From Disgust to Cringe to Vitalism: Examining the Evolution of Cultural Frameworks

This episode delves into the transition of cultural frameworks from disgust to cringe, leading up to the current age of vitalism.

1. Disgust-based morality often leads to exclusion and persecution, motivating a shift towards more inclusive cultural frameworks.
2. The era of cringe, characterized by secondhand embarrassment and a fear of breaking social norms, dominated recent decades but is now giving way to vitalism.
3. Vitalism promotes a love of existence and authenticity, though it risks glorifying morally dubious figures due to its emphasis on unapologetic self-expression.
4. Historical and cultural references are used to illustrate shifts in societal norms, such as the role of beauty in fascist aesthetics and the moral implications of disgust.
5. The discussion on vitalism raises questions about the future of societal values and the potential need for a balanced approach that avoids the excesses of previous cultural frameworks.

1: Introduction to Cultural Frameworks

Discusses the historical context of disgust-based morality and its influence on societal behaviors and laws, with references to LGBTQ+ persecution and the role of disgust in politics. Malcolm Collins: "Disgust-based morality caused the persecution of LGBT individuals."

2: The Age of Cringe

Explores the concept of 'cringe' as a cultural framework, its rise in the late 20th century, and how it shaped public discourse and personal behavior. Simone Collins: "Cringe is secondhand embarrassment about someone breaking social norms."

3: Emergence of Vitalism

Defines and discusses 'vitalism', a new cultural framework centered on embracing life and authenticity. The potential societal impact and challenges of vitalism are examined. Malcolm Collins: "Vitalism sells itself with a love of existence and being who you are, unapologetically."

1. Embrace individual authenticity while being mindful of its impact on others.
2. Recognize and challenge the cultural frameworks that influence personal and societal behaviors.
3. Foster discussions that promote understanding and evolution of societal norms.
4. Be aware of how historical prejudices shape contemporary attitudes and policies.
5. Encourage a culture of respect and acceptance, moving beyond mere tolerance to genuine appreciation of diversity.

In this insightful discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the evolution of cultural frameworks in modern society, tracing the transition from disgust-based morality to cringe culture, and ultimately to the emerging age of vitalism. The couple delves into the factors that have driven these shifts and the implications for our understanding of morality, identity, and social norms. Malcolm and Simone begin by examining the era of Protestant Christianity's dominance in the United States, characterized by a disgust-based moral framework that often led to the persecution of marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community. They argue that the recognition of the flaws in this system led to its eventual downfall and the rise of cringe culture, which relied on secondhand embarrassment and conformity to shape social norms. The discussion then turns to the emergence of vitalism, a cultural framework that celebrates individuals who unapologetically embrace their identity and break free from the constraints of cringe culture. Malcolm and Simone highlight examples of vitalistic figures, such as Tiger King and Donald Trump, and explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of this approach. Throughout the conversation, the couple emphasizes the importance of personal choice in belief systems, the value of austerity, and the role of faith in shaping one's outlook on humanity's future. They also touch on the concept of anti-racism as an ontological framework and the potential for anti-DEI consulting to promote meritocracy and combat bigotry in the workplace.

People

Simone Collins, Malcolm Collins

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A
I think it was the recognition that disgust based morality was leading to immoral actions like the persecution. No, hear me out here. I genuinely think it was the disgust based morality caused the persecution of lgbt individuals that led to the destruction of that system. Because just how ridiculous it ultimately was. Yeah.

Cause many people were like, why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves that they can't change? I think it's the new cultural framework that is going to dominate in the next age, which is the age of vitalism. So vitalism I would define as a cultural framework that sells itself with a love of existence and a love of being who you are. Unapologetically. One of the problems with the vital assist, and also explain why it's going to potentially eventually crash, is often the people who care the least about how society judges them.

Like us, for example. Because of that, they lack a general moral framework and they'll just do narcissistic stuff all the time in a way that, like, the Tiger King or Trump does. Right? Would you like to know more? Hello, Simone.

