RadixJournal - Quoth the Raven, ＂Better Score＂

00:00:00.000 Hi, thanks for having me in this very interesting interior space.

00:00:06.040 This was a very fun invitation to get, I'll tell you.

00:00:09.720 And it brought me back to my days at the Evergreen State College when the alt-right was coming to campus and was threatening students.

00:00:21.780 I was there when all of that was happening.

00:00:25.640 So it's very interesting to be kind of like brought into this world from a completely different angle.

00:00:32.740 And I guess that shows all of you some of my intellectual trajectory over the years.

00:00:39.420 So, yeah, I went to school at Evergreen and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, anarchist, progressive world, and then was introduced to Nick Land and the blogosphere, Robin Hanson, and then went really far.

00:00:56.080 Into looking into, you know, NRX, Mencius Moldbug, all these things.

00:01:04.300 And that has basically been my telos in life, is being like a free thinker and pursuing whatever ideas I find the most compelling.

00:01:15.120 And eventually that has led me to living in Europe, among other free thinking intellectuals.

00:01:21.420 And now I'm part of a movement, we're called Dark Renaissance, and we're producing events that are oriented around technology and the human condition.

00:01:31.460 And then in my private practice, I work with people who are trying to figure out their sexualities and get into relationships.

00:01:40.720 And my priority there is to help people increase their fertility, get into relationships that can actually bring forth family.

00:01:51.080 So that's a good review.

00:01:53.160 Well, I have a lot of questions about this.

00:01:55.080 So I'll start with the more recent ones.

00:01:58.880 So you do sex therapy from a psychological standpoint and not a, you know, biological fertility standpoint.

00:02:09.800 Is that correct?

00:02:11.240 Yeah, it's from a somatic and relational standpoint.

00:02:14.240 I'm not actually, you know, a nurse or anything like that.

00:02:18.280 Right.

00:02:18.360 But what I find is that there's, there isn't a lot of answers to existential questions within the medical profession.

00:02:26.620 They can just give you whatever procedures are available for assisting in your fertility, but they can help people make real, you know, existential decisions.

00:02:36.200 Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't mean that as any sort of criticism, actually, because I meant it as in the way that you're presenting it in the sense that, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you can get a drug to lose weight, like this new thing that is like shrinking people's faces and whatever.

00:02:59.240 You can, you can, the question is like, why are you fat?

00:03:04.400 And that's a deep question.

00:03:07.220 And it might have something to do with, you know, let's say personal responsibility.

00:03:12.860 You're not going to the gym enough or you're eating Oreos at midnight or whatever.

00:03:18.080 But it also, it spreads out to something much deeper, you know, like you're living in a suburban home where there is no problem.

00:03:29.240 You could even walk to, there's no sidewalk in this suburban environment you're living in and you drive one hour to work each day.

00:03:39.640 And so no wonder you're fat and depressed, in fact.

00:03:43.220 And the fact that you live like that has like a deeper economic base, but also kind of a deeper spiritual, you know, base of why is this really happening?

00:03:55.540 And if you're not at least trying to address those questions or like confront that reality, you're not getting anywhere.

00:04:04.900 It's like a doctor can go, oh yeah, let's just freeze your eggs or I'll give you, what is it called again?

00:04:10.160 Ozimic or whatever this miracle drug that I'm sure is going to create disasters to lose weight.

00:04:15.800 You know, they'll offer some superficial solution without confronting the problem.

00:04:21.240 Ozimic there.

00:04:24.360 I'm just saying that to try to distract you that I, to make you believe that I'm not actually on it.

00:04:30.040 Because I, just a year ago, I was a 300 pound whale and I've taken this right now.

00:04:35.900 Just kidding.

00:04:36.460 But, but yeah, go on.

00:04:37.900 I think that's, that's fast.

00:04:39.180 Like you'll, I guess you don't have to give any details about patients or anything like that.

00:04:43.840 But like, what are you dealing with on a personal level with, with people who are, you know, failing to complete a relationship or failing to have children, et cetera?

00:04:56.400 Yeah.

00:04:56.740 Well, sometimes it's quite simple things like, you know, moving out of your parents' house.

00:05:00.340 Right.

00:05:00.740 You know, especially for, for people who are Zoomers or even young millennials, like some, they're just not thinking about the context that they're in. 0.64

00:05:13.020 And I think that's what you're speaking to, right?

00:05:14.920 Like the world that you place yourself in, the environment that you're in and how you design it really creates the affordances of a, of a whole life.

00:05:24.480 It creates the possibility of even being able to bring someone of the opposite sex into your world and have them not be repulsed by you. 0.99

00:05:33.060 So, you know, it depends, like most of the, like the clients I've had so far have been men who are looking to define themselves in the world of, of dating, establish relationships.

00:05:46.300 And some of the things that they need to be told are quite basic.

00:05:49.880 Like, so, um, I think that speaks to like the maturity of this, this generation.

00:05:56.620 Well, like what?

00:05:58.200 Yeah.

00:05:58.600 Like, you know, maybe if you move out of your parents' house into your own flat, then it wouldn't be so weird to bring a girl home.

00:06:05.660 Right.

00:06:06.040 That would be weird.

00:06:07.080 Like really basic things.

00:06:08.300 Um, and, and, and just sexuality is such a deep part of how we like become ourselves, become our own identities.

00:06:19.560 Right.

00:06:20.200 I, and it's about deciding what we want to identify with.

00:06:25.580 Like, I do think that sexuality runs very, very deep.

00:06:29.120 And, um, obviously if you go into the very, very depths of it, you end up with like rape and conquest.

00:06:36.400 You end up with really intense forms of interaction between men and women, uh, that most people aren't really capable of handling.

00:06:47.720 And that's why people who are into that stuff, they go into, you know, BDSM dungeons and they experiment with the very depths of human sexuality.

00:06:56.000 The stuff that's usually put deep, deep into like the cages underground.

00:07:02.380 Um, but, you know, for, for people who are just beginning to start out investigating sexuality, it's really about opening up the space to even get to know yourself as a, as a sexual being.

00:07:14.980 Um, and it just, it really seems that highly disembodied, very intelligent people who are mediating their identities through language and through stories have a, have a very difficult time being engaged with their libidinal kind of vital life force energy.

00:07:34.460 Um, and that's why bringing in a somatic approach, bringing in this design approach, what does your life look like?

00:07:43.540 How engaged are you on a bodily level?

00:07:46.840 Do you have sensory experience that invigorates you?

00:07:50.580 Can you even identify a sensation that you find pleasurable?

00:07:54.480 These types of things, um, are the practices that we work on.

00:07:59.460 Uh, it's very important, especially for people who are on the spectrum because they tend to be disconnected from their bodies.

00:08:05.880 Uh, and then these are also a lot of the more affluent, uh, mobile men in society because of how much being on the spectrum affords you the possibility of working in tech.

00:08:19.420 So, you know, yeah, there, there are these things going on.

00:08:23.780 I would really like to be working with more women, but so far, uh, most of my practice has been with, has been with men.

00:08:31.320 Interesting.

00:08:32.040 Um, let me throw out some kind of big picture items and, and you can pick up on some ideas within there.

00:08:41.840 So there, I, I, I would say that there are two paradoxes and the first paradox is one of the most secular and the sense of widespread phenomenon there is.

00:09:00.760 And that is as technology or the industrial revolution enters a society, as education begins to be promoted, especially education for women, as child mortality collapses, you know, from 40% to almost zero.

00:09:22.400 So, uh, as you have an ability to go out to the market every morning and buy basically whatever you want, affluence, uh, surplus, et cetera, we have a dramatic collapse of fertility.

00:09:41.060 And this seems to happen everywhere, maybe not so much in Africa, but it is definitely happening in Mexico.

00:09:50.340 It's happening in Iran.

00:09:51.620 It's happening in Western Europe.

00:09:52.940 It's, it's happening in the United States.

00:09:55.080 It's definitely happening in China, et cetera, et cetera. 0.99

00:09:58.480 And so it's, it is almost as if there needs to be more of a struggle or more of an existential angst to life in order to get people to fuck, to put it as bluntly as possible, you know? 0.91

00:10:18.140 And you could even imagine, you know, I mean, like there was a massive baby boom in Germany immediately after, uh, the end of the war. 0.94

00:10:28.800 And so the, these people had been around death.

00:10:32.840 They'd been around destruction. 0.96

00:10:33.940 They'd been around bombing campaigns and they just wanted to go have sex. 0.98

00:10:38.580 And so there's this weird contradiction because whenever you talk to a normie or, you know, here, I guess I should quote, you know, idiocracy.

00:10:50.620 When you talk to like the intelligent, educated normie, they would say things like, well, I, we couldn't possibly have a child in this market or, you know, oh, my mortgage rate ran up 3%. 0.98

00:11:01.620 So, uh, well, we're going to have to delay having children, you know, it's this, they almost think that they need more money or more safety to fuck. 0.94

00:11:11.920 But looking back over the history of the world, the exact opposite is the case. 0.98

00:11:22.000 Um, so that's one paradox.

00:11:24.420 And then the other paradox, which I find equally fascinating is that when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, I remember after school specials, you know, nightly news programs on teen pregnancy or, you know, the, oh, these 13 year old girls, they're out of control.

