Based Camp - How Self-Actualization Destroyed Western Civilization

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. I'm excited to talk to you today. Today, we are going to be discussing

00:00:04.420 the popularization and development of the term self-actualization, as well as the damage it has

00:00:12.080 done to society, tracing it. I think it's a horrible concept that is upstream of a lot of

00:00:18.260 what makes the urban monoculture so toxic to a personal framing of reality. We will provide

00:00:25.040 alternate frameworks, which I think are better. And we will also be exploring the interesting

00:00:29.900 truth behind the current term self-actualization, which is that it actually came from a pretty

00:00:34.800 based concept. Self-actualization is, even in the words of the guy who popularized it,

00:00:41.340 a rebranding of the concept of Nisha's Ubermensch for a progressive audience.

00:00:46.900 No! Oh my god, the psyops of that. Wait, so was that Maslow of Maslow's horror TV?

00:00:53.940 Yeah, Maslow was the one who popularized it. And before him, it meant something entirely

00:00:58.260 different. Wow! Okay, I'm really, I'm very curious to see what your ultimate take on all

00:01:04.440 this is. Like, is it going to be a play on that South Park episode of like, we have to

00:01:09.100 invert the pyramid? Are we now putting just survival at the top? Survival at the top? I actually

00:01:16.080 like that a lot! The pyramid doesn't work. We've already tried it.

00:01:19.280 It's upside down. What? Sir, the pyramid is upside down. Turn the pyramid upside down.

00:01:27.540 It can't be serious. That would put butter and fat at the top of the damn food pyramid!

00:01:31.700 Yes, we have to invert the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

00:01:35.440 I love that the White House actually posted a clip from that. Yes! When they changed the

00:01:42.360 food pyramid. And the funny thing is, is everyone was like, I mean, it's basically right. Like

00:01:47.840 the nutritionists were like, I'm not complaining about this. Yeah. No, no, no. Honestly, because

00:01:53.100 you know, I listen to like all leftist media, basically. The leftist critique of it was not

00:01:58.880 that it was substantively wrong, because they can't actually argue against it. It's fairly

00:02:02.920 correct, as you say. So can you imagine what the leftist critique of it instead had to

00:02:07.240 be? It wasn't a respectable way to announce it? No. No, no, no. Okay. Well, okay. Yeah.

00:02:12.840 They were like, well, I can't believe they used stealth work, too. But they took out sugar?

00:02:16.820 No. They did take out sugar, as ever. I know. Well, because you shouldn't. There should

00:02:21.280 be no added sugars, period. There's no point for that. Right?

00:02:23.660 Anyway. No, it was, well, how dare they insinuate that people can afford vegetables and meat? I'm not

00:02:34.700 kidding. I'm not kidding. That is 100% seriously. I think that was a Philip DeFranco take, if memory

00:02:40.540 serves. But yeah, they were, they were very freaked out about it, that someone would have the gall to

00:02:46.060 suggest. Um, and then they even went to a clip of some either Trump administration official or health

00:02:53.420 official talking about that. No, it actually was quite affordable. You know, that, that every,

00:02:58.220 every American adult can eat, uh, you know, uh, a piece of broccoli and a chicken breast and I can't

00:03:05.420 remember some other thing. And they're like, what do you think people can survive off of just a piece of

00:03:12.060 broccoli and a piece of chicken? Like they're just freaking out about it anyway. So that was,

00:03:16.700 that was, but what I love is the idea of a progressive rebranding of the food pyramid,

00:03:21.900 except they just take out all the foods they perceive as expensive. So it's just, it's just

00:03:26.060 all bread that you get in the bread line. It's all the bread. They, they take out all of the,

00:03:31.420 the meat and the vegetables and the fruits. And then they just are like, and we'll add in what,

00:03:37.180 what are other cheap foods like chips and Fritos to like those categories. And it's like,

00:03:41.900 and we're not going to take out sugar because you know, of course in oil, right? You gotta,

00:03:45.580 you gotta deep fry stuff. That's, that's the new approved progressive one that they wanted.

00:03:51.500 I love that you watch progressive media. So you know, this stuff, but let's get into this.

00:03:54.460 All right.

00:03:54.780 They call it bread tube for a reason. I think they're very, very insulted when their bread is...

00:03:59.340 They gotta get all that soy from somewhere. 0.98

00:04:01.500 Well, I love bread though.

00:04:03.820 My attempt to make homemade crumpets with my sourdough starter

00:04:06.540 this morning was a complete failure.

00:04:12.220 So Kurt Goldstein, a German neurologist and psychologist coined the term self-actualization

00:04:18.620 originally. Oh my God. Am I going to try to pronounce this?

00:04:21.580 I'm going to try to pronounce this in German.

00:04:34.060 I should put the German puppet here. 1.00

00:04:38.140 There you go.

00:04:39.260 I guess. All right. All right.

00:04:41.580 It is 1939. So the book is only as old as 1939.

00:04:45.580 Wow. And that was the pre Nietzschean self-actualization.

00:04:50.700 Yes. This was its original usage. The organism, a holistic approach to biology derived from pathological

00:04:58.060 data in man. He introduced it within organismic theory, describing it as a fundamental driver for

00:05:07.500 an organism to realize its full potential and maintain its wholeness, especially in the face of

00:05:14.460 challenges like brain injuries.

00:05:17.820 Oh, is it like a lizard with its tail cut off and it self-actualizes if it grows the tail back?

00:05:26.140 Are we talking like that?

00:05:27.660 I think he's talking more about how brain injuries self-correct. Remember, his background is in neurology.

00:05:34.620 Yeah. It has been like if you have a stroke, you have to relearn your actions.

00:05:38.460 If you're born or you have a serious brain injury as a child, you can typically perform unnoticeably

00:05:46.300 different from other adults, even if and there's been cases where people are born like without a

00:05:50.940 hemisphere of their brain or a huge section of their brain and they can typically live mostly normal

00:05:54.940 life. So, you know, he is he is right in that regards. But what I find interesting is I think if you

00:06:03.020 re-contextualize his initial take on this, which is to say it is a fundamental driver for an organism to realize

00:06:11.340 their full potential and maintain wholeness. If we're just looking at it like that, I think then it's a good term.

00:06:17.500 It basically means to breed because that's what an organism exists to do and not die. Right.

00:06:22.460 Like or just to return to a normal stasis kind of state. Yeah.

00:06:26.860 To say breeding and not dying is self-actualization. I say, you know, okay, good. Yeah, that's that's a

00:06:32.140 decent term. But you are going to go for this is inverting the pyramid already. I can tell.

00:06:36.860 Oh, my God. The concept was popularized by American psychologist Abraham Maslow,

00:06:43.100 who adapted and refined it in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, where he positioned

00:06:49.420 self-actualization as the pinnacle of his hierarchy of needs. Maslow's work gained widespread attention

00:06:55.980 in the 1950s and 1960s through books like Motivation and Personality, 1954, and Towards a Psychology of

00:07:04.140 Being, 1962, framing it as the ultimate human motivation, achieving one's innate potential after

00:07:10.860 lower needs, physiological, safety, love, esteem are met. He studied historical figures like Albert

00:07:17.180 Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt to identify traits of self-actualized individuals, such as peak

00:07:23.180 experiences, autonomy, creativity, and realistic perception of the world. Roosevelt, of all people.

00:07:29.740 Right. Well, what a cooked brain do you have to be to be like Eleanor Roosevelt, self-actualized.

00:07:35.020 That's who I think of. Well, I mean, even Einstein, right? He, he did come up with some great theories

00:07:42.300 when he was a kid, like, like very young. But if you look at his later work, a lot of it actually

00:07:48.220 held back the field of particle physics and theoretical physics. Yeah. Basically, he hated any ideas in

00:07:54.940 physics that were probabilistic rather than deterministic, which is really important when

00:07:59.500 we were developing the field of quantum mechanics. Though things like spooky action at a distance,

00:08:04.940 he just saw as ridiculous. Basically, if a concept went against his presuppositions,

00:08:11.900 he would push against it. And so a lot of ideas that we needed early in the development of our

00:08:17.580 understanding of the quantum world, which basically breaks a lot of normal physical norms, he was

00:08:22.860 staunchly against it because he was so respected. It held back the field a lot. And so that to,

00:08:28.700 to say that he is the pinnacle of like self-knowledge or an understanding of the world,

00:08:34.220 I think basically shows that Maslow is like the perfect pop psychologist, like the epitome of

00:08:40.540 everything that I hate about pop psychology, because to him, being a self-actualized person

00:08:48.060 basically meant like being a famous person within the progressive sort of washing of history.

00:08:55.580 You know, I'm sure he added, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt and he's like, well, I need some women. 1.00

00:08:59.740 So I'll choose one that happened to be married to a successful man. Right. And that's, you know,

00:09:04.860 which I think is really bad for a lot of reasons. I mean, you know, he could have at least gone with

00:09:12.060 like Marie Curie or something. Right. Yeah. Right. She also had a lot of kids, didn't she?

00:09:17.500 Marie Curie or Eleanor Roosevelt? Marie Curie. Right. I think Eleanor Roosevelt was childless.

00:09:24.460 I don't know. You can, you can look it up. Yeah. I think Marie Curie had like four kids or

00:09:29.900 something and Eleanor Roosevelt had zero, but I'll, I'll, I'll correct myself if I'm wrong.

00:09:36.540 Over time, the concept evolved within humanistic psychology, the quote unquote, third force in

00:09:42.460 psychology that emerged in the mid 20th century as a counter to psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

00:09:49.740 Psychologist Carl Rogers contributed in the 1950s by emphasizing quote unquote,

00:09:54.700 actualizing tendency in client centered therapy, viewing it as an inherent drive towards growth and

00:10:01.420 fulfillment in a supportive environment. By the 1960s and 1970s, self-actualization influenced the

00:10:07.740 human potential movement, including practices like encounter groups in Esalen Institute workshops,

00:10:14.700 or Esalen Institute workshops. So I decided to look this up to suit it was in the Esalen Institute

00:10:21.100 is a renowned nonprofit and holistic retreat and education institute located in Big Sur, California.

