0:11 Hi everybody. I'm so happy to bring this 0:12 new episode of Common Ground and our 0:14 guest today is Malcolm Collins and as 0:17 always is my co-host and friend Dave 0:19 Hamilton the founder of the America's 0:21 Future series. Malcolm Collins is a big 0:23 figure in the pro-natalist movement and 0:26 he cares a lot about maintaining that 0:29 our world's population doesn't go into 0:31 irreparable decline our society doesn't 0:33 fall apart. What got you into this 0:36 Malcolm? 0:37 So I first started caring about this 0:39 issue when I was working as a venture 0:40 capitalist in South Korea. I was a 0:42 director of strategy at the number one 0:43 early stage firm in the country sort of 0:45 similar to our Y Combinator here. And as 0:47 a director of strategy you know I'm 0:48 supposed to be plotting where the 0:49 country's economy is going to be in 50 0:51 to 100 years. And the thing that was 0:53 blindingly obvious to me so if you look 0:56 like for example today at South Korea's 0:57 fertility rate it's 0.8 1:00 0.78 1:02 you know. 1:03 Um so it means that for every 100 1:04 Koreans 1:05 Yeah well so it means that for every 100 1:06 Koreans alive today there's going to be 1:09 around 6.1 great-grandchildren. 1:12 Uh that is you know and this is assuming 1:14 that it doesn't continue to decline and 1:16 yet it's declining every year. So I went 1:18 to the other people at my firm 1:20 and I was like this situation seems like 1:24 like there isn't going to be an economy 1:25 in 100 years. What are we doing here? 1:28 Um and they were like yeah I mean 1:30 everybody in sort of the financial 1:32 classes of our country broadly is aware 1:34 of this. We just pretend like it's not 1:36 the case because like I'm a VC like I 1:38 have to invest and that's my job right? 1:40 Like I'm not going to just go around 1:42 running around like the sky is falling 1:44 even though the sky is falling like 1:45 collectively we pretend like it's not. 1:48 Um coming back to the US it felt a bit 1:51 like going back in time 1:53 uh 20 years like it was some dark mirror 1:55 episode or something like that. Um 1:58 And and it's in the US people will be 2:00 like oh our situation isn't as bad as 2:02 theirs. I mean we are today where they 2:05 were in the '90s in terms of our 2:06 fertility decline and if the US 2:09 continues to have fertility to decline 2:10 at the rate it did between 2010 to 2020 2:14 um that means that if we have a 2:16 generation every 30 years 2:19 uh we should expect for every 100 2:21 Americans alive today there to be only 2:23 3.7 great-grandkids. Now keep in mind 2:26 this is assuming a continued decline and 2:28 I can give you the stats for that if you 2:29 want to link to that 2:31 it's wild how bad things are and what I 2:34 learned in Korea were a few things. 2:36 There does not appear to be a floor on 2:38 this fertility decline 2:40 um a lot of people they think well 2:41 eventually it'll get so low that it'll 2:43 just even itself out. A lot of countries 2:46 have undergone this not a single country 2:48 has hit that floor yet. 2:50 Uh and there's also a belief that okay 2:52 well maybe society will begin to adapt 2:54 when fertility rates get really low. Yet 2:56 you can see in Korea in fact the exact 3:00 opposite thing is happening right now. 3:01 If you look at Korea right now the 3:02 really big thing is the four nose 3:04 movement you know among women in the 3:05 country right? Like no sex no dating no 3:08 men no marriage right? 3:10 Um and 3:12 it it is it is horrifying uh and and so 3:14 a lot of people look at this they're 3:15 like what so you just care about this 3:17 from an economic perspective? 3:20 And it's it's true that yes this will 3:22 lead to a global economic collapse 3:25 unlike anything we've ever seen before 3:27 to understand why that's going to happen 3:30 uh historically we have this perception 3:32 I think in in in the west right now that 3:35 economies only go up like on 3:38 if you money into the stock market grow 3:40 but that's happening 3:43 consumers has been growing exponentially 3:44 the number of producers has been growing 3:46 exponentially and the number of 3:48 productivity per producer has been 3:49 growing linearly. Yes technology has 3:52 been increasing exponentially but the 3:53 productivity per worker has been 3:54 increasing linearly for about the past 3:56 200 years. Now if those things level off 3:58 or start declining we will be in an 4:01 economic context where things are 4:03 shrinking on average. Uh our entire sort 4:06 of civilizational structure right here 4:08 not just like western civilizational 4:10 structure this is true in China and 4:11 Japan and Korea as well. Um is set up on 4:15 this sort of Ponzi scheme 4:16 uh where it requires constant growth and 4:19 this isn't just because of our various 4:20 social security programs which yes are 4:22 completely screwed but it's because of 4:24 the way that we've handled debt. Debt is 4:26 this miraculous thing where if I make a 4:28 $10 investment and $8 of that is debt 4:31 and $2 is equity and that investment 4:34 grows by just 20% you know I have 4:36 doubled my equity investment but if it 4:38 shrinks by just 20% I have lost my 4:40 entire equity investment. We have taken 4:43 out debt at the level of individuals the 4:44 level of our states the level of our 4:46 land the level of our cities the level 4:47 of our nation states it's just leveraged 4:50 to the floor and this was amazing when 4:52 things were growing but if they ever 4:54 start shrinking everything begins to 4:56 fall apart. Now this is really important 4:59 because there are other problems due to 5:01 demographic collapse and what it means 5:02 is by the time that we recognize these 5:05 problems it'll likely be too late to fix 5:09 it for two reasons. One because we will 5:11 have a much bigger crisis which is the 5:12 economic crisis but two it's a problem 5:14 that Korea is facing right now which is 5:16 called the pig in the snake issue which 5:18 is to say that 5:19 in Korea right now 60% of the population 5:21 is over the age of 40. You know you can 5:23 have a population where like 80% of the 5:25 population is over the age of 50 and be 5:27 like okay now we've decided we need to 5:29 solve demographic collapse but you just 5:31 can't at that point right? 5:33 Korea if it's almost statistically 5:36 impossible to solve the problem now with 5:38 before it's just like total social 5:40 collapse. Um and this is really 5:43 terrifying. So so again what's the 5:45 actual problem here? Like the biggest 5:48 problem to me as somebody who who 5:50 believes that society's greatest 5:53 strengths is our diversity is you are 5:56 going to see a great dying like a mass 5:59 cultural extinction event where many 6:02 cultures around the world are just going 6:05 to disappear over the next 100 years 6:08 much much more so likely than even 6:10 during the age of colonialism. Um and to 6:13 to people who purport to care about 6:16 cultural diversity this should be a big 6:18 issue for them and and and 6:21 So back here a lot of people like oh 6:23 this is code for white people like he's 6:24 talking about white people when you when 6:26 you talk about this but if you look at 6:27 the cultures that are most resistant to 6:29 prosperity induced demographic collapse 6:32 you're looking primarily at conservative 6:34 Christian and conservative Jewish 6:35 populations. 6:36 Native Americans are really [ __ ] Like 6:38 then if you look at Native American 6:39 birth rates they're well 6:40 below replacement 6:42 Native Americans are one of the most 6:44 [ __ ] groups. 6:47 Generally white conservative groups are 6:49 the least [ __ ] group in the entire 6:51 world. 6:53 East Asians South Asians Native 6:55 Americans 6:57 all completely [ __ ] and and I I 6:59 suspect we'll also see South Americans 7:00 get [ __ ] too if you look at current 7:01 rates. So you know you talk to 7:02 progressives about this and they're like 7:04 oh we can solve this with immigrants and 7:06 then you point out to them that you know 7:08 even by the UN's own statistics which 7:09 famously inflates these numbers as of 7:11 2019 all of Central America South 7:14 America and the Caribbean fell below 7:15 replacement rate. That means they are 7:17 not reproducing themselves within every 7:19 population they are collapsing as well. 7:21 India fell below replacement rate this 7:23 year. 7:25 It um So so real quick this seems to be 7:27 primarily an awareness issue. Okay? 7:30 You're aware of this and I think a lot 7:31 of Rutgers followers on Walter Walter 7:33 test are they're very intellectual 7:35 they're up on these things etc. and 7:36 they're aware of pro-natalism. What 7:38 would you say is is the average American 7:41 or the average person in Western America 7:43 I'm sorry Western civilization even 7:45 aware that this idea exists and that 7:48 it's a problem? You've used the word 7:50 scary frightening etc. I don't think a 7:52 lot of people are actually aware of this 7:55 nor are policy makers aware of this 7:57 issue. They don't think this long term. 8:00 Yeah so it's very interesting that you 8:01 point that out. A lot of people like 8:02 when I'm talking with reporters they're 8:04 like why is it all of these like Silicon 8:06 Valley tech bros are are are aware of it 8:09 or like talking about this but nobody 8:11 else seems to be talking about this. And 8:12 I'm like well let's be clear what you 8:14 mean when you say that. What you what 8:15 you're asking is why are venture 8:17 capitalists aware of this but the people 8:18 who you are friends with your social 8:20 circles not aware of this and the answer 8:22 is for the same reason I first realized 8:24 this when I was a venture capitalist is 8:25 that venture capitalists are about the 8:27 only class in society today that 8:28 regularly needs to think 50 to 100 years 8:30 in advance. 