00:11:49.540 They're having sex all the time and getting pregnant and the boys don't care that this, like, what is wrong with kids these days? 0.93

00:11:56.740 They're out of control.

00:11:58.420 Well, there still are things like that in our society.

00:12:01.940 No, no doubt about it.

00:12:03.120 And I, of course, you would agree that that is unhealthy, not the, not the proper channeling would be libidinal energy.

00:12:12.100 But the, the fundamental thing that's happening is a lack of sex. 0.98

00:12:16.760 And so Gen Z is having less sex than their parents and that they're, than their grandparents, than the silent, the gen, that the silent generation was more likely to, you know, go for a role in the hay or even do something kind of stupid, like look up the skirt of a girl in the, on the bleachers or whatever than Gen Z are. 0.96

00:12:40.360 And yet the, the paradox is that Gen Z is overly saturated with sex through widespread pornography, through quasi or crypto pornography on something like TikTok, where, you know, attractive women will go and like, you know, lip sync hardcore sexual rap songs or all, all just stuff like that. 0.95

00:13:06.200 It's, it's, it's effectively pornography, even if they're, even if they're clothed and they're, they're exploring gender in ways that baffle older generations. 0.54

00:13:17.120 And so it's, and so it's this weird paradox, again, of they're the most kind of oversexed people, perhaps ever, and they're not doing it.

00:13:32.360 So those are kind of the two, those are the two fundamental paradoxes that, that I see.

00:13:37.860 What, what are your, your thoughts on, on that?

00:13:40.640 yeah i mean it's it's really weird stuff i mean obviously you you frame this within the context

00:13:47.320 of industrialization and i do think that's quite important there has been an acceleration of

00:13:53.180 technological mediation in our environment for you know you could argue 200 years now but it's

00:13:58.360 certainly accelerated quite a lot even within the last 50 years especially with the advent of the

00:14:04.680 internet and the ubiquity of social media and the most recent decades and obviously this is having

00:14:11.300 a massive impact on our whole experience of reality um so i do think that that plays a major role there

00:14:21.720 are instances in history where it seems like population decline has been an issue in other

00:14:28.240 civilizations as they're going through their kind of their death phase um it does seem like

00:14:34.360 complex civilization do do have a life cycle um human beings are interesting and when we get a

00:14:42.100 lot of abundance in our environment there seems to be a a mechanism that shuts down our interest in

00:14:50.540 reproduction it's very strange that this happens um i don't think that anyone has a clear answer

00:14:56.240 for why this is the case uh there have been some experiments uh for example there was experience

00:15:04.340 experiences uh there were um there's this mouse utopia experiment that was done yes so you know

00:15:10.820 classic yeah well go on you can you can explain it yeah oh yeah they i mean they put these mice

00:15:16.140 into a dense environment where they had all the entertainment that they wanted any kind of food

00:15:22.440 that they wanted but i think the the real thing that was part of it as well is that it was a dense

00:15:27.160 environment there were a lot of mice there uh and they ended up with these these mice that started

00:15:34.260 to the first they started to reproduce and fill up this environment to its capacity and then they kind

00:15:38.920 of bifurcated into different classes where the males started to act more like females there were females

00:15:44.680 that started to act more like males and then there was a group called the beautiful ones who just sat

00:15:48.960 around grooming themselves um and this was just a completely dysfunctional mouse community they

00:15:56.500 didn't know how to communicate with each other they didn't understand how to communicate and with the

00:16:02.840 pheromones that they had and basically this was the this was the this was the end of mouse utopia

00:16:09.520 so there's also another scale a very interesting scaling law that human beings have been kind of sucked

00:16:16.200 into with urbanization mass urbanization without the cost of disease right so our cities have just

00:16:24.420 able to get so much larger uh without there being these massive like population fluctuations

00:16:30.100 so some of the contexts that we're living in today have definitely had an impact on our

00:16:36.820 biological fertility and our sexuality um but it doesn't it doesn't quite address um i think the

00:16:44.540 spiritual the spiritual level of this because what you're talking about is as well as some sort of

00:16:49.120 will right the the this will to actually continue on and to see some legacy outside of your own individual

00:16:57.560 life and that is an interesting quality to me because right now we are dealing with people who are not

00:17:07.880 only abstaining from sex but even the people who are engaging with sex are doing it in a sterilized 0.75

00:17:13.620 way where the risk of pregnancy uh is very very low and then if pregnancy does happen you can go and

00:17:20.820 get an abortion to make sure that the pregnancy doesn't actually come to term so people who are 0.98

00:17:26.820 still fucking of which there are many and even if they are a bit older um these people aren't actually 0.90

00:17:32.800 having children either um oh yeah i just as to interject real briefly i was going through the new york 0.96

00:17:39.140 times today just to kind of you know see what's going on in the world there was a funny article

00:17:43.660 about st stis among like gen x boomers and silent gen they're like there's a crisis of you know spreading 0.91

00:17:51.860 whatever gonorrhea among like 50 year olds or whatever and okay and now granted obviously that is a problem

00:18:00.180 uh but i was kind of like yeah because like people my age are the only ones doing it so

00:18:06.980 you know it's it was it was kind of funny i was like yeah we're still cool like yeah you're still

00:18:13.940 fucking yeah oh my god yeah there's there's a virility you know in these generations that gen z 0.76

00:18:22.160 seems to have in very few amounts there are still virile gen z's but what filter is spreading across 0.99

00:18:33.560 humanity for gen z is quite extreme um and there's a very narrow canal uh in terms of kind of a vital

00:18:40.820 human spirit that seems to be getting through in that generation well let me throw this out there so

00:18:48.280 do you think that maybe freud was right so for freud famously on particularly in the the first half of

00:19:00.760 his career was promoting the idea of of a libidinal energy so the way to understand dreams for instance was

00:19:10.020 simply wish fulfillment and um he also went into trauma but then he actually kind of

00:19:18.280 moved away like he the many of the hysterical quote unquote women that he treated um as a young

00:19:26.500 physician he thought that they were suffering from abuse by a parent um most likely a father

00:19:35.600 and that they were kind of repressing that memory and they weren't able to confront it and deal with

00:19:42.420 it and you had to engage in a talking cure to you know to the very least address this issue

00:19:47.780 um he then revised that and thought that those that trauma was in fact a fantasy so what they

00:19:58.120 were doing was working through a fantasy an unresolved developmental issue with their parents

00:20:04.740 and so it's it's that they weren't in fact abused they had a certain you know fantasy not of

00:20:12.600 abuse of say but but you you know a certain uncom unresolved or uncom kind of completed relationship

00:20:20.140 with a parent that was being expressed maybe through a fantasy of abuse or sexuality etc now you can make

00:20:28.740 of all that what you will i'm actually maybe surprising to some i'm more sympathetic towards freud

00:20:35.500 than most every other person on the right wing but that's just me but he also complemented that

00:20:44.260 with a a death drive and if i remember correctly i haven't read this in a number of years but there

00:20:53.840 was a baby in a crib and he lost a toy so like the toy fell off the crib and he was crying you know it's

00:21:02.620 like oh my you know you know how children are like you know they can obsess about a little stuffy or

00:21:08.080 something um and uh he was crying because he lost the toy and the caregiver grabbed the toy from the

00:21:16.300 the ground and put it back in his crib and then after a while the young child would himself throw

00:21:24.640 the toy out of the crib and so what it was expressing was a like control it was a will to power even in

00:21:37.800 destruction and even something like suicide i think often is a way of someone kind of finally gaining

00:21:48.780 control you know i'm in control now i this i'm going out on my own terms i'm doing exactly what

00:21:56.060 i want no matter the cost and so there there was a kind of will to power even towards destruction and

00:22:02.900 so there are these competing energies it was almost like you know nietzsche's apollo and dionysus

00:22:09.340 these these kind of like related and weirdly very similar gods they're both gods of music but but who

00:22:15.260 were totally opposed one was a god of drunkenness and chaos and it's in madness and the other was a

00:22:21.540 god of kind of form and illusion and artifice and so on and they're and they're kind of like mixing

00:22:27.540 together i i think you know these are you know painting with broad strokes here but i think these

00:22:34.280 things are very insightful but i i guess i would ask the zoomers i mean i understand their complaints 0.99

00:22:42.820 about the end of the american dream and it's impossible to own a home and the jobs suck and

00:22:51.560 the internet etc etc etc but i i i don't want to like give them let them off the hook or give them

00:23:00.980 some cop-out like is there maybe there is a certain spiritual nihilistic drive towards death

00:23:10.860 that's in conversation if you like with that drive towards life and fertility and overcoming

00:23:21.100 and an advancement and goal setting that that these are kind of like in conversation together

00:23:29.860 and what do you think about that yeah i think that's very interesting um one of my friends who

00:23:37.280 is a zoomer and is one of the most agentic people that i know um he used to destroy his toys when he 1.00

00:23:44.700 was a child like systematically pull them apart so um i think that there's something there and this idea

00:23:53.160 of the suicide is kind of taking taking control of your own existence i think that there is also a

00:23:59.640 way of reading that as a way as a kind of life-affirming action um so there there is something

00:24:08.420 pathic about open aggression and destruction what's interesting about gen z is that they have spent so much 0.82

00:24:18.960 of their lives mediated by screens and participating in the screen world seems to create an inward turn

00:24:28.360 an internalization of aggression this would be most exemplified by girls like cutting themselves 0.99

