Mapping the Progression of Human Mindsets: A Framework for Understanding Personal Development

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm Collins presents a new framework for understanding the evolution of human mindsets and personal development. Inspired by the shortcomings of existing models like Spiral Dynamics, Malcolm's tree-like structure outlines various branches of mental states, ranging from animalism and perceptualism to utilitarianism, mysticism, and pragmatism. He explains how individuals can progress through these stages, sometimes regressing or becoming stuck in suboptimal states. Malcolm and Simone explore the implications of this framework, discussing how it can help people identify their current mindset, understand the potential pitfalls of each branch, and navigate towards more intellectually sophisticated and mentally healthy states. They also delve into the practical applications of this model and debate its utility for personal growth and cross-cultural understanding.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello simone Today, we are going to do one of those episodes that excites me so much. I have put so much effort into today's content, and I know it will do horrible in the algorithm, but it's a development of my view of the world further, where I feel that because of this revelation I've had, where I'm like, oh, now I understand things better when I have systematized them in this way.

So it's a

Simone Collins: paradigm shift. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: my paradigm shift for me. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it actually came from reading about a theory that I find very distasteful, which is spiral dynamic. So I ended up, because it was a paradigm shift, I wanted to write it down. So I'll read what I've written down and we can talk about it.

Okay. Like I used to do with the tracks. Sounds good. Yeah.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: The idea of spiral dynamics has come up a few times when talking to fans, and since then, I have noticed some related channels like [00:01:00] HoMath, WhatIfAltHist, and Brittany Simon delineating level systems for how people evolve in their thinking. Anyone who knows us knows how viscerally negatively we would react to such a system at first glance, given that humans seem to have a natural inclination to categorize themselves and others based on simplistic criteria.

If you don't understand why this would create a negative reaction, just watch any video on Spiral Dynamics and watch the person explaining the concept, happily classifying leaders of the political opposition to their beliefs among the examples of the lower order mindsets. All Spiral Dynamics really gets right is a broad ordering of the very lowest levels of personal development and then transitions into a moral and religious system at most of the two tier systems and beyond.

Though, I suppose it is only axiomatic that an individual cannot accurately predict mindsets that are above their own. Thus, if they are at a relatively low level of personal development, will just project a mystical pseudo [00:02:00] religious worldview as being the higher order mindset. However, despite dismissing these systems early on, I began to think more about the ways humans relate to each other.

relate to reality, a life well lived, and a self conception about how those systems build upon others, and it helped me realize that there is a real way to build out such a map. However, the two keys to doing this that others have missed, is that this is not a line, but a branching tree of life philosophies that sometimes, in fact, frequently, has a mindset that is strictly worse than its progenitor.

By this, what I mean is the mindsets don't get better as they go further along the path.

Simone Collins: Would you describe mindsets in this model that you're going to go into deeper, of course, as straying from the path or straying from an ideal? Scenario when they get an

Malcolm Collins: example, which I have written in the next sentence, for [00:03:00] example, we would argue that a strict deontological religious world perspective, which is one of the earliest mindsets is also one of the most mentally healthy and intellectually sophisticated for this reason,

we draw our map of mindsets with a quote unquote waterline with the sophistication and mental health associated with a mindset being determined by where it is along the waterline. So if you think of this like a Line graph that then ends up branching. There is a waterline and some nodes of the line are below the waterline.

Some are above the waterline. Some are below the waterline. Okay. Now before I go further, have you heard of spiral dynamics? Do you know broadly what I'm talking about here? When I'm talking about these level systems for understanding how people think

Simone Collins: I've learned it about five times, and then each time I learn about it, I completely forget about it because that's what I do when I come across information, I disregard.

It is. It's not being useful, I don't maintain space for it. Can you? And that's the way I

Malcolm Collins: was. And that's what this [00:04:00] sort of caused this breakthrough for me is just having my face shoved in it again and again recently. And eventually my distaste for how stupid the predominant theories in this space are became shadowed by the, Oh, but you probably actually could build a system like this that works mindset.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Huh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So that's where, cause I kept seeing things. It was like, no, if you really wanted to do it, you would actually probably order this and this. I should point out that with this system, single individuals don't necessarily need to pass from one node to another node within the system, but a society might.

So if you start at one node, you can often like within your larger society, you can often process further on your own. And that most societies, and I'll get to a point in the graph when I say, this is the node that is a starting node for most people born in a Western society right now.

Simone Collins: Can you start by giving the CliffsNotes version of spiral [00:05:00] dynamics as it is interpreted by the mainstream?

Malcolm Collins: With Spiral Dynamics really all it is very basic, human society progresses through these various mindsets, which they're right about for the first three mindsets, and then it turns into like mystical religious mumbo jumbo, basically.

Simone Collins: And it's it's this Spiral, but you're describing it as a sort of linear. So you ignore

Malcolm Collins: the word spiral. Just think of it as an upwards line. Okay. They have some things where they call it a spiral because they see certain themes repeat as societies develop. And they're like, Oh, and society oscillates between this mindset and this mindset as it moves to higher phases.

However, I think most of this is just an artifact of how the map was constructed. And I don't think that they're actually noticing something that's real in the ways humans develop because they are only through one spiral. Like IE one cycle when they get to the end of their accurate observations before they get into their like pseudo religious [00:06:00] observations.

Simone Collins: Okay. That's important because people who follow this podcast will know that you love what you call spiral energy. And now they're learning that you hate. What you call spiral dynamics. And it might be a little bit confusing.

Malcolm Collins: And we can do another future video going deep into why spiral dynamics are the bad theory.

But I don't like feel, I don't think that's necessary to understand the concepts that we're doing here. And I think that most intelligent people, when they look at spiral dynamics, they're like, Oh, that's an interesting model, but obviously it's being affected by these people's priors. If I

Simone Collins: may, then for the audience, what I would say is if you're not familiar with spiral dynamics.

What I've heard from Malcolm about this so far, although I'm coming into this mostly not knowing what he's going to say, is that what it seems like Malcolm is describing here is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but if it starts at self actualization.

Malcolm Collins: My system goes way past self actualization, which is another problem with a lot of the historic systems.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: but in other words, thematically what we're talking about is what humans do after [00:07:00] they've met all their basic human needs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The other thing that I'd note about a lot of level systems, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs or spiral dynamics is that if people were, if all of society was at the highest level society wouldn't function.

And to me that means that's axiomatically not the highest level that you can be at.

Simone Collins: Is that just because no one's working on the stuff that needs to be done?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like in a society where everyone is turquoise society, where everyone is at Maslow's idea of self actualization is a very non efficacious society.

So it, to me, that just clearly means, no, this isn't some in state it's their idea of what a priest cast should look like which is again, a theological position and not a factual position.

Simone Collins: That's a really good point. I appreciate you're saying that the world doesn't run On self actualized people, the real actualized

Malcolm Collins: gurus

All right. So for the very 1st of the states, this is a state that is in the branch tree, which we call the [00:08:00] lower tree that all of the other trees end up branching out of and I marked this at negative eight. So this scale goes from negative 10 to positive 10.

