Based Camp - Parenting, Faith, and the Future with Ex-Muslim Activist Sarah Haider

00:00:00.000 I think that all the ways in which we have allowed women, especially young women, greater

00:00:04.480 autonomy and control over their life choices, there has been a negative consequence for

00:00:12.740 those same women, I think, when they become mothers, because it's the same forces that 1.00

00:00:16.560 give you more autonomy as an individual, weaken the social ties that are very, they're important

00:00:21.300 for families and for mothers.

00:00:22.340 Would you like to know more?

00:00:23.380 Hello, everyone.

00:00:24.340 I'm really excited because after listening to Sarah Hader on podcasts for months, maybe

00:00:30.680 years at this point, she is here on our podcast, and we're so excited to have her on.

00:00:35.940 If you don't know her, she is on Substack. 0.84

00:00:39.100 Her Substack is called Hold That Thought. 0.55

00:00:40.840 You can find it at newsletter.sarahhader.com.

00:00:44.460 That's H-A-I-D-E-R. 1.00

00:00:45.800 And on Twitter, she's Sarah the Hader, as in H-A-I-D-E-R, which is a great, it's a great 0.89

00:00:51.420 name, Sarah.

00:00:52.020 As she also does with Megan Dahm, who we also love, a podcast called A Special Place

00:00:57.740 in Hell, which is very fun.

00:01:00.140 Your banter is fantastic.

00:01:01.400 So we're very glad to have you here bantering with us.

00:01:03.560 Welcome, Sarah.

00:01:04.840 Thank you for having me.

00:01:06.280 I'm so excited.

00:01:06.820 And let's jump right into the tweet that got us connected, because I think it's good framing

00:01:11.240 for the topic of this show.

00:01:12.480 Let's go.

00:01:13.540 All right.

00:01:14.300 Let's do it.

00:01:15.040 Do you want to read it, Simone?

00:01:16.040 Yeah, I'll read it.

00:01:16.900 The other day, Sarah asked if there were any group slash resources out there, for lack

00:01:23.140 of a better word, that offer traditional parenting, but with a secular or rationalist approach.

00:01:27.960 And someone from probably like a follower of this podcast followed us and followed Sarah

00:01:33.000 and connected us saying, hey, you should probably talk with Simone and Malcolm.

00:01:37.620 Let's start with whatever motivated this tweet.

00:01:40.020 Yeah.

00:01:40.240 What made you decide to tweet that?

00:01:41.480 What do you think in there?

00:01:42.960 Yeah, it's been in the works for a while, but I am a new mom, new-ish.

00:01:47.660 I have a toddler.

00:01:49.180 So I was looking to connect with other parents.

00:01:51.640 I have been for some time now that it's like a play date age and just thinking about how

00:01:59.380 to think about parenting.

00:02:00.640 Like what are the models that make sense?

00:02:03.280 Now we're at a point where we're thinking about school, preschool, homeschool, Montessori.

00:02:08.300 So all these big questions are coming up.

00:02:10.100 And I'm not the kind of person who trusts establishment.

00:02:13.960 Like the kind of normie options make me nervous sometimes.

00:02:16.820 And I actually have good reason to feel that way about our education system.

00:02:21.520 I didn't love it when I was going through it.

00:02:22.800 I went to public school.

00:02:23.720 I don't know if you guys did as well, but.

00:02:25.460 Same.

00:02:25.600 Yeah.

00:02:25.880 Yeah.

00:02:27.780 Terrible experience.

00:02:28.520 I just can't.

00:02:30.840 The prison metaphor is a good one, but I think it really killed my love of learning,

00:02:34.200 which I had very naturally.

00:02:35.460 It's the same contractors.

00:02:36.640 Actually, in the Bay Area, when I went to school, the same architectural firm did design

00:02:41.900 most of the jails and the high school.

00:02:43.860 So.

00:02:44.440 I think they had the same parent company that was creating the cafeteria food.

00:02:49.040 Oh, yeah.

00:02:49.660 No, I imagine that's true in a lot of areas because it makes sense if you're winning

00:02:52.440 government contracts anyway.

00:02:53.940 Yeah.

00:02:54.180 And it's a state school to pipeline ecosystem in a lot of these districts, right?

00:02:58.020 Right.

00:02:59.160 One and the other.

00:03:00.360 Yeah.

00:03:00.900 Luckily, I was not in one of those places, but I was definitely in a like testing, get

00:03:05.860 good grades and compete in incessantly, have like 10 hours of homework a night school

00:03:10.860 environment.

00:03:11.360 It was not amazing.

00:03:13.060 I was thinking about that with my son as well.

00:03:14.720 And my background is actually in new atheism, which we were touching on a little bit.

00:03:19.500 Yeah, we were touching on before this, so for context, for our viewers, this is, I think,

00:03:24.400 germane for the topic of this podcast, somebody who rose to fame in the new atheist community.

00:03:32.020 Simone and I really rose, like we were mostly affiliated with like EA rationalist, less wrong

00:03:37.140 community before this.

00:03:38.360 So obviously a bit of a different community, but very aligned culturally speaking.

00:03:42.800 Certainly big areas of overlap for sure.

00:03:44.900 Yeah, and the pronatalist movement in many ways within those communities represents a

00:03:50.780 group that's, hey, we threw out a lot of stuff that maybe we shouldn't have thrown out.

00:03:55.620 And it's hard to find people willing to engage with any aspect of the traditionalist idea.

00:04:02.700 Like we often use the term neotrad to mean when I'm explaining it to reporters, I'm like,

00:04:08.260 what it means is we look through various older traditions for social technology that we can

00:04:15.960 re-implement and that still makes sense within our social and technological context right now.

00:04:22.800 And a lot of people, they think when you're looking to the past for social technology, they

00:04:26.820 mean, oh, so you're looking to just the 1950s.

00:04:30.360 And it's now like, there's a lot of cultures in the past.

00:04:32.520 I can look to ancient Athens.

00:04:34.400 I can look to things that was common in Rome.

00:04:36.460 I can look to things that was practiced in Egypt in various time periods.

00:04:40.220 There are lots of social technologies that have evolved and can be re-screwed together

00:04:45.420 that aren't just removed boundaries.

00:04:48.380 Another thing that I was talking to somebody about recently that really colored this idea

00:04:52.880 for me is for a long time, I've actually speaking to a reporter at The Economist about

00:04:57.040 this today, like societal progress has been tearing down fences and we didn't know why

00:05:03.820 they were there.

00:05:04.380 It's been very much, okay, there's this random rule here.

00:05:07.340 Let's get rid of it.

00:05:08.680 And up until today, we're now finally at a part where we have torn out so much of the

00:05:13.900 base infrastructure that people are now realizing, oh, a lot of that infrastructure had a purpose

00:05:18.500 and we get the opportunity to, we can either rebuild things exactly the way it used to be,

00:05:24.140 or we can intentionally build the social infrastructure to really optimize it going into the future

00:05:31.860 in a way that humanity never really has, which is really interesting to me.

00:05:35.420 But anyway, yeah, just some context there.

00:05:37.440 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:38.100 So those could be, I've always been like rationalist curious.

00:05:41.540 Like I've always been like poking around in the blogs and not participating, but lurking.

00:05:46.020 So I'm familiar, just broadly speaking, with some of the kind of movements and tendencies

00:05:51.000 and values of like the rationalist sphere.

00:05:53.320 And I definitely feel that I align with that in a personality sense.

00:05:58.600 It's harder when we get to policies that it can get trickier there because then that requires

00:06:04.280 us to have the same facts on hand.

