Based Camp - Why is Self Control Sinful to Progressives？

00:00:00.000 humans don't actually feel that much happiness. And so when you get out and you attempt to

00:00:04.240 maximize your own personal pleasure, you have a deep realization of how trivial your life and

00:00:12.200 existence is every single day, because you are experiencing everything good that you have bought

00:00:19.020 to the world. And this fleeting, actually not terribly satisfying feeling. Life is about not

00:00:26.480 cultivating positive emotional states, not the things that evolved into us, but intergenerational

00:00:32.120 improvement. This expansion of human potentiality. In truth, doing whatever you want, whenever you feel

00:00:38.440 like it, does not cultivate human potential. It diminishes it. It is sand on a fire. But what's

00:00:44.620 really interesting is that an individual who lives for hedonism will always be less happy than an

00:00:51.100 individual who lives for something else. The only real happiness you will ever experience

00:00:56.740 is efficaciously living your values. Yeah. And if those values are happiness, then you'll never

00:01:05.060 experience true happiness in your life. And so many people was in this far progressive movement never

00:01:10.700 do. Would you like to know more? This topic is an interesting one. Speaking of me losing

00:01:17.000 self-control right now, which is self-control is seen in some ways as sinful within the urban

00:01:26.940 monoculture in our society today, which some people identify with the progressive movement. I mean,

00:01:31.000 that's largely what they're fighting for at the urban monoculture. Right. To tell an individual

00:01:34.860 you should not do that thing when that thing that they are doing doesn't directly cause any negative

00:01:42.580 impact on another person is seen as a sinful thing to do. Now, what's interesting is, is it is even

00:01:51.080 seen as sinful if that thing causes them negative consequences in the future. So if I say something

00:01:56.640 like, do not eat that thing and, and, and because you'll get fat and you will feel bad about that in

00:02:01.260 the future, that scene is a bad thing to, to tell someone, to notify them of that reality. This is

00:02:06.280 the Hays movement and everything like that. And I could go deep on the Hays movement in an episode.

00:02:11.100 It's really interesting. For people who aren't familiar, it's the healthy at every size movement.

00:02:14.620 And it's the movement that's gotten really big around saying that, um, no pun intended.

00:02:21.000 Yes. Got really big saying that being overweight is unhealthy. And one of the articles that, that

00:02:28.320 was done on us when they were like researching us afterwards, they're like, Oh, this, whatever

00:02:32.300 couple, well, you don't know this about them. It was the best journalism ever done on us. They

00:02:35.580 somehow found our Reddit history, which was an advice article. And they were going through our

00:02:39.820 internet history. And they were like, these two, you would think like innocuous individuals.

00:02:44.640 Did you know he liked a post that was laughing at fat people having to go to the zoo to get an MRI?

00:02:51.640 And I'm like, yeah, I did. I'd like, did you know that he follows like Kotaku in action on Reddit?

00:03:01.400 And I was like, wow, it's funny that they can't see. I used to follow Tumblr in action, right?

00:03:05.140 I mean, man, like if I, if I had to, I mean, I feel like it's a beached whale right now because

00:03:11.540 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 0.94

00:03:16.940 MRI. Wouldn't you laugh? I would laugh. Well, I mean, it is, I think it's objectively funny. It's one of

00:03:23.300 the things that when we talk about our model for what makes people laugh at something, it's when

00:03:27.340 something is surprising, you didn't expect it, but it makes sense in context. Yeah. Whenever

00:03:32.960 something surprising, but makes sense in context, that's what causes laughter. And our hypothesis

00:03:37.920 around laughter for people who aren't familiar with this theory, because we haven't done it in a

00:03:41.380 few, a long time. I think we've only talked about it in one of our early episodes is that it originally

00:03:45.800 evolved in children and it made the person that they were doing this to feel good about themselves.

00:03:51.540 And so the person would repeat the action. And the reason why the child was basically asking the

00:03:56.160 parent to repeat the action that was surprising, but made sense or some level of sense in context

00:04:01.760 is they were trying to sort of make the mental connections around that until it was no longer

00:04:07.220 funny, i.e. until the thing that didn't, that kind of made sense in context, but was surprising

00:04:11.900 was no longer surprising. They're like, oh, okay, I understand this now. And this is why peekaboo

00:04:16.420 is one of the longest things that makes kids laugh under, around the age when they're learning object

00:04:22.600 permanence and around the age where they are learning sort of theory of mind of other people are

00:04:27.500 what? She's still there? I guess it kind of makes sense that she's still there when her

00:04:31.600 hands are there, but it's a little surprising to me. And so that is, and that's an important