So people in this state have very little ability to engage with sophisticated ideas. And people generally start in this state when they don't have their basic needs met. I call it animalism. Individuals who live within this mental state are only motivated. By base pre evolved instincts that we share with other animals like sexual desire and a desire for food.

This mindset is virtually unseen outside of mentally handicapped individuals and drug addicts. The next state, which I rate at negative five. So it's like you, you can engage with some more complicated ideas, but it's still mindscape. I call perceptionalism. And you unlock the ability to have this mindset or move from animalism to perceptualism when you are no longer living in fear of not having your basic needs met.

However, I should note here that one of the ways people move from this lower order state [00:09:00] to perceptualism is by deciding they don't need a particular need met.

Simone Collins: Basically, if you decide, if you go from being red pill to MGTOW. You go from that first stage, negative eight to this next stage.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. If you decide that sexuality is a need that you absolutely have then you will stay in the animalism stage until you can decide that you don't need that.

That's not the most important thing to you. You'll see this was drug addicts. Like how does somebody move between the animalism stage of drug addicts to begin to get out of it? They They have to choose to go clean. They have to choose to not need the basic need that previously was driving them

Simone Collins: right.

Malcolm Collins: And this is where perceptualism, even though I view it as a fairly unsophisticated and simple state, is very useful to people who are really struggling. It is the life raft for people who are When they are, deep in self hatred or addiction or something like that, right? So perceptualism individuals in [00:10:00] this state optimize around a self perception, usually an aesthetic ideal like masculinity or a value they associate with high status, like power, love, intellectual deepness, et cetera.

The individual then models their life around embodying this aesthetic ideal. A common mental crutch used by perceptionalists to justify their mindset is not having some need met at a younger age. For example, I was poor when I was young, and thus I now live my entire life focused around the accumulation of wealth or security of some sort.

Obviously, it is not true that wealth equals morality. And we all get to choose what we optimize around. But this is a statement people will often make when they want to avoid reflecting on how illogical their life path has become. Some perceptionalist individuals will present as religious, but for them, religion serves to reinforce their self perception.

For a stereotype of this kind [00:11:00] of person, think of the white kid in college that converts to Buddhism to maximize the aesthetic of spiritual depth and sophistication. For these individuals, their world cosmology exists to service their self perception and does not guide their decisions or view of morality.

So you've seen many people fall into the self perceptionalism mindset. It is better than base level animalism but it is still a fairly unsophisticated mindset. Where you see it the most is when we often complain if you look at our videos of the gender dysphoria problem on the left and the right, where people begin to identify a thing associating with gendered stereotypes as a moral compass.

And you will see some of these like masculinity influencers on the right, ask themselves when they're making major life decisions, what is the most masculine choice? Which is just an insane thing to do. To, to anyone who's has any level of intellectual sophistication, obviously masculinity, [00:12:00] Is not a moral system.

It is an aesthetic system. Okay. It might lead to a healthier lifestyle than just acting on your basal actions. And you actually hear people in the systems talk when they're like there's the two ways you can live. You can either live the masculine way or you can live in hedonism.

They are like, literally unaware that any more sophisticated mental frameworks exist above them. And that's something you regularly see. see within individuals in this stage. Like my mom was very hard in the money equals morality. framework, or at least

Simone Collins: no, just more money, more better. And when I

Malcolm Collins: tried to mentally engage her, I was like, how does that moral framework work?

This moral framework makes no sense. She was really unaware or completely dismissed the sophistication of any moral framework above this.

Simone Collins: I think she just Dismissed the concept of moral frameworks entirely if we're being fair

Malcolm Collins: What she was able to do [00:13:00] through this I didn't have money when I was younger therefore i'm not gonna think about anything higher order than this and with andrew tate who falls into one of these frameworks although he might be transitioning to the next framework right now.

We'll see with his recent conversion to islam but he could have converted to islam just because he saw it as the most masculine religion Which is something he had said before. Is there's a clip of him saying I do everything I do out of a fear of not having power because I have seen what it is like to not have power.

when people say to me, Tate, you're obsessed with money. I say, no. I'm obsessed with not being in that position. Tate. I'm never going to let me live my, me live my only one life on this planet and waste my years of consciousness in that position.

I don't want to be the guy who's 37 driving a f*****g shitty Citroen who gets pulled out on a girl who's too hot for me driving a car I can never afford who can call f*****g dudes psycho kickboxers with f*****g Lambos and asses to turn up and bust me up. I'm never going to be that guy. I'm never going to [00:14:00] accept that submissive position.

And that's why I say when I talk about money and achievement and training and all these things, how important they are, because if you don't find those things important, well, then you're just accepting your place lower down

Malcolm Collins: And I have seen what it is like to be on the lower end of society. So people in this state are often motivated very heavily by fear.

Simone Collins: So is this The same as optimizing your life around a certain identity.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So an identity money perception of status was in society. Perception of status was in a, so basically when

Simone Collins: you're, when your basic need, However, a logical shifts from an animalistic based need to perhaps something more societal or resource based.

Is that fair? I say

Malcolm Collins: it's something aesthetic based is the way I word it. It's a morality designed around an aesthetic. And by that, what I mean by aesthetic, that can mean many things depending on the social context. So people can be like, wealth isn't an aesthetic. And it's actually wealth definitionally differs between which culture you're in.[00:15:00]

And so you're really dealing with one culture's aesthetic of what wealth means. Like it's usually not like numbers in a bank account that they're trying to max. It is their perception of themselves as a wealthier person. Yeah. Yeah. It's not actually

Simone Collins: the dollar signs. It's how you. See yourself and they will spend their wealth

Malcolm Collins: in a way that's meant to reinforce this self perception of being a wealthy person.

And then some people was in this it's that they need other people to see them this way But regardless of what it is, it's about maximizing some self perception and there's some more complicated self perceptions Like I am intellectually deep and some more simple ones like a gender or Something like that right or just power, right?

So that is the second system.

Simone Collins: Okay

Malcolm Collins: the realization that transitions to the next stage is the realization how trivial a life designed around optimizing self perception is. Because just, this is one of those systems where it's more sophisticated than just base animalism, is just if you apply any level of reflection to it, or any level of logic, is just very obviously not [00:16:00] A intellectually satisfying moral system.

And so the next system here as I have it as five, like positive five. So it's a huge. Wow. So we're just,

Simone Collins: yeah, it's not like there's a one number change with every new step.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this step is one of the highest steps in terms of intellectual sophistication and mental health of any step in the entire system.

And these are religious rule systems. So these systems are a stable set of self reinforcing means that lay out a set of rules for how to live. Individuals subject to these systems build their lives, morality, and behavior downstream of their theological system, following a strict set of rules given to them by that system.

This system generally leads to self reinforcing. to better mental health and better equips people to engage with sophisticated philosophical concepts than any system presented of individuals born in the top few percentage points of intellect and ability at self reflection. So [00:17:00] by that, what I mean is if you are a person of a below average intelligence, this system is almost always going to be the best system for you.

