Why is Self Control Sinful to Progressives？
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the role of self-control in our society, and why it's not as important as it seems it should be. We also talk about why we laugh at things that make us uncomfortable, and what makes us laugh at them.
Transcript
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humans don't actually feel that much happiness. And so when you get out and you attempt to
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maximize your own personal pleasure, you have a deep realization of how trivial your life and
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existence is every single day, because you are experiencing everything good that you have bought
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to the world. And this fleeting, actually not terribly satisfying feeling. Life is about not
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cultivating positive emotional states, not the things that evolved into us, but intergenerational
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improvement. This expansion of human potentiality. In truth, doing whatever you want, whenever you feel
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like it, does not cultivate human potential. It diminishes it. It is sand on a fire. But what's
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really interesting is that an individual who lives for hedonism will always be less happy than an
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individual who lives for something else. The only real happiness you will ever experience
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is efficaciously living your values. Yeah. And if those values are happiness, then you'll never
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experience true happiness in your life. And so many people was in this far progressive movement never
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do. Would you like to know more? This topic is an interesting one. Speaking of me losing
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self-control right now, which is self-control is seen in some ways as sinful within the urban
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monoculture in our society today, which some people identify with the progressive movement. I mean,
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that's largely what they're fighting for at the urban monoculture. Right. To tell an individual
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you should not do that thing when that thing that they are doing doesn't directly cause any negative
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impact on another person is seen as a sinful thing to do. Now, what's interesting is, is it is even
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seen as sinful if that thing causes them negative consequences in the future. So if I say something
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like, do not eat that thing and, and, and because you'll get fat and you will feel bad about that in
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the future, that scene is a bad thing to, to tell someone, to notify them of that reality. This is
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the Hays movement and everything like that. And I could go deep on the Hays movement in an episode.
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It's really interesting. For people who aren't familiar, it's the healthy at every size movement.
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And it's the movement that's gotten really big around saying that, um, no pun intended.
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Yes. Got really big saying that being overweight is unhealthy. And one of the articles that, that
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was done on us when they were like researching us afterwards, they're like, Oh, this, whatever
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couple, well, you don't know this about them. It was the best journalism ever done on us. They
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somehow found our Reddit history, which was an advice article. And they were going through our
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internet history. And they were like, these two, you would think like innocuous individuals.
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Did you know he liked a post that was laughing at fat people having to go to the zoo to get an MRI?
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And I'm like, yeah, I did. I'd like, did you know that he follows like Kotaku in action on Reddit?
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And I was like, wow, it's funny that they can't see. I used to follow Tumblr in action, right?
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I mean, man, like if I, if I had to, I mean, I feel like it's a beached whale right now because
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I'm so pregnant. Like I would laugh. I would laugh if I was obese and had to go to the zoo to get an
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MRI. Wouldn't you laugh? I would laugh. Well, I mean, it is, I think it's objectively funny. It's one of
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the things that when we talk about our model for what makes people laugh at something, it's when
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something is surprising, you didn't expect it, but it makes sense in context. Yeah. Whenever
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something surprising, but makes sense in context, that's what causes laughter. And our hypothesis
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around laughter for people who aren't familiar with this theory, because we haven't done it in a
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few, a long time. I think we've only talked about it in one of our early episodes is that it originally
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evolved in children and it made the person that they were doing this to feel good about themselves.