00:04:36.320 concept for kids to get to. That's why they laugh. And then any of these concepts that were useful for

00:04:40.300 kids end up becoming something that the adult mind will hijack. We say, this is what we think

00:04:45.000 happened with the love reaction. It was the laughter reaction. It became sort of hijacked in courtship

00:04:49.840 rituals when it hadn't turned off properly. You can read one of our books to go into our theory on this

00:04:53.700 more. But in this, what we want to talk about is the idea that self-control is sinful. And like,

00:05:01.880 where did this come from and why is it so critical? And why does it cause so much damage? And where I

00:05:07.680 really started to like, wow, like I got how normalized it is within the progressive world and

00:05:14.340 how not normalized it is within ours is I was following one of my friends on Facebook and they

00:05:20.620 had this message in one of their private groups where they were like, I really want to sleep with

00:05:26.400 this guy. And they weren't sure whether they should or should not sleep with this guy. Like

00:05:32.280 they didn't, sorry, they didn't really want to sleep with this guy. They had entertained the notion of

00:05:35.900 sleeping with this guy. And this guy had said, I am open to sleeping with you. And so they were sort

00:05:42.120 of stressing about the idea of, will I feel better? Like, like, will it make me happier long-term

00:05:48.360 to sleep with them? Or is it better to just not deal with it because of the potential negative social

00:05:54.680 ramifications and negative emotions that could create in me to sleep with them? Right. Now,

00:06:00.920 this is really interesting for two reasons. I mean, when it's so far down this progressive monoculture that

00:06:05.660 whether or not you have sex with an individual is completely determinant on how it makes you feel about

00:06:11.100 yourself and feel in the moment, that's a very odd, I mean, that does show like that is complete

00:06:16.720 dedication to the urban monoculture in terms of how you interpret things. Logically consistent. Yeah.

00:06:21.860 Yeah. It's logically consistent. But then too, I realized I haven't in years ever asked myself

00:06:30.560 what will make me happier when I was trying to make a difficult decision. Like this has never been the

00:06:36.640 thing I was optimizing around. Even when I had a more atheistic structures in my brain, it was always,

00:06:43.140 well, what matters more for my mission? Like my intrinsic value, the thing I think has value in

00:06:46.840 society. And when I would do something that would make me happy, the justification I would use is I

00:06:53.220 was doing it so that I would not be distracted by these lower order desires. The analogy I use in some

00:06:59.400 of the tracks that are yet to come for this is we all have this ancestor inside of us is this four

00:07:06.300 legged individual that is that is from this evolutionary time period where our ancestors who

00:07:12.940 had certain inclinations had more surviving offspring than other ancestors. And we're sort of like a person

00:07:18.040 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

00:07:24.040 idea. If you, if your logic doesn't feed it at all, it will attack you. But if you feed it too much,

00:07:30.300 it will become stronger and stronger and stronger to the point where your logic can't resist it

00:07:35.540 anymore. Then you are just a slave to this four legged creature inside of you. And to us, the way

00:07:42.280 you and I have always defined sort of humanity, and this was the theory you came up with, Samam,

00:07:47.320 is how far are you from this thing? This is how you define civilization as well. You were mentioning is,

00:07:52.280 is civilized societies are the ones that are better at suppressing these instinctual parts of

00:07:58.120 ourselves, what makes us happy. Yeah, that express the very most self-control. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean,

00:08:04.080 do you want to talk on this topic a bit before I go further? Yeah, well, I mean, one is, I'm just

00:08:09.120 curious, what do you think of the decisions that man and woman could have made would have maximized

00:08:15.560 their hedonic enjoyment? Well, I pointed out in my response to this- You commented on this? Oh,

00:08:23.620 of course, yeah. It is important to remember that sometimes, or almost always, what would make me

00:08:30.200 happiest, if I just asked what would make me happiest every day, I'd spend every day at home

00:08:34.140 drinking and playing video games. I would never leave the house, may have a few plights of exotic

00:08:40.060 cheeses or something like that. But other than that, you know, I would do nothing. I don't know,

00:08:44.540 I feel like after like one and a half days of that, you'd start to feel miserable.

00:08:49.240 Maybe. You would. But what I would say is that I do that so little because there's always little

00:08:55.360 things in life. Like, do I want to go, like, you know, I booked a scuba trip or something,

00:09:00.200 right? I got to wake up at like 5 a.m. I mean, I typically wake up before that, but I have to leave

00:09:04.540 the house at 5 a.m., right? Yeah. Go out, get everything ready, go in, you know, jump in where

00:09:10.360 it may be cold or something like that. All of these incremental steps are painful. But I know

00:09:16.180 that after the scuba trip, I will be happier that I did it than that I didn't do it, right? Yeah.

