00:03:00] study, you know, if our opponents have a philosophy, I make a point of studying their intellectual arguments as much as I could.

He, did not have any particularly sophisticated or interesting intellectual arguments. But he had a very interesting, buddhism

Simone Collins: because I feel like one, this is a very, very, very old meme. The life is suffering meme is like extremely old. So what is, what are his novel? Are

Malcolm Collins: I don't remember it. No, it was something like just not interesting. The other person I was studying today was C. S. Lewis who had, it was dumb for like way more interesting ways than this guy was dumb. But we'll, we will do C. S. with our audience.

Simone Collins: If you're calling C. S. Lewis dumb, boy, oh boy. I'm sorry, Simone.

I'm sorry.

Malcolm Collins: He wasn't dumb.

Simone Collins: Emails we're going to get.

Malcolm Collins: He was straight up retarded. Like, I was shocked at the stupidity of some of his arguments.

this, this yes, Lewis rant was moved to the end of the episode. If you want to see it, you can go there.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: That said, I'm probably wrong to call him dumb.

It's more that [00:04:00] he's very Malcolm Gladwell y. He mostly just aggregates other people's ideas and tells them in a way that is more accessible to the average person. And when he has independent or new ideas, like the argument from desire, they're typically very, very bad. He doesn't really interject any interesting new ideas to the conversation.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So this guy did basically he was maxing this particular perspective in a way that I think that we can all learn from because we're all are drawn to this perspective.

One of the things he did is even though his book was famous, even though he was famous. He tried to never allow his book to win any awards, so he'd withdraw from any awards that he could win. He would put himself in environments that made him less likely to become more famous, specifically trying to hang out with other failures and be more of a failure, and specifically liked associating disproportionately with failures.

The line that he used is [00:05:00] that he didn't hate misfortune. He hated being surprised by it. And I think that this is something that we all know to some extent. In many ways, it feels safer to not even expose yourself to the potentiality of success because having some goal and not achieving it can hurt more than never having had the goal in the first place.

However, You are never going to achieve any life of genuine satisfaction if you don't build goals for yourself and occasionally fail. Or even predominantly fail. I would say that a lot of successful people early in their careers predominantly failed before they reached that level of success.

Thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I think that's absolutely true. I, I, when you, when you describe that behavior, it just made me think that we're listening to [00:06:00] the description of someone who's suffering from some fairly severe emotional problems.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think so because I think that that's an easy thing to say, Oh, this person's suffering from depression.

Oh, this person is without really, it just seems

Simone Collins: like like super avoidant behavior, maybe that he's very anxious about recognition.

Malcolm Collins: It's not this is I think the mistake here, right? And I think that this is one of the things that we need to look out for was in our modern culture Is the medicalization? And the depersonalization of things that are very much individual choices and this was an individual choice that he made and the reason i'm saying that this is not a medical choice or something Like that is because it's a choice That I feel calling to me that you can feel calling to that.

I think any mentally healthy person feels sometimes it would be better if I never even tried. It is easier to develop [00:07:00] comfort. With failure than it is to aspire to success, the mere fact that it is easier and maybe leads to less suffering was in your life does not mean that you should pursue it. The next thing here is I'd note to the, the chic ness of pessimism.

And nihilism. And I think part of the question is, is why is pessimism and nihilism chic? You know, when I think of the classic nihilist, what I'm thinking of is the, you know, French beatnik in their, in their outfit, like being like, Oh, nothing really matters. Oh, you know, and it's even chic cause it's, Oh, you know, the sexy philosopher man troubled with his, Oh, nothing matters because, and I think that this is why it is sexy, right?

Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin, there is sadness so deep it pulls me down, [00:08:00] happiness dies in a deep dark sea.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 3: happiness dies. Yeah.

Speaker 5: Henrietta! Hi, sweetie! Go away, Mom. Leave me alone.

Speaker: Daddy and I just got your birthday present! But you can't see what it is till tomorrow! You'd like to wait till I was dead, wouldn't you? You'd like to see the magazine in my face.

Speaker 3: You are so creative, honey!

Speaker: Conformist b***h.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Why it is alluring and, and, and high class, because if I'm looking at two people and one person is like, hey I genuinely believe that this stuff does matter and I'm really excited about it. And the other person is, oh, nothing matters. The person who wants things who wants or is excited about something has put themselves in any sort of interaction with this other person on the lower foot.

Speaker 12: To what do I owe the pleasure?

Speaker 11: Jack, [00:09:00] pleasure is the name of a pony I hate. This is business. So, I just happened to bump into Jenna Maroney

Speaker 12: what did you do to her, Hooper?

Speaker 11: Oh, her brain's like silly putty. A toy I am too old for. Kaylee

Speaker 13: Hooper! OMG! It's Jenna!

You're wearing that belt as a joke, right? Of course I am!

Speaker 14: Where did you get your belt? You're so cool!

Speaker 15: Kayleigh, you look so gorgeous today. I'm wearing a headband because you are. Pathetic.

What?

Simone Collins: Well, in general enthusiasm, approbation, excitement are, they open one up to vulnerability. And to criticize those things implies you have knowledge the other person doesn't. And that they are excited or optimistic or hopeful or trying out of ignorance and that the person who is pessimistic or who knows better or who, who understands that that brand is actually s**t [00:10:00] is just more informed and therefore better in, in the hierarchy of that social interaction.

Malcolm Collins: There's such a great way. So if you're in a group of people and one person in the group of people comes up and they're like, I just found this really exciting new product or philosophy or idea. And then another person in the group goes, oh, I know about that. It's terrible. And here is why, like that person has asserted dominance over the person who just came up all excited about the idea.

And I can see why you would have a fear, like if you're building a profile, like a psychological profile to interact with the public, you are going to get a lot of dumb, easy hacks by taking this pessimistic approach in the same way that Simone mentioned when she was younger, she used to dress in these ridiculous, kind of slutty, like, Neon taffeta dresses, very punky hipster because the [00:11:00] people around her socially rewarded her for this as a, as a, you know, a young fertile girl.

That's the way people are. But is a long term maxing for that. Would have really hurt her. And it's the same with this particular tactic in individual conversations, especially when you're young, you can socially cheese those situations by taking the nihilistic perspective and nihilism more than just general skepticism.

Well, and even if

Simone Collins: you like, I think it can happen very subtly. We're just. Every time you take a more pessimistic or nihilistic or antinatalist perspective, you win the conversation, or you're seen as the more respectable person in the conversation, or more people kind of nod and agree with you, looking thoughtful.

So, you might, you might, one, be subtly emotional and reinforced to do it, but also, you will be subtly, Signal that it's correct, even if it isn't correct.

Malcolm Collins: So with this [00:12:00] particular philosophy, this may help you understand just some of the quotes from him here. I only write this kind of stuff because explaining it bores me terribly.

That's why I say when I've written aphorisms, it's that I've sunk back into fatigue. Why bother? And so the aphorism is scorned by Quote unquote, serious people, the professors look down upon it when they read a book of aphorisms. They say, Oh, look what this fellow said 10 pages back. Now he's saying something to the contrary.

He's not serious. Me, I can put two aphorisms that are contradictory right next to each other. Aphorisms are also momentary truths. They are not decrees. And I could tell you nearly every case why I wrote this or that phrase and when it's always set in motion by an encounter, an incident, a fit of temper, but they all have a cause.

It's not all gratuitous. [00:13:00] Every bit of it. Gratuitous? Gratuitous, gratuitous. But every bit of this is about avoiding responsibility for his decisions and attempting to essentially cheese a social fight. You know, starting with the, oh, why do I do this? Well, it bores me terribly is what he starts with.

Oh, I have fatigue. Why bother? You know, very much the,

the,

the, the, the, the, the, the nihilist was the cigarette, right? And then. He talks about, oh, how it's scorned by quote unquote serious people, right? And they'll say that these two things contradict each other. An actual problem if you're writing, like, ideas or philosophy.

He's like, but that doesn't matter. I don't need to address that. And then you see him attacking their, their character for pointing out that his work is internally inconsistent. Or if you want to see other types of things that I think we all feel this way internally and drawn to this because it's such an easy way to frame ideas in our heads.

I invented [00:14:00] nothing., I invented nothing. I've been the one and only secretary of my own sensations. And these are just random quotes I'm pulling for his Wikipedia, but like you get the gist of like this guy thing, right?

And I think that we, I bring this up because I think that this is a huge part. of antinatalist philosophy, is it's a psychologically protective mechanism. This, oh, life is suffering. Suffering is everything. Suffering is the only thing that matters. Where I come to them and I don't even go, you know, oh, well focus on all the good things.

I'm like, yeah, suffering exists. It's what pushes us to improve. Like, It doesn't matter is like an intrinsic thing. It's just like what your ancestors sort of were coded based on an environment that has nothing to do with your modern environment to feel when facing specific stimuli in order to have the maximum number of surviving offspring.

It means nothing. It is literally the most trivial thing you could base your life around. And yet. It is so [00:15:00] easy when you don't have to think beyond it to coat yourself in this, if life is suffering, then your responsibility, your, your failures are not your responsibility, which is an incredibly safe, emotional place to be.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 9: Look

Speaker 10: at that, another

Speaker 9: tortured

Speaker 10: soul. Another life of

Speaker 9: pain. What's the matter with you? Well, my girlfriend broke up with me. Sure does hurt.

That's cool. I guess you can join us if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: No thanks, I love life. Huh? But you just got dumped. Well yeah, and I'm sad. But at the same time I'm really happy that something can make me feel that sad.

It makes me feel human. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness.

Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid. We'll [00:16:00] see you, Stan.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Note, we don't go into a lot about arguments against the philosophy of antinatalism in this episode or negative utilitarianism because we have a whole nother very long episode where we do that called These People Want You All Dead and have, and are weirdly reasonable about it, see the thumbnail here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It also, though, strikes me as one of the lower effort interpretations of this that I've heard because the, the Buddhist conclusion of the life is suffering. doesn't just mean give up on everything. It means so learn how to not be attached to anything and then break the cycle, like commit permanent suicide.

And, and let yourself really

Malcolm Collins: want to do, right. But yeah, make this decision on behalf of other people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, this just seems like uniquely low agency it's therefore, I will not try. For anything. I mean, there's some of that behaviors in there, like this choice to not submit for any book awards or even be eligible for any is, is, I guess, [00:17:00] akin to trying to avoid like suffering resulting from attachment, but it just doesn't seem very proactive.

And. I, I wonder,

Malcolm Collins: well, I think that the, the, the point I'm making here

Simone Collins: is

Malcolm Collins: that we can very easily confuse psychologically protective mechanisms with a philosophy that is internally coherent and then build philosophy Actions, identity off of the psychological protective mechanisms, these tools for hacking conversations, these tools for not pressing yourself to engage with reality, these tools for excusing your own failures, and then attempting to use this as a foundation upon which you build an identity, a house in a worldview.

And this is really, really dangerous because any identity built on top of [00:18:00] this is going to be. An intrinsically toxic identity. It's going to hurt the people around you. And I think that this is really important to remember when you adapt this pessimistic and nihilistic mindset, it might help you in social situations.

But everyone who hears you dress down that other person feels worse. Everyone who had the person walk into the group excited to share their excitement with other people and those other people could have gotten excited about that thing, whether it's life or whatever and you came in and desired to kill that excitement.

You have made things worse for everyone. You have hurt everyone. Everyone around you. Think about this was in our like marriage or was my kids, right? Like if one of us is feeling down that day, we believe we have a philosophical and theological duty to not push that on to our kids to not push that on to each other.

Because, like, as I [00:19:00] said, like, when the episode about my mom dying, I was like. Yeah, I might feel bad, but like if I go and I cry about this, like, who does that help? That just hurts my kids. That hurts my wife. You know, I get to choose how I respond to this and I'm not going to choose that response to this.

And yet these individuals choose that response to everything because it's the Trump card. And this is what gets me about the effortless and the antinatalists is they'll say things like, Oh, I won't on a live. Et cetera. Because it could cause suffering to others. It would, it would cause suffering to all my friends and family.

Right. And it's like, but your entire philosophical framework, your entire way of acting, the way that you communicate with these people is likely putting them in a state of constant suffering that is higher than any degree that could be caused by you not being

Simone Collins: here. You're, you're doing them a net positive, probably.

What are you waiting for, [00:20:00] huh? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? What am I waiting for? What are you waiting for? F**k you!

Oh my god!

Simone Collins: Being around, you know, having, being friends with fat people more likely to make you fat, being around depressed people. I imagine your risk of being depressed is yourself higher.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but it's not just that their entire philosophy when they share it, if you go to their subreddit, it's like the efilism subreddit.

It's just like pictures of like mutilated animals and like starving children. Because they're trying to show everyone, like, look at how bad the world is to maintain this constant state of, Despair when, if you are actually being realistic and looking at the numbers, you know, we have the capacity to improve the world.

You know, we have the capacity to improve technology and we are seeing this in all of the data. Like we can make the world a better [00:21:00] place. And yes, because of fertility collapse, there is going to be a period where things get harder, but we know from the technology that we've already built, that we can achieve something better on the other side of that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There's, there's this other element of the attitude. That I kind of have a, a, a wondering about and I'm wondering what your thoughts are. You'll probably say it's dumb, but it seems to me like nihilism and in general, this pessimistic attitude toward the world. Or so what also manifests is like down with capitalism.

They're all out to get us is a form of like a meta version of displaced aggression. Where, when you yourself are stressed out this has especially been seen with rats experimentally because I think review boards aren't letting this experiment be run on humans, but they found that if you stress out a rat or a mouse and then put another mouse in its cage, it will lash out at the other [00:22:00] mouse and then actually feel better.

And that's displaced aggression, taking it out. And I feel like, yeah, they're taking it out on the world and it, I think it does. And I think that in an age of increased social isolation where people just actually aren't hanging out with other people, there aren't that many other people to take it out on.

And so they just take it out on all of humanity on all of the world on capitalism on the government on, you

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that you can see this. Here's a quote. I'm just reading like any quote I can find from this guy's Wikipedia. This is him trying to compliment Bach, okay? So he says, the, the, the Oh, the composer.

Yes. Without Bach, God would be a complete second rate figure. Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. But I mean, you talk about displaced aggression and it's just dripping with that. And I think that if [00:23:00] you go to the efilism subreddit or the antinatalism subreddit, you see that displaced aggression, but I think that it's important that like, the reason I bring all this up is All of us are susceptible to this.

All of us shouldn't just be looking at the outsider and say, where are they terrible? Where are they doing these things? Ha ha. Look at their community. So toxic. We need to be able to catch this as it bubbles up within ourselves. So that and this is something that people always notice was in me.

They're like Malcolm. Why are you always so excited? Why are you always so high energy? And I'm like, because I choose to be not just because it helps me and achieve a greater state in the end. And it makes my life better to live this way. And it makes me look in a way foolish to other people. So keep in mind, I experience vulnerability because of my upbeat, peppy nature.

Oh, 100%. People dunk

Simone Collins: on you all the time about it. You just heard [00:24:00] Taylor Lorenz and Julia Black dunk on you

Malcolm Collins: for this. Oh yeah, they just did this thing, this episode on us, and they're like, Oh, you're so nerdy, so like weird, so Well,

Simone Collins: no, she said you were foaming at the mouth about this subject, which is, I think that's a really great example.

of taking someone's enthusiasm and using that to assert dominance by talking about, by framing their subject of enthusiasm as not that important or dumb for some reason.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, but I still choose to do this. Like I act. And, and, and experience the world this way in large part, because I choose to, I do it through framing devices.

Like, Hey, how are you doing? I start every conversation the same way. Anyone who's seen me, they know I give them a handshake. I'm like, Hey, it's so great to meet you or see you. Because if I can start a conversation high energy and positively, it's more likely to carry throughout the [00:25:00] conversation. And that positive energy doesn't just.

Allow me to be more efficient, more effective and more mentally healthy, but it rubs off on everyone around me, including my family. And this becomes astronomically more important when you do have a family. And I'd actually say that this in terms of who you might marry is one of the most important things to filter for anyone who attempts these sorts of things should be considered.

not a marriageable candidate or somebody you need to talk through. Do you understand what you're doing and that I cannot have a longterm relationship? Like you can work with them on it, but like if they approach social competition in this dismissive way you and your kids will pay for that. Your kid will come home one day so excited about some new thing they learned and their mom or dad.

is going to be like, well, it's really not that impressive. Is it? That's not that [00:26:00] interesting. Is it? And that's just going to destroy their excitement for reality because excitement for reality is something. that can be destroyed. Now, some people allow themselves to destroy it to remove personal responsibility as we pointed out.

But another person can destroy this apparent etcetera, right? And it's hard to build back up after that. Unless you have role models, like potentially we could act as an individual for like, this is what it looks like to be foaming at the mouth about how much you love being alive. You know, like That's really what they're saying in their little progressive hoity toity world.

Like, how is he, how is he so excited to, to, to care about this topic?

Simone Collins: Yeah in such a put down y way, it's, but yeah, no, it's, it's, Low energy. I actually

Malcolm Collins: note here to people who watch this podcast, you'll note that Simone never [00:27:00] undermines me in this way.

Simone Collins: Do I not? I'm sure I make every mistake out there, I'm sure

Malcolm Collins: it's something different.

No, you, you have some mistakes that you make that I try to work with you on like you will underplay yourself, especially when I do. I guess,

Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, I, I love your enthusiasm so much that I guess I would be unlikely for me to. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas I had other people who almost, and I'd say that there's a certain profile of person, be very careful about creating a relationship with this type of person who will automatically, if you are excited about something or bringing something to them with excitement, feel compelled to, Like s**t on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we know people like that. I'm sure you know people like that Anyone listening to this for sure?

Malcolm Collins: And you're just like

Simone Collins: because it's such an easy hack

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's such an easy hack to always being socially dominant. And and so people can say like, well, then how do you [00:28:00] continue to like get by in life?

When you act like this and other people are acting like that. Well, one is that I think it's very hard in the urban monoculture. Nihilism is always the winning hand. Because the urban monoculture is built on this sort of negative utilitarian mindset and social bureaucratic dominance hacks. Which is, I think, part of why it's so, like, mentally negative.

So I think, one, you're going to have trouble playing it in those communities, but when you are outside of the urban monoculture so long as you continue to line in to optimism and excitement you will grow. A community of the types of people who are interacting with you and around you who also do that.

And in addition to that you will move up in the world faster because you will be able to set goals for yourself because you will take responsibility. And that's, that's the ultimate thing here is how much can you sit with? Like these individuals act like they sit with so much [00:29:00] pain and they objectively do sit with so much pain because they're unwilling to hold any of it.

Like if you just pick up that responsibility, the pain of responsibility of saying where I am in life right now is my responsibility. No one else is going to get me out of here. I need to move to the next stage instead of just saying life is terrible. .

Simone Collins: Working with thoughts. Suddenly brain shorted. Another really big issue is that when you define pain and suffering as a major problem, then every time you experience pain and suffering, which is all the time because it's a signal that our body uses to get us to move in certain directions, you're going to make it worse than it is.

Right? Like, the perception of pain is highly subjective, and typically pain only hurts. When you have decided it's a bad thing, right? Some people love being whipped, right? It's kind of their thing. The best pleasure they can imagine. Whipping in other [00:30:00] contexts, probably the worst, most painful and humiliating thing you will ever experience in your life, right?

And it all comes down to context. And I think that a big problem with seeing pain and suffering as a problem. And especially thinking about it a lot is now you're making it painful for sure. There's no way you can just kind of muddle through it, which is what most people have done throughout history.

I mean, it's signals are important. You need to hear them. You need to be aware of them and you need to try to address them. But you also shouldn't this, the signal's not the feature. People don't like worship red lights because they tell you to stop. Okay. So the, when you recognize it, it's a problem.

And now it's like, oh, it's a big deal. And then because you think about it constantly, you're, you're, you're heightening it. You're turning up the volume. And this I've, I've experienced this in, in some small ways where I've had medical conditions that are very uncomfortable. And then I realized what it is.

And then I, [00:31:00] I, I get even more uncomfortable because I know what it is and how bad it is because I actually have a really high pain tolerance. Right. But like the mental acknowledgement of a, a, a sensation as a problem and a serious problem, that contextualization is able to dial up pain levels from like a seven to a nine easily.

And certainly more than that.

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, I guess what I'll end with is, we all know these types of people, and because of that, rather than looking at them as a signal of derision, we should search for this in ourselves, I will give another quote by him and we've got to put the scene of the goth kids from South Park in here doing their poetry.

Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin,

Malcolm Collins: I am simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously? Which is such a removal. Everything about this Philosophy is about removing personal [00:32:00] responsibility. It is the lowest effort philosophy and world perspective conceivably possible. You know

Simone Collins: what though what actually got me away from this attitude?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, did you ever have a phase like this? I had, like, 100 percent

Simone Collins: had a phase like this.

Malcolm Collins: Huge. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Was that people fully observed, acknowledged, and described that phase to me. Like, they saw it in me. They acknowledged me. And they were like, Yeah, basic. This is very embarrassing for you. Like, please let me help you.

This is a bad look. You don't look sophisticated. You don't look smart. No one's gonna like this. You are being so boring right now, take a try again, try a different approach. Yeah, no, but like that is 100 percent what happened. And it was actually in relation to this really stupid middle school project where you had to like write this whole report on your life and who you were.

And that's, that's why. I got the critique and basically I turned in my rough draft and [00:33:00] was like, life is suffering. I don't even know it. I'm not very important. I'm just a, it sounded like this guy, like you're reading that to me. And I'm like, it's taking me back. They read my draft and they were like, b***h, you need to rewrite this.

I can't, I'm not accepting this. You're not going to pass. If you submit this, this is s**t. This is basic. This is boring. It's depressing. You try again. And I'm like, it's my identity. And they're like,

Malcolm Collins: get

Simone Collins: a better

Malcolm Collins: identity. And I actually think that that is the light that fights this. Yeah. You have enthusiasm for life and individuals who lack.

I think that even just showing

Simone Collins: to the people who do this, that in the end, it actually makes them look super dumb and not sophisticated and basic. Cause that's what worked on me. Okay, this was the vulnerable trying to fit in teenage me who was driven to this in the first place and the argument that worked for me was, no, this isn't the sophisticated thing that you think it is.

This makes you look really [00:34:00] bad. So. I think that that I'm just pointing out that you kind of have to use, you have to argue on their own terms at least subconsciously and if subconsciously they're doing this to look sophisticated you need to explain the lack of ultimately the lack of sophistication it demonstrates.

Malcolm Collins: I agree 100%. Well, I love you to death, Simone. Now we'll add a little bit where I'm ranting about C. S. Lewis. We'll have a whole other episode because a lot of his philosophy and this is the thing. C. S. Lewis is a very interesting counter to this guy because he has none of the problems this guy has, but.

Where he looks for meaning is to essentially outsource it and in a way that is very I'd say almost equally philosophically lazy. And remember

Simone Collins: how you did that episode on how Christmas was not. Actually Pagan, and you were defenestrated for it. So many people got mad at me because they didn't Yeah, this is more than that.

You don't understand how much people love C. S. Lewis. This is, this is [00:35:00] Pagan Christmas all over again. I'm already developing hives. I'm not ready for the You're not ready for me to do.

Malcolm Collins: I might not do a full episode on why I, I actually what I'm thinking about doing is, is building a character into the game, which is pro.

So the way that I do things in, in the game is the game is philosophical battle after philosophical battle. And one of the things that gets me about CS Lewis's work, which really contracts in the way that I try to do art is if you play the game. Our philosophical perspective is always intentionally represented in the most monstrous way conceivable.

Whereas the more antithetical to us a philosophical perspective is, the more generous to that perspective we are. Because that's how I think through things, right? Like, I don't want to create a straw man that I can just bash. I want To make my side the straw man in the, in the in the fictional universe and their side be the strong side so that I get something that's more [00:36:00] interesting to engage with the the, the, so I think it'd be fun for me to build out his perspective and build it into sort of a wider.

Philosophical framing within the, the Catholic faction. I'd find that to be pretty interesting because that's what it really gels well with. But yeah, I that's another thing I don't like about his work. His work, like really straw man's the other side. Of his arguments and we'll get to that if we do a video

Simone Collins: on it.

Like you're above that?

Malcolm Collins: No, I, I do, okay, I will admit, I do straw man occasionally, but I at least, like, internally, when I'm trying to think through things, I do try to steel man them. I don't always straw man. But yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, even, even when I was looking at his thing, I was like, you're like, is that really what he argued?

And I go, okay, I'm going to pull up. No, you,

Simone Collins: you yeah. You don't strawman behind closed doors because you actually want to [00:37:00] win the argument and you know that if you don't If you don't steal me on the other side, you're gonna lose the argument. So your your focus on winning Actually does prevent it's it's really more just publicly you like to strawman because I think you make you think that it makes For better entertainment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do it when I'm doing like entertainment content rather than actual philosophy content, which is part of our content

Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%. So yeah,

you'll have plenty more terrifying things to say about him.

Malcolm Collins: What are we doing it for? Oh, I know the way that you make CS Lewis work and we'll get to this in the episode we do on him is you need to not think about his arguments logically. And think about them athletically, and then it all works.

You need to approach his morality by saying, does this have an athletic truth to it rather than a logical truth to it? And as soon as you abandon causal logic his entire philosophy is quite beautiful. It just doesn't really gel with [00:38:00] causal logic.

Simone Collins: Okay. That makes sense. The people that I know who really likes CS Lewis are very.

In a contemporary term, vibes based, they're very,

Malcolm Collins: yes, vibes based arguments and they're very good and beautiful vibes based arguments, but you cannot leave the vibe zone.

Simone Collins: It's about the aesthetic feelings and general sentiment and impressions that you're left with. Yeah. Okay. I was going to make you go to John chicken with

Malcolm Collins: steamed rice scratch or reheat some

Simone Collins: reheat.

We don't have any. Fresh chicken. No, I

Malcolm Collins: was hoping you'd reheat some. I'm very excited and I'll have that with some rice.

Simone Collins: I love you. I'm glad you're home.

Malcolm Collins: I'm glad to be home.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, [00:39:00] fairytale.

Speaker 10: Aren't you still wallowing in pain? I just realized that there's gonna be a lot of painful times in life, so I better learn to deal with it the right way. Hey, Wendy! You're a b***h. Token, right here, buddy.

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, okay, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, C. S. Lewis, literally, his argument for God, and he, like, thought this was, like, a good argument, and other people have repeated it.

I am saying this as somebody who believes in God, okay? Is that Humans have this desire for something beyond our world, something greater than this world. And that desire is proof. That thing exists.

Simone Collins: Oh my god, it's like your mom when she wanted you to make more money and she's like, go to your [00:40:00] boss and see, I want more money.

Does it just manifest

Malcolm Collins: it? Yeah. No, this is literally like, I'm like, well, a lot of guys want cat Girl girlfriends. Okay. You got your Elan's and you're all that. That means they must exist somewhere. Maybe they exist in heaven and C. S. Lewis says heaven.

Or consider something like a Tolkien esque fantasy world with elves, and orcs, and knights, and magic. So many people all over the world independently yearn for a life in a very, you could almost say, eerily similar type of alternate universe. Is that at all evidence that that alternate universe exists?

Or is it evidence that popular books propose that it exists and many people are familiar with those books?

The mere fact that a lot of people can imagine and want something and seem to come to this position separated from each other means that that thing exists somewhere.

I'm sorry, but like people can understand how astronomically stupid [00:41:00] that point is, right? Sorry, I'm just flabbergasted by it. Like, sometimes I come across an argument and I'm like, what?

Simone Collins: Why? That's pretty bad. If that is actually his argument, that is really maybe we're missing something. Hold on, I'm going to ask an AI this, okay?

So, let me move

Malcolm Collins: you to the end of the episode so that you can This, okay, so I'm going to go to Claude, okay?

Simone Collins: Tell me if

Malcolm Collins: you think this is a fair phrasing given what I've said here. Did C. S. Lewis argue that proof that heaven exists was that people wanted something beyond this world, and that they would only want that if something beyond this world existed?

What world and bigger existed. That's basically what I said, right? So I'm putting this in the quad.

Yes, it says, C. S. Lewis made this argument in several works. Most notably in Mere Christianity and his essay, The Weight of Glory. However, you're slightly paraphrasing the actual argument, which is known as the argument from desire or argument from joy.

He reasoned that, . One, humans have natural desires that correspond to real life satisfactions. Hunger for food, thirst for water, sexual desire for [00:42:00] sex. Two, humans also experience a longing for something that nothing in this world can satisfy, what he calls joy or a sin shot.

Three, if this desire exists, Lewis argued, it likely points to something real that can satisfy it, just as our natural desires point to real satisfaction. Wow, so like,

Simone Collins: hunger Indicates the existence of food. Thirst indicates the existence of water, and therefore, desire for meaning indicates the existence of, of God?

Y yes.

Now, I note here, for those who are confused as to why you feel hunger or arousal or things like that, it's because your ancestors who had these, desires or emotions in response to specific environmental stimuli had more surviving offspring, either because they had more sex or they got more food or anything like that.

Hunger isn't unique to humans. I mean, I, I don't even, C. S. Lewis would argue that, like, dogs don't feel hunger. Worms feel hunger. Everything that has a degree of a nervous system in the same evolutionary pathway as us feels hunger. Like, [00:43:00] cows obviously feel hunger. What, what,

Even if a desire for more than what we have in this world or something like heaven, was evidence that something like heaven existed, the evidence for something like heaven existing would not be the same mechanism of action for the evidence of hunger to food or arousal to sex, , because those things were driven by evolutionary pressures, and the In all animals, in all insects even, , whereas the desire for like heaven would have been driven by some completely different pathway, like God implanting it in us.

Malcolm Collins: lewis wrote, quote, If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world, end quote. Of course, here I'd say, quote, If I find myself a desire for catgirl girlfriends and anime waifus, that must insinuate that those worlds are real.

It's, it's just absurd at face value.

Simone Collins: It's on a scale of [00:44:00] one to aggressively Hopeful? I would put it on the aggressively hopeful end.

Malcolm Collins: Is it logical to you? Is it an argument that would be persuasive to anyone? This would not persuade me.

Okay, but anyone like you can model other humans, right? You are aware how like the human brain works with this persuade. I would not use this argument and if attempting to convince someone else, okay point now back to the main story here.

Simone Collins: Good

Malcolm Collins: for you.

Dow is down 800 points today. The S& P always seems a bit more resistant. Okay,

Simone Collins: anyway. Do you remember when on the radio people used to just say that the S& P 500 is up this and the Dow is down blah blah blah and like they It was like a

Malcolm Collins: thing. Why did we need to know that? Who was day trading?

We needed to know that because we couldn't like No, but this is back when like you couldn't like Google it. I [00:45:00] think. The newspapers

Simone Collins: would say it. Yes. I mean, we, when we first heard this on the radio as really young kids, it was before internet was available on the young people today.

Malcolm Collins: Don't know that they would like start radio shows with this information.

Like, yeah, of course you need to know.

In this intriguing episode, we delve into the modern origins of what is known today as witchcraft, Wicca, and Druidism. Discussing key figures like Gerald Gardner, who invented Wicca in the 20th century, and how he convinced people of its ancient roots, we also explore other notable personalities such as Aleister Crowley. The episode sheds light on how these new-age religions were shaped by modern influences and entirely invented narratives. The conversation further debunks misconceptions about ancient connections to current mystical practices, analyzing the role of historic beliefs and comparing them to modern adaptations. Dive into the fascinating history and evolution of these mystical traditions with a critical eye.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today is going to be a very interesting episode on a topic I should have done a long time ago. It's going to be on how the movement that today purports itself to be witchcraft or Wiccan or juridic, all of these religious systems.

are very, very modern. They are some of the youngest religious systems to exist and have literally no ties to any historic pagan faith practices. And even when they were revived, were revised as monotheistic traditions and only became pagan in their later iterations. What?!

Specifically here, I'm talking about the guy who made up the druidic phase, not the Wiccan phase.

And these were both around the 1900s. So we're gonna go into these individuals, how they made it up, how they got people to believe them. We're gonna go into Alistair Crawley, another interesting figure. He didn't even claim to have connections to anything in the past, he was just Okay.

A wackadoo. I didn't know he was a real guy. I, I saw him from the show, right? And I was like, [00:01:00] Oh, a real guy. No, he was a, he was a wacko, but way more fun than the other guys. Cause at least he owned that he was just making everything up. And the other guys, well, and he stole a bunch from Kabbalah and we'll go over where So were the other guys trying practiced as witchcraft today within the Wiccan community, not realizing that what they're practicing doesn't come from ancient witches, but it comes from Jewish mysticism.

Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Do I understand correctly then that the two men who claimed to have either rediscovered or who reignited druidic practices in Wicca sort of pointed to historical materials that they may have made either misinterpreted or made up kind of like Joseph Smith using funerary texts from Egypt?

Malcolm Collins: It's, well, maybe not crazier than the Joseph Smith story, but he said he, he, he met a cult in the woods that taught him about all of this is the first one we're going to go to. And we think we know who some of the figures he was talking about were. So we know that like, they didn't do this. There's been people who have [00:02:00] gone through and, and, and researched him to learn more about this.

So the guy. Was Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, with a taste for the occult. He returned to England in the 1930s, and he claimed that in 1939, he was initiated into a secret coven. in New Forest by a group he called the Wicca, allegedly survivors of an ancient pagan witch cult. His story leaned heavily on the now debunked theories of anthropologist Margaret Murray, who argued in the 1920s that European witchcraft was a remnant of pre christian fertility religions.

Scholars later dismantled Murray's hypothesis. There is no solid evidence of a contiguous witch cult surviving the middle ages, but Garner ran with it. So a quick note here, if you're like, well, where did all of these mystical traditions come from if they didn't come from some ancient religion it turns out that people will invent the same [00:03:00] mystical traditions over and over again.

For example, when you hear a sports player keeps a lucky sock under their helmet or something to win games, you don't go, oh, he must've picked that up from some ancestral religion. You're like, oh yes, humans often end up associating fetishes, not like Sexual fetishes, but like small token stuff with having magical properties and then build rituals around them.

It is a natural and emergent human behavior with the fact that we see today things like chaos magic, which is another group I could go into, where they believe things like McDonald's arches are like abundant signs and stuff like that and can be used like, like just, or you see, pop culture paganism where people will believe that.

Like Loki, not Loki, like the ancient Norse God, but Loki, like the hot guy from Marvel. Oh my God. Is, is. Oh no. The one who all the girls get a crush on. I mean, I don't know. I hear that he's supposed to be the hot one. Not

Simone Collins: the [00:04:00] actual God. No, no, no, no, no, no. They're the different like Marvel characters. Like, Snape wives, right?

Like, yeah. But not, not the. Snape wives. Yes. Snape is definitely not, no connection to anything. Harry Potter, Sephiroth. Like. The actor whatever it's

Malcolm Collins: not that there was no rituals being practiced in these regions but these rituals were almost certainly maybe two generations old. They were not, it's very hard to keep rituals running a long time unless they are being practiced publicly and at the community level when rituals aren't being practiced at the community level or really rigidly within a family structure.

And we've seen this historically over and over again, it's hard to keep a tradition going without public rituals or, or at least publicly saying that you're a member of it but we'll get to like other proof we have that he probably wasn't even pulling this from local folklore of the period.

Not

Simone Collins: even trying, but I, you know what, I like the idea of being a lifelong fan of [00:05:00] cults. And just making the cult you wish existed, right? Can you imagine a lifetime spent in civil service? Your nights and weekends spent, you know, looking, looking to find proof of the thing you wish existed. And you're like, you know what?

Screw it. Just going to make it up.

Malcolm Collins: I'm just going to, no,

Simone Collins: because then people follow people, people like actually started doing all the other people

Malcolm Collins: made up their religions. Like it starts somewhere.

Simone Collins: He, he, you know, the, the, they say, you know, dress for the job. You want to get, you know, be the person you want to be like he did it.

He made the bolt he wanted. I'm so happy for him. That's nice.

Malcolm Collins: So, in the 1930s, he got involved, or he says he got involved with the local esoteric scene in Hampshire. He claimed that in September 1939, he was introduced to a hidden group of witches in the New Forest, led by a woman who he called Old Dorsey, later identified as Dorsey Clutterbuck.

It's still called the very real name of Dorsey Clutterbuck. Clutterbuck, right, yes. This is a real person who later people went and investigated the area [00:06:00] he was and who he was talking to. And Dorsey Clutterbuck did exist. And he, he referred to her as like a wealthy, older woman. Okay. Who fit.

Dorsey Clutterbuck at the time. She was a wealthy conservative Christian woman who lived in Highcliffe near New Forest and died in 1951. Oh, so she would have found this very offensive. Oh yeah. Gardner's associate Doreen Valentin tracked down her diaries via Clutterbuck's housekeeper after her death and confirmed her identities.

The diaries mentioned social events and gardening, but nothing about witchcraft or coven. So, the person who discovered all of this was a true believer in this guy. Okay, it was his assistant, so she had no motivation to lie or try to deceive us. She found the lady who supposedly taught all of this to this guy.

This lady was a devout Anglican. And, and a well known devout Anglican. Not only that. But they had her private diary. So it's not like she was practicing one thing in private and then doing another thing in public, she [00:07:00] privately was a devout Anglican. And interestingly what are they going to say here?

She was on the other hand, the, did know a lot about folklore and was very interested in folklore. So what seems likely is she may have taught him about some local folklore and he took, you know, built the rest of this character himself. Now historian Ronald Hutton in Triumphs of the Moon, 1999, argues that Clutterbuck might have been a figurehead used by Gardner to legitimize his story.

She was an unlikely witch, devoutly, Anglican, and socially prominent, but her eccentricity and interest in folklore could have made her a possible cover if Gardner needed one. Gardner lived in the area in the late 1930s and mingled with occult enthusiast, including members of the rescue.

Raskurian Order Croatan Fellowship, a mystical group with a theater in Christchurch. Some speculate this group, or a splinter of it, might have inspired his coven [00:08:00] story. A member, Edith Woodworth Grimes, nicknamed Dafoe, was close to Gardner, and more plausibly involved in occult activities. But there's no record of her leading a pagan witch cult.

So something important to note here, if somebody is like, is it entirely implausible that a group with old practices was meeting in the woods? Yes, it actually is because there were so many and widely known other occult traditions of this period, like this one that we're going to go into just a second, that people would have just.

Associated with if they had those inclinations instead of going to this secret one that met in the woods you know, why not do what you do today and go with the theater kids where you know They're all I love it that it was theater kids back then theater kids today. But then you're like, okay. This is all very traditional.

Yes. Maybe this Rokurian Order Krotana Fellowship maybe they had some ancient traditions. Here's the problem. We know what they believed, and we know where they said [00:09:00] they got it from. The core beliefs of the ROCF claim to preserve secret knowledge from ancient Egypt and the Renaissance Roscurians. So not local Rosicrucians.

If you're wondering who the Rosicutions were, It was a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts announcing to the world a new esoteric order. Rosicutionism is symbolized by a rose cross or a rosy cross.

It was a Christian tied movement that was interested in things like alchemy.

Anyway, a group. Okay. Okay. The point being is it, they said where they got was from Egyptians and persecutions Renaissance ions. It was not from some sort of local hidden witch cult that preserved some ancestral pre Roman tradition that was local to Britain.

Okay. Which is where he said this stuff came from. Okay. They believed in a, uh oh. Hidden great white brotherhood of enlightened masters guiding humanity. Oh dear. Sullivan taught that members could tap into cosmic forces [00:10:00] through meditation, ritual study, think astrology, Kabbalah, and other seophysical ideas about reincarnation. Theatrical flair by the 1930s when Gardner encountered them, R O C F, had their base in Christchurch near the New Forest where they had built Ashram Hall, a tiny theater for mystical plays. Sullivan wrote and performed these dramas The Rite of Isis, for example, blending Egyptian mythology with Christian allegory and to enact spiritual truths.

Members wore robes, chanted, and staged ceremonies, less quote unquote witchy, and more like a cosmic morality play. Practical mysticism, unlike hardcore occult groups like the Golden Dawn, the ROCF, was less about spellcasting and more about self improvement through esoteric philosophy. They attracted middle class seekers, doctors, teachers, retirees, looking for meaning in a post World War I world.

Some rituals involved healing vibrations or channeling [00:11:00] divine energy, but was pretty tame compared to Garner's later Wiccan rites. So keep in mind, Things like trying to talk to the dead and mystics doing like stage performances to scam people was really common in this period. Oh, yeah. Another episode on Houdini's war against mystics.

Yes. Yeah, all these people like

Simone Collins: tapping on seance tables, etc. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: It's fascinating to learn about. But yeah so how did this grow up or go from here in 1954 after Britain repealed its witchcraft act in 1951 specifically which prevented publishing this stuff Gardner published witchcraft today, laying out his version of this ancient religion.

He blended Murray's ideas was bits of ceremonial magic. St. Freemasonry and Alistair Colley's influence, folklore, and his own imagination. His rituals, like the use of a magical circle, astrums, ritual knives, and a dualistic god goddess framework. He did believe in like a dualistic, singular, monotheistic god that had a [00:12:00] feminine and masculine side.

Kabbalah there. We're cobbled together from Victorian occultism, not dusty grimoires from antiquity. Gardner's collaborator, Doreen Valentia, this is the one who later identified who the old lady was joined in the 1950s and polished his work, stripping out some of Crowley's heavier philemic vibes to make it more palatable.

Valentia herself admitted the rituals were modern, not ancient, though she believes they tapped into the timeless spiritual current. So basically, the person who inherited the Wiccan tradition and then built on it admits this guy made it all up.

Simone Collins: That's I mean, I feel like even more so like, OK, I think that validates it more.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: long as you're

Malcolm Collins: willing to accept that. It's just like understanding this

Simone Collins: is. The, the culty religion for people who wish there was a culty religion and acknowledge that it just isn't one. Like, that's historical.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. And, and I think you're gonna like this next guy, Simone. Okay. So, you can be like, who is this Alistair Crawley?