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And so the person would repeat the action. And the reason why the child was basically asking the
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parent to repeat the action that was surprising, but made sense or some level of sense in context
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is they were trying to sort of make the mental connections around that until it was no longer
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funny, i.e. until the thing that didn't, that kind of made sense in context, but was surprising
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was no longer surprising. They're like, oh, okay, I understand this now. And this is why peekaboo
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is one of the longest things that makes kids laugh under, around the age when they're learning object
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permanence and around the age where they are learning sort of theory of mind of other people are
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what? She's still there? I guess it kind of makes sense that she's still there when her
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hands are there, but it's a little surprising to me. And so that is, and that's an important
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concept for kids to get to. That's why they laugh. And then any of these concepts that were useful for
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kids end up becoming something that the adult mind will hijack. We say, this is what we think
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happened with the love reaction. It was the laughter reaction. It became sort of hijacked in courtship
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rituals when it hadn't turned off properly. You can read one of our books to go into our theory on this
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more. But in this, what we want to talk about is the idea that self-control is sinful. And like,
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where did this come from and why is it so critical? And why does it cause so much damage? And where I
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really started to like, wow, like I got how normalized it is within the progressive world and
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how not normalized it is within ours is I was following one of my friends on Facebook and they
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had this message in one of their private groups where they were like, I really want to sleep with
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this guy. And they weren't sure whether they should or should not sleep with this guy. Like
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they didn't, sorry, they didn't really want to sleep with this guy. They had entertained the notion of
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sleeping with this guy. And this guy had said, I am open to sleeping with you. And so they were sort
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of stressing about the idea of, will I feel better? Like, like, will it make me happier long-term
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to sleep with them? Or is it better to just not deal with it because of the potential negative social
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ramifications and negative emotions that could create in me to sleep with them? Right. Now,
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this is really interesting for two reasons. I mean, when it's so far down this progressive monoculture that
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whether or not you have sex with an individual is completely determinant on how it makes you feel about
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yourself and feel in the moment, that's a very odd, I mean, that does show like that is complete
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dedication to the urban monoculture in terms of how you interpret things. Logically consistent. Yeah.
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Yeah. It's logically consistent. But then too, I realized I haven't in years ever asked myself
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what will make me happier when I was trying to make a difficult decision. Like this has never been the
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thing I was optimizing around. Even when I had a more atheistic structures in my brain, it was always,
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well, what matters more for my mission? Like my intrinsic value, the thing I think has value in
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society. And when I would do something that would make me happy, the justification I would use is I
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was doing it so that I would not be distracted by these lower order desires. The analogy I use in some
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of the tracks that are yet to come for this is we all have this ancestor inside of us is this four
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legged individual that is that is from this evolutionary time period where our ancestors who
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had certain inclinations had more surviving offspring than other ancestors. And we're sort of like a person
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in a cage with this, you know, you can, if you don't feed it at all, it will attack you. That's not a good
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idea. If you, if your logic doesn't feed it at all, it will attack you. But if you feed it too much,
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it will become stronger and stronger and stronger to the point where your logic can't resist it
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anymore. Then you are just a slave to this four legged creature inside of you. And to us, the way
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you and I have always defined sort of humanity, and this was the theory you came up with, Samam,
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is how far are you from this thing? This is how you define civilization as well. You were mentioning is,
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is civilized societies are the ones that are better at suppressing these instinctual parts of
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ourselves, what makes us happy. Yeah, that express the very most self-control. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean,
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do you want to talk on this topic a bit before I go further? Yeah, well, I mean, one is, I'm just
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curious, what do you think of the decisions that man and woman could have made would have maximized
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their hedonic enjoyment? Well, I pointed out in my response to this- You commented on this? Oh,
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of course, yeah. It is important to remember that sometimes, or almost always, what would make me
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happiest, if I just asked what would make me happiest every day, I'd spend every day at home
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drinking and playing video games. I would never leave the house, may have a few plights of exotic
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cheeses or something like that. But other than that, you know, I would do nothing. I don't know,
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I feel like after like one and a half days of that, you'd start to feel miserable.
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Maybe. You would. But what I would say is that I do that so little because there's always little
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things in life. Like, do I want to go, like, you know, I booked a scuba trip or something,
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right? I got to wake up at like 5 a.m. I mean, I typically wake up before that, but I have to leave
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the house at 5 a.m., right? Yeah. Go out, get everything ready, go in, you know, jump in where
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it may be cold or something like that. All of these incremental steps are painful. But I know
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that after the scuba trip, I will be happier that I did it than that I didn't do it, right? Yeah.
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Yeah. This was back when I was still tempted by expensive hobbies like this. Solo things.
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Yeah, which I don't do as much anymore. But, you know, it's an important- There are so many things in
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life, like these sort of more complicated rituals or things you can go out there and do
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that in the long term are going to make you happier, even if in the moment they are not
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your source of highest happiness. And so I told them to consider that sex with this individual
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may be that type of thing and to consider it was in that context.
