Why Shadow Work Feels Appealing

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into Carl Jung’s analytical psychology — explaining the ego, personal unconscious, collective unconscious, archetypes, shadow work, and more. Malcolm (who is openly not a fan) breaks down why Jung’s ideas sound profound but lead to disempowering, unscientific views of the mind that have quietly infected conservative and manosphere thinking (hello, Jordan Peterson fans).

We contrast Jung’s mystical “deep state” model of the psyche with a more pragmatic, first-principles understanding of consciousness, unconscious processing, memory, trauma contextualization, and emotional framing. Learn why repressed memories are mostly myth, how you can choose your emotional reactions (and why that’s empowering), why shadow work can manufacture problems that didn’t exist, and how over-mythologizing the self leads to cognitive abdication.

If you’ve ever felt pressured into “integrating your shadow,” doing dream analysis for growth, or treating archetypes as destiny — this episode will give you the tools to spot the woo and reclaim agency over your mind.

Timestamps below. Like, subscribe, and share if you want more no-BS breakdowns of influential ideas that shape culture.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about Jungian psychology, which people know I am not a fan of, but I want to explain what his psychology is, and it’s important to know about because if you are consuming. Manosphere content. What you may not realize or even conservative content more broadly is a lot of conservative intellectuals recycle Jungian theory without telling you that’s what they’re doing.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Famous person for doing this is Jordan Peterson.

Simone Collins: Well, Jordan Peterson talks about young a lot. I think just not that many people necessarily understand how much young has influenced him.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so it’s useful to be able to note, call out when you’re having Jungian BS thrown at you and to understand why it’s wrong, because a lot of it can sound like, oh, shadow work or something like this.

I can see. How this is useful. And it’s fundamentally bad because it leads you to bad conceptualizations of how [00:01:00] your brain works. Mm-hmm. That lead you to psychological places that can be more difficult than they need to be to resolve. So let’s dive in. Hmm. The structure of the psyche, in Young’s perspective is that you have the ego, the center of consciousness, your sense of i identity and everyday awareness.

It is an important part, but not the whole self, and it can become rigid or inflated if it ignores the unconscious. And this is where you talk about people with like. An inflated ego, and we’ll get to more what he means by this, which by the way, and I think a very bad way to think about this phenomenon.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Then you have the personal unconscious. This contains repressed or forgotten personal experiences, memories, and feeling toned complexes, emotionally charged clusters of ideas like a mother complex or inferiority complex, which we’ll get to a lot at. The other. Really important to him these act asynchronously and can influence behavior strongly.

Now the first thing I need to note, just like [00:02:00] before we go farther. Scientifically speaking to the best of our knowledge in psychology right now. And, and, and, and keep in mind, I am very dubious of psychology as a science, but I am trained enough in it to feel like I have a fairly good understanding of where the BS lies and where where things that we’ve actually pretty much gotten down at this point.

Mm-hmm. And one of the things that it seems pretty reliable at this point is that. Repressed memories are not a real phenomenon. Yeah. You do not forget something. Have it continue to affect you and then have it come back later in life. Yeah. When this happens, it is almost always in the studies that have like looked at this a lot.

One of two phenomenon phenomenon. One is called forgetting Before remembering. So, what happens in is somebody will go to their, their spouse or something like that [00:03:00] and been like, oh my God. I just had this memory that came back to me all of a sudden of my father or uncle sexually, you know, essaying me as a kid.

And this is horrifying. And then the person who they came to is this will be like, oh, oh my God. That is horrifying. Well, secretly being like, actually you talked about that all the time. And causes this phenomenon. Is they’ll remember something like this, but then the context of that memory changes.

Hmm. They might remember their uncle doing something funny with them as a kid or touching them in a way that they thought was silly or weird or made them a little uncomfortable. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: their uncle was always creepy and like did stuff

Malcolm Collins: like that that, yeah, it did this creepy thing for me, but it wasn’t, you know, grape.

And then one day they’re sitting there and they’re like. That was a grape. Oh my God. But because they hadn’t remembered it with such a charged word, like grape [00:04:00] attached to it. They had forgotten the previous times. They had remembered it. They had forgotten that that was always in their memory because what they’re actually remembering is I had never remembered that as a grape.

I had never remembered my uncle Graped me. I had just remembered my uncle did this funny thing to me. So you get enough of a category change that you forget that you had previously always had this in your memory. The second thing is it’s an implanted memory. This is, when these, these very famous with hypnosis, but also it can happen with psychologists more broadly which is to say it’s very easy for people to conflate fake memories.

People fake memories all the time. Our brain. Constantly makes up memories. The, obviously the famous study that I talk a lot about when I’m talking about ai, when people are like, well, AI makes up how it knows something. And the famous memory blindness studies in humans where you show them pictures of attractive women and then you do sleigh of hand and you go, why did you pick this one?

And they’ll just go on a long rant about why they chose that one. And it was not the one they just chose. Or

Simone Collins: even like, [00:05:00] political ballot choices.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So people will just make up why they made decisions. And, and this, this has a big problem with memories, right? Because if you make up, oh, well, you know, a psychologist walks you through something in a hypnotic suggested state, or they, you, you know, they walk you through, well, do you remember this happening?

You can think back and create that false memory shockingly easily. It is very, very easy for humans to create false memories. And the reason why I’m so against people who push the idea of repetitive memories is because the moment you have this concept and you believe it’s real, then you and any culture that stems from you, your kids, everything like that, that you teach about this are very susceptible to this.

Mm-hmm. And this is really bad because this is the core wedge that things like the urban monoculture and cults like Scientology. Used to drive a wedge between people and their support network, IE your their families. Mm-hmm. So if your kids grow up [00:06:00] believing in suppressed memories, it’s much easier for someone to later te teach them.

Imagine how mortifying that would be if somebody convinced one of your kids that you assayed them and you didn’t. And yet, we know from research, this happens all the time for people who go visit psychologists and stuff like this.

Simone Collins: Well, and this was even an issue in, in the period of this. The Satanic panic.

All these kids were like, yeah, I was involved in this horrible stuff. And everyone’s like, what whatcha you talking about?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this

Simone Collins: never happened.

Malcolm Collins: Then his final layer here, the collective unconscious young’s most distinctive contribution, a deeper universal layer shared by all humans inherited across generations, not personally acquired.

It is like a psychic instinctual reservoir containing primordial images and patterns common to humanity. And he believes that this is like a real physical thing. He’s not talking about like. Pop culture here or something like that which is obviously stupid and woo, and we would immediately call that out as stupid and woo.

But let’s go to the ego. ‘cause I actually think [00:07:00] people might think the ego is the least objective one of these ideas before we get into all the shadow work and everything like that. But I actually think it’s the most wrong of his ideas about how the human brain works. And because it’s the most wrong it can lead to and, and because it doesn’t seem obviously wrong, it can lead to tons and tons and tons of mistakes.

And it is seeped into every aspect of our language. He has a big ego. You know what somebody might say, right? And they’re literally referring to a psychological theory when they say that the ego is the center of the field of consciousness. Your subjective sense of I personal identity will, continuity of time.

It handles everyday awareness, decision making, reality testing, and adaption to the external world. Young saw it as essentially, but limited. It’s like a small island of light. In a vast ocean, a psychic life strengths. It provides focus, stability, and necessity. The center for navigating lives limitations and risks.

The ego is not the whole psyche if it becomes [00:08:00] rigid, clinging too tightly to its current self image or work. It blocks growth. Mm-hmm. It comes inflated identifying with archetypes, collective ideals, or overly grand self concepts. It loses contact with reality and deep psych inflation often feels like godlike certainty or superiority, but it leads to fragility isolation or eventual deflation collapse.

Young warned that an inflated ego can become quote unquote egocentric and incapable of learning from the past. Now,

Simone Collins: wow. These are so many mainstream words. That’s, that’s crazy. Egocentric was a hidden a thing, like a young thing. Oh my gosh. Yeah. When, when I looked him up originally. I, and I’m wondering if this is something that you, that, that is accurate.

My understanding of, of youngian psychology was basically. Trying to take Freudian psychology, but then build it around the hero’s journey and [00:09:00] book style narratives. But is, is that just a misreading of what he did? That’s a

Malcolm Collins: misreading. He did do that, but and obviously Jordan Peterson borrows a lot from that.

No, it, it, it is a, it’s a sort of framework for how people think and how to improve how people think. Mm-hmm. While the framework has its three core components, the ego, the you know, the subconscious and the what is it? The, the, the, the like, super, super, ego, societals, subconscious. The, the core failure is he basically took Freud’s stupidness of, of like you have, you know, the ego in the id.

He re renamed some stuff and he tried to make it like less crazy. Right? And the problem with this is, okay, let’s take out the thing that seems obviously wrong and objectable, which is like this, this collective unconscious, okay. Yeah. The idea of an ego and an unconscious is not how your brain actually works.