To be at this stage, a person is following a strict set of rules laid out by their religion and does not ask why those specific rules exist. They simply accept that those rules are good and that those who do not follow them are sinful. Thus, they would be said to have

a deontological ethical system.

Most of these systems evolved to help some populations outcompete other populations. For more on this, see the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion. However, an individual blindly living by a complicated series of rules about how to live, such as an extremely woke individual, may also be said to be living in one of these systems.

This framework is where a lot of religions are, especially a lot of religions are like, if you were a medieval peasant, this is where you work. It, you do not heavily engage with your [00:18:00] religious system. Outside of it is just true and it is a set of rules that determines right from wrong. However, not everyone in this is in one of these these sorts of religious systems. Some just have a personal. Honor system. Some have some sort of culturally derived system that comes from their local peer group that they picked up in college because they got caught in this, self stabilizing memetic tornado.

That's basically what causes these. And they are just following a set of rules that define good and bad and right and wrong,

Simone Collins: but without. Yeah. So I could see even like someone who just slavishly lives by like some bro code. Being caught up in this. This isn't necessarily like someone being super Catholic or super Orthodox Jewish.

It is someone who just decides to live by rules. Or that's the code of a samurai. You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, exactly. That would be somebody living within one of these systems. And again, I should say they're not all religious people are in the system, but religions are typically the best explanation for these [00:19:00] systems.

Like when somebody is that woke that they have like this, cosmological framework created by it and a strict set of rules about what's sinful and what's not, they may as well be in a religion, this system is passed when an individual or a group realizes the serendipity of which religious system you were born into or the silliness of assuming your generation exists at a moral nexus in history and that the morals, rules, and cosmologies that are common among your birth group, your generation, or your peer group are largely serendipitous and unlikely to align with a true moral north star.

As we say at the beginning of the pragmatist guide to life, you. Even if you're like my morality was my society's morality. And then you point out, yeah, but that moral system has changed constantly throughout history. And now you look back at all those previous moral systems is savagery. And you should expect that people in the future, like we do not live in the moral nexus of history right now.

So you likely want to try to develop a system that is more sophisticated. Then whatever system you happen to be born [00:20:00] into and this realization leads to relativism. This I mark as a negative eight. So a very mental, very unsophisticated close to animalism in its level of Lack of intellectual sophistication or like the people was in it.

Like you just can't have very complicated discussions with them. This is the belief system that attempts to see all moral frameworks and cosmologies is equally true. This world framework often leads to nihilism and value paralyzation. This system leads to high amounts of nihilism and uniquely poor mental health outcomes.

So what, do you have any thoughts on these past two systems?

Simone Collins: I find it interesting and I like how basically becoming more advanced or having some kind of fancy rule set behind what you're doing doesn't necessarily make you We'll say morally or logically superior to someone who has absolutely [00:21:00] nothing on that front.

So that's interesting. I've not really seen a system like that where you can advance, but you can advance in a really bad direction.

Malcolm Collins: I also will note here that spiral dynamics, people will be like what stage you're at the spiral doesn't mark whether you are a good or a bad person often. And I do not take that framework at all.

I think that certain parts of the tree or the map almost always lead to negative behavior patterns. However, the negative behavior patterns are negative as judged by other moral frameworks. I don't really, when I'm marking a part of the tree, I am not marking it by the moral action of its members.

I am art. Marking it by their ability to understand an intellectually sophisticated conversation when you're having it with them. If you're discussing intellectually sophisticated ideas, can they talk back to you or do they just go right over their head? Is one thing that is judged on in mental health outcomes is the other thing is judged on.

Can they largely structure their lives and if they choose to live mentally healthy, [00:22:00] fulfilled lives. And relativism, obviously, I think most intellectually sophisticated people can understand why very few people are actually at the relativist stage because it's just so stupid.

Like obviously you can't say all societies are equally morally just. My favorite line from the relativist standpoint was I forgot who it was, but it was a British general. And some of his Hindi soldiers who were fighting for him in India. Began to construct a fire to burn the widows of some other troop members on.

And they were clearly not doing this voluntarily. And Because there was

Simone Collins: a tradition for a widowed wife to be burned on, along with the remains of her husband. Correct?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he said you can't do this. And they're like we're on the same side, like respect our traditions, expect multi traditionalism.

And his response to this was to say oh, okay, I understand. Sure, I'll respect your tradition, but you need to respect ours. [00:23:00] And so I will let you burn the widows. And then I will begin hanging your men because in England we hang people who burn women alive. And that was the end of the discussion. And a, what I mean by this is if you adopt a true relativist framework, you can excuse, Any moral horror as it's just their way and people will be like, but Malcolm, you're so pluralistic.

Isn't that what you're doing? And I'm like, no, I still judge other cultural groups as morally wrong when they do things that my culture disagrees with that I would see as abusing their kids and stuff like that. I just look at the downstream consequences of a society where everyone can impose their moral frameworks on everyone else and see that downstream consequence as a worse then.

Morally, internally judging other groups, but saying I won't interfere with them and they will eventually self extinguish. And this immoral action will leave the world. But that's where people leave that system is people in this. They're not like me where they don't hold this [00:24:00] perception from a functionalist framework.

I. E. Well, we can't just have everyone impose their moral values on everyone else. But I also believe that other groups are immoral when they don't follow my immoral framework as will be more and more clear as we go further down the chart. Then that leads to the next mindset, which is the default mindset that people born into the developed world are born into.

And this I have at a true zero. So it's not a positive, it's not a negative mindset. It is utilitarianism. This framework sees the goal of an individual life being to maximize the emotional state in the general population, though individuals in this mindset often heavily overvalue their own mental state in internal calculations.

This is the starting mental state of most humans born into a secular society and is the branching point the more derived philosophies come out of. So this is where the tree starts branching. And I'm sure you have seen this mental state and you were probably born into a utilitarian culture if you were born into any culture.[00:25:00]

It's the default assumed position in our society today, and a lot of people are like, if it's the default position, why do we see some people go back to religion? And so I think that there's two things happening here, like deontological religious systems or perceptionalism, right?

Most people who are in the deontological religious systems, either they were raised in often rural, poorer areas that just were not as carried along by the march of civilization as other areas, and thus are mentally healthier as a result of that or they Instead of progressing further on the tree, when they saw that the mindset of the culture they were raised in just wasn't working, they retreated to the last stable state, and so they retreated to religion.

Then you're like why are there so many perceptionalists in our society? Most perceptionalists are people who, at some point in their life, Succumbed to some form of animalism and then just barely escaped that [00:26:00] animalism. And that's why they're at the perceptionalist stage, but they were born and taught within school and had all the resources to be a, in the utilitarianist mindset, they just maybe got addicted to drugs or developed a deep self hatred.

Or, as they often say, I Experience, like my mom said, extreme scarcity as a child of something. And therefore I really can't get above, stage one scarcity mindsets, in terms of intellectual sophistication. So any thoughts?

