In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with sex therapist and author of the book "The Dark Renaissance" to talk about his journey to becoming a sex therapist, how he got into the field, and what it means to be a millennial in the 21st century.
00:00:00.000Hi, thanks for having me in this very interesting interior space.
00:00:06.040This was a very fun invitation to get, I'll tell you.
00:00:09.720And it brought me back to my days at the Evergreen State College when the alt-right was coming to campus and was threatening students.
00:00:21.780I was there when all of that was happening.
00:00:25.640So it's very interesting to be kind of like brought into this world from a completely different angle.
00:00:32.740And I guess that shows all of you some of my intellectual trajectory over the years.
00:00:39.420So, 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.
00:00:56.080Into looking into, you know, NRX, Mencius Moldbug, all these things.
00:01:04.300And that has basically been my telos in life, is being like a free thinker and pursuing whatever ideas I find the most compelling.
00:01:15.120And eventually that has led me to living in Europe, among other free thinking intellectuals.
00:01:21.420And 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.
00:01:31.460And then in my private practice, I work with people who are trying to figure out their sexualities and get into relationships.
00:01:40.720And my priority there is to help people increase their fertility, get into relationships that can actually bring forth family.
00:02:18.360But what I find is that there's, there isn't a lot of answers to existential questions within the medical profession.
00:02:26.620They can just give you whatever procedures are available for assisting in your fertility, but they can help people make real, you know, existential decisions.
00:02:36.200Well, 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.
00:02:59.240You can, you can, the question is like, why are you fat?
00:03:07.220And it might have something to do with, you know, let's say personal responsibility.
00:03:12.860You're not going to the gym enough or you're eating Oreos at midnight or whatever.
00:03:18.080But it also, it spreads out to something much deeper, you know, like you're living in a suburban home where there is no problem.
00:03:29.240You 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.
00:03:39.640And so no wonder you're fat and depressed, in fact.
00:03:43.220And 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?
00:03:55.540And if you're not at least trying to address those questions or like confront that reality, you're not getting anywhere.
00:04:04.900It's like a doctor can go, oh yeah, let's just freeze your eggs or I'll give you, what is it called again?
00:04:10.160Ozimic or whatever this miracle drug that I'm sure is going to create disasters to lose weight.
00:04:15.800You know, they'll offer some superficial solution without confronting the problem.
00:04:39.180Like you'll, I guess you don't have to give any details about patients or anything like that.
00:04:43.840But 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?
00:05:00.740You 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.
00:05:13.020And I think that's what you're speaking to, right?
00:05:14.920Like 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.
00:05:24.480It 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.
00:05:33.060So, 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.
00:05:46.300And some of the things that they need to be told are quite basic.
00:05:49.880Like, so, um, I think that speaks to like the maturity of this, this generation.
00:06:20.200I, and it's about deciding what we want to identify with.
00:06:25.580Like, I do think that sexuality runs very, very deep.
00:06:29.120And, um, obviously if you go into the very, very depths of it, you end up with like rape and conquest.
00:06:36.400You end up with really intense forms of interaction between men and women, uh, that most people aren't really capable of handling.
00:06:47.720And 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.
00:06:56.000The stuff that's usually put deep, deep into like the cages underground.
00:07:02.380Um, 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.
00:07:14.980Um, 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.
00:07:34.460Um, and that's why bringing in a somatic approach, bringing in this design approach, what does your life look like?
00:07:43.540How engaged are you on a bodily level?
00:07:46.840Do you have sensory experience that invigorates you?
00:07:50.580Can you even identify a sensation that you find pleasurable?
00:07:54.480These types of things, um, are the practices that we work on.
00:07:59.460Uh, it's very important, especially for people who are on the spectrum because they tend to be disconnected from their bodies.
00:08:05.880Uh, 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.
00:08:19.420So, you know, yeah, there, there are these things going on.
00:08:23.780I would really like to be working with more women, but so far, uh, most of my practice has been with, has been with men.
