Based Camp - Why Christians Don't Have Babies in East Asia

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. Today is going to be an interesting and controversial discussion focused on the

00:00:06.940 question of why doesn't Christianity work for Asians? Typically, when I say why doesn't it 1.00

00:00:13.300 work here, I mean at increasing fertility rates, because these numbers are going to shock you,

00:00:19.320 and I'm going to lead right in with the numbers. So I think a lot of people know that, okay,

00:00:23.620 you're a Christian, you're a conservative Christian, you're going to have more kids if

00:00:26.520 you're in a Western country, if you're in Europe, something like that, right? You know,

00:00:29.520 this is a broadly known thing about fertility rates, and it's also broadly known that Buddhism

00:00:35.060 has the lowest fertility rate of all of the religious systems, right?

00:00:39.200 And also, like, the end game of Buddhism is, like, genocide all conscious beings.

00:00:44.220 Well, yeah, we'll get into why Buddhism has a low fertility rate, but I think the on-the-ground

00:00:48.800 fertility rates of these religions may surprise you. And another thing you'll note here,

00:00:55.180 surprisingly, is generally, as we've noted, if you are in Europe or you are in the United States,

00:01:01.480 if you are an average Catholic, you are going to have a lower fertility rate than the average

00:01:06.460 Protestant at the same level of income. Pretty dramatically lower, you can see our episode

00:01:10.800 on this. But it's the exact opposite in Asian population. So we'll also be talking about this,

00:01:16.720 because Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate there. So if you go to Japan,

00:01:20.440 if you are a Protestant, when this sample was captured, okay, you had an average fertility

00:01:25.820 rate of two, but if you were a Buddhist, you had an average fertility rate of 2.1. Now,

00:01:31.160 keep in mind, this is an older sample, so the numbers are much lower now, but this is, you know,

00:01:35.700 when this, this is the data I have, okay? So if you were a Buddhist in Japan, you had a higher

00:01:40.340 fertility rate than if you were a Protestant. Now, if you were a Catholic, you'd be involved 0.87

00:01:45.880 with a fertility rate of 2.5. What is also interesting here is that in Japan, the no religion 0.99

00:01:51.420 was two and the Protestant was two. So no religion and Protestant had the same fertility rate at this 0.54

00:01:56.700 time in Japan. Korean, if you were a Protestant, you had a fertility rate of 1.99. If you were a 0.83

00:02:05.880 Buddhist, you had a fertility rate of 2.35. Why? Yeah. And if you have no religion, it's 2.96. So 0.95

00:02:16.120 about the same as Protestant. Catholics here are actually in Korea are beaten by Buddhists. In 0.65

00:02:21.860 Korea, the Catholic fertility rate is 2.32, where the Buddhist is 2.35. Now let's go to Taiwan here. 0.99

00:02:29.600 All right. In Taiwan, if you're a Protestant, you have a fertility rate of 2.5. This is the one where 0.99

00:02:35.400 they have a big jump over no religion, which is only 2.06 when this sample was taken. Keep in mind,

00:02:40.540 these are older numbers. They're way lower now. Note, these numbers are limited to women in their 1.00

00:02:45.020 first marriage. And this study was published in 2016. You are a Buddhist in Taiwan. You have a

00:02:52.360 fertility rate of 2.7 to the Protestant 2.5. And if you are a Catholic, it's 2.8. So slightly higher.

00:02:58.720 Now, this is from a different study here that is looking at these over time for various religions.

00:03:06.420 Okay. So if you were a Buddhist in 1985, you had a fertility rate of 2.71. If you were a Catholic,

00:03:15.600 it was 2.14. So much lower. If you were a Protestant, it was 2.27. So again, much lower. 0.77

00:03:23.480 And if you were not affiliated, it was 2.47. So not affiliated in 1985 Korea beat both Catholic

00:03:39.360 and Protestant. What is going on there? Could it be? Okay, wait, wait, wait. I have a theory. I want 0.90

00:03:47.960 to come in with hypotheses because then you can make me look wrong. My guess is that because

00:03:54.220 Christianity is a minority religion in these countries, that you are narrowing your population

00:04:02.080 and creating additional barriers to marriage and coupling that ultimately delay childbirth and 0.93

00:04:07.940 therefore reduce lifetime fertility. Minority populations, when they are persecuted, almost

00:04:12.760 always have higher fertility rates. In some circumstances. Native Americans and stuff like

00:04:18.740 that. But generally, being a minority population and feeling persecuted increases your fertility rate

00:04:22.760 because you have a reason to exist. Yeah, but maybe it's just hard as a Japanese Christian

00:04:29.660 woman to find a Japanese Christian husband. I imagine you'd have more default in common with them, 1.00

00:04:34.880 but maybe. But that doesn't seem to be with the data. Well, especially if your local Christian 1.00

00:04:39.700 church does not have a really robust dating infrastructure set up, which I haven't. I've

00:04:46.120 toured one Christian community in Japan in my life. It was kind of weird. And to my knowledge,

00:04:51.780 it had absolutely no infrastructure for young couples. Nothing. Fascinating. So we'll get into why 1.00

00:04:59.000 that might have been the case in a second. Okay. Okay. Onward. 2005. So this is a bit further

00:05:04.520 forward from the 1985 sample. Okay. Have things begun to change. The not affiliated fertility rate

00:05:10.220 has crashed. Remember it used to be 2.47. Now it is 1.40. So this is for not affiliated, but the

00:05:17.860 Buddhist fertility rate has also crashed to 1.59. Okay. But also the Christian fertility rate has crashed. 0.93

00:05:24.740 The Catholic is still below the Buddhist at 1.48. And the Protestant in this moment was actually 0.79

00:05:32.380 above the Catholic at 1.50. So what? Could this be a selection thing? It could be an aesthetic thing

00:05:40.320 too. The people who are attracted, like sort of an outsider in Asia being attracted to Catholicism is

00:05:46.420 more like they're attracted to the asceticism and maybe even the asexuality. Because there are big

00:05:53.420 factions of Catholicism that are very asexual. Nuns and priests are asexual. Could it be that 0.95

00:05:58.560 there's a weird selection effect taking place that like the hooks that are attracting people

00:06:03.020 and the aesthetics that are attracting people are the non-fertile subsets? I think you got part of it

00:06:08.660 here, but not in the way that you were thinking. Okay. Okay. Well, let's just lay it out here before

00:06:13.180 we go to 2015. I'm dying for this. Come on. What else would Christianity be associated with,

00:06:18.160 especially in like the 80s, to somebody in Korea or Japan? America?