00:10:27.100 And it is widely regarded at the birthplace in the epicenter of the human potential movement,

00:10:32.460 a mid 20th century wave focused on exploring and realizing untapped human capabilities

00:10:37.340 through psychology, spirituality, bodywork, and personal growth. The Esalen Institute pioneered

00:10:43.340 the integration of Eastern philosophies like meditation and yoga with Western science and

00:10:47.900 humanistic psychology, helping popularize such practices such as gestalt therapy, mindfulness,

00:10:53.100 somatic work, holopatic breath work, five rhythms, dance, rolfing, making them more mainstream.

00:11:01.660 Sounds like a weird cult that was sort of big in that period. Cult, mix of cult and psychology,

00:11:07.340 it was very much like figure it out yourself sort of stuff. I don't think it was necessarily harmful,

00:11:12.380 but if it's what I'm remembering it is. So Simone, what'd you find?

00:11:15.500 It froze. So I'll let you know.

00:11:19.820 Didn't your parents go to Esalen workshops, Esalen Institute workshops?

00:11:24.540 Est.

00:11:24.940 Est is what they went to. Okay. That's what I was thinking of. Est.

00:11:27.900 Est.

00:11:29.180 Marie Curie had two daughters. Oh, I was totally wrong.

00:11:33.500 Marie Curie had two daughters and Eleanor Roosevelt had six children, five sons and one daughter.

00:11:38.220 Oh, with one son dying in infancy. That's really sad.

00:11:41.420 Well, at least Eleanor is meeting our pro natalist agenda here. 0.98

00:11:44.940 Yeah, I'm good for her. I was totally wrong on that. Yeah.

00:11:48.460 I love when the people are like, hey, you know, you can't have a lot of kids as a woman and achieve 0.81

00:11:53.260 great things, you know? And it's like, well, I mean, the women of history would like to disagree

00:11:57.420 with you.

00:11:57.900 Yeah. You just do it. And that's, it's part of, it's, it's somewhat of a bad toupee thing,

00:12:03.900 you know?

00:12:04.700 Well, no, it's a, it's a them thing, right? Like I, I bet they'd even, he'd get criticized for putting

00:12:09.580 Eleanor Roosevelt on the list because she had so many kids, you know, doesn't make a good progressive 1.00

00:12:14.220 icon anymore. And I'm sure people are going to be like, don't you know about her charity work?

00:12:18.060 And it's like, no, I don't because charity work doesn't matter. Generally speaking,

00:12:22.380 charity work doesn't matter in the grand scheme of human history.

00:12:25.500 Sometimes it worsens problems. That's one of our bigger problems.

00:12:28.780 Yeah. It seems to generally make things worse. I agree with that. Unless you approach it in a very

00:12:33.020 specific way, but that's a whole other conversation and not, not today's conversation.

00:12:37.660 Not today. No.

00:12:39.740 So apparently she didn't even do anything that big with charity. Her big thing was

00:12:45.740 joining the UN famously ineffective body and promoting the idea of a universal declaration

00:12:52.940 of human rights, which also famously did very little for anyone important. So apparently to get

00:13:00.300 on this guy's list of self-actualized, if you're a man, you need to invent general relativity. If you're

00:13:07.100 a woman, you need to F a famous person. That's, that's basically the way the world 1.00

00:13:12.940 works for these fricking people. But what you can see here that's being described, I think it's very

00:13:18.060 important that around the concept of self-actualization, an alternate form of psychology,

00:13:26.140 and not just an alternate form of psychology, but an alternative school of what psychology is meant to

00:13:31.820 optimize, begin to grow both within the public narrative, but also within the academic institution.

00:13:40.460 Um, and this allowed for some branches of like talk therapy to see their goal as moving the individual

00:13:48.620 towards the concept of self-actualization, which again, here, it really matters what that concept is and how

00:13:57.820 it is derived if it is the goal of a school of psychology. Because what happened with the urban

00:14:06.300 monoculture is it went and when it was trying to determine what is an individual's goal in life,

00:14:13.020 it wanted that goal to sound large and sophisticated and try to remove the accusation that it's just

00:14:21.020 hedonism. And so to academia, which is like, it's priest cast. Right. And it said, well, who, who studies

00:14:27.980 like, what is a life well-lived and it's what psychologists do. Right. So it's okay. Well,

00:14:33.740 what are their various models for what you are optimizing for? And the other schools of psychology

00:14:40.460 don't have as strong of a singular motivational endpoint. And so self-actualization became the

00:14:47.660 end point, the goal of everything was in the urban monoculture.

00:14:53.740 And it began to get worked into a lot of scientific movements as well, as, as you'll see, I, I will

00:14:58.860 point out, I do not think self-actualization was ever good science. I think that it epitomizes,

00:15:03.980 I mean, the mere fact of how he came up with the concept that he basically looked up famous people

00:15:10.300 who he kind of respected or that he didn't think that he'd get a lot of pushback on and then

00:15:14.700 pretended to derive a theory of needs from them. When in reality, he was just thinking through

00:15:23.660 himself. Like if you want to just like blow up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Stephen Hawking's like

00:15:31.900 clearly Stephen Hawking's didn't just live with, you know, horrible debilitating. Yeah.

00:15:39.660 Yeah. For most of his productive career. But also his caretaker slash nurse was apparently like

00:15:46.700 very well documented as abusive. No toward him. Yeah. So just for more clarification,

00:15:52.620 the abuse accusations come against his second wife, not his first wife, and were in part made

00:15:56.700 by his first wife. And they were investigated by Cambridge police. He always denied them. They

00:16:02.300 later got a divorce. There have been no clarifications about whether they were real.

00:16:05.900 Well, and his sexual needs weren't being met. And I think he told his wife to go sleep with other

00:16:10.060 people, didn't he? He's sort of famous for that. I don't know all of that.

00:16:12.940 But my understanding was he was like, just go, like, I'm really not going to hold you to this

00:16:17.100 marriage because obviously I can't keep up my part physically due to this. So yeah, I mean,

00:16:22.780 he really wasn't, but, but he was 100% making the absolute most of his mind. And this is,

00:16:28.460 that's where I'm really struggling with this because as soon as I heard about Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

00:16:33.260 I got super excited about it because I contextualized self-actualization as being,

00:16:39.740 having everything else sorted in your life, such that you were able to completely live in your

00:16:43.580 prefrontal cortex. You're not in your amygdala. You're not in your high, you're like, you know,

00:16:46.940 you're not, I mean, he's talking about the life lesson he had, but my, my thought was that you are not

00:16:55.900 in survival mode. You're not freaked out about stuff. So you're able to just be totally in your

00:17:00.860 prefrontal cortex and just be about ideas and concepts and advancing civilization and inventing

00:17:06.220 and moving forward science. But that doesn't seem to be what this is about.

00:17:10.140 Which is, no, it's actually, I'm going to create the best analogy for what,

00:17:14.380 the way he actually defines self-actualization. The closest term I have found to the way that he

00:17:19.980 transformed Nietzsche's concept is being OTP clear in Scientology.

00:17:25.180 Being OTP what?

00:17:28.300 So it's, so there's a status called being clear, which means you have no more thetans attached to

00:17:34.940 you. One of the highest statuses you can have was in Scientology.

00:17:39.580 Once you have this, basically you are no longer burdened by like the problems of this world.

00:17:44.300 And then you get all these magical powers. And that's basically the way that self-actualization

00:17:49.260 is defined even by Maslow. It's like clear out all of these lower states. And then you enter a state

00:17:59.420 that is either almost magical in its conceptualization or just definitionally good without an explanation

00:18:07.340 of how it's good.

00:18:08.380 But isn't like, well, I mean, think about it this way, right? But people who are hung up on sex and

00:18:14.940 seeking after that, I think, you know, in some way, haven't had their validation or just basic

00:18:22.220 sexual needs met. And so they're held back because they've basically intrusive thoughts about sex.

00:18:26.620 If people are food insecure, they'll have intrusive thoughts about food that, that prevent them from

00:18:31.580 being more productive and moving forward. And you could call those thetans, you can call those whatever

00:18:35.500 you want, but that's, that's a thing. And I think even same with, with, I would argue hedonism,

00:18:40.940 just feeling good implies some level of feeling of insufficient physical security so that you,

00:18:48.220 you actively try to seek out physical comfort because you don't feel like you can get it whenever

00:18:53.500 you need it.

00:18:54.380 You've grabbed onto something really important here before, before we got further, but I, I love,

00:18:58.460 this is all stuff I plan to get to later, but I actually think it's really good to bring it in here.

00:19:02.060 You point out the real challenge, which is, are there things that are mentally preventing you

00:19:10.140 from focusing on the bigger concepts in life, a bigger purpose in life? And I'll get to a good

00:19:16.300 way to structure this for yourself, but are there things that are blocking you from reaching that

00:19:21.100 point? And it is useful to have a word for talking about those things. The, the problem is, is that there

00:19:29.820 are two core ways to approach this. One of them is super toxic and one of them is very useful and healthy.

00:19:37.660 And the way that he contextualize it automatically rolls into the toxic category, which is to say,

00:19:44.460 you can either remove all of the things that are blocking you from focusing on the bigger concepts in

00:19:53.980 life, the bigger questions in life by literally removing them from your life, right? By literally

00:20:00.460 never being hungry, never being uncomfortable, never not feeling love, never not having,

00:20:07.420 you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Or you can remove them from affecting you

00:20:13.180 by learning to better control your own mind.

00:20:17.100 Just stop caring.