You know, [00:13:00] I've heard this term before. Yes, yes. What, what was he about if other people were picking up his ideas? Okay. So, born in 1875 in what? Workshire, England, to a wealthy, strict Plymouth's brethren family, Edward Alexer Crawley rebelled hard against his religious upbringing. After his father's death, he inherited money, ditched Cambridge, where he studied but didn't graduate, and dove into the occult.

By his twenties, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 1898, a secret society blending Kabbalah, Tor, tarot like tarot cards and ritual magic. Think Victorian England's Hogwarts for mystics. He clashed with its leaders like W. B. Yeats, got kicked out, but it shaped his lifelong obsession with esoterics.

Systems. Oh, I should dig into that secret society more than the hermetic order of the golden dawn. It's a boy crowley styled himself a larger than life figure He called himself the great beast six six six Loved scandalizing polite [00:14:00] society and lived a chaotic life of drugs sex and travel Egypt india mexico sicily and this is traveling in the 1800s.

So this is like wild travel In 1904, while in Cairo with his wife, Rose claimed a spirit named Ayahuas dictated the book of the law to him over three days, a text that became foundational to his philosophy, which was called Thelema. He spent the rest of his life until his death in 1947 spreading Thelema, writing prolifically, poetry, novels, occult treatises, and founding groups like AA, well it's A and then like a triangle, and then A and then a triangle, a magical order, and the Ordo Templi Ortanus OTO, which he retooled to fit his vision.

His reputation, a mix of genius and infamy, papers dubbed him the wickedest man in the world for his libertine lifestyle, opium, orgies, and rumors of black magic, mostly exaggerated, but he was a serious thinker, blending eastern mysticism, western occultism, and his own flair into something unique. Gardner met him in the [00:15:00] 1940s.

Forties through mutual occult circles and crowley's influence seeped into wicked's rituals, even if toned down later, despite the ancient veneer. Crowley did not pretend to limo was a literal hand me down from Pharaohs or medieval wizards. He was upfront that the book of the law was a new revelation dictated to him in 1904 and called it the start of a fresh, spiritual epic, not a dusty relic.

So basically, he's so much an egoist. He's like, I don't need any, you know, this is just all new dictated to me by spirits.

Simone Collins: I mean, that's not that much of a deviation from so many. Historical religious leaders who heard from spirits,

Malcolm Collins: but you can also see why old traditions that get washed out so quickly, if even this guy who was trying his very best to sort of pick up some form of like pure mysticism of England that had any sort of an ancient route ended up being heavily influenced by this other guy who not even a full [00:16:00] generation before it was like, I made all this up.

What? You know, you're like, okay, I can see how if you add in the third, every generation with your next crop of crazy people it's going to really quickly wipe out any historic stuff if you don't have text to be going off of.

Simone Collins: I think so, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now, I wanted to dig more into the Selemic vibes, because remember it said that a lot of Crawlies Had this Selemic stuff, and the other guy who made up Wiccanism ended up buying into the Selemic stuff and writing it directly into the religion, which is one of how we know it's not ancient, because we know the guy who made it all up.

But the, the person after him, Valentin attempted to remove a lot of this Selena stuff. Because the idea of, well, this gets back to maybe what is a historic religion a bit more.

Selena's central tenet is, do What thou wilt shall be the whole of the law which the Satanists also picked up.

Meaning to follow your true will, your deepest purpose above all else. [00:17:00] Or as Cartman

Simone Collins: says, I'm gonna do what I want.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Self liberation, cosmic exploration, and rejecting conventional morality. The vibe. Solemnic rituals and writings drip with theatricality and intensity. Think elaborate chants, references to Egyptian gods, like Naq al Hadid, etc.

A mix of sex, power, and mysticism. Crawly stuff often feels dense and rebellious with a break all the rules attitude. For example, his Gnostic mass involves a priestess, a priest, and symbolic acts hinting at sacred sexuality, i. e. naked. Priest and priestess way more esoteric than Wiccan's circle casting and moon worship.

Crowley's influence on Gardener. Gardener borrowed the melemic phrasing and structure like Crowley's focus on invoking higher powers or his use of smote it be a Masonic, Selemic sign off that Wicca kept. So Wicca also took some ideas from Freemasons.

Okay, again, just stealing from everywhere, but none of it particularly ancient. Some early Wiccan rites even echoed Crawley's [00:18:00] obsession with polarity, male female, light dark, though Gardner redirected it towards fertility and nature. So, what do you think of this guy? Better? I mean, I do like the person who followed up immediately after Gardner.

It feels like she adds a lot of validity to the Wiccan tradition by one, admitting that it was made up, and then two, trying to remove the parts that are the very most made up. And, and trying to create this sort of, like, nature religion instead of a religion focused on, like, rebellion for rebellion's sake.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: it sort of feels to me like a fan community trying. To make itself work and to make it so itself sustainable. And that's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Let's look at where these communities borrowed from Kabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism, which was largely by my estimation, just pop philosophy of the year like 1000.

That's around when it was collated. So it's a fairly, obviously Jews are going to be very [00:19:00] offended by this, but the ideas in Kabbalah, like you can track where they came from. They have a lot of, of mirrors and other things. They come from a school of Jewish mysticism that was popular around that time and had existed, or we have records of it for a few hundred years before that time Sufi mysticism.

And basically, yeah. Pop mysticism of that time period. But it was genuinely ancient from their perspective. Cause it was about a thousand years old by the, well, not a thousand, you know, like 800, 900 years old by the time they were writing. And if you go back to its inspirations, then you're looking at like maybe 1, 200 years old.

And so that, that's genuinely historic there, but then the idea is, okay, so what from Kabbalah. Ended up being captured in the Wiccan tradition. If you're, if you're like, Oh, what parts of Wiccanism come directly from Kabbalah? Well, one, we know Crowley. So it came through Crowley, not through Garner, maybe directly.

In that Crowley ended up including a lot of Kabbalah in his stuff. He was a huge Kabbalah nerd. He studied it in the [00:20:00] Golden Dawn and made it the backbone of Telema, especially his magical order, A triangle, A triangle. Here's what he lifted. Tree of Life as a map. Crowley used the Tree of Life to structure spiritual progress in his systems.

Initiates climb the Sirfuric like a ladder from Malkut, the physical world, to Keter, union with the divine. Each grade in the A triangle A triangle corresponds to a Seraphie with rituals and meditations to master its energy for example, his book 777 1909 is a kabbalistic cheat sheet linking sephirot to colors, planets, and tarot numerology, tarot, tarot, tarot, tarot, tarot,

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: don't know numerology and Gemma Crawley was obsessed with combobolistic number crunching.

He analyzed the book of law using Gematria where Hebrew letters, which doubled as numbers, reveal hidden meanings. For instance, he equated will, Thelema in [00:21:00] Greek, equals 93, with love, agape, equals 93. Tying it to its maximum, love is the law, love under will.

This numerological play came straight from Kabbalah's playbook. So here I'll note and this obviously causes a major problem for modern Kabbalists is that the movement that both Wiccanism is descended from and modern Satanism is descended from borrowed a bunch of stuff from their writings which, of course, a lot of the symbols and symbolism.

When you look at like a Kabbalistic symbolism, you'll be like, Oh, that looks like satanic or Wiccan symbolism. And the reason is not that they emerged from the same tradition but that these other two traditions just directly cropping Kabbalism when they were started. And a lot of them forget that this was that that's what they were doing.

Simone Collins: That's really funny. I can see why though. I mean, there's so much to play with.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, if you're going to build a mystical tradition, Kabbalism is a great place to start. You know, it's got some claims to [00:22:00] antiquity. It's of the mystic traditions, one of the older that we, and I think modern ish, which you'll notice about Kabbalism, Is that it feels much more like these modern systems of, of mysticism than the ancient systems of mysticism, which come either here, you're looking at like a Greek more general policy of them, which has a very different feel to it, or you're looking at the, the really interesting one what would they call the algebra nerds, the

Yeah, I've got to remember what they're called. It was a Greek philosophical tradition based around mathematics.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: The group I was thinking of here were the Pythagoreans. The, uh,, Pythagoreans followed strict rules and rituals aimed at achieving purity and spiritual enlightenment. They believed in reincarnation and sought to escape the cycle of rebirth by living an austere life and adhering to their philosophical and mathematical principles.

Malcolm Collins: Or I've never heard of that. And they practiced a really [00:23:00] interesting philosophy that may have some relations to the branches of, like, early Christianity and Judaism, and it was a very interesting philosophy. But it feels very different from the older traditions, I guess is what I'd say.

And in that respect, Kabbalism did invent a genuinely new way or, or coalesce what was becoming popular in the Middle Ages, a new way of relating to the mystical. Thalamic rites, like the lesser banishing rite of the pentagram inherited from the golden dawn, uses Kabbalistic names for God YHVH, Adoni, and Archangels Michael and Gabriel tied to the Sefirot.

Crawley's Gnostic Mass invokes divine polarity, think . Binah and Chokmah the feminine and masculine Seferit, to mirror Kabbalah's balance of opposites. Symbolism, Krali tied thelemic deities to the tree, Nut, as infinite. Ein Sof, Hadit as the point of consciousness, Keter or Chokmah And then I don't need to go into all [00:24:00] that.

The rock him in as action, give her or Tiefen. He didn't just copy. He rebranded Kabbalah's abstract energies into his Egyptian pantheon, but the framework's Kabbalistic roots are clear.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. So it's almost like he did a control F and then replaced a bunch of like words. Yeah, he basically controlled F.

Malcolm Collins: Kabbalistic practices. Oh boy, that's great.

If I'm going to be self reflective here, I think that this is where a large part of my negative bias against Kabbalism comes from, is that the first time I would have engaged with this category of mysticism, or a branch of mysticism, , is Partially descended from this tree would have been when my friends, , in high school and middle school were getting into like Wiccanism.

And I would go through some of their books and be like, is there anything to this? Like, what's going on with this? Or other forms of, you know, hermetics and stuff like that. That, you know, I phase, I [00:25:00] think a lot of people go through where they're like, okay, I'm gonna research the edgiest. Of mystical path, , because I'm a middle schooler and I want to see what my parents don't want me to see , and so when I re approached it as an adult , the mental frameworks appeared very similar to ones I was engaging with ideas that were particularly sophomoric or otherwise puerile

It would be a bit like if you grew up in japan and your first experiences with christian theology and cosmology were from neon Evangelion and so when you like read the bible, you're like, oh gosh Yeah, I remember all this stuff from my weird otaku phase when I was really into neon evangelion

crawley didn't claim that Philomel was Kabbalah, he saw it as a new revelation, But I, I find that really interesting and it's, it's kind of a shame for modern because to some people that would be seen as invalidating of Kabbalah, but I'm like, he also borrowed Christian concepts.

You're just, you know, you're going to be more familiar when he talks about angels and Michael.

Simone Collins: It's, it's [00:26:00] kind of, I mean, it really does. Again, it feels a lot like fan fiction and just mixing and remixing and then trying to make it into your own thing that. People get excited about independently, which is exactly what happened here.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So when Doreen Valentin, this is the one who took over from him afterwards, joined Gardner and the one who discovered the old lady joined the coven in 1953, she became his right hand collaborator, helping refine the rituals. This is Gerald Gardner. It's a guy who invented Wiccanisms, right hand collaborator.

collaborator, helping refine the rituals and texts that would define Gardinian Wiccan. Gardiner's early book, The Book of Shadows, the ritual playbook for Wicca, was a mashup of influences, including stuff he picked up from Aleister Crowley, as I mentioned there. Hmm. However Valentin found some of the material too dark, too intense, or just too Crowley specific for the broader nature loving, pagan vibe Gardener wanted to sell.

So she rewrote parts [00:27:00] and softened the edges to make Wiccan more accessible. So I asked, well, what did she Again,

Simone Collins: so fan fiction y. I'm just going to like, re like this, make it a little more It is

Malcolm Collins: very like an early fan fiction community. Yeah. Valentin specifically targeted chunks of the text. Gardner had lifted from Crowley's works the Book of Law and the Gnostic Mass.

For example, Gardner's original rituals included Crowley's dramatic invocations, like calling on, quote unquote, the mighty ones, with a heavy poetic flair and phrases tied to the limit concepts. More on that below. Okay. Valerie replaced these with simpler, more folkloric language emphasizing the goddess and horned god over Crawley's esoteric ideas.

She also toned down some of the sexual undertones and mystical bombasts that Crawley loved, which didn't fit her vision of a gentle, earthier witchcraft. One famous tweak, she rewrote the charge of the goddess from a clunky, crawly, heavy draft to the lyrical versions Wiccans still use today. Why she did it, she wasn't anti crawly, she respected his intellect, but she worried his reputation as quote, the [00:28:00] wickedest man in the world, a type would scare off some newbies and taint Wiccan as a Satanist knockoff.

She also wanted rituals that felt timeless and universal, not tethered to one man's philosophy. In her own words from her 1989 book, The Reverse of Witchcraft, she saw Gardener's Reliance. On Crawley as a crutch and pushed for originality if the result was still modern. So keep in mind, she was still writing in 1989.

That's how modern her rebranding and recreation of what we think of as Wiccanism today was.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, now we're going to talk a bit about the Druids, because it's with another group from around the same time. And

Simone Collins: this is so funny, because I grew up definitely with the impression that Wicca was kind of a, Like, almost invented, sort of, almost very commercial thing, tradition.

It is my mom. I think misled me to believe that druidic practices were old and ancient because there were in the Bay Area. A bunch of like [00:29:00] stone circles and fairy rings and other weird alters in the woods because we'd go hiking a lot that we'd come across and my mom would be like, Oh, that was probably used for some kind of druidic ritual.

And I'm like, okay, this must be really old. No, it was hippies. That is. That would make sense. This was in California. This was like in the woods around. In California. So this totally makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, no, it's being okay. So, Stuckley, this is another guy from around the 1900s reimagined. So basically what we like the Druids, the people who think they're actually following druidic practices were largely seeded by a guy called Stuckley, but he imagined Druids.

And this is what's really interesting here. When he recreated their ideas and ideology as noble proto christian philosophers rather than policyistic ritual figures described by Romans, here's his pitch. So he saw them as monotheists, he argued Druids worshipped a single supreme god foreshadowing Christianity.

He saw them as [00:30:00] enlightened priests who taught morality and natural law, not pagan sacrificers. We know that human sacrifices were done, by the way, at the, what's it called? Stonehenge.

Speaker 26: To be buried in that ditch at Stonehenge with the injuries he has, Suggests we have a sacrificial victim.

Malcolm Collins: The, the ancient Oh yes,

Simone Collins: like actually back in the real day of there being a religion practice. Yeah, the

Malcolm Collins: ancient druids were brutal, evil, evil people.

But we know that like they would have a practice where when they make bridges, they would sacrifice children and bury them under the bridges so the bridges wouldn't fall down.

Like that was a practice. Yeah, it's funny, when I've

Simone Collins: gotten tours of the areas around Stonehenge. I think you were actually there.

We did this on our honeymoon. They were like, ah, it was probably just a mistake that there was a child here. Do you remember them saying that? They were like, there's probably an accident.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. We we have a, not a child, but an adult that was sacrificed at Stonehenge and we can see where they were.

Hit on their head and everything and tied up. Yeah, so we know that these were done at Stonehenge. These are not good guys, and they certainly weren't monotheists by any [00:31:00] understanding we have of the period. This individual who recreated modern Druidism linked it to biblical patriarchs like Abraham, suggesting they inherited primal, universal faith from the Near East, brought to Britain by Phoenician traders and lost tribes.

So, keep in mind, he's saying, oh, this is like the lost tribes of Israel and Phoenician traders. The early Druids tried desperately to attempt to connect their religion to Christianity. And monotheism because they saw that as like an enlightenment ideal, whereas the more modern ones try to say, oh, no, it was the totally disconnected from Christianity, the ancient religion of this area and polytheistic.

So what we know of Druids, they left no written records, but we know from Roman writers, Caesar, Tacitus, Finney or later Celtic myths, and none of this stuff supports them. We know that they had multiple gods for example, Lug, Serranos And they often were tied to bloody rites like the wicker man's burnings that plenty mentioned [00:32:00] plenty mentions

Sorry, I misspoke here. It was actually Julius Caesar who wrote about the Wicker Men ceremonies, not Pliny. Pliny mentioned that they had human sacrifices, but Julius Caesar specifically goes into how these sacrifices were done, in his book, Commentary on the Gallic War, he writes that the Gauls would construct large figures made of ossiers, a type of willow branch, fill them with living men, and then set them on fire as part of their sacrificial rituals.

According to Caesar, these sacrifices were performed by the Druids, who believed that the gods required human life in exchange for propitation.

He notes that the gulls preferred to use criminals for these sacrifices, but if such individuals were scarce, he, they would use innocent people.

And I would also note that this is one of the only DTIC ceremonies that we have a description of. It's not like, oh, we have a description of a bunch of nice ceremonies. They did. And then there's this one crazy one. This is like one of the only DRI ceremonies we have with any degree of historicity to it.

Speaker: What is that? What is that? What is it? Oh, no! [00:33:00] Not the bees!

Malcolm Collins: Stuckley the guy who did this had zero artifacts or texts just speculation as I said to where he got this from it was from the enlightenment the 1700s valued reason order and a single natural god Stuckley projected this onto the past ignoring, He totally misread Stonehenge.

He thought it was a temple. Made by druids We now know that no, it wasn't made by druids. It was made around 2500 bce so the neolithic period well before the druidic religion was ever Came to exist. And it would have been old news by the age of the Druids who were around C 500 BCE to 43 BCE.

So it was further from the Druids than we are from the Druids. That's, that's how old Stonehenge is. Archaeologists now see it as a burial and ceremonial site, not a druidic temple. And, and keep in mind, all the ideas he got about what the druids believed, he got from Stonehenge, which didn't even have a connection to the Stonehenge in the Bible.

That's where he [00:34:00] got it from. A, a final interesting note here is another group, That some people see as, oh, well, they restarted the Druids. Whereas Henry Houle, in 1781, who founded the Ancient Order of the Druids. However this was a fraternity group, much more common to, say, Freemasonry. It didn't itself claim to come from any sort of ancient stuff.

It didn't have the same sorts of rituals or anything like that. So, this is just a misreading of history. It was a, it was a secular society, close to like the Society of Oddfellows and stuff like that. He and also it had ties to Christianity. Again, trying to connect it. So, I gotta go too far here, but, your thoughts, did this, did this blow your brain, given being raised a hippie?

This is

Simone Collins: wild. But I'm also starting to realize that, The way we've seen super soft religions, what, what do they call the religions that people have built around Loki and Snape, for example? Pop Paganism. [00:35:00] Pop Paganism. Yeah, I think Pop Paganism is the ultimate proof point that people don't need provenance in religion.

That they're, they're, it's like the placebo effect where like they've, they've shown in studies that if you say, this is a placebo, people have often found placebos to be quite effective. And then they give them the placebo. People are like, wow, I feel so much better from the placebo, which is an inert medication.

My point here is that people don't need it to be real. They don't need it to be an active medication. They're okay with placebo religions. That is to say religions without Real history without real provenance and the existence of Snape wives and like Loki like show that that we are willing to to induce Suspended disbelief

Malcolm Collins: because it helps us feel a certain way I think these people believe it and I think if you read the writings of Snape wives and stuff like that They because they choose to believe it.

That's what i'm saying. They're [00:36:00] induced. It's induced suspended disbelief Right, but these beliefs are convergent depending on the social context, but you often get the same, like, cluster of beliefs reappearing and reappearing and I do not think that, like, the Snape wise genuinely believe that Snape is a real person who, God, who influenced J.

K. Rowling to write him and I think Yeah, my point is that people are, are willingly deluding themselves into this.

I don't think they are. I, I, I don't think they are. I don't think that they go into this saying, oh, I'm going to choose to believe something that's not true. I think that they, you think they do. We'll let the audience There's not a conscious

Simone Collins: thought process. It's more like, wow, I like the aesthetics of this.

Wouldn't this be kind of cool if it's true? And then you just go into it. With a very, very open mind and you don't look for the evidence to the contrary. You only lean in with full confirmation bias and before you know it, you are convinced because [00:37:00] you've only seen supporting evidence, you've only seen the lore, you've only had spiritual experiences.

In this, in this framework and that it'll get you, it'll get you. It's enough.

Malcolm Collins: I will say one thing that really this Valerie woman, you know, as I go through this who sort of remade Wiccanism, I have to really respect her a lot for a few things. I think she was right in the way that she rebranded Wiccanism.

I think it's a better branding for its growth and getting it to grow. I think that you know, Imagine being like the right hand man to this guy who then you find out made it all up and you're still like, well, yeah, he made it all up. So I'm just going to make it cooler. I guess she probably heavily suspected or was like dealing with a, okay, this guy's crazy.

Or, you know, just, just likes making things up. Which is fine, you know, I, that is, that level of intellectual honesty and branding management, I think is why, when contrasted with the other new [00:38:00] religions this one has done particularly good at spreading. And I think Casting it as, oh, these were what the ancient witches believed or this concept of like Puritan witches and stuff like that.

Keep in mind, we have some understanding of like what the Puritan witches were like supposed to be doing in the woods. And it's nothing like modern Wiccan stuff. I mean, some modern Wiccans have tried to reinvent this stuff, like dancing naked in the woods and stuff like that, or trying to seduce people or whatever, right?

Simone Collins: It also doesn't, it'll resemble the old superstitious things that you saw, for example, across Appalachia, it was like boil a puppy if you feel this way, or like cut off a kitten's tail, remember those, I think they were described in Albion seed that sounds like fricking witchcraft to me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I was like, what is actual and we know about a lot of these rituals from if you're like, oh, what rituals appeared and then disappeared?

Well, like boiling puppies which was done by my ancestors, the rural Appalachian people.

Simone Collins: I,

Malcolm Collins: no,

Simone Collins: [00:39:00] that is what is described in Macbeth. You know, this is the, you know, you know, eye of newt and, and toe of, of. Frog, but this is, this is the thing that if we're talking about witchcraft as, as seen in like stereotypical Shakespearean works, let's go to Appalachia, let's see what they're up to.

And not necessarily what nineties. Well, I guess she was writing in the 70s, but like, yeah, turn of the century.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and if people are like, well, you know, we don't know anything, so they could have been these various different faiths. It's like, yeah, we don't know much, except for the sacrifice victims.

We've got lots of those. So we do know they loved sacrificing humans. So if you're like, what do we know about these people?

Speaker: Oh, no! Not the bees!

Malcolm Collins: Not the best.

I think Christianity had a right to, as it was moving into these religions, be like, Hey, we really need to stamp out these older religious traditions entirely.

Now some people have been like, well, couldn't there have been pockets of these ancient [00:40:00] religions that were practiced in regions, right? Like with may poles and stuff like that at a few festivals. I would guess there probably could have been pockets, but the thing you have to remember is you get a church crackdown on one of these pockets, and if they don't hold the tradition for, let's say, even 50 or 60 years, it's going to be incredibly hard to recreate it from, like, local memory.

Do you, for example, know the types of rituals that your grandparents got up to? Or the types of, we should probably do an episode on that, just for an example. We can look up the, the common rituals and myths of the 1900s. Like, for example, do you even know if your grandparents ever Did a seance it would be actually if I think that

Simone Collins: I'm pretty sure none of my grandparents would have done a seance Because You know what one's in France during the war one is in you know, Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and war Then the other two [00:41:00] weren't really born yet until much later like in the 50s and they sort of grew up in The affluent growing America in 1950s.

So like totally not Okay, great grandparents

Malcolm Collins: will say because that would have been the period of seance Yeah, I I even the ones in the war. No a french person

Simone Collins: At that period during the war. Yeah, but then they were like in romania and like fleeing russia. So If your

Malcolm Collins: grandparents have lived in the united states, let's say between 1900 and 1950, chances are, I'd say because you have at least, I'd say over 50 percent that at least one of them participated in a séance.

And yet you don't know about this or not know about it because traditions just don't pass down that much. Folklore is pretty bad at passing down.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that and like, I think that there's just really poor transmission, even from grandparents. Like, I had one Grandmother who thought that she was reincarnated from a Native American woman.

And like, that's all I heard because it kind of like, she's a little [00:42:00] crazy. And like, I didn't hear like the belief system behind that. It was just like, yeah, she thinks this and that's it. You know, it's not like, well, what was that based on? Like, what was her religious framework here? I mean, she took our kids to

Malcolm Collins: frameworks are forgotten.

Like recently we got for our kids a book of Appalachian folktales. After I was reading one that's an old Appalachian, like scary story that they've done a book of, I remember when I was a kid, because I was like, Oh my God, the guy's dogs die. Like I remember the guys. Dogs dying as a kid. It's called Taily Poo, if you wanna get it.

It's a good story, very visceral for kids. They'll remember it. But I read it to the kids and I'd forgotten it. At the end of the story, the guy dies too! Everyone in this story, the guy and his three dogs are murdered! And this was a children's tale! So Slowly and one by one, like the dogs going into the woods and then going quiet, like very horror story esque, not very, but it feels very authentic, you're like, yeah, this was definitely an old story, but then we got some called [00:43:00] Jack's Tales, and we started reading them, and I, and I was reading the book, and I was like, oh, holy sh Jack and the Beanstalk was not a standalone myth.

Jack and the Beanstalk was part of a series of campfire stories about a boy named Jack who got up to crazy sh and I Jack was a

Simone Collins: busy boy, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Completely lost in the cultural memory that that was the case. And so I can see even within my own tradition how quickly these people who want to believe in ancestral traditions being passed down, I would just ask you, How many direct ancestral traditions do you have outside of your mainstream religion from your grandparents?

You may have a few from one of them, but I would best for most people, it's almost none. And keep in mind, you have four grandparents. If even you can't remember the very things that your grandparents went through, how do you think this passes down for like, dozens of times that number? [00:44:00]

Simone Collins: That's fair.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. You are absolutely amazing, and thank you for being my wife.

Simone Collins: Thank you for being my husband. I love you so much. My non Druidic husband.

Malcolm Collins: My non Druidic guest. You want to go into early Christianity versus the religions it was replacing we released an episode on Christmas day.

Simone Collins: So like nobody watched it called was Christianity actually a more moral religion. When I asked Grok what his favorite episode of our show was, it picked that episode. So if you guys want to check it out, Grok thinks it's the best.

So, I'm excited for this. You haven't even talked to me about it, so I'm coming in blank. I don't know what to expect.

Malcolm Collins: Mean, do you know anything about this, or how the movement started, or anything?

Simone Collins: You know, I know I had my, like, 90s friends who had their, you know, books from Barnes Noble about Wicca, you know?

It was like, oh, Wicca, that thing, you got a book [00:45:00] at it, Barnes Noble, with a little Gold foil cover that has little spells. That's how

Malcolm Collins: you know it's magical.

Simone Collins: That's how you know. I mean, if not gold, then silver foil. Nothing

Malcolm Collins: could disappoint me more than if our kids end up becoming Wicca. I don't even think it's

Simone Collins: Wicca though.

I'd be more disappointed if they buy spells. on Etsy, or whatever it is, like, you know, from a TikTok influencer or something.

Malcolm Collins: Although, although, I mean, I will tell my sons the truth. You want to, you want to find easy girls, look for Wiccans. Oh my God. That's an easy group.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but that's also a date.

They're like the kind of people that I would expect to cut holes in condoms and stuff. This is a no no. It's true. So just don't,

Malcolm Collins: just don't. Okay. Okay. I'll get started here.

Speaker 3: I didn't say bye. You're gonna be sent to the portal of hell. No! No! You're gonna be sent to the [00:46:00] portal of hell. Uh oh, Octavian. Titan's stealing your backpack. You're going to the portal of hell, toy. No! No! No! Octavian, Titan stole your backpack. Are you going to go get it?

Speaker 4: Don't! Close the door. No, no. Don't play with the door. Octavian, the door is not a toy. Stop.

Speaker 3: Hands up! You're under arrest! Break into the new house for you.

[00:47:00] I

broke the alcohol bottle. Aren't you going to get your backpack back? Tyson has it. Oh, tickle attack! I can't get out of here. I can't get out! Mommy! Hey! You! Hey! [00:48:00] Oh!

In this engaging episode, the hosts sit down with Mike Solana, founder and editor-in-chief of Pirate Wires, to dissect the contemporary political scene. They explore Solana's role in shaping the tech-right political movement and the significant changes since the recent election cycles. The discussion spans from the transformation in Silicon Valley's political affiliations to the rise and strategy of Donald Trump's second term. Solana shares insights into the surprising status gain of Trump supporters in tech and the implications of such a shift. The conversation also delves into broader societal changes, including the shifting values in America, the decline of mainstream media, and the increasing significance of niche communities in a post-job economy. The episode is a fascinating look at the undercurrents shaping today's political and social landscape.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. We're excited to have with us today. Mike Solana, the founder and editing something chief of Pirate Wires. 1,

Simone Collins: 2, 3. Hello everyone. We're so excited to be day today. Oh my gosh.

Okay. Yeah. Sorry. You went,

Malcolm Collins: this is why we go with mine. Okay. Anyway. For people who don't know who Mike Salona is he doesn't just have a podcast. It's very popular. But in a publication, that's incredible. Yes. You also sort of put together heretic on, right?

Mike Solana: It was my idea.

Yeah. Founded it, created it. It's out of done out of out of Founders Fund, but yeah, it's mine. All mine.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you've been a central figure in the coalition or sort of the consolidation of this sort of new right or tech right political movement that right now is sort of blowing through the country within the White House and a lot of what we're seeing.

And I wanted to talk with you as somebody who [00:01:00] is. Totally integrated in like what's going on sort of the venture capital Silicon Valley tech worker scene the vibe shift that you have seen post election cycle there What's changing about how people are relating to things as well as the role that you played in this?

Consolidation to to write some history here as the country changes and also to discuss the political realignment. We're seeing in the United States

Mike Solana: Well, I think first of all my own in my own personal life. I kind of i'm like very cagey about labels I Have tried to just be honest about what I'm seeing.

And so people tend to put me in a box based on that. Maybe I belong in the box. I don't know, but I can talk about what I've seen. And in terms of what's different right now, I think the best thing to contrast is not what's happening today versus what was happening like four years ago with Biden, but just to, to just, we have this great example of Trump's.[00:02:00]

Presidency and his inauguration and you can just compare the first one to the second one. He's had two first terms in a sense Really like he hasn't had a first in a second term. These are two totally separate I said not too long ago. It sort of feels like He played the video game and and, and lost.

And he just started the exact same game over from the very beginning. Now knowing where all of the bosses are, right? It's not like he's gotten to the second chapter. He's just still in that first chapter, but he's doing it all over again. So we've never seen that. None of us have seen that in any of our lives.

So it's, it's like a very kind of new thing. And within tech, you can compare that first one to the second one. And it's obviously night and day. I mean, the first one was there was one person in tech who was open about his support of. Donald Trump. It was Peter Thiel, and he was completely alienated right out of town for it and has since been sort of forgotten to a, to a large extent because there were much louder people who came to Trump's defense and support this second [00:03:00] time around who've, I think, occupied a lot of the, Discourse surrounding that in tech.

And I don't want to like, obviously I feel some kind of way about that. Having been on the front lines of it, obviously not like Peter, but I mean, I work for Peter, I've known Peter forever. So I have a feelings about the way he was treated. But the difference is just obviously today, Trump supporters.

Have status in Silicon Valley. And in fact, being a right wing person almost grants a certain amount of status, I would say at the higher levels. So I think it's really unclear what's happening among the rank and file. We haven't seen another round of fundraising data. The last time that we looked tech was still overwhelmingly voting.

funding Democrats, venture capital will so overwhelmingly funding Democrats, but all the people openly talking about it are, it's just like overwhelmingly Trumpian. And then everybody else is, I think either conflicted because the Biden term was so [00:04:00] disastrous or quiet. And I suspense it. I suspect it was conflicted rather than quiet.

I think people actually just didn't know how they felt.

Malcolm Collins: So I want to pull apart the two things you said here to focus on each individually, because I think they're really, really interesting. The first thing that you noted, I think is so true. It's like that game the movie with I want to say the Scientologist guy where every time he dies, he plays the same day tomorrow.

What was it, Colleen?

Mike Solana: Edge of Tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Edge of Tomorrow. Yes. Trump's edge of tomorrow ing it right now, but the thing that's weird about this and the part of this I want to focus on is why is the left doing everything exactly the same? Like why are they being so predictable? Why is it the exact same play through?

Mike Solana: I think that they. I have no idea what they are right now. They're, they've lost so many things and it's not just an election, right? They've lost the culture. They've lost the youth. They have lost their sense of political identity [00:05:00] because Trump is not a regular Republican. Trump, they tried really, really, really hard to make the kind of like, Oh, he's a rich guy who wants to just help rich people, things stick.

But even if you could, maybe that is secretly true. His policies are populist policies. They are economically populist policies. There's a reason that Tucker Carlson was aligned with him and is talking about things like banning self driving cars to protect the jobs of drivers. That's like a Democrat idea.

And so I don't think it's like, if you've taken away the economic populism or at least provided a competitive economic populist. Platform you, what are you left with to differentiate yourself and what they were left with in the last election and even now today is like, maybe we should trans the children, maybe that's okay.

Right. And that's, I don't think they even believe that they're just, that's something they were just forced to say by the party elites to sort of be in the party, but that's all they have now. It's like those really deranged far left social issues because also the right over the last 20 years has moderated a [00:06:00] lot on social stuff.

I think there's, yeah. A lot of transformation happening on the right on the social stuff and conflict on the right now, but that's that's like coming That's not currently where we are like the terrain right now is the major the dominant figure in right wing politics Republican politics, but I don't think it's really that is Donald Trump and he is an economic populist who does not give a s**t about gay people marrying.

He just does not care I also don't think the thing that's really hard to make stick is the abortion stuff because Yeah, he has been like, Oh, yeah, like, I'm, I'm against Roe v. Wade, but no one believes that that man hasn't paid for an abortion. Like he's not a Christian right kind of guy. And and he also is strongly said, you know, I'll knock out the any kind of federal ban for or whatnot.

He's like states rights only. It's a bad case, but he just isn't that kind of. He's not that kind of right wing socially extremely far right wing kind of guy. It's just more complicated. So they don't know what to [00:07:00] be. And I think

Malcolm Collins: there's, I've noticed two big differences in this particular playthrough.

One sort of highlights the point that you're making here and Trump has even said this verbally. He's like, I'm pushing this issue because it's a nine 90 10 issue. This was specifically when he was talking about trans people in sports. And, and I think. The administration right now is looking to only battle 90 10 issues at the beginning because Democrats culturally have a compulsion to double down on whatever he is opposing.

Mike Solana: So, well, because it's also always worked. They've always been able to just. Scream until they got what they wanted and they've, they've, the country has changed a lot because of it and the other overwhelming sort of like, let's say 80 20 issue at least that trump first one on and I think one on again is immigration.

And they don't know what the f**k to do about that because they presided over an open border for four years and have people in their party who have now normalized that to the point that they can't go backwards. That's the thing about the [00:08:00] left, man, is like they can never go backwards, that they can never pivot.

They can never change their mind. Trump doesn't care about changing his mind. And he's also not a Republican. He doesn't care about Republican baggage. He's just this guy who's doing what he thinks is the right thing to do. And so it comes off like common sense

Malcolm Collins: rather than ideology. Well, so the second thing that he's doing differently this time, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, because this is like a huge difference.

It's like when you're choosing to run for president and you're like picking a character, like your character is your VP, in many ways, in terms of like how you're colored, and the VP he picked sort of demonstrated a completely different alignment. I mean, Mike Pence versus J. D. Vance. Yeah. It was really like the.

GOP Inc versus the new right or the tech right?

Mike Solana: Well, I wouldn't even say it's the tech. I think, I mean, the tech right thing is something that's put on. That's like a Steve, Steve Bannon likes to, I think there's a, there's a tension between Steve Bannon and the tech right with JD Vance I think it's complicated because he's come out like in favor of Lena Khan and people like this who [00:09:00] want to regulate the hell out of the industry.

But I agree you're right that the difference between VP pick is really important and the first one is I need it was Trump like I want approval from. The elite, and I don't know why he wanted that, but you could tell that he really did. And so he picked an establishment guy and he wanted establishment approval in the press.

This new term is like JD Vance is an anti establishment guy and he blew up the press. He blew up the press room. He's now got like Mike Cernovich in there asking questions alongside the New York Times. It's like he, he, Trump knows that he will never have establishment approval. And so that actually was a huge mistake on the side.

of the establishment. They should have brought him in instead of trying to ice him out because now he doesn't have anything to gain from working with them. He has a lot to gain from destroying them and that's what he set out to do. He's

Malcolm Collins: completely surrounded now and it's this weird phenomenon with people who hated him in the first election cycle.

I mean, JD Vance, Elon, RFK, you know, it seems like his entire administration is just former adamant opponents. [00:10:00]

Mike Solana: I don't know that. J. D. Vance was ever an adamant. I think it's like he has some comments that he's made and whatever, but he wasn't like, I

Malcolm Collins: thought he led like the never Trump movement practically.

Yeah, because he wrote hillbilly elegy and then he did this like apology tour for everyone who voted for Trump.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Just for clarification here so I don't look uninformed, here are some quotes from J. D. Vance about Trump in his early days. He called Trump America's Hitler. He called him an idiot. He called him reprehensible. He called him cultural heroin. He called him unfit for office.

Mike Solana: Okay, so I don't know anything about that. I know that he, the hillbilly, I know that he's defended trump supporters and things like this. I don't know if how committed he was to like the sort of never trump or cause in the beginning.

It's definitely true that the others were against it. But even Ilan, I feel It's like, you have to think back to that period of time. And I give people all sorts of grace because at that period of time we were living in like a one party state, which became very apparent the moment that Trump [00:11:00] entered office and the whole entire deep state apparatus rose up to prevent him from doing anything and then tried to put him in jail for the following four years.

And I think that was really the radicalizing moment for most reasonable people. It was like, you maybe didn't support him in 2016. You maybe didn't vote for him in 2020, but what happened after 2020. Was really scary. That was like the coordinated tech thing to the platform him. Then the government went after him, started putting his allies in prison, tried to put him in prison.

I think that he would be certainly in prison at this point or on the path to it if he didn't win. And that's really scary. And so it's like everything the left is saying about him. I have not seen that from him, but I have seen it from them. And the sort of jig is up in that respect. Like you can't really hide the fact that you tried to put the front runner presidential candidate in jail, like in the middle of an election.

Malcolm Collins: So you're going to hypothesize where the left goes in response to this?

Mike Solana: Well, I think they have two choices. I think the first choice, no one wants to hear this, but I think that Gavin Newsom. Starting his new podcast is [00:12:00] really interesting. Mm. He is a total sociopathic political creature. He's like a classically presenting sociopathic politician in the late 20th century model

Malcolm Collins: of this.

Yeah. Yes.

Mike Solana: He's like a Bill Clinton kind of person.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. What's coming to my head as Bill or, or Hillary Clinton. Well, he feels, he's more like Bill. He

Simone Collins: feels more like a mayor out of Gotham City.

Speaker 2: I'm just a poor schmoe, got lucky. I wish I could Hand out world peace and unconditional love

Speaker 6: intimidate me. Bully me if it makes you feel big. I mean, it's not like you can just kill me.

Speaker 4: Actually, it's a lot like that.

Simone Collins: Like to me, he's more of a comic and I grew up in San Francisco. Like I, or well, right next to it. I grew up like sort of around, yeah.

Just steeped in his, his lore. It just feels comic book ish.

Mike Solana: Yeah, I think though that he's really smart and really underestimated. And the fact that he's now speaking to like Steve Bannon on the second issue of his episode of his podcast is really fascinating to [00:13:00] me because what I saw while I was watching the clips of that was he had clearly never, ever in his life.

Had strong pushback on any of his ideas, even on the issue of was the election stolen? That's not something that he's whether, regardless of what you think about that question, that's not a question that, that, that he has, that Newsome has ever had to answer before. He's never had to beat back against the argument that it was stolen.

And so to have them there. Laughing it off and pivoting in a smart way. He's also learning the fact that he's even talking to Steve. Ben is means that he's learning from the culture. He's his son is obviously red pilled and he's like, Holy s**t. Why is the youth Republican all of a sudden? And so he's trying to talk to these people.

He's going to learn or whatever. He'll still be a sociopath. He'll probably be a centrist and he'll have some better signaling or. What I think is much scarier and maybe more likely is the like Hassan pikers of the world, the pro like the Luigi Mangione left the populist, radical, yay murder left the pro [00:14:00] Hamas left like, and I think the Hamas thing is less important as As the reaction to Luigi Mangione has really frightened me because it's so earnest and so deep and it also crosses into the world of Trump supporters.

Anytime a left wing policy, you start seeing Trump supporters talk about it is like, Oh, that's real policy. That's like a Bernie Sanders, Trump overlap kind of thing. And I think that rather than put up that little, I forget his name. He's the ex Parkland kid who became a leftist activist and had the pillow company briefly.

And now he's like a DNC chairperson.

Simone Collins: Yes, we know of him, we don't know his name.

Mike Solana: So that little dweeb rather than him, if they put Hasan Piker up there, who has a lot of energy, is good looking, is very, I wouldn't say he's masculine, but he peacocks masculinity, and he has a lot of young male supporters, and he's a total monster, like an actual earnest, like, guy who would have put all of us in, had all of us killed in a communist revolution, like they might win.

So those are the two paths. I think the energy is actually on some [00:15:00] form of the populist left side and we'll see what happens.

Malcolm Collins: That's really interesting. Okay, so I'm just sort of thinking through this in my head. If they go the Hamas Piker path, I actually think that that would lose their support from the mainstream institutions.

In the same way, like when Trump ran the first time and the Republicans had to sort of like re coordinate Because, you know, he's, he's, he's supported like the kill. He said babies are legitimate military targets.