00:06:26.480 Modernization and Western values. Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's just increasing the 1.00

00:06:35.800 adoption curve of the anti-natalism. Yeah. So we'll get to all that. I want to go to 2015 because

00:06:43.400 people can be like, okay, is this trend reversing? Because I've heard some people argue that the

00:06:46.780 trend is reversing based on anecdotal data. Unfortunately, the actual data does not agree

00:06:53.120 with them that strongly. If we go to 2015, for the not affiliated, it's down to 1.13. So, okay. Not

00:07:00.560 good. Are Buddhists above unaffiliated? Yes, they are. 1.33. Okay. What about the Catholics? How are 1.00

00:07:10.160 they doing here? Are they beating the Buddhists yet? No. 1.16. Almost as low as the not affiliated 1.00

00:07:18.440 at 1.13. Guys, guys, guys. If we go to the Protestants here, where are they? 1.28. So 0.96

00:07:25.140 they're getting stomped by the Buddhists. So let's get into what some of the papers that have been going

00:07:35.600 into this have been saying because I just find these numbers fascinating. Yes. Like, it's not

00:07:39.840 an interesting question. Why is Christianity lowering rather than raising fertility rates 0.89

00:07:46.480 in East Asia? Right. Because, I mean, in Scott Alexander's long and fascinating blog post

00:07:52.320 reviewing a book about the rise of early Christianity, his end conclusion was kind of like,

00:07:57.220 well, maybe Christianity rose because the memes are just better. Like, it just imparts more fitness

00:08:01.920 to people. And you and I have argued in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion that in

00:08:06.060 the end, religions that spread really well impart fitness to their adherence. And fitness is in large

00:08:12.220 part reflected in birth rates. So why would a religion that has imparted quite a lot of fitness to

00:08:19.500 adherence in Europe, especially parts of the Middle East, not be working in Asia? Why?

00:08:28.040 Why? Well, one of the hypotheses you put out there is they are extreme minorities that might have

00:08:33.960 trouble dating because of that. So I'm going to put a chart on the screen here so you can get an

00:08:42.240 idea. Are these groups extreme minorities? You might be surprised by the actual data. So by 2015,

00:08:50.360 what percent is Buddhist? 14.1%. What percent is Protestant? 20.7%.

00:08:58.740 What? So they should have an advantage. What is going on?

00:09:02.880 What percent is Catholic? 8.5%.

00:09:05.360 Okay. That shouldn't be bad.

00:09:07.440 Now, what if you go to the past? What do you go to the past? Okay.

00:09:09.960 Okay. Let's go 1985 here. Okay. What percent is Buddhist? 27.5%. Back then for Catholics, 0.95

00:09:18.960 it was 5.9% and 18.7% for Protestants. So you can see a change. The Christian groups have grown

00:09:26.920 over time.

00:09:27.660 Well, yeah, clearly. But I guess they're growing through conversion more than birth rate.

00:09:32.840 And Buddhism has lost like half of its participants over that period.

00:09:37.000 Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, could it be also, I think I, you know what, I think what you said

00:09:44.440 about this being more correlated, not with an adoption of the actual religious values, but of

00:09:50.800 us, of the aesthetics to really hold weight. And here's why in Japan, when I traveled through there

00:09:57.840 as a teen, there were like lots of Christian looking chapels. They were just used for weddings. Like

00:10:02.840 people weren't really Christian, but you might have like your traditional Shinto ceremony.

00:10:06.180 And then you'd like do photos and maybe a wedding in like a building that was purpose-built to kind

00:10:11.980 of have like show weddings that looked like they were in chapels. And that it was really about the

00:10:16.620 trappings of the aesthetic. And the aesthetic was Western. I mean, this was at the same time when a

00:10:21.800 lot of, a lot of women were dyeing their hair, the sort of auburn chestnut color and, you know,

00:10:28.420 dressing in Lolita clothing. It was largely like sort of inspired by like frilly European dresses.

00:10:34.680 And there was sort of this idealization of Westernization and riffing on it, but it wasn't

00:10:40.860 full adoption of the means. And that's something that like, for example, Japan, and I think South

00:10:45.640 Korea is also really good at this, but like, I've always thought of Japan as being a master at this,

00:10:49.080 of like taking foreign ideas and just making them cooler, but also kind of abstracting them from

00:10:56.120 their core values and purpose.

00:10:57.300 So the studies do, there's a lot of studies on this because I read them. I was like, okay,

00:11:02.900 what is this?

00:11:03.540 Yeah.

00:11:04.140 They do show that in the eighties, Christian churches were seen as being uniquely pro things

00:11:12.100 like contraception, planning.

00:11:14.580 No.

00:11:14.940 Many of these concepts they saw as like Western and forward.

00:11:19.660 So this is a Western thing. It's not a Christian thing. 0.67

00:11:21.980 Right. But they saw the two as a combined entity in the eighties.

