Why is Self Control Sinful to Progressives?

<p><strong>We discuss how modern progressive culture glorifies losing self-control, pursuing pleasure/happiness as the highest aim in life, and avoiding discomfort. We contrast this with historical and conservative values around self-mastery, overcoming fear/anxiety, and finding meaning by improving future generations. We argue the progressive view diminishes human potential and actual happiness.</strong></p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> [00:00:00] humans don't actually feel that much happiness.</p><p>And so when you get out and you attempt to maximize your own personal pleasure, You have a deep realization of how trivial your life and existence is every single day. Yeah. Because you are experiencing everything good that you have brought to the world. And it's this</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> fleeting, actually not terribly satisfying feeling.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Life is about not cultivating positive emotional states, not the things that evolved into us, but intergenerational improvement, this expansion of human potentiality</p><p>in truth, doing whatever you want, whenever you feel like it does not cultivate human potential, it diminishes it.</p><p>It is sand on a fire. but what's really interesting is that an individual who lives for hedonism.</p><p>will always be less happy than an individual who lives for something else. the only real happiness you will ever experience is efficacious living your [00:01:00] values. Yeah. And if those values are happiness, then you'll never experience true happiness in your life.</p><p>And so many people was in this far progressive movement, never do.</p><p>Would you like to know more?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> This topic is an interesting one. Speaking of me losing self control right now, which is. Self control is seen in some ways as sinful within the urban monoculture in our society today, which some people identify with the progressive movement. I mean, that's largely what they're fighting for the urban monoculture.</p><p>To tell an individual you should not do that thing. When that thing that they are doing doesn't directly cause any negative impact on another person is seen as. A sinful thing to do. Now what's interesting is is it is even seen as sinful if that thing causes them negative consequences in the future So if I say something like do not eat that thing and and and because you'll get fat [00:02:00] and You will feel bad about that in the future that scene is a bad thing to to tell someone to notify them of that reality This is The haze movement and everything like that.</p><p>And I could go deep on the haze movement in an episode. It's really interesting for people aren't familiar as the healthy at every size movement. And it's the movement that's gotten really big around saying that</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> no pun intended</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> really big saying that being overweight is unhealthy. And one of the articles that, that was done on us when they were like researching us afterwards, they're like, oh, this whatever couple, well, you don't know this about them. . It was the best journalism ever done on us. They somehow found our Reddit history, which Oh, wasn't that</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> a Vice article?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> And they were going through our internet history and they were like, these two, you would think like innocuous individuals.</p><p>Did you know he liked a post that was laughing at fat people having to go to the zoo to get an MRI? And I'm like, yeah, I did. I'd like, did you know that he follows like Kotaku in action [00:03:00] on Reddit? And I was like, wow. It's funny that they can't see. I used to follow Tumblr in action. Right. I mean,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> like if I.</p><p>If I had to, I mean, I feel like it's a beached whale right now because I'm so pregnant, like. I would laugh. I would laugh if I was obese and had to go to the zoo to get an MRI. Wouldn't you laugh? I would laugh.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I think it's objectively funny. It's one of those things that when we talk about our model for what makes people laugh at something, it's when something is surprising, you didn't expect it, but it makes sense in context.</p><p>Yeah. Never something surprising. But make sense in context, that's what causes laughter and our hypothesis around laughter for people who aren't familiar with this theory, because we haven't done it in a few long time, I think we've only talked about in one of our early episodes is that it originally evolved in Children and it made the person that they were doing this to feel good about themselves.</p><p>And so the person would repeat the action. And the reason why the child was basically asking the parent to repeat the action That was surprising, but made [00:04:00] sense or some level of sense in context is they were trying to sort of make the mental connections around that until it was no longer funny, i. e.</p><p>until the thing that didn't kind of made sense in context, but was surprising was no longer surprising. They're like, Oh, okay, I understand this now. And this is why peekaboo is one of the longest things that makes kids laugh under around the age when they're learning object permanent and around the age where they are learning sort of theory of mind of other people.