00:09:20.820 Yeah. This was back when I was still tempted by expensive hobbies like this. Solo things.

00:09:26.020 Yeah, which I don't do as much anymore. But, you know, it's an important- There are so many things in

00:09:30.800 life, like these sort of more complicated rituals or things you can go out there and do

00:09:35.200 that in the long term are going to make you happier, even if in the moment they are not

00:09:39.800 your source of highest happiness. And so I told them to consider that sex with this individual

00:09:45.260 may be that type of thing and to consider it was in that context.

00:09:49.340 See, I would say just like clearly don't have sex because you're going to have way more fun

00:09:53.520 with the sexual tension. Like, I think about like most movies-

00:09:59.000 That is such a woman response. 0.98

00:10:00.960 Most movies and television shows, like it's all about the sexual tension. And then even

00:10:05.820 after like a couple-

00:10:06.680 I guarantee you none of our male listeners, they're like, this woman does not understand 1.00

00:10:11.100 the male- No, the men are not having fun being teased and baited.

00:10:16.540 Oh, that's not fun. Okay.

00:10:18.600 But I wanted to talk about- So at one instance, you know-

00:10:23.100 Well, no, no, no. I mean, to your more important point, right? The actual substantive point of what

00:10:26.840 what makes us human, what makes humanity special is the fact that we have this prefrontal cortex,

00:10:31.660 that we have the ability to override our instincts and say, here are ideas that I think

00:10:37.560 are in the best interests of my values or morals, things that can be totally unmoored from even

00:10:41.620 our survival. And then we can act on those. That is what makes us human. That definition is the only

00:10:47.980 thing that separates us as far as I'm concerned. And so, yes, the more that you separate yourself from

00:10:54.020 your hedonic instincts and needs, and this includes like, you know, if you're fearful of something,

00:10:58.680 if you have anxiety, avoiding that, that includes that, which is also a big thing in progressive

00:11:02.860 circles. The less, the less you, sorry, the more you, you distance yourself from that, the more you

00:11:07.680 become human. So also you could see how this very inconveniently, as far as I'm concerned, because I

00:11:13.600 want to be really, really nice to all progressive groups. Can dehumanize progressive groups in

00:11:18.860 my view, because they are choosing to grow closer to their instincts and animalistic selves and further

00:11:26.860 away from that, which I define as human, which is deeply disturbing. Well, no, and this is, this is

00:11:32.180 sort of around all of our belief structures and everything like that is this framework of what

00:11:38.020 makes somebody human. And, and we see this, not just in like these lower order desires, all of our

00:11:43.400 pre-programmed behavioral patterns, like super soft culture, mysticism, stuff like that, the stuff we

00:11:48.740 describe as witchcraft in our witchcraft video to us, these people are moving back to this, you know,

00:11:55.420 sort of pre-Abrahamic animalistic like tradition. They're moving back to their pre-programmed self

00:12:02.340 and, and that, that is the opposite of, of human. That is to become less than the barbarian, right? 0.72

00:12:10.940 It's to revert. It's just to revert, which is very, very sad.

00:12:13.820 Well, not just revert. It's not like civilization is a direction that always goes in one way, but we do

00:12:19.460 see human history as being a conflict between the restrained and the controlled and the, then

00:12:26.860 redirected at things of value and purpose, and then sort of letting the cold take you like, you know,

00:12:33.740 you're freezing out in the, in the wilderness. And before you die, it begins to feel warm and nice a bit.

00:12:42.500 And the person who is like, Oh, this is nice. I'll take off all my clothes. Paradoxical undressing, that's

00:12:48.220 called when people are freezing to death. That's sort of what we see this as instead of the person who goes to

00:12:53.280 the fire, the struggle, people say the struggle burns you. Yeah, it does burn you, but it also motivates you to do

00:12:59.860 better. It's the burning that is keeping you alive. It's keeping the vitality of humanity alive. And we

00:13:06.660 all freeze in the vacuum of space without it, but I need to get back to the question at hand, because

00:13:12.360 there's a few other interesting points about this that I really want to elucidate on. One is just like

00:13:16.440 the mental health issue here. If you tell an individual, you know, you can do whatever you feel

00:13:22.480 like doing, whatever you feel like doing it, you know, always optimize for your happiness. So long as

00:13:27.120 it's not like interfering with other people's lives, you are demonstrably hurting that individual's