Mike Solana: Sure. But what have, what is the left not normalized? Give me like a crazy left wing policy that they have not normalized.

I mean, open borders now is a normal policy. The transing of youth women. Let's say biological women competing against biological men in youth sports. Like these are all things that 10 years ago we would have been like, Oh, that's crazy. Free speech is no longer it's like we must do government censorship, right?

Like that's a mainstream Democrat position. I do not trust that there's anything that they won't actually normalize. And so I think that might be right.

Malcolm Collins: That is really [00:16:00] scary. A world where that becomes normal.

Simone Collins: I feel like your average American though, if you get out of especially coastal cities is not cool with that stuff.

And I think that whether or not we see a radical left versus a reasonable and corrected, like market corrected left depends on trust and institutions. I think that the reason why Luigi Mangione is seen as a saint. Is because there is this fundamental sentiment that there is no law, there is no order, there is no justice.

If you are not wealthy, if someone steals from you, if someone attacks you, if crimes are committed against you, well, sorry, nothing's going to be done. And I think if the Trump administration manages to restore some sense of faith in institutions, like, oh, now we actually First, prosecute people for breaking the law.

That would be kind of huge. So it, it, I'm really watching closely to see what happens

Mike Solana: with the fact [00:17:00] that he's doing the things that he said on like immigration, for example, huge,

huge.

And he really didn't in the first term. And then the second term, it seems like it's all he cares about. And. Well, he cares about, he's doing a lot actually, but this is something that he promised that he seems to be taking seriously, even deporting Mahmood.

What's his face? The Columbia guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Who? He's married and has done nothing but organized protests that are anti USA. Right.

Mike Solana: He's been here for four years. He's only participated in anti American protesting. It's like he's being deported and that's a difficult move for Trump for a variety of reasons.

Because I think there's actually. Once someone gets a green card due process enters this, it's, it should be harder to kick them out rather than if they were just here on a visa, it seems like he's just doing it. You know, the optics there are not great for him and he doesn't give a s**t. He's like, this is the kind of stuff that I talked about.

If you hate the country, you're. going back to where you came from. If you don't belong here, you're going back to where you came from. And and these are things that, [00:18:00] you know, people have a harder time talking about online, including friends of mine who are on like the more centrist people, more thoughtful libertarian type people.

But when you just talk to anybody who's regular, they're like, Oh yeah, why would we want that person here? Obviously, back to Syria or wherever the f**k he came from, it sounds like he likes it better. Why would we don't want him? Why do we want him?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it seems like active enemy propaganda, like in our school system.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think actually just maybe today you tweet something like your, your, your minimum requirement for citizenship. Should be that you want to be an American. You like it. There's something along those lines. You should love

Mike Solana: us and want to be us. Like you should want to become what you see here. It should not be like, Oh, that would be a great country.

If only I could change it and make it like a little more Islamic. No, we're not doing that. That's not what we're doing here. Yeah,

So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not your [00:19:00] population is going down the slum, right?. One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.

Right In your face!

Malcolm Collins: all of these people who point out that you have these big protests going on in California where people are protesting being sent back to Mexico with Mexican flags. It's like, what, why, why are you madder than

Mike Solana: you're with like, I feel that way about Israel and Palestine too.

It's like my problem with it. Is I don't want to see either of your flags in my streets like I, it's an American flag or no flag is kind of how I feel about it. I just don't care about either one of these flags. You're perfectly nice people. I'm sure. Definitely what happened on October 7th was disgusting.

Like definitely it happens a lot. Terrorism is bad. All true. I don't want your like multi thousand year old blood feud Being litigated in the streets of New York city. It's like, I just don't want to see that. And this is the problem with immigration. And this is, I think the reaction of the average American who is like, why the f**k are we even [00:20:00] talking about this?

This has nothing to do with us. I don't want to have to think about this. I don't care. And Trump is just. He has like an instinct for that and he just talks to the people who no one else talks to, which is most people, by the way, that's like,

Simone Collins: yes, well, I mean, it's, it's not just him mentioning 90 10 issues.

I'm hearing it more and more, even on issues when he doesn't plan to support them, like with daylight savings, when he was asked. Will you finally get rid of daylight savings? He said, well, this is more like a 50 50 issue. I'm not going to touch it no matter what I do. Someone's going to get mad. He really, it's so refreshing to hear a president look at what the majority of reasonable people want and try to get that because it seems like we haven't done that for a really long time.

Mike Solana: It's not ideological at all.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Mike Solana: That is the thing that people get so wrong about him is he's actually, I think the most. Pragmatic president. We've had, you see this on issues of things like trade where and also things like, I mean, any policy [00:21:00] position he has, it's never, it's never about what should the world look like?

It's always about like, well, what is the landscape and how do I get the best deal possible based on what? People all seem to want, he's all about making deals with people. He loves striking deals between people who don't want the same things. He loves brokering those kinds of deals. And that's just unlike we've never seen anything like that for better or worse.

It's just a new thing. And I find the honesty of that refreshing.

Malcolm Collins: I want to transition from this into the second part of the very first thing you said, which I thought was just really interesting is the conversations that are happening on the ground, the nature of them is really changing. And you mentioned it a little bit here in terms of like what people are saying.

I know from my experience, I got this email chain from Stanford MBA. And, and it was from my class and it was all of them were like panicking, like panicking, panicking. I was like. The one person who would start just went on it and started magging and I probably really burned my chance of ever getting a job through that [00:22:00] network.

Just by being like, Hey, if you ever want to talk to somebody with the opposite perspective,

Mike Solana: They don't newsflash or narrator narrator's voice. They did not,

Malcolm Collins: But the, the The at the same time, you know, we have people on our show all the time who have nothing to do with politics, like I'll invite somebody on because he runs like a statistics channel on fertility rates in like Eastern Europe or something or a religious thinker and like before the recordings turn on, it's always like, oh my God, like, I'm so glad, like, I wish I could move to America or I'm so jealous for what you guys are getting to go through right now.

We're like,

Mike Solana: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: a lot in Europe. Is, is, how is this, is it like filtering down from the top within Silicon Valley, like in the intellectual class of Silicon Valley, because we're really connected to them, I'd call it like the EEO sphere, like the former effective altruist community, like the top intellectuals who we have connections with, they're like They're, they're, they're moving more centrist on this sort of stuff when previously they would have been hyper reactionary against it, but I [00:23:00] feel like the rank and file still think they're supposed to hate Trump.

Yeah. Like that's sort of what I'm seeing.

Mike Solana: That's the culture of there's this thing that is like. The aesthetic of thoughtfulness and they feel you have your centrist people, you're like Yimby type people, any kind of wonkish policy person, your former EA type people, your rationalists, they care more about projecting a sense of their own personal thoughtfulness than they do about securing.

High level goals. I truly believe this for the country, like just positive, let's say growth borders, law and order, things like that. They don't care about that as much as, as how they come off to their friends and things like that, which is a weird thing to say, because they're rationalists and they're not supposed to care about that.

But that is truly my read of most of them, even the ones that I like and friendly or whatever. I think that that's what's happening. And there's nothing about Trump. The aesthetics of Trump, there's nothing reasonable about them. He comes off [00:24:00] way crazier than he actually is. So the way that he just like, even on tariffs or something where it's an issue that you could actually get behind the idea of reciprocity and trade, he just every day is announcing something new.

And so if you're like, your aesthetic is thoughtfulness. That, well, that's not thoughtful. He didn't think it through. He's changing his mind. He changed his mind five times. What does he really believe? And I look at that and I have to do the math and I've now known him for, not personally, but I've watched him for however many, 10 years almost.

And it's like, Oh he's creating leverage out of nothing in advance of some kind of trade negotiation or deal negotiation that I don't even. Know anything about right now. The other day I saw him throw Google under the bus for something. And I was just talking to myself like, I mean, I wonder what he wants from them.

Like maybe that's what's happening. Right? Like, like, I don't know what's going on over there, but probably something is going on there. And so that's how I approach Trump is just the principle of charity. I. I just assume that he's not deciding, Oh, I would really like to tank the economy today by doing something [00:25:00] crazy.

I would like to just tank the stock market or whatever. My assumption is there's a plan and I just don't know what it is and we can judge him for it in, you know, six months or whatever. And it's like we can change the whoever's in charge now anyway. I was

Malcolm Collins: talking to New York times reporter today.

And she was like, well, what do you think of like what he's done to the economy? And I'm like, he didn't like. Plan to take the economy if he even if he did he meant for it to be short term Like his goal is to make the american worker feel more secure like

Mike Solana: well ain't also just to shore up Manufacturing security and that is a goal.

It's like we just F*****g forgot that that's an important goal. COVID happened and proved that that's an important goal. It proved that it's not just a thing that you should care about. If you are this plebe who is saying, Oh, I wish that I could afford a home. And you're this, a rich person is like you idiot.

That'll never happen again. That's not what we do here anymore. We don't give you like great middle class jobs. It's no longer just an issue for those people. It's an issue for all of us when you have a country like [00:26:00] China controlling so much of the manufacturing, and then they're also manufacturing viruses that they're then releasing, and then they're hoarding things like PPE, and that is something that was not nearly as bad as it could have been, but I think that the takeaway from that has to be.

Oh, wow. That could have been easily so much worse. It could have been a little more lethal and that would have been way more devastating. And we were way not prepared for it. And so I think about it in those terms that completely 20, how could 2020 not have changed your mind completely about things like domestic manufacturing and Trump really cares about it.

And we'll see what happens.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. So there was something you said there that aligns with one of our recent theories that I thought you might find interesting to pull on. So we were looking at why American conservatism like Americana conservatism is the only group really other than Jews who stay above repopulation rate fertility wise when they get wealthy.

And what we pointed to was the truck nut fertility thesis, which is to say within Americana [00:27:00] culture, there is this idea that if some sort of culturally dominant force or respectable force wants to force something on you. Your reaction to that should be reflexively reactionary. Like put truck nooks on something because it's not respectable.

Put the little naked girl on the thing, the Hooters chicks, you know, like, be. offensive in your existence. And that this was Trump authenticated him in a large part of America's mind rather than undermining his credibility. And there is, with these individuals who live their lives just to signal, I'm a good person an incapability of recognizing this.

Mike Solana: I think that's true. I think that the way he talks, even just the cadence and the strangeness of his vernacular is all signaling a segment of the population that is considered [00:28:00] not elite to elitists. And when people like my parents heard it, all they really registered was like, Oh, this guy hates it.

All the same people who I hate. I, they don't care that he was rich. They don't care about his dumb real estate deals in New York city, which by the way, like, does anybody think that there's no corruption in real estate in New York city? Like the only way to do real estate in New York city, like they don't give a s**t.

They're just like, he's going to throw. a grenade at the machine, which I can't stand. And if he doesn't do that, we're going to have a problem. And then he didn't do it enough. And there was a problem in the election is my read of the 2020 election. It was like, he didn't do enough of the s**t that he was going to say, but I think, yeah, the way that he speaks the offensiveness, everyone thinks that's fun.

The supporters think that's funny. And, and they register it as, oh, he cares just as little about, he has just as little respect. For this system of morality, the elitist morality as I do, you know, these people are people who [00:29:00] grew up saying before white privilege was a phrase. It was in the early nineties.

You still had politically correct language. And there was this idea of like, why the average, like working middle class white person is like, what, what do black people What do I have that black people don't have like no one has ever given me anything? Why do I have to have this like reverence for this idea that the black person is persecuted or something in 1992?

They don't believe they just never believed that because their lives weren't that good and they were really hard and the government wasn't giving them Anything and so to disrespect to show disrespect for that system that never in their minds gave them anything Is absolutely a part of his credibility.

They're like, Oh, he gets it. That's a guy who doesn't, he hates the same stuff that I hate.

Malcolm Collins: I think what's really fascinating is that it, I think that that also gave him credibility with like the tech bros, I guess I'd call them like the Silicon Valley VC crowd has always had an intentionally contrarian streak to it.

But it's almost [00:30:00] like. Like for me, for example, I wasn't pro Trump his first election cycle. I, and, and I see it now as like maybe internal cowardice or something like that, but it took me a while to recognize the contrarianism in what he was doing and that that aligned with the value system that I was, you know, purported to have.

Mike Solana: I don't agree. I think that it was more a matter of for the people who are maybe more famously pro Trump, like David Sachs and Mark Andreessen, that's probably true. But for the rank and file, like all of the, like the Mark Zuckerberg and the Google people calling up Trump and everybody was donating to his inauguration parties and stuff.

That was much more about. Tech had tried for years to be a part of the elite and succeeded to a certain extent when he was censored while Trump was in office, they succeeded, like they, they, there was. It wasn't just remember the tech platforms or the speech platforms. It was like every tech company [00:31:00] cut Trump off and we're lockstep with the Democrat elites who were in power.

It was a very scary moment in American history. I was like, Oh yeah, that was like straight up. Like we were teetering on the brink of real authoritarianism at that point. And and I would say that most tech people were. Aligned. And then what happened was four years in which it became absolutely certain that the Democrats were going to do everything in their power to dismantle that power.

They were, they were, they were never going to be aligned with tech power. It didn't matter how much the tech elites peacocks the same values and pretended they cared about the same things like they were just not going to work because the https: otter. ai Do not want competition in power and tech was becoming too powerful.

It was powerful enough, for example, to silence a president. The Democrats saw that and they were just as nervous as the Republicans. They were like, Oh my God, if you can silence the president, who is actually the powerful person here? It's not the democratic party, even all of a sudden. And so there was suddenly they were out of alignment and the backlash against the Democrats was, I think, totally expected just in terms of like.

A read of [00:32:00] the, the, the power structure.

Malcolm Collins: You think, you think the Democrats started, cause I, I personally didn't see any of the Democrats really targeting tech institutions leading up to the election. I, I remember them being really happy when they're banning stuff other than Elon.

Mike Solana: This last, this, which election are we talking about?

Malcolm Collins: This last like, like Zuckerberg that didn't really, you know, they were fine with him. They,

Mike Solana: you have antitrust legislation targeting like every major tech company Valley. You have the global trade war targeting tech from Europe that our administration not only did nothing about, but abetted by. Sharing information with the Europeans.

They talked about, they were constantly dragging tech people before Congress to yell at them and talk about whatever the issue was. They were talking about new taxation stuff. They were talking about, you had people like Elizabeth Warren, who talked about I don't want to get that wrong. So I don't want to say who it was, but there was an a conversation about going after unrealized gains.

That is very popular on the list. Oh, yes. That would kill the entire concept of startups, how we know [00:33:00] about them, which is like raising equity to people who don't have money to pay the taxes on something like that. Yeah, because the, the, the gains have not been realized, which is like a basic economic concept, but they don't, the Democrats don't care because there is an, there is a huge part of that party.

Many centrist Democrats would, of course. Would care. And in fact, there were many Democrats in Silicon Valley who absolutely cared and talked about it, but the Democrats have in their party, a group of people who do not believe in like industry as a concept, this is like, they're very socialist and it's not a small number of people.

And so I think at that point, When they were in power and all of this happened. It was like, wow, if we want to keep on existing, we cannot work with these people here. Maybe they will, that party will crash and burn and the new version of the Democratic Party, we will be able to work with. And that's, I think what someone like Gavin Newsom is trying to demonstrate even in his rhetoric, he's trying to demonstrate that.

But what we currently saw, the Biden thing, whatever, whatever was in charge while Biden was technically the president, that thing. [00:34:00] The tech industry just, it was straight up pragmatic. It was like, we will die if this is in charge. So,

Malcolm Collins: so, no, I, I, I think you might be right about it. It's very different from my intuition of what was leading the tech community.

Which was, if I look at like the words of the tech people, like Mark Zuckerberg, it was the. Government forcing him to censor stuff in weird ways. So I think the censorship, my read was censorship handling of COVID and the trans stuff is actually what turned the tech intellectuals away. But you see it as more just like pragmatic economic orientation.

Mike Solana: Well, it depends on who you're talking. If you're talking about like, again, the Mark Andreessen's and the David Sachs's of the world, I think those are always thoughtful people who kind of disagreed with that stuff. And they, their opinions are not that different now than they were. I think a while ago if you're talking about corporate leadership, you know, the C suites of all these companies, I think it was just straight up economics and for Mark specifically, I think there was probably, there is something earnest to the evolution there for someone like Jack [00:35:00] Dorsey, who I've covered really closely, I absolutely believe there was an earnest intellectual philosophical development there.

I think that he saw what happened during the Hunter stuff, not even from the administration, but from his own team, from himself, from what he Really antithetical to all of his like crypto libertarian values, which he has talked about forever. I think he was horrified by what he had become and I think he gave it, he worked to put Elon in power to end that whole entire machine.

I love Jack. I defend him all the time and people always get mad at me. But I, I think that he is one of the most earnest, that's like the most, the most earnest evolution on the issue of the safety stuff. He would maybe even argue, he never. Evolved. I don't know, but he certainly, his company certainly had become something really terrifying on the censorship stuff.

He

Malcolm Collins: ran blue sky for a bit too, right? Like he was on their board.

Mike Solana: That came from Twitter. He was on the board. Blue sky was a protocol developed by Twitter. That's why they don't like own it now. It's, it's not a [00:36:00] part of the company. But then he was on the board and then he left because he was like, well, this just became the exact same thing that Twitter was.

Malcolm Collins: What are your thoughts on, because we're talking about like how it almost became fascist of the US with the alignment of censorship and government, and yet I look at what's happening in Europe and the shutting down of election cycles, the extreme censorship. Do you just think Europe is cooked? Or like?

Mike Solana: Yeah, I mean, this is a good example of, we were saying, oh, well, not everyone in the country, like most people in the country aren't going to stand for these crazy ideas. That can be true. As it is true in Europe that most people in Europe believe that you should want to become European, you should want to be if you're German coming to Germany, you should want to become German, you should want to learn German, you should want to integrate with the German population and ultimately be a part of the German nation,

you can

all believe that and still have people in charge of your country who are doing things in the opposite direction, because they've just They've really seized power and the democracy doesn't matter at [00:37:00] that point.

So the only thing I think that is going to stop what's happening in Europe is some kind of, I mean, it would have to be a major change in the political structure, even cause they're like an end

Simone Collins: to the EU.

Mike Solana: I don't think that's enough. I think it's gotta be like on an individual level, like, cause you could, you'd have a change in a country like France, political change in a country like France, EU.

I think the EU doesn't matter as much as France leaving the EU matters. But I think, right, I feel. Like it's over for you. I don't think that they have, I don't think they're going to do it. There's no mass deportation coming out of Europe. And just on the demographic, the demographic question alone there 20 years from now is going to be such a different world that

Malcolm Collins: you're absolutely right.

I mean, one thing I point out is, is 25 percent was actually 24 percent of German's population is either immigrated or the descendants of immigrants after the 1950s. Well, that's

Mike Solana: close to a third of Canada's population is from a different country. [00:38:00] Like, like immediately.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Mike Solana: Immediately. It is, it's like, it's 20 something percent.

I'd have to Google it really quick. But, but it is, it's extremely high number. That's like a lot of people in your country who are not from your country. Yeah. And you may or may not want to be a part of your country.

One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.

Right In your face!

Malcolm Collins: Of Canada. There's been one like a gambit that I don't understand why Trump hasn't polled and it's like really surprising me actually.

Why not just like go to Alberta, go to, there's one other conference. Province that would probably flip. And provinces can secede from Canada just by a popular vote. Why not just say, Hey, you want to join the U S

Mike Solana: I don't think they have those. Numbers yet. I think that's like the most likely province, but they're not quite there.

And I go back and forth on whether or not Trump even actually wants Canada to become a state. I think he'd love it. It'd be fine. He'd be open to it. But I think the reason he's talking about Canadian statehood is just to demoralize Justin Trudeau. I think what he really wanted was to get rid of [00:39:00] Justin Trudeau.

And that has, he succeeded. Justin's now out and he just resigned today. And I don't know. I don't know that he thought much more about it other than that other than like this really works for me rhetorically in terms of rhetoric and it really works against him. It makes him look like a total loser and he's just going to keep hammering it because it made Justin look, you know, impotent.

Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. I would like to see a push on that. That'd be really cool. Simone, you've been quiet here for a Canadian

Mike Solana: statehood.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, to take the economically most productive regions of Canada just take their oil regions because they already don't want to be part of Canada. Canada established when the whole Quebec thing was going that you can just secede.

And Canada has been using these regions resources to fund the rest of their stupidity.

Mike Solana: I kind of think Canada is on a long term path to American integration. It's like the, the way is just in terms of. It's a slow [00:40:00] cultural economic, you know, integration until there's just we forget why we're not even the same country and then it just kind of happens.

I don't think it will happen like this. But then also, I would say, like, if the demographics totally change in Canada becomes a very different place. I don't know what that looks like. And that could happen because this country is a country that seems to hate itself is a country that seems to not want to be Canada anymore.

And that is what we're seeing in Europe too. And that is maybe the fundamental thing of our era that I don't understand that the weirdness of our era is like what seems to me to be a pervasive self hatred that in America, we have now room to not be that it used to, we had to be that culturally there is all we have now that everyone else does not have is we have permission.

To love ourselves. And they don't have that in Europe. And in fact, when I was abroad just about a month ago, a few weeks ago for a conference I was in London and that is the thing that everybody kept saying was like, man, I wish that we had that over here. I wish that that we had people who loved it that much over here.

It seems so fun and exciting to be over there right now. They didn't even care [00:41:00] about the policy. They only cared about it. Just like the permission to be excited about being alive and, and being your, your nationality. And yeah, they truly just do not have that there and we do, and that's precious right now.

We'll pop it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's funny that you mentioned that. Cause I was talking to some reporters about the prenatal conference and I was like at the last one. Really the most shocking thing about it is that everyone, it was the first time for a long time. I've been with a group of people where everyone was happy to be alive and excited about the future.

Even though they think it's bleak and I think that the reason for this is just cultural evolution, which is the dominant culture in the world right now. It's the urban monoculture as we call it. And to convert somebody out of their birth culture, because the urban monoculture is a very low fertility cultural group, you need to disillusion them with the starting cultural tradition.

If I want to convert somebody out of Americana culture, if I want to convert somebody out of German culture or British culture into the urban monoculture, I need to cut them off from their family, you know, convince [00:42:00] them their parents are horrible, and convince them that the culture itself is horrible, that that's how I deconvert them.

And as such, I need to convince them that they are. Horrible. And a lot of cults do this, you know? And so I think it just sort of spiraled out of control. And then everyone was like, why do we, why do we all hate it? What, like what, why am I supposed to hate my ancestors and our tradition and our civilization?

Mike Solana: Yeah. And then it turns out when you just refuse to do so and a bunch of other people say, yeah, I don't, I'm not doing that either. And you talk about it out loud. The hysterical screaming eventually dies down because it no longer works. It's like the behavior only persists for as long as they get a positive reaction from it and it just eventually it just dies down.

I kind of think of 2020 as I thought of 2017, I thought was the peak and then 2020 happened and I thought, holy s**t, it's worse. Okay. There is, it keeps getting worse. But there's this idea in behaviorism called behavior extinction. [00:43:00] And the idea is that you know, people will act out to get a reaction.

And then when you stop reacting. They don't stop reacting. They don't stop acting out. They actually act out much more at first. It's it's like they have to do much more to get the same reaction and then that works. And so they have to do much more. And the behavior extinction happens when as much as they ever acted out and then they don't get the reaction and then it dies.

And the behavior being that, like The sort of woke behavior is broken and part of that sort of constellation of bad ideas was this expectation that you hate your culture in America. At least that no longer exists. That behavior has gone extinct and those people still maybe there are people out there that have those ideas, but I'm allowed to not and nobody can stop me and nobody even really cares, which is why I find so tedious.

The people who are still doing anti woke. Content in 2025 as like their whole beat, which is like every day. It's woke whack a mole. It's like, look at this [00:44:00] blue haired idiot telling me that that white people are bad. It's like, no one cares anymore. I don't care. Like no one doesn't matter what that idiot says.

They don't have power over me anymore.

Simone Collins: That's actually one of the things I wanted to ask you about, which is a lot of energy and time went to that sort of the resistance. And now you have a whole bunch of people who don't really shouldn't be thinking about that aren't talking about that anymore. I'm really curious to see because you're so.

A finger on the pulse of the cutting edge. Both societally and in the tech world in some spheres, what you're seeing is like new dialogues and new obsessions and new themes that are emerging that people are talking about and obsessing over and thinking about how to solve now that they're not trying to fight.

Sort of progressive overreach.

Mike Solana: I think that whenever Trump is in office, he casts this like crazy smoke screen. He just, I think he just, I'm trying to find the right metaphor for this. But he just makes it hard to think about anything else. And so I think a lot of people are distracted by him and I'm trying my best.

To [00:45:00] sort of be like engaging with the culture, but to not be distracted by him from like, I'm, I'm sort of really refusing to be upset ever by anything that's going on. And whenever he says some crazy thing about tariffs, whatever, I'm just going to wait a few days and see what we learn. And people get mad at me for that, but that's just how I'm going to move on.

But I think a lot of people are distracted by him.

I

think on the far right of politics, on the far left of politics, there's total. Collapse and confusion and not even far left. Let's say the center left. That's where it's collapsed. Confusion disillusionment, sadness. They don't know what to be. And they're just not being productive at all on the far left.

There's excitement because the center left is dead. They have no competition and they're gaining followers. Then on the far right. Not even the far right, the whole spectrum of the right. There's a huge war for what it means to be right wing because Trump is bizarre and he's not the future of the party because no one is like him.

He is. No one else is as pragmatic as him. Even the Trumpians like they're Trumpian. He's not Trumpian. He's just Trump. It's a very different thing. There's no philosophy there for him at all. So whoever comes next, that's the war and you see it. I think [00:46:00] the. On both the economic side, where there's a conflict between the Bannon types and the the sort of the tech writer, the Elon Musk types, and then you see it on the social side, where there's also a conflict between like Elon Musk and his.

It means like Genghis Khan. It's like, how many kids is he going to have with random people? And the Christian right? The people who Pretend they're the Christian right, the trad right, which started as a meme and feels more real to me by the day. I think there's a lot of interesting, just no one knows what it's going to become.

And there's like conflict there, and it, without a common enemy on the woke left, it's becoming much more vicious.

So that is going to be distracting right wing people. And I think it's just going to be that what's happening is just going to be culturally quite chaotic because this is also happening at the same time that media fragmentation has happened.

So not only are all, are all of these things, would it have been natural even with standard media that was closer to what we saw like eight years ago with a few big giant tech companies and then the mainstream media, it's way more fragmented now. So no matter what you believe, you can [00:47:00] hop into a place that confirms all of your biases, shares news with you.

That is true. But super radicalizing about what you're about, what you believe. And so everyone is like very different and becoming more different. And yes, I think chaos for a while, unfortunately.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Here's a question that leads from that, that you might have an answer to. Cause I asked Simone about this.

So Hassan Piker is most popular Twitch streamer. If you look at the most popular long form podcasts eight out of 10 of them are right wing, right, right wing. Why do you think the podcast scene has gone right or right wing people succeed in the podcast scene? And. On YouTube as well. And the, the left is becoming focused on things like Twitch and Tik

Mike Solana: TOK.

I have no idea. I don't know. I've even, I had this idea. Yeah, no, I don't know. I, I actually have no idea. I just know that it's true. And I don't know that I don't know Twitch. I'm not familiar enough with Twitch to know who the other popular people are. I know that a lot of what they do [00:48:00] is, I mean, they love to fight with each other.

And get on into their shows and attack each other. That used to be popular on YouTube and it's not really as much anymore. And that was at a time when YouTube was more left wing. I don't know if there's something related to that, that it's all more He's just like a good WWE kind of star. I don't, I don't know.

That's,

Malcolm Collins: that's, that brings me to another point where you're like, you know, people used to fight when you had the lefties in control. It is something that you mentioned as part of the narrative, which is personally not something I'm seeing. And I've sort of taken it to be like a left wing gaslighting because, you know, they do a lot of this was media is that the right is now fighting each other.

I just personally haven't seen that much of the right fighting each other.

Mike Solana: I mean, you see it even with just like the Babylon B talking about anti semitism and getting attacked for it by there are all sorts of sort of. Is real skeptical where you really see it breaking down is on the question of Israel and Palestine, which is like a shadow war for all sorts.

It's our proxy war for all sorts of ideas about [00:49:00] nationalism and the influence of Jewish people and things like that. And try my best to just stay out of that entire thing. Because I think it's one not what I focus on America only. And then to It just seems like there's no way to enter that world and not become like a way scarier person.

I think that you just become the things that you fight and everybody there that's fighting that I see fighting. I don't want to be like so I've just tried my best to stay out of it. I worry that that fight that's budding up on the right is going to. Kind of overtake us all and we'll be dragged into it and have to pick sides or whatever.

But for now, I don't think we have to, but I do see a lot of fighting on the right. I think it's on the question of Israel, Israel's influence. The influence you see, Bannon really trying to gin up fights between the, what he calls the MAGA right. And what he calls the tech, right. I, those are, I don't believe in that distinction.

Maybe it will become a more serious distinction in the future, but he for sure feels. A conflict there. I just saw him on a Newsom podcast talking about the tech oligarchs and he hates the [00:50:00] influence of tech people on Donald Trump. I think this Elon thing really, really, really bothers him and he's going to stoke those flames and stoke those flames until he gets back into a position at the right hand, I think.

But yeah, those, those fights, I see a lot. I think the left is correct about those, those who is maybe I actually haven't seen the left to talk about this as much.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's interesting. My, my read of Steve Bannon, and I could be super wrong about this, is he's just like deep state slime and like everybody recognizes that now and he's mad because Elon is showing that he, he was the Elon of the first administration and he did effing nothing.

Mike Solana: Right, exactly. He failed. He ended up in jail. That's, and that, by the way, That's what happens if you fail on this game, you go to prison, like you lose your life. That is what they proved. And that's why the stakes are so high, right? Like we, everyone knows going to prison. If he doesn't nail it, this does not succeed.

We all are going to jail. Like that is what is going to happen. They say it, they actually just f*****g say it is like they lost the game fair and square. And their response to [00:51:00] that is. We should do communism. And and that's, that's like, that's the scary thing that's hanging over our balance. And that's why I worry about people like Hassan, because I think that he's the only one who's being really honest about, about.

His intentions.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and people find that honesty, very attractive, very appealing. I mean, for the same reason they love Trump,

Mike Solana: which is a very difficult question. You'll have to answer eventually. If that conversation picks up is like, do you have to act like them or something? Because that, again, it's like, it's just, it's the only way to survive a fight like this, I think, is you become not even, I don't know if you can even resist it.

If you're in a fight with someone, I think you just start to become them. That is what happened with everybody who fought. The woke people is like, you just fought fire with fire. You used to, you get obsessed with the culture wars you became. And I say this even a little bit like just self reflectively, like I became too much like them over the last few years.

I don't regret it because I don't know that I could have been effective in that environment if I didn't,

but

it is a sad thing. I look back at [00:52:00] my work from. Six, seven years ago when I was first, like, why can't people just let me write about this f*****g Mars thing? Like I'm doing a podcast on Mars. Like leave me alone.

It's not white supremacy. Shut up. Like, I look back at that guy and I'm like, man, I have, we like, I personally lost a lot by Fighting this thing. And I want to like get back to it, but it's hard. Like you just, you change in this kind of, in this kind of idea environment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I can see that. One thing that I find really interesting that to expand it a bit from what's going on in the tech world.

And I don't know how much insight you have into like a nerd culture stuff, which is another area that we do like a lot of stuff on, but the, how nerdy are we talking? Well, I, I was going to say Too much

Simone Collins: Warhammer

Mike Solana: lore? I played Magic the Gathering, and I had familiar with Dungeons

Malcolm Collins: and Dragons. The, the breakdown of the video game, like the woke video game industry in the United States has been pretty catastrophic to the extent where you'll have like 400 million dollars, and this has [00:53:00] happened multiple times, it's about to happen again with Assassin's Creed Shadows, 400 million going to a project and like 500 people buy it or like 1000 people buy it.

And it's, it's, it's destroying a giant industry. There was like the major media industry. And at the same time as I'm seeing this industry burning, I then see the, the news media, like the traditional MSNBC. It almost feels like a light switch flipped and everyone now is like, Oh yeah, they're not like meaningful sources of news anymore.

Even the people who work at these companies,

Mike Solana: well, even the left, they're like, Oh, they're too right wing or whatever. Like there's the trust in media is totally collapsed. But I think I was going to say, as you were talking about, I was going to connect it with media and I, I just see that as opportunity, especially as AI as our, as our AI tools advance and we are more able to create these things more easily ourselves.

You're just going to see new gaming companies and new people, or gaming people, single individual creators of incredibly popular, beautiful games. You're already seeing that on the media side. And that's maybe the future of everything is people doing more with less and creating new [00:54:00] institutions, new balance of status and power and wealth and things like this.

Malcolm Collins: It's funny that you mentioned that we're actually doing that. We're building a video game company right now with AI. Which I'm really excited for because the big like institutional players are so bad at using AI effectively.

Mike Solana: Yeah, I mean, well, so new it's like, and no one has ever super incentivized as a giant to embrace the new thing for this.

Like the, what is the famous innovators dilemma? You don't want to be creating the thing. That's going to put your, your bread and butter out of business. I guess they should be able to use new tools, but if they create tools that give way more autonomy to the user, just to get to a point where, You start to wonder what the point of this thing is, which is like, you know, that's what kind of is happening with the sub stack ecosystem and social media and stuff like this.

It just got to a point where I remember the whole blue check conversation was so crazy. And when Twitter was still Twitter. And the first thing that Elon did was he was like, I'm taking rid of, you're no, no, you no longer get blue checks just because you're like this anointed, you know, priest, high priest of the establishment, you're going to [00:55:00] have to pay for a blue check.

And anyone can have a blue check if you're a person and you give me money. And they were furious. The shift had already, like no one took that blue check seriously. It was just like, you don't deserve this because you have, you have 400 followers and you're crazy and you happen to work for like Vox.

That's, I am more influential than you. And that's crazy. Like you don't, you're not more special. You don't deserve a new, a special suite of tools and access to the administration or the art, what I consider my administration, which is whoever runs Twitter. You're not, you're not better than me. And he just, Elon just made, he forced his company to confirm with the reality that already existed.

And that's always a really interesting place to be when, when there is something that everybody already knows to be true, but you can't say it, or everybody's already doing something, but you can't, you can't talk about it or discuss it or plan for it. And then someone just. This is the real thing. This is what we're doing.

This is reality. And people love that. It's [00:56:00] like, thank you for saying the truth. And also now the world is different overnight.

Simone Collins: We're going to see a lot more of that in the coming years. What do

Mike Solana: you think the things are? Maybe that what is the one, what, maybe one thing that you think most people kind of think, but you can't say

Simone Collins: about social media or the news.

I think people realize that we live in a post job economy already. And that also money doesn't matter anymore. Those are my two big things.

Malcolm Collins: It's in the process of not matter. And Elon has said this as well, like because of AI because of AI

Simone Collins: and also because of sort of debt cycles and inflation. And we're, we're headed towards a Jubilee.

That's not going to play out like a Jubilee, like social security is going to fall apart. But then I think the government's just going to mint money to sort of cover it. I don't think social security is going to be privatized. And then, I mean, even if that doesn't happen, so even if our currency isn't massively devalued that way people are already behaving in a way especially younger generations and especially people who aren't wealthy and there there's a lot of them like, well, money just doesn't matter anymore.

I'm going to be in debt forever. I'm [00:57:00] going to put it on a credit card. Cause I'm never going to pay it off. It doesn't matter what the interest is because it's never going to be paid off.

Malcolm Collins: Weight of relating to money has inverted. So historically, the core store of value was anything that was fungible and had a set value like land or Bitcoin or house, you know, whatever.

But gold but now because those things were great for storing value because the number of people who wanted them was growing exponentially. But when the population begins to stabilize and then begins to collapse. The core thing that we thought of as a store of value collapses, and you could say, well, you could put it all into the economy like the S and P or something like that.

But all of the large companies are going to be the companies that are most at risk from the AI transition. So all of the places where you could store value are very unsafe.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I think a lot of people feel like they've been scammed so many times. Yeah. I mean, I can't buy a house. I can't, you know. I can't afford this.

I'm in debt. Money doesn't matter anymore. Everything's going to be on credit. And eventually we're going to say, well, this happened in Japan a couple of times where they're just [00:58:00] kind of like, huh? Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It is always a part of the beginning of demographic collapse.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Let's what, what debt it's gone.

So yeah, money's going to go crazy. And I think a lot of people are already the idea of

Mike Solana: our national debt. Like, I don't know how you pay that back. So do you just have to say, I'm not paying that back? I think that that's actually how it ends. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And our currency can be. Massively inflated until it doesn't really matter anymore.

And, you know, the portion of our budget that it becomes is going to be so silly because we get to just inflate it to high heaven. So yeah, that's, it's something that we think about a lot because, you know, we, we keep, our kids are now becoming obsessed with money and asking us. You know, how, how will I, how will I buy things?

And, and where do I get my job? And we're like, no, you won't get a job. That's never going to happen. And it's, it's, we're not trying to figure out what to tell them. To help me

Mike Solana: understand, what do you think is going to happen rather than having a job?

Simone Collins: You're going to have to create a niche personality.

That's that is capable of selling gatherings, events, access [00:59:00] or artisan goods of some sort. That people want that a niche of people wants

Mike Solana: That's a fraction of the population. So what happens to what, I don't know what that world looks like.

Malcolm Collins: There have been worlds in the past. And I think that people just fundamentally, like in our generation, art.

Capable of accepting this. But if you go back to like the 1910s 1900s you know, you didn't have a welfare. You didn't have social security. You didn't have medicaid when people were poor. They just died. And we're going to go back and a lot of people are just gonna And the rest of us are going to be scraping by and there's going to be a few people with an astronomical level.

There's going

Simone Collins: to be extended families sort of, I mean, we're going to, I think we're going to see a bit of a return to feudalism where you're going to see sort of these walled gardens where the top 001 percent is going to be. And then these ecosystems around it sort of in a, in a feudal format.

I think that there could be a world in which there's basically UBI, but then you're going to see systems kind of like [01:00:00] in you can see in prisons where. Sure. Your food is covered, your housing is covered, but there are all these artificial economies where people are making food for each other, they're trading services, they're cutting each other's hair, they're threading, they're, they're doing all this.

So there's going to be a lot of like human to human service exchanges. And that's, that's for the, everyone else who basically is just getting by sort of living in these. Localized and I'm not meaning even geographically, but often sometimes we call them like techno feudal where like you're sort of living based on your cultural subset, like, you know, the furries over here and like the, whatever.

And they're all sort of exchanging services and you're probably a member of a bunch, like you're probably a member of your geographical one and then maybe one or two social set ones like the FLDS and you're this geographic area or like EDM enthusiasts of this weird subset. And. this local geographic area, and you're going to be exchanging goods and services based on that.

And the ones who really thrive and manage to gain wealth, who are not part of the 0. 001 percent who just maintain all the wealth in the future, you have to have some kind of celebrity status where that 001 percent [01:01:00] comes to you for their artisan vegan leather bike shoes. Because you are the one, the master, the one whose, whose content they've watched, who, you know, they get obsessed with your artistry or the fact that you can weave.

This rare silk fabric using the method used in the 1500s in, in some obscure region in China, that kind of thing. You gotta, you gotta sell to the autist and you gotta be an autist. I guess I

Mike Solana: just, things will change. That's such a radically different world. That

Simone Collins: it's more like it's been for thousands of years.

It's back. It's back to what things were. We're in the aberration. We're in the sci fi world.

Mike Solana: What, what is the, what, it was like I guess the era of industrialization.

Simone Collins: The era of industrialism and the era of, basically with the rise

Malcolm Collins: of,

Simone Collins: it began with the British Imperial Empire and it is ending with AGI.

Mike Solana: What I'm hearing is colonialism was not that bad.

Simone Collins: It was [01:02:00] a good run. It was interesting. It produced a lot of cool stuff. It's just also, it's like a wave crashing on itself. It will produce something new.

Malcolm Collins: For us, this is existential. Because, you know, we want to have a lot of kids. We want to create a culture.

We're building a religion. And so we've got to think about, you know, next hundred, next two hundred years. And I just think that things are going to be astronomically harder for the next generation. And they're going to have to, like you would need to in, in, in these earlier eras, figure out how to support yourself, but maybe without a community.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, the future is here, just not evenly distributed. You can get got by probably telling a kid. Teaching them to get a job and do that and like do the traditional breadwinning stuff, but it's going to be shakier. It's going to, it's kind of like a game of musical chairs. There are not going to be that many chairs left.

I think a lot of the people getting laid off from corporate tech jobs and from the government are just, they're just never going to get jobs again.

Mike Solana: Yeah. Well, the good thing is we'll be able to see that happening soon and maybe we'll have more information. The

Simone Collins: numbers are so off, like the reporting's really [01:03:00] off.

So I feel like we're flying blind a little bit

Mike Solana: in tech

Simone Collins: and in employment and do people have jobs anymore? I think that we are, we've gone off the rails.

Mike Solana: Here's, I think one good indicator that they do have jobs is the protest sizes have completely plummeted since the BLM era. Everyone is out of work.

That's really the true, that's the real story of the BLM protests and why they were so big is because no one had anything to do. And right now you're looking at protests at like Trump tower or whatnot. And even like they're, they're cleaning up BLM alley. And no one's even there protesting. There are reasons

Simone Collins: to lie flat.

