Based Camp - From Disgust to Cringe to Vitalism： Examining the Evolution of Cultural Frameworks

00:00:00.000 I think it was the recognition that disgust-based morality was leading to

00:00:04.260 immoral actions, like the persecution. No, hear me out here.

00:00:08.080 I genuinely think it was the disgust-based morality caused the persecution of

00:00:12.640 LGBT individuals that led to the destruction of that system. 0.96

00:00:16.780 That's not just how ridiculous it ultimately was. 0.76

00:00:21.140 Yeah, because many people were like,

00:00:22.460 why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves that they can't

00:00:26.960 change? I think it's the new cultural framework that is going to dominate in the next age,

00:00:33.520 which is the age of vitalism.

00:00:36.940 So vitalism, I would define as a cultural framework that sells itself with a love of

00:00:45.200 existence and a love of being who you are unapologetically.

00:00:50.340 One of the problems with the vital system,

00:00:51.980 and I'll also explain why it's going to potentially eventually crash,

00:00:56.040 is often the people who care the least about how society judges them, like us, for example,

00:01:03.060 because of that, they lack a general moral framework and they'll just do narcissistic

00:01:09.900 stuff all the time in a way that like the Tiger King or Trump does, right?

00:01:14.540 Would you like to know more?

00:01:15.960 Hello, Simone. We are going to be discussing a very interesting topic today, and there's going

00:01:21.560 to be a long emble at the end of this because sometimes we just have casual conversations

00:01:25.900 before them, and we had a really interesting one before this episode. But I'm going to be

00:01:29.680 discussing a concept that I have been thinking about personally, and a fan sent me some ideas.

00:01:36.440 It actually helped me flesh out this concept into a broader concept about how our society

00:01:42.540 functions and where we are moving as a society and a realistic path through the pervading nihilism

00:01:50.960 of our current age. This story starts in the age of our childhood or our parents when the dominant

00:01:59.940 cultural group in the country was Protestant Christianity. These were the days of the satanic 1.00

00:02:07.240 panic and a lot of the anti-gay stuff and stuff like that.

00:02:12.200 We're talking the 80s, early 90s.

00:02:14.300 Yeah. There was, and I love that some people still think we're there. Like, they still think

00:02:18.160 like the Republicans are like the anti-gay party or something like that. It's freaking insane. 0.99

00:02:22.860 Like, I cannot, it's insane. 45% of gay men voted for Trump, by the way. Like, we are no longer 0.99

00:02:29.120 in that the gay party and the non-gay party. Society has done a 180 since then. But anyway, 0.64

00:02:34.400 back to what we were saying here. Or at least that was one study. Some people, it's only

00:02:39.440 one study. Yeah, because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe. You're just

00:02:43.300 throw it out. Anyway, we need to take it back here. In that world, while there was a philosophical

00:02:50.800 structure for what the conservative ideology was, like the Christian philosophical structure,

00:02:57.260 everything like that, it wasn't that philosophical structure that motivated individual action,

00:03:04.140 voting, and decision-making among the Republican party when they were communicating with the mob,

00:03:10.340 I guess you could call it. Specifically, the way that they communicated was through disgust.

00:03:17.260 And by that, what I mean is they're like, doesn't it disgust you when you see gay people kissing, 1.00

00:03:23.360 for example? Therefore, we should ban that, right? Doesn't it disgust you when you see X or Y?

00:03:31.120 That is how they motivated the export of their cultural value system. And in reaction to that,

00:03:39.200 interestingly, the far left began to deify things that disgusted them. That was how they fought this.

00:03:48.060 And you actually see this in leftist art. One thing I always mention is Vanderhoeven,

00:03:51.720 who's being interviewed about Star Trek Troopers. Really, you should watch our Star Trek Troopers video

00:03:55.780 if you haven't seen it. I think it's one of the best that we've done. But in the interview,

00:03:58.800 he was like, I was surprised that people didn't realize it was supposed to be a parody against

00:04:03.620 ultra-right-wingism because everyone I casted in it was beautiful. And I thought that people

00:04:08.880 would recognize that meant that it was supposed to be evil, like they were supposed to be evil

00:04:12.480 like bad guys. And I just love this world perspective of if a thing is beautiful, it is

00:04:17.180 therefore evil. And you actually see this in a lot of post-modernism and stuff like this.

00:04:21.520 And it actually helps me understand a little bit of the hatred of us. We've gotten online hate for

00:04:28.660 naming our kids after Romans, like Octavian, for example. They're like, this is a sign... 0.98

00:04:33.720 Or Scandinavians. We get hate for that too.

00:04:36.280 Yeah. The Roman one is more interesting to me because we actually do have Scandinavian

00:04:39.780 heritage. That is your family's original last name before Ellis Island. The Roman one is

00:04:44.620 interesting because I don't have Roman heritage. Romans were not white. Romans subjugated and

00:04:48.920 enslaved white people. They were a Mediterranean population group. I guess if you want to call

00:04:53.460 them white, you can. Historically in the United States, they were not treated as white. Italian

00:04:58.660 immigrants were not treated as white immigrants. They were treated very badly.

00:05:02.240 The Irish weren't treated as white immigrants either in many ways.

00:05:05.160 And this is why probably the Hispanic immigrant group today that is seen as a separate ethnic group

00:05:10.420 is not going to be seen as a separate ethnic group. They're no less white than Italians. 0.62

00:05:14.760 But anyway, Italians had a problem with organized crime and everything too. So remember that.

