Hamza: How the Red Pill Can Destroy Your Life

This episode explores the detrimental effects of "Red Pill" ideologies on personal relationships and life choices, using the experiences of an influencer named Hamza as a case study.

1. "Red Pill" ideologies can lead to unrealistic expectations about relationships and personal success.
2. The pursuit of performative masculinity often results in detrimental lifestyle choices and poor mental health.
3. Cultural and aesthetic ideals significantly influence one's life decisions, often to one's detriment.
4. The episode discusses the importance of genuine self-improvement over superficial changes dictated by societal expectations.
5. It challenges listeners to critically evaluate the cultural narratives they adopt, promoting a more thoughtful approach to personal development.

1: Introduction

The hosts introduce Hamza's story and discuss his decision to move to the Scottish Highlands for a simpler, family-oriented life. "Malcolm Collins: It's about understanding the impact of cultural and media influences on our life choices."

2: The Pitfalls of 'Red Pill' Ideology

A deep dive into how 'Red Pill' philosophies have impacted Hamza's relationship decisions and life plans. "Simone Collins: These cultural scripts can lead to making choices that are not in alignment with one's true desires."

3: Cultural Influences and Identity

Discussion on the broader cultural influences affecting individuals like Hamza, including societal expectations of masculinity. "Malcolm Collins: The performative aspect of masculinity can often lead to a disconnection from authentic self-expression."

4: Consequences and Reflections

The hosts reflect on the consequences of living a life driven by rigid, aesthetic-driven principles. "Simone Collins: We need to be aware of how these ideologies can trap us in roles that stifle our true potential."

1. Reflect on Influences: Consider how cultural narratives influence your life decisions and actively seek to understand their origins.
2. Cultivate Authenticity: Focus on developing a sense of self that is true to your values rather than external expectations.
3. Seek Healthy Relationships: Prioritize relationships that encourage mutual growth and respect, avoiding those that reinforce toxic norms.
4. Embrace Flexibility: Be open to changing your perspectives and behaviors as you gain new insights into your values and life goals.
5. Educate Yourself: Continuously seek out diverse viewpoints and educate yourself on the psychological and social dynamics at play in your life choices.

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the world of male influencer Hamza and the growing trend of optimizing one's life around an aesthetic ideal of masculinity. They explore the similarities between this movement and the trans community, both of which prioritize gender identity as a central focus. The hosts also examine the cultural differences in gender roles and expectations, particularly between traditional American and Muslim or Eastern European backgrounds. They argue that defining one's moral system around an aesthetic can lead to despair and that true fulfillment comes from pursuing goals with intrinsic value. The discussion touches on the importance of finding a life partner who complements one's own values and the dangers of maintaining a false "frame" in relationships.

People

Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins, Hamza

Companies

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Books

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Guest Name(s):

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Content Warnings:

None

Hamza

Basically, I'm starting the fatherhood chapter of my life. We're not pregnant just yet, but we've moved to the Scottish Highlands. The reason why me and my ex split up is I told her to sit down and to write down, like, her goals. And I wrote, you know what? I want to move to, like, a big city.

You will not find this kind of woman who will fit with this lifestyle in a big, major city. Why the women who are in the big cities are their glorified Instagram prostitution. I actually want to have a few, like, sleepless nights. I want to have a few, like, sleep deprived nights where I stay up late. Bro, for the last few years, I've been to sleep at.

Hamza's Friend

You couldn't imagine the amount of parties and social events and dinners that I've missed. I know what goes on in these parties. And the issue was that the girls that I was meeting from these places, just like I was as well, were all low quality. It's a low quality place to be. I wanted to be super social.

I wanted to have some late nights where we stay up and we're social and there's a party that we go to and everything. But she saw it, and I'm not gonna lie. Like, I could see how, like, offended. She was where she was quite, like, pressuring. She was like, wait, you wanna do this?

Hamza

Oh, you wanna do that? You wanna stay up late? But that's unhealthy. Those party girls like, the party. Low quality, degenerate TikTok type of girls.

They are attracted to the party, low quality, degenerate TikTok type of guys. Fine. Like, trash can stay with trash. Because for hers, she wrote that she wanted to do more of the things that we were currently doing. It's wholesome as fuck.

Hamza's Friend

And you know that she's an awesome girl for that. She doesn't wanna be around, like, you know, like, party girls and whatever. I just realized, like, we're actually going into two separate seasons right now. Fine. Like, trash can stay with trash.

Hamza

This is gonna sound weird. You need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again as a young man. You need to be hit in the face consistently. But the problem is that when you define your moral system around an aesthetic, it needs to be witnessed to have value.

Malcolm Collins

And when he got to the countryside. There was no one to witness him. From the social community. Would you like to know more? Hello.

Hello, Simone. Recently, I fell down a rabbit hole trying to learn about this influencer named Hamza. The men of this country in general, unless they follow me. Are fucking weak. The only strong men in this entire fucking country, in the entire west, are just the ones who are part of my culture, have followed my advice, and become strong from that.

Hamza's Friend

Every fucking other guy here is basically just a fucking pussy. They're all just weak as fuck. If you put some of your money into a company like Apple, or you put it into the big index funds like Apple and 500 different companies, you're giving them money to help them with their business. And you're hoping that since they think that you're a good boy, they'll give you a little bit more money in return. I think your pp size has to be very small for that.