00:11:28.160 Now this has dramatically changed. If I'm going to read a passage here from one of the studies,

00:11:34.440 Christian churches have not up with recent radical transformation of the notions of sexuality,

00:11:39.080 marriage, and childbearing. For example, studies have shown association of Christian affiliation,

00:11:43.460 especially with Protestant churches with more conservative orientations in matters such as dating

00:11:47.620 and sexual partnership, e.g. Lee, Joe and Kim, 19, or in more general, social and political views,

00:11:54.660 e.g. Jang, 2018, Kang, 2004, Kang, 2012. As a result, Catholicism and Protestantism, which were once

00:12:02.740 the vanguard of Korean modernization, are increasingly seen as symbols of traditionalism in today's Korea.

00:12:09.960 So you can say, oh, this is good. And we'll get to, in a second, numbers on how, actually,

00:12:16.320 I'll just get to them right now. Why don't I just throw them up right now? How actually

00:12:19.980 traditional are these different religious traditions? And so I'll read something about

00:12:24.520 the study that was done here. So the EASS also contains 18 questions on individuals' attitudes

00:12:30.240 towards marriage in general, e.g. it is all right for a couple to live together without intending to

00:12:36.240 get married. Gender roles, e.g. a husband's job is to earn money. A wife's job is to look after the home 1.00

00:12:42.280 and family. Relationship inside the family, e.g. the authority of father in a family should be

00:12:49.180 respected under any circumstances and familial piety, e.g. children must make efforts to do

00:12:56.120 something that would bring honor to their parents. On a scale from one to seven, they either strongly

00:13:01.440 disagreed or strongly agreed. And so in answering questions like these, where did people of different

00:13:08.720 religions come up in sort of their conservative scale? Okay. And here, we're going to look at

00:13:14.220 Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. All right. So if you were a Buddhist, you would come up as quite conservative

00:13:24.040 on this stuff. Wow.

00:13:25.720 In Korea, it was a 25.7%. In Korea, it was 29.77%. And in Taiwan, it was 25%. For context,

00:13:34.900 if you were a Catholic, you would come up as 0.28% in Japan, 11.05% in Korea, and 0.83% in Taiwan.

00:13:47.700 Okay. I'm realizing something here, which is when I think about sort of the inverse of this,

00:13:54.420 and I think about Americans who adopted Buddhism or other Eastern religions,

00:13:58.660 they often have very, very low birth rates and are unmoored from their traditional cultures.

00:14:06.060 And it's, they're, they're like, it's almost like a proxy for them being taken over by the

00:14:11.000 urban monoculture. And I wonder if there's some element of this where it's about being unmoored

00:14:16.000 from your ancestral culture and like making a concerted decision to abandon it.

00:14:20.920 Well, rather than just adopting our belief system with technopuritanism to work on their

00:14:25.340 ancestral culture, if they have a strong connection to it, because it might be the only way that they

00:14:30.440 have out of this. Let's, let's go to some of these other countries here. Remember I was just going

00:14:33.900 through, okay, how bad is this for Catholicism? Let's look at Protestantism. So in Japan, where

00:14:40.600 Buddhism is at 25.7% very conservative attitudes, Protestants are 0.14% very conservative attitudes. 0.94

00:14:47.920 It really seems that adopting a foreign religion is more about rejecting your ancestral religion.

00:14:54.600 Exactly. In Taiwan, where Buddhism is at 25.08%, Protestantism was at 3.99%. Keep in mind,

00:15:03.140 much more than Catholicism, but still like not that high. The only country where it's high,

00:15:08.140 very interesting here is remember how Protestantism had been in Korea for a long time. Even if we go back

00:15:13.460 to the eighties, we're looking at 18% of the population. Well, in Korea, while Buddhists had 1.00

00:15:18.100 a 29.77% very traditional attitudes, Protestants had a 25.67% very traditional attitudes. So almost

00:15:26.140 the same as Buddhists, whereas Catholics were only 11.05% very traditional attitudes.

00:15:32.360 And your argument there is that at that point, it had become more of a historical and traditional

00:15:37.400 religion. Exactly. So Christianity does work within these countries if it's been working within a

00:15:44.840 community for many generations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep in mind that we argue that these things

00:15:50.340 co-evolve together. So there's two things. One is, is adopting a new tradition a rejection of your

00:15:56.880 ancestry? You know, like if you're in India and Christianity has been there almost since the 0.99

00:16:00.440 time of Christ, and you're from the Christian community, you are rejecting your ancestry and your 0.99

00:16:06.500 heritage by believing anything else. So one is, does this disconnect you from pride in your

00:16:11.380 ancestry? But then the second is, does this, did you co-evolve with this? And by this, what I mean

00:16:19.220 is we can see that historically, if you look at like a Korea, right, Protestants have lower fertility

00:16:26.600 rates than Buddhists. And it's likely because some elements of this culture, people who would have been

00:16:32.100 bred out of the culture due to personality elements, like maybe being overly obsessed with it,

00:16:36.400 or something like that, are not bred out in Korean culture. And so you see this lower birth rate at

00:16:42.280 first, but after those people are bred out of the population, then you get a population where the

00:16:46.300 software package, this Protestantism, is designed to work with this new sort of strain of Korean

00:16:53.400 identity and culture and genetic line, which is why it's hard to just paste one religion onto a group

00:17:01.020 that has no connection historically to that. And so I think that where you see people coming out of

00:17:06.480 this in like Korea, let's look at the fertility rates here to see if this, this backs was what we're 0.56

00:17:11.780 seeing. So if we look at the more modern fertility rates in Korea for Protestants, how far is that below

00:17:20.020 Buddhists? It's not as far below as it used to be. So in 2015, Buddhists were at 1.33 for Protestants,

00:17:26.960 it was 1.28. So really almost as high as the Buddhist rate. If we go back to 1985, was it different?

00:17:35.980 Yeah, it was quite different. For Buddhists, it was 2.71. For Protestants, it was 2.27. So we see the gap

00:17:43.020 there decreasing as time goes on. Now, if we look here, and keep in mind, this may not be like pure,

00:17:50.180 like evolutionary pressure. It may be the culture better adapts to this new environment over time,

00:17:56.740 or this new population with different predilections, different ways of relating to authority.