Malcolm Collins: I know. I think it's the Hikikomori causation that happened during COVID. I think COVID taught people, you can just stay in your house in bedrot. And a lot of people never came out again.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Why protest? I mean, they know it doesn't do anything. Like

Malcolm Collins: it just, there's, I think it's not. We see in our fan base who reach out to us sometimes and stuff like this, just never interacted with another person, really.[01:04:00]

Mike Solana: Yeah. I don't know why. It's super not rational, but I just feel like this is not, it's not that bad. I think even AI. You're so

Simone Collins: wholesome. You're so like, you're so, your interpretations, though being heterodox and though being cutting edge, I don't know how you managed to do it. They come across as so kind, so charitable, so optimistic.

And I love it. I love, I love your vision. I just

Mike Solana: think it's like, like even with AI. It's did you guys see this Sam Altman? He posted the AI telling a fiction story.

Simone Collins: No,

Mike Solana: it just wasn't. He's like, this is great. And all the people were like, this is there. It's fake. It can do fiction. And I just felt like, it could do a lot, but it couldn't do what he said it could do.

And we're talking. I don't think so, actually, because what it's really good doing is predicting The words that are going to come next based on words that have already happened. And

Simone Collins: guess what? So are you. [01:05:00] So are you. We've done it. Do you

Mike Solana: believe, you believe that I am an LLM? This is, but we've always done this.

Simone Collins: We think that there's. Abundant proof.

Mike Solana: But this is what people have always done with technology. If you look back 150 years ago or whatever it was, people were like, what is the future going to be? And it's like a crank machine that gives you knowledge. It's like, how does the brain work? The brain, the way we describe it, we describe it in terms of the technology that we see.

And so I don't think it's like this. LLM is what we are. I think that that is just how we're understanding ourselves because it's the most advanced thing that we have and we recognize that the brain is Actually still the most advanced Piece of technology that exists in the world by far. It's a very, very strange and I don't utilize

Simone Collins: his training data to come up with.

I mean, like, come online, like

Mike Solana: a car, like it's not the same. I think it's not the same. We can do things that it can't do. And have you

Simone Collins: been in a car with a 16 year old who was just learning how [01:06:00] to drive?

Mike Solana: Cause I've been the 16 year old who was just,

I'd note here that this is a bit different from times in the past where we have, , said, Hey, humans work kind of like a machine. , it would be more akin to if we said, Hey, humans work kind of like a machine. And then we got the first fMRI images of a person's head and it was filled with gears. , that is basically what's happening as fMRIs.

Studies on how humans process language get better with LLM related stuff. We have an episode on that right here if you're interested in this topic. But I didn't want to derail this particular conversation too much

Malcolm Collins: no, hold on, the smartest humans can do things that AI can't do.

I don't know if like, there's a few things that AI is bad at because they appear to be using different systems in our brains like counting or something like that. But I don't know if like, when I look at the, the language processing of AI, that seems better [01:07:00] than 80 percent of humans. 70%? It's not about Sorry, I'm

Mike Solana: getting a phone call right now.

Simone Collins: Oh, we've probably gone over time. Yeah, we'll leave you go. We kept you for way longer than we said we were

Mike Solana: going to. This is another fascinating conversation. I wish we could have done more about it. But it's been great talking to you guys.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Is there going to be another Hereticon?

Mike Solana: I think there will be, yeah, I think it'll, I don't know if it's going to be the last one or not. Maybe these things will be good. It's a feel like a trilogy is important,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, we love having you on. Go check him out. Oh yes. Very similar to this show, but much more mild. And if you hate our AI takes, which like a big part of our fanbase does, because we're very pro AI, like, this guy is like us, but with saner AI takes. More optimism. This is if you like us, but you don't like our pro Luigi Mangione stuff.

It's like us, but not pro Luigi, you see, thanks guys. so much. Enjoy your weekend. Bye.

In this episode, we delve into the famous 'moral circle' chart from the study 'Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle.' We discuss common misinterpretations of the study, highlighting errors made by the researchers that led to widespread confusion. We explore how conservatives and progressives allocate their moral concern across different layers, from immediate family to the entire universe. We also examine neurological and psychological differences between these groups, touching on aspects such as threat sensitivity, cognitive processing, and brain structure. This comprehensive discussion aims to shed light on the fundamental ideological divide and how both sides perceive and value their moral priorities.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting with you today. Today, we are going to go in to the famous circles or charts of interest. It comes from a study titled Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle. And so this is a moral circle chart that everybody loves to show. And I wanted to go into this in an episode because one, what the study actually says, Versus what people think it says is hugely misinterpreted, mostly because the people who wrote the study made a mistake in the way they described the procedure of the experiment, which led people to completely misunderstand what was being shown in the graph because the graph is intuitively not what you would expect it to be.

So there is actually data that looks at what people think this is, which is on average what conservatives and progressives care about. But it's not the graph that you think you're looking at. Okay, so what a lot of people think that this graph shows that I have shown you is [00:01:00] sort of moral expanses of what people care about.

Where do they put their intention with each layer of this circle, representing moving out from like yourself to your family. To out out out. So let's go over what the the various rings mean. The innermost layers include categories like immediate family, closest friends, et cetera.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: then you have the innermost layers, layers, sort of the middling layers, all people you've ever met, all people in your community, all people in your country which reflects sort of a broader sense of community.

Then you have the outer layers. These encompass all humans, all mammals, all living things in the universe, including plants and trees. And then you have the very outermost layer, which is all things in existence, like rocks and everything like that, okay? And what a lot of people interpret this chart as meaning is the average of what conservatives and progressives care about.

And in a way, it's telling, because not a lot of people pushed back against this interpretation. I. e., you see here, conservatives care about things like family. [00:02:00] their countrymen, whereas progressives in this interpretation cared the most about things like rocks and plants and stuff like that. And, well, I mean, people intuitively hear this and they're like, yeah, that sounds like the type of brain dead thing a progressive would care about.

The problem is, is they did ask that question. Okay. It's just the data that they collected from asking that question was shown in a separate chart. Which I will show you in a second. And this chart shows data around the question of what is the furthest extent of the things you care about.

Simone Collins: Which makes

Malcolm Collins: progressives look a little less crazy.

IE conservatives often do not really, it actually makes the conservatives look a little sociopathic with many conservatives not really caring much outside of their family, their friends, etc. And with, and I, and progressives being like [00:03:00] almost sort of sociopathic in the other extreme. I care about the universe and everything.

I care about all things.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so let's look at the real graph that that actually looked at the answers to this rating and you'll see why nobody shares it because it's done terribly and it's hard to interpret.

Now,

if you saw this graph, you'd think that the first graph was the, what do you care about most? Not the extent of your beliefs. And right. This graph was the extent of your beliefs question, but no, they did it oppositely because they were bad at their jobs. It was great for memes and they haven't really gone back and commented on it much because They're scientists and they don't like that it's become like a meme thing and they feel kind of bad about messing it up to begin with.

It's sort of like my read of what's going on here. But what you can see from this chart is this took the thing that you care about most on average basically gave people a number of tokens. And you can slot them into different categories. You can put like all your tokens on family and only like one or two on country and stuff like that.

Or you can distribute [00:04:00] your tokens more evenly. And so when you divided people into human versus non human categories, what you see here is that generally the more progressive somebody was, the less they cared about human things. More plants, animals, space, rocks. Or more,

Simone Collins: I, I would argue the more equally you care about all things.

Malcolm Collins: Well, including non human things. Yes, including non human things. This is assigning value to non human things, which I think is weird, but okay. And then I'll put another graph on screen here, which will give you a bit more, because it shows like the error bars on each of these. Or the, the margins so you can get an idea of how much they separate from each other.

And what you'll notice here, is some interesting things. But in general, the broad trend is that, yes, liberals actually do care about non human things more. Now I want to, now suppose you're like, okay, but what if we did like a heat map of what people were caring about? [00:05:00] Graph what people are caring about.

And then we're going to go into the neuroscience of this because the conservative and progressive brain are actually a little different.

Simone Collins: Okay. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: So here, here you can see like a depth map or heat map of where people were actually clicking and it does show that yes, the conservatives largely viewed their loyalty in tranches, i. e. a lot of them were really loyal to family, a lot of them were really loyal to country and then you have a smaller like out there group, whereas progressives are much more unified in their beliefs with sort of a out there, probably all plants and animals.

Yeah, like it's

Simone Collins: very, it's much more outwardly focused with. Very little emphasis put on the nearest circle.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I I'd say that I also understand this conservative idea of okay. I'm distributing tokens. What do I care about? It's gonna be Family a lot in country a lot. Yeah, or when I think of country, I've been like wider cultural System that I'm a part of right maybe not necessarily exactly like just a country for arbitrary like countryman's sake [00:06:00] Yeah, and I think that's the way a lot of people would interpret that and then the second graph here that I'm showing what you can see is Approximate distance from center aggressive versus conservative, and you can see that what you actually get is progressives actually care about almost everything more except for family, where the conservatives

Simone Collins: beat you a little bit more.

That makes so much sense that you always make the point that like the urban monoculture works like a cult by starting. with a separation between the person and their family and their support network. The therapist goes and finds about all the terrible things that supposedly were done by this person's parents in their childhood.

And there's a lot of hatred for one's inherited group and their traditions because they're backwards. And Savage,

Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah so, I think that, why is this a meme? Before we go into neuroscience and stuff like this. Why is this all out there? I think because it shows something that we all know to be intuitively true, which is that [00:07:00] progressives care about things outside of sort of their immediate circle.

People will be like, well, why can't you care about everything? Why can't you just Like, I guess you can say that, but care units are attention units. You can say care units are units of like, what are you weighing? Right. And somebody who distributes too many care units outside of, because that's what I'm saying when I'm, when I'm distributing a care unit, I'm saying when I'm making moral decisions or equations, how much am I going to reference things outside of my immediate community

Simone Collins: and, or how much of your mental bandwidth goes.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this actually matters a lot if I'm thinking about the type of people I want in my community or I want to invest at invest in, in members of my community because these individuals, I can invest in them, but then they will make decisions or the community can invest in them. And they will make decisions that benefit things other than the community.

It's [00:08:00] like. You know, you have the old grandma who you're giving money to, to try to help her and her cat and you learn that she's been giving it all away to Rwanda. And you're like, well, you know, yeah, I gave you this cat grandmother. You were supposed to be taking care of it. Like, what are you doing?

Like, it's like, well, I gotta give it all to Rwanda. And it's like, well, I gave you the money. For you, like, do you not have any loyalty to that? And it's like, no, I don't because we're Wanda. And I think that this is, this is why it makes sense for conservative cultures, i. e. cultures that have survived a long time and are just like made up modern philosophical hokum to want to reject and eject individuals who over emphasize moral weight of things far out of the system.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm. I mean, I would also argue just from a logical standpoint, I've I've definitely shifted from being very, very outward circle focused to very, very inward circle [00:09:00] focused because I'm aware of where I as an individual can make the most difference and you can make the very most difference at the local level.

Not, you know, not very far away. And honestly, if you really care about Rwanda, the best way you could make a difference is probably by well one either like Donating as much of your income as you can to that and just focusing on it exclusively or honestly going out there and helping like getting on the ground and helping.

Yeah. If you can't make a lot of money. And then, and then what? Then it becomes your local circle. So now you're, you've, you've shifted the circles and now you're, you're, you're, you're an inner circle person. It's almost like they, they, they want to make the outer circles their inner circles, but they don't.

And so they're feckless. And that's, that's what bothers me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's almost like, But I think having kids really switches this up for people, because then you get invested in this sort of the intergenerational part of life, investing in the next generation, thinking about how you're going to set things up for your kids, for your country, for your cultural group.

And you begin to realize. That a [00:10:00] lot of the signaling of things far outside your immediate cultural group is ultimately signaling to make yourself feel like a good person. I think I don't think that a lot of this is actually deeply caring about these things as you see with a lot of progressive causes, you know, they care.

They say, Oh, I care about human suffering. And I'm like, well, yeah. Population collapse is going to lead to astronomical suffering when social security systems and welfare systems collapse. Don't you care about that? Or I care about the environment. Well, then shouldn't we be doing nuclear plants? Why are you shutting all the nuclear plants down in Germany, right?

Like, that's people who say they care about the environment doing that. Like, that's nuts. But it's because they don't actually care. They care about looking like somebody who cares about the aesthetics of the environment or the aesthetics of family or, or, or human suffering. Whereas I think conservatives, when you are allocating your points pragmatically, like, where am I actually going to be able to make an impact in the world?

I think that that's a big part of why conservatives [00:11:00] allocate their care in this way, because they know that that's where they can matter and where them, when you. Help communities that aren't your own overly you typically end up one causing communities that are less healthy and cause more suffering over the time to proliferate and end up making your own community suffer.

So just on net, you cause more suffering in the world. When you look at our video on, on Nietzschean philosophy on this where we critique it, but we say, but you know, it's not wrong on everything. But let's go into the, the, the brain and psychology of all this. Psychologically, progressives tend to score higher on traits like openness to experience, a big five personality dimension tied to curiosity, imagination, and tolerance for ambiguity.

They're often more comfortable with change and uncertainty, which aligns with their inclination towards social reform and making things up. Here it says innovation, but. I'm gonna say making things up. Conservatives on the other hand typically score higher on conscientiousness, particularly the sub trait of orderliness, and [00:12:00] they value stability, tradition, and structure.

You see, Simone, you were always meant to be a conservative. Orderliness, conscientiousness.

Simone Collins: Well, and why I was the black sheep of my family as I grew up in California.

Malcolm Collins: Low anxiety, structure. Order this can make them more skeptical of rapid change and more focused on preserving established norms. And, and I think that this is not as much what we see from modern conservatism because we live in an odd time where the dominant culture is a progressive culture and to maintain tradition and what the conservatives largely make up today is people who are rebelling against a domineering and fascist like Social order attempting to force people to live and think what it believes if you look for example Let's say like the reason why the people who are labeled anti lgbtqia or whatever are anti it now very few are anti it because they're like This is what the bible says [00:13:00] if you look at the most prominent leaders of this space They're generally just anti trans And started as pro trans, but moved anti trans when engaging more with the science and with like J.

K. Rowling didn't go anti trans because she was a Christian curmudgeon. Elon Musk didn't go anti trans because he was a Christian curmudgeon. Both of these people started as avidly pro trans. and moved against it over time as they learned more about the, the science and the social costs and the, the nature and psychological, you know, stuff.

You can look up our trans episodes, we don't need to go into that here. But the point being is what motivates people to be a conservative today is often very different than what motivated them in the past, which was maintaining traditions. Which I think changes a lot of the nature of the community.

When the conservative community of today goes towards traditions, they go towards them [00:14:00] not out of a fear of change, but because they believe they work. Like you can look at someone like J. D. Vance, like why is he going towards traditions? And I love that all the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Monocle and stuff all now said, because the evidence does show this, it turned out that the Christian traditions were probably better and we shouldn't have met with them.

And the one, the Muslim one who did end up converting to Christianity, she even said when the, you know, people would be like, why did you convert, you know? It wasn't like a religious argument, it was, it was a functional argument. She was depressed, she had tried everything, and her psychologist was like, I know this is going to be offensive to you.

Oh my gosh. Thought about just trying to pray. Really? And that's what did it for her. She tried and it worked and she started to feel better. And then she, she got into it again.

Simone Collins: And this is like Grimes saying she, she might, she might be getting Christianity because it helps her quit vaping, whatever it takes.

Malcolm Collins: Sometimes you just need,

Simone Collins: sometimes religious fixes problems. That's so true.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I, I think of that, that well, no, but I mean that that, that means that [00:15:00] the modern conservative today, actually the, when the old right tells the new right, you guys have a lot of progressive traits or, you know, you, you guys used to be in the progressive movement.

I think they're, they're right about both of those things, but they're misdiagnosing what's happening. What they picture is happening is the Overton menu, just moving window, just moving further and further to the left. And then. People who, you know, in the nineties would have been like standard progressives in their ideology becoming conservatives today, and I don't think that that's what's actually happening.

The core reason why they look like progressives of the nineties is because that they are the rebels trying to buck the social order. And that's fundamentally where the new right comes in is most of them are people who are like, they didn't like the censorship of tech. They didn't like all of these.

like anti reality stuff, like, Oh, men, when they transitioned, don't have an advantage in sports. When like, everybody knows that's like clearly, obviously not a true thing. And yet we're supposed to repeat it. They are people who feel like [00:16:00] in the same way that many of them built a grudge against Christianity, telling them what to do in the nineties and in the eighties.

That same instinct and those same cultures are now antagonistic against the progressives. And it's funny that it turned out that the way that you got these people to become Catholics, like, like, say, J. D. Vance or something like that, was just to have atheists tell them what to do. Like, you know what?

I'm going to become a Catholic, dammit! And, and I actually think that this is where we're getting a lot of growth in Christianity today, is the urban monoculture overplaying its hand and trying to force people to become believers. And I also think it's why, when you look at faiths that are the minority within their region, their members are typically much more faithful.

I. e., if you are a Catholic in a majority Protestant country, and the Catholic communities in majority Protestant countries are typically Much stricter in their faithfulness and much more believing and in their sense of community than Catholics in [00:17:00] Catholic majority countries where you see Catholicism dying out much more quickly in terms of fertility rates and in terms of strictness of practice.

And, and I think that that's what we're seeing here is being a rebel is useful. And even within America, I think that it is fundamentally wrong to try to raise your kids to be full. America, American, you can be Americana so long as Americana is framed as a state of rebellion against those who control our society and the, the, the people in power and everything like that.

But trying to try to push for this normalcy, I don't think works, but thoughts before I go further.

Simone Collins: I think you're right. And I think this shows up in, in the fact that you see lower rates of fertility in homogenously religiously conservative, like when it feels forced on you. That back, there's backlash

Malcolm Collins: emotionally, fear and threat sensitivity play a big roles.

Studies like those from John Himmering and colleagues suggest conservatives have a stronger physiological response to [00:18:00] threatening or disgusting stimuli, e. g. images of spiders or rotting food, measured through inconductance or brain activity in the amygdala. The fear processing hub. This heightened sensitivity might explain a preference for security, authority, and clear boundaries.

Progressives, while not immune to fear, seem less reactive to these triggers and more attuned to empathy driven concerns, often prioritizing fairness and harm avoidance as seen in John Haydite's moral foundation theory. Now, I note here that this has actually changed. Okay, continue. John Haidt. John Haidt.

Jonathan Haidt. Oh, yeah. Where I do not think, I think in the 80s, a lot of the conservatives, and I mentioned this on other videos, you can check it out, really interesting, where we talk about conservatives motivated voters with disgust. You vote against gayness because of disgust, because it makes you feel disgust.

This system largely just collapsed and fell out of favor, culturally speaking where very little is motivated by disgust anymore. Then we had a system that was motivated by. Fear of social shame. This is the cancellation system that progressives really jumped on to. And [00:19:00] the new conservative system is motivated positively through sort of vitalism.

Which you see in Trumpianism and everything like that. This idea of like. Be alive, have hope in the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You think for yourself.

Speaker 5: let's go start a f*****g revolution. Take it!

Speaker: The entire world would be better off if these people were permanently removed from these platforms. Like, there is no downside and only upside to see people like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Tim Poole never be allowed to publicly broadcast their opinions ever again.

Speaker 5: Tread on them! Tread the f**k all over them!

Speaker: I don't give a f**k about anybody that winds up at any of these rallies and gets shot or whatever the f**k, okay?

Speaker 6: You gotta fight! For your rights! At home in such despair. Now

Speaker 20: Is free speech under threat in the UK? With the rise of so called non crime hate incidents, arrests over grossly offensive memes, can you really speak your mind in 21st century Britain?

Speaker 7: [00:20:00] bussy. You gotta fight for your

Malcolm Collins: And there's very little discussed, but I can see why in the older disgust based framework, when these studies were done, discussed would be found more among conservatives.

Simone Collins: Oh here, here's a study I found actually just in, in contrast to the one that you cited that in this case, researchers found that conservatives do not appear to feel more disgust than liberals.

Malcolm Collins: When was it done? Remember I told you that the way that people motivate political action changed over time.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so, this is My guess is is discussed a conservative emotion published when was yours? I told you. Yours was later.

Malcolm Collins: No, the one I did was a long time ago, that would have been like the 80s. What I said was, is that in the past, in the 80s and 90s, conservatives [00:21:00] used disgust to motivate voting behavior.

Today, they don't use disgust to motivate voting behavior. They use vitalism to motivate voting behavior.

Simone Collins: So it's just less Which means that you would no

Malcolm Collins: longer see this trait clustered in conservatives like you would have historically. So that makes perfect sense and seems to validate my theory.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Okay, fair enough.

This is, this is interesting though, because I, I kind of gave up for a while on reviewing studies on conservatives and progressives, because After a while, it became so obvious that it was just about people with agendas, like, basically a bunch of researchers just wanted to publish a study saying conservatives are dumb or conservatives are whatever, it's the same, like, progressives are stupid and, and then they, they're just not really well done they're not very interesting, there's not much that I can act on.

So I just, I kind of gave up on them, but I do think that when you see the averages that come out, [00:22:00] you see patterns and there is, we, that, that should help us understand what's going on and what it actually does mean to, to be more progressive versus conservative so that it's a worthwhile discussion and I'm glad you brought it up.

Malcolm Collins: If you talk about threat sensitivity, research actually suggests that leftists exhibit higher threat sensitivity to certain types of threats, such as environmental issues and social inequality when compared with conservatives. However. Conservatives are more sensitive to what we would call real threats, such as physical threats or social order threats or crime and terrorism.

Interestingly Social studies have shown that conservatives tend to be less threatened by social threats, e. g. outgroups, but more responsive to physical threats, which goes against what a lot of progressives would want to believe, that conservatives are the ones afraid of people who don't think like them, which isn't true, they're afraid of being stabbed by somebody who doesn't think like them, but it is fundamentally the progressives who are more afraid and have a higher tendency of being afraid of people who think differently than them.

Simone Collins: I think this, [00:23:00] this reveals though, a very deep set understanding of how you relate to the world. I remember, remember that interview around the pandemic that went viral of some woman who is progressive saying that she was assaulted on, I think the New York subway and how that was just like, you know, normal, like she wasn't supposed to do anything about it.

And I think it had to do with this broad concept that it's. I don't know, like it's, it's not your responsibility or there's nothing that you can do about these immediate physical threats and really the, your way of relating to the world is so much more cerebral, so much more, I mean, if you want to be prerogative about it, you would be, or sorry, derogative about it, you would say that it's performative.

But I guess they would say that they're focusing on the big problems that really matter. Whereas the conservative mind seems a lot more oriented around what. Do I need to physically address in my immediate area now? Well, [00:24:00] there can I actually protect? Can I actually help?

Malcolm Collins: It's like a mass action solutions as we've seen, whether it's, you know, social services or, you know, UBI or anything like that.

See our UBI video. They, they appear to make people worse off intergenerationally.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and they appear to make cultures that they end up getting bloated. They end up not serving their original function. Argentina is basically a case study to all of this. The ways that progressives attempt to fix things doesn't work, but the ways that conservatives attempt to fix things do work intergenerationally.

I. e. because they're focused on the cultures and people who they can influence, i. e. my own culture, my own community my own people. And the paper I was talking about earlier is titled, Who Fears Strangers and Spiders? Political Ideology and Feeling Threatened. Neurologically brain structure differences pop in some studies a 2011 study by found that conservatives tend to have a [00:25:00] larger amygdala, potentially amplifying threat perception, or at least certain types of threat perception.

While progressives show more gray matter in their anterior cingulate cortex, ACC, a region linked to conflict resolution and handling ambiguity, fMRI research also hints that conservatives active Regions tied to rule based reasoning more strongly, while progressives lean on areas involved in social and emotional processing.

I actually think what we're seeing here, and we've talked about this before, is the memetic virus. It's sort of like a self replicating virus, which Is represented in the urban monoculture when I mean it's a memetic virus. I mean quite literally It's a virus that gets into people's heads and then starts replicating and then uses them to spread itself it needs a certain amount of structure And so it's pretty bad at spreading in people below a certain level of intelligence Um in in which case those people only really conform to it when they realize that they can use signaling their conformity to it Do you get other people to do what they tell them to?

This is why you see was like [00:26:00] the low IQ communities. They use the wokest context concepts when they think that they can browbeat someone into following them.

Or when they're afraid of bring Val break themselves,

Simone Collins: That's really interesting,

Malcolm Collins: cognition is another divide conservatives often favor intuitive heuristic thinking quick gut level decisions rooted in tradition or group norms again This might have changed. I don't know. Progressives are more likely. I mean, it seems to me that now progressives make the gut level decisions It's interesting in looking at this research.

You can see how much What aligned people with conservatism has changed over time? It was do you actually like are you doing this because of the tradition or are you doing? Like with progressives, are you doing this because you're part of the urban monoculture because there used to be an alliance with like elitist, intellectual culture and fighting back against the system, which, you know, you could say started with the hippies, right?

Are you actually fighting for individual freedom or are you fighting with the ultimate goal of imposing your values on everyone else?

And that, that sort [00:27:00] of split, you know, was now the progressives that are left are just the ones who want to impose their values on other people. Yeah. Cognition is another divide. Conservatives often favor intuitive heurists. Yes, sorry I said that. Progressives are more likely to engage in analytical reasoning. It seems to be one of your studies of like, trying to make progressives sound smart. Absolutely. Questioning assumptions and weighing abstract systems according to work by psychologist John This can make progressives seem overthinky to conservatives, while conservatives might strike progressives as rigid or simplistic.

It's interesting, I'm pretty sure of this flip. Because when I talk to progressives now one person has noted, and I think I have a question, is why do conservatives have like, if you look at like 8 of the 10 long form podcasts, why are they conservatives? And as somebody was saying when they were on the long form podcast, that Gazam Newsom has now done, where he talks with conservative thinkers.

Oh, God, and people

Simone Collins: love

Malcolm Collins: that. I want to get, you know, it's got a review of like 2. 5 or something on, on what's the progressives bombing it? Like, why are you giving these people? Oh

Simone Collins: my gosh. How sad is that? But conservatives are [00:28:00] loving it though. They're like, wow, he actually listens. Just this idea of a progressive actually listening to conservatives is mind blowing.

But the point

Malcolm Collins: being is the reason why conservatives have all this long form interview content and stuff like that and long form talking content like this show is you couldn't do this as a progressive, like I couldn't every day go over for like 45 minutes something that is interesting without updating my beliefs, just be telling you what you're supposed to believe.

And most progressives already know what they're supposed to believe. So they don't need to be told again, you know, there, there, there is no. curiosity about digging into these subjects because if you dig into things like human sexuality or arousal or transness, you're bound to accidentally cross the line somewhere.

I

Simone Collins: don't know. No, I, I listened to a decent amount of long form progressive content, but it's mostly just building a case as to why something is something. So it doesn't need to lead to a changing of minds. So I don't really know what it is.

Malcolm Collins: That is [00:29:00] fundamentally, I think, you know, like what ContraPoints does and stuff like that.

Yeah. Like one long form progressive area where they do like broad philosophy, but they do it fairly rarely. My X is Y. I, I don't know any that are regular shows, like Philosophy Tube, ContraPoints, all of that stuff is like. Once you

Simone Collins: mean just like philosophical discussion, or do you mean discussion about current regular

Malcolm Collins: podcasts?

If we're looking at regular podcasts, eight of the top 10 are conservative, like daily podcasts or weekly podcasts. I don't know, like the one I can think of that's progressive is Hassan, but Hassan is mostly done in a short form context. And without really engaging with people who have different beliefs or attempting to update his view of the world.

Which makes it, you know, less interesting unless you're just there for the shock jock stuff, which Hassan does very well. I mean, I do think that that's how you make progressive. Content interesting is be shocking in how extreme you are, which is one reason why the progressives who have done that and white progressives do well on platforms like tick tock.

And [00:30:00] originally on systems like Twitch before, you know, I wonder if that was moderation, like Is it the only reason progressives seem to do well in any platform, whether it's Twitch, because the Chinese are trying to destroy us, or old Twitter, because they are very good at controlling bureaucracies and then putting their finger on the, on the scales.

Once the finger is removed from the scales, they end up fleeing like we've seen with TikTok.

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Like, I don't spend enough time on TikTok to be a good judge of any of this. I wonder if blue sky is still growing. I do too. I really do.

Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You're looking it up? Yeah, looking it up. It says its growth has slowed significantly.

Simone Collins: I mean, it would. Yeah. And you get the initial boost, then it

Malcolm Collins: slows. Actually, even the, the articles about it slowing are mostly pretty old at this point. So, oops. That, I mean, it could, could continue to grow. I mean, it's, it's astronomically small when compared with two other platforms.

So,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: well, any takeaways you've had from this[00:31:00]

Simone Collins: that perhaps this isn't just a story of polarization. When we talk about very difficult to cross political divides, perhaps it's also a story of a fundamental way of relating to the world. And perhaps part of the reason why it can be so difficult for conservatives and progressives to relate to each other and effectively communicate is because they have such a different contextualization of self and a different contextualization of that which we must protect.

So when people are talking about protecting good things, or, you know, we have to do this, it's just. It's it's difficult to have a debate when your definitions are so different when

Malcolm Collins: I disagree pretty strongly. Yeah, I think that this is what progressives tell themselves when they're trying to look like they're they're seeing both sides of the issue.

But I think the core thing is that conservatives, when they look at what they want to protect and [00:32:00] grow. It's typically realistic things. Like it is a real system that could potentially work and improve the world. Whereas a lot of the progressive stuff, like shutting down nuclear power plants and stuff like that, it's not realistic stuff.

It's stuff that is based around personal signaling.

I think that that's the core difference is the conservative is okay with. Doing what actually makes the world a better place, even if it makes them look like a villain. Whereas the progressive cares more about looking like the good guy than doing good.

And we've seen this from conservative icons throughout history, like Ayn Rand, for example, like famously leaned into that. And I think that we're seeing it even more within the new right, the acceptance of Do the right thing, even if it makes you, I mean, what is the pronatalist movement, but that what is hard EA.

org, but that,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I love you to that Simone. I love you too.

Simone Collins: You're perfect.

What are we

Malcolm Collins: doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: You can have [00:33:00] potstickers or you can have green curry with coconut rice.

Malcolm Collins: Green curry!

Simone Collins: Green curry.

Malcolm Collins: Green curry is really good.

Simone Collins: Well, then that is what you shall have, my love.

Speaker 2: Egg Tower! Go ahead, take a bite, Octavian. It's ready for you. Woah, woah, woah! I put a ton of salt on already. Yeah, you can taste it by taking a bite. Right, Titan?

Join us in an inspiring conversation with Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, a professor of economics at Catholic University, and author of 'Hannah's Children'. Catherine, a mother of 14 (8 biological and 6 adopted), shares her experiences of motherhood, the purposefulness behind having many children, and insights from her qualitative research on mothers with large families. We discuss the controversy surrounding the book, factors influencing high fertility rates, and the cultural and policy implications of promoting intentional childbearing. Catherine also provides practical advice on parenting, gender roles in large families, and the surprising joys and challenges of raising many children.

[00:00:00]

Simone Collins: Hello everyone. We are so excited to be joined today by one of my favorite people in the entire world and inspiration to me. Catherine Ruth. She is a teacher.

She's a professor of economics at Catholic University, but more importantly to me, she's author of Hannah's Children, the book that changed my mind from wanting seven kids to 10 plus kids. It got me so excited about it. So we're thrilled. We're thrilled to have you on and we're very keen. to ask you some questions, both about the book, but also about being a super mother.

I mean, you've had, you're the mother to 14 children, eight of them that you've given birth to. It's just insane, like, that you're living this, this dream. Just to clarify, you have

Malcolm Collins: 14 children. But that gives you a lot of data points.

Catherine Pakaluk: That is true.

Simone Collins: So the first thing we were curious as we were prepping for our conversation with you and just wondering is when you published Hannah's Children, which is a book in which [00:01:00] you really share academic research where you did qualitative interviews with.

Mothers who had more than five Children or five or more Children, I should say. When you released the book or even when you were doing the research what was the most controversial thing that came up or the place where you got the most pushback or bristling?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, probably. If you want to know the truth, probably the fact that I limited my sample that college educated women.

Yeah,

it's just interesting because a lot of people wanted to you know, number one, you know, are you sort of saying that the only way to be like a full human being is to have a college education, which is funny because I'm like on the other end of this I I'd be. More inclined to say, like, we've done too much college in this country, and we need to kind of free up the education market, free up the credentialing market.

But so that was something that came up a lot as a kind of pushback was like, you know, you're, you're, you're zeroing in on sort of this a special group of people, right? Because it's not, it's not everybody. Why did you

Malcolm Collins: choose College Educated Women?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, well, I did, because that's where in the data, we really see [00:02:00] this the, the, the correlation most strongly, right?

So the more education people, women and countries have, the fewer children they have. So you see what I mean? So you kind of want to figure

Simone Collins: out this post globalization, post female empowerment world. You're totally right. It's one of the things we were just recording an episode about. was how we can't go back, how researchers have found that, for example, giving men more economic empowerment relative to women actually doesn't increase marriage rates.

You know, so like, yeah, no, okay. That makes sense. Now I get it.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. That was the reason. And of course I wrote the book really for a general audience, a very wide audience. And so I didn't want to, I didn't. Use a lot of space to make that case. It's like, it's like a couple of sentences. And then people ask me later and they're like, Oh, you know, they didn't even read those two sentences.

And they, they think like, it's really elitist to just talk to college educated women. I'm like, I didn't have a lot of space here guys, but I did, you know, I did go, I did. Intentionally, from my sample of people who applied to be interviewed, I did grab women from kind of all parts of the [00:03:00] socioeconomic spectrum.

So, I mean, you know, there are women who have college degrees who aren't living it up and just to

Malcolm Collins: make sure you got some that were poverty and you kept some on who wanted to get PhDs and work in academia.

Catherine Pakaluk: 100%. There you go. You nailed it. Like my best friends. Yeah, that's right.

Malcolm Collins: So question here. What surprised you most of the like findings or the commonalities in these women maybe that differentiated from your own experience or that affirmed your own

Catherine Pakaluk: experience?

Yeah. Good question. Let me see. So, I think this is going to sound funny, but you know, the first piece that kind of confirmed my experience was that like, people have reasons for what they're doing. I mean, I know this is like the whole, you know, this is something you guys talk about all the time.

You represent this in a lot of ways. For so many people. And I think that's so cool. Which is like, we don't end up with a lot of kids. We just don't know how that happens, right? Like, obviously like we go to great lengths to make it happen. It's something that you could with a college education or whatever else.

A lot [00:04:00] of other things you could do with your time. You could choose it on purpose. So, so that like I, my hunch going into it was like, women are purposeful. Couples are purposeful. They're not accidentally having kids. We all pretty much know how this happens at this point. And like birth control isn't that expensive.

So, so why did you do this? So, you know, but again, in a sense, it was a hypothesis. I had to, it had to come out of the research, which was like, yeah, people have reasons and they can say what they are. That was great. So that really confirmed my experience. You know, I, I, like I say in the first chapter, I know when any, every one of my kids was conceived and I could have avoided it.

Right. So there has to be like a story there. Like, what were you thinking? Yeah, so that was a big thing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there's a theory that I've been building that's related to this and we were gonna go over it at the pronatalist conference But it said all kids come into existence for one of three reasons one is a Parents are practicing Jesus take the wheel basically You know, they get pregnant when they get pregnant.

They keep the kids. They keep [00:05:00] the second category is the parents wanted a child and then did what they needed to to bring that child into existence. And then the third case is the kid was conceived accidentally and the parents then, then kept the kid. And when you're looking at pronatalist interventions, Pretty much every form of pronatalist intervention only affects now we can put the Jesus take the wheel families in a different category because they're ones so rare and already high fertility, but of the other two categories, every pronatalist intervention you can do only affects one category.

So, for example, banning pornography, banning contraception, banning abortion, all of these increase the accident kids. Whereas economic factors, increasing house sizes all of that stuff, that affects the intentional kid category. And that It's something that we can be really intentional about as we build out policy, but also to bring focus to the fact that if you look at where Children are disappearing in the United States, [00:06:00] we pointed out on a lot of podcasts, you really only see a drop in the Children.

The number of Children and women under 24 in the other categories is either growing or staying steady. And to me that represents a likely accident kids in any time recently. So what actually is causing the existing fertility crash is a disappearance of this accident category of baby. And the best way to resolve this is to increase intentionality around having Children and build more.

And I'm wondering how you would think about doing that. You've seen so many families that made this decision.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Well, I mean, so if I understand you correctly, you're saying like in a sort of move people from the accident category into the intentionality category, which is like totally possible to do.

I think I mean, first of all, I talked, so, so I mean, just, we can't underscore enough, like, I love the, I love the way you guys are thinking about this and it tracks a little bit with some of the things I'm hoping to present at the natalist. Are you guys going to person? Yeah. Or we're not. Great. This is going to be fun.

Catherine Pakaluk: Using the code word [00:07:00] NATALISM. ORG or just look up NATALCON, , you can get discount tickets using the code COLLINS, all caps.

It's March 28th and 29th this year in Austin. So, just coming up.

So it tracks a little bit with the, how I'm trying to formulate things. But right. If people have reasons for what they're doing, then they, and they can say what those reasons are. And they're not like hard to understand. Well, then, you know, that, that should inform our policy tremendously. It should have a huge impact on our, on our policy.

That's the first thing. Second thing is. I talked to a ton of people who didn't, like, grow up wanting to have kids in or not wanting to have, like, more than, you know, two kids or one, one kid, 1. 5 kids. So, so people can be persuaded, they can change their mind. And, and that's like, that's like the most normal thing in the world.

So, so a hundred percent, like our focus has to be on kind of like what defines this intentionality category, where it comes from. Where, how, what manner of educating kids is likely to perpetuate that? Because this has a lot to do with what, you know, in the policy world would think of as preference formation, you know, kind of, [00:08:00] or somebody else might just say, like, your beliefs, like, what do you believe about things?

So, that's more of just a way of underscoring the importance of the question.

Simone Collins: Well, I want to dig into this actually, because we. Sort of offline discussed the, a little bit of the way wise change, like often young parents start off wanting kids, or even a lot of kids for one reason, and they sort of build their plan, but then like, there's a totally different driver, and I feel like there's a pretty different way significant disconnect between all of the whys of high fertility families and then most of the policy focus, like I should ask, like, did any of the families that you're interviewing that you interviewed before that you're considering intervening in the future say like, Oh, well, you know, I got a little more money and so then we decided we should have a big family.

https: otter. ai

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Okay. So, well, I'll get to schooling in a minute. I mean, probably the number one thing was like, I really enjoyed my kid. Right. And that sounds like so simple. It's so ordinary. And yet you don't hear that as much. You don't [00:09:00] hear this sort of these sort of stories. I mean, I would want to merge that and say, like, there's kind of an interaction effect between I really enjoyed being with my kid and some kind of arrangement where people had the freedom to say, well, I'm really enjoying this kid.

And yeah. I could just do this full time. I mean, so that there's something there like the woman who gave up being a doctor because she just actually turned out to hate being a doctor.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Catherine Pakaluk: but presumably her husband made enough money and they could just keep having babies. So there was this. I mean, I do think the enjoyment or the experience of having kids was a big factor for a lot of people.

Then you have to ask that question. How early do you have to have that first kid to kind of yeah. Realize this like, oh, I really do like this and I'd like to do this again and again. Yeah, probably for most people That's going to be like in your 20s.

Malcolm Collins: Did you have any examples of husbands who convinced their wives and what arguments worked?

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, I had one like famous case and it was so famous and so bizarre that it like it had to be a chapter in the book. It was kind of the exception that proved the rule. Because actually right of 55 people I interviewed, there was only one [00:10:00] case of all the 55 of what I would call husband led childbearing.

And it was the least religious couple in my sample. So that I think is kind of fun and mind blowing a little bit. These were not like a bunch of religious families where the husband was like, more, more, more, you know, tribe, established tribe no, it was the least religious couple. And you know, I don't know a lot about him.

It'd be great to go back and interview him. What I do know is what I can say is that he was a, he was a faculty member at a, at a really elite school. And I won't say the state because that will, it won't help. So, you know, he's a really successful, talented person, his wife so dual PhD couples.

When they met and they first started dating he said to her right away, like, I want nine kids, you know, and actually she learned about it first through his mom and she's like, why? You know? And I guess. I guess part of the point about, like, he's really bright, and he was a bodybuilder, and has a gym in the basement, and you're like, okay, does he just, he thinks he's got, like, he's, he's, he's, he likes his life, he likes who he is, and he wants to have more of himself.

They, they [00:11:00] didn't describe themselves as especially religious. They did identify as Jewish, but she said really clearly that Jewish part is separate from the having kids part, whereas all the other Jewish women I interviewed would have said, no, no, no, like, of course, this is like the fulfillment of our religious beliefs.

Right. And so how did he succeed? I mean, he just, he just said he really wanted these kids. And The way she put it, I drilled down. I'm like, look, if you don't want the kids, how do you keep going along with this? She said, it's really hard to make it sound like he's not a dick. Like this is what he says.

And he's like, but she's like, they have this great marriage. They're really they're really into each other. And she said, you know, and this is. I think really telling, and it kind of reminds me of something that our friend at MoreBirths the, the ex account MoreBirths says she said, you know, he doesn't ask for much.

He, he doesn't want me to cook for him. He does his own laundry. He doesn't, this is like the one thing he really wants for me. We have a great marriage. And so like, why would, why wouldn't I just want to give that to [00:12:00] him? And so that sounds like in a way so old fashioned.

Malcolm Collins: I make her have lots of kids and she cooks for me and she cleans and she makes our money because I'm a feminist, full empowerment

Simone Collins: on my part.

That's interesting though, because we also didn't come from a religious background and Malcolm was the one that led the interest in fertility. See, that is

Catherine Pakaluk: interesting.

Simone Collins: And then I,

Catherine Pakaluk: well, I do, I do kind of wonder if there's part of this like secular, right. This like emerging secular, right. Which you guys are.