Hamza

Because if you understand this concept of investing, why would you invest in someone else's business instead of your own? He is a London based influencer that is seen as, like, a new big figure in the. I guess I'd call, like, male aesthetic movement. Like looks maxing. Not exactly looks maxing.

Malcolm Collins

It's the movement that I would say. That an individual, like, rag nationalist. No, Andrew Tate would be a leading figure. Okay. Performative masculinity.

Performative masculinity for the sake of performative masculinity. And I think it's really shown in a lot of his videos, because what he asks himself, and you'll actually see this in the Hamza video. So just so for people know, he became very famous. He's got, like, 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube. And regularly in his videos, he will ask himself, should I do x or Y?

And the metric he uses when deciding x or y is what fulfills my potential as a man. What is the more masculine thing to do or the thing that is more like a man to do? Mediocre man would get the vision that I did, and he'd start training a few hours a week. The superior man would go and live in a fight camp. The superior man, the man who's rude, really, like, on this, would literally go and live amongst the fighters and the warriors and live amongst them, eat amongst them, and be revolving around this lifestyle as much as possible.

Hamza

And four months later, he uploads why I never became a fighter. Well, at least he did give it a whole four months. At the end of the day, the first day of being in this fight camp, I go and sit down and journal in my room, and I just ask myself a question. Is this authentic? So you're telling me he quit this newfound metamorphosis after one day?

This is gonna sound weird. You need to be hit in the face I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently in. The pragmatic guide to life, where you talk about just like, people's objective functions and what they should maximize their existence around. You give thought experiments going over any possible thing, be it hedonism or serving God or negative utilitarianism, like, you're all over the place, right?

Simone Collins

The one thing, because you're very unbiased in that book, the one thing that you shit all over is people whose objective function revolves around an identity or an aesthetic, which is exactly what you're describing here. So hopefully this gets really salty really fast. Yeah, oh, I'm excited to get salty. And the last time, because we regularly talk about how the problem with gender dysphoria and a gender fixation is not just a problem on the left. On the left.

Malcolm Collins

This was in the trans movement, where people make their entire identity, their gender, but is not Andrew Tate's. A huge chunk of his identity, his gender, and the people who follow him, following him, because they're trying to be more like a perfect man. And in the comments to that video, one of the commenters said, I feel so much better and more fulfilled since I started optimizing around my masculinity or man like things. And I was like, you sound like a trans person would tell me the same thing. Like, I feel so much more fulfilled since I started optimizing my life around my gender.

It's not that this isn't able to create a feedback cycle that can make you feel as if you are living a fulfilling life, but like, objectively peel it back for 5 seconds, you must realize that none of that matters objectively. Just because you can feel good by gambling all day or by exercising twenty four seven. And I'm not saying that's what these individuals do. What I'm doing is I'm creating comparison here. That doesn't mean that you exercising 24/7 is a thing of value.

That doesn't mean when you die, people will be like, wow, he really lived a life of value. And this is where I will add some nuance to this before I go further with any of this, which is to say that individuals like this, like aesthetic aspirations like masculinity, can be the lifeline or the life like safety preserver for somebody who is drowning in thoughts about not unaliving themselves, in thoughts about just like, desperation and depression and a sense of worthlessness within society, which a lot of young men feel these days. And if you try to engage them with a more complex concept, whether that concept is a theological concept or a philosophical concept or some, like, deeper, actually, good reason for living and a good thing to dedicate your life to that can't get through to them in that state. It's like when you're in too much pain, you can't really think about anything complicated. You need a painkiller, and there's nothing mentally effective like a painkiller that's really highly intellectual.

Simone Collins

You need a mini game that you can easily win. And anything that's aesthetically based is fairly easy to win because you look in the mirror, do you look like that person you saw on Instagram? Yes or no? Okay, fantastic. And you know where you're going, where you are, there's no nuance, because, frankly, you're in too much mental pain and anguish or depression to feel that nuance.

Is that what you're saying, really? That's absolutely what I'm saying, yeah. And I'd also point out here that we have to be aware of, given that we think that a large part of IQ is heritable. When you're saying how smart the average person is, half of them are dumber than that. The problem is that a lot of people may simply lack the mental ability to conceptualize anything more complicated than just be man unga bunga and as.

Malcolm Collins

Oh, gosh. Yeah. You're saying this isn't just a people hurting or depressed people thing. It is, but it can also just be an IQ thing. Yeah, it can also just be an IQ thing.

So I'm saying that I don't hate that these memes are spreading more broadly. Like, I do not think Hamza, for example, is a bad guy or what he is doing is making society net worse. And I actually feel the same about Andrew Tate. I do not think what he's doing is making society net worse. I do not think he is a bad guy.

I do think so. One thing I do need to note about both of these individuals, and we mentioned this in our Tom Girl episode, which is really interesting, or tomboy episode, which is sort of apocalypse of tomboys, that they are disappearing and they are being villainized by both the right and the left, where the one really negative thing that does come out of these individuals is that these individuals often come from eastern european or muslim countries as muslim backgrounds, which means that they stall idealized women from a muslim cultural perspective, which is very different than what the idealized woman is within classical Americana perspective, which is a woman who is much more do it herself, can fix a car can tough it out with the boys much more. And if you want to see our big arguments around that and all of the citations around that, you can just go to that episode. I love it when people in response to that other video were like, nuh uh. Andrew Tate isn't a stalling a muslim view of femininity and gender relationships.