00:06:07.100 So I don't know how much, maybe we'll fork a little bit when it comes to that.

00:06:11.320 But I definitely, I like that approach, the kind of optimistic yet grounded in like a real

00:06:19.860 reality, let's engineer something like, I like that.

00:06:24.140 And I wanted to be able to talk to people who could, I like the way you, you put it, I like

00:06:31.360 that you put that you can look back into the past as also, also something that we can look

00:06:38.440 towards, not just, we don't just have to come up with new ideas, but we can look back and think

00:06:42.940 about the wisdom of our forefathers or whatever.

00:06:45.340 But that's a weird word, isn't it, wisdom, because I don't know if they knew what they

00:06:48.360 were doing, but nevertheless, it came together in a useful way for them.

00:06:53.780 And I've come around to appreciating that as well.

00:06:57.020 I think a lot of people have walked that path in the past like 10 years or so.

00:07:01.220 In the atheist, like new atheist kind of community, not so much.

00:07:05.960 Like there definitely was a big woke pilling that happened and like atheism.

00:07:12.440 I don't know how you guys feel about that.

00:07:13.720 I feel like I know, but it seems like the parts of it that survived actually became like

00:07:18.300 anti-feminist channels and stuff like that. 0.99

00:07:20.400 It's like dedicated skeptics of whatever the dominant cultural group is.

00:07:24.420 And I think that we see, I want to say they're true colors, but what they are, and I suspect

00:07:30.860 this is a genetic proclivity, somewhat hard-coded in some people that they get off most on just

00:07:37.380 criticizing the dominant culture in our society and the dominant cultural perception from

00:07:42.320 me growing up transitioned from theocratic perception of the dominant culture, which

00:07:48.120 is what I believed was the dominant culture when I was a kid.

00:07:50.520 And I think it was accurate to a woke theology, which is, it gives them something new to criticize.

00:07:58.120 And yeah.

00:07:59.840 Yeah.

00:08:00.560 Maybe that, maybe there's definitely something to that about the public figures, because

00:08:04.800 certainly if you get popular in the new atheism movement, you are known to be like this big

00:08:09.160 critic of religion and religious values.

00:08:13.500 And I don't think the average atheist necessarily is that way, even if they like lurk around in

00:08:18.100 the communities and not necessarily that way.

00:08:19.940 So there's a misrepresentation of the kinds of person who rises to the top in that space.

00:08:25.280 I tried not to be too much that way.

00:08:27.700 I was trying more to fight for the right to criticize religion because I come from a Muslim

00:08:32.880 backgrounds in many Muslim majority countries, there's like nothing resembling freedom of 1.00

00:08:37.180 speech or religion.

00:08:38.180 And that sort of carries over into Muslim majority or just Muslim communities here in Western

00:08:44.860 context as well, because there's so many of them for multiple reasons and they're becoming

00:08:49.780 very isolated.

00:08:51.400 And so you have this like mini nation and there's a, I think of a culture that is not open to

00:08:57.780 dissent at all.

00:08:59.500 So that's the kind of thing that I was talking about and I found that it was really hard to

00:09:05.400 talk about Islam openly because for some things you're not supposed to say, and that was one 0.86

00:09:09.000 of the things you're not supposed to say.

00:09:10.780 And so that was my entryway into pushing back against the normal dominant like political paradigm.

00:09:18.260 And my instinct, because I came in from that background was to look away from religion when

00:09:28.540 I'm looking or even religious communities or anything resembling religious communities or

00:09:32.220 traditional communities or anything like that.

00:09:33.640 Like it was just, I don't think that I'm a person that's easy to bias.

00:09:38.120 Nevertheless, this was my social context.

00:09:39.580 This is everybody I knew.

00:09:40.740 And this is still many of the people I know.

00:09:44.540 So traditional is a bad word in the way religion is a bad word.

00:09:51.440 It's the way that people think about it is definitely tied strongly with women's disempowerment.

00:09:59.320 All these like social ills that now we can talk about in a kind of a different way, but it's

00:10:05.380 impossible to move that conversation forward in some circles.

00:10:08.680 So I was, when I was tweeting that I was actually wanting something else.

00:10:12.300 I don't want to, I don't want to be a part of the atheist parenting communities. 1.00

00:10:16.700 I feel like they are, when they're not looking at traditional cultures or even religious practices

00:10:22.160 associated with the religious, we don't have to accept it for the religious reason.

00:10:25.300 We can accept it for a different reason.

00:10:26.760 I feel like in an abandoning all of that or refusing to take a good look at it, they were

00:10:32.560 abandoning a huge and important source of knowledge.

00:10:35.140 And as you said, social technology.

00:10:36.720 So yeah, I'll elevate a, well, a misconception here, but I think a misconception that also

00:10:43.240 delineates probably where some of the negative parenting practices come from.

00:10:46.960 So if you're talking about the rationalist community as 99% atheist, they just don't primarily

00:10:52.240 identify as atheist.

00:10:53.480 And one thing that we often elevate on this show is that when a community identifies in

00:10:58.420 a specific way, status hierarchies within that community can often begin to form with how

00:11:04.360 far you other yourself along the metric of identification within the community.

00:11:08.540 So an example here would be, if I'm a goth and I meet another goth, how much that person

00:11:14.580 has othered themselves from mainstream society, whether it's through piercings or a weird way

00:11:19.880 of dressing, that is my immediate assumption of their goth status.

00:11:23.940 And so when a community has identified primarily, primary mechanism of identification is atheist,

00:11:30.800 you get, how do you be more atheist than other people can become a bit of a part of the status

00:11:37.000 hierarchy, which can make it really hard to pull from these older social technologies.

00:11:42.160 Oh, but I also think that a big problem with people looking at older social technologies and

00:11:45.760 traditionalism, like you say, is they often look at, oh, so the traditionalism equals female 1.00

00:11:51.460 disempowerment or social isolation.

00:11:54.060 And they often do, but I think that often people look at the worst devices or the worst

00:11:58.200 aspects of these traditional cultures and think of those as the defining aspects of those

00:12:02.400 cultures.

00:12:02.980 When really, what we talk about a lot in the book that Malcolm wrote, The Pragmatist Guide

00:12:06.860 to Crafting Religion, is that really the key is it has to be a hard culture. 0.80

00:12:12.020 And by hard, we mean a culture where you make serious sacrifices, you other yourself to a

00:12:17.340 certain extent, like you look funny or you dress funny, you have a weird name, you live

00:12:20.360 differently, and you really lean into and invest in that tradition and religion in a way that

00:12:26.660 leads to benefits.

00:12:28.100 So for example, many-

00:12:29.340 It's hard to adopt a sense of identity if you're not making those kinds of daily sacrifices

00:12:34.140 with a community.

00:12:35.920 And many of those sacrifices also are the things that do impart strength.

00:12:39.520 So while female disempowerment does not impart strength as far as I'm concerned, things like 1.00

00:12:44.140 fasting do because they help you develop stronger inhibitory controls.

00:12:48.380 And that's hard.

00:12:49.740 People don't like fasting or giving things up.

00:12:51.800 It's pretty freaking difficult.

00:12:53.760 I might even push back in the female disempowerment thing because I think there's push and pulls 1.00

00:12:58.640 with all the different choices that we make in terms of, okay, we're going to allow more

00:13:03.120 for something here.

00:13:05.160 There is, sometimes there is a loss on the other side.

00:13:07.760 It's not visible entirely.

00:13:08.640 But I think that all the ways in which we have allowed women, especially young women,

00:13:12.920 greater autonomy and control over their life choices, there has been a negative consequence

00:13:20.940 for those same women, I think, when they become mothers, because it's the same forces that 0.83

00:13:25.400 give you more autonomy as an individual, weaken the social ties that are very, they're important

00:13:30.140 for families and for mothers.