Simone Collins: That makes sense. And I guess I can understand why utilitarianism would be the default in your system, because also if you live in a.

fairly nihilistic society, you're still going to end up on average being empathetic because most humans are most humans don't like to see other people suffering. So it's a pretty easy moral default to fall back on in the same way that humans and apes instinctually fall back on Fairness being moral, even though it is a [00:27:00] nonsensical concept, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So explain what you mean by fairness is a nonsensical concept. So

Simone Collins: there we found that, oh, not that it's evolved, but yeah. So fairness is nonsensical because there's literally no way you can make something fair on all dimensions. And there's this great example that was presented in this book called Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone that was really influential.

And I read it. It to me what she describes as a cake that you have to fairly divide for a class. So how are you going to divide up this cake? Are you going to divide it by who is the most hungry, by who is the best student, by who the teacher likes the most, by who had the hardest childhood By who is the most clever and the subject by who wants it the most.

There's no way to make it fair along all of those dimensions, because everyone has differing levels of all of these different merits. Meaning that there is no such thing as fair. But as we've seen in Capuchin monkeys with this famous video, where you can see a Capuchin monkey being given. [00:28:00] Some kind of remuneration, some kind of food based remuneration for a task.

And then it sees the monkey next to it, getting an even more delicious food for that same task and suddenly, despite being perfectly satisfied previously with their compensation, they become completely irate because this is unfair.

Getting grape and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it. The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does. And she gets a grape and she eats it. The other one sees that she gives a rock to us, now gets again cucumber.[00:29:00]

She tests the rock now against the wall. She needs to give it to us and she gets cucumber again.

LAUGHING

Simone Collins: So it seems pretty clear from that experiment and other research done that our instinct for fairness evolved as.

Us being a collaborative Mammal or put it another word. It

Malcolm Collins: is part of our pre evolved Instincts no different from lust or something like that. It is not

Simone Collins: more empathy because Group based society where we have to collaborate and we have to all contribute those groups that felt Instincts around fairness or empathy, typically outperformed groups that did not feel things like that.

Because typically if you feel something like empathy, if you feel something like fairness, you're not going to have as many free riders. You're going to have more people contributing of their own free [00:30:00] will and enforcing contribution as well. The

Malcolm Collins: selfish gene would argue you're wrong on this. Yeah.

Group level evolution. Is not an in favor idea within the field of evolution right now. I don't want to get too far into that but the point being is using a claim to fairness to ask for things or anger at society. When you see unfairness is a trade

Simone Collins: selfishly and

Malcolm Collins: it is an animalistic trait, it is a trait that is monkey.

Like it is not. Yeah. If we define your level of humanity being your distance, like the things that you chose about yourself instead of the things that were just pre evolved into you, it is one of these lower order emotional subsets above

Simone Collins: A desire for sex or those more basic things. I don't think it is above

Malcolm Collins: those things.

Simone Collins: But

Malcolm Collins: you might, this is a neutral zero. I said utilitarianism. Utilitarianism isn't a desire for fairness. I think utilitarianism

Simone Collins: comes from a place of empathy. You don't think so?

Malcolm Collins: We'll talk about where it comes from in a second. The [00:31:00] desire for fairness falls into animalism. When people are just like, I need fairness.

Animalistic level. The people will elevate some pre evolved traits as being higher order than other pre evolved traits because they see them as being more conducive to motivating pro social behavior within a functioning society. But I don't see them that way. I see pro social behavior motivated by logic.

As being higher order than pro social behavior motivated by animalistic instincts. And so I don't think it's helpful and you'll understand why I would see it this way. When you get to the higher order parts of the tree, I don't think that there is any utility in ordering your pre evolved emotions. Now I will note that a lot of utilitarians, right?

They do not like self identify as a utilitarian. A lot of them are arguing for hypotheses about how to best use Create a utilitarian landscape. So by that, what I mean is a [00:32:00] libertarian and a communist where that is like the core of their moral framing can both be different types of utilitarians where they have two different hypotheses about how best to distribute positive emotional states within a population.

It can have many different faces. But most of them are represented within mainstream political positions because it is the mainstream belief system within our culture today. When conservatives and progressives are arguing, they are often arguing with the presumption that the goal is utilitarianism.

To help the most people on average in the country was the laws that they're implement.

Before we go into the branches of the tree. I should explain why the tree itself branches it is because individuals choose to optimize around different things and therefore go in different directions. So individuals on the. Urban monoculture path, we call it. Are attempting to optimize around their [00:33:00] own subjective experience of reality , like how good that experience is, the mystical path is completely dedicated to the expansion of your experience of reality. And then the pragmatist. Path is completely dedicated to.

Impacting the objective world around you.

And determining what has value in that world?

Malcolm Collins: So now we're to the first branch of the tree. The urban monoculture branch. This is the mainstream, like when you're moving into elitist circles within the urban monoculture, like intellectually elitist circles, you're typically traveling down this branch. And if you are born into an intellectually elite circle within the urban monoculture and you want to develop into one of the like better branches of the trees, you often need to first recess your mental thinking back to utilitarianism before you can move forwards again.

So this pathway is aimed at reducing the personal experience of negative emotional states and negative self [00:34:00] judgment. A path towards it is often driven by nihilism around finding that you can't actually have a meaningful impact on world events in the way you would want to as an individual. And thus it is heavily colored by an external locus of control.

So the first node on this branch is. Negative five, self acceptance. These individuals try to accept themselves for who they have allowed themselves to become. The goal within this system is a lack of negative self judgment. Obviously, to someone outside of this mental state, they would say that you should try to be the type of person that you are.

Worthy of love and not love yourself if you are indeed wretched. However, to people who go down this path, they often have the prior that they cannot really change who they are. And then to move to the next node within this particular tree that happens when people decide to be a quote unquote good person and build a pathological [00:35:00] need to see themselves as a good person.

Thus, even though you can't help everyone, these individuals decide to help as many people as they can within the moral framework of this self acceptance, never experience anything negative in their lives, blah, blah, blah. We've talked a lot about this when talking about the urban monoculture.

Then they get, get to a negative six node, so slightly lower in the moment negative utilitarianism. Responsibility avoidance. This is the life philosophy held by many of the most educated elites within the urban monoculture. We talk about it all the time in other areas, so I won't go into it too much here.

Suffice to say it is a system of morals based around attempting to set up a world structure where people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without ever encountering emotional discomfort. With no care towards the long term consequences. Individuals in this state often do not have sophisticated models of reality, and instead focus more on the aesthetic of benign quote [00:36:00] unquote good, with a very narrow moral framework, or within a very narrow moral framework, with the epitome of somebody in this state.

Moral system being like the haze movement, for example, right? Even though this causes long term damage to people, occluding from them, that being fat is unhealthy, it reduces in the moment suffering. You can see things like affirmative action being the result of this or handing out fentanyl being the result of this.

But this is where if you are born into the elite of the urban monoculture, often a wealthy, really college educated family this is going to be the mindset that you are grown up being indoctrinated with. But you can also see that this is a branch that's not coming out of the negative utilitarian branch.