00:08:32.040Um, let me throw out some kind of big picture items and, and you can pick up on some ideas within there.
00:08:41.840So 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.
00:09:00.760And 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.
00:09:22.400So, 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.
00:09:41.060And this seems to happen everywhere, maybe not so much in Africa, but it is definitely happening in Mexico.
00:09:52.940It's, it's happening in the United States.
00:09:55.080It's definitely happening in China, et cetera, et cetera.
00:09:58.480And 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?
00:10:18.140And 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.
00:10:28.800And so the, these people had been around death.
00:10:33.940They'd been around bombing campaigns and they just wanted to go have sex.
00:10:38.580And 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.
00:10:50.620When 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%.
00:11:01.620So, 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.
00:11:11.920But looking back over the history of the world, the exact opposite is the case.
00:11:24.420And 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.
00:11:49.540They'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?
00:12:03.120And I, of course, you would agree that that is unhealthy, not the, not the proper channeling would be libidinal energy.
00:12:12.100But the, the fundamental thing that's happening is a lack of sex.
00:12:16.760And 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.
00:12:40.360And 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.
00:13:06.200It'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.
00:13:17.120And 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.
00:13:32.360So those are kind of the two, those are the two fundamental paradoxes that, that I see.
00:13:37.860What, what are your, your thoughts on, on that?
00:13:40.640yeah i mean it's it's really weird stuff i mean obviously you you frame this within the context
00:13:47.320of industrialization and i do think that's quite important there has been an acceleration of
00:13:53.180technological mediation in our environment for you know you could argue 200 years now but it's
00:13:58.360certainly accelerated quite a lot even within the last 50 years especially with the advent of the
00:14:04.680internet and the ubiquity of social media and the most recent decades and obviously this is having
00:14:11.300a massive impact on our whole experience of reality um so i do think that that plays a major role there
00:14:21.720are instances in history where it seems like population decline has been an issue in other
00:14:28.240civilizations as they're going through their kind of their death phase um it does seem like
00:14:34.360complex civilization do do have a life cycle um human beings are interesting and when we get a
00:14:42.100lot of abundance in our environment there seems to be a a mechanism that shuts down our interest in
00:14:50.540reproduction it's very strange that this happens um i don't think that anyone has a clear answer
00:14:56.240for why this is the case uh there have been some experiments uh for example there was experience
00:15:04.340experiences uh there were um there's this mouse utopia experiment that was done yes so you know
00:15:10.820classic yeah well go on you can you can explain it yeah oh yeah they i mean they put these mice
00:15:16.140into a dense environment where they had all the entertainment that they wanted any kind of food
00:15:22.440that they wanted but i think the the real thing that was part of it as well is that it was a dense
00:15:27.160environment there were a lot of mice there uh and they ended up with these these mice that started
00:15:34.260to the first they started to reproduce and fill up this environment to its capacity and then they kind
00:15:38.920of bifurcated into different classes where the males started to act more like females there were females
00:15:44.680that started to act more like males and then there was a group called the beautiful ones who just sat
00:15:48.960around grooming themselves um and this was just a completely dysfunctional mouse community they
00:15:56.500didn't know how to communicate with each other they didn't understand how to communicate and with the
00:16:02.840pheromones that they had and basically this was the this was the this was the end of mouse utopia
00:16:09.520so there's also another scale a very interesting scaling law that human beings have been kind of sucked
00:16:16.200into with urbanization mass urbanization without the cost of disease right so our cities have just
00:16:24.420able to get so much larger uh without there being these massive like population fluctuations
00:16:30.100so some of the contexts that we're living in today have definitely had an impact on our
00:16:36.820biological fertility and our sexuality um but it doesn't it doesn't quite address um i think the