00:13:31.060 Or when they try to get married, for example, if you have a super sexually free leave and

00:13:36.340 then you try to get married, it's hard.

00:13:37.740 Yeah.

00:13:38.280 Or a society with equal wages being harder for women to get partners if they always want 0.89

00:13:42.040 a partner who's earning more than them.

00:13:43.580 I mean, there's so many ways that I think that there, I wish that there was a more open

00:13:48.060 discussion about some of these things, but it is hard to do.

00:13:51.440 So I think, and I definitely agree with you in terms of hierarchies within communities.

00:13:55.520 This is why I, when I said rationalist, I wasn't even sure, do I want to be a part of a community

00:14:01.620 where everybody considers themselves a rationalist?

00:14:04.240 Because yes, I found like within those communities, I think the rationalists really enjoy contradicting

00:14:09.140 each other in a way.

00:14:10.980 I do.

00:14:11.580 I've written long things about how that community, it fell apart because it was a community where

00:14:16.760 status hierarchy was determined by knowledge, like scientifically backed knowledge.

00:14:22.120 The problem is that if you try to front with a scientific study that everyone knows, then

00:14:26.580 that actually hurts your position because it shows that you thought that something that

00:14:30.520 was commonly known was not commonly known.

00:14:32.960 So you can only really front with either scientific studies that go against what anyone would think

00:14:38.860 is true or scientific studies that are fringe or rare findings, which leads to the communities

00:14:44.680 becoming what I call as a slur for them, butter eaters, because they'd have these things where

00:14:48.820 they'd eat full sticks of butter every day, because there was like one study that said

00:14:52.900 it was a good idea.

00:14:54.480 And because it was an obscure study, they looked good or like extra special for doing the weird

00:14:59.280 thing, the obscure thing that people didn't know about.

00:15:02.000 I didn't believe it.

00:15:03.360 It discourages following, actually.

00:15:05.600 That's a community that discourages true followers, which you do need in a healthy community,

00:15:11.100 actually.

00:15:12.040 But then this becomes a thing.

00:15:13.860 If we're restructuring culture, right, we've got to think about how do we prevent these

00:15:18.900 sort of downstream effects that you're easy to miss.

00:15:22.420 You say something like, I often think of culture crafting as being like a monkey's paw.

00:15:27.580 Like you don't, if you're not really careful in how you word things, like I want rationalism.

00:15:33.340 It's like define rationalism.

00:15:34.700 They're like scientific studies.

00:15:36.200 And then the monkey's paw does its horrible rish.

00:15:38.640 Or I want atheism.

00:15:40.260 And it's okay.

00:15:41.060 How do you define atheism?

00:15:42.380 Lack of old traditions.

00:15:44.080 And then the monkey paw does its horrible wish.

00:15:46.360 And so it's, if you're building something, especially for your kids, for your family,

00:15:49.680 you've got to think.

00:15:50.520 So I would love to ask you three questions I want to go through.

00:15:54.180 One has almost become like a mainstay on this show that I think will make a mainstay on

00:15:58.760 the show every time we have somebody who's deconverted from a religious tradition.

00:16:01.860 What did you like about your birth religious tradition?

00:16:05.120 What social technologies do you think Islam does well?

00:16:08.840 Or, and before we go further, it's useful if you talk about the branch of Islamic culture

00:16:14.300 you came from, because one of the things we're always talking about in this podcast is, is

00:16:17.500 one, the difference in Muslim and Western marriage strategies.

00:16:21.880 One of the ones that we say is very interesting is Andrew Tate has taken like some Muslim strategies 0.96

00:16:25.880 around marriage structure and tried to almost secularize it into a new family structure.

00:16:30.620 And I'm like, that's interesting, but I don't know if that's something that Western men

00:16:33.820 should be emulating.

00:16:35.300 But anyway, yeah, so I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on like, what do you think

00:16:39.020 Islam gets right, especially that you think Western culture doesn't? 0.90

00:16:42.660 Okay, so let me start from the first question, which was, how did I grow up?

00:16:47.260 I was raised Shia Muslim, which is like a minority, but it's the Iran people in Iraq.

00:16:53.280 But I was schooled in the Sunni tradition, because that was the local community where I grew up.

00:17:00.540 So that's where I was going to Sunday school.

00:17:02.660 And that's, those are the like religious like competitions I was involved in.

00:17:05.940 So it was, in my mind, actually, the two traditions are very mixed up.

00:17:11.400 I'm actually confused.

00:17:12.320 And it's only because I've been doing this kind of activism for a long time.

00:17:15.520 And this topic has come up that it has, I've been able to pull them apart in my mind.

00:17:20.440 It's, but it's like saying that I was Catholic and also Protestant from evangelical

00:17:24.760 on one side of my family and Catholic from my mom's side.

00:17:27.800 But I think there's a lot that I like about Islam.

00:17:32.380 And there's a lot that I think is unique and interesting.

00:17:34.980 So it's actually not a hard question for me to answer at all.

00:17:37.820 It's just that I think that on the whole, it is like deeply harmful.

00:17:42.060 So I don't have any trouble talking about all the things that are great about it.

00:17:46.260 But I think that what's fundamental to understand is that the internal logic of Islam is so alien. 0.99

00:17:54.580 I think it's so different.

00:17:55.680 And it's not, I didn't even appreciate how different, like how fundamentally different

00:18:00.740 of a social structure it is until like now.

00:18:05.160 I couldn't possibly, I couldn't, I'm not actually, we don't have the, we don't have the time.

00:18:09.540 We don't have the, I don't have the intelligence.

00:18:11.560 But I think that it's just something I'm coming to fully understand.

00:18:14.940 If anybody wants to read up on this, Ernest Gelmer is a scholar that I would recommend.

00:18:20.160 He is so interesting that he wrote several books that are, he also, he wrote about like

00:18:24.540 philosophy, words, linguistics, but also Muslim society and civil society in particular.

00:18:30.780 What are the kinds of conditions that foster healthy civil society?

00:18:34.980 So he took a look at Muslim societies, Asian societies and the West and compared the ways

00:18:40.460 that they structured power in the kinds of conditions that that brewed.

00:18:43.720 Very eye-opening, very easy.

00:18:45.060 Anything you remember from this, just any specifics.

00:18:47.160 Especially if you're putting me on the spot.

00:18:49.500 I think, I don't know.

00:18:55.300 I don't know.

00:18:55.760 I would have to prep.

00:18:56.820 I would have to, because there were so many ideas about it.

00:18:59.900 We'll keep going.

00:19:00.740 So what other specific things would you borrow from Islam for your kids?

00:19:05.060 Back to that question as to what's good about it.

00:19:07.600 Um, one of the things I always liked about Islam is the way that it encouraged charitability 1.00

00:19:13.180 amongst other Muslims.

00:19:15.260 So there's a requirement to give a certain percentage of your income to the ummah, the 0.89

00:19:21.360 community, the poor, really in the community.

00:19:23.480 And that, is that through any religious organization or just directly to, is it direct giving or through

00:19:29.520 an organization?

00:19:30.620 I think it could be, I don't know if it's specified, but it could be anything.

00:19:34.160 It could be direct giving.

00:19:34.960 You can, if you look at the words of the text, because I was looking at this, it is implied

00:19:39.360 that it's direct giving.

00:19:40.860 Nice.

00:19:40.960 I'm sure some people have, or any tradition is going to, over time, have a lot of branches

00:19:45.040 which end up hijacking this.