It's just a completely different branch. Which is very interesting. And it's also worse mentally than the general utilitarian. Like when you meet these people, you're often able to have less sophisticated conversations with them than you can a general utilitarian, even though their philosophical beliefs are downstream of general utilitarianism.

Simone Collins: [00:37:00] Yeah. I've noticed that normally the conversations just go along the lines of you just can't do that, or that's just wrong instead of negative utilitarians or utilitarians in general, having a bit more to say about why something could be damaging or is suboptimal, which is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: So to get to the final node at the end of the urban monoculture branch, you realize that you're going to die and you begin to form an obsessive fear around this negative state.

Which I call life extensionism. And this is the mental state. It's actually a realization I had while I was going through this chart of just, you fear negative emotions, right? But you realize that not existing is the worst negative emotional state from your own perspective. Really different from the effortless and stuff like that.

And so you begin to build your entire life around a person. Fear of death and not existing anymore, and you just can't let go of this. And this is [00:38:00] why you often see this within the ultra educated elite in our society.

As to why this particular pathway ends in life extensionism and a paralyzing fear of death. It is because the core. Thing that drives people to this pathway versus the other two pathways is an elevation of an individual's own personal subjective experience of reality, which of course leads to the fetishization of your own objective experience of reality. And then of course, if it is your own objective, Experience of reality. That is the thing of value in reality than a reality that no longer has. That thing is a reality without any value, which is what causes this obsession with life, extension and fear of death. Four people on this pathway.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now we're to branch three, mysticism.

This happens when an individual begins to focus on finding some metric to expand one's internal mental state to something above just quote unquote mentally [00:39:00] healthy. And this branch of the tree is the one that a lot of other level systems treat as the only branch of the tree. Like after utilitarianism, they're like the mystical path is the right path.

So node one was in the mystic branch is a negative three nodes. So actually fairly mentally healthy which we call low mysticism or low mystic, low mystics, look for an expanded internal experience of the world, which they believe can be achieved through improving their internal self. However, there is no higher order in herself outside of.

That can be achieved by simple self discipline and what can be learned through the study of science. As such, they construct a self masturbatory framework and hierarchy. This is the branch. Most individuals who create level systems like spiral dynamics are at basically they believe in mental states that are deeper or higher order than just having mental self control.

And because of that, they create. Almost a theological belief in higher order mental states [00:40:00] that they then attempt to access when they are in this setting of low mystic. Do you have any thoughts?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Then the next they move from low mystic to high mystic when the no, the low mystic framework leads to the belief that the world we interact with is an illusion and that higher order information can be gained from alternative mental states.

Essentially, this is the path that quote unquote shatters the illusion of knowing. Negative nine high mystic. They are at the same philosophical sophistication of people in the true state of animalism. High mystics start to draw an understanding of the world from corrupted mental states achieved with things like hallucinogens, chants, or rituals.

They stop being people you can engage with through logical structure. As their experience of reality trumps all others. They usually become arrogant and condescending with the belief that they have access sources of knowledge that no one can touch. However, because their sources of knowledge are generally not cross [00:41:00] interpretable, e.

g. their own experience always trumps all others, there isn't a way for them to have productive conversation with either Even others of their group. And so an example of this, as I was talking with someone who had begun to travel down the pathway of the high mystic. And he was like, yeah, like I tried to be logical in how I'm trying to access these higher order mental states.

I can't meet other people or have conversations with other people trying to be logical about it because all of us, The truth that have been revealed through what I would call a corrupted mental state trump all other truths that have been revealed through other people's because you haven't experienced those corrupted mental states, and therefore there is no interpret ability between the frameworks developed within these various frameworks, which leads to intellectual isolation.

Once you enter this stage Any thoughts here? I'm sure you've met people who are in the stage of high mysticism and they're just really hard to engage with.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When you throw [00:42:00] most rules and pieces of evidence out the window and have to question everything, it's hard to have any sort of meaningful conversation.

Malcolm Collins: When your own subjective experience of reality trumps other any measurable objective experience of reality, then you can no, there's no longer any interinterpretability between you and other intellectuals, no matter how smart you are. And this is why we're so against the mystic pathway, but I think this better shows why we're against the mystic pathway.

Then the final stage in the mystic pathway comes from living in the self imposed intellectual isolation. Basically you're living like in a self imposed jail cell where you can't talk to anyone for decades. And it causes a phenomenon we call brain rot. This is the only negative 10 on the entire tree.

Individuals with brain rot are only able to communicate in simple narrative loops. It is quite common among boomers who went down the mystic path. When [00:43:00] you talk to these individuals, they will either respond with a simple narrative loop about something like what they did that day, some event that happened in the past, or their medical history.

While people in the animalism state have an uncontrolled or untamed self awareness. soul. Individuals with brain rot almost feel like they have no soul left. And this is something that you can often see and is apparent from their eyes and facial expressions. If I was going to put on my theological cap here, I would say this is the end result of communing with chaos and inviting demons into their hearts, which feasted on their soul.

If I am going to put on my secular hat, I would say that this is just the result of living so long with an unstructured logical system that their higher order brain function simply stopped working. Basically, it atrophied. Their brains basically atrophy to a state where they can only talk in narrative self loops.

And if people don't understand what I mean by narrative self loops, if you talk to boomers who grew up in the hippie movement, they're [00:44:00] often in a state of brain rot where you will try to engage them with an intellectual conversation. And then they'll just repeat almost like it didn't hit them at all was a narrative loop about what they did that day.

Or like a narrative loop about something that happened to them in the past or a narrative loop about their medical history. These are the common narrative loops you'll have, but they seem to like, it literally goes in one ear and out the other people in other states. If you try to engage them with a level of intellectual sophistication that they are incapable of engaging with, they typically either respond with anger or just saying, what you're talking about doesn't exist.

People like this just can't engage with you. They almost are like zombies walking through life. And you've seen this before you've seen brain rot before. It's something we've talked a lot about.

Simone Collins: Most people have, yeah, often in older parents or neighbors or something along those lines, people who are just completely lost in their own lives, but not even meaningful lives, just the [00:45:00] minutia of, the Making meals or getting up to shower or paying bills.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah it's a really sad state to see, and I think it is the end state of the mystic path, which is why we're so afraid of the mystic paths. I think you can end as a low mystic and still be a very intelligent person that's easy for me to converse with. The problem is I meet very few old low mystics.

Most mystics, like when you start engaging with low mysticism, you almost inevitably come to the conclusion that this shattering of the illusion of knowing, which then puts you on the path to high mysticism, which puts you on the path to total brain rot. People with a uniquely high amount of mental fortitude can stay on low mysticism but a lot of them are pulled forwards inexorably into high mysticism and then these more dangerous mental states.

And this becomes really dangerous. When entire religious communities move into states of low mysticism or high mysticism. Because people get pulled really quickly to un efficaciousness. Because you can justify anything as a [00:46:00] good life when you're on the mystic tradition. Which means you typically don't contribute back much to society.