00:18:00.700 Like Koreans relate to authority in a different way than people from the Western world relate to 0.99

00:18:04.900 authority. And they're like, why? Well, how would that change their relationship with God? And it's

00:18:08.680 like, oh, okay, obviously, that's going to change their relationship with God. So I think that they,

00:18:14.480 you know, if this religion has been honed for an audience that is an anti-authoritarian audience,

00:18:21.380 like, like, suppose you have like an Appalachian, more like Protestant, like a

00:18:24.800 reflexively anti-authoritarian population, and you had a religion that was

00:18:29.760 not designed, but co-evolved with that, and then you put it on a pro-authoritarian population,

00:18:35.780 it's just not going to thrive.

00:18:37.540 This is probably also why in these East Asian, more authoritarian cultures, Catholicism significantly

00:18:44.620 outcompetes Protestantism in terms of fertility rates, because it better harmonizes with their 0.56

00:18:51.680 just trust the guy in charge mindset.

00:18:54.500 But I wanted to go into a piece by Mercantor. Do you have any thoughts on this before we go further?

00:19:00.620 Mercantor, big fans of this, this guy's work, really fun. One of the first people to write on us,

00:19:05.440 and he, he mentions us in this particular piece as well on Korea's fertility rate.

00:19:09.040 Oh, wow.

00:19:10.240 Did he's talking about like, are they building their own Quiverful movement?

00:19:13.600 Quiverful is a Christian movement, which first caught the eye of the mainstream media with 19

00:19:18.240 Kids Accounting, a reality show starring the Duggar family. It was going strong until sex scandals hit

00:19:23.440 the founder and the Duggars themselves. In recent years, the American pronatalist movement has taken

00:19:27.760 a techno-optimist turn. Its best known representatives are Simone and Malcolm Collins, who feature frequently

00:19:31.920 on news sites and TV shows, and it starred at recent pronatalist conference. They describe

00:19:37.360 themselves as atheists, which not really anymore, maybe in some of the earlier stuff about us.

00:19:42.340 Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has fathered 11 children with three women, is a fertility evangelist

00:19:47.600 and is not known to be religious. A couple years ago, a promoter of pronatalist values emerged

00:19:52.760 in South Korea, Lee Byung-chung, a missionary from Kianto Church, a small missionary sending church

00:19:58.540 in Busan in the country's second largest city, found a new calling. He calls his campaign the 303

00:20:03.980 Project. The aims of the 303 Project are to encourage marriage before 30, having at least 1.00

00:20:08.680 three children. So it's, oh, I think he maybe means here 33 Project, to mean have kids before 30 and

00:20:16.640 have at least three kids. I like that.

00:20:18.700 It's really important, have kids before 30. Lee was inspired by Eastern European and American

00:20:25.160 Protestant missionaries in China who often had six or seven children. These are probably migrant 0.84

00:20:30.180 Ukrainian and Russian Pentecostal or Baptist churches in the USA. Lee and his wife have four

00:20:35.760 children who have already pledged that they will marry and have children early. He then started the

00:20:41.220 303 Club in which couples as well as single people pledged to strive towards 303 goals or 33 goals.

00:20:48.340 He frequently quotes the biblical verse, which gave the quiverful movement its name,

00:20:53.040 like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose

00:20:59.720 quiver is full of them. When I actually read that line, I was like, that's remarkably good advice from

00:21:05.400 the Bible. If you notice here, it's saying children born in a man's youth, which is pointing out that for

00:21:12.760 most of your life, you are not going to be able to have healthy kids. You get a short window in your

00:21:18.560 youth to have kids. Children and childbearing are activities of youth, not activities of

00:21:26.480 middle age. Yeah. His campaign seems to be getting traction. Hundreds of searches are promoting his

00:21:32.580 message and pastors and young couples have become activists. According to the newspaper Kukiyom Imbo,

00:21:38.320 Pastor Lee's congregants at the Kento Church had an average of 2.4 children last year,

00:21:43.260 triple the national average. Wow. He's getting the number up, but 2.4 ain't gonna

00:21:48.680 save anyone. I mean, we're, we're, we're only at four now ourselves, right? Like the recent slate

00:21:54.540 please bemoaned how few kids we had. Why are they the pronatal? Yeah. How pathetic. Listen,

00:21:59.740 hopefully we haven't had a sex scandal yet. Okay. Maybe that's why. So I'm, Simone, am I going to get in

00:22:07.100 trouble for, well, the sex scandals they had were from their kids. So we've got to work on that.

00:22:13.740 I really am not concerned about our kids. You do not know me as a kid. Oh. Especially if our kids

00:22:22.580 are famous. I don't know how you get away without a sex scandal if you're famous on the internet and

00:22:26.800 like a 17 year old horny guy. I hope we will train our children well. Yeah, I hope so too. Maybe 0.70

00:22:34.840 get some true believers out of them. However, he then here notes another thing called the

00:22:39.580 Dengjing Donggil Church. Li Bejong Chong has some competition. For more than 20 years,

00:22:45.220 the Dengjing Donggil Church in the country's world southwest has provided daycare and afterschool

00:22:50.940 childcare services at half the standard cost. Unlike municipal daycare centers, they are open

00:22:56.520 until 10 p.m. There are several in the city, according to TV interviews with the pastor at Donggil Church.