00:19:47.240 But it is actually pretty unique in that you do not get this in most Christian traditions

00:19:52.240 where the expectation is that it goes through church infrastructure before reaching the

00:19:58.480 poor, which is interesting.

00:19:59.800 But continue.

00:20:00.880 Yeah.

00:20:01.140 So I like that about it.

00:20:02.540 I like that it was an expectation, almost like a text.

00:20:04.540 But Islam thinks of itself as very much a state religion and not, not even something

00:20:10.880 that you can pull apart and say, this is the state and this is the church.

00:20:14.260 I think even that conception, it real is a kind of Western approach to politics and religion.

00:20:20.940 And so that, that whole infrastructure is not something I support.

00:20:24.440 But it is worth elevating this concept because it's one that I would definitely talk about

00:20:29.680 when you're trying to understand Islam as different from the other major religious traditions.

00:20:34.220 Whereas I think Judaism is also pretty unique in this regard.

00:20:37.340 And then Judaism is really structured to be an ethno group slash state slash religion. 0.89

00:20:43.780 It ain't necessarily ethno group.

00:20:45.100 Yes.

00:20:45.520 But would you say state?

00:20:46.840 So it depends on the period of Jewish history.

00:20:49.380 If we're talking especially about a second temple period Judaism, it was structured ground

00:20:54.080 up to be a state system.

00:20:56.140 And what happened to Judaism was how a culture evolves when a religious system that is really 0.66

00:21:02.220 meant to be operating a state no longer has a state to operate.

00:21:05.800 That's why the destruction of the second temple was so existential for the Jewish people.

00:21:10.660 And every exodus period was so existential for the Jewish people.

00:21:15.960 And then it has obviously heavily modified itself since that period.

00:21:19.920 But I think it's re-pulling on now with the state of Israel.

00:21:23.820 It's restructuring itself in that older fashion.

00:21:27.920 With Islam, as you pointed out, but it is worth elevating here,

00:21:31.440 is it is a religion that is designed to be the state religion.

00:21:36.700 And it doesn't function as effectively when it is not the state religion.

00:21:41.560 And when it is not the state religion, it's always searching to become 0.74

00:21:44.500 eventually a state religion, which can have positive and negative consequences,

00:21:49.660 depending on the side.

00:21:51.360 You might think only negative consequences, but...

00:21:53.160 I think it's just, as somebody who grew up now, I was raised primarily in the...

00:21:57.640 I was born, actually, I was born in Pakistan.

00:21:58.980 And I remember coming here, but I was quite young, still seven.

00:22:02.620 But as being raised in that religion that has all these instincts of a majority religion, 0.83

00:22:07.920 that's the instinct of Islam.

00:22:10.140 And that is part and parcel of even some of the celebrations.

00:22:12.880 Like Eid is supposed to be this public thing that you all do together.

00:22:17.240 The whole community is involved and it is happening publicly.

00:22:21.340 And for Eid to be something like in the West, where it's very private now,

00:22:25.040 it's like you visit somebody's house and then you take a drive

00:22:27.840 and you visit somebody else's house.

00:22:29.200 In Pakistan, it's in the streets. 1.00

00:22:31.280 And then, and Baqar Eid, which is the one where they sacrifice the animals, 0.97

00:22:34.600 that's happening on the streets everywhere.

00:22:36.880 It's a very public spectacle.

00:22:39.100 And that's part of it.

00:22:40.200 Part of the thing, the celebration that this is public.

00:22:42.840 To be driven into kind of a private, the private sphere,

00:22:47.020 I don't think Islam really thrives. 0.99

00:22:48.600 And that's part of the reason I think diaspora communities that are Muslim

00:22:53.580 feel a sense of like disorientation, because I think that they're,

00:22:58.360 the instincts of the religious tradition that they have been brought up in

00:23:02.540 do not fully and easily comport to being a minority in a country that has very different 0.92

00:23:09.260 majority values and traditions.

00:23:13.180 Judaism, I think it's, they don't struggle in the same way.

00:23:16.720 I think that just because their history has for so long been in that position,

00:23:21.660 I think they tend to take it a little bit more.

00:23:23.720 They thrive, actually.

00:23:25.160 I think they thrive in that environment.

00:23:27.620 Yeah.

00:23:27.800 And now they do.

00:23:28.540 They thrive as subcultural groups with separated, often like legal systems and stuff like that,

00:23:33.460 which is really interesting.

00:23:34.460 It's so interesting, the idea of a religion and culture that's optimized on a societal level

00:23:40.340 rather than on an individual level, because I'm so used to growing up with the extreme

00:23:44.720 opposite end of the spectrum.

00:23:46.440 Not that I was, my parents were, they called themselves born again, Buddhist.

00:23:50.260 I really, they were like the most non-religious people in the entire world, but they came from 1.00

00:23:54.920 basically a Calvinist kind of background or Protestant background, which is just, it's so

00:23:59.460 individualistic that of course they would end up calling themselves born again, Buddhists

00:24:02.980 after a certain number of generations, like just doing their own thing.

00:24:06.060 And their metaphysical beliefs were like a mixture of inspired by Scientology and other

00:24:09.880 science fiction books and Buddhism and like whatever they saw on TV recently.

00:24:14.640 And that that was all just so on the local level.

00:24:17.660 Whereas here you're looking with Islam at holidays. 0.99

00:24:19.960 They don't really make sense if it's not literally on a community, not just a block party, but

00:24:24.620 like the entire city.

00:24:27.120 And that makes it really hard, I think, for you to try to replicate some of those things

00:24:30.340 that worked well for your own kids, because they're not going to have that community.

00:24:34.700 Did you find the most utility in?

00:24:36.420 Yeah.

00:24:36.880 Sorry, repeat that first bit.

00:24:37.960 Which holidays did you find the most utility in?

00:24:40.320 If you were going to practice them for your kids and you could have them practice at a

00:24:42.960 society-wide level, which ones would you be like, this particular good value or is a useful

00:24:47.760 social technology?

00:24:49.140 I wouldn't do any of the Muslim ones. 1.00

00:24:50.640 I wouldn't.

00:24:51.100 I like Christmas.

00:24:52.160 So I think that is what I would do.

00:24:54.940 There's only two in Islam.

00:24:57.560 And one is from a kid's perspective.

00:24:59.840 I didn't think either was spectacularly interesting.

00:25:03.580 Unless you went outside and then you kind of had a blast.

00:25:05.840 The one where you kill all the animals, that one was actually traumatizing.

00:25:09.740 I remember when I was young, I was taken to a slaughter of a cow and I saw it happen.

00:25:16.800 I remember the blood.

00:25:17.760 I can't forget.

00:25:18.400 And I don't even have a fantastic memory, but I remember everything about that.

00:25:22.060 I remember the butcher's son playing in the blood because he was just like, for him, it

00:25:26.000 was just whatever.

00:25:26.800 I'm just having a good time.

00:25:28.420 And I was just like, dad, I want to go home.

00:25:31.480 I need to go home.

00:25:32.360 I remember just all these animals on the street.

00:25:34.580 It was not, maybe it's something you come around to as you grow, if you grow up in it

00:25:38.220 and then you're an adult and then you have all these great memories associated with it.

00:25:41.660 But just as a child, it wasn't, it wasn't my friend.

00:25:45.380 Okay.

00:25:45.760 What's the other one?

00:25:46.860 The other one is it's like Christmas, but you get money at the end of it.

00:25:50.660 Money?

00:25:51.120 You just get money.

00:25:52.100 You get money.

00:25:52.580 Instead of presents, you get money.