We are going to be discussing a very interesting topic today, and there's going to be a long amble at the end of this, because sometimes we just have casual conversations before them. And we had a really interesting one before this episode. But I'm going to be discussing a concept that I have been thinking about personally. And a fan sent me some ideas that actually helped me flesh out this concept into a broader concept about how our society functions and where we are moving as a society and a realistic path through the pervading nihilism of our current age. This story starts in the age of our childhood or our parents, when the dominant cultural group in the country was protestant Christianity.

These were the days of the satanic panic and a lot of the anti gay stuff and stuff like that. And we're talking the eighties, early nineties. Yeah, there was. And I love that some people still think we're there. Like, they still think, like, the Republicans are, like, the anti gay party or something like that.

Freaking insane. Like, I cannot. It's insane. 45% of gay men voted for Trump, by the way. Like, this is.

We are no longer in that. The gay party and the non gay party society has done a 180 since then. But anyway, back to what we were saying here, or at least that was one study, some people with only one study, because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe, you just throw it out anyway. We need to take it back here in that world. While there was a philosophical structure for what the conservative ideology was like the christian philosophical structure, everything like that.

It wasn't that philosophical structure that motivated individual action, voting and decision making among the republican party when they were communicating with the mob, I guess you could call it specifically, the way that they communicated was through disgust. And by that, what I mean is they're like, doesn't it disgust you when you see gay people kissing, for example? Therefore we should ban that, right? Doesn't it disgust you when you see X or Y? Like, that is how they motivated the export of their cultural value system.

And in reaction to that, interestingly, the far left begin to deify things that disgusted them. That was how they fought this. And you actually see this in leftist art. One thing I always mentioned is Vanderhoeven, who's being interviewed about starship troopers. Really, you should watch our starship troopers video if you haven't seen it.

I think it's one of the best that we've done. But in the interview, he was like, I was surprised that people didn't realize it was supposed to be a parody against ultra right wingism because everyone I casted in it was beautiful. And I thought that people would recognize that meant that it was supposed to be evil, like they were supposed to be evil, like bad guys. And I just love this world perspective of if a thing is beautiful, it is therefore evil. And you actually see this in a lot of postmodernism and stuff like this.

And it actually helps me understand a little bit of the hatred of us. We had gotten online hate for naming our kids after Romans, like Octavian, for example. They're like, this is a sign. Or Scandinavians. We get heat for that, too.

Yeah. The roman one is more interesting to me because we actually do have scandinavian heritage. That is your family's original last name before Ellis island. The roman one is interesting because I don't have roman heritage. Romans were not white.

Romans subjugated and enslaved white people. They were a mediterranean population group. I guess if you want to call them white, you can. Historically, in the United States, they were not treated as white. Italian immigrants were not treated as white immigrants.

They were treated very badly. The Irish weren't treated as white immigrants either, in many ways. And this is why probably the hispanic immigrant group today that is seen as a separate ethnic group is not going to be seen as a separate ethnic group. No less white than Italians. But anyway, yeah, Italians had a problem with organized crime and everything, too.

So remember that. Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. But why do I elevate this cultural group that stomped Mon, right, that civilized us, right? They took us when we were savages in the woods, worshipping stones and stuff like that.

And they brought us a different system. And I think that system made us better. And then we went out and we exported that system all over the world. This was the period of imperialism. And a lot of people are like, oh, that was such a horrible thing.

And I think that they capture something true about us when they're like, why do you look up to the Romans? We don't look up to Romans because we are the Romans. We look up to the Romans because they showed strength, competence and beauty and the things that they created, especially in contrast with our ancestors of the similar period. And when they are looking to people to uplift from that same period, if you look at like the far progressive mind, you're looking at somebody like Bambi thug, where she is uplifting, like wicked, and this neo paganism, where they are looking for the weak group of that period, where the older conservative systems uplifted beauty and demonized things that disgusted them. They also uplifted strength.

The problem that the systems had, that they communicated this to the mobile through disgust systems, which can allow for people to be victimized. And it's very easy to mistake disgust. An innate reaction that we evolved to try to help us have more surviving offspring either through not engaging in reproductive behavior that will lead to lower offspring. I think that's why we have discussed towards things like male relationships. I want to support gay people, and I think a lot of gay people don't recognize this.