00:20:19.260 Yeah. To better control what you care about and what you allow to affect you. So, and this isn't a

00:20:24.860 new concept, but one thing I love about Casalesism, people say, here's that from Malcolm. They're like,

00:20:29.420 what? But I, I, I do love this. Is that many of their sects, like the Opus Dei being one of the most

00:20:34.780 famous practice, various forms of mortification and mortification and, and many like mainstream

00:20:40.940 Catholics will do this forms of, of mortification. I think it's an incredibly mentally healthy practice 1.00

00:20:46.380 if practiced correctly, where they will wear things like bands that are constantly digging

00:20:51.740 into them and constant pain throughout the day, which they learn to suppress. And when you learn to

00:21:00.780 suppress that pain, that then ability can now be repurposed to suppress sexual desires or desires for

00:21:11.980 food indulgence. You're not going to be super avoidant about stuff just because you think you

00:21:16.460 might feel a little bit of pain and discomfort because you're so used to it. It's the default in

00:21:19.900 your life. Right. You overcome it as somebody like say Stephen Hawking's would write by, or, or Helen

00:21:27.340 Keller would, or something like that, right? Like by learning how to remove its effect on you,

00:21:35.500 i.e. you, you basically learn to make yourself immune to parts of Laszlo hierarchy of needs.

00:21:42.860 And that is where true and meaningful actualization comes from. If there was a concept of actualization,

00:21:49.180 but conceptualizing actualization of being at the top of this pyramid defaults people to wanting to fill

00:21:56.060 all the stages of the pyramid below that before they begin to address the, oh, but I could have

00:22:03.580 just learned to ignore all that stuff. Well, and I think, yeah, I guess, yeah, I just see that as

00:22:09.500 an insane misinterpretation because housing security, food security, and sexual security can be endless

00:22:19.260 voids. And I think you actually see this when we see discussions of socialism or human dignity among

00:22:27.340 the left, where there's been this creep from human dignity involving the right to the pursuit

00:22:35.420 of happiness, for example, right? The right to the pursuit of these things to not only do I deserve

00:22:41.660 food, but also I deserve best in class medical care that I don't pay for. And I deserve a TV and I

00:22:48.540 deserve a house of a certain standard. Like there's just this creep, this hedonic treadmill

00:22:53.020 of like, well, I don't, I don't live a life of dignity if I don't have a smartphone and a flat

00:22:58.540 screen TV and a nice apartment and, and, and, and, and a trip a year, whatever. Right. And these are

00:23:03.900 things that, and yeah, this idea that you will ever be satisfied sexually or food wise, it's not about

00:23:14.380 that. It's about reaching the point at which you don't care anymore. There's, there's not like an

00:23:18.220 amount like you, Oh, you just need 200 sex units. And then you've, you've accomplished this rung of

00:23:23.500 the pyramid. You can move on. So you are absolutely correct about this, Simone. And I hope you're now

00:23:30.620 seeing what I mean when I say that Laszlo's hierarchy of needs built the framework, the, what it means to have

00:23:40.380 reached, you know, Nirvana or what's it called? Enlightenment that it's, it's become sort of

00:23:45.340 enlightenment for progressives, but it is achieved through meeting hedonistic needs underneath it.

00:23:51.580 So even though he, Laszlo would say, well, self-actualization is itself not about hedonism

00:23:58.460 maxing. He basically conceptually set up his framework to lead people down a road of hedonism

00:24:04.860 maxing before they can achieve this. And not just hedonism masking, but sort of self love maxing,

00:24:12.860 right? Kirsha five months ago did a video. I just watched it was like an hour and a half and it was

00:24:17.420 really fascinating and it was titled, and I thought it was like a clickbait when I read it and it was not

00:24:23.420 a clickbait. Father of seven leaves family to become a child. So a, a, a father who was married and taking

00:24:31.020 care of seven kids left his family to enter the eight polyamorous relationship with another man

00:24:40.220 and woman where he acted as their 10 year old kid daughter, who the dad also had relations with.

00:24:48.460 And he would do like play behavior with their granddaughter and stuff to, because he was their

00:24:54.620 daughter. That was who he really was. And there was an NPR piece on this. Like, I think it was NPR.

00:25:02.860 That was the voice they were using. It could have been something other than NPR, but it sounded

00:25:05.820 like a high production value. You're calling that INTJ voice.

00:25:10.060 And hey, I'm technically INTJ, Simone, so I get the words.

00:25:14.060 Yeah, but you don't have, you don't have an INTJ voice. God.

00:25:17.660 But anyway, so they do this NPR. The people hate my voice though. The internet hates my voice, I think.

00:25:23.900 But I don't know. I can't change it. It's very unique. But anyway, so they, they have this

00:25:29.580 interview, right, where they cover him and it's produced and it ends with like a sappy, like,

00:25:36.540 well, in his new life, he has found love without judgment, which he just wasn't able to get from

00:25:42.700 his old community, you know? There's judgment.

00:25:46.700 Well, no, no, no. In this new family where he lives as a child. And it was very much like,

00:25:50.540 we hope that like more of the world can reach a state like this. So there were like other people

00:25:55.900 who see this guy doing this and want to broadcast this as like an inspirational,

00:26:01.020 positive story to the world about how his old community was bigoted against his, and it's,

00:26:09.020 it's clear. Like the story is, is, is really like, it shows the degeneracy of the age we live in

00:26:14.940 where his wife tried to like humor his cross-dressing habit, it seems for a long time.

00:26:21.660 And she just decided as sort of the trans movement came out, oh, I'm not a cross-dresser.

00:26:27.740 I am a woman. And he would talk about how his daughter would sometimes like steal his purse

00:26:31.980 or something without realizing it, you know? And he just, you know, live as a woman sometimes at home 0.61

00:26:37.580 or whatever. And eventually he learned that he could be a little and, and go down that path.

00:26:42.380 But, and if you want to see other lifestyles, if you want to get an idea of other people who have

00:26:46.060 like Maxis, you can look at our video on Anna Valen's life called the life of a Cenobite,

00:26:50.140 I think is what we called it. It's funny that we're talking about Kirsha right now,

00:26:52.940 because she was the reporter who tried to cancel Kirsha. 1.00

00:26:56.700 She has a, a very detailed sub stack about her life and trying to find purpose and meaning.

00:27:02.220 And you can really see that her search for purpose is about a search for self-validation

00:27:12.380 from a wider community, as well as an endless search for hedonism. And they, they both always end up

00:27:23.580 feeling hollow for her at the end because she, in this search for self-validation,

00:27:30.860 has come up with a very odd persona of who she really is. In her case, is a giantess. 0.94

00:27:39.260 Anna Valen's. Anna Valen's is a giantess. 0.95

00:27:41.660 Even though she was born a man, but that...

00:27:45.340 Oh, you're not going to approach the elephant in the room that she's not a giantess. 0.99

00:27:49.260 That's the harder thing to solve.

00:27:51.900 Right. Well, I mean, the bigger problem is she hadn't even done all of her,

00:27:55.820 she still had male genitalia. And she was confused that the progressives who pretended

00:28:01.980 that they accepted trans people didn't want to validate her in the way she wanted to be validated,

00:28:07.020 which was through giving her sexual access to them. And they didn't want to give them like,

00:28:11.980 they're like, yes, we respect you, but I don't want to sleep with you. Right. Like, and she, 0.94

00:28:16.460 that, that for her was not enough validation. So she could never reach the top of the hierarchy.

00:28:20.940 And she needed to basically stop there instead of saying, wait, I have the thoughts in my head

00:28:27.260 of wanting to be X and wanting to be Y, how do I better suppress these wants? Because these wants

00:28:35.580 are not constructive in terms of what I think a meaningful life is. And then it's, what is a

00:28:42.460 meaningful life? Well, now you've moved to self-actualization. As soon as you've entered

00:28:46.460 the conversation of what is actually a life well lived, you've entered the realm of self-actualization,

00:28:52.700 which can be done right now, or, or what meaningful self-actualization is. But to continue here.

00:28:59.660 Actually, just something you said made me think of that line. There's actually several lines in the

00:29:06.300 Bible about this, but basically the, the ones in relation to it's, you don't need to focus so much

00:29:13.020 on materialism, but just being like what God, God provides for birds. Like the birds aren't worried

00:29:18.300 about, I mean, they actually kind of are obsessed with where they're going to get their food, but

00:29:22.220 like God provides, you know, focus on what your job is, whatever that's supposed to be. Right. I'm not

00:29:28.060 remembering the exact lines. Cause I'm not. So the quote she's thinking of is therefore I tell you,

00:29:34.060 do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body. What you will wear is not

00:29:38.940 life more than food and the body more than clothes. Look at the birds in the air. Do they not sow or

00:29:44.780 reap or store away in barns? And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable

00:29:50.860 than they? So do not worry saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? But

00:29:57.180 seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.

00:30:02.860 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble on

00:30:08.620 its own. That's sort of what we're doing right now. We're at a Jesus take the wheel moment in our

00:30:12.620 lives. We don't know where our future income is going to come from. I mean, our fab is, it's

00:30:16.780 what I'm saying though, is there is a biblical basis for this as well, that, that for arguably

00:30:22.700 thousands of years, people handed down wisdom has been, Hey, don't get too obsessed about food,

00:30:32.540 shelter, money, sex, focus on serving God, whatever that means for you.

00:30:40.860 Yeah. Well, and as interesting is I almost think that this is an inversion of the Buddhist concept

00:30:47.020 of enlightenment. And I think that both show. I disagree. Um, because the, the Buddhist concept

00:30:53.420 of enlightenment involves letting go of your attachment to things. And I think that the point

00:31:00.220 of this is I don't care about the food or the shelter or the sex or the social validation.

00:31:06.860 And that's what I thought the pyramid was all about. I'm talking about Laszlo's contextualization

00:31:11.820 of self-actualization here. Whereas the, the Buddhist is trying to fully suppress all outside desires and 0.82

00:31:19.980 wants and everything like that. Not suppress, let go. Say what you want. It's the same thing.

00:31:26.380 Make it. No, no, no. Because it's, it's like, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's let it, you know, the whole,

00:31:34.300 you will not fear if you're a mind killer, you let it pass through you and only you remain.