00:24:36.140 or anorexia girls tend to suffer more in general from these internalizing disorders but now boys are

00:24:45.660 doing it as well right um and this the it's interesting to think about the interface of the

00:24:52.780 screen in this sense right like uh just like the printing press kind of created the era of

00:24:57.940 enlightenment and the idea of the individual and the concept of the possibility towards some sort of

00:25:04.160 linear truth um we are living in a new paradigm and that's being facilitated by this interaction

00:25:11.700 with screens that are live they're living surfaces and we have to project our imagination into them

00:25:19.500 and we also receive all sorts of just completely stochastic nonsense into our minds without any narrative

00:25:28.120 holding those impressions together and this these are very intrusive kinds of uh of experiences right

00:25:39.340 and you have it just like you have to create a design and design a world where your body can

00:25:44.700 can flourish you also have to take control of the mimetic landscape that you're within and the

00:25:53.000 platforms that you're using right it's very very different to go for example onto substack and interact

00:25:57.380 with ideas versus going on to twitter versus going on to tiktok um i don't think that lots of people don't

00:26:04.180 have the literacy don't have the awareness they don't have uh the curiosity to go outside of what has just

00:26:10.860 been given to them and then they complain that they don't like it right um um and can even spiral into

00:26:18.960 a identity that's formed around resentment of course that is seems to be ubiquitous in the west

00:26:25.440 and as a form of rot uh that seems to spread in cultures that have a lot of abundance right

00:26:32.520 so the problem today is the abundance it's the super salient stimuli it's the impossibility of

00:26:41.020 all the choices that we have around us and this need for like an affirmative stance is it is the

00:26:48.880 difference between not making it through the filter or and making it through the filter um and that that's

00:26:54.680 on the level of the individual life do you want to create something and have a legacy do you want to

00:26:59.280 make something with your own spirit or do you want to do that and also produce a family both of these

00:27:06.260 things are challenges today um for anyone but i think if you get past that threshold actually we live in a

00:27:13.480 time of oh my god just like tremendous capacity to create like if you can be a creator the things that

00:27:23.080 you can make the worlds that you can move have been asymmetrically um designed you know and that's

00:27:32.360 that is that is the affordance of being a creator today so could i pop in a question for you raven real

00:27:42.200 quick yeah of course um you were talking about the resent like uh resentful men and also about some of

00:27:50.900 these like autistic leaning tech individuals i know a few of these people from school or work

00:27:57.660 and they like they want a family they make enough money you know let's say they make 80 000 100 000 a

00:28:04.520 year but they on some level they like want a woman who's gonna like you know in their words love them

00:28:11.000 for them or the way they are but like the way they are is like obtrusive and in like a little bit

00:28:17.260 repulsive like they don't know how to clean like be camped or like put together a good looking outfit

00:28:23.200 and like i've tried to help these people like to varying degrees of success but i was wondering

00:28:29.980 like what has like what do you do with them that seems to like motivate them out of video games and

00:28:35.840 funko pops and into like getting out of the wardrobe

00:28:40.600 yeah that sounds a bit like they need to internalize their anima um and and this is

00:28:48.240 something that we as we mature into adults like it's so easy to just push the concepts that you

00:28:56.740 have about the opposite sex onto them project onto them and to not internalize them in a productive

00:29:02.320 way for your own personal development it's like oh i want i want a woman to care for me i want her to 1.00

00:29:07.460 make me clean i want her to you know take make me look beautiful and that's what i don't want to

00:29:15.720 do those things right and and somehow the idea of being loved or being desired or wanting someone to

00:29:22.260 take part in your life is wrapped up in these projections but really at the end of the day

00:29:26.420 it's trying to externalize something onto someone else that makes it their responsibility

00:29:32.260 rather than your own so once again it's it's it's really about how to bring in that sense of

00:29:38.980 empowerment from someone else's responsible to i am responsible i have control i'm the one who decides

00:29:47.940 what my body looks like uh what how i look when i'm operating in the world that i respect myself

00:29:55.320 enough to look at who i am and to think that i'm attractive you know that someone would be able to

00:30:00.120 love me because i care for myself you know um and yeah it really depends when a client comes in how

00:30:08.560 far they are kind of in that in that process but a lot of it is you know we do have different parts

00:30:14.440 of ourselves and we can be very mature and developed in certain aspects and then especially when it comes

00:30:19.780 to sexuality and relationships we're still quite infantile um and so we i in a very non-judgmental way

00:30:27.760 we go into those parts and we listen to them and we hear what they have to say and even just the

00:30:33.900 process of witnessing these things in a very non-judgmental container and i think for as well

00:30:39.220 for me being a woman being able to offer that can really release a lot of the inner tension

00:30:43.880 and that produces energy and that energy can be channeled into higher level beliefs that actually

00:30:51.980 motivates someone to change because this is a lot of it is when you've lived a certain way and

00:30:57.800 you've kind of entrenched certain beliefs especially if you've gone onto the internet and formed an

00:31:02.220 identity around these beliefs you have to be open to changing yourself and overcoming these

00:31:08.080 inner tensions and taking that energy and producing a new identity out of that and a new story for who you

00:31:13.340 are and it's much easier if you have high openness in your personality yeah but if you have low

00:31:20.000 openness then you have to move more slowly um and really create the uh the motivational structure

00:31:28.000 to do something that's that's difficult which is to change right like i've had these conversations

00:31:35.440 with some of these guys where i like explain to them that like they would be uh you know they would

00:31:41.300 have better success if they weren't 50 pounds overweight and if they like you know went to a barber

00:31:46.960 regularly and like these these types of conversations but it's almost like uh like you said

00:31:53.400 like almost like they want to offload it onto like it's a woman's responsibility to like just take them 0.99

00:31:58.280 as they are it's like there should be no effort necessary on their part when i explain to them that's

00:32:05.080 like that's not that's nonsense thinking that's childish like you're gonna get in what you put in

00:32:11.140 like that's where the disconnect comes it's like well you can come to the gym with me like three

00:32:15.700 days a week and you know you'll see results but usually that's where the separation happens

00:32:20.560 i'd rather play counter-strike with my funko pop and like like work at this in a sense

00:32:28.200 yeah yeah i mean and i and maybe this does go back to this i this idea of what what is the

00:32:37.780 existential container that we're living in now because the i want to have a family it's like

00:32:46.440 well what is that really serving is that just some sort of weak illusion that you have a weak desire

00:32:53.540 you know because everyone else has it or you have some sort of concept from childhood about what a

00:33:00.220 family ought to be and you've identified with that in some way or is it something actually deep and

00:33:06.080 motivating where you're willing to over actually overcome things to go towards that thing and

00:33:11.580 usually when we're in the pits and we're trying to get out we need something more than mere illusion

00:33:19.000 to get us out of that place mere fantasy it needs to be something that is existentially motivating

00:33:26.080 uh and you know curiosity i think about the world and about the time that we're living in today

00:33:31.020 is one of these things um when you're looking around and seeing so much decay and chaos and madness

00:33:37.920 and realizing that people are going into these evolutionary sinkholes you know and that you could

00:33:43.920 be one of them then it starts to reframe the context you know when i think about my own life i'm just

00:33:52.020 like how was i not one of the people who is lost i don't know i have no idea like and i don't even

00:34:01.140 attribute it to myself on some level that somehow i've been able to find my way through this entangled

00:34:07.540 landscape of competing ideas and values uh and i think like everyone in this room probably can identify

00:34:15.680 with carving their own path and creating their own worldview and some of us have that spirit in us

00:34:25.180 and other people don't seem to have the will and i don't know at the end of the day why

00:34:34.560 kind of spiritual power seems to be distributed so unevenly i don't have well

00:34:42.540 well well i would push back on that a little bit like i don't i don't think in the the history of

00:34:48.820 humanity most all people were you know generating their own worldview or something like that i i think

00:34:59.300 that was something that was given to them and maybe it's too much to ask uh of these people

00:35:10.120 that that you know that they become you know their own mini nietzsche or something i i think you know

00:35:19.720 maybe the right question to ask is like why why aren't we why aren't elite institutions or just

00:35:30.520 institutions let's say able to convey something to the public like what where is that breaking down

00:35:39.340 um and and here i i think even like really basic things you know like why why aren't the zoomers more

00:35:52.920 patriotic or something you know what why is the only football player they know or care about

00:36:00.280 colin kaepernick or something you know like what why why are they even going out and protesting over

00:36:06.640 gaza i mean i i have my own opinion on that but like why are they why are they so unhappy why don't

00:36:14.220 they just kind of get along and you know and maybe it's because our institutions you know it's like the

00:36:21.740 the liberals now are hysterical in an almost freudian sense about saving democracy from this 1.00

00:36:30.800 threat that they can't even quite articulate you know trumpism it's fascist it's stupid it's it's 1.00

00:36:41.160 it it it has no decorum it's on it's going to cut taxes for the rich it's this weird like 1.00

00:36:50.640 contradictory blob that they fear it's racist white racist in the rural areas or whatever

00:36:56.660 um jsex it's this weird contradictory blob that they fear but they're not really interrogating

00:37:04.340 what democracy is or means like it's these people are in charge of the institutions and it's really on

00:37:15.880 them to corral the masses and if they're failing at that it's their fault on some level like