I could not be more pro gay. I lived throughout my entire high school career with a gay roommate, not living with my family or anything like that, a GSA. And then in college, my academic dad with a gay guy. Your core like social community, and these were communities I was choosing. But even with that, I still like my brain, still instinctually exports a disgust export.

When I see men kissing, that is something that I can't help but feel. And that's just the way human sexuality works. It includes arousal and it includes disgust. And you don't get to choose what arouses you or what disgusts you. It's just.

Yeah, it's just important that I don't confuse that with a moral intuition. And that's something that Christianity also was figuring out in the eighties and nineties. I think that is what Mother Teresa represented for a lot of people, is that when you see somebody with leprosy, your average person sees them and their brain exports disgust because it's trying to get them to not interact with somebody who might be diseased. Yeah. But a lot of people in these older moral frameworks confused that disgust with.

B
A lack of morality, with evil. With evil. Like, they must be immoral if they are causing disgust. Yeah. Or they have sinned in some way, or this is a sign of their sinful life, or depending on your religious framework, sinful past life, etcetera.

Right. It's very important that our society moved past, discussed as a metric for morality and immorality. But during that period, the seeds of the worst impulses of modern progressivism were sowed, which is a cultural group that in the figures in history that they worship and look to was reverence. And it was in modern times, they worship and look to as reverence is weakness and ugliness are seen as signs of greatness, which can seem like a very, it, bizarre philosophy, but it makes sense if you look at where it grew, which was originally in opposition to a moral framework that was using disgust to shape things fair. But then we moved from this disgust framework to another framework that is, I think, equally bad.

A
And it's the framework that we're just now leaving. Now, I would say this spans from late nineties through 20, 2020, pretty much. Right. Basically, like, we're only just now seeing emerging from it. Just now emerging from it.

And this is the era of cringe. Motivating mass action, which is very different from disgust, though. Very different from disgust. Yeah. Cringe is secondhand embarrassment, and it is embarrassment about somebody breaking social norms that they may not have recognized were social norms or something like that.

B
Right. This motivated during the dominance of the urban monoculture in our society. When we switched from the christian group having control to the urban monoculture having control, this largely progressive group, they motivated mass action through cringe. Cringe in others and fear of cringe yourself. Yeah.

Which is why when you look at polling, for example, there's are fewer people now than at least ever before in this polling that are willing to not only express their views on controversial subjects, but express their views on any subject at all. The extent to which people are afraid of criticism is off the charts now. And I think that's a product of the era of cringe. Right? Yeah.

A
When I think that that was the result of cringe, which now people are recognizing as bad. When you use cultural conformity as your primary method of communicating with the mob, eventually, intellectually alive players are going to be like, yes, but the end state of this is everyone thinks the same, everyone acts the same, everyone's afraid of being creative or interesting. And I think that almost, you can see as a perfect counter and reflection to this Bap Bronze Age pervert who I mentioned in another recent video where I think he is, his entire thing is like a performative artistic statement against the dominance of cringe culture. I just think so out there, so flamboyantly unapologetic in stances that are quite. Colorful and that break every one of the cringe culture's frameworks.

So you can contrast him with somebody like, who I actually used to respect as an intellectual. I don't like the path that he's gone down. Milliannopoulos oh, okay. Who would have, yeah, like these, but these, no, more like he would have give speeches and then get canceled and then have people come on stage and freak out. Yeah, Milo Yiannopoulos.

Yeah. But Milo Yiannopoulos was actually still operating under cringe culture. Like, he liked it being a shock joke, but he never actually really broke the rules of progressive society. He was still operating under the cringe framework. He was just trying to show that it wasn't logical or logically consistent.

Like, that was his whole thing. Bap, who I think is equally as colorful as Milo. So I don't think it's just that he's colorful that makes him this through the cringe to baste. Because based, as we've said on our episode, you know, you need to pass through the tunnel of cringe to get the baste. Yes.

And I really, truly believe this. I think that all based is intrinsically cringe, because to be based, you have to go against the dominant cultural framework, which is what cringe is, the secondhand embarrassment. And to be based what it really is to, and I actually, this is really interesting. And I think how we got to this sort of based culture, which is the perfect anecdote to cringe culture, which is people can't feel secondhand embarrassment for us, not easily, because we take ownership. We know we are breaking cultural norms.