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See, I would say just like clearly don't have sex because you're going to have way more fun
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with the sexual tension. Like, I think about like most movies-
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Most movies and television shows, like it's all about the sexual tension. And then even
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I guarantee you none of our male listeners, they're like, this woman does not understand
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the male- No, the men are not having fun being teased and baited.
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But I wanted to talk about- So at one instance, you know-
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Well, no, no, no. I mean, to your more important point, right? The actual substantive point of what
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what makes us human, what makes humanity special is the fact that we have this prefrontal cortex,
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that we have the ability to override our instincts and say, here are ideas that I think
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are in the best interests of my values or morals, things that can be totally unmoored from even
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our survival. And then we can act on those. That is what makes us human. That definition is the only
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thing that separates us as far as I'm concerned. And so, yes, the more that you separate yourself from
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your hedonic instincts and needs, and this includes like, you know, if you're fearful of something,
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if you have anxiety, avoiding that, that includes that, which is also a big thing in progressive
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circles. The less, the less you, sorry, the more you, you distance yourself from that, the more you
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become human. So also you could see how this very inconveniently, as far as I'm concerned, because I
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want to be really, really nice to all progressive groups. Can dehumanize progressive groups in
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my view, because they are choosing to grow closer to their instincts and animalistic selves and further
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away from that, which I define as human, which is deeply disturbing. Well, no, and this is, this is
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sort of around all of our belief structures and everything like that is this framework of what
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makes somebody human. And, and we see this, not just in like these lower order desires, all of our
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pre-programmed behavioral patterns, like super soft culture, mysticism, stuff like that, the stuff we
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describe as witchcraft in our witchcraft video to us, these people are moving back to this, you know,
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sort of pre-Abrahamic animalistic like tradition. They're moving back to their pre-programmed self
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and, and that, that is the opposite of, of human. That is to become less than the barbarian, right?
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It's to revert. It's just to revert, which is very, very sad.
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Well, not just revert. It's not like civilization is a direction that always goes in one way, but we do
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see human history as being a conflict between the restrained and the controlled and the, then
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redirected at things of value and purpose, and then sort of letting the cold take you like, you know,
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you're freezing out in the, in the wilderness. And before you die, it begins to feel warm and nice a bit.
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And the person who is like, Oh, this is nice. I'll take off all my clothes. Paradoxical undressing, that's
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called when people are freezing to death. That's sort of what we see this as instead of the person who goes to
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the fire, the struggle, people say the struggle burns you. Yeah, it does burn you, but it also motivates you to do
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better. It's the burning that is keeping you alive. It's keeping the vitality of humanity alive. And we
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all freeze in the vacuum of space without it, but I need to get back to the question at hand, because
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there's a few other interesting points about this that I really want to elucidate on. One is just like
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the mental health issue here. If you tell an individual, you know, you can do whatever you feel
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like doing, whatever you feel like doing it, you know, always optimize for your happiness. So long as
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it's not like interfering with other people's lives, you are demonstrably hurting that individual's
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mental health for two big reasons. One is that if an individual, all religions, all old cultures
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have some sort of arbitrary self-denial ritual, whether it's Lent or Ramadan or feast of the
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firstborn, it's because self-denial is important. This is why all religions have self-denial rules,
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right? Self-denial is important because it strengthens your inhibitory pathways and your
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prefrontal cortex, as Simone was saying. These pathways become weak. Like your brain is sort
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of like a muscle in a way. Like I hate that analogy. Pretty much everything now, pretty much
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everything with the human body though, seems to have a use it or lose it factor. So yeah,
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if you do not use your inhibitory pathways regularly, intrusive thoughts are just going to like plow
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through and you won't be able to shut them down. You will have anxiety. I lived this. Like I lived this
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before I met you. I was alone with my intrusive thoughts and you gave me basically bigger things
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to worry about. And I have my, like, I'm so much lower on the intrusive thought front. It is insane.