Simone Collins

And then few days later he puts out this tweet, which we've actually done a full video on that'll go live soon, where he is saying the solution to demographic collapse is polygyny, that men need to take multiple wives. If you are so brainwashed that you don't understand that his entire view of gender is just a muslim view of gender, I don't know what to say to you. You're a brainwashed simp. There's nothing wrong with this view of gender, but it is not an american view of gender and it is not a christian view of gender. Also, side note here, can we appreciate how awesome the new x is with this community?

Note here. Under this being, fertility rates have been falling in all parts of the world and among all races. The fertility of non whites has fallen more than that of whites, which is one of those statistics that I always have to put out there. To people who say we're racist for talking about falling fertility rates, this is both true between countries and within countries, that is, within the United States, fertility rates are falling faster among other races, and outside of the United States, fertility rates are falling faster among non whites. Oh, also, don't give me this I'm being racist for assuming that Hamza was raised muslim.

He was, and he says so, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it does create problems when you combine ideas that you don't realize are about muslim gender roles with the picture of the western idealized family structure. And unfortunately, many of the ideas about women or idealized femininity or the woman's role in society that have become normalized within the red pill movement are muslim cultural conceptions of that and therefore do not work when you try to mesh them with everything else being a western framework. When I was younger, I was raised to be a Muslim by my parents. I am teaching you things that religion has been teaching us for thousands of years.

Hamza

Everything that the red pill has taught us about male and female sexuality, Islam has been enforcing. And I really like this video. This is a multi millionaire christian kickboxer who's speaking about Islam. If you have a problem with feminism. Islam will fix it.

Malcolm Collins

It's really clear if you look at history books around what was considered idealized in an american woman. Or if you just look at what people like in country songs.

Simone Collins

Barbie down time. No, I can't swig that sweet champagne I'd rather drink beer all night get red neck woman I ain't no high class brawn I'm just a product of my rains and I say, hey, y'all. Andy Hawk. Look at that. I think every fish I've caught this.

Malcolm Collins

Year has been mean.

It's beginning to stole a very non american aspiration in terms of what women should aspire to and what young men should look for. I don't know. This didn't occur to me when I was recording this originally, but I realize now that a lot of people, when they imagine what your stereotypical ideal muslim woman looks like, they are picturing the current radical, extremist muslim populations where women wear hijabs and stuff like that, instead of the way muslim women historically dressed, which was absolutely dripping in jewelry in very scantily clad outfits. Think your classic belly dancers and stuff like that, or the historic persian women. But if you're watching this on audio, basically think Jasmine from Aladdin and contrast this with the idealized women in the american frontier.

Simone Collins

And I've also posted some pictures here that were very homely and very plain and wore almost no jewelry. And people would be like, what? Those can't be the idealized frontier woman. They're not hot. And it's like, well, because in the traditional american value system, when you are choosing a wife, you are not optimizing around how hot she is.

You are optimizing around other things, like her moral character and how tough she is, which is something that these women are showing. Every one of these women was photographed with a gun. This woman posing with a gun is not just a thing of modern, sexy, conservative women. This is something american women have been doing for a very long time. One of the things that really got me when I listened to these influences, which was really interesting, is I was listening to Hamza talk about what an ideal wife was for him.

Malcolm Collins

And he's out there. He's exercising every day. Obviously, he puts a lot of effort into exercising. He puts a lot of effort and stole mental discipline. This is a big thing for him, like, don't play video games.

There's a lot of sacrifice he's making. And the end goal of this sacrifice, even from his own perspective, is a wife and a family. And so he talks about what he wants in a wife, and he says, I want a wife that is submissive, cheerful, I appreciate cheerful, and I do appreciate, at least to me, submissive. That's something I'm into. But.

But also, that doesn't have any male friends. And that's where I'm starting to be, like, whoa, male friends. There's some insecurity in there. Some massive insecurity. Yeah.

And then he goes on, he needs her to be pretty. Either not have a job or have a job that's more like a hobby. And sells knitted goods on Etsy job. Yeah. That fits like a feminine aesthetic.

And I hear this and I'm like, I would hate being married to that woman. It seems like people who do this, like, if you follow the full Andrew Tate thing or you follow the full hamza thing and you become this, like Giga Chad. Right. The fish that is catching you, the woman that is catching you, the family life that is catching you seems to me astronomically less than the value system that we will raise our children with and that we try to portray on our channel. He couldn't get a woman like you with that sort of attitude.

Like someone who's intellectually engaged and engages in these intellectual conversations and, like, jokes with me and knows all of these cultural, low cultural concepts that I find pretty engaging. I think there are two elements of that here, and I'm curious to hear what you think. One element I think is insecurity, that they wouldn't want a wife like that because they, I think, either fear that a wife like that would get too big for their britches and then start making lots of demands and ultimately leave them or make their life really complicated and divorce, rape them and all of that. I think the other part of it is, given the nature of who they are, per what you're saying about lures and, like, the kind of fish they're catching, they haven't met these women. They just don't know they exist.

Simone Collins

And I don't think they believe that they exist, if that. Yeah, they wouldn't, like, you wouldn't engage with one of these guys, like the nerdy. Yeah. I've not met anyone like this before. And you wouldn't be.

Malcolm Collins

I was interesting, so I showed Simone some of his videos, and she goes, isn't it interesting that so many of the men who go for this ultra masculine identity to you came off as preening in a feat? So for people who don't know what a feat is, that means they come off as effeminate and very obsessed. When she says preening, like, very obsessed with their looks and stuff like that. Preening is typically a word that people learn when they look at male birds grooming themselves, just sort of sitting there, making sure their feathers are all fluffed out the right way, that kind of thing. Yeah.