00:31:38.140 That is very like the Buddhist thing, but just take that and anything that you feel just dukkha, 0.53

00:31:42.940 like any, like, you know, you, you are not hunger, like hunger passed through you and only, you know,

00:31:47.420 just take that and apply it to everything. And that's Buddhism. I understand that Buddhists try

00:31:52.220 to say it in a fancy way that makes it seem something fancier than emotional suppression,

00:31:57.100 but what it functionally is, because if you are, you are not emotionally suppressing

00:32:03.420 like some insane sex drive. You did it and you slutted it up and now you just don't care that much 0.95

00:32:10.140 anymore. If you are a Buddhist, okay, you are still a human being. You are still feeling 0.97

00:32:17.500 hunger. If you are hungry, you have just learned to not allow that emotional pull to make you act

00:32:25.660 on it or to interrupt your other mental processes. I don't know.

00:32:29.100 I call that whatever you want. You can know you and food too. Like you used to like invest a lot of

00:32:34.620 time and going out to eat cool meals and stuff. And now you eat one meal a day and you're like,

00:32:40.700 well, like. Right. But that's because I found out the hack to this. We're going to talk about that

00:32:45.820 later, but the, the, the Buddhist versus the Lazos hierarchy of needs have her, right? The guy who has

00:32:51.900 everything and the Buddhist who has learned to suppress everything. I think both of them have missed the 1.00

00:32:57.020 point because once you have reached that state, I E either you have every need that you want fed to

00:33:04.780 you or you have reached enlightenment and you no longer are affected by those needs. The point of

00:33:12.780 reaching those two states should have been the okay. Now that I am not distracted by lower order,

00:33:20.700 biological or self-affirming thoughts. I can think about what is a life actually well lived.

00:33:27.020 And I can construct myself in my lifestyle based on what a life actually well lived is.

00:33:34.060 And if you're just sitting alone in a tip, I do not think by most sane people's standards,

00:33:39.260 that's actually a life well lived. You have done nothing to contribute to the civilization that bore you

00:33:44.700 and that sacrifices with you because a lot of these monks live off of donations, right? You,

00:33:49.020 you are living a life that is fundamentally one of the most hedonistic and self-satisfactory of any

00:33:56.380 living human because it is a life wholly dedicated to your own mental state.

00:34:03.420 Yeah, your little pet project. That is true. That is kind of messed up that everyone else has to work

00:34:09.340 and give you rice for your little rice bowl just so you can get enlightened, but they don't have time

00:34:14.540 to get enlightened because they are too busy surviving.

00:34:17.420 I mean, what they'll tell you is, oh, you drew it in your next life. You, you serve me in this life.

00:34:23.020 So in your next life.

00:34:24.460 I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's, that's a little,

00:34:28.140 I'm sure they have some profound, sort of profound at least answer for that.

00:34:31.420 People who have watched our track videos knows I, I see Buddhism as an anti-spiral religion, 0.93

00:34:35.740 and which means that I see it as being a personification of sort of evil on earth.

00:34:42.940 If you haven't watched our track series, which is our like religious series, which I understand

00:34:46.300 if you haven't, the concept of spiral versus anti-spiral is the, it builds on a distinction

00:34:54.300 made in an anime, Gurren Lagann, which is philosophies fundamentally fall into one of two buckets.

00:35:00.140 Either they're about the intergenerational and intermomentary evolution, which is sort of the

00:35:07.260 destruction and building up and improving of things, which makes it a spiral thing, the evolving

00:35:14.300 of things or the reduction of things, the driving to remove humanity suffering from the world, which

00:35:24.380 would make it an anti-spiral philosophy.

00:35:26.700 So a spiral conceptualization of reality sees reality as something that is constantly evolving

00:35:32.460 towards something greater, where anti-spiral beliefs towards reality typically see reality

00:35:37.900 as a cycle that must be ended.

00:35:39.900 We evolve beyond the person we were a minute before.

00:35:44.380 Little by little, we advance a bit further with each turn.

00:35:48.380 That's how a drill works.

00:35:49.900 Mark my words, this drill will open a hole in the universe.

00:35:55.020 And that hole will be a path for those behind us, the dreams of those who have fallen, the hopes

00:36:00.780 of those who will follow.

00:36:02.780 Those two sets of dreams weave together into a double helix, drilling a path towards tomorrow.

00:36:09.180 In other words, you argue that Buddhism wants to genocide sentience.

00:36:14.940 It does.

00:36:15.980 That is actually a stated goal.

00:36:17.820 I remember I first told you this because you were raised partially Buddhist.

00:36:20.460 You went to like Buddhist churches and everything like that.

00:36:22.700 Like you were actually, you were raised fully.

00:36:24.860 And you were like, no, it doesn't.

00:36:26.700 And I was like, yes, it does actually like go read.

00:36:30.300 And then you came back a few days later and I heard you argue that, yes, it does to somebody.

00:36:34.140 And I was like, wait, when did you change your mind on that?

00:36:37.020 Yeah, I just realized that you just, you were right.

00:36:39.580 And then, yeah, when you heard me arguing, that was at one of our dinner parties in New York City.

00:36:43.340 And the guy had lived with like Zen monasteries for a while.

00:36:49.580 Like he was like quite in it.

00:36:50.780 And he was like, oh yeah, I mean, you're right.

00:36:55.580 It's just, when you put it that way, it sounds so bad.

00:36:58.780 It is a genocide of sentience.

00:37:01.100 I can imagine nothing worse in all creation as a cult.

00:37:05.020 I have in one of my fictional sci-fi universes, like the Buddhist being the big bad trying to end reality, you know, and it's- 1.00

00:37:13.180 Well, at least Maslow's hierarchy of needs doesn't do that.

00:37:17.260 I mean, I think it's just as bad.

00:37:19.740 So the Buddhist version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is just like a gun at the top of the pyramid and like, do it.

00:37:27.100 Glass the planet.

00:37:27.900 I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're actually like anti-utilitarians, right?

00:37:31.020 Like they, that is what Buddhism is.

00:37:33.500 It's anti-utilitarianism turned into a religion.

00:37:36.380 Negative utilitarianism.

00:37:38.220 Oh, sorry.

00:37:38.620 Negative utilitarianism turned into a religion.

00:37:42.220 It is David Benatar, the religion.

00:37:44.380 Yeah.

00:37:44.780 All existence is suffering, therefore end existence.

00:37:47.260 Anyway, enough of that.

00:37:49.420 We're going to really piss off some watchers who haven't watched our tracks or have gone into this longer.

00:37:53.180 And I can go into a bunch of quotes from texts, but I'm not going to go into here because I know I'm right on this one.

00:37:58.620 In the late 20th century, criticisms arose.

00:38:01.900 Some argued Maslow's model was overly Western and individualistic overlooking collectivist cultures

00:38:07.900 where self-actualization might involve communal harmony rather than personal achievement.

00:38:12.700 I love that, right?

00:38:13.980 Positive psychology in the 1990s and 2000s, led by figures like Martin Seligman built on

00:38:20.860 it by inter integrating empirical research on well-being, flow states from Myla Chisavakalia or something,

00:38:29.100 and eudonic happiness, focusing on purpose and virtue over hedonic pleasure.

00:38:34.380 I am not going to put those dirty foreign words in my American tongue, Samoan.

00:38:41.020 Check you on a bitch or whatever, you know? 1.00

00:38:42.860 So anyway, positive psychology, I really think is the version of the psychology movement that grew

00:38:48.700 out of self-actualization.

00:38:50.140 And that was really big in the 90s and 2000s.

00:38:52.460 And a lot of EAs act like it's this great form of psychology or this non-harmful form of psychology.

00:38:58.620 And it's extremely harmful.

00:39:00.860 By the way, before I get further, if you're wondering about, like, my ultimate hack to

00:39:05.420 the suppression of thoughts and needs, while also, you know, building your life into something

00:39:12.780 where you are working towards the future and working almost, I think, as hard as you can

00:39:16.300 towards building a better future for humanity.

00:39:18.300 And I can vouch for that.

00:39:19.900 Malcolm works his...

00:39:21.580 He's never worked harder.

00:39:23.020 I mean, he was, from the day I met him, the hardest working person I ever met.

00:39:28.860 You too.

00:39:29.500 That's why I wanted to marry you.

00:39:30.380 I was like, that's what I'm in for.

00:39:31.740 And you work harder today than you have ever worked since the day I met you, which is insane.

00:39:38.140 But anyway, yes.

00:39:40.300 So how, how?

00:39:41.580 What's my hack?

00:39:43.660 Oh, opioid agonist.

00:39:45.580 Oh, just naltrexone.

00:39:47.020 I should have figured.

00:39:48.300 I'm pretty much always on naltrexone.

00:39:50.540 So for people who don't know, naltrexone is an opioid agonist which blocks the pleasure

00:39:55.340 pathways that you feel from opioid pathways, right?

00:39:59.580 Which are caused by things like, say, Facebook scrolling, gambling, other addictive behavior

00:40:05.100 patterns.

00:40:05.580 I originally started taking it to lower my drinking and it was very effective at that.

00:40:09.420 And then I realized that it basically had a positive effect on almost everything in my

00:40:13.180 life because like, I haven't checked Facebook in like a year, years at this point.

00:40:19.500 I made a post recently, like an update on my life, but I haven't checked Facebook in years.

00:40:23.740 I think I haven't, I have a theory that this might also have a genetic basis because I feel

00:40:28.540 like my life is what Malcolm describes.

00:40:31.500 He feels like on naltrexone.

00:40:33.820 It's like, I just don't like, because I never understood what, what it was like to feel any

00:40:39.820 sort of addictive response to things.

00:40:41.340 And then people will be like, well, you didn't really master those, those, you know, impulsive

00:40:47.180 emotions, right?

00:40:48.380 You used something else and it's like, yes, but hold on, hold on.

00:40:51.980 Because I'm human.

00:40:53.740 That has always been an option.

00:40:55.980 Yeah.

00:40:56.940 This is like saying the Europeans didn't really beat the native Americans.

00:41:01.260 They shot them with superior technology.

00:41:03.500 It's like, well, the point was winning the point of shutting down these emotions, right?

00:41:09.340 Like these impulsive or intrusive thoughts was so that I could focus on structuring my life

00:41:16.540 to be one that, well, from my perspective, what I think matters, and we'll get to how to determine

00:41:20.940 this for yourself that contributed to human civilization.

