Based Camp： Being Sad is a Sin and a Choice
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about how to balance work and family life balance, and how to create a balance in your life so that you can enjoy the most amazing thing in the world. We talk about the importance of work-life balance and how we can all work together to achieve it.
Transcript
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so we're gonna do a video today on work-life balance which you can see with a kid home
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from school was pink eye i got terrible pink eye today too that's the one thing they don't tell
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you about being a parent you're gonna be sick 24 7 right octavian i actually started a spreadsheet
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to track the number of days that all of us are sick so every time someone gets sick i track the
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dates because i want to see ultimately like how many days out of the year someone in our family
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is sick because i legit think that it's like quite a few days i think it's about a quarter
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a quarter i'd say it's about a quarter of the year yeah it might even be more than that it might
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actually be more like a third so we can report back on that one but despite being sick i would
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argue that we still really have a lot of fun and that i expected that as a parent we would be a lot
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more stressed out and unhappy because everyone talks about how like merge is hard work and having
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kids is hard work but in the end i think that it's actually pretty fun and seamless but i think that
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a lot of that has to do with framing so something that we do a lot with our kids when we need them
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to be excited about something is we play a hype game essentially where we will take something really
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mundane like an airport shuttle bus and we will frame it as the most fun the most amazing thing
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in the world so let's say that we need to get through a really rough travel day with lots of
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transfers we will hype up the airport shuttle at the end of that day um to get to a parking lot like it is
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the coolest thing in the entire world and it works like crazy like we we talk about it all day oh my gosh
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we get to do this thing and we actually get to the airport shuttle bus we're like this is the best thing
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ever and i think that one of the tricks to making a really heavy work schedule work with family with
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a spouse with whatever is playing the hype game with everything so no matter what you're doing
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you make it fun you make it funny i think it's important to remember how much society plays the
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hype game with you and how much you're already doing this to yourself whether you realize it or not
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would you like to know more so think about like a marriage right people are like the day i was
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married to you was the happiest day of my life it's like why like you knew you were gonna get
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married well before that day that's not like you just found out you were gonna get married that day
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it's a ceremony they're not very fun ceremonies yeah it's a pretty stressful day
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yeah you're sitting there you're likely last minute making sure you've memorized your vows so
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you say them right you're trying to project a certain self-image to the crowd are you just
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trying to keep all your guests happy and deal with all the logistical nightmares that are coming up
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with whatever catering people needing stuff etc and i think this is true of beaches for example
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right god miserable oh people go to a beach it's hot they're drinking alcoholic beverages in the hot
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sun often reading a book that they could be reading at home or laying down burning themselves and giving
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themselves cancer i don't know what i don't know why people still do that that seems like it's not even
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like a trend anymore but the question is why what are you getting out of doing that differentially
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right it's that society has told you that this is a fun thing to do and that is where you are getting
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happiness from the event and you can change what is a fun thing to do if you create new narratives for
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yourself so we can say some people are like oh that's really sad that you turn your business trips into
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little mini honeymoons or family vacations or whatever right for you and your spouse because you work
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together and it's like why we we section life into fun and not fun time but you can make all of life
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fun time if you create the right story for yourself around what you're doing and the people around you
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are helping you continue to generate this delusion and you might be like that's not real fun that's a
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delusion everything this whole game this whole life you're living the emotions you feel they're delusion
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generated by the narratives society has created for you or the pre-evolved emotional responses
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that you have because your ancestors who had those responses had more surviving offerings and i think a
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really influential moment for you in your life around this hype machine game was from watching an
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adams family movie where well we talk about that in another video so i don't want to go too deep on
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this yeah but there's a scene in which morticia is cutting the tops the the blossoms off of roses
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and admiring this bouquet of thorny branches essentially and it just it's this perfect moment
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encapsulating how it is up to you in your mind to decide whether something is positive or negative
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whether you enjoy it or not and you can choose to do that with everything and honestly we're not as good
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is it is it we're not as good at it as we should be like i should be more like recently for example
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our son octavian isn't with pink eye welcome got pink eye i should have been like oh this is a great
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opportunity for us to spend more time together and have a special day with octavian and instead of
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oh no like how are we going to handle the logistics the calls oh how do we do this how do we keep octavian
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happy and i think that really what was a missed opportunity every time also as if you were in a
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a working relationship where you fail to spend time together and turn it into something really
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special and fun and enjoyable that's a failure on your part but i think many marriages also fall
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apart for that same reason that when stuff happens it doesn't matter if it's good or if it's bad
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the couple or one partner chooses to view it negatively and that can honestly happen with really
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good things like maybe a spouse gets an amazing job opportunity and they get to move into a much better
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house in an amazing city that spouse is like oh i don't want to leave home this is horrible or you've
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created this power imbalance right yeah yeah no i i absolutely agree that within every moment and this
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also really colors how we see emotions why we see indulging in positive emotions is really negative but
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we also really culturally shame was in our family the idea of indulging in negative emotions because if i
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come to simone one day and i'm in a bad mood i'm hurting her i am hurting our kids i am hurting
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everyone i interact with that day and at the end of the day a bad mood is often a choice yeah unless
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you're like have major depressive disorder or something like that and then there's pharmacological
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solutions there there might be pharmacological solutions but generally if we're talking about like
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just general bad moods most of them are a choice and they're something that we can change due to
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how we believe that we are interacting with reality that the framings that we have of the world and that
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is is why i think even though our wider philosophy says emotions don't matter in part because emotions
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don't matter and because a bad mood makes everyone less efficient there is never an excuse to be in a bad mood
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and this is a really interesting thing with cultural groups that do believe emotions don't matter because
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this is something throughout them for example you've got the opus day when the opus day of the catholic
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sect the evoke set that a lot of people have about them is oh they're the ones who whip themselves right
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famously a character from the da vinci code with an opus day member like one of the bad guys and so
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people see this as gruesome or something but the reality is that it is a mandate for every opus day
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member the reason they whip themselves the reason they flagellate themselves is to learn better
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emotional control the reason they have that mandate is because they have a mandate in
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all of their interpersonal interactions with other people to be happy and be cheery that's another thing
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about the opus day that a lot of people don't know generally cultural groups that see emotional
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control as a mandate see it as part of that mandate to always try to be as chipper as possible
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which creates a lot of people are like yeah but if you don't indulge in your negative emotions
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and they'll come out in other weird ways and it's no they don't the study will always cite and i'll cite
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this till it's a blue moon because people need this beaten into them is it when you do something like if
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you're mad and then afterwards you go punch a bag it has been shown that that will make you more mad
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and you will get more mad in the future indulging in a negative emotion makes that negative emotion
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worse always and it makes it easier to feel that negative emotion in the future
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if you however just choose not to view things negatively and you experience very little negative
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emotions it's like not having that first vomit you will be less likely to throw up afterwards
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don't break the seal um don't break the seal don't break the seal hold in all those positive
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emotions because i think in our daily life do we experience that many negative emotions i don't
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really see you no actually i started using a mood tracking app called dalio just to see how my moods
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are no actually even when we're stressed out about stuff like we we do all right we're pretty even
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keeled like you would expect per our value set which is pretty encouraging but i also think that
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we are actually a lot more happy go lucky than people would expect per our value set but again i also
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think here's another thing that we do that i think really makes a big difference in in our perceived
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happiness and in our experience in life and also our stress levels quite frankly is we will do stuff
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that is actively uncomfortable or act a certain way while doing something even when we are uncomfortable
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we will act really happy and then take a bunch of photos of it and record everything as happy
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and then when we are we have like little playback albums of recent photos like throughout our house
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or on our phones and stuff when we look at those our memories end up being of oh that was so happy
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we're such happy people well this is like the day on a beach phenomenon right which is yeah i might be
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miserable all day in the hot sun on a beach but i want to take a number of pictures of me smiling
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and then that helps record it in my narrative like my internal history that i enjoyed that day and i
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will believe i was happier and this can actually have a really positive effect on relationships with
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your spouse your kids yeah are you showing them the picture you made wow buddy what is it up um it
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has colors on me oh yeah just colors show it again because when you believe that your partner is
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somebody who makes your mood better you will like being oh hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on
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hold on hold on let me get you one paper please here you go thank you buddy you are a nice boy my
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and i think so there's two things to this one is like that interaction people have been asked like
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why are your kids always happy and polite and i think it's because they just don't have
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a lot of modeling of other ways to emotionally react to people and i think that's really
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important in terms of what you teach kids the emotions and the ways that you treat the people
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around you is the way that they are going to learn to treat the people around them but to the other
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point i was saying the reason you create these false narratives even if we had a bad day at the
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airport or something like that we got stuck at the airport all day and so it's okay rounding the kids
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very stressful we couldn't miss our flight are we going to get one but let's do some video of us having
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fun right because when i believe that my partner makes my life better that's going to make my
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relationship more stable and i will show her more regular gratitude throughout the day
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which makes her feel better and creates a positive feedback loop the moment one partner begins to
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believe that a relationship is is a negative thing for them it's really quick to get in a negative
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feedback loop where they're not treating the partner the way the partner wants to be treated and
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the partner doesn't treat them the way they want to be treated and it is just so hard to break out of
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that cycle alternatively you can have sort of a cycle of positivity that is remarkably easy to
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create now a few side notes here okay one is work cheating so it's important to remember that everybody
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has a happiness set point yeah and what that means and there's been studies on this if you win the
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lottery or if you get a major injury and become an amputee yes your happiness will go down for a short
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period but largely it almost always goes back to about where it is everyone has about the same
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level of average happiness and i think i just have a really high happiness step point and that could
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also explain why my kids are so chipper it could be that we are just have a genetically high happiness
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set point most people in my family are really happy people and we pass this on to our kids and so they're
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just cursed with happiness all the time what are your thoughts on that simone i would say we've
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definitely seen in our kids that they have different happiness set points some are happier than others
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but that yeah definitely modeling how you react i would also say that you the way that you personally
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choose to react to things 100 feeds off the other person so when one of us accidentally gets into a bad
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mood like we miss a night of sleep or one of us is in a lot of pain for some reason and then that leads to
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us being like not reacting to something in a positive way it definitely gets the other person in a negative
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mood so i do think that there are both virtuous and vicious cycles that are created i think also
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cosplaying wholesomeness as a families it does make sense to expend some time on that even when it's not
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of immediate utility this season we've got fireflies out in the field that we stay up later than we
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otherwise would to sometimes go out catch fireflies together with the kids or go berry picking there's
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lots of raspberries and wine berries out this season and we're doing that and we're expending the time
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doing that even though it's not efficacious in the moment because it helps create this narrative for
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ourselves which makes us i think appreciate our relationship and our family more and it creates
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a narrative that i think our kids will also remember growing up that i had a picture of an ideal
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childhood i also want to add a refining point here an important one because what we're describing here
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obviously is acting you you should dress for the job you want like we act for the life experience
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we want but i think a lot of people hear that they hear okay so i'm just going to pretend it and
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there's that implies that there's also a period where you start acting like yourself and i think
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a really core rule here is no you never act like yourself there's the stereotype of there's this
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celebrity couple and they act like everything's perfect and then the moment the cameras stop rolling
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the moment the photographer steps away they're immediately snapping at each other like the moment the guests
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leave they're fighting they're yelling at their kids this is shown all over the place in media maybe
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it happens sometimes in reality but for us if we are alone like i am alone let's see there was this
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other night like two nights ago there's this night where i was cleaning up after the kids and i was wearing
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our infant on my back and she just vomited like it just spilled five gallons of milk down my back
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at the same time that our younger toddler decided it would be really fun to spill his milk all over
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the floor and at the same time that octavian thought it would be really fun to to throw food all over the
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place and i'm just like just like i'm feeling the warm goop like roll down my like pants like this is
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a bad moment but no i'm i'm like still acting chipper in the moment malcolm you weren't there i was
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performing for absolutely nobody i was acting cheerful but there is no time where you're off
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period it's very important to note that there have been studies on this if you smile you will report
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feeling happier if you even just say words that cause you to smile more oh i actually think the
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pencil study and this is one in which they had people put like a pencil like in their mouth i think
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that wasn't replicated we'll see that there are caveats but i think there are lots of but i think the
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the preponderance of evidence in the research says that acting as if you are happy or acting
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as if you are having a wholesome moment with your family will make you feel a wholesome moment with
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your family yeah even if you have a an inclination not to feel and of course conversely indulging in
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anger indulging in sadness is going to make it worse which is of course why we think it's so toxic
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when we have other episodes talking about how modern therapy is a cult all these narratives
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also something we do as our kids i'd be very careful not to tell my kids they're sad people
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or that they're tell your kids you're a happy person you're a good boy right because they
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will internalize that and act like that but adults do the same thing we build these narratives about
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who we are and then that determines how we act to the people around us okay so side note on all
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of this that we find very perplexing and i'd love it if our audience could help us think through
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because it's always been one of the big mysteries to me and every now and then i'll have a little
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breakthrough on it it's nightclubs okay i went to nightclubs a few times as a kid and then i went
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back recently i was on this trip to latin america with a bunch of teal fellows and i was like okay i'm
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gonna go back i'm gonna observe this maybe i'll find some fun at it that i didn't see before it was
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hellish nothing about this experience to me evokes any sort of positive emotional state you may be able to
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find a partner at it maybe like some sort of romantic partner but there's got to be more
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efficient ways with less cost you're there late at night you are sweaty everything is overpriced so
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every moment i feel like i'm being scammed and i'm just annoyed people are like spilling drinks on you
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the music is loud it's actively painful i guess it could be some sort of group bonding ritual that's
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meant to create some sort of hormonal thing in someone's head like almost inducing the effects of a
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drug or like a mini to mindy bonding ritual but then why are you doing that with people you don't
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know are you just trying to languish in like a certain emotional subset i i guess i don't understand
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it maybe these people have some narrative around nightclubs making them happy that i don't have and
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so they're building memories that nightclubs are making them happy or maybe they're really gaining
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something from the experience what are your thoughts about my thoughts are that for some types of people
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there's some kind of religious or like mind-altering experience of dancing at a really large like
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loud environment with a lot of people like moving in unison and like just the intense over stimulation
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of that and then the group cohesion of the moment probably creates some kind of mind-altering state
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that is intoxicating for some types of people so you think it's like an intoxicant that we don't feel
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for whatever exactly yeah it's like some drug that we somehow can't process like we don't have receptors
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for it so everyone else is like dosing on it and they're like ah and we just can't we don't get it
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could be i think so if we're addressing the subject of our work-life balance and how we handle it i think
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we also have to address the constant question that we get from people or like statement which is oh i
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could never imagine working with my spouse oh yeah that's a weird thing i it just seems like from our
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life just so weird to say why would you marry someone if you don't want to be around them all the time
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yeah that and there's this assumption that what about when you have a disagreement that like you
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will not be able to work together if you disagree on something and i think that's to us when we hear
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that from someone that basically says to us you really shouldn't be married because if you do not
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have shared values and a shared vision that you have aligned around that means that you are not