And when you said that, what I realized is this americana idealization of a partner that a lot of our society has lost. Because a lot of the leaders and, like the masculine identity movement, come from muslim and eastern european backgrounds. They don't come from traditional Americana backgrounds anymore, at least the ones that are reaching the youth. We have forgotten this, that it wasn't just that the women were expected to be rough and tumble in terms of their aspiration, but the men also were expected to exude a form of masculinity which is very difficult to describe in today's society, where to you, when you looked at individuals like that, they came off as effeminate to you. Like Andrew Tate came off as effeminate to you.

Homs that came off of the effeminate. To you because they. What is effeminate? But investing in your appearance and obsessing over your appearance and what other people think of you, that is an inherently feminine thing. And it is also very clearly an obsession of these people.

Simone Collins

They do invest a lot in their appearance and also in what other people think of them. What's more feminine than that? I just want to be clear that it's not bad that these traits are feminine and it's not bad to be feminine. I'm just saying it's ironic because these men frame themselves as being hyper masculine, whereas really, the height of masculinity lies in inherent confidence and a lack of interest in how other people see you. A giving zero fucks kind of thing, which Andrew Tate invests heavily in projecting.

But it's obvious that he really cares about it. I'm gonna disagree with you here. I just think it's different cultural ideals here, really. So, for example, right, I'll explain what I mean by this. Right?

Malcolm Collins

So to you, when you look like a woman with this americana cultural subset, when she looks at men like this, I suspect that they appear to you the same way that when I look at two women, and one of the women is very a country girl, right? Overalls dirty, everything like that. And the other one is all done up with, like, lip injections and tons of makeup and tons of long nails. And I'm just like, ew to that one. I don't know if a feminine masculine distinction is really necessary there.

It is a value system distinction that we can associate with femininity and masculinity. And that is, from your perspective, to me, I don't know if it's. And I think that within this movement into men like this, they hear words like feminine, and they hear it when used to talk about something a male is doing is having an intrinsically negative context, which I don't think mean here. You mean it just not culturally aligned with what you were raised to believe. A good partner looked and acted like and valued, which was specifically when your culture talked about what is a man to you, what is masculine.

It was confidence, leadership, and not caring what other people think of. Okay. And I agree that there's a cultural aspect to that. But also, when you look at what hormonally distinguishes men and women on average, and behaviorally distinguishes men and women on average, women are the ones who hormonally and behaviorally care more about what other people think, are more concerned with social signaling and status and all the sort of bureaucratic how do people see me? How do I see them?

Simone Collins

What's everyone thinking right now thing. And men are the go big or go home testosterone. I'm going to go out and make my fortune or die a virgin, and no one's going to care about me, and I'll die in war, and I'm disposable. That is masculinity versus femininity from a biological perspective. So, yes, maybe I culturally hold that view, but I also think it's a biological truth.

Malcolm Collins

I appreciate that. I also want to talk more about the Hamza story here, because it was really interesting to me what happened to him. And I think that it shows the danger of the masculinity as a moral system, like an aesthetic as a moral system mindset is he actually won. He got a girl who seemed like a really fantastic girl, from what I've seen, went to go live in a rural area with her, living the lifestyle that he had told everyone that he. Saw as aspiration, like the ranch and everything.

Hamza

I moved into the rural mountains of Scotland with my woman, and soon we're gonna buy a home and we're gonna have children. I'm gonna move up my family here. I'm gonna move up like families that I love, and I'm gonna create this dream into a reality. But basically, I'm starting the fatherhood chapter of my life. We're not pregnant just yet, but we've moved to the Scottish Highlands, like the mountains of Scotland.

And this is just an Airbnb that we're currently staying in, but we're going to view houses, and we're gonna get a home somewhere around this region, and we start this, like, chapter of our lives of having children. Yeah, but then go back to all of the temptations that he pretended like he wasn't tempted by the wife. Did they sell their house in the countryside? The wife didn't. I think they were renting something in the countryside.

Malcolm Collins

He broke up with her, this person he was planning to marry.

Why? Because on what grounds did he leave her? Wait. He wanted to be more social, and she wanted to focus more on, just, like, the family, right? Oh, she was smothering him.

Not smothering him. I think what it was is she believed what he had been saying. She believes that was his true aspiration. I want a dedicated wife. I want to live in the countryside, and I want to focus on personal self improvement.

Simone Collins

Note if you were listening in audio and this section sounds disjointed, that is because I am interspersing clips of him explaining why he broke up with his girlfriend, with clips of things he has said in the past about high quality partners and how to find an ideal girlfriend. The reason why me and my ex split up is because we did this little exercise together where I told her to sit down and to write down, like, her goals and the season of life that she wanted to get into for the next few months. What kind of life do we want to live? And so I wrote it really authentically and honestly, and I think she did as well. And I wrote, you know what?

Hamza's Friend

I want to move to, like, a big city. I want to be around, like, businessmen. I want to really make friends. Let's talk about where you won't find her. You will not find this kind of woman who will fit with this lifestyle in a big, major city like London, Dubai, Miami.

Why? Because the women who are in big cities. Imagine you move to a big city. There's certainly more women there, but quantity does not equal quality. The women who are in the big cities are there for one major reason.