00:13:32.580 mental health for two big reasons. One is that if an individual, all religions, all old cultures 0.92

00:13:38.960 have some sort of arbitrary self-denial ritual, whether it's Lent or Ramadan or feast of the

00:13:43.940 firstborn, it's because self-denial is important. This is why all religions have self-denial rules, 0.98

00:13:49.420 right? Self-denial is important because it strengthens your inhibitory pathways and your

00:13:53.620 prefrontal cortex, as Simone was saying. These pathways become weak. Like your brain is sort

00:13:59.140 of like a muscle in a way. Like I hate that analogy. Pretty much everything now, pretty much

00:14:02.580 everything with the human body though, seems to have a use it or lose it factor. So yeah,

00:14:06.360 if you do not use your inhibitory pathways regularly, intrusive thoughts are just going to like plow

00:14:12.900 through and you won't be able to shut them down. You will have anxiety. I lived this. Like I lived this

00:14:19.000 before I met you. I was alone with my intrusive thoughts and you gave me basically bigger things

00:14:24.840 to worry about. And I have my, like, I'm so much lower on the intrusive thought front. It is insane.

00:14:31.020 Oh yeah, you're so happy and calm now compared to what you were. You were like really agitated when

00:14:35.140 I met you. No, I couldn't. There were like things that would render me basically useless for weeks

00:14:41.040 as I just dreaded them, you know? And it was dumb stuff like eating out for dinner with people

00:14:46.040 in the evening. So yeah, I totally get this. Yeah. So, so well, and it is a level of self 0.86

00:14:52.720 ownership. One of the stories you told me recently is somebody you heard who had a similar sort of OCD

00:14:57.220 as you was like, oh my God, I stress so much about eating with the utensils at restaurants that I

00:15:03.820 know that other people have used. Yeah. And your response to me was why don't they just bring their

00:15:09.880 own with them? That's what I've been doing ever since I met you. And it's, it's one of these things

00:15:15.500 that shows a level of, this is the difference between an external locus of control and an

00:15:19.620 internal locus of control. Are things my mind to control? Like, do I control the world around

00:15:26.000 me? Is it my job to fix the things around me? Or is it just, I allow the world to act

00:15:30.460 on me? And a concept we'll get into in both the religious tracks and in future episodes

00:15:34.740 is this concept. We have a spiral energy versus non anti anti spiral energy where spiral energy,

00:15:40.680 this would be a huge, this would be a very clear example of a spiral energy thinking versus

00:15:44.480 anti spiral energy thinking. Is it, it, you know, the level of, I have ownership over

00:15:49.500 my reality. My reality does not have ownership over me. And the, so, so you get these negative

00:15:56.440 effects like that, but then also this idea of, I'm just going to go out, constantly chase

00:16:02.720 hedonism has a huge negative effect on the amount of hedonism that you're able to get. And this

00:16:09.440 is really, really, really critical to understand as well. And it's a fairly difficult concept

00:16:14.820 to explain because it's both true at the biological, but also at the conceptual level.

00:16:19.540 So if I define my life by how good I feel, like if that's a core thing of value to me,

00:16:27.860 when I go out in the world and I do something that feels good, like I've done the thing of value

00:16:35.100 that I have, I know and have experienced exactly how much value I have brought into the world.

00:16:43.840 Whereas if I define my value based on something other than myself, like for me, it's helping the

00:16:50.640 billions of humans that will exist after me, hundreds of billions of humans that will exist

00:16:55.960 after me and iteratively improving their quality of life and building structures and beliefs and,

00:17:01.360 ways of interacting in the now that reverberate and affect all of human history. So when I do

00:17:08.320 something good, you know, I endure some austerity to do it and then I do it and I don't get to feel

00:17:16.200 it. I don't get to really fully know all of the good that comes from the thing I did. I can

00:17:21.540 conceptually imagine it, the hundreds of billions of people, but I don't know it, right? Now this is

00:17:28.180 important because humans don't actually feel that much happiness. And so when you get out and you

00:17:32.720 attempt to maximize your own personal pleasure, you have a deep realization of how trivial your life

00:17:40.880 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.

00:17:52.340 Yes. And that's the biggest problem with hedonism. The biggest problem with hedonism is that it reveals

00:18:00.420 the triviality of your own life to, to the hedonist. Now I don't think life is trivial. I think life is

00:18:06.180 a deeply important thing, but I think that's because life is about not cultivating positive emotional

00:18:12.260 states, not the things that evolved into us. But as well, I guess we can talk about it right here. It's

00:18:17.560 the spiral energy, human potentiality. When we have this concept that we talk about of

00:18:24.280 every man's role, like what defines a good life. When we quote, when we would read, you know,

00:18:30.060 we think of as a prophet, he defines a life well-lived. Did you make the next generation better than you?