00:25:53.600 But I like presents better because I think it's personal.

00:25:56.940 Like I like that somebody's thinking of me rather than just handing me a $20 bill.

00:26:00.620 And for kids, it's good.

00:26:02.300 Oh, you would probably like our religion.

00:26:03.900 We'll have to have a separate conversation about that at some point.

00:26:06.440 But I think that's better for her podcast.

00:26:07.780 But I was going to say Christmas, it's a great thing because it's like people are always

00:26:10.920 telling us, oh, a constructed religion that's meant just for the best interest of your

00:26:14.060 kids with unique holidays, that would never catch on.

00:26:16.360 And I'm like Christmas and Santa Claus.

00:26:18.840 What are you talking about?

00:26:19.940 Obviously this stuff can catch on.

00:26:21.500 Yeah, but Christmas is also one of those holidays that works when it's done publicly, when it's

00:26:27.820 a season, when it's the colors and it's the warmth and everyone's making those cookies

00:26:32.100 and the smells that are associated with Christmas.

00:26:34.660 Although our kids talk about the future police, which is like the Santa of our weird holiday,

00:26:40.720 our flagship holiday, more than they talk about Santa.

00:26:43.440 Yeah, we've had more success with our holiday than Santa.

00:26:45.560 They proselytize our religion more than we do.

00:26:47.680 So like the babysitter will come over and they'll be like, the future police got this

00:26:51.560 for me because I did this.

00:26:52.860 And like the future police might do this or that.

00:26:54.620 And they keep our babysitters are giving us the side eye.

00:26:56.900 And we're like, it's a thing.

00:26:58.000 I don't know.

00:26:58.480 Don't derail it, Simone.

00:26:59.580 Don't derail this.

00:27:00.400 Another question I wanted to ask, which is one, or I've actually wanted to talk to a

00:27:03.400 Muslim scholar about this.

00:27:04.980 I'm the wrong person for it.

00:27:06.360 I can tell you that right now.

00:27:07.040 You're probably the wrong person, but you might be just the right person because you

00:27:10.260 have lived in both cultures and you're from outside the community, is I have never fully

00:27:14.620 gotten the animosity affiliated with the Sunni-Shia split.

00:27:19.220 When I look at something like the Catholic-Protestant split, for example, I can understand why there's 1.00

00:27:24.680 animosity.

00:27:25.320 There's two completely different systems for how to determine what's true.

00:27:28.900 When I look at splits within Jewish communities, I can understand where that animosity comes from.

00:27:32.920 But the Sunni-Shia split doesn't seem to be a theological split.

00:27:36.960 It seems to be a purely governance system split.

00:27:40.120 And so my thesis is that the, and you can tell me if I'm wrong about this, is the animosity

00:27:44.280 is actually because Islam is designed to be a state system.

00:27:48.600 So the governance split matters so much more than it would in another religion.

00:27:52.960 Yeah.

00:27:53.360 Yep.

00:27:53.940 Is that it?

00:27:54.680 Yeah.

00:27:54.900 The politics can't be separated.

00:27:56.280 And it was a political difference.

00:27:57.440 And it was a meaningful political difference.

00:27:59.400 And the two sects are, they do practice differently.

00:28:01.700 And I mean, it differs a little bit from country to country.

00:28:05.380 Like I was talking to this ex-Shia from, ex-Muslim from Saudi who was Shia, but in her experience

00:28:12.420 with Shiism is not mine.

00:28:14.240 My experience with Shiism was as a minority religion within a majority Sunni population.

00:28:20.420 That's how Shiism has developed as well, actually.

00:28:22.600 So there's like layers to all of this.

00:28:24.660 But getting back a little bit to the local and individualistic aspect of Christianity,

00:28:31.180 I think that's key to, it's key to how well it has functioned in this specific modern liberal

00:28:39.780 kind of societal context.

00:28:41.940 And why it has just worked in tandem with developing so many interesting and innovative, like not

00:28:50.300 just technologies, but social systems and ideologies and ways of thinking about the world.

00:28:55.300 I think that has been, it is key.

00:28:57.820 And without it, you end up in a completely different space.

00:29:01.120 But I will add that it's not the case that Islam is just like centrally controlled.

00:29:06.600 It's actually not really centrally controlled at all.

00:29:10.060 Yet there is this high culture, like this high Islam that matters. 0.95

00:29:15.620 There are folk traditions, but those tend to be the remnants of whatever that region used

00:29:23.340 to believe in before it was conquered by Muslim army.

00:29:26.760 So that those sort of folk religion of Bangladesh looks very different than the folk religion

00:29:31.580 of Turkey.

00:29:33.600 Having said that, I feel as if that those are disappearing.

00:29:37.020 And that's, that is what you would expect over time as literacy increases everywhere.

00:29:41.720 And then you're able to look at the book and determine that, okay, this is the originalist

00:29:46.840 interpretation of Islam is actually the true one.

00:29:49.360 What I've been practicing or what my grandmother has tattoos on her face.

00:29:52.620 I didn't know that was not acceptable.

00:29:54.680 I didn't know that was a local Tunisian tradition.

00:29:57.500 And in fact, it's not Islamic at all. 0.92

00:29:59.140 And I have to get rid of it.

00:30:00.400 So there is a kind of a coming together, flattening almost of Islam as it looks and as it's practiced 1.00

00:30:08.480 worldwide, which is a little troubling and a little sad, I think.

00:30:12.780 Yeah, I definitely say that's sad, losing that, that cultural diversity.

00:30:15.860 I, okay.

00:30:16.400 So another question I have for you, because you're talking about like the Christian system,

00:30:20.180 which I will admit has led to a tremendous amount of technological and economic growth.

00:30:25.440 But there was a period where a form of Islam caused one of the greatest technological leaps 1.00

00:30:31.680 in human history during the Islamic golden age. 0.96

00:30:34.360 Do you think that was, so a lot of people will say that was just serendipity.

00:30:38.960 Like the libraries were destroyed.

00:30:40.160 The area became less economically powerful.

00:30:42.120 And that's why.

00:30:42.920 Do you think that's why?

00:30:43.900 Or do you think that there was a shift in the theology of Islam that made it harder for

00:30:48.300 modern Islam to match the technological greatness of its ancestors or a shift in underlying technological 0.96

00:30:54.100 trends?

00:30:55.200 I think there's a lot of historical reasons that are just like, that is how it played out.

00:30:59.180 And that is why it happened.

00:31:00.860 And it is also the case that the, this is the benefit of having kind of a religion in which

00:31:07.100 the political rulers do have spiritual power and spiritual leadership positions, because

00:31:13.300 if they happen to be liberal, and if they happen to be tolerant and interested in, you

00:31:18.780 know, technology and innovation, which is what, that is what I would put as the central factor

00:31:24.400 in why the golden age looks so different than other times.

00:31:29.120 However, I'm not prepared to.

00:31:30.880 I'll give you my attention.

00:31:31.800 I have a thesis on this and you can tell me if it sounds wrong to you or right.

00:31:34.920 So I think there were two key factors.

00:31:37.600 One is I think that Islam pushes a drive towards a form of academic study of stuff like math 1.00

00:31:45.860 as a way of understanding God.

00:31:47.420 And so long as math and chemistry didn't directly contradict Islamic scripture, it could be seen

00:31:55.580 as a theological pursuit.

00:31:57.680 And that is why during the period where before technology got so hard that it started contradicting

00:32:03.480 scripture, it really synergized very well.

00:32:06.660 Isn't it?

00:32:07.100 Isn't the, but that was the Catholic church.

