Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

We discuss why many wealthy and powerful people seem to be building bunkers and making end times preparations. We explore the frontier instinct towards apocalyptic fantasies, how this varies by ancestry, and why it persists generationally. We cover bunker features like AI kill drones, the risks of private security forces, concerns around climate change and social instability, and why islands are not actually that safe. We argue this preparation makes sense given fragile infrastructure but warn against the Marxist perspective of the ultra-wealthy wanting collapse.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. You sent me an interesting tweet by our friend,Diana Fleishman friend of the show, done a few episodes with us. What was it on? Talk a bit to thisSimone Collins: bunkers. So essentially she posted a Twitter poll recently asking her followers.If they received 3 million, would they put some of it toward building a bunker, you know, for like end times or whatever? And the vast majority of responses was no, they would not. The average person is not thinking about this, but I have noticed that on the side of Very wealthy people and also some of our friends who are not necessarily like insanely wealthy, but they move in those circles are totally thinking about this and totally want the bunkers and totally have their getaway plans.And then there are some like articles coming out about fairly prominent people, either attempting to or planning to build their. Cool, scary times bunker. So apparently Peter [00:01:00] Thiel had plans to build a bunker in New Zealand. I think it might have been rejected. I don't know what the current status is, but Sam Altman had at some point, he's the CEO of OpenAI said something about like, you know, kind of being in on that. And like, you know, his plan was to go to that bunker, to Teal's bunker, if things went bad.Malcolm Collins: You know, Simone, I don't know if you know this, we have two different bunker invites. We do? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to go into who they are or anything.Simone Collins: Well, I wish you were from Mark Zuckerberg because he certainly has the coolest bunker. I just want to read a description from Wired Magazine because It is so fun.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: According to plans viewed by Wired and a source familiar with the development, the partially completed compound consists of more than a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms in total and is centered around two mansions with a total of four area comparable Oh, sorry.With a [00:02:00] total floor area comparable to a professional football field, 57, 000 square feet, which contain multiple elevators, offices, conference rooms, and an industrial sized kitchen, in a nearby wooded area, a web of what, 11 disc shaped tree houses are planned, which will be connected by intricate rope bridges, allowing visitors to cross from one building to the next while staying among the treetops.A building on the other side of the main mansions. We'll include a full size gym, pool, sauna, hot tub, coal plunge, and tennis court. The property is dotted with other guest houses and operations buildings. The scale of the project suggests that it will be more of a personal vacation home. Zuckerberg has already hosted two corporate events at the compound.And the plans show that the two central mansions will be joined by a tunnel that branches off into a 5, 000 square foot underground bunker. So not all of this is underground, like a lot of it's sort of above ground, which many of these planned things appear to be. They're not all like these super underground [00:03:00] nuclear fallout bunkers.And many of the compound's doors are planned to be keypad operated. or soundproofed. Others, like those in the library, are described as blind doors made to imitate the design of their surrounding walls. The door in the underground shelter will be constructed out of metal and filled with concrete, still common in bunkers and bomb shelters.So, What I love about what Zuckerberg is building, the very least, is that like, he's clearly making a mixed use place. Like, I love, I hate the idea of building a bunker that you're just not going to use. And I love that he's like, you know what, if I'm building a bunker, I'm going to make it like the coolest vacation house as well.You know, kill two birds with one stone. Even if the end times don't come, at least I get to like You know, have some fun, some good parties, good vacations in Hawaii. I,Malcolm Collins: I, I absolutely love this as well. And so something that you had mentioned is, is not a lot of people are doing this. That has [00:04:00] not been my read at all.I would say it was in the billionaire circles, almost every single one of them that we know of. All the billionaires are doing it. And, and within our wider friend group, like if I think of our friends who work in VC and stuff like that, I'd say 80 percent of them have some sort of bunker system or off the grid plan.And if they're conservative, I'd say 99 percent of them do. Which is interesting, and so the question is like, what do they know that you don't know? And I actually think that the answer is going to be a little bit of a bummer to people. And it comes from hold on a second. To actually address something that some people were talking about because they want to use the resident J O O's comments on the situation in Manhattan. Where the, the tunnel Jews, where it was found that they had dug these, the teen boys had dug these tunnels or like built out these tunnels underneath one of the I think it was synagogues or something like that.Um, [00:05:00] And, and they're like, Oh, look, it's proof. And they had like creepy old like beds in them and stuff like that. And they, Oh, they went by like the girls, basically the girl's dorm. No,Simone Collins: a woman's bathhouse, a woman's ritual bathhouse.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. Basically the girl's dorm. Okay. I'm sorry. The funny thing is, is people, like, they look at this.And they're like, Oh, this is sign of something nefarious going on. And I'm like, actually, this is more of a sign of like, you're out of touchness with traditional masculinity. No, it's true. Like, like a traditional boy childhood. I had forts in the woods. I had, and when I was in the city, there was like at various places, I always had some sort of like fort in a derelict building or something like that.There was a derelict building by ours that we would go like explore and we had like little areas that we knew about. And of course you take the little like doll heads and stuff like that and all of the creepy things. Well, one of the ones near us was an old, hospital, and there was a children's wing of the hospital, [00:06:00] you know, you had all the decaying toys and all of that.It looked extra creepy, but of course, that's the home base when you're setting up and making it, you know, look that way. And of course, anyone he grew up in the movie era of like the 70s. Every single male coming of age movie had a, you know, them drilling a hole in the side of the the wall on the girl's dorm.You're starting to leave s**t! Hey, beat it, midget! But I'm missing it, man! Would you shut up and you stay on your side?Malcolm Collins: Like, is it gross? Yes. Is it something that they should have been doing? No. Is it normal male youth behavior and, like, not the sign of, like, child, like, whatever smuggling? No, it's not like that. It's the insane conclusion to draw from that. Yeah. PeopleSimone Collins: are like, Oh, like these, these disgusting child sized mattresses who's been forced to sleep on them.And it's like, dude, their little sister probably like aged out of it. And they were like, Oh yeah, mom, dad, I'll go dispose of it. [00:07:00] And they're like, Oh, finally we have something soft to sit on down here. You know, this is the desire ofMalcolm Collins: young men to build little forts in hidden areas. And then of course, because it was a religious extremist, you know, community like these.They probably associated it with some form of like religious purpose as well.Simone Collins: Everything's through that filter, you know, and if it wasn't that it would have been like Marvel movies or something, right? Like,Malcolm Collins: whatever. Right, right. Well, I mean, when you're young, you know, you do that sort of stuff. I mean, if you don't have a religious tradition, I don't know, it's like a Wiccan spot or something like that, or it's that, you know, Oh, I'm doing these little.Like special magic things that like other people don't have access to. It is normal kid stuff. And it was the kids who did this. So this wasn't like older people in the community. It was like a group of young men. So, yeah, whatever. Right? Like I, but I think that that's sort of what we're seeing here.Okay. Is. I think you have an instinct within some populations to build little fortifications. And I think that this instinct, you know, it comes from an episode that we were going to do, which [00:08:00] is the frontier people's instinct to crave apocalypses. I think when you're talking about the general population you know, you ask them, about you know, do you have a bunker?No, they can't afford a bunker. You ask them, do you have a zombie plan? Like, when was the last time you thought about your zombie plan? I, I think especially if you're talking to conservatives, probably 80 percent of men have spent. Some time, like a lot more time than they need to, given the actual probability of a zombie attack, thinking about their zombieSimone Collins: plan.Yeah, are you asking like, how many MREs do you have? Like, you know, or even like you, you can see this built into some religions, like, you know, the, the Mormon Norm of having a certain supply of food all that, you know, like, yeah,Malcolm Collins: well, and a lot of people don't know, but the, the, the because your grandfather worked on one, the, the the bones ofSimone Collins: the bunker.Yeah. At the bottom of someMalcolm Collins: large temples. Yeah. So a lot of these frontier religions have this, but I actually think it's [00:09:00] a genetic. instinct in the same way that I think that like sort of, the men, the young men of a tribe before they come of age, like building little traditions together and building little forts together, it's likely a traditional instinct because that would have really helped you bond with your kinsmen in a historic context and still does.But I think in addition, in developing secret rights and everything like that, you know, you see this, what is a fraternity if not that. All the boys get together, they, they have a A place that's disgusting often and they have secret little rituals and everything like that. This is a very conservative instinct, you could say.But then in addition to that, I also think the prepping for like things that can never happen is interesting. One of the most interesting things is if you ask people What's their velociraptor plan? Now this isn't as popular today because the Jurassic Park movies aren't as popular as they used to be.Okay. Something like 20 percent of men would have a velociraptor attack plan of their house, like in their house was surrounded by velociraptors. Just like not a scenario that's going to remotely happen, but there's still planningSimone Collins: around. It's fun to fantasize [00:10:00] about, right?Malcolm Collins: Right, but I don't think everyone does this.I think people who are from areas that have been civilized for a really long time don't have apocalyptic plans as much as people who lived in frontier areas for a long time. So Yeah,Simone Collins: because surviving in the frontier Is surviving in the apocalypse.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, an apocalypse can happen at any day, you know, basically an apocalypse.Right. Yeah. You know, you're building, then what do you have? You're back to square zero again. Right. No, ISimone Collins: mean, you don't think about it. No, just even on a nice sunny day you know, food is limited. Locusts could come through, you know, some kind of pests could come through and completely wipe out all your food.A snowstorm could come raiders, you know, like, you know, in some cases, like, local tribes that are very antagonistic or sometimes just like, like thieves on the road, you know, could just come and like attack your house at any time. Like it's, it is 100%. It is the, the frontier. It's an apocalyptic scenario.So to a great extent, the [00:11:00] kinds of concerns that people are planning around are exactly the same concern their ancestors survived around.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the people in these contexts who didn't have this instinct to have like a hidden store of food away from their house to have like a backup house that's like uniquely defensible to have like, they.Just died when these things happen. That's why this instinct is so strong in these populations. It's also why if you look at the frontier, like if you look at the best apocalyptic movies, they are coming out of frontier areas. So you look at like good Hollywood movies, good, like like, Road Warrior, where did that come from?Australia, right? You know, all of the good apocalyptic stories typically come from the Americas or from Australia. And if you look at anime, they honestly just don't do a very good job with apocalyptic stories. I, I've never had a good apocalyptic anime that I really liked. High School of the Dead is probably the closest.I think it's the best zombie property I've ever watched. But it wasn't [00:12:00] really told like an apocalypse story. Yeah. Which is much more you know, an instance where you're forced to like prove your mettle and like everything. Yeah,Simone Collins: it's a survival story. An apocalypse is very different from survival scenarios.It's about a sustainable life going forward. It's about having a defensible property. It's about having a food supply. It's not about making it from one day to the next as the zombies try to killMalcolm Collins: you. Yeah, which is what you often see more in the Japanese stories, right? Like it's not about building a settlement, building the defenses around the settlement.This is what the people from these apocalyptic traditions start fantasizing about. And I also think that there's different colors of apocalyptic tradition that people fantasize about given the environment that their ancestors had to adapt to. So if you look at me, like my apocalyptic fantasy, when I look at it, when I listen to the songs associated with it,I, I love it.A part of my heart longs for it. And you could say, well, who would ever long for this? It's the Frostpunk universe.Are those [00:13:00] who would defy us Who choose oppression over ascension For the pie is dizzy and ends without regret Depend a bend on questioning the direst twisted I am this pariah's and their heretic messiah Winter blizzards to infinity, so sing the hymns and legionaries Hand in and skin the sinners if you wish to skim divinity Each shiver will deliver us, deliverance in time Earn the innocence for penitence if we preempt the crime This battlement of sacraments has chatteled to our right The sacrilegious and recalcitrant shall vow of this night Non believers shall not deceive us, we shall greet their cheek with grievance In this ceaseless season we redeem the meek with bleak obedience I'M SEEKING A It's unheeding heathens, either bleed or bleed allegiance.Blessed be relief from freedom, lest ye feel the need for treason. Since the precept was decreed, its certainty was be determined. Mere herds of sheep are people, thus they need to be subservient. Be so turbulent a firmament, the worst of men survive. Pray their mercy may preserve us once we touch the other side.​Simone Collins: [00:14:00]And here you are complaining about our interior temperature being 51 degrees. Come on, Malcolm. Right?Malcolm Collins: Yes. You need to edify the spirit.Simone Collins: Would you know, I know Octavian the other day, I just have to say this.The other day, he was like, I love the cold. And I'm like, yes,Malcolm Collins: yes. Our house is a cold house, not heat in the winter with our belief system, right? You know, constant , self deprivation. Yeah. So, It, I think what we're seeing here is an evolved instinct and I mean,Simone Collins: yeah, we also frame it as something that people enjoy.It doesn't seem that all of the people involved with this enjoy it. Like they're actually worried and you know, some of our friends when they've spoken about it, don't talk about it like they're enjoying it. They talk about it like it's keeping them up at night. So I wouldn't say I do agree. It's an instinct.Just like a, a squirrel having the instinct to hide away food. I don't think that these people [00:15:00] enjoy it. Now there's this one Marxist media theorist, self styled I should say, I'm not just calling them that who wrote this piece in the Guardian about how, oh, these. Rich people just keep reaching out to me and asking for my advice because they think I'm a futurist, even though I'm a humanist.And then sometimes I just go anyway, because I won't say no to the money, of course, and maybe I can convince them to be better people. And the general gist of this person's thesis is that the apocalyptic mindset that these wealthy people have is a danger to society because it's kind of this fantasy that they.They want to come true. Like there can only be one, they, they want this future where only they survive. And, like, they might, the article doesn't, I think, explicitly say this, but, like, they might manifest it because they're the powerful people and they'll make it happen or they won't stop it from happening because they kind of want it to happen.These are Marxist feverMalcolm Collins: dreams.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I [00:16:00] mean. I don't know what to say. Like IMalcolm Collins: would only do that. I mean, they have their power because of the existing system. Exactly. Rich in the powerful in a society are those individuals who are often most threatened by ideas that counter The society and the mainstream ideals.This is why you have individuals who are often clearly smart enough to understand the concept of the urban monoculture, understand the negative value sets. It's, it's, it's giving to a population, you know, like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or something like that. Like if they. Applied the most small modicum of thoughts to the way the world is structured today.They would realize how unjust it is and how dangerous it is, but they can't, they can't afford to because of the world structure changed, they would lose what they have.Simone Collins: I don't know. I think, so, it, among the threats that they were planning for that were listed, there was climate change, obviously. So like a lot of concern over that, but also social instability.