00:37:26.400 they aren't articulating an american dream for the 21st century that really works that

00:37:33.560 gets average people thinking that they're part of something good and i don't know that that's kind

00:37:43.020 of how i see it i i i react a little bit against any sort of individualism and so on i guess precisely

00:37:53.520 because i am an elitist like it's i it's too much to ask for mike my neighbors or something to like

00:38:02.080 confront the crisis and generate a way out or you know all of this stuff that nietzsche tried and and

00:38:09.960 failed and it killed him i mean i'm not going to demand that of people i i think that we need to

00:38:16.300 demand that of institutions that there there has to be a big lie as it were that can motivate an

00:38:26.320 illusion that can motivate many people many people who aren't very intelligent and they're the fact

00:38:34.340 that they're failing at that i i think is really the key issue that even explains the existence of trump

00:38:41.520 and the persistence of trump and in the 20th century the united states really did excel at that

00:38:50.360 there were problems along the way there were breakdowns like the what we think of now is the

00:38:55.800 60s a very long period of time um but they still were able to give people a sense of you're part of

00:39:06.260 something exceptional you're special you have a mission in this world uh and so on and the fact

00:39:12.980 that the right wing even even like the the touchstone of america first i think is fundamentally lame

00:39:24.260 in the sense that it's not really anything it's just like i don't want to give more money to ukraine

00:39:31.120 or you know we don't want a military base in asia or or missiles in poland because who care it's like

00:39:38.500 this retreat from any sort of world mission and there's nothing but you you retreat and you go back

00:39:48.540 to like america putting america first and you find that there's nothing you know that you you look at

00:39:54.420 the actual america or the actual lives that these people are living like marjorie taylor green's

00:40:00.540 constituents and what is this americanism outside of maybe going to a mega church on sunday but most

00:40:08.820 of them don't do that what is their life outside of like visiting strip malls and paying their mortgage

00:40:16.080 and watching a football game more religiously than they attend a church service like there's it's like

00:40:25.180 this retreat from america as a world mission which which had high watermarks in the w george w bush era

00:40:31.740 in uh the 1950s and mid 60s with kennedy etc maybe there's a high a sort of sort of high watermark in

00:40:41.440 the 80s um and like the fact that we don't have that and so the big critique coming from the right is like

00:40:53.140 don't do this we don't like it we should keep that money isn't that kind of pathetic isn't that like

00:41:01.000 an expression of the problem there you go yeah i mean i really i i totally understand where you're 0.99

00:41:08.580 coming from and you know i think part of it is like even the so-called elites uh have no fucking 0.92

00:41:15.520 idea really what's going on you know i think it's a it's a really exposing moment the contradictions

00:41:22.200 in the narratives you know the motivations of people seem to be quite about selfish and and

00:41:28.980 narcissistic um people losing a sense of the scope of the responsibility of america as an empire

00:41:38.440 i think uh is is is it's it's a deep deep issue i mean i'm i'm living in europe and that has

00:41:47.120 definitely given me much deeper understanding that america plays a significant role in peacekeeping

00:41:55.860 in europe um and there needs to be a presence here of americans and all over the world right

00:42:04.840 americans are isolated from the globe in many respects uh even ones who are well educated uh 0.99

00:42:14.720 because it really takes setting setting yourself uh onto the soil of another of another continent and 0.90

00:42:21.500 seeing like holy shit there are there are other people here and their safety and their capacity to

00:42:28.060 participate in the market and bring prosperity to their people is dependent on an infrastructure that is 0.74

00:42:33.780 preserved by americans um and the global order is protected and preserved by americans and people are

00:42:44.940 completely lost uh in terms of being able to understand the implication of that being uh that

00:42:52.020 falling into decay i think it's yeah and isn't make america great again ironic like and it's and it's not

00:42:59.540 not like donald trump was actually an isolationist you know if you look at what he did during

00:43:06.580 his uh time in office and maybe what he would do if he gets back in uh you know uh the white house

00:43:16.460 will be in a jail cell or house arrest in mar-a-lago who knows uh it's gonna be wild that's all i know but

00:43:23.440 it's not really about like what actually happened it's it's about the logical implications and

00:43:30.920 consequences of the rhetoric and make america great again if you if you take its

00:43:38.160 its catch words and theory seriously it is leading towards isolationism and just saying no so make america

00:43:49.040 great great great again it's really the end of america you know what what they what they're pointing

00:43:54.860 back to in terms of like some 20th century high watermark of americanism is when america was on the

00:44:02.940 move america was expanding nato america was you know mono a mono with the soviet union and a nuclear

00:44:13.600 standoff america was uh hollywood was building movie theaters and bringing american content to europe and

00:44:24.780 around the world and so there's this weird contradiction or a kind of paradox where they

00:44:32.600 they want to make america great again and they want to like relive this half-remembered dream of

00:44:38.920 1962 or something i don't know um but then they more accurately what maga represents really is the

00:44:49.120 end of america it's like the full withdrawal from the world from being consequential in the world

00:44:57.900 from feeling like you have a world mission like there's a charge that you have to complete

00:45:04.420 and it's weird in my old age i i remember when i was just out of college i would to the degree that

00:45:13.640 i had any influence i would just you know this is pre-blogging and all this kind of stuff i would just

00:45:19.400 make fun of george w bush um i hated this this idea of you know um there's a america represents a force

00:45:27.900 of freedom that is attractive to all humans on the planet there everyone is is a kind of

00:45:33.600 monotheistic freedom lover just waiting to be released and america is that that like designated

00:45:41.660 force that brings it to them i i hated this and and it's it's something that's kind of easy to debunk

00:45:47.580 and point out the hypocrisy or something but i almost have a certain appreciation for that type of rhetoric

00:45:55.360 as i get older because it was it was heady and idealistic if also reckless and in need of tempering

00:46:07.300 and what maga represents now is a kind of like evaporation of any sort of idealism you know it's like

00:46:18.040 the everyone in charge of institutions are evil satanist pedophiles um we need to just keep all our money

00:46:27.160 here don't do anything for the world uh it's it's it's very i i find like not that not that trump

00:46:37.040 himself will actually enact any of this stuff but if you take the logic seriously it's it's actually

00:46:45.500 deeply depressing and and so it's like the critique of liberalism is somehow worse

00:46:53.340 and i guess that's maybe explains my own support for joe biden but but anyway that those are my

00:47:01.620 that's my kind of perspective on it why i can't really ever i i can't really ever jump on the maga

00:47:09.480 bandwagon ever again and and it's and it's not for any reasons of like getting you know lambasted in

00:47:16.740 the press or that's superficial it's it's more of like that that bandwagon is taking you nowhere

00:47:24.680 basically it's it's taking you off a cliff or it's taking you to like a desert

00:47:30.140 and i i would much i i think there's there's like a desperate need for something that offers

00:47:39.980 some sort of heady idealism you know it's like to quote walter uh sobichek or something it's like

00:47:48.700 say what you will about national socialism at least it was an ethos like these men are nihilists

00:47:54.020 like that's a very funny line from the big lambowski just become one of my favorite movies but

00:47:59.860 it's it's it's really actually insightful you know like there's kind of nothing worse than being a

00:48:06.880 nihilist there's nothing worse than trying to reduce idealism or reduce the libido to put it

00:48:13.700 maybe in terms they're more applicable to to your way of thinking

00:48:17.740 yeah well it's a very powerful meme flex what you're speaking about and it does seem to be

00:48:25.280 something that many adolescents move through and in the reaction to the hegemony that they face

00:48:32.140 you know i mean you went through it i went through my own phase with it many of us

00:48:36.660 kind of go through this phase of reaction to the existing power structures and i think

00:48:41.900 that is one of the rites of passage of the youth to reject and react to existing narratives uh i think

00:48:53.040 today this is extremely the the the kind of possibility for being caught in a very powerful

00:49:00.860 memeplex has just accelerated because of the types of technology that we have and the way that it can

00:49:07.340 really integrate into our identities and also be weaponized for political political gains uh obviously

00:49:16.540 there's also been a hollowing out of the american spirit and then what do you have to pull what

00:49:27.080 leverage do you really have to bring people into an idealistic narrative about the role of america

00:49:32.820 without there being some sort of you know catastrophic event or you know something that really motivates

00:49:37.980 people but as we can see now even war like active war happening in the world is is not sufficient to

00:49:45.340 motivate people either um so yeah i would say this nihilism is a very powerful state um and getting out of

00:49:56.360 it really takes an affirmation of existence as it is and the desire for something invigorating even in the face of nihilism

00:50:07.940 it is part of the process to go through nihilism it just it's so difficult to actually overcome it

00:50:17.680 and now that you can galvanize people and utilize them for i mean for anything really for consumption

00:50:27.620 uh for votes for donations um it's much harder for people to see that there's any any reason uh to move

00:50:38.320 outside of that so i do think that this is a moment for a different kind of elitism this isn't the

00:50:45.920 elitism of the existing classes because i think if you look at the rot in institutions it's not just

00:50:53.380 about being born into a wealthy family or going to a prestigious college there's something else that

00:51:00.260 defines being an elite today and it seems to be the capacity to get through this nihilistic stage

00:51:06.520 and affirm existence and move towards some sort of telos some sort of state um a possibility of the

00:51:17.800 future and to put effort into it and and will even when you don't know what will happen right uh i also