00:32:09.300 Oh, the Catholic. 0.77

00:32:10.180 Whoever did math like Muslims. 1.00

00:32:12.300 I mean, it, you know, but I mean, in the sense of the, that's how they approached the study

00:32:16.360 of the natural world as a study of God, because you were studying his creation.

00:32:19.860 So it was all part and parcel of the same thing, this science as an oppositional group.

00:32:25.320 Yeah, you're probably right.

00:32:25.880 That's a good point.

00:32:26.420 You've got all the like Gregor Mendel and everything like that and all the study out

00:32:29.520 of the monasteries.

00:32:31.320 So yeah, it's basically closer to God until it doesn't, and then it's not okay.

00:32:35.300 The secondary thesis that I had, which could also be wrong, but it's one that informs

00:32:39.280 my thinking a lot, is it was the spread of Sufism that ended up collapsing the culture 1.00

00:32:44.180 among the elite circles that allowed them to look for sources of knowledge in what we would

00:32:48.720 argue is corrupted mental states, i.e. emotions and visions are a better source of truth than

00:32:54.880 study of the natural world.

00:32:56.420 But you could say maybe that's wrong too.

00:32:58.500 Yeah, I don't know.

00:32:59.160 I don't know about that.

00:33:00.500 I would have to give that one a little bit of thought.

00:33:02.340 I'm not automatically dismissing it.

00:33:05.160 Okay.

00:33:05.920 And then the way the first theory makes me think.

00:33:08.140 But I do think it's worse at studying these things.

00:33:11.240 If a culture was productive at one time and not productive at another time, and you can

00:33:15.580 isolate what elements changed, then I can know what elements are useful to build into

00:33:20.220 my own family's culture.

00:33:21.720 Good point.

00:33:22.880 In a world where fertility is collapsing, those of us with high fertility could end up

00:33:28.860 having a disproportionate play in the future.

00:33:31.220 Right.

00:33:32.200 So let me, I think that at least in modern times, this is not a deeper going back to

00:33:38.240 the core of what Islam might be a point, but I think that it, what it is in the modern

00:33:44.320 world, at least the example of the West definitely played a part in how Muslims viewed science 0.70

00:33:52.880 and technology in general, because they were able to hook across the pond and see where

00:33:59.420 science took all these guys who thought that they were going closer to God, but now we know

00:34:03.460 that they aren't close.

00:34:04.440 Yeah.

00:34:04.620 And how did that go?

00:34:05.360 And yeah, so there's that example that they can always point to and they can say, no,

00:34:09.700 they looked at, they approached the world in this fashion.

00:34:14.160 They abandoned revelation and instead started using their reason to make out all kinds of

00:34:19.200 things.

00:34:19.420 And now they have strip clubs. 1.00

00:34:22.320 This is, it was just this explicit example of, you didn't really have to think through

00:34:27.940 it.

00:34:28.180 You didn't really have to, you just see it play out.

00:34:30.980 And I think that that has a huge impact on how Muslims think of even modernity, right? 1.00

00:34:36.480 Like modernity is a bad word.

00:34:39.480 Capitalism, like all this consumerism, like that all just goes together really.

00:34:43.360 But in the Muslim world, they really do. 0.99

00:34:46.840 Modernity really is atheism.

00:34:49.260 And they're not, if you're looking at it from the perspective of evolved cultural traits

00:34:54.420 designed to increase fertility rate of cultural members, it is a successful memetic package.

00:35:00.460 Oh, sure.

00:35:01.380 Yeah.

00:35:01.640 But to be good enough to reproduce on a societal level in long periods of time, hey, I could

00:35:09.880 never disagree.

00:35:10.880 And I think the apostasy taboo really does help there. 0.99

00:35:14.760 Easy in, easy in, but it really difficult to get out even if you want it.

00:35:20.680 So there's lots of Islam and the taboos and the traditions, like there's so many ways in

00:35:26.220 which it really is a, it's a great mean if just living, just surviving is your most important,

00:35:33.360 it's the thing that you are focusing on.

00:35:36.120 However, I would also add that I don't know if what has worked for the Muslim world up

00:35:43.340 until now will survive our most recently.

00:35:46.820 I don't think that we talk about all these things with social media is creating social

00:35:51.080 alienation and isolation.

00:35:53.020 But if you look at the research for in Muslim places where you think they would have a healthy 1.00

00:35:57.880 sense of community.

00:35:59.260 In fact, the same kind of erosions are happening, but they also don't have running water.

00:36:03.520 So like it's the combination of two horrible things that are coming together.

00:36:08.460 I am not sure it might be, they might be finding a way through it with their strong social networks.

00:36:13.800 I think that maybe they won't, like maybe they'll get the wrong end of the sticks in both ways.

00:36:20.080 I am, at least I'm concerned about that in any case.

00:36:23.000 No, no, I think you're absolutely right.

00:36:24.840 And this is something we regularly see.

00:36:26.420 You're studying fertility collapse.

00:36:27.820 Generally, cultures that have had some cultural hack that has acted as a bulwark to fertility collapse, 0.99

00:36:34.000 when the dam breaks, it breaks very fast and all at once.

00:36:38.260 But then, of course, that leads to downstream especially negative consequences

00:36:42.200 because within, for example, these already conservative Muslim cultures,

00:36:46.880 if everyone who is open to using a cell phone is memetically sterilized,

00:36:50.120 that means only the most extremist iterations are going to get through, as we call it in,

00:36:55.780 because we do some like pseudo-religious stuff.

00:36:57.640 We say you've got to walk through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters. 1.00

00:37:00.080 That's what our civilization is doing right now.

00:37:02.160 I mean, that is so much harder to do given the way that they're,

00:37:06.640 given their level of development.

00:37:08.220 It is actually, it's easier to procure a smartphone than it is to have a laptop or a computer.

00:37:13.240 From a literal functioning perspective, cell phones have become a really important part of the way that their world works.

00:37:21.340 I would say we're just used to them for a longer period of time.

00:37:25.120 But I actually think because we have the, our foundations are quite strong, our institutions are quite strong,

00:37:29.680 we can get away from technology and survive in a way that is becoming increasingly harder for them to do

00:37:37.380 because they're in this crucial, like mid, like bizarre stage of development.

00:37:41.420 And so that's just something that, it's something to think about.

00:37:44.560 And I think that the way that cell phones in particular, smart phones in particular,

00:37:49.360 and their connectivity to the internet, the way that has pierced through the social fabric,

00:37:56.760 because you have, okay, you have these, you have societies,

00:38:00.020 you have a lot of this metacontrol over people and what they're thinking and what they're thinking truly,

00:38:05.240 because you're talking to each other and all of that is very control and bounded.

00:38:07.980 But now here's this escape hatch.

00:38:11.260 I have a lot of social controls here.

00:38:13.220 I think the world does this and this is how it works and this is what truth is.

00:38:16.100 But now I have something in my pocket where, in, in which once I join that place,

00:38:20.500 I can be as individualistic as any American and I can access all of that information that they have.

00:38:26.900 I can see what they're doing and it will impact my brain too.

00:38:29.980 So that social, the social control that you have,

00:38:32.360 just it's hard to maintain in that kind of environment.

00:38:35.680 They're watching a lot of porn there too, right? And they're virgins. 0.99

00:38:38.440 Yeah.

00:38:38.960 And a lot of people are aware of how significantly Muslim fertility rates have fallen.

00:38:44.000 In even non-wealthy Muslim countries, it has been... 0.99

00:38:47.160 And when you think about the fact that they don't have regular access to birth control in the same way that we do,

00:38:51.940 that is, it's also, it's more striking when you think about it.