Certainly representative of in some sense. Nobody's representative of anything at the day, right? We're

Malcolm Collins: certainly mixing in there An episode on this in the near future one of our fans who sometimes collects data collected data in utah that was really interesting He was looking at fertility rates of mormons and voting patterns and he found some really interesting stuff in this study but one of the things that I found particularly interesting is that if You divide counties by you know, Mormon voted [00:13:00] Trump, Mormon voted against Trump, non Mormon voted Trump, non Mormon voted against Trump.

Non Mormon voted Trump has the same fertility rate as Mormon voted against Trump. So voting for Trump is as impactful for your fertility rate as being Mormon.

Catherine Pakaluk: Mormon in Utah.

Malcolm Collins: So Trump's

Simone Collins: solution to the birth rate. Get

Malcolm Collins: on my team. It'll fix the problem. Fixing may be more of a thing than people realize in terms of the vitalism.

You know, one thing I was wondering was because what I see with a lot of people, like my anecdotes, when I ask families who wanted to have a lot of kids and didn't end up having a lot of kids is it's always, well, they had that one really bad pregnancy scare or something like that. Could you run into that frequently?

Were these families who just didn't have that happen or did they have it happen and they kept going?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. That's a good question. And actually I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to come back to this. Like, well, what, what, what, what kept them going? What was the why? And oftentimes it was really enjoying that first baby.

And so, yeah, these aren't people who had like the [00:14:00] nightmare experience with their first kid. And so the first point is like, Yeah. Your experience with kids actually highly influences like whether you have more kids. Like that's a really, which kind of brings us back to like, well, what are those experiences?

Do you feel as one of the women said, like alone in a box,

Simone Collins: we

Catherine Pakaluk: send people home from the hospital. They are alone in a box with their baby.

Simone Collins: Yeah, basically a good way

Catherine Pakaluk: to put it. Actually, that's true. No wonder. No wonder you wouldn't want to go back to that. For sure. So were there no bad experiences? I would say there were a couple of bad experiences.

Where people kept going. Of course, I don't know the counterfactual. There could be, you know, bazillions of people who were potentially like multi parity people who had a terrible experience and didn't go on to have children. And I never interviewed them because that wasn't part of my study design.

But I did interview a few people who had bad experiences at the beginning. Postpartum depression. Tough kids, that sort of thing. But the description there was kind of like, we really believed what we were doing when to keep going. And at some point it leveled off. So there was also this kind of interesting idea about like three was the [00:15:00] hardest number of kids to have.

And that, you know, if you, if you kept going and got that far, like after that, it was kind of like, there wasn't that much else to, to learn. It's like, it sounds like weird, but yeah, that was.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, that's why after three, well, really after four economies of scale kicks in, and I guess with you, you like came in with economies of scale, like suddenly, like you became mother to six children.

Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Economies of scale. But I think there's another piece, which is you know, like one mom said something like, well, I hate, you know, she said something, I feel really bad for the people who give up after two, because like, now you're good at this. And so there's this idea that like, there's a skill to be learned.

And if you take that 10, 000 hours concept.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I

Catherine Pakaluk: actually haven't worked it out. How many kids do you have to have to do 10, 000 hours of parenting? That's a quick question. Gosh, like, actually not that much, like, you're, you're, you're,

Simone Collins: a couple of years in you're.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. You're probably pretty close, right?

Simone Collins: Even if you're not doing a whole lot of childcare. Yeah. Right.

Catherine Pakaluk: Cause unlike the other skills, you have to like go out and do them. For a few hours a day, whatever that is like to 10 years over a few hours a day. But anyway, I mean, [00:16:00] just take that concept. I think this is a big piece of our culture is that people think of parenting as a binary condition.

Like you're, you're our parent or you aren't a parent. But there's such a thing as being like a better parent and a worse parent. And actually I think that's why people don't like to talk about it. Cause it seems like you're criticizing people like, Oh, you're, you don't even, you don't have much experience, but actually we've got to talk about parenting as a skill in part because it's great news.

it means that actually you can get better at it.

Simone Collins: True. Yeah. Speaking of parenting as a skill, I mean, you are, yeah, you've done a lot of it. I'm very curious to hear what one you would say is most misunderstood about being in a large family, a parent in a large family. And, and two things that you learned after having a lot of kids where you now like.

When you meet someone who's becoming a first time parent or they're about to start their family, you're like, let me hit this off.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Maybe I'll go backwards. Things that I want to head off at the, I'm like, I look back, especially with my last few kids and I'm like, [00:17:00] wow, I didn't need all this stuff.

Like all that stuff, like those, you know, the babies, you got all like four different kinds of strollers and baby seats. And I just didn't know. Right. All the stuff I really. Maybe there's no way to prevent that, but I think part of it is like at the beginning you feel like, it's like the crash test dummies, you feel like you need to sort of, everything has to be protected and it needs a tool or a machine.

My last couple kids I just had like a thing I threw, like a backpack or a thing and I just, the car seat never left the car, I didn't tote things around. I hardly use strollers to be honest. Same actually. Yeah, I mean, maybe because I don't live in a city, but you know, mostly if I went out with my kid on foot, I would carry the kids.

So, I found baby wearing to be really something that freed me up to do a lot of things. You have your hands when you're, yeah, when you're wearing your baby.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean,

Catherine Pakaluk: I used to teach classes with the baby on my back, which was great. Anyway, so I think there was a sense in which when I was younger, like, there's just a lot of stuff.

And like, I carried a huge diaper bag at the beginning. And then later it was like, I don't think I [00:18:00] need more than. Two items and I can stick them in something else. You know my pocket like there's a diaper and a and a onesie in my pocket I'm good to go, right? It's a good pocket that that goes against the

Simone Collins: female conspiracy against pockets,

Malcolm Collins: but I

Simone Collins: know

Malcolm Collins: here's a question What are your thoughts on advice to people who are dating to attempt to find a partner who wants a lot of kids?

Yeah,

Catherine Pakaluk: well, you definitely have to be up front right and I think people have to like have to match on that from the beginning. I don't, I don't know. I guess I've known a few cases where it was like, surprise. I really, but I feel like that ought to be like very high on the profile. Oh yeah. Right. It could kind of cut through a lot of stuff.

I suppose people don't want to like reduce the pool or something, but fundamentally that's what you have to do is reduce the pool.

Simone Collins: You get to know sooner if you filter them out earlier. Otherwise you've just wasted two weeks or more. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Cause I think if you don't have kids, I mean, right. If you don't, If you don't have kids, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a pretty big sell.

I mean, it's a, it's a, something you really have to kind of [00:19:00] get through. But yeah, that's my number one thing with my, my own kids that are dating my college students. You're like, you, you, like my son dated a girl in the fall and they met on hinge and, you know, and you're like, Did you know, do you know if she wants kids, you know, three weeks in, you know, it's like, Oh, it's not going to work out.

And you're like, that's what it was. Wasn't it

just

kids, right? It's like, well, cause if anybody will say you want kids, maybe you have to be more specific. It's like, I want to get married to start a family like right away because that'll scare them off really quickly. Yeah.

Simone Collins: No, would that have scared you off Simone?

Well, on our second date, Malcolm was like, I want to have a lot of kids, but I didn't say right away. I didn't say right away. Well, it was on the second date. It was on the second date. Yeah, it was after and it wasn't like the first conversation. I think it's a good second date subject. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. You don't want to let it go.

You don't want to let it go too far. Yeah. There's some chemistry and attract. Yeah. I mean, yeah. But I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, obviously, like, look, churches do this for people. And so there's a lot of this happening in churches where you don't [00:20:00] have to be explicit, like you're both, you're part of some tiny traditionalist group.

And you know, like everybody in this church already agrees that this is what we're going to do when we get married. And then you don't have to have all those conversations. But I think if you're just dipping into the big pool and a dating app or whatever, you're going to have to get it out there quickly.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So at the beginning I interrupted you, you were going to say the second thing that you thought was interesting in the pool of people that you had or surprising to

Simone Collins: you. That surprised you about the

Catherine Pakaluk: interviewees? Right. Well, I guess this was interesting. I guess. Well, I don't know.

Like, I'm, I'm familiar with Catholics. I'm Catholic. But I interviewed women of a bunch of different religious backgrounds and beliefs, and I didn't really know what the story was going to be. And I think what surprised me was to find out that while religious identity was strong in most of my interviewees, except for that one, that one couple what surprised me was how I don't know.

Way to go, baby. Is he drinking? She's drinking the beer. Yeah, basically. Just Malcolm. That's so cute. It's a girl, right? [00:21:00] She's a girl. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, what surprised me was actually like how non credal the common sort of religious factors were. Meaning they were Kind of common across all of these different Jewish and Christian groups who shared the same, you know, or, or partially share the same scriptures.

So this kind of like thing that you can say in a, in a, in sort of non religious terms that children are blessings, I guess it's a religious term of like a blessing. But you know, it wasn't like, well, the Mormons have this One idea. And then the Jewish women had a totally different idea and that it was really linked to their specific religious creeds.

It was pretty general. And so I think that was interesting. So I, I've started to think and, and by the way, what was the content of that? It was this, we, we might call it pronatal belief. I know that's what some people like to call it or like a conviction that children are, are really important, worth having.

Yeah. And I think what that drove me to think, and I'm, I'm really kind of [00:22:00] thinking about this going forward, looking at the social science of religion. I mean, you've seen this Pew study that was out this week about how like Christianity stopped falling. I guess the number of people who identify as Christian stopped falling.

It's not exactly like it's rising, but it's stopped falling, like that's what Ryan Burge is calling it. Like maybe we hit the floor of and so. I think that the study of religion, the scientific study of religion in this country has got to move past like just these denominations. Like, that's as much as we do.

We just sort of survey. And what I'm finding is there's this like minority group in all these different religious groups that has this very strong we could say biblical set of principles or beliefs about the value of having children, but And if you want to know who's having kids, you, it's like, that's who you have to find.

It's like the 5 percent of Mormons and the 5 percent of Catholics and the, and so it's religious. It is religious for those people, but you couldn't find them just by finding out who's religious. You'd have to dig into, so it's like intersect the being religious [00:23:00] with this specific belief. Like, so it's like, what kind of religion?

Did you find any

Simone Collins: unifying, was it that they also lived in really high fertility communities? Like were there correlatory factors that seem to indicate like, okay, so this is, this is what makes them that 5 percent of Mormon or Catholic or whatever it may be that is really high fertility.

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, I'd be hesitant to draw a strong conclusion from my relatively small sample, which wasn't representative but I did have like all kinds.

I mean, I did have people who did live in these smaller communities, but a lot of times, like, they went to move near them. So they already, they got this belief, or they became convinced of this. And then that's why they sought out the community. So the causality went in the other direction. It's true. I had one lady who moved to a, because of a school and then met a bunch of people and was like, okay, I can keep going.

But then you've got the couple in chapter seven and they just are like opening the Bible and they feel like, you know, they're Jesus take the wheel types. And and they just are off by themselves at their own church in the Rocky mountains. So I think we need to do more [00:24:00] research on that. I think there were certainly cases where clearly the orientation or belief was coming out of how they were, how they had been.

Educated how they've grown up and that's a piece that's relatively understudied. So it's something we can take to the data in the next couple of years and kind of ask like what, what types of schooling most predict higher, higher birth rates. Mike, like my hunch would be, we'd see a lot of homeschooling, we'd see a lot of private independent schools, like micro schools, co ops, things like that.

That'd be my hunch, but I haven't asked the data yet.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we're really, we'd love to see more research on that too. And he's like, in terms of,

Malcolm Collins: oh, go ahead, you're talking about the, the idea of these high fertility sub factions of these religious communities is, is participation in them intergenerational?

Like does it persist with fidelity or do they deconvert to the other type of Christian within this community? Have you seen?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: That well, that's the question. There's been a little bit of work on [00:25:00] intergenerational transmission of values in in that I looked at in in European data, but my problem with that data, because it would it would it would argue that basically like religious groups don't pass on their values like particularly well, but I would argue that the thing that they're not looking at is the.

Beliefs of the groups like it's not granular enough. Because some people clearly are. And so, you know, you just need to get more granular. What type of religious group is it? And then how do they educate their kids? We know that sort of alternative schooling isn't that common in Europe. So. If I were to guess I would say that that's the missing link.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I I don't know I actually i'm gonna push back here I think that a lot of people who are from religious backgrounds when they see things like the rate of religion stabilizing or growing what they think it is this family's getting better at keeping their kids within the religion and what it actually is is people training new types of religion that are radically different from their parents version of christianity.

Yeah and i've seen increasingly poor [00:26:00] rates of keeping kids, especially within the incredibly conservative iterations of religions. One of the things I was telling Simone recently, I didn't know is apparently, and I've got to look for more information on this, but the F. L. D. S. The F. L. D. S. R. FLDS are the most extreme.

Those are the Mormons that have like multiple wives and dress kind of frumpy. Apparently they just held their third gay pride parade this year.

Speaker: Two towns on the Utah Arizona border with deep roots in the FLDS Church will celebrate pride this weekend. Jenna BreE shows us how queer people are openly showing their colors.,

Speaker 2: An area known for its polygamous community and ties to the fundamentalist LDS Church,

Speaker 3: the history of the town.

Um, you know, I feel like it kind of gets a bad rep.

Speaker 2: Last year, Short Cr in the fourth of july par they plan on marching wit again this year.

.

Malcolm Collins: Like we're seeing within the most extreme factions of these religion communities, they're losing [00:27:00] young people to woke like at a way higher rate. Which is really shocking.

It's not what I would expect

Simone Collins: because I thought they were more culturally isolated. It's

Malcolm Collins: what I'd expect if you have a cultural preference for high authority and following what the average of the community pressure.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say that we definitely have to study this more because we don't really know.

Simone Collins: More data is needed. I want to hone in on something that you said about sort of the factor that made people want to have a lot of more kids,

Which is that first kid is that they, they really like it. Like they have one and they get hooked. And I think Malcolm and I got hooked after two or three, like it wasn't, I think.

We think the hardest number of kids to have is one. It's just like, you're doing everything for the first time. It's too stressful. But I'm also curious from a policy or cultural design or lifestyle design standpoint, if you came across factors that you think correlated with that being a good versus bad experience, like basically being alone in a [00:28:00] box with your kid, sort of terrified and alone versus super enjoying what we think is like the hardest stage first time with everything.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah. Hmm. You know, I'm just, I'm reaching, it's not something that that I, I mean, I would certainly say I was gonna say some sounds, sounds obvious. Like, I would certainly say for me, the, the, the hardest transition was zero to one.

Hmm.

I think in terms of like, just the, the chaos of parenting, it was harder.

Like at three or four, or three toddlers was really tough. Oh. But yeah, like the lifestyle changes, like the psychological shock was biggest from zero to one. There she goes again. But I had a lot of I had a lot of kind of cultural capital coming into that because I came out of a large family.

So I kind of had this vision, like it's going to get better. Oh, you'd seen it before. Yeah. And I felt like that's probably the, the me, you know, like that would, that would have to be, but then, you know, then you kind of bump into this. I think it's one of the reasons why lower birth rates beget lower birth rates, like how you get into these traps that keep cycling [00:29:00] down because I think that the fewer kids there are around, the less you have like a, a belief that it will get better.

You haven't seen it before. So that we don't have any context to interpret how difficult that is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. At one point in the book, you do talk about the. The shortage of, of people growing up in America who even have had exposure to infants in their entire lives. Like maybe when they have a kid, that's their first time encountering a young human which definitely was.

It's pretty much the experience for me, for example.

Catherine Pakaluk: So do you think

Simone Collins: that's

Catherine Pakaluk: a big factor? I think that's a huge factor. I think, I think it's got to be a huge factor. I mean, I did some back of the envelope, you know, calculations, like how many, how many years of your childhood would you have been exposed, like even if you had one sibling, which is a pretty normal family these days, two kids.

Well, like most normal people are going to have their two kids and probably maximally like a five year span, which means that by the time, by the time your brother or sister is [00:30:00] born, you're like two by the time you're six, you're not going to remember a baby by the time you're 12, a baby never happened in your house, you know?

Right? So I think that's gotta be enormous. Like, and then you don't have cousins nearby and then that's it. That's, that's got to be really good. When you feel strange, like, well, think about like you're in the hospital and like you've got these unrelated human beings who are like, let me show you how to put up a baby on your boob.

Yes. Yeah. And change a diaper. And you think about like the dogs and the cats and that like you think what a weird species that we like need someone To show us how to feed our our offspring

Malcolm Collins: Which I hadn't thought to ask before but I guess it's actually really important for this new theory I have if you were going to Estimate what percentage of these high fertility families, you know five kids over when you were talking to them. Didn't plan on their children i. e. They were using a full jesus.

Take the wheel thing Not not tracking their cycles not anything like that Versus what percent do you think really intended on having every kid they had? [00:31:00]

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah well i'm pretty sure because I did ask like I asked about every kid in the interview It's it doesn't necessarily come out in the book I'm, pretty sure it was like one out of 55 was the jesus take the wheel case Yeah

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was my way as well.

Incredibly rare. I was talking with a Catholic reporter about this and I was like, it's rare within Catholic communities. And he was like, what makes you think that? And then Simone had great evidence for that. She said, well, they track their cycle so well that they were the first to realize the vaccines were causing issues.

The only reason you would know your cycle that well.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yes, yes, exactly. I don't think they would mind if I yeah. Share this case, but well, I'll just say I know a young couple. I wouldn't say who they are, but they got married. They're Catholic. They got married. They knew because she was, they were tracking before they got married, cause they wanted to have kids.

They knew that they got married like on peak fertility. Nobody would know that. And so like they got off their honeymoon and knew that there was a good chance they were expecting because they got married on peak, peak, peak fertility tested at the earliest possible minute, you know, so, but [00:32:00] like under two weeks from their wedding, they knew they were expecting.

And you nailed it when you get people looking at them like you definitely must have like gotten pregnant before you got married But that's because people don't understand how granular that is and how much I could know about your cycle So that's really interesting. I only met one family I put them in the book because again like my job was to display the whole diversity of it The general story was that people did intend and knew exactly when they got pregnant but there was that one couple that in chapter seven and we're like we just didn't ever we didn't ever do anything to plan or it Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's really rare. And I, and I think that's what we should expect. Like, I think people are kind of, people are smart and they, they learn stuff and, well, I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't think it used to be that way. I, I think that this is a, that used to make up maybe 30 percent of, of some populations birth rate, maybe.

You know, 50 60 years ago.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, I think that's correct. And it's, but it's, it's one of the reasons why I don't know, some people sort of naive idea that we could just like ban [00:33:00] birth control would somehow like change the picture. I don't think it would change the picture.

Malcolm Collins: It might for like communities in poverty that are really uneducated like with apps being what they are now.

I think people just people find a way. Also,

Simone Collins: historically, you can see different birth rate trends and when economic prosperity goes up, suddenly birth rates go up to like, I've always kind of had a ways, even without the apps, even without, you know, you can pee on you. There have been so many ways for people to take care of their children.

I mean,

Catherine Pakaluk: probably, you know, probably like the teenagers and the kids that like people who aren't planning to have sex and then all of a sudden, you know, so they weren't tracking or something. But that's, again, that's that third category that's shrinking, this kind of accidental ones. But I think among the people who like.

Are coupled up or would like to be coupled up. I mean, I think people are they're either using birth control. They're tracking tracking is becoming incredibly common. And it's like, so easy to do it at this point. I do think that's going to be a huge piece of the future

Malcolm Collins: of what percent of the kids were in public school

Catherine Pakaluk: of the kids of the [00:34:00] women that I talked to.

Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'm curious. We're around public school in these communities. Or was this That's a great

Catherine Pakaluk: question. You've asked me a question for which I don't have a ready answer. I didn't total that up. But if I'm just thinking through the people I talked to it was certainly under 50%.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah.

That makes sense. Well, I mean, this is, I see it being terrified. We have our kids until middle school and public school or until they say they don't want to be there anymore. And our own community is like, you can't put that, like, what are you doing?

Catherine Pakaluk: Amazing.

Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. Well, I mean, I think that I mean, we're, this is a kind of a funny moment to talk about schooling because my own, I think like 10, 15 years from now, the, the menu of options that are going to be out there for schooling is going to be so diverse and so different from what we have now.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the Collins Institute is improving quickly. We're, we're adding a test and tutor to it, which should be ready by the summer. We're trying to

Simone Collins: like make possible at scale. And [00:35:00] very affordably aristocratic tutoring, which just seems like such a great way of learning, you know, just being able to explore what you like and talk to someone who can guide you through it

Catherine Pakaluk: and

Simone Collins: not be, you know, taken through this industrial system.

But yeah, I mean, I think a big factor that we look at certainly with pronatalism is just. School choice and educational freedom because there does seem to be this element of mainstream culture that just takes the focus away from that point that you point out of just kids are good. You know, kids are a blessing.

Kids are good. And that that is this really important meme that takes place with high fertility. And I'm, I'm curious to get your thoughts on like other ways that a country trying to improve its birth rates can do that. I mean, we've, when you were talking about your exposure to babies thing, for example, I was thinking about, I think it was in Australia, that one case where the birth control program, where teens had to take home baby dolls yeah, they were like, Oh wow, this is, I can handle this.

This is great. Like they, they got exposed even just fake baby dolls and it [00:36:00] encouraged more fertility, which is crazy. But then there's, there's kind of examples of like watching teen pregnancy reality TV. really successfully reducing rates of, of teen pregnancy. Cause they saw it as like low class or undesirable or disastrous.

And I'm curious if you saw anything among the families, I mean, it sounds like even within your family. Yeah. With your kids who are dating. There are some discussions on like, well, I mean, do the partners want to have kids? How do you promote a pronatalist kids are a blessing culture within your own family?

And how have you seen the families you've spoken with do it in a way that's not like, you know, creepy or backfiring.

Catherine Pakaluk: Right. Well, I, there's probably a lot of things to say if there's like the policy stuff, by the way, I wanted to say that I think, okay. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful that like the remote work stuff is going to keep going because I think it's crossed.

Yes. I think that's been, I mean, look, I, I work remote. I mean, although I, I have a job that wouldn't have been called remote work for a long time, but when I was in [00:37:00] college and I knew, like, I wanted to have kids and be, you know, be, be able to have kids. I remember looking at the menu of options. I was like, well, I'm, you know, Doing economics and math.

And, you know, there's a strong pull to do wall street or finance at that. And I'm looking at it like you have to be in your actual office, you know, like 40, 50, 60 hours a week, not going to work because I want to have a couple of kids. So I'm looking at it as a young person thinking, how come like academics aren't like all with a huge family?

Cause I'm thinking to myself is what blows my mind. It seems like these people have very flexible jobs, right? So, so why? Yeah, well, I think like academia is like tilted left and sort of anti natal as long as I can, I mean, certainly for 100 years, if not more.

Malcolm Collins: Have you run into anti natalists yet?

Catherine Pakaluk: At university or in general?

Within your

Malcolm Collins: job or within your promotion? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I

Catherine Pakaluk: get emails from them a lot. Oh, okay. I'm like, yeah, I mean, you know, like the nastier ones are the ones who send you these little scripts. Do you guys get them? Like little handwritten, scrawled notes and you're like, Oh, [00:38:00] yes. I'm looking at this script and like, I think you're 95 and you're in the Bay Area.

Was it on a

Simone Collins: used, like, bill envelope? Cause that's what we got. Like, you know, the ones with the windows of like, he just used, cause he's, he cares about the environment. There are too many people. So he's free using. Oh yes.

Catherine Pakaluk: They're like, you're like, you are

Malcolm Collins: just like filled with old bills and stuff like that.

And like writing books.

Catherine Pakaluk: No. Exactly. No, they, they do, they come out of the woodwork. They send you, you know, letters and you're, and you're like, you're so old and you're so out of touch, like, who is paying your bills? Like, you know, buddy, this is just outrageous. So I don't, I mean, I was gonna say, I don't have any colleagues or any, I haven't experienced anything super nasty personally.

Good. The antenatal, you work at Catholic

Malcolm Collins: University though, so. Oh.

Catherine Pakaluk: You would think, but I will say like politically there, it's all over the map.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Catherine Pakaluk: yeah. I'm so

Simone Collins: sorry. Catholic, but university, Malcolm, university.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, no, no, it's true. Yeah, I won't, I probably should, I should probably just leave it there.

Simone Collins: So, [00:39:00] and that makes sense though.

I mean, cause when we speak with academics especially when they're young. They're like, well, you know, no one would take me seriously if I got pregnant. And in all these things, I've been told not to have kids. And I mean, actually the same thing happened to us when we were in private equity. We had people be like, well, don't have kids until you've completely gone through the entire process and sold your company.

And we're like, oh, should we not tell them that we're pregnant right now? This is, and we just did it. And that's the thing is you have to just do it. You just have to do it. You just have to do it. Well, my husband's not on this.

Catherine Pakaluk: My husband's not in this conversation, but at some point the four of us will sit down together and like, you guys are not short on confidence.

And you know, like we're kind of similar, we're like, well, you know, my, you know, my way or the highway. So, but you know, it's true that definitely in the eighties and the nineties, like there was this very normie kind of thing, which was like in academia, you know, you had your, you, you. You had your, you finished your degree, you got tenure and then, you know, we were like 38, you would kind of start having, and it like didn't work for a lot of people and little by little people were like, Oh, you know, kind [00:40:00] of, so my advisor, one of my advisors was a female.

And you know, she really never said anything outright. But she at some point she dropped me the tiniest line and said, you know. You're, what did she, how did she put it? She said, you're, you're you're narrow, like you're, you're narrow, narrowly focused peers will regret their narrowness later.

And I,

and I thought like, that's not exactly a encouragement, but it's also not a discouragement. So it's kind of, you know, it's, it's pretty good for the ivory tower, you know, broadly antinatalist

Simone Collins: environment. That was her like, underground railroad of hinting.

Catherine Pakaluk: She didn't have kids and most of the women in the faculty didn't have children, but you know, you never really know like some people already know you

Malcolm Collins: were pregnant when she said that, though.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, that was, that was like, it was like three kids in and I'm sort of like, I'm sorry, I didn't get you this stuff. I'm slow. You know, she was like, she was a little, you know, she's the one voice of like, don't worry too much about

Simone Collins: it.

Catherine Pakaluk: Which was, yeah, I really am. I'm really great. I probably saved that message [00:41:00] someplace.

I thought it was like a miracle. But you know, I mean, especially when I was in my twenties, I didn't think of, of trying to find out why the childless women on the faculty didn't have kids. Like, was it because they had waited too long and couldn't, or is it because they didn't want to? I never asked her.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Catherine Pakaluk: Seemed impertinent.

Simone Collins: I can't remember if this was mentioned in many of your interviews but did you find any trends with. male versus female task sharing within the household. I mean, there was a pretty good mix of like, there were some women who were full time mothers. There were some women who had sort of hybrid part time careers.

Someone fully in. Was there a pattern?

Catherine Pakaluk: What I heard a lot of was a lot of nice stories. I mean, again, you know, most mostly people volunteer to talk to an interview about their family size. You know, you're certainly not getting the people who are really upset about how things are going. So, I mean, I realize there's a bias there, but I got a lot of nice stories about, I mean, I guess I would say like, we would broadly think of it as like, we [00:42:00] figured out a way between us to kind of like share tasks in a way that is kind of division of labor ish.

And I would say that in general, it was kind of and I, there's like that one quote from The academic couple at the beginning of the book, and she says at the end of that chapter, she says something like we started out like kind of progressive and egalitarian. We're like, we're going to split everything 50, 50, whatever.

And she's like, but here we are with five kids. And it's kind of weird how traditional it's turned out to be. It's not intentional. It's just, it was like, we each leaned into our strengths and this is what we got. Whereas, you know, you had the couple where he was staying at home full time. So I guess I would say I heard a lot of stories about when you have a lot of kids there's a lot going on.

Like your household is certainly a complicated, almost as a small enterprise, right? It's something else that you're, you know, you have your work to manage and you have this other enterprise and if you're doing it well, you know, you've got like, you're developing your kids and you're, and so that, because it's an enterprise. We do the thing that we do in human life. Generally, we sort of like we make rational decisions like you're better at this. So you do it. So I [00:43:00] wouldn't say like, I know, I knew this guy a couple, he's an academic. I knew him through, through conferences. And they were homeschooling and their, their deal was like, he did all the cooking cause he was so good at it and he loved it.

And it was the deal because she was homeschooling. So she was like, well, by the time my day is over I've had it and he just did the, so I wouldn't say I got like this really long list of sort of like super traddy looking things, but rather sort of like, it's worked out well because, you know, he's good at some stuff.

I'm good at some stuff and efficiency means that's how you do it. You just, that actually says a lot

Simone Collins: though. Pretty radical because I think modern marriages are often like we are peers. We each do exactly the same thing. You know, maybe we make almost exactly the same amount of money with the male making a little bit more.

And with children, everyone has to do exactly the same thing interchangeably. And otherwise it's not, it's like early

Catherine Pakaluk: on. I mean, my husband and I didn't have any role like. We don't have any like principles about who does what and, and, [00:44:00] but I figured out really quickly, like if, if I, if I divided up like the nighttimes equally and I was like, you take this night and I take that night, the kid was going to not be happy

Simone Collins: and I

Catherine Pakaluk: was going to not sleep well.

So it was going to be like, not a good deal. So I'm just like, okay, I'm nicer in the middle of the night and I want my kids to have a nice life. So I'm going to see them in the middle of the night. But if we were to fast forward and like, look at their teenage years their early teen years, he does so much more with them in terms of like taking them to sports stuff.

Oh, that's interesting. So like stages of

Simone Collins: life too. Cause I would say like

Catherine Pakaluk: now, you know, now I'm working a lot more than I did when they were babies and he is. kind of, in a sense, I don't want to say over the hill. That's not right. He's, he's very productive. But he has done enough in his profession that he has time to, so he's like, you know, taking him to, he oversees the piano lessons, he oversees the music, he oversees the sports.

And I'm so glad, I'm so glad because those are. The things that I'm not really that good at. I'd be way inclined to be too much of a gentle parent, like the minute they're crying over a piano lesson. I'd be like, all right, that's it. We're done. We're [00:45:00] saving that money. My husband's like, no, this is so good for them.

We're doing this. We're going to push through it. So, you know, I'm glad I was the person that was getting up in the middle of the night. Cause I think the babies were. We're better for it. Better off for it. But we didn't, we didn't go into marriage with like this game plan. Like this is how I'm going to do it.

Right. You just sort of go hit the moment. You're like, yeah, I'll take him at two in the morning. Like you suck at this. It's like basically

Simone Collins: true. And you touched on something though, talking about that, you know, you, you do invest in some activities for your kids. And, and we also talked about sort of frugality at the beginning of this conversation briefly.

We, we, one of our big arguments is that. Parenting is completely overblown now, like people very, very unsustainably parent their kids and that's why they're like, well, I can't afford to have a kid, but they're basically raising a millionaire, like a retired playboy. And like, I don't know why you think that's normal.

Like it hasn't been for the vast majority of humanity. And I, I, but I, I feel very conflicted on this. Like, I don't want to both Malcolm and I are like, we want to give our kids everything we also want to be [00:46:00] reasonable. We don't want to spoil them. We don't want to coddle them. And we also don't want to clutter their lives with things that are like, you know, to your point, like we all get too much stuff.

So. Where have you found it to be, like, really useful to invest in things in your kids? And where have you just decided, like, we don't need to spend money on this?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, well, I definitely think skills and skills and things that are really challenging to learn. I think it's hard to self teach and a lot of those types of things, like, you know, I would say certain, certain academic things.

I mean, like, you know, you could do a lot in math and languages that. That your local schools aren't gonna be able to do. You can invest in tutors if you can't do it yourself. Those are things that are hard to just tell your kid, like, just pick it up. Right. Whereas whereas, you know, some of the skills my kids have are things that, because we didn't do, we didn't occupy, we didn't have tablets.

They didn't have devices. They didn't have video games. Like they went outside and did stuff. And those are things we, we really under parented in that sense. So my, my three oldest sons are all like kind of really accomplished fishermen. I don't know anything about fishing and neither does my husband.

Did they

Simone Collins: just go out and figure it out once?

Catherine Pakaluk: Yes, they 100 [00:47:00] percent did.

Simone Collins: How did you not get

Catherine Pakaluk: CVS

Simone Collins: cold on you? This is, this is the mystery.

Catherine Pakaluk: No, we lived in Florida. Well, this is the funny thing about it. We, we moved there. I thought my kids were going to eat and buy alligators. And but we lived, we had like, you know, there's, there's water everywhere.

And the kids are like, can we go to Bass Pro Shops? We want to learn to fish. Me being this like Northern sort of like. educated, you know, safety conscious mom. I'm like, they're going to die. Like they're going to get sharp stuff, you know? And of course, like, I know nothing at this point. I know nothing, you know?

And then I think it was the grandma that brought him to best, but like, it wasn't me. Right. So the grandma brought him over there. They go out there with their stuff. And then like the next thing, I don't see them for four hours. And so you're like, Hey, this is kind of good. Like that's good for them.

Right. But actually the end of the story is really kind of cool. Like they just, they became such good fishermen because of all the time they spent unsupervised, just kind of figuring it out. So it's kind of a mixture. There's a great story about them kind of in their mid teen years when they went out on a charter sea fishing boat.

And well, it was like a, like [00:48:00] a neighbor brought them on this thing and it was like a fancy thing. So they're out in this. deep sea boat off the gulf coast of Florida. And the captain says, Hey, they can't line up shoulder to shoulder on that, on that rail. Like they'll get their lines crossed. Yeah. The boat's moving, you know, the water's moving.

And so you can see that would be reasonable. And the neighbor guy that took him, he said, no, I think there'll be okay. And anyway, later the captain said, I've never seen three men stand shoulder to shoulder and not screw up. He said, but that's just, they stood shoulder to shoulder. Do we know how they learn, you know, so they're great fishermen.

So I think there's some mixture of like, there's a bunch of things you want to throw your kids at that allow for that kind of like just organic learning and lots and lots of time, but you know, music lessons there, most kids aren't going to. They're not going to persevere, you know. Our kids wouldn't

Malcolm Collins: do music lessons, no.

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. Who knows? I think for developing inhibitory control, that's amazing. Like, one of the things that I've read that really stuck with me [00:49:00] is that all humans now, in like sort of developed societies, have lost the ability to sit with discomfort. And that a lot of building resilience and maturity is about learning how to be uncomfortable and not to immediately freak out and think something needs to be fixed if you are not happy and serene.

And I think that things like music lessons, when it's just like, this is actually really frustrating and kind of boring and I'm not enjoying myself is like that is building that muscle for you. Yeah. So I like that, especially in the absence of a really strict religious environment where you're like fasting and get all these things out and like, you know, spending like three hours at mass every day, like things like that, because that also could do it, but it could do it.

Yeah. Most

Catherine Pakaluk: people don't.

Malcolm Collins: So, question. Do you, where do you see the most, because you've mentioned a number of guys cooking, where do you see the most gender nonconformity in large parent families in terms of the roles that are taken on?

Catherine Pakaluk: That's a good question. Probably a lot of like shuttling kids around.

Like if [00:50:00] you've got a drive to, yeah, I think, cause I think when I did that, see, I think, well, I think there's this idea of like the soccer moms, right? I mean, that was like, it was like not a dad thing. It was a mom thing. But I think that with the larger families, dad, but because of the number of trips, dads have to get involved with that.

I think. That's, that's it's softly at least a gender nonconforming thing. I think cooking is Cyber truck dads are the new stalker moms. Oh no, funny.

Simone Collins: That's it. It now makes sense. What dads? Cyber truck dads. Cyber truck? Yeah. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: So I think that cooking, I think maybe tutoring or, or kind of helping, helping kids.

I mean, I did see, I don't think we've talked about this yet explicitly. I think there's some, there were a couple of you know, sort of the interaction with these kind of alternative forms of schooling. Because a lot of the dads are kind of getting involved with, with, with tutoring or helping the kids with, with schooling.

There were a couple of couples who kind of hit that place where they had kids in private schools and then realized like, we're either going to have another kid or we're going to keep schooling and we want another kid. [00:51:00] And then you hear like, well, that's when we turned into homeschoolers. And so, so that means dad's involved with a lot of stuff during the daytime.

Maybe. Come in working, working from home or kind of juggling in and out. So those are all kind of slightly, you know, they're not, he's not wearing a dress, but they're also like slightly gender nonconforming. Yeah. Bedtime, bath time. I mean, I was just going to say that's a big one. Yeah, there you go. I think.

Yeah, I think because there's this idea like mom's pretty pretty like tapped out by the end of the day, but when mom's

Malcolm Collins: pregnant again, she's got to go to sleep early. Yeah, I

Catherine Pakaluk: know. Leaning over a bathtub with that belly is a terrible thing.

Malcolm Collins: Not ideal. You don't trust me. Yeah, actually

Simone Collins: I do the baths because a bath with Malcolm is not to my standards.

Yeah, I see that's

Catherine Pakaluk: like middle of the night parenting is not to my standards of my husband. Yeah. He'd be like, he'd be like, I solved the problem. I just let the kid cry to sleep and you're [00:52:00] like, Oh yeah, you didn't solve the problem. You just turned the kid into like an anxious wreck for the rest of her life.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. No, I think that's the interesting thing too, about how division of labor plays out. It's, it's both what you're inclined to do and what you like to do, but also like where you can't tolerate your partner's standards. And then that's right. And you take it on. Exactly.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, exactly.

Simone Collins: Which makes sense.

Like to your point, like you're too gentle parenting around some things like piano lessons where the kids get frustrated. No, I would fold immediately.

Catherine Pakaluk: No, I would fold. I'm like, that's it. I can't. The kid is criminal. We're not.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, we get into trouble for barely beating our children. Barely. Barely. But I don't know.

It's interesting. I've talked to my wife. It's very interesting how we both intuitively have such similar beliefs. around, you know, punishment and the way I always get so happy when I see that she actually punishes a kid. And I know that everyone else is going to tell you to keep it like

Simone Collins: for context.

The last time he was berated by another parent in public, it was merely because he removed one of our children from an arcade because [00:53:00] that children, that child had stolen a toy from another girl who then started crying like horror, like what it's Breaking the cycle of trauma and like all these things and like Malcolm didn't hit the kid.

Malcolm didn't know. Malcolm just was like, we have to go home now. I only didn't hit the kid cause I was afraid of being yelled at

Malcolm Collins: too.

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, you're self regulating a little bit there.

Malcolm Collins: I don't want my kid to grow up to be a hippie. Yeah.

Catherine Pakaluk: That's so funny. Yeah. Well, but these are so

Simone Collins: go ahead. Sorry.

Catherine Pakaluk: Well, these are all things that like really grow out of experience. I mean, the first time you think like, maybe, maybe you have to smack your kid because they're reaching for something dangerous, you know, and you kind of realize like, it actually doesn't ruin anything.

It doesn't, your kid doesn't like love you any less. And, and then, you know, actually like over time, it, it creates a sort of a cycle of trust and exchange where the kid knows they're safe. And I mean, that's all good. And that's kind of like how it's meant to be. But these are definitely ways that [00:54:00] parents make or I don't know if it's, it's not that they.

mean to do it this way, but it ends up making parenting so much harder. Right? Like if your kids are well disciplined, well raised from when they're young, like they're not terrible in their teenage years.

Simone Collins: This is true. This is terrible. How old is your oldest? Our oldest is four. So we're still pretty young.

You're not

Catherine Pakaluk: at the payoff stage yet.

Simone Collins: But also like, I don't know if the payoff stage is ever going to come. Cause even though like Our kids are broadly honorable. They're also, like, we know genetically, like, from just the, the other family members that have gone through adolescence and adulthood, that the rebelliousness will not stop no matter what we do.

So we can more just be like, This is the price, like the new phrasing in our language is like, this is the price of this activity, like everything is a tax, you know, you can speed, you might get a speeding ticket, but it may be worth it, even if you have to pay that, like, whatever fine, because you need to get there, and we're like, yeah, maybe you're going to do this, this will be the price if you do it, cross the line, pay the [00:55:00] price but like, that's too funny.

That's all we can do now. We can just try to be like the real world. We can't develop some kind of like honor or morality. You have to

Malcolm Collins: learn, when you have kids, there's, there's this category of kids. I don't know if other kids are like our kids, but there's this category of kids where somebody is like, how, how much do you like punish your kids?

Like, how hard do you hit your kids? And I'm like, hard enough so that they don't laugh.

Catherine Pakaluk: Because it's not hard enough.

Malcolm Collins: It's just hilarious. And they're having fun. Yeah, they don't think it's a game. Like Jordan Peterson being like, I just sit that child down at the end of the table and I just wait him out.

And I'm like, wow. Your kids are really different from mine.

Catherine Pakaluk: Yeah, that's a lot of time too, by the way. I'm like, I got stuff to do, you know. Yeah, I do

not know.

Definitely in our in our parenting that's been different for different kids, right? Like each kid is pretty different. We've had some kids, you just look at them funny.

They're crying. Oh my gosh. All you need to do, right. It's just like, no, you know, and you, you know, wrinkle your, and they're like, why are you yelling at me? [00:56:00] You're like, nobody was yelling, but they just are so sensitive. That's how it feels to them. And then our daughter was like

Malcolm Collins: that when she was younger, but she grew out of that phase.

Yeah. Now she, she just,

Simone Collins: the important thing for her is that she makes eye contact with you while breaking the rule. Smiling. She just like loves to see your devastated face. Oh, the youngster. Okay. That's your baby. It's our number three.

Malcolm Collins: Intentionally break rules ever. Like Octavian almost never breaks rules.

Yeah. That's all. Okay. Punish the other kids if he sees them breaking a rule. But I think that's a very

Simone Collins: common first child thing.

Catherine Pakaluk: That is a very common first child thing. It doesn't mean that they don't have some other interesting things going on, but they're kind of like, they figured out the system.

They're like, those are the rules, right? But there's something else. Like I was like, the kids later, it'd be like, you didn't, you never knew what Joe was doing behind your back.