00:16:44.540spiritual the spiritual level of this because what you're talking about is as well as some sort of
00:16:49.120will right the the this will to actually continue on and to see some legacy outside of your own individual
00:16:57.560life and that is an interesting quality to me because right now we are dealing with people who are not
00:17:07.880only abstaining from sex but even the people who are engaging with sex are doing it in a sterilized
00:17:13.620way where the risk of pregnancy uh is very very low and then if pregnancy does happen you can go and
00:17:20.820get an abortion to make sure that the pregnancy doesn't actually come to term so people who are
00:17:26.820still fucking of which there are many and even if they are a bit older um these people aren't actually
00:17:32.800having children either um oh yeah i just as to interject real briefly i was going through the new york
00:17:39.140times today just to kind of you know see what's going on in the world there was a funny article
00:17:43.660about st stis among like gen x boomers and silent gen they're like there's a crisis of you know spreading
00:17:51.860whatever gonorrhea among like 50 year olds or whatever and okay and now granted obviously that is a problem
00:18:00.180uh but i was kind of like yeah because like people my age are the only ones doing it so
00:18:06.980you know it's it was it was kind of funny i was like yeah we're still cool like yeah you're still
00:18:13.940fucking yeah oh my god yeah there's there's a virility you know in these generations that gen z
00:18:22.160seems to have in very few amounts there are still virile gen z's but what filter is spreading across
00:18:33.560humanity for gen z is quite extreme um and there's a very narrow canal uh in terms of kind of a vital
00:18:40.820human spirit that seems to be getting through in that generation well let me throw this out there so
00:18:48.280do you think that maybe freud was right so for freud famously on particularly in the the first half of
00:19:00.760his career was promoting the idea of of a libidinal energy so the way to understand dreams for instance was
00:19:10.020simply wish fulfillment and um he also went into trauma but then he actually kind of
00:19:18.280moved away like he the many of the hysterical quote unquote women that he treated um as a young
00:19:26.500physician he thought that they were suffering from abuse by a parent um most likely a father
00:19:35.600and that they were kind of repressing that memory and they weren't able to confront it and deal with
00:19:42.420it and you had to engage in a talking cure to you know to the very least address this issue
00:19:47.780um he then revised that and thought that those that trauma was in fact a fantasy so what they
00:19:58.120were doing was working through a fantasy an unresolved developmental issue with their parents
00:20:04.740and so it's it's that they weren't in fact abused they had a certain you know fantasy not of
00:20:12.600abuse of say but but you you know a certain uncom unresolved or uncom kind of completed relationship
00:20:20.140with a parent that was being expressed maybe through a fantasy of abuse or sexuality etc now you can make
00:20:28.740of all that what you will i'm actually maybe surprising to some i'm more sympathetic towards freud
00:20:35.500than most every other person on the right wing but that's just me but he also complemented that
00:20:44.260with a a death drive and if i remember correctly i haven't read this in a number of years but there
00:20:53.840was 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
00:21:02.620like oh my you know you know how children are like you know they can obsess about a little stuffy or
00:21:08.080something um and uh he was crying because he lost the toy and the caregiver grabbed the toy from the
00:21:16.300the ground and put it back in his crib and then after a while the young child would himself throw
00:21:24.640the toy out of the crib and so what it was expressing was a like control it was a will to power even in
00:21:37.800destruction and even something like suicide i think often is a way of someone kind of finally gaining
00:21:48.780control you know i'm in control now i this i'm going out on my own terms i'm doing exactly what
00:21:56.060i want no matter the cost and so there there was a kind of will to power even towards destruction and
00:22:02.900so there are these competing energies it was almost like you know nietzsche's apollo and dionysus
00:22:09.340these these kind of like related and weirdly very similar gods they're both gods of music but but who
00:22:15.260were totally opposed one was a god of drunkenness and chaos and it's in madness and the other was a
00:22:21.540god of kind of form and illusion and artifice and so on and they're and they're kind of like mixing
00:22:27.540together i i think you know these are you know painting with broad strokes here but i think these
00:22:34.280things are very insightful but i i guess i would ask the zoomers i mean i understand their complaints