00:05:18.920 Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. But why do I elevate this cultural group that stomped

00:05:23.460 mine, right? That civilized us, right? They took us when we were savages in the woods,

00:05:30.880 worshiping stones and stuff like that. And they brought us a different system. And I think

00:05:36.640 that system made us better. And then we went out and we exported that system all over the world.

00:05:44.060 This was the period of imperialism. And a lot of people are like, oh, that was such a horrible

00:05:48.160 thing. And I think that they capture something true about us when they're like, why do you

00:05:52.540 look up to the Romans? We don't look up to the Romans because we are the Romans. We look up to

00:05:57.020 the Romans because they showed strengths, competence, and beauty in the things that they created,

00:06:01.640 especially in contrast with our ancestors of the similar period. And when they are looking to people

00:06:06.780 to uplift from that same period, if you look at like the far progressive mind, you're looking at

00:06:11.440 somebody like Bambi Thug, where she is uplifting like wicked in this neo-paganism, where they are 0.94

00:06:18.160 looking for the weak group of that period, where the older conservative systems uplifted beauty and

00:06:24.800 demonized things that disgusted them. They also uplifted strength. The problem that those systems

00:06:28.700 have is that they communicated this to the mob through disgust systems, which can allow for people

00:06:34.480 to be victimized. And it's very easy to mistake disgust, an innate reaction that we evolved to try to help

00:06:40.400 us have more surviving offspring, either through not engaging in reproductive behavior that will

00:06:45.580 lead to lower offspring. I think that's why we have disgust towards things like male relationships.

00:06:50.020 I want to support gay people. And I think a lot of gay people don't recognize this. I could not be

00:06:55.920 more pro-gay. I lived throughout my entire high school career with a gay roommate, not living with 1.00

00:07:02.960 my family or anything like that, a GSA. And then in college, my academic dad with a gay guy. It's your core

00:07:08.500 social community. And these were communities I was choosing. But even with that, my brain still

00:07:15.520 instinctually exports a disgust when I see men kissing. That is something that I can't help but

00:07:24.340 feel. And that's just the way human sexuality works. It includes arousal and it includes disgust. 0.99

00:07:30.280 And you don't get to choose what arouses you or what disgusts you.

00:07:33.360 Yeah, it's just important that I don't confuse that with a moral intuition. And this is something

00:07:38.520 that Christianity also was figuring out in the 80s and 90s. I think that is what Mother Teresa

00:07:44.300 represented for a lot of people, is that when you see somebody with leprosy, your average person sees

00:07:49.940 them and their brain exports disgust because it's trying to get them to not interact with somebody

00:07:54.360 who might be diseased. But a lot of people in these older moral frameworks confused that disgust

00:08:00.700 With a lack of morality. With evil. With evil. Like they must be immoral if they are causing

00:08:06.940 disgust. Yeah, or they have sinned in some way or this is a sign of their sinful life or

00:08:11.580 depending on your religious framework, sinful past life, etc. Right?

00:08:16.000 It's very important that our society moved past disgust as a metric for morality and immorality.

00:08:26.680 But during that period, the seeds of the worst impulses of modern progressivism were sowed,

00:08:32.740 which is a cultural group that in the figures in history that they worship and look to with reverence

00:08:38.740 and was in modern times they worship and look to as reverence, is weakness and ugliness are seen as

00:08:45.660 signs of greatness, which can seem like a very bizarre philosophy, but it makes sense if you look at

00:08:51.060 where it grew, which was originally in opposition to a moral framework that was using disgust to shape things.

00:08:57.120 Fair.

00:08:58.680 But then we move from this disgust framework to another framework that is, I think, equally bad.

00:09:05.760 And it's the framework that we're just now leaving now.

00:09:08.420 And I would say this spans from late 90s through 2020 pretty much, right?

00:09:15.480 Yeah, I think we're only just now seeing it.

00:09:20.000 Emerging from it.

00:09:21.240 Just now emerging from it.

00:09:22.940 And this is the era of cringe motivating mass action.

00:09:27.940 Mm-hmm.

00:09:28.980 Which is very different from disgust, though.

00:09:31.580 Which is very different from disgust.

00:09:33.360 Yeah.

00:09:33.720 Cringe is secondhand embarrassment.

00:09:36.320 And it is embarrassment about somebody breaking social norms that they may not have recognized

00:09:44.300 were social norms or something like that.

00:09:46.500 Right.

00:09:46.740 This motivated during the dominance of the urban monoculture in our society, when we switched

00:09:52.960 from the Christian group having control to the urban monoculture having control, this

00:09:57.280 largely progressive group, they motivated mass action through cringe.

00:10:02.480 Cringe in others and fear of cringe yourself.

00:10:06.480 Yeah.

00:10:06.740 Which is why when you look at polling, for example, there are fewer people now than at

00:10:11.420 least ever before in this polling that are willing to not only express their views on

00:10:15.400 controversial subjects, but express their views on any subject at all.

00:10:19.460 The extent to which people are afraid of criticism is off the charts now.

00:10:24.580 And I think that's a product of the era of cringe, right?

00:10:27.960 Yeah.

00:10:28.160 And I think that that was the result of cringe, which now people are recognizing as bad.

00:10:32.020 When you use cultural conformity as your primary method of communicating with the mob, eventually

00:10:40.260 intellectually alive players are going to be like, yes, but the end state of this is everyone

00:10:45.720 thinks the same.

00:10:46.700 Everyone acts the same.

00:10:48.320 Everyone's afraid of being creative or interesting.