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Oh yeah, you're so happy and calm now compared to what you were. You were like really agitated when
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I met you. No, I couldn't. There were like things that would render me basically useless for weeks
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as I just dreaded them, you know? And it was dumb stuff like eating out for dinner with people
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in the evening. So yeah, I totally get this. Yeah. So, so well, and it is a level of self
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ownership. One of the stories you told me recently is somebody you heard who had a similar sort of OCD
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as you was like, oh my God, I stress so much about eating with the utensils at restaurants that I
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know that other people have used. Yeah. And your response to me was why don't they just bring their
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own with them? That's what I've been doing ever since I met you. And it's, it's one of these things
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that shows a level of, this is the difference between an external locus of control and an
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internal locus of control. Are things my mind to control? Like, do I control the world around
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me? Is it my job to fix the things around me? Or is it just, I allow the world to act
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on me? And a concept we'll get into in both the religious tracks and in future episodes
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is this concept. We have a spiral energy versus non anti anti spiral energy where spiral energy,
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this would be a huge, this would be a very clear example of a spiral energy thinking versus
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anti spiral energy thinking. Is it, it, you know, the level of, I have ownership over
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my reality. My reality does not have ownership over me. And the, so, so you get these negative
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effects like that, but then also this idea of, I'm just going to go out, constantly chase
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hedonism has a huge negative effect on the amount of hedonism that you're able to get. And this
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is really, really, really critical to understand as well. And it's a fairly difficult concept
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to explain because it's both true at the biological, but also at the conceptual level.
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So if I define my life by how good I feel, like if that's a core thing of value to me,
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when I go out in the world and I do something that feels good, like I've done the thing of value
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that I have, I know and have experienced exactly how much value I have brought into the world.
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Whereas if I define my value based on something other than myself, like for me, it's helping the
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billions of humans that will exist after me, hundreds of billions of humans that will exist
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after me and iteratively improving their quality of life and building structures and beliefs and,
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ways of interacting in the now that reverberate and affect all of human history. So when I do
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something good, you know, I endure some austerity to do it and then I do it and I don't get to feel
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it. I don't get to really fully know all of the good that comes from the thing I did. I can
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conceptually imagine it, the hundreds of billions of people, but I don't know it, right? Now this is
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important because humans don't actually feel that much happiness. And so when you get out and you
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attempt to maximize your own personal pleasure, you have a deep realization of how trivial your life
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and existence is every single day because you are experiencing everything good that you have
00:17:47.640
brought to the world. And whereas this fleeting, actually not terribly satisfying feeling.
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Yes. And that's the biggest problem with hedonism. The biggest problem with hedonism is that it reveals
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the triviality of your own life to, to the hedonist. Now I don't think life is trivial. I think life is
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a deeply important thing, but I think that's because life is about not cultivating positive emotional
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states, not the things that evolved into us. But as well, I guess we can talk about it right here. It's
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the spiral energy, human potentiality. When we have this concept that we talk about of
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every man's role, like what defines a good life. When we quote, when we would read, you know,
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we think of as a prophet, he defines a life well-lived. Did you make the next generation better than you?
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Yeah. That's, that's how you define a life well-lived. And people hear that and they're like,
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that seems like a really weird thing to build your entire life around. And this is where,
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and we'll, we definitely will do a Gurren Lagann episode, but Gurren Lagann and anime does a very
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good job with this concept of spiral versus anti-spiral energy, where the heroes are fighting
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on the behalf of spiral energy and the bad guys are fighting on the behalf of anti-spiral energy.
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And spiral energy is what we mean when we say intergenerational improvement.
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This expansion of human potentiality and an expansion of human potentiality that is
00:19:17.320
so enormous that because that, because that's the point of the spiral, right? Every time it goes
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around, it's getting exponentially larger in volume. Our ancestors, you know, four or five generations
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ago, couldn't even be able to conceive that we have thinking machines now, you know, that we can talk
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to. It's insane. Even, even for two generations ago, two, three generations from now, they will be
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as exponentially greater than us as we are from our ancestors in terms of their cognition, their
00:19:52.060
interaction with reality. Well, and then this is one of the reasons we have such hostility as well
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towards frozen traditions, right? Traditions are good insofar as they evolve and keep humanity focused
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on the things that are actually important. This expansion of human potentiality to us.