00:22:42.820about the end of the american dream and it's impossible to own a home and the jobs suck and
00:22:51.560the internet etc etc etc but i i i don't want to like give them let them off the hook or give them
00:23:00.980some cop-out like is there maybe there is a certain spiritual nihilistic drive towards death
00:23:10.860that's in conversation if you like with that drive towards life and fertility and overcoming
00:23:21.100and an advancement and goal setting that that these are kind of like in conversation together
00:23:29.860and what do you think about that yeah i think that's very interesting um one of my friends who
00:23:37.280is a zoomer and is one of the most agentic people that i know um he used to destroy his toys when he
00:23:44.700was a child like systematically pull them apart so um i think that there's something there and this idea
00:23:53.160of the suicide is kind of taking taking control of your own existence i think that there is also a
00:23:59.640way of reading that as a way as a kind of life-affirming action um so there there is something
00:24:08.420pathic about open aggression and destruction what's interesting about gen z is that they have spent so much
00:24:18.960of their lives mediated by screens and participating in the screen world seems to create an inward turn
00:24:28.360an internalization of aggression this would be most exemplified by girls like cutting themselves
00:24:36.140or anorexia girls tend to suffer more in general from these internalizing disorders but now boys are
00:24:45.660doing it as well right um and this the it's interesting to think about the interface of the
00:24:52.780screen in this sense right like uh just like the printing press kind of created the era of
00:24:57.940enlightenment and the idea of the individual and the concept of the possibility towards some sort of
00:25:04.160linear truth um we are living in a new paradigm and that's being facilitated by this interaction
00:25:11.700with screens that are live they're living surfaces and we have to project our imagination into them
00:25:19.500and we also receive all sorts of just completely stochastic nonsense into our minds without any narrative
00:25:28.120holding those impressions together and this these are very intrusive kinds of uh of experiences right
00:25:39.340and you have it just like you have to create a design and design a world where your body can
00:25:44.700can flourish you also have to take control of the mimetic landscape that you're within and the
00:25:53.000platforms that you're using right it's very very different to go for example onto substack and interact
00:25:57.380with ideas versus going on to twitter versus going on to tiktok um i don't think that lots of people don't
00:26:04.180have the literacy don't have the awareness they don't have uh the curiosity to go outside of what has just
00:26:10.860been given to them and then they complain that they don't like it right um um and can even spiral into
00:26:18.960a identity that's formed around resentment of course that is seems to be ubiquitous in the west
00:26:25.440and as a form of rot uh that seems to spread in cultures that have a lot of abundance right
00:26:32.520so the problem today is the abundance it's the super salient stimuli it's the impossibility of
00:26:41.020all the choices that we have around us and this need for like an affirmative stance is it is the
00:26:48.880difference between not making it through the filter or and making it through the filter um and that that's
00:26:54.680on the level of the individual life do you want to create something and have a legacy do you want to
00:26:59.280make something with your own spirit or do you want to do that and also produce a family both of these
00:27:06.260things are challenges today um for anyone but i think if you get past that threshold actually we live in a
00:27:13.480time of oh my god just like tremendous capacity to create like if you can be a creator the things that
00:27:23.080you can make the worlds that you can move have been asymmetrically um designed you know and that's
00:27:32.360that is that is the affordance of being a creator today so could i pop in a question for you raven real
00:27:42.200quick yeah of course um you were talking about the resent like uh resentful men and also about some of
00:27:50.900these like autistic leaning tech individuals i know a few of these people from school or work
00:27:57.660and they like they want a family they make enough money you know let's say they make 80 000 100 000 a
00:28:04.520year but they on some level they like want a woman who's gonna like you know in their words love them
00:28:11.000for them or the way they are but like the way they are is like obtrusive and in like a little bit
00:28:17.260repulsive like they don't know how to clean like be camped or like put together a good looking outfit
00:28:23.200and like i've tried to help these people like to varying degrees of success but i was wondering