00:51:26.280 think that american consumerist culture has really bred this idea that you know you know uh i remember my

00:51:34.400 grandmother would say it i pay i say right this idea that if you're buying something you're guaranteed

00:51:41.880 to get it and this is a very corrupt cycle if you generalize this outside of markets and services

00:51:51.660 right yes if you buy a consumer product you don't want to break yes if you get someone to come and

00:51:58.540 clean your house you don't want them to stand you up but for all of these bigger existential

00:52:04.100 idealistic ideas you need something you need to be motivated by something more than the guarantee

00:52:11.520 that you're going to get what you want there needs to be something um so there's just a

00:52:17.640 clashing and colliding of these different meme plexes coming together and the malaise of a culture

00:52:24.300 that's quite isolated um from the the rest of the world and the kind of media ecology that we're

00:52:32.420 living in that isolates and and maybe even liberalism like if liberalism were a you know

00:52:40.540 fundamental i ideal you know in the american 20th century it's it's kind of devolved into mere

00:52:47.900 safetyism yes you know like we're and and this is where i am you know i've changed and evolved in a

00:52:57.560 lot of ways but i i will always be a nietzschean and it's like danger is more important than safety

00:53:06.160 and the fact that liberalism we're not again we're not even like there's no we've evaporated

00:53:14.800 any sort of idealism about liberalism even the george w bush era kind of like um every human

00:53:21.960 heart quest for freedom or something look that's kind of dumb but yeah it's something it's it's some

00:53:28.120 sort of message or mission and now liberalism is reduced to just mere safetyism so it's like 0.97

00:53:35.040 you need to be safe in your transgender experimentation you need to be safe as a jewish 0.97

00:53:45.680 zionist on campus like you can't hear those mean old words and you you can't get into a shouting

00:53:51.980 match with someone oh my that's just the you know the worst you know you need to have job security even

00:53:58.360 you need to have all it's like we're we're we're constantly questing towards that and that's fake

00:54:07.120 because the ultimate safety is death you are really safe in your grave or in your urn no one is going to

00:54:16.020 harm you and there's there's we should be promoting danger you know they have to be balanced obviously i i'm

00:54:26.560 not going to go out and not wear a seat belt and just slam on i'm thinking of that seat for fight

00:54:33.440 club of like just pressing the accelerator and seeing what happens i'm not going to do that obviously

00:54:38.940 it's a metaphor but like we need to be thinking about ways of increasing danger as opposed to

00:54:47.640 increasing safety and you know i've i've used this i've said this uh i maybe a few times in this um

00:54:53.940 broadcast and i i've i've said it with with friends like think about the gay movement and its trajectory

00:55:01.260 at one point being homosexual was in fact dangerous you were an outsider and as an outsider you might 0.70

00:55:14.760 actually be able to offer some sort of deeper insight into society or you might be able to

00:55:21.400 do something that the insiders to the world can't do there there's a certain privilege to being

00:55:31.260 oppressed or being marginalized or being taboo there's a certain privilege in that and i think

00:55:39.680 society needs that energy to move forward but as homosexuality and here i would just say any sort of 1.00

00:55:49.200 non-normative sexuality becomes safety eyes it it it's it's it's a way a form of nihilism like at one

00:55:59.960 point like oscar wilde's suffering um certainly you know in some ways self-inflicted suffering we have to

00:56:08.880 remember he brought the lawsuit that sent him to jail but anyway his suffering was meaningful

00:56:14.620 and compare that to 115 years later and like gary who works at a corporation and has a good health

00:56:29.420 plan and wants to go to the gay pride festival you know it's like oh hey guys i got my you know rainbow

00:56:38.600 cake together and let's all go out and celebrate homosexuality i think the mayor is going to be 0.80

00:56:44.160 there maybe a senator it's it's it's lame it's it's no longer dangerous it's no longer critiquing 0.97

00:56:52.280 society it's no longer contradicting society in any way shape or form and so you're safe to be gay but 0.83

00:57:00.140 all that means is that gayness has no like it's evaporated of any sort of like meaning that that

00:57:09.960 it in some ways it had you're just now another corporate drone who has a particular sexual

00:57:17.160 preference um as opposed to jim who works in the other cubicle or sally who works in the other cubicle

00:57:25.480 it's it's just it's evaporated of all meaning by liberalism and the kind of bourgeois ethic now you

00:57:33.420 can become a kind of heterosexual and that that's ultimately going to end homosexuality it's this 0.82

00:57:40.420 weird contradiction or paradox but that's where it goes so it's like in this quest for safety

00:57:46.360 we're we're ultimately kind of neutralizing and destroying any sort of identity or way of thinking

00:57:55.340 that might actually have meaning like wasn't it kind of cool to go and see like in in a repressed

00:58:03.640 society wasn't it sort of cool to like go on a late night not tell you know your your boss or or

00:58:12.820 your family or maybe your wife where you're going and go to see like a erotic striptease act 0.99

00:58:20.380 there was something you know you're kind it's subversive it's titillating it's dangerous

00:58:25.020 it's it's contradicting the norm but when that is embraced by the system and when that's when

00:58:35.360 that's become normal it's now evaporated you know there's there's nothing dangerous about

00:58:43.240 pornography it's in fact boring in in fact you you can't you don't get any it if you understand

00:58:51.560 what it's like it's it's constricting the libido if anything it's not like offering and an exciting

00:59:00.720 and dangerous if new world even if it's one that you ultimately reject it's no longer doing that so

00:59:07.100 it's like we've just in our bourgeois liberal quest for safety we have destroyed even subversion

00:59:16.260 i mean i i think this is again why i just i can never be a liberal because it's it's like there

00:59:23.800 there needs to be that that like contrast there there needs to be some sort of battle between

00:59:31.220 normativity and the dionysian you could say the the the um the the the excessive the dangerous the

00:59:41.400 the weird there has to be that battle and liberalism is so all-encompassing that it encompasses even that

00:59:47.840 and thus ruins it and turns everything into some bourgeois preference

00:59:52.860 yeah i mean absolutely the way that we talk about this and in my intellectual communities is the need

01:00:01.280 for the tantric and the sutric divide so this comes out of adriana buddhism this idea of the sutra is you

01:00:10.060 know you live by your set of rules you live by a set of dogmas you show up with a certain personality

01:00:16.040 in public and in society and those are that's the law of the land and the tantric spaces are tight

01:00:26.000 containers that are only there for the initiated and they're only there for the people who actually

01:00:31.640 have the balls to go and seek them out and that's where you engage in transgressive activity that's

01:00:38.560 where you engage with other people who can actually handle those types of environments and that's when 0.99

01:00:45.720 you go into sex drugs you know dark elements of the kind of human animal and learn how to be in

01:00:55.480 relationship to those powerful sources of energy and of course those membranes have been broken as

01:01:02.600 you're speaking to that and the the kind of tantric containers of sex and even of drug use right this

01:01:12.740 kind of psychedelic renaissance in a way is also taking drug use which has been contained and

01:01:19.260 suppressed in the sutric aspects of society and making it a therapy yeah making that everybody 0.98

01:01:26.060 doesn't elon even elon must like promotes drug use as it makes you more productive something or like

01:01:32.980 it may like you have all these anxieties and you can take this drug and it will kind of like

01:01:38.420 even things out and you can be a good corporate drone so even like transsexuality or transvestitism or 0.65

01:01:48.060 whatever that's existed for a very long time and it it's exist i mean i i'm sounding kind of like a

01:01:54.480 liberal here but i'm not like it's existed for a very long time it's existed within a religious context

01:02:00.040 to some degree it's it's been able to kind of capture or express certain types of energies and

01:02:07.960 even drug use and transvestitism we've ruined we've turned that into like oh good now you're a woman now 0.76

01:02:16.720 okay get back to work you know or like drug use oh yeah drugs can really help you get back to work

01:02:23.620 we've learned this you know as opposed to like taking a crazy acid trip and going to another

01:02:29.300 universe which i don't recommend but it's still sort of cool you know like we we've evaporated

01:02:38.420 everything um and i i just i don't know it just it kind of there's something there's a there's a

01:02:48.000 certain type of i guess nietzsche would say it's like a passive nihilism at the heart of the bourgeoisie

01:02:54.540 and at the heart of the middle class and as the bourgeoisie dominate western europe and america and

01:03:01.820 australia and increasingly dominating the world they're going to really destroy everything they 1.00

01:03:07.980 there is nothing that the bourgeois spirit can't absorb and ruin

01:03:13.700 yeah it's interesting though it's when you look at um where fertility is dropping it's in this class

01:03:21.440 you know the very very rich and the very very poor are still reproducing so i think that this this

01:03:28.440 mentality will lead itself to its ultimate end which is death uh it's just a matter of patience i guess

01:03:38.280 um because these people who want safety and security in their lives above everything else

01:03:45.440 want everyone to be included don't want to have any friction they just want to be given things

01:03:51.240 guaranteed and have their identities reinforced and never have to change these are not the people

01:03:57.140 who can even risk the idea of of pregnancy or relationship or having a family even that is too

01:04:05.080 stressful to cope with um yeah so it it's uh yeah these these people are not moving on um into the future

01:04:15.120 and it's um yeah i'm and i'm not trying to convince them to either it's it's uh being i'm pronatalist but

01:04:23.500 i think it's it's a pronatalism is for people who already want to have children and need to be encouraged