Mm-hmm. And believing it’s how your brain actually works can lead to a lot of [00:10:00] mistakes. Mm-hmm. So first, your brain does a lot of thought that you are not consciously aware of.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: This is. Just an objectively true thing in science and neuroscience. We can measure this, we can look at this, we can see thoughts happening before, significantly before they enter your field of awareness.

As we’ve pointed out in other videos on this, it appears from the most cutting edge science that the and you can watch episodes on this, like stop anthrop izing humans that the most cutting that, that these parts of your brain that you do not have conscious access to are likely working with a level of architectural convergence.

Two token predictors. For, for many reasons and more and more studies keep coming out showing this, which is really cool, that like we made this prediction a while ago and since then a number more studies have come out that from different angles seem to be arguing that this is the case. There seem to yeah, provide evidence that this [00:11:00] is the case.

But this unconscious part of your brain then funnels. It, it it, one, it operates in separation from itself. Like it’s fairly regionalized. It’s not like you have a unconscious LLM and then a central LLM. You have a a a dozen bodies of unconscious LLMs, which are interacting with each other, and then send all of that to a centralized workstation, which is what.

That centralized workstation then may be conscious, but it’s probably also mostly unconscious and you’re not aware of it. Then that centralized workstation sends the decision it makes into your conscious mind and where your conscious mind interacts with it is. Predominantly through the way it writes your memories.

Mm-hmm. That appears to be the core focus of the conscious mind, not making decisions, but writing [00:12:00] memories. Mm-hmm. And how the conscious mind ends up writing those memories. The emotional framing that it puts on them, the contextual framing it puts on them can end up shaping a great deal of your personality because those memories are then.

Referenced by the unconscious parts of your mind when they make decisions. Okay? Now this is the reason why I’m, I’m going into all of this, is this unconscious part of your mind is not like some mystical, wooey, whatever. It’s just the parts of your thought process that are happening by components in your brain that are not part of your consciousness and are the predominant part of your brain.

They are also. Not held under some secret influence that you’re unaware of. Mm-hmm. When you talk about like an individual’s unconscious mind in like a frereian sense or something like that, the implication or, [00:13:00] or the Jungian sense is this unconscious part of your mind. Is one completely out of your control.

And it’s going out there and just like creating ideas based on thoughts that are completely like for injected into you by maybe like an advertising campaign or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. Like, that’s, that’s how it’s typically thought of. Like you had something suggested to you because of some.

Advertising campaign. And then your unconscious ended up making a decision based on that because you were tricked and you didn’t even know why you made that decision. When that’s not exactly what’s happening. Mm-hmm. When things like that do happen it’s a lot closer to what I would call a, an an illusion.

Right. Like you. Experience an illusion in real time, like an optical illusion in real time, but you don’t think it’s [00:14:00] like, your eyes influenced by some like magical thing you can’t see. You’re like, oh, that optical illusion happens. Because when my eyes are processing X, they do X in a weird way, and then that hits my brain.

Mm-hmm. So a lot of like advertising related unquote illusions are really just like priming effects. Okay. A priming effect means by the way. Token predictors have priming effects as well. Yes. In case you’re wondering very heavily it means if, if you want to get somebody to act in a certain way, you prime them with something else, like some concept, like you wanna get them to act more morally.

You prime them as the concept of God or something like that. And you can also get like faster response times. Like if you prime them with the concept of red, they’ll like say firetruck faster, right? They’ll, they’ll have an easier time passing through that neural pathway. But there’s nothing like.

I, I, I guess fancy or secretive happening here. Everything in the [00:15:00] output from these parts of your mind, the unconscious mind is fed into your conscious mind. Your conscious mind can. Heavily control your unconscious mind. But it still doesn’t make decisions. By that, what I mean is you completely control your moral and emotional framing of reality through the lens and context you put onto a story with the part of your mind that is sentient If you decide and this is where he gets an element of correctness where he talks about these.

Societal archetypes being really important to people’s egos. Many people will take a societal archetype. Define that societal archetype as a life well lived. Mm-hmm. Right. Within every memory they have. Did I live up to that societal archetype? It’s, it’s one way that they may do it or they may ask, do other people see me as that societal archetype [00:16:00]

Simone Collins: or, or essentially you’re saying that they’re functionally method acting as that archetype.

And so when they behave like that sort of makes their,

Malcolm Collins: this trains their unconscious brain to method act as this archetype.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Because their conscious brain is labeling things as good or bad, eg. Other people’s perceptions of them, their own actions, their own decisions based on whether or not they conformed with this archetype.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And if they’re trying to work out how to respond to something, the subconscious. Thought process is how would a like tough man respond to this? Versus like, how would a, you know, yes. Fancy, frail, delicate, desired woman respond to this or whatever. Right. That kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes, exactly. And this is a genuinely, like when you recognize that you are doing that, or you see somebody who’s doing this, this is a genuinely bad way to live life and it can lead people to.

Fail at their lives when they [00:17:00] over glom onto these archetypes. But to try to over mythologize what they’re doing, can miss the banality of it. They simply found an archetype and decided that archetype was definitionally aspirational. Mm-hmm. And then attempted to. Embody the archetype that they saw.

Mm-hmm. And the moment you, you realize it’s just as simple as that. There is no other fanciness to it. And that the, the, their ability to embody the archetype is more encoded in their memories than in their and that they have control of that. Now, what I mean when you have control of your memories, I’ve talked about this on other shows, but it’s very important to the, the sort of Adams family principle, I guess I’d call it.

If somebody gives you wilted flowers, you know, Gomez and Morticia are like, oh, they’re lovely. Right? And culturally they choose to see them as lovely, right? Culture is in part a choice, but in part we’ll talk about where culture is not a choice. But they like the Adams family very intentionally.

Leads into their family’s unique culture. [00:18:00] And I, I think when the Adams family has done well, they are not monsters, but they are around a normie society that sees them as so culturally different that they are the equivalent of monsters. Yeah. And then they live in a world where monsters also see them as the equivalent of monsters, simply because they’re so culturally deviant from the society around them.

With theor joke behind all of that in. Whenever Adams family has done well, but despite all of that, despite doing things their own way, they are fundamentally more loving. They do have a better sex life. They do have a better relationship with their children despite, you know, inverting and the Adams family that do this rest are the, the full links movies like Adams Family Values from the, the, the 1980s or just God at this

Speaker 2: I hated you. I despised you. I choked him until he lost consciousness and had to be put on a respirator. I tied him to a tree and pulled out four of his permanent teeth when he was [00:19:00] asleep. I opened his skull and removed his brains. You did.

Brother. Brother

Malcolm Collins: and good for this as well.

They can choose. Like when you watch the Adams family yes, there’s like some supernatural stuff and stuff like that, but the vast majority of what they do, you could just decide to do. You could decide to treat your relationship the way that they treat their relationship. You could decide to treat disappointment and death and the macabre as things that are positive to you because it fundamentally.

Other than a few hardcoded things, we get to decide how we react to our experiences and our history, and it matters a lot that you understand and incorporate this into the core of who you are. The reason I [00:20:00] say this is a great study that was done on this, I was actually a series of, I think four studies.

It’s been pretty well replicated at this point. That shows that if you ask somebody about. Whether or not they experienced trauma when they were growing up.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: How much trauma they say they felt growing up is perfectly correlary with all the negative effects of that trauma. What is,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: nearly uncorrelated is whether or not they actually experienced any trauma as a kid.

If you go to the court records and stuff like this, this is, this is not correlated with the effects of trauma. So the effects of trauma are caused by believing. That you had these traumatic experiences, right? Mm-hmm. This is why it matters so much how we encode things. You can choose. There are people who genuinely were heavily abused as a kid, but if they don’t believe, they didn’t interpret that as traumatic which I would be seen as one of those people, right?

Like in the Stephen Mullany debate, he got really into this like, how can you not say that you were in a highly abusive [00:21:00] situation growing up? And I was like, because I choose to not see it that way. Right. I choose to not see that about my childhood. I choose to not believe that about my childhood. I choose to believe the best about any situation that I’m in.

I have been in really terrible situations in my life, and Asim knows I always frame them positively as an opportunity, right? Like we don’t have jobs right now, and yet I frame it as an opportunity to try to build our next thing that I’m excited about. And I’m excited every day I could be moping and worried.

Right. That is a fundamentally a choice. And when you don’t frame it that way, when you frame a, the unconscious as something that is fundamentally outside of your control it it, it leads to cognitive abdication and working on all of these things that don’t really matter and avoiding all these things that don’t really matter.

But now let’s go to what he thinks of the personal unconscious. This layer sits just below the consciousness and contains a material that was once conscious, but has been forgotten, repressed, or never fully noticed. This is not [00:22:00] how your unconscious mind works. You, you’re actually largely aware of most of, at least the consequences of what goes on in your unconscious mind and your decision process.