Simone Collins: That's no, I mean, like, that's the thing that at least Octavian has revealed to us as the eldest is that he likes the rules because then he believes that he has the right to impose them.

And when [00:57:00] we were trying to like adjudicate things between them and he was like, don't. Talk to the little ones like they were in his domain,

Catherine Pakaluk: he

Simone Collins: rules them and I think maybe that's a good

Catherine Pakaluk: and actually that's a great point. We haven't touched on, which is like the community of the children, right? Like how there's this cool thing that when you have a bunch of kids, like they actually.

Take on their own community. There's like the the parents and then there's the kids and they kind of like practice politics they practice like all kinds of like they make societies and they have their own rules and you know, Like pecking orders and it it's got to give them something that they this useful stuff that they take into society

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm gonna think it's like really brilliant people But like I love that I'm reading his his one of his books again, David Sedaris. Like I love his writing. Oh, yeah Great writer how much of his writing is about Growing up in a family of six kids and it's about the politics of them when they were young and the things that they got up to and you realize just how much kids really raise each other and I love that because Malcolm and I are very flawed [00:58:00] people and we don't necessarily believe that we have everything right for yourself.

I'm a very flawed person. My husband

Catherine Pakaluk: is perfect and beautiful. Malcolm is perfect and a hero and a saint.

Simone Collins: But I love that like, With every additional kid we have, that is one more moderating factor, where if we're wrong, maybe they'll be right. And they sort of make everything a little more reasonable, but

Catherine Pakaluk: Yes, and if you ask kids later, it's really interesting, because I don't think as parents we ever really get our feel for it.

They often have a completely different Story about what it was like, you know, to me, we imagine it's this and they have this completely different story and that's, I don't, I don't think we can ever bridge that, but it's, it's, it's a great point you're making that that our children can moderate kind of the experience of life for our other children.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Huge benefit. Oh my gosh. I just, I want to thank you again for writing Hannah's Children for doing that research.

Catherine Pakaluk: I do

Simone Collins: think that this is like, again, looking at how to move forward because we can't go back.

You have to look at these populations. What do educated [00:59:00] people who have a lot of kids, Yeah. What do they do? What do they say? What do they think? And to your point about, you know, young people being exposed to babies, I think to a great extent adults being exposed to high fertility families, even just through your book is, it has a very birth rate increasing property because it definitely did that to me.

And I'm not the only mother who's read your book and been like, I'm in for more. Because you're just like feeling like you get to know these families and you did great interviews with them. Thank you. It just really. Yeah. And I

Catherine Pakaluk: think, you

Simone Collins: know, most people when they have a lot of kids, it's like, it's just people act like you're crazy and then you're like, well, I must be crazy.

I can't do this. And this makes it seem doable. So everyone, if you haven't actually read this book yet, you've got to read this book. If you have a girlfriend who you want to maybe have considering like having more kids, like her wife, like maybe give it to her as a gift. Along with other really nice things as well, of course, maybe like, you know, some help around the house, cooking, driving somewhere.

Yeah. [01:00:00] Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. You're so welcome. And we'll see you at NatCon. We'll see you in Austin in like a month.

Catherine Pakaluk: This is the countdown. I know, it's great.

Simone Collins: Alright. Okay. One month from today. Good. Alright, well from today. Thank you very much.

Catherine Pakaluk: You're so welcome. That's fantastic.

Alright, I'm

Simone Collins: gonna end the recording here. That was fantastic. Really like keeping the house at 55. Okay. We're paying like 600 for electricity. So

Catherine Pakaluk: this is how it goes. But you know,

Simone Collins: I think a lot of it like comes down to your, you point out in Hannah's children. Yeah. Again, and again, how families just sort of choose to prioritize their kids too for these other things.

And I

Catherine Pakaluk: think there's something connect, there's a connection between thrift and having a lot of kids. I don't think I've got it like mathematically worked out, but it seems to be true.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

In this episode, delve into the controversial transformation of Yale's infamous secret society, Skull and Bones. The discussion explores how the organization, historically known for its exclusive white male membership, has altered its selection processes to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. The conversation covers pivotal moments and changes within the society, raising questions about hypocrisy, elitism, and the true motives behind these shifts. It also touches on broader implications for elite networks and how they reconcile with modern political ideologies, highlighting the complexities and contradictions within these evolving traditions.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about the secret society skull and bones. And before anyone thinks that this title was clickbait and that maybe this secret society, one of the most famous secret societies in the world didn't actually go woke.

I'll start with a quick excerpt for what I'm going to be reading in 2020. Skull and Bones had its first entirely non white class today, the idea of skull and bones selecting someone whose dad was a Republican president seems inconceivable.

The so called tap lines, the tradition guaranteeing the football captain and the student body president would end up in bones, are all gone. And few descendants of the alumni members get in. Instead, the secret societies affirmatively select students ,

the bones class of 2021 had quote unquote all kinds of people, but the one thing they didn't have was a single member who was a conservative. Okay, I get an [00:01:00] idea of just how there's been a

Simone Collins: takeover and that's a, that's a little Al canes recalls being tapped

Malcolm Collins: by a senior who wanted to keep the Latino line going.

So this was a person who was tapped by another Latino with the intention that they would go and tap a Latino themselves to keep at least this Latino line going with it. Okay. All right. He decided to focus on a different diversity metric. I chose three trans people. Oh no, oh no. That was my specific goal.

Simone Collins: Oh, it's yeah, wow. No white people, three trans people. It reminds me of those cartoons of like, a little fish eats a another tinier fish, and then a bigger fish eats that one, and a bigger fish eats that one until, yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: wanted to go into this because I think a lot of people, when they look at these societies, there's a few things that we can take away from this.

One is we're going to learn sort of how they took over these organizations and how this happens to, we're going to see these strange parallel [00:02:00] between the, if you look at the history of skull and bones, you know, they were a. Supremacist and an ethno supremacist organization at times. Well, they still are.

It's fine. Nothing has changed. Literally, the racists are still the one in charge. Yeah. They are still deeply concerned with and talk about the skin color background. Well, thank goodness. Tradition isn't dead. Of everyone that's being admitted to the organization. This is great. To me highlights the ethno elitism of the leftist oligarchical class at this point.

It shows how these people get into positions of corporate power to continue to carry out their dastardly needs. And it shows I, I think as well when people think to these old pockets. Of secret societies, and you know, you famously used to be managing director of a secret society that was founded by Peter Thiel and Orrin Hoffman.

We go to stuff like Hereticon, that's one I can talk about. We also go to a bunch of things I can't talk about, like I mentioned before, [00:03:00] because it was found out by a secret undercover reporter that I've been to the Bohemian Grove. But I can't say anything more than that. I can only do quotes from other people.

Same thing with my knowledge of Skull and Bones. I need to, I can talk around it. I didn't go to Yale, so I'm, you know, not directly connected. But I, I might be able to add some elaboration as I'm reading through this, but again, I have to be very careful about what I say, but I have a lot of insight into these things.

One of my favorite claims to fame personally is that the book, The Bloodlines of the Illuminati which is like the major Illuminati book, the CII hosted on their website for whatever reason. Says that my dad, like calling him out by name and the company he runs is one of the supposed leaders of the Illuminati.

So I'm the oldest male child, so I wasn't born yet when this book was written. So now I guess I'm one of the leaders of the Illuminati too. But what's humorous is in terms of the secret societies that actually impact things, you and I actually are like significant players. And I think what people don't.

realize is that the secret societies and parties that impact things are not the ones that you and conspiracy [00:04:00] theorists are afraid of. And most of them are on your side. I. e., if what they were saying at these events was something that you could just say out in the open then it would be what aligned with the urban monocultures goal for our society.

It would align with what like the leftist oligarchs want for our society. The reason they're meeting secretly is because they are in opposition to that. Now, I'm sure that there is likely some mirror societies to ours that are the actual like PDA file stuff. I mean, we know that like Epstein's Island existed and everything like that.

Yeah. So, like, clearly there was an elite network of leftists of PDA files and they likely didn't disappear just because we got rid of the school teacher that hosted the stuff. So, yeah, that, that likely exists. But I don't know if those, those organizations have the power that they used to have.

And we'll see likely why they lost a lot of their power. It's just because of governing inefficiency when you devolve into this DEI nonsense.

Simone Collins: But

Malcolm Collins: any thoughts before I dive into this? [00:05:00]

Simone Collins: I really want to hear more. I want to hear how this happened.

Malcolm Collins: All right, skull and bones equity and inclusion This was a piece in the atlantic a couple years back one evening in 2019 in a windowless building known as the tomb in the center of yale's campus The members of skull and bones snapped there They were having granted membership to the most elite secret society at one of the most elite universities in the world Part of a rare group that for generations included individuals from the most powerful families on the planet the vanderbilts the rockefellers And Buckley's have all been members of Skull and Bones.

Three bonesmen would go on to become President of the United States. Their traditions, including oaths of secrecy upon admission and antics, stealing a gravestone of Yale's founders and the rumors about them that the Bones tomb contains a human skull are legendary and an intense source of campus gossip.

Just, you know, I've cut a lot out of this story, so I'm just reading the juiciest bits.

Simone Collins: Good.

Malcolm Collins: That assumes that most of our audience is going to Basically know who the skull and bones are a lot of that expository stuff. I took out But they're in the tomb [00:06:00] surrounded by oil portraits of former bones men all white all chosen by the society's alumni board The current members felt overcome not by the achievements of those that had come before them or by the possibilities that lay ahead But instead by the organization's long history So the students did what they felt had to be done they pulled the portraits down and replaced them with homemade signs Criticizing the Secret Society's records of keeping people of color out of its rank.

Ugh! Quote, Portraits is a relatively straightforward and easy ask. End quote. One member who participated in the redecoration told me, Quote, The way a place looks can have a large impact on somebody's psyche. End quote. This is somebody in the Skull and Bones! My psyche was terrorized by the pictures on the wall of the people who built the society!

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins: This was not the only act of Skull and Bones Rebellion in 2019. During an all expense paid trip [00:07:00] to meet with George W. Bush in Texas that year, one of the members confronted the ex president, who wrote in his 1999 autobiography, I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society. So secret, I can't say anything anymore, and criticized him for leading America into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to several people familiar with the trip.

More recently, young graduates of Brezeliz, another of the Ancient Eight, these are other secret societies on Yale Yale's most elite secret societies. Pressed to change the name of the society's nonprofit legal entity from the Colony Foundation on the grounds that it evoked slavery and colonialism.

Students in LOEA society named for LOE Yale also tried to re christen the organization over the name Stakes. Ties to the Slave Trade. When the Bones Clan of 2019 took down the portraits, some of their predecessors were aghast at the bad . Manners a former member. Of the bones alumni board who graduated from Yale in the 1960s told me given that the society's former members were overwhelmingly white [00:08:00] He argued it didn't make sense to criticize skull and bones for accurately portraying its own legacy Their historical protest was silly, end quote.

He said, Still, the Bones board tried to appease students by putting up photographs of non white alumni alongside the portraits. This year, the former board told me the board will unveil the Seeker Society's fourth portrait of a black alumnus. Similarly, Bresoliz agreed to rename the Colony Foundation.

Eloi, However, is keeping its name picture of skull and bones or any of the anyway. Yeah. Continue. Would you, what'd you want to say? Like,

Simone Collins: I just start at this point, you have to wonder why people want to join. If they hate it so much, why do you want to join it? I'm very, you

Malcolm Collins: can see it later. It's because they don't actually hate what it represents.

They don't actually hate the exclusion and the special privileges. They're like, Oh, well I hated it before I got in, but now I can use it to get a good job.

You know, fundamentally, they're

Simone Collins: [00:09:00] still taking down the paintings. They're still criticizing the alumni. Like they're, they're undoing those benefits.

What's the point?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. These individuals still get those benefits. These individuals, you'll see, you'll see they still get the old people. Haven't learned their lesson about don't let these types of people into your organizations. They were not let in because of their moral character. They were not let in because of their.

You know, integrity or work ethic or likelihood to be successful in the future. They were let in because they're vile, frankly, because they identified with the cult that took over and destroyed your organization's history. And I think that accepting this and trying to find a way forwards from this place of acceptance is where these people can begin to think about fixing things.

And, yeah, it's it's just horrifying. But I think it shows how quickly and how totally many of these organizations have just been completely destroyed [00:10:00] from any historical route that they had. And yet this destruction is based in racist and racial elitism. Picture a member of skull and bones or any of the other ancient eight societies.

And you'll probably conjure a preppy white guy who summers in the Cape. In fact, in recent years, the demographics of Yale's most elite organizations have been utterly transformed in 2020 skull and bones. had an entirely non white class. Every year, the society admits around 15 rising seniors. Selections must be unanimous and members have final say.

This was the key thing that allowed for the destruction of the organization.

Simone Collins: Because

Malcolm Collins: the admission had to be unanimous. So you have one woke person, you get one diseased member in your organization. That's it. All of a sudden, they scan for everyone.

Simone Collins: And then it's just a war of attrition until everyone's like, Yeah, fine.

Well, we'll select your person. Fine.

Malcolm Collins: And then it's all Black, extremely woke people. Yeah. They, as I said, they didn't invite a single person from a conservative ideological background. These are not organizations that are interested in. Continuity with the past outside of racial [00:11:00] elitism.

Interesting. But this racial elitism is exemplified in woke culture in a way that Oh, 100%.

Simone Collins: That's the top place where it's alive now. And you can see that in the way that suddenly the composition of, of skull and bones changed.

Malcolm Collins: Many of the societies now have only one or two students each year who aren't from historically marginalized groups.

So it's very hard to get in now, if you're white today, the idea. So you one to two white people every year.

Simone Collins: That's

Malcolm Collins: it. Today, the idea of skull and bones selecting someone whose dad was a Republican president seems inconceivable. The so called tap lines, the tradition guaranteeing the football captain, the student body rep, the skull and bones are long gone.

Few descendants of alumni get in. Instead, the secret societies affirmatively select for students who are their first in family to attend college, who are from a low income background or who are part of a minority group. This has created something of a diversity arms race. Quote, people are intentionally or not thinking does this cohort have too many white people in quote said Alkanes a member of [00:12:00] Brazilian class of 2020.

It's definitely an undercurrent. He said, I graduated from Yale last spring and I didn't belong to a secret society when it came time for members in my year to select the next class, a friend of an ancient eight society worried that the person she wanted to tap wouldn't get in. He was a person of color, but came from a wealthy family and was not the first in his family to attend college.

She was the right to worry. The society rejected. Well, that's how bad this is.

A history of progressive activism is an asset among secret society hopefuls. Oh, so you need to be a progressive activist as well. One of the leaders of Yale's Democratic Socialist Chapter, socialists Mind. You joined Scroll and Key, one of the oldest secret societies last year. Okay. The Bones class of 2021 had quote people from all kinds of backgrounds.

In quote, one member of the class told me, but no conservatives unless you count centrist as [00:13:00] conservatives, which some members do.

Simone Collins: Most members probably do.

Malcolm Collins: Like Yale student body overall members of the secret societies mostly range from far left to left of center in short Yale secret societies are now filled with students who as a matter of political conviction consider wealth privilege Indefensible, but who as members of Yale's most elite clubs enjoy enormous advantages skull and bones pair students with alumni mentors in the field They hope to enter.

It has an endowment of 17 million. Bones members spend a week in late summer getting to know one another at the group's private island on St. Lawrence River. Dinners at ancient eight societies are prepared by private chefs. They used a 17 million endowment and all of these privileges and all of these mentorships to progress and further this cult that they're a part of.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And this racist fundamental cult. And I think That if I was a member of the alumni of this group, I would focus on attempting to create a [00:14:00] parallel society at the university that focused on individual integrity and not this racist nonsense or find other ways to deal with this. Like, just let the organization drain the 17 million dollar fund because they will stop doing the mentorship, start doing the mentorships for people who deserve it and are actually being ethnically discriminating against which.

These days as not these people as we can see from their acceptance into these organizations

Simone Collins: Yeah

Malcolm Collins: And, and that is what we're seeing, like at the dinner parties we host in New York, the dinner parties we host in D. C. We always try to have young, rising stars at these events when we can, and we connect these individuals with movers and shakers, and it's done a lot to accelerate their careers.

And I think that this is something that it's upon us and all, you know, sane thinking individuals with ties to power to continue to do. It's on you to fund and invest in the things that can't get [00:15:00] investment in other ways to do donations to those types of things instead of, you know, what keeps you on the board of whatever that makes you look good.

In 2021, Caleb Dunson, then a Yale sophomore published an op ed in the school newspaper. Titled Abolish Yale. Oh, fantastic. In the essay, he described his discomfort attending an opulent holiday feast for students while homeless people suffered in the cold nearby. Remember, they have private chefs, private islands.

The school operates, quote, under the assumption that only a small group of remarkable people can push humanity forwards, end quote. Well, I mean, that's true wrote Dunton. And it's likely not you or the people you're associated with, to be frank who is black. Quote, it started off excluding women and people of color from its student body and now parades them around for diversity photos and justice brownie points, end quote. Even if the university made marginal changes, which Johnson argued it had been reluctant to do, its nature would remain the same, quote, since we can't change Yale, we have to tear it down, end quote, he wrote.

So they're trying to destroy [00:16:00] these traditions, these organizations, and everything they stood for while using them to push their cult like message. Today, Dunson is a member of one of the ancient eight societies. That's the type of person that these organizations are admitting. He knows how that looks.

When I asked him about the apparent contradiction, he said he decided to join in order to make new friends and be part of a community, but acknowledged that he was attracted to the status that being in a society confers. Quote, once you get a tap for a society, it's funny how quickly you get invested in the preservation of that society.

End quote. He told me, ultimately, he said, given his political views, are at odds with attending Yale in the first place, quote, there's already a bit of cognitive dissonance, end quote. So joining a secret society isn't that big a leap. Oh, what a

Simone Collins: hypocrite. This is so annoying. If you don't believe in Yale, don't apply to Yale.

Like, huh. I hate this. This

Malcolm Collins: is, oh, it's painful.

This is why I love when you talk to one of these lefties who want like communism or more socialism, and you're like, well, every [00:17:00] time that's been done in the past, the people, as soon as they got power to manage the system, ended up abusing it, taking all the money for themselves, becoming elitist, creating a strict class system with an oligarchy that was it.

Malcolm Collins: Even less predictable than it was under capitalism and they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no the next generation of elite communists They're not like that They would give up the power as soon as it was handed to them and yet we see it even in the case of these kids at like Yale Being given these giant endowments and private islands and stuff like that that we'll learn about in just a second They don't give it up.

They don't give any of it up. they keep the system working for them even individuals like Bernie Sanders, for example, number one, and has been for like 10 years receiver of a pharma donations among senators, , and, and he also was like, oh, well, those are all small donations.

Those are all small donations. Really, Bernie, buddy. , that's why you fought so hard against RFK

getting [00:18:00] appointed that makes no sense that you, it, when you're looking at an industry, That has a vested interest in greasing the hands of senators that you could beat every other senator in terms of donations by chance from small donations from employees multiple years in a row for a decade

and that you would ardently campaign for their interests. No, the point is, is that these individuals, whether it's Bernie Sanders or these DEI guys and skull and bones, , the moment they get power, all of their values that they have been campaigning for disappear.

Are these people not the, this is the majority of the people at Yale now. Yale now on somebody's resume just stamps them as this kind of grifter. I mean, you really gotta be like, and when did you graduate? You know, I went to Stanford back when Stanford was still like a respectable institution.

A lot of people went to Yale in the past. I know some friends who went to Princeton who are, I think doing a lawsuit saying that the organization no longer has any it's like a negative. On their [00:19:00] resume at this point. No,

Simone Collins: the idea was yeah to to file a lawsuit because their management of the school had degradated the value of The degree that they'd spent so much money to get

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is absolutely true These organizations are being horrific stewards because they have been co opted by the cult and we'll see if the vibeship pushes them back We'll see if the supreme court lawsuit making it illegal to discriminate against someone based on race Surprise surprise that we had to do that in the united states States.

And these were the people fighting against that Supreme Court decision screeching about it. But they're also the elitists who control everything. The Republican Party of today is fundamentally an anti elitist party. It is a party of the people because this is elitism. You can't be pro this stuff and anti elitism.

Yeah. The DEI is elitism. It's like a fundamentally elitist idea. Yeah. Yes. The most common argument current and recent members give [00:20:00] for preserving the societies is that by opening them up to groups that had previously been excluding, they can help diversify the elite. Ally Canals recalls being tapped by a senior who wanted to quote, keep the Latino line going.

Once inside, Canals focused on a different diversity metric. I chose trans people, Canals told me. That was my specific goal. So three trans people, no Latinas. Today's students believe that their values are better than those of the secret society members who came before them, and thus they will use their positions in more socially beneficial ways, even if they're not yet sure exactly how.

The member of the 2021 bones class had been uneasy about joining, but was convinced by a student from the year above quote. Yes, there is that baggage that we do have to reckon with in quote. The older student told her, but the fact that you are reckoning with it.

The other people in your class are reckoning with it. That's a good sign. Her class included many students from low income families. And they often talked about how they would leverage their [00:21:00] network to help their communities. One recent Bones member used an alumni gathering to fundraise for a non profit she ran.

Mm hmm. Nearly all of the current, and basically to get money for herself. Yeah. Nearly all of the current and recent members I spoke with said that it would be better if secret societies didn't exist at all. But, given that they do exist, they decided they might as well join to make it better. The most full throat.

critiqued as societies tends to come for people who didn't get in. Elizabeth thou. Oh, she was Asian. She never had a shot. Who graduated from Yale in 2023 felt confident in her odds to be tapped by St. Elmo's one of the ancient eight, but she spent tap day crying because she wasn't chosen. Of course she's Asian.

Doesn't she know she's, she's an underclass by the standards of DEI and comparing her qualifications against those of her friends who were, Invited in. In Yale Daily News op ed, she argued that secret societies should be torn down rather than open up. By including more students from marginalized backgrounds, [00:22:00] she wrote, the society system merely diversifies the ranks of the worthy without transforming the underlying structures that deem others worthy.

In quote, yes, it's exactly the same as it always was in that respect. And yet she admitted, quote, I know in my bones that if I had gotten tapped by Selma's, I would have taken it and likely wouldn't have developed a critical mode of participation. In quote, they're all, they're all such Democrats.

Quote, everyone talked a really big game. In quote, one member of the LA class of 2019 told me, quote, in the first months of my time in the society, there were people like, we got to burn this place down. We need to mobilize the endowment to redistribute the wealth back to New Haven. And then inevitably we all just ended up doing what had been done in year.

It's previous, which is doing the bios, hanging out with each other and a few volunteer things, but it wasn't anything radical in quote, as the 1960s bones alumnus, former member told me, quote, if you want things to stay the [00:23:00] same, everything has to change in quote, in his view, the secret societies are thriving.

This is an old alumni members. And alumni meet for the annual bone celebration in New York. The old guard gives a hearty applause to the new members and the kids are thinking there's somebody in this room who's going to help me get a job.

And that's what the old board member was saying, the quotes there. So they, and this is fundamentally what a lot of these people who were conservatives of the last generation and were taken in by the oligarch and are like the never Trumpers and everything like that, they don't understand how much this new generation.

One does not care about integrity. They do not care about actually making the world a better place that they care about this redistribution cult if you gave skull and bones Endowment to for example, just redistributed it to yale. It would be gone Like that. It's basically dumping it in the ocean. In terms of the impact it would have as we've seen from things like the UBI studies.

It might even make the [00:24:00] situation worse. These individuals do not care about any evidence backed direction to make the world better.

Simone Collins: Do you think these people are going to get jobs from the network though? Because if I were one of the senior How do the woke people get

Malcolm Collins: to the top of BlackRock and s**t like that, Simone?

This person was one of the heads who said, Oh, I think this is all a good thing in the 1960s. A lot of elitist society, as you and I have seen, Like, if you talk about like the, the, The reason why we do secret meetings is because we're like Part of the underground, right? The overground, if you go to like the Met Gala or something like that everyone there agrees with this ideology without fully realizing that it plans to have them erased.

I'm not even

Simone Collins: concerned about that. I mean, I, I guess, wait, maybe this makes sense because a lot of like this particular network, which I guess used to be kind of an old boys network hired. Almost like [00:25:00] hereditary dynasties into, we'll just say show positions that didn't actually need to perform necessarily.

Yeah. Like, I think you saw this a lot with sort of the old garden Dallas where. Like kids would expect to go into family businesses, but then like not actually do anything, you know They just like they'd get a big salary and just be there and maybe that's what these networks were meant for was fulfilling these these almost dynastic positions that were No, a lot of these positions don't work

Malcolm Collins: that way anymore.

Simone Collins: That's, that's the point though, is when we moved to Dallas, you realized that all of your friends who had grown up in that aristocracy weren't getting the jobs they expected. Yeah, they thought

Malcolm Collins: they were going to get handed jobs, but now like boards exist and stuff like that. But these boards have been taken over by these types of people.

Simone Collins: This is

Malcolm Collins: fundamentally a religious cult that is taking over things. And it functions like a cult, like a self reinforcing mechanism. I see.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So we basically went from old boys, dynastic networks, putting useless people into useless possessions to woke [00:26:00] boards, putting people not based on merit into yes, that we're transforming the

Malcolm Collins: company's goals, the goals of these organizations.

Now it's to promote the D E I mindset, this, this cult mindset. And they've said that very clearly. I see my role at this organization as promoting this mindset. Yeah. In terms of what we accept, in terms of how we leverage our money, in terms of what we do when we get into other companies. They believe that this is like a moral north star that they build every action that they take around.

Simone Collins: Okay, that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: And it is Well, I mean, how do these people get in places like BlackRock and stuff like that? You think that these people are smart? Like they're not particularly intelligent. Like we've run into them whether it was you know Given that I went to institutions like Stanford for my MBA and stuff like that, and St.

Andrews for my undergrad where you had this, the people, you know, and so I've seen the people who do the DEI pathway and they're not your [00:27:00] great performers they're, they, they are You know, they, they often got there through a DEI pathway as well. And it's, it's obvious. Well, I think

Simone Collins: that's the problem is they could be great performers, but the way that they rose wasn't from learning how to be great performers, it was from learning how to manipulate DEI oriented networks.

So they, they weren't given the opportunity nor were they given the incentive to build the ability to be, to, to yield a return on investment. And that's a really, really sad thing is that these. actually typically are very smart people because it takes a good amount of savvy cunning and emotional intelligence to To get that far and these

Malcolm Collins: people, yeah,

Simone Collins: and yet they're then going forward, they only use the cunning and savvy and Machiavellian manipulation skills rather than complex problem solving and project management and data analysis and all the things they should be using if creating good outcomes for whatever organization they've chosen to join.

So it's a shame [00:28:00] and I just want to make it clear that we don't think that these people are inherently. Less than. We think that they have been incentivized to play a game that makes them useless.

Malcolm Collins: If somebody is the agent of a dangerous cult that is dangerous, not just in its racial discrimination and its implementation of a racial hierarchy it's, it's dangerous in a lot of the ideas it pedals, you know, when you begin to push this stuff at like the FAA, where we talked about where people were being hired to try to get more.

Black people on board, they post the idea of, Oh, well, we need to have a test that like the wrong answer is science was my favorite subject at school, or I take answers well, and it becomes like a racist person stereotype of black culture because these people have a really, really harmful beliefs boast about Because I think a lot of them know that they're not really from these cultures.

A lot of them know that they're not actually from a family that has deep roots within black culture and stuff like that. And that's what you often see by the people who grift on this system. Is they're often not [00:29:00] actually connected to the communities that they claim to represent. And this creates a huge sort of like imposter syndrome.

Where they then make up, they're like, Hmm, what? What's black stuff? I guess it's, it's, it's being bad at science and math. So we should make those the questions on the test. Like what, what, like And when you see people, cause we actually have a lot of like really close black friends who like work to and, and have sort of entered like real elite circles to try to better the black community.

And I'd say the core difference between the black people who don't go crazy about this s**t and the black people I know who do go crazy about this s**t is it's, did they. Actually come from like a discriminated background. Like one who we know, for example, grew up an orphan and was raised in that environment and grew up in like actual poverty.

And he does like really cool stuff was like fixing education systems. Whereas when I think about. You [00:30:00] know, the, the ones I know that have gone the DEI grift route these are individuals who grew up to, like, wealthy parents who, or recent immigrants from, like, royalty in Africa or something, and really have no connection to American black culture, or wanting to improve it outside of how they can utilize it to get money, like this one girl who's like, I used it to raise money for my non profit.

Well, let's see how much of that went to her. You know, that's, that's the way the grift goes.

Note here when you read things that these organizations like what we work really hard for first generation You know college people who came from whatever background you can tell that they are not Actually from these communities and they've just learned to do the grift really well By where they are focusing their efforts and their buy in to the dei stuff Or they might have come from parts of these communities that have built their entire identity around a DEI government welfare grift, which is something that I've also seen.

And a lot of these old people who go [00:31:00] to the like, Met and stuff like this for the yearly gala or whatever, they're frankly too disconnected and bought into like this media lie ecosystem to know how bad the grift has got.

What?

Simone Collins: I think you're right. It's just depressing. But it also feels, you can't help but feel a little smug about it. I mean, this wasn't. A secret society without some flaws and certainly a lot of elitism and now it's experiencing the end result of all that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and the, the cool kids club is now like way more dynamic, way more open, like for the, the cool events that we would be invited to like Hereticon, I think it's the best secret society event that's ongoing right now.

They do it so well. They, oh my gosh, it's incredible. So, but how do you get an invite to Heretic Con? You have to be out there saying interesting, controversial, new ideas, and be bringing them to the scene and [00:32:00] changing the world. And that's like such a better criteria than these older systems. And I really by the way, if you go to Heretic Con again next year, are you gonna get a tattoo this time?

They, they do free tattoos at Heretic Con.

Simone Collins: I mean, I still think you should get the gear tattooed on you.

Malcolm Collins: I'll get the gear tattooed then.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Where, where, where should I get it?

Simone Collins: At your wrist. Wrist?

Malcolm Collins: Do you

Simone Collins: know

Malcolm Collins: how much that

Simone Collins: hurts? Where it hurts the most. Yeah. That,

Malcolm Collins: you are intense. That's where you

Simone Collins: do it.

That's where you do

Malcolm Collins: it. But, you're a typical Puritan,

Simone Collins: Malcolm. You gotta show it.

Malcolm Collins: I gotta show it? I gotta, oh god, you are, you are insane. But, hey, you know, there's, there's, there's, it's a good souvenir from like a hereticon or something like that. God, my whole life without getting a tattoo, am I gonna get one at 38 or something, I guess?

I mean, I'm going to be with you. I don't need to attract any other partners, I guess. Yeah. I

Simone Collins: still would love for someone to explain to me why people get tattoos. That would be helpful.

Malcolm Collins: The last time we were there, they had a stall where you could genetically alter [00:33:00] frogs to glow in the dark. And so we both did like, yeah, it's a

Simone Collins: mega frog embryo.

That was, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it was pretty cool. No, it's like, but you're like, what if people do it? Like the cool secret societies, that's the stuff that's happening. And they genetically

Simone Collins: alter frog embryos and genetically altering frog embryos, you know, eat delicious food, talk with fascinating, smart people. The general premise of Skull and Bones, which I hadn't, I haven't really read much about it.

I didn't know that so much of it was sort of highlighted around getting a job and networking. That in itself makes it to me pretty gross because I am definitely of the belief that you should get your job based on merit and hustle instead of like, Oh, well, I got accepted, accepted into this club and therefore you will hire me.

And I felt the same way about sororities and fraternities, which also often sold it as like, You'll find it easier to get a job. And I just thought that was disgusting. Like who hires someone because they're friends? I mean, that's, that's really an argument against hiring that [00:34:00] person. Because then when you have conflict, or you need to give constructive criticism, it becomes so much harder.

It's just a terrible idea. This, the entire premise of this society is fundamentally unsound.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I, well, yeah, I, I like that things are changing and that this system has in a way destroyed itself. It was a system based on nepotism and then there's a cult that found out how to hack nepotism networks.

And it is destroying the system and this is why We started an organization deiremediation. org if you need to hire people for one of your orgs to clean out dei you let us know we are a non profit as well. So You can pay us in tax deductible money to come in and fix the, you know, the, the inefficiencies and racism that are affiliated with this, but I not just inefficiencies, mission creep.

Well, let's talk about where the, I mean, you, you and I see the real like secret society networks that are important now, right? And I'd say they generally fall into a few [00:35:00] categories. The EA network, while being a giant peerage network, is still very important. The effective altruist network is probably in terms of like a global influence.

The number one sort of society that you can access the next. Big one is the counterculture network that we're like sort of organizing members of. Like all

Simone Collins: heterodox related things.

Malcolm Collins: Heterodox related things. There's a few others that are matter. Like there's that secret society that I think is still sort of old boy, the Catholic one for and you're getting Catholics promoted within the judge network which is really important and conservatives within the judge network, which is really important.

But even ones like, you know, like the Coke network and stuff like that. I think a lot of them have become less relevant as, as time has gone on because they're not generating new ideas.

Simone Collins: I think there's different types of secret societies. So some are like you could call them resource distribution, secret.

And that's what it seems like Skull and Bones was that was what [00:36:00] the Koch Society was that's like, it's it is of people typically wealthy benefactors deciding. Where to throw their crumbs and playing patronage games and sometimes ego games. You could argue maybe that the Bohemian Grove was a little bit like that because it was supposed to be very, very expensive membership for wealthy people balanced out by either subsidized or free membership for artists.

And so that, that, I think that, that qualifies as well. And then you have. What I would argue are the power broker secret societies. And I think this is where you get like, you know, Sun Valley and all the sort of more exclusive corporate founded retreats plus the heterodox meetings, arguably like a lot of the EA stuff.

It's about, Hey, we want to get these high agency people together because when they talk and when they mix more, they build really cool things and. We, the organizers of the society or conference or retreat series or community like that and want to see more of that and [00:37:00] also personally benefit from it, but there isn't like some, there's no daddy warbucks.

There's no patron per se that runs those communities. In fact, when there is some kind of patron that does start to turn those communities into money grabbing places. Like Sam Bankman Freed did with the Effective Altruist community for a while. I think they degrade significantly because you attract entirely the wrong kind of person.

In fact, that was when you saw the EA community becoming very corrupt, where people were just Vying for attention and privilege to get funding for a nonprofit that basically just funded their salary and lifestyle for them to do research on AI, which basically just meant like pay me a huge salary and I'm going to dick around on the internet all day.

Oh, I'm so good. So I, I would, yeah, I think that's the important distinction here. And clearly Skull and Bones was more for like entitled people who wanted to have their solutions made for them rather than people who [00:38:00] were already building things would always build things and would just Be excited to meet other people who are building things and debate with them and share ideas

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I I think for me the important thing is as this system crumbles because it was never built to be efficient in the first place that For the first wave of defectors or the first few waves of defectors that we've had so far I think it's really important to accept them in um to the to the movement of like the vital society, the ones who are actually taking humanity forwards.

But I think for the later defectors, for the people who defect when it becomes like corporate okay to defect these people need to be sort of permanently frozen out. Because they are bad actors who will turn bad again if given the opportunity and means.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And that's why I agree with creating lists and stuff like that, what the Trump administration is doing.

And I think that other organizations you know, as we go through and we work on this stuff, I think having lists that organizations can share of anyone who's ever [00:39:00] engaged in this sort of activity is really important because we can't allow this to happen again. And, and if. A movement like this based on elitism and systemic racism ever grows again they need to know that they will be destroying their careers when the movement goes.

But I think a lot of these people sort of assume that no backlash was ever possible to the lifestyle that they were Living and, and we can only fight back by making sure that there is actually a punishment so that the next class, the next crop is like, Oh yeah, I see what you're peddling, but I'm not going to be about that.

Simone Collins: Even if there's only short term potential, I still think people are going to go for it. Unfortunately.

Malcolm Collins: Mm.

Simone Collins: Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: We saw this is like, BLM grift and everything like that. Hey, they still got those mansions out of it. I mean. That's their family.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that made it worth it for them.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you to decimum.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Speaker: Okay, so what did you want to [00:40:00] tell subscribers? Like, I like and subscribe to somebody's channel too, and I got so happy that I like them.

Do you think that they'll get happy if they like and subscribe to our channel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

In this thought-provoking episode, Simone and Malcolm tackle the contentious and controversial topic of gay conversion therapy. They delve into its history, methods, and the scientific data surrounding its effectiveness (or lack thereof). The discussion spans various types of therapies, from psychotherapeutic to medical and faith-based methods. The hosts confront the ideological biases and misinformation often found in debates about changing sexual orientation, while highlighting the ethical and practical implications of imposing such therapies on individuals. The episode also touches on broader societal issues such as community identity, the cultural significance of sex, and the impact of modern ideological conflicts on age-old practices.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be asking the age old question is. If somebody is gay, can you turn them straight by electrocuting them?

Speaker: Do you think you should turn gay? I don't think it works like that. Okay, well, Hot Topic's next on the list. Could I turn gay working there? You can't just magically turn gay. This isn't Degrassi. Why are you so against turning gay? Because if you think you turned gay, there's some weird Christian guy who thinks he can electrocute you into turning back.

Speaker 3: People think that?

Malcolm Collins: No, so hold on so actually I feel like for anyone who hasn't seen there's this show in the u. s The unbreakable kimmy schmidt everybody's on netflix, right? And it's about a girl who grows up in this cult with a guy who lied to her about everything and when she enters the world, she has to constantly find things and then be like Oh yeah, I need to check if this was a lie or not.

And this happened to me recently around conversion therapy. Okay. Just, you know, I think if you grow up in the broadly like progressive sphere the line [00:01:00] is conversion therapy, gay straight conversion therapy doesn't work. Yeah. And, you know, recently I found myself reflecting on this and I was like, oh yeah, but if it did work, they'd still say it doesn't work.

Like they have an ideological reason to need to believe this uh, due to the way that they were framing like gayness as an identity. And, what really hit me is when I asked an AI questions about this, it got really angry at me. I don't know if you noticed, but there's certain issues where I'm like, hey, can you just steel man this other perspective?

It could not bring itself. Perplexity could not bring itself to steel man the other perspective.

Simone Collins: And this is a really important thing for us to be talking about now specifically because As of our recording now this coming Monday, the Supreme Court is going to take up state bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ plus children based on a Colorado case.

So, this is actively something that is being discussed. Do you have

Malcolm Collins: a religious right to [00:02:00] electrocute your children? That is, I'm, I'm joking by the way. What we're going to go over is all of the different types of conversion therapy. The thing that really got me in the AI Answer is I don't know if you guys have ever asked an AI a question And it gives you parts of the answers that are just obvious and transparent lies.

Yeah like it gave me a list of things that it said do nothing to change an individual's, you know Sexual expression and one of those things was castration and I was like brother. I'm not like brother in christ I'm, not saying that we should be castrating gay people, but it obviously changes their sexual expression.

Yeah And and Another thing that I just know because I've done a lot of research on like LGBT stuff is it will say, you know, you cannot change an individual's sexual orientation. And yet anyone who's familiar with like trans people just knows that wrong. About 43 percent of trans people report changes in their sexual orientation.

When they go through hormone therapy. Yeah, it was only about 13 percent experiencing a complete change, but 13 percent do [00:03:00] experience a complete change. Exactly what gay conversion is supposed to achieve. Now, again I don't think that many conservatives are like that, that doesn't really solve the problem for most conservatives but it does show that there is a potential mechanism of action to achieve this.

And in addition to that, you have the case of it would say that like certain therapies didn't work. But then I'd ask, well, are these therapies used in other areas? And he was like, oh yeah, they're also used in like phobias and alcohol addiction. And I was like, do they work there? It turns out they don't mostly so a lot of this stuff that it was actually right But it was much more nuanced in how it said they don't in those instances It was interesting debate, but I will note here that you can be like, but what about all the studies that say?

It didn't work One of the things that was a real red flag for me because well there used to be a popularly cited study that said that It didn't That it worked. But the, even, even the academic who wrote it had it retracted because it might cause harm. Oh. And then I was like, [00:04:00] oh. So there were evidence out there and people could have lost their jobs for publishing that, which shows why you're getting such bias in what's being published.

There is one study that's out there right now out of like the 36 studies on this that shows Okay. could plausibly work. This one was a two silent study, retrospective self reports of changes in homosexual orientation, a consumer survey of conversion therapy clients. What I will note as we go over all the data and all this stuff here, if you're like, what's the actual answer to this?

There does not appear to be a persistent and reliable way. IE the urban monoculture was Kind of right on this to induce a new arousal pattern in an individual. If I am not aroused by women nothing that happens at gay conversion camp is going to make me aroused by women. If I am not aroused by men, nothing that happens at a gay conversion camp will make me aroused by men.

Doesn't mean nothing can. You [00:05:00] could, like, try to do a gender reassignment with hormones, but I think if you're a conservative Christian and you have a problem with same sex attraction that is not the pathway that you are interested in taking. You're right. And it doesn't even work all the time. It works like 13 percent of the time and 50 percent of the time.

Basically, given that 50%, you know, have new arousal patterns afterwards. Gender reassignment and like hormone therapy is like re rolling your character. In terms of what arouses you. Yeah. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: actually the, the one we've had, I think, different maybe podcasts about this, where we talk about how if you're dealing with severe depression completely changing your identity by also changing your gender and your hormonal profile could successfully kickstart you out of it.

And it's not the, the fact that you had gender dysmorphia per se that changed it. It's the fact that your entire hormonal profile and identity and clothing changed. Changing

Malcolm Collins: the way that you see yourself and relate to other people is one of the easiest ways to change sort of persistent psychological [00:06:00] issues.

So, like we're, we're trying to be as, as sort of fair minded on this topic as, as we can be, as we go into the data. However, what is also true and where the left is just lying about this is, is while you can induce a new arousal pattern. There are plenty of ways to suppress an individual's libido and arousal patterns.