00:28:29.980like what has like what do you do with them that seems to like motivate them out of video games and
00:28:35.840funko pops and into like getting out of the wardrobe
00:28:40.600yeah that sounds a bit like they need to internalize their anima um and and this is
00:28:48.240something that we as we mature into adults like it's so easy to just push the concepts that you
00:28:56.740have about the opposite sex onto them project onto them and to not internalize them in a productive
00:29:02.320way for your own personal development it's like oh i want i want a woman to care for me i want her to
00:29:07.460make me clean i want her to you know take make me look beautiful and that's what i don't want to
00:29:15.720do those things right and and somehow the idea of being loved or being desired or wanting someone to
00:29:22.260take part in your life is wrapped up in these projections but really at the end of the day
00:29:26.420it's trying to externalize something onto someone else that makes it their responsibility
00:29:32.260rather than your own so once again it's it's it's really about how to bring in that sense of
00:29:38.980empowerment from someone else's responsible to i am responsible i have control i'm the one who decides
00:29:47.940what my body looks like uh what how i look when i'm operating in the world that i respect myself
00:29:55.320enough to look at who i am and to think that i'm attractive you know that someone would be able to
00:30:00.120love me because i care for myself you know um and yeah it really depends when a client comes in how
00:30:08.560far they are kind of in that in that process but a lot of it is you know we do have different parts
00:30:14.440of ourselves and we can be very mature and developed in certain aspects and then especially when it comes
00:30:19.780to sexuality and relationships we're still quite infantile um and so we i in a very non-judgmental way
00:30:27.760we go into those parts and we listen to them and we hear what they have to say and even just the
00:30:33.900process of witnessing these things in a very non-judgmental container and i think for as well
00:30:39.220for me being a woman being able to offer that can really release a lot of the inner tension
00:30:43.880and that produces energy and that energy can be channeled into higher level beliefs that actually
00:30:51.980motivates someone to change because this is a lot of it is when you've lived a certain way and
00:30:57.800you've kind of entrenched certain beliefs especially if you've gone onto the internet and formed an
00:31:02.220identity around these beliefs you have to be open to changing yourself and overcoming these
00:31:08.080inner tensions and taking that energy and producing a new identity out of that and a new story for who you
00:31:13.340are and it's much easier if you have high openness in your personality yeah but if you have low
00:31:20.000openness then you have to move more slowly um and really create the uh the motivational structure
00:31:28.000to do something that's that's difficult which is to change right like i've had these conversations
00:31:35.440with some of these guys where i like explain to them that like they would be uh you know they would
00:31:41.300have better success if they weren't 50 pounds overweight and if they like you know went to a barber
00:31:46.960regularly and like these these types of conversations but it's almost like uh like you said
00:31:53.400like almost like they want to offload it onto like it's a woman's responsibility to like just take them
00:31:58.280as they are it's like there should be no effort necessary on their part when i explain to them that's
00:32:05.080like that's not that's nonsense thinking that's childish like you're gonna get in what you put in
00:32:11.140like that's where the disconnect comes it's like well you can come to the gym with me like three
00:32:15.700days a week and you know you'll see results but usually that's where the separation happens
00:32:20.560i'd rather play counter-strike with my funko pop and like like work at this in a sense
00:32:28.200yeah yeah i mean and i and maybe this does go back to this i this idea of what what is the
00:32:37.780existential container that we're living in now because the i want to have a family it's like
00:32:46.440well what is that really serving is that just some sort of weak illusion that you have a weak desire
00:32:53.540you know because everyone else has it or you have some sort of concept from childhood about what a
00:33:00.220family ought to be and you've identified with that in some way or is it something actually deep and
00:33:06.080motivating where you're willing to over actually overcome things to go towards that thing and
00:33:11.580usually when we're in the pits and we're trying to get out we need something more than mere illusion
00:33:19.000to get us out of that place mere fantasy it needs to be something that is existentially motivating
00:33:26.080uh and you know curiosity i think about the world and about the time that we're living in today