Mm-hmm. It is personal and shaped by your individual life history experience in the environment. So you can see why I push against this. This is just not the way unconsciousness actually works. Unconsciousness is just like the line of thought takes before it gets to your consciousness. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Right. What, what, let me be clear here. What he see, what you’re implying, at least per this language, is that he thinks that there are memories that we don’t remember but that affect our behavior. Whereas in reality, if there’s a memory you don’t remember, or like you, you haven’t retrieved it in a long time, it is not going to be influencing your behavior.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is correct. This also doesn’t heavily influence things like arousal patterns from the studies that we’ve done on this. Like being spanked as a kid in our study, we couldn’t find good correlation with that in like, anything sexual. So a a lot of people think that a lot of these like [00:23:00] experiences that they’ve had there, there’s been great studies on grape in this.

So, when, people are great girls specifically are griped. In societies where there’s a big stigma around grape grape has a really huge negative effect on their cognition. But in societies like say Islamic society where it’s more common, it does not have a particularly big effect on their cognition.

They like it. Being griped does not psychologically hurt them that much because of how they contextualize it. Grape isn’t bad because of grape. Grape is bad because of how we psychologically contextualize what that means to an individual.

Simone Collins: Great. That’s not the right phrasing. It’s not mentally traumatic or harmful to people.

Yeah. Mentally

Malcolm Collins: aspect of it.

Simone Collins: And, and the same could be said for like experiencing violence as a child or other things like that. And that’s what the research shows. And this is not a, a judgment on the morality or goodness or badness. Of the actions of the trauma that you might experience, be it. Of that sort or just like, you know, [00:24:00] witnessing a terrible accident.

But what matters is the contextualization. If you contextualize it as this horrible thing happened to me, I’m now damaged goods, or I am now traumatized, I’m now never gonna be able to function again as a normal human. That is how it is damaged. And this doesn’t been even more innocuous things. We, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum.

But people who’ve, who’ve undergone formal sleep studies who have had horrible sleep. But don’t know that. And, and they report to researchers, I think, you know, I slept fine. Feel better and perform better throughout the day than people who per actual re research, like, measured sleep, slept really well.

Malcolm Collins: Most of the effects from sleeping differences just by telling someone We measured your sleep last night and you slept well, and then they’ll perform better on a test. Yeah, like, so,

Simone Collins: so really like even, so it could be with something as serious as some form of assault or it could be as something innocuous as.

You know, believing you had a good or bad night of sleep, how you contextualize things is really [00:25:00] important. Someone joked in our comments when we talked about this in, in a recent episode. They were like, man, how do we get like our Fitbits to gaslighting us to thinking we have good health? Which is the legit good question.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. But where this ends up mattering and it explains why if it, like, the more progressive somebody is, the worse their mental health is and the more depressed they are. Mm-hmm. Is in part because. You can choose to contextualize, like there are types of like light essay, right? That may happen as part of like regular life.

And a conservative woman or man or, or, or let’s say discrimination, right? May be affected by one of these things and just rub it off as a normal part of life, right? Whereas a progressive. Because they contextualize it as equivalent to grape or because they contextualize it. Like this incredibly, what they might call a microaggression, but it’s just somebody being like what, what bathroom is the right one for you again?

Mm-hmm. You know, because they contextualize this as an attack, [00:26:00] they feel it as an attack and it has the same effect on them, not just psychologically, but physiologically as an attack. But to continue here he believes in this concept that affects the personal unconscious. We’ll get to a second called autonomous complexes.

So he says, quote, the image of certain psychic situation, which is strongly accented emotionally and is moreover incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence. It has its own wholeness, and in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy so that it has the subject to control the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the fear of consciousness.

So, essentially to word this in another word he sees the unconscious mind. As like a separate mind from your conscious mind that interacts with your conscious mind [00:27:00] instead of a collection of components that is part of the pipe into your conscious mind.

So you can think of your conscious mind. Okay. He basically thinks of the mind as working like two living blobs, right? Whereas a better way to think of the mind is a series of action calls where you have a thought is written by the conscious mind into memory then your unconscious mind like you.

Responds to that it’s like, okay, I, I just had X memory. What do I do next? And it does whatever it wants to do next. And that thing happens in the world and then also enters.

Simone Collins: I think I have a better, I think I have a better analogy. So per young, our conscious mind is the president. And our unconscious mind is the deep state.

So the president [00:28:00] is like, we’re gonna do this. And then the deep state is like, ah, actually for all these rules and other things that you can’t even see and that are super obscure yeah, we’re, we’re gonna actually do this totally differently. And then, you know, things get botched and don’t go according to plan.

And young is trying to say, you must understand the deep state. You must fuel the deep state. You must you know, ride the deep state. Whereas I think n non Youngian people are like, no, let’s just do what the Trump administration does and write a bunch of executive orders and go without all of this nonsense, no baggage.

Malcolm Collins: I, I actually, okay, here’s a better way to describe. Okay. It, it’s not as accurate and a metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one for visualizing. What it actually is, is closer to a train track with light on one section of the track.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Like the light’s only covering 12% of the track. Mm-hmm. Now it’s still all of the same process.

It’s all the same track. Mm-hmm. You know, when the track goes through the part that you have conscious access to it’s then going around the track, but, but you’re seeing the whole train. [00:29:00] Right. Does that work better for you?

Simone Collins: No, I don’t understand that at all, but, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll continue to go here and because, we’ll, we’ll come back to this in different words and it might make sense to you then.

Yes. In plain terms, complexes are emotionally charged clusters of ideas, memories, and and associations. A mother complex, which might involve intense feelings around nurturing, dependency, or authority figures rooted in early experiences. They have a quote unquote nuclear core often.

Simone Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So the whole complex, wait. Just the complex, like you have a. Savior complex, like when people say things like that, they’re referring to Jungian psychology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re referring to Youngian psychology. Which is not scientific, by the way. It’s not like there’s not scientific evidence for this. Now, now it is true that we have tropes within our society and some people attempt to embody those tropes, as I’ve said above.

But that attempting to. [00:30:00] Bond to a trope is intentional on behalf of the individual. People are not, not aware that they are doing this. They may contextualize it differently. Like, of course I want to be a good progressive and progressives are good, so I go out and save the environment. You know, they don’t ly ask, well, are they actually good?

Is this actually a good way to structure my life? But they’re not like lying about what they’re doing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If that makes sense.

Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: I got really lightheaded all of a sudden.

Simone Collins: No. You okay? You need to take a break?

Malcolm Collins: No. Young, young, what was I just saying?

Simone Collins: That when people are putting on an affectation or character, it is known by them and intentional. They’ve intentionally chosen to be, yeah, the JY Barbie girl or the, the high school jock type or the, the

Malcolm Collins: reason why this

is

Simone Collins: important.

Malcolm Collins: Is I, I know they may contextualize, like they may act in a way that you see as the mean [00:31:00] cheerleader when they think that’s how a popular girl acts.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But this is not and it’s very important the people who are like, oh, this is like, something happened to them when they were a kid and they picked up this unconscious belief in whatever.

It’s really important that you don’t get sucked in by this type of language. Or explanation because it’s, it’s, it’s just wrong. And it is hugely disempowering to the individual in a way that can prevent actual solutions from taking place.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, so how, how do I explain this? If you buy into his world perspective.

You can easily come to believe something like, oh, my friend does X because they have a mother conflict, which they got in childhood for this just so story. And that’s a bad thing to believe because that’s not why your friend is doing X. Your friend is doing X because they want to be seen in X way because they believe X-ray being seen as [00:32:00] good now.

What’s important is, is once you understand this, now it’s a lot easier to work on helping them, right? Because now all you need to do is explain or break through to them why believing that X thing looks good or makes them look good, is a bad and inefficient idea that is functionally not working. May you be unable to do that because it’s something that happened in their childhood.

Absolutely, you may be unable to do it because of something that happened in their childhood. But that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that like it’s some secret, magical thing that got stuck in their unconscious. It just means that their framing of those definitions happened in their childhood. Does that make sense, Simone?

I.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. He, when triggered when one of these complexes is triggered, they possess you temporarily. He says you react with disproportionate emotion as if an inner foreign body has taken you over. You might suppress them with willpower, but they return stronger until [00:33:00] integrated and your. Goal is to work through these complexes via analysis, dreams or reflection, released energy and other things can foster growth.

And you can see this is where the woo comes in, right? Like, it’s actually very, very similar to Scientology disbelief that you have, setons that you get because of bad things that happens. This is what Scientologists believes. Bad things that happened to you with the child, which are the souls of Rigo dead, dead aliens.

And they, they attach to you. And this is why, you know, you kids can’t even hear like screaming when they’re born because that may distress them. And then they’ll pick up Theon and the Setons will lead to bad things in their life.

Speaker 9: beings born on this planet have had clusters of Satans attached to their bodies. OT three can run out these clusters and cause them to leave us and reincarnate as individuals.

Speaker 10: After hours of expensive auditing, you are rid of the body thetans attached to you. You may then acquire psychic powers, move objects at a distance, and have out of body experiences. [00:34:00] If you find you can’t, then you must take the course again for another 5,000 pounds.

Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s basically what young thought. That’s how he thought reality worked.

Theon logic is that, you, you get possessed by these little anima that live within you. Very video gaming actually.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re right.

Speaker 12: You can’t be serious now. Come at me. No one’s. What the hell?

Speaker 11: What’s up you? How come get up.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a game called Persona five, where you sort of have these, where you have these like anima inside you. And I think this is influenced by Jungian psychology. The idea that you have these, ideas about what is good that live inside you and can take you over. That’s not really how it works.

Now. You can be like, but sometimes around specific archetypes. I have seen people get triggered. And it’s, yes, sometimes people [00:35:00] are triggered by specific archetypes. This absolutely can happen. But. Sorry, my feet were getting cold. People can get triggered by archetypes but this is just like a, a, a known archetype that they have chosen to incorporate in their self identity.

So how does the flow of emotions actually work? Because we talk about this in the pragmatist Guide to life and it’s really important to understand. So most people like. Are living on autopilot. So the, the sentient part of their brain, the, the like, one little important part is completely on autopilot.

And this sentient part of their brain is so if you, after you get in an argument with somebody you may attempt to model them, right? You’ll, you’ll do something like say like. You’re creating an emulation of them within your mind so you can continue to have that debate that has their characteristics.

Mm-hmm. And stuff like this. And this is called a theory of mind. And I mo believe [00:36:00] that the way that most humans operate is they have one theory of mind in their brains at all time, dedicated to themselves, to the person,

Simone Collins: what they believe themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, they have chosen to be or become. And this theory of mind is referenced by the little sentient inside of them when they’re on autopilot.

So by this what I mean is. They have an idea of who is Malcolm, right? Like what, what is Malcolm like? And they create a model for that. And then the little part of their brain that writes down their emotions with like, are you angry about this? Is this good for you? Is this whatever? It references that theory of mind, which is talking about yourself.

When you are going to experience an emotion, so mm-hmm. Suppose you’re like going through a [00:37:00] breakup like some, somebody’s just texted you and said, I wanna break up with you. Right. Your sentient part of your brain references the part of your brain that’s the Malcolm or Simone theory of mind and says, how do I feel about being broken up with?

And then that theory of mind tells them, Malcolm, the type of person Malcolm is, feels like X or Y when they’re being broken up with. Mm-hmm. That gets encoded. Now you can override this. But. It’s mostly running automatically. And we argue in that book, the core way to change your emotional reaction is both through recontextualization we talked about before, but also chiseling at and working on that theory of mind.

That is you, right? The one that’s constantly referenced by your autopilot. And I note here that this theory of mind can come in one of two forms. And you throughout your life will meet people of both forms in one form. [00:38:00] It’s modeling themselves from their own perspective. These are people who are this is, this is a normal way of doing it for like non-super toxic people.

In the other type of person, it models it from the perspective of outsiders. And these people are very dangerous. So what I mean by that is with suppose somebody has just broken up with it, right? The question that the thing constructing the theory of mind of them is asking is not what type of person am I and how does that type of person react?

Mm-hmm. It what type of person do I want other people to see me as? Yes. And how does this person react?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, these, these people are become very performative in this sort of stuff. And the reason why this is so toxic is because they can never really be satisfied, right? Like, they never really are seen enough [00:39:00] as what they want to be like.

But to continue here, the collective unconscious, this is a deeper universal layer beneath personal unconscious. It’s not acquired through personal experiences, but inherited as part of our psychic structure like instincts or biological predispositions, but psychic in nature. This one is really stupid.

I mean, like, obviously it doesn’t exist. If it did exist, we would it, we would see it in like feral children and stuff like that. So, but we’ve seen a lot of children who have been raised outside of families and stuff. We’ve seen art from people who’s been like totally isolated their entire lives.

And it’s just disordered there, there isn’t like some sort of recurring. Thing to it outside of what we biologically inherit from our ancestors. Any thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, no, no. But this has been a lot better than the summaries I’ve read, so I appreciate you trying to explain this, at least in terms I can understand.[00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Then within the collective unconscious, you have archetypes. And he sees this as being like primordial images that are not fixed images of, or characters, but underlying forms of potentials that shape human experience appearing in Miss Fairytales, dreams, arts religions. Across cultures.

Okay,

Simone Collins: this is where I got that perception that it was basically just psychology, but with like, some kind of like through the lens of book narratives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I’ve pointed out the reason I say that this is bad is while it is true that you do get some convergent phenomenon between cultures, especially cultures that are inheriting from each other narrative flows, structures and histories you know, El Revo and all that you, you.

Now that I’m play more stories with reality fabricator, I’m realizing just how much AI chooses El Vos is the name. It chooses it well over half the time which is maybe I play too many sci-fi stories.

Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:41:00] in sci-fi stories, that’s the case. It’s certainly not the case in like historical fiction.

Which I also choose a lot.

Malcolm Collins: So my favorite sci-fi story to play here is I play it with the the new, like build your own one where it like makes up an image concept based on a gist of an idea you have. Yeah. Is I am an ambassador for the Tarn Empire meeting with the the Federation, which are humans who have sort of.

Evolved into this sort of gay space Communism, utopia. And, and my job is to infiltrate and take down these Witless Federation members you know, to, to eradicate their, their colony for, for further expansion of the Tarn Empire. So

Simone Collins: anyway, these archetypes?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. These types, so they include things like the persona, the social mask or role we present to the world, useful for adaptation, but problematic if we identify it completely.

So note here when I talk about persona, like the thing I’m talking about, you can be like, but that’s very similar to a persona and that’s the trick. It sounds similar, but it’s a completely separated concept. [00:42:00] I’m literally just saying. People identify tropes as good and attempt to build them into their self identities.

It’s, it’s not part of a collective unconscious, it’s based on things they saw in their lives and then attempted to model. Okay. When people try to live out the hero’s journey, that’s just because they have seen it that many times in books. Especially in the west. The shadow, and we’ll talk about this one a lot, the repressed disavow aspect of personality.

What we don’t want to be, it includes negative traits, but also hidden strengths in creativity. Anima in men, the inner feminine image, quality, soul, emotion, relatedness, animus. Women, the inner masculine images, quality spirit, logic, assertiveness, and the self, the central archetype of wholeness the regulating center of the entire psyche, not the same as the ego.

It often appears in dreams as madness, wise figures or symbols of unity. The self guides, the processes of becoming who we [00:43:00] truly are. Other common archetypes include the hero, the mother, the child, the trickster, the wise. Old woman, et cetera. And those are not, those are just tropes. They’re just tropes that people see.

And then identify moral value to as to how you should actually build yourself. If you’re like, well, what trope do I choose? Or what trope is really me? And the practice is this guide to life. You should get it. Read it. We argue. First, you decide what has purpose. Then you decide what trope. If you embodied it would best maximize that purpose, then you embodied that trope.

That’s the best way to live because then you can live with maximum efficacious throughout your life in a, in like a, a, a big way, which I’m a big fan of.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. I also would just argue that the hero’s journey. It’s just kind of a reflection of common life pathways, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s not

Malcolm Collins: growing up being teen, going out, you know, then creating a story of success or a story of challenges and failure.

That’s the [00:44:00] way people like to tell narratives and

Simone Collins: stories. Life happens. You leave home, you face challenges, you grow, you know? That’s profound. Yeah. I mean, it is, but it’s not it’s, don’t overthink it. There’s a lot of overthinking it seems, in young Youngian psychology, which ironically I first heard about when I, I did that internship with the Fake Cult the Jesu Institute as they called it was like all about like Carl Young this and Carl Young that, and I just love that, like aesthetically when a bunch of alternate reality game narrative writers decided that they were going to create.

A cult and try to throw in all these things that like were creepy. So alongside things like human dolphin communication, they threw in a bunch of references to Carl Young, I think goes to show you everything you need to know about just how I. You know, useful and, and, and real world ish is

Malcolm Collins: but the reason this gets to me before we go further with shadow work and the shadow is it’s just not accurate.

It’s an inaccurate view of who [00:45:00] you are. Yeah. And it includes many elements like you know, past events living in your unconscious or something. Yeah. That. Can be used by your ironically real subconscious mind, eeg, the little model that you’ve built of yourself. Mm-hmm. To justify actions that you wouldn’t want, right?

Yeah. If you believe that you have trauma, then you build that trauma into that model of yourself, which determines how you emotionally react to stimuli in your environment,

Simone Collins: leads to suboptimal reactions and less resilience.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re like, oh, I am someone who is traumatized. It is a very belief in the concept of trauma that makes you susceptible to trauma in the first.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m not up for this because I’m traumatized. You know? Instead of I can do this, I’m empowered. I Right. Can do whatever I want to,

Malcolm Collins: but it’s not just trauma. It’s the entire world of the unconscious that allows for these justifications to be built [00:46:00] within an individual.