00:41:24.380 That's all I cared about, right?

00:41:25.980 Yeah.

00:41:26.540 I didn't care about the individual, like, like winning those individual battles was pointless

00:41:34.460 to me.

00:41:34.860 I just wanted it gone so I could focus on work, the bigger thing.

00:41:39.820 And from my perspective, you are being masturbatory and self-indulgent by engaging in a battle that

00:41:47.180 you don't have to engage in.

00:41:48.780 Yeah.

00:41:49.420 You are the person who, when a forklift is right there, insists on lifting the heavy

00:41:55.100 boxes yourself.

00:41:56.060 Yeah.

00:41:56.620 You get somebody else to saying, well, that'll take you four times as long.

00:42:00.060 Just use the forklift, right?

00:42:01.740 Like, you're not better for doing that.

00:42:04.460 You're a dumb butt who has had to start.

00:42:07.820 And this is actually an example of your self-vision being so intrusive that it beats living a life

00:42:17.980 without you, right?

00:42:18.860 Because with that time that you spent lifting those boxes rather than using the forklift,

00:42:24.940 you were unable to educate yourself to learn more about the world, develop the world, or

00:42:33.020 act in a way that directly contributed to human civilization.

00:42:35.820 You specifically made a decision to hold your self-image over things of greater value,

00:42:43.260 which shows that you are a slave to that.

00:42:48.540 A note here, I'm not putting myself out here as like a master of, I mean, I think I'm uniquely

00:42:52.860 good.

00:42:53.100 I've done a lot with my life, like you and I have so far.

00:42:56.460 I mean, five kids, five books, run major companies, graduate degrees from Stanford and

00:43:04.300 Cambridge, a lot of people, CEOs of a company that pulled in 70 million a year at one point.

00:43:08.860 That's, that's pretty big.

00:43:09.660 Oh yeah.

00:43:09.980 We started the pro natalist movement.

00:43:11.420 That was big.

00:43:12.140 Our podcast is doing well enough.

00:43:13.660 I mean, I hope we continue to grow, but you know, I, I, I, I've done a lot in the time that

00:43:19.020 I've had and it's because I've been able to allow the, the things that distract me to distract

00:43:25.260 me less than they otherwise might.

00:43:27.020 But there is nothing less masturbatory about playing video games for a bit every night

00:43:33.660 than there is for taking extra time, doing something quote unquote yourself rather than

00:43:38.700 automating it.

00:43:39.420 But to continue here, what are the, the five levels, the original levels of Laszlo's hierarchy

00:43:46.380 of needs?

00:43:46.540 So we can sort of talk about this theory and, and, and break down more why it sucks.

00:43:50.140 Oh yeah.

00:43:50.780 Wait, let me, let me see.

00:43:51.660 Okay.

00:43:51.900 I think it's a food and shelter, safety, social approval, and then self-actualization.

00:43:59.980 Did I get it right?

00:44:00.780 What's really funny here is you got love and belonging confused with sex, but I think that

00:44:06.540 the progressive urban monoculture has morphed it into sex.

00:44:09.420 Yeah.

00:44:09.900 And so at the bottom, he has physiological leads, basic requirements for survival.

00:44:14.940 These include air, water, food, shelter, sleep, closing, and reproduction as essential

00:44:19.980 for species.

00:44:20.540 Oh my gosh.

00:44:21.260 We are going to invert the pyramid, have those things and need nothing else.

00:44:31.500 And I loved it from the very beginning.

00:44:33.500 He made reproduction, the bottom level need sex is a bottom level need for him.

00:44:40.940 Right.

00:44:41.660 Which I think is very interesting in terms of how this influenced later fields of psychology

00:44:46.300 in the urban monoculture.

00:44:47.180 Safety needs.

00:44:49.580 Once physiological needs are met, people seek security and stability.

00:44:53.660 Examples, personal safety, financial security, job saving, health, property, and protection

00:44:59.340 from harm or chaos.

00:45:01.340 This one I just think is pure stupid.

00:45:03.020 You can always imagine some threat to you.

00:45:06.860 Everybody knows that the trans person who's screaming about how when somebody says we shouldn't 1.00

00:45:11.580 give, we shouldn't be gender transitioning a seven-year-old and they're like, how could you 0.91

00:45:17.420 say that?

00:45:18.380 You're going to kill me.

00:45:19.820 You're going to genocide everybody like me.

00:45:21.660 It's like, no, I'm just like, you know, maybe we shouldn't be doing this to seven-year-olds because

00:45:25.580 they're seven, you know?

00:45:27.420 I mean, you're going to kill me.

00:45:29.340 So safety, and this is important about safety.

00:45:31.500 And I think, you know, a good book on this is why zebras get ulcers.

00:45:36.380 I don't get ulcers.

00:45:37.180 Sorry.

00:45:37.420 Why zebras don't get ulcers.

00:45:38.780 Where he basically points out.

00:45:42.140 Robert Listig.

00:45:43.180 He's wonderful.

00:45:44.220 Wait.

00:45:44.620 You're so smart, Simone.

00:45:45.580 Anyway, he basically points out that.

00:45:47.340 No, no, no, sorry.

00:45:47.900 It's Robert Sapolsky.

00:45:48.940 I'm sorry.

00:45:49.340 Robert Sapolsky is the health guy.

00:45:51.020 Yeah.

00:45:51.500 That a zebra in nature has a series of biological mechanisms that puts their nervous system into

00:46:02.460 an alternate state and a lot of their biology into an alternate state when they think their

00:46:06.860 life is existentially at risk, when they see a lion, for example, right?

00:46:12.700 And so they freak out when they see the lion.

00:46:14.540 Yeah.

00:46:15.100 And you as a human have a problem.

00:46:18.060 Your higher cognitive ability has given you the ability to imagine that your life is at risk.

00:46:24.700 Yes.

00:46:25.180 We can make synthetic lions and then we are constantly subject to synthetic lions.

00:46:30.220 Whereas the zebra, we're only going to have the lion reaction when there's

00:46:33.660 just an actual lion there.

00:46:36.060 So that lion reaction, if you utilize that to motivate, so for example, if you utilize that you have

00:46:42.860 an existentially important test coming up to motivate yourself to focus on that test and you genuinely

00:46:49.100 believe this to be existential to you and you allow that to put you in this alternate neurological

00:46:54.940 state, who will be less good at retaining information and everything like that.

00:46:59.100 This is what I think.

00:46:59.740 People who are addicted to blue sky or X or whatever your social media platform is,

00:47:04.860 especially if you've got a lot of rage on it, are putting their health at so much risk because they're just

00:47:09.900 choosing to get enraged by this and they're just, oh, the years they're shaving off their lives.

00:47:15.980 No, I think there are ways to do it right.

00:47:17.580 Some people just scroll X and just chuckle incessantly.

00:47:22.380 We've got people who do that, but that's rare.

00:47:24.780 What actual self-assualization looks like, or a meaningful form of it, is you have existential tests coming up.

00:47:29.660 And instead of letting a fear of the existential nature of the test be what drives you to study,

00:47:35.340 you are clear-minded enough to suppress other needs that you may have in that moment and say,

00:47:40.860 no, I just need to focus on this because it is more important than these other needs I may feel in the

00:47:46.780 moment. This is the area of physiological needs. I think learning to suppress those can be indulgent.

00:47:53.740 You feel physiological needs for a reason often. And the main theological need that I would say that

00:47:58.220 people should learn to suppress at times is arousal because a lot of people feel arousal for a lot of

00:48:03.020 things that just aren't particularly important to serving the need that arousal originally felt,

00:48:08.540 which was getting you to have children, right? As I said, you should think of arousal as saying,

00:48:13.500 you should impregnate that. And if the thing isn't impregnatable, you're like, oh, you're,

00:48:17.980 you're not useful to me right now in this moment, right? You know, this is not a useful,

00:48:23.100 this is not serving the purpose it evolved to serve. So safety needs completely negative, right?

00:48:29.900 Next love and belonging needs also called social needs, the need for interpersonal relationships and

00:48:36.060 a sense of connection, intimate relationships, family bonds, a sense of belonging to a group,

00:48:43.100 affection and feeling accepted by others. This is, again, I think, completely toxic. And I think

00:48:50.300 that this is really who needs being bundled as one. One is having other people accept you the way you

00:48:56.780 accept yourself or see yourself. This is where the trans person says, I want them to accept me as a

00:49:03.020 woman, because that's the way I see myself or the guy who thinks that he's a 10 year old child saying,

00:49:09.020 I want them to accept me and my community and my family and my kids to accept me as a 10 year old

00:49:13.580 child, because that's the way I see and conceptualize myself, right? It can be taken to mean that. And

00:49:19.100 that's just obviously toxic to even on face value, but there's otherwise saying conservative that will say,

00:49:25.420 hey, well, at the very least, you should learn to, you know, you should, you should strive for

00:49:31.340 acceptance from your community and family and everything like that, where I would say, no,

00:49:36.380 not if it is, if it interferes with larger, more important goals for yourself, time spent with family

00:49:45.820 and masturbating. Those needs is no less removing you from either self-improvement through, through

00:49:54.060 education, through whatever you need to improve your ability to act on the world or directly acting

00:49:59.580 on the world to attempt to make the world better. It is, it is removing you from that. And as like,

00:50:05.180 Simone and I have, I think a very healthy relationship and yet we don't interact that much outside of these

00:50:11.980 recordings because our interactions are fundamentally indulgent, be they sexual interactions or be they

00:50:20.780 romantic interactions or love interactions or anything like that, right? So, and I think everybody

00:50:26.940 logically they recognize it, right? You know, I think that you have a duty as far as you have a duty to

00:50:34.300 attempt to help your partner meet needs that they cannot suppress. That is the need for

00:50:41.980 belonging and acceptance and arousal. But you should keep in mind that if you over meet those needs,

00:50:50.780 you functionally hurt their ability to help their wider suppression system. Go in there and you say,

00:50:58.700 I'm going to make sure that you feel completely accepted with whoever you are. I don't think anyone

00:51:03.180 should ever feel that way in a relationship. I know that I can disappoint Simone by not living up

00:51:09.420 to her expectations of me. And that is a good thing. That is healthy in a relationship. There is

00:51:15.900 nothing more hateful a person could say to their partner than I love you as you are. And I will

00:51:22.860 always love you unconditionally, even to a child. What if that child becomes a serial killer or something,

00:51:27.420 right? Like that's a, that's a messed up thing to say to somebody, right? Like those people who are like,

00:51:33.100 well, my son would never do this. They then just deny the person that they created and raised.