00:33:31.020is one of these things um when you're looking around and seeing so much decay and chaos and madness
00:33:37.920and realizing that people are going into these evolutionary sinkholes you know and that you could
00:33:43.920be one of them then it starts to reframe the context you know when i think about my own life i'm just
00:33:52.020like 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
00:34:01.140attribute it to myself on some level that somehow i've been able to find my way through this entangled
00:34:07.540landscape of competing ideas and values uh and i think like everyone in this room probably can identify
00:34:15.680with carving their own path and creating their own worldview and some of us have that spirit in us
00:34:25.180and other people don't seem to have the will and i don't know at the end of the day why
00:34:34.560kind of spiritual power seems to be distributed so unevenly i don't have well
00:34:42.540well well i would push back on that a little bit like i don't i don't think in the the history of
00:34:48.820humanity most all people were you know generating their own worldview or something like that i i think
00:34:59.300that was something that was given to them and maybe it's too much to ask uh of these people
00:35:10.120that that you know that they become you know their own mini nietzsche or something i i think you know
00:35:19.720maybe the right question to ask is like why why aren't we why aren't elite institutions or just
00:35:30.520institutions let's say able to convey something to the public like what where is that breaking down
00:35:39.340um and and here i i think even like really basic things you know like why why aren't the zoomers more
00:35:52.920patriotic or something you know what why is the only football player they know or care about
00:36:00.280colin kaepernick or something you know like what why why are they even going out and protesting over
00:36:06.640gaza i mean i i have my own opinion on that but like why are they why are they so unhappy why don't
00:36:14.220they just kind of get along and you know and maybe it's because our institutions you know it's like the
00:36:21.740the liberals now are hysterical in an almost freudian sense about saving democracy from this
00:36:30.800threat that they can't even quite articulate you know trumpism it's fascist it's stupid it's it's
00:36:41.160it it it has no decorum it's on it's going to cut taxes for the rich it's this weird like
00:36:50.640contradictory blob that they fear it's racist white racist in the rural areas or whatever
00:36:56.660um jsex it's this weird contradictory blob that they fear but they're not really interrogating
00:37:04.340what democracy is or means like it's these people are in charge of the institutions and it's really on
00:37:15.880them to corral the masses and if they're failing at that it's their fault on some level like
00:37:26.400they aren't articulating an american dream for the 21st century that really works that
00:37:33.560gets average people thinking that they're part of something good and i don't know that that's kind
00:37:43.020of how i see it i i i react a little bit against any sort of individualism and so on i guess precisely
00:37:53.520because i am an elitist like it's i it's too much to ask for mike my neighbors or something to like
00:38:02.080confront the crisis and generate a way out or you know all of this stuff that nietzsche tried and and
00:38:09.960failed and it killed him i mean i'm not going to demand that of people i i think that we need to
00:38:16.300demand that of institutions that there there has to be a big lie as it were that can motivate an
00:38:26.320illusion that can motivate many people many people who aren't very intelligent and they're the fact
00:38:34.340that they're failing at that i i think is really the key issue that even explains the existence of trump
00:38:41.520and the persistence of trump and in the 20th century the united states really did excel at that
00:38:50.360there were problems along the way there were breakdowns like the what we think of now is the
00:38:55.80060s a very long period of time um but they still were able to give people a sense of you're part of
00:39:06.260something exceptional you're special you have a mission in this world uh and so on and the fact
00:39:12.980that the right wing even even like the the touchstone of america first i think is fundamentally lame
00:39:24.260in the sense that it's not really anything it's just like i don't want to give more money to ukraine
00:39:31.120or you know we don't want a military base in asia or or missiles in poland because who care it's like
00:39:38.500this retreat from any sort of world mission and there's nothing but you you retreat and you go back
00:39:48.540to like america putting america first and you find that there's nothing you know that you you look at
00:39:54.420the actual america or the actual lives that these people are living like marjorie taylor green's