01:04:30.260 to have more children and to fortify their family cultures so that their children can be strong in

01:04:38.920 the face of all of these mimetic contagions around them and and that's the kind of thing that if this

01:04:46.340 is the spirit that you're called to you can foster that type of family culture and community around you

01:04:51.920 um and yeah it's just it's the the ascent of the middle class has just been a byproduct of of

01:05:01.740 prosperity um and of of capitalism and markets functioning and an industrial model you know the

01:05:08.340 the wealthy needed workers but we're moving into an era where that will not be the case they will not

01:05:14.360 need large bureaucracies of people shuffling papers around and hr managing you know microaggressions

01:05:22.980 between people because all of that mundane work is going to be automated and those people no longer

01:05:29.260 be useful uh and and at the end of the day i don't think the hyper rich are going to be all that

01:05:34.520 sympathetic to the interests of these people once they are no longer useful uh for for labor um

01:05:42.600 so it's an interesting time that we're moving through because these ideas are really being

01:05:48.340 pushed to their behavioral extremes and i think the internet is also accelerating that process and

01:05:57.160 sterilizing the capacity for these people to actually bring their gene plex into the future

01:06:05.120 which will yeah i mean it will filter them out it will um where do you think we're going with all

01:06:12.000 this because you know there's um there's a famous book by um eric hoffman uh called the religious

01:06:19.260 shall inherit the earth and he he mentions that you know within a society the more it's not even

01:06:27.740 necessarily more religious it's just more kind of fundamentalist are out reading the less fundamentalist

01:06:35.620 so evangelical christians have three kids and episcopalians have 1.2 kids and so they will

01:06:45.480 ultimately win it might take a few generations but it's it's happening between societies it's also

01:06:52.400 happening so religious fundamentalist or like primitive cultures are are are out reading um more secular

01:07:01.620 cultures um there's um there's there's also some bad things about this like um you know in many ways

01:07:08.800 we're breeding for um uh unhealth like we're breeding for heart disease we're breeding for criminality

01:07:17.880 like there there are a lot of bad things that happen there but um i don't know even those people who 0.98

01:07:25.060 are kind of psychotic and dumb at at least are in touch with the libido which is something 0.62

01:07:33.840 yeah it's something it's some sort of life force energy um yeah there's nothing more libidinal than 0.99

01:07:42.480 committing a crime yeah it's true i mean it's interesting how the mind you know mind fits into

01:07:48.700 this right if you have enough mind to kind of repress your instincts um and you know conscientiousness

01:07:56.620 to integrate into the virtual kind of aspects of our of our society then you can effectively sterilize

01:08:04.780 yourself um and if you're very intelligent especially if you are disagreeable um you can really

01:08:12.600 you can use your libido you can harness your animal and channel it into a form of competition

01:08:20.420 that allows for you to have tremendous amount of asymmetrical success right but these people in the

01:08:26.940 middle who have just enough mind to inhibit themselves uh and to distance themselves from the animal 0.97

01:08:32.760 end up kind of the most fucked because um they they have cut off their relationship to 0.99

01:08:40.880 to the body and to this kind of aggressive and primitive force of nature that just wants you to 1.00

01:08:48.440 fuck and to kill or you know to to be this ape that we are um and yeah it's a domesticated class 0.99

01:08:57.980 a very domesticated class of people um and within the context of an industrialized factory-based kind of 1.00

01:09:06.480 uh architecture right this is you can even be seen in the way that the spaces are designed and built

01:09:13.740 that this was the form that was domesticating people but there is still a streak of wildness

01:09:21.560 in in like you're saying these kind of these these criminal ghetto populations and also the populations

01:09:30.160 of people who are competing at very very high levels um these people also have a lot of the lot of 0.98

01:09:38.000 libido you know um and they do fuck a lot a lot of them do um these very successful men uh in in bed as 0.87

01:09:49.800 well so yeah i don't know it's uh i i really think about this as like a waiting game you know sometimes 0.98

01:09:59.160 i think about what's it going to look like when the joe bidens of the world are gone what's it going

01:10:03.160 to look like even when my when my parents are gone right um the world will have a very different

01:10:09.080 landscape who will be young what would those people be like and who who would be the parents of those

01:10:15.200 children um and obviously there's still going to be a lot of this population that we're talking about

01:10:23.780 still around for a while especially with life extension technologies um and biotech right uh there's

01:10:32.200 going to be this attempt to prolong the existence um i think about it as kind of using technology to prop up

01:10:40.920 the corpse of of our civilization and in the meantime there just needs to be at least this is where i've

01:10:50.160 come i don't know you don't have to agree with my position here but it's about maintaining some vitalist

01:10:56.940 in-group culture that can get past this time and come out the other side and potentially you know be the

01:11:08.520 grounds of a new era of civilization a new paradigm possibly uh there's lots of other contingent

01:11:15.940 factors but this is once again one of these things where it's not about a guarantee it's just about an

01:11:20.940 orienting force um a telos you know it's about moving towards something uh and also having an

01:11:30.580 intergenerational approach because demographics when you look at demographics and you really think through

01:11:35.580 it even past your own life the world really starts to look very different and then you can think about

01:11:44.000 okay what were my what were my grandchildren be looking at if demographics is is the main factor

01:11:49.980 and all else being equal who are they going to be competing with what kinds of cultures will there be

01:11:54.920 who is going to be technophilic who's going to actually know how to leverage the

01:12:00.200 instruments that have been left behind by by the previous generations right the people who have that

01:12:08.620 capacity are going to have a lot of potential power in the world um so it's like preserving things to

01:12:15.700 the point where they can be utilized in the future by a technophilic vitalist elite yeah

01:12:24.540 um this is all this is a fascinating disgusting yeah walter you you raised your hand would you like

01:12:32.220 to yeah this is well bismarck guys hey i had a question for raven um i i was uh so what if the

01:12:39.240 average iq is just too high you know we're all familiar with the flint effect we're all familiar with

01:12:43.900 uh you know how how consistently executing every year like the one percent you know most dangerous

01:12:49.820 and most violent uh you know contingent of our population has uh radically decreased violent crime

01:12:55.860 rates throughout the years what if we've sort of created a type of person who is just so

01:13:00.760 kind of sheltered and is so focused on optimizing uh i mean like there's just kind of like the

01:13:08.160 optimization impulse in and of itself like like like what if what if eugenics is actually bad what if

01:13:14.040 you sort of need a population that has an average iq of 88 or 90 just to uh not destroy itself in

01:13:19.760 a way because in a sense when you when you get that sort of middle class culture that's always

01:13:23.320 optimizing and that that will promote republicanism and will you know promote like a constant increase

01:13:28.860 of wealth at a certain point uh nobody's gonna vote to make things more difficult for themselves or to

01:13:35.920 to get into a conflict i mean i i like maybe we need to look at things like democratic peace theory from

01:13:41.760 the other perspective like maybe maybe you actually want to sort of warlike and violent and and

01:13:47.120 uh i guess sort of savage savage species because that's just going to you know prevent people from

01:13:54.500 making these really dysgenic long-term decisions where they're just kind of like dying out and and

01:13:58.960 um i don't know i i just i look at a lot of the sort of wn and a lot of sort of um like alt-right or

01:14:04.880 nrx talking points about you know just optimizing for eugenics at the expense of everything else and i'm

01:14:09.800 almost wondering if we're looking at it from completely the wrong direction because maybe

01:14:12.680 when you you go down that path as a civilization you just inevitably end up optimizing everything

01:14:19.740 for pleasure and optimizing for i guess creating like vr pods where you know the entire species will

01:14:25.780 just die out in a in a simulation to their specifications right i mean that's in a lot of

01:14:29.540 science fiction a lot of people say that's you know why certain um uh uh you know like why we never

01:14:34.920 encountered like another alien species before because it's not even that they'll wipe each other out in a

01:14:39.380 nuclear war it's that any any alien species would just invent virtual reality right and sort of escape

01:14:44.000 into that as a put like like that's much more easy than colonizing the universe or whatever so i i don't

01:14:48.520 know like maybe you can still have a much higher iq population that uh you know they can still achieve

01:14:54.760 great things great art great literature great you know uh accomplishments but maybe you need just the 0.96

01:14:59.820 average man to be kind of a grug to be kind of an idiot because i mean if you look at the roman empire 0.97

01:15:04.080 you look at any of you know the great civilizations in our past uh i mean it seems if you look at the 0.99

01:15:09.640 flint effect and if you look at other factors i mean the average roman was probably quite brutish it 1.00

01:15:15.060 probably looked like you know the average resident of detroit today in terms of it you know just the

01:15:19.560 abstract reasoning ability in terms of violent crime rate i mean it was probably you know a pretty

01:15:23.920 miserable existence whether to be a common person there but you know you still have the caesars you

01:15:27.700 still have the ciceros i mean you have that aristocratic class that could do something different but 0.99

01:15:32.080 maybe you just need that certain level of stupidity in the common man uh maybe that's actually a good 0.97

01:15:37.040 thing so i just wanted to submit that because like you know we're talking about vitalism we're talking 0.98

01:15:40.100 about how do you how do you stop people from just optimizing away like basically turning themselves

01:15:44.000 into elves right like if you look at like war of the worlds i think um h.g wills kind of predicted