00:38:54.800 Yeah. And as we always point out on the show,

00:38:57.280 is one path that some groups will take to get through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters is blinding themselves.

00:39:01.920 By that, what I mean is completely like we will kill our kid if we catch them with a cell phone.

00:39:06.620 And you're going to find this in some communities,

00:39:08.540 but if you blind yourself to get through, at the other end, 0.99

00:39:11.640 if you're then coming out and telling everyone else you're going to kill them

00:39:14.360 and they have to follow your system, you're still blind, okay? 0.92

00:39:17.320 And they have automated kill drones.

00:39:19.580 You don't have the same amount of cultural power that you would have

00:39:22.580 if you got through using power of will that was reinforced culturally.

00:39:26.760 And so the question is, how do you do this?

00:39:28.100 I can give you an answer.

00:39:29.160 It sounds like Simone really wanted to tell you about our future holidays.

00:39:32.080 So why don't you do that and get her reaction to it?

00:39:34.880 We, the very gist of our attempt at this is we practice descendant worship.

00:39:39.080 So we tell our children that essentially our God, our family's God,

00:39:42.220 is their descendants, thousands, millions of years in the future,

00:39:46.100 who plausibly even have the ability to travel through time and intervene

00:39:49.260 to create the future that should come.

00:39:51.060 Because we also have this sort of weird deterministic,

00:39:53.320 but you still have free will view of how the world works, very mechanical.

00:39:56.160 And so for Future Day, for example, we steal toys.

00:40:02.780 The future police steal through us, of course, toys or things from their lives

00:40:08.000 that cause bad behaviors, addictive devices, games, things like that, iPads, whatever.

00:40:13.140 Last year, we just took all their toys.

00:40:14.640 We just, yeah, all their toys disappeared because we're like, oh,

00:40:17.200 let's make this really dramatic.

00:40:19.320 And then, but they loved it because in their place,

00:40:22.460 we left like sort of scorch marks with a bunch of different things

00:40:25.300 and like weird future like evidence.

00:40:27.580 And they're like, oh, what happened?

00:40:29.400 And then they have to make a pledge in this family book

00:40:32.420 that we're using as a time capsule slash heirloom

00:40:34.800 to how they're going to make the world a better place

00:40:37.100 and how they're going to become a better person

00:40:38.820 for that year and for the long-term future.

00:40:41.360 Upon making that pledge, of course,

00:40:43.800 then the future police will see it and receive it.

00:40:45.900 They receive their toys back plus some additional toys.

00:40:49.340 And if they achieve those things that they committed to

00:40:51.660 at some point in this year, they'll get an even bigger gift as a reward.

00:40:55.260 So there are gifts involved.

00:40:57.060 There's photo opportunities involved and the kids just freaking love it.

00:41:02.720 And we started to, though, this wasn't part of the plan for the holiday

00:41:05.400 is throughout the year as they are moving closer to their goals,

00:41:08.740 they do get not just one future police gift, but like a couple of things

00:41:11.920 because their goals weren't like, oh, I'm going to start a business

00:41:13.980 or I'm going to graduate high school or I'm going to ace algebra.

00:41:17.720 They're the oldest of four, so not exactly cognitive processing.

00:41:20.640 Yeah, they're very young, so it's more like I'm going to be nice

00:41:23.840 to my brother kind of stuff.

00:41:25.220 So they are getting things from the future police as reinforcement

00:41:28.080 and they just love it and they know that the future police are watching.

00:41:31.460 So it's affecting their behavior, but it's also a fun, cute thing.

00:41:34.720 But the idea here was this in most of our holidays

00:41:37.100 is we had a specific value we wanted to convey,

00:41:39.660 the idea of having agency over the future.

00:41:41.780 And long-termism.

00:41:43.600 Yeah.

00:41:43.920 Okay.

00:41:44.680 So I think that's great and remarkable and very inventive of you.

00:41:51.600 I've been thinking myself about what to do and what to adopt

00:41:54.460 and how lazy to be in that respect.

00:41:57.180 In terms of creating your own thing, though,

00:42:00.020 do you think about there's one, the problem of does this take away the magic

00:42:04.940 when it is so articulated also on your end?

00:42:08.760 Like you're telling them the purpose of the thing that they're doing

00:42:12.100 in a kind of in an explicit way that people don't, people normally don't.

00:42:17.380 And do you think that will take away from the experience

00:42:20.860 or make it less effective or anything?

00:42:22.160 No.

00:42:22.360 Or just, no, no.

00:42:23.820 I can explain why.

00:42:24.500 So even within the theology of the future police,

00:42:28.100 they are to a child, right?

00:42:30.320 In the same way that like God changes the conception.

00:42:32.640 People have a God when they're young.

00:42:33.740 It's like Zeus.

00:42:34.380 It's like a guy in the clouds.

00:42:35.320 And when they're older, they're like, oh, it's like some incorporeal.

00:42:38.060 We would say they're changing like small probabilistic quantum fluctuations,

00:42:42.340 which have a butterfly effect, which has changed larger behavior.

00:42:45.060 And if they were going to create this holiday and convince us to do it,

00:42:50.400 they would have had it appear in a way where we thought it was our idea

00:42:53.460 and we were doing it for their best interest.

00:42:55.520 So in a way, unlike Santa Claus or something like that, even to an adult,

00:43:00.160 the future police really plausibly did create the holiday

00:43:04.060 and really are gifting them things.

00:43:07.300 We were being manipulated all along.

00:43:10.140 Okay.

00:43:10.660 Okay.

00:43:11.200 All right.

00:43:11.540 Do you think it, do you need converts now though?

00:43:17.160 Because it's a, it's not going to be a community thing though.

00:43:19.400 Exactly.

00:43:19.900 And the thing is, it doesn't need converts, but what we really,

00:43:23.240 what we fight for.

00:43:24.400 I'll take those.

00:43:25.660 Take them.

00:43:26.400 What we really want to fight for and why we're so excited to see your tweet.

00:43:29.740 And this brings it all back, which is good because the kids just got back

00:43:31.940 home from a park, Malcolm, and they're about to storm the castle.

00:43:34.700 It's okay.

00:43:35.720 But so what we really want people to do is what you're doing,

00:43:40.020 which is I want to culturally innovate from a very thoughtful perspective.

00:43:45.420 And maybe it's a little religious and maybe it's not a little religious.

00:43:48.380 It's whatever.

00:43:49.000 And we want as many people to take a whack at this as possible because there

00:43:52.920 will always be people who choose to go with the traditional religion.

00:43:55.760 Like that is being tried.

00:43:56.940 So it's not an experiment that I'm concerned about.

00:43:58.840 What I'd love to see more of is essentially that startup seed investment where 99% are

00:44:04.280 going to fail.

00:44:04.840 That's fine.

00:44:06.140 But a couple are going to become unicorns and become additional viable religious

00:44:10.040 traditions that may create additional thriving alternatives to people because we need thriving

00:44:16.460 alternative religions that can make sense in a post-globalization, post-internet,

00:44:21.360 post-smartphone world.

00:44:22.560 And so I'm happier if someone chooses to do their own thing like what you're doing.

00:44:28.820 So we should elevate the larger theological structure of this system is if God is communicating

00:44:33.160 with us through which cultural systems succeed and don't succeed, then he can only talk if

00:44:37.520 there is a diversity of cultural systems to compete against each other.

00:44:40.740 So this is the theological framing to it.

00:44:42.620 The logical framing to it is to say, if we're entering this period of mass cultural die-off,

00:44:48.020 we're going to need as large a diversity of people to make it through the Valley of the

00:44:52.160 Lotus Eaters unblinded for human civilization to survive and not become some sort of like

00:44:58.040 large fascist monoculture.