00:10:51.900 And I think that almost you can see as a perfect counter and reflection to this BAP, Bronze Age 1.00

00:10:59.460 Pervert, who I mentioned in another recent video, where I think he is, his entire thing is like

00:11:04.980 a performative artistic statement against the dominance of cringe culture.

00:11:09.380 And I think so out there, so flamboyantly unapologetic in stances that are quite colorful.

00:11:18.320 And that break every one of the cringe culture's frameworks.

00:11:23.060 So you can contrast him with somebody like, who I actually used to respect as an intellectual.

00:11:29.720 I don't like the path that he's gone down.

00:11:31.680 Mylon Yiannopoulos.

00:11:32.740 Oh, okay.

00:11:34.600 Who would have, yeah, like these, but these were, no, more like he would have, give speeches

00:11:38.380 and then get canceled and then have people come on stage and freak out.

00:11:41.360 Yeah.

00:11:41.560 Mylon Yiannopoulos.

00:11:42.780 Yeah.

00:11:43.180 But Mylon Yiannopoulos was actually still operating under cringe culture.

00:11:49.360 Like he liked it being a shock junk, but he never actually really broke the rules of progressive

00:11:55.020 society. 0.90

00:11:56.260 He was still operating under the cringe framework.

00:11:59.000 He was just trying to show that it wasn't logical or logically consistent.

00:12:02.740 Like that was his whole thing.

00:12:04.800 Bap, who I think is equally as colorful as Milo.

00:12:08.000 So I don't think it's just that he's colorful that makes him this through the cringe to base

00:12:12.540 because base, as we've said on our episode, you know, you need to pass through the tunnel

00:12:16.060 of cringe to get to base.

00:12:17.440 Yeah.

00:12:18.000 And I really, truly believe this.

00:12:19.640 I think that all base is intrinsically cringe because to be base, you have to go against the

00:12:25.660 dominant cultural framework, which is what's cringe is the secondhand embarrassment.

00:12:29.360 And to be based what it really is to, and I actually, this is really interesting.

00:12:35.400 And I think how we got to this sort of based culture, which is the perfect anecdote to cringe 1.00

00:12:40.660 culture, which is people can't feel secondhand embarrassment for us.

00:12:45.380 Not easily because we take ownership.

00:12:48.420 We know we are breaking cultural norms.

00:12:50.580 We know where the cultural norms are we are breaking, and we are doing it intentionally

00:12:55.520 and take pride in those decisions because we believe that those cultural norms are bad

00:12:59.460 cultural norms.

00:13:01.160 Where cringe exists, right?

00:13:04.400 Like where you can get cringe in breaking cultural norms is you break cultural norms just because

00:13:08.960 you're not aware of them.

00:13:10.180 Or you break cultural norms because you're part of a separate cultural group and you just don't

00:13:15.140 see them as normative.

00:13:15.980 So you're just doing your own thing.

00:13:17.200 And for those individuals, they can be like, oh, they didn't know, poor child.

00:13:20.800 I actually think Trolls does a great job of showing the racism.

00:13:26.780 The kids movie Trolls.

00:13:29.000 Well, Trolls World Tour.

00:13:31.080 And showing the racism intrinsic, and I'll put the clip here, in this cringe world perspective

00:13:38.080 where she meets the country trolls, great, the rural poor for the first time.

00:13:42.620 And she's shocked that their songs are sad.

00:13:45.800 And she goes, don't they know that music is about making you happy?

00:13:48.920 And then she's like, oh, they must not know.

00:13:51.520 And so she's going to go tell them to erase their culture in favor of her culture because 1.00

00:13:55.960 her culture is obviously correct in the way it relates to the arts.

00:14:00.520 And their culture is obviously wrong in the way it relates to the arts because it's different, 0.97

00:14:04.880 right?

00:14:05.120 And I think that movie also, I'll have the other clip here, they do such a great job in

00:14:27.060 that movie, of showing the sin of progressivism, the sin of progressivism actually being about

00:14:36.180 cultural imperialism, where she's, we can make us all the same. 0.99

00:14:39.940 Like she's, we can understand that we're not really different.

00:14:42.040 And then one day we can all come together.

00:14:44.020 And Trolls are like anything but that.

00:14:48.380 It's our differences.

00:14:50.020 And this is what I think in this new conservative movement, the recognition that progressives

00:14:53.100 claim to love diversity, but don't actually think anyone's different.

00:14:57.560 Men and women aren't different in their perspectives or proficiencies, different cultural groups,

00:15:00.860 different ethnic groups.

00:15:01.680 Why would diversity matter if no one's different?

00:15:03.600 But if you elevate the difference, if you're like, it's actually good that we're different 0.96

00:15:06.680 and that English people with different proficiency than perspectives, we can achieve better outcomes.

00:15:12.160 But to do that, you need to recognize that we are actually different and that different

00:15:16.060 cultural groups are actually better at different things on average.

00:15:21.040 Not everyone in a cultural group, but on average, they have slightly different proficiencies

00:15:24.780 and perspectives.

00:15:25.900 If we combine our music, she'll see that music unites all Trolls and that we're all the same

00:15:30.300 and that she's one of us.

00:15:31.820 I mean, no disrespect, but anything but that.

00:15:35.060 History is just going to keep repeating itself until we make everyone realize that we're all

00:15:38.760 the same.

00:15:39.940 But we're not all the same.

00:15:41.980 Denying our differences is denying the truth of who we are.

00:15:46.160 Just out of curiosity, what do you think brokered our shift culturally from disgust to cringe?