01:15:47.980 this you know he sees humanity diverging into eloi and morlocks i see this as kind of becoming

01:15:52.160 eloi we're sort of living longer you know these days the sensibility among a lot of zoomers is that 1.00

01:15:56.880 you're not an adult until you're 25 um you know like we're certainly just much softer i mean if you just

01:16:01.800 look at people's faces if you look at a 30 year old today compared to like 50 years ago it's just

01:16:06.020 night and day um we're just like softening ourselves to a level i i wonder if if that just

01:16:12.600 precludes any any sort of ability for uh like like having that vitality so i just wanted to submit that

01:16:17.960 to both raven and to richard spencer and see see what you guys think about that

01:16:21.080 yeah raven you can go first well i i really love the flip there that's it's fantastic and i guess

01:16:30.780 it's in a way kind of what we're describing if we think you know two three generations if we continue

01:16:36.420 to have high fertility in the upper classes and high fertility in the lower classes and the middle

01:16:41.340 class basically breed themselves out of the population um where we will end up with this kind 0.99

01:16:47.820 uh this difference especially uh because you know the the upper classes are not they're not as large

01:16:55.300 as the lower classes to begin with and then they also don't have as many children so we kind of will

01:17:00.920 end up with the stratified culture um and it's an interesting thought experiment to consider whether

01:17:09.780 or not that is better for vitalism you know increasing the the vitalism of the world and in a way i think

01:17:17.000 i definitely can imagine a future where that is in some sense better for human vitality because

01:17:23.700 the humans that don't have the capacity to interact with the high highly abstract environment of the elite

01:17:31.340 um they will live a much more primitive life a much more embodied life life 0.83

01:17:38.920 of of of our ancestors in a kind of tangible tactile world uh and i mean hopefully that would

01:17:46.320 help men have higher testosterone levels and actually just engage in kind of the processes of

01:17:52.920 the animal human and maybe that will cause more territoriality and violence you know at the at the

01:17:59.960 edges of different tribes and maybe that will mean different kind of mating dynamics that 0.87

01:18:06.080 you know liberals wouldn't like very much or whatever but in terms of living a vital human life

01:18:15.340 um i think it's possible that that that would actually be the case and then the elites would i mean

01:18:22.260 they're just going to live in their city states anyways so i don't think they're going to be very much

01:18:27.540 they're going to be bothered very much by the human animal um just kind of existing in their own

01:18:33.100 little enclaves because the kind of asymmetrical power that will exist in that world will be so

01:18:38.820 dramatic that you know the human animal would be no threat to you know a highly speciated um elite 0.75

01:18:46.220 group that's been using you know genetic modification and all sorts of other forms of technology to

01:18:51.120 enhance their own capabilities um and i don't know space faring or maybe it's the gnostic thing like

01:18:57.980 maybe it is about traveling to new realms maybe that's what we will select for uh i'm not sure

01:19:04.240 there's there's different ideas about what it actually means to ascend uh as a population into

01:19:11.880 the new a new realm um but yeah i i'm definitely going to think about that more because it's a very

01:19:18.240 interesting idea well in in archaeofuturism guillaume fey suggested a a sort of bifurcated society

01:19:28.320 where you would you would have a enforced primitivism in a way so we we we give up on

01:19:41.020 the kind of middle class dream and we move towards we're going to make sure that you're able to have

01:19:50.960 like a village and an organic farm and a temple in the center of it and lots of room to run and play and

01:20:01.600 you know have fun and explore and hunt and all that kind of stuff and that can be enveloped by

01:20:10.320 an elite class that is pursuing you know higher levels of existence maybe in a in a gnostic in a

01:20:19.660 knowing gnostic sense um or you know even in a in a sense of genetic modification or something like

01:20:28.580 that i i i'll just admit my own sort of reactionary conservative that a lot of that i'm a lot of that

01:20:40.040 some of that stuff kind of does rub me the wrong way to be honest but uh nevertheless uh if it could

01:20:47.480 be done at least consciously and seriously it it could have beneficial effects um and but maybe this

01:20:55.760 is where we need to go and in that bifurcated society would kind of eliminate the bourgeoisie which

01:21:03.020 is the fundamental problem and yeah i mean i i think walt bismarck's you know criticisms of of wn and and so

01:21:14.860 on is is uh they're appreciated in the sense that it's not so much like white nationalism or like the

01:21:24.660 neo-nazis or or whatever those types of people who you know wave flags and are are really kind of gross

01:21:32.260 it's it's it's more of a of a kind of refined white nationalism where it is a sort of safetyism in itself 0.96

01:21:41.240 it is you know whites are good because we don't commit crimes and whites are good because we're you know 0.61

01:21:49.960 happy little consumer consumers basically and that's our justification we want a world more like that

01:21:58.200 and i i have certain sympathies towards that but i i don't know i i do fundamentally reject that and

01:22:06.220 we need to think about this stuff in it in a different way

01:22:09.320 walt do you have any response yeah i mean i i fully agree and i would just say you know if you

01:22:19.340 were to take an average classical roman and drop them in the you know middle of kansas or something

01:22:24.680 i think uh i think that they would be disgusted by where we've gone they would think that we are

01:22:30.800 way too soft we're way too conflict averse and uh i think that a lot of modern day wns would probably

01:22:36.920 look at them and they'd see like a dindu basically you know um and i i think that we've lost sort of 1.00

01:22:43.140 just i mean the desire for conquest and the the i i guess willingness to to sort of go there

01:22:49.340 you know without even thinking about it too hard i mean i think a big problem is we think too much

01:22:53.460 these days uh we're sort of trapped in our i mean this is something you talk about with embodiment

01:22:57.300 i mean uh i think that just that sort of like visceral impact like when somebody insults you to

01:23:01.680 just like put your fist in in his face i mean like that's that's just something we've sort of lost and

01:23:05.960 that's uh there isn't i mean there's an extent to which you still sort of have that vitality in our

01:23:11.640 underclass um but we don't really appreciate them and i'm not necessarily suggesting that we should but

01:23:16.700 it's it's more um it's more like you want that impulse in just like the sort of common

01:23:22.080 middle-class man and i think maybe we need like an average iq of 90 uh in order to get that back 0.74

01:23:27.820 so i mean maybe you know in in that vein brazilification isn't the worst thing in the world

01:23:31.860 or i mean like uh you know like i not to be too uh i guess controversial here but i mean i i think that

01:23:39.960 we just need to look at a lot of the assumptions that we've all sort of developed collectively

01:23:43.680 you know thinking about eugenics and thinking about the path forward as a civilization and just think

01:23:48.600 what is really the biggest threat to us and i think that's i mean basically everybody just

01:23:53.560 losing their vitality because they're sitting around jerking off all day or they're they just

01:23:56.780 don't want to go outside because entertainment is too good and i don't think that people will ever

01:24:01.260 vote that way i don't think that people will ever voluntaristically i mean like it takes an

01:24:06.060 extraordinary amount of willpower even for a very agentic person to you know like quit these

01:24:11.100 addictive dopamine traps to get out of these skinner boxes right it's extraordinarily difficult 0.89

01:24:15.440 and uh for like a midwit who has just been raised in this incentive structure i mean like imagine 0.52

01:24:20.960 zoomers and especially gen alpha i mean you know they grow up especially with covid and everything i

01:24:25.900 mean like they're just inside all the time surrounded by hardcore porn at their fingertips surrounded by

01:24:30.220 you know uh immersive like virtual reality adjacent experiences at this point um it's it's tremendously

01:24:36.520 worrying and i feel like this is actually our biggest sort of challenge as a civilization right

01:24:42.880 now is figuring out how to get rid of those dopamine traps and how to get young men especially

01:24:47.960 because young women are a bit more obedient they'll always sort of you know i guess kind of follow the 1.00

01:24:52.980 social script whereas young men really require a firm incentive structure to kick them in the ass and 0.97

01:24:57.260 get them out and you know accomplishing things in the world and uh i just don't think anybody is

01:25:02.280 posing anything close to a realistic solution that's actually going to get especially gen alpha

01:25:07.280 guys i mean zoomers you know they're already kind of making their way into the world but uh you know 1.00

01:25:11.380 like i i imagine if i have a son one day i mean how like how am i going to tell him you know to go

01:25:17.020 get a job how am i going to tell him to go to school when he has like sydney sweeney simulator

01:25:20.960 you know at at his fingertips at all times when he has you know he can go have any sort of

01:25:27.160 experience he wants in in vr with with uh you know uh algorithmically generated ai experiences

01:25:34.680 like virtually limitless i mean it's just it's tremendously scary and um that's what i'm

01:25:40.220 concerned about and i think that intelligence and especially just the tendency to be in your head too

01:25:45.540 much that's really what we have to avoid and and really eugenics if you look at at what the 0.90

01:25:51.160 practical effect of what eugenics did over the years and we definitely practiced eugenics pretty heavily 0.98

01:25:55.380 in europe just in terms of you know executing violent stupid people for many generations we had 0.96

01:26:00.900 a lot of downward social mobility right a lot of the the second sons of the nobility would become 0.99

01:26:04.980 merchants and then you know their sons would become peasants and what have you um it made the average

01:26:08.980 person much more intelligent but i think that creating this midwit class that just constituted like 0.90

01:26:15.020 the the great bulk of humanity that that was tremendously dangerous and yeah of course it leads to the