8:32 If you're looking at like Wall Street 8:33 investors or something they think maybe 8:36 five years in advance maybe 10 years in 8:38 advance but that's long Of course it's 8:40 narrative too. 8:42 What? Almost everything in our society 8:44 is built off narrative and if you look 8:46 at especially so for the left everything 8:49 the left say has to fit inside one of 8:50 their key narratives and there are very 8:53 few social classes today that have to 8:54 look at numbers and 8:57 this is a weird tangential point but I 8:58 was watching Ingmar Bergman's The 9:00 Seventh Seal and I love that movie 9:02 because it shows the end of the medieval 9:05 world and my specialty is the Middle 9:07 Ages and so that speaks to me. And what 9:09 you're looking at the movie set during 9:11 the Black Death is that this society has 9:13 no frame of reference for what's going 9:15 on because it's a society where they 9:16 said their entire world is built around 9:18 God loving them and then half the 9:20 population's dying of the plague and 9:22 that's kind of where we're at now where 9:25 we our society doesn't have to look at 9:27 numbers for anything and I think the 9:28 reason the VCs and people like that 9:30 picked up on this is if you're a VC you 9:32 look at numbers but the things that I 9:34 like to say the things that will kill 9:35 modernity and I do think the modern 9:38 world is about to end in the same way 9:39 the medieval world ended with the Black 9:41 Death. That 9:44 the thing modernity can't deal with is 9:47 it can't think in long term and it can't 9:49 think on gradual incremental issues and 9:52 I'm kind of mixed on climate change I 9:53 don't really know what to believe but 9:55 climate change is the exact sort of 9:57 problem that would mess us up because 10:00 it's a gradual inclement incremental 10:02 issue and in previous historical 10:04 societies, you had all of these social 10:06 rules that might have seemed really 10:09 stringent in the short term, but in the 10:11 long term saved your society. If you 10:13 look at like all of those Jewish rules 10:16 and Malcolm's got a lot of points on the 10:17 Jews that are positive. I got to throw 10:20 that in, but 10:22 but if you look at the Jewish laws, it 10:24 sounds incredibly stringent until you 10:26 realize this is a very isolated very 10:28 weak population in one of the hardest 10:31 places to survive in the world and by 10:33 only by having these incredibly 10:34 stringent rules could they survive the 10:36 waves of attacks and the fear of 10:38 assimilation and everything. Yeah, so in 10:41 our book The Pragmatist Guide to 10:42 Crafting Religion and on our podcast 10:44 Basecamp, this is like a core thing we 10:46 talk about a lot, which is if you look 10:48 at human evolution, you know, this was 10:49 my background. I actually have I worked 10:51 on an exhibit that's still in display at 10:52 the Smithsonian's like human origins 10:54 department and stuff like that. So I was 10:55 really into, you know, human evolution's 10:57 research back when I was a scientist. Um 10:59 and I I think that we often 11:01 underestimate 11:03 how much humanity is a co-evolving 11:05 firmware and software package. 11:08 So when we're talking about like our 11:10 biologically coded like social 11:12 predilections and stuff like that, which 11:13 I think the general population 11:15 underestimates how much of our 11:16 sociological profile is sort of 11:18 heritable. 11:19 But on top of that, 11:21 we had these memetic packages. And today 11:24 when we think about memes, we think 11:25 about a meme infecting somebody and then 11:27 using that person to infect other 11:28 people. But historically, when I'm 11:30 talking about memes, I'm talking about 11:31 the way sort of ideas evolve, right? 11:34 Yeah, yeah. 11:36 So historically, you had meme cultural 11:40 clusters, which we call cultuvars, which 11:41 today we would think of as like religion 11:43 sort of. 11:45 And they 11:47 were subject to biological evolutionary 11:50 pressure. And by that what I mean is 11:52 that when they could get motivate a 11:54 person to do something that increased 11:57 their biological fitness, their 11:58 likelihood of surviving or their 12:00 likelihood of having kids, 12:03 they would survive at a higher rate. So 12:05 this is how we argue things like, you 12:06 know, Judaism and Islam figured out hand 12:09 washing literally hundreds of years 12:12 before science figured out hand washing. 12:14 We argue like this is why pretty much 12:15 every older tradition you see in the 12:17 world today, they have some sort of 12:20 arbitrary self-denial ritual, you know, 12:21 like Lent or Ramadan or Feast of the 12:23 Firstborn. This is likely important in 12:27 strengthening your inhibitory pathways 12:29 in your prefrontal cortex like saying no 12:31 to things. It's also likely why if you 12:33 look at since Pew started recording 12:35 data, conservatives have been happier 12:37 than progressives. It's also likely why 12:39 you have huge mental health issues in 12:41 the progressive movement right now 12:42 because so many of them have abandoned 12:44 this older software package that that 12:47 was that co-evolved with the way our 12:49 brains were meant to work. Um and and I 12:52 I can understand that it may have had 12:54 some 12:55 uh negative externalities. 12:57 Like a great example of a negative 12:58 externality is you're almost always 13:00 going to get uh homophobia like in every 13:02 old long-lived cultural tradition around 13:04 the world and it's 13:05 you know, that's been really successful. 13:07 And by successful I mean conquered its 13:08 neighbors. Like you might find some 13:09 tribe where they're, you know, okay, but 13:11 if you're talking, you know, whether 13:12 it's the East or the West or anywhere. 13:13 But the reason is is because um 13:15 traditions that were homophobic had more 13:17 kids than ones that weren't. To be 13:19 fruitful and multiply 13:21 to be fruitful and multiply and 13:22 therefore have more kids than your 13:24 enemies. 13:25 Right, right. But so I'm so I'm not 13:27 saying that all of these evolved things 13:28 are positive, right? I'm just saying 13:30 that they were really important to 13:32 maintaining like a stable conscious 13:34 structure and we have ripped them out 13:37 and they carried the majority of the 13:39 psychological weight that motivated 13:42 reproduction. The moment we ripped out 13:44 these older traditional packages, we 13:46 lost a lot of the motivation to 13:48 reproduce. 13:49 And if you look around the world today, 13:52 the groups that are most resistant to 13:54 prosperity induced fertility collapse 13:57 are the ones that are still operating on 13:59 these more robust 14:02 software packages. There's an 14:03 interesting book There's an interesting 14:05 book named Fitzpatrick's War and it was 14:07 written in the '90s and it's set in the 14:08 25th century and it's about an American 14:11 Alexander the Great and it's a very fun 14:13 book. But the backstory of it is that 14:16 over the 21st century, modern industrial 14:19 civilization isn't sustainable and you 14:20 start to see mass social breakdown as 14:22 well as a breakdown of the birth rate. 14:24 And you start to see giant wars, 14:26 plagues, etc. in the late 21st century, 14:29 but what ends up happening is that 14:31 religious fundamentalists take over 14:32 America because they're people with a 14:33 birth rate. Muslims colonize Europe and 14:36 the Chinese colonize the rest of East 14:37 Asia. And so be the point of the book is 14:41 that modern industrial civilization 14:43 cannot sustain the birth rate and thus 14:45 these groups that as you described have 14:47 more pronatal social norms basically 14:50 inherit the earth. 14:51 Yeah, well so I I would argue that the 14:53 book is interesting and it has a point. 14:55 But where I'd say East Asian populations 14:58 like Chinese for example, 15:00 they seem to be by far the most 15:02 susceptible to this fertility collapse. 15:04 No one can replace them though. It's 15:05 like the thing is China always gets 15:07 [ __ ] by history. They've They've eight 15:09 out of 10 bloodiest wars in history are 15:11 in China, but there's so many of them 15:13 that they and they're such a tough 15:14 people that they always find a way to 15:15 pull themselves up. Yeah, there's 15:18 Like I can't imagine the Siberians 15:20 populating China or the Indians 15:21 populating China. 15:23 So there's two things I'd like you to 15:24 address, Malcolm. One is making sure 15:26 people understand this prosperity 15:27 induced fertility collapse. That one 15:30 thing may be fundamentally maybe not a 15:31 lot of people's consciousness and why 15:33 that occurs. Secondly, if I would like 15:35 to propose the counter argument saying 15:38 and then have you address it, which is 15:40 so what if the population goes to half? 15:43 People create climate change and they're 15:45 actually a virus and a menace. We they 15:47 should it would be good if they 15:48 decreased the surplus population like 15:51 Scrooge would tell us, right? So maybe 15:53 it would be better for the world and for 15:55 us if the population did collapse and 15:57 and why is that such a bad thing? So 15:59 those are the two things. I don't think 16:00 people understand prosperity induced um 16:03 Yeah, so I say prosperity induced cuz if 16:04 you look around the world today, the 16:06 thing that is most correlated with 16:08 fertility collapse is prosperity. 16:11 After that, it is access to education 16:14 and then after that, it's 16:16 gender equality. 16:18 And and so when I say prosperity, what I 16:21 mean is like wealth. So between and 16:22 within countries, the more wealth you 16:24 have, the less kids you have until you 16:27 get to absolutely high extremes. You get 16:28 above in the US for example, above 16:30 repopulation rate again when a family's 16:31 earning over half a million dollars a 16:33 year. But before that, generally the 16:35 less wealth you have, the more kids 16:37 you're going to have. And so this goes 16:38 against I think one of the left's core 16:40 things where they're like, well we 16:41 should we can't afford to have kids. 16:43 That's the problem. And it's like, well 16:45 if that was true, then poor people 16:46 wouldn't have more kids and poor 16:47 countries wouldn't have more kids. 16:50 And and I think a lot of people 16:51 underestimate how poor a country needs 16:53 to be to be above repopulation rate 16:54 again. 16:55 So they think it's like developing 16:56 countries like they imagine like South 16:58 America. Like that's where the people 16:59 have No, South America is below 17:00 repopulation rate. On average, a country 17:03 in the world today is only above 17:04 repopulation rate if the average citizen 17:05 has under 5,000 USD per year. 17:09 And so 17:10 Yeah, and so to the point that he was 17:12 making 17:12 world if there is one. Yeah, yeah, 17:14 fourth world you could say. Like just 17:16 desperate desperate poverty. 17:19 Um And to the point that you were 17:21 making, which I think is really 17:22 interesting, um 17:24 which which is to say when people are 17:26 like, why why do I care about this? Like 17:28 what's the issue here? You know, when I 17:29 talk about this in terms of prosperity 17:31 induced fertility collapse. I'm like, do 17:32 you not see it as a problem that it that 17:34 that that we're playing this 17:35 civilizational game where we are saying 17:37 we can move into this bright future of 17:39 equality, of gender diversity, of of of 17:43 you know, broad access to education and 17:45 yet the civilizations that are making 17:48 this promise are unable to motivate 17:49 reproductive fertility rates, that their 17:51 economies depend on a constantly growing 17:53 population and that they're playing this 17:56 this sick shell game where they are 17:58 hiding the fact that they can't motivate 18:00 fertility and yet their economies and 18:02 prosperity depend on fertility by 18:04 importing people by country from 18:06 countries that don't have those things 18:07 yet while telling those countries that 18:09 they're eventually going to export those 18:11 things to them. So somewhere here is a 18:13 lie. Either they never plan on the whole 18:16 world developing, right? 