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But I'm open to other things of importance. What I am not open to is this sort of general
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utilitarianism, hedonistic utilitarianism, I call it, which is to just sort of expand good happiness
00:20:23.320
units throughout the world. It seems very obvious to me that is not why we're alive. But what's really
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interesting is that an individual who lives for hedonism will always be less happy than an
00:20:35.280
individual who lives for something else. And we've talked about this on other things, you know,
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your rock stars, your movie stars who should have all the hedonism they want. And, you know,
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you and I know a number of billionaires. They're generally not very happy people unless they're just
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totally and austerely dedicated to a higher cause. Yeah. And even then,
00:20:53.380
not necessarily. And this is a quote you came up with that I will always repeat and repeat and
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repeat, which is the only real happiness you will ever experience is efficaciously living your values.
00:21:07.620
Yeah. And if those values are happiness, then you'll never experience true happiness in your life.
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And so many people within this far progressive movement never do.
00:21:18.120
Well, because we're not designed to be happy. We're designed to pursue things that we think
00:21:24.400
will make us happy. But we're not designed to be happy. You know, like when you take away any
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motivation to do anything, you die. And if you're perfectly happy and content, you're not going to
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do anything. So, you know, we're really not designed for it. One of the things I find really interesting
00:21:42.960
that I think a lot of people might not have contextualized is the things that get popular was in
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the progressive sphere are often really core in their messages to aggrandizing individuals who live for
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this loss of self-control. And a great example of this was Let It Go from Frozen. It is the loss of
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self-control anthem. The anthem of a generation. Yeah. It is a woman who felt constrained by the rules
00:22:15.600
she felt she had to live with. And keep in mind, these rules were there for a good reason that she
00:22:20.300
had to live with growing up. And so when she was able to just not care about the rules anymore and do
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whatever she wanted to, she had true power. Like that is what her power was. Her power was trapped by the
00:22:40.480
individuals who said exercise self-control. And her power was unleashed when she no longer had to
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And when she abandoned her city slash kingdom to die in the frozen tundra.
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To be clear, she was not actually showing power when she did. She was hurting everyone around her.
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And I forgot here to mention Wish, the new Disney movie where the villain is a villain because he
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doesn't just grant everyone's wish immediately and automatically. He grants some wishes and not
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others. The idea that it would be considered sinful to not just give everyone what they want,
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regardless of the consequences, is so emblematic of this failure in progressive culture and this
00:23:47.520
And this also reminds me of the transition and transformation of the Harley Quinn character.
00:23:51.880
Hmm. I don't know what happened to her. Did she start as Manic and Crazy and become something
00:23:58.560
other than Manic and Crazy and or dead? No. So she started very much. I mean, the Manic and Crazy
00:24:03.840
thing was either an act or brainwashing to impress an abusive partner. And she was seen as a weird
00:24:10.880
sort of sex symbol to guys for a long time. And then feminist authors took over her.
00:24:17.320
Oh, so you're talking about like the meta instance of like how her character, her character's
00:24:22.420
treatment evolved over time. Ha ha. Okay. Okay. Where her craziness is her strengths. And it's,
00:24:28.600
I mean, it's a very uninteresting character in a lot of ways because it is what they are using to sort
00:24:34.080
of edify themselves. They see her partners as sort of constraining her and constraining her
00:24:41.280
potential. And then her craziness, her doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants is a sort
00:24:48.880
of like a implementation or it cultivates her potential. When in truth, doing whatever you
00:24:55.780
want, whenever you feel like it does not cultivate human potential. It diminishes it. It is sand on a
00:25:02.020
fire. And it is interesting to me when people from this urban monoculture, they interact with me
00:25:09.220
and they go, Malcolm, you seem to be so energetic. You seem to be so full of vitality. Where does this
00:25:16.500
come from? And I don't get that question as much in conservative circles because many conservative
00:25:21.280
circles know zealots like me, you know, people who have ordered their lives and are happy with that
00:25:27.480
order because they are efficaciously living their value system. But progressives in their gray world of
00:25:34.220
sadness, they haven't seen this. And they delude themselves. You know, we were talking about the
00:25:39.100
Hayes movement earlier. One of the really interesting things about the Hayes movement is now it's seen as
00:25:43.720
this female activist movement. But like Hurley Quinn, it was started by chubby chasing men. It was
00:25:50.060
originally started for chubby chasing men to normalize them sort of talking about how sexy their
00:25:55.580
wives were to them. And this is like well documented. This is not like my. And then they begin to use it
00:26:01.700
and organize the Hayes meetings for men who chased fat women to meet those women. This was all
00:26:07.380
organized by skinny white men. That was what started the Hayes movement. And then in the in the days of
00:26:15.060
intersectionality and everything like that, you know, fairly recently really was, you know, Tess
00:26:19.220
Holliday and Regina George, I want to say was her name or something. No, Regina George is the name.
00:26:23.700
Reagan. No, Reagan. Sorry. Tess Holliday and Reagan. Okay. That was when it really became
00:26:31.700
more of like a codified thing. Reagan was the real one who did it. And she is, I don't know if she's
00:26:37.020
still alive. Well, there was this big kerfuffle in generally in the Hayes community. This is totally
00:26:42.280
off topic. But when Ozemba came out and a bunch of the Hayes people started getting skinny and losing
00:26:48.100
weight. Whoops. So I can only imagine how gross it is to be around an overeater on Ozempic.
00:26:55.100
Well, I mean, die. I mean, we talked about this. No, but no, no, no. That's yeah. Except that
00:26:59.820
a lot of people who take Ozempic see appetite suppression as well as more inhibitory control,
00:27:05.740
which is really interesting. It's like a, I don't know if it's a placebo effect or something else is
00:27:10.280
going on or things that are correlated with appetite also can affect your like shopping and gambling
00:27:15.660
behavior. But people have reported that when they are on Ozempic, they also engage in less in other
00:27:21.260
addictive behaviors. I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, when you are hungry, you gamble more
00:27:25.640
and shop more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they say never go to a grocery store hungry. So, I mean, it's not.
00:27:30.860
I mean, that's shopping for food, but I'm talking about like related to other things.
00:27:35.660
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Although I don't know, like I hear it on both sides,
00:27:40.120
like a lot of people who are big proponents of intermittent fasting, like the added focus. And I do
00:27:45.500
too, of, of being in a fasted state. So. Yeah. Well, I want to hear, I mean, do you have a thesis
00:27:53.580
on this or any memories of feeling this way when you were in this progressive monoculture more
00:27:58.220
yourself? If somebody had said to you, like, it's a bad thing to just do whatever you want to do so
00:28:04.720
long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals or whatever makes you happiest so
00:28:08.440
long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals, whatever affirms your identity
00:28:11.300
the most, so long as it doesn't negatively affect other individuals, would you have seen that as
00:28:15.380
an odd thing for someone to say, like. That you can do whatever you feel like doing.
00:28:20.480
No, that you shouldn't do whatever you shouldn't. Yeah.
00:28:27.220
It's, it's hard for me to say, like, things have gone way more off the rails now than they were when
00:28:32.240
I was growing up in a hyper progressive culture. And I think a lot of people who are progressives
00:28:36.500
feel that way. Like, wow, things used to be so reasonable and I had argued correct. And now
00:28:41.880
they've completely gone off the rails. And which is why there's this huge subset of progressives
00:28:46.840
or like, I guess you could say more liberal people who have now been alienated by the progressive
00:28:52.600
movement because they're like, no, no, no, hold on. You crossed a line here. This thing's crazy.
00:28:56.160
Can't you understand this is really damaging what you're saying, whatever it may be.
00:28:59.260
And then, you know, the progressive movement subsequently shuns them and they have to create their
00:29:03.240
own sub stack and their own news outlets and all that, which is, it's weird. Cause now there's
00:29:07.260
this like weird, there are two versions of progressives, like the more sane ones who've
00:29:11.980
been kicked out. And then there are the insane ones who are staying in. But I definitely do remember
00:29:16.980
that when I showed maladaptive behaviors within progressive culture, there was no like
00:29:26.500
discussion of, you know, well, we're just not going to talk about this or, oh, we're just
00:29:34.060
going to ignore it. It was more something of like, oh no, like, let's, let's talk about
00:29:38.500
this. Let's, this is a thing. Now we have to do something about it, which was really damaging.
00:29:44.700
For example, I mean, I went to public school. So of course I got head lice multiple times.
00:29:50.780
I don't, you probably did too. It's not just a public school.
00:29:52.940
Oh yeah. I am Countess von Vermenstrosser, the Delauser. For your own good, you will
00:29:58.780
cooperate. You have lice. You dare question me, question my methods. You who stands to
00:30:07.320
benefit the most from my work. You disgust me. I got head lice before.