00:40:00.540constituents and what is this americanism outside of maybe going to a mega church on sunday but most
00:40:08.820of them don't do that what is their life outside of like visiting strip malls and paying their mortgage
00:40:16.080and watching a football game more religiously than they attend a church service like there's it's like
00:40:25.180this retreat from america as a world mission which which had high watermarks in the w george w bush era
00:40:31.740in uh the 1950s and mid 60s with kennedy etc maybe there's a high a sort of sort of high watermark in
00:40:41.440the 80s um and like the fact that we don't have that and so the big critique coming from the right is like
00:40:53.140don't do this we don't like it we should keep that money isn't that kind of pathetic isn't that like
00:41:01.000an expression of the problem there you go yeah i mean i really i i totally understand where you're
00:41:08.580coming from and you know i think part of it is like even the so-called elites uh have no fucking
00:41:15.520idea really what's going on you know i think it's a it's a really exposing moment the contradictions
00:41:22.200in the narratives you know the motivations of people seem to be quite about selfish and and
00:41:28.980narcissistic um people losing a sense of the scope of the responsibility of america as an empire
00:41:38.440i 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
00:41:47.120definitely given me much deeper understanding that america plays a significant role in peacekeeping
00:41:55.860in europe um and there needs to be a presence here of americans and all over the world right
00:42:04.840americans are isolated from the globe in many respects uh even ones who are well educated uh
00:42:14.720because it really takes setting setting yourself uh onto the soil of another of another continent and
00:42:21.500seeing like holy shit there are there are other people here and their safety and their capacity to
00:42:28.060participate in the market and bring prosperity to their people is dependent on an infrastructure that is
00:42:33.780preserved by americans um and the global order is protected and preserved by americans and people are
00:42:44.940completely lost uh in terms of being able to understand the implication of that being uh that
00:42:52.020falling into decay i think it's yeah and isn't make america great again ironic like and it's and it's not
00:42:59.540not like donald trump was actually an isolationist you know if you look at what he did during
00:43:06.580his uh time in office and maybe what he would do if he gets back in uh you know uh the white house
00:43:16.460will 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
00:43:23.440it's not really about like what actually happened it's it's about the logical implications and
00:43:30.920consequences of the rhetoric and make america great again if you if you take its
00:43:38.160its catch words and theory seriously it is leading towards isolationism and just saying no so make america
00:43:49.040great great great again it's really the end of america you know what what they what they're pointing
00:43:54.860back to in terms of like some 20th century high watermark of americanism is when america was on the
00:44:02.940move america was expanding nato america was you know mono a mono with the soviet union and a nuclear
00:44:13.600standoff america was uh hollywood was building movie theaters and bringing american content to europe and
00:44:24.780around the world and so there's this weird contradiction or a kind of paradox where they
00:44:32.600they want to make america great again and they want to like relive this half-remembered dream of
00:44:38.9201962 or something i don't know um but then they more accurately what maga represents really is the
00:44:49.120end of america it's like the full withdrawal from the world from being consequential in the world
00:44:57.900from feeling like you have a world mission like there's a charge that you have to complete
00:45:04.420and it's weird in my old age i i remember when i was just out of college i would to the degree that
00:45:13.640i had any influence i would just you know this is pre-blogging and all this kind of stuff i would just
00:45:19.400make fun of george w bush um i hated this this idea of you know um there's a america represents a force
00:45:27.900of freedom that is attractive to all humans on the planet there everyone is is a kind of
00:45:33.600monotheistic freedom lover just waiting to be released and america is that that like designated
00:45:41.660force that brings it to them i i hated this and and it's it's something that's kind of easy to debunk
00:45:47.580and point out the hypocrisy or something but i almost have a certain appreciation for that type of rhetoric
00:45:55.360as i get older because it was it was heady and idealistic if also reckless and in need of tempering
00:46:07.300and what maga represents now is a kind of like evaporation of any sort of idealism you know it's like