Hamza

They are grinding is, like, as. As glorified instagram, prostitution. I actually want to have a few, like, sleepless nights. I want to have a few, like. Like, sleep deprived nights where I stay up late.

Hamza's Friend

Bro, for the last few years, I've been to sleep at you couldn't imagine the amount of parties and social events and dinners that I've missed. So the girls that I have dated previously have always just been these sort of, like, party hookup girls. They were just, like, in parties, just like, sucking dick. Because I know what goes, bro. I'm the guy who's getting this dick sucked in the party.

Hamza

I know what goes on in these parties. And the issue was that the girls that I was meeting from these places, just like I. I was as well, were all low quality. It's a low quality place to be. I know that's probably not what you've wanted to hear because you got so excited when I just started saying, you know, I used to these girls, but the truth is, like, the casual sex lifestyle brings instant gratification.

Jet freeze to it. Like, people who you don't actually want to be around. I wanted to be super social. I wanted to have some late nights where we stay up and we're social and there's a party that we go to and everything. And I'm not gonna lie.

Hamza's Friend

Like, I don't want to say a bad word about my girl. I really can't about my ex. But she saw it, and I'm not gonna lie, like, I could see how, like, offended she was where she was quite, like, pressuring. She was like, wait, you wanna do this? Oh, you wanna do that?

You wanna stay up late? But that's unhealthy. This pursuit has actually made me less attractive to those party girls. Like, the party, low quality, degenerate TikTok type of girls. They are attracted to the party, low quality, degenerate TikTok type of guys.

Hamza

Fine. Like, trash can stay with trash. Because for hers, she wrote that she wanted to do more of the things that we were currently doing. She wanted to get more into the sort of wild, detached, away from people. Whilst that sounds, it's wholesome as fuck.

Hamza's Friend

And you know that she's an awesome girl for that. She doesn't want to be around, like, you know, like party girls and whatever. I just realized, like, we're actually going into two separate seasons right now. Fine. Like, trash can stay with trash.

Hamza

This is gonna sound weird. You need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again as a young man. You need to be hit in the face consistently. But the problem is that when you define your moral system around an aesthetic, it needs to be witnessed to have value.

Malcolm Collins

And when he got to the countryside. There was no one to witness him. From the social community and everything like that. Why didn't he just post his life like ballerina farms and everyone else who goes out trading? He is.

He did do that to an extent, but I guess it wasn't enough for him. Like, I'm actually confused as to why he left her or why this city called to him that much. But I will say that people with different cultural values, many of them actually struggle to live in rural environments because rural environments offer a completely different set of reward mechanisms for an individual. Think about you and me as an example here, right? You thought you would hate living in a rural environment.

When I was first like, we should do it for cost reasons. And then you got out here, and you were like, oh, my God. Like, recently, you were telling me. I was like, what can I do for you? I wanted to do something nice.

I was like, can I upgrade your mattress? Can I, you know, fix a part of the house? Can I do something outside or buy you something? Because she just had a kid. And I was like, you deserve some sort of a push present.

I go, do you want more jewelry? And you go, I have all the jewelry I want. You're like, she had a set number of jewelry that she wanted, like, at the beginning of our marriage, and he. Just went and got it all. And now she doesn't want any more jewelry.

I don't want any more jewelry. I don't want any more clothing. And I was like, Lynn, what do you want? And you go, the only thing that I want is in everything that I think about, like, luxury for me is not having to worry about losing the lifestyle we have today, not having to worry about losing the house, not having to worry about losing the. And we've paid off all the debt on our house and everything like that, which isn't even a sound financial decision.

Simone Collins

We just did it because you did it to humor me, because it makes me feel safer. And so we don't. And we have a super low interest loan from, like, during COVID and everything like that. She's like, no, I know. But it's still.

Malcolm Collins

Now it's about getting income streams that we don't need to leave the house to go get. But it was interesting to me that this is your heaven. This rural environment you didn't even know. Created my ideal life, and I never would have expected it. Sorry.

Which is interesting for me, is that I think that what might have happened with him is someone that may have been culturally and genetically optimized for a urban environment, put themselves in a rural environment, and realized that while it may have fit certain, like, trans cultural narratives about masculinity, it didn't. His narratives about masculinity. Here's another potentiality, though, is perhaps his primary value. Like, what made him feel validated and what made him feel like he was bringing something to the table was this more in person socializing, being witnessed thing and taking a life in the countryside removed his ability to feel like he was something special and something high status. Maybe.

Another thing that was very interesting about him, when I think about cultural differences and the eastern european muslim cultural background versus the Americana cultural background is this idea of fighting to prove one's masculinity, which is he did this thing where he stopped creating YouTube videos, like, he created these high quality YouTube videos every day for a while, and then he stopped creating those so that he could go fight. Be like a fighter, like. Like, I guess Andrew Tate, like, he. Took some inspiration fighting in front of an audience, professional, like, ma style fighting. Stuff like fighting in front of an audience like other men.

And what is interesting is this is really popular within that segment of this movement so much that I saw this convergence here. And yet within traditional Americana, it's typically not considered a masculine thing to go out and fight other men. And I suspect that the reason is, if you were going to ask me why, is because in traditional Americana environments, what would be seen as masculine is like hunting, fishing, things that allow you to survive. But in a survival frontier environment, picking fights is going to get you and your family dead. Actively detracts from your survival and productivity.