Simone Collins: Well, it seems to create an external locus of control by creating this, this yeah, subconscious that, that supposedly drives.

So much of your action disempowers you as a conscious individual because it says, well, you’re not really in control anyway. You’re being controlled by repressed memories and all these things that happen to you over which you have no control, which leads ultimately to a much less. Efficacious, successful and happy life.

Not good?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I

Simone Collins: time out though. It looks like you’re about to pass out also. I need to get the kids. Should we finish this tomorrow?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just started on shadow work, so we’ll finish it tomorrow.

Simone Collins: Sorry. Are you okay? ‘cause you look like, you’re like,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I’m feeling i’ll like, really d drowsy.

I

Simone Collins: just, yeah, that happened. Really suddenly, are you not sleeping enough or is there something like, do I need to take you to an emergency room?

Malcolm Collins: No, I’m, I’m fine. I’m, I’m not sleeping. I have so much to do. I’ve gotta make it fixed

Simone Collins: right now, Malcolm. No, you, you, I think you need to take it, you [00:47:00] know how like a, even a short nap makes a huge difference for you?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if I take a short nap now, then I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep later.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s okay. You have a weird schedule. You can keep a weird schedule. Okay. Can you, because you, you just don’t. You look off, right? Like you can’t work right now. You, you clearly need to take a nap or I need to take you to a doctor.

Like it’s one of those two.

Malcolm Collins: I just need, I just need some beer. That’s what I need.

Simone Collins: No, you don’t. Are you okay? Is this normal tired or is this I need to take you to a doctor? Tired.

Malcolm Collins: No, this is a feeling I get when I’m in a car and I have to concentrate for a long period of time and then I get like, it

Simone Collins: looks like that.

Okay then. But

Malcolm Collins: I’m just doing that with episodes. ‘cause you know,

Simone Collins: please

Malcolm Collins: stick out thinking, thinking for too long.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s okay. Look, you need your glymphatic

Malcolm Collins: system. There’s the bigger problems. I’ve got all of these things in the back of my head that I’m worried about, like the board meeting and the site having issues right now and that’s doing investor outreach.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I get it. But I [00:48:00] think then you need to shut down. Let the waste matter clear out and you’ll feel a lot better, even if it’s just 15 minutes. Can you do that for me?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, if you dunno what she’s talking about when you go to sleep, your glymphatic cells shrink, which allows them to clean out the waste matter in between them, which is why short naps can be useful for brain health.

Simone Collins: Okay? You need to

Malcolm Collins: me when I concentrate for too long.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well he, so he both seems to accumulate waste matter in his brain much more quickly. Or like, it just blocks up more quickly, but then naps clean it out much faster. I like

Malcolm Collins: pass out if I concentrate for

Simone Collins: too long and it’s like 30 minutes and he’s fine.

And we did two

Malcolm Collins: episodes in a row and it was a really long one before this,

Interestingly, the one we had done before this was Tucker Carlson, which, , has already gone live and it has one of our lowest, like to dislike ratios was only 80% likes. , Usually we get around 99% likes. , And this is weird for me because, , almost none of the comments were [00:49:00] negative, , which leaves me to believe is this all bots like is is the whole Tucker Carlson situation just maintained by angry bots.

Malcolm Collins: so Yeah.

Simone Collins: So Malcolm, please. , In like two hours. I’ll bring it to your room, but sleep okay.

I love you. Be safe. Good.

Malcolm Collins: So now we’re gonna go into Young Again, and this time we’re gonna be talking about the shadow.

So young described the shadow as an unconscious aspect of the personality. The conscious ego does not identify whi or want to acknowledge. It encompasses repressed ideas, instincts, impulses, weaknesses, desires, and traits that feel incompatible with our self-image or societal expectations. In simpler terms, it’s the dark side of who we are.

Not necessarily evil, but everything we push into the unconscious because it doesn’t fit our ideal self. The persona or social mask that we present to the world, young famously called it the thing a person has no wish to be. The shadow [00:50:00] isn’t just bad qualities like anger, jealousy, greed, or selfishness.

It also contains positive elements, hidden talents, creative impulses, realistic insights, normal instincts and strengths that were repressed, eg because they seemed, quote unquote, too much or inappropriate or undervalued in childhood or culture. And so, what young wrote of shadows is everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

So, if I’m gonna explain this in different words, what young believed is that you had this. As we’ve talked about, people really do do this. They build sort of a, a, a trope into their model of who they are that they use to determine what emotions they feel in relation to what decisions in environmental stimuli that they end up making.

But too young. This meant that you had a, another, you that was also you that had been [00:51:00] pushed out of that ego. Or, or the persona that you’re trying to embody. The problem is, is that’s just like not the case. Like the one, it doesn’t really show up in research. But two,

Simone Collins: the closest thing I think it could come to, but it’s still too much of a leap for him, like, I, I don’t EI even think I can give him credit for this, is that people are afraid of becoming their parents and then they become their parents.

And that’s kind of what I’m feel like this rhymes with, but I don’t think he even got that far.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. So the, it, the problem is, and the reason why it’s a, it was a fairly toxic concept, is the moment you accept. The shadow, the unconscious, any of these things. You also,

Simone Collins: you could call it the young conscious.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. You, you also accept as he does this idea of repressed ideas, instincts, mm-hmm. Et cetera. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And when you accept that, you allow [00:52:00] that to manifest in yourself. Yeah. Because accepting that something is a concept allows this. Image of you. Remember I said there’s like the trope of you that is creating your, this, this mental model that you’ve created of yourself to adopt those traits.

And it will adopt this shadow self as a component of itself, which is one of the problems with these ideas is somebody will have had them for a long time and tell me Malcolm, but I experience all these things and I’m like, of course you experience them the moment you accept them. They are then able to build into your self identity if you steal yourself against them as real, just not real concepts.

It, it, silly is supernatural things. Then they can’t affect you in the same way.

So continue here. And if you’re like, oh, but why is it so, because this is like, while it [00:53:00] may not have the same word as trauma, it basically implies trauma. It’s trauma was a nicer word. It’s something that happened to you as a child, changed your self-perception, right? And, and change, sorry, changed your.

Ability to accept certain things about yourself, when the reality is, is yes, it’s true that things that happen to you in a child can affect this adult self, but the way that they affect your adult self is by affecting. The type of person that you want to be and, and the type of person you have crafted, the, the mental model of yourself that’s always running and judging, like what emotions you should feel to things that, that, that mental model embodies.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and. Even more simply, he just gives a ton of excuses to develop an external locus of control.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: It’s not my fault, it’s my repressed memories. It’s my shadow self. It’s the, the collective unconscious. It’s just like, oh, everything’s anyone [00:54:00] else’s fault but yours. You are, you’re not responsible for your own actions, so don’t worry about it.

Just see your therapist more.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, this is why this is really dangerous in like right wing spaces and stuff like that, in manosphere spaces. And why I push against it so much was in these spaces. Anything that attempts to overcomplicate how your thinking works in, in a big way especially if it can be used to externalize responsibility.

For your own mind, like what could be worse than externalizing responsibility for your thoughts?

Simone Collins: For real.

Malcolm Collins: You, you are not responsible for your own thoughts.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So bad. It’s so bad.

Malcolm Collins: But it can continue here.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: How do shadow forms operate? Formation. As we develop our conscious identity, ego, and persona, we repl or split aspects of ourselves that don’t align with what family, society, culture, our ego ideal, and [00:55:00] this is where he gets something.

Right. People do separate out aspects of potentially their capabilities. Like maybe there’s something that they’re uniquely good at, like music or something like that, or something that they really enjoy. Now, this could be due to like biological tendencies or something like that, right? They, they just happen to enjoy this.

But they think that they shouldn’t lean into that thing. And they might build that. Into their self-conception that we’ve talked about in a way that it doesn’t need to, but this isn’t what he’s talking about. He’s covering that, but then he is adding all of this extra stuff. Then you get projection, a key mechanism.

We often see our own disowned traits in other people. What we strongly dislike. Judge or react to in others. It’s frequently a mirror of our shadow. For example, somebody who prides themselves in being always kind, might intensely criticize selfish people while unconsciously harboring selfish impulses themselves.

And again. This isn’t a [00:56:00] trait that you need to have. If you believe that people have this trait, you may adopt it. But I have lived my entire life and I feel like I am an exceptionally good at reading people person. And the vast majority of people just don’t do this. They will have traits in other people that trigger them, but those traits aren’t exactly an inversion of traits that they secretly have in themselves and don’t wanna,

Simone Collins: everything we understand about.

I don’t know. Biology, psychology, sociology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the only, the only time where you really see something, I think, kind of like this that I do see is like the closeted gay person who is extra critical of gay people. Which is a phenomenon that you see. But I don’t think that that’s because of this.

I just think that, sometimes if there is something that you struggle with yourself, whether it’s gayness or in this case it could be greed or anything like that, and you don’t like [00:57:00] that aspect of yourself, being reminded of that aspect of yourself is, makes you

Simone Collins: kind of mad,

Malcolm Collins: is going to create negative emotions within yourself.