We know where the cultural norms are. We are breaking, and we are doing it intentionally and take pride in those decisions because we believe that those cultural norms are bad cultural norms where cringe exists. Right? Like, where you can get cringe in breaking cultural norms is you break cultural norms just because you're not aware of them, or you break cultural norms because you're part of a separate cultural group and you just don't see them as normative. So you're just doing your own thing.

And for those individuals, they can be like, oh, they didn't know, poor child. I actually think trolls does a great job of showing the racism movie trolls. Yeah, well, trolls world tour in showing the racism intrinsic. And I'll put the clip here in this cringe world perspective where she meets the country trolls. Great.

The world poor for the first time, and she's shocked that their songs are sad. And she goes, don't they know that music is about making you happy? And then she's like, oh, they must not know. And so she's going to go tell them to erase their culture in favor of her culture because her culture is obviously correct in the way it relates to the arts, and their culture is obviously wrong in the way it relates to the arts because it's different. Right?

This song is so sad, but it's so different. Oh, they must not know that music's supposed to make you happy. That's awful. Now, take it easy, growlie Pete. I feel bad for them.

It looks like they got beat up by a rainbow. And I think that movie also, I'll have the other clip here. They do such a great job in that movie of showing the sin of progressivism, where there's this scene, the sin of progressivism actually being about cultural imperialism, where she's, we can make us all the same. Like, she's. We can understand that we're not really different.

And then one day we can all come together. Oh, yeah, roles are like anything but that. It's our differences. And this is what I think in this new conservative movement, the recognition that progressives claim to love diversity but don't actually think anyone's different. Men and women aren't different in their perspectives or proficiencies.

Different cultural groups, different ethnic groups. Why would diversity matter if no one's different? But if you elevate the difference, if you're like, it's actually good that we're different and that working with people with different proficiency, the perspectives, we can achieve better outcomes. But to do that, you need to recognize that we are actually different and that different cultural groups are actually better at different things. On average, not everyone in a cultural group, but on average, they have slightly different proficiencies and perspectives.

If we combine our music, she'll see that music unites all trolls and that we're all the same and that she's one of us. I mean, no disrespect, but anything but that. History's just gonna keep repeating itself until we make everyone realize that we're all the same, but we are not all the same. Denying our differences is denying the truth of who we are. Just out of curiosity, what do you think brokered our shift culturally from disgust to cringe?

B
Was it the fact that content creation became pervasive online and a bunch of people who weren't subject to public scrutiny before suddenly were what changed? So, no, I think that it's people like us in BAp. Really? So it was the key. No, I'm referring from disgust to cringe.

A
This is us to cringe. Yes. I think it was the recognition that disgust based morality was leading to immoral actions like the persecution. No, hear me out here. I genuinely think it was the disgust based morality caused the persecution of lgbt individuals that led to the destruction of that system.

B
Okay. Because just how ridiculous it ultimately was. Yeah. Because many people were like, why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves that they can't change? So essentially, there was enough of a recognition of the lack of truth and impracticality of disgust based reactions and in general, support for progressive causes that caused an elevation of, honestly, of disgusting things that people found disgusting.

There's the whole, like, Mary Harrington conspiracy theory that I love of the reason why children's book illustrations now are so ugly. More tracks with the rise of progressive culture than anything else. And it's almost like a psyop that's encouraging people to normalize ugliness as part of this embrace. To your point, you know, of disgust. Yeah.

A
Any normal person, she would invoke a strong, immediate instinct of disgust. But progressives have learned to treat that emotion as a sign that something is more morally pure and more worthy of engagement. And there was a period at which it was useful to counter that feeling of disgust. But this disgust should just be ignored, not elevated. And I think now people realize that's stupid.

And the key that broke the lock of this second system was the based individuals who previously, when they were dunking on cringe, just people like Chris Chan and stuff like that, people who just had no clue what they were doing and were breaking cultural boundaries because they were usually, like, mentally ill people or like, actual racists or et cetera then, or like, just behind the times. But you can't argue that Bap or us are behind the times. Like, we break it. The key that breaks that lock is people being like, wait, these people are subverting the culture, but have pride in who they are, right? And I actually think this is what led to Trump winning the election.