00:51:39.420 Thoughts, Simone, before I go further.

00:51:43.580 I agree with you. Sorry, I admitted myself because Tex is singing.

00:51:48.060 And then esteem needs. He then divides this into two parts.

00:51:52.460 In confidence, achievements, independence, and respect for oneself. This is

00:51:56.300 completely toxic. It is not something that you should strive for at all. Either you accept yourself

00:52:05.180 as somebody who is attempting to live a worthwhile life, or you do not. You do not, like if you want

00:52:12.220 to understand our wider philosophy, like if you're like, oh, this philosophy that they're laying out

00:52:15.740 here sounds like a worldview I'd like to understand better, read our book or listen to our audiobook,

00:52:20.860 The Pragmatist Guide to Life, where we lay out an alternate way to live. And I'll go over the basics

00:52:25.740 of that in just a second. But confidence, achievements, independence, respect for oneself,

00:52:32.380 right? If one of my kids can achieve more for the world while they live under our roof,

00:52:41.820 that does not lessen the work that they did while we helped them. Use the tools that you were born with

00:52:50.060 and had access to do not, because if you, if you do the opposite and you allow those tools to say,

00:52:56.220 oh, I don't really have independence because I'm living off of money I inherited or something like

00:53:00.380 that, which we are not people who know this about us. We are definitely not all of the money my

00:53:05.100 family had got stolen, but it is very well documented in court records. You can look this up. I think it's

00:53:09.740 even on our Wikipedia. But if you are a person living off of that and you allow yourself to feel

00:53:16.300 lesser and then do all this indulgent charity giving and everything like that, as opposed to

00:53:22.140 to try to make yourself feel like, oh, I'm a good person, as opposed to say, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:53:25.980 What role do I need to serve within civilization? What is the optimal role for myself? Every wasted

00:53:32.300 dollar is something you spent on a form of mental masturbation. But this also comes of respect for

00:53:38.380 yourself. You don't need to work on respect for yourself. Be somebody worthy of respecting. Once

00:53:44.700 you develop a world model about a good way to live and a good thing to be, you don't need to worry

00:53:53.100 about respect for yourself because you know if you have suppressed masturbatory desires, right, that you

00:54:02.780 are achieving through your actions or at least attempting to, best you can, something meaningful

00:54:09.420 in civilization. Somebody may ask me, Malcolm, if you didn't have kids, what would you be doing with

00:54:13.980 your life? You know, what would you be focused on in your life? And it's like the same stuff. I'd just

00:54:17.660 be less effective at it, but it wouldn't make me necessarily a lesser person or have less respect

00:54:24.060 for myself because I knew I was acting on the best I could with what I had access to in my biology.

00:54:31.260 And keep in mind, your biology can include things like genetic predilections for addictions and stuff

00:54:37.180 like that. You just have to work on it as best you can to live the most productive life you can.

00:54:43.740 And then the second category here is respect from others. Status, recognition, prestige,

00:54:48.780 strengths. People seek accomplishment, mastery, and appreciation here. People do not really seek

00:54:56.060 respect from others. What people seek from others is they want other people to see and think of them

00:55:03.740 the way that they see and think of themselves. If you have respect from others, but it's through an

00:55:11.100 archetype or a caricature, and we know this because we have a lot of very famous friends that you don't

00:55:16.700 see as authentic to the way you want to be perceived or to yourself, you often see the fame as a noose

00:55:23.180 around your neck. And you will become annoyed by your fans, right? Because they don't conceptualize you

00:55:32.060 the way you wish to be conceptualized. And you see this of a lot of famous actors and musicians and

00:55:37.740 stuff like this, and they end up blowing out. They should have everything they need, right? By Maslow's

00:55:42.700 hierarchy of needs. And yet they seem to be the people most likely to crash out. Why are they

00:55:48.300 the most likely to crash out if Maslow's hierarchy of needs is actually a good way to contextualize

00:55:54.220 what you need from life? Thoughts on that before we go further?

00:56:00.380 I agree. I think you see enough from people whose needs should technically be met per the pyramid

00:56:05.660 that are clearly not thriving and clearly not working on whatever it is you expect them to be

00:56:12.620 working on having those other needs to be met. And again, I think a lot of this has to do with the

00:56:19.020 fact that none of those things lower on the pyramid by modern standards, I think, can be met.

00:56:24.860 So, and I think that you see this even when you look at people who you have met and think about

00:56:32.700 mental stability, right? The people who you know who have tons of wealth, maybe tons of sexual access,

00:56:41.420 tons of, you know, et cetera, like the movie star types, do they seem more mentally healthy and

00:56:47.180 disciplined to you in terms of their, like, on their deathbed satisfaction with your life? Or think of your

00:56:52.940 average, you know, person who you know, who's like, say, Opus Dei or whatever,

00:56:55.820 who's actually going through these mortification rituals, everything like that, attempting to learn

00:57:00.620 self-discipline. Do they not seem more, everybody knows that they're happier and better up and not

00:57:06.620 just happier, but happier in the way that anybody wants to be, right? Like the only true happiness you

00:57:11.580 will ever feel is sacrificing for a goal that you have genuinely sought through and genuinely care about.

00:57:18.620 Well, that's why in general, people who have four plus kids strike me as among those most

00:57:26.620 self-actualized people. They've decided that something that isn't easy is important to them,

00:57:31.660 and they are pursuing it effectively, and they feel a great sense of contentment and alignment

00:57:37.020 as a result of that. It's one of the reasons why this story of this father of seven is so shocking

00:57:41.340 to me because normally when someone goes through the great difficulty of having and raising seven

00:57:46.620 children, you know, they clearly are expressing that they value children and they are very involved

00:57:53.980 in raising those children and feeling pretty aligned and good and contented with that. So,

00:57:59.580 it's so odd to me, this case, but every story is complicated. So, who knows, you know, and sometimes

00:58:07.180 people have a mini stroke and get brain damage or change significantly in terms of their personality,

00:58:13.340 and no one realizes it, or they have a tumor growing and their personality totally changes.

00:58:19.340 And I wouldn't totally put it past, unless this is behavior that has long existed.

00:58:25.420 So, later developments and expansions. So, he developed some few extra parts to the chart in

00:58:29.900 his later years, if you remember. Really?

00:58:31.340 He added cognitive needs, desire for knowing, understanding, curiosity, and explanation. This is the one good

00:58:37.580 thing I think he has. See, I just thought that was part of self-actual, I thought that was self-actualization.

00:58:44.060 No, no, you need that before self-actualization, apparently. So, next here, aesthetic needs,

00:58:49.420 appreciation of beauty, balance, form, and symmetry. No, that just sounds like a sensitivity.

00:58:55.500 Yeah, and transcendence needs, the highest level involving helping others achieve self-actualization.

00:59:01.340 He's directly borrowing from Buddhism here. Peak experiences beyond the self, spirituality,

00:59:06.220 and connection to something greater, e.g., humanity, nature, or the universe.

00:59:10.140 I don't know, this sounds like the life coach problem, where, you know, when you have a life

00:59:17.180 coach, the only thing you ever want to be is a life coach.

00:59:19.500 Yeah, that's where all new life coaches come from. Somebody was working with a life coach,

00:59:23.020 and so the life coach told them, oh, well, you want to be a life coach, because that's what they

00:59:26.860 thought was a good life, you know?

00:59:28.460 Well, typically, the advice you get from people gets you to where they are, and, you know,

00:59:32.940 advice from a life coach is going to get you to become a life coach.

00:59:36.060 So, he views this as a shifted focus from pure self-fulfillment to selflessness,

00:59:41.500 which, again, I see is just comical. Like, come on, you're either living a productive life or you're

00:59:46.300 not, right? And part of that productive life can be helping other people break out. I mean,

00:59:51.580 that was the first thing that we did when I was like, I want to do something like purely

00:59:54.860 to help the world. The big early project we had was the Pragmatist Guide to Life,

00:59:59.820 and the moral and philosophical framework laid out in that. And that framework, if you're

01:00:04.380 unfamiliar with it, I'm going to briefly go over it. We're unfortunately going to have to cut this

01:00:07.340 episode in half, because it is too long at this point. We haven't even got into the Nietzsche stuff.

01:00:11.340 What? There's, oh my gosh, wow, okay. That easily breaks into self-actualization versus

01:00:18.060 the Ubermensch. So, I want to quickly talk here about the Pragmatist Guide to Life. Basically,

01:00:23.820 we say that you first need to develop a framework for how you determine what is true in the world,

01:00:29.740 in reality, because it is getting increasingly harder. And so, you have a framework of sources

01:00:34.460 of truth and how those sources interact with each other. Then you use that source of truth to build up a

01:00:40.060 sort of tree of beliefs about how the world works with metaphysical stuff sort of lower on that tree.