Simone Collins: I think it’s simpler than that. Which is that we, we frequently like to talk about how much we love this concept of offense. You only feel offended when something credibly threatens your worldview. And when you experience something let’s say you’re same sex attracted and, and you experience other same sex attracted people and feel this underlying sense of attraction yourself, it credibly threatens your worldview.

I’m the straight guy. I feel threatened because right now I feel slightly aroused at this thing. You’re like, I, you know, kind of feel this pull to this group that I, no, that’s not part of my identity. And then you get really angry. You get offended and that’s what’s showing up. I don’t think it’s like some kind of opposite reaction thing showing up.

It is. It is someone being offended and acting like someone offended.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I think that that’s just really, you don’t need all of this extra idea like a shadow self.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: To understand why. If somebody’s [00:58:00] struggling with so bit something and they see somebody else, especially somebody caving to it, think of it like this.

You know, somebody’s an alcoholic or something like that and they’re trying to get over their, a alcoholism. So they have an impulse and they’re struggling to resist that impulse and then they see somebody around them indulge in drinking with apparently no consequences to them. Right? Yeah.

Obviously that’s going to make them angry, right? Like that’s gonna create the anger emotion. But that you don’t need the whole concept of a shadow self to explain that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think overall young in psychology is the kind of thing, we’ve talked about this in other episodes where it really appeals to bids and people broadly who.

It doesn’t quite make sense to them, but because it doesn’t make sense to them and they’re sufficiently intelligent to be able to parrot it, they think that it also won’t make sense to other people and those other people won’t. They’ll just take their word for it of like, oh, well I guess that person’s smarter than me ‘cause I don’t understand this, and they’re talking [00:59:00] about it very confidently.

And therefore they, you know, oh, you know, they win this dominance game. When in the end, I, I think most people who are proponents of young and psychology don’t understand it and just think it makes ‘em look smart. Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, I should also explain our theory on anger.

Anger is actually a very similar motion to surprise. Anger is what? Is created in your brain when something doesn’t happen as you expect within a negative context. So, this is in this case it would be you have an expectation of the type of person you are and you are reminded that that is not accurate.

And that creates surprise with a negative contextual framing. So you feel anger. Or somebody treats you in a way, this is how you get like, anger loops between two groups where a you know, trans person goes up to a, an extremely religious Christian person and [01:00:00] the extremely religious Christian person is.

Generates anger because this person is labeling themselves in a way that they don’t expect, and it creates surprise to them in a, in a, in a negative context. Mm-hmm. And then the trans person expects to be gendered correctly, and the Christian person isn’t doing that. So then they get mad at them, which creates further surprise in this other population because they didn’t expect, you know, even, even on top of all that, this person’s getting mad and then you can get anger cycles really easily.

Mm-hmm. And it’s important to be able to understand like what causes emotions. Exactly. Because as soon as you can put your finger on this is, and you’ll really see this purest form of anger when you experienced anger due to attempting to do something mechanical that doesn’t work out the way you expect it to.

This is like you run code and it ends up not working. Or you click a button and it doesn’t do the thing you expect it

to,

Simone Collins: or your earphones get yanked outta your ears. By something percent if they’re wired. Yes. That unique rage, you’re like,

Malcolm Collins: ah, [01:01:00] yes, the unique rage.

Simone Collins: It’s so stupid because it doesn’t hurt, but it’s so rage inducing.

Malcolm Collins: But, but you see what I mean. There’s no reason with most other explanations of anger that that would induce anger. But when you understand that anger is just a negative, contextualized surprise, you’re like, oh, that’s why I get angry out of nowhere when I stub my toe. Mm-hmm. I have no reason to be.

Angry when I stubb my toe or step on a Lego. Mm-hmm. Right? And yet those are some of the, the highest levels of anger you will experience in your entire life. But anyway, I I, I’ll note here that there is another category here where it can be so negative that it just creates shock. This is like having your arm shot off or something. But this isn’t exactly anger. This is more like a, a specific mental state associated with shock.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, and, and no here.

Once you understand where an emotion’s coming from, you can change it like the moment you understand, oh, I’m only feeling anger because X.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Then instead of accidentally taking it [01:02:00] out on the people around you, nothing is worse than the person who stubs their toe. And then yells at somebody else, like, why did you leave the door like that?

Right? Because that’s instinctively what an individual wants to do. Like that’s how your system works. But when you understand, oh, the anger is working like this, I can’t let it hijack me. I cannot allow my brain to be hijacked by something so basal. To continue here, let’s talk about shadow work.

Simone Collins: Oh God, do we have, oh, this sounds so terrible already.

Malcolm Collins: In the process of becoming aware of and accepting and assimilating, the shadow is central to an individual Young’s term. For the li oh individualization. Young’s term for the lifelong journey towards psychological wholeness and becoming one’s true self young, outlined a rough approach, not a rigid technique as it’s a.

Highly individual like diplomacy, except it exists. Take it seriously and recognize the dark aspect is real and present was in you. This requires moral effort and honesty. [01:03:00] He would say now I do you see immediately why I hate the concept of the shadow if this shadow doesn’t accept exist, if. Thing number one is to accept that you have this problematic thing was in you.

Now you begin to model yourself as having this thing, and you manifest it within you where it didn’t exist beforehand. Become informed about equality. So now, now you’re moldering on it. Oh, that’s wonderful. Observe your moods, emotional triggers, fantasies, impulses, dreams, and strong. Reactions to others?

Journaling, dream analysis and active. Imagination. Discu dialogue with inner figures help. How, what, what, this is purely masturbatory and not very useful. Right. You can have internal dialogue, conversations to help yourself work through questions that you have about reality in the world or anything like that.

Right. But they should be goal [01:04:00] directed, not to, to actualize. Right. And what you’re seeing here is sort of like proto actualization he’s describing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Negotiate and integrate through ongoing conscious engagement. Bring these parts into relationship with the ego. This doesn’t mean acting on harmful impulses blindly, but owning them, understanding their origin slash energy and channeling them constructively, eg.

Turning repressed aggression into healthy assertiveness. But you don’t even need to have the repressed aggression. You can just decide not to have the aggression. Like, like there are certain, impulses that you will feel but you feel them because you have chosen to build a model of yourself which reacts to specific and when it’s not an innate thing, like say anger or something like that mm-hmm.

With is that stimuli. And even when it is an innate thing, you can enact conscious control to sublimate it. You at the end of the day. Always have [01:05:00] control of your emotions. And I’ll note here that the worst thing you can have in your life is somebody who affirms emotional states in yourself that are negative and not useful for your objective function or life purpose.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So if you go to somebody and you’re like, or you have a friend and they, they, they stoke, you know, they’re like, yeah, you really like suppose. You’re a, a wife right now and you have a group of friends and that group of friends is like, oh yeah, you’re really justified in being mad at your husband for doing this.

Right. That is. Highly toxic, like get away from them because then you will have more of these negative emotions if they’re affirmed by your community like that, or by a psychologist. Mm-hmm. Or any environment. Mm-hmm. Right. Whereas negative emotions where I’m saying negative, here are emotions that hurt somebody.

His ability to achieve. So they might be positive feeling in them. A lot of emotions that we describe as negative feel really good. Like revenge. Oh [01:06:00]

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. Well, or at least we’ll say the word might be righteous indignation instead.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That feels really good.

Malcolm Collins: Righteous. Yeah, righteous indignation feels good.

And, and so when you have this and then somebody else affirms it in you that is. Really negative and, and, and keep this in mind with your, your larger friend groups, guys do as well. Do you have a friend group who, when you’re like, you know, my partner did X to me, or, or y horrible things, if this ever comes up.

Now this rarely comes up in male friend groups, do they say, well, you know, here’s a plausible reason why this could be a misunderstanding. You know, blah, blah, blah. Or do they say, wow, you’re really justified in being angry right now? You know, because then you’ll get angrier and angrier and angrier. And if you.

Focus on yourself in the moment. Whenever somebody has done this to you, affirmed a negative emotion. I’m sure people have noticed that’s when anger or sadness often begins to spiral out of control.

Simone Collins: Actually, here’s an interesting just side note on [01:07:00] women in groups. And, and meat blocking specifically, it is very, very common in female groups for righteous indignation to be fueled.

So, you know, if a woman is like, oh, like I was just treated this way at work, or something like that, the, the typical appropriate. A female network response is, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that, you know, you’ve been so wronged, blah, blah, blah. I think, well, that’s normative. It’s also a sub, maybe subconscious mate blocking tactic because it ultimately leads to long-term disempowerment and increases the competitiveness of those who don’t engage in that activity.

So just like, a woman might say. Oh no, you’re beautiful when like, you know, someone doesn’t look very good in their group. No, don’t you know? Like, don’t, don’t change anything, you know, because then they’re, they’re ultimately better off competitively. I think this is something similar to that. And I think that you’re more likely to see this kind of justification of an external locus of control in [01:08:00] general or of justified anger or, or victimization in female groups and in male groups.