And we did another video, something like my husband's not gay or, or like, I would be okay if you, I don't remember what it was, something like that. Where we basically say that like, I'm okay with same sex attracted individuals deciding that they want to be in cross sex relationships. I don't think that like, that's something that We as a society need to freak out about or police them on.

And I can understand why an individual might want that for me, one of the most powerful things I ever read in regards to that was from an Amish kid on rumspringa, which is, you know, when they leave their family. And go live like in the secular world, for a year Uh when they when they go through like a bit [00:07:00] after puberty basically before they decide to come back in the community And decide to be an amish and he was saying in it he having lived in the secular world now now recognized I am a same sex attracted or gay individual, but I am still going to go back to live in the amish world with The point he was making was even though, like, I understand I can fulfill certain things more easily by continuing to live in the secular world there was just a greater sense of purpose of mental well being of sort of a life that he really wanted in the future.

If he went back to the Amish world and he saw the, the, Having to have sex and have a wife who he wasn't attracted to part of that is being Marginally more challenging, but not worth giving up everything else that came was an Amish life And in the video game that we're doing now talking about like weird woke themes because you know You don't say that the the LLM game it's coming along great really [00:08:00] excited takes place in a post apocalyptic world post fertility collapse world and one of the early sort of conflicts is is I tried to do an inversion of the typical thing here, which is a young kid wants to go live with the Mormons, and he is same sex attracted, and he knows that he will have to live a different type of lifestyle, and his mom doesn't want him to go live with the Mormons, being like, but you're same sex attracted like you should stay, live with us, live this lifestyle and I thought it was a, a, a fun inversion of this particular debate that you see so frequently, and interacting with it.

You know, for me, I like with all the characters I'm creating, creating interesting interactions and debates that cause the player to look at issues from a different angle.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But okay, so I'm going to go into this. Anything you wanted to say, Simone?

Simone Collins: Just to give a little bit of context to why I think you find it often practical that people who are still same sex [00:09:00] attracted get into heterosexual relationships is that it can be, if you, if you care more about having a family, if you care more about, Being able to maintain a certain community.

It's just a no brainer. And, and I think the fact that we live in an age where people put sex lives above family and community is pretty crazy that like it is, it is your extracurricular, curricular sex life is a more important than that is.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: think about what is meant by this. I mean, if you talk about something like the Amish or like a conservative Mormon community or conservative, like Catholic community.

These community identities mean a lot to the people who are part of them. Yeah. And I think that we, in our society, trivialize them as just, you know, seeing them as the oppressive thing that they can be framed as, instead of the rever I mean You know, for example, if I'm a conservative Catholic and I grew up as a conservative Catholic, even though [00:10:00] I'm same sex attracted, you know, I might believe that, like, you know, the Catholic God exists and everything said in like Catholic Catholic theology is real.

And yet we treat it like it's a mistake to make that choice. Or the Amish person is like, well, I mean, you know, I'm choosing between this and. Not necessarily heaven, but the wholesome life I could otherwise live with this community and community support.

Simone Collins: Yeah, a little more context beyond that, too.

Alyssa Grenfell talks about this, actually. Many people who grow up in these more conservative religious communities, where people, for example, know that they're gay, but still marry. Someone of the opposite sex. They sort of grow up thinking that sex is not going to be pleasurable for them at all.

Like Alyssa Grenville talks in a detail about how her OBGYN at BYU when she was about to get married was like, well, you know, sex is painful for many women. And she actually gave her this. Like dilator to use, [00:11:00] like before she had sex for the first time to try to make, like, I think maybe to break her hymen, like to make it less painful.

Like it's just not framed. Like they're not given, they're not expecting at any point in their lives, sex to be amazing, which is of course, it's very different from what the that other conservative influencer, the,

Malcolm Collins: Wow. It was these two Mormon women. No, no, no. They're

Simone Collins: not Mormon. They're not. Those aren't Mormon.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, no, they were part of some conservative

Simone Collins: But yeah, oh my gosh, so, while they grew up certainly expecting sex to be amazing, not all conservative religious groups do. Girl defined.

Malcolm Collins: Girl

Simone Collins: defined. Our

Malcolm Collins: episode, how girl defined ruined an entire generation of women, but I actually think that this is really bad No,

Simone Collins: no, but my point is, many additional communities, including many subsets of the LDS church, apparently, Basically never expect sex to be amazing.

And many just never have a satisfying sex life and never thought that was important. And yet they still end up having tons of kids. So how can it be a surprise to someone of like, Oh, well, I'm not attracted to [00:12:00] this person, but we're going to have sex anyway. Like just, you know, whether it's. Being sexually oriented toward a specific sex or just expecting sex to be pleasurable.

Like if you're not even expecting sex to be pleasurable, then it doesn't really matter. I actually think

Malcolm Collins: it's more culturally healthy. And that's why we did the video on Girl Defined is that Girl Defined maintain the idea of chastity until marriage and then you would get married and then sex would be the most amazing thing because sex is better in marriage.

And I'm like, that's not something you should ever be teaching someone is like you sex. It's better because you wait to have it in marriage. It's like, As somebody who's had a lot of sex, that's like objectively not true. Like, Yeah. Sick burn, Malcolm. No, I'm not saying that's it. What I'm saying is as a guy, for example, if you're sleeping with a lot of people, like the, the pleasure that you get from that sex is going to be I, I would suppose easier to access.

Just keep digging.

Speaker 8: Hey everybody, today we're going to teach you [00:13:00] how to dig yourself a hole.

To begin with, you need yourself a pair of very durable work boots. Steel toed, preferably.

Malcolm Collins: No, just because it's multiple people, just because it's multiple people. Well, anyway,

Simone Collins: I think the important note though, is, is, is that yes. The, the girl defined message that they grew up with was very toxic, but it messed up their head. Cause they get into marriage and then it's not that great.

I'm saying it was really toxic. And I'm saying one thing that I love, Alyssa Grenfell, she is a, an ex Mormon YouTuber and TikToker. She wrote a book about leaving the Mormon church where I really. Disagree with a lot of her episodes like I just watched a really long episode. She did on Mormon funerals Where she's like, oh, isn't it horrible that they restrict this and they restrict that like you're not supposed to have a Mormon funeral That lasts more than like the church service shouldn't be more than an hour and I'm like, yes.

Thank you They're like, you know just for considering the people there. Yeah, like let's just keep you know, keep it going. Don't get too emotional Like, think on the positive things, you'll be reunited in the afterlife, all this, right? And she's like, can you believe they're not letting people grieve?

They're making it too fast. And I'm [00:14:00] like, nope, that's good. They're, they're not letting people Are we, are we making that a technical

Malcolm Collins: puritan thing? Funerals can't last over an hour.

Simone Collins: Just no funerals.

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: we should, we should build, we should build death rituals because it's really important to have death. My point though is that Alyssa Grenfell points to the fact that, oh, can you believe that they are teaching young women that sex isn't going to be enjoyable?

And can you believe that they restrict funerals in this way? And can you believe they do this and that without realizing this is a Chesterton's fence issue? Like there is a reason why. Those things actually have benefits for the culture at large, even though they appear to cause, in many cases, a lack of hedonic pleasure in the immediate term.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what you're pointing out here, and I think that this is really valuable, is a lot of people hated how sex negative their religious traditions were. negative, like had a negative view of sex and sexuality and sexual indulgence. And they thought that by ripping out that sex negativity and replacing it with sex positivity, but staying [00:15:00] Christian, saying whatever, they were creating a, like a better form of like Protestantism.

And you saw a lot of churches do this and thinking they were being so hip. But in reality, there's a reason for the sex negativity that actually leads to more. Hedonic, you could almost argue, pleasure for the average person within that community because they're making better choices. And for example, choosing their partner based on arousal choosing their partner based on great aside here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I just want to, like, I just think that the best religions do set expectations low. And frankly, if you find a partner with whom you have a lot of good sexual chemistry, it's gonna happen. Just consider Queen Victoria, right? Like, the most, like, straight laced, like, everything Albert, and yet, I mean, they have nine kids.

And they, she was into him. She was very into him. Although the first meeting, it was all about the parent. Anyway, keep going. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'd also point out for people one, keep in mind that sexuality on average works very different in men and women. So the idea of saying to a woman telling a guy you can.

You know, [00:16:00] change what arouses you or you know, what you're going to be interested in is, is quite a different thing. Like, and I think we see this a lot of the people who run a lot of these like sexual reassignment clinics are women may not understand how much more set in stone. Male arousal patterns are than female arousal patterns which I think are much more flexible around stuff like, well, we know from the data that they're more flexible around stuff like this.

And I'm saying this just to start, like, if you're watching this and you're a straight man, like what could somebody do to get you turn, like to sleep with a guy? Like seriously, like for me, it would be. It would be really, really hard to get me to become aroused by a guy. Like, I just don't think it could easily happen.

It, like, not if you electrocuted me, not if you electrocuted me every time I didn't get turned on by a guy. Not if you had me look at pictures of naked men every day for You [00:17:00] know, and these are

Simone Collins: 100 percent all things that have been done in gay conversion therapy. Yeah, and like look at these sexy woman pictures.

Are you not convinced now? It's just done by people who are so freaking straight. They're like, oh, I can't control myself Yeah, yeah, i'll not say no to this one. Oh my god

Malcolm Collins: I'd actually think that that would get me more grossed out by women. 100%. Yeah, because then

Simone Collins: you're going to be like, why? It's like being exposed to a smell and you're like, listen, I'm just not into that smell.

And they're like, no, smell it again, inhale deeper. And then you suddenly you're like, I think I'm going to throw up. Like this

Malcolm Collins: is. I'm being conditioned to hate. Like I have a visceral negative reaction to this smell.

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah. They just make you gayer. You're just getting gayer. Another

Malcolm Collins: thing that's important for people to remember is if you go to our book, The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we lay out a really long argument that disgust is the same emotion as arousal.

It's just operating with a negative modifier. Not gonna go into long argument here for this, but what it means is that when somebody has inverted sexual patterns like, [00:18:00] say, a gay man, for example they are much They're more likely to have a disgust response to naked female bodies. So it's important to keep in mind that they might actually have an active aversion to sleeping with a woman.

Which is different than just not being aroused, and that can make things significantly harder. But that can be mollified through many of the things that mollify arousal the, which we'll get into in a bit. Okay, so let's start here. What, what goes on at these, right? You know? Is it But I'm a Cheerleader for people?

I used to love that show. It was my favorite movie growing up. It's such a good movie. It's about a girl who gets sent to one of these. Very funny if you haven't seen it. I actually suggest it. It's like an indie film. Anyway, psychotherapeutic methods. So talk therapy is common here. This is the most common form.

It includes cognitive behavioral and interpersonal therapies. Some practitioners use hypnosis to alter thought patterns related to same sex attraction as well. Just like picturing

Simone Collins: someone [00:19:00] sleeping on a couch and the therapist being like, you are not gay. I hypnotized your son to be into chicks.

Boobs are cool.

Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. No. So, So I was like, okay, so what does this mean exactly, right? So, identify and changing thought patterns. Therapists may try to help individuals recognize and alter their thought patterns around same sex attraction, often by reframing these attractions as unhealthy or undesirable. This seems like a giant mistake to do.

For people who aren't aware, if you try to get somebody to not think about something, or frame a certain Thought is sinful. You get these patterns where people just like will like compulsively think that thing. And they'll think it much more and they'll feel like negative thoughts when they're thinking about it.

Like teachings around sinful thoughts are likely like really deleterious. If this is something that you want to handle, it's much better to be like, okay, I understand this as part of who you are. Maybe even it makes sense to continue to masturbate to this stuff. But I wouldn't, like, [00:20:00] what? Like, can you to, to try to avoid and see these thoughts as sinful?

This doesn't mean that you can't change people to change how they're thinking about their environment. So by this, what I mean is you could, for example, work with somebody to See an arousing thing is, is not necessarily a mandate for action, as it is seen within some parts of progressive culture, you know, just because this arouses you doesn't mean you need to do X or you don't need to think about this as controlling your identity.

That could be really helpful in these sorts of therapy, but not, I think, probably everything they're doing. Role playing and behavior modification. Some therapists use role playing to teach stereotypical masculine or feminine behavior. Well, they

Simone Collins: do this, but I'm a cheerleader. The movie you're referencing about a lesbian girl who was sent to one of these conversion camps.

And I think they all, like, the girls have to wear pink and the boys all have to wear blue. And they have to, like,

Malcolm Collins: do, like, Mopping and like vacuuming. Yeah. You do like play fighting and there's a great scene where in the play fighting ring. There's like a cutout of one soldier on his knees and the other has a gun to his head.

But it's like [00:21:00] stereotype like boy blue.

Speaker 5: Backwards. And

Speaker 7: you slip it in, and out. Who wants to go down with me? Your thoughts, we'll

Malcolm Collins: This almost certainly does nothing. If anything, I'm quite. It's funny. So. It's funny, but it almost certainly I, I'd say gets individuals more into their gender into their existing like gay or lesbian identity because you abstract these gender roles into something that feels unnatural for the individual.

And you say, this is what a natural gender role is, but because they're not enjoying it and it's not, you know, natural in that context, I mean, you've made it an artificial thing in this context. They then think, oh, this isn't for me, like, this, I am not straight or I would be [00:22:00] liking the play fighting or the vacuuming or the other stereotypical women roles.

Exploring childhood experiences. Practitioners might explore an individual's childhood experiences, suggesting that same sex attraction is a result of past trauma or family dynamics. One, it's not. Like there's just, this is an area where like, I'm not worried about the data. Like it is not psychotherapy

Simone Collins: nonsense.

What did your mother do to you?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because the stuff, well, and I, I think generally almost any form of psychotherapy or, or, or, or psychological talk to help somebody. This used to be a field that I worked in people. I'm not like out of nowhere. I actually had memorized the entire DSM at one point.

I'm that much of a nerd about this stuff. If for people who know the DSM is like this thick, it's like an insane thing to have memorized it, but I want it to be cool that that was what I thought the cool kids did. That's how much of a nerd I was. But anyway the, the, if somebody's doing like a, what happened to you in your childhood that caused something that person is [00:23:00] not a therapist, that is a cult.

That is not a real thing. The reason why people do that is to help break your connection with your support network, which is your parent and birth culture. And then that can be used to build dependency on an individual. This is why, if you go to something like a Scientologist meeting, if you, I've gone to them before, they'll be like, okay, what, what, like, that's the first thing they'll ask you.

So why therapists used to do this before they realized how bad it was and why it's re emerged within some of the hokier parts of therapy. And some people like freak out on us on it because they've read books by individuals, like say Erica Commissar who's like, oh, all this stuff, relation, children to their parents.

And if you actually look at, like, she's a great person, right? She's a fine person. But her beliefs around like the psychological schools that she finds compelling are like straight up Freudian. It's like she's like, I'm influenced by Freudian psychology. This is not this is [00:24:00] a, I'm not going to say it's like evil or wrong or anything like that, but it is a theological position, I guess I'd say.

It's not bound by like a realistic mechanism.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but you would argue, even if we're calling it a cult or a culture, that it doesn't produce Great outcomes. So

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't, it's not, it's not based on what I would call like a, there's, there's different ways that you can rate relate to the mind and something like this.

And I would put hers in, like, look, if somebody's doing like Kabbalistic therapy or something like that, I'd be like. Okay, but that's like a religious therapy like you understand most people be like, yeah, I understand that this belief that all of this stuff that happens when you're super young is super important to your adult life It's just not that important.

Unless it's like really big like you can like traumatize a kid for sure like yeah Can you traumatize them into being gay? Probably not, unless you've done some like really serious stuff. Well, you could, you could give them [00:25:00]

Simone Collins: hormones. Fear

Malcolm Collins: of sleeping with the opposite gender. You could give them

Simone Collins: hormones and mess them up that way.

Oh, you could do

Malcolm Collins: that, yeah.

Simone Collins: And parents too, so.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, parents too, but the, the which, which would change gender if primary attraction, you're right about that. Could, which could. Could. But and again here I'm not, thing that nothing that happens to you in your childhood matters. It can matter, but it needs to be pretty extreme to matter.

It's not like general, like how much was my mom home has a huge difference. Your mom is like broadly non abusive and you have somebody caring with you for you. The, the difference is not that big. As we can see, when kids grow up in single father households, they don't do that much differently than parents who grow up in two parents households.

Which is usually because if they're with a father, that's the more responsible person. And so from that, we know a lot of the research on people who grow up in single parent households or, or other sorts of disruptive households. The, the, what There are confounding

Simone Collins: issues there. Basically, in a, in the United States, if a father is getting the kids, he is so exceptionally better than [00:26:00] the mother, than it Did throw things off.

So what it shows

Malcolm Collins: is if you get a good pair, it's like the same way that the studies that show that like when, when gay people raise kids, the kids turn out better often than when straight people raise them. And that's mostly an effect of just how hard it is to get kids as a gay couple. That doesn't necessarily indicate but, but, by this, what I mean is you have to go through like tons and tons of screening to get kids with a gay couple, at least when a lot of the studies were done. I don't know if it's still the case, but I think it is. I mean, my understanding is adoption is astronomically difficult right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I imagine it's still the case.

Okay, so then aversion therapy. This involves associating same sex attractions. It was unpleasant stimuli such as shocks, nausea, or physical discomfort to create negative associations. It's like remembering, but I'm a cheerleader when they shock her every time. Yeah. Does this work now? Of course, you know, the AI at first was like, well, obviously this, you can't fix sexuality, but then I'm Is aversion therapy used in any other place in psychology these days?

Like, because like, obviously it won't say that it works for sexuality, but does it work for anything else? And it's like, well, it's used in addiction treatment. It's like, okay, so what? It is? Oh, [00:27:00]

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: is. Aversion therapy can lead to short term reduction in substance use, but long term efficacy is debated.

Basically it doesn't have long term efficacy. Oh, okay. So it doesn't work. A phobias. Again it's been shown to have some short term utility, but does not appear to have long term utility. Same with anxiety behaviors. So it's used in self harm behaviors. Aversion therapy has been used to reduce self harming behaviors, such as cutting, by associating these players with unpleasant stimuli.

But I don't get, isn't like cutting the unpleasant stimuli. You're just giving someone like an additional unpleasant stimuli. Like you just made

Simone Collins: cutting plus congratulations. Upgrade plus new mode activated. Cutting a premium premium version. Yeah. Are we going to talk about what does work not for changing orientation, but for at least reducing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, so they, they then mentioned medical methods. So hormone and steroidal therapies have been attempted. These are, it said, these are sometimes used under the belief that [00:28:00] hormonal imbalances contribute to sexual orientation or gender identity. I love it. It says this as if this is not true, like your hormones absolutely determine your, you know, sexual identity.

That's why this is like

Simone Collins: extremely well attested, just based on the way that women's arousal patterns. Interests in different types of male dynamics change throughout their cycle, like even within one person.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is, is there don't appear to be, like, good studies on this. So, like, if I was somebody who, like, personally, absolutely wanted to attempt to change my arousal patterns, I would probably do some hormonal experimentation.

But it's just not well studied. Like we know from trans individuals, plausibly it can change how erosive patterns activate, but I'd imagine you really need to do something that extreme to get a change in patterns. And that like, if I'm a gay man and I just take more testosterone or something, I'm just going to be even more turned on by men.

That would be my thought as the main. outcome of that. With [00:29:00] women, there might be more stuff that you can do in regards to this, but basically the answer here is not enough data to know.

Chemical castration. In some extreme cases, this involves using drugs to suppress sexual desire. And I thought it was so funny when I was thinking through, I was like, Oh, it's so wild.

That when I was young the fear is that, you know, conservatives would come and, and take away like the, the young, like tomboy y lesbian girl and chemically castrate them. And now those same drugs are being given to that same population by far lefties under the guise of puberty blockers and, and trans stuff.

So, that is wild. It does change sex I mean, I don't think anyone should be doing this to But like, it does, you know, work in that it does lower arousal patterns, I suppose. And then that got me thinking. I was like, okay, well, suppose I just want to, like, lower my arousal patterns in general, so I'm not as tempted, right?

I was like, what, what can do that, right? Because obviously things can do that. Like, every [00:30:00] antidepressant says, like, I don't lower your arousal patterns. SSRIs do,

So anti androgens can medications like Kipro, Actinor, and Endicor can reduce testosterone levels and lower sex drive. They're sometimes used in cases of hypersexuality and treatment of sex offenders, so they probably work on a regular person.

Or you can just be unhealthy dietary adjustments. So for example soy products you could become a level four boy. High intake may lower testosterone levels. Greasy foods will affect sperm production and libido. Refined carbohydrates and excess alcohol consumption all may help now I don't know because alcohol consumption would lower Your ability to suppress the libido.

So it might lower libido, but also lower your ability to contain whatever was there Exercise that'll also help lower your libido.

Simone Collins: Really? That's interesting. And I heard that before. Oh

Malcolm Collins: no, but if you exercise too much apparently it can lower libido. Like when you did when you were younger and you ended up losing it.

Yeah, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: Oh, cause your body thinks you're like migrating and starving.

Malcolm Collins: Before I go to the last one, I would [00:31:00] argue like if I wanted to do this, right? Naltrexone is an absolute wonder drug.

Simone Collins: I was just thinking that. But it would just make sex not fun. It wouldn't make you interested in what it would make it

Malcolm Collins: marginally less fun.

So I take enough naltrexone so that I'm only a little addicted to alcohol. I didn't want to give up my alcohol addiction entirely. This is not the way you're supposed to use it. But it actually has like a bunch of other like positive side effects. If you take naltrexone

Simone Collins: yeah, like this is not super well documented, but it may have made him.

Significantly more immune to COVID. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because I never got COVID and I always wondered why and I was reading a study and it was like, Oh, low dose naltrexone appears to create immunity to COVID in some people. I was like, that's crazy. But it has like a bunch of other benefits because you know, now I, you know, I actually stopped checking Facebook.

Like entirely?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it's

Malcolm Collins: also because

Simone Collins: Facebook

Malcolm Collins: got boring. It makes you less addicted to social media, it affects those pathways it can be useful for gambling, it can be useful for [00:32:00] anything that's using the opioid pathway to sort of force behavior. Yeah, food, sex,

Simone Collins: exercise, gambling, anything but smoking, pretty

Malcolm Collins: much, right?

But yeah, but what's important is that you take it and then you do the thing. So you'd have to like take it and masturbate to gay porn and then not be interested in masturbating to gay porn as much within a few weeks of doing that. Yeah. You can take it at low doses. If you're like, I still want to enjoy this.

I just don't want to enjoy it so much that it's distracting or causes unhealthy behavior. Yeah. Which is, I wanted a little unhealthy behavior with alcohol. I was like, I don't actually want to be a teetotaler, but like. I also don't want to die. And I found a happy medium. I test myself all the time now and I'm not having any issues.

I even got my liver scanned and it's totally down to a normal size here. It looks like a normal liver. And so, I, which it wasn't for a while. I actually had major problems at one point, which is when I, when I decided I needed to look at this seriously and do something about this. But I mean, how is that decision particularly different?

Like I. [00:33:00] Was prone to addiction to alcohol or prone to like really wanting alcohol because of my genetics, right? A person might be prone to same sex attraction because of something that they can't control. I didn't control that I had a preference for alcohol. And yet I am able to say, and therefore, despite that, despite me not choosing this desire, I am choosing to suppress this desire or work to engage with this desire in a fashion that doesn't interfere with other things I want from life like having a

Simone Collins: family

Malcolm Collins: and everything like that.

That's not considered weird but if I do that for, like, eating too much with, like, the Haze movement, then it's considered weird. I've always thought, Haze is an even better example of this, like, I control my alcohol, or I work to do that, and they're, they don't work to control their food, they're like, eating too much.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, but, but what,

Simone Collins: Ozempic. It, Ozempic is, is the naltrexone of food. People are totally into that. [00:34:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah so, you could use naltrexone to, to work on this, what you

Simone Collins: pointed out in the pragmatist guide to sexuality was you could also just overdose on it. You can

Malcolm Collins: also overdose, that should work.

So you do appear to be able to reduce sexual desire of specific varieties by overindulging in them. Yeah, like the

Simone Collins: best gay conversion camps would be like quarterly gay orgies.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I sometimes wonder if those didn't happen historically. Yeah, you just got

Simone Collins: it out of your system. And I mean, I listen, I mean, if I were so actually responsible player in the space and I actually wanted to help these poor Christian young men and maybe women just like get over it and like go back to the real world and feel normal.

This would be the right thing to do. It wouldn't, the families wouldn't want to know about it, but if you want to like really reduce. Their desire,

Malcolm Collins: this would be the right thing to do. Well, I mean, that might actually be something that's happening. So, [00:35:00] you know, I can't talk about my own experience. Again, not slept with a guy at something like the Bohemian Grove.

But it has been reported that I've gone in, in various things. I can say, like, at least I've gone. I can't say any more about the extent of my connection to that. But I can talk about somebody who did go on the record about their experiences there which was Richard Nixon, and he called it the gayest f*****g place on earth.

He actually used a

Simone Collins: worse, a worse word than that, but you can imagine. Oh yes, he didn't

Malcolm Collins: use the f word. And so it's an all male retreat for like elite conservative men. And could it have been if a Richard Nixon's understanding of it was accurate, could it have been a place where a lot of gay people went and slept together?

Obviously that wouldn't be everyone there. You have a lot of other reasons to go to a retreat without women. But when I look at throughout history, the all male secret societies. That, that elite conservatives went to and knowing quotes like Richard Nixon talking about one of the [00:36:00] things that people who already had this arousal pattern at these specific events may have overindulged in that, that they may have served some utility for that.

And that's absolutely fascinating. It's a fun theory.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Does that make them more satanic? Who knows?

Simone Collins: Doesn't it make them more progressive and normal? I, yeah, who knows? What I can tell is somebody

Malcolm Collins: who's like gone to all the actual Secret Society stuff like the stuff that people have on their records is like so much tamer than anyone thinks it is.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also like their insinuations of what could be worse are so off. They're so off.

Malcolm Collins: They're so off about like where the, the bad decisions are made behind closed doors and where the, the, Yeah, and what

Simone Collins: the really crazy outlandish stuff is. It's not what you think it is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and a lot of these organizations have been taken over by wokes.

Like Skull and Bones was totally taken over by wokes. We should probably do an episode on that one day. You know. I guess a lot of people wouldn't have a lot of connections in there, but yeah, skull and [00:37:00] bones and it's, it's even in like the media now, like the media has, I'm not releasing private information here.

I don't want to get in trouble. That's why I'm just like being like, but yeah, skull and bones totally taken over by the wokes. And I can say that I think the, the, the, their, The culture war has touched all of these types of locations, and typically the older a place is the easier and more bureaucratic it is, the easier it was for woke individuals to sort of get their teeth into it, and then basically prevent it from serving anything close to its historic function.

Which is why we run our own secret societies basically now, when we go to cities and stuff like that, and we invite people who are, like, influential in that city. And I'll note here that these are not like fan meetings. Sometimes fans have reached out and been like, I've heard you're meeting with people.

It's like, yes, because all of these people have jobs. It's not like for anyone who watches our podcast. But anyway thoughts before I go into the final stuff here, the faith based methods.

Simone Collins: No, proceed. Oh, you mean we're going to talk about faith based methods now?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I was just going to say the faith based methods are prayer and spiritual counseling.

These [00:38:00] methods often rely on religious beliefs that view same sex attraction as sinful or abnormal. They may include anti gay slurs and prayers. You know, I don't think that this is going to be very effective. If anything, I think it's just going to focus the person's attention on these issues. And then exorcisms, in some cases exorcisms.

Oh,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Which that actually could work weirdly. I'm going to say, because an exorcism could be similar to like,

Simone Collins: Going trans, like really just being like, I've been, I'm new, I'm a different person. It's gone. They

Malcolm Collins: could see themselves as a new person enough that it might change their arousal patterns.

I don't, like, I wouldn't say it. It

Simone Collins: could help them contextualize the residual arousal patterns that they feel. As remnants of demonic possession and therefore not act on it and in general not lean into them because I think there's also like, well, we don't have a lot of control over our sex drives and.

I do think that you can lean into something and you can lean out of something. [00:39:00] You can make it a bigger thing, or you can choose to play it down, and that might encourage playing it down.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and so, broadly speaking I think that the best thing to do, like, if you actually, if this was a big problem for you and conflicted, with your faith and the way you wanted to live your life.

Something like naltrexone I think would be the safest way to address this. I think a, well, especially if

Simone Collins: you're trying to reduce what you see to be problematic behavior that you don't want to have anymore, but it's not going to make you want to do something that you,

Malcolm Collins: it's only if you want to get rid of the behavior, right?

You want to reduce these impulses, indulge in them while on naltrexone. Yes. But I think the

Simone Collins: bigger thing is. You can't make yourself want something that you don't want, but wish you wanted.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and i'd point out here now i'm going to say something crazy i'd point out here if you want to live a hedonistic life, there are few things you can be born that are better than a gay man.

Like, I was actually bemoaning this with Simone. I was like, [00:40:00] I if I was a gay guy, I, it would be like being able to one, have an easy time, like with like an orgy where like everyone at the orgy is a woman, first of all, because you're like, you're aroused by everyone at the orgy. The thing that grosses me out the most about like the concept of an orgy is like half the people that are going to be guys, like, I don't want to see naked guys.

I receive a strong disgust response, but if I was a guy I'd be like an orgy full of women. And dating way easier, you know, because you're, you're reaching out to people who aren't a******s who have, I'm not saying all women are a******s, but I'm saying that being the gatekeepers within sexual marketplaces causes women to relate to men in a way that can be derisive.

Like if they don't, I mean, women really. come off as quite cruel to men within sexual marketplaces because they get spoiled. Seeing like even normal overtures as creepy or whatever wouldn't have to deal with that as much if I wasn't being creepy as a gay man. Because you know, they would have a [00:41:00] better understanding of me.

Another one you like would be dealing with people who are on average, more attractive to the general population. I don't know if you like Have many gay male normal friends, but like a gay men, put a lot more effort into how they look Yeah, on average they take way better care of themselves.

Yes. Yeah and And I was also just thinking like even something like a like a singles cruise Like I was on a gay man on a singles cruise Like that's something where you can actually like sleep around with women. You can't do that because like women actually want something out of this. Like there isn't like this large pool of women who just wants to sleep around all the time, but all of these men who I was attracted to would also have the male sexual profile of preferring variety.

And. Now, all of this is, is, is maybe on the net bad for gay people because it's more temptation. But I'm just saying, if you're hidden as a maxing you're actually in a preferable position to be born gay. In this age,

Simone Collins: yeah. In

Malcolm Collins: this age, well, with this prep and everything like that, which is like an [00:42:00] AIDS drug and stuff.

It, but I'll never experience that. A party, like a multi-day, day like fire I island party. There is like no straight thing. That's the equivalent to that? No, except like maybe a furry party, but that's mostly gay anyway. No, you like,

Simone Collins: no, there's, there's just always gonna be drawbacks there. Yeah. Unless you're like some historical sultan with a menagerie of women.

I guess there's, there's just no Did gay

Malcolm Collins: people, what did you say? Gay. Gay people get to have the sex lives of like historic sultans

Simone Collins: basically. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Basically.

Simone Collins: But it's a little more fun because I think, let's say that you're a sultan with your menagerie of women, like you don't get to feel like you've conquered, you don't get to feel like you've won someone over.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because they, they're just

Simone Collins: there because you have money and resources. So I think it's even better now.

Malcolm Collins: Then you murdered their husbands.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'm not, I'm not saying that, well, that might make it a little hotter, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. For some, it depends on what you're into.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it depends on what [00:43:00] you're into.

Yeah. But the, the, the point I'm making here is that, think it's cool to revisit these topics that we, for so long, we're not allowed to talk about or investigate or think critically about with a more open minded approach that is less reactive in the way that the progressives in the urban monoculture react to the environment.

Simone Collins: Well,

so then I think our takeaway from this is if the Supreme Court overturns state bans on gay conversion therapy. A bunch of like businesses are going to maybe start providing, providing it again, but it's not going to do anything. So you're just getting, it's, it's like being like, Oh yes, we now allow homeopathic therapy again.

And it's like, well, okay. I mean, some people are going to get make money and some people are going to have their money taken from them.

Malcolm Collins: It entrenches the issue because if you look at the types of practices that they're doing, for me, it would cause me to focus more on what's arousing me and help me not.

See myself [00:44:00] as, you know, what could make you think you're not straight more than simulating like a housewife's life with a stranger? I know, I know. A person being like, does this feel normal to you? Yeah, I think like

Simone Collins: if, let's say that we were in like some culture where it's just like super not okay to be gay, we'd just be like, well, like your life is not about pleasure or sex.

And whether you were gay or straight, we wouldn't want it to be. We don't want you to be in a straight relationship and straight and obsessed with sex because that is really not productive. It's almost a blessing that you're gay. So, don't worry about it. That's fine. You know, focus on the things that actually matter and you're okay.

That kind of thing, like, I guess, is what we would advise someone to say if they actually were really not okay with their kid being gay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I would, I would focus more on the kid. I think that like, my question here is, should a kid be forced? to have an opinion like that. No, it can't, shouldn't be forced to have an opinion like that.

But if they were brought up in a culture that they like and want to [00:45:00] stay in they should be allowed to pursue therapies and stuff that make it easier to stay in a culture that they want.

Simone Collins: So I don't know, like if our sons, if any of our sons say, listen, we're gay. My first thing is just like, make sure you make a lot of money because.

Having kids is going to cost you a ton more. If our daughters turn out to be lesbians, I'd be like, Congratulations, you can double up on kids immediately. This is amazing, you've hit the jackpot.

Malcolm Collins: But I would be about as orchi our kids going to something like this, as I would be our kids you know, being gender transitioned.

I'm going,

Simone Collins: they're going through gay conversion. Yeah, I do not think Yeah, no, no, it just makes things worse. You're absolutely right. It makes things worse.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that in reality, the vast majority, when I talk about like drugs and stuff like that, that lowered libido, the majority of the time I actually think these drugs should be implemented is not necessarily same sex attraction for young people, but just arousal patterns that the young person [00:46:00] finds problematic or deleterious with their daily life.

Yeah. Which some people have, they develop fetishes or they develop You know, it was one I saw somebody talking about on a show recently was they developed like an addiction to like sissy hypnoporn and like, I wouldn't like if I was aroused by that, I would probably take a chemical to suppress that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If you don't like it and it doesn't make you feel good about yourself, then let's let's. Let's take some naltrexone.

Malcolm Collins: I'd be like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: bet that there are a lot of gay men who are in, who have like a beard, who are in a relationship and they are the only ones in the world who actually know their arousal pathways, who really wish that they just felt them less.

And in this case, naltrexone would be. Amazing. Just make life

Malcolm Collins: less. So I think it's about being accepting of all lifestyles, both gay people who want to live as gay people, but also gay people who want to live within cultures that, that say that you should marry a woman and have kids.

Simone Collins: Because again, [00:47:00] whoever said that sex was more important than religion, culture, and family?

Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, literally. But that's

Simone Collins: insane! That's insane. I mean, even for someone who has a lot of sex, then the hours of the year that they spend having sex, not that many hours. Not that many. In the end.

Malcolm Collins: That's a weird thing to define identity around.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but just like, if we're talking pleasure hours though, like versus other things that could yield more pleasure hours, if that's all you're optimizing for, it just is such a dumb thing to make your life decisions

Malcolm Collins: around.

Doesn't make, there's no logic to it. I love you autistic woman autistic, mostly asexual woman who's just like, sex doesn't make logical sense.

Simone Collins: Give me the argument in favor of its utility. Right, Indy.

Malcolm Collins: Love you to death, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you so much, Malcolm. And you are very, very, very, very sexy. I'm, I'm gay [00:48:00] for you, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'm, I, I'm gay for women. Thank goodness. That's, that's wonderful. No, I think, I think you're attractive as well.

Simone Collins: Huh, yeah. You're just dealing with post marriage sex life, which Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it would reward me more if I was sleeping with lots of other women. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. We have that video.

I'm allowed to, but like, it seems like a waste of time. Remember

Simone Collins: the last time we were on a college campus or in a bunch of people wearing swimsuits, it was like kind of hard. Like there were enough fit guys around, but

Malcolm Collins: oh yeah, men are not as attractive as they used to be. When the

Simone Collins: economy is kind of rough right now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I was like,

Simone Collins: so yeah, good luck. I'm glad you went on your rumspringa sexually when you did, because I think before you, yeah, well, no, no, no. Like before women started letting go, I guess before the

Malcolm Collins: randomly accusing people of things. [00:49:00] And before all of these women have, but also like on the whole, I think

Simone Collins: college women were more attractive 15 years ago.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you are

Simone Collins: now.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry. I'm sorry guys. You've got the mooses, the mooses, the meeses. Mooses are majestic creatures. And many people would say that about these scooter roaming college campuses these days. They're

Simone Collins: just They're not even Scooter Beasts, they're like soft and unremarkable. Yeah, shapeless, like, yeah, like lumpy space princess.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, that is, that is, that is women on college campus these days, this lumpy space princess.

Speaker 11: I knew you liked me. No, I don't. I'm just stopping by because Just admit it, lover boy. You can't resist me. Well, if you want these lumps, you gotta put a ring on it. Where's my ring? I knew you liked me then.

That's why you're running. Get in touch with your feelings, [00:50:00] babe.

Simone Collins: Sweatpants, the rounded edges, yeah, there's just no more sharp edges left.

Malcolm Collins: You just want my lumps, I'll post that

Simone Collins: Alright, alright,

alright, alright.

I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: That was fun, I just love speaking with you so much.

I love

Malcolm Collins: speaking with you too.

Simone Collins: All right. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, this Limestone article is such a puff piece.

Simone Collins: What? The Guardian article? It's not about Limestone.

Malcolm Collins: It is largely about Limestone.

Simone Collins: Well, they hate us. So he, and they, share a common person they dislike. They're clearly trying to censor

Malcolm Collins: him as like the pronatalist you should listen to.

They don't say anything mean about him or take anything that he said out of context.

Simone Collins: Nope.

Malcolm Collins: Which shows that like they are To anyone who has, like, media literacy, they are trying to promote him while framing him as a reasonable alternative to us. But the problem is that everything he says in the piece is super Like nothing burger, [00:51:00] like watery and, and, you know, it's, it's not going to do well.

Like nobody's going to families

Simone Collins: need to be treated better. It, it is vague, but it is the guardian Malcolm. Don't worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, nobody sees it anymore. They don't even have a Twitter account anymore. Or an ex account.

Simone Collins: Oh, yes. Did

Malcolm Collins: they get the, you know, all their pieces were getting nerfed. Unless they just summarize them.

And so, you know, who sees their stuff anymore?

Simone Collins: Subscribers, people in. The UK, theoretically,

Malcolm Collins: theoretically.

Speaker 12: It's a shopping cart. A shopping cart?

That's a pretty full purse. What's going on with the airport? I just had to bring these back to the airport so, uh, but I got these from the [00:52:00] Predators. Yeah, it's a small car,

Oh my gosh, Titan. You have such a full purse. Nom, nom,

Speaker 14: nom, nom. Oh, the, the police are protecting the police, the, the police are making sure predators do not get in the airport.

Speaker 12: I think the predators of an airport are called terrorists.

Speaker 14: Terrorists.

Speaker 12: Yes.

Speaker 14: Stop interrupting my airport. You're out.

Speaker 12: Terrorizing. Stop terrorizing my airport.

Speaker 14: Yeah. Terrorizing. He's terrorizing the airport.

In this enlightening conversation, explore the ways conservative and traditional rural cultures, particularly Americana and Jewish cultures, resist the influence of urban monoculture. Malcolm and Simone delve into America's surprising fertility rates compared to other countries and discuss how cultural pride plays a crucial role. Discover how behaviors encouraged at home but restricted by schools create a distinction between family life and the outside world, and how this concept parallels the defensive nature of Orthodox Jewish communities. The discussion touches on a piece by Cat Girl Kulak, examining the comparisons between American conservatives and Jewish conservatives regarding cultural immunity and fertility rates. Learn about the potential causes behind Mormon fertility decline and the significance of embracing nonconformity within Americana culture in securing long-term cultural survival. The episode concludes with a lighthearted conversation about family life and the dynamics of raising kids to cherish their unique culture.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing how you can better protect your culture, especially if you have a conservative or religious culture or in any way distinct culture from the urban monoculture. And I wanted to do it within the context of why Is Americana culture so resistant to the urban monoculture?

And it really hit me today because it is more resistant than other cultures. Like America's fertility rates, like 1. 66 now, whereas even like developing countries like Columbia, I was on a McKinsey call and on that call, this is McKinsey's sake, it had a fertility rate of 1. 02. You know, I was talking with some Italian reporters recently, and they were like at 1.

2 something. And I was like, this is just terrible. And you see this all over the world. So why is Americana culture alongside Jewish culture so resistant? And I will be pointing out that they are resistant almost in [00:01:00] exactly opposite ways. Like they both built a resistance, but that, well, there is one area in which it's a lot.

It is both fundamentally based on a pride in being different from the urban monoculture.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But. For Jews, this pride is in being Jewish in Americana culture, this pride is in upsetting the urban monoculture, basically an upsetting anybody who tells you what to do or who to be. That is more of it. And I see it, you know, represented in things like truck nuts.

And where this was handed. No, it is like, what's more like Trump or like real red. Well, let me explain

Simone Collins: this because I hadn't, I didn't see them until my adulthood. Truck nuts for those who are uninitiated. Literally a pair of balls that people hang from the trailer hitch of their trucks. Proceed.

Malcolm Collins: And it hit me when I had a, a tea The principal from Octavian school was talking to [00:02:00] me. And he's always getting in trouble at school. Because he does things that he's not allowed to do, like make poop jokes, make fart jokes, make guns with his hand you know, and the school is just apoplectic about all of this.