And I'll explain what it is because I think it's the new cultural framework that is going to dominate in the next age. And I think it's a sustainable one, which is the age of vitalism. So vitalism I would define as a cultural framework that sells itself with a love of existence and a love of being who you are, unapologetically. And I think that this is where we see individuals like Tiger King exploding onto the stage. Tiger King did so well because he ignored, you know, in the past, that is what would have been called cringe.

But in our time, he knew the cultural norms he was violating. He just had perfect ownership over who he was and was proud of who he was. And even though he was a genuinely reprehensible person, that is no longer the way people relate to others. I think Trump, for example, while I think he was a good president, I think he's a morally reprehensible human being. I think he is a bad human being.

When I look at the way he's treated his wives, when I look at the way he's. It's just gross to me. But in the age of vitalism, what we're going to see, and I think that this will scare a lot of people, is a lot of reprehensible human beings are going to be elevated through vitalism, because one of the problems with the vital assistant will also explain why it's going to potentially eventually crash, is often the people who care the least about how society judges them. Like us, for example. Because of that, they lack a general moral framework, and they'll just do narcissistic stuff all the time in a way that, like, the Tiger king or Trump does.

Right. And so we need to then transition from a purely vitalistic system to a vitalistic city on a hill system, which I think is our end goal.

The idea of we are trying to create something beautiful in the future, like this consistent striving, not that we are the city on the hill right now, but the city of the hill that will exist in this vision of a more perfect humanity that we can strive towards. Aristotle, Aristotelian. The word I was looking for was imaness dies the eshtan, which means, in political theory and theology, to eminestize. The eshtan is generally pejorative phrase, referring to attempts to bring about utopian conditions in the world and to effectively create a heaven on earth. Theologically, the belief is akin to post millennialism, as reflected in the social gospel of the 1880s and 1930s era, as well as protestant reform movements during the second great awakening in the 1830s and 1840s, such as abolitionists.

I'll add it in here. Yeah, but. And I think it's bad to think that you're like living in that now or that there's ever this perfect society that you can create because that leads to things like communism and stuff like that. But I do think a moral system around it ever improving society is the way to go. And when people look at like, the way that we're framing our public images, it is with this based vitalism in mind.

Our end goal is present. Will I get there? I don't know, but that's where I'd like to end. Okay, sorry. I shouldn't say that's our end goal.

That's like our mid goal. End goal is, I should say we live at such an early time in human history. We haven't even lived through a period where one human ruled a planet yet. But question, Simone, what are your thoughts? I think the transition tracks.

B
I can intuitively feel a shift from disgust to cringe. And then I also can feel that shift from cringe to bait vitalism, which I'm seeing even now. For example, I keep hearing people talk about hate following or hate subscribing to people who originally, they might argue were cringe. And then after spending more time, hate watching their content. And this happens with us to a certain extent because we do get emails from people about this.

They at least either they actually come to see their views as being legitimate and joined their side, or at the very least, they start to envy the fact that they have this very vitalistic life that they hold to their morals. They're very happy in pursuit of them, and they envy that confidence and lack of cognitive dissonance that these people who are just so confident in their lifestyles, however wrong these hate watchers find them to be, are. For example, I hear one person I follow online hate watches, a bunch of Mormon influencers who live out in Miami, or not Miami, sorry, in Hawaii. And this person hates everything about their values and their lifestyle, and everyone wants to have kids themselves, etcetera. But then can't stop watching these wholesome Mormon families.

And we're going to see more and more of that. And this is where the transition starts to happen, is that the more you start to question your own lifestyle and see that other people, no matter how much you disagree with them, are experiencing a level of vitalism and success and happiness that in your entire pursuit of happiness, you could never achieve, it's going to get you thinking differently. And I think that's interesting. I actually think that's a really core point, and it's why based, wholesome baseness was a key to always defeating cringe culture. Is that cringe culture motivates individuals to watch these individuals outside their cultural framework because that's where they're getting the satisfaction.

