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

This episode delves into human cognitive evolution and how various mental frameworks influence personal and societal development.

1. Critique of Conventional Models: The episode challenges the validity of popular developmental theories like spiral dynamics, suggesting they oversimplify human cognitive progression.
2. Introduction of a New Framework: A detailed tree-like model is introduced, categorizing mindsets into branches that reflect different life philosophies and their consequences.
3. Nonlinear Progression of Mindsets: It's argued that advancing through stages of cognitive development is not always progressive; some paths may lead to regressive outcomes.
4. Impact on Society: The discussion extends beyond individual development to consider how these mindsets influence societal norms and functionalities.
5. Philosophical Depth: The episode provides a profound philosophical analysis of how different mental states affect both personal well-being and communal health.

1: Introduction to New Framework

The hosts introduce their unique framework for understanding human mindset evolution, critiquing existing models like spiral dynamics. They propose a more complex model that better accommodates the nuances of human psychological development. Malcolm Collins: "Existing models like spiral dynamics are too simplistic to fully capture the complexities of human cognitive evolution."

2: Detailed Exploration of Branches

Each branch of the proposed model is explored, discussing how it relates to personal and societal development. Simone Collins: "Each branch represents a different philosophical path, some of which can lead to regressive outcomes despite being advancements."

3: Implications for Society

The societal implications of different mindsets are discussed, highlighting how certain mental frameworks can influence broader social structures and behaviors. Malcolm Collins: "Societal development strongly correlates with the dominant mental frameworks within the community, impacting everything from legislation to social norms."

1. Reflect on Personal Mindset: Consider which branch of the proposed model you currently inhabit and its implications for your personal development.
2. Be Open to Change: Recognize that advancing to a higher stage in the model isn't always inherently better and can sometimes lead to worse outcomes.
3. Apply the Model Socially: Use the framework to understand broader societal issues and contribute to discussions on social reform and community development.
4. Educate Others: Share the insights from this episode to foster broader understanding and discussion about mental and societal development.
5. Engage with Contrasting Views: Actively engage with perspectives from different branches of the model to enrich your understanding and avoid intellectual stagnation.

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

People

Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins

Content Warnings:

None

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

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it actually came from reading about a theory that I find very distasteful, which is spiral dynamic. So I ended up, because it was a paradigm shift, I wanted to write it down.

So I'll read what I've written down and we can talk about it. Okay. Like I used to do with the tracks. So, yeah. Would you like to know more?

The ideal spiral dynamics has come up a few times when talking to fans, and since then, I have noticed some related channels, like homath what if? Alt hist and Brittany Simon delineating level systems for how people evolve in their thinking. Anyone who knows us knows how viscerally negatively we would react to such a system at first glance, given that humans seem to have a natural inclination to categorize themselves and others based on simplistic criteria. If you don't understand why this would create a negative reaction, just watch any video on spiral dynamics and watch the person explaining the concept happily classifying leaders of the political opposition to their beliefs. Among the examples of the lower order mindsets, all spiral dynamics really gets right is a broad ordering of the very lowest levels of personal development, and then transitions into a moral and religious system at most of the two tier systems and beyond.

Though I suppose it is only axiomatic that an individual cannot accurately predict mindsets that are above their own. Thus, if they are at a relatively low level of personal development, we'll just project a mystical, pseudo religious worldview as being the higher order mindset. However, despite dismissing these systems early on, I began to think more about the ways humans relate to reality, a life well lived, and a self conception about how those systems build upon others. And it helped me realize that there is a real way to build out such a map. However, the two keys to doing this that others have missed is that this is not a line, but a branching tree of life philosophies that sometimes, in fact, frequently has a mindset that is strictly worse than its progenitor.

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

Simone Collins
Would you describe mindsets in this model that you're going to go into? Deeper, of course. Is straying from the path or straying from an ideal scenario when they get further along? Yeah. An example which I have written in the next sentence, for example, we would argue that a strict deontological religious world perspective, which is one of the earliest mindsets, is also one of the most mentally healthy and intellectually sophisticated.

Malcolm Collins
For this reason, we draw our map of mindsets with a quote, unquote, water line, with the sophistication and mental health associated with a mindset being determined by where it is along the waterline. So if you think of this like a line graph that then ends up branching, there is a water line, and some nodes of the line are below the water line, some are above the water line, some are below the water line. Okay, now, before I go further, have you heard of spiral dynamics? Do you know broadly what I'm talking about here? When I'm talking about these level systems for understanding how people think, I've learned.

Simone Collins
It about five times, and then each time I learn about it, I completely forget about it, because that's what I do when I come across information I disregard as not being useful. I don't maintain space for it. Can you? And that's the way I was, and that's what this sort of caused. This breakthrough for me, is just having my face shoved in it again and again recently.

Malcolm Collins
And eventually my distaste for how stupid the predominant theories in this space are became shadowed by the. Oh, but you probably actually could build a system like this that works. Mindset. Interesting, huh? Okay, so that's where.

Because I kept seeing things, it was like, no, if you really wanted to do it, you would actually probably order this and this. I see, I should point out that with this system, single individuals don't necessarily need to pass from one node to another node within the system, but a society might. So if you start at one node, you can often, like within your larger society, you can often process further on your own and that most societies. And I'll get to a point in the graph when I say this is the node that is a starting node for most people born in a western society right now. Can you start by giving the cliff notes version of spiral dynamics as it is interpreted by the mainstream?

With spiral dynamics, really all it is very basic human society progresses through these various mindsets, which they're right about for the first three mindsets, and then it turns into, like, mystical, religious mumbo jumbo. Basically, and it's this spiral, but you're describing it as a sort of linear. So ignore the word spiral. Just think of it as an upwards line. Okay.

They have some things where they call it a spiral because they see certain themes repeat as societies develop, and they're like, oh. And society oscillates between this mindset and this mindset as it moves to higher phases. However, I think most of this is just an artifact of how the map was constructed. And I don't think that they're actually noticing something that's real in the ways humans develop, because they are only through one spiral. Like, that is one cycle when they get to the end of their accurate observations before they get into their, like, pseudo religious observations.

Simone Collins
Okay, that's important because people who follow this podcast will know that you love what you call spiral energy, and now they're learning that you hate what you call spiral dynamics. And it might be a little bit confusing. And we could do another future video going deep into why spiral dynamics of the bad theory. But I don't, like, feel. I don't think that's necessary to understand the concepts that we're doing here.

Malcolm Collins
And I think that most intelligent people, when they look at spiral dynamics, they're like, oh, that's an interesting model, but obviously it's being affected by these people's priors. If I may, then, for the audience, what I would say is, if you're not familiar with spiral dynamics, what I've heard from Malcolm about this so far, although I'm coming into this mostly not knowing what he's going to say, is that what it seems like Malcolm is describing here is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But if it starts at self actualization. My system goes way past self actualization, which is another problem with a lot of the historic systems. Yeah, but in other words, thematically, what we're talking about is what humans do after they've met all their basic human needs.