00:15:54.720 Was it the fact that content creation became pervasive online and a bunch of people who

00:15:59.940 weren't subject to public scrutiny before suddenly were?

00:16:04.000 What changed?

00:16:05.640 So no, I think that it's people like us in BAP, really.

00:16:08.840 So it was the key...

00:16:10.240 No, no, I'm referring from disgust to cringe.

00:16:12.620 This is...

00:16:13.100 Disgust to cringe.

00:16:13.720 Yes.

00:16:14.640 I think it was the recognition that disgust-based morality was leading to immoral actions.

00:16:22.240 Like the persecution...

00:16:23.720 No, hear me out here.

00:16:25.380 I genuinely think it was the disgust-based morality caused the persecution of LGBT individuals 0.66

00:16:31.240 that led to the destruction of that system. 0.96

00:16:34.020 Okay, that's not just how ridiculous it ultimately was.

00:16:37.300 Yeah, because many people were like, why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves

00:16:43.700 that they can't change?

00:16:45.100 So essentially, there was enough of a recognition of the lack of truth and impracticality of disgust-based

00:16:53.000 reactions.

00:16:54.000 And in general, support for progressive causes that caused an elevation of, honestly, of disgusting

00:17:02.480 things that people found disgusting.

00:17:03.760 There's the whole, like, Mary Harrington conspiracy theory that I love of the reason why children's

00:17:10.140 book illustrations now are so ugly, more tracks with the rise of progressive culture than

00:17:15.120 anything else.

00:17:15.920 And it's almost like a psyop that's encouraging people to normalize ugliness as part of this

00:17:21.340 embrace, to your point, of disgust.

00:17:24.640 Yeah.

00:17:24.940 Any normal person, she would invoke a strong, immediate instinct of disgust.

00:17:30.220 But progressives have learned to treat that emotion as a sign that something is more morally

00:17:35.020 pure and more worthy of engagement.

00:17:37.900 And there was a period at which it was useful to counter that feeling of disgust, but this

00:17:41.680 disgust should just be ignored, not elevated. 1.00

00:17:45.900 And I think now people realize, well, that's stupid. 0.99

00:17:48.340 And the key that broke the lock of this second system was the based individuals who previously, 0.99

00:17:54.560 when they were dunking on cringe, just people like Chris Chan and stuff like that.

00:17:57.640 People who just had no clue what they were doing and were breaking cultural boundaries 0.93

00:18:02.220 because they were usually, like, mentally ill people or, like, actual racists or et cetera. 0.93

00:18:08.800 Then, or, like, just behind the times. 0.71

00:18:11.220 But you can't argue that BAP or us are behind the times.

00:18:14.200 Like, we break it.

00:18:15.720 The key that breaks that lock is people being like, wait, these people are subverting the

00:18:21.500 culture but have pride in who they are.

00:18:23.900 Right?

00:18:24.160 And I actually think this is what led to Trump winning the election.

00:18:28.260 And I'll explain what it is because I think it's the new cultural framework that is going

00:18:33.120 to dominate in the next age.

00:18:35.060 And I think it's a sustainable one, which is the age of vitalism.

00:18:40.340 So vitalism, I would define as a cultural framework that sells itself with a love of existence

00:18:49.120 and a love of being who you are unapologetically.

00:18:53.280 And I think that this is where we see individuals like Tiger King exploding onto the stage.

00:18:59.720 Tiger King did so well because he ignored, you know, in the past, that is what would have been

00:19:05.800 called cringe.

00:19:06.760 But in our time, he knew the cultural norms he was violating.

00:19:10.460 He just had perfect ownership over who he was and was proud of who he was.

00:19:14.520 And even though he was a genuinely reprehensible person, that is no longer the way people relate

00:19:21.360 to others.

00:19:21.940 I think Trump, for example, while I think he was a good president, I think he's a morally

00:19:26.780 reprehensible human being. 0.99

00:19:28.540 I think he is a bad human being. 0.99

00:19:30.980 When I look at the way he's treated his wives, when I look at the way he's, it's just gross 0.99

00:19:35.500 to me.

00:19:35.920 But in the age of vitalism, what we're going to see, and I think that this will scare a lot

00:19:40.080 of people, is a lot of reprehensible human beings are going to be elevated through vitalism

00:19:46.380 because one of the problems with the vitalist system, I'll also explain why it's going to

00:19:50.980 potentially eventually crash, is often the people who care the least about how society

00:19:57.060 judges them, like us, for example, because of that, they lack a general moral framework

00:20:03.140 and they'll just do narcissistic stuff all the time in a way that like the Tiger King

00:20:10.540 or Trump does, right?

00:20:11.660 And so we need to then transition from a purely vitalistic system to a vitalistic city on a

00:20:19.580 hill system, which I think is our end goal.

00:20:22.480 That's fun.

00:20:23.560 The idea of we are trying to create something beautiful in the future, like this consistent

00:20:32.960 striving, not that we are the city on the hill right now, but the city of the hill that

00:20:38.280 will exist in this vision of a more perfect humanity that we can strive towards.

00:20:44.840 Aristotelian.

00:20:47.180 Aristotelian.

00:20:47.740 The word I was looking for was imanestize the eshton, which means in political theory

00:20:56.620 and theology, to imanestize the eshton is generally a pejorative phrase referring to attempts to

00:21:02.540 bring about utopian conditions in the world and to effectively create a heaven on earth.

00:21:07.680 Theologically, the belief is akin to post-millennialism as reflected in the social gospel of the 1880s

00:21:14.940 and 1930s era, as well as Protestant reform movements during the second great awakening

00:21:19.300 in the 1830s and 1840s, such as abolitionists.