[00:17:00]And no, well, I, I, I think so there's some people who are covering this whole billionaire bunkers thing are also talking about people getting golden passports and all these other, like, you know, like, you know, buying islands. I totally don't think this has anything to do with apocalyptic planning. They're buying islands because they want to have a fricking island.Like buying an island is like the worst place to be in an apocalypse. You're going to get taken out by the next hurricane. This is when IMalcolm Collins: grew up, my family had a private island, the Bahamas. that we would go to and we would spend, you know, I'd spend a few months there every year. And you know, pirate raids and stuff like that.They are, people think islands are much more defensible than they are. Yeah. TheSimone Collins: house that Malcolm lived in with his family, that they'd built on that Island, literally riddled full of bullets. It is like, it was so sad to walk through it. And it was so disturbing because it was likeMalcolm Collins: stuffed animals that have beenSimone Collins: stuffed animals, these kid beds.Yeah. Like just. Yeah, caught up bullets, bullet holes everywhere. So anyway, yeah, no, these people are just buying islands because they want party islands and then, you know, other people are covering it saying, oh, they [00:18:00] think the end of the world is coming and the passport saying, come on, that's not going to do you any good in a real apocalypse.I think people just kind of. For some people, it seems like a kind of hobby to pick up more passports. I think it's the bunker people that are actually thinking about this, but I think one of the reasons why I think they are planning for social instability is that a lot of the, the conversations are circling around the, like private security forces, for example, this, this Marxist who was, was flown out to advise a group of a small group of like five millionaires and billionaires about their bunker strategy rights.Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, how do I maintain authority over my security force after the event? The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, and malicious computer hack that takes everything down.The single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be [00:19:00] required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy SEALs to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards?Or, once Even crypto was worthless, what would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader? The, the billionaires considered using special combinations of locks and food supply that only they knew, or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe, Building robots to serve as guards and workers, if that technology could be developed in time.So like, okay, so these, at least these people who are dumb enough to hire a Marxist to help them with their survival strategy Who are building bunkers and stuff are really concerned about security. Yeah, they are concerned about social unrest. They are concerned about people attacking themMalcolm Collins: When we would say I mean, I hope anyone who knows our channel would say what we would say if we had a lot of money is that the skills needed in a good leader are going to change during this time period and you should build a system that [00:20:00] allows the society that you're building to elect the best leader.It doesn't need to be you. You, you don't need to control, you're just lucky to survive the apocalypse. And after that, it's about building a strong culture and you should be happy if one of the Navy SEAL guards is running everything, if they're a benevolent and good leader, you should focus much more on good governance than you should focus on, and we did write the pragmatist guide to governance.Then you should focus on trying to maintain power yourself. And great example of this. So in China, by the way, this is a, this is a great story. So when the CCP was coming to power there was, you know, the, the government before it, I forget what they were called Shanghai Shek's government was falling apart.And one of the mayors, I want to say was the mayor of one of the major cities, took all his money. And put it in his car, like, in gold bricks, right? Oh, I love this story. And he, he, he just filled this, like, limousine with gold bricks, and he got in, and he had his limo driver drive [00:21:00] him out of the city, apparently, like, right at the city limits.The limo driver Took him out of the car, shot him, and drove off with a limo full of gold bricks. Because that's why! You don't matter anymore! I got a limo full of gold bricks here! You've been a dick to me! And this is the problem with these people. If they haven't engendered the respect of the people around them in terms of how they've made their money and how they spent their money.Which is very antithetical to the way we live. It, like, if you look at the way that we put money into our community and stuff like that, the idea that anyone in our community would betray us like this, and it's not like small amounts, like, this is the problem. You don't give your community, like, a pittance or something like that.Because if you do that, then, you know, they still have a lot of So, one, never give your community Less than what they deserve to have the same advantages as somebody was in your family, right? Because then you're building a community of people who are like, I genuinely appreciate you guys. But on top of that, and we, we've had this, like we've mentioned to the community, [00:22:00] like, it'll come up sometimes like, oh, this person has, has mentioned killing us online.And they're like, I, they better not f*****g come here. So that's, that's, you know, one thing is, is, is your. You, you need to actually be a good person and actually reinvest in your community. Well, at least on a meritocratic basis. But the other thing is don't have things that are worth taking. Within a system like this, like within our house, we have nothing that's worth stealing.We have computers that will be like, like literally the most expensive things we have in our house or our technology. But it'sSimone Collins: like even our laptops are not like Like mine is four years old, three, three years old. Like, yeah, none of it. Like even our, our, our screens, like our bigger like screen, like in the kitchen is, is so shitty.I don't think anyone would even take it. Cause it's like, I could imagine them trying to turn it on and like waiting the five minutes it takes for it to load, you know, and being like.Malcolm Collins: We have like five sets of the same [00:23:00] outfit. That's not particularly useful. You don't have no one steals clothes or jewelry.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess a lot of it's just, but I mean, but hold on like in the apocalypse though, what these people are afraid of having stolen is just like literally their food, their clean water, their supplies, like the stuff that people need to not die.Malcolm Collins: And I think what you need then is the thing that really protects you is by having a system centered around you or your property or something you have built that is stable and that people want to participate in.Hmm. That's the thing. You want to be the one, if not stable democracy, because I actually don't think democracies are particularly good governing systems, and again, read the Pragmatist Guide to Governance if you're interested in this, but be the system where people can be fairly certain that they, that the best People that the most meritocratically competent people are going to be promoted was in that system to the to to a good position and that people was in that system were want for less than other systems and then people are [00:24:00] like, well, what about the angry non meritocratically competent people?Well, the great thing is that if you like, if you. Sap the surrounding area of all the meritocratically competent people, then you don't need to worry about the other groups in the area because the meritocratically competent people will find ways to defend your settlement. So at that point, it's mostly just about having the ammunition and the guns and stuff like that, that can be distributed competently by whatever governance system you set up.I will say one of the, the, I know bunkers that we have been invited to use is AI kill drones. So they wouldn't have this problem. We'd have to.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, I think we're really like me just a few years away from most people being able to like commercially set up AI drones to defend their property, which is like, and that would change a lot like that.Plus a good solar flare protected solar energy system and, um. You know, some other like energy supplies would probably do the trick. Right.Malcolm Collins: [00:25:00] No, but I mean, I do find the AI kill drone thing. Interesting. It's a system where they've got a an area of farmland and did that's enough to support the people who would be coming there.And then like a silo and the silo has the drone flying. Kill drones to protect the area, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, people would be like, well, that can't be operational constantly because they need to recharge. And it's like, well, it doesn't need to be operational constantly. It needs to be operational a few times before people realize that you do not attack this settlement.And you put the people who you care about dying less on the outskirts of the settlement and the people you care about dying more on the inside of the settlement. very different settlement planning practices than you would have historically. And you, you can earn land and stuff like that by labor or by, by contributing to the settlement schools.Yeah.Simone Collins: But here's, okay. Here's the big bust that I think this group is missing. That like, I think you and I always bring up with our friends when they tell [00:26:00] us their bunker plans is that like, Realistically. Yeah. I mean, it's good to have an emergency plan. And I think this is part of just being like, everyone should have a good emergency plan as a part of a healthy balanced diet.You should know what to, you know, you should know CPR. You should know how to get your kids safe if they start choking on something and all that, right. Put out a fire. And you should know what to do. If suddenly like global infrastructure collapses or, you know, there's a climate apocalypse or whatever, but like the real, thing is demographic collapse.The real thing is the future of human civilization. The real thing is all that. And I think, you know, another group that gets put into this category of doomsday preppers are people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk who are trying to get humans off planet, right. Who are like, let's go to Mars. Let's, let's go to the, you know, let's get off.The earth and that is, that is not the thing. Like [00:27:00] these, that is not, that is about saving civilization. That is not about saving their asses. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. People are like, Oh, they want to scurry off this thinking ship was like, like rats off of, and it's like, I'm sorry, you idiot Marxists are the ones who thunk this ship.Okay. You are the sign of the rot in society and that they have chosen not to take you shows that and when this comes to one of the things of, of, of wealth. And in our society, and it's something that I just, it disgusts me that people don't get this. So there are ways to make wealth that is unethical.I agree with that. There are ways to like play the market where it's just, you know, showing intellectual superiority over other people. Okay. I get that. If you look at the wealthiest people in our society and you're not including women It's mostly people who earn their own money. So what does it really mean to earn your own money in our society today, outside of a few isolated scenarios?It's like saying, okay, you can, you can get paid for one of two things. You can be a factory worker, like an [00:28:00] incremental factory worker, and get paid for the incremental productivity that you, as a factory worker, gave to that factory. Or you can be a person who allows Five people to do the job in the factory that 10 people used to be able to do.And people are like, well, how can this person be making, you know, more hours of work than I could work if I was working from the time of Jesus to today? And I'm like, that's how, that's how, because they're literally adding more productivity than you could add to the world working from the time of Jesus to today.And they deserve that money because of that. That is how the vast majority of ultra ultra also wealthy people are making so much money.Simone Collins: This is super underrated. I just want to emphasize this because like there are all these shows out there about like rich families and rich people. And a lot of them just sort of frame them as incredibly dumb, incredibly unethical.Like it's clear that these are written by people who hate capitalism and hate wealth. And like, I'm thinking about these are the most irredeemable unethical, terrible [00:29:00] antisocial people out there. And like the vast majority of wealthy people, certainly the ones that we've met are Good pro social people who care about making the world a better place, who are kind and patient and good to others.They're a littleMalcolm Collins: burned from being constantly attacked by society, but it's clear that they at least started with a positive heart for society. And like, okay, for example, Jeff Bezos, right? Like a lot of people are like, oh, what a horrible person. Amazon, like the, the quality difference. If you didn't live in the pre Amazon world, the quality difference that Amazon makes to my life.Every day. If you're talking about, like, time saved, if you're talking about, like, the amount of incremental, they're like, how could he make as much as, like, like, like, like, like, literally, I think he probably gives every American citizen two hours extra time every day compared to the pre Amazon world.Simone Collins: That's a big claim. 20 minutes. Well, maybeMalcolm Collins: not two [00:30:00] hours. 20 minutes a day. 30 minutes a day, at least. 30 minutes a day for every American citizen is enormous if you're talking about like productivity increases in our economy. To, to, if you gave him 30 minutes of our salary every day for every American citizen, then that gets a lot more interesting because you're like, oh, Less than what he's probably actually making, you know, and at that point you're like, okay, I get it now.Right? Just people are unwilling to recognize how little they add to the world compared to other people. I think that's the real problem. If they want to pretend that everyone's adding the same things to the world and that's just not true. And in a communist system that distributed wealth fairly, people like him would still be getting stupid amounts of wealth.Yeah, but communist didn't communist systems intentionally end up sabotaging more competent people. And there's like a whole, you can read the pragmatist guide to governanceSimone Collins: for describing communist as in the ones that [00:31:00] have actually been executed. Like we've, we've come to understand that. Communism in theory, the concept of communism is, it actually requires like a science fiction world that doesn't exist yet, which is basically like post AGI, post scarcity, post singularity, and then totally you can have communism.I think the problem is that like, a bunch of people decided that they were going to try it without like the fundamental necessary principles being there. I agree. That'sMalcolm Collins: what you're describing. I mean, obviously you have the telescoping history concept that was invented by Lenin, which shows to an extent you're right there, but I, I don't think that's, like, I don't think that those things are necessary for communism.I'd like, like, I think that communism works on a small scale.Simone Collins: Oh, it totally does. Yeah. But I don't think communism as described by the great communist thinkers was meant to be applied only at the family level, for example.Malcolm Collins: So. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, it was great. This is a great conversation, Simone. We'll see how many people we piss off with it.That's how we judge the [00:32:00] quality of, of how based we are. You know, I think we've alreadySimone Collins: gotten rid of most of the Marxists at this point, but we'll see. Hi guys. If you're here,Malcolm Collins: you're still around. We,Simone Collins: we can't say we love you, but we tolerate you, but I love you, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. This is a public episode. 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Malcolm and Simone explain how and why mysticism and witchcraft corrupt rational thinking, even though they can emotionally comfort people lacking perceived control. Practices like horoscopes hijack brains by providing alternate physical "truths" without logic or evidence. This is fine on Earth but would endanger space exploration, where physics understanding is essential. Allowing some controlled traditional mysticism can act as an "idiot trap" though, concentrating dangers.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] well, I mean, did I, did I tell you that when I was in high school, I was the anonymous horoscopes writer for my school's newspaper.Malcolm Collins: No,Simone Collins: people loved it.Malcolm Collins: So why is mysticism so dangerous if you want to become a space fearing civilization? It is becauseall mystical frameworks are fundamentally Alternate hypotheses without evidence or predictive capacity for how physics works. They are mundane in our world today, outside of how they affect a person's ability to think clearly,they are not mundane if they are allowed to spread. on a spaceship where you need a life support system and you can immediately disintegrate if somebody's like, well, radiation has healing properties, or somebody's like, Oh, I don't believe that this is how our warp drive should work.And in those capacities, it's literally life or death to not allow these heretical beliefs to spreadWould you like to know more?Simone Collins: You look like a newscaster, and I look like some kind of [00:01:00] witch from the, like, Middle Ages.Malcolm Collins: I thought I'd mix it up a lot. People are really surprised by our logo. Like, they think this is a new thing for us. I've had this for half a decade at this point. Maybe Almost, no, not a full decade, but yeah, we've been using it as our family logo for a long time.Well,Simone Collins: it's the logo of, no, our family logo is our monogram. This is the logo of the Pragmatist Foundation. Put that up. The Pragmatist Foundation has been around since 2016. And the gear has been a main part of that. And the Pragmatist Foundation is what technically owns and operates. This podcast. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah, well, and the, the, the baby when we had Octavian, our first kid, his blankie has the pragmatist foundation logo on it.And all of our books had the pragmatist foundation logo on it. And somebody was like, well, why this number of teeth in it? And the answer was. Actually it's a, it's a superimposed, you can think of it as a superimposed Latin cross and St. Andrew's cross. Is why it has this number of teeth in it for the, the religious element.But also, you [00:02:00] know, we, we go over in the, the, the piece I posted a text as to why we decided to do the logo change. We'd been meaning to for ages. Might do a dedicated episode about it, actually. That would be interesting as to why we chose the gear as our logo here. But recently something happened.So, Simone went to accept the Republican Party's sort of nomination, not nomination, but endorsement of her candidacy for the state house.Simone Collins: From the Republican committee of our county in Pennsylvania.Malcolm Collins: You said this is the first time in my entire life, you're like I'm here, 30 what years old and for the.First time in my life I experienced real gender discrimination. It was amazing. I've never experienced it before. The That's possible thing. Yeah. So, so I, as we were walking around she was obviously the candidate, you know, she was on stage as a candidate and everything like that. But for whatever reason, there was a specific category of idiot.Who had a lot of advice to give about [00:03:00] running for office, but would only talk to me. And so all the interesting people, I was like this weird force field of idiocy around Simone at the event. I know. LikeSimone Collins: normally the misogyny you'd think would like benefit Malcolm, right? That like people would just like see me and be like, okay.And then like, be like, okay, I'm going to talk with the man. But it was only. The, it sounds bad. It was only the dumbest people and clearly like the least important and least impactful people that just completely ignored me and only spoke with Malcolm, which was hilarious and amazing. And, you know, they would say things like What did that one guy say?He's like, well, I'm going to ask, he looked to me for a second. This is before he really ignored me. He looked at me and he said, well, this is normally something I've always asked guys, but now I ask women too, what do you do for work?Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, I run a chain of companies in a private equity firm.Simone Collins: Thank you, sir. Only between like. [00:04:00] 1956 and 1965, because apparently, like, I mean, there's been no other time where women don't work. I don't understand, like, this whole housewife thing. What even? I, IMalcolm Collins: don't. And he was, he was another person running for office too. Oh, boy. It was anyway. So hold on. But we got to get to the topic at hand, which is not for not a witch to live.And so a lot of people, you know, they hear about our beliefs and they are sometimes surprised by the elements of traditional cultures that we maintain. With extremely fierce fidelity, even fiercer fidelity than most of the current conservative religious communities and our beliefs around witchcraft and sorcery fall into this extremist faction of things. When you look around the world and you see all successful cultural groups that is successful in [00:05:00] terms of their spread or not all, but almost all like a huge convergent belief system is the belief that Witchcraft, sorcery, and mysticism are evil. This is something you see across traditions.And so that means there is some reason for it. That reason can either be that it is actually evil, or it has some negative consequences. On the traditions that allow its practice at high levels. But another thing that's really interesting is they often frame it as being evil in the same way. So it's usually not just that it is broadly evil.It is, and Simone, you were telling me that you had experienced this, was like your own parents were even into this stuff and told you stuff like this.Simone Collins: Yeah, my, my parents were always like either, like my mother was really interested in sort of like training as a shaman and her. Final years, my, my dad had attended like these sort of psychic seminars.And as a kid, you know, you always want to [00:06:00] hear about ghost stories or anything crazy. Right. So I always asked him about it and he's like, man, you have to be really careful because you know, like when you open yourself up to this stuff, like you, you become a conduit, you know, you let them, they can come in through you essentially.And yeah, it's interesting that like, even people who are into it, even people who like want to harness that or access or tap into that world are like, no, it's dangerous. It's dangerous.you were telling me that it f***s with your head. The certain amount of it after a while, it just f***s with your head. That's why I'm usually kind of like almost autistic is I'm just being constantly.Why? Because lower entities will come in and violate your free will. They know. All your b******t, they see right through you. They will not manipulate your free will unless you ask them in. I have dude, do not say that I'm gonna get killed. I've a hundred percent communicated with something. I'm not judging anybody.I'm just saying, okay, be careful. The question is whether that something was actually in my imagination or in my mind, or that something was something that takes place in another [00:07:00] dimension. Once you open that gate, it's all bad. They have, so why is it all bad? Why? Why can't you experience that interdimensional?being and learn something from it, and be a better person when you come out of it. Because, because every time it gets control, it starts murdering everybody. They wind up killing everybody later. In every case. And it always starts beautiful. It always starts great. Problem is, some of it makes sense. That's where the psychosis comes in.Whoa. It's going to create a giant societal crisis where most of the people are already going to get killed. Because an evil force wants conflict. So I'm saying no, no, no. It's all chaos. Stop it. This is the nature of the beast.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And then you see this within Christian communities, you know, you engage with a Ouija board or something like that.And that is the pathway for demons to enter your spirit and corrupt your mind. Or you look at. You know, Jewish teachings around like the Kabbalah, like there is a Jewish mysticism branch, but you are often taught you do not engage with this until you are very well trained in other areas. Like it is not child's play.It is meant [00:08:00] to be taken very seriously in systemically and in some cases, almost like a training of a defense against the dark arts rather than you know, practicing for the sake of practicing for individual power. And. This then comes to our broader framework around this. One, why has this been historically shamed?So there's like three categories here. Like, is there a reason this is a bad thing to believe? Two, if we are creating an iteration of a tradition that we mean to take humanity to the stars does it make sense to have really fierce prohibitions against this? Three, what really is mysticism? Like what's the core of it and why is it so appealing to people?And how can we identify it and stamp it out? So first let's sort of talk about like what mysticism really is, because if you go historically, like if I go to ancient Athens or something like that, right, mysticism would include what today we would call astronomy and [00:09:00] physics and. And when mysticism included all of these other fields it was generally not shamed by the traditions around it, but as society evolved those things that could be proven true and could be engaged with became split out of mysticism and became the sciences and mysticism Is sort of the residue that's left when you take out.All of the provable, material, studyable aspects of these traditions. And it's not that people don't try. Like, there are whole university departments that have been created around, like, trying to, like, this was big in the 80s like, mind reading and stuff like that. departments. They're actually made fun of in Ghostbusters.That if anyone has seen Ghostbusters, one of the characters works in one of these departments. Like, and, and it's something you can easily measure. Like, somebody claims to be psychic. Okay, we have one [00:10:00] person holding cards. How often can the other person guess the cards that this person is holding and looking at?Square. Good guess, but wrong. Is it a star? It is a star. Very good, that's great.Malcolm Collins: Like, this is very measurable stuff. Well, it turns out that these departments didn't really produce anything particularly interesting. And so most of them were shut down. If they That would have become a science and it would have split out of mysticism because they would have been like, well, are you talking about the science, the measurable kind or the mystic kind?It's funny where it was quote unquote proven within like government, like far seeing programs and stuff like that. So the government had some programs tied to mysticism, a giant bureaucracy. Idiotic bureaucracy that bureaucracies always are and it decided that a lot of this stuff was true at first the movie men who stare at goats is is about this.But over time it was realized that no This was just con men who were easily screwing with bureaucracies [00:11:00] and bureaucracies are incredibly stupid especially government bureaucraciesThis is Larry's spirit guide, Maude. I'm looking into the cupboard now. And I see A tin Mug.No, wait a minute. You said A, not K. He said A.Malcolm Collins: But I I want to So what defines mysticism today? Like, like what's left of mysticism? Are the, the ways of viewing the world and the ways of seeing the world that do not infer a predictive or competitive advantage for the individual?Simone Collins: Yeah, it's like, it's, it's like adding an additional explanation for things or additional heuristics for making decisions that are not backed up by science results and yet they provide comfort or a feeling of control sometimes in places or ways where there just is no control. And I think maybe this is taking things [00:12:00] too off, but like we would probably even throw like personality assessments like the Myers Briggs and like blood types and horoscopes.Into this category as well,Malcolm Collins: I would strongly throw horoscopes into this category. Yeah. You know, if, if we are, if we're out there burning witches, that includes people who believe in horoscopes.Simone Collins: And I was just listening to, there's a really fun podcast called the studies show where they sort of do a meta analysis of a subject.They did personality tests recently, and they going through the research actually found that even like the Myers Briggs, which is used extensively is really not the robust people think it is, especially when you port it across cultures or apply it to different cultures. Like, there are some cultures that just only pick up on like.Two of the things and really the bigger like personality modulators or things like intelligence. So even yeah, even the Myers Briggs, you know, is, I would say is, is one of those mysticism ask things [00:13:00] that people fob off as science. But that has, it's falls into that category of this thing that people really like to use to explain things or predict things that doesn't actually track with like very predictive or solidMalcolm Collins: results.So this is actually really interesting because the Myers Briggs is a good way of showing how we determine when something is witchcraft versus not witchcraft, how we determine if it's mysticism versus not mysticism, right?Simone Collins: Yeah, it's not the aesthetics. We don't need like. A wand or,Malcolm Collins: or because some mysticism at one time was science, but has since been proven non useful.So within our framework, for example, phrenology would be considered a form of mysticism. Totally. Homeopathy would be considered a form of mysticism. 100%. And Myers Briggs. If it is disproven in the data, which I think the preponderance of data shows that it's just not particularly useful, it edges on mysticism, but it [00:14:00] isn't full mysticism in that it still does have some level of efficacy, it is only mysticism in so far as people overuse it, and that it appeals to earlier mystical frameworks whereas Zodiac signs, if you look Spencer Greenberg ran a giant study on Zodiac signs recently to see if they had any predictive capacity and they have zero predictive capacity.And okay, Cupid did a big study on this as well. And then people of course go, Oh, well, what you actually need is not the sun. No, no,Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. What they're saying is they're like, Oh, well, Spencer's just a classic Capricorn.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Right. Right. No, no. But then they're like, Oh no, but you actually need to do it in this ultra specializedSimone Collins: way that like, Yeah, like you're, you're, you're just going by their sun sign.It's obviously you have to look at like where Mars is as well. Blah, blah, blah.Malcolm Collins: And then it's like, okay. So then if somebody did a test using all of that, like, and it had a reasonable sample size, like a hundred people. Would you then look at that test and have your beliefs overturned if it didn't show that it was predicted?And these people would be like, No, not really. [00:15:00] So, so, they believe something, and, and this is where mysticism becomes really important for two reasons. You view it from a completely secular framework. One is, is it's corrupting of the mind. And we'll talk about how it's corrupting of the mind, because it really affects these people's ability to hold Like coherent, logical thoughts after they engage with it too long.And in that way, these earlier analogies of like, you know, you touch the chaos and it corrupts you. Mm, were not incorrect. They just, yeah, were explaining it like you'd explain it to a child. And likeSimone Collins: I say, well they were explaining it in their own terms, which is that the, the terms of a mystic. Before we move forward, I just wanna point out one more thing in that this goes both ways.There are many practices that are, or in the past have been mystical. that are now shown to be fairly scientifically robust in causing certain meaningful effects. Consider ayahuasca ceremonies. Now, of course, there's wide variation in the effectiveness of these because every every like practitioner of these has a slightly different formula and [00:16:00] process.And obviously some formulas are more effective than others, but these can very significantly affect people's like life outlooks depression levels, et cetera. Like they're, they're very meaningful. And they're very like effective psychedelics that people are administering. And yet that was, you know, seen as like kind of witchcraft, kind of like in this like shaman.So like the aesthetics of it don't matter. We don't care about that. Same with like a lot of like herbal remedies. You know, a lot of people who are seen as witches were just like basically providing. effective pharmaceuticals to people in their lives.Malcolm Collins: Right. And then, so very important in this is that it is not the aesthetics.It's whether or not it has been tested. There was not like a previous period where people had tested these ayahuasca ceremonies and determined that they did not have efficaciousness. They just assumed that they didn't because of the aesthetics around them, which we are very against doing. Actually, this brings me to a great example of what modern mysticism is.Modern mysticism is. to science, what herbal remedies are to medicine. If you look historically, a lot of [00:17:00] medicine we use today was originally herbal remedies, aspirin, aspirin, like, Oh, you chew on bark of an aspirin tree, right? Like, like it's aspirin tree, I guess it's, yeah. And that creates some, you know, effect that lowers inflammation and lowers pain in an individual.Um, Well, this was tested and it worked and then the, the companies then said, okay, well, can we create this without all the impurities that you're getting when you're chewing on bark? Can we make this healthier? Can we make this more? And that's the way science has engaged a lot of the earlier mystical practices.Yeah. And that it has tried to distill them. Now, keep in mind, modern science has become corrupted. We are the first to say that academia has become corrupted by the virus. But that doesn't mean that we are as we often say, like we believe in an academic reformation. We do not have a problem with the scientific method.What we have is a problem with the centralized bureaucratic institutions that have become the guardians of that method. When the Protestants [00:18:00] split from the Catholic church, they didn't have a problem with God. They had a problem with the corruption of the central bureaucracy. And this is the same way we relate to things like mysticism, but I need to go further here.So, so why is mysticism so dangerous if you want to become a space fearing civilization? It is because space fearing civilizations need to have portions of their populations that live on Space faring ships. These are ships that are going to function on the edge of science, whether it is their life support systems the cutting edge of science or they're, you know, faster than light propulsion drives or they're, you know, near speed of light propulsion drives.All mystical frameworks are fundamentally Alternate hypotheses without evidence or predictive capacity for how physics works. That is what mysticism fundamentally is. Whether you are talking about ghosts, or you are talking about the zodiac signs, or you are talking about, [00:19:00] God forbid, I mean, we take a very anti mystical framework, so anti mystical that many religious traditions, now keep in mind, this is only within our tradition that we treat this so harshly.The human soul. All of these are alternate hypotheses about how reality works and, and belief in alternate physical planes and stuff like that behind reality, and as such, are forms of mysticism. And they are mundane in our world today, outside of how they affect a person's ability to think clearly, which we'll talk about in a second.They are not mundane if they are allowed to spread. on a spaceship where you need a life support system and you can immediately disintegrate and be exposed to space if somebody's like, well, radiation has healing properties, or somebody's like, Oh, I don't believe that this is how our warp drive should work.And in those capacities, it's literally life or death to not allow these heretical beliefs to spread. And they need to be. [00:20:00] Prosecuted within these communities and people can be like, how does this? correlate with your views around religious pluralism, right? Which is really interesting. So we still believe in religious pluralism, but remember we believe in the concept of a Tesseract God.And the Tesseract God concept means that there are multiple holistically true revelations of God in the world today. Some iterations of Islam, some iterations of Christianity, some iterations of Judaism. None of those, we think, are iterations that lead heavily into the mystical arts. We think that most of the true iterations see the mystical arts as what they are, which is dangerous.And not things that any individual, or any individual who is aligned with the forces of good, Should be meddling with or should be engaging with, but let's talk about why this, the historically this happened and why it's such a problem. And you'll see this if you engage with mystical communities.You know, we had a one of our viewers who's trying to create [00:21:00] something similar to what we're doing, but he's like, yeah, but I want it to be like mystical and like incorporate mystical arts from various communities. And he's like, but the problem is whenever I talk to people, they're either like mystical arts are stupid or they're like, yeah, man, like, I like your vibes around this idea.And it's like, well, why is he getting that response? It's because he's engaging with a community that is defined about the untestability of its ideas other than in an aesthetic sense. So they define which ideas they accept and which ideas they reject based on how those ideas aesthetically make them feel.You begin to structure your logic and the way you engage with the world around aesthetic sensibilities and you are now debating and communicating with other people using that as your metric for true versus untrue things. You can begin to see how now your brain is no longer learning the true metric of truth, which is for us.This gives you some level of predictability over [00:22:00] future events. Like if I know about the world, that thing is true. If it helps me predict future events, like, my knowledge of fire is accurate. If it predicts what fire does when you are no longer, when your fire now for you is something that has nothing to do with prediction, it's completely mystical in nature.And it has some sort of like, you know, a lot of the times mystical arts tap into super soft culture, which we've talked about in our books and stuff like that. It has some sort of, like, personal identifying thing. It may have some product of fetishes, and by fetishes I don't mean sexual fetishes, I mean, like, religious fetishes, like, some sort of item that provides an individual with power.Um, and, and this is another thing that's really a problem with mysticism, is it appeals to individual vanity almost as much as hedonism does. Hedonism appeals to individual vanity in that it allows an individual to just engage with whatever their brain is telling them to engage with at like the lower level.ButSimone Collins: then there's I mean, personal vanity isn't even necessarily the right word. It's, it's a, a [00:23:00] cheat code or excuse to, to not think, to not act, to not do the hard thing. Yeah, yep. And I think that's, that's also a big reason why many very established religions reject witchcraft or mysticism because while they have their own internal cheat codes for like hand waving of like, oh, this thing is logically inconsistent, but here's the reason why.No one else is allowed to do that because if other people start to do that, then they get to bend all the other rules and the important roles. So I think, you know, this is an important thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Well, you know, there's some mystical arts that clearly show some form of effect, right? You know, like, oh, the whirling dervishes or something like that. Right. And I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, of course they show some kind of effect. If you study science, you would know that doing something because like, I'm really into the study of cults and how cults recruit and how.Psychology works and stuff like that. If you are doing a repeated rhythmic dance that can activate the same [00:24:00] part of your brains as hallucinogens, this is especially true of your spinning, which is going to create a form of dizziness and other forms of neural damage, which will create feelings of, of grandeur.And it's, it's, it's particularly true of anything you do to the absence of sleeping enough and eating enough. Like these, I mean, it's similarSimone Collins: to like drug intake. It's going to, it's going to alter your consciousness. But itMalcolm Collins: also makes people incredibly susceptible to ideas. And as we have pointed out in in other episodes, the human brain did not evolve in any context where it was rewarded for recognizing profundity as profundity.So it is very easy to hijack the parts of the brain associated with profundity using things like. twirling for hours on end that we can understand as psychologists and neuroscience, how that makes people extremely susceptible to really any idea you want to insert into them after doing that or dancing or anything like that.And that, that doesn't just because something is effective at brainwashing people doesn't [00:25:00] mean it's an effective source and sourcing for truth in the world. And this is why it is important to educate yourself. This is why A person who lives, as in the words of Wynwood Reid, a person who lives by their conscience, but who does not take the time to educate that conscience, is living in sin.Because it doesn't matter if your conscience is prone to sin, if your conscience is prone to corruption. And let's talk about what we mean by, like, corruption, right? I actually really like, like, when we're explaining this to our kids, because as we said, every religion needs an adult way of understanding things, like the The way that leans towards more like a rational understanding, but also why GodSimone Collins: then you need like the cartoon kidMalcolm Collins: version, the cartoon kid version.I'm just going to take again, the Warhammer version. The war, you know, that you engage with the mystical arts and you open yourself to possession by demons. And, and, and, and this, this, but I'll be clearer about it and true about it. This possession doesn't look like a full on like Catholic possession or something like that.It looks. [00:26:00] Like a corruption of the mind, you have opened your mind to a world that is not a world of logic and consequences, but a world of aesthetics and wishy thinking, which is one of the most dangerous mystical. And I think the core of super soft cultures to people who don't know what she thinking.It's from an I. T. crowd episode, but it's something you see across mystical traditions, which is the idea that it's not. Human intentionality can increase the probability of events in the future. The secret is the best example of this, but it basically means if you want something to happen badly enough, it can affect real world probabilities.Space. What is it? The simple answer is, we don't know. Or at least we didn't know until now. I'm not a scientist. But I do have a better understanding of what space is than any scientist living today. Where did I gain these insights? From this man.Beth Gaga Shaggy. The founder of spaceology. , when it comes to space, he's the man with his head screwed [00:27:00] on tight. This is what he told me . Space is invisible mining dust. I mean, think about that.That means every star you can see in the night sky is a wish that has come true. And they've come true because of something he calls Space Star Ordering. Space Star Ordering is based on the twin scientific principles of Star Maths and Wishy Thinking.No. If that doesn't convince you, well then, maybe you just don't deserve to get what you want.You're a sceptic, Jen. You should be more like these. They can't get enough of my space star ordering story. How did the cosmos grant you a helicopter? Well, I visualized the thing I wanted. In my case, it was a helicopter.I drew a picture of the helicopter on a piece of paper. Couple of days later, bought myself a helicopter.Explain that one if you can.Malcolm Collins: And now you see what we mean when we talk about this being an alternate hypothesis for how the physical laws exist. [00:28:00] But an individual who gets invested in this will have a very easy time. In terms of confirmation bias and stuff like that, these beliefs persist intergenerationally among some communities because of their effectiveness at hijacking the human brain.Is there a way to prevent this from happening to a person's brain when they engage with mystical arts. Previously, I would have said no, but I have some disconfirming evidence recently, which has made me rethink this particular topic specifically. Historically speaking everyone I ever knew. Who engaged with Kabbalah or cabalistic texts. This is the Jewish mystical texts. Was so bad at structuring their thoughts afterwards, Simona and I even had an internal phrase to describe these individuals called Kabbalah brained. , yet recently, actually a fan of the show who I've been engaging with is an expert on these texts.And he seems to be able to structure his thoughts very [00:29:00] logically and be a very otherwise smart and lucid individual. Why is this the case? What I suspect happened is he actually engaged with the text following Jewish custom, which is, you know, you don't engage with them until you are very well-structured in logic and other forms of, , engaging with ideas before you approach the text.And they are. Written about as something that should be seen as potentially dangerous within Jewish customs. , and that should be approached with an extreme amount of caution. And that when he went into them, he went into them. We as that understanding and not that understanding being because one of the really dangerous things is people misunderstanding.When somebody says approach this with caution, it could have damage you, , some people hear that and they think, oh, that must mean it's a super powerful thing. Or it's a super forbidden and cool thing, which I think is something that draws a lot of people to mysticism. When, what is actually meant to that is no, not, this is a place of unique [00:30:00] power, but this could actually just mess you up.If you do not approach it. Was an ordered mind. , The fact that I only know one person who hasn't been severely affected by engaging with these types of thoughts. To me still says it's probably better to make a blanket ban on it. However, I will say that it appears that there are ways to engage with it that doesn't totally destroy your ability at higher order logic. I just, haven't seen evidence that they provide.. Enough enduring value to a community to be worth. . The risk that is. Included with keeping them top of mind within a community's traditions, outside of a sort of defense against the dark arts studying guide.Malcolm Collins: But as we point out for our kids, if these mystical arts worked, people in power in the world today, like when I look at the top, like 100 most powerful people in the world today. They would be really into them and yet people who are into the mystical arts disproportionately are from lower socioeconomic [00:31:00] groups and lower political power groups and lower social power groups.And, and then the question is why? So there's 2 answers here. Either mysticism is just complete hokum and a waste of time. And so individuals who have dedicated their time to it. And not to matters of materialism have allowed their minds to be corrupted and have wasted time that they could have spent learning things and thus are less industrial and economically productive and less human in our perspective or.They do work, but they come with some external costs that is preventing them from being used to gain power within society. In which case that also historically would have led to most religions, even from a cultural evolution standpoint, to end up shaming them. And there is no reason for you to investigate them outside of a defense against the dark arts thing.And this is where I, you know, Simone, you know me, I love studying ghosts, cryptids, the, the Multiple lives, everything like that. I study every story, every story of the weird.Simone Collins: Every one stuff. I mean, there's a reason why people are into this stuff. It's [00:32:00] fun.Malcolm Collins: And I, and even within our school system, we have a whole branch of the tree called dangerous ideas.That basically goes into every single one of these, these branches of conspiracy theories and mysticism and stuff like that. And allows people to go as deep as they want to go within these ideas in terms of personal education. But I think the best way to. spell many of these ideas is and I think that this is one of the problem with the existing school system is in, in existing religions is they say, don't engage with these ideas.Don't learn about these things because if you learn about these things you might be tempted to engage with them, right? Whereas I actually think that if you just put them out there for people now, if you taggle the Christian. Taggle in our skill tree, all of these get deleted. None of your students will see them, so you don't need to worry about this.But for those of us who have our perspective, which is the way to prevent student education for something is to educate them on it. When students actually learn about Zodiac system, how it was developed, what the [00:33:00] mechanism of action is behind the system. I think most of the students are most of, for example, my kids that I would want to keep within our cultural tradition would immediately see how stupid itSimone Collins: is.Put that in contrast with how people typically encounter this, which is typically a trusted friend or family member. Talks about these things with immense confidence as though they are so true and so predictive and so right. That if you respect that person or you're in a social situation where you're afraid of social rejection, you are going to accept it without vetting it at all, which is why I think a lot of people come to believe in things like the Zodiac is, you know, like someone.That they like or care about or a good friend or a family member is like, Oh, well, I mean, as you can tell, like, because you're a Sagittarius, this, this, this, you know, and then they just, you know, when you're in a social situation, you're not in your, I'm sitting in an armchair. Like primed to think critically mindset.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it feels like forbidden information and [00:34:00] forbidden information is uniquely tempting. You can fight forbidden information by denying access to it, which doesn't work in the age of the internet. Or in our cultural tradition, you prevent forbidden information by making it not forbidden and making it not uniquely tempting because it offers nothing.And the way. That you like if you, if they're taught about this stuff alongside these famous psychologist experiments, I don't know if you guys are familiar about this, but there's these famous studies in psychology where they would present people randomly with explanations that had come from something like a Zodiac test.But they were doing them actually for like psychological personality tests, right? But they were written in the way that like Zodiac. writers write their tests. It's something like 90 percent of people when they would read the explanationthat was assigned to them at random, they'd be like, wow, that's a great explanation of my personality and who I am.And like, because many people, people with weaker minds and, and, and the type of people who maybe wouldn't want within our culture is as readily. They have a very weak sense of [00:35:00] self. And so when an external projection of who they are, it's assigned to them, especially in their like teenage years, when they're trying to figure out who they are they really want somebody to just basically tell them and they want that thing to be assigned some form of authority and that's what a lot of these do is they,Simone Collins: well, I mean, did I, did I tell you that when I was in high school, I was the anonymous horoscopes writer for my school's newspaper.Malcolm Collins: No,Simone Collins: people loved it. And I did exactly that. I just was, you know, like, Oh, this, you know. This week you worked really hard and, you know, people didn't recognize how hard you worked or, you know, you, you, you know, you take things out on yourself a lot and you probably should take it. We did just like so generic, everyone goes through it.Everyone feels these things. It is incredibly obvious, but people love it because it often involves hearing what you want to hear about yourself. And or hearing what you want to hear about other people or giving you an excuse as to why you're not compatible with someone. So as long as you do that and[00:36:00] it's, it's so easy to get by with it and, you know, similar things happen with psychics and like the con men that you talked about who like con the government for a while into thinking that, you know, people actually did have psychic abilities is.You can do a lot by just reading someone really quickly looking at their face, the way they dress, the way they hold themselves, the way they smell, all these tiny little cues can tell you a lot of things, so like, it's, it is incredibly easy to place people over and a lot of, again, what mysticism is, and what witchcraft is, is providing an easy button for thinking, providing a don't make me think, give me an excuse to not work hard and just make me feel good thing, which we associate with, obviously The worst elements of culture, any culture or any practice that allows you to just say, Oh, I'm going to give myself a break or, Oh, I don't have to think about this or, Oh, it's not my fault.It's because of my blood type slash horoscope slash you know, someone put a curse on me that makes it inherently. evil and bad and it [00:37:00] will create bad outcomes, weak cultures, poor birth rates, bad mental and economicMalcolm Collins: outcomes, et cetera. Something you said this morning that was so powerful is you're like, it's the ultimate form of externalizing.Yeah. Because you are externalizing your self control to something outside you, but then believe that you have influence over it in a way that you actually don't have influence over it.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, it allows you to blame everything on something else, feel like you're in control, but ultimately not be inMalcolm Collins: control.Yeah, and so then I think, like, what would our cultural rules be about this? Like, how against us are we? I would say that we would be okay with living next to cultures that practice forms of mysticism but we would not be okay with living next to them in a way where they Could influence our ability to live.So, for example, if we were going on a spaceship or something like that, or we were colonizing another planet, I think we would take very harsh rules against this. And harsh rules against it in the raising of our own kids. I do think thatSimone Collins: we're not morally against using mysticism to subdue others, however.And I think [00:38:00] this is also something that like people have leveraged to subdue other groups for a very long time. And that's the thing, this is a really good example of also how like mysticism can make people incredibly vulnerable to outside incursions. Because those people can be like, oh yes, I I am the thing that was prophesized to come and that's why you should listen to me or yes this thing.Oh, like in Asimov's foundation series the, the one culture after the decline of, of intergalactic civilization after the empire falls that maintains basically like the Wikipedia and understanding of all technology and history just sort of tricks the other, yeah. Cultures that have now become, you know, backwards barbarians into believing that all of their science and technology is like religious power and they are a religious order.So they're using people's tendency to fall to mysticism as their means of gaining and maintaining power.Malcolm Collins: And yes. [00:39:00] So like sexuality, mysticism is something that should be studied to understand how to manipulate the weak-minded. Yeah. But also understand that in your study you are learning how to guard yourself against those who would use this power against you.Oh, mysticism isSimone Collins: like sexuality, fun, . Right. But I, I'd alsoMalcolm Collins: argue, well, and Psyche, you know, psyche being like psychological nonsense that we often, you know, preach against. Oh, psychic. Psychic hokum. Yeah. Well, I know what I'm talking about is like modern day psychology movements that are used to manipulate people,So the interesting question here is if mysticism is so dangerous and if so many religious traditions have converged on the teaching, don't engage with mystical stuff. It is not good for you. Why does it intergenerationally, persist? As a teaching was in some of the most successful cultures in human history. , with obviously the probably big example within the Abrahamic traditions being, the cobblistic teachings in Judaism. [00:40:00] And you know, if you look at other Jewish writings and even. That's a third of your time should be dedicated to Carlos. One-third. Michelle went third. I can't remember, but anyway, yeah, one third.So it's not even like a Off topic side quest. As some people try to frame it. yes, you should wait until you're married and you're mentally mature, but it does say a lot of your time should be dedicated to it. So wind is something like this day around. The first and most important reason is that it is very good for lighting a religious fervor. In. Low IQ, low education populations. So if you have like a bunch of peasants or something like that, you're gonna have a very hard time getting them really excited and. Dogmatic about just Abrahamic teachings in and of themselves.You usually need some form of mysticism. This is where Catholics use a lot of like St. Worship and where the Orthodox use a lot of Relic worship. Which is from my perspective, clearly idolatry.[00:41:00] , but why would you engage with something that the Bible tells you not to if you're within one of these Abrahamic traditions, but because it is very, very good at getting peasants excited. Who otherwise don't feel like they have a lot of power or control over their lives.This allows them to feel that power or control. And also close to the divine. The problem is what aspect of the divine are they actually touching? Is it, you know, the agents of Providence or is it the Basler risk? Or I guess. In normal Christian phrasing. Is it God, or is it demons? Then the, the second reason I think that this is so effective in intergenerationally persistent. Is. That it. It mirrors humans pre evolved, super soft culture.This is something we talk about in the pragmatists guide to crafting religions. But we think that when man removes all, , tradition and all science from his mind, most humans converge on a very similar set of beliefs about the world. And these beliefs come from what was [00:42:00] probably the most common human religious system in the pre agricultural period, , that just humans coevolved with for a very, very, very long time.But that as soon as acumen started to live in settlements and started to get advanced technology was no longer efficacious for humans. And so, , it was suppressed and out competed by religious systems, which out competed other groups merely from how they helped. Those groups is a fitness. I E how many surviving children they had, and they didn't have enough time to fully integrate with those individuals neurology.So when you remove that, a lot of people reconverge on this old sort of mystical tradition, which has lost its efficaciousness,I'd also note that mysticism will always be with us because it is part of that pre evolved iteration of humanity. , it is part of that ape, like side of us that is always going to bubble up in the background.And that will always [00:43:00] re-emerge within any religious community. Even if we, , went on to spaceships and we burned every book that ever talked about the mystical.Our great, great, great, great grandchildren would one day rediscover a mystical tradition that looks very similar to the forms of mysticism that are around today because it is sort of a genetic scar deep within us.First, and it's definitely not that it works. If it works.As we've said, we would see the majority of people in power in our society utilizing these sorts of teachings. If it was actually helping people gain power or out-compete other people. No here. I should know, even though it can't help a person gain real power in the world. Uh, or Gainey real edge in the world. It can make a person feel as if they have real power and from a religious standpoint, that can be almost as useful when you are dealing with a population that doesn't feel like they have power over their own lives. And that means it can be a very useful conversion [00:44:00] mechanism. Of course within our belief system, we would say that those sorts of emotions or the very last emotions, any human should be masturbating because masturbating those emotional subsets. It increases the strength of those emotional subsets and we'll move you more and more towards the most perverse type of external locus of control.When you mistakenly believe that you actually have power over, even when you don't. And then when, when things go wrong, you know, you don't. take responsibility for them. It's the mystical workings of the universe that caused them to go wrong. Not yourself, not your own responsibility. So it's, it's uniquely toxic form of feeling like you have power. The. Final thing that I think is, is useful about these traditions, if they sort of are cordoned off within a wider, , system, is that they can be used as a Sophos trap or an idiot trap. So this means if an individual is incredibly good in terms of verbal intelligence, but otherwise not [00:45:00] particularly high IQ and could otherwise prove a danger to the wider community. , this can be very, very useful for. Preventing them from causing too much damage because it can sort of. Begin to eat up all of the time. Of people who otherwise might've become a con artist or something like that. Or a preacher, but a preacher of. Idle things that don't actually move people towards their goals, but instead is just like enriching his own pockets. And this is something that I have noticed, and I don't know exactly what causes it. Maybe people can pontificate in the comments, but people was really high verbal intelligence, but fairly low general intelligence seem to become over distracted and obsessed with mysticism and mystical arts. When contrasted with other groups in the general population. , which is what makes it such an effective, like sticky trap for rats, for those types of individuals, which can be very dangerous if left as free agents in a [00:46:00] society. It is for this reason that I actually am not particularly. Against Kabbalistic teachings within Jewish communities. If you read our book, the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. One section that we go really deep into is the myth of higher IQ within Jewish communities, which is just that it's not very well supported by at least rigorously collected data.But what is incredibly well-supported is an unusually high verbal intelligence in Jewish communities. And what mysticism may have done in the same way that, , we talk within Catholicism because within Catholicism, they had this system that prevented nepotism. From becoming a problem in their communities by ensuring that people within the bureaucratic positions of power within their communities couldn't have wives.And so it meant that the genetic precursors associated with, Amoral familiar realism E promoting family members over members of the general public. Ended up [00:47:00] becoming more ingrained in Catholic communities than in other communities. Because Catholicism had traditions that were so good at defending against it, there was not an additional, , Genetic costs towards individuals over engaging in the amoral familial ism. This is why within Catholic countries, you have so much more corruption than in other countries.Well, I think something very similar happened within the Jewish community because it had such a good defense, , Interculturally against, , extremely high verbal intelligence individuals, , becoming a problem for the community. It allowed verbal intelligence to concentrate at a genetic level within their communities.That would have been very deleterious to other communities. And removing cobblistic teachings or practices from a Jewish community would cause these free radicals to spill out into the community and begin to call it a lot of damage. So weirdly, this is one of those areas where I would just give Jews a pass. Not because I think that their [00:48:00] mystical teachings are accurate. Or, Give them any sort of an edge through the teachings themselves, but because I think that they confer benefits uniquely to their community.And have been vetted for a very, very long period of cultural evolution for doing just the right amount of good for the community without. Becoming, , an overt obsession for too large, a population or swaying to larger population towards in efficacious traditions or alternate. Belief systems about physical reality. Wait, but if Jews were able to use mysticism to get a higher verbal intelligence within their population, why would I not encourage other populations to use this similar tactic? The answer is a fairly straight forward. We now have genetic technology and you don't need to. Inject your tradition with something. Efficacious LIS. Outside of the way it impacts the. Genetic selection effects of your culture. [00:49:00] Into a culture anymore.So there just isn't a need for this to get the advantages that the Jewish population was able to glean from this unique cultural technology.Malcolm Collins: But the final trait of mysticism, which is really important to note is if you look in our relationship and sexuality, like the pragmatist guided relationship, the pragmatist guided sexuality, if you look at our other videos on the topic of how love works and how some religious systems utilize love to trick people into seeing mysticism, doesn't just hijack people's brains by tricking them into seeing the profound where the profound doesn't actually exist. Like manic dancing, obviously that's not an actual profound experience. But it's very good at tricking them into feeling love. And love can be feeled whenever you're thinking about a concept that holds A lot of basically like a mental volume in your mind.But one way you can trick a concept into holding a lot of mental volume in your mind is by holding a concept that is itself illogical. And therefore [00:50:00] constantly advance one way that some Christians do this is like the concept of the Trinity, three separate things, but that are also one thing. And then meditate on that because that is in it in.intrinsically a paradox. It fills up a lot of your mind. And then when you see that thing as protective and loving, it makes you feel this feeling of love, which makes you feel that there's some truth behind it. Mysticism does that all the time. And for that reason, It is also uniquely tempting to people who cannot find true love in the world because they are acting in ways that are selfish or self aggrandizing which mysticism enables because it tells you that you have powers or importance that you don't have.And this is why I think the truly ordered mind and the truly dogmatic, like. dogmatic in a good way mind, mind that is following the righteous path, is ordered enough to not succumb to forms of mysticism that inflate its ego so [00:51:00] much so as to believe that it is in any way like the divine. And this is where we probably have one of our more controversial takes on mysticism is that I believe that the belief in the soul is a form of mysticism because it is to elevate the human to the level of the divine and believe that humanity touches the divine where we do not.Simone Collins: Doesn't that veer though, somewhat from our definition of mysticism in that, like it's, it doesn't. The soul kind of doesn't, it's not relevant to this definition because it's, it can't be predictive or not. Like we can't test it.Malcolm Collins: Any feeling of the soul that is not a predictive claim. I will accept. Okay. I will say, okay, that's great.But a lot of people use the soul to explain or as a mechanism for explaining extra physical or extra materialist action with the world. Like his soul is so powerful or his, you know, And that is why it is so, it is a very tempting concept because it allows people to believe in [00:52:00] things like life after death and stuff like that, which is a form of mysticism in my perspective.But again, this is, this is an area where we would probably be a bit more flexible. If somebody believes a form of mystical tradition, which is actually an old Abrahamic revelation I would be willing to say, okay you can come to space with us. Like we can cut some slack here so long as you're not using it to inform your decisions about physics or inform your decisions about the powers that you have.And so long as you do not use what, what I guess I'd call soul magic, like trying to engage this extra planar realm in terms of. Impacting our existing realm. That is where I would, I would draw the one line, but I would say for members of our family, we would see it as a form of, of, of mysticism,self masturbation, and an offense to God in that you are claiming to be of the same kind of thing that he is in which humans are not from our understanding.Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. That, that broadly checks [00:53:00] out.I was thinking we're about wind delineating, whether witchcraft is okay, when done in the name of. Abrahamic traditions. And I think looking at the various forms of it practice under the guise of Catholicism are a good example. So one that I would say is solidly within the realm of okay. Is exorcisms because that is specifically invoking extra Plano powers. For the sole purpose and only purpose of directly combating the perceived extra plane on powers of others. , on the other side, when you look at things like St. Worship and Relic wary worship, I see that as being a really muddy middle ground, probably bordering on just blatant witchcraft and to understand why stuff like St. Worship gets so dangerous. Is then you'll get things like, the big Catholic Colt right now in Latin America. , worshiping Santa Muerte, they're basically worshiping an [00:54:00] unnamed, like not canonized Saint of the dead, which is a skeleton., they worship alongside biblical figures. , and represents death to me, this is just very, obviously, probably the truest form of actual Satanism being practiced in the world today. And yet it is practice under the guise of Catholicism. I think the way that evil religions. Seep in to the world. Is not those individuals who are , like the individuals who call themselves Satan as, who are really just having a laugh, and trolling people.But under the guise of. Established religions like Christianity, because these people actually believe in have fervor for these entities they're worshiping. And these entities are just like, Sometimes comically and obviously.Not just normal witchcraft, but malicious witchcraft. One of the reasons Santa Muerte has drawn such a [00:55:00] following. , he look at like interviews with her followers, if there's like, well, you know, I can't pray to God or Jesus to hurt someone or for something petty because they would judge me negatively, but sent him where to, you know, she's a deity of the people.So when I want to hurt somebody or when I want something selfish or when I want like a love spell, I can pray to her. And it's like, okay. So like very, obviously you're praying to the devil. The devil doesn't come out and be like, Hey, I'm evil. it is evil in how it is attracting you and what you are using it for.And I think that Santa Muerte does show why we. Council so much caution. Even when the witchcraft is being done under the name of the Judeo-Christian tree of religions. And I think the easy branch here is are you invoking extra plane? All realms only to. Combat other extra Plano entities or are you invoking them for some form of control or self benefit?If it is a ladder than it is just witchcraft, [00:56:00] whatever you claim inspired it. I also think that, , this helps explain to Catholics who are a little confused, why other Christians take idolatry? So seriously. I mean, other than that, it's the first commandment and I don't understand how people ignore that. But, , when you do things like begin to worship other entities as.Gatekeepers to God or as.Some sort of intermediary and your worship of God directly. It can very easily spin out into just worshiping what are essentially demons, even from a secular perspective.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death Simone. This has been a fun episode.Simone Collins: I love you too. I love talking about these things. Never thought though, from my childhood, that we would be like, burn the witches! No,Malcolm Collins: it's just bad. I, I don't think that, I mean, I think that it's probably worth recycling them into some sort of food stuff or something like that.I mean, if you're on an interplanetary [00:57:00] journey, you don'tSimone Collins: burn the witches, soylent the witches, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Turn them into starch. But just be aware that they are a danger and it can be thought of as. Chaos, corruption, basically and that it will spread if not stuff out at the earliest stages within communities that rely on things like a rigid understanding of physics to maintain their lifestyle, which just isn't a thing today in the world, but it will become oneSimone Collins: as we think that the cure is so simple and it has to do with how you learn about it.If you learn about it from. In a, in a logical educational format where you're, you're understanding the framework of it, its origins and, and its efficacy. You will learn the right way. You'll, you'll learn in a way that you're not, that doesn't corrupt you. If you learn it in a social environment where someone that you trust or trying to gain social credit with presents it to you as though it's reality and you respect them, you're so screwed.You're incredibly screwed. [00:58:00]Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and I should note here that from this understanding of physics beliefs around genetics that are not based on science, but based on, you know, as we call it, justicalism, like humans don't have genes or human genes do not inflect, influence their personality or, or, et cetera, like, like the way that they interact with the world.Um, like, like human genes stop right here. No genes go above this part or influence anything that happens up here. That's a form of extreme and very dangerous mysticism because it is outright science denial. And, and it is science denial in favor of a hypothetical alternate framework for the physical reality of our universe.And a very dangerous one because intergenerationally. Now that all humans basically live because, you know, half of humans used to die are going to have an accumulated genetic load that will lead to them becoming dangerous mutants. When I say dangerous mutants, I mean mostly dangerous to themselves.They're going to [00:59:00] basically be big balls of cancer but you'll also likely see negative psychological effects not discordant with the, Jolly Heretic Spiteful Mutant Theory. Ah,Simone Collins: yes. TheMalcolm Collins: classic. Anyway, I love you to death, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm. 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

Malcolm and Simone analyze shocking new fertility collapse data in France and China, discussing the societal effects and proposed solutions. They delve into China's bizarre homophobic response and France's need for cultural renewal. The podcast also explores complaints about Muslims in Europe and the importance of diversity and genetic uniqueness in achieving success.

In a hypothetical conversation about victim blaming, the podcast hosts discuss testing the phenomenon of spousal abuse. They explore the historical roots and consequences of victim blaming, as well as societal attitudes towards different types of abuse. The episode also delves into the impact of victim blaming on society and advocates for education and warnings to reduce the number of victims.

Malcolm and Simone discuss a progressive writer's proposal of punitive taxes on dual-income households as a solution to declining birth rates. They argue that tax incentives and encouraging younger parenthood would be more effective. The hosts also touch on the impact of homes on individuals and the misconception of substituting pets for children in fertility collapse.

Author Louise Perry joins the podcast to discuss the future of women in relation to declining birth rates, artificial wombs, and the impact of modern lifestyles on gender dysphoria. They explore the unique psychology of teenage girls, the stages of a woman's life, and cultural expectations around family formation. A nuanced look at where women may be headed and how we can support femininity in a pro-woman future.

Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the consistency of old religions and the reasons why scientists and logical thinkers leave them. They discuss logical inconsistencies, doubts, and challenges faced by believers. The podcast also delves into the treatment of women, sexual restrictions, and gay rights causing people to leave their religion. They highlight the problems of profiteering and scientific inconsistencies within Christianity. The dangers of opening one's mind to dark forces and the usefulness of mysticism in religion are explored. The chapter also covers reinforcing religious values through approved films and unique holidays and discusses the philosophy of consequentialism. They conclude by discussing the creation of new religions and the importance of learning from different cultures.

The podcast explores new research showing that masculinity correlates with better mental health in men. The hosts discuss the differences in voting behavior between men and women and examine the impact of different expressions of masculinity on mental health. They also explore gendered perspectives on nurturing and personal responsibility, as well as cultural differences in masculinity and femininity.

Malcolm and Simone interview Pastor Paul VanderKlay on why people are increasingly leaving faith traditions and how churches can adapt to strengthen communities. He sees Jordan Peterson as bringing meaning back for lost young men, but online spaces still lack the authentic bonds of real-life congregations. They discuss modeling values for children, the limitations of internet community, changes coming to old institutions, the importance of sacred spaces for honest dialogue, and more.Paul VanderKlay: [00:00:00] Traditions of almost every kind are being tremendously tested and most of them are, are, are found wanting.And this includes, now, every, all the Christians listening to this, I know a bunch of my people are going to find their way to your channel and listen to this. This includes the church, and what, so G. K. Chesterton talked about, I remember it was five or seven, but the five deaths of Christianity. He said basically Christianity has died five times, and I think that's true.And I think the church, as most of us have known it, which, again, generalizations are really tough, but many of us have known churches that are Fundamentally modernist institutions sort of created around modernist assumptions, including my own denomination, many of these [00:01:00] churches are going away and they are going away fast.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: All right. All right. So for any of our audience who does not know Paul Vander Klee, the man who is on the show here with us today you might be surprised to know that you're probably in the minority of our audience. Cause I just now was reviewing our most overlap channel subscribers.And you are one of the most overlapped and I watch your videos. Pretty regularly. I, I, like, I haven't watched all of them. You produce videos almost as frequently as we do, which may be why we, you're extremely prolific. Yeah. Yeah. But they're actually really, really solid if you want to get I, I think one, like, insider politics of competent Protestant theology these days.Oh, that's true. As, as well as what is, like, what do, like, competent Protestant theologists. think these days? How are they engaging? Because the truth is, is that if you are listening to, and this is something I always talk about, if you're listening to like the conservative [00:02:00] elite class, the vast majority of them are Catholic or Jewish in descent.And so, you know, finding really good Protestant theologians who, who talk competently is, is, is much rarer within the current media landscape. And so I want to start with one. talking about how you came to the media landscape, because to me, you are somebody who is really I'd say almost the, , the paragon of an individual who is adapting new. technology and new social structures to serve an older religious position, which was the position of the preacher. How are you doing that? And how are you thinking about that right now?Paul VanderKlay: That's a great question. I'm constantly thinking about it actually.So I, I pastor a small dine church in Sacramento, California. Most churches, the size 60 year life cycle and. I would always have [00:03:00] interests beyond just the local church, and so I was involved with denominational things and all of this stuff. I blogged for years, just, just sort of playing with it, and then Jordan Peterson arose, and I thought this is probably the most important thing for me to pay attention to in my pastoral career.Wow. And I looked around because, because, well, the reason was, I mean, you guys talk about this basically this monolithic urban culture. What, what, what this has done in churches is that people have sort of either strayed into new atheism or strayed into a light new, new ageism and everyone who's going down that road.And what I saw happening behind Jordan Peterson were people coming back down that those roads and you hardly ever saw that before and significant numbers were doing it, listening to Jordan Peterson. He was reopening the conversation in a way that I didn't [00:04:00] understand, and so I wanted to understand it and the way I understand things is by talking to people, but.People in my church weren't going to watch Jordan Peterson. They were all mostly older people. So then I looked to colleagues. Well, most of my colleagues weren't listening to Jordan Peterson and those who were, wouldn't admit it. So I knew I needed some new conversation partners. So I thought. I was reading, I was rereading.I was real reading, I'm using ourselves to death at the time. And I thought there's something about this medium YouTube. And I had played with it a little bit with a member of my church, the Freddie and Paul show, you can still find it on my channel, but so if you want to get a sense of what my church is like, watch the Freddie and Paul show.So, so I was seeing this and I thought I'll make a YouTube video. What can, what, what, what can it hurt? There are how many YouTube videos out there that have 10 to 20 viewers and that's, I just needed a few people to talk to. And then [00:05:00] something happened, which I didn't understand, which was this overwhelming response, emails coming to me.And because I'm a pastor, I wanted to talk to these people. I wanted to hear from them. I wanted their stories. And so then I would zoom them or Skype them and have a conversation. And of course that didn't end the relationship that began the relationship. This was happening locally as well. So I started a Jordan Peterson meetup where before, you know, churches do all kinds of crazy things, try to get people through the door, you know, hot dogs, trunk or tree.Um, You know, vacation, Bible school. And so I, and so a bunch of people, well, we should do a meetup. I'm like, nobody will come. So I did a meetup and a dozen people came who I had no idea who they were before. And the next month, another dozen came and it just kept growing. So this thing took on a life of its own pretty quickly.And at about 2000 subscribers, I thought [00:06:00] seriously about just shutting the whole thing down because where's this going to go, but I couldn't shut it down because The conversations were too real and the people were too honest. And what I saw was that all real people really wanted was, can I, can I just talk about this?Can I just process it with you? Let me know what you think. And I, my church is in a very distressed part of town. I'm always dealing with homeless people panhandling people who were right across the street from a gas station. So people, they want 20 bucks. They walk across the street, they knock on the church.And I thought, Knock on the church doors looking for 20 bucks, but nobody knocks on the church doors looking for a reasonable conversation about what's most important and where they can actually be honest about what they think and believe. And I thought, I've always wanted a church that could do that.And I'd be, I discovered, oh my goodness, that is exactly what we have happening here. So [00:07:00] I began to post with permission, some of the conversations that I was having with people. And then once people saw that I would talk to strangers, randos online, then the flood really started. Because then, you know, people just wanted to talk.And so the, the local meet, then other people wanted meetup groups because they can't get to Sacramento. So I'm helping other people start meetup groups and other churches and in other places that became estuary, which is this whole, it's basically a conversation format where we have. Very open conversations with people.And then the channel has just kept growing. It's grown slowly, which I'm grateful for. You know, I look at what happened to Jordan Peterson as kind of a cautionary tale, because when you grow that fast, it completely destroys your life. And I, I have, I have a wife, I have five children. I have a church. I didn't need my life destroyed and I didn't want my church.Pushed out of my life by this. And so, you know, the church and I, the church has been people who [00:08:00] watched the channel have been very supportive of the church. The church probably still wouldn't be open if people didn't financially supportMalcolm Collins: the church. Where's the church, by the way, in case any of our listeners live in this area?Paul VanderKlay: It's on Florin road in Sacramento. Okay. Great. And it's, it's Livingstone's Christian Reformed Church. You can find it. Just Google it. You'll find it. And, and so, and so the church, then, then, then visitors would start coming into church, but most of the people who'd wander into church would sit there and people are always saying, well, I want authenticity.And I always tell them my church has so much authenticity. You really don't want it. What it is. Okay. You might say, Oh, I listened to Paul online. Okay. But Paul online is just one little element of what a church is because the church is a community.Malcolm Collins: So, so talk about this, talk about what you can't achieve within the online sphere that you can't achieve within in person spaces and, and where you feel that you're achieving more within the online sphere.Paul VanderKlay: That's an excellent question too. People [00:09:00] want to know and be known and to love and be loved. Online is an attentional economy. That just basically saps our attention. And what this means is that a limited number of us who get a certain degree of visibility with the algorithm, get a decent amount of attention and get all sorts of good things from it.But the vast majority of people are participating in this online space. You know, they get a little entertainment, they get a few ideas, they get a little amusement, but they don't get anything behind it. And loneliness has gotten to. Has gotten to a point in our culture where even governments are doing things like, you know, you know, creating ministry of loneliness.And I'm thinking a government is creating a ministry of loneliness. People have, people have no, I, another thing that I think of is that part of what happened with radio and especially with television [00:10:00] and that magazines is that the images that we are completely surrounded by. Subtly form our expectations of what life is, and as a pastor, you get a very real sense of just how hard and grimy and uncomfortable and painful life is for many, many people, and You know, all the way back to Thoreau, people live lives of quiet desperation.They do all the time. And what churches have been able to do, at least to some degree, and what families do to a degree, and what friendships do to a degree, and pubs and all sorts of things, is at least give people a little tiny sense of community. That's someone out there. I remember, I think it was Jonathan Haidt talking about friendships.He's like, you need a friend. If you go to school, if you don't have one friend, Boy, you know, you're in trouble. And if you think about it, [00:11:00] just one, and many people don't have that. And in fact, partly due to all of these screens and, and where, what we've done as a society, people are desperate and lonely and their lives are filled with pain.Now they can media mediate that to a degree with television and radio. I can't tell you how often I'll go into a shut ins home and either am radio or television is on. All the time because they just want to hear another human voice.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is something I often think about. We live in this society today, which is something I often know, where you move to a new city often after college or something like that.And yet your entire, one of the things people always complain about our school system is they're like, well, what we were kids learned to socialize. Where will kids learn to make friends? And one of the things I point out is that in our existing high school and college system, people only learn to make friends with people they're forced to interact with.When somebody first leaves college and moves to a new city, I often wonder how, like, what percent of America has [00:12:00] no friends at all? Literally talks to no one else. My, like, guess would be it's probably between 15 and 21 percent of people living in the developed world right now. Just have not a singlePaul VanderKlay: friend.Yep. Yep. I wouldn't be surprised. And, and as a pastor, I Well, and this is only accelerated by YouTube. I regularly bump into people who are, if not hermits, almost so, and their main form of mediation is this internet because with radio and television, it's, it's, it's completely one sided the internet, maybe that fourth wall will be broken a little bit.So one of the things that I wanted was not just a big channel where I could get my ideas out there and, you know, maybe have a. A strategy for employment when my church dies, but I wanted, I wanted people to be able to find each other. [00:13:00] I wanted people to be able to make friends. They need friends.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Talk about TPI, because this is something you haven't talked about. And some of our listeners don't know about TPI. No,Paul VanderKlay: TCI, this corner of the internet. Oh, that's a TLC. No, sorry. TLC. That's it. This little corner, right? So I started with Jordan Peterson videos and then people were like, oh, there's an icon carbonate Jonathan, Jonathan Peugeot.You should talk to him. Jonathan at that time at 4, 000 subscribers had about a thousand. So talk to Jonathan Peugeot. So, and Jonathan Peugeot also had been a foreign missionary in his past. And so we develop a relationship and another viewer starts sending me videos from John Verveche. Who's doing courses in Buddhism and cognitive science.And so I start looking at his, and so part of what I did initially with, with his stuff was I didn't know who to talk to. And so I would just talk to the videos. So, you know, and I didn't even understand that YouTube had a genre of this. I didn't know anything about YouTube. [00:14:00] So I just started talking to the videos cause who's going to talk to me.And so then I start doing this to other people's videos because I'm interested in the thoughts. And I also noticed because, because of my kids, that there's this thing called Twitch where people watch each other, play computer games, and I thought. That's kind of crazy. But then I thought, I wonder if people watch each other, watch videos.And then I learned that that's a thing too. So I started talking to John Vervaeke and he was a wonderful guy. And so the three of us start talking and then it's like, well, we've got to really do some live events because we have to get people away from their screens into real spaces, getting to know each other, to actually.Build the kind of bonds that human people, that human beings need one. And so then because we're doing this online, a bunch of other people start YouTube channels and start doing the same thing that I'm doing or having conversations. And, and then one woman who Sevilla King, she, she had gone to art school.She was a therapist. She did a bunch of things. She had been doing little videos on [00:15:00] piercing one day. She basically says this little corner of the internet. And the funny thing about naming is that nobody knows quite what's going on. And then when a name comes in, it kind of gels it, then the group sort of has a degree of identity.And so what happened was that. So we had a discord server. I was always a little frustrated with the format of discord because with these blocks, these walls of text, a lot of the people are auto didacts, which means that it means a whole bunch of things. But then you tended to get like, first we had hardly any Christians and then people start becoming Christians.And then the Christians want to fight about theology. And it's like, I, I've grown up. I've lived all my life in the church. I know theological fights. I know my theological positions, but I don't want to space. If I have a limited amount of time with people, I don't want to fight about theology with them. I [00:16:00] want to find out about their stories because I want to find out about their lives.And I'd like to, I'm a pastor. I'd like to help them knit together community around them. So a bunch of people start YouTube channels, a whole bunch of different things, and eventually that sort of becomes a kind of community, but that's where you get this internet question. Because the internet affords a capacity for community.It's different from real life community. And figuring that out, I think we only are barely in the, barely at the frontier of this right now. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, that's sort of what I'm exploring. And it's a mess, but well,Malcolm Collins: before you go further, I, I really, I've been writing down. I've got a whole series of tabs open with questions that we need to get to.Because the first one is what do you think Jordan [00:17:00] Peterson was doing or saying that started bringing people back that other people hadn't done before?Paul VanderKlay: That's a half hours of video trying to figure this out there. There's a lot to this so part of what happened. This is going to be a little theoretical. So my apologies. Part of what happened even before Descartes. I think Tom Holland is right about a lot of his ideas about Western history at the beginning or kind of in the, at the About the year 1000, there's, there becomes a, a separation of sort of these two realms that we have, and you can map these two realms in all sorts of different ways.Ian McGilchrist sort of has the master and the emissary. People. Commonly can today. This has only been true for a couple hundred years. Talk, talk about natural and supernatural. We can talk about it in terms [00:18:00] of mental and physical, but we have the kind of experience that suggests, you know, for example, C.S. Lewis, when he says, you know, every instance of human love will die by death or betrayal, but love itself doesn't die. Plato gets into this in terms of the form. So you have this separation and the separation Eventually became in the West sort of a dualism and Descartes sort of nails it. And so, and he's trying to figure out what's the, and it's, it revolves around the idea of substance.So there's like matter is a material substance. And then Descartes says, well, there's a spiritual substance. And what eventually happens in the West is that we have degree of, we have a degree of skepticism about material, about immaterial substances or spiritual substances, and you get this differentiation and.What Jordan Peterson starts doing through psychology and the Bible is to begin to give the Bible a degree of [00:19:00] plausibility that a lot of people who have sort of thrown off the supernatural said, Oh, and when he did the biblical series with Genesis, that really triggered something. Because people began to read the Bible and say, You know, unlike Sam Harris, unlike the new atheism, maybe, in fact, there is wisdom, perennial wisdom, even in a Darwinian sense that's encoded in the Bible that, in fact, if I listen to and learn from, I can maybe make my life better.And one of the things that I noted, especially in the early years of doing this conversations, that nihilism in a good number of people, especially men, basically causes depression. Jordan Peterson did. I call him sort of the unauthorized exorcist because there's an unauthorized exorcist of the gospel of Mark that Jesus disciples are sort of saying, this guy's casting out demons in your name and we [00:20:00] should stop him.And Jesus says, leave him alone. And so Jordan Peterson completely outside the church is basically casting out. On a variety of levels, a lot of the demons that have sort of been possessing our culture and possessing individuals. And when people, he sort of would break nihilism in people. And when they woke up from their nihilism, well, guess what?You know what they want to do? They want to get a job. They want to start eating better. They want to maybe that maybe turn that love interest into a girlfriend and that girlfriend into a wife. And then they want to have kids and then they want to build something. I mean, basically. This whole group of men sort of woke up and decided to once again participate in the human race instead of wasting themselves, as the cliche says, in their mother's basement watching porn covered with Cheetos dust.