A
At least I'm not like them the second hand. Yeah, look at how backwards and dumb these people are. But then they look at, look how you get this sort of, look how backwards and dumb these people are. It goes from, ha ha, look how backwards and dumb these people are. And then they're watching, like, the whole simmerman family.

And they're like, look how backwards and dumb these people. Wait a second, wait a sec. Am I the backwards and dumb one? What happens first doesn't have their shit together. Do these people have their shit together?

B
What happens first is they just hate them and make fun of them. Then they start to critique elements of their lifestyle. Oh, the trad lifestyle. That's not really what Trad is like. These trad influencers are just showing a caricature, but then they're more like, but the trad lifestyle in general, I kind of support.

Like, they have to find new reasons as to why these people are cringe that aren't actually related to their lifestyle. And I think that's where the adoption starts to take place. And it's one of our things is be so wholesome. It's cringe, you know, in the way that we relate to each other and our kids and everything like that. I think one thing that was said when you were talking about this, and I think that this is a broad thing that people are going to realize because we live in a secular society now, and a lot of people are brought up secularly.

A
They can only think of religion in this dehumanized context of, like, religious insane extremists, instead of people who still have a spark of light in their eyes. If you're like, what do I mean by the spark of light? Talk to an amish person or something like that. Somebody in one of these communities where they're really true believers, and you will see this light of human dynamism in their eyes that you just don't see from these ultra woke individuals, which just look, I almost say, like, soulless when you're interacting with them. And a lot of their content feels that way.

It just feels like it lacks any passion anymore. And it's that religion and faith are a choice. And that was the core thing that sort of, we realized when we're putting together this faith system for our family is we made a choice to believe these things. They were just, yeah, let's try it. Like, like, and I think that that's a really interesting thing about faith as a concept that people without faith, faith don't understand, right?

They think that faith is blindly believing things that don't have full evidence to support their frameworks, right? When what faith actually is making the choice to believe those things, and when you reach a moment as like a hate watcher of the wholesome Mormon group or something like that, where you're like, wait, I can just choose to be like them? The problem for a lot of people with something like Mormonism is they're like, then I have to make too many sacrifices around things that I want for logical consistency, purpose and everything like that. And that's the core purpose of our tracks videos, if you haven't seen those. It's like our own religion that our family has that we're trying to put together that we'll get back to.

It's one of my favorite projects, but it requires a lot of intensity in terms of mental effort to write one because I need to think about how it could be misinterpreted if this ends up working and becomes a religion 500 years from now. How could this be misinterpreted? To cause hatred or bigotry or mass negative action and stuff like that. But I'm also trying to create it as a genuine descendant of the christian and jewish and muslim traditions. Mostly the christian tradition, mostly my calvinist ancestry.

And so I think of it as a form of Christianity, but it requires less. I think you don't get the benefit of antiquity with it. So a lot of people are like, okay, antiquity. But a lot of these older religious traditions don't really have that much antiquity in the way they're currently practiced anyway. Even Judaism.

Right. The kabbalah was only added about a thousand years ago. Only about a thousand. Goodness. Great.

I mean, if you look at christian frameworks, like a lot of the protestant beliefs, rapture are fairly new. Yeah, debatably, but most scholars think that it's a fairly new belief. So these religions evolve all the time, and we simply see ours as the. But then we choose to believe things that don't make sense to people. We're like, yeah, God is real.

Which is interesting that we call ourselves atheists, but we believe in God. Like our wikipedia says we're atheists, but I'm like, but I also believe in God. And people will be like, how do you square that? And I'm like, because I don't see God as supernatural. I think God like is an actual being that physically exists just at a different point in time in a way that we may not understand, in a way that we may see is supernatural from our own perspective, but not in some other mystical realm, physically real thing, but in a way that we may not be able to touch or something like that, but physically within our physical constraints, the physical constraints that our reality operates with it.

But anyway, yeah, I think there was another thing I wanted to say here. So one is belief of the choice. We just try to make that choice come with as few sacrifices as possible for broad secularists, while still motivating the core thing that religion motivates, which is austerity. I think that just, you don't need to make all of the individual sacrifices, so long as you're making sacrifices across your entire life for the greater good and genuinely living with those sacrifices. People were so shocked.