Fair. Now we're on the final branch. The quote unquote good branch. Or the branch that we have gone down and I think leads to the most positive mental outcomes.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Which I call pragmatism. So people go from utilitarianism to pragmatism when they realize the value of attempting to live for a value system is good, but the value system of like there is value in saying, okay, this is what good is, and I will structure my life around this and my moral framework around this.

But value systems based around the subjective emotional states of humans are stupid. So by that, what I mean, and this is a statement we often throw out quite frequently is value systems. If you say I am living my life to optimize human happiness. What is human happiness or like positive human emotional states?

Those are just the things that our ancestors felt in response to environmental conditions. That led to them having more [00:47:00] surviving offspring than their neighbors. It would be like a group of paperclip maximizers deciding that the number of paperclips in the world is a true moral good. It's just what we're programmed to believe.

But unlike paperclip maximizers, we were programmed by serendipity. So it's like a lower order philosophy. And even if paperclip maximizers came to this. And the Few groups of paperclip maximizers that are like, Oh, I actually believe that there should be a higher order way to structure. One's logic, they might actually follow the same branches that I've described here.

One might focus on I might be able to program myself to have some deeper understanding of the true nature of reality. And then they would go down the mystic path. And then another might go down this patch, which is to say there are things of value to just, this is a bad way to structure it.

Plus seven, low pragmatism. People with this value system decide on an objective function, or set of things they believe have intrinsic value, and then construct their identities and lives to maximize those things. The book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Life, is a guide towards constructing one's life around this path.

And what I [00:48:00] should say when I'm talking about an objective function, Is essentially you create a weighted list of things you think have value in the world. So it could be a utilitarian framework, but it's likely not. Because this is typically what moves you to true pragmatism is moving away from utilitarianism.

And this weighted almost Mathematical equation determines how you judge individual decisions, but also how you judge how you construct yourself. Instead of using a set of rules to decide what is moral, this path decides what is moral by the effects of the actions on the world adapting a consequentialist moral system instead of a deontological one.

So remember where I said you have the deontological religious framework? This is a consequentialist framework where instead of following a set of rules, the rules that you choose to live by Are based on the consequences your actions have on reality. And for people who are like, no, deontological ethics is a good way to do ethics.

I'm like, okay, so like lying is bad. You agree. Lying is bad. Yeah. Lying is bad. Or stealing is bad. Somebody said, I'll [00:49:00] kill this innocent child. If you don't lie you're going to be like, okay I can lie in that instance. Or I'm going to kill this innocent child. If you don't steal, you're like okay, I'm going to kill.

So you've admitted immediately that yes, it is downstream or this genocide is going to happen if you don't lie, of course you then lie, right? I think everyone, they would really think about it as okay, obviously deontological ethics is stupid. I just chose it because I think it's the system that works at a societal level.

And I disagree with some ethical systems that consequentialists use or that consequentialists Ethical systems can be used if chosen incorrectly to justify atrocities. And it's yeah, if they're choosing bad things to optimize around it, can you be used to justify atrocities?

This is a particularly bad argument because deontological systems that are bad can also lead to atrocities. Nothing about deontological ethical systems, prevents them from leading to atrocities. And then somebody will say, oh yes, but my deontological ethical system would never lead to atrocity. Then I'd say yes, [00:50:00] but my consequentialist ethical system would never lead to atrocities.

So. At least from the perspective of the system itself. So.

we send an argument.

Malcolm Collins: Many religious individuals fall into this path, but unlike the deontological religious people, they are more concerned with why God made rules and what He ultimately wants of them than the rules themselves.

For example, instead of just banning themselves from interacting with porn, they ask, why is there a prohibition on porn? What behavior is that meant to encourage? Then maximizing that directly. Simone, when I was talking to you about this offline, you said it's the difference between dancing and DDR.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

With DDR, you're clearly following the rules. You're doing exactly the steps and you. Are technically dancing, but when you see someone totally nailing DDR, it's very impressive and super cool, but they're not dancing. Whereas when someone's dancing [00:51:00] to the music, it is very clear that they are feeling the music and they are living the music.

And that is. The easiest way for me to understand the difference between these things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think also when people think about this, I might even change like what was I going to say? This is not a prescription towards a specific value system, right? We're not saying this is good or that is good.

It's just, these are people who have decided what they think is good in the world, whether it's through a religious system or through just logicing it out and then they construct their identities. In an attempt to maximize that thing. And they choose their actions and life choices to maximize what they have either logically or theologically decided is good.

The, you're

Simone Collins: assigning points values

Malcolm Collins: to

Simone Collins: these

Malcolm Collins: things. No. But what I'm saying is there's many moral frameworks that can fall within this system. This is not saying this one religious system is true or this one. Objective function is true. It's just saying structuring your life in this way typically leads to better [00:52:00] mental health outcomes and better cross interpretability.

So that's what

Simone Collins: the point system is for. It's for mental health outcomes. As I said, it's for mental

Malcolm Collins: health and philosophical sophistication, which is really cross interpretability. When I talk to these people even if they're in a completely different religious system than me, or they have a completely different moral framework than me, I can usually have a Fairly sophisticated philosophical conversation because they understand as I do that they have a different objective function and they're able to use that and engage with the core reasons that we have intellectual differences.

And they're able to recognize those reasons instead of just I can't talk to you. You know what I mean? Like with other things, it's you're just, Totally wrong about all of these assumptions about reality. So there's no cross interpretability between communication here, right? If you're talking to somebody who thinks money has intrinsic value, it's I can't even begin to explain to you while you're wrong.

You're at such a low level of intellectual sophistication,

or if somebody is drawing truth from emotional states rather than things that are cross interpretable across people, I'm just not [00:53:00] going to be able to have a philosophical conversation with you, right?

Post a pertinent level of sophistication. And so this, what I'm saying here is this is not saying you have to be like us it's saying that there's this one way of structuring things that leads to higher outcomes. Then the next node, an individual goes from there to high pragmatism, when an individual realizes the utility of religious systems, how they evolved, and, are acutely aware of memetic clusters and how they influence group behavior and how they spread.

So this is a plus nine high pragmatism. While low pragmatism is focused on self mastery and living the best life possible as an individual.

When people reach the state of high pragmatism, they begin to focus more on how society came to be structured as it is. See the mimetic clusters move and interact and are acutely aware of the mimetic clusters that influence themselves. Think of this as quote unquote, seeing the matrix [00:54:00] and then take that ability to begin to alter the mimetic systems that influence themselves to allow self control.

To take less mental resources and discipline. They also focus on influencing society more by creating mimetic machines or influencing the direction of mimetic machines. Everyone in this stage lives by some sort of theological system, but are acutely aware of why the system is structured as it is to the most nuanced level, while also altering the course of society more by throwing stones into a river to change its flow than by directly attempting to damn the river.

The Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion is designed to help you. Individuals at this stage. So does this make sense to you? The high pragmatism stage, it's the realization that we had between the pragmatist guide to life and the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. When the pragmatist guide to life, we even point out, 95 percent of the time, you're not lucid.

So you're [00:55:00] operating off of this internal narrative you've created about the type of person you are. The core advancement between low pragmatism and high pragmatism is you learn about and accept that the older religions had a lot of sophisticated tools that you can borrow scaffolding from and use that to better structure yourself on autopilot.

So it requires less mental effort and you more adhere. Towards the life path that you want for yourself in moments of lucidity. And for religious people, it comes when they realize, Oh, this is why my religion is structured the way it is. This is why God structured things like this, or the course of history structured things like this.

And I can utilize these systems. For the service of my community and for the service of God. It is seeing the matrix basically of this sort of the mimetic clouds blowing across our landscape and becoming the architect of them, both within yourself and within the outside world. But it's not with [00:56:00] being just in our framework.

It's basically everyone. Like when we talk about the index, everyone was in the index is basically in a state of high pragmatism because they are all working intentionally to build a culture for their family.

Simone Collins: And what I like about this is that it seems to be pervaded by. bounded rationality in that we understand the limitations of our sentience and we try to address that.

Whereas in contrast with spirituality, for example, there's this adherence or chasing after This illusion that you can be fully awake and enlightened, whereas the pragmatist, especially the high pragmatist understands that there is no such thing as being fully awake or enlightened. And we have to optimize our limited systems around our limitations, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And another thing about high pragmatism is individuals within the high pragmatist state. Often have a very low [00:57:00] attachment to themselves by this. What I mean is they see themselves typically as like frames within time affected by mimetic clouds and they are part of those mimetic clouds and how those clouds move through time and their biological bodies are not particularly important to them., this is how the high pragmatist paths really differentiates from the.

Life extensionist paths, like the fear of death path it's typically whatever religious framework you're dealing with or anything like that, you are just part of a tradition and you don't see yourself as being in a particularly privileged position, even from your own perspective. And I'd say a unique thing about high pragmatists is they typically do not really fear death.

They just fear the things that they won't have time to do. Because that's what they see their life as every day is just I need to do this and this to, live my life towards putting society on the best course possible. And then the final stage within this an [00:58:00] individual achieves perfect self masturbate.

Mastery is plus 10 freedom from sin. Humans are not yet capable of entering this stage to believe you can is to commit a sin of arrogance. However, with technology and further gene editing or further intellectual sophistication that might be achieved by my descendants, this state might be achievable. And so that is how the tree works.

Did that seem like when you think about this tree, does it seem? More useful to you than the tree presented by Spiral Dynamics.

Simone Collins: Both of them seem equally useless to me, if we're being honest. I just don't see the point. Okay, why don't you see the point? This is very interesting to me. People are going to choose the philosophy they choose. They're not going to be influenced by this. I care about this. So what if this, so how is it going to change behavior, my behavior, someone else's behavior?

How is this going to help me behave in a way that is actually

Malcolm Collins: disagree really strongly with your perspective here? Of course, because you made this framework. So you [00:59:00] must explain why I think you are wrong about this. Okay. One, I think this framework when you look at it is also an obviously true framework, unlike spiral dynamics, which I really think you get aspirational after a point there is a level like you might disagree with my scoring system, but I think a lot of people would at least agree with the map more broadly.

And that my scoring system may be more downstream of how these different philosophical perspectives or world perspectives are able to relate to somebody who is in the high pragmatist perspective. So obviously somebody who is in the high pragmatist perspective is going to have more inter interpretability with somebody else in the high pragmatist perspective.

But even if you say that, I think broadly they can agree that the map is true. And when they see the map, it allows them to either quickly advance to higher frameworks. Or see the dangers that are involved with the part of the tree that they're on. So I think when you see something like a low mystic, that might be beginning to proceed towards high mystic, and I'm like, look, this is the path you're on.

I'm sure you can think of [01:00:00] people within your life. Like instead of me being like, Oh, here, Trump is on the chart. That's what everyone always does. I don't need to do that. Like you can think of people within your own life who have descended into brain rot or within high mysticism and low mystics.

Typically look down on people in a state of brain wat or even people in advanced states of high mysticism, but because they don't really see it as an inex path of their philosophy, they don't realize the danger of the path they're on.

And I think that's where the utility of the tree is. I also think the utility of the tree is very useful to people who are at these very low parts of the tree. Like perceptionalism. People at a perceptual estate may not believe that there's anything above them, but as soon as you start delineating all these philosophical frameworks above them, I think most of them have to begrudgingly be like, okay, there are more sophisticated mental states than the one I'm at right now.

I think it also helps people understand, because I think that there can be a belief among people at the deontological part of the tree, the deontological religious part of the tree, that [01:01:00] there is no religious pathway further than the deontological stage that they're at, because they're at this incredibly high local optimum, where they need to path through the valley of utilitarianism before they then get to the higher religious or theological pathway again.

And so I think that's another thing, right? That they don't realize, Oh there is a higher order pathway and here it is mapped out how to get there. Does that sound useful to you now?

Simone Collins: I appreciate that this can show how a radicalized version of a behavior could become like if someone's, just getting started with dabbling in drugs, putting them in some kind of scared straight program and being like, this is what happens if you keep doing what you're doing. So I see what you're saying and I also like any sort of framework that shows people a world beyond their own.

One thing that I really love about the comms Institute and the work you're doing on it, the school that we're creating is that it features this skill tree that shows tons of domains of information that I didn't [01:02:00] even know. I didn't even know. So I like that as well. But yeah, I don't know. I have the same general reaction to this that I do to spiral dynamics.

And perhaps this is due to my inherent lack of intellectual curiosity where I'm just like, okay. But I also think that people in these other categories aren't going to engage with it in the way that you think they would. Like you think they'd be like Oh, I see how I could progress here. But I think a deontological inherent, like someone in that category as you would categorize them would be like.

No, this is how I get closest to God. This is the correct way. And I'm following these rules. So they wouldn't even put themselves in that category. So seeing themselves there wouldn't do anything because they wouldn't believe that they are there in the first place. You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Here's another area where I think it has Really high utility, as I think that there's a belief that progress is always especially if you're going down the urban monoculture pathway towards like self acceptance, like you really see this, like they're like, okay, after self actualization, that comes through self acceptance and then it goes.

And I'm like, [01:03:00] no, the end of self acceptance is no longer questioning yourself. And then that always ends with a paralyzing fear of death. That always ends with you trying to, a paralyzing failure of any in the moment emotional inconvenience, right? Of the belief that everyone should be affirmed for believing whoever they are.

Obviously, if all society is doing this is going to lead to enormous mental health problems and stuff like that. It's just a very bad way to structure society. And that you cannot Like you, you need to reverse track to an earlier mental state before you can branch into the more sophisticated and mentally healthy segments of the tree.

And I have seen a lot of people dead end. In various branches for example, I know a lot of low mystics who have dead into the low mystic branch. They have the intelligence to go higher, but they were just seduced into that path early on. And they don't realize they need to go back before going forwards.

It's the same with people who, enter this state of [01:04:00] intense paralyzation in terms of the fear of dying, and they begin to just spend all their money to stop dying and everything like that. And it's like, how did you get here? And when they can see the larger map that this is not actually a fear that they need to have, when they have different self conceptualizations of themselves, but they need to go a number of stages back before they're at a level of optimization again.

And I also think that the chart shows, which is really useful to people is going through. forwards in terms of mental systems, like realizing obvious logical inconsistencies or problems with a philosophical or world framework doesn't move you to necessarily a more sophisticated moral framework. And I also think it's really important to have a map for what happens after self actualization.

And I view self actualization as a stage as occurring almost before like add self acceptance, I guess you could say like it is the wrong pathway. Once you've gone to self actualization, you've gone the wrong way.

Simone Collins: What I like about that too, is like Ayla went through this process where she's, she tried to interview as many people as [01:05:00] she could who had.

Believed to achieve some form of enlightenment and then found that there was no uniform definition of enlightenment. And it does show that this is a field when it comes to human flourishing, that is perhaps a little bit anemic. We haven't really thought through what human flourishing is, what enlightenment is, what it is to be self actualized.

To reach one's full potential. So I like that at least

Malcolm Collins: for that is so few people are on these higher branches of the tree that they just haven't thought about it. And, or that they can't see it. I think that some branches of the tree can't see other branches of the tree. I think a lot of people who are deep in the mystic path genuinely cannot see the other branches of the tree.

They just disappear to them and look like just an earlier stage. I think sometimes this, I think it's true for the effortless, right? They can no longer see the other branches of the tree. Once they're there, just everything appears perplexing to them. They don't understand how somebody went from here to here.

[01:06:00] And I think that the full map. Allows a degree of cross interpretability between the different branches. If somebody is at this stage of, we need to just remove negative human emotions, they don't understand like how somebody could have gotten to like lower high pragmatism. Where they're like, yeah, but it causes in the moment, emotional pain causing in the moment, emotional pain makes me a bad guy.

Why would I care about any other sort of Ethical framework. I'm like but long term, even by your own system, you're causing huge amounts of suffering. And they're like I'm not directly causing that. That's more of a consequence of the system I'm creating. And so then you have to put into a, okay, if there's thought experiments, if you're putting into place a system now that is going to work.

Explode on someone in 100 years who isn't even born yet in a bed that was shattered. Or are you responsible for that? And then it's yeah, of course I'm responsible for that. But it's like, how is that any different? If you're creating a cultural system, that's doing that to millions of people, it allows for.

An explanation or better explanation as to why these other moral [01:07:00] systems aren't as useful. And lead to, I think, actions that are just wrong. What you often notice about the other branches of the tree is they get worse as they get deeper. So for most branches of the tree, you're actually better off not advancing to the higher stages.

Would you say

Simone Collins: that the, if we were to flesh this out more, and I guess this is a tree that's only giving examples, it's not comprehensive that we'll say rationalism as it existed a while ago, could be seen as the, extreme going too far with pragmatism where people are like I'm just going to be so practical that I'm going to eat a stick of butter every day because the research says so that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with rationalism, I would see it as extremely, I'd actually say it's the branch between utilitarianism and low pragmatism, but I wouldn't say it's all the way to low pragmatism yet.

Simone Collins: What would be pragmatism taken too far?

Malcolm Collins: I don't think you can.

Simone Collins: No, [01:08:00] everything else can become corrupted except for our chosen philosophy.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: That's why I like our philosophy. That's why I warn against other philosophies. And you can follow one of the mystic traditions and go when I mean like theological traditions and then become a high pragmatist and try to structure it to be of usefulness to you, right? And I think this shows how people who are in the mystic traditions can try to restructure them from a high pragmatist framework, but they just can never succumb to the belief that the Information they receive from corrupted states of mind is higher order than sort of their objective experience of reality.

And I think that that's the core thing about the high path that just gets better. If you look at spiral dynamics, when you hear people talking about like the highest orders in spiral dynamics, or I hear about people talking about the mindsets within the highest orders. of their mental frameworks.

Society would just be worse if everyone was at them. Weird mystic gurus that are in touch with the fabric of reality and [01:09:00] spend their days philosophizing and blah, blah, blah. Whereas, The high pragmatist, if he's in a society of high pragmatist is just functioning, right? Like they're just working.

They're trying to make the world a better place and see their value system replicated as much as possible within wider society. But they are not at this level of sort of intellectual freeze. I also think that the chart shows why we've hit this stage of nihilism in our current society. I love doing the longer ones. I don't know, do you have any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I think I need to understand this better before I can judge it. Obviously, I'm not quite getting it because if I were, I'd probably find it a lot more interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, maybe one of the fans creates a chart for you or I'll create some rudimentary chart and you'll be like, Oh, I get it now. That could help.

Simone Collins: That could help for sure. But I appreciate you sharing this and I'm really glad to have

Malcolm Collins: so intuitively right to you that you have trouble. In gauging with people who got stuck on other branches of the tree or thinking, I don't think that's it.

Simone Collins: No, that's not it. It's more that I [01:10:00] don't understand the pragmatism of this itself, but I

Malcolm Collins: guess it depends on if people find it of utility. You're basically saying that I don't find this other branches of the tree will. Not learn from this. Like they, this will not give them a visibility outside of their branch of the tree.

And because of that, it offers no utility. I guess we'll see in the comments does this help people at different branches of the tree? And would people have found a system like this useful wherever they are on the tree, if they had seen this earlier?

Simone Collins: Yeah. But thank you for thinking through this.

I just love that you're constantly trying to figure out how the world fits together, how philosophies fit together and how things can be improved, how people can find something closer to the truth. And I'm so lucky that you do this because I'm, as much as I would like to think of myself as a pragmatist, I'm often stuck in survival mode in different ways because I'm so neurotic.

And there are so many things that like, I can't hear myself think over a mess. So If there's a mess somewhere in our house, I'm no longer a pragmatist. I'm someone who's in a panic state who can't deal with the [01:11:00] fact that there's like a turd on the ground because there's like a turd on the ground every third day in our house.

Potty training. I love you so much, Malcolm, and I'm grateful for everything you do.

Malcolm Collins: Have a great day.

Simone Collins: You too.

Okay.

I'm actually really curious to see if other people found this useful at all. Because afterwards someone was like, I don't know. I just don't find, um, you know, mapping systems like this or ranking systems like this useful. And uh, such, uh, I am very interested to see if 81 thought it might have some utility to people. However, I will say I don't check the YouTube comments as thoroughly as the discord.

I typically read the discord discussion on every day's episode. So if you. Uh, have ideas, put it on the discord episode discussion. If you put it on YouTube, I'll probably read it, but you know, less probability. And, uh, put a poll on the discord discussion of whether or not it's a good theory or a bad theory, because I'd love to see [01:12:00] voting on that. And I'll put the link to the discord.

I won't forget this time, guys in the, description.

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