00:21:23.820 I'll add it in here.

00:21:24.880 Yeah, but.

00:21:25.500 And I think it's bad to think that you're like living in that now or that there's ever this

00:21:29.620 perfect society that you can create because that leads to things like communism and stuff

00:21:32.800 like that.

00:21:33.680 But I do think a moral system around an ever improving society is the way to go.

00:21:38.960 And when people look at like the way that we're framing our public images, it is with this

00:21:43.660 based vitalism in mind.

00:21:46.020 Our end goal is present.

00:21:47.280 But will I get there?

00:21:48.160 I don't know.

00:21:48.680 But that's where I'd like to end.

00:21:50.400 Okay, sorry.

00:21:50.900 I shouldn't say that's our end goal.

00:21:51.900 That's like our mid goal.

00:21:52.960 End goal is I should say we live in such an early time in human history.

00:21:56.280 We haven't even lived through a period where one human ruled a planet yet.

00:21:59.580 But question Simone, what are your thoughts?

00:22:02.520 I think the transition tracks.

00:22:04.240 I can intuitively feel a shift from disgust to cringe.

00:22:11.240 And then I also can feel that shift from cringe to based slash vitalism, which I'm seeing

00:22:17.480 even now.

00:22:18.260 For example, I keep hearing people talk about hate following or hate subscribing to people

00:22:24.120 who originally they might argue were cringe.

00:22:28.140 And then after spending more time hate watching their content, and this happens with us to

00:22:34.400 a certain extent, because we do get emails from people about this, they at least either

00:22:40.800 they actually come to see their views as being legitimate and join their side, or at the very

00:22:47.640 least, they start to envy the fact that they have this very vitalistic life that they hold

00:22:55.660 to their morals, they're very happy in pursuit of them.

00:22:58.500 And they envy that confidence and lack of cognitive dissonance that these people who are just

00:23:05.360 so confident in their lifestyles, however wrong these hate watchers find them to be, are.

00:23:11.900 For example, I hear one person I follow online hate watches a bunch of Mormon influencers who 1.00

00:23:19.380 live out in Miami, or not Miami, sorry, in Hawaii.

00:23:22.080 And this person hates everything about their values and their lifestyle and never wants

00:23:26.860 to have kids themselves, etc.

00:23:28.180 But then can't stop watching these wholesome Mormon families.

00:23:32.340 And then we're going to see more and more of that.

00:23:33.920 And this is where the transition starts to happen is that the more you start to question

00:23:37.880 your own lifestyle and see that other people, no matter how much you disagree with them,

00:23:42.700 are experiencing a level of vitalism and success and happiness that in your entire pursuit

00:23:49.340 of happiness, you could never achieve, it's going to get you thinking differently.

00:23:53.600 And I think that's interesting.

00:23:54.800 Yeah, I actually think that's a really core point.

00:23:57.280 And it's why wholesome baseness was the key to always defeating cringe culture, is that

00:24:03.540 cringe culture motivates individuals to watch these individuals outside their cultural framework,

00:24:08.700 because that's where they're getting the satisfaction.

00:24:10.360 At least I'm not like them, the secondhand embarrassment. 1.00

00:24:12.540 Yeah, look at how backwards and dumb these people are. 1.00

00:24:14.580 But then they look at, look how, you get this sort of, look how backwards and dumb these 1.00

00:24:18.860 people are. 1.00

00:24:19.640 It goes from, ha ha, look how backwards and dumb these people are. 1.00

00:24:23.260 And then they're watching like the wholesome Mormon family and they're like, look how backwards 1.00

00:24:28.760 and dumb these people, wait a second, wait a second, am I the backwards and dumb one? 1.00

00:24:34.900 Like my community doesn't have their shit together. 1.00

00:24:37.260 Do these people have their shit together? 1.00

00:24:39.060 What happens first is they just hate them and make fun of them. 1.00

00:24:41.800 Then they start to critique elements of their lifestyle.

00:24:45.440 Oh, the trad lifestyle, that's not really what trad is like.

00:24:49.920 These trad influencers are just showing a caricature.

00:24:52.820 But then they're more like, but the trad lifestyle in general, I kind of support.

00:24:58.120 Like they have to find new reasons as to why these people are cringe that aren't actually

00:25:02.880 related to their lifestyle.

00:25:05.540 And I think that's where the adoption starts to take place.

00:25:08.100 And it's one of our things is be so wholesome, it's cringe, you know, in the way that we

00:25:13.980 relate to each other and our kids and everything like that.

00:25:16.280 I think one thing that was said when you were talking about this, and I think that this is

00:25:19.680 a broad thing that people are going to realize because we live in a secular society now.

00:25:23.960 And a lot of people are brought up secularly.

00:25:25.960 They can only think of religion in this dehumanized context of like religious insane extremists

00:25:31.600 instead of people who still have a spark of light in their eyes.

00:25:34.360 And if you're like, what do I mean by the spark of light, talk to an Amish person or something 1.00

00:25:37.780 like that.

00:25:38.080 Somebody in one of these communities where they're really true believers and you will

00:25:41.260 see this light of human dynamism in their eyes that you just don't see from these ultra 1.00

00:25:47.500 woke individuals, which just look, I almost say like soulless when you're interacting with

00:25:51.300 them.

00:25:51.620 And a lot of their content feels that way.

00:25:53.520 It just feels like it lacks any passion anymore.

00:25:56.680 And it's that religion and faith are a choice.