They're like, oh, they stack their kids in a barracks, like, behind me right here in the dad's office, and they don't put their heat on in the winter. And it's like, yeah, living with austerity used to be seen as an intrinsically good thing of human vitalism. But the final point I want to make here is in response to a question that somebody was asking me that I found really interesting and got me thinking where they're like, why do you think humanity is a good thing? Like, why are you promoting this ideology where, like, humanity and the human potential future is a good thing? And I said, journalists just asked me that yesterday.

B
And I'm like. First of all, it's an irrelevant question, because groups that don't think that humanity is a good thing are going to turn nihilistic and cease to exist. Yeah. So it's not like mimetically an interesting question to me. Obviously, you need to somehow convince people of this.

A
But two, because it's a choice. I have faith in humanity. I have faith that we will continue to improve. And I think if we look through history, we do continue to, on the broad scale, improve ethically, I think eventually, biologically, technologically, in the way we relate to our reality. But this is also why I love pronatalism, because I see the next generation is better than the last generation.

Totally, always. And that's why I'm okay with death. That's why we have this weird pro death stance. I don't want people to live forever. I think that people after a certain age do not change their mind as much as young people and cannot recontextualize reality as easily.

And this leads to negative externalities. But realistically, my kids will be able to call up an AI of me whenever they want because I've created so much content. We already have some of our fans creating AI's of us that they can interact with, which I've actually found really cool to use. We can't share them yet, but you can put yourself on a list of them for dating advice and stuff like that. They're trained on specific segments of our content, and I just can't tell the people who are doing this how much I appreciate that they're doing it, because it's one of the goals of the creation of all of this for us is to have.

But then presumably my kids will be so much better than me in a few generations that they would just see no reason to ask me questions, except as a historical curiosity of what someone of this previous period would have thought. Not as like a fountain of wisdom, which I think is the way that we would see if you could summon an ancestors ghost from 400 years ago. Are you really going to learn anything about reality from them? Not really. It's an interesting historic curiosity, but I think that's what the life extensionists are creating.

But then they're going to consolidate power on them, which creates all sorts of negative externalities, because generally, the longer you've been alive, the more you can consolidate power. And we've seen this with boomers not letting the next generation rise up and creating intergenerationally worse society. But I just think boomers are the worst. Like, the generation before them was awesome. The generation before them was, they underwent so many hardships and they became better as a society.

They began to really challenge some of the systemic wicked problems of society and actually begun to fix them, like racism. And then boomers are just like, eh, let's go back, let's become like, fully racist, but this time against, like, white people and Jews. Like, it's wild. And it's been carried on the mindset that started with them in some of these younger generations, but fortunately in the factions that are going to die out. So I love humanity, and I think that promoting that love and being excited to be a human and excited to be alive and excited to create humans, I hope that this can be the thing that, like, gets people interested in the future.

People being happy with who they are, rather than this constant struggle to be happy of who you are. Whether or not you're happy with who you are, is a choice, and it is not one that you should always make. If you are a terrible person that needs to improve, you shouldn't work on trying to be happy with who you are. You should try to work to change yourself into somebody who deserves to be happy with who they are. I think that's why we're going to end up in a future with people who are like this.

B
Those who are nihilistic, those who can't bring themselves to imagine why humans should exist in the future aren't going to have kids and their views won't be represented. So I think it's going to be just fine. I think what we're trying to fight for with prenatalism, though, and what's interesting to me, to bring this back to the, the theme that you've highlighted, is that what we're trying to fight against is a return to the disgust system, because that's what a lot of the numbers look like when you look at which groups are going to continue to reproduce and what's going to happen when the woke monoculture essentially picks off anyone who's more open minded or pluralistic from those groups. I also want to be clear that a vitalist system is not a pro beauty system necessarily. No, it's a pluralistic, enthusiastic, high energy system.

What you're talking about, if I could. Describe the difference between these two systems in the past, were some pro beauty systems. Right. But pro beauty systems are intrinsically, I think, over exclusionary and overly culturally conformist around what is beautiful. I keep an eye on the time.