00:23:04.420 According to a recent news report in April 2024, the mayor of Donggil, Sanghuan, a city of 100,000,

00:23:12.020 estimated that 12.4% of all newborns are from members of the Donggil Church. They account for

00:23:19.560 the fact that Donggil had the highest TFR in the South Chaijong province at 1.03. This is the highest

00:23:28.340 fertility of all of the districts of the province. Well, isn't this just the message we've been sharing

00:23:32.840 that you may say, okay, well, South Korea is boned, but all you need is a small number of families with

00:23:39.500 a very high fertility rate. And theirs isn't crazy high, but still, and they will just inherit the 0.89

00:23:44.680 future. This is not an everyone has to get involved problem. This is an only people who make children

00:23:49.880 their autistic special interest problem thing or religion. And that's why we all hold hands as a

00:23:55.640 united team. Now, keep in mind this 1.03 number, which is the average for their province can be

00:24:02.340 compared to a, at the time of this national average of 0.72. Now he notes here, of course, 1.03 is still

00:24:10.100 abysmal, but in South Korea, anything above one is high. Donggil Church has inspired other Korean

00:24:15.860 churches to provide budget childcare for members at reduced costs by making use of church facilities,

00:24:22.200 which usually stand idle during weekdays. As Korea continues to sleepwalk towards extinction, 0.88

00:24:27.400 some Korean Christian leaders are stepping up and taking action. These two initiatives are only a

00:24:31.520 drop in the bucket, but they offer hope that increasing fertility rates is not impossible even

00:24:35.980 in South Korea. So. That's really encouraging. That's, that's super encouraging. That's also the sign

00:24:43.460 that, okay, I'm taking away a couple of things. One, letting go of tradition and especially letting go of

00:24:51.280 hard culture is the death knell to you inheriting the future. Either you can lean into your hard

00:24:58.780 culture and, or adapt it for the present day, or you can create a new hard culture. Um, but

00:25:05.740 to just give up and, or adopt some foreign religion or culture kind of as a cop-out to just be like,

00:25:14.480 well, I'm not my mainstream nation's religion. I'm this hipster version, but also like not really

00:25:24.040 leaning into the ideology of it. It's just not, not going to work. But what's also helpful in this

00:25:30.020 is that it's really not about any failure of Christian doctrines or values here. It's about,

00:25:36.820 this wasn't really Christianity being adopted. It was traditionalism and hard culture being 0.99

00:25:42.520 rejected. Right. I disagree to an extent here. I mean, if you know, Korean Christians or Taiwanese 0.99

00:25:47.480 Christians, there's some of like the most devout Christians I know. Oh, performatively. Yes.

00:25:54.720 No, they believe in like young earth and stuff like that. Like they're really traditional. Well,

00:26:01.260 these are the immigrants to the U S who I've met now that I remember the statistics that show how

00:26:05.360 non-traditional they are within their own countries. Okay. I might be wrong here. Yeah.

00:26:09.400 Keep in mind that the Koreans who immigrate to the U S have higher birth rates after immigrating.

00:26:15.000 Yeah, about 20% higher than the Koreans. So like, yeah, I mean, how, how is that super? 1.00

00:26:18.880 Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah, they're just like the true

00:26:24.880 believers. They're the ones that I'm interacting with. And in Korea, it might be more of an aesthetic

00:26:28.080 choice as you mentioned, especially in a society that is this hierarchical, I can really see the choice of,

00:26:34.720 as you've mentioned, it's like, are we getting a Western marriage or are we getting a Korean

00:26:38.840 marriage? Are we getting a Western Japanese or Japanese? Many of the aesthetics of Christianity, 0.54

00:26:44.940 especially in like a highly structured hierarchical culture could probably feel very rebellious and

00:26:51.340 refreshing to an outsider who just wants to reject the traditionalism because keep in mind,

00:26:55.440 Christianity is about breaking down the hierarchy. You know, this is not about like, you know,

00:27:00.340 what he, something about camels and stuff.

00:27:04.460 Well, a lot of anime has actually bemoaned that they're anime like this, making it. So I think

00:27:10.920 this was specifically the case was Evangelion. But I know it's the case with some like classic

00:27:15.160 anime, where if you look at older classic anime, they would put Christian tropes throughout the

00:27:21.200 anime of like crucifixions of savior narratives of stuff like this.

00:27:25.820 But not to, without overtly saying, this is like Jesus, just kind of putting it in.

00:27:31.300 Putting it in because they thought it was like edgy and cool. Like to them, keep in mind,

00:27:35.840 this is a religion about a guy who died after like being tortured and like, you know,

00:27:40.940 so they're like, oh, for them, Christianity felt edgy, profane, gothy, maybe a little like, 0.98

00:27:50.340 you know, you go to Christian churches and they got all that.

00:27:52.200 So they, they're seeing Christianity in this way and they're adding it to their works in maybe the

00:27:58.540 way that like, you know, Avatar, the last airbender might've added Buddhist elements to try to be

00:28:03.540 like edgy and philosophical. And I've heard interviews in the past with the creators and

00:28:07.900 they're like, yeah, if we'd known how popular this would get in the U S we might not have done that

00:28:12.040 because some of these shows get really popular with like Christian groups that see them as like

00:28:16.220 Narnia or something, you know, like, like, you know, that has explicit and intentional

00:28:20.200 Christian narratives to push a Christian agenda where they didn't mean to do that.

00:28:24.360 They were just trying to be like edgy and gothy and, and, and like just sort of like choose a

00:28:29.440 foreign philosophy, which I find pretty interesting.

00:28:32.920 Like no, no reason behind it. Just kind of liking the aesthetics. Like there,

00:28:35.980 there was that issue of a lot of cosplayers in some Asian countries just wearing Nazi uniforms

00:28:42.180 because they looked cool and they had no idea, like just no idea because the, I don't know,

00:28:46.900 they've gotten, not, I don't think they care as much if it's Japan. I'm going to tell you that much.

00:28:51.180 Um, they, they don't have the same memory of that time period that we have.