00:26:00.540 And that was the core thing that sort of we realize when we're putting together this faith

00:26:03.880 system for our family is we made a choice to believe these things.

00:26:10.240 Yeah, let's try it.

00:26:12.880 Like, like, and, and, and I think that that's a really interesting thing about faith as a

00:26:18.380 concept that people without faith don't understand, right?

00:26:24.500 They think that faith is blindly believing things that don't have full evidence to support

00:26:31.120 their frameworks, right?

00:26:33.020 When what faith actually is making the choice to believe those things.

00:26:40.300 And when you reach a moment as like a hate watcher of the wholesome Mormon group or something

00:26:47.180 like that, where you're like, wait, I can just choose to be like them.

00:26:51.720 The problem for a lot of people with something like Mormonism is they're like, then I have 1.00

00:26:54.600 to make too many sacrifices around things that I want for logical consistency purpose and

00:26:59.940 everything like that.

00:27:00.820 And that's the core purpose of our tracks videos.

00:27:03.380 If you haven't seen those, it's like our own religion that our family has that we're trying

00:27:06.820 to put together that we'll get back to, it's one of my favorite projects, but it requires

00:27:10.080 a lot of intensity in terms of mental effort to write one because I need to think about

00:27:15.440 how it could be misinterpreted.

00:27:17.200 If this ends up working and becomes a religion 500 years from now, how could this be misinterpreted

00:27:22.040 to cause hatred or bigotry or, or mass negative action and stuff like that.

00:27:26.960 But I'm also trying to create it as a genuine descendant of the Christian and Jewish and Muslim

00:27:32.000 traditions, mostly the Christian tradition, mostly my Calvinist ancestry.

00:27:35.440 And so I think of it as a form of Christianity, but it requires less, I think, you don't get

00:27:41.700 the benefit of antiquity with it.

00:27:43.460 So a lot of people are like, okay, antiquity, but a lot of these older religious traditions

00:27:46.740 don't really have that much antiquity in the way they're currently practiced anyway.

00:27:49.920 Even Judaism, right? 0.94

00:27:51.700 The Kabbalah was only added about a thousand years ago.

00:27:54.560 Only about a thousand.

00:27:56.300 Goodness gracious.

00:27:57.280 I mean, if you look at Christian frameworks, like a lot of the Protestant beliefs, rapture are

00:28:01.120 fairly new.

00:28:01.960 Yeah.

00:28:02.180 But debatably, but most scholars think that it's a fairly new belief.

00:28:06.200 So these religions evolve all the time and we simply see ours as the, but then we choose 0.94

00:28:11.780 to believe things that don't make sense to people.

00:28:13.420 We're like, yeah, God is real, which is interesting that we call ourselves atheists, but we believe

00:28:17.920 in God.

00:28:18.300 Like our Wikipedia says we're atheists, but I'm like, but I also believe in God.

00:28:20.800 And people will be like, how do you square that?

00:28:22.300 And I'm like, because I don't see God as supernatural.

00:28:24.120 I think God like is an actual being that physically exists just at a different point

00:28:30.400 in time in a way that we may not understand in a way that we may see as supernatural from

00:28:35.220 our own perspective, but not in some other mystical realm, physically real thing, but

00:28:41.840 in a way that we may not be able to touch or something like that, but physically within

00:28:45.520 our physical constraints, the physical constraints that our reality operates with it.

00:28:50.380 But anyway, yeah, I think there was another thing I wanted to say here.

00:28:54.480 So one is belief of the choice.

00:28:56.000 We just try to make that choice come with as few sacrifices as possible for a broad secularist

00:28:59.280 while still motivating the core thing that religion motivates, which is austerity.

00:29:04.260 I think that just, you don't need to make all of the individual sacrifices so long as you're

00:29:08.340 making sacrifices across your entire life for the greater good and genuinely living with

00:29:12.620 those sacrifices.

00:29:13.260 People were so shocked.

00:29:14.100 They're like, oh, they stack their kids in a barracks, like behind me right here.

00:29:17.920 Um, in, in the dad's office and they, they don't put their heat on in the winter and

00:29:22.920 it's like, yeah, living with austerity used to be seen as an intrinsically good thing.

00:29:25.880 It's part of human vitalism.

00:29:27.480 But the final point I want to make here is in response to a question that somebody was

00:29:31.980 asking me that I found really interesting and got me thinking where they're like, why

00:29:36.500 do you think humanity is a good thing?

00:29:39.800 Like, why are you promoting this ideology where like humanity and the human potential future

00:29:46.760 is a good thing?

00:29:47.440 And I said, gosh, yeah, journalists just asked me that yesterday.

00:29:49.560 And I'm like, duh.

00:29:52.200 First of all, it's an irrelevant question because groups that don't think that humanity

00:29:56.340 is a good thing are going to turn nihilistic and cease to exist.

00:29:58.860 Yeah.

00:29:59.080 So it's not like mimetically an interesting question to me.

00:30:03.220 Obviously you need to somehow convince people of this, but two, because it's a choice.

00:30:08.860 I have faith in humanity.

00:30:10.940 I have faith that we will continue to improve.

00:30:14.960 And I think if we look through history, we do continue to, on the broad scale, improve

00:30:20.000 ethically, I think eventually biologically, technologically, in the way we relate to our

00:30:26.000 reality.

00:30:26.720 But this is also why I love pro-natalism because I see the next generation is better than the 1.00

00:30:30.640 last generation.

00:30:31.540 Totally.

00:30:31.880 Always.

00:30:32.380 And that's why I'm okay with death.