</p><p>Are, what? She's still there? I guess it kind of makes sense that she's still there when her hands are there, but it's a little surprising to me. And, and so that is, and that's an important concept for kids to get, so that's why they left. And then any of these concepts that were useful for kids. End up becoming something that the adult mind will hijack.</p><p>We say, this is what we think happened with the love reaction with the laughter reaction. It became sort of hijacked in courtship rituals when it hadn't turned off properly. You can read one of our books to go into our three on this more, but in this, what we wanna talk about is sit the, the [00:05:00] idea that self-control is sinful.</p><p>And like, where did this come from and why is it so critical and why does it cause so much damage? And where I really started to like. Wow, like I, I got how normalized it is within the progressive world and how not normalized it is within ours is I was following one of my friends on Facebook and they had this message in, in one of their private groups where they were like, I really want to sleep with this guy.</p><p>And they weren't sure whether they should or should not sleep with this guy. Like they didn't, sorry, they didn't really want to sleep with this guy. They had entertained the notion of sleeping with this guy, and this guy had said, I am open to sleeping with you. And so they were sort of stressing about the idea of, will I feel better?</p><p>Like, like, will it make me happier long term? To sleep with them, or is it better to just not deal with it because of the potential negative social ramifications and negative emotions that could create in me to sleep with them, right? [00:06:00] Now, this is really interesting for two reasons. I mean, what it's so far down this progressive monoculture that Whether or not you have sex with an individual is completely determinant on how it makes you feel about yourself.</p><p>Good feel in the moment. That's a very odd, I mean, that does show, like, that is complete dedication to the urban monoculture in terms of how you interpret things. Logically</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> consistent, yeah.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, it's logically consistent but then, too, I realize I haven't. In years ever ask myself, what will make me happier when I was trying to make a difficult decision like this has never been the thing I was optimizing around even when I had a more atheistic structures in my brain.</p><p>It was always well, what matters more for my mission, like my intrinsic value, the thing I think has value in society. And when I would do something that would make me happy. The justification I would use is I was doing it so that I would not be distracted by these lower order desires. The analogy I use in some of the [00:07:00] tracks that are yet to come for this is that, , we all have this ancestor inside of us, this, this four legged individual that is, that is from this evolutionary time period where our ancestors who had certain inclinations had more surviving offspring than other ancestors.</p><p>And. We're sort of like a person in a cage with this, you know, you can, if you don't feed it at all, it will attack you. That's not a good idea. If your logic doesn't feed it at all, it will attack you. But if you feed it too much, it will become stronger and stronger and stronger to the point where your logic can't resist it anymore.</p><p>And you are just a slave. To this four legged creature inside of you. And to us, the way you and I have always defined sort of humanity, and this was the theory you came up with Simone, is how far are you from this thing? This is how you define civilization as well, you were mentioning. Is, is civilized societies are the ones that are better at suppressing these instinctual parts of ourselves?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> What makes us Yeah, that express the [00:08:00] very most self control.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, I mean, do you want to talk on this topic a bit before I go further?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, I mean, one is I'm just curious. What do you think of the decisions that man and woman could have made would have maximized their hedonic enjoyment?</p><p>Well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I pointed out in my response to this, you commented on this. Oh, of course. Yeah. It is important to remember that sometimes or almost always what would make me happiest if I just asked what would make me happiest every day, I'd spend every day at home drinking and playing video games. I would never leave the house.</p><p>May have a, a few plates of exotic cheeses or something like that. But other than that, you know, I, I would do nothing. I, I feel like</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> after like one and a half days of that, you'd start to feel</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> miserable. Maybe you would, but what I would say is that. I do that so little because there's always little things in life.</p><p>Like, do I want to go, like, you know, I booked a scuba trip or [00:09:00] something, right? I got to wake up at like 5 a. m. I mean, I typically wake up before that, but I have to leave the house at 5 a. m. Right. You know, go out, get everything ready, go in, you know, jump in where it may be cold or something like that.