00:28:55.640 Well, it was, I mean, yeah, there, there were other things happening at that time, but no,

00:28:59.840 but also think about like how cool, like, okay, I'm making an anime and I can, you know,

00:29:04.100 put characters in like preacher outfits and stuff like that. And this isn't a thing for my culture

00:29:09.340 or my history. They have been much, they, they've done this in really big levels that like Western

00:29:14.980 studios don't anymore, but where like they're coded as like the good guys, because for them,

00:29:20.780 this is like weird and out there. And a good example of this recently is fire force. I don't

00:29:26.380 know if you've seen anything. You should Google fire force. It has some of the coolest outfits

00:29:29.560 I've ever seen where it is a, a world that is a combination of firefighter outfits.

00:29:35.940 What? Is this the one with the ghosts that you've watched?

00:29:39.760 No, it doesn't have ghosts and Catholic preacher outfits.

00:29:42.720 Wait, hold on. I'm looking at fire force anime.

00:29:46.140 Anime. What? What? Like none firefighter. What is happening?

00:29:52.680 Yeah. Like none firefighter outfit and everything.

00:29:56.460 Also turned into.

00:29:57.660 Do they use like holy water when they're dousing the evil demonic fires from building?

00:30:02.740 No, no, no, no. They, they create fires themselves and like fight other fire things. Anyway, it's,

00:30:08.560 it's awesome.

00:30:08.960 I'm so confused.

00:30:10.120 Um, like honestly, the anime, the plot, not that strong, but the, the aesthetics are so

00:30:16.580 beyond top tier that I'm like humbled by, look at, look up fire force nun. 1.00

00:30:21.960 But how? He's so steadfast in his faith. He's always in prayer.

00:30:26.580 I'll take care of it. Please keep back sister. The prayer.

00:30:31.620 Right. Of course. Um, the flame is the soul's breath. The black smoke is the soul's release.

00:30:39.300 Ashes, thou word and art, may thy soul return.

00:30:44.700 And yet it's like this like metallic reinforced preacher's collar. What is happening?

00:30:50.220 Yeah. The cross sword. Okay.

00:30:54.480 And it lights on fire too.

00:30:56.780 Oh, well, I mean, well, it had better light on fire. Of course. I love the, the barefoot

00:31:01.580 flaming footed firefighter because it's great to run into a burning building when you're

00:31:07.700 barefoot, but his, his feet make flames, sweetheart.

00:31:12.040 Well, I'm so glad they do. Wow.

00:31:14.680 He can do like fly stuff. It's, it's, it's pretty awesome.

00:31:19.300 Sorry.

00:31:19.840 I, I, yeah, the, the nun outfit is the best.

00:31:22.640 I mean, like you wouldn't get a positively coded faction in Western media being dressed

00:31:27.520 like preachers. By the way, in the game world that we're building right now, so many of the

00:31:32.280 positive factions are descended from religious extremists. Like one is Catholic religious extremists,

00:31:38.780 one's Mormon religious extremists, but we've got Amish, we've got, you know, and, and we

00:31:43.680 really go heavy into the aesthetics and the traditional stereotypes of these communities

00:31:50.860 to build something awesome because that was something that I loved from the anime I used

00:31:57.420 to watch.

00:31:58.040 As I always mention, one of my favorite characters in old anime is Wolfwood from Trigun, who's

00:32:03.620 Catholic preacher themed. And I just like, so cool looking. And, and you don't get this

00:32:10.080 in Western media anymore. You used to, in like the eighties, you'd get, you know, Catholic

00:32:14.620 vampire hunters, which I always thought looked so cool, but you, you don't, you know, you know,

00:32:20.620 I haven't seen done, which could be cool. Maybe I should work on doing this. I have not seen

00:32:25.920 somebody really make, uh, Orthodox Christianity look cool. And I don't know if it's because

00:32:32.240 it's like too bedazzled, but like, there's gotta be a way to do that.

00:32:35.740 Come on. There's no such thing in anime as too bedazzled.

00:32:39.700 You know, you know how you make them look cool. Okay. You got to combine them with, and

00:32:45.640 if you guys haven't seen this, you should watch it. It is so much better than the new Dune.

00:32:48.780 The new Dune is like bad. Like I haven't even watched the second one. It's, it's gone.

00:32:52.600 It just, why did she become a walking eye roll? 1.00

00:32:56.380 The Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries that was made for the Sci-Fi Channel. It is God-tier

00:33:01.780 cinema because they made it like a, a theatrical play instead of like, like if you watch.

00:33:07.080 That's the, that's the one where, um, um, what's his face? Just like.

00:33:10.600 Many people call it the Ministry of Silly Hats. 0.60

00:33:13.020 Yes, it is. 0.72

00:33:14.040 A show. But anyway, if you, if you watch the aesthetics of that Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries

00:33:20.780 from the Sci-Fi Channel, uh, and you combine this with Eastern Orthodox outfits. 0.54

00:33:26.520 Oh, so like Benny Jezzeret meets Eastern Orthodox. 0.90

00:33:29.960 Yes. I think you could create, well, well to like, because what you would do is you take

00:33:34.440 the Eastern Orthodox outfits, but you'd have them do the sort of like hand actions that

00:33:38.560 like the guild does when they're talking to people that are like over the top or the

00:33:42.280 Benny Jesuit. Like they have all of these like actions they're supposed to do that like signal

00:33:46.860 stuff. And you can. Oh yeah. They're like secret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Secret like code

00:33:55.160 talking to each other all the time while they're having a conversation. And you, and you combine

00:33:58.940 this with like the swingy incense things. I don't know. Like Catholics do that too, but

00:34:02.660 like the, the Eastern Orthodox. You can get some really cool, cool stuff.

00:34:06.980 I want to see an anime character who uses a swingy incense thing as a weapon, you know,

00:34:11.160 like, Oh, this has gotta be a thing. There's gotta, there's gotta be a thing. It's gotta

00:34:14.700 be a thing. And I'm sure that the number of times in history that one of those has been

00:34:19.100 used as a weapon is not zero. So we can rest easy tonight.