00:30:33.860 That's why we have this weird pro-death stance.

00:30:35.820 I don't want people to live forever.

00:30:37.200 I think that people after a certain age do not change their mind as much as young people

00:30:41.800 and cannot recontextualize reality as easily.

00:30:44.820 And this leads to negative externalities.

00:30:47.500 But realistically, my kids will be able to call up an AI of me whenever they want because

00:30:51.080 I've created so much content.

00:30:52.060 We already have some of our fans creating AIs of us that they can interact with, which

00:30:55.960 I've actually found really cool to use.

00:30:58.880 We can't share them yet, but you can put yourself on a list of them for dating advice and stuff

00:31:02.560 like that.

00:31:02.980 They're trained on specific side segments of our content.

00:31:05.700 And I just can't tell the people who are doing this how much I appreciate that they're

00:31:09.100 doing it because it's one of the goals of the creation of all of this for us is to have

00:31:12.820 a...

00:31:13.320 But then presumably my kids will be so much better than me in a few generations that

00:31:16.420 they would just see no reason to ask me questions except as a historical curiosity

00:31:21.080 of what someone of this previous period would have thought, not as like a fountain of wisdom,

00:31:25.560 which I think is the way that we would see if you could summon an ancestor's ghost

00:31:29.600 from 400 years ago.

00:31:31.380 Are you really going to learn anything about reality from them?

00:31:34.020 Not really.

00:31:34.600 It's an interesting historic curiosity, but I think that's what the life extensionists

00:31:38.580 are creating, but then they're going to consolidate power around them, which creates all sorts

00:31:42.080 of negative externalities because generally the longer you've been alive, the more you

00:31:44.880 can consolidate power.

00:31:46.240 And we've seen this with boomers, not letting the next generation rise up and creating an 1.00

00:31:49.160 intergenerationally worse society. 0.93

00:31:51.280 But I just think boomers are the worst. 1.00

00:31:53.120 Like the generation before them was awesome.

00:31:55.560 The generation before them was awesome.

00:31:56.560 They underwent so many hardships and they became better as a society.

00:32:00.160 They began to really challenge some of the systemic wicked problems of society and actually

00:32:05.020 begun to fix them like racism.

00:32:07.020 And then boomers are just like, eh, let's go back. 0.81

00:32:09.040 Let's become like fully racist. 0.98

00:32:10.200 But this time against like white people and Jews, like it's wild. 0.98

00:32:14.440 And it's been carried on the mindset that started with them in some of these younger generations, 0.96

00:32:18.020 but fortunately in the factions that are going to die out.

00:32:20.020 So I love humanity and I think that promoting that love and being excited to be a human and

00:32:26.800 excited to be alive and excited to create humans, I hope that this can be the thing that like

00:32:32.260 gets people interested in the future.

00:32:34.200 People being happy with who they are rather than this constant struggle to be happy with

00:32:39.180 who you are.

00:32:39.820 Whether or not you're happy with who you are is a choice and it is not one that you should

00:32:44.680 always make.

00:32:45.340 If you are a terrible person that needs to improve, you shouldn't work on trying to be happy

00:32:49.720 with who you are.

00:32:50.740 You should try to work to change yourself into somebody who deserves to be happy with

00:32:56.580 who they are.

00:32:57.500 I think that's why we're going to end up in a future with people who are like this,

00:33:04.080 those who are nihilistic, those who can't bring themselves to imagine why humans should 0.81

00:33:08.880 exist in the future, aren't going to have kids and their views won't be represented.

00:33:12.660 So I think it's going to be just fine.

00:33:14.680 I think what we're trying to fight for with pernatalism though, and what's interesting to me to

00:33:18.300 bring this back to the theme that you've highlighted is that what we're trying to fight against

00:33:24.320 is a return to the disgust system, because that's what a lot of the numbers look like

00:33:28.960 when you look at which groups are going to continue to reproduce and what's going to

00:33:34.420 happen when the woke monoculture essentially picks off anyone who's more open-minded or pluralistic

00:33:41.840 from those groups.

00:33:43.980 I want to be clear that a vitalist system is not a pro-beauty system necessarily.

00:33:49.380 No, it's a pluralistic, enthusiastic, high-energy system.

00:33:52.840 What you're talking about is-

00:33:53.680 So if I could describe the difference between these two systems.

00:33:56.120 In the past, there were some pro-beauty systems, right?

00:33:58.380 But pro-beauty systems are intrinsically, I think, over-exclusionary and overly culturally

00:34:02.860 conformist around what is beautiful, whereas the disgust, the vitalist systems, think of

00:34:09.940 them as the guy who rides into a room on a lion, dressed with an American flag, with

00:34:15.560 a torch in one hand and an AR-15 in the other hand, shooting into the sky, singing the national

00:34:21.280 anthem.

00:34:22.020 That's what I want to be, dressed in cyber armor.

00:34:24.720 I'll put on my Corgi picture on the page here.

00:34:26.940 Oh my god.

00:34:27.460 So that's what I want to represent, this book culture love of true Americana.

00:34:33.520 Yeah, it's not beautiful.

00:34:34.760 It's not ugly.

00:34:35.420 It's just extra.

00:34:36.840 I love you, Simone.

00:34:38.080 I love you too, Malcolm.

00:34:39.380 Well, no, it's proud of who it is.

00:34:41.160 That's what we need is pride in who we are.

00:34:43.360 And we've stamped that out outside of specifically approved subcategories.

00:34:46.820 Totally.

00:34:47.400 Yeah.