</p><p>All of these incremental steps are painful, but I know that after the scuba trip, I will be happier that I did it than that I didn't do it, right? Yeah, yeah. This was back when I was still tempted by expensive hobbies like this. Solo things? Ugh. Yeah, which I don't do as much anymore, but it, you know, it's an important there are so many things in life like these sort of more complicated rituals or things you can go out there and do that in the long term are going to make you happier, even if in the moment they are not your source of highest happiness.</p><p>And so I told them to consider that sex with this individual may be that type of thing and to consider it was in that context.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> See, I would say just like clearly don't have sex because you're going to have way more fun with sexual tension. Like, I think about, like, most movies That is</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> such a woman [00:10:00] response.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Most movies and television shows. Like it's all about the sexual tension. And then even after like, I guarantee</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you, none of our male listeners, they're like, this woman does not understand the male. No, the men are not having funny and fun, fun being teased and baited.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Okay. But I wanted</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> to talk about, so one instance, You know, like, well, no, no, no.</p><p>I</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> mean, to your, to your more important point, right? The actual substantive point of what, what makes us human, what makes humanity special is the fact that we have this prefrontal cortex, that we have the ability to override our instincts and say, here are ideas that I think are in the best interests of my values or morals, things that can be totally unmoored from even our survival.</p><p>And then we can act on those. That is what makes us human. That definition is the only thing that separates us, as far as I am concerned. And so, yes, the more that you separate yourself from your hedonic instincts and needs, and this includes, like, you know, if you're fearful of something, if you have anxiety, [00:11:00] avoiding that.</p><p>That includes that, which is also a big thing in progressive circles. The less, the less you Sorry, the more you, you distance yourself from that, the more you become human. So, also, you could see how this, very inconveniently, as far as I'm concerned, because I want to be really, really nice to all progressive groups, can dehumanize progressive groups, in my view, because they are choosing to grow closer.</p><p>To their instincts and animalistic selves and further away from that, which I define as human, which is well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> no, and this is, this is sort of around all of our belief structures and everything like that is this framework of what makes somebody human. And, and we see this, not just in like these lower order desires, all of our pre programmed behavioral patterns, like super soft culture, mysticism, stuff like that.</p><p>The stuff we design describe as witchcraft in our witchcraft video. To us, these people are moving back to this you know, sort of pre Abrahamic animalistic like tradition. They're [00:12:00] moving back to their pre programmed self and, and that, that is the opposite of, of human. That is to become less than the barbarian, right?</p><p>It's to</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> revert. It's just to revert, which is very, very sad.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, not just revert. It's not like civilization is a direction that always goes in one way, but we do see. Human history is being a conflict between the restrained and the controlled and the then redirected at things of value and purpose and then sort of letting the cold take you like, you know, you're freezing out in the, in the wilderness and before you die.</p><p>It begins to feel warm and nice a bit. And the person who is like, Oh, this is nice. I'll take off all my clothes. Paradoxical undressing that's called. When people are freezing to death, that's sort of what we see this as instead of the person who goes to the fire, the struggle, people say the struggle burns you.</p><p>Yeah, it does burn you, but it also motivates you to do [00:13:00] better. It's the burning that is keeping you alive. It's keeping the vitality, humanity alive. And we all freeze in the vacuum of space without it, but I need to get back to the question at hand because there's a few other interesting points about this that I really want to elucidate on one is just like the mental health issue here.</p><p>If you tell an individual, you know, you can do whatever you feel like doing, whatever you feel like doing it, you know, always optimize for your happiness. So long as it's not like interfering with other people's lives, you are demonstrably hurting that individual's mental health. For two big reasons.</p><p>One is if an individual, all religions, all old cultures have some sort of arbitrary self denial ritual, whether it's Lent or Ramadan or Feast of the Firstborn, it's because self denial. is important. This is why all religions have self denial rules, right? Self denial is important because it strengthens your inhibitory pathways in your prefrontal cortex, as Simone was saying.</p><p>These pathways become weak, like your brain is sort of like a muscle in a [00:14:00] way, like I hate that</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> analogy. Pretty much everything though, pretty much everything with the human body though seems to have a use it or lose it factor. So</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> yeah, if you do not use your inhibitory pathways regularly, Intrusive thoughts are just gonna like plow through and you won't be able to shut them down.</p><p>You won't have</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> a higher rate of anxiety. I lived this. Like, I lived this before I met you. I was alone with my intrusive thoughts. And you gave me basically bigger things to worry about. And I have my, like, I am so much lower on the intrusive thought front. It is insane. You're</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> so happy and calm now compared to what you were.</p><p>You were like really agitated when I met you. Oh, I couldn't,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> there were like things that would render me basically useless for weeks as I just dreaded them, you know, and it was dumb stuff like eating out for dinner with people in the evening. So yeah, I totally get</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> this. Yeah. So, so, Well, and it is a level of self ownership.</p><p>One of the stories you told me recently is somebody you heard who had a similar sort of OCD as you was like, Oh my God, I [00:15:00] stress so much about eating with the utensils at restaurants that I know that other people have used. Yeah. Which in your response to me was. Why don't they just bring their own with them?</p><p>That's what I've been doing ever since I met you. And it's, it's one of these things that shows a level of, this is the difference between an external locus of control and an internal locus of control. Are things my mind to control? Like, do I control the world around me? Is it my job to fix the things around me?</p><p>Or is it just, I allow the world to act on me? And A concept we'll get into in both the religious tracks and in future episodes is this concept we have of spiral energy versus non anti anti spiral energy. Where spiral energy, this would be a huge, this would be a very clear example of a spiral energy thinking versus anti spiral energy thinking.</p><p>Is it, you know, the level of I have ownership over my reality, my reality does not have ownership over me. And the, so you get these negative effects like that, but then also this idea of I'm just [00:16:00] going to go out. constantly chase hedonism has a huge negative effect on the amount of hedonism that you're able to get.</p><p>And this is really, really, really critical to understand as well. And it's a fairly difficult concept to explain because it's both true at the biological, but also at the conceptual level. If I define my life, By how good I feel like if that's a core thing of value to me when I go out in the world and I do Something that feels good.</p><p>Like I've done the thing of value that I have. I know and have experienced Exactly how much value I have brought into the world Whereas, if I define my value based on something other than myself, like for me, it's helping the billions of humans that will exist after me, hundreds of billions of humans that will exist after me, and iteratively improving their quality of life and building [00:17:00] structures and beliefs and ways of interacting In the now that reverberate and affect all of human history.</p><p>So when I do something good, you know, I under some austerity to do it. And then I do it. And I don't get to feel it. I don't get to really fully know. All of the good that comes from the thing I did. I can conceptually imagine it, the hundreds of billions of people, but I don't know it, right? Now, this is important because humans don't actually feel that much happiness.</p><p>And so when you get out and you attempt to maximize your own personal pleasure, You have a deep realization of how trivial your life and existence is every single day. Yeah. Because you are experiencing everything good that you have brought to the world. And it's this</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> fleeting, actually not terribly satisfying feeling.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yes. And that's the biggest problem with hedonism. The biggest problem with hedonism is that it [00:18:00] reveals the triviality of your own life. To, to the hedonist. Now I don't think life is trivial. I think life is a deeply important thing, but I think that's because life is about not cultivating positive emotional states, not the things that evolved into us, but as well, I guess we can talk about it right here.</p><p>It's the spiral energy, human potentiality. When we have this concept that we talk about of every man's role, like what defines a good life when we quote, when would read, you know, we think of as a prophet he defines a life well lived. Did you make the next generation better than you? Yeah. That's, that's how you define a life well lived.</p><p>And people hear that and they're like, that seems like a really weird thing to build your entire life around. And this is where. And we'll, we definitely will do a Gurren Lagann episode, but Gurren Lagann in anime does a very good job with this concept of spiral versus anti spiral energy. Where the heroes are fighting on the behalf of spiral [00:19:00] energy and the bad guys are fighting on the behalf of anti spiral energy.