Yeah, it's a very dangerous thing to do. But when you're in a structured city or military environment, picking fights can be a useful sort of theatrical thing that you can do. Yeah, I think it's an environmentally based means of attaining status if you are in a densely populated environment where you are not capable of gaining independence. From a resource perspective, fighting within those bureaucracies or within those small, dense cities probably enables you to access better resources, better women, better. I also think whatever it might be.

Is elevated within tribal environments where you have tribal groups and they are basically testing males as who's going to be the alpha with different tribal groups, which is not something you had in Americana frontier environments. You. You did not have. Frontiersmen. Did not.

They didn't function as tribal groups like that. You would have people who try to defend their family. But it was usually with weapons. Sorry, when I say weapons. Firearms.

Right. Well, and if anything, you benefited from, with anyone with whom you could communicate. You benefited more through trade and mutual understanding than you did from trying to fight or compete. Yeah. Another thing that he elevates that I found very interesting, especially in regards to the quote unquote reward that he is after when he talks about his ideal woman, was, you need to be in frame 24/7 like, this is something that he often extols as a concept.

Sorry, people who may not know red peril jargon. Being in frame means that if you are married to someone, you basically can't joke around with them. You can't show them who you really are. You can't. You can't show them vulnerability.

Hamza

Feminine women are only attracted to men who are like stoic cold rocks, even though they don't want to admit this. Because if you break that down, you're no longer the guy that she actually fell for. And she loves you, so obviously, you know, she'll stay and she still really likes you and everything. But here's the brutal part. There's another guy out there who's still speaking to her like James Bond.

Hamza's Friend

She walks past the guy who's still been getting, like, his haircuts every week or every two weeks, and she can't help but to feel that sting, that shock of attraction that she used to have with you, but now in another guy, and you're like the good old faithful beta male. I'm just this fucking goofy guy who's making high pitched, like, noises and. And, you know, like, laughing next to her the same way that I would with my male friends. We need to make this clear to each other, and I hope you can learn from my lesson. Don't act in front of your girl like you would with your boys.

When you're with your boys, you probably can relax fully and speak however you want. You're not trying to sexually attract them. So you don't need to have, like, a low, deep, like, presence voice. You can just speak and goof around, laugh really loudly and everything. But when you're with your girl, you should see it as always, like a moment of attraction.

Even when you know you've got her, never think that your woman is like 100% yours. And here is what he was saying before sucking at the teat of Andrew Tate style content. But when it comes to the dating tactics, which say, okay, act like this, don't talk so much, that's when it can get about a little bit tricky. Like we said today, it makes you act like the stereotypical chad who's cold and avoidant. And when you do that, and it's not the authentic version of you, which, if you've watched this much of the video, it's.

Hamza

That's not who you are. This is gonna sound weird. You need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently.

Simone Collins

It's basically like being in character as an actor 24/7 so if. If your role in the relationship is to be the hyper masculine dominant partner. You do not get to at any point break that character, meaning you cannot be vulnerable, you cannot be relaxed, because that would ruin the underlying framework of that relationship. Yeah, and I found that really fascinating because I can't imagine, do they think that that actually would work like, that you could be married and be like that twenty four seven, and that would be like something to fight for. Cardigan wonders if it's.

If frame is really more a misunderstanding of genetics and culture. Some men see that there are relationships in which men are proto abusive, highly dominant, always angry, always very heightened in terms of their aggression, and they assume that is just the way you're supposed to act, when in actuality there is a subset of men from different cultures and of different genetic makeups that are just naturally that way. So really there shouldn't be no such thing as maintaining frame. There should be optimizing around your hormonal and genetic propensities, but it's just a misread. What do you think?

Malcolm Collins

Yeah, no, I think that you're right about that. So, like, I see this, for example, in female spheres where there's all these little memes that come out here and there about like, super healthy, like clean girls and that girl, and like fitness girl and all these things where there are influencers who demonstrate it, who just are it, they just have the good skin, they just like to eat healthy and exercise and whatnot, or they just like to be whatever it is this type of trope is. And then there are the people who try to become that because they believe it is something you can become and it's an adoptable lifestyle. And they, in their attempts to maintain frame, completely fall apart. There's one youtuber, for example, who detailed her process of glowing up, where she, like, tried to become one of these, like, healthy, aesthetic, beautiful influencers, and she just filmed herself working out and eating well and doing all this stuff, and she completely fell apart and broke down because it just, it's not her, it's not what she could ever be.

Simone Collins

And I think that happens a lot with this masculine ideal of maintaining frame. They're looking at this totally different culture that they're not well suited to. And if you have to maintain frame in anything, it's not ever really going to happen for you. It's going to cause problems. It's not going to happen.

Malcolm Collins

It's not worth it. If what you are after is a happy wife who you enjoy being around in a happy family. Like, if that's the goal that you need to be in frame to get. If you are only able to maintain that goal while living a life in frame, then the goal probably isn't worth it, especially if you're attempting it for any sort of a self fulfillment reason, because you can't really, I think, meaningfully improve the core of who you are. If you know you're in state is just going to be an act.

It's not a desirable thing that they're fighting for. Here's something where I want to distinguish this, though. How can we distinguish between a choice to behave a certain way to lean into a certain tendency, and a choice to maintain frame? For example, I do think that there's a meaningful difference. I just don't know exactly where to draw the line.

Simone Collins

You and I decide to be happy about life, to be grateful to see things as funny instead of frustrating. Whenever we have the ability to go that way, we go that way. And that could be seen by some as maintaining frame that we choose to be happy go lucky, that we choose to do harder things. See mishaps as funny. How is that different from someone who always tries to lean in the form of male dominance and aggression?

