Malcolm and Simone dive deep on the difference between aesthetic conservatism (trappings without core values) and substantive conservatism focused on cultural reproduction. They analyze how to convert people, the role of government restrictions, dominating vs symbiotic cultures, and more keys to building an enduring worldview.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. This is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.

Malcolm: if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, at the government level, You, make them less likely to convert to your cultural group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage,

Malcolm: if you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.

Simone: in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base I feel like [00:01:00] these political parties are more strong for people than, than values. People are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.

Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm Collins.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to touch on a topic that's been bugging me recently. Because I think it shows the extent to which our society has fallen that even within conservative circles there has been a clear confusion around the sort of point of conservatism like actually advancing conservative values and the aesthetic of conservatism.

Malcolm: Acting in a way that you identify as like aesthetically conservative. And it's not to say that you will not [00:02:00] intrinsically appear aesthetically conservative if you are aligning with conservative values. Actually, here, I'll give a really great example of this that came from one of our recent videos.

Malcolm: Where we're talking about porn , and I'm like, , conservative cultural groups evolved to have porn restrictions because it led to people potentially better mental health, but also , having sex more frequently, leading to more kids, leading to more people within that cultural group.

Malcolm: And people were like, well, you know, aesthetically, like they still want the government to enact porn restrictions. And I think that this is almost a perfect example. Because who are you helping if you do that? If you have the government enact porn restrictions? Well, it's not the people who naturally would have been able to resist porn due to the cultural group they're a part of, right?

Malcolm: So if I'm a Catholic intercalist and I'm trying to get the government to restrict porn, it's not the other conservative Catholics at my church who are benefiting from this. It is... Specifically the people who disagree with me. It is [00:03:00] specifically the people who are most culturally distant from me. And, and worse, I am making whatever positive things my church is offering through this differential cultural value set less because now everyone is practicing this porn restriction thing.

Malcolm: And in addition to that, people within my cultural institution, they are now no longer getting any sort of psychological benefit. From consciously choosing to resist this thing in their environment, right? Which is.

Simone: Well, so I'm going to push back and I think what, what we may be looking at is an overlap of some, what we call dominant cultures and then conservative cultures, which are often harder cultures, right?

Simone: Dominating cultures is the word. Yeah, dominating cultures. So in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, Malcolm, you describe. Different types of cultures in terms of how they relate to broader society with dominating cultures, generally having the view that [00:04:00] basically everyone should, in an ideal scenario, follow this religion, because if they don't, they're all going to go to hell or experience some other really bad outcome.

Simone: This is in contrast to cultures that we, we call in the book, symbiotic cultures, a symbiotic culture is more like the Jewish faith. Calvinists, people who are not like, okay, everyone should join us. Everyone should be one of us. It's more oh, not everyone can be. So these cultures don't have a mandate to force everyone to adhere to their rules, and they don't have a mandate to try to proselytize or convert or save everyone.

Simone: So I think what you're talking about here is that there are many hard cultures that are also dominating cultures that feel it is imperative for them to save people from damnation. By imposing their rules on them. So, I think you're taking a symbiotic view. Why

Malcolm: imposing the rules doesn't actually have that effect if you do it at the state level.

Malcolm: So first let's elaborate a bit more on this dominating versus symbiotic cultural view. Symbiotic cultures, ironically, typically have a somewhat elitist attitude as [00:05:00] many would argue Calvinist and Jewish groups do which is to say they typically divide the world into a chosen population or an elect population and a non elect population or a non chosen population.

Malcolm: And because of that, they don't think that everyone is meant to be saved. And so they don't have a cultural they, they, they culturally work much better with other cultures because they can interact with someone. Of a completely different world perspective and have no interest in converting that person.

Malcolm: Whereas if you believe that everyone can be saved, you know, if you believe everyone can join your cultural group you always have a moral mandate to attempt to convert that person. And this is something I really feel when I am you know, when, when somebody like feels bad for trying to convert me to, to their religion.

Malcolm: And I'm like, there's no need to feel bad. I actually am a little bit more insulted when somebody doesn't, because I'm like, I'm literally going to be tortured for all eternity if I don't

Simone: convert. And they're apparently super cool with that.

Malcolm: Yeah. I also [00:06:00] don't even understand how interfaith marriages within these cultures, like what you think your spouse is going to be tortured for all eternity.

Malcolm: I think,

Simone: I think for many of them, they, they're just playing the long game, like the, the, the interfaith. Marriage that I know from childhood was one in which like up until the very end this man held out But then he converted to the like LDS church, which is great because then they can have you know, eternity together But you know, I do think that people hold out Yeah, so, so these

Malcolm: two cultures will act very differently in different societal contexts.

Malcolm: Dominating cultures typically have a behavior pattern where they will pretend to be victims when they're in the minority status. And as they get more and more social power, they'll try to move the society more towards a theocracy. But they will do it in a really... And this is also interestingly, a huge change that has happened within American Christianity where American Christianity, when the country was founded they're very studied by the Heritage Foundation showing that the country was over 50% Calvinist, which is why it was so easy for, for the founders to be like, Oh yes, of [00:07:00] course we can have a multi faith system here.

Malcolm: But Armenianism grew and grew and grew within American Christianity. That's the anti Calvinist beliefs that there's no elect and unelect and everyone can be saved. And, and as that grew, this sort of new American Christianity does see a value in using the government to impose its values on people. And so as dominating groups grow in power, they will try to enforce their values on other people, but it's a very bad strategy.

Malcolm: Right? Your real goal is to capture these people's souls as we say. Yeah. And well, in

Simone: the most like technical sense possible too.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's to save their souls. So if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, let's say pornography restrictions or monogamy or other things like that on a person, and you do that at the government level, You, in many ways, actually make them less likely to convert to your cultural [00:08:00] group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage, right?

Simone: So what you're saying is basically, if I'm in some special Simone dominating hard culture and I try to impose my rules on other people without their consent necessarily, that I'm going to also, Lose the edge that the people in my culture have. By imposing this on other people making them less likely to want to join me because they're like, Oh, I already live my, my wholesome life with my wholesome nofap life, you know, because you forced me to, so why would I need to join your group?

Simone: Is that sort of where you're going?

Malcolm: Yeah, historically, whenever a dominating cultural group has gained control of a society, it's typically like innovation has collapsed really quickly and economics typically do very poorly. It's, it's not a very historically, it hasn't been very successful.

Malcolm: And it [00:09:00] hasn't been successful for, I think, obvious reasons. Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And, and are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. And so I think, this is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.

Malcolm: I think within conservative circles, somebody can be like, oh, yes, I resist porn, right? Like they're showing how much they follow their cultural practices or within like their local community, right? Oh, I resist, you know, their local Muslim community. Oh, I don't do this. I resist porn. I don't do X, Y, Z. Okay.

Malcolm: And then somebody wants to show that they're even more conservative than that person because that's how their local dominance hierarchy is sorted. And so they're like, actually, I'm against porn so much, I think the government should ban it. Which makes sense within this local dominance fight, but it actually screws over your culture from the perspective of your [00:10:00] cultural value system, which is to convert the maximum number of people.

Malcolm: If you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.

Malcolm: They impose almost no culture restrictions and focus on controlling the educational system. And they've done a good job of infiltrating even these You know, conservative dominating cultural educational institutions. Like you're beginning to see a lot of woke stuff, you know, bubble up within like Catholic schools, for instance which should be one of the bastions.

Malcolm: What is meant to serve the exact opposite function because they are focused on the aesthetics of what they're doing, the aesthetics of looking conservative and enforcing conservatism without focusing on. What? Why does this edX evolved or the advantage? Those aesthetics give them? [00:11:00] What

Simone: I think is interesting about this is the power of I guess, cultural influence and exposure over forced rules or regulation.

Simone: And by that, I mean like, just. Exposing people to culture as youth and showing them this is how life can be, or this is how life is, can be so much more powerful than forcing people like, oh, you're not allowed to get an abortion, or you're not allowed to do this or that. The much more powerful influencer is really just exposing people to ideas and lifestyles in a certain way.

Simone: And, and that people are especially many conservative groups are misplacing their, their attention. What I thought you, you were going to touch on too, and maybe this is something to explore, is also just people who identify, for example, as Republican, but. Not actually ideologically conservatively, like they weren't just a part of the team.

Simone: And they would be Republican no matter what.

Malcolm: [00:12:00] I think abortion is a completely separate issue here because in that it's about, are they killing a human life? Yeah. It's about the

Simone: definition of where life begins. Yeah. That's

Malcolm: very different than something like porn restrictions or in the case of the Amish community. .

Malcolm: So we did a video where we were explaining You do not want to have the government keep out, , immigrants who keep fertility rates up. If you look at really high fertility cultural groups like the Amish, you know, they, they do not need the government to do something like that for them. And then somebody pointed out in the comments, they go, oh, but the Amish are an insular community, right?

Malcolm: How does that prove that? And,

Malcolm: The, the point of the Amish community. Is that they are able to maintain social cohesion and social isolation without the government enforcing that. They have a choice to leave and they don't make it. And when you, as a cultural group need the government to enforce that, because you can no longer through whatever benefits you're providing people [00:13:00] get them to choose to stay within your culture, that is the first signs that your culture is actually falling apart.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . And as the government begins to take more and more roles to hold your culture together and to ensure people actually practice your culture The culture itself is doing less and less of that, right? It's more and more relying on this government enforcement, meaning it's becoming exponentially weaker and faster.

Malcolm: To the point you were talking about, about conservatism. So, I think it's important for people to remember what is actually the core of conservatism and the core of conservatism. Is being part of a cultural group and wanting that cultural group to exist in the future with intergenerational fidelity in terms of how it's, it's transferred.

Malcolm: Now, there's two core conservative factions. One wants their culture and only their culture to be the culture that exists in the future and to us, they're like progressives in disguise because that's what the progressives want, right? They just happen to be the dominant culture right now. And the other wants to [00:14:00] create an environment in which multiple cultures can continue to exist together with.

Malcolm: Some degree of autonomy from the government because the government's not like And some ability to to operate their own government systems for their own communities, which is to say, a lot of conservative institutions. They're not against things like feeding the poor. They just believe that their own soup kitchen should be doing this.

Malcolm: Not government run soup kitchens. you go to conservative churches, they are offering a lot of what we think of as government services. You know, historically the church ran basically all orphanages, for example. You were, you were going to say something.

Simone: Well, no, I just, I think that there are also really different types of conservatives.

Simone: So there are some people who are, for example, Republicans in the United States, because. That party in particular at this point in time is the best for protecting or in some ways facilitating their particular [00:15:00] imperatives, like religiously, their inherent values, their doctrine, et cetera. But then there are people who just seem to be Republican to be Republican.

Simone: And it's about playing in that particular dominance hierarchy. And in many ways, they're more Republican than they are religious. You know, they may. They may performatively go to church and stuff, but in many ways, it's maybe because they identify as Republican and that's what Republicans do. I don't know if I'm super off here, but I do feel like this is something that happens on both sides of the political spectrum, that there are some people who just, Because they tribally choose to identify more with that political party than any particular religious doctrine, doctrine or value sets, they just go with all of its, its trappings because I think to many people, especially in the United States, at least political parties are more in your face and cohesive and easy to understand and then also behave in line with.

Simone: Then, then religions, I, I certainly I, I remember receiving in, when I still lived in [00:16:00] California, before I met you, like all of these letters and emails from the various nonprofits I donated to just being like, and here's who you vote for. You're going to vote for this person and this person and this person, because obviously you're progressive who cares about the environment.

Simone: And so it's you're given this whole way to live. And in, in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base if you're not raised in that kind of world. I feel like these political parties are more. are more strong for people than, than values. So my, my question to you is do you think that that's also an issue at play here too, where people are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.

Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party. I think that is very

Malcolm: common among progressives. I think it is exceedingly rare among conservatives. Really? Not exceedingly rare, but much more rare than it is among progressives. I would agree that what you're saying is definitely, I think, [00:17:00] yes, it is true that both sides to some extent see truth as a team sport, you know, and they're like, okay, which team am I on?

Simone: I remember a woman and I was getting a notary in Philadelphia and this woman who did my notary was like, vote blue, no matter who. And I'm like, whoa.

Malcolm: I say, Progressives do this a lot. However, with conservatives, I think that their team is their cultural slash religious group. And the Republican party is just the, the, well, and this is the point I'm making when I'm talking about this aesthetic form of conservatism is they forget that the reason that they are conservative is not to be conservative, not to be a Republican.

Malcolm: But to be a better, you know, Catholic or a secular Calvinist or Jew or, you know, it's, it's, it's to advance their own cultural objective. I do think that you're right that there is this growing sort of hollow form of [00:18:00] conservatism, where it's just, and I actually It almost comes out of the manosphere to an extent.

Malcolm: People have realized that the progressive party is against them, right? Like it, it treats them like s**t, like just s**t. And so they're like, okay, well, they're not my team. And so they're like, well, this is my team. And yeah.

Simone: So I must be. Politically and like socially conservative.

Malcolm: Yeah. But there's no understanding of why like again, to the porn thing, why is the party against porn?

Simone: I guess. I think traditionalism also falls into that category. There's a lot of people who are like, Oh, I believe in. The ways of traditionalism, but they don't know why. And if they actually, I think there are many strong religious arguments. If you actually just looked at the doctrine for adopting quite a few changes in technologies, because there are better ways to, to serve God than, than ways that people were able to do in the past, given technological limitations, et cetera.

Simone: Well, what I'm saying is I [00:19:00] think a lot of aesthetic. Conservatism has to do with doing whatever the traditional thing is, going back to the old ways and, and not accepting change. I think people like.

Simone: I think an example would be accepting different relationship formats more openly if it can lead to higher levels of, you know, good religious adherence or strong community cohesion or birth rates. No, I disagree with

Malcolm: that. Really? No. Look, these are their old systems. This is their culture. Their culture does not believe these things are moral.

Malcolm: So, yeah, they're against these things, and that's fine. But this is a cultural hypothesis. See, their culture wins in the long run, if it turns out they're right. Their culture will come to dominate in the long run. When they enforce those systems on people who don't believe their culture, right, and aren't ready to join their culture, all they [00:20:00] do, assuming they are right in these different types of relationship structures, turn out to be the correct ones, the ones that their culture asks of them.

Malcolm: All they're doing is Increasing the strength of their enemies. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a terrible idea, but I want to come back to this Amish thing here because I think this is, this is really an important thing to drill down on. And this is also to me, Where I think the immorality of this situation is horrifying and the extent to which it shows people have lost their conservative roots is horrifying.

Malcolm: They can't even imagine asking somebody to show a little self control from a cultural perspective and a person being able to do that. without the government helping them. That's what it signals to me when somebody is I need the government to assist in this because clearly they think it's helping people of their own own culture.

Malcolm: They're not [00:21:00] doing it to help other people, right? They're not doing it to help their enemies better compete against them. And if they're not doing it to help their enemies better compete against them, it means that people within their culture. need this help. They need this government help to maintain their cultural value system.

Malcolm: And then the value system just isn't very good or it's not relevant in a modern context. And, and that's really horrifying where the Amish elucidate this is this idea that they're missing, yes, the Amish socially isolate themselves, but they do it as a choice. Our culture, you, me, the people our kids engage with, we socially isolate ourselves to an extent within a wider cultural network.

Malcolm: And yes, sort of we, we, we preach to the public, but we maintain some level of a bubble around our kids so that they are not polluted with this urban monoculture and, and they, you know, we really intentionally go out and we find other families that have our [00:22:00] weird value set and we have our kids. Play with their kids and go on trips with their kids and do summer camps for them.

Malcolm: And we don't like if the government started mandating this, I don't know what, that's like a ghetto, right? They're like, okay, you just interact with your cultural group. We are doing all this for our kids because we think they're better off socially isolating to some extent from these urban monocultures as well as other conservative cultural groups.

Malcolm: But we do that without blocking immigrants. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we're not pro like open borders or anything like that. If you've watched our immigration video, we are pro skill based immigration stuff, but yeah.

Simone: So I think your broad, your broad take on this is. People who are trying to more broadly impose their, their culture on other groups by using the government as an implementation weapon or tool are ultimately doing themselves a disservice, if they care about their culture, if they care about winning people over [00:23:00] and they should be focusing more on just improving their own internal function.

Simone: Is that sort of where you stand on

Malcolm: this? Well, I think of your intuition is because most hard cultures, most of these older conservative cultures, they require a lot of restrictions for people. But the point of these restrictions. Is that you're choosing to do them. The point of Ramadan is that you're choosing to do it.

Malcolm: The point of Lent is that you're choosing to do it. You are engaging in these yourself. If a person feels that they need the government to help them with this, then their culture is failing them. That is not a sign of being extra conservative. That is a sign of being from a weak cultural group that is failing and likely won't exist for long, unless you personally can come up with a way to make it stronger, to make the, the, the, the lessons it is using to tell you You need to resist this thing.

Malcolm: [00:24:00] Better lessons in a modern context.

Simone: That checks out. Yeah, well. Cultures, you've been put on notice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think anyone's going to change their behavior though. Let's be honest here.

Malcolm: And keep in mind, different cultures recommend Different restrictions and what history is going to tell us and what we're going to learn from the world is which ones happen to be right, right?

Malcolm: My family has a lot of restrictions on the way we live our lives, the way our kids live their lives, but they are not, they're very odd restrictions to other people. They're not the same set of restrictions. Many older conservative groups may use, but they, we designed them to specifically combat like internet and stuff like that and not.

Malcolm: Fight against battles that we don't think can can win anymore. I mean you can watch our video and like Masturbation like should that be restricted from a cultural perspective within a modern context. Eh, but we could be wrong, and if we are wrong, then either the [00:25:00] iterations of our cultures, i.

Malcolm: e. our kids that adapt different cultural practices, they'll survive and thrive and proliferate, and, and, and thus they'll win, or our entire family culture won't be able to motivate intergenerational fidelity and reproduction. And it will go extinct and the, the different groups that are out there right now will end up dominating the future of the human species.

Malcolm: But the faster weak cultures can go extinct and strong cultures can proliferate, the better. Giving allowing weak cultures to hobble forwards by giving them, or forcing them to use a few of the tools of harder, stronger cultures is not beneficial to anyone.

Simone: So I think also then a bigger issue is a culture that will withstand the test of time is going to think intergenerationally and really, you need to be thinking about.

Simone: How many of your families now are going to have a bunch of kids and successfully give them such good childhoods that they carry on that culture and have kids themselves and give them their kids, that culture, et cetera, et [00:26:00] cetera. It doesn't really matter what other people are doing right now. You know, if it lets, if you want to save as many souls as possible, like probably the best way to do so is to ensure that most souls in the future.

Simone: Like are born into your religion and that your, your religion inherits the future, theoretically. So you're,

Malcolm: you're saying people are also... Or create better educational systems.

Simone: Yeah, or, yeah, or create better educational systems. That's another, yeah, very good point. So people are just

Malcolm: misled. If we weren't creating a school system for our kids, you know, we would either be sending them to the local Catholic or Jewish schools.

Malcolm: Obviously and I think that disproportionately religious school systems are, are, we're lucky as we always say that our enemies are not as competent as they are malevolent. They have provided you a Easy pathway for new converts if you can ensure that these are well run school systems that are out competing the traditional school systems, not just in terms of how they introduce kids to your ideology, but in how they help those kids prepare to [00:27:00] engage with the world.

Simone: So in the end, top pro tips for people building cultures that are designed to win are one, just focus on creating a strong intergenerationally durable culture, and two, if you want to be a dominating culture, focus on education, stop trying to impose rules on people. It's probably not going to help you anyway.

Malcolm: Yeah. Don't impose your culture on other people, convince them that your culture is better.

Simone: Well, let's see. Let's see who does that. I guess we won't see, but our, our descendants will, and we'd identify as them anyway. So who cares?

Malcolm: They'll figure out

Simone: one day. Yeah. Well, we'll check in

Malcolm: via them someday.

Malcolm: Or other people can, you know, probably no one will know what we wrote in the future. We'll see.

Simone: Well, I love these conversations. Thank you so much, Malcolm. I love you.

Malcolm: Thank you.

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