01:26:19.440 industrial revolution it leads to all these great things but unless you can sort of get to escape

01:26:23.820 velocity and then make the average iq like 120 or 125 you get this really dangerous middle area where

01:26:29.800 there's not enough agency and not enough sort of forward thinking to be able to break out of the

01:26:33.200 dopamine traps escape the skinner box but they're also just over optimized and they're too they're 1.00

01:26:38.380 too agentic to not just be a stupid grug and you know go impregnate their high school girlfriend and 0.99

01:26:42.840 you know just just get into fights all the time and because of that you can get this really 0.99

01:26:47.380 stultifying malaise where you just can't move forward as a civilization and i'd really be interested in both of

01:26:51.740 your thoughts as to how we can deal with those dopamine traps and how we can provide i mean even

01:26:56.660 for our own children even if you have a kid who's 135 140 iq who's very smart i mean how are you going

01:27:01.500 to make a compelling case for hey go get a job go date girls as opposed to go you know have this this

01:27:07.520 like maximally stimulating fantasy experience well yeah you you just do it i mean you just take the

01:27:16.740 phone away and don't give them a phone in the first place you ban tiktok in your home and heart 0.92

01:27:22.940 what was paul say circumcise of the heart like ban whatever congress does you should ban tiktok in

01:27:29.800 your heart um yeah i mean it's just it's just that um in in terms on on a personal uh level like on a

01:27:38.860 society a societal level it's kind of big too big for us to really figure out i mean i you know i

01:27:46.700 none of us sadly are just going to become king of the world or something so i i think we have to

01:27:52.340 look at like where these massive social trends are going and what are the ultimate consequences of

01:27:58.860 these and how to survive them and um also what are what are some of like the silver linings

01:28:05.120 you know what what what is the the right wing is so like up in arms about the lack of middle class

01:28:13.640 fertility you know they want a mandatory monogamous society they want every you know every man gets 1.00

01:28:20.100 a gf and we'll all be happy and that's not going to happen and so maybe what are some of the benefits

01:28:30.320 of the decline of this population that wants that kind of stuff that's you know reading red pill content

01:28:41.920 and listening to jordan peterson and and all and complaining about women all day like what is the

01:28:49.600 the the social consequence and maybe even benefit of their reduced fertility

01:28:55.380 yeah you can already start to see this in the trends in south korea where the men's movement

01:29:02.940 is quite strong and and it's surprising what they're i think from a western perspective what they want

01:29:08.860 they want the same kinds of privileges and as women you know they want to be served things 1.00

01:29:15.480 um and it's yeah it's it's it's it's a bit it's embarrassing um what these men are asking for

01:29:26.240 to be they want to be catered to and given things by i don't know who a big daddy a big mommy

01:29:32.640 consider this is a society where they have a draft right so like everyone always proposes oh you know

01:29:38.220 in the west we need to just send our boys into the military go find well you know they have that

01:29:40.980 in korea and they have a constant threat of being obliterated by kim jong-un and yet they seem to 0.99

01:29:45.260 turn into the biggest pussies so i mean clearly that's not like a straightforward answer right 0.98

01:29:49.460 well they have a draft they don't have a war um maybe a real conflict would uh man them up a bit 0.98

01:29:56.000 well technically it's an armistice right i mean technically it's still i mean like they'd like

01:29:59.820 i think it's very much drilled into their heads like at any time if they could i mean

01:30:02.520 practically speaking it won't but it's it's uh they're a very heavily militarized society right

01:30:06.900 but definitely real possibility i would say you know unlike being being in an isolated america

01:30:12.900 where we've got to worry about canada and mexico i mean you you know it's a serious thing but yeah i

01:30:19.640 i agree with your point though i was i was you know just jumping on the the technicalities but

01:30:24.720 uh yeah i mean maybe the world really does need a big catastrophe and um i don't know i've i've always

01:30:34.120 been a little bit ambivalent about this world war three prospect gosh we're getting extremely dark

01:30:42.100 here usually on tuesdays um it's usually lighter and more kind of scattered and then thursday night

01:30:49.480 when we do the same thing that's when i'm you know might have had a um a glass of wine or two and

01:30:56.220 you know we go into dark territory but i don't know i i sometimes like i just kind of roll my eyes when

01:31:04.080 conservatives are like you know we don't want world war three or you know uh we need to prevent that or

01:31:09.760 like the greatest thing about trump was no new wars or war is good

01:31:16.460 and it's the mother of all great things and war tests you and maybe precisely what we need is world

01:31:29.160 war three

01:31:29.760 you know do you think if if we don't have world war three that america is gonna become less feminized

01:31:40.860 you know in the sense of like if we don't have a threat or a conflict that you know the chads will

01:31:48.360 take over or like we'll we'll we'll start having all these you know families all all over the place

01:31:54.000 and we'll ever be based and red-pilled you know seems like if that is what you if that is what you

01:32:02.860 want from society and that's what conservatives do want you know tough guy dads and you know

01:32:10.420 trad wives and babies like that that's what they constantly are are promoting through imagery and 1.00

01:32:19.040 memes etc then like how do you get there and i i would say that a a massive global conflict probably

01:32:30.720 is necessary to get to that type of society and the last thing you want to do is do the america first

01:32:39.260 like oh no more money for ukraine or you know like um or china's base we should reach out to china

01:32:45.540 or something maybe exactly what we need is is a conflict

01:32:50.640 yeah but even war has become disembodied and highly mechanized and virtualized

01:32:57.800 so it may not even have the vitalist effect that you might hope for

01:33:05.340 it would be a bunch of drones and then like each side would be cutting off the internet of the other

01:33:10.500 side like that would be the there we go i mean that might get people outside well that's true that

01:33:17.240 would be that might be the answer yeah mutually assured internet destruction would be exactly what we

01:33:24.120 want cutting off my porn access is a violation of human rights yeah exactly but i i so yeah i mean

01:33:35.720 there's it's unclear if if war would even really i mean ground war maybe um but like the us once again

01:33:43.640 is just so geographically blessed um that the the chances of that happening on american soil is is

01:33:52.620 really slim but to go back to the question of of how to how to raise a family or how to create a

01:33:59.980 family culture that can persist with these corrosive forces uh just around trying to put your child into a

01:34:09.000 skinner box i think that this is actually for me this is a very compelling creative and interesting

01:34:16.060 question and there's there is something exciting about being on this existential quest for creating

01:34:22.660 a hard culture uh and a family culture that's agentic and embodied and creative and forward looking

01:34:32.640 and i do think that it begins very very young uh it begins with a different attitude towards education

01:34:39.660 uh literacy being being a huge factor uh starting to get your kids reading at a very young age get

01:34:46.920 them immersed in books get them outside learning about nature and the world take them out hunting

01:34:52.700 put a hunk of meat in their mouth you know no baby food no pacifier um and all right wait uh after

01:35:01.560 they're one i would say after they're one yeah after they're one not when they're not when they're

01:35:05.720 infants but you know when they're sort of a baby a steak it's kind of a funny no that won't work but

01:35:11.060 you know milk from mom and then you know real food and yeah and and and being able to climb and i think some

01:35:21.620 of it as well is the the having two children has created a a different type of relationship with

01:35:30.720 um between parents and children right the idea of losing one of those children becomes very scary

01:35:37.380 for a parent whereas back in the day it was obviously very tragic when people lost children but

01:35:43.540 this was happening a lot and they were having a lot more children and the kids they had to fend for

01:35:49.560 themselves uh to a large extent and now there's so much poured into the two and a half children you're

01:35:58.060 having or the one child that you're having um that it's very scary for parents to let their kid out in

01:36:05.200 the world and to maybe get hurt or have something bad happen to them but being in those types of

01:36:13.420 environments as a child is exactly what creates that fighting spirit and you know being able to

01:36:19.720 fostering uh a a family culture where authority is scrutinized i think is also important especially

01:36:29.520 authority outside of the home right because if you're told to just be obedient in school or to you

01:36:35.940 know do what other adults tell you then that's the kind of attitude that reinforces this the

01:36:43.360 domestication of children uh and over socialization of them in mainstream society

01:36:48.720 if you want to create a hard culture that resists those things then there needs to be a a reinforcement

01:36:55.480 of this kind of this questioning of authority uh by by children while also preserving a strong

01:37:02.240 relationship of respect and authority in the home and within the family culture um yeah so i think that

01:37:10.340 there are things that people can do but then obviously family becomes its own creative project

01:37:15.920 becomes something that people have to actually think about uh and invest energy into to produce a

01:37:22.880 kind of taste and a kind of style and an immersion in the kind of particular type of culture and it

01:37:30.120 requires i think at least two parents and potentially you know a community of parents that are all on that

01:37:38.400 journey investing in that to actually foster this type of learning environment that leads to these

01:37:44.820 highly agentic very contrarian children um and and yeah for me that's the kind of project that's exciting

01:37:52.540 but i think for a lot of people they're not willing to give up their free lifestyle uh to invest so much

01:37:59.220 of their creativity into someone else's life into a life that ultimately they will not be able to control

01:38:05.060 very quickly

01:38:16.520 you

01:38:18.460 you

01:38:19.040 you

01:38:24.840 you

01:38:25.000 you

RadixJournal - May 08, 2024

Quoth the Raven, ＂Better Score＂

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