01:00:46.620 And if you break something lower on the tree, it breaks everything further down the tree of your

01:00:52.140 beliefs. And we also go over how to build what you think is true. Like, a good example is,

01:00:58.620 because a lot of people are like, well, I just trust academics. And everyone knows that you can't just

01:01:02.060 trust academics anymore. And somebody's like, well, I just trust the church. And it's like, well,

01:01:06.780 you know, historically, the church has, you know, put out specific perceptions of God and its own

01:01:14.620 religious framework that has evolved since they have gone out. So, you know, some level of, even if

01:01:20.220 you're in the most conservative Catholic group, even they know that through the various councils,

01:01:25.900 things have evolved over time, right? So, you know, you, you, you have some more, more internal

01:01:32.940 responsibility to decide things by yourself. And we go over, like, how you can do that. Like,

01:01:38.860 an easy explanation here is, if an organization puts out information that is counter to their

01:01:48.300 goals, it is more likely to be true, right? Like, if an academic puts out information that makes,

01:01:55.580 and they don't have a long history of like anti-trans research or something like that,

01:01:59.260 that makes transness look like a bad idea for kids, you can be like, oh, that's, that's more

01:02:03.980 likely to be true. Or if an oil firm puts out stuff that makes it look like, you know,

01:02:10.860 oil is actually damaging to the environment, you can be like, well, maybe they have some underlying,

01:02:15.260 they're trying to create barriers to entry for small players or something. But it's probably more

01:02:19.100 likely to be true. If, if somebody who is historically been critical of, of gender transition

01:02:25.900 puts out something saying, it's not that bad, you can be more likely to trust that, right?

01:02:29.420 So there's, there's things that you can build here. And then we say, once you have this framework

01:02:32.860 for understanding reality, then you need to determine for yourself, what your objective

01:02:38.140 function is sort of like what a utility function is for computers. But just to say, the weighted mix of

01:02:45.020 things that you are attempting to maximize with your life, like you, you, you likely want some

01:02:50.140 level of hedonism, you know, just in case you're wrong about everything else, but then you want

01:02:54.220 like a multiplier on like how maybe helping others feel good. If that's something you think of as

01:02:59.740 having value, I do not, or building up human civilization or, and we go through in that book

01:03:04.380 all of the various dumb things you may choose. Like, like if it's one of the reasons that hedonism is

01:03:08.780 such a dumb thing to maximize in yourself or others is the things that make us feel good.

01:03:13.180 We only feel because our ancestors who felt them had more surviving offspring. They're not things

01:03:18.620 of intrinsic good. Right. And this is one of the core reasons I see negative utilitarianism as so

01:03:24.860 stupid. If you were programmed to feel something else, like suppose you were programmed to feel,

01:03:32.860 and some humans are actually programmed to feel this because there's weird like poop fetishes to

01:03:37.740 think that rubbing poop on your face, like that makes you feel good. Right. Is that an intrinsically

01:03:43.980 good act now? Because of course not. It's ridiculous. Right. Like that is not a barometer for any form of,

01:03:53.420 of, of objective goodness within our reality. Right. Which is one of the reasons why all of these

01:03:59.180 biological, all of these, you know, when we talk about martyrdom of man, is a very good way to put

01:04:03.740 this to escape, you know, our four footed ancestry, all of these bestial desires and hallucinations, 0.50

01:04:12.060 malformations of our world perspective created by this evolved side of us. Everything done based on

01:04:20.140 that is definitionally evil. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Love you, Simone.

01:04:29.980 And you are a great wife and I think are a natural Zen master of this, but I think it's because you

01:04:34.940 got like naltrexone in your vein, your opioid pathways like basically don't work.

01:04:38.220 Yeah. Well, and we know this too, that it, I, we suspect it's genetic because

01:04:42.620 my dad just says that he like just did all the drugs. And he's like, yeah, but I never get addicted

01:04:50.060 to any of them. Yeah. And he would, you know, he'd like take up smoking on, on trips and stuff and

01:04:55.980 then come back and just not smoke anymore. Like he's just, he's literally, I can stop anything whenever

01:05:01.900 I want to. And also whenever I drink, I just get drunk. Like nothing else happens. And I wonder what

01:05:07.340 it is that other people experience that I'm missing when I scroll, I just see stuff. I really

01:05:14.060 want to know what it feels like. I will describe it as being closest to what MSG tastes like.

01:05:21.260 That is the closest other sensation that I can describe as to what the extra feel on top of

01:05:27.420 drinking feels like. So addiction is the umami of emotions. Yes. It's the umami of emotions.

01:05:33.820 Delicious. It's just that, that enhancer of all the other emotions. Salt of emotions. Gosh, wow.

01:05:42.460 Imagine living my life, a life of food with no salt.

01:05:48.540 Umami isn't just salt. No, it's salt and fat, basically.

01:05:51.900 But it enhances the way you perceive other flavors. Yeah. By the way, did you know,

01:05:57.980 there's this, this weird spoon that was invented in Japan? It uses like some kind of ionizer or

01:06:04.780 something else that you can, you can consume low sodium products. But when you eat off of the spoon,

01:06:10.860 I think it uses some kind of electrical current. It's so, it's so Japan. It enables you to taste more

01:06:17.660 of the salt. So you're eating a fraction of the amount of sodium, but you're getting the same sodium

01:06:24.140 taste. Japanese got some cool tech. I'll tell you what. Right. And it's not some kind of,

01:06:28.620 it's not like those stupid, you put a scent cartridge in your water bottle products that you

01:06:34.780 get from a YouTube influencer. It is actually, no, you are tasting the salt. It just sounds so cool.

01:06:42.780 Yeah. So I love that. By the way, another fun fact I learned that I didn't know,

01:06:46.540 and this was from that Kirish video on the guy who wanted to be 10, uh, the original trans child

01:06:51.500 influencer, the one who they, they realized that he, he was the wrong gender. And I think it was

01:06:56.300 three or four. And then they transitioned him or started him on, you know, purity blockers and

01:07:00.860 transition at seven and who was on the cover of national geographic. Like they did a full cover

01:07:05.820 story on him. It was about 10 years ago anyway, or maybe like six years ago or seven years ago.

01:07:14.540 Anyway, that individual now says that becoming trans ruined their lives and they no longer

01:07:20.460 identifies trans identify as that. What is it? By gender or whatever, like

01:07:25.900 gender, multi, multi-gender, whatever it is that people, the, I can't remember.

01:07:31.900 Helicopter Octavian would 100% identify as a attack helicopter.

01:07:36.300 You asked him, this was so funny. So Simone asks him like, do you want to identify? Like

01:07:42.300 there's some people who think you can identify as a helicopter. Oh no, no, it wasn't that it was,

01:07:45.820 it was, do you want to marry a helicopter? That's what you asked him.

01:07:47.900 Yeah. I was joking. I was joking. I was like, if you like helicopters so much, why don't you just

01:07:51.500 marry one? And he was like, I can't marry a helicopter. And I was just thrilled to hear

01:07:58.700 him say such a reasonable thing. He's like, the ring would fly right off. And no, no.

01:08:05.420 Now you're like, is this how you determine whether or not something is-

01:08:09.340 Can you put a ring on it? Then it's marriable.

01:08:11.980 No, I actually really like this interpretation because he has said the point of marriage,

01:08:19.020 in his mind, the point of marriage is putting a ring on something. And if you can't put a ring

01:08:23.100 on something, you shouldn't marry it. I could put a ring on a squirrel's tail though. I could, 0.67

01:08:27.340 I could put a ring on a- Great. But Simone, the point I'm making here is that the point of

01:08:33.820 marriage is not putting a ring on somebody's finger. It's getting married to somebody you

01:08:39.500 can impregnate and have children with to start a family with.

01:08:42.700 Well, that's not where he is right now with the whole concept.

01:08:45.340 No, but obviously he's a child. But once he understands that the point of marriage isn't

01:08:49.980 the ring, but impregnation-

01:08:51.820 Okay. Then he's like, well, I can't have a child with this person. Therefore, I won't marry them.

01:08:55.740 I see. And somebody would be like, what? You think that somebody who is infertile isn't worthy

01:09:03.900 of marriage? And it's like, if my kid asked me, should I marry this person? They're perfect for

01:09:09.660 me in every other way, but they're infertile. And there isn't another way to have kids like 0.99

01:09:13.420 through surrogacy or through artificial wombs. I would say, absolutely. No, don't marry them. 1.00

01:09:17.580 And they'd be like, what, do they not deserve marriage? Do they not deserve happiness? And I'm

01:09:20.220 like, no, they can marry somebody else who's infertile, right? Like they don't need to 1.00

01:09:23.580 waste the life of a fertile person on their own personal indulgence. And if they were living

01:09:30.380 a purposeful life of sacrifice, they would understand that.

01:09:36.540 And so that's an offensive thing to say, but it's, it's something that, yeah, I absolutely,

01:09:42.140 that is the point of a marriage. I was infertile, Malcolm. Well, we made you fertile. 0.66

01:09:49.340 We powered through it. That's the point.

01:09:51.100 Absolutely. You, you made yourself fertile through technology. Again, not cheating.

01:09:56.060 Thank goodness.

01:09:57.740 You've, you've done all of the drugs, all of the extra, you bring every kid into this world 0.84

01:10:02.300 with more sacrifice than I think just about any other woman when bringing a child into the world.

01:10:09.660 And, and, and through.

01:10:11.020 No, a lot of people just, just die. Okay.

01:10:15.340 I mean, I think I would rather have, I had to go through what you were going through and I just

01:10:20.380 lived for hedonism. You haven't seen the drug. She has to take a needle that's like this long into 1.00

01:10:24.620 her butt every single day for months with every kid that we have. Like it is, I couldn't even,

01:10:31.180 I look at it and I couldn't even push it in for her. It is so gruesome. It's like, you look at it and

01:10:36.380 you're like, how does that not go through the bone? Yeah. The first time I had to do a needle

01:10:39.500 like that, both Malcolm and I were like, especially cause I'm, I'm on the thinner side.

01:10:43.580 It's going to hit my hip bone. There's no way this is not going to hit my hip bone.

01:10:47.180 I still don't know where it goes. It's honestly, I'm like, I don't know how this works, but it works.

01:10:52.940 You are so tough.

01:10:55.180 I have permanent scarring. You can actually see the permanent scarring from all the needles,

01:10:59.740 but I mean, you know, we're, they're, it's such a nice, like we have other friends who have

01:11:05.260 permanent scarring because they have chronic diseases that have, you know, involved so many,

01:11:10.620 so many blood draws and so many other things. I would much rather have permanent scarring from needles

01:11:17.340 due to trying to create new life rather than fighting for my own. You know what I mean?

01:11:22.300 So it's, it's a very lucky place to be. What, what, what a, what a profound thing to say,

01:11:26.700 Simone, you are a priestess. It's not profound. I'm lucky. It's not a profound. You were just born

01:11:35.500 enlightened. I love it. No, it's true. No, no. I'm lucky that I'm not chronically ill and fighting for my

01:11:40.940 life. And so are you, we should enjoy it while it lasts. Cause it's not going to, I'm going to get

01:11:46.220 cancer for sure. I hope there's better treatments for when it hits. I love you so much. I love you

01:11:53.100 too. Have a spectacular day. Bye. Bye.

01:11:56.700 Bye. Now we can do your episode next, or we could try doing the second part of this episode next.

01:12:04.220 Let's do your episode. Okay, great.

01:12:07.100 Well, I don't know if you've been downstairs, but since Octavian finished his mandatory lessons of the

01:12:12.940 day, he decided he didn't want to fly his RC helicopter. He wanted to set up an elaborate

01:12:19.100 obstacle course for it. And it is elaborate. When you go down, you will see it's a whole thing.

01:12:27.420 It's a whole thing. And also when we went down, there was some kind of bird, I think some kind of

01:12:31.420 finch flying through our kitchen and living room. And I think they came into the same, the same part of

01:12:37.420 our house that the other dead birds that used to be in that cabinet where the bunk beds now are would

01:12:45.100 end up. So I think I sufficiently directed him out of the house for her, but I don't know.

01:12:57.900 How was the comments today in the China video?

01:12:59.740 People were glad that we were covering it broadly speaking because it's not really being discussed.

01:13:09.100 I mean, if we end up breaking that story and it turns out to be accurate, which I think all the

01:13:13.580 evidence shows that it is right now before like the New York times and the mainstream media breaks it.

01:13:18.780 Oh my God. We deserve so much credit for that. The internet. I deserve internet points. I don't

01:13:23.740 know what those look like. Maybe another me, maybe another know your meme page. I think they've

01:13:29.340 integrated all of our know your meme pages and very sadly, and I'd love if one of our fans fix this

01:13:35.820 because we don't edit our own Wikipedia page, but they took away the picture on our Wikipedia page.

01:13:41.660 It was a picture that your late mother took. How dare they, this, this, this merch, this merch

01:13:47.260 your memory, her efforts. Oh, I'm sure somebody was like, well, it's technically not whatever license.

01:13:53.420 I don't know how to give a picture with the right license. Oh, that's true.

01:13:56.940 Yeah. It's, it's not in Wikimedia Commons. If we can, we can literally just contribute

01:14:01.500 images to Wikimedia Commons. If you want me to.

01:14:04.300 I think that's a good idea. Just dump a bunch of images in and then somebody who wants to use them

01:14:08.220 can that are like ours. So yeah. Yeah. Cause yeah. Otherwise it could be copyright infringement.

01:14:14.460 And technically that was, I guess, copyright infringement of your late mother's work. I'm not

01:14:18.540 really sure how that, that works when someone dies. But anyway, I mean, all our videos are free for

01:14:25.180 public use. Like if anybody wants to like cut up or re-stitch our videos, we would never

01:14:29.740 complete. Yeah. But they're not published online as, for example, Creative Commons.

01:14:35.820 That used to be one of the major nonprofits I would donate to. I really like Creative Commons.

01:14:41.420 Here's a good idea. We put our pictures on the Pronatalist website under a Creative Commons license.

01:14:49.500 So that anybody who wants to take them from there and use them can. So just very clearly

01:14:54.380 put the Pronatalist website under a Creative Commons license.

01:14:56.620 Honestly, I mean, except I think Wikipedia is one of the few exceptions now because of AI,

01:15:02.700 it kind of doesn't matter anymore. You know, things like licenses of that sort are absurd.

01:15:09.020 People shouldn't waste time thinking about that. But I, yeah, I will, I will therefore handle that.

01:15:15.180 One of the most funny comments on what's going on with CCP in terms of substantive and smart,

01:15:20.940 one of our collective friends also who listens to the podcast was saying they don't think it was

01:15:25.820 an attempted coup. They think that Xi Jinping is actually trying to prepare the country for war

01:15:33.260 and like actual war. And that has this person really nervous, but he doesn't think it was a coup.

01:15:40.460 He just thinks that Xi is like doing everything. But Xi arrested the only two sitting members of

01:15:47.100 the council, other than himself. Who were opposed to war with Taiwan. He's like,

01:15:51.100 let's get it done. We're doing this. And if you don't want to do it, you're out.

01:15:54.860 And their entire families. This wasn't like a... You need to. Yeah.

01:16:01.420 If you need to remove all impediments to war with Taiwan and you're ready to go, 0.68

01:16:05.900 I could see a world in which that makes sense. This person also pointed out just the sheer

01:16:10.780 and intense opacity of the CCP and its inner workings, which leads to rampant conspiracy

01:16:16.700 theories. So to a certain extent, anyone's guess is as best, as good as anyone else's because...

01:16:22.620 I don't think that's true either. Not anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's. There are people

01:16:27.340 who have in the past made predictions about China's future actions, and those predictions have turned

01:16:32.940 out to be accurate. Or made predictions about what was happening, and then later we learned that that

01:16:37.580 stuff was actually happening. Yeah. That's why I rely on a commenter like Lei's Real Talk, because

01:16:42.380 she is one of those people for me. Oh, that's funny. This same person was like, I hate Lei's Real

01:16:47.100 Talk. Just go back and watch her various predictions she's made and see how those play out. That was

01:16:53.980 exactly his argument against her analysis, actually. By the way, if you had been watching Lei's Real

01:16:58.780 Real Talk and her predictions, you would know all the rumors leading up to the various assassination

01:17:03.900 attempts against these generals and against Xi was predicting that these generals would be ousted

01:17:11.500 dramatically and in a very high-profile way, which is exactly what happened. And in a higher-profile

01:17:16.860 way than any even confirmed insurrectionists had been denounced in terms of how quickly and loudly they

01:17:25.660 were denounced after their arrest and the arrest of their entire families. So the point being here is

01:17:33.260 you would have seen this coming if you had been watching her. You would not have seen this coming if

01:17:38.300 you had been watching mainstream news. And we do know that this happened and it was a complete reversal

01:17:44.540 of things. So this idea of like, oh, she doesn't predict it. Clearly she does have some sort of insider

01:17:49.980 knowledge of what's going on. And I love that some of the people who are just so brain-cut on China are like, 0.98

01:17:54.860 no, it's not a major sign that every single major general other than Xi and the person arresting

01:18:00.700 them were arrested in the CCP's military. That's not a sign of a major turnover in how the government

01:18:07.980 works and everyone who can actually arrest or enforce power was removed in a very short period

01:18:13.820 and that was consolidated. I think it just shows the sheer levels of denialism that these people will

01:18:20.140 undertake to believe that the CCP is not undergoing a severe restructuring right now.

01:18:26.380 So yeah, the funny comment that I got actually came from Octavian who saw the title card for

01:18:35.340 the thing, the bleeding Winnie the Pooh. And as we've not read Winnie the Pooh books to him or

01:18:42.060 anything like that, they're just not very substantive or interesting in my opinion.

01:18:45.820 He didn't know who Winnie the Pooh was. And he was like, who is that? Because it's, you know,

01:18:51.260 more interesting than all the faces we put on our podcast normally. And I said, it's Winnie the Pooh.

01:18:56.220 And he suddenly looked very, very disturbed, not because this plush bear was bleeding, but because

01:19:04.620 some horrible person decided to name a bear Pooh. And he was like, I feel very bad for the bear. I'm going

01:19:12.380 to give the bear a new name. Now he's just like on a whole campaign of, we need to save this poor man.

01:19:19.500 Rename Winnie the Pooh.

01:19:20.540 His bear has been mistreated egregiously. Who, who could do that? Which I get actually,

01:19:28.220 especially because kids are all about Pooh jokes. How on earth did it work that I guess kids of, of,

01:19:35.180 of that time when those books first were written were not as vulgar as the kids today. They would never have

01:19:41.820 thought that such a term was, maybe they had a different word for excrement, for fecal matter.

01:19:48.380 I don't know. I should look that up anyway. Sorry for distracting from this.

01:19:57.020 Oh, wait. And this is going to be the floor for it.

01:20:01.820 Oh, it is?

01:20:02.700 Yeah. Why did you put that big?

01:20:05.820 Well, that makes sense. Oh, this is the floor for it. You're right. Look at that.

01:20:09.100 Yeah, look. Yeah, we're making the castle. Wow.

01:20:13.100 Yeah, we're making the castle. Wow.

01:20:16.220 Wow. Yeah.

01:20:17.340 Mommy, these are the podcasting.

01:20:19.900 Oh, really? Yeah, look.

01:20:21.900 What are they?

01:20:24.300 Hey, Mommy. 0.89

01:20:26.060 Yeah? Ooh.

01:20:27.100 Upon the green team and the talent team, it's the black team. 0.89

01:20:35.100 What? Are they the coolest?

01:20:37.100 Mm-hmm.

01:20:37.500 That was one of the greatest.

01:20:39.340 I thought it'd be on the black team.

01:20:42.380 Oh, not like the other green guys. 1.00

01:20:46.220 I thought it'd be on the black team.

01:20:50.780 Okay, guys. Where is this? Ah, here we go.

01:20:52.620 This is on the floor.

01:20:54.700 Oh, thank you, Octavian. Can you find all the floors for me?

01:20:58.060 Yeah.

01:20:58.940 Oh, of course.

01:21:00.660 Oh, my God.

01:21:05.700 Oh, my God.

01:21:11.260 Oh, my God.

01:21:13.980 Oh, my God.

01:21:16.460 Oh, my God.

01:21:18.420 Oh, my Lord.

01:21:22.620 Oh, my God.

01:21:24.260 Oh, my God.

01:21:26.140 Oh, my God.

01:21:27.020 Yeah.

Based Camp - January 29, 2026

How Self-Actualization Destroyed Western Civilization

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