00:45:00.780 And so the more cultural experimentation we have, the better off we're going to be because

00:45:05.700 the more robust our species is going to be on the other side of this, where robustness

00:45:09.700 is correlated with a diverse group of cultural systems surviving to the end of it.

00:45:15.420 They might not be necessarily diverse by the end of it.

00:45:19.020 Like it might be that there's one, it took a long time for religious systems to get to

00:45:23.760 where they are and to be as robust as they are, and they're still not that robust.

00:45:27.220 So if we're just inventing them on the fly or like trying to reason our way into them,

00:45:31.260 which is, I think, I wonder about that as a method regardless, which is crazy to say as

00:45:37.480 somebody who's, this is all I have.

00:45:39.100 This is what, this is the thing that I, I don't even know how else to go about in the

00:45:43.260 world, but it, a certain amount of serendipity and just like chance encounters formed some

00:45:49.700 of the experimentations.

00:45:50.660 Cause I think that might've been like throughout history, because I think they, the reason

00:45:54.800 would have rejected them.

00:45:56.080 Reason might've said, this is never going to work.

00:45:58.940 This is not, we shouldn't do this, but for whatever reason, it just so happened that they

00:46:03.240 did it and they tried it and it worked.

00:46:04.400 I think a lot of it's right time, right place.

00:46:06.420 Jesus was not the first apocalyptic Jew, right? 0.88

00:46:09.140 Right.

00:46:09.240 Sometimes it clicks, right time, right place.

00:46:12.240 And there's an underlying logic that you didn't understand right at the moment, but it worked.

00:46:16.940 And so you keep doing it.

00:46:17.800 So that's, I think it's, that's interesting.

00:46:20.460 Yeah.

00:46:20.760 And I, I actually, we need so much more diversity than is maybe possible, but we'll fight for

00:46:27.620 it anyway.

00:46:28.100 Yeah, sure.

00:46:28.840 Yeah.

00:46:29.080 Yeah.

00:46:29.980 Great.

00:46:30.680 No, we'll have to, we'll have to brainstorm more about this, but I, yeah.

00:46:33.600 Anyway, I'm so glad you're thinking about these things.

00:46:35.560 You're taking such a thoughtful approach and I'm in a boring, I'm in DC, which is boring.

00:46:40.400 I was just talking to, you're not born from us.

00:46:42.820 Yeah.

00:46:42.980 You're pretty close.

00:46:43.700 We're in Pennsylvania.

00:46:45.080 Okay.

00:46:45.700 I'll have to stop by and say hello at some point.

00:46:47.660 For sure.

00:46:48.120 If you're ever nearby, let me know.

00:46:50.420 Yeah.

00:46:50.840 I was actually thinking I need to be in like California or New York in order to meet like

00:46:55.320 minded people, but maybe not.

00:46:56.820 Not at all.

00:46:57.660 All right.

00:46:58.280 You're in a really good, like in the, actually some of the most thoughtful parents, like from a

00:47:02.300 cultural standpoint that we know are in DC.

00:47:05.040 Yeah.

00:47:05.540 So you're in a very good zone and yeah, but okay.

00:47:09.060 So everyone check out Sarah Hader's work.

00:47:11.780 It just like basically everything I've encountered that you've written or done in terms of like

00:47:15.960 podcasting has been fantastic.

00:47:17.540 So Sarah, the hater on Twitter and check out Sarah hater on sub stack as well. 0.94

00:47:22.000 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:47:23.760 And we'd hope to have you back at some point.

00:47:25.840 This was great.

00:47:26.780 Thank you.

00:47:27.760 Thank you.

00:47:29.660 Do you guys have guests often?

00:47:31.080 Yeah.

00:47:32.560 On this podcast.

00:47:33.140 Yeah.

00:47:33.400 But it's harder to keep good consistency when you're doing guests as you probably know.

00:47:38.340 Okay.

00:47:39.800 Because sometimes you're super fun.

00:47:41.180 You're super fun and super cool.

00:47:42.380 So we just don't post them then.

00:47:43.660 Great.

00:47:44.740 When we don't post them, it's typically because the people have never been on podcasts before

00:47:48.720 and they like answer questions with yes or no.

00:47:52.000 It's not great.

00:47:53.480 That's not it.

00:47:54.540 You're just hedging in case she's boring.

00:47:56.800 No.

00:47:57.260 You're not going to be boring.

00:47:58.040 You're so nice, Simone.

00:47:58.940 You're not going to be boring.

00:47:59.660 I'm hoping that, yeah.

00:48:02.440 It's going to be good.

00:48:03.360 I'm excited.

00:48:04.360 Indy's being pretty good today, so I'm not worried.

00:48:08.420 It's good that I'm feeding her though.

00:48:09.980 But look, I mean, look, so the doors behind you, they're pretty thick.

00:48:12.500 If we just shoved two bookshelves in there that are suspended from, it's like a barn door

00:48:21.080 where there's an overhead suspension.

00:48:23.760 So there are two suspended bookshelves and like they can part to create a small doorway.

00:48:28.700 And they're probably too much of a hassle, but.

00:48:30.700 Where are we to go?

00:48:31.820 You said right.

00:48:32.620 Between the playroom and the bunk bedroom.

00:48:34.380 In the thick double door area behind you.

00:48:38.800 Yeah.

00:48:39.420 Oh, you mean.

00:48:41.020 Oh, what?

00:48:41.720 A secret bookshelf?

00:48:42.800 Yeah.

00:48:43.240 Like a bookshelf that then opens into a door.

00:48:47.020 Or.

00:48:47.080 So you make that whole wall there.

00:48:49.140 A bookshelf.

00:48:50.160 Uh-huh.

00:48:50.940 Oh.

00:48:53.620 A suspended bookshelf.

00:48:55.060 Could be pretty cool.

00:49:00.460 Someday.

00:49:02.000 Secret bookshelf.

00:49:03.140 I don't know.

00:49:03.700 We take up room.

00:49:05.180 It would.

00:49:05.980 Honestly, your house is so perfect.

00:49:07.640 What are we going to do with it?

00:49:09.700 Like you said, like.

00:49:10.920 I could do that, Simone.

00:49:12.740 A fat lens.

00:49:13.480 Yeah.

00:49:13.820 A fat lens probably already has one.

00:49:16.080 But whatever.

00:49:16.880 It's sold, Malcolm.

00:49:17.920 It's sold.

00:49:19.060 And we can buy it.

00:49:20.380 We can storm it.

00:49:21.600 That's why we have guns. 0.98

00:49:23.640 I don't want fat.

00:49:24.300 I'm not vacuuming fat lens.

00:49:26.060 Okay.

00:49:26.640 I'm not cleaning those floors.

00:49:28.640 I'm not doing it.

00:49:30.400 Can't.

00:49:31.080 That'd be such a nightmare to vacuum.

00:49:32.760 Yeah.

00:49:33.040 Can you imagine cleaning all those toilets?

00:49:34.660 Vacuuming all those floors?

00:49:35.960 Heating all those rooms?

00:49:38.200 At least that one haunted house that we looked at.

00:49:40.060 The one that was like super creepy.

00:49:41.140 That had like these super old house attached to it.

00:49:43.220 At least you could just cordon that off.

00:49:44.900 And be afraid of all the ghosts.

00:49:46.360 That's what they did.

00:49:47.800 How's this?

00:49:48.340 Is this better?

Based Camp - June 11, 2024

Parenting, Faith, and the Future with Ex-Muslim Activist Sarah Haider

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