00:30:11.700
And the first time it ever happened to me, it's like any instance of being sick as a kid. It's
00:30:16.460
like, I don't know. Okay. I'm like home from school now and I'm spending more time with like
00:30:19.620
a parent or a caregiver. And like, that's not so bad. But then when it, when I first
00:30:26.520
got head lice, my mom especially was like, oh, this is going to be so traumatic for her.
00:30:32.400
This is going to be so terrible. Like, I don't know how to deal with this. And she made it
00:30:36.640
such a big thing that I developed this immense phobia of head lice going forward. We're like,
00:30:42.360
I couldn't sit on public chairs or couches. No one could touch my hair. I had waist length hair
00:30:50.620
and I cut it really short. And I combed my hair every single day with a lice comb, which is this
00:30:57.680
really fine tooth comb that is probably pretty damaging to hair. And I think that might be an
00:31:04.340
instance of like progressive culture, especially when it comes to the other element, which you've
00:31:08.700
been talking a lot about pleasure, right? But then the other, the other instinctual thing
00:31:12.860
or element of loss of self-control, the progressive movement, I think perhaps even more damagingly
00:31:17.980
plays into is this concept of trauma or fears where it's like, oh no, no, no, we're not going to
00:31:24.760
overcome them. We're not going to take our prefrontal cortex and say, Hey, I have something
00:31:28.160
bigger to worry about right now. We're just going to live all the way, like in our, you know,
00:31:33.820
amygdala, like all the way back there. Let's just stay there. Let's not go anywhere else.
00:31:36.940
Let's just stay right back there and let's just live in the fear. And that, that is something
00:31:43.340
that definitely happened, not just with me, but with other peers and other issues where like
00:31:49.560
suddenly a friend of mine is seeing a therapist about a thing that like really isn't a thing,
00:31:53.820
but their parents decided to make it a thing because that's kind of the culture. And I think
00:31:58.220
parents did that because they grew up in a culture in which you would be seen as being a bad parent.
00:32:03.720
If your child experienced something potentially perhaps traumatic and you didn't make it a big
00:32:10.120
deal. Um, the whole sucking it up thing is interesting. I, I wish there, there may be
00:32:16.840
research on this, but like post-traumatic stress disorder is a very big issue among veterans. Um,
00:32:23.400
right. It's, it's widely diagnosed. It's now widely treated. And there's some really cool,
00:32:27.780
interesting, like psychedelics based treatments that are coming up that may help to address it.
00:32:31.700
However, people coming back from world war two and world war one also experienced extremely traumatic
00:32:39.460
things, theoretically also post-traumatic stress disorder or syndrome. And I would love to see
00:32:45.060
research on the like negative behaviors associated with that condition in like the fifties and sixties
00:32:57.460
and the twenties and thirties versus we'll say the eighties and nineties. And then the noughties like
00:33:04.100
now, because I feel like people coming back from Vietnam, people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan
00:33:09.380
have seemed to, to not be dealing with it as well. And is that an element of this? Like, is there just
00:33:17.540
an element of living in a culture that doesn't believe in succumbing to your instincts or living
00:33:24.260
anywhere else from, except for your prefrontal cortex? Is that, is that what's harming us? And I mean, I
00:33:30.420
guess, you know, you could say that really then the 1950s too was more civilized and you can see this in
00:33:35.300
how, again, I keep talking about it, but my 1950s, you know, like instructional videos that I like
00:33:40.900
watching on YouTube, but by corded films and all these other ones are there's, they're so oriented
00:33:47.380
around logic and the prefrontal cortex. And they're so fricking civilized where it's like, well, you know,
00:33:53.540
Susie, Susie couldn't comb her hair in the morning and now no one, no one's going to love her ever.
00:33:58.020
You know, but like, but it's true. I don't love women who don't comb their hair in the morning.
00:34:03.220
It's true. Yeah. Or like, you know, Billy can't help it, but buy a soda. And so he's not going to
00:34:07.860
get his camera that he wants because he can't budget, you know, like it shows again and again.