But all of this stuff is very much Americana, you know, Appalachian culture, like that's the cultural region my family's from. I'm not going to shame my kid for doing this stuff, so I explain to him the same way a Jewish family might. This type of behavior is for home and out in the world, you can't do this type of behavior.

But what's really important about what I'm doing here is so many cultures, when they realize that they can't do something at school, when they can't do something out in the world, they make bans against it at home to make lives easier for their kids out in the world. But, They maintain bans at home that they expect to also carry out into the world, i.

e. maybe a ban on being slutty or a ban on same sex marriages or [00:03:00] something like that, right? Don't, don't,

Simone Collins: don't. It's all about sacrifice. Don't, don't,

Malcolm Collins: don't. Because they're okay with adding don'ts, but they're not okay with taking away maintaining permissions that are unique to their culture.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

So they're inadvertently

Malcolm Collins: taking away amenities. Yeah, they're inadvertently taking away amenities. So my kids, because of this, they're learning a number of very important things. They're learning, one, that the outside world is different from the Collins family. There are things and behaviors allowed in the Collins family that aren't allowed in the outside world.

But two, they're immediately having, with the very first ways where they see the outside world as different than our family's culture, see it as more restrictive. More authoritarian and more controlling so they understand when they abandon My family's culture or like cultural groups that are adjacent to my family They [00:04:00] lose freedoms Rather than gain freedoms

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: this is core to the way americana culture has Fared so well against the urban monoculture is it highlights throughout it the additional freedoms you have By being a part of that culture that they do not have.

And here I wanted to read a piece that I thought really did a good job of explaining this. And better explaining why Mormonism is in a state of collapse. Doesn't have this feature. Whereas the Americana culture is doing so well. And it aligns with a really great study that we'll be going over later that was done by one of our fans.

That showed that being a Trump voter. Boosts fertility rates as much as being a mormon in utah. So if you are a non voter in utah You will have a slightly higher fertility rate than a non trump voting mormon and mormons are Increasingly non trump voting so we'll go over that in a [00:05:00] different video. It's so interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah

I I would put it So there, there's this relationship researching slash coaching group called the Gottman Institute, which we largely hate. There's one good point they have, which is a really good predictor of whether a relationship stays together is if the majority of the couple's interactions are positive versus negative.

And I think that kind of goes with pretty much anything. It's not necessarily a married couple thing. It's an anything thing. If the majority of your interactions. With a religion, or a friend, or a school, or a, an employer, are negative, and about no, and no, and you messed this up, and you can't do this, and you shouldn't do that, and you, how, how dare you, instead of, oh, guess what, you get to do this, this is a perk, oh, surprise.

Then you're going to break up. You're going to leave. You're going to detract. That is absolutely

Malcolm Collins: perfect. That's what's

Simone Collins: happening with the LDS religion. No, you can't wear this clothing. No, you can't drink coffee. No, you can't drink alcohol. No, you can't watch rated R movies. No, you can't [00:06:00] You know, take all your money home and not tithe 10%.

There's so much sacrifice and then the benefits seem to start easing away. But this

Malcolm Collins: is, this is what's fascinating to, to your point. There is what we are doing with our family. And what Americana culture does is it engineers a situation where my kids have additional negative events. When they're in urban monocultural environments, so they develop an intrinsically negative view of the urban monoculture from a young age.

When they go to school, it's teachers saying, no, you can't make poo jokes. No, you can't make fart jokes. No, stop making a gun out of Legos. No, don't play this way. No. When at home, they know they have fun with their Nerf guns, you know, they know that they rough and tumble play, they wrestle and fight, because kids love to do that, or at least kids in our community do not love to do that, and at school, oh I can't fight, I have to follow all the rules, and so, and Jews do this [00:07:00] as well, you know, that's why they dress weird.

That's why they look weird, act weird, everything like that. Where weird is judged by distance from the urban monoculture. An orthodox Jew is going to have far more negative daily experiences interacting with the urban monoculture because of how they differentiate themselves than they will within the Jewish community.

People are like, why do you give your kids weird names? This is why. They're like, people will make fun of them. Well, not the type of people I want them hanging out with. Like, for example, you think Elon's kids are going to make fun of my kids for their quote unquote weird names? No, they're not. You think you're like, normal, like, intellectual.

Online person who is exploring, like, how to make culture thrive or could be a good potential mate is gonna be like, Oh, Indy, like, your name is industry. That's so weird. Like, I don't, oh, Titan Invictus. What a weird name. They're gonna be like, ah, dope, you know? Whereas The negative experiences they have within the urban monoculture are positive and you might say, oh, why would you engineer negative experiences for [00:08:00] your children?

Where they're told no or they're told whatever, right? And this hurts them or causes them not to get along with other people. And I'm like, because in the long term it helps them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Not

Malcolm Collins: capitulating to the urban monoculture is great for your mental health. Capitulating to the urban monoculture is terrible for your mental health, as any of the studies will show you.

Whenever you want, whenever you want, and constantly seeking affirmation and being affirmed for whatever you want to believe about yourself. Well,

Simone Collins: while simultaneously pedestalizing anything negative you feel, and making it a thing, when otherwise it might have just been an ephemeral negative thing. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Surprise, surprise. This hypersensitizes you to negative stimuli. And then causes you to have these anxiety and depression spirals. I want to get into a paper here that I found really fascinating, unless you had any final words. This is by Cat Girl Kulak absolutely amazing writer, talked with them before really respect this person as an intellectual and they wrote a piece titled American Conservatism and Fertility.

Cult your on immunity in the cultural swamp, [00:09:00] and they have a map here that shows fertility rates around the world. And you can see, like, everywhere is crashing. And I'll put up one that I view as the more detailed modern one by McKenzie, which I found really good, which shows that America is actually doing fairly well.

This is CatgirlKolak writing now. The only subcultures that have managed to achieve above replacement fertility at average incomes above 5 to 10K, and this is true, are Jewish conservatives and American conservatives. There are some other, like, weird groups in, like, Kazakhstan or something, maybe but I don't think that they have particularly high incomes.

So the only groups In the world that I know of that are like large cultural troops are Jewish conservatives and American conservatives and American conservatives do have above replacement fertility. Everyone else, Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, secular euros, Irish Catholics. Every one of them sees birth rates collapse below replacement when they become wealthy at 5 to 10k GDP per capita.

So, not that [00:10:00] wealthy, by the way. 5 to 10k per year is not that wealthy. Even Africans and South Americans see birth rate collapse as soon as they become middle to upper income. What makes these two exceptions so unique? Many notice Israel is above replacement and immediately think Conspiratorially, the people behind the media, financial, globalism, progressivism, is , making it harder to live, are somehow immune to it's anti familial poison.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But this doesn't explain why white Christian conservatives in America are somehow above replacement. If there's one group, media, finance, slash, globalism, progressivism, would want to die out, wouldn't it be American conservatives? And here I will note about his hypothesis about the Jews.

The Jews who actually stay high fertility are not the ones involved in this cabal. The cabal is the ones who are coming from the river to the sea and want them exterminated. I mean, when I look at, for example, my Jewish classmates in Stanford who have Capitulated to the, the, the [00:11:00] cabal you know, they don't have kids.

They support the from the river to the sea stuff. They are not on Jews side. Okay. The, the, the, the Jews, the Orthodox Jews, the real Jews are as much an enemy to the cabal as you are. I American conservative is well, maybe not as much. I'd say that they're a degree less. , The urban monoculture may hate them, but it doesn't hold the special type of hatred it hates.

It holds for rural, white, traditional, Americana Americans.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Back to the text here.

Malcolm Collins: The much despised white man, the lonesome Americana, the rubes, the flyover kulaks. No conservative slash Israel aligned Jews and white American conservatives. Aren't the only two groups above replacement rate because of a conspiracy. They're the only two above replacement rate because there's the only ones with adaptive immunity to global homogenized urban progressive is a mind virus.

All [00:12:00] cultures around the world, as they've developed partially due to American empire, partially due to the logic of globalization have adapted the same Anglo inspired monoculture more or less. Equality between, ah, he agrees with us. Equality between sex, dual income, household urbanization, contraceptions, a extreme educational investment during traditional marriage years, not getting married until financially established, which now only happens in your thirties when you're already well past Prime Child years.

Even I ran has been. Has it not been immune to this despite the heroic and divinely guided effort of supreme leader? Kamele's they're now below replacement and i'll note here before they did well below replacement for over a decade and i'll note here on the style of cool cat girl kulak's writing here It really follows this americana irreverent style where it's intentionally written in a way where it couldn't receive commendations from you're a traditional [00:13:00] intellectual who wants to look better than other people.

You know, he'll make jokes about Jewish people, he'll make jokes about, like, the Americaner, he'll make, he'll write in a way that is grammatically more fun. So when he has to choose between writing in a fun way and writing in a way that is I guess I'd say like status seeking, he chooses the fun way.

You also see this with people like Bronze Age Pervert who have risen within the New Right. And that's because the New Right and the New Right intellectuals fundamentally recognize

Simone Collins: this. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It is. Through showing that we are not interested in signaling to the traditional intellectual class, that we can validate our authenticity among this new community,

only peoples who are immune to this cultural virus are those that have been exposed to it since its inception, i. e. The conservative cultures who've been resisting Anglo monoculture for a hundred years, conservative Jews fought to resist modernizing liberal monoculture [00:14:00] as conservative Christians and the Amish, notably Mormons.

would have once been on this list as well, but their fertility has fallen off a cliff in the last five to ten years. And I can actually identify the culprit for why their fertility finally fell off a cliff. Oh,

Simone Collins: really?

Malcolm Collins: And I agree with this, Cissus. Okay. Mormonism is a culture that is always on the outside of mainstream American life, but always wanted to be at the center.

Mormons had historically suffered great persecution and persecution at the hands of the American state and culture, but always aspired to be the quintessential American religion. All of their founding events, revelations, religious mythology, were set within America, and they always saw their face as something that should be Americana.

Even the Mormon Ernest Singlesman, proselytizer, teetotaler, hardworking, go getter, huckster attitude is quintessentially American, and he's absolutely right about this. And tragically, they tried to make America love them back. They refine Mormonism, acts [00:15:00] polygamy, they act racial theological commitments, no more.

racially barring from the clergy, bans on interracial marriage, or theological claim that faithful blacks would become white after death. And faithfully, they sought out religious protection slash recognition and then sought to work within the U. S. government. After being a persecuted and excluded religious group, Mormons became amongst the core recruits for U.

S. security, state, and bureaucratic jobs. And this is true, they're overwhelmingly represented in the U. S. government. Having little problem with drug testing or polygraphs, Mormons were quickly becoming what Cossacks had become to the Russian czar. Oh, that's so

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: to the Soviet state after the czar, a core ethnicity of regime aligned enforcers.

They had rested 180 years for respectability, their proper place as the most American of American religious groups. And then Trump appeared, the embodiment of the rejection of all respectability. The man who rallied the rage of the Americana [00:16:00] folk cultures, the man who would have challenged the state and regime openly, the polar opposite of Mormon cultivated niceness and Burgoese decency, and their ties to conservative culture, and more importantly, their remaining X.

I saw this in the Mormons I knew, the ex Mormons I knew, their horror, their restrained outrage, the indecency of the man. Famously, in 2016, the Never Trump campaign ran an independent presidential candidate in the state of Utah, Evan McMullin, who was a Mormon retired, or maybe retired, CIA officer, undergrad at Brigham Young University, then went to Wharton Business Graduate. Exactly the type of man Mormons believe should be president. Respectable, experienced, proper, loyal to the American state, and proudly confused if you ask about the distinction between church and state, the nation and the country, or whether these loyalties might conflict.

Actually, this is a really good point that distinguishes the type of [00:17:00] Christianity that is dying out versus the type that is going strong in America is the individuals and I've seen this in some of the, you know, conservatives I've been talking to recently who have no kids, , the types of people who are like, Oh, America should get rid of the separation of church and state.

these, Are the types of Christians that are dying out, whereas the types of conservatives and Christians who would immediately recoil in horror at the concept of combining the church and the state are the ones who are doing strong because they are the ones who are intrinsically suspicious of imbuing the church with that kind of power, making it immediately untrustworthy, you know, The church has value because it's something that we can explore ourselves.

If it was just something we were told, this is what's true, this is what's not true, we the bureaucrats have made this decision, then that's a church without any value. Or at least this is a perspective that is maintaining [00:18:00] strengths against the urban monoculture because it is a perspective that holds, , a suspicion of authority.

And suspicion of authority makes it very hard to force the dominant cultural value system onto an individual.

And of course, the Atlantic and other left wing magazines loved him, just like they loved all never Trumpers. Even respectable Republican figure Evan McMullin thinks Trump is the death of the Republic. And of course, once your culture and face drips into that vortex of progressive liberal urban monoculture, it's all over.

I imagine Mormon girls gasping in shock at how not respectable Trump's grab her by the pussy take was. And slowly drifting ever outwards towards progressivism. Buying contraceptive and deciding to do just one more degree. Or just get that much more established or pursue an urban career just that much further.

Recoiling in horror at the improper aggression which was Roe v. Wade overturned. [00:19:00] Or the vulgarity of conservative politics as she veers further and further. And Mormon birth rates decline further below replacement. It's tragic. Mormons spent over 180 years wishing America and American state would love them back, not understanding that the second the affection was reciprocated, it would be their doom.

Like a praying mantis finally winning the heart of a red, white, and blue female. They wanted to be quintessentially American people, was quintessentially American religion, and pursued civic duty and cultural acceptance with the earnestness to make a Roman city father proud, not understanding that if there was one thing that was quintessentially American, indeed core to its irrepressible folk culture, it was hatred of the government and an inherent suspicion of its major civil institutions.

And I would go further. It's hatred of the cultural norm. Hatred of anyone telling you what to do. And this is fundamentally what individuals like Matt Walsh We'll never understand about the standard [00:20:00] American conservative when he makes fun of things like anime, when he makes fun of things like gooners, when he makes fun of things like video game players if he's out there doing this.

Hey, I have the back of what's respectable and normal and you guys are weirdos. America has always been about the weirdos. That is fundamentally, it is us pissing you off that certifies our validity as Americans. Because I don't give a What do you think about me? And what do people like that think about me?

And that's how people know, and other Americans who were raised within the Appalachian American folk culture know, the one that's maintained a high fertility rate, know that I'm Legit or based or whatever word you want to say. Whereas you are fundamentally a cuckservative you May signal more to what you think of as standard conservative values [00:21:00] But you sold out the one thing that makes us quintessentially american which is respect For the person who bucks the system and fights against authority and that's also what mormons didn't contain and this is why individuals like matt walsh are part of the Group of conservatives that are going to be outbred and washed out was the urban monoculture.

Um In the same way that, like, pus leaves a wound after all the antigen tests. Oh, good god. Now mainline Latter day Saints is going the way of American Presbyterianism without even the whiskey to hold on to, and he has a graph here showing them disappear. Conservative Jews, and particularly Orthodox Jews, persist because their culture has existed in the urban cultural cores of the most advanced countries and adapted themselves to maximally alienate the faithful from that culture, the obsessive rituals, the bizarre maximally garish haircuts of a style reminiscence of Mongolian warlords and punk rockers that ensures one [00:22:00] cannot switch clothes.

Choose to blend in for an afternoon or a trip on the town. The intense ritualization of male slash female interaction. Everything exists to break the possibility of true cultural interface with the surrounding culture. , of course if one looks at fully secular Jews, inevitably urban, outside Israel, they fall below replacement immediately.

Often their kids and grandkids even lose knowledge of their culture, being surprised they're quote unquote Jewish, only adopting the identity like so many post Soviet Jews. Many only meet the vaguest definition when they see economic opportunity in Israel. This orthodox Jewish purposeful alienation, this embracement of cultural alienation, the cringe of a genuine cultural gap, a gap that can only be surmounted by betrayal, that is what maintains a culture.

And he is absolutely right about this. You have to be cringe to have vitalism and nuts are like, I [00:23:00] love this as a symbol of traditional Americana because my gosh, cringe, it is gooder. It is not this, this part of American culture. This new right was always there below. With the foot on them of the theocratic aristocratic right that many of these individuals like Matt Walsh represent that wanted to impose their culture on other people silently outbreeding them in the background is that aristocratic right was dying and dying and dying every generation losing more of its kids to the urban monoculture because they didn't know how to fight it.

It desperately wanted To fit in, even if it wasn't with the urban monoculture, maybe it was with their conception of what a conservative is without understanding that rebellion is the core of fighting the urban monoculture, because my kids, like when they go to school, the core thing they need to drop, the core thing the urban monoculture has to [00:24:00] get them to drop to be allowed to fit in with it.

Is not to be a rebel to not speak their mind to not curse when they feel like cursing To not like trump's where to not be vulgar when they feel Like being vulgar the urban monoculture cannot handle like when I tell my kids why the school doesn't let them play with They're hands like gun. I'm like, Oh, well, they're not like our family.

They're so stupid. They think that you could shoot somebody with your handgun. They think that this could hurt somebody, but you know, the difference between this and a real gun. And we laugh at that as a family. Cause that's so funny to us. How stupid you need to be to think a handgun could hurt somebody or a chicken nugget that was shaped like a gun.

One kid got like detention for that at one school. Oh God.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Think that this really helps understand the part of American culture that is going to go extinct was this old aristocratic branch of the conservative party that briefly held sway in America and many people, because they grew up during that time period, thought to be [00:25:00] real American conservatism. This was a branch that said, Oh, well, if you are different, you're weird.

If you're doing X, you're weird. It. Shamed people from deviation from what it saw as respectable, acceptable cultural norms, whereas the iteration of the Americana culture that is doing well fertility wise and is doing well at keeping their kids within the culture is the branch that always saw any degree of rebellion against social norms as Thank you.

validating of an individual, and so it made no sense to say, oh, this individual is weird, or this individual is deviant. , and this is, you know, the culture that, for example, J. D. Vance comes from. When you look at J. D. Vance as a kid, what are his hobbies? There's things like Magic the Gathering, right?

And I remember this from my social groups that I hung out with in rural Texas growing up, is nerdy hobbies like Magic the Gathering, that's actually where I got into Magic the Gathering, [00:26:00] those were the communities that were often most into them.

Those were the communities where if I wanted to jump into, you know, whatever, , sci fi I was watching those days, whether it was Stargate SG 1 or Farscape, that those kids would be the most likely to be up to date on those shows. , whereas I wouldn't expect that if I was talking with, like, the city Catholic conservatives.

J. D. Vance. he is the type of person who, if he was growing up today, would be an anime nerd.

The hobbies, which are seen as othering, are the hobbies that this category of conservative is drawn to.

, consider something like the MLP fandom, , that's the My Little Pony fandom, getting its start on 4chan, which is a conservative bastion. It was specifically a way to attack the normative culture within 4chan, because, okay, now we've normalized this attack everything. , culture. Well, let's choose something garishly wholesome to be the new sign [00:27:00] of rebellion.

, and that happened for a generation and then washed out, but that was what was going on with that. And I think, in part, that's why things like comics and anime and video games have always been the purview of conservatives, as we see right now in the video game fights online. The people who are repelled by, oh, this is weird.

This is nerdy. You shouldn't do it if you can use that strategy to. edit someone's behavior, then the urban monoculture is going to have an easy time editing your behavior. So if you raise your kids being afraid of defying cultural norms, you know, like a Matt Walsh might in terms of like, Oh, anime is bad.

Video games, bad urban monoculture is going to be able to take the same strategy that you use to control your kids actions, behaviors, and norms, and use it to peel them out of your culture.

Malcolm Collins: And this is what American white conservatives have uniquely developed. [00:28:00] Indeed, the progressive liberal monoculture works hard to integrate the traditions of almost every other culture, and every other cultures, not having interacted with Anglo progressive liberals, don't identify them as a threat or at least don't identify them with how outgroup hatred. It's a wonder Irish Republican Catholics and Ulster loyalist prots can still somehow hate each other and be more worried about

whether they're the Irish Republic or the United Kingdom, when both are in identical drifts towards low fertility, low gross, Euro decline, but not the American conservatives. Indeed, American conservatism, uniquely, has always been the outgroup of secular progressivism, and has always seen itself that way.

It has sought out to create new ideas of cringe. Country music culture, redneck, rock culture, of which figures like Kid Rock are just the surface. Backyards wrestling, evangelism, and even truck nuts. And when I wrote to this teacher, I was like, Just tell the kids that, like, at home [00:29:00] they act one way and at school they act another, like you would with any conservative.

I'm just like, you know, we're from the Appalachian, Greater Appalachian Cultural Group. And of course, I know when she reads that, when she reads Greater Appalachian Cultural Group, she's reading hillbilly, like, Mud pirate you know, like whatever, like, like cannibals living in the woods. And I'm okay with that.

The derision is what allows my kids to see themselves as different and where they can understand the benefits of my culture versus the urban monoculture. In a world where the urban, liberal internationalist, respects all people's sexualities, religions, and nationalities. The Americanner rural culture has worked incredibly hard to make itself intolerable.

Anti respectable.

Simone Collins: Yeah? I like the concept of anti respectable.

Malcolm Collins: Anti respectability, yes. And that's what Trump did as well. That's how he signaled to this culture, I'm really one of you. I'm a real American. And the Mormons didn't get that. They didn't get, grab them by the pussy. Showed his authenticity.

It [00:30:00] did not invalidate his position as a potentially high status person because we rank status by what you sacrifice. By me being a Stanford MBA, but doing all of the stuff that makes me unemployable. You know, I could have gone their route. I had the chops to go their route. But I would rather be authentic.

Then that inauthenticity is shown publicly through what I'm willing to sacrifice. I mean, look at our podcast. It's not that popular. It's pretty popular, but it's not that popular. So certainly not paying our bills. But it prevents us from raising another round, right? It helped that the heart of the globalist culture comprised of their direct, immediate international political enemies that they have. The animus to differentiate themselves, but the wider cultural ethos cannot be ignored. There is no reason the second american culture couldn't have been equally anti natalist in its effects instead american conservatism exhibits culturally the adaptive traits one observes in the group [00:31:00] of Parasite and disease heavy corners of the world just as the natives of various jungles exhibit unique resistances and immunities To many of the diseases and parasites found there, often allowing them to survive uninvaded until the 19th to 20th century, so too do American conservatives.

Natives of the disease laden American cultural jungle exhibit a unique immunity to its most devastating memetic disease. If you're a member of European or East Asian or Persian culture trying to improve your birth rates, one could do worse than start trying to import the Americana. Folk culture that global urbanites despise.

How does saying, thank God, I'm a country boy fair. If you haven't watched country music recently, you, you should, because it's great. And I love one of the top comments on this where somebody said, I doubt any other governments will import American redneck conservatism because they can't abide by the core belief that each individual holds.

You are not the boss of me. And that is so true.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and it doesn't matter who you are a group of [00:32:00] people who hold that belief make poor serfs to be ruled over but a productive businessman. Now I will note here, that this group Fundamentally is at odds Was what Mormons have because they have the central church hierarchy.

So there's always, you know, you're never supposed to say, well, who are you to tell me this? You know, and then say, wait, we treat religion,

Simone Collins: the Mormon church is super, super hierarchical. And I think that's another element that you haven't really thoroughly discussed here, which is sort of the fundamental structure of the predominant religion of these different groups.

That Judaism is not a monolithic thing like there are all these sub communities and all these different sort of rabbis and different, different groups. It is not a centrally ruled hierarchy. In fact, it's very much as we discussed in other episodes, a huge meritocracy where if you are smarter, if you are cleverer, if you can learn The, the, the sort of the, the knowledge and the, and the, and the memes better.

And you can debate better. You can get [00:33:00] to the top of the, of the hierarchy. There is no, like, you got to work your way up or you, this is your place.

Malcolm Collins: If you point out other people are wrong. And you can back that up with argument that you get status, you get done.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You are, you are celebrated for being anti establishment.

You're celebrated for questioning the status quo. And, and the similar thing exists for for the, the backwoods people who are. This combination of Calvinist which, you know, in itself is a religion that's, that's quite anti establishment at least vis a vis the Catholic Church, but also like these warring clans from Ireland and Scotland, which were also very independent and very sort of competitive with these blood feuds.

So. You have to have this lack of, of centralized hierarchy. Whereas I think it's very difficult to be a Mormon and to pull rank because you just can't. Even when you're like a really high status person like Mitt Romney, you're just given more and more responsibilities. You're given more and more work by the hierarchy of the [00:34:00] church.

Malcolm Collins: And in fact, you lower your status was in Mormonism by I was talking with a Mormon recently and they were talking about the cultural taboo they have against what they call deep theology, which is like getting into like the real nitty gritty, deep stuff of like, continued human. I forget the word here.

A great example of this is the concept of eternal progression. I have literally had two different Mormons tell me on opposite sides of this issue, one arguing that no humans don't eventually become gods, and the other arguing that humans do actually become gods, and both of them told me that no other Mormons actually had the opposite belief, and that it was actually a super fringe belief.

And they both 100 percent believed this, had gone on missions where they were around other Mormons the entire time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just in case you're wondering, like, what the actual breakdown of who believes what in the Mormon community, I decided to ask Claude to see if I could get a straight answer on this.

And it says the traditional, literal [00:35:00] interpretations, humans can become gods in a literal sense, perhaps 30 to 40 percent of active members, more common among older generations than those with multi generational Mormon heritage. Metaphysical interpretation becoming godlike, but not literal gods, perhaps 25 to 35 percent of members more common among younger college educated members downplaying slash uncertainty view it as speculative or non essential, perhaps 20 to 30 percent of members, including many converts.

And less doctrinally focused members and then unaware of the doctrine's historical importance perhaps 10 to 15 More common among new converts are those in international areas with less exposure to mormon theological history and I find this really fascinating like The such a major part of this isn't like a small thing like mormons will be like Oh, you know, we don't focus on the mysteries like it's not important to debate, you know I can maybe understand all of that, but this is like The core thing of what happens to you after you die there could be such diversity of [00:36:00] beliefs about this, and yet Mormons would not perceive this diversity of beliefs.

Two really interesting quotes from a Mormon fan of the show that I was talking to about this, that I'd read here, and this helps understand where Mormons draw the delineation about the type of stuff you're not allowed to talk about. Mormons are very anti mysticism in general and don't like strange ideas.

The difference between Jews and normal Anglos was coming up with cool new theories and interesting ideas is like the same distance as normal Anglos was LDS, as in ideas relating to the non material world are taboo. Let me make that distinction again. Any idea that can't be explained by science is taboo.

That may come from a strong materialist bias within Mormonism. Materialistic philoso, philosophical forms of Mormonism heavily suppressed and like to pretend that non materialist forms of Mormonism thought do not exist.

, and this really helped me when I read that to understand the things you're not [00:37:00] allowed to talk about or not encouraged to talk about was in Mormonism. I was even asking AI this. I'm like, if you're on like a Mormon. Mission with someone like what are they talking about? If not philosophy or debating, , the doctrine, because like, if I was stuck.

Given my culture on a mission with someone, and it was focused around being religious, the core thing I would be doing is debating religious philosophy, and apparently that's like, specifically called out as something you're not supposed to do within Mormon mission documents. , So they just never talk about these things with each other and thus do not realize their own internal diversity of beliefs.

, and another thing that he wrote that I thought helps understand why it's considered so heretical for me to point out that there is this diversity of Mormon beliefs. To Mormons is so finally to answer your questions about how Mormons make decisions. They make decisions in unity opposition revulsion and dissension are taboo.

You [00:38:00] don't disagree directly to someone's face. Decisions literally don't get made until everyone is on board being unanimous is highly prized in Mormon culture open internal debate and disagreement is frowned upon And this made me realize that the way that Mormon culture survives basically is through the illusion of uniformity and conformity of beliefs, it is important to Mormon identity, the belief that there is conformity in uniformity of beliefs, even though that's not true. And the way that those two things are able to exist. In conjunction with each other, is Mormons just don't talk about the things where there isn't easy and hard proof, whether that is scientific proof or scriptural proof.

, and that allows them to, , Exist with this illusion in their heads, but because they don't talk about those things, those things [00:39:00] actually drift much further apart from each other than they would within a normal religious tradition where they do talk about these things, i. e. even if there's disagreement within mainstream Protestantism, because we're regularly talking about what happens after death and stuff like that.

, we understand where that disagreement is and how vast those disagreements are. But in Mormonism, because there isn't the same discussion or picking at these particular scabs, , people are unaware of where they are and note here, I asked an AI if there was any other religious tradition in the world that could think of that had a similar sort of taboo against, , investigating the deeper, , theology of something.

And it, none Mormonism is totally unique in world history for this.

And I would also note that this is totally unique to modern Mormonism. Mormonism used to almost be the exact opposite of this. , I'd say pre 1960s where it had a lot more philosophical, metaphysical and theological investigation and [00:40:00] theorizing than other Christian denominations. , but I think out of fear of being seen as weird or individuals within the community who maybe went too far, , this taboo began to develop.

Fairly recently, but spread very quickly.

And this leads to one of the, well, strengths of Mormonism is Mormons believe like a huge diversity of things.

But they are all, like when I talk to them, absolutely convinced that whatever their personal beliefs are, are actually really, really common in Mormonism. And that the other Mormons who have the diversity of beliefs are more like, out there weirdos. When, if you're like me, because I'm really into theology and I immediately start questioning people about their weirdest and deepest beliefs.

If they actually asked lots of other Mormons about like their deep theology, then you see there's actually a huge diversity of thought about like basic metaphysical things in Mormonism, like, the nature of the soul, what happens after death, everything like that.

And I think that if you look at Mormon history, this wasn't the case.

So in Mormon history, people would [00:41:00] actually rise all the way to profit by having like really interesting theological ideas really out. Oh yeah. I think of somebody like

Orson Pratt.

Gosh, I mean like the only people I've really heard

Simone Collins: of is as leaders in thought.

where Brigham Young, young and young

Malcolm Collins: crazy ideas.

Simone Collins: I know. I know. But it was just Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, as far as I was aware. A lot of the early

Malcolm Collins: thinkers, like when I study Mormonism, I'm typically looking at that for like the Brigham Young and just after Brigham Young generation, that's where it's most theologically interesting to me.

But those are the ideas that have been most abandoned by the modern Mormon church in terms of like what they publicly will tell new members, what they do outside of their own internal study. Because it's seen as like deep theology or like the weirder stuff, the stuff that really differentiates them from other Christians.

And I think that, that, that is, if the church wants to survive, it needs to return to deep thought debate being common within [00:42:00] Mormonism. Because we have exited the era where You know, Mormons went from this population that was so afraid of being seen as like a weird cult and even when old people, when they attack Mormonism, they still say that.

Young people don't see it as a weird cult, like, unless they're like really out of touch with mainstream culture.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They either see it as normal, like, like, normie to the point of being boring. Like, not being particularly adventurous, maybe being a bit like It's the Disney

Simone Collins: religion. It's the Disney religion.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, the Disney religion, right? You guys could deal with a bit more spice. right now in terms of like external views and external people engaging with your ideas because they're not all terrible. Like Mormon, like weird theology actually is some pretty cool stuff if you get into it. And it's not theologically unsophisticated either.

It aligns a lot. I actually say like, when I go to old Mormon theology, when I look at old Mormon theologists, there is good as like modern rabbis. Theology rabbis live in this culture where they're constantly theologically debating and [00:43:00] everything like that. And that's part of what makes them really resistant to the urban monoculture one that they intentionally set up like this is how I'm going to be othered by the urban monoculture.

And two, they have this culture of I'm going to constantly debate like the most controversial parts of our theology and if I can prove someone else wrong. Publicly, I move up. Like, I get more followers. I get more respect. If you did the same as in Mormonism it would be seen as, I think, very inappropriate.

Especially if it was like a respected member of the church. Instead of like, oh, you know more than him about Mormon theology. That would be fantastic. But, it's difficult for Mormons to do that today. Given the way their theology is structured. And it's because they have iterative prophecy. So this means, like, whatever was said most recently trumps what was said before.

So, you have a problem with iterative theology because to truly argue Mormon theology, you need to argue from a position of logic. This is why the early Mormon theologians were so [00:44:00] interesting. Is they weren't like, let's look at the Mormon scripture, like in the way I do, it's like Protestantism, let's try to work back from there.

They'd be like, let's think how the soul could work, you know? And then they'd build a, and then let's build like moral logic around how the soul might work.

Simone Collins: Aw, that's so much better.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And they'd build some real, that's why their theologies were so interesting. But now if you're like, I have a bunch of people arguing online about this because the original texts have weight, but can sometimes be overridden by a more modern profit, it's harder to choose like who wins a fight other than like by and so they're really forced into this ethnic based religion.

I, I suspect see a path through this, but it is going to be difficult for them. They're gonna need to came on one of these things. Either they have to become anti authority, or they have to become more willing to engage with the sharper, more interesting parts of their theology, or they, and at least accept the amount of [00:45:00] diversity within their own believers Or they need to, like, Mormons get as mad when I point that out as Jews do when I point out how much Judaism has changed over time.

I'm sure a Jew will, like, confidently claim, Second Temple Jews were exactly theologically like modern Jews, except the Temple. And I'm like, no, they were not. Modern Mormons will be like, Every Mormon believes almost the same thing, and anyone who doesn't is a no true Scotsman. But the final point here I was gonna make was yes, it was that these two other groups also do things that intentionally other themselves. You, I, Classic Americano, even Trump does things that intentionally other himself. Well, no, no, no, I

Simone Collins: don't think it's, so it's not about intentionally, that's not how they look at it.

They look at, I'm going to show people how awesome I am. I'm going to stand out. I'm going to make my place in the world. It's not, I'm going to make myself look like a freak. Trump looks the way he does because he likes the way that looks and he thinks it makes him look distinctive. We look the way we look because we like the [00:46:00] way that it looks and we find a bunch of intentional

Malcolm Collins: counterculture in both instances,

Simone Collins: but it's, it's, but it's about standing out and being awesome.

It's not about, you're just coming at it from completely the wrong mindset from the other side's mindset, which is like everyone else is thinking, how do I fit in? How do I not fit in? And this, this culture you're talking about, is it talking about how do I not fit in?

Malcolm Collins: Because how do I not look like these stooges?

But the point I was about to make was that yes, you're right about the instinct that drives dressing in a way that intentionally causes you to Look out of place in culture, create conflicts with that culture. That's how Americana culture motivates it, but there's other ways to motivate that. Jews motivate it through a completely different pathway.

Just they have a bunch of traditions around how they dress and act that are out of line with mainstream culture and give them weird looks within mainstream culture. The Mormon problem right now No, because they're

Simone Collins: different and special and better. I don't think

Malcolm Collins: they do it because they're like, well, we want to make [00:47:00] sure we don't fit in.

Yes, but that's the, that's the consequence. Mormons right now cut off the, for example, recently they updated the garments for women so that now they can wear, like, sleeveless dresses.

Simone Collins: Like I mean, it's more, I think, about interpretations of the rules. Like, you see so many No, this is made by the church.

The garments are made by the church. Oh, wait, so they actually, they changed, they changed to the physical garments? Yeah! To be tank tops for women instead of those long, longer sleeves? Yeah. Whoa. That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: It's like a huge and bad capitulation because it allows him to look more normal. Well,

Simone Collins: Women were already really heavily bending the rules because the rules were like, for example, if you were working out and you know, it was, it could be really difficult to work out wearing garments.

They're kind of. heavier and sweaty. You could wear just normal workout clothes, but then basically like Mormon, Mormon wives and influencers were kind of like always in [00:48:00] between a workout, you know, just about to go work out. So that's why they were all wearing like athleisure. But also there's huge amounts of plastic surgery in Utah.

Like there's definitely this desire. To fit in and homogenize and that is just the death knell of of the religion of any

Malcolm Collins: culture. Yeah

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So have pride in how you're different and F the urban monoculture and When your kids are sent home from school for making finger guns be like, I'm sorry. That's my culture Like anyone from a conservative culture, whether they're conservative Muslim or a conservative Jew I hope you can respect that.

We will have certain rules at home They might be different from the rules you have at school, but it is my job to protect my family's heritage

Simone Collins: You just

Malcolm Collins: gotta teach your kid to code

Simone Collins: switch.

Malcolm Collins: Code switch. Yes. Love you to death Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too Malcolm. Oh, what am I eating? Well, so you're having the Thai green curry leftovers, but you wanted me to put in The coconut.

Did you want me to like cut it into very [00:49:00] small like confetti? It's already cut. It's sliced into little Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I wanted it to be like a crunch in the curry.

Simone Collins: Yes, so you want me to leave the slivers intact, or do you want me to cut it Leave the slivers

Malcolm Collins: intact, just make sure that it like boils down enough so that the, the There's not a whole lot of It's a very small serving.

That's, that's left to finish. Oh, well let's not do that, let's not do the coconut. Ignore the coconut for now. Okay, so

Simone Collins: you're just gonna have a small, and then I'm gonna make it with those dumplings that you bought. a while ago that you want to try. Yeah, you're so good

Malcolm Collins: at making dumplings now.

Simone Collins: Well, I don't know.

I've never prepared these before. But we'll see. But it's the ones that you picked out. So you sort of have an accompaniment with a small Oh, is

Malcolm Collins: this like the spicy whatever ones? It's the ones that

Simone Collins: you looked at yesterday and you were like, Oh, I want to try these. Oh, those looked good. Yeah. I think, you know, that would be a good combination.

What I plan on doing since it's the first warm day of the year is I will just put the kids dinner in their tree house and they'll eat it there and we can enjoy this. This did we

Malcolm Collins: build an actual tree house for them? No,

Simone Collins: no, no.

Malcolm Collins: That the tree, the little, the fort, which is a ladder up to where they can really hurt themselves.

No, [00:50:00]

Simone Collins: no. And the rule is of course you are free to do that, but then you are personally responsible out of your discretionary income for the hospital bills. So it is along with the trampolines. Something wrong with

Malcolm Collins: trampolines.

Simone Collins: I never said no to trampolines. I just said that it's your discretionary income that would pay for the hospital bills for any trampoline related incident.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. The one thing, if you ask emergency room doctors What not to do with your kids. It is invariably do not let them play with four wheelers. Do not get a trampoline Are we how old do they need to be before we can give them pellet guns to shoot each other? You know pellet guns just don't come up in those stories, which is interesting But I think that's just because pellet guns are so unusual But we have all the ammo.

I don't know where you put the actual pellet gun But I wouldn't use

Malcolm Collins: airsoft guns for the kids But I I remember like Polygons can actually cause, like, serious injuries, you know that, right?

Simone Collins: Pretty much anything can cause a serious injury. I mean, a screwdriver, a hammer. [00:51:00]

Malcolm Collins: Oh yes, one of our kids is very good with that.

He loves finding anything sharp and just stabbing anything he can find. Pokey thing, as he says. Pokey thing? He's like, I won't do it again. It's like, you absolutely will, then why do you want

Simone Collins: the pokey thing? Yeah, I think he defines, you know, I won't stab the couch to pieces again. Because then I'm gonna stab something else.

I'm gonna stab electronics again.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my god, these kids. Wow. They, they need punishment. Like, they are wild kids, and I love it. They don't respond to

Simone Collins: punishment.

Malcolm Collins: They don't. Actually, a huge problem I've had, and people would be like, Oh, like, Malcolm, like, you, you use corporal punishment, like, you hate your kids, that's so horrible.

I'm like, Honestly, about half the time when I do it, I under correct and they start laughing. And I'm like, this is a huge problem. That's what, I said jokingly in another episode, like, how hard do you hit your kids? Just hard enough that they don't laugh? And that can sometimes be, like, [00:52:00] pretty hard to get to that point with our kids because they love roughhousing so much.

Simone Collins: They always said harder. There

Malcolm Collins: was a reporter over once where we tested, like, throwing our fist at the kids to see if they flinched. Well, because there was, yeah,

Simone Collins: you missed it. There was this whole viral thing where a parent put their, their hand close to the kid in a shopping cart and the kid flinched.

And then the whole internet was like, Proof of abuse and we were with a journalist and we're like, Oh, I wonder what our kids are going to do if we like go like this. And they just, they just look at us. They don't move at all. And they just smile and later

Malcolm Collins: in that same thing, I ended up flinching when one of the kids was doing something it's actually like, you're the, you were the child in the shopping cart.

You were hit me. No, hold Bart. Well, because I want to encourage them to be tough, you know? When I play fight with them, I never like tell them to like. They don't pull their punches, they don't pull their punches. Yeah, they, they, they're a little like monkeys. They can do damage. Monkeys are terrifying. [00:53:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah.

You see your

Malcolm Collins: face off like an angry champ chimpanzee. If you get them,

Simone Collins: they're very, very scary. I don't like, I don't like tourist attractions with monkeys.

Malcolm Collins: They're screwed. Love you to death.

Simone Collins: I love you too. I will start dinner.

I was watching this YouTube video about an eco village that had basically a

I was watching this YouTube video about an eco village that had basically a covered street with very close townhouses. So the townhouses that faced each other were connected under a covered street and it just was all sort of this one big kind of like a mall, you know, like there's shops each other's across from a mall.

That's what it felt like. They had set the design of the houses up so that your kitchen window faced Was like the storefront window of the mall and [00:54:00] I'm just thinking about how miserable it would be there. I think you can't hide from anyone Everyone knows everyone else and this woman who's touring it is being led around by this old woman who like clearly is up in everyone's business and just thinks this place is the best and like people are walking by and she's like Hi, Brian!

And, you know, there's someone, like, trying to walk by, and she's probably like, Brian! You left the vegetables out last night, and they were, you know, Oh, God, it just seems so miserable to me.

Malcolm Collins: To be there, but yet you kept watching it.

Simone Collins: I want to know about all different ways of

Malcolm Collins: living.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: what was this way of living?

I don't understand what was unique about it. It was an eco village. No, it wasn't. It wasn't historic. It was newly built. Oh, of course. That's exactly the type of place for like a woman up in everyone's business would be. I

Simone Collins: mean, yeah, basically.