</p><p>And spiral energy Is what we mean when we say intergenerational improvement, this expansion of human potentiality and an expansion of human potentiality that is so enormous that because, because that's the point of the spiral, right? Every time it goes around, it's getting exponentially larger in volume.</p><p>Our ancestors, you know, four or five generations ago, couldn't even be able to conceive that we have. Thinking machines now, you know that we can talk to this insane even, even for two generations ago, two, three generations from now they will be as exponentially greater than us as we are from our ancestors in terms of their cognition, their interaction with reality.</p><p>Well, and then this is one of the reasons we have such hot. Stillity as well towards frozen traditions, right? [00:20:00] Traditions are good insofar as they evolve and keep humanity focused on the things that are actually important. This expansion of human potentiality to us, but I'm open to other things of importance.</p><p>What I am not open to. Is this sort of general utilitarianism, hedonistic utilitarianism, I call it which is to just sort of expand good happiness units throughout the world. It seems very obvious to me that is not why we're alive, but what's really interesting is that an individual who lives for hedonism.</p><p>will always be less happy than an individual who lives for something else. And we've talked about this on other things, you know, your rock stars, your movie stars, who should have all the hedonism they want. And you know, you and I know a number of billionaires, they're generally not very happy people unless they're just totally and austerely dedicated to a higher cause.</p><p>Yeah.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> And even then ,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> that's necessarily, and this is a quote you came up with that I will always repeat and repeat and repeat[00:21:00] which is the only real happiness you will ever experience is efficacious living your values. Yeah. And if those values are happiness, then you'll never experience true happiness in your life.</p><p>And so many people was in this far progressive movement, never do.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, because we're not designed to be happy, we're designed to, to pursue things that we think will make us happy. But we're, we're not designed to be happy. It's, you know, like when you, when you take away any motivation to do anything, you die.</p><p>And if you're perfectly happy and content, you're not going to do anything. So, you know,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> we're really not designed for it. One of the things I find really interesting that I think a lot of people might have contextualized is the things that get popular was in the progressive sphere are often really core in their messages to aggrandizing individuals who live for this loss of self control.[00:22:00]</p><p>And a great example of this was Let It Go from Frozen. It is the loss of self control anthem.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> The anthem of a generation.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, it is a woman who felt constrained by the rules she felt she had to live with. And keep in mind, these rules were there for a good reason that she had to live with growing up.</p><p>And so When she was able to just not care about the rules anymore and do whatever she want whenever she wanted to She had true power like that is what her power was Her power was was was trapped by the individuals who said exercise self control And her power was unleashed when she no longer had to exercise self control.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> And when she abandoned her city slash kingdom to die in the frozen [00:23:00] tundra. Yes.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> To be clear, she was not actually showing power when she did. She was hurting everyone around her.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Like, even the show recorded that.</p><p>Oh, and I forgot here to mention wish the new Disney movie where the villain. Is a villain because he doesn't just grant everyone's wish immediately. And automatically he grants some wishes and not others. The idea that it would be considered sinful to not just give everyone what they want, regardless of the consequences.</p><p>Is so emblematic of this failure in progressive culture and this urban monoculture.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> And this also reminds me of the transition and transformation of the Harley Quinn character.</p><p>Hmm.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I don't know what happened to her. Did she start as Mannequin Crazy and become something other than Mannequin Crazy and [00:24:00] or dead?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> No, so she started very much. I mean, the mannequin crazy thing was either an act or brainwashing to impress an abusive partner. And she was seen as a weird sort of sex symbol to guys for a long time.</p><p>And then feminist authors took over her.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Oh, so you're talking about like the meta instance of, of like how her character. Her character's treatment evolved over time. Huh. Huh. Okay. Okay.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Where her craziness is her strength. And it's, I mean, it's a very uninteresting character in a lot of ways. Because it is what they are using to sort of edify themselves.</p><p>They see her partners as sort of, Constraining her and constraining her potential and then her craziness, her doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants is a sort of like a, a implementation or it cultivates her potential when in truth, doing whatever you want, whenever you feel like it does not cultivate human potential, it [00:25:00] diminishes it.</p><p>It is sand on a fire. And it is interesting to me when people from this urban monoculture, they interact with me and they go, Malcolm, you seem to be so energetic. You seem to be so full of vitality. Where does this come from? And I don't get that question as much in conservative circles because many conservative circles know zealots like me, you know, people who.</p><p>Have ordered their lives and are happy with that order because they are efficaciously living their value system. But progressives in their gray world of sadness, they haven't seen this. And they delude themselves. You know, we were talking about the Hays Movement earlier. One of the really interesting things about the Hays Movement is now it's seen as this female activist movement.</p><p>But like Hurley Quinn, it was started by chubby chasing men. It was originally started for chubby chasing men to normalize them sort of talking about how sexy their wives were to them. And this is like well documented. This is not like, my, [00:26:00] and then they began to use it and organize the Hays meetings for men who chased fat women to meet those women.</p><p>This was all organized by skinny white men. That was what started the Hays movement. And then. in the, in the days of intersectionality and everything like that, you know, fairly recently really was, you know, Tess Holliday and, and Regina George, I want to say what's her name or something. No, Regina George is Reagan.</p><p>Reagan. No, Reagan. Sorry. Tess Holliday and Reagan. Okay. That was when it really became more of like a codified thing. Reagan was the real one who did it. And she is, I don't know if she's still alive.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, there was this big kerfuffle in generally in the Hays community. This is totally off topic, but when Ozempic came out and a bunch of the Hays people started getting.</p><p>Skinny and losing weight. Whoops.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> You know, I can only imagine how gross it is to be around an overeater on Ozempic. Well, I mean, I mean, we talked about this in our</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> No, no, no, that's, yeah, except that [00:27:00] a lot of people who take Ozempic see apacite Suppression as well as more inhibitory control, which is really interesting.</p><p>It's like a I don't know if it's a placebo effect or something else is going on or things that are correlated with appetite Also can affect your like shopping and gambling behavior but people have reported that when they are on ozempic they also engage in Less in other</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> addictive creations. If I remember correctly, when you are hungry, you gamble more and shop more.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they say never go to a grocery store hungry. So, I mean, it's not. I mean,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> that's shopping for food, but I'm talking about like related to other things.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Although I don't know, like I, I hear it on both sides, like a lot of people who are big proponents of intermittent fasting like the added focus.</p><p>And I do too, of, of being. In a fasted state. well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I want to hear, I mean, do you have a thesis on this or any memories of feeling this way when you were in this progressive monoculture more yourself? If [00:28:00] somebody had said to you, like, it's a bad thing to just do whatever you want to do, so long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals or whatever it makes you happiest.</p><p>So long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals, whatever affirms your identity the most, so long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals, would you have seen that as an odd thing for someone to say? Like.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> That you can do whatever you feel like doing. No, that</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you shouldn't do whatever you feel like doing.</p><p>That you shouldn't.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, um.</p><p>It's, it's hard for me to say, like, things have gone way more off the rails now. Then they were when I was growing up in a hyper progressive culture. And I think a lot of people who are progressives feel that way. Like, wow, things used to be so reasonable and I had argued correct. And now they've completely gone off the rails.</p><p>And which is why there's this huge subset of progressives or like, I guess you could say more liberal people who have now been. Alienated by the progressive movement because they're like, no, no, no, hold on. You crossed a line here. This thing's crazy. Can't you understand this is really damaging what you're saying, whatever it may be.