So they’re just like, dude, you clearly weren’t trying hard enough like you deserve this. Which is, it seems mean. But in the end is actually cooperative and benevolent behavior versus anti-competitive mate blocking behavior. Just throwing that out there.

Malcolm Collins: So here’s a young quote on the shadow. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego.

Personality for no one can become conscious of. The shadow is without considerable effort to become conscious of. It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This. Act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. So he’s doing here what cults often do, what Woo often does, where they try to frame the type of self knowledge that they have of making you special and unique and more important than [01:09:00] other people.

Flatters the ego, right? Also, this feeling of like, I have this dark, mysterious thing inside me. Flatters the ego. Right? And that’s, that’s why it’s so tempting, because it feels cool. Like it, it’s cool. Maybe context if all of this was true, if your life was a battle between some dark shadow living in your heart, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. It’s poetic. It’s, it’s, and a lot of his work was like about that. Like, how do we make the story better? So to be fast on these last steps, he had like psychological types where he goes into like, extroversion, introversion, stuff like that. I think it’s pretty boring. He, the central goal of his philosophy as individual, individual.

Lifelong process element towards wholeness, integrating consciousness and unconscious elements, cheating the unique individual from the collective, while connecting more deeply to the [01:10:00] self it involves confronting and assimilating the shadow relating to the anima or animus that’s like your male or feminine and transcending the persona.

Not about becoming perfect or ego inflated, but achieving balance, authentic personality often intensifies in midlife the second half of life shifting from adaptation to society towards inner meaning. And yeah, this is, I mean, you can see why I just be like, this is just all giant waste of time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Seriously.

Malcolm Collins: This stuff is manifested in your mental landscape by believing it. I, I really wanna make this point. You can have any, anything. Oh, here’s an example, right? Even something totally stupid like an Oedipus complex, right? That like, women get jealous of their dads because their dads have a penis.

Is that the Oedipus?

Simone Collins: No, no, no. That’s penis envy. You’re referring. So an Oedipus complex is where the. [01:11:00] Son wants to kill the father and

Malcolm Collins: marry the

Simone Collins: mother. The mother,

Malcolm Collins: okay, so suppose you Oedipus complex, you’re a normal person. You’re like, this is stupid. This isn’t a real thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But suppose somebody managed to convince you that the Oedipus complex was a 100% real thing.

Now you would say, oh, well I guess I have a secret desire to kill my dad and sleep with my mom. Right? And you begin to build this into yourself because you now believe that this is real, and now this is something you have to deal with. This is why it is so critical that you don’t do this. The craziest ideas out there, like, well, penis Envy would be another one, right?

Like a, a girl believes this. Now all of a sudden she experiences it to some extent because she sees what she now believes within herself, right? The, the brain is, if you see our episode that we did recently [01:12:00] on placebos.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: They’re incredibly powerful.

Simone Collins: Or, or maybe exorcism is where we talk more about placebos.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. You can build these things into yourself. You can build psychological illnesses into yourself. Okay. You can build all of these negative traits into yourself. You can build these challenges into yourself.

Mm-hmm. We

Simone Collins: even talked about this in our episode on Spoony from way back.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, watch your Spoons episode of You’re a Long Time subscriber and you haven’t seen it because This’s a good one, I think. And they’re a useful thing to know about. We actually have two spoons episodes. We have one where we interviewed Barry Weiss’s sister Susie Weis on it.

Su Weiss. Yeah. Cool person. We should ask her back on now that we’re,

Simone Collins: she’s very busy and important now.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, very busy and important. Mrs. Susie Weiss.

Simone Collins: She is

Malcolm Collins: you or whatever now.

Simone Collins: Man, CBS kind of a, anyway, go on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s it. That’s it. This is where we are. This is why I’ve talked about this.

Simone Collins: Worst we hate him.

He’s,

Malcolm Collins: this is [01:13:00] why it’s important to keep your mental models of how your brain works. Lean and be first principles in how you construct them because it is too easy to invent the problems that you’re dealing with. And you can be like, well, I could just swear that I definitely, definitely do have this shadow self because it makes me colon special and awesome.

And you know, you don’t have it because you just aren’t thinking enough about yourself. Right. And I’d point out, well then why don’t I deal with any negative consequences from not addressing it then? Right? Like presumably if I do secretly have it and I’m just not addressing it. Simone, you live with me 24 7, right?

Do I have some like hidden dark side to my personality?

Simone Collins: Well, it’s not hidden.

Malcolm Collins: What’s the dark side then? What’s the, the negative aspect of my personality?

Come on, you. You,

Simone Collins: you’re just. [01:14:00] I’m not gonna say it on air. It’s, it is nothing you act on.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, you mean the arousal pathway?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: That’s not what we’re talking about here.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well, you were asking,

Malcolm Collins: that’s not caused by like a shadow self. That’s something I fully admit.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s one of these things that

Simone Collins: oh God,

Malcolm Collins: Like.

It’s, it’s like not something that I’m even remotely embarrassed about. I, I should say or that I would be particularly embarrassed about talking about. And I have even on the show hypothesized that it is unique to my demographic group,. And the reason why I hypothesized that was both due to statistics around that social group, but also like,

There are other reasons. I think it’s genetic, but Simone had me remove this one.

Simone Collins: oh God. Okay. Are you just gonna say it or are you

Malcolm Collins: not gonna say No? I’m not gonna say it, but

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The point being is ba basically just very [01:15:00] extreme aggression.

Um-huh. Yeah. But. That’s not something I act on. It’s not something that controls me. It’s not something that, no

Simone Collins: no, but you’re right. It’s not, it’s not a hidden part of your your personality. So that’s fair. There there is no, there is no hidden part of you that is yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that is no, but I’m, so what I’m

Simone Collins: asking, like counter to your personality.

Which I guess for you would be like, oh, you know what? I guess that this movie shows up in these stereotypes of like men who are super powerful, but need a dominatrix, that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Do you think

Simone Collins: that’s

Malcolm Collins: No, I just think that’s part of their, their sexuality and like, you don’t need to act on your sexuality.

You don’t need to obsess about your sexuality. You didn’t choose your sexuality. Yeah. I think sexuality is just completely untied from really much else about you. It’s just something that you randomly have. And it doesn’t need to be a big part of your daily thoughts or anything like that, right?

Like it doesn’t need to be part of your. [01:16:00] Rituals. It doesn’t need to be part of how you self conceptualize. And by understanding this, you can free yourself from a lot of the negatives that might come with it, right? Like, oh, I, I should actually indulge in this. I should actually talk about this. But what I’m talking about, Simone, is what somebody would say is you don’t address your shadow.

And if you don’t address your shadow. That you’re going to like, have outbursts at people or you’re going to be secretly cruel to people. Mm-hmm. Or you’re going to you know, be greedy or selfish or, and so what I’m asking you is, is in those types of things are the types of things people think that the shadow actually manifests.

Yeah. Do you see that behavior from me like ever?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: No. And Simone, you haven’t tried to address some shadow in yourself, have you?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So I will say as somebody married to Simone there, like she has no negative [01:17:00] traits. She has,

Simone Collins: Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: please, but you have, you have some eccentricities like not liking being touched when you’re eating.

But that again is something that’s a, a, a random. Biologically inherited thing, not being, yeah, sure. That has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and you harness it in so far that it doesn’t come out in any way that is societally not useful.

Simone Collins: Thanks. I appreciate that.

I think in the end, like it’s just really bad.

Anything that helps you develop an external locus of control and anything that has you overthinking stuff or getting too far up into your head, not good. Just try

Malcolm Collins: it. And, and I, I’ll note here, something that is really bad that can happen is when you don’t accept your biological realities and you assume that they’re, because of like a shadow self, you can end up going on these like endless side quests.

You know, like you, you are uncertain. Like in Simone’s case, you’re un you don’t know why you don’t like you. You wanna measure all your food and you don’t like being [01:18:00] touched when you’re eating and you have other sensory issues. Mm-hmm. And essentially just accepting like, I’m like autistic. My brain is put together differently.

You say. Oh, it’s because I have an unresolved trauma somewhere in my life that I’m just gonna dig, dig, dig, dig, dig at, right. Pick, pick, pick at. Yeah. And that allows you to create, because now, because you’re never actually gonna address this thing ‘cause it’s just part of who you are, you end up creating this giant statue of the shadow in your mind, and it ends up actually having negative effects.

Right, right. And you see this a lot and like, you know, like a conservative individual who doesn’t understand why they deal with same sex attraction, they just happen to be born with some same sex attraction.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And again, what the reason I say that it’s, it’s likely something you’re born with or you get through parasites CR episode on that is because like.

I would, I would admit to you if I felt an ounce of same sex attraction and I don’t, I find it, I get quite a disgust reaction to that stuff. And it’s not ‘cause I was trained to, because I, I not, I wasn’t trained to be aroused by some of the things aroused me, right? Like, [01:19:00] it’s just not part of my biology.