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I want to know what you think of [00:21:00] Simone's criticism of Jordan Peterson's teachings. Which you have in the past, Simone said that it feels to you very much like Jungian psychology dressed up with a conservative aesthetic. Am I, am I accurately?Paul VanderKlay: Yeah. And what's so interesting hearing about your experience of Jordan Peterson Colin, I mean, I'm sure you've consumed like way more of his content than Malcolm and I have.Is that maybe like, I'm not looking at it through a religious lens at all. Like I'm looking at it more through the lens of the things that I understand. And there's just, So much Jungian psychology and it just rubs me the wrong way because anything that's like Freudian or Jungian, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and I don't know, like, I, I, I get, I, my feeling about him is he told the internet to make their beds and they were like, yes, thank you for being it.That fatherMalcolm Collins: figure, I'm going to take a different answer here. Yeah. I think that he was literally the first person. I think it was about branding. He was the [00:22:00] first person who created an intellectually feeling path to conservative traditions and, and before this, nobody, there was this branding in society that conservative traditions meant stupid and he was the first person.Who said conservative traditions don't mean stupid, and he rose to fame through the left attacking him. So, he used a debate, like if you look at how he rose to fame, it was a debate he had with a feminist reporter in Canada that then went viral. And then when people saw this and they saw that conservative attitudes didn't mean stupid, that led to his rise to fame.What's interesting to me actually is contrasting Jordan Peterson was Milo. Because Milo came before Milo Yiannopoulos, he's referring to. Yes. And, and Milo equally showed that conservatism didn't mean stupid, but he also made conservatism look kind of crazy [00:23:00] and unhinged. Whereas Jordan Peterson made conservatism.feel very, like, I think it was all about the aesthetic and the narrative made it feel very much constrained and put together. I don't know. These are, these are just our thoughts. You can. Yeah. But Paul, doPaul VanderKlay: you really think that Jordan Peterson is first and foremost about faith? Jordan Peterson is first and foremost a university professor who cared about his students and a clinical psychologist who cared about his patients.You have to understand that about Jordan. Now this second phase of him as sort of a getting into the political realm, that's not really his native environment. If you really scratch him, he cared about helping regular people make their life better. I think you're both right. He's clearly a union and He, at the same time, I think you're also, I think you're also right, Malcolm, that he, he, the man in his moment sort of found [00:24:00] their, their time together.And, you know, it's, it's not an accident that this happened at the same time as sort of the Trump emergence. So there's a populism, I mean, Peterson also. It's, it's really helpful to go to the live events and meet the people and talk to them. Now, this is, this is part of the reason when you introduced me as a theologian, this is part of the reason that I always sort of correct people.I'm not a theologian. A theologian is an academic. I'm a pastor. Now pastors have to dabble with theology, but I've, part of the reason why I don't fight about theological models on the internet is because all of these models are limited and the emergence of Jordan Peterson in reality, We can sort of speculate on models.Models have their place and they're super, super useful, but it's this, it's, it's in the commotion of everyday life down here where heaven and earth come together, [00:25:00] that things actually happen. And so I could probably write a list of a dozen reasons why Jordan Peterson changed as many lives as he did. And probably a lot of them are valid.But that doesn't mean that any one of those things is sort of key to why it happened, because reality is just that complex. Because there have been a lot of people who've done similar things to Jordan Peterson. I mean, I've got books from him. A lot of people have sort of worked Jung in this space and had sort of little eruptions.And I talked to one Canadian academic early on that basically said, yeah, another year or two and Jordan Peterson will pass out a favor. And he listed three or four guys who I could recognize, and it happened. Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons for that.Malcolm Collins: So why do you think so, so you talked about the people coming back to the faith.Why do you think people were leaving the face? What do you think were the core hooks that, that the, the, this force, whatever we want to call [00:26:00] it, the urban monoculture was using to pull people out of the face. Why do you think it was working so effectively compared with historic conditions?Paul VanderKlay: Well, I, the video that.Someone sent me the first one I'd watch of yours in terms of why people are leaving. I thought you're dead on right about a ton of that stuff. I think in my experience for a lot of people, I think there are a lot of factors to this. Number one, people are formed by their expectations are formed by technology and we now are accustomed to certain kinds of technology that works so reliably.We have a sense of, well, that's what truth is. And the scientific revolution and really the technological revolution, the industrial revolution really created those expectations for us. So therefore when, so one common story of why people leave a particular religious tradition is because they had a bad experience, something [00:27:00] bad happened.And at some deep place in their heart, they thought something like this, that if I am a good boy or girl, if I show my allegiance to Jesus or whatever God they have bad things won't happen to me now, ask almost any pastor if that is true in the past. No, even ask almost any of those people if they believe that they will say no, but when that bad thing happens at a very deep level in their life, a plausibility structure begins to break free.And this urban monoculture has in many ways delivered. On some promises in a way better than a lot of religions have at, I think, a fairly shallow level. And I think for this reason, we're going to see the urban monoculture will hold people to a degree, but it's only going to hold a certain segment of people.But those people tend to be highlighted in. [00:28:00] All of the media that the urban monoculture really uses for it's for proselytizing. And I, I've known this because, so my grandfather pastored churches, mostly of Dutch immigrants and Dutch farmers. My father pastored a church of African Americans just outside of New York City.And what you begin to realize if you spend a lot of time with African Americans is that, well, they also have a culture and their culture has roots and their roots are in the South. So they've got a deep amount of Christianity built in them. They've got some African, they've got a whole ton of stuff in it.And so I remember when COVID hit and everybody in California is like, we've got to get this vaccine into people. I thought. I've lived in the black community all my life. Guess who is not really going to be too quick to queue up for that vaccine? They are not going to jump on these bandwagons because they have seen these bandwagons before.So American culture tends to have this little level that's in the media and, [00:29:00] and, and it's just a reinforcing narrative. And of course now with with with social media, all kinds of other narratives now have space again. Those narratives had space before just because there weren't the kind of mass media that happened in the 20th century.And and now with other medias, things are breaking down again. And, gosh,Malcolm Collins: it's really interesting that you point this out because this is something that we've noticed as well. This idea that the media class was in our country right now, and it's almost like they've become a narrower class than they were even historically is so out of touch with the other groups.Especially the groups that they purport to protect or help that one of the groups that we're really, really close with because of our company and our work and everything like that is the recent Hispanic immigrant population. And they communicate the way that they relate to truth. It's so [00:30:00] different from the way that the left thinks they do and and from what the left is saying that they their their truce networks Which is very different from the black community because I think you're absolutely right about the american black community Within the hispanic community their truce networks are family based.Where they have large networks of intermarried families, and that's how they transmit information and stuff like what's going on in the news is largely irrelevant outside of these, these family networks to the extent where they're actually, you know, we talk about all the problems that we're having with the internet and everything like that.You're not seeing this within the traditional Hispanic community. They've just. much, but they've just retreated back to these family networks. To the extent where, you know, one of our friends was telling us he has friends outside of his family and he gets teased by his cousins about it. Like they call, they call him a white boy for having friends who are not family members.And it's like, that's how like intense these family networks are. And it shows it. To me, [00:31:00] when I look at like this or the way the black community relates to authority, which like the Democrats don't get it all a, these communities are not talking to each other, even in the slightest way anymore.And we do not realize how different, different American populationsPaul VanderKlay: are. That's exactly right. And that's exactly right. And part of the reason, so there's a, there's a thesis by a scholar named Mark Knoll, who was from the Christian reform church. I think went to Notre Dame has sucked up a lot of the Christian reform intelligentsia.And he basically had the frontier thesis in terms of American church. So what happens in the history of the United States is that of course, the British, the British really wanted to sort of contain the colonies so they wouldn't have Indian problems West of it. And a big part of the American revolution is.People wanted that land and they could sort of push out the Indians. And so, and so America has always been an [00:32:00] amalgamation of different tribes within it. And more recently, more American history books have, have looked at that. But part of what happened in terms of the church was the, the churches in the, in the colonies were the ones that came over from Europe.What happens when Americans went out is that family bonds are ruptured, all kinds of bonds are ruptured, and Americans sort of have to sort of make new bonds, and so it's a very open space where things can happen, and that's part of the reason why the Bible takes on such primary focus in American Evangelicalism, because the only thing they had in common was the Bible, not all these historic creeds and confessions of Europe.Well, similar things have been happening, and it's, and it's, For a while, when we had mass media, when there were three tv networks and we had a common culture And and partly also because at that time in the 60s and the 50s and 60s There was a great degree of attention of trying to bring catholics jews and african americans into this group[00:33:00] you know, so the hispanics sort of were Somewhat catholic but I mean and for that and now that the sort of the mass media has broken down People are just unfamiliar with people who are mostly familiar with screens are unfamiliar with their neighbors on less.They're from a community that has its own ways of deep connection. And so that's why, yeah, the, I often, I watched the woke stuff and I was thinking there's a certain class of African Americans who have sort of been brought up into the ruling class, but most of them, they watch this stuff and they just kind of.Because they've seen regime after regime go through and they're not believing much of it because they mostly believe what they know from their own lives, which is how most people do it. So back to your question about the deconversion. So you're right that this urban monoculture [00:34:00] took a lot of people out and the more and more of our, of our world is mediated by these images.That subtly frames expectations and incentive structures. And so that has really broken apart a lot of traditional white churches. But, you know, it's, to me, one of the more, one of the most interesting things that we're going to watch is going to be what happens with Islam in the West. Because I mean, again, all of these systems are far too complex for any of us to actually be able to accurately track.There's just way too many variables. But Islam is, you know, that's going to just be a fascinating thing. And that's mostly going to happen in Europe. In the United States, it's Latentum. And The history of, so I, I spent my first eight [00:35:00] years of seven years of professional ministry in Latin America doing missionary work.And so you begin to get a sense of, you go to that place and it's like. Yeah, a lot of people just fly down here to go to the beach, but if you live there, it's like, yeah, you know, culture is real and part of where I learned that is, again, I was growing up in a black community in a mostly black church in a white denomination in a, in Christian reform schools, which were sort of, you know, one of the things that I find so interesting about your project is that I have watched the Dutch try resisting cultural assimilation Yeah.All my life and fail. And right now my denomination is just sort of being completely pulled apart and assimilated in some of the larger things in our culture. But we had our own Christian schools. You didn't marry outside the Christian reform church. You know, we had, we had all of these enclaves and this has just been.Pulled apart. And so now [00:36:00] Hispanics, it's, we're in the middle of a crazy, crazy social experiment. And of course the internet is just gasoline on the fire.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do.Paul VanderKlay: I want to pull on though, what you've said. This isn't the only time you've said it where like, if you got too big, especially too fast, that it would sort of destroy you and destroy the community.I mean, part of me, I want to push on that and understand why you believe that, because you've reached an amazing number of people. You've changed their lives. Like it's super clear that you've created a community online that is very, very real for these people. And you have found ways to make it participatory.I mean, Even as a pastor, you're in a one to many relationship. Like you can't speak one on one with absolutely everyone who shows up. And so even in person, there's a limit to your reach, but online, your reach is scaled in a way that's incredible. Can I understand a little bit more about why you think?Growing your [00:37:00] community online would be damaging because yeah, I just, I really, I'm not sure if I think that's true, but I would be open to you convincing me. Okay. Well, well, I'll say a few things. I, my, my main employment remains my local congregation and I've been with these people 26 years. A number of them are in the last few years of their life and all they really want is for their pastor to bury them.And I want to be able to do that for them. The number, so, you know, there's the Dunbar number, and how true that is, I don't know. And you're right, as a pastor, I'm used to one to many relationships. But I also, and for that reason, I have a sense of, you have to fairly quickly try to hand off people into other relationships, if the community is going to cohere.And it's a little bit of a dance because usually what happens and nothing at the internet hasn't changed this people come to my church [00:38:00] because maybe they saw a little thing online or, you know, maybe they just walked in and saw me on stage preaching and then something touched their heart and they say, wow, he touched my heart.I want to be friends with pastor Paul. Okay. How many friends can Pastor Paul have? Pastor Paul has five children. Pastor Paul has a wife. Pastor Paul has a job. Pastor Paul has all of these things. And so it's, it's sort of the pace at which things grow impacts what exactly you're going to have. And so I wanted things to grow at a rate where people could find each other and actually be able to build.Friendships with one another to scale away. One of the things that I noted is that just like with it, I mean, when we talk about getting it on the ground floor of, let's say a company or something, that's a real thing. And so as this little corner of the internet has grown a lot of, so [00:39:00] there's, let's say I'm at the top of a certain hierarchy, then there's a whole group of people who found me within the first month.That are right there at the second level. And now there's always a few anomalous people who sort of shoot up beyond themselves, but the whole community sort of grows together and there are very subtle ways in which these lieutenants are gatekeepers. And also part of it is what we have done in this little corner of the internet is not really premised around, let's say a doctrinal statement.This is a statement that we agree with. No, we, we, we're hard pressed to find a lot that we agree with. What we have is sort of a style of relationship. Now, I just gotta actually, I was late to this because I got a message from someone that said, Oh, yesterday's yesterday's live stream was ugly. They were calling you a liar.They were [00:40:00] saying you're not a leader and they were bad mouth. I know your thick skin and winsome, but and and so. But the thing is being pastor of a real live church is really good for those kinds of things. Because if you think people get mad at you for things you do online, try doing it in a real life church.That's where people really get mad. And so a lot of the stuff online is like, yeah, someone online is angry with me. They don't believe me.Malcolm Collins: Wait, wait, wait. A live stream? Was this like some random live stream was in your community where they decided to? And thisPaul VanderKlay: is part of the difficulty. Is that right now, in terms of this little community, it's funny because there's a sort of a fear and you see this with churches to there's a sort of this little fierce debate.Is this a real thing or not? They have all this philosophical ideas. So that's something they can chew on. And then is Paul our leader? What is a leader? A leader is someone who says yes and no. Now in the church, In an actual [00:41:00] organization and institution, there are things that I can say yes to and no to in ways I decide things that have consequence within the organizational structure.This isn't quite that. There's no organizational structure. There's no, yeah, there's, you know, there's a little bit of money going, moving around and memberships and YouTube AdSense and that kind of stuff. But I'm not paying anyone. I have zero employees. I can't hire and fire anyone. And we don't have a structure like we have in the church where someone might go under formal discipline for believing something or doing something, what have you, there's none of those things.And so part of what's happening is, you know, there's people, and there's another thing you learned as a pastor, people come to communities with their expectations and they don't even know what their expectations are, but you begin to discover them when certain. Expectations don't get met or fulfilled and then people get a little bit upset because I thought Paul was going to do this.And [00:42:00] the thing you also have to realize is that, you know, let's the AA people say, well, expectations are preconceived resentments.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. If you would mind indulging us, what are the expectations people are coming in with that are causing the conflicts?Paul VanderKlay: Oh, I really have, I don't have a very clear idea of it. Because they themselves don't have a clear idea of it. IMalcolm Collins: assume they want you to be more conservative or more progressive. Is that it?Like it's a political fight.Paul VanderKlay: It's a political, they they'd love for it. So about four years ago before COVID, when this thing sort of started taking on steam, people wanted me to found a 501 C three and to develop a board of directors and to basically institutionalize this thing. And so. Paul Vander Klee, anchor this little corner anchor estuary ink, something like this.And I said, no, that's it. Things are way too early. We don't even know what we're doing here. And in one of the [00:43:00] things, so before I did any of this, I was involved in church planting. And one of the things that you realize with church planting is that pace of growth and institutional structure Those these things sort of have to find themselves and sort of a rule of hand is don't start a structure until You really know you'll need it or at least anticipate needing it soon Because with the pace of change of change right now in our culture You'll almost always structure badly and it will hurt the sort of the organic growth of the thing.So I don't, you know, so people wanted me to start to start an organization and then people, you know, and then suddenly there'll be guidelines and boundary rules. And, and I said, first of all, I said, I don't have time to manage that. Second of all, I know myself well enough to know I'm not a great manager of those kinds of things.I run a small little church and even the tiny little bit of administration I have to do here, I really don't like. So if we're [00:44:00] actually going to do something like that, then suddenly I'm, I've got a board that I've got to deal with. I already have a church board. I have to deal with that. I'm going to, then I'm going to have to have a structure and I'm probably going to not be able to work in the church.And then I'm going to need a budget of. Somewhere probably about half a million to a million dollars a year. Then I'm going to raise that money. Then I'm going to be, and I said, I don't want to do any of these things. I would love to do what I can to facilitate community for people. But in my opinion, it's going to be fairly ad hoc.It's going to be fairly loosey goosey. And that's what I'm comfortable with right now. And that's what I can do right now. Well,Malcolm Collins: I imagine this is what people actually want. I mean, other than the people who are high within the status hierarchy, there's always different motivations, depending on where you are within the status hierarchy.One question, one final question I had for you, because this is something that you've mentioned on our videos, and I want to hear your thoughts on it. If you were going to give advice to someone today, to keep, and I know this is hard, and I know this is not something you do, but to keep their children within the tradition they grew up [00:45:00] in, What would that advice be?What are the biggest threats to our children? WhenPaul VanderKlay: I'm at wherever I'm at, whenever I'm asked for parenting advice, I say this, be who you want your children to become. Oh yeah. First of all, let's talk about human beings. We think we know what we are. We think we know ourselves. We really don't know ourselves very well. My children know me in a way that I don't know myself.My wife knows me in ways I don't know myself. My church people know me in ways I don't know myself. There's, I have a certain degree of delusion about myself that is really difficult to, to, to cure. So part of what is [00:46:00] happening right now is that. Traditions of almost every kind are being tremendously tested and most of them are, are, are found wanting.And this includes, now, every, all the Christians listening to this, I know a bunch of my people are going to find their way to your channel and listen to this. This includes the church, and what, so G. K. Chesterton talked about, I remember it was five or seven, but the five deaths of Christianity. He said basically Christianity has died five times, and I think that's true.And I think the church, as most of us have known it, which, again, generalizations are really tough, but many of us have known churches that are Fundamentally modernist institutions sort of created around modernist assumptions, including my own [00:47:00] denomination, many of these churches are going away and they are going away fast.Now, I, I continue to be a Christian, and I continue to believe in the church, but I think what we are going to see is churches continue to, there's going to be new kinds of churches that we cannot imagine yet. That's really hard for the church. Now, part of what's been interesting in this whole thing is that a lot of people have gone grown interested in orthodoxy and Catholicism, and I think there are real reasons for.people's desire for these very sacramental, very ancient churches with certain constructions. And I think that's because modernity as we've experienced it for the last 500 years, especially the last 200 years is receding quickly. And so people are looking for something old, [00:48:00] something reliable, something structured and something they can get their hands on like a sacrament.Yeah. I. think the people coming into those churches are going to change those churches in ways that many of the older people who are really excited about these new people coming in, they don't have any idea because the people cut themselves coming in, they don't have any idea. And so for this reason, I mean, I've seen it in, I've seen it in my own denomination.Like I said, the Christian Reformed Church, ostensibly Calvinist, which talked about divine election, did everything in their power to ensure that their children would maintain the faith. And I think the Christian Reformed Church Is probably in the top 10% of denominations that succeeded until the 1980s.I mean, Mm-Hmm. . The Christian Reform Church had a thick, yeah, thick culture, but it's basically been torn apart. The urban monoculture [00:49:00] has had its way with it. And what that means, not only is that churches that have sort of bought in completely to the urban monoculture, they're going the way of the main line.Yeah. The other side of churches has been like, duh, you know. Double down on having a bunker mentality. I don't have a lot of confidence in that path either. Yeah, because it's, you know, Rene Girard has this mimetic rivalry thing. If you decide the urban monoculture is your enemy, you are probably going to become a bizarro.alternate, you know, it's going to map on you. So in other, in other words, what, in other words, what you need to actually create a sustainable culture is something that has a different root from the opposition. It's going. And for that reason, people are looking for very old things. I think that's part of the reason people are so interested today in evolutionary psychology.Because it's the new natural laws, one of my friends just recently said. I,Malcolm Collins: I love [00:50:00] this interpretation. So today I spent, we have the longest episode we've ever done going live soon. It's going to be like two hours or something. I was working on it today. And it's, it's on this question and it focuses on a specific hypothesis or sort of conundrum where I was like, okay, my kids are like me, right?So if I'm going to understand why have I joined a traditionalist religion, I need to look at why my dad left. And the answer that he chose to leave Christianity was he got punished for questioning the Noah's Ark story. He was like, this does not seem logically plausible. Let's go through it. And he was like, I will not stay in a tradition that punish it.And people who know me, they're like, yeah, Malcolm would have done that too. Had he grown up in a, you know, a conservative Christian family. And so it's made me think, well, one of the problems that we have is that when we say we want to be looser about these kinds of stories, every option I have for my kids today, loosens [00:51:00] up on all the morality as well.When you loosen up on the stories, you loosen up on the morality. And for me, the question is, is there a way to reconstruct things that loosens up on the, the, the. scientific plausibility stories, but that doesn't loosen up on any of the moral restrictions. And that might be an absurd thing to try to create, but I do suspect that's what the winner of this.I don't think it's going to be necessarily what we're trying to build, but I think it's going to be. Whoever builds that successfully is going to be the person who wins.Paul VanderKlay: So, so, if there's something at the heart of sort of what has been happening with Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pajot, John Verveke, it's the idea that John Verveke calls combinatorial explosiveness.Hmm. In that The world is too complex for any of us to manage. [00:52:00] When we talk about morality in a context that is being colonized by evolutionary psychology, the idea is, what practices, what do we say yes to, what do we say no to, that will finally achieve, what, in terms of a Darwinian process? Nobody can figure that out because there are far too many elements And this is part of the reason again to answer the jordan peterson question.Why do why are people now interested in religion? Ironically, it's because of darwinism that people have begun to and I don't think they know this intellectually yet Yeah. They have begun to sense that, huh, if I want to figure out how human beings work, I have to sort of look at an ancient record of track record, an ancient track record.And you know what? There is nothing that we have like religion [00:53:00] for providing that data. Yeah. And so the winners in religious competition are probably the best place to start to think about how should we live in the future. I mean, that's at the heart of, and Jordan didn't sort of say it directly that way.That's what's happening. And so when I saw your channel, I thought oh these people get it And and part of why you two are so fun. And this is why I love the estuary project So what I started doing in churches i've as i've told churches You need to have conversation groups where that little boy can go and say I think a worldwide flood is bunk and everybody says All right, cool.I mean it's tom holland's story. It's story of how many people because What happens? It used to be that the university was supposed to be a place where you could have open ideas, blah, blah, blah. That's done. Ironically, churches are places, potentially [00:54:00] some churches, perhaps where you can go and have an honest conversation.And so that's what I want for churches. I want them to be places where people can come in. And then the group. So we have this little process where the group Can have a conversation about what those people that they want to talk about. And that, again, I think back to this leadership thing that involves more modeling, you know, we've had people that say, we need to, we need to list the rules of this, like, well, usually by the time you have to list rules, something's already broken.So the longer you can put off listing rules, the more modeling you can do. Probably the further you'll get along.Malcolm Collins: Nice. Yeah. I really like this, this insight here. Yeah, this, that's great. Well, this conversation has been fantastic and I hope we can do something like this again. This will be one of our longer episodes, but we've started doing that with interviews recently.But this is fantastic. And I really do hope our listeners who are interested in, in what you're hearing from him, either check out his church. [00:55:00] In person, if you're in his area, or at least check out his YouTubePaul VanderKlay: channel. Come at 9am to the estuary meeting. So we have estuary at 9am and then we have the worship service at 11.Now, again, the worship services, some music, me preaching, it's a, you know, I've got an older church here. This is what they like. And, and, and I, I, I work for them, but at 9am we do estuary. That's where you'll have a much more open, free flowing conversation.Malcolm Collins: That's spectacular. And look, five kids, right? We gotta be working on this, people.This should be thePaul VanderKlay: norm. You won't know what your kids believe until they're in their 50s and 60s. Oh, maybe. Think about that. Maybe.Malcolm Collins: I hope I live long enough to have a wager with you guys.I think we're going to have little firebrands. You know, one of the people thatPaul VanderKlay: I agreeMalcolm Collins: with, one of the people coming on our show soon again is Ayla who came [00:56:00] from a cow. I don't know if you know, we're having her back on. She came from a Calvinist tradition and just, I think her dadAnd yeah, I we'll, we'll be doing no, I, I expect our kids will be that way too. I think if they're going to break away from whatever we're doing, they're going to do it loud and early. Yes.Paul VanderKlay: I'm going to say this. I would not be surprised. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I would not be at all surprised if Ayla.When she gets in her fifties and sixties, doesn't look a lot like her father.Malcolm Collins: I don't look a lot like him now. I think I know. I think she has an incredible amount in common with him. And if you read her writings, she has meditated on this recently where she's like, yeah, I actually am a lot like my dad. It's funny because she's like, why do you guys feel so close to me? And I'm like, Oh, we're like dissidents from the Calvinist cultural group. You're a dissident for you feel very similar to us [00:57:00] culturally. And she's like, she doesn't like, she, she gets it. Like she's friends with us, but I don't think she understands what we mean when we're like, Yeah.Like we're part of the same family, like we're, we're distant and we have different beliefs, but we're still part of the same larger family.Paul VanderKlay: Well, I, you know, again, part of what, what part of the beauty about an actual community, I remember some of the fire brands when I was growing up where the preacher's kids, see, my father was always very open.And so we didn't have a strict house at all. But the stricter the house, the worse the preacher's kid. And now that, you know, I just turned 60 and these people are about my age, they're just like their parents. It's an amazing trajectory to watch. Ah, I love it. I loveMalcolm Collins: it. Well, we'll, we'll recreate that for our kids and hopefully we have a lot.You know, you're on number four now. You're not at five yet, Simone. You got more work to do to catch up with Paul Vanderclay.Paul VanderKlay: True [00:58:00] story. Yeah. We deeply admire you and I'm so glad you came on the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us. Well, I'd very much like to continue talking with you guys because you're, you're so open and you're so smart.And I, I just enjoy people. I mean, I wouldn't be a pastor if I didn't enjoy people. And you two are, are really a breath. Like one person said after our. Conversation on my channel. Oh, what a breath of fresh air. And, and again, you'll, you'll get a lot of crap from a lot of other people for a lot of other reasons.That's just the internet, but you two are, you two are well used to that.Malcolm Collins: Oh, we utilize it to spread. We're not like you. I want to grow as fast as Jordan Peterson. I want to replace Jordan Peterson. That's our long term goal. I want a loving, happily married couple that respects each other to be the next Jordan Peterson.And I think with a lot of kids, not with like one or two measly kids. I think that that's how we, we save this whole system and that's what we're working on. And I told this [00:59:00] to one woman, she goes, can't we all work together? And I go, yes, but there can only be one best. And that's what we're working on.So there you have it,Paul VanderKlay: Paul. Now we have it. Yeah. You can always look to Brigham Young. I mean,Malcolm Collins: Hey, I like Brigham Young. I think Brigham Young is the true founder of Mormonism. I don't think Joseph Smith really founded what we today call Mormonism. I could go deep into Brigham Young. I think he's intellectually very sophisticated.I think a little less sophisticated than Orson Pratt. I, sorry, I don't wanna go too far into Mormonism here because we're gonna talk about this in some, yeah. Let's just sayPaul VanderKlay: the man has pizazz, you know? Yeah. Bring me Young is quite a very interesting guy. , I'll say that. Very interesting guy. . I know most of my, I know most of what I know about Mormonism from a very Mormon homeland homeless addict, and I've learned a ton from him.Interesting. Yeah. Addicts are. The homeless people are just an incredible source of learning [01:00:00] about the real world. They really are.Malcolm Collins: This is actually an interesting point that I want to point to people is historically people had multiple sources of information about the world. They had the media elite and they had their local pasture and their local pasture or.You know, rabbi or whatever, was always learning from homeless addicts as well as learning from their congregation. Whereas the media elite never had that connection to those flows of information. This is one of the reasons we become so dissociated as a population is because we disintermediated our pastors as a source of information.Paul VanderKlay: Yeah. And that's fairly recent as early as the fifties. Pastors, you know, if the government would do a panel, they'd always have a minister or two on it. And that's, that's, that, that went away.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, this has been fantastic. Yeah. Please come back on atPaul VanderKlay: some point we would. Oh, I'd love to know you guys.And, and I want to have, I want to, I want to continue. I keep watching your stuff [01:01:00] and Oh, great.Malcolm Collins: I'm really excited to hear if you do do a response to this that I was doing today. Cause I'm really. We go over every one of the major reasons that people leave the main traditional religions. Oh, really? And we try to come up with solutions for them.Yeah, like, I go through like the good God problem. This is how can I, and it's a lot of stuff where like, atheists pull at the wrong strings. Often they, they pull it nuances. The good God problem is actually a problem that drives people away from religion. The local revelation with miracles, but a universalizing religious tradition is also a big problem that we go into.We go into yeah, we just go into all of these, like, how can you have good answers to these when people attack them? Because I think about them in terms of my own kids. I think too often people in religious traditions, they say people left because they didn't like the rules. And I actually have almost never seen this.People usually leave because they're disappointed in the leadership. They don't understand the logic behind one of the [01:02:00] rules that they see as arbitrarily cruel or they see a logical inconsistency. Like those are the only three reasons people really leave. So if you can build a structure without those, you don't have to worry.We'll see.Paul VanderKlay: There's, there's all there's, there's almost always a lot of reasons. And even the ones who leave probably aren't fully aware of all of the reasons they're leaving. I mean, people are, people are just complex this way and you just never get around that. So we, we talk a good game, but you know, I think Jonathan Heitwood is the rider and the elephant.It's a strong point.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, by the way, if I was going to tell my listeners to start with one video by you, what would it be? Oh,Paul VanderKlay: good question. I'd say let the algorithm decide because, I mean, the algorithm for as flat footed as it can be sometimes, it knows. What you have watched and what other people [01:03:00] who are watching what you're watching.I mean, there's a reason our channels have a crossover.Malcolm Collins: True. Yeah. Cause we didn't have any initial audience crossover. Our initial crossover was all the evolution bros, i. e. mostly Jolly Heretic people, because we talk with him and we have a lot in common with him and a lot of crossover with the manosphere, like the red pill sphere and everything like that.Cause we've done a lot of stuff with Sandman. But like MGTOW and stuff like that. But you. That's totally new. Like there's no reason for us to have a viewer crossover and get viewers who we had reaching out to us in the early days. We're watching your channel before they were watchingPaul VanderKlay: ours. Right.And for that reason let the algorithm, even just because you watched this, you know, you guys are probably going to put me in the show notes or something. That algorithm is going to look at that and they're going to serve you up a video. From me. And, you know, 50, 70 percent you might be interested because the algorithm knows all the details.I put out [01:04:00] over 2000 videos and most of them are long. And so it's really hard to get a sense of, you know, what, what you'd be interested in, but veryMalcolm Collins: conversational and authentic, very different from ours. We try to make them memeable.Paul VanderKlay: Yeah, it's, see, and again, also for my channel, the videos that I think are most important are the ones that are most difficult to watch because they're usually conversations with random people and the way YouTube sort of functions.I mean, if I, I did a conversation with Jonathan Peugeot last week, and of course that one just shot right up because Jonathan Peugeot is an audience. And one of these days I'm sure, you know, I'll, I'll say, okay, Jordan, it's time. And then Jordan, Jordan Peterson and I'll do a conversation and that one will go crazy.But the most, the people, the most important people in your life are not the ones on the screens. They're the ones you share your home with and they're your children and they're your parents. Those are the most important people in your life. And actually that's what your channel isMalcolm Collins: about. [01:05:00] Yeah, well, I, I disagree.I'm the most important in all of our viewers life. I'm just going to have a kid's life. MalcolmPaul VanderKlay: goes, we all go. It's soMalcolm Collins: sad. I'm joking. Of course it's Simone. Who's the most important in your person. No, no, no,Paul VanderKlay: no, no. Jordan and Tammy, they have a, they have a, I believe those two have quite a fine relationship.And again, I think. Probably one of the most important thing about your channel is in fact, the way I hear you two talking about each other and you are modeling, you are modeling something in a relationship that I think is profoundly important and what's interesting about you two. I mean, Jordan and Tammy are about my age.You two are a lot younger and I can see the models of, I mean, you've, you've brought into your relationship a lot of the values of the urban monoculture. You defer to each other. You value each other. You very much are of this culture. That's true. Now you're also playing with [01:06:00] it. So .Malcolm Collins: Anyway, have a, a great one.Yes. Thank you again, Paul . Good to have you on. Alright. Yeah.Paul VanderKlay: The first of many recordingMalcolm Collins: thePaul VanderKlay: second of many.We are making bread and now we're adding ingredients. What's in here? What do you think? What's inside? Can you guess, Torsten?A kadu kuk? Oh, Octavian's opening it. What's that? It's salt. Salt! Yay! What is this? Can I see what it is? What do you think? Look at it. What do you think it is? It's like soap. It's like soap? What is it? What does it taste like? Ice! Ice? You think it's ice? Yeah. It's yummy. It's yummy? So what do you think it is?It's sugar. Sugar! Can [01:07:00] I put it in? Yeah, it's sugar. We're going to have to start putting it in. Okay? Okay. Okay. Yes! Absolutely. Yes. Yummy! Good. Are you jumping in, Torsten? Just a little bit right here. Wow. That's what we're gonna do. That was crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah.Yeah. Your sister said bad. Now, what's this, you guys? What do you think it is, qua? Good job. Now we need to put in 420 grams of it. Do you wanna help you? Very careful. Yeah. Ready? What does the scale say? You wanna do it too? All right, we're gonna let Torsten do a little egg. So did we do water? Yes. Did we do oil?Yes. Did we do salt? Yes! Did we do [01:08:00] sugar? Yes! Did we do flour? Yes! Now we have one more thing. Instant yeast. Do you know what instant yeast is? That's a close one. That was a close one? Yeah. We'll get that in five hours. All the things we need are in. So, hold this bucket, tell me, is it heavy?No, that goes all together into the machine, okay? I think all the settings are right now, so let's press the start button. Yeah, go ahead and press it. Oh, good job! What's going on with the things we put in? Bread is done. Are you excited? Does it smell good?Yep. Inside the bucket, [01:09:00] right? You just a little bit worried. Nope. You're a big worried. Yep. Why? Put some peanut butter on a bread. Take a bite and tell me what you think.Do you like the bread that you made?You do? Yay! You made bread! 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

Malcolm and Simone discuss the shocking decline in fertility rates across Latin America, analyzing cultural causes and linking them to contraception access. They highlight the dire global trends threatening Hispanic and African cultures, which are often dismissed. The podcast explores the impact on education, assimilation, and cultural diversity, as well as the misconceptions about the immigration crisis in Latin America.