00:34:12.020
And it's so interesting that that's a recurring theme within these videos, but really the key to
00:34:16.100
becoming civilized and the key to achieving any of these things that these videos were trying to teach
00:34:21.700
kids to do, which ranged from hosting a dinner party. Well, to having a good marriage,
00:34:27.380
to saving money through things, to just navigating society and maintaining a job,
00:34:32.260
they all had to do with this self-control. So yeah. Well, it's bad that it's become taboo
00:34:43.140
to express self-control. I love you to death, Simone. And these episodes are always fun to make.
00:34:48.740
So I appreciate you taking the time to do them with me and I'm happy to have you back.
00:34:52.180
You know what you should close with to like show the extent to which our culture now no longer
00:34:56.820
indulges in self-control is like maybe a clip showing new like Haagen-Dazs commercials
00:35:04.420
or ice cream commercials have people just eating out of the pint.
00:35:10.340
Oh yeah. That's the thing now, but hold on. No, I can do that. But there's another one I can
00:35:13.780
also close with, which I think shows how narcissistic and you know, the cultural genocide campaign that
00:35:22.180
progressives are waging now and they don't realize it. They don't realize how evil they look.
00:35:27.220
Um, so in trolls to world tour. Oh, well, there's a great scene where she is seeing what is coded in
00:35:34.900
the movie as another culture for the first time, which is the country music trolls.
00:35:39.140
The song is so sad, but it's so different. Oh, they must not know that music's supposed to make you happy.
00:35:51.060
Like I need to enlighten them by making sure that they stop making music their way and start making music
00:35:57.380
my way because their music that isn't happy is bad. Their music would show self-control. This is the way that
00:36:04.500
the progressives relate to the rural people when they get there. Don't they know the purpose of
00:36:09.300
life is just to be happy and we need to uplift them. And then I also, I also need to do the clip
00:36:15.060
after that, where after, after doing this big happy song, she gets put in jail and they're like,
00:36:19.220
Now I want you three to sit in here and think about what you've just done. That was a crime against music.
00:36:26.500
You need to think long and hard about the crime you just committed against music.
00:36:30.340
This show actually just has a ton of great scenes. I really enjoyed it and the aesthetics of it.
00:36:37.540
But one in particular that I'm going to play here before we leave is it really sort of encapsulates
00:36:42.660
whatever a Baha'i comes to us. And they're like, Oh, what you guys are doing is just like what the
00:36:47.300
Baha'is are doing. And I'm like, Hmm, you have severely misunderstood.
00:36:53.620
If we combine our music, she'll see that music unites all trolls and that we're all the same.
00:37:02.100
Poppy. I mean, no disrespect, but Cain the Queen, anything but that.
00:37:07.540
Why not? I can make it right. History is just going to keep repeating itself until we make
00:37:11.700
everyone realize that we're all the same. But we're not all the same. Denying our differences
00:37:17.860
is denying the truth of who we are. Anyway, love you to death, Simone.
00:37:22.740
I love you and your immense self-control. You all are awesome and inspiring.
00:37:35.620
Just trying to like get comfortable, but it's like, I can't feel my hands anymore.
00:37:42.500
Because of the cold. And there's this scarf here.
00:37:46.580
I just did something naughty and indulgent. I bought Octavian a toy on Amazon.
00:37:54.660
Oh, he has, hasn't he? Well, and he loves the special deliveries.
00:38:01.220
So a fan of ours sent him a book that they had made, like a child, a children's book.
00:38:06.500
Which, honestly, he's not as interested in the children's book.
00:38:10.020
But they sent it in a cardboard container, like a small one.
00:38:15.620
But they had had their kids cover the container with stickers and like, I don't know, like glitter,
00:38:21.140
like other fun stuff. And so he loves the container.
00:38:32.420
And this is how he got obsessed with mail trucks.
00:38:35.620
No, he's always big on like, when a package is received, we just drop everything and open it.
00:38:43.380
Yeah, the difference about this one is it is decorated.
00:38:46.820
And it is smaller because it was like a small flat package.
00:38:50.500
So we don't end up like breaking it down and throwing it out like all the other ones.
00:38:54.100
And so it's been more persistent than the normal packages.
00:38:58.580
So he's in love with it and sleeps with it every night.
00:39:01.620
I was going to see if it was behind me right now.