00:18:36.400 Yeah. That's, that's how you define a life well-lived. And people hear that and they're like,

00:18:42.380 that seems like a really weird thing to build your entire life around. And this is where,

00:18:47.860 and we'll, we definitely will do a Gurren Lagann episode, but Gurren Lagann and anime does a very

00:18:52.120 good job with this concept of spiral versus anti-spiral energy, where the heroes are fighting

00:18:58.740 on the behalf of spiral energy and the bad guys are fighting on the behalf of anti-spiral energy.

00:19:04.100 And spiral energy is what we mean when we say intergenerational improvement.

00:19:10.220 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

00:19:26.180 around, it's getting exponentially larger in volume. Our ancestors, you know, four or five generations

00:19:32.380 ago, couldn't even be able to conceive that we have thinking machines now, you know, that we can talk

00:19:38.720 to. It's insane. Even, even for two generations ago, two, three generations from now, they will be

00:19:46.660 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

00:19:56.880 towards frozen traditions, right? Traditions are good insofar as they evolve and keep humanity focused

00:20:06.500 on the things that are actually important. This expansion of human potentiality to us.

00:20:11.440 But I'm open to other things of importance. What I am not open to is this sort of general

00:20:16.640 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

00:20:29.020 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,

00:20:39.160 your rock stars, your movie stars who should have all the hedonism they want. And, you know,

00:20:43.720 you and I know a number of billionaires. They're generally not very happy people unless they're just

00:20:48.500 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

00:20:59.180 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.

00:21:14.260 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

00:21:31.540 motivation to do anything, you die. And if you're perfectly happy and content, you're not going to

00:21:36.420 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

00:21:47.940 the progressive sphere are often really core in their messages to aggrandizing individuals who live for

00:21:58.180 this loss of self-control. And a great example of this was Let It Go from Frozen. It is the loss of

00:22:06.500 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

00:22:27.840 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 0.61

00:22:47.540 exercise self-control.

00:22:48.680 They don't care what they're going to say.

00:22:54.400 And when she abandoned her city slash kingdom to die in the frozen tundra.

00:23:01.400 Yes.

00:23:01.680 To be clear, she was not actually showing power when she did. She was hurting everyone around her. 0.98

00:23:15.240 Like even the show recorded that.

00:23:17.680 And I forgot here to mention Wish, the new Disney movie where the villain is a villain because he

00:23:25.580 doesn't just grant everyone's wish immediately and automatically. He grants some wishes and not

00:23:31.960 others. The idea that it would be considered sinful to not just give everyone what they want,

00:23:38.960 regardless of the consequences, is so emblematic of this failure in progressive culture and this

00:23:46.320 urban monoculture.

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 1.00

00:24:10.880 sort of sex symbol to guys for a long time. And then feminist authors took over her. 1.00

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, 1.00

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 0.74

00:24:41.280 potential. And then her craziness, her doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants is a sort 1.00

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 0.95

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 0.76

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. 0.99

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. 1.00

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.

00:35:48.260 That's awful.

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 1.00

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.

00:36:58.260 And then she's one of us.

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.

00:37:29.940 Take everything.

00:37:32.980 I've ruined everything.

00:37:35.620 Just trying to like get comfortable, but it's like, I can't feel my hands anymore.

00:37:40.420 Because of the cold?

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.

00:37:50.100 Oh, fucking dare you. 0.99

00:37:51.460 He's been really excited about postal trucks. 1.00

00:37:54.660 Oh, he has, hasn't he? Well, and he loves the special deliveries.

00:37:57.540 Which he pronounced as special deliveries.

00:37:59.940 Oh, that's sweet.

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.

00:38:27.060 Yeah, the mail.

00:38:27.700 The package, as he calls it.

00:38:28.580 He calls it my mail.

00:38:29.380 And he...

00:38:29.860 No, my package.

00:38:30.740 My package.

00:38:31.540 And he'll put stuff in it.

00:38:32.420 And this is how he got obsessed with mail trucks.

00:38:34.820 Oh, was that it?

00:38:35.620 No, he's always big on like, when a package is received, we just drop everything and open it.

00:38:41.860 And what is it? And what's inside?

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.

00:38:50.420 Yeah.

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.

00:38:56.820 Well, and it's so nicely decorated.

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.

00:39:03.380 But yeah, anyway.

Based Camp - February 19, 2024

Why is Self Control Sinful to Progressives？

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