Malcolm Collins

That is interesting. Yeah. And I think, yeah, we do have some level of frame which is to choose to be happy because it is unproductive to not be happy. And genetically speaking, my mother suffered from pretty severe depression. Your mother suffered from depression?

Simone Collins

It's not as though we don't have problem mental problems, genetically speaking, either. So this is, I suppose, what it is. This frame that we are maintaining is just a more productive and enjoyable frame which makes it more sustainable. If the frame is, I am happy to be alive and I love my wife and kids. Right?

Malcolm Collins

And one, there's a level of truth. Things happen every day that can make a day bad or something like that. Like right now, Simone, under an intense amount of pain, she has incredible pain threshold. She was handling sales calls while having contractions with one of our kids, for example. Right?

Like, she can undergo an intense amount of pain. And so when she says that she's in a lot of pain to me, or she starts crying because of the amount of pain, she's. And I know she's in an insane amount of pain and. But she puts on a smile and she works through it because she's like, how does it help us as a family for me to indulge in that? I think the problem was this form of aesthetic of, it's like this sort of masculine dominance.

The question isn't how does it help us as a family. For me to be open with my wife, or for me to share different sides of myself with my wife, or for me to joke around with my wife. The question is, how do I optimize myself as a man? And once a person realizes that's what they're doing, that they're just optimizing an aesthetic vision of masculinity, I think it becomes transparently clear that they are living a life of no value. Because there are no value to just aesthetic optimization.

Simone Collins

This comes back to the pragmatist guide to life and objective functions, right? Our objective function is not to be happy or choose things that are funny, right? That is very different. Our objective functions have deep philosophical underpinnings. They're nuanced, they're complicated.

And when we choose to maintain frame, it's because that helps us maintain the identity most likely to optimize our objective functions. So. So there's a philosophical underpinning behind our maintaining a frame when we choose to do that. When we look at someone instead, who's a maintaining frame just to pursue an identity, perhaps it's the hollowness of that objective function that there's no deep why behind their work that maybe leads to that contentment and satisfaction that pays for the price or the mental load of maintaining frame. Do you think that's what's at play here?

Malcolm Collins

Yeah. And I would say that with everything we're saying here, I am as much criticizing the far right and far left on this. Like, I see them as completely overlapping movements. This male optimization movement and the trans movement. So, whether you're a trans man or woman trying to get people to view you as your gender, versus a cis man or woman trying to get society to recognize your gender.

When the optimization of your life and your identity is an aesthetic gender optimization, it only ends in despair. But what we're also discussing here is something different, which is different cultural conceptions around gender optimization. And while we astol our own cultural conception, I want to say that I do not know if a person, especially genetically, has been within one cultural conception for a really long time, that it makes sense to attempt to live out a different cultural conception of masculinity. So, if I was talking from somebody who was deep muslim heritage, for example, about this, I would say that if they tried to live with and marry a woman, like the Americana ideal of a woman, they would have a terrible time. Same with, like, japanese man.

If a japanese man from longstanding japanese cultural background. Now, there may be cultural outliers here where they're like, actually, that's my thing. That's what I'm into. And I'm an outlier within my cultural subset, then go for it. Right.

You can live a really good life, but if you have any underlying attachment to the traditional gender roles of your culture, which there's going to be some genetic selection events around, right. You may fundamentally have a big problem with people from other cultural backgrounds. And to understand why you get this bifurcation, it really is. And we've done episodes around this that talk more to this, like the why don't you own guns episode. Because historically speaking, the muslim groups that you see the most in cities today come from urban, ultra urban based cultural backgrounds.

And ultra urban based cultural backgrounds typically prefer more feminine, made up women, because those women didn't need to fight. Historically, if you're coming from a frontier culture, of course you don't want a weak wife. That's one of the people you need with a gun defending your house when raiders or bandits come along. Right? But if you live in a highly structured society, women become a status symbol to you.

That's their core value to you, is how they augment your position in these complicated social hierarchies that exist within crowded cities, the crowded cities of antiquity, and that actually more augments your family's safety and wealth. Your own status on a frontier, status really doesn't matter that much. You don't care that much about what other people think of you. It's functionally, you care if you're alive still. Yeah.

We should be clear. It's not that these things don't matter in the urban environment. Your status, that the male status within a family in a patriarchal urban environment played a huge role in how many of their kids survived in environments where kids died, often from diseases and stuff like that. And this is why, within these urban environments, you often get a lot of negative views towards things like dogs, for. Example, which is why you have such.

Negative dogs within traditional muslim cultures, because they're just not. They are disease vectors, basically, if you're in a large urban setting. But if you're from a rural culture, like dogs are a necessity to survive often. Yeah, yeah. They're not around corrupt sewage systems and gross human density that would make them disease vectors.

Simone Collins

So don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. And you're not gonna get. You would get in urban environments in a culture that had been in urban environments for a long time. We don't think about this in modern times, but rogue dog packs were actually a major problem in cities, kill people, kill kids.

Malcolm Collins

Oh, yeah, feral dogs. You don't have feral dog problems anymore in our society because modern technology and everything like that. But feral dogs were a huge problem in antiquity. They were not a problem in frontier context because they'd be killed by wild animals. The bear was much more dangerous than a dog, which is, I think, really interesting in terms of how you get these different cultural perceptions as to, like, why they like the done up woman with all the jewelry, whereas people from this culture don't done up women with lots of jewelry.

But I think what it reminds us of is when you define something like masculinity as a thing of intrinsic value or femininity as a thing of intrinsic value. What you forget there isn't a uniform masculine definition or idealization. There are different iterations of what it means to be the ideal feminine or the ideal masculine, depending on what your culture was optimizing for in a historical context. And it's not like rural good, urban bad. They're just different optimizations.

And the best I can say, if you're trying to define good and bad is what works best for what you are attempting to optimize with your life, which ideally is something more than just an aesthetic. If you're talking about, like, base level humans, you're looking at something like, very base level, like humans just barely surviving. It's feed your family. That's what you're optimizing for, is basic safety. Then I think you get a level above that.

Simone Collins

And it's what I think you're missing is before someone can even think about taking care of their family, they're thinking about taking care of themselves. Like putting your own oxygen mask. And when you turn to self care online, as a man or a woman, it often dovetails really heavily with performative masculinity or femininity. So I think part of this is a trap, as people try to get their basic oxygen mask on mentally, if that makes sense. No, I agree with you.

Malcolm Collins

And I think that builds on what I was saying, which is to say, if you're talking about. Because there's various different models for what does it look like on a person's path towards, like, mental health, or as you move up civilizationally or individually in terms of a building oneself's journey. And there's various models for this, some of them are very stupid. I might do an episode on them. But I think that it is true that if you're talking at a base level, what people optimize for is just feeding themselves.

Then there's aesthetic optimization. And I think when you get above aesthetic optimization, you have people optimizing around cultural systems and cultural value systems, which I think is an order above aesthetic optimization. And then I think at the highest level, it is people who are optimizing around a thing that they believe has intrinsic value in the world, something of true good that they have defined for themselves. And this is the core question of the pragmatist guide to life, is like, how do you think about that question? How can you explore these various systems?

And we try to do it in as unbiased question as manner as possible. Very different from this podcast, and it's $1 if you want to check it out on Amazon. And it has an audiobook if you want to check it out. So I do recommend it. If this is something that you have ever personally thought about is, I don't have a thing that I live for, you probably should, because it helps sort of everything downstream.

People who know what they live for and what they want from life are always going to, in terms of mental health, and often in terms of career success, out compete individuals who have an aesthetic optimization or just a purely cultural optimization. And each one of these systems typically out competes the one below it in terms of efficacy. But anyway, I absolutely love you, Simone. And I love our new daughter. And you are spectacular.

Simone Collins

The perfect. I love you too, Malcolm. And so does Indy.

All right, I'll go feed her. I love you. Thank you. Those are fun conversations. Oh, I thought these were great.

Malcolm Collins

Yeah, I always like it when they're good. And you're fantastic. So entertaining. Yeah, no, I have a more nuanced view, too. I really do think, though, that self care, in terms of just getting off the ground, in terms of you can't even think about your objective function until you have a basic mental level of functioning in terms of depression or anxiety or other problems.

Simone Collins

And I do think that when you go to self care, and let's just get my life in order, let's just make sure I'm not like super fat, super sick, whatever it might be, super depressed, you end up in these masculinization, feminization, identity optimizing pipelines, because that's what you're going to find on social media. Because obviously someone who's going to be selling fitness or health, mental health, physical health, whatever it might be, is probably also selling an aesthetic. And so you just get trapped into that whole whoever has a life coach suddenly decides they want to be a life coach problem. So that's what's happening. In my opinion.

Malcolm Collins

But it's actually very interesting when somebody's deep in this, because I read some videos of people who were critical of Hamza, and they basically, in their worldview, they saw two optimization functions. Either you were optimizing around an aesthetic ideal like masculinity, or you were optimizing around pure hedonism. And they even. Those are the two things. There could be different moral systems than just those two, which I think shows how mentally degraded the population has become.

Simone Collins

Yeah, yeah, no kidding. I guess that's what happens when you like over religion, right? Yeah. But keep in mind, I think there's systems that are higher order than religion. I think religion is a cultural optimization.

Malcolm Collins

When I say higher order, I don't mean the. They can't exist alongside religion. So, for example, a person can optimize themselves to be the perfect cultural Catholic, or they can study the Bible and say, this is a thing of true value that I believe God wants for me, and I will do that. Which often doesn't align with. Because the ideal of the perfect Catholic has changed over time with current cultural conception of the perfect Catholic.

When I say there's higher order things in religion, what I'm talking about is what the religion says God actually wants of you instead of what the religion says it wants of you, which are often different things. Interesting. Yeah. A great example of. We're talking about Muslims here is like the Shia Sunni split.

Within most muslim conceptual frameworks, there isn't actually a Shia Sunni split. This is a human thing, right? Yeah. It's a bureaucratic conflict and not a theocratic conflict. Yes, a bureaucratic and not a theocratic conflict.

And so some Muslims optimize themselves around being Sunni or Shia instead of optimizing around what Allah wants of them. Yeah, big mistake. Big mistake there. Yeah. Love you to death.

Simone Collins

Love you, too. All right, have fun talking with your dad. What? A girl who's obsessed with you, I'm gonna teach you some fucking truthful, like, somewhat dark shit. But you want a girl who's obsessed with you, bro.

Hamza

Make her feel all the emotions possible. Make her cry, make her happy, excite her, scare her, make her feel any emotion possible. Disgust her, make her angry, make her so happy. Make her, like, so happy, she cries.