Yeah. The other thing that I note about a lot of level systems, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs or spiral dynamics, is that if people were, if all of society was at the highest level, society wouldn't function. And to me, that means that's axiomatically not the highest level you can be at. Is that just because no one's working on the stuff that needs to be done? Yeah, like in a society where everyone is turquoise society where everyone is at, Maslow's idea of self actualization is a very non efficacious society.

So to me, that just clearly means no, this isn't some in state. It's their idea of what a priest caste should look like, which is, again, a theological position and not a factual position. That's a really good point. I appreciate your saying that the world doesn't run on self actualized people. The world, self actualized gurus.

Simone Collins
Yeah. All right. So for the very first of the states, this is a state that is in the branch tree, which we call the lower tree, that all of the other trees end up branching out of. And I mark this at negative eight. So this scale goes from negative ten to positive ten.

Malcolm Collins
So people in this state have very little ability to engage with sophisticated ideas. And people generally start in this state when they don't have their basic needs met. I call it animalism. Individuals who live within this mental state are only motivated by base, pre evolved instincts that we share with other animals, like sexual desire and a desire for food. This mindset is virtually unseen outside of mentally handicapped individuals and drug addicts.

The next state, which I rate at minus five. So it's like you can engage with some more complicated ideas, but it's still really deleterious to a person's mindscape. I call perceptionalism. And you unlock the ability to have this mindset or move from animalism to perceptualism when you are no longer living in fear of not having your basic needs metal. However, I should note here that one of the ways people move from this lower order state to perceptualism is by deciding they don't need a particular need met.

Simone Collins
So basically, if you decide, if you go from being red pill to MGtow, you go from that first stage, negative eight, to this next stage. Yes, yes. If you decide that sexuality is a need that you absolutely have, then you will stay in the animalism stage until you can decide that you don't need that. That's not the most important thing to you. You'll see.

Malcolm Collins
This was drawing addicts. Like, how does somebody move between the animalism stage of drug addicts to begin to get out of it? They. They have to choose to go clean. They have to choose to not need the basic need that previously was driving them.

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

Malcolm Collins
The individual then models their life around embodying this aesthetic ideal. A common mental crutch used by perceptionalists to justify their mindset is not having some need met at a younger age. For example, I was poor when I was young, and thus I now live my entire life focused around the accumulation of wealth or security of some sort. Obviously it is not true that wealth equals morality and we all get to choose what we optimize around, but this is a statement people will often make when they want to avoid reflecting on how illogical their life path has become. Some perceptionalist individuals will present as religious, but for them, religion serves to reinforce their self perception.

For a stereotype of this kind of person, think of the white kid in college that converts to Buddhism to maximize the aesthetic of spiritual depth and sophistication. For these individuals, their world cosmology exists to service their self perception and does not guide their decisions or view of morality. So you've seen many people fall into the self perceptionalism mindset. It is better than base level animalism, but it is still a fairly unsophisticated mindset. Where you see it the most is when we often complain.

If you look at our videos of the gender dysphoria problem on the left and the right, where people begin to identify associating with gendered stereotypes as a moral compassionate, and you will see some of these like masculinity influencers on the right ask themselves, when they're making major life decisions, what is the most masculine choice, which is just an insane thing to do to anyone who has any level of intellectual sophistication. Obviously, masculinity is not a moral system. It is an ascetic system. Okay? It might lead to a healthier lifestyle than just acting on your basal actions.

And you actually hear people in these systems talk when they're like, there's the two ways you can live. You can either live the masculine way, or you can live in hedonism. They are like literally unaware that any more sophisticated mental frameworks exist above them. And that's something you regularly see within individuals in this stage. Like my mom was very hard in the money equals morality framework.

Simone Collins
Or at least no, just more money, more better. And when I tried to mentally engage her, I was like, how does that moral framework work? Moral framework makes no sense. She was really unaware or completely dismissed the sophistication of any moral framework. Above this, I think she just dismissed the concept of moral frameworks entirely, if we're being fair, what she was able.

Malcolm Collins
To do through this. I didn't have money when I was younger, therefore, I'm not going to think about anything higher order than this. And with Andrew Tate, who falls into one of these frameworks, although he might be transitioning to the next framework right now, we'll see, with his recent conversion to Islam. But he could have converted to Islam just because he saw it as the most masculine religion, which is something he had said before, is there's a clip of him saying, I do everything I do out of a fear of not having power, because I have seen what it is like to not have power. When people say to me, Tate, you're obsessed with money, I say, no, I'm obsessed with not being in that position.

I'm never going to let me live my only one life on this planet and waste my years of consciousness in that position. I don't want to be the guy who's 37, driving a fucking shitty citron, who gets pulled out on a girl who's too hot for me, driving a car I can never afford, who can call fucking dudes, psycho kickboxers with fucking lambos and acids to turn up and bust me up. I'm never going to be that guy. I'm never going to accept that submissive position. And that's why I say, when I talk about money and achievement and.

And training and all these things, how important they are, because if you don't find those things important, well, then you're just accepting your place lower down. And I have seen what it is like to be on the lower end of society. So people in this state are often motivated very heavily by fear. So is this the same as optimizing your life around a certain identity? Yes.

So an identity, money. Perception of status was in society. Perception of status was in a society. So basically, when you're. When your basic need, however illogical, shifts from an animalistic based need to perhaps something more societal or resource based, is that fair?

I say it's something aesthetic based, is the way I work. It's a morality designed around an aesthetic. And by that, what I mean by aesthetic, that can mean many things depending on the social context. So people can be like, wealth isn't an aesthetic, and it's actually wealth definitionally differs between which culture you're in. And so you're really dealing with one culture's aesthetic of what wealth means.

Usually not like numbers in a bank account that they're trying to max it is their perception of themselves as a wealthy. Sure, yeah, yeah. It's not actually the dollar signs, it's how you see yourself. Yeah. And they will spin their wealth in a way that's meant to reinforce this self perception of being a wealthy person.

And then some people within this, it's that they need other people to see them this way. But regardless of what it is, it's about maximizing some self perception and there's some more complicated self perceptions, like, I am intellectually deep and some more simple ones, like a gender or something like that. Right. Or just power. Right.

So that is the second system. Okay. The realization that transitions to the next stage is the realization how trivial a life designed around optimizing self perception is. Because just this is one of those systems where it's more sophisticated than just base animalism is just if you apply any level of reflection to it or any level of logic is just very obviously not a intellectually satisfying moral system. And so the next system here is.

I have it as five, like positive five. So it's a huge. Oh, wow. So we're just. Yeah, it's not like there's a one number change with every new step.

Yeah. And this step is one of the highest steps in terms of intellectual sophistication and mental health of any step in the entire system. And these are religious rule systems. So these systems are a stable set of self reinforcing memes that lay out a set of rules for how to live. Individuals subject to these systems build their lives, morality and behavior downstream of their theological system, following a strict set of rules given to them by that system.

This system generally leads to better mental health and better equips people to engage with sophisticated philosophical concepts than any system presented outside of individuals born in the top few percentage points of intellect and ability at self reflection. So by that, what I mean is, if you are a person of below average intelligence, this system is almost always going to be the best system for you to be. At this stage, a person is following a strict set of rules laid out by their religion, and does not ask why those specific rules exist. They simply accept that those rules are good and that those who do not follow them are sinful. Thus they would be said to have a deontological ethical system.

Most of these systems evolved to help some populations outcompete other populations. For more on this series, see the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. However, an individual blindly living by a complicated series of rules about how to live, such as an extremely woke individual, may also be said to be living in one of these systems. This framework is where a lot of religions are. Especially.

A lot of religions are like, if you were a medieval peasant, this is where you were. You do not heavily engage with your religious system outside of it is just true. And it is a set of rules that determines right from wrong. However, not everyone in this is in one of these. These sorts of religious systems.

Some just have a personal honor system. Some have some sort of culturally derived system that comes from their local peer group that they picked up in college because they got caught in this self stabilizing memetic tornado. That's basically what causes these. And they are just following a set of rules that define good and bad and right and wrong, but without a yes. I could see even, like, someone who just slavishly lives by, like, some bro code being caught up in this.

Simone Collins
This isn't necessarily like someone being super Catholic or super Orthodox Jewish. It is someone who just decides to live by rules or the code of the samurai. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. That would be somebody living within one of these systems.

Malcolm Collins
And again, I should say they're not all religious people are in the system. But religions are typically the best explanation for these systems. Like, when somebody is that woke that they have, like, this cosmological framework created by it and a strict set of rules about what's sinful and what's not, they may as well be in a religion. This system is passed when an individual or a group realizes the serendipity of rich religious system you were born into, or the silliness of assuming your generation exists at a moral nexus in history, and that the morals, rules, and cosmologies that are common among your birth group, your generation, or your peer group are largely serendipitous and unlikely to align with a true moral north star, as we say at the beginning of the pragmatic sky to life. Even if you're like, my morality was my society's morality.

And then you point out, yeah, but that moral system has changed constantly throughout history. And now you look back at all those previous moral systems as savagery. And you should expect that people in the future, like, we, do not live in the moral nexus of history right now. So you likely want to try to develop a system that is more sophisticated than whatever system you happen to be born into. And this realization leads to relativism.

This I mark as a negative eight. So a very mis. Wow. So we're back down again. Very unsophisticated, close to animalism in its level of lack of intellectual sophistication or like, the people within it, like, you just can't have very complicated discussions with them.

This is the belief system that attempts to see all moral frameworks and cosmologies is equally true. This world framework often leads to nihilism and value parallelization. This system leads to high amounts of nihilism and uniquely poor mental health outcomes. So what? Do you have any thoughts on these past two systems?

Simone Collins
I find it interesting, and I like how basically becoming more advanced or having some kind of fancy rule set behind what you're doing doesn't necessarily make you, we'll say, morally or logically superior to someone who has absolutely nothing on that front. So that's interesting. I've not really seen a system like that where you can advance, but you can advance in a really bad direction. I also will note here that spiral dynamics, people will be like, what stage you're at? The spiral doesn't mark whether you are a good or a bad person often, and I do not take that framework at all.

Malcolm Collins
I think that certain parts of the tree or the map almost always lead to negative behavior patterns. However, the negative behavior patterns are negative as judged by other moral frameworks. I don't really. When I'm marking a part of the tree, I am not marking it by the moral action of its members. I am marking it by their ability to understand an intellectually sophisticated conversation.

When you're having it wisdom, you're discussing intellectually sophisticated ideas. Can they talk back to you, or do they just go right over their head? Is one thing that is judged on, and mental health outcomes is the other thing it's judged on. Can they largely structure their lives in, if they choose to live mentally healthy, fulfilled lives? And relativism, obviously, I think most intellectually sophisticated people can understand why very few people are actually at the relativist stage, because it's just so stupid.

Like, obviously you can't say all societies are equally morally just. My favorite line from the relativist standpoint was, I forgot who it was, but it was a british general and some of his hindi soldiers who were fighting for him and began to construct a fire to burn the widows of some other troop members on. And they were clearly not doing this voluntarily. And there was a tradition for a widowed wife to be burned along with the remains of her husband, correct? Yeah.

And he said, you can't do this. And they're like, we're on the same side. Like, respect our traditions, multi traditionalism. And his response to this was to say, oh, okay, I understand sure, I'll respect your tradition, but you need to respect ours. And so I will let you burn the widows and then I will begin hanging your men.

Because in England we hang people who burn women alive. And that was the end of the discussion. And what I mean by this is if you adopt a true relativist framework, you can excuse any moral horror as it's just their way. And people will be like, but Malcolm, you're so pluralistic. Isn't that what you're doing?

And I'm like, no, I still judge other cultural groups as morally wrong when they do things that my culture disagrees with that I would see as abusing their kids and stuff like that. I just look at the downstream consequences of a society where everyone can impose their moral frameworks on everyone else and see that downstream consequence as a worse than morally, internally judging other groups, but saying I won't interfere with them and they will eventually self extinguish and this immoral action will leave the world. But that's where people leave that system is people in this, they're not like me. Where they don't hold this perception from a functionalist framework that is, well, we can't just have everyone impose their moral values on everyone else. Right?

But I also believe that other groups are immoral when they don't follow my immoral framework. As will be more and more clear as we go further down the chart, then that leads to the next mindset, which is the default mindset that people porn into the developed world are born into. And this I have at a true zero. So it's not a positive, it's not a negative mindset, is utilitarianism. This framework sees the goal of an individual life being to maximize the emotional state in the general population.

Though individuals in this mindset often heavily overvalue their own mental state in internal calculations. This is the starting mental state of most humans born into a secular society and is the branching point the more derived philosophies come out of. So this is where the tree starts branching. And I'm sure you have seen this mental state and you were probably born into a utilitarian culture. If you were born into any culture, it's a default assumed position in our society today.

And a lot of people are like, if it's the default position, why do we see some people go back to religion? And so I think that there's two things happening here, like deontological religious systems or perceptionalism, right? Most people who are in the deontological religious systems, either they were raised in often rural, poorer areas that just were not as carried along by the march of civilization as other areas, and thus are mentally healthier as a result of that. Or they, instead of progressing further on the tree, when they saw that the mindset of the culture they were raised in just wasn't working, they retreated to the last stable state. And so they retreated to religion.

Then you're like, why are there so many perceptionalists in our society? Most perceptionalists are people who at some point in their life, succumb to some form of animalism and then just barely escaped that animalism. And that's why they're at the perceptionalist stage. But they were born and taught within school and had all the resources to be in the utilitarianist mindset. They just maybe got addicted to drugs or developed a deep self hatred, or as they often say, I experienced, like my mom said, extreme scarcity as a child of something.

And therefore I really can't get above stage one scarcity mindset in terms of intellectual sophistication. So any thoughts that makes sense? And I guess I can understand why utilitarianism would be the default in your system, because also, if you live in a fairly nihilistic society, you're still going to end up, on average, being empathetic, because most humans are. Most humans don't like to see other people suffering. So it's a pretty easy moral default to fall back on in the same way that humans and apes instinctually fall back on fairness being moral, even though it is a nonsensical concept.

Simone Collins
Right? Yeah. Sue, explain what you mean by fairness as a nonsensical concept. So there we found that, oh, not that it's evolved, but, yeah, so fairness is nonsensical because there's literally no way you can make something fair on all dimensions. And there's this great example that was presented in this book called Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone that was really influential when I read it.

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

By who is the most clever in the subject? By who wants it the most? There's no way to make it fair along all of those dimensions because everyone has differing levels of all of these different merits, meaning that there is no such thing as fair. But as we've seen in Capuchin, monkeys with this famous video where you can see a capuchin monkey being given some kind of remuneration, some kind of food based remeration for a task. And then it sees the monkey next to it getting an even more delicious food for that same task.

And suddenly, despite being perfectly satisfied previously with their compensation, they become completely irate because this is unfair. I'm getting grape and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it.

Malcolm Collins
The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does. And she gets a grape. And each of the other ones sees that she gives a rock to us, now gets, again, cucumber.

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

Simone Collins
So it seems pretty clear from that experiment and other research done that our instinct for fairness evolved as us being a collaborative mammal, put it. Another word. It is part of our pre evolved instincts, no different from lust or something like that. It is not. Or empathy.

Because if we group based society where we have to collaborate and we have to all contribute, those groups that felt instincts around fairness or empathy, typically outperformed groups that did not feel things like that. Because typically, if you feel something like empathy, if you feel something like fairness, you're not going to have as many free writers, you're going to have more people contributing of their own free will and enforcing contribution as well. Selfish gene would argue you're wrong on this. Really? Yeah.

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

And it is an animalistic trait. It is a trait that is monkey like. It is not a. If we define your level of humanity being your distance, like the things that you chose about yourself instead of the things that were just pre evolved into you, it is one of these lower order emotional subsets. It's above a desire for sex or those more basic things.

No, I don't think it is above those things. But you mark this as a neutral zero. I said utilitarianism. Utilitarianism isn't a desire for fairness. I think utilitarianism comes from a place of empathy.

Simone Collins
You don't think so? We'll talk about where it comes from in a second. The desire for fairness falls into animalism. When people are just like, I need fairness at like this animalistic level, the people will elevate some pre evolved traits as being higher order than other pre evolved traits because they see them as being more conducive to motivating pro social behavior within a functioning society. But I don't see them that way.

Malcolm Collins
I see pro social behavior motivated by logic as being higher order than pro social behavior motivated by animalistic instincts. And so I don't think it's helpful, and you'll understand why I would see it this way. When you get to the higher order parts of the tree, I don't think that there is any utility in ordering your pre evolved emotions. Now, I will note that a lot of utilitarians, right, they do not, like, self identify as a utilitarian. A lot of them are arguing for hypotheses about how to best create a utilitarian landscape.

So by that, what I mean is a libertarian and a communist, where that is like the core of their moral framing can boast be different types of utilitarians where they have two different hypotheses about how best to distribute positive emotional states within a population. It can have many different faces, but most of them are represented within mainstream political positions because it is the mainstream belief system within our culture today. When conservatives and progressives are arguing, they are often arguing with the presumption that the goal is utilitarianism. Help the most people on average in the country with the laws that they're implementing. Before we go into the branches of the tree, I should explain why the tree itself branches.

It is because individuals choose to optimize around different things and therefore go in different directions. So individuals on the urban monoculture path, we call it, are attempting to optimize around their own subjective experience of reality, like how good that experience is. The mystical path is completely dedicated to the expansion of your experience of reality. And then the pragmatist path is completely dedicated to impacting the objective world around you and determining what has value in that world. So now we're to the first branch of the tree, the urban monoculture branch.

This is the mainstream. Like when you're moving into elitist circles within the urban monoculture, like intellectually elitist circles, you're typically traveling down this branch. And if you are born into an intellectually elite circle within the urban monoculture, and you want to develop into one of the, like, better branches of the trees, you often need to first recess your mental thinking back to utilitarianism before you can move forwards again. So this pathway is aimed at reducing the personal experience of negative emotional states and negative self judgment. A path towards it is often driven by nihilism around finding that you can't actually have a meaningful impact on world events in the way you would want to as an individual, and thus it is heavily colored by an external locus of control.

So the first node on this branch is negative five, self acceptance. These individuals try to accept themselves for who they have allowed themselves to become. The goal within this system is a lack of negative self judgment. Obviously, to someone outside of this mental state, they would say that you should try to be the type of person worthy of love and not love yourself if you are indeed wretched. However, to people who go down this path, they often have the prior that they cannot really change who they are, and then to move to the next node within this particular tree.

That happens when people decide to be a quote unquote good person and build a pathological need to see themselves as a good person. Thus, even though you can't help everyone, these individuals decide to help as many people as they can within the moral framework of this self acceptance. Never experience anything negative in their lives, blah, blah, blah. We've talked a lot about this when talking about the urban monoculture. Then they get to a negative six node, so slightly lower in the moment.

Negative utilitarianism, responsibility avoidance. This is the life philosophy held by many of the most educated elites within the urban monoculture. We talk about it all the time in other areas, so I won't go into it too much here. Suffice to say, it is a system of morals based around attempting to set up a world structure where people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without ever encountering emotional discomfort, with no care towards the long term consequences. Individuals in this state often do not have sophisticated models of reality, and instead focus more on the aesthetic of benign, quote unquote good, with a very narrow moral framework, or within a very narrow moral framework, with the epitome of somebody in this moral system being like the haze movement, for example.

Right? Even though this causes long term damage to people, including from them, that being fat is unhealthy, reduces in the moment suffering. You can see things like affirmative action being the result of this, or handing out fentanyl being the result of this. But this is where if you are born into the elite of the urban monoculture, often a wealthy, really college educated family, this is going to be the mindset that you are grown up being indoctrinated with.

But you can also see that this is a branch that's not coming out of the negative utilitarian branch. It's just a completely different branch, which is very interesting. And it's also worse mentally than the general utilitarian. Like, when you meet these people, you're often able to have less sophisticated conversations with them than you can a general utilitarian, even though their philosophical beliefs are downstream of general utilitarianism. Yeah, I've noticed that normally the conversations just go along the lines of, you just can't do that, or that's just wrong.

Simone Collins
Instead of negative utilitarians or utilitarians in general having a bit more to say about why something could be damaging or is suboptimal, which is interesting. So to get to the final node at the end of the urban monoculture branch, you realize that you're going to die and you begin to form an obsessive fear around this negative eight mental state, which I call life extensionism. And this is the mental state. It's actually a realization I had while I was going through this chart of just, you fear negative emotions, right? But you realize that not existing is the worst negative emotional state from your own perspective, really different from the ephy and stuff like that.

Malcolm Collins
And so you begin to build your entire life around a fear of death and not existing anymore, and you just can't let go of this. And this is why you often see this within the ultra educated elite in our society. As to why this particular pathway ends in life extensionism and a paralyzing fear of death, it is because the core thing that drives people to this pathway versus the other two pathways is an elevation of an individual's own personal, subjective experience of reality, which of course leads to the fetitization of your own objective experience of reality. And then, of course, if it is your own objective experience of reality that is the thing of value in reality, then a reality that no longer has that thing is a reality without any value, which is what causes this obsession with life extension and fear of death for people on this pathway. Yeah.

Now we're to branch three. Mysticism. This happens when an individual begins to focus on finding some metric to expand one's internal mental state to something above. Just quote unquote mentally healthy. And this branch of the tree is the one that a lot of other level systems treat as the only branch of the tree.

Like, after utilitarianism, they're like, the mystical path is the right path. So node one within the mystic branch is a negative three node. So actually fairly mentally healthy, which we call low mysticism or low mystic. Low mystics look for an expanded internal experience of the world which they believe can be achieved through improving their internal self. However, there is no higher order inner self outside of that can be achieved by simple self discipline and what can be learned through the study of science.

As such, they construct a self masturbatory framework and hierarchy. This is the branch most individuals who create level systems like spiral dynamics are at. Basically, they believe in mental states that are deeper or higher order than just having mental self control. And because of that, they create almost a theological belief in higher order mental states that they then attempt to access when they are in this setting of low mystic. Do you have any thoughts?

Simone Collins
No. Then the next, they move from low mystic to high mystic when the low mystic framework leads to the belief that the world we interact with is an illusion and that higher order information can be gained from alternative mental states. Essentially, this is the path that quote, unquote, shatters the illusion of knowing. Negative nine, high mystic. They are at the same philosophical sophistication of people in the true state of animalism.

Malcolm Collins
High mystics start to draw an understanding of the world from corrupted mental states achieved with things like hallucinogens, chants or rituals. They stop being people you can engage with through logical structure. As their experience of reality trumps all others, they usually become arrogant and condescending with the belief that they have access, sources of knowledge that no one can touch. However, because their sources of knowledge are generally not cross interpretable, e. G.

Their own experience always trumps all others. There isn't a way for them to have productive conversation with even others of their group. And so an example of this, as I was talking with someone who had begun to travel down the pathway of the high mystic, and he was like, yeah, like, I try to be logical in how I'm trying to access these higher order mental states. I can't meet other people or have conversations with other people trying to be logical about it, because all of us, the truths that have been revealed through what I would call a corrupted mental state, trump all other truths that have been revealed through other people's, because you haven't experienced those corrupted mental states. And therefore, there is no interpretability between the frameworks developed within these various frameworks, which leads to intellectual isolation once you enter this stage.

Any thoughts here? I'm sure you've met people who are in the stage of high mysticism, and they're just really hard to engage with. Yeah. When you throw most rules and pieces of evidence out the window and have to question everything. It's hard to have any sort of meaningful conversation when your own subjective experience.

Of reality trumps other, any measurable, objective experience of reality, then you can. No, there's no longer any interpretability between you and other intellectuals, no matter how smart you are. And this is why we're so against the mystic pathway. But I think this better shows why we're against the mystic pathway, then. The final stage in the mystic pathway comes from living in the self imposed intellectual isolation.

Basically, you're living, like, in a self imposed jail cell where you can't talk to anyone for decades, and it causes a phenomenon we call brain rot. This is the only negative ten on the entire tree. Individuals with brain rot are only able to communicate in simple narrative loops. It is quite common among boomers who went down the mystic path. When you talk to these individuals, they either respond with a simple narrative loop about something like what they did that day, some event that happened in the past, or their medical history.

While people in the animalism state have an uncontrolled or untamed soul, individuals with brain rot almost feel like they have no soul left. And this is something that you can often see and is apparent from their eyes and facial expressions. If I was going to put on my theological cap here, I would say this is the end result of communing with chaos and inviting demons into their hearts, which feasted on their soul. If I am going to put on my secular hat, I would say that this is just the result of living so long with an unstructured logical system that their higher order brain function simply stopped working. Basically, it atrophy.

Their brains basically atrophy to a state where they can only talk in narrative self loops. And if people don't understand what I mean by narrative self loops, if you talk to boomers who grew up in the hippie movement, they're often in a state of brain rot, where you will try to engage them with an intellectual conversation, and then they'll just repeat, almost like it didn't hit them at all, with a narrative loop about what they did that day, or like a narrative loop about something that happened to them in the past, or a narrative loop about their medical history. These are the common narrative loops you'll have, but they seem to like it literally goes in one ear and out the other. People in other states, if you try to engage them with a level of intellectual sophistication that they are incapable of engaging with, they typically either respond with anger or just saying what you're talking about doesn't exist. People like this just can't engage with you.

They almost are like zombies walking through life. And you've seen this before. You've seen brain rot before. It's something we've talked a lot about. Most people have, yeah, often in older parents or neighbors or something along those lines.

Simone Collins
People who are just completely lost in their own lives, but not even meaningful lives, just the minutiae of making meals or getting up to shower or paying bills. Yeah, it's a really sad state to see. And I think it is the end state of the mystic path, which is why we're so afraid of the mystic paths. I think you can end as a low mystic and still be a very intelligent person. That's easy for me to converse with.

Malcolm Collins
The problem, I meet very few old low mystics. Most mystics. Like, when you start engaging with low mysticism, you almost inevitably come to the conclusion that this shattering of the illusion of knowing, which then puts you on the path to high mysticism, which puts you on the path to total brain rot. People with a uniquely high amount of mental fortitude can stay on low mysticism, but a lot of them are pulled forwards inexorably into high mysticism and then these more dangerous mental states. And this becomes really dangerous when entire religious communities move into states of low mysticism or high mysticism because people get pulled really quickly to unefficaciousness.

Because you can justify anything as a good life when you're on the mystic tradition, which means you typically don't contribute back much to society. Fair. Now we're on the final branch, the quote unquote good branch, or the branch that we have gone down and I think leads to the most positive mental outcomes, which I call pragmatism. So people go from utilitarianism to pragmatism when they realize the value of attempting to live for a value system is good. But the value system of, like, there is value in saying, okay, this is what good is, and I will structure my life around this and my moral framework around this.

But value systems based around the subjective emotional states of humans are stupid. So by that, what I mean, and this is a statement we often throw out quite frequently, is value systems. If you say, I am living my life to optimize human happiness, what is human happiness? Or, like, positive human emotional states? Those are just the things that our ancestors felt in response to environmental conditions that led to them having more surviving offspring than their neighbors.

It would be like a group of paperclip maximizers deciding that the number of paperclips in the world is a true moral good. It's just what we're programmed to believe. But unlike paperclip maximizers, we were programmed by serendipity. So it's like a lower order philosophy than even if paperclip maximizers came to this. And the few groups of paperclip maximizers that are like, oh, I actually believe that there should be a higher order way to structure one's logic.

They might actually follow the same branches that I've described here. One might focus on. I might be able to program myself to have some deeper understanding of the true nature of reality, and then they would go down the mystic path, and then another might go down this patch, which is to say, there are things of value. It's just, this is a bad way to structure it. Plus seven low pragmatism.

People with this value system decide on an objective function or set of things they believe have intrinsic value and then construct their identities and lives to maximize those things. The book, the Pragmatist Guide to Life is a guide towards constructing one's life around this path. And what I should say when I'm talking about an objective function is essentially you create a weighted list of things you think have value in the world. So it could be a utilitarian framework, but it's likely not, because this is typically what moves you to true pragmatism, is moving away from utilitarianism. And this weighted, almost mathematical equation determines how you judge individual decisions, but also how you judge how you construct yourself.

Instead of using a set of rules to decide what is moral, this past decides what is moral by the effects of the actions on the world. Adapting a consequentialist moral system instead of a deontological one. So remember where I said you have the deontological religious framework? This is a consequentialist framework where instead of following a set of rules, the rules that you choose to live by are based on the consequences your actions have on reality. And for people who are like, no, deontological ethics is a good way to do ethics, I'm like, okay, so, like, lying is bad.

You agree lying is bad? Yeah, lying is bad. Or stealing is bad. Somebody said, I'll kill this innocent child. If you don't lie.

You're gonna be like, okay, I can lie in that instance, or, I'm gonna kill this innocent child. If you don't steal, you're like, okay, I'm gonna kill. So you've admitted immediately that, yes, it is downstream, or this genocide is gonna happen if you don't lie, of course you then lie. Right. I think everyone they would really think about it is okay.

Obviously, deontological evidence ethics is stupid. I just chose it because I think it's the system that works at a societal level. And I disagree with some ethical systems that consequentialists use, or that consequentialist ethical systems can be used, if chosen incorrectly, to justify atrocities. And it's, yeah, if they're choosing bad things to optimize around, it can be used to justify atrocities. This is a particularly bad argument because deontological systems that are bad can also lead to atrocities.

Nothing about deontological ethical systems prevents them from leading to atrocities. And then somebody will say, oh, yes, but my deontological ethical system would never lead to atrocities. And then say, like, yes, but my consequentialist ethical system would never lead to atrocities. So at least from the perspective of the system itself. So it's not an argument.

Many religious individuals fall into this path, but unlike the deontological religious people, they are more concerned with why God made rules and what he ultimately wants of them than the rules themselves. For example, instead of just banning themselves from interacting with porn, they ask, why is there a prohibition on porn? What behavior is that meant to encourage, then maximizing that directly? Simone, when I was talking to you about this offline, you said it's the difference between dancing and DDR. Yeah.

Simone Collins
With DDR, you're clearly following the rules. You're doing exactly the steps, and you are technically dancing. But when you see someone totally nailing DDR, it's very impressive and super cool, but they're not dancing. Whereas when someone's dancing to the music, it is very clear that they are feeling the music and they are living the music. And that is the easiest way for me to understand the difference between these things.

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

It's just these are people who have decided what they think is good in the world, whether it's through a religious system or through just logicking it out. And then they construct their identities in an attempt to maximize that thing, and they choose their actions and life choices to maximize what they have either logically or theologically decided is good. You are assigning points, values to these things. No, but what I'm saying is there's many moral frameworks that can fall within this system, this is not saying this one religious system is true or this one objective function is true. It's just saying structuring your life in this way typically leads to better mental health outcomes and better cross interpretability.

Simone Collins
So that's what the point system is for. It's for mental health outcomes. As I said, it's for mental health and philosophical sophistication, which is really cross interpretability. When I talk to these people, even if they're in a completely different religious system than me, or they have a completely different moral framework than me, I can usually have a fairly sophisticated philosophical conversation because they understand, as I do, that they have a different objective function, and they're able to use that and engage with the core reasons that we have intellectual differences, and they're able to recognize those reasons instead of just, I can't talk to you, you know what I mean? Like with other things, you're just totally wrong about all of these assumptions about reality.

Malcolm Collins
So there's no cross interpretability between communication here, right? If you're talking to somebody who thinks money has intrinsic values, I can't even begin to explain to you while you're wrong. You're at such a low level of intellectual sophistication, or if somebody is drawing truth from emotional states rather than things that are cross interpretable across people, I'm just not going to be able to have a philosophical conversation with you right post a certain level of sophistication. And so this, what I'm saying here is this is not saying you have to be like us. It's saying that there's this one way of structuring things that leads to higher outcomes.

Then the next node, an individual, goes from there to high pragmatism. When an individual realizes the utility of religious systems, how they evolved, and are acutely aware of mimetic clusters and how they influence group behavior and how they spread. So this is a plus nine, high pragmatism. While low pragmatism is focused on self mastery and living the best life possible as an individual, when people reach the state of high pragmatism, they begin to focus more on how society came to be structured as it is. See, the memetic clusters move and interact, and are acutely aware of the memetic clusters that influence themselves.

Think of this as quote unquote, seeing the matrix, and then take that ability to begin to alter the memetic systems that influence themselves to allow self control to take less mental resources and discipline. They also focus on influencing society more by creating memetic machines or influencing the direction of memetic machines. Everyone in this stage lives by some sort of theological system, but are acutely aware of why the system is structured as it is to the most nuanced level, while also altering the course of society more by throwing stones into a river to change its flow than by directly attempting to dam the river. The pragmatist's guide to crafting religion is designed to help individuals at this stage. So does this make sense to you?

The high pragmatism stage? It's a realization that we had between the pragmatist guide to life and the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting religion. When the pragmatist Guide to life, we even point out, 95% of the time, you're not lucid. So you're operating off of this internal narrative you've created about the type of person you are. The core advancement between low pragmatism and high pragmatism is you learn about and accept that the older religions had a lot of sophisticated tools that you can borrow scaffolding from and use that to better structure yourself on autopilot.

So it requires less mental effort and you more adhere towards the life path that you want for yourself in moments of lucidity. And for religious people, it comes when they realize, oh, this is why my religion is structured the way it is. This is why God structured things like this, or the course of history structured things like this. And I can utilize these systems for the service of my community and for the service of God. It is seeing the matrix, basically, of this sort of the memetic clouds blowing across our landscape and becoming the architect of them, both within yourself and within the outside world.

But it's not with being just in our framework. It's basically everyone. Like when we talk about the index, everyone within the index is basically in a state of high fragmentation, because they are all working intentionally to build a culture for their family. And what I like about this is that it seems to be pervaded by bounded rationality, in that we understand the limitations of our sentience, and we try to address that. Whereas in contrast with spirituality, for example, there's this adherence or chasing after this illusion that you can be fully awake and enlightened.

Simone Collins
Whereas the pragmatist, especially the high pragmatist, understands that there is no such thing as being fully awake or enlightened, and we have to optimize our limited systems around our limitations. Right? Yeah. And another thing about high pragmatism is individuals within the high pragmatist state often have a very low attachment to themselves. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins
By this, what I mean is they see themselves typically as like frames within time, affected by memetic clouds. And they are part of those memetic clouds. And how those clouds move through time and their biological bodies are not particularly important to them. This is how the high pragmatist paths really differentiates from the life extensionist path, like the fear of death path. Typically, whatever religious framework you're dealing with or anything like that, you are just part of a tradition and you don't see yourself as being in a particularly privileged position, even from your own perspective.

And I'd say a unique thing about high pragmatists is they typically do not really fear death. They just fear the things that they won't have time to do, because that's what they see their life as. Every day is just, I need to do this and this to live my life towards putting society on the best course possible. And then the final stage. Within this, an individual achieves perfect self mastery, is plus ten freedom from sin.

Humans are not yet capable of entering this stage. To believe you can is to commit a sin of arrogance. However, with technology and further gene editing or further intellectual sophistication that might be achieved by my descendants, this state might be achievable. And so that is how the tree works. Does that seem like, when you think about this tree, does it seem more useful to you than the tree presented by spiral dynamics?

Simone Collins
Both of them seem equally useless to me, if we're being honest. I just don't see the point. Like, why don't you see the point? This is very interesting to me. People are going to choose the philosophy they choose.

They're not going to be influenced by this. I care about the. So what of this? So how is it going to change behavior, or my behavior, someone else's behavior? How is this going to help me behave in a way that is advocacy?

Malcolm Collins
I actually disagree really strongly with your perspective here. Well, of course, because you made this framework, so you must think there's some utility in it. Why? I think you are wrong about this. Okay.

One, I think this framework, when you look at it, is also obviously true framework, unlike spiral dynamics, which I really think you get after a point, there is a level like, you might disagree with my scoring system, but I think a lot of people would at least agree with the map more broadly. And my scoring system may be more downstream of how these different philosophical perspectives or world perspectives are able to relate to somebody within the high pragmatist perspective. Obviously, somebody within the high pragmatist perspective is going to have more interpretability with somebody else in the high pragmatist perspective. But even if you say that, I think broadly they can agree that the map is true. And when they see the map, it allows them to either quickly advance to higher frameworks or see the dangers that are involved with the part of the tree that they're on.

So I think when you see something like a low mystic, that might be beginning to proceed towards high mystic, and I'm like, look, this is the path you're on. I'm sure you can think of people within your life, like, instead of me being like, oh, here Trump is on the chart. That's what everyone always does. I don't need to do that. Like, you can think of people within your own life who have descended into brain rot or within high mysticism.

And low mystics typically look down on people in a state of brain rot or even people in advanced states of high mysticism. But because they don't really see it as an inexorable path of their philosophy, they don't realize the danger of the path they're on. And I think that's where the utility of the tree is. I also think the utility of the tree is very useful to people who are at these very low parts of the tree, like perceptionalism. People at a perceptional estate may not believe that there's anything above them.

But as soon as you start delineating all these philosophical frameworks above them, I think most of them have to begrudgingly be like, okay, there are more sophisticated mental states than the one I'm at right now. I think it also helps people understand, because I think that there can be a belief among people at deontological part of the tree, the deontological religious part of the tree, that there is no religious pathway for further than the deontological stage that they're at, because they're at this incredibly high local optimum where they need to pass through the valley of utilitarianism before they then get to the higher religious or theological pathway again. And so I think that's another thing, right? That they don't realize, oh, there is a higher order pathway, and here it is mapped out how to get there. Does that sound useful to you?

Simone Collins
Now, I appreciate that this could show how a radicalized version of a behavior could become like, if someone's just getting started with dabbling in drugs, putting them in some kind of scared straight program, and being like, this is what happens if you keep doing what you're doing. So I see what you're saying. And I also like any sort of framework that shows people a world beyond their own. One thing that I really love about the Collins Institute and the work you're doing on it, the school that we're creating, is that it features this skill tree that shows tons of domains of information that I didn't even know. I didn't even know.

So I like that as well. But, yeah, I don't know. I have the same general reaction to this that I do to spiral dynamics, and perhaps this is due to my inherent lack of intellectual curiosity where I'm just like, okay. But I also think that people, other categories aren't going to engage with it in the way that you think they would like. You think they'd be like, oh, I see how I could progress here, but I think a deontological adherent, like someone in that category is.

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

Malcolm Collins
Here's another area where I think it has really high utility, is I think that there's a belief that progress is always, especially if you're going down the urban monoculture pathway towards, like, self acceptance. Like, you really see this? Like, they're like, okay, after self actualization, that comes through self acceptance. And then it goes. And I'm like, no, the end of self acceptance is no longer questioning yourself.

And then that always ends with a paralyzing fear of death. That always ends with you trying to a paralyzing fellow of any in the moment emotional inconvenience. Right. Of the belief that everyone should be affirmed for believing whoever they are. Obviously, if all society is doing this is going to lead to enormous mental health problems and stuff like that.

It's just a very bad way to structure society and that you cannot, like, you need to reverse track to an earlier mental state before you can branch into the more sophisticated and mentally healthy segments of the tree. And I have seen a lot of people dead end in various branches. For example, I know a lot of low mystics who have dead end at the low mystic branch. They have the intelligence to go higher, but they were just seduced into that path early on, and they don't realize they need to go back before going forwards. It's the same with people who enter this state of intense paralyzation in terms of the fear of dying, and they begin to just spend all their money to stop dying and everything like that.