18:18 Or their whole system's going to 18:20 collapse. And this is one of the, you 18:22 know, the real sick thing that I, you 18:23 know, sometimes I'll I'll talk to, you 18:25 know, extremist progressives about this 18:27 and they're like, okay, well it doesn't 18:28 matter that Latin America's above below 18:30 repopulation rate, you know, we can fix 18:32 our population problem by importing 18:33 people from Africa. And I'm like, so 18:35 your the not racist plan is to import 18:39 people from Africa to support 18:41 non-working old white people on social 18:43 security? 18:44 That's how you're 18:46 like pro 18:47 by effort into raising your own kids? 18:49 Worse, you're going to create a scenario 18:51 where the entire global economy is 18:54 reliant on keeping a few African 18:56 countries so poor that they just 18:58 naturally 19:00 motivate reproductive rates due to this 19:02 poverty and then importing people from 19:03 those countries. You're using them like 19:05 like human farms? That is sickening that 19:08 you are treating that as your like 19:10 default solution to this problem instead 19:13 of creating an environment where you can 19:14 have a stable population. Now, I want to 19:16 get to your second point before I go 19:17 further here, which is people saying, oh 19:18 oh okay, well, so what if population's 19:21 collapsing, you know, global warming, 19:23 blah blah blah. We as an organization 19:25 are not trying to keep 19:28 ensure the population grows or even 19:30 trying to keep the world population 19:31 stable. That is impossible at this 19:33 point, okay? We are on the Titanic right 19:36 now. No matter what we do, we are 19:38 hitting that iceberg. We are just trying 19:40 to get as many lifeboats ready as 19:42 possible and build some sort of 19:44 community on the people who are going to 19:45 have to live on these lifeboats for the 19:47 years until we can build something up 19:49 again. 19:50 I often argue that when people are like, 19:51 well what, Do you want the world's 19:52 population to grow forever?" That's a 19:54 bit like somebody's talking to a global 19:55 warming organization and they're like, 19:57 "What? You want it to get colder every 19:58 year? You want us to live on an ice 19:59 planet?" It's like, "No, the global 20:02 warming's probably going to happen no 20:03 matter what yet now, but we should like 20:05 be talking about this because it's going 20:07 to have major economic and sociological 20:10 and social effects. So, you're going to 20:11 say something. Well, I'm glad you 20:12 brought that up because there's a 20:13 parallel between the group of people 20:16 that are very, very focused on the idea 20:17 that we're at tipping point with regard 20:18 to climate. 20:20 There are a lot of people that say it's 20:21 too late now, one more week, one more 20:24 year, 30 years from now, it's going to 20:25 be too late. The notion of a tipping 20:27 point with regard to population though 20:29 is something that they don't take on. 20:32 Your point is that we're already there. 20:33 You You used the Titanic example. Um 20:36 we're going that way and then ultimately 20:38 we when population gets to a certain 20:40 level of decline, it actually goes to 20:41 zero. The idea that it could actually go 20:43 to zero is unimaginable. And I always 20:46 like to quote the Mouse Utopia 20:47 experiment, right? Where every time they 20:49 ran it, the the population because of 20:51 affluence, you know, this was affluence. 20:53 They had all the food, shelter, no uh no 20:56 existential threats. The mice continued 20:58 to grow until their population growth 21:00 and they they went to a tipping point 21:01 and they always went to zero. 21:04 I think that's almost an analogous model 21:05 for us. There's a point where you can 21:07 get to the point where you can't 21:08 replace. 21:09 And And which has been one of your 21:10 points. And I don't think a lot of 21:11 people understand the tipping point idea 21:12 with regard to population, but they're 21:14 very comfortable with it with regard to 21:16 uh 21:17 uh climate change. Well, so I I one 21:19 thing I want to touch on with the 21:20 Matthew Utopia experiment cuz I think 21:21 it's very interesting. And I think that 21:23 you know, a lot of people talk about a 21:24 post-scarcity environment. I think in 21:26 many ways, like if you're middle class 21:27 or above and living in in the Western 21:29 world right now, you're already in a 21:31 post-scarcity environment. And that's 21:32 what the Matthew Utopia experiments were 21:33 studying is what happens to mammals in a 21:36 post-scarcity environment. And we don't 21:37 know you know, how accurate these 21:39 experiments actually were, but it 21:40 appears in at least one case. Like he 21:41 may have pH the results a bit. We go 21:42 into this a bit in our book. But it 21:44 appears that at least in some cases this 21:46 can lead to population collapse. And I 21:47 think one thing we're learning in the 21:48 West and this is something that is 21:49 really uh uh taking even me off guard is 21:53 that when people have everything that 21:55 they could possibly have, I thought the 21:57 highest level of luxury and indulgence 21:59 was going to be these individuals 22:02 indulging in hedonism. But instead, what 22:04 we have seen is the highest level of 22:06 indulgence that a person can access is 22:09 removal of personal responsibility. And 22:11 that is achieved through 22:12 self-victimization. 22:14 Because when an individual is a victim, 22:16 then they are not responsible for the 22:18 things that are happening in their 22:19 lives. And so in these post-scarcity 22:21 environments, instead of seeing extreme 22:24 the extreme hedonism I think we've we 22:26 would expect, which we we're actually 22:28 seeing you know, declining sex rates, 22:29 everything like that. What we are 22:30 instead seeing is a level of extreme 22:34 responsibility shrugging because that is 22:36 something that somebody can only do when 22:38 they are in literally like the safest 22:41 and most indolent of environments and 22:42 childhoods. I think it's um a feminine 22:44 versus a masculine I think it's a 22:46 feminine versus masculine environment 22:48 where the conditions you describe of 22:50 post-scarcity in the late Roman 22:52 Republic, which is a very masculine 22:53 society, it was just like mass sex 22:56 slavery, it was giant feasting and 22:59 throwing up food and eating more of it. 23:01 And now we're in a much more uh 23:03 feminized society. And so I think it's 23:06 Yeah. 23:08 Yeah. Well, and I would also encourage 23:09 people to look at because I think with a 23:10 lot of people they're looking at 23:11 civilizational collapses, Rome is like 23:13 the only thing that comes to mind. I 23:15 would also look at the height of the 23:16 Islamic Empire, which is very similar. 23:20 No one talks about that. There's one 23:21 thing I really want to There's one thing 23:23 I think is really important to touch on 23:24 because I I've watched some of your 23:25 stuff. I've seen your interviews, etc. 23:27 And there seems to be a recoiling of 23:29 some people and then as you alluded to 23:31 earlier, they try to make this about 23:32 race when in fact this is not about 23:34 race. You're actually talking about 23:36 Korea, of Asia, all of these other 23:38 non-white areas suffering the same 23:40 problems at even a greater rate and much 23:43 at a much greater rate than conservative 23:45 religious whites, okay? I'm a former 23:48 civil rights activist, okay? I spent 23:49 over 20-something years in the movement, 23:51 wrote on it, led marches, all that, 23:53 okay? I I care about that. I don't see 23:56 this as a race issue. What you're 23:57 proposing 23:58 has nothing to do with race. It has to 24:00 do with world population. Is that a fair 24:02 statement? 24:03 Well, absolutely. And I And I think that 24:06 that some people, like some political 24:08 groups in our environment, they uh they 24:10 sort of have this coding where they see 24:12 truth as the team sport and they try to 24:13 determine which team are you on. And 24:16 then the moment you're not on their 24:17 team, you know, depending if you're on 24:19 the left or the right, if you're not on 24:20 the left team, they just immediately say 24:22 racist racist racist racist, you're a 24:24 racist. Um and I'm like, "I'm not a 24:26 racist." Like I am like well-known not a 24:29 racist. Like people who know me are 24:30 like, "Oh yeah, you're super not a 24:31 racist." My family like historically was 24:33 uh 15 of the 50 founding members of the 24:36 Free State of Jones were uh within one 24:39 like either brothers or siblings of 24:41 brothers of my direct ancestors. Like my 24:43 family has hugely been into uh you know, 24:46 pro-civil rights stuff for a long time. 24:48 Um and I I think that it's it's just 24:52 really sort of sick to an extent that 24:55 when I tell people all of the different 24:57 groups that this is affecting and um 25:00 when you're talking to progressives, 25:02 they're like, "Is it affecting uh black 25:04 people?" And I'm like, "Yes, it's 25:04 affecting black people in America." And 25:06 they're like, "Well, is there some group 25:07 of black people it's not affecting?" You 25:08 know, like in like Africa. And I'm like, 25:10 "Okay, no. There are some countries in 25:11 Africa that this is nowhere close to 25:13 affecting." 25:13 Incredibly people talk about Africa 25:14 only. Yeah. And it's like just because 25:16 you can find one approved group that 25:18 this isn't affecting yet, doesn't mean 25:21 it's not a problem like globally 25:23 speaking. This is almost to me when 25:25 people bring up the the the race thing, 25:27 it's a bit like the global warming like, 25:29 "Oh, it's it's winter here right now. 25:32 How could it possibly be 25:34 How could global warming possibly be 25:35 happening? Oh, in Africa there's still a 25:37 high population. How could this possibly 25:38 be a problem?" And it's like, "Well, 25:40 presumably we want to increase their 25:42 prosperity. Uh presumably you don't want 25:44 to set up a system that that minimizes 25:46 their prosperity." But yeah. 25:48 Uh and to Ruby Ridge's uh a point 25:50 earlier, um what I was saying is I would 25:53 suggest that people when they look at 25:54 what civilizational collapses look like 25:56 cuz I think a lot of people they have 25:57 this perception that a civilizational 25:59 collapse can't happen because one hasn't 26:01 happened in a while. And it's like, 26:02 "Well, you point out that one, we're 26:04 kind of due for one." Um and the three 26:06 that I would look at if you're looking 26:08 for sort of patterns is the height of 26:09 the Islamic Empire, the height of the 26:10 Roman Empire, and the height of the 26:11 Athenian Empire cuz we have really good 26:13 evidence on each of those collapses. Uh 26:15 and you see very similar behavior 26:17 patterns of indulgence and hedonism, um 26:20 uh yeah, and stuff like that as Ruby 26:22 Ridge was talking about. One of his 26:23 videos is towards decadence and he did 26:25 an entire video on it, which I I think 26:26 is great. Everyone should check out the 26:28 barbarism to civilization to decadence 26:31 thing. Absolutely true. And I agree with 26:33 you 100% that people don't think this is 26:35 possible because they haven't had it in 26:37 a while. And America in particular has 26:38 been stable, you know, for a couple 26:40 hundred years, right? 