If I then go on some deep quest about like what happened in my childhood that made me x-ray I’m gonna end up obsessing over that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: And, and then I end up building a shadow and then it never goes away because it had nothing to do with a shadow. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was just a random roll of the cards that I didn’t need to make an important part of myself that I didn’t need to act on, that I didn’t need to indulge in.

Anyway,

Simone Collins: screw young. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. And you are an amazing woman.

Simone Collins: You’re an amazing husband and man, which one do you wanna do next?

Malcolm Collins: Whichever one you want.

Simone Collins: Let’s do mine. Here’s your taste of Octavian. Sense of humor, by the way. I was just bantering with him and talking because we, we were, we measured the boys [01:20:00] again this morning against the door, and I was like, yeah, Octavian, someday you’ll be taller than me. And I think he just thinks that humans just grow indefinitely like that.

iGrow too. But this wasn’t apparent to me when he decided to crack what he thought was a joke. And he’s like, oh yeah, ‘cause you’ll be dead. Ha ha, ha. Get it. You’ll be dead. He just kept saying that. I was like, okay. Ah, thanks.

Malcolm Collins: Now that we’ve explained to him that all humans die, he just thinks it’s hilarious.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He’s like, we

Simone Collins: don’t do I have your YouTube plaque when you’re dead, that, that’s like that and he’ll miss our house. That’s kind of

Malcolm Collins: Did he ask for the YouTube plaque this time though?

Simone Collins: No, he’s, he’s kind of forgotten about that for a while. I guess he just gave up on us.

Malcolm Collins: The other, we haven’t even won that yet.

You know, this is just assuming

Simone Collins: he’s preemptively hoping for it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We get to a hundred K so please subscribe

Simone Collins: for a child for when we die. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So this,

Simone Collins: maybe this is the only time someone has [01:21:00] asked for a subscribe for that. Please subscribe because our son wants us to die and then to take the plaque so, you know, have pity on this orphan.

Malcolm Collins: So, oh, what is it that I wanted to say? Yeah, so in relation to the Tucker episode new conspiracy theory dropped where somebody in the comments was like, it’s really weird how whenever somebody starts to. Question the Jews or Israel you know, two, three years later, they’re just completely crazy, like every time, right?

Mm-hmm. No matter how sane they were to begin with, like Tucker Carlson. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and my take on this. Is that Mossad secretly is poisoning people as soon as they become ask any questions about it’s Israel, so that they go crazy.

Simone Collins: It’s like a bad hatter kind of situation. They’re they’re getting like lead, lead laced hats,

Malcolm Collins: mercury or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Lead or something. Oh. I, they go crazy like Candace Owens that somehow made her more famous to go crazy.

Simone Collins: I know. They’re like, this backfired terribly. What have we done?

Malcolm Collins: This [01:22:00] backfired terribly. I, I actually wonder about a full episode on that. Trying to draw like, okay, let’s assume this program is real.

Simone Collins: How would they do it

Malcolm Collins: start? How are they administering the, the poison? What would be a good long-term poison to cause these effects in people?

Simone Collins: Yeah, it would need, yeah. Gosh, what, because I mean the way that Tucker Carlson has gone off the rails is different from the way that Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens have gone off the rails, which I think is the biggest refutation of this conspiracy theory because if they were all acting schizophrenic, like Candace Owens who’s connecting dots where there are no connections it’s very different from the way that Tucker Carlson is going off the rails, which is basically just favoring the.

The views of everyone who’s not American or being sort of a weather vein of those around him, and it just happens to be chic for elite Americans too. Hate America and chic for people in the Middle East and Japan to like their

Malcolm Collins: countries. I don’t know. I mean, he said some pretty crazy stuff. [01:23:00] A actually, you know, you can even look at this historically.

You can argue that Hitler ended up going crazy, right? You could argue

Simone Collins: that, well, well come on. We knew that that was all the methamphetamines and everything else. He was,

Malcolm Collins: well, what if, what if engaging in. Any form of antisemitism actually does just make you go crazy. Like what if they’re God’s favored people?

And so if you decide to,

Simone Collins: it’s God smiting them. It’s not if

Malcolm Collins: God’s ming them with madness

Simone Collins: yeah, maybe

Malcolm Collins: it’s trace it through history. Has God been smiting anyone who attacks the Jews with madness?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Starting with Pharaoh,

Malcolm Collins: well, you could go over Roman emperors because a lot of Roman emperors were both mad and targeted.

The Jews. The question is, does that overlap?

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and we’re the, we’re the Pro J ones if there were any less crazy,

Malcolm Collins: very, very interesting question.

Simone Collins: Dunno know. Who know,

Malcolm Collins: actually, yeah. I’m, I’m feeling a whole episode form here. Simone.

Simone Collins: Oh boy. Oh boy, boy. Oh no. Oh

Malcolm Collins: boy.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Speaker: You call him [01:24:00] Titan, I think he calls the pinker. What do you call Titan? What do you call him? I call him pink.

Is he pink? What else do you call him? Pink is an ugly color. Pink is a ugly color. Titan. Do you think pink is an ugly color? Um, no. It’s just a cool color. I think Pink of the ugly color was that. ‘cause you’re a boy Octavian. Yes. Boys hate pink. Whatcha doing girl? I’m I boys. Did you know Octa Pink used to be the color for little boys?

Octavian Collins: Yeah.

Speaker: Octavian. I wanna tell you something very scary. What there is a type of person out there who wants to make you into a girl is liquid nitrogen. No, no, no, no, no, no. [01:25:00] Octavian. This isn’t a joke. This is real. There is a type of bad person out there that wants to turn you into a girl. Like a meat. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna shoot him in the head.

Well, that might be a little intense. Octavian. And eat him. And eat him for dinner. You want kill him and eat him his meat. What part? What part of the body do we not. Eat. Yeah. Octa, what’s the rule of the body? No heart. No. No. hearts are fine.

Simone Collins: No. Come on. I’ve told you this so many times. What carb do we not eat?

Octavian Collins: The lung?

Simone Collins: No,

Octavian Collins: the skin.

Simone Collins: No.

Octavian Collins: This is really hard.

The brain. The brain.

Simone Collins: We never eat brain

Malcolm Collins: because you can get prion diseases and die.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Very dangerous. Everything else, not the brain.

Octavian Collins: I have to make a video. [01:26:00] Stop it buddy. I that. I own that and I owe you.

Do you see what I have here? Are there slippers?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. She’s be like, ow, that hurts.

Got a lee on me.

You okay buddy?

Octavian Collins: Woo. Go look. Wait. Is it there’s gonna be a giant ship

Speaker: or are they gonna blow something up? Woo.

Octavian Collins: Go. A giant ship. [01:27:00]

Simone Collins: Whoa.

Octavian Collins: In the smack house.

Simone Collins: Titan. Titan. Titan. Did you know that there’s people out there who want to turn you into a boy?

Octavian Collins: Oh no. They turned you into a cat.

Speaker: Oh no. They’re mean people who wanna turn you into a boy.

Malcolm Collins: No.

No, because you already are. Watch out. You’re gonna knock that over

Ian. You’re in trouble. You’re not paying attention.

But you do need to be careful because they did this to one of our friend’s kids, Octavian, actually, multiple friends. Multiple friends, kids, hurry, that one’s gonna turn on Octavian. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes. So one of our friends run, hold on, listen. They took their little boy and they turned him into a girl.

Octavian Collins: Why? [01:28:00] Why?

Speaker: Why? Because they tricked him.

Octavian Collins: What the,

Speaker: oh yeah.

Octavian Collins: I wanna kill him.

Speaker: And you know what they did? They cut off his whoopies.

Malcolm Collins: This is real. Isn’t into our kind of, yeah. It’s helicopters on motor. Why? I like this? This helicopter. Helicopter.

And then they got very sad and you want to hear something crazy. They didn’t like their mommy and daddy anymore. Helicopters. What? The skies are full of. Unlike ‘cause. That’s what these people do. They make you hate your mommy and daddy and they make you a girl. Just hover in one spot. I’m gonna kill them.

Speaker 4: And when the,

Speaker: you probably shouldn’t just like immediately kill them,

Speaker 4: the 64 D ‘

Speaker: cause then, um,

Speaker 4: helicopter in the world,

Speaker: they’ll say [01:29:00] that, I don’t know, you’re overly aggressive or something.

Octavian Collins: Then I would, and I would go out. People would

Speaker 5: attack. He. And

Octavian Collins: even the people want us.

Speaker: Okay.

Octavian Collins: And the camera. I own view, I own, I own speed.

I own the viewers.

Speaker: Oc don’t say that like that’s me. Viewers say you want them to like and subscribe and you like them, not that you own them.

Octavian Collins: I want them to like, and.

And I want

Speaker 6: laser guided.

Octavian Collins: They and I,

depending on the.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe