Based Camp - Based Camp： Growing Up in the Progressive Cult

00:00:00.000 would you like to know more hello simone it is wonderful to be here with you today

00:00:04.320 i'm going to give you a topic today because i want you to talk more i talked way too much in

00:00:09.600 that last video i don't like that so i want to hear about your origin story growing up within

00:00:17.360 the san francisco bay area sort of your parents background how that shaped your worldview today

00:00:25.360 interesting sure yeah because i would say that meeting you was it did feel like entering a

00:00:31.280 cult deprogramming program that i only realized after meeting you that i'd grown up with the

00:00:39.520 subconscious understanding that there were certain things i wasn't allowed to think or feel and that

00:00:43.480 i just wasn't allowed to hold certain beliefs and so i couldn't which i think is really interesting

00:00:48.380 and i think we're seeing more and more of that being discussed openly so this is a fun thing to

00:00:52.660 talk about i guess i'll dive into it how do they meet what's their background yeah i think they

00:00:59.820 ended up in common circles after graduating when both of them were married to other people

00:01:05.160 i know that my mother would babysit for my father and his ex-wife they would do various things and

00:01:15.880 that she had a close relationship with my half-brother and sister early on and that they my mother and my

00:01:21.660 father were also in a polyamorous relationship which sounds awfully familiar like in similar

00:01:26.760 she was not doing things with your brother and sister she was taking care of them as a nanny

00:01:32.220 and she's in a polyamorous relationship with my dad great yes and it actually sounds very similar to

00:01:40.340 common relationship structures in the bay area today there are many polyamorous families um so it's

00:01:46.420 they were real trailblazers in terms of that stuff is it i don't and i think that's the thing is people

00:01:52.060 say that polyamory and act like polyamory is this new invention and that it's so it's not new i promise

00:01:59.820 you that stuff was not happening in texas your family was just on the cutting edge of this new

00:02:05.780 cultural movement but i maybe but to some extent she thought this was all normal so you can talk about

00:02:11.060 what were so they ended up i'll just because you're taking no i will explain a little bit more so

00:02:15.680 in this case actually polyamory did not work out it led to a fairly not fun divorce from my

00:02:21.420 father and his ex-wife that was really difficult for my half-brother and sister my mother basically

00:02:26.920 gave an ultimatum to my dad saying listen i i can't do this polyamorous relationship either i need

00:02:32.240 to move out of state and just kind of quit you because i'm too in love with you or we need to be

00:02:37.700 monogamous and he ultimately decided to end his marriage and get with my mom which was rough that's

00:02:43.220 polyamory doesn't always work out but um anyway so i you'll fast forward you're going so they ended up

00:02:49.260 going together to japan and then they were going to go to china to train under different masters your

00:02:54.800 dad was an aikido master in japan and your mom was going to be a tai chi who's going to study tai chi

00:03:01.040 yes in china yeah um but in japan after a long time of trying to get pregnant they didn't think

00:03:05.860 they could get pregnant they accidentally got pregnant with simone and that is where you were

00:03:10.600 born i was born in japan that's right made in japan and they moved back to the united states

00:03:17.420 after my first birthday where they were turned to the bay area where both of them grew up where

00:03:22.060 you know of our collective families are um they were still very involved in all these cultures so

00:03:27.420 talk about things like what you thought of politics growing up what you thought of gender growing up

00:03:31.060 what you thought of sexuality what was this world that you were in yeah i mean i in many ways think

00:03:38.060 it was very ideal but back then there there was so little discussion of it everything was just kind

00:03:44.580 of taken for granted like i i actually thought i think there were more lesbian couples i knew that

00:03:51.200 were raising my friends than like straight couples so i had no sort of prior on what a like a marriage

00:03:58.200 should be i figured it was just as likely that i would end up marrying a woman as marrying a man

00:04:02.000 it just didn't seem any different to me i thought that a wedding meant like a naked sweat lodge and then

00:04:09.300 masks in the forest that was my prior there politics there was in my school there was one one student who

00:04:17.280 was the son of a republican and it was just considered this like point of curiosity like if there were an

00:04:22.040 albino student in the school i think that would be kind of the same thing of oh yeah we have an

00:04:26.560 albino student like kind of cool right like we have a republican but i had no idea what republican

00:04:32.420 values were it was just a matter of course that any republican political candidate was evil and not

00:04:39.420 good and that of course everyone would disregard them and see them as terrible think of republicans

00:04:44.460 in that environment when you grew up and you thought of your average republican what were you thinking

00:04:47.340 were they like the same species as you or were they like yeah it actually felt like they were very

00:04:51.680 different species almost i wonder how north koreans feel about like outsiders maybe i feel

00:04:57.700 it could be something kind of similar to that of just who could model these people and i remember when

00:05:02.240 i was like 11 or 13 years old i spent a month in mexico staying in a hostel working on an environmental

00:05:09.440 preserve where we would do sea turtle conservation and we met a lot of families that would come in and

00:05:16.160 visit and just join the ecological center for turtle walks and stuff and so i would speak to other people

00:05:21.340 and at one point i met this young woman around my age who came from texas on vacation to this place

00:05:28.440 where i was volunteering in the yucatan and she was like all i want to do is grow up and get married and

00:05:36.020 have kids and i just remember the shock at hearing that from someone i lived to 13 years old and this was my

00:05:43.340 first time hearing a young woman say that she wanted to be a mother and i was honestly a little

00:05:50.060 bit shocked and worried for her yeah like you thought something was wrong with her like something

00:05:56.380 was definitely right yeah and i would argue now you can tell me if i'm saying this wrong but it was

00:06:02.140 almost like there wasn't real animosity for these people no subhuman i don't think you no it's not it's

00:06:10.140 not about someone is less than human it's just it's the same way that you would view someone who

00:06:14.660 was in a toxic cult or something like one i can't even model your weird world view you think that

00:06:20.740 aliens walk among us and the earth is flat it's just like how could you be so wrong i can't possibly

00:06:27.160 like it's dangerous how wrong you are i can't even wrap my head around it i don't even know how i would

00:06:33.760 argue with you so i never tried here's my question now given that you accept many conservative views

00:06:39.780 as being broadly right why was it that you were unable to consider those views back then

00:06:46.180 when you grow up in a normative culture that's just like everyone holds the same view and i think

00:06:52.660 people who grow up in conservative mormon communities people who grow up in like any sort

00:06:56.380 of isolated conservative community when you don't get exposure to people with other world views and

00:07:01.640 especially not just that but you don't get exposure to debate around these issues nothing is

00:07:07.260 ever questioned that's when it's a problem because obviously like i was exposed to i was aware of the

00:07:14.140 existence of these other groups i was aware and i think that's how it is with many cults that other

00:07:17.960 outsiders exist you understand broadly their world views but because there's no interchange there's no

00:07:25.020 pushing back and there's no one questioning your own views and that's just not done i think that's

00:07:31.140 where a culture becomes cult-like and toxic and dangerous i was just actually watching a youtube

00:07:38.520 video where someone was pridefully saying that they were going to punch up throughout the video

00:07:43.640 and i was like oh man like i intuitively i felt really bad about that like punching up

00:07:48.580 just safe it's safe and kind of cowardly punching down kind of a dick move i honestly think we should be

00:07:54.820 punching sideways and punching ourselves that is where to punch right you should be punching your own

00:08:00.120 culture you should be seeing where you fall down where you can't stand up to criticism

00:08:04.680 and sharpening yourself and because that didn't happen in the bay area cultures where i grew up

00:08:09.760 i literally grew up not allowing myself to feel certain things and this is something also i've seen

00:08:19.160 recently trending on twitter people having all these conversations about progressives doing mental

00:08:26.260 gymnastics to justify their passive reaction to being assaulted on the subway regularly there's a lot of

00:08:34.060 discussion i'm seeing among we'll say dissident right like speakers being talking about well actually

00:08:40.000 it takes a lot of mental firepower to convince yourself to not react when you're regularly being

00:08:45.760 assaulted by mentally ill people on the streets and to support these homeless encampments and to support

00:08:50.720 fentanyl distribution etc etc and i'm looking back at that and i'm looking and i'm seeing in these people

00:08:56.520 that they're pointing to myself in how i also had to do these mental gymnastics and it wasn't because

00:09:03.440 i had ill intentions it wasn't because i was stupid it was because i literally had no tool set

00:09:12.120 for questioning them and then i met you and you were literally the first person ever who asked me

00:09:18.960 what i believed and why i supported certain things and it's so simple to ask that and yet somehow i

00:09:27.600 couldn't do it and no one i knew did it what's going on there i think this is the thing when we talk

00:09:34.740 about this as being like a cult i do not think it is different from extreme conservative cults for sure

00:09:42.000 this across our society kids grow up in them they are afraid to question them they know that they

00:09:47.180 will be shunned from their community if they question them i mean it's no it's not and i think

00:09:51.520 that's where you're getting it wrong yeah okay it's not i wasn't afraid of being shunned i wasn't afraid

00:09:56.800 of being isolated i wasn't afraid of being kicked out and i see this also when i hear people in

00:10:03.560 conservative cults talk about their experience it's not that per se it's literally just not having

00:10:10.880 anything question your worldview it's so it's not even that insidious it's just about the lack of

00:10:16.260 and you lacked like the vocabulary to question your world yes the mental vocabulary to say

00:10:22.340 is this wrong so in the past if somebody had come to you and engaged you with those questions

00:10:28.920 would you have immediately thought they were evil would you have immediately thought that would you

00:10:34.060 have been able to engage them or that just like you were always open to be deconverted just

00:10:39.540 nobody ever questioned you ever you were never i think that's really what's more happening in all

00:10:44.380 these scenarios and that's what was happening with me because i can't even imagine because no one

00:10:48.880 ever asked me no one ever questioned these things testament to your parents is they never really primed

00:10:53.660 you as hatred to people who are different from you no i think that's not true for everyone i think

00:10:58.540 that there are people within both these conservative cults and these progressive girls that are

00:11:04.000 primed to hate anybody who questions it i'll buy that yeah or that also dehumanize and other

00:11:10.660 outside groups and that is totally not how my parents raised me yeah you're reclin using the

00:11:15.640 word deplorables and stuff like that like just these people are less than human but that isn't

00:11:19.480 what's happening with would you argue that your experience is actually representative of a larger

00:11:25.540 majority of the movement yes i think and i also think that most like cult-like environments

00:11:29.940 don't do this evil exploitative stuff i think that most are genuinely well-intentioned groups

00:11:36.620 of people who just tend to echo chamber themselves into a state of insanity so let's talk about some of

00:11:43.240 the big things for you that were like big shifts gender roles for example i remember when we first

00:11:48.200 met you're like i would never consider taking a man's last name blah blah so talk about but also other

00:11:53.820 things that we've adopted into our lives i would never consider stepping back from the workplace

00:11:57.680 when you began to really think about gender roles how did you decide that some of your views

00:12:03.860 actually had value and you wanted to continue into your adult life and then other of your views were

00:12:08.840 sort of cultural artifacts of not really questioning them i think what you taught me to do and what

00:12:15.940 most people i would hope do with cult deprogramming is to ask everything from a more first principles

00:12:22.360 approach is okay first what are my values what do i actually care about and then once you've worked

00:12:28.180 at that out it's easier to answer all subsequent questions can you talk about your values right now

00:12:32.980 so people understand what value seed it was that you built from yeah the things that influence my

00:12:40.660 lifestyle and like political decisions now both are based on my genuine personal proclivities and also

00:12:47.580 our inherent values and our core inherent values revolve around preserving interchange discussion

00:12:55.080 and that kind of bouncing off of ideas that leads to innovation and human flourishing so we encourage

00:13:01.300 we encourage debate first principles thinking intentional action and plurality and preserving that and

00:13:08.300 encouraging that is something that's at the core of our collective values we argue that progressive culture

00:13:13.740 now is more of a monolith that when you scratch just beneath the surface of every progressive subculture

00:13:18.480 they're ultimately saying the same thing and that conservative culture now is more defined by a coalition

00:13:24.060 of very different ideologies just trying to maintain cultural sovereignty but that's a kind of

00:13:29.460 we don't have to discuss economics and how those changed or your views on being a housewife or having kids

00:13:34.300 like any of that stuff i think they they only matured the way that most things are sure for adults or

00:13:39.520 mature for adults i'm certainly not a trad wife i think we believe more in a a hybrid almost like

00:13:46.100 where we go even further deep into tradition and that we believe in the corporate family and we're

00:13:50.920 not like oh you should just be only a wife at home doing housekeeping we're like no you should yes you

00:13:59.400 should be at home doing housekeeping while also running a business and raising kids all at the same time

00:14:03.960 which is very different but i think yeah one of the things that when it comes to a lot of this you

00:14:08.740 wouldn't say my views today would you say that your views are now the views that i came into our

00:14:13.980 relationship with or it's more just that i caused you to question things and now both of our views

00:14:18.400 are highly different from where we were to start 100 both of our views are different and they evolved

00:14:23.220 together and i think that's a really great aspect of a a culture that is first and foremost about

00:14:30.620 quest solving as we get we adapt when presented with new information i think that's a i think that's one of

00:14:37.240 our core values here and the thing that we want to spread too is that we want the best ideas to win

00:14:41.860 and that means bringing in sometimes scary and offensive ideas and genuinely engaging with them

00:14:46.440 because sometimes they're right and if we're wrong we would rather be corrected than to never find out

00:14:51.560 that we're wrong and feel safe yeah and we regularly change pretty dramatically our worldview on things

00:14:57.720 and this is where i think a lot of people misunderstand opportunity with us so many people on twitter will attack us

00:15:02.960 and they'll be like look at this right here this proves you're wrong and then we go look at it and

00:15:08.420 did you not google the statistics on this before sending this to us because it doesn't support your

00:15:13.260 position i think people just aren't used to having that opportunity to genuinely change someone's mind

00:15:18.200 so they're so used to just sending out statistics that are overly biased towards those existing

00:15:23.740 preconceptions that they don't expect somebody to go and then try to do literature review on the

00:15:28.160 subject and then come back and say okay you lost your chance there and i'm not going to engage with

00:15:33.760 arguments like that again but i'd love to know more of where do you see things going in the future

00:15:39.320 where do you see like how would you deprogram people or do you think people even need to be

00:15:44.660 deprogrammed from your environment growing up do you wish you had found an out do you think you'd be

00:15:50.520 mentally healthier today if you had found an out earlier or do you think that it was okay to not find

00:15:55.740 one until you were an adult what are your thoughts on that it's a good question i think to a great

00:16:00.160 extent it's better to become deprogrammed from your culture once you reach adulthood because i think

00:16:07.020 when you become deprogrammed and you're still a minor and you don't have the rights of an adult and

00:16:11.340 you also don't have the ability to go out get a job live in your own place then the cognitive dissonance

00:16:16.360 that you experience having to live a lifestyle and in a household that you don't inherently agree with

00:16:23.260 can cause so much mental anguish and pain that it probably does more harm than good i think being

00:16:30.380 like a closeted whatever like different person a black sheep of the family is really painful and

00:16:36.740 difficult and the more you can put that off the better and maybe you have a different opinion about

00:16:42.740 this and i also feel like maybe i'm wrong because if the amish have rum springa at the younger age

00:16:49.440 and theoretically i guess though it's at an age at which they could choose to never return

00:16:54.420 and start their own independent life i guess it depends but that's my take what would yours be

00:16:59.940 is it better to be deprogrammed early or as an adult i actually i heard what you were saying i had never

00:17:06.660 thought of it that way but i think you're absolutely right i think at the end of the day as long as our

00:17:11.400 society is structured with parents being parents like presumably one day some factions in our society

00:17:17.860 could have like corporate raised kids or something or government raised kids and then that would be

00:17:21.580 different or like child labor laws that allow people to become emancipated minors but so long as

00:17:27.760 we expect people to be wards of a specific family and with our existing adoption laws being what they are

00:17:35.760 and adoption system being what they are it's probably less emotional pain overall to not introduce

00:17:42.700 people to other cultures until they reach the age at which they can support themselves at which point

00:17:51.160 it makes sense to in mass introduce them to other cultures and be like okay now you get to choose which

00:17:57.660 is one of the things that we've really tried to set up for our kids is systems in place that ensure

00:18:02.640 that they feel no obligation to continue on any aspect of our culture that we raise them with

00:18:08.580 that they don't feel was actively beneficial to them or that didn't cause any sort of emotional

00:18:13.440 pain to them so that we can have this intergenerational cultural improvement while also maintaining aspects

00:18:19.720 of harder cultures and by that what i mean is stricter cultural rules but many of these ideas i did not

00:18:24.740 have when i met simone i was still i was actually pretty you might think of this as like a conservative

00:18:29.400 person meeting her i was pretty progressive when i met you right extremely yeah very i was just more

00:18:34.680 questioning at the time yeah it was really like our relationship was much more like when i'm on

00:18:40.560 youtube and i hear a questioning mormon meets a mormon wife or husband who was like totally in on the

00:18:47.000 church and then they slowly start questioning together instead of me coming into this and saying

00:18:53.400 oh i have a totally different way of seeing things also i as i said i think that there is and i've said

00:19:00.280 this in other videos where i talk about this concept of the super virus i think what the progressive

00:19:04.360 movement has become is no longer a movement about tolerance as much and now the movement no longer

00:19:11.660 i feel tolerates diversity or tolerates people doing things in different ways that and it says my way of

00:19:19.080 doing things is correct and everything else is evil yeah well it's a lot of sympathy it's not just that

00:19:25.840 though and when you ask me like when i should deprogram i would definitely have been way worse off had i

00:19:33.000 stayed in that culture specifically because i do inherently have a lot of issues around social

00:19:39.840 anxiety ocd now diagnosed autism right where i have a lot of reasons to fall into victimhood mindsets

00:19:49.560 and that is a very now predominant mindset in progressive culture but it wasn't when you were

00:19:56.200 growing up i'm not yeah not so much but mindsets we've got six minutes here yeah the idea it comes

00:20:03.340 from in progressive culture one of the top selling points essentially is that we will protect you from

00:20:09.220 hurt feelings we will protect you from pain and one of the greatest evils is pain mental or physical or

00:20:15.020 any sort of anguish or suffering that that is not okay it's not okay for children to get hurt or beat up or

00:20:21.020 to experience bullying any adversities is bad and ultimately that would cause me immense damage as

00:20:30.120 an adult because it would give me an excuse to become a complete shut-in and when i met you

00:20:36.120 i couldn't go out to eat restaurants you didn't leave your house at all no yeah i only left my home for

00:20:42.560 work i had to really force myself to get out i really had to force myself to socialize and it was

00:20:48.620 extremely scary for me so all sorts of things were very difficult talk about how that felt so how did

00:20:54.480 your growing up lead to that outcome where you were afraid of engaging with the world at all

00:20:59.160 and how did engaging with me and beginning to think first principally and for yourself get you out of

00:21:04.620 that i don't think it's the culture that made me feel that way it's my it's the fact that i'm

00:21:09.740 autistic and i've ocd and i don't like people stress me out help you out of that well so no yeah so

00:21:15.920 deprogramming from progressive culture helped me out of that because progressive culture basically

00:21:21.780 says oh we must accommodate you if you get really stressed out by being around people if you get

00:21:27.880 really stressed out by leaving the house don't do it like you don't have to do it you can stay inside

00:21:34.040 we're not going to do anything that's going to trigger you etc so it builds this cocoon of learned

00:21:39.400 helplessness around you whereas the culture that you and i developed from thinking about things from a more

00:21:45.360 first principles and questioning standpoint was suck it up things are hard this is how you sharpen

00:21:51.840 yourself this is how you learn your own boundaries this is how you build strength adversity and suffering

00:21:57.360 is just part of the human condition it's a signal that you learn to navigate that is very informative

00:22:03.440 but that shouldn't make you never do things and mentally how did you feel versus those two mindsets

00:22:09.900 when you were in one versus the other did you feel better when you hid from the world in any way

00:22:15.080 or no and i'm definitely leaning in to to protecting my my my mental or shielding myself from the world

00:22:24.220 only made it worse it's very similar to recovering from surgery they want you up and walking as soon as

00:22:29.740 you can so you get blood flow to the injured area it recovers more quickly you're not as likely to

00:22:34.960 develop additional weird limps and stuff that like make other parts of your body start to break and get misused

00:22:41.440 and i think dealing with anxiety issues and other mental issues is a lot like that like you're gonna

00:22:46.620 have to somewhat work through the pain to be able to recover enough to function as a human

00:22:50.520 and working through the pain is part of the recovery process and so i think a lot of that sort of

00:22:55.740 exposure therapy has led me to be able to do things i could never imagine i could do

00:23:01.200 and i definitely feel less overall anxiety now because i'm just so accustomed now to throwing

00:23:06.420 myself into completely terrifying situations and it's just a normal thing and it is no it is no more

00:23:12.780 i think a lot how like humans have a baseline happiness level i think humans also have a baseline

00:23:17.460 anxiety level um and i actually think that our lifestyle now has my baseline anxiety level a little

00:23:22.980 bit lower because i'm not doing things that exacerbated it which is what i did when i tried to protect

00:23:27.980 and this is very interesting so our viewers may think that simone is the one who is like more timid

00:23:32.980 in our relationship now but it is absolutely the opposite being with her is what inspires me to take

00:23:40.460 risks and put myself out there and endure suffering in pursuit of my goals because i look at her as an

00:23:48.600 example and as such a shining example of the type of person i could be if i had her mental fortitude

00:23:57.060 and the mental fortitude she has developed dwarfs i even wonder of what i'm capable of but i can try

00:24:05.400 every day to reach her levels and i don't know if that makes me simp to say that i really love and

00:24:12.800 admire my wife and every day i am almost ashamed at how great of a person you are and how much you

00:24:22.180 embody the type of person i wish i could become and how much you have shaped even that set of

00:24:28.020 aspirations for myself it's back at you i think we each push each other to go further and i think by

00:24:34.520 because each of us models what the other person believes we can become and tries to to live up to

00:24:41.080 that standard and be the person that you think we each think we can be makes a big difference i just

00:24:46.300 have to thank you so much for giving me the ability to see so much more than the myopic world that i

00:24:52.500 grew up in i really love you malcolm i'm so grateful for it so much simon i'm so glad to do these with you

00:24:58.180 and talk with you and i know these things can get us in trouble but i think for people either on the

00:25:02.700 conservative or progressive end of the spectrum it helps them see people who are open to outside

00:25:07.540 opinions who do differ from them those that are able to engage with ideas without yelling just the

00:25:12.440 idea of being like or dehumanizing people or saying oh you hate this group or oh you hate that group

00:25:17.140 because i i think that's how we can improve and help ourselves but also help our kids by exposing them

00:25:23.460 to different ideas hopefully that's the hope but we'll see but hey we have a roughly 18 year sales pitch

00:25:30.620 if we yeah they don't buy it and they say hey your life kind of sucked i am glad for them to try

00:25:36.400 something better if we're wrong we want them to be right yeah at the very least that's what it is to have

00:25:42.100 kids right to to understand that i lack the capability to iteratively improve as much in

00:25:48.480 the next 30 years is i expect my kids to iteratively improve from the starting point we give them

00:25:54.280 totally i look forward to our next conversation already thanks malcolm thank you

Based Camp - May 16, 2023

Based Camp： Growing Up in the Progressive Cult

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