26:41 Um and so we just we're so insular, 26:43 we're so protected that we can't 26:45 possibly imagine it could happen to us. 26:47 One of the principles that I like to use 26:49 is that when a civilization's 26:50 collapsing, it pushes the exact opposite 26:53 of what it should. And I've seen this 26:54 happen 10 times in history. For example, 26:56 when Hitler knew he'd lose World War II, 26:58 he killed more Jews because he thought 27:00 that would be the best thing he could 27:01 possibly do and his best legacy. When 27:03 the Aztec Empire was follow the Aztecs 27:05 and the Inca, and this is one of these 27:07 weird tangents that I've been gone down, 27:09 they were able to actively predict the 27:11 exact year their civilization would 27:13 fall. And so the Aztecs 27:15 were they jacked up their human 27:17 sacrifice massively in the years before 27:19 the Spanish because they thought that 27:20 was the only way to please the the god 27:22 the gods that they'd survive. For us, 27:25 we're pushing these various 27:27 anti-natal social norms even harder when 27:30 we need the exact opposite to survive. 27:32 And that's just a pattern I've seen 27:34 where people double down on the 27:36 behaviors that are killing them right as 27:38 their civilization's falling apart. 27:40 You're absolutely right. Um and again, 27:42 this is what we're talking about in 27:43 Korea. But here's the really cool thing 27:45 about all of this. So, a lot of people 27:46 hear all this and they think that what 27:47 I'm really like I'm preaching gloom and 27:49 doom here. But I actually think that 27:51 overall, there is a huge uh positive uh 27:55 externality from this. So, the the the 27:58 negative side effect of this is that the 28:01 sort of urban monoculture in our 28:03 society, and this is this sort of 28:04 culture that exists throughout the world 28:06 today, you know, whether you're New 28:07 York, Paris, Tokyo, wherever, right? 28:10 Like these places they're often more 28:11 similar to each other than they are like 28:13 if I'm near Philadelphia now and I just 28:14 drive out to the Amish, which are high 28:15 fertility, the the Amish are more 28:17 different from any of these cities than 28:18 they are from each other, right? So, 28:20 this urban monoculture anywhere you go 28:21 in the world, it is completely unable to 28:23 motivate reproductive fertility rates. 28:25 Um and where this gets negative, I think 28:27 especially for people of conservative 28:28 leanings in the near future, is that uh 28:31 for that population to stay around, for 28:35 it to survive, it has to essentially 28:38 parasitize or take the kids of adjacent 28:40 cultural groups. Um and none of this is 28:43 malicious. It's just that the iterations 28:46 of it that become more aggressive about 28:48 proselytizing to children are the 28:50 especially children not of that cultural 28:52 group are the iterations that outcompete 28:54 other iterations in terms of its 28:56 population in the future, meaning that 28:57 in the future it becomes more and more 28:59 aggressive at proselytizing to children, 29:01 of capturing educational systems, of 29:02 stuff like that. Uh where this becomes 29:04 interesting is this is only a threat in 29:06 the short term, right? In the long term, 29:09 this group is self-sterilizing and it 29:11 will disappear. Um so, in the future, 29:15 we are in this amazing scenario where 29:17 when I was in Korea, I kept thinking, 29:18 "It's wild to think, you know, this 29:19 country's going to have like 4% of its 29:21 current population in 100 years. Where 29:23 are they going to get people from? 29:24 Japan? No. Like Japan's collapsing in 29:26 population. China? No. Like China's 29:28 collapsing in population." Um and I was 29:30 like, "It's wild to think that less than 29:31 100 years ago, you know, Japan was able 29:33 to motivate its citizens to go out there 29:35 and kill, you know, hundreds of 29:37 thousands, millions of people to to 29:39 expand their cultural footprint when 29:41 today they can't even motivate 29:42 reproductive rate among their general 29:44 population." Um but this is really cool 29:46 because it means that the future of 29:48 human civilization right now is 29:50 controlled by those of us who can 29:53 intergenerationally 29:55 motivate a high fertility rate. Um, and 29:58 by that what I mean like if my family, 29:59 if I had eight kids and we did that for 30:00 just 11 generations, I'd have more 30:03 descendants than there are people on 30:04 Earth today. So, when we look at what 30:07 the pronatalist movement is really doing 30:09 is it's sort of building an alliance of 30:11 all of these cultural groups that are 30:13 able to motivate above reproductive 30:15 fertility rate right now. That are able 30:16 to motivate their kids to stay within 30:18 their culture based on what their 30:20 culture offers those kids other than 30:22 threats. That used to be a successful 30:23 strategy. It's not really anymore. Um, 30:25 and and that are going to inherit the 30:28 future of human civilization. You today 30:31 as a human being can have more impact on 30:33 the future of human civilization than 30:35 you probably could have at almost any 30:37 point in human history because you just 30:39 get to choose in this time of indolence, 30:41 do I want to take all of this additional 30:44 stuff that we have, heating, food, stuff 30:46 like that, and use it to build an 30:48 intergenerationally durable culture and 30:49 set up a intergenerationally durable 30:51 societal framework for my children and 30:53 build join this network of people doing 30:55 this or do I want to spend it, you know, 30:58 complaining about how much of a victim I 30:59 am and indulging in hedonism, you know? 31:02 And it's This is This is a kind of a 31:03 hard sell at the really micro 31:05 microeconomic level. As an individual, 31:07 as an atomized person who doesn't give a 31:09 crap about anything else, I'm just 31:10 hedonistically focused on myself, I've 31:13 got the opportunity to have kids and 31:15 spend my money on them, my time and my 31:17 energy, etc. or I can go to Cabo. 31:20 Yeah. And and and that's probably the 31:22 way most young people in particular now 31:24 see it or or they're just depressed. I 31:26 don't have any money. I'm not making 31:27 enough money. My prospects aren't good 31:29 enough. By the way, I can't get a date 31:31 because I'm a quasi incel or incel, 31:33 right? Um, so so how do you how do you 31:36 sell this? I mean, first off, they got 31:38 to find a girl. 31:40 Well, so so there's two core points 31:42 here. One, to your first point is when 31:44 people say I can't afford kids, what 31:47 they always mean is I can't afford kids 31:49 without reducing my current lifestyle. 31:52 Because the cultural groups that do have 31:55 a lot of kids, they understand that you 31:56 make enormous sacrifices for your kids. 31:58 You stop going on vacations. You stop 32:00 You know, my family, we don't heat our 32:01 house in the winter, you know? We live 32:03 in a pretty cold area. 32:04 We just don't do it because we're like, 32:05 "Hey, we got more We need more money for 32:07 our kids. We need more money for the 32:08 charities." You know, and and they're 32:09 just unwilling to make I think a lot of 32:12 the sacrifices that they need and and 32:13 sacrifice their their existing lifestyle 32:15 quality. 32:16 To the second point that you were 32:17 making, 32:19 relationship markets are completely 32:20 broken in our society today. One of the 32:22 books we wrote was the Pragmatist's 32:23 Guide to Relationships and the other was 32:24 the Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality. And 32:25 on Basecamp, our podcast, we talk about 32:27 this all the time because it's it's just 32:30 so difficult. And it's so difficult for 32:32 two reasons. One is 32:35 I mean, we can go into like why this is, 32:37 but the fundamental structure of dating 32:39 in our society has fallen apart. 32:43 It's we've created an environment 32:46 where if you are an average guy, let's 32:48 say for example, the average male on 32:50 Tinder has less than 1% of women swipe 32:53 right on them. That is absolutely insane 32:55 when you consider how high these women's 32:57 standards are and it's it's partially 32:59 because now we live in a society where 33:00 people can sleep around a lot, which I 33:03 think messes up people's perceptions of 33:05 the type of person they can secure as a 33:07 long-term partner because for for 33:09 example, for women, 33:11 their value in in sex marketplaces is 33:13 much higher than it is in marriage or 33:15 long-term marketplaces, but many of them 33:17 believe that because they could secure 33:19 sex partners of a certain quality that 33:20 they can secure marriage partners of 33:22 equal quality and they just can't and it 33:24 messes up all of the market dynamics. 33:25 And so you can see since Tinder hit the 33:27 market, you know, falling sex rates, 33:29 falling relationship rates, and it's 33:30 very hard for people. And so you look at 33:32 things like what the Pronatalist 33:33 Foundation is working on right now. 33:35 We are working on, you know, arranged 33:37 marriage markets, like a new sort of a 33:39 London season. This is in addition to 33:41 the educational projects which we have, 33:43 which is our main project, which is 33:44 replacing the educational system. But 33:45 yeah, when guys say I have a major 33:47 problem with dating, they are telling 33:48 the truth, but I 33:50 problem is 33:51 unfortunate, which we also talk about a 33:52 lot, is that a lot of young men have 33:56 gotten their dating advice from and 33:58 remember how I had said that sex 33:59 marketplaces are very different from 34:00 marriage marketplaces? They've gotten 34:02 their dating advice from the manosphere, 34:04 red pill, MGTOW, etc., right? 34:08 What was the thing? Dating strategies? I 34:09 forget what they were called. And and 34:11 and all of those are dating strategies, 34:12 not marriage strategies. Yeah, they they 34:14 are optimized around securing sexual 34:18 relationships. And they do that pretty 34:20 well, actually. Like all of that dark 34:22 triad [ __ ] it actually works. The 34:24 problem is is it works at securing 34:27 thots, t h o t s, not like 34:30 it does not secure you 34:33 the the women who likely actually want 34:35 to marry, right? And the question is why 34:37 is this happening? If what you are 34:39 advertising to women is how arousing you 34:42 are to them, then you are going to 34:44 secure as a partner the type of woman 34:46 who would date someone because they are 34:48 more arousing to her than, you know, 34:50 intellectually stimulating or a 34:52 compatible partner. And so learning how 34:55 to date within marriage marketplaces is 34:57 something that I feel that there is very 34:59 little actionable advice on for young 35:01 men, 35:02 which which is really I think harmful. 35:04 As a guy who's part of this target 35:06 demographic, what I'd say and I consider 35:08 myself a decently nice guy and so I'll 35:11 do the morally best thing I can do while 35:14 not getting flecked over. And the 35:18 um 35:18 defection rate for marriage is so 35:20 horrifying that it kind of makes you 35:23 that like in another society, I'd 35:25 happily get married in my early 20s, 35:27 have kids. But the thing is as a guy 35:28 today, if you do that, 50% divorce rate. 35:33 If your girl is college educated, it's 35:35 even higher. 35:37 Then she takes the kids, she takes 2/3 35:39 of your money. This happened to my 35:40 father. And so it's like, why are you 35:43 setting yourself up for a deal in which 35:46 there's a majority chance that it screws 35:48 you up and you eat costs for that for 35:51 the rest of your life? 35:53 Mhm. So these things were true in my 35:55 youth and I'm in my 60s and Rodger knows 35:58 him, he's read it. I read a book called 35:59 the wrote a book called the official 36:00 nice guy's guide to dating. And in that 36:03 I say all the same things we're saying 36:05 today. There's a difference between the 36:06 dating world and the marriage world. 36:08 Women have a crazy list. I call it the 36:10 Santa Claus wish list. They wanted all 36:12 these things, right? Etc. Whereas the 36:14 guys just need two or three things. Do 36:15 you care about me? Do you nurture me? 36:18 Will you do me? Those were the two or 36:20 three things that maybe get guys cared 36:21 about. That hasn't changed. It has just 36:23 become so extreme. 36:26 And the perception of what a quality 36:28 male is versus quality female and what 36:29 they'll accept, etc. 36:31 The disconnect between what women think 36:34 they should be able to get versus what 36:37 the reality out there is so severe and 36:40 because as you say, there we're talking 36:42 about dating 36:43 and getting our and not about long-term 36:46 marriage 36:47 or relationships like that. Yeah, so one 36:50 thing I'd add to this, which I think is 36:51 really interesting, is yes, we're in 36:52 this uniquely challenging situation 36:54 where if you win, you can really clean 36:55 up in the future because, you know, when 36:56 I'm raising my daughters, you know, 36:59 I am going to raise them to be realistic 37:01 and have good expectations in terms of 37:03 what they're looking for in terms of a 37:05 male partner. All of these women who 37:06 fall into these cultural groups that are 37:08 who have been parasitized by these 37:09 cultural groups which build these 37:12 unrealistic standards for them, they're 37:14 not going to have kids. They're not 37:15 going to perpetuate into the future. You 37:17 know, we live in in in a collapsing 37:19 society in a way right now, which can 37:21 make it very hard to get partners. But 37:24 if you do, you know, 37:25 and again, there's a secondary problem 37:27 of all of us used to, you know, if you 37:28 look at the 1950s, my wife has this huge 37:30 collections of like 1950s advice videos, 37:33 which she loves to watch, which used to 37:35 teach people how to do all this stuff. 37:36 It used to teach girls what to expect 37:38 from a relationship. It used to teach 37:39 people how to court. It used to, you 37:41 know, we don't have any of these 37:42 cultural things anymore that that make 37:44 all of this easy. So one, we don't have 37:46 the lessons on how to date for a 37:49 long-term relationship for either guys 37:50 or girls, right? And and and and two, 37:54 you know, girls and I think to a certain 37:56 extent 37:57 but to some extent as well, guys aren't 37:58 being 37:59 raised to act in a way that can attract 38:01 a good partner. But the cool thing is is 38:03 all of us in a cultural network, like 38:05 when you get married, when you start 38:06 raising kids, one of the reasons why 38:08 we're building out this intercultural 38:09 network of those of us on lifeboats, is 38:11 because I need people for my kids to 38:13 marry, right? I need people who were 38:15 raised by other sane people 38:18 with insane cultural frameworks so that 38:20 they too can have kids. And those kids 38:22 want to have kids, you know? Yeah, well, 38:23 I'm happy to hear that you're trying to 38:25 address operationalize an an answer. So 38:28 there has to be a way for like-minded 38:30 people to connect. There has to be a 38:32 form for this, etc. And you also have to 38:34 be able to winnow out those who are buck 38:36 naked crazy 38:38 versus those who have realistic 38:39 expectations. And it'd be nice if 38:40 everyone's bar coded, you just go 38:42 and go, "Oh, this person gets it or this 38:44 person does it, right?" But there's no 38:46 bar coding, right? There's no little 38:48 quick check. And so I had a I had a 38:50 litmus test that I 38:52 I I I 38:53 I interviewed over 100 women for this 38:55 and and and guys. And the question is, 38:57 pretend I'm God. 38:59 And if you tell me today that you want 39:01 to meet the person of your dreams at 39:02 8:00 the next morning, that person's 39:04 going to knock on your door and they 39:05 will be there. And you will never want 39:07 to be with another person. You know, 39:08 this is going to be enough for you. This 39:09 is going to be great. You're going to be 39:10 happy, etc. And if you ask men that 39:12 question versus women that question, 39:15 almost 2/3 of the women said no. 39:18 And the reverse was true. The men said 39:20 2/3 of the men said yes. And this was 39:22 1990s, okay? And the And the idea being 39:25 was, "What if I get married, I'm not 39:27 going to be able to do what I want to 39:28 do? It's going to be a net negative for 39:30 me." But I said, "Wait, I'm God. And you 39:33 asked for the perfect perfect perfect 39:35 guy." And And you say, "Well, I want to 39:36 go study abroad or go work in Europe." 39:38 Great, he owns a chateau in France. All 39:40 right, shut up. I told you I'm God, 39:42 right? So, this is the perfect guy and 39:45 they still said no until they got older. 39:49 Yeah. So, I I would add just for young 39:51 guys here that the single biggest piece 39:53 of advice I give in terms of sorting for 39:55 a partner is the two big traits that 39:57 you're sorting for. The absolute biggest 39:59 is gratitude. Are they actually grateful 40:01 to be in a relationship with you and are 40:03 they able to show that gratitude? The 40:05 second is work ethic. All of this other 40:07 stuff like how hot are they? How you 40:10 know, etc. It does not matter. This is 40:13 This matters in terms of social 40:14 signaling within your local status 40:16 hierarchies. It is irrelevant in the 40:19 long term. Please, please, please 40:20 remember gratitude is what you're 40:22 sorting for and then work ethic. 40:24 Well said and then how do I find that 40:26 out? And you only find that out by 40:27 meeting someone and getting to know 40:28 them, etc. in their behavior. But, 40:31 giving the two guys the litmus test the 40:32 targets, these are the traits that you 40:34 should prioritize is really important 40:36 and I don't think most young men I don't 40:38 old guys my age didn't get that either 40:40 growing up. We thought were they hot? 40:42 That's all we cared about. 40:44 Right. Well, and I think today some guys 40:45 are like how submissive are they, right? 40:47 Like a girl can be submissive and have 40:49 zero gratitude. And I think that that 40:51 this is a one of these incorrect things 40:54 that guys are picking up from the 40:55 manasphere. 40:56 Well said. Well said. Um but yeah. But, 40:59 I'm Well, I I I appreciate you're not 41:00 just pointing out the issue, but also 41:02 saying here's what we can do about it. 41:04 Well, I also want to point out that it 41:06 is a systemic issue and people who 41:07 believe that they're having trouble 41:08 finding a partner aren't imagining 41:10 things. 41:11 They're not crazy. The dating market's 41:13 completely broken. People who look at 41:15 the society today and are like wow, 41:17 things seem like really crazy. Like are 41:19 are people sort of losing it? Like 41:22 they are accurate. Um 41:25 you know, and this is also true with our 41:26 positions of power in our society. I 41:28 think that there's this perception that 41:30 um at least the elite have some sort of 41:32 like background plan to what's going on. 41:35 You know, one one of our our side jobs 41:37 my wife and I has been like managing 41:39 secret societies and stuff like that. 41:40 You know, between us you know, I have my 41:41 graduate degree at Stanford. She had 41:42 hers at Cambridge. Like we have been in 41:44 the positions of power within our 41:45 society. They are if if you sort of view 41:49 this urban monoculture as like a memetic 41:51 virus or a sterilizing memetic virus I 41:53 call it a cult. 41:54 furthest gone of all places in the world 41:58 right now. Um and there are so many 42:00 little like viruses that even specialize 42:03 on just eating the elite. One of the 42:05 things that we talked about in one of 42:07 our videos is how psychology has almost 42:08 become a bit of a cult. I remember you 42:10 know, I was walking behind 42:12 three women at one of these events and 42:13 they one of them was like, yeah, I won't 42:16 date a guy unless he's seeing a 42:17 psychologist. And the other two were 42:18 like, oh yes, of course. And I was like, 42:20 whoa, whoa, whoa because my original 42:22 training was in you know, 42:23 psychotherapy and stuff like that. Um 42:25 That means some psychologist incepted 42:27 them with the idea that you can't be 42:29 mentally healthy unless you are not only 42:32 seeing a psychologist, but you are 42:33 continuing to see a psychologist. 42:36 I was like, that's what a cult does, 42:38 right? If they build dependency instead 42:41 of fixing issues and not only do they 42:44 build dependency, but they begin 42:45 isolating you from everyone who doesn't 42:47 have this dependency. And then so the 42:49 question is is like why do these sort of 42:52 I guess you could almost call them 42:53 cancers because none of this is done 42:54 maliciously. It's just this psychologist 42:56 who built mechanisms that built this 42:58 dependency 42:59 economically outcompeted the ones who 43:01 didn't and so that their types of 43:02 psychology begin to be practiced more 43:04 and more, right? And as a psychologist, 43:06 they should have known not to do this. 43:07 Like one of the things you're taught in 43:07 psychology is you know, like the 43:09 hypnosis and the implanted memory thing 43:11 and like how horrible all this was and 43:13 that you need to be very careful about 43:14 this. And then the whole field just 43:16 threw that out when they realized they 43:17 could make money by creating dependency 43:18 in people. 43:19 But anyway, there's all of these 43:21 organizations that are munching on the 43:24 top of our society right now. Um and it 43:27 is horrifying. When you when you see 43:29 this and you're like they can't actually 43:31 be that stupid, can't they? 43:33 No, they really can be. They really are. 43:36 As somebody who's been close to all 43:37 this, things are really as bad as you 43:40 think they are and however dumb you 43:42 think like your local friend group is, 43:44 the elites of our society, the people 43:46 running things, they are at the same 43:47 level. My my friend Sam I like to say 43:50 that when you look at the world I love 43:53 this point. When you look at the World 43:54 Economic Forum, they're trying to 43:55 bureaucratize decline and they these 43:59 people are seeing the same things we are 44:00 that the world population is going to 44:01 collapse, but they want to make it a 44:02 process and I love 44:05 McGilchrist's book The Master and His 44:06 Emissary where he talks about the right 44:08 and the left brain. If you get too stuck 44:09 in the left brain, you see everything as 44:11 a mechanical process. But, one of the 44:12 things that really shocks me is you lose 44:15 I have this test. You make an argument. 44:17 Can you think that is the only argument 44:20 that gets made? And among the elite 44:22 today, they'll make a single argument 44:24 and then there's no analysis if that 44:25 argument's correct. It's just I made a 44:27 chain of logic, thus that chain of logic 44:29 is completely correct. And that's one of 44:32 the litmus litmus tests I use for 44:35 sanity. Intellectual purity sanity. 44:38 Exactly. Intellectual honesty. The 44:40 Talmudic The Talmud when guys study the 44:42 Talmud, they would take both sides of an 44:43 argument. 44:45 You take it this time, I take the other 44:46 one. To your point, Roger, you if you 44:48 can't think of the other argument, 44:49 you're not thinking hard enough. 44:51 Yeah. 44:51 Secondly, I would say say this. There's 44:53 an analogous model with the psychology 44:55 deal which is, oh, you won't you won't 44:57 date a guy that because he doesn't go to 44:58 the gym, but he works out all the time 45:00 and he's a world-class athlete at home. 45:01 You won't take a guy that's got his own 45:03 home gym. 45:04 You only go to a guy that sees a 45:05 professional, right? It doesn't make 45:07 sense. Is the guy in shape or not? Is 45:08 the guy sane or not? 45:10 Um the last thing I want to say is this 45:12 idea this behavior has to become 45:14 cringeworthy because the most important 45:16 psychological tool that your generation 45:18 has is cringe. 45:20 If 45:20 If something is cringe, it dies. 45:23 And people have to actually make fun of 45:26 the little 45:26 This is something Dave roasted me for. 45:28 Dave says that the amount your 45:30 generation cares about cringe is cringe. 45:33 Yeah. No, no, so I love all of this. I'd 45:35 actually going to take the alternate 45:36 point. I think cringe is the only thing 45:38 that survives. So, by the also I love 45:40 Sam. He's got some great ideas. Um so, 45:43 by that what I mean is cringe is the 45:45 mechanism in our society through which 45:47 we realize what is culturally aberrant 45:49 and culturally different and through 45:51 which we punish those things. Yes. It is 45:53 a culture's immune system. Historically, 45:56 like if you're talking about like the 45:57 old, you know, if if we were all some 45:59 like older conservative culture, yeah, 46:01 cringe because those cultures were able 46:02 to motivate fertility rate. But, today 46:05 when people say something is cringe, 46:06 what they generally mean is it 46:08 differentiates from the urban 46:09 monoculture. Yeah, so 46:11 so what I'm saying this thing has to be 46:12 flipped where wholesome, whatever you 46:14 want to call those traditional values, 46:16 productive, 46:18 positive notions are considered cringe 46:21 now and they can't be. This sort of 46:23 hedonistic, silly, self-destructive 46:26 thinking has to become what's considered 46:28 cringe. That's all right. 46:29 I mean that'd be nice, but I think what 46:31 we're going to see happen is the people 46:33 who can deal with being called cringe. 46:35 My wife and I, you know, we've gone 46:36 viral a number of times like the elite 46:38 couple meme, everything like that. 46:39 People think we are cringe as hell and 46:42 what they mean by that is why don't you 46:44 fall in line? Why do you have to be so 46:45 freaking weird? And what we point out is 46:48 every cultural group in the world today 46:50 with a high fertility rate is freaking 46:52 weird. Whether it's the Amish or the 46:53 Hasidic or anything like that, we all 46:55 look like weirdo. We name our kids weird 46:58 things. We have weird practices and we 47:00 are the people who are able to walk into 47:02 a grocery store and have everyone 47:04 snicker at us 47:05 or or be on you know, the cover of a 47:07 magazine and have everyone snicker at us 47:09 and not care about it. Those are the 47:12 people who will be around in the future 47:14 and I think that if you over focus on 47:15 cringe, if you over focus on judging 47:17 other people, 47:18 then you can begin to feel that like 47:20 you're okay because your relative status 47:23 or your relative sanity is higher than 47:25 other people today. Um and I'm like, oh 47:27 my god, that's such a low bar. That is 47:28 such a low bar. It reminds me of when I 47:30 talked to people with like talking to 47:32 some of our followers about body 47:33 dysmorphia and I because a lot of them, 47:35 you know, they they do exercise all the 47:36 time. They want to be really buff all 47:38 the time. I guess they say it's weird 47:39 that there's body dysmorphia on both the 47:40 left and the right. I was like, just go 47:42 to your average mall. Are you in the top 47:45 20 to 5% of body types in the average 47:47 mall? Then you're probably okay. And 47:49 they're like, no, no, no, no, no. You 47:51 don't understand how bad the average 47:52 mall is. I promise, if you're in the top 47:54 20%, you are still probably clinically 47:56 obese. 47:58 And I was like, I think it's a bit the 48:00 same way with with intellectualism. You 48:02 can look at the world and convince 48:03 yourself that you're doing okay because 48:05 you can see the cringe around you and 48:07 you can see the the patheticness around 48:10 you and it can I think over justify your 48:13 own lackadaisicalness towards 48:15 self-improvement. So, I I would almost 48:17 say seeing cringe in the world around 48:19 you is cringe. I mean also the process 48:22 that Dave describes already happens 48:24 where the right uses the the right uses 48:27 cringe much more than the left does and 48:29 the right uses it in general as a 48:31 descriptor. Be as cringe as opposed to 48:33 based and these are the two polarities. 48:35 Where do do something cringe is to do 48:38 something that is unnatural, bizarre, 48:41 over looking for social approval. Too 48:43 earnest, too too wholesome, too too too 48:45 well-meaning, too 48:47 too caring. But, based as well, that is 48:49 true a lot of the time. But, based is 48:52 the opposite of cringe and based means 48:53 what you're saying is built off fact. It 48:56 is sincere. It is honest. 48:59 And there's a lot of politics in this 49:00 like no one on the left uses the term 49:02 based. It's used to be a political, but 49:04 it got co-opted by the right. 49:06 Um 49:07 But, we 49:08 we're kind of already seeing that of 49:11 using cringe 49:13 as a 49:15 as a wedge towards pro-social values and 49:18 it reminds me of 49:21 what I think we're going to see is 49:24 I There are three civilizational cycles. 49:26 Each are on 2,000 years. The first is 49:27 the Bronze Age one. The second one's the 49:29 Roman Empire. We're going to see the end 49:30 of the third which is the historical 49:33 cycle that started with the fall of 49:34 Rome. Is that for example, the Jews 49:36 isolated themselves from the rest of 49:37 civilization and they took all these 49:39 pro-social norms. And I view the Jews 49:42 like the Mormons, where the Mormons 49:43 isolated themselves from the rest of the 49:44 culture, took a lot of beliefs that 49:46 other people would consider to be weird 49:48 and arbitrary. But the Mormons actively 49:51 distanced themselves from the rest of 49:54 civilization, 49:57 moved to the desert. But if any group 49:59 survives this, it's going to be the 50:00 Mormons. 50:01 Well, I mean, Mormons have fallen below 50:03 replacement rate already. I don't know 50:04 if you've seen this data. But if 50:05 everyone's below replacement rate, it's 50:07 matter of degree. The blind the one-eyed 50:08 man rules. 50:10 Well, the the Jews aren't. I mean, if 50:12 you if you don't include Orthodox Jews 50:13 as Jewish, which I Well, the progressive 50:15 Jews, very liberal Jews are secular, are 50:17 almost suicidal. Yeah. Okay, okay. I'll 50:20 buy that. You Well, there's there's 50:21 something I wanted to comment on that 50:22 you were talking about, um, which which 50:24 is is you're talking about pro-social 50:26 values and and and this relates to 50:28 something that you guys were saying 50:28 earlier, where I think if you're talking 50:29 about the progressive world mindset, 50:32 they've moved from pro-social values to 50:34 pro-social truths. And this is this this 50:36 way of reasoning that we call 50:38 justicalism, which basically means you 50:40 don't ask yourself, is this what the 50:42 evidence supports? You ask yourself, is 50:44 this what would be true in the most just 50:46 world? Um, and that is how you determine 50:49 what is true is in our world. You know, 50:51 are men and women men and women exactly 50:54 the same sociologically? In a just 50:56 world, they would be, therefore it is 50:58 true. You know, so I I think that this 51:01 is this is just something you see within 51:03 their reasoning and it's how you can get 51:05 really illogical reasoning sets from the 51:07 perspective of people who are more like 51:09 data-and-tradition-based. 51:11 Um, and it it leads to a lot of 51:13 breakdowns in structures when you begin 51:16 to then hunt out anyone who seems immune 51:19 to this form of logic, because that's 51:20 the way cultures work. When a culture 51:22 begins to dominate in a region, it 51:24 begins to expel or socially isolate 51:27 anyone who doesn't bend a knee to it. 51:29 Um, one of our uh uh fortunes in all of 51:33 this 51:34 is that this culture that they're 51:36 building is incredibly incompetent. 51:38 I've like if our podcast had a line, it 51:40 would thank God that our enemies are not 51:43 as malev- are not as competent as they 51:47 are malevolent. Um, and and it's 51:50 I'm glad I I thank myself every day that 51:52 the left is not Stalinism, because for 51:54 everything you say about Stalinism, they 51:56 are one of the most ruthless and 51:59 efficient movement you'll ever see in 52:01 history. And I think the modern left's 52:03 political views aren't that different 52:04 from Stalinism. They just don't have the 52:06 balls Stalinism had. 52:09 I'd actually argue they're very 52:10 different. So, here is where I would 52:11 argue that they're different and this is 52:12 something we talk about a lot on our 52:13 podcast is, um, 52:15 that historically leftism was motivated 52:18 by equality. It was trying to create, 52:21 um, even if everyone we had less 52:23 resources, at least they all had closer 52:25 to equal resources. Now, it never 52:26 actually worked out that way, because 52:27 that creates power vacuums, which um the 52:30 argument we use in our book is you can 52:31 envision an upside-down pyramid, but it 52:32 always collapses into the shape of a 52:34 pyramid, which is just like a 52:35 dictatorship. Uh, but anyway, the the 52:37 new left is motivated by something 52:39 different. They're motivated by the 52:40 removal by negative utilitarianism, by 52:43 the removal of all negative emotions. 52:45 Um, so, uh, if you look at like weird 52:48 things they're doing, like in California 52:49 where they're trying to remove like 52:51 testing from school systems, right? 52:53 Because some kids failed their test. 52:54 Like obviously that's going to increase 52:56 inequality, because rich kids' families 52:58 will still pay for them to go to SAT 52:59 prep, will still like instill these 53:01 values in them, but it does remove 53:03 in-the-moment emotional pain. Like why 53:04 are they handing out like fentanyl on 53:06 street corners if like obviously that 53:08 increases inequality and and the rich 53:10 people who can afford, you know, to go 53:11 to rehab and stuff like that, they get 53:12 out of these situations? It's because it 53:14 removes in-the-moment emotional pain. 53:16 And I think so much of their ideology 53:18 today can be understood by the promise 53:21 of removing in-the-moment emotional 53:22 pain, whereas when we say, what is 53:24 rightism today, what is conservatism 53:26 today? It's an alliance of cultural 53:28 groups that want to ensure 53:30 intergenerational cultural transfer and 53:33 intergenerational cultural thriving. I 53:36 agree with that. So, I'm your I'm your 53:37 test market. I grew up as a 53:38 left-of-center classic liberal 53:40 socialist, um, you know, very active in 53:43 the civil rights movement, all that kind 53:44 of stuff. And what drove me was the 53:47 desire for fundamental fairness 53:49 and justice and equality and that sort 53:50 of thing. Okay, that that's what drove 53:51 me. I can't relate to this new brand new 53:54 brand, because as you say, I think 53:56 absolutely the new brand group wants 53:59 what wants what it wants the way it 54:00 wants it, logic or consequences be 54:03 damned. And to your point, and I really 54:04 love your point, which is, and I want to 54:06 I don't want to have any negative 54:08 feelings, negative exposure. You have to 54:09 accept me completely as I am. Any of my 54:11 behaviors, any of the things I do should 54:13 be accepted, no matter how good or bad 54:16 they are, and you don't get to judge me. 54:18 Yeah. No, you're you're absolutely 54:20 right. Well, and what is a trigger 54:22 warning if not that? I don't want to 54:23 hear ideas that could cause emotional 54:25 pain. I I don't want to engage with 54:27 anything. But what a great system, 54:29 because when you think about emotional 54:31 pain and offense, like what is that 54:32 flagging for you? It's flagging things 54:34 that may lead you to change your mind. 54:36 It it's flagging for you things that may 54:39 challenge your worldview. Like if 54:40 somebody came to me and it was like, 54:41 yeah, Malcolm, you're fat, I'd be like, 54:43 I wouldn't be offended by that. But if 54:45 they attacked me for something like, you 54:47 know, like saying, Malcolm, sometimes 54:48 you talk over your wife, I am offended 54:49 by that, because I don't want to be 54:50 somebody who does that, and I know 54:51 sometimes I do that, right? So, that 54:53 does actually hurt me, right? Um, and 54:56 and if you can build an ideological 54:58 structure which flags everything that 55:00 causes any emotional pain in a person 55:02 and says, you don't hear these things, 55:04 then that logical structure becomes 55:06 immune to any sort of external 55:09 challenge. And so, it's a really really 55:11 really powerful like immune system for 55:15 this sort of virus to build around 55:16 itself to protect the people it infected 55:19 from uh sort of leaving the cult. Okay. 55:21 So, what I'd like to do, and I know 55:22 we're planning to wrap up it eventually, 55:24 you've covered a lot of great ground 55:25 here, and what I like is that you not 55:27 only framed the problem, the root causes 55:29 of it, what's what's driving all of 55:30 this, the consequence if we don't change 55:32 it, plus you're coming up with 55:33 solutions. You you have recommended, you 55:36 know, prescriptions for how to fix this. 55:38 Um, and then we're also uh you're also 55:40 delving into, well, what what's going to 55:42 keep this from happening? There's some 55:43 thinking that's keeping uh that that 55:45 that that stands in the way of maybe, 55:47 um, you know, re-educating the world or 55:49 getting people to think differently, 55:50 etc., because they have this ingrained 55:52 thinking. Um, they don't want to deal 55:54 with cognitive dissonance, etc. I am 55:56 5'8", 196 lb. 55:58 Yeah. That's fact. I need to be 175. 56:01 I'm okay with acknowledging the fact 56:03 that I'm 20-plus pounds overweight. But 56:05 it doesn't, you know, but no, the 56:07 alternative that you're talking about 56:08 is, oh no, you need to accept me and 56:10 tell me that at 196 lb, I'm 150. 56:13 No. 56:14 Right? 56:15 be pretty hateful not to. Yeah, 56:17 absolutely. Um, so you I I I I love 56:19 where this is going. I I want curious 56:21 how people can connect with you. I'm 56:22 curious how they can learn more about uh 56:24 your institute, your podcast, your 56:26 writings, etc. Where should people go to 56:28 see all that? Well, I'll I'll get to all 56:30 that, but I'm going to start with the 56:31 structure, you know, what's the problem, 56:33 and then we'll get to all that, right? 56:34 So, problem. What's causing it today? 56:36 There's a number of things that we 56:37 haven't touched on. First one we haven't 56:39 touched on is biological. You know, uh 56:41 uh male sperm rates have declined by 56:44 over 50 51% in the last 50 years. You 56:47 know, I testosterone rates have declined 56:49 by something like 30% in the last 20 56:50 years. It might be 20% in the last 30 56:51 years. Whatever, it's like a huge 56:53 amount. Um, if you're looking at, um, 56:55 you know, endocrine disruptors in our 56:57 environment, you know, one great study 56:58 we saw recently, we've talked about this 56:59 a lot on our program, is that like males 57:01 and females are changing, like 57:02 biologically. So, endocrine disruptors, 57:04 which are really big, there's been some 57:05 studies that look on male children that 57:07 were uh exposed to endocrine disruptors 57:09 in utero and they had uh lower androgen 57:11 resistance. 57:13 What? What's an endocrine disruptor? Oh, 57:15 uh it basically disrupts the hormones 57:18 that are used in uh gender 57:20 differentiation, uh both as an adult and 57:23 and uh in utero. So, 57:26 Like plastic? Estrogen repressors? Well, 57:29 you can look it up. Yeah, but there was 57:30 one great study that showed that that 57:32 these infants that were in utero, these 57:34 male infants, they were born with lower 57:35 anogenital distance, which basically 57:37 shows they hadn't fully differentiated 57:39 into males. And when they were 7 years 57:42 old, there was a follow-up study that 57:43 showed that they exhibited less 57:44 male-like play behavior. They they 57:46 played more like a female would play. 57:48 So, we have all of these these things, 57:51 you know, from testosterone, to sperm 57:52 rates, everything like that. And then in 57:53 women, you know, I think most people who 57:55 know women who have tried to get 57:55 pregnant today, a huge number of them 57:57 are having a real hard time getting 57:58 pregnant. We are becoming increasingly 58:00 infertile. And the reason that is 58:02 happening is when the environmental 58:04 activists were out there trying to 58:05 remove all these things that cause 58:07 cancer, that caused all these other 58:09 problems in humans, that caused problems 58:10 in our environment, the one thing they 58:12 didn't care about at all is things that 58:13 caused infertility or things that caused 58:16 like gen- different like gender um 58:18 patterns. Yeah, and and so they just 58:20 didn't care. And like I I guess I get 58:22 it, you know, like it didn't align with 58:23 their ideology at the time, it didn't 58:24 matter, they were trying to lower 58:25 population rates anyway. 58:27 Um, so, uh the these things exist at 58:30 really high rates in our in our 58:31 environments today. So, we are 58:32 biologically becoming less fertile. We 58:34 are socially becoming less fertile. This 58:36 is what we've talked about with this 58:38 you know, urban monoculture, right? And 58:41 we are um 58:44 uh uh economically becoming less 58:46 fertile. And this is for a reason 58:47 different than people think. It's not 58:48 that we can't afford to raise kids 58:49 anymore. It's that laws are being put in 58:51 place by those in positions of power 58:54 that make it less economically feasible 58:56 to have kids, often the more wealth you 58:58 have. You know, the this can be things 59:00 like car seat regulations or stuff like 59:01 that, you know, which really limit you 59:03 to the number of car seats you can fit 59:05 in a car. Whereas for a population to 59:07 stay stable, you know, as we often say, 59:09 uh if you have a population where a 59:12 third of people are having no kids and a 59:14 third of people are having two kids, and 59:15 I think this is broadly Gen Z would say 59:17 this would 59:18 would be generous for them, that means 59:20 for them to stay stable, the final third 59:22 would have to have over four kids. 59:24 That's just like very difficult to do, 59:26 and well over four kids, six, seven, 59:28 eight kids. Um, but uh the the the 59:31 biggest economic problem around kids is 59:33 actually capitalism. I love capitalism, 59:35 right? I think it's a great economic 59:37 system. The problem is 59:39 is it's very bad at thinking long term. 59:42 And this is the core reason why wealthy 59:44 people have less kids than less wealthy 59:45 people. Is the economic system is very 59:47 good at dynamically judging the value of 59:51 an individual to its productivity and 59:54 can pay them the minimum amount it needs 59:56 to to get them to not spend time on 59:58 other things. I either family and stuff 1:00:00 like that. And because it's, you know, 1:00:02 it's almost systemically incapable of 1:00:04 thinking long term unless you put like 1:00:06 the political mandates like people who 1:00:08 have a certain number of kids don't have 1:00:09 to pay taxes or something. It's unable 1:00:12 to adjust for that. And and that is 1:00:14 partially why people who have more money 1:00:16 have less kids. And it's partially why 1:00:18 in countries where the average wage is 1:00:20 under $5,000, those are often the only 1:00:22 countries with above repopulation 1:00:24 fertility rates. And and what's 1:00:26 happening there is that um 1:00:28 they're not really engaged in the modern 1:00:30 economic system. They're they're 1:00:31 they're, you know, when you're at that 1:00:33 lower level of wealth. But the other 1:00:34 thing to note is if you like grade 1:00:36 countries and you're like, okay, who has 1:00:38 the highest fertility rate you know, 1:00:40 versus lowest. Generally it grades on 1:00:42 how much wealth that country has, you 1:00:43 know, except you will notice outliers 1:00:46 all over the place, right? And the core 1:00:49 thing that you find with outliers is how 1:00:52 much hope they have in the future and 1:00:55 how much hope they have in the future 1:00:56 for their people. A great example of 1:00:59 this is the only really persistent 1:01:01 fertility gain that have ever happened 1:01:03 in a country. Countries have tried weird 1:01:05 things like Romania tried banning 1:01:06 abortion and it like raised fertility 1:01:08 rate for like 2 years and then it came 1:01:09 crashing down again. 1:01:11 The only place where we've seen a 1:01:12 persistent jump in a country that would 1:01:14 have a really low fertility rate was 1:01:15 Georgia during I want to say the Rose 1:01:17 Revolution or the Revolution of Roses. 1:01:20 Where we saw really big fertility gain 1:01:21 afterwards. And that was when they 1:01:22 kicked out the last of the communist 1:01:24 political class because they had hope 1:01:27 again, you know. And this is why you see 1:01:30 you know, in China right now, the reason 1:01:31 they're having such a hard time 1:01:32 motivating 1:01:33 reproduction is I think that the classic 1:01:36 the lying flat movement or the classic 1:01:39 example here would be the we are the 1:01:40 last generation meme where somebody 1:01:42 would knocking on their door and was 1:01:43 like if you don't do what I'm telling 1:01:44 you to do, 1:01:45 you and your family for three 1:01:47 generations will be punished by the 1:01:49 government. And they go, oh, well, we 1:01:50 are the last generation. And they 1:01:51 slammed the door on them. 1:01:53 And what they meant by that is if you 1:01:55 and and this is a sentiment you see in a 1:01:57 lot of countries. When people feel like 1:01:58 they're having kids just for the benefit 1:02:01 of like an economic ruling elite class 1:02:03 so they can stay in their positions of 1:02:04 cush economic power, they're not going 1:02:06 to do it, right? And this is why block 1:02:07 countries have so few kids often 1:02:09 compared to their economic situation. 1:02:11 However, it's also why Israel has such a 1:02:14 high fertility rate. Because, you know, 1:02:16 when a Jew in Israel is having a kid, 1:02:17 they don't feel like they're doing it to 1:02:19 to benefit the economic elite of their 1:02:21 country. They're doing it to because 1:02:23 they like being Jewish, they want more 1:02:24 Jews, they think this is a system that 1:02:26 works. 1:02:27 And and I think that that's something 1:02:29 that we really need to for all of the 1:02:30 people who are going to get through 1:02:31 this, they need to learn to build a 1:02:34 culture that they are proud of and that 1:02:36 they believe there is some form of hope 1:02:37 for in the future and to not teach this 1:02:39 mental desolation to our kids because 1:02:42 this doomerism pervades the world today. 1:02:45 And then to the question of how do we 1:02:47 fix this? Well, we've been working on a 1:02:48 few things. You know, I was mentioning 1:02:49 dating things. So we're doing this with 1:02:51 the Pro-Natalist Institute. You can 1:02:52 check us out at pronatalist.org. 1:02:55 But the biggest project we're working on 1:02:57 right now is the Collins Institute, 1:02:58 which is collinsinstitute.org. And with 1:03:01 this we're trying to create an alternate 1:03:02 education system other than the public 1:03:04 education system that is better 1:03:06 performing and that doesn't try to 1:03:08 indoctrinate kids into this urban 1:03:10 monoculture because if it turns out that 1:03:12 only these sort of 1:03:13 deviant individuals within our society, 1:03:15 those with some sort of like ideological 1:03:17 mutation that somehow make them still 1:03:20 create kids within current like economic 1:03:22 and social environments, well, we need 1:03:24 to protect them. You know, we need to 1:03:26 build we need to help them thrive 1:03:28 without trying to deconvert them. A lot 1:03:30 of people think like, why are you not 1:03:32 trying to make people more people just 1:03:34 like you? Like like why don't you just 1:03:35 convert people to your way of thinking? 1:03:37 And I'm like, look, we are in an 1:03:38 incredibly precarious position of the 1:03:39 species right now. Every family is a 1:03:42 hypothesis right now. A hypothesis for 1:03:44 how we can intergenerationally motivate 1:03:47 reproduction. And we are at a higher 1:03:49 chance of losing civilizationally the 1:03:52 fewer hypotheses are being tested. 1:03:55 And so that's why I don't you know, I my 1:03:56 family's got our hypothesis. You try 1:03:58 your thing. And then finally, the place 1:04:00 where we've been putting a lot of effort 1:04:01 these days is Base Camp. We have a book 1:04:03 series five books to pro 1:04:05 series at our camp 1:04:06 relationships, 1:04:08 government, and crafting religion. 1:04:09 Crafting religion is probably the best 1:04:10 of the series, I think. One of them was 1:04:12 a Wall Street Journal bestseller 1:04:14 recently, topped the nonfiction list. 1:04:16 So they did do pretty good. 1:04:18 But 1:04:19 they all sell for like a dollar or like 1:04:21 $2. Like we take no money from them. It 1:04:22 all goes to charity. 1:04:24 But our core thing right now is the 1:04:25 podcast, which is Base Camp. And we do 1:04:26 an episode every weekday. 1:04:28 If if people are interested in in 1:04:31 reaching out or joining this, I I think 1:04:32 the core thing we're trying to do here 1:04:34 is just begin to build a movement. Begin 1:04:37 to build awareness of this 1:04:38 civilizational game at play and stop 1:04:41 playing the old game. 1:04:44 You know, we want to build an alliance 1:04:46 of the groups that will exist into the 1:04:47 future. And these groups don't fall 1:04:51 exactly into traditional, you know, 1:04:53 optimization functions around 1:04:55 traditional progressivism or traditional 1:04:56 conservatism. You know, one of the 1:04:58 things I always point out here is if you 1:04:59 look between countries. So 1:05:02 the progressives might say here 1:05:03 fertility rates are falling, let's give 1:05:04 cash handouts. And you're like, well, 1:05:05 that doesn't work. Hungary spent 5% of 1:05:07 its GDP last year doing that and only 1:05:08 got fertility rates up by like 1.6%, 1:05:10 right? So it doesn't it doesn't seem to 1:05:12 work. And there's been great great long 1:05:14 large studies on this. You get very you 1:05:16 can do it, but it just costs too much to 1:05:18 be sustainable. And then conservatives 1:05:21 are like, well, ban immigration. Like 1:05:22 let's keep our country as it is, like 1:05:24 homogeneous. And I'm like, well, the 1:05:27 problem is is we know what happens. 1:05:28 Other countries have tried this. Korea 1:05:30 has tried this, right? You know, the 1:05:31 countries with the lowest fertility rate 1:05:33 in the world today, if you're looking at 1:05:34 wealthy countries, are the least 1:05:36 diverse. The countries with the highest 1:05:37 fertility rate in the world today, 1:05:39 wealthy countries, are the most diverse. 1:05:40 You're looking at countries like the US 1:05:42 and Israel right now, right? 1:05:44 And and and it's for all people within 1:05:46 within that cultural group. So it's just 1:05:48 being aware of the new game. And the new 1:05:50 game 1:05:52 is is this I guess sort of 1:05:54 individual hypothesis or cultural group 1:05:57 hypothesis in helping your cultural 1:05:58 group into the future instead of 1:06:00 focusing overly on on um 1:06:03 national identity and stuff like that. 1:06:05 That's a common feature at Dark Ages 1:06:07 where if you want to look at 1:06:08 civilizational cycles, things go into a 1:06:11 more local level because a Dark Age 1:06:13 occurs when your macro civilizational 1:06:15 strategy is no longer effective. And so 1:06:17 when the Roman strategy is no longer 1:06:19 effective, you have the French strategy, 1:06:21 the 1:06:22 Italian strategy, the North African 1:06:25 strategy, and 1:06:28 um 1:06:29 I I can see that happening in our 1:06:31 future. 1:06:32 Um 1:06:33 Thank you so much for coming, Malcolm. 1:06:35 It's been a pleasure. I had a great time 1:06:37 and I really respect your work. And you 1:06:39 know, everyone should really just binge 1:06:41 his videos over and over again if you 1:06:43 want to get an understanding of what's 1:06:44 really going on in the world today. 1:06:46 Well, this was fascinating and I 1:06:48 appreciate you articulating these things 1:06:49 very well. Really appreciate it. And I 1:06:51 hope more people sort of come because 1:06:52 this issue should um go beyond left or 1:06:56 right. This is not a left or right 1:06:57 issue. It's not a race issue, etc. It is 1:07:00 a survival of the species issue. I think 1:07:01 what you're doing is very important. 1:07:04 We appreciate your being here with us. 1:07:06 I loved joining you guys. Great 1:07:09 conversation. 1:07:09 a pleasure. I'm going to stop recording 1:07:11 now.