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sustainable like you are not stable that means that you're both just in it for yourselves and leaning
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out of the relationship typically if an aligned couple has a conflict the conflict is in that
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each of you have a different hypothesis around how to best maximize what matters to you collectively
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as a family malcolm might think that it would be better for everyone to buy uniforms for some
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project and i might think it's better that no one has uniforms because i think that will make
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them more efficient and whatever and it costs less and so it we both want the same thing which is for
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that project to succeed or something we just have very different ideas and on how it is best executed
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and there are ways around that right one can run tests one can try one method one can do all sorts
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of things to figure out where the truth may be whereas i think for many other relationships there's
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this expectation that there will be compromise compromise is the most toxic thing you can have
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in a relationship yeah what you're looking for is the correct answer not the answer that's in between
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the two people but i think a lot of people are purely motivated either by hedonism or by satisfying some
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sort of self-narrative in both of those things you can have differentiations between the couple where
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there is like systemic differences that can't be resolved you're both optimizing for your own hedonism
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then yeah there is potential systemic disagreement whereas if you're optimizing for specific outcomes for
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the world it's very rare that we have any sort of sustained disagreement what are our sustained
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disagreements right now simone i'm trying to think one of them actually like over time for a long time
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has been on like whether or not we would support our kids taking something like adderall um oh yeah
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i'm very supportive of it and she's very against it however i decided to research the subject more
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right because what we want is the best outcome for our kids so it's not like i'm anti-drug and he's pro-drug
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it's that i was concerned that if our kids take drugs like adderall to do well on tests to do tasks that
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that are really hard to focus on that as adults they will not feel empowered to focus on things
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independently and malcolm's saying listen sometimes you just have to take these things to be able to
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get through it because if you don't like you just won't like like you won't succeed and i i think she
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has an enormous almost superhuman ability to focus on things yeah i'm like someone who doesn't need it
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who's or i'm like a wealthy person being like why can't you just buy your way out of the problem
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yeah which is is silly so what i ended up doing and this i guess is probably a pretty good illustration
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of how an aligned couple will disagree on something is i went out and i looked for more information on
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okay actually what are the long-term effects of drugs like adderall and and now have a more nuanced
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understanding from the research of when it's actually appropriate so it looks like for people who are
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diagnosed with adhd like they are shown to have significant attention problems that taking adderall
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or drugs like basically focus medications whatever like the best like time released one is these days
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it's like least addictive or habit forming taking one of those actually helps to build the sort of
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connective pathway in your brain that would enable you to learn how to focus without that medication
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as an adult and you see this goes to everything we've been saying in this when you act out any
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emotion or any behavior pattern it becomes easier to access in the future even if the way you're acting
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it out is pharmacologically assisted yeah and so i was hearing that i was like at first i was like wait
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what really but then also i've done a lot of research on psychedelics for example and it also seems to be
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found that if you've done a lot of psychedelics you can reach similar states after taking them just from
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meditation alone because essentially your brain has walked that path it's like taking a machete and cut
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and more easily walkable trail so you can get there without the assistance in the future so now my view is
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very different i think what my stance is on our disagreement now is if our children if we have
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children who are diagnosed with adhd and i i'm pretty sure we will that yes indeed we should give
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them those medications for use in very specific applications when they really need it to do rigorous
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tests and stuff but we should not give it to any child we have who is not diagnosed with it because
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it could create this feeling of dependency like i can't focus without it does that make sense
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we'll see i mean our general takes on our body one of our recent tweets is saying thank god our bodies
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are disposable that's what it is to be a pronatalist it's to fundamentally believe that my body's
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disposable my kids are the next better iteration of me and their kids will be the next better
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iteration of them and so i think it makes us a little loosey or goosier with performance
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improving medications than other people who are like my body's a temple might be burn the blade
00:24:50.180
runner quote the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long for them i would say just do