And it's like, how did you get here? And when they can see the larger map, that this is not actually a fear that they need to have, when they have different self conceptualizations of themselves, but they need to go a number of stages back before they're at a level of optimization again. And I also think that the chart shows, which is really useful to people, is going forwards in terms of mental systems, like realizing obvious logical inconsistencies or problems with a philosophical or world framework doesn't move you to necessarily a more sophisticated moral framework. And I also think it's really important to have a map for what happens after self actualization. And I view self actualization as a stage, as occurring almost before, like at self acceptance, I guess you could say, like, it is the wrong pathway.

Once you've gone to self actualization, you've gone the wrong way. What I like about that too, is like Ayla went through this process where she, she tried to interview as many people as she could who had believed to achieve some form of enlightenment, and then found that there was no uniform definition of enlightenment. And it does show that this is a field when it comes to human flourishing that is perhaps a little bit anemic. We haven't really thought through what human flourishing is, what enlightenment is, what it is to be self actualized, to reach one's full potential. So I like that at least.

The reason for that is so few people are on these higher branches of the tree that they just haven't thought about it and. Or that they can't see it. I think that some branches of the tree can't see other branches of the tree. I think a lot of people who are deep in the mystic path genuinely cannot see the other branches of the tree. They just disappear to them and look like just an earlier stage.

I think sometimes this, I think, is true for the ephylist, right? They can no longer see the other branches of the tree. Once they're there, just everything appears perplexing to them. They don't understand how somebody went from here to here. And I think the.

The full map allows a degree of cross interpretability between the different branches. If somebody is at this stage of, we need to just remove negative human emotions. They don't understand, like, how somebody could have gotten to, like, low or high pragmatism, where they're like, yeah, but it causes in the moment emotional pain. Causing in the moment emotional pain makes me a bad guy. Why would I care about any other sort of ethical framework?

I'm like, but long term, even by your own system, you're causing huge amounts of suffering. And they're like, I'm not directly causing that. That's more of a consequence of the system I'm creating. And so then you have to put into a, okay, if there's thought experiments, if you're putting into place a system now that is going to explode on someone in 100 years who isn't even born yet in a bed that washed, are you responsible for that? And then it's like, yeah, of course I'm responsible for that.

But it's like, how is that any different? If you're creating a cultural system that's doing that to millions of people, it allows for an explanation, or better explanation as to why these other moral systems aren't as useful and lead to, I think, actions that are just wrong. What you often notice about the other branches of the tree is they get worse as they get deeper. So for most branches of the tree, you're actually better off not advancing to the higher stages. And it's always, if we were to flesh this out more, and I guess this is a tree that's only giving examples, it's not comprehensive, that we'll say rationalism as it existed a while ago could be seen as the extreme.

Simone Collins
Going too far with pragmatism, where people are like, I'm just going to be so practical that I'm going to eat a stick of butter every day because the research says so. That kind of thing. Yeah, wiz rationalism, I would see it as extremely. I'd actually say it's the branch between utilitarianism and low pragmatism. But I wouldn't say it's all the way to low pragmatism.

Malcolm Collins
Yet. What would be pragmatism? Taken too far. I don't think you can. No.

Simone Collins
Everything else can become corrupted except for our chosen philosophy. Yes, that's why I like our philosophy. That's why I warn against other philosophies. And you can follow one of the mystic traditions and go when I mean, like theological traditions, and then become a high pragmatist and try to structure it to be of usefulness to you. Right.

Malcolm Collins
And I think this shows how people who are in the mystic traditions can try to restructure them from a high pragmatist framework, but they just can never succumb to the belief that the information they receive from corrupted states of mind is higher order than sort of their objective experience of reality. And I think that that's the core thing about the high path that just gets better. If you look at spiral dynamics, when you hear people talking about, like, the highest orders in spiral dynamics, or hear about people talking about the mindsets within the highest orders of their mental frameworks, society would just be worse if everyone was at them. Yeah, that sounds about right. Like weird mystic gurus that are in touch with the fabric of reality and spend their days philosophizing and blah, blah, blah.

Whereas the high pragmatist, if he's in a society of high pragmatists, is just functioning, right? Like they're just working. They're trying to make the world a better place and see their value system replicated as much as possible within wider society. But they are not at this level of sort of intellectual freeze. I also think that the chart shows why we've hit this stage of nihilism in our current society.

I love doing the longer ones. I don't know. Do you have any final thoughts, Simone? I think I need to understand this better before I can judge it. Obviously, I'm not quite getting it, because if I were, I'd probably find it a lot more interesting.

Maybe when one of the fans creates a chart for you, or I'll create some rudimentary chart and you'll be like, oh, I get it now. That could help. That could help for sure. But I appreciate you sharing this, and I'm really glad to have just so. Intuitively right to you that you have trouble in engaging with people who got stuck on other branches of the tree or thinking that they don't think that's it.

Simone Collins
No, that's not it. It's more that I don't understand the pragmatism of this itself, but I guess. It depends on if people find it of utility. You're basically saying, I don't find this useful. Other branches of the tree will not learn from this.

Malcolm Collins
Like they this will not give them a visibility outside of their branch of the tree, and because of that, it offers no utility. I guess we'll see in the comments. Does this help people at different branches of the tree? And would people have found a system like this useful wherever they are on the tree if they had seen this earlier? Yeah, but thank you for thinking through this.

Simone Collins
I just love that you're constantly trying to figure out how the world fits together, how philosophies fit together, and how things can be improved. How people can find something closer to the truth. And I'm so lucky that you do this, because I'm. As much as I would like to think of myself as a pragmatist, I'm often stuck in survival mode in different ways because I'm so neurotic and there are so many things that, like, I can't hear myself think over a mess. So if there's a mess somewhere in our house, I'm no longer a pragmatist.

I'm someone who's in a panic state, who can't deal with the fact that there's, like, a turd on the ground. Because there's, like, a turd on the ground every third day in our house. Potty training. I love you so much, Malcolm, and I'm grateful for everything you do. Have a great day.

You too.

Okay. I'm actually really curious to see if other people found this useful at all. Because afterwards someone was like, I don't know. I just don't find, you know, mapping systems like this or ranking systems like this useful. And as such, I am very interested to see if thought it might have some utility to people.

Malcolm Collins
However, I will say I don't check the YouTube comments as thoroughly as the discord. I typically read the discord discussion on every day's episode. So if you have ideas, put it on the discord episode discussion. If you put it on YouTube, I'll probably read it, but, you know, less probability and put a poll on the discord discussion of whether or not it's a good theory or a bad theory, because I'd love to see voting on that. And I'll put the link to the discord.

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