</p><p>And then, you [00:29:00] know, the progressive movement subsequently shuns them and they have to create their own sub stack and their own news outlets and all that. Which is, it's weird. Cause now there's just like weird. There are two versions of progressives, like the more sane ones who've been kicked out and then there are the insane ones who are staying in.</p><p>But I, I definitely do remember that when I showed maladaptive behaviors in within progressive culture, there was no like. Discussion of, you know, we're just not going to talk about this or, Oh, we're just going to ignore it. It was more something of like, Oh no, like let's, let's talk about this. Let's, this is a thing now we have to do something about it.</p><p>Which was really damaging. For example, I mean, I went to public school, so of course I got head lice multiple times. I don't, you probably did too. It's not just a public school. Oh yeah,</p><p>Menstrasse, the delouse. For your own good, you will cooperate. [00:30:00] You have LIES! You dare question me? Question my methods? You! Who stands to benefit the most from my work? You disgust me!</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I got head lice before. And the first time it ever happened to me, it's like any instance of being sick as a kid.</p><p>It's like, I don't know. Okay. I'm like home from school. Now I'm spending more time with like a parent or a caregiver. And like, that's not so bad. But then when it, when I first got head lice, my mom, especially was like, this is going to be so traumatic for her. This is going to be so terrible. Like, I don't know how to deal with this.</p><p>And she made it such a big thing that I developed this immense phobia. Of head lice going forward where like, I couldn't sit on public chairs or couches. No one could touch my hair. I had waist length hair and I cut it really short. And I combed my hair every single day with a lice comb, which is this really fine tooth comb.</p><p>[00:31:00] That is probably pretty damaging to hair. And I, I think that might be an instance of like, progressive culture, especially when it comes to the other element, which you've been talking a lot about pleasure, right? But then the other, the other instinctual thing or element of loss of self control, the progressive movement, I think perhaps even more damagingly.</p><p>Plays into is this concept of trauma or fears where it's like, oh, no, no, no, we're not gonna overcome them. We're not going to take our prefrontal cortex and say, Hey, I have something bigger to worry about right now. We're just gonna live all the way, like in our, you know, amygdala, like all the way back there.</p><p>Let's just stay there. Let's not go anywhere else. Let's just stay right back there and let's just live in the fear. And that, that is something that definitely happened. Not just with me, but with other peers and other issues where like, suddenly a friend of mine is seeing a therapist about a thing that like really isn't a thing, but their parents decided to make it a thing because that's kind of the culture.</p><p>And I think parents did that because they [00:32:00] grew up in a culture in which you would be seen as being a bad parent if your child experienced something potentially. Perhaps traumatic and you didn't make it a big deal. The whole sucking it up thing is interesting. I wish there, there may be research on this.</p><p>But like post traumatic stress disorder is a very big issue among. Veterans. Mm-Hmm. , right? It's, it's widely diagnosed. It's now widely treated, and there's some really cool, interesting, like psychedelics based treatments that are coming up that may help to address it. However people coming back from World War II in World War I also experienced extremely traumatic things.</p><p>Theoretically also post-traumatic stress disorder or syndrome. And I would love to see research on. The like negative behaviors associated with that condition in like the fifties and sixties and the twenties and thirties. [00:33:00] Versus we'll say the eighties and nineties and then the noughties like now, because I feel like people coming back from Vietnam, people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have seemed to, to not be dealing with it as well.</p><p>And is that an element of this, like, is there just an element of living in a culture? That doesn't believe in succumbing to your instincts or living anywhere else from except for your prefrontal cortex. Is that, is that what's harming us? And I mean, I guess, you know, you could say that really then the 1950s too was more civilized and you can see this and how, again, I keep talking about it, but my 1950s, you know, like instructional videos that I like watching on YouTube, but by corded films and these other ones are, there's, they're so.</p><p>Oriented around logic and the prefrontal cortex. And they're so fricking civilized where it's like, well, you know, Susie, Susie couldn't comb her hair in the morning and now no one, no one's going to love her ever.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> But like, but it's [00:34:00] true. I don't love women who don't comb their hair in the morning.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> It's true.</p><p>Yeah. Or like, you know, Billy can't help it, but buy a soda. So he's not going to get his camera that he wants. Cause he can't budget, you know, like it shows again and again. And it's so interesting that that's a recurring theme within these videos, but really the key to becoming. Civilized in the key to achieving any of these things that these videos were trying to teach kids to do, which ranged from hosting a dinner party well, to having a good marriage, to saving money through things, to just navigating society and maintaining a job.</p><p>They all had to do with this self control. So, yeah.</p><p>It's bad that it's become taboo to express self control.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I love you to death, Simone, and these episodes are always fun to make, so I appreciate you taking the time to do them with me, and I'm happy to have you back.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> You know what you should close with, to like show the extent to which our culture now no longer indulges in self control, is [00:35:00] Like maybe a clip showing new like Haagen Dazs commercials or ice cream commercials have people just eating out of the pint.</p><p>Diamonds. It could be</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> oh, yeah, that's the thing now, but hold on. No, I can do that, but there's another one I can also close with. Which I think shows how narcissistic and you know, the cultural genocide campaign that progressives are waging now, and they don't realize it. They don't realize how evil they look. So in Trolls 2 World Tour, Oh, well, there's a great scene where she is seeing what is coded in the movie as another culture for the first time, which is the country music trolls.</p><p>This song is so sad. It's so Different. Oh, they must not know that music's supposed to make you happy. Ah, that's awful.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Like, I need to enlighten them by making sure that they stop making music their way and start making music my way because their music that isn't [00:36:00] happy is bad.</p><p>Their music is no self control. This is the way that the progressives relate to the rural people when they get there. Don't they know the purpose of life is just to be happy. And we need to uplift them. And then I also, I also need to do the clip after that, where after, after doing this big happy song, she gets put in jail and they're like,</p><p>Now I want you three to sit in here And think about what you've just done That was a crime against music</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you need to think long and hard about the crime you just committed against music.</p><p>God.</p><p>The show actually just has a ton of great scenes. I really enjoyed it. And the aesthetics of it. But one in particular that I'm going to play here before we leave is.</p><p>It really sort of encapsulates whatever a behi comes to us and they're like, oh, what you guys are doing is.</p><p>just like what the Bahais are doing.</p><p>And I'm like, Hmm, you have severely misunderstood. If we combine our music, she'll see that music unites all trolls, and that we're all the same, and that she's one of us! [00:37:00] I mean, no disrespect, but King to Queen, anything but that. Why not?. I can make it right. History is just gonna keep repeating itself until we make everyone realize that we're all the same. But we're not all the same. Denying our differences is denying the truth of who we are.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Anyway, love you to death, Limone. I</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> love you and your immense self control. You all are awesome and inspiring.</p><p>Everything. I've ruined everything. I'm just trying to like, get comfortable, but it's like, I can't feel my hands anymore. Because of the cold? Because of the cold. I'm going to use this scarf here.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So, I just did something naughty and indulgent. I bought Octavian a toy on Amazon. Oh, f*****g dare you. He's been really excited about postal trucks.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Oh, he has, hasn't he? Well, and he loves his special deliveries. [00:38:00] Oh, that's sweet.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So a fan of ours sent him a a book that they had made. Like a children's book. Which Honestly, he's not as interested in the children's book, but they, but they sent it in a, in a cardboard container like a small one, but they had had their kids cover the container with stickers and, and like, I don't know, like glitter, like other fun stuff.</p><p>And so he loves. The container, the mail package, as he calls it, my mail and he, no, my package, my packaging, he'll put stuff in it. And this is how he got obsessed with mail trucks. Oh, is that it?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> No, he's, he's always big on like when a package was received, we just drop everything and open it. And what is it</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> and what's inside?</p><p>The difference about this one is it is decorated and it is smaller because it was like a small flat package. So we don't end up like breaking it down and throwing it out like all the other ones. And so it's been more persistent than the normal</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> packages. So nicely decorated. So he's in love with [00:39:00] it and sleeps with it every night.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I was going to say it was behind me right now. But anyway,</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe</a>