00:24:55.540
whatever increases your efficiency yeah but malcolm don't forget for a hot second that we're also
00:25:00.420
incredibly frugal people and that these medications cost a lot of money and dependencies
00:25:07.220
our kids are gonna have to find a way to pay for it if they want it i know but i'm just saying a life
00:25:11.300
in which you don't need to pay for something is going to be easier than a life in which you feel
00:25:16.980
like you do and then more things you feel like you have to pay for cookie consider the fact that neither
00:25:20.980
you nor i is addicted to caffeine think about the thousands of dollars we've how many sodas do you
00:25:26.100
think i drink a day okay i'm not addicted to caffeine how many thousands of dollars i know
00:25:32.020
genuine i must drink 20 a day okay fine you are caffeine you know they see me drinking these on camera
00:25:39.860
but also no i know how much you spend on uh coke zero and it's a lot it's a lot of money so i'm just
00:25:48.180
saying like the less you have of that in your life the better so we have to balance our collective
00:25:52.980
values frugality but also performance and yeah we don't really care bodies are disposable brain
00:25:57.780
bright die young whatever uh have kids first whatever raise them successfully but yeah that
00:26:03.220
is how we navigate agreements right like our discussions aren't like oh you're hurting my
00:26:06.980
you never listen to me i just don't think this is right actually this is another point the burn
00:26:11.700
bright die young part of our our world view yeah that perhaps makes it very easy for us to be pretty
00:26:17.540
happy most of the time is that we really genuinely are not worried about death i i am worried about
00:26:23.860
dying before i'm able to put my kids in a good position in life but i'm not worried about death
00:26:29.380
and more generally and i feel like people who have this attachment to their immortality they probably
00:26:34.580
feel more like a dagger dangling above them by a thread their entire life right i can understand why it
00:26:42.420
would create this sort of fear of i don't know the other i wonder right you can die at any moment right
00:26:54.900
i guess it's something that's hard for me to model because i'm not really afraid of dying i'm not
00:26:58.740
really i'm afraid of my kids dying but i guess that's not like an ever-present fear for me because
00:27:03.860
we're gonna have a lot of kids if i had two kids i'd be really afraid of them dying but i'm terrified of
00:27:08.580
anything bad happening to anyone who i love or honestly anyone i don't want bad things to happen
00:27:14.100
to anyone but no yeah maybe our mortality maybe actually the fact that we fully embrace our
00:27:19.140
mortality encourages us to enjoy the moment that we have at any point but i think that's more like
00:27:24.340
hippy-dippy nonsense and we just understand that because we want to maximize our objective functions
00:27:30.420
we perform better when we're not depressed and demotivated and so we know that we have to find some
00:27:35.940
way to max out our feelings of happiness both individually but especially as a couple but it's
00:27:42.020
so weird to me that you wouldn't think that should be pharmacologically assisted then why aren't you
00:27:46.820
constantly on something like because i don't need to be but when i was younger i had a harder time
00:27:54.180
focusing and i needed to be then i think you actually have adhd like i think you actually need it
00:28:00.740
this is an important thing to know is the relationships you have can make things much easier for you
00:28:05.860
so when i say when i was younger i had a hard time focusing one of the things where my brothers
00:28:09.540
this is the best sign of your guys relationship before i met simone i had a problem with grinding
00:28:14.820
my teeth in my sleep and i had to wear a night guard and i think it was due to just like constant
00:28:19.300
stress of looking for a wife not having met that stage yet but also just in general with my day-to-day
00:28:24.340
life because i started grinding my teeth in early high school right and that's when i really started
00:28:29.540
trying to put my nose to the grindstone and sure i got into a top-tier college and sure i got into a top-tier
00:28:34.020
graduate school start my career well so i was really on full blast after that point in my life
00:28:41.300
and after i started dating simone within the first year dating you i it used to be if i didn't wear my
00:28:45.700
night guard for a night my my teeth would start cracking and you can even see some lines i did
00:28:50.340
real damage i broke off parts of my teeth that have now been don't do this to me but now not once since
00:28:57.060
we've been in a relationship have i ground my teeth and maybe it's just i so feel like i someone
00:29:02.020
has my back that i'm dealing with incredibly low levels of stress in my daily life which makes
00:29:07.620
things much easier and it's created the illusion for you that i have always been this emotionally calm
00:29:13.780
when it's really more something that has been created because i have so little fear of any sort
00:29:20.020
of betrayal from you or any sort that even things could hit me in the back because i've got another
00:29:26.020
pair of eyes looking for me i would imagine that the mig tau slash red pill community be like of
00:29:31.540
course she has your back that's the easiest way for her to stab you a waltz oh women are like that
00:29:40.020
i will destroy you malcolm when you least expect it no but like seriously and i think that's
00:29:44.420
it's it's one of the most romantic things that you've ever said that like i could make your life
00:29:49.780
that great because when i learn about hard things that have happened to you before i met you i just
00:29:54.660
like desperately want to travel back in time and give you a hug and at least i can help that younger
00:30:01.700
person by making your life a little better now but golly yeah i would say working with you is amazing
00:30:09.380
and it's specifically amazing because we choose to make it amazing it's our version of
00:30:13.620
yes and except it's just yes and it's awesome yes and we're loving it and every moment is awesome
00:30:19.620
and that's actually one final thing that i note on this is a lot of people are surprised that i start
00:30:24.580
every conversation with a hey how's it going it's great to be chatting with you people will notice this
00:30:29.380
on interviews with me or things and it's like a thing and they're like why do you do that and
00:30:33.780
because i have trained myself to always start every conversation on an emotional high note
00:30:38.820
it's much easier to maintain this emotionally positive high note throughout the entire
00:30:44.580
conversation yeah we have an evoke set of the ways that we respond to people and when you ensure that
00:30:50.260
evoke set is just this very easy positive message like hey how's it going it's great to be talking
00:30:55.060
today it makes it very easy to maintain this positive emotion and if anyone was going to take any
00:31:00.820
one thing away from this i think that's an easy thing to do yeah and you know what i'm really excited for now
00:31:06.740
dinner yes all right you're gonna start some food for me uh do we want me to um yeah i have
00:31:15.620
about 150 grams of 93 lean ground beef that i want to saute for you with some onions and butter
00:31:23.060
yeah please do extra butter and yeah saute with some onions and a jalapeno and a jalapeno and then
00:31:29.220
steam some rice and you'll add the spices after you get back with the kids the tomatoes when i get back
00:31:33.780
yeah okay perfect all right we're on i love you i love you too gorgeous