00:34:23.720 Actually, I like that. That'd be a great weapon for this faction. Like to wrap it around your

00:34:28.300 hand to have like a, that, Oh, that'd be so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I love that as a

00:34:33.380 weapon or like a great weapon combined them with like, you know, monks, you have like

00:34:38.220 the Shaolin thing was like the, uh, yeah. Incense thing. And then you have on the side 0.50

00:34:42.580 of it, like spikes. So it's like a flaming mace. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You got the fire. You

00:34:46.500 got the spikes, you know, red, red, hot flaming incense thing. Yeah. You have a tax action that

00:34:53.800 they, they're leaving the building. Cause it's like burning down and they got those like over

00:34:58.240 the top outfits was like the swinging things that that'd be cool looking for post-apocalyptic

00:35:03.220 like in an emergency, you like explode it into a smoke bomb or something. But yeah, there's

00:35:08.100 just so much you can do. How did we get, what are we, what did we get here?

00:35:14.360 We were talking about how in East Asia, the Christian stuff was seen as like edgy and weird.

00:35:18.820 No, an aesthetic, an aesthetic flourish. Right. Yeah. Sort of cool foreigner stuff. 0.99

00:35:23.900 And I need to make their stuff cool. What else could I do that's cool? You got me thinking

00:35:29.020 here for the game world. You know, something I haven't, I was thinking like what in the East

00:35:33.120 hasn't been done well in Western media? Cause everybody's tried the like Buddhist-y nonsense. 1.00

00:35:38.420 I actually think that's super weak sauce to like include. Everyone's tried the, you know,

00:35:42.640 Shinto stuff. You know what I haven't seen done? And, and a lot of old stuff did Muslim 1.00

00:35:46.940 inspired. All Dune is Muslim inspired. First of all, right? Like that's like, okay, how can 1.00

00:35:50.640 we make that edgy? Seek. Go for an over the top, like Seek warrior faction. Like the old

00:35:58.400 Sikhs that are, you know, they, they, gosh, they were so cool. If you read like old accounts

00:36:04.920 of them, like one of the ones I remember really vividly is they were hired disproportionately

00:36:10.140 to when the British were fighting Muslims. So I don't want to say that like some parts 0.99

00:36:16.120 of Seek culture were really specialized to fight against Muslim culture, which was the dominant

00:36:21.540 alternate culture against them. And was quite a martial culture within those regions.

00:36:25.140 When the British would recruit people to, to go out and fight with them, they would recruit 0.75

00:36:30.900 Sikhs for a lot of the senior positions and everything like that. And there was one account

00:36:35.860 where they're walking through a battlefield and one of these guys jumps up. He'd been playing

00:36:41.180 dead from the Muslim side and the Sikh like sort of sidekick to like the main British general 1.00

00:36:48.160 sliced his head in half.

00:36:50.220 You know, they've got those giant swords on them and Sikhs even have like some unique

00:36:56.540 weapon types. I can't remember, but I think the, the, not just do they have the knife thing,

00:37:01.900 but I think the circular blades might be unique to Sikhs.

00:37:06.480 Okay. Yeah. No, chakrams. So they're not unique to Sikhs, but they're strongly associated

00:37:11.520 with Sikhs. They are basically like a, a frisbee, like a modern frisbee, like a circular thing 1.00

00:37:16.560 with a hole in the center, but the whole side around it is a blade and you hold it in your

00:37:22.420 hands, like two circles. And they would fight with these up close and throw them like a frisbee

00:37:27.780 at someone, you know, like odd job might have one of these.

00:37:30.180 Oh my gosh.

00:37:31.960 And they'd, uh, come on, this is like, I don't think this is in video games.

00:37:36.320 This is cool.

00:37:36.800 Yeah. It seems to me like the least practical weapon in the world because there's a reason

00:37:41.460 why this isn't pervasive. Okay. Let's just be clear about that, but that doesn't mean it's not

00:37:46.860 cool.

00:37:47.840 I think that they like built them into their like big hair things, which is why they were

00:37:53.180 known for them.

00:37:55.700 So the possibility was favorable.

00:37:57.600 Well, yeah. Build it into your outfits, right? You know, um, love you to Desimone. This went

00:38:04.240 way off the rails. What's, what's in East Asia. That's cool. What could I be picking up from them?

00:38:08.440 That's cool. We have a faction that is descended from Koreans, by the way, that I love, I love them.

00:38:13.960 So this faction, what we did with them is one of the Korean corporations, when they started having

00:38:18.640 fewer and fewer people, they decided, well, we'll just make our own people using, you know,

00:38:23.500 tanks that age people. Uh, so, so it's sort of like artificial wombs that create people at older

00:38:28.560 ages because they don't want to deal with kids. You know, they want to create workers, but what

00:38:32.420 they ended up doing was creating people who are genetically specialized for roles within the

00:38:38.420 company to create sort of a, a version of like the horror of like the worst version of a Korean life 1.00

00:38:45.420 without certain proteins. So they can't easily leave the company. And the entire company is

00:38:50.120 structured sort of like an ant colony was like casts and everything like that. And you have like

00:38:54.580 the management cast who is created for this. You have the worker cast. But my favorite thing about

00:38:59.300 this world is one of the casts is the cast that does all public facing stuff, which is a teen female 0.51

00:39:06.960 idol cast. Um, which is all of the females and there always have to be like signaling and they dress like 0.99

00:39:12.880 in super cute outfits all the time. And so they're constantly like, if you go to like a reception desk,

00:39:18.220 that's who's going to be there. And like workers for like every meal, they get like shows of like

00:39:23.680 Korean, like pop diva type things with the understanding that they're all euthanized when 1.00

00:39:29.160 they hit the age of like 27. Of course, of course. Yeah. Because they're, you know, that's their

00:39:33.700 purpose and they're super okay with this. They're like, if you as a player, because I like discussing

00:39:37.780 interesting philosophical concepts. If you discuss like, isn't this horrible? They're like,

00:39:41.900 you want me to be old? Yeah. Burn bright, die young. Yeah. I mean,

00:39:46.600 why would you do that to me? Um, and if you're like, well, what do you want to be like a mom? 0.99

00:39:50.780 They're like the company makes the people and they'd make people better if they could,

00:39:54.360 because they've been adapted to not question the company. It's like a child, like a horrifying,

00:39:59.300 like chival thing. And I thought this was a really fun faction. That's a very fun concept. I like that.