00:34:48.400 All right.

00:34:49.000 I'll see you in the Google Meet.

00:34:49.960 It's in the calendar invite.

00:34:51.560 Yeah?

00:34:52.300 Yeah.

00:34:53.020 Okay.

00:34:57.460 How are the kids this morning?

00:35:01.940 Great.

00:35:02.420 Sorry.

00:35:02.600 I was just checking to make sure I didn't have something, but I've got one at, yeah,

00:35:06.180 no, it's Wednesday.

00:35:07.360 11 a.m.

00:35:08.040 is when we have the...

00:35:09.540 Yeah, no, it's before that.

00:35:10.780 I was going to talk with the guy from Side Scrollers about working with him on the business

00:35:14.560 idea of the anti-go consultancy firm.

00:35:17.200 Because he used to run a large, like a gaming company type thing.

00:35:20.040 Yeah.

00:35:20.300 So he'd be a great...

00:35:21.620 I was actually thinking of reaching out to Jane Lindsay about doing something on this too,

00:35:25.620 he seems really sane and educated, and he could be a good person to rope into an anti-go consultancy firm.

00:35:32.520 The anti-bigotry consulting dream team.

00:35:35.280 Yeah.

00:35:35.740 And the goal would be to fight anti-meritocratic behavior, bigotry behavior that dehumanize

00:35:41.680 the specific groups.

00:35:42.420 It's wild when you think about it that there's progressive organizations.

00:35:46.560 The organizations have this one body within them, the DEI department, that is specifically

00:35:51.840 about exporting progressive cultural values.

00:35:55.080 It's a progressive department to make sure the company never doesn't act too non-progressively,

00:36:01.420 yet they don't have a parallel conservative department to make sure they never act too

00:36:06.680 out of line with conservative values.

00:36:07.720 Well, I think they see DEI as resolving a wicked problem in society at the level of the corporation,

00:36:17.800 because to the point of anti-racism as it is popularized in many spheres, you cannot just

00:36:23.420 not be racist.

00:36:24.360 You have to be actively anti-racist.

00:36:27.620 If you're not actively solving the problem, you're part of it.

00:36:30.720 Which somewhat, I would say, shores up with our philosophy in the sense that we agree that

00:36:36.720 if you see a mess, it is your responsibility to clean it up.

00:36:39.660 I don't care who spilled the milk, you need to wipe it up.

00:36:42.940 I think that's what they see.

00:36:43.900 But what's really interesting is, we'd actually talked about this in a video that I don't

00:36:46.500 know if it's going to go live, so I'll briefly mention the idea here because I think it's

00:36:49.180 a really interesting concept, and this will be put at the end of the video instead of

00:36:52.920 the beginning of the book.

00:36:53.720 The anti-racism, what it really is, remember how we divided ethical systems into consequentialist,

00:36:58.000 like the consequences of your actions are you judge the morality, it's logical, it is

00:37:02.680 the rule system that determines your actions, like lying is bad, therefore don't lie, and

00:37:07.240 then aesthetic, which is about masculine, in every decision you go, what is the most masculine

00:37:11.040 choice?

00:37:11.560 What is the most, you know, these people, what anti-racism really is, it's a logical framework

00:37:17.220 for interacting with reality, where with every decision you need to ask, what is the most

00:37:21.040 anti-racist choice I could make?

00:37:23.480 Yeah, or what is the most performatively inclusive, woke position I could possibly take, but it

00:37:30.120 is misused frequently.

00:37:32.700 No, but I think that that shows how you get bigotry as an end result of that.

00:37:37.480 When you do not include, because you're creating a hierarchy of groups within their view of what

00:37:42.640 racism is, where certain groups are more worthy of human dignity than other groups.

00:37:46.640 This is actually really interesting.

00:37:47.840 There was recently this scandal with a very progressive library that after a cis white 1.00

00:37:53.800 man leader retired for that library, they hired the perfect DEI, not only a very well-credentialed

00:38:00.360 and qualified woman to take the position, but a woman who was not white. 0.93

00:38:05.460 And where things went wrong for her, and where a huge sort of campaign against her was created,

00:38:10.720 I think probably started when she, I think, let go of some underperforming employees who 0.73

00:38:18.160 also didn't happen to be white, which I think shows where DEI has gone wrong, which is that

00:38:24.680 true DEI, which is what this woman was practicing is, yeah, when they were looking for someone who's 0.61

00:38:28.760 qualified, they chose to hire someone who also brought in a more diverse perspective.

00:38:33.800 But then when she actually focused on the outcome and mission of the organization over performative

00:38:44.220 preferential treatment for groups that have historically been discriminated against, then

00:38:50.460 she was defenestrated.

00:38:51.500 Yeah.

00:38:51.760 So it's just bigotry.

00:38:53.160 Yeah.

00:38:53.420 But hold on a second.

00:38:54.580 I got to get something.

00:38:55.360 I'll get started on the piece here.

00:38:58.700 And I think what's great about anti-DEI, I'm going to keep pitching this to people, is

00:39:03.200 that it actually increases profits.

00:39:05.160 If you had allowed her to do her real job, which should be anti-bigotry, you increase the

00:39:10.440 meritocracy within a corporation.

00:39:12.060 When you're doing DEI, you are intrinsically decreasing the efficiency of a corporation because

00:39:16.820 you are maintaining like underemploying employees and stuff like that.

00:39:20.540 Anyway, so.

Based Camp - June 07, 2024

From Disgust to Cringe to Vitalism： Examining the Evolution of Cultural Frameworks

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