A
Whereas the disgust, the vitalist systems think of them as the guy who rides into a room on a lion dressed with an american flag with a torch in one hand and an AR 15 in the other hand, shooting into the sky, singing the national anthem. That's what I want to be dressed in cyber armor. I'll put on my corgi picture on the page here. Oh, my God. That's what I want to represent this culture.

Love of true americana. Yeah, it's not beautiful. It's not ugly. It's just extra. I love you, Simone.

B
I love you, too, Malcolm. Well, no, it's proud of who it is. That's what we need, is pride in who we are. And we have stamped that out outside of specifically approved subcategories. Totally.

Yeah. All right. I'll see you in the Google Meet. It's in the calendar invite. Yeah.

A
Yeah. Okay.

B
How are the kids this morning?

A
Great. Sorry, I was just checking to make sure I didn't have something, but I've got one at. Yeah, no, it's Wednesday, 11:00 a.m. is when we have the. Yes, no, it's before that.

I was going to talk with the guy from sidescrollers about working with him on the business idea of the anti consultancy firm because he used to run a large, like a gaming company type thing. Yeah. So he'd be a great. I was actually thinking of reaching out to James Lindsay about doing something on this, too, because I thought that could be. He seems really sane and educated and he could be a good person to.

To rope into an anti woke consultant. The anti bigotry consulting dream team. Yeah. And the goal would be to fight anti meritocratic behavior. Bigotry behavior that dehumanize the specific groups are just.

It's wild when you think about it, that there's progressive organizations. The organizations have, like, this one body within them, the DeI department, that is specifically about exporting progressive cultural values. Like, it's a progressive department meant to make sure the company never doesn't act too non progressively. Yet they don't have a parallel conservative department meant to make sure they never act too out of line with conservative values. Well, I think they see Dei as resolving a wicked problem in society at the level of the corporation, because to the point of anti racism is it is popularized in many spheres.

B
You cannot just not be racist. You have to be actively anti racist. If you're not actively solving the problem, you're part of it, which somewhat, I would say, shores up with our philosophy in the sense that we agree that if you see a mess, it is your responsibility to clean it up. I don't care who spilled the milk, you need to wipe it up. What's really interesting is we'd actually talked about this in video that I don't know if it's going to go live.

A
So I'll briefly mention the idea here because I think it's a really interesting concept. Okay. And this will be put at the end of the video instead of at the beginning. But the anti racism, what it really is. Remember how we divided ethical systems into consequentialists?

Like the consequences of your actions, or the. You judge the morality ontological. It is the rule system that determines your actions. Like, lying is bad, therefore don't lie. And then aesthetic, which is about masculine.

In every decision, you go, what is the most masculine choice? What is the most. You know, these people, what anti racism really is. It's a logical framework for interacting with reality, where with every decision, you need to ask, what is the most anti racist choice I could make? Yeah.

B
Or what is the most performatively inclusive woke position I could possibly take? Yeah. But it is misused frequently. So, no, but I think that that shows how you get bigotry as an end result of that, when you do not include, because you're creating a hierarchy of groups within their view of what racism is, where certain groups are more worthy of human dignity than other groups. This is actually really interesting.

There was recently this scandal with a very progressive library that after a cis white man leader retired for that library, they hired the perfect Dei. Not only a very well credentialed and qualified woman to take the position, but a woman who was not white and where things went wrong for her and where a huge sort of campaign against her was created, I think probably started when she, I think, let go of some underperforming employees who also didn't happen to be white, which I think shows where Dei has gone wrong. Which is that true? Dei, which is what this woman was practicing, is. Yet when they were looking for someone who's qualified, they chose to hire someone who also brought in a more diverse perspective.

But then when she actually focused on the outcome and mission of the organization over performative preferential treatment for groups that have historically been discriminated against, then she was defenestrated. Yeah. So it's just bigotry. Yeah, but hold on a second. I gotta get something.

A
I'll get started on the piece here. And I think what's great about anti Dei gonna keep pitching this to people is that it actually increases profits. If you had allowed her to do her real job, which should be anti bigotry, you increase the meritocracy within a corporation. When you're doing Dei, you are intrinsically decreasing the efficiency of a corporation because you are maintaining, like, underemploying employees and stuff like that. Anyway, sorry.