00:40:04.980 Yeah. Okay. All right. Love you to death, Simone. I love you too.

00:40:08.240 Are you okay with Dan Dan noodles tonight? Yeah. Dan works for me. Would you like me to saute

00:40:14.080 along with the ground pork peppers and garlic? I'm assuming that would be a plus.

00:40:19.560 Absolutely. Yes. I would like you to saute that along with the noodles. You are my princess and

00:40:26.440 I love you and you're perfect. I love you too. Thank you for being married. And I am totally whipped

00:40:30.880 guys for those guys who think I'm too nice to Simone. Some people come say you're too nice to Simone.

00:40:34.300 Some people say I'm too mean. I feel bad when people say I'm too mean, but they say I'm too nice.

00:40:37.260 I'm like, I, I should be like, what, look at all the stuff you did for me just today.

00:40:43.760 What did I do for you today? You, you got the chicken. Did you get the chickens? Did you give

00:40:47.760 them water? I did go to the chickens. I did give them water and I got my hand pecked by one of them.

00:40:54.300 Bitch. Oh, who was it? It was a black one in the, the, the more crowded, you know, ghetto side of town. 1.00

00:41:01.220 And it went for my finger when I was pouring the water and I had to like close the gate. 0.54

00:41:07.240 I, because I wasn't able to lure them to the other side with scraps this time.

00:41:10.720 Oh, I'm sorry. I should have showed you where the big scraps bowl is.

00:41:14.360 Well, I couldn't have put them outside today anyway, because it was all muddy.

00:41:17.380 Oh yeah. We don't want them. Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:19.060 From the melting stone.

00:41:19.900 Well, I bet that was Che. One of the, the black chickens is Che and they're like very friendly, 0.86

00:41:25.120 but I'm sorry about that. No, it's, there's this one midnight Moran that always goes for me.

00:41:31.560 And that is back to me a bunch of times. Cause she thinks my fingers, little sausages and she's 1.00

00:41:35.080 like that midnight Moran are the black ones, right? They're the ones. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm,

00:41:40.380 I'm talking about the green Eggers. Yeah. Sorry. The, the, the brown ones. There's a great

00:41:44.340 brown ribbon. Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway, love you, Dad.

00:41:48.740 Who invites me? Che got you, but.

00:41:51.600 I need to remember to do a little clip here.

00:41:54.800 Hey, you want to make a bit of money? You see that? It's made of chicken. It's actually

00:42:03.320 made of chicken. You kill it. You got free chicken. You can sell it to people or don't kill it. 0.99

00:42:10.600 Fucking eggs come out of their arses. Fucking hell. 1.00

00:42:15.820 I love them so much. They are wonderful. They're wonderful, beautiful birds. And they're so friendly 0.99

00:42:20.000 and sweet. And I want to be a better bird mother.

00:42:23.680 That's why we can lock our kids in with them to entertain our kids. 1.00

00:42:26.740 Survive, motherfucker. 1.00

00:42:28.100 But I want to make, I want to make an egg, sorry, a chicken tunnel for them. I've seen all 1.00

00:42:32.420 over Instagram now, chicken tunnels. So they can run around your property protected from the eggles. 0.68

00:42:37.540 Because we need to. I'm okay with making a chicken tunnel. If you want that to be a major project,

00:42:41.220 I think that'd be a lot of fun. I think, yeah, I'm, I'm very much in favor of this so that they

00:42:45.140 can explore the world. They yearn, they yearn for freedom. But also we have so many predatory

00:42:54.000 birds. The chicken tunnel though is just another avenue for a fox to break in.

00:42:57.580 Oh my God. Well then maybe we can, it's just that the, the, um, like the hamster balls for chickens

00:43:02.760 are really expensive. Like the good ones are $60 plus each. Yeah. You're not even going to get

00:43:08.640 time to have them all run around. I know each one has to take a turn and like, who has time to like

00:43:13.660 switch that. There's also, we could theoretically construct a mobile coop that you can like wheel

00:43:20.080 around. So it's just like a chicken wire. Simone, I'm going to tell you something that you may not

00:43:26.560 know. They don't care. They're chickens. They're made of chicken. Your heart is too big. Your heart

00:43:36.740 is not too big. It is just, it is the size of a chicken, small chicken, a small chicken, juvenile

00:43:45.400 chicken. All right. Have a good day. Bye. Bye. God. You know, it really breaks my heart about the

00:43:53.920 fact that like the babies laugh when you tickle their neck is I like fear that it's this evolved

00:44:00.100 trait of babies to like look extra cute whenever someone's trying to choke them to death. 0.53

00:44:06.420 Could be. I'm like, I don't like it. I don't like it, but it's also really cute. And,

00:44:12.660 but they don't seem scared. So you try to choke our baby. That's what a progressive report is. No,

00:44:17.420 I'm just trying to make her laugh. Simone frequently tries to choke child. No, 1.00

00:44:20.800 it just, I tickle her. But only like when I touch her on her neck, does she think it's tickling.

00:44:26.360 And see, look at how cute she's being. Cause you know, I don't know. You're trying to kill her 1.00

00:44:30.860 with your murder gloves. I see those assassin gloves you're wearing. I'm trying to hide the, 1.00

00:44:35.840 obviously like completely ruined hands I have right now.

00:44:38.980 So.

Based Camp - February 19, 2025

Why Christians Don't Have Babies in East Asia

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