00:46:18.040the everyone in charge of institutions are evil satanist pedophiles um we need to just keep all our money
00:46:27.160here don't do anything for the world uh it's it's it's very i i find like not that not that trump
00:46:37.040himself will actually enact any of this stuff but if you take the logic seriously it's it's actually
00:46:45.500deeply depressing and and so it's like the critique of liberalism is somehow worse
00:46:53.340and i guess that's maybe explains my own support for joe biden but but anyway that those are my
00:47:01.620that's my kind of perspective on it why i can't really ever i i can't really ever jump on the maga
00:47:09.480bandwagon ever again and and it's and it's not for any reasons of like getting you know lambasted in
00:47:16.740the press or that's superficial it's it's more of like that that bandwagon is taking you nowhere
00:47:24.680basically it's it's taking you off a cliff or it's taking you to like a desert
00:47:30.140and i i would much i i think there's there's like a desperate need for something that offers
00:47:39.980some sort of heady idealism you know it's like to quote walter uh sobichek or something it's like
00:47:48.700say what you will about national socialism at least it was an ethos like these men are nihilists
00:47:54.020like that's a very funny line from the big lambowski just become one of my favorite movies but
00:47:59.860it's it's it's really actually insightful you know like there's kind of nothing worse than being a
00:48:06.880nihilist there's nothing worse than trying to reduce idealism or reduce the libido to put it
00:48:13.700maybe in terms they're more applicable to to your way of thinking
00:48:17.740yeah well it's a very powerful meme flex what you're speaking about and it does seem to be
00:48:25.280something that many adolescents move through and in the reaction to the hegemony that they face
00:48:32.140you know i mean you went through it i went through my own phase with it many of us
00:48:36.660kind of go through this phase of reaction to the existing power structures and i think
00:48:41.900that is one of the rites of passage of the youth to reject and react to existing narratives uh i think
00:48:53.040today this is extremely the the the kind of possibility for being caught in a very powerful
00:49:00.860memeplex has just accelerated because of the types of technology that we have and the way that it can
00:49:07.340really integrate into our identities and also be weaponized for political political gains uh obviously
00:49:16.540there's also been a hollowing out of the american spirit and then what do you have to pull what
00:49:27.080leverage do you really have to bring people into an idealistic narrative about the role of america
00:49:32.820without there being some sort of you know catastrophic event or you know something that really motivates
00:49:37.980people but as we can see now even war like active war happening in the world is is not sufficient to
00:49:45.340motivate people either um so yeah i would say this nihilism is a very powerful state um and getting out of
00:49:56.360it really takes an affirmation of existence as it is and the desire for something invigorating even in the face of nihilism
00:50:07.940it is part of the process to go through nihilism it just it's so difficult to actually overcome it
00:50:17.680and now that you can galvanize people and utilize them for i mean for anything really for consumption
00:50:27.620uh for votes for donations um it's much harder for people to see that there's any any reason uh to move
00:50:38.320outside of that so i do think that this is a moment for a different kind of elitism this isn't the
00:50:45.920elitism of the existing classes because i think if you look at the rot in institutions it's not just
00:50:53.380about being born into a wealthy family or going to a prestigious college there's something else that
00:51:00.260defines being an elite today and it seems to be the capacity to get through this nihilistic stage
00:51:06.520and affirm existence and move towards some sort of telos some sort of state um a possibility of the
00:51:17.800future and to put effort into it and and will even when you don't know what will happen right uh i also
00:51:26.280think that american consumerist culture has really bred this idea that you know you know uh i remember my
00:51:34.400grandmother would say it i pay i say right this idea that if you're buying something you're guaranteed
00:51:41.880to get it and this is a very corrupt cycle if you generalize this outside of markets and services
00:51:51.660right yes if you buy a consumer product you don't want to break yes if you get someone to come and
00:51:58.540clean your house you don't want them to stand you up but for all of these bigger existential
00:52:04.100idealistic ideas you need something you need to be motivated by something more than the guarantee
00:52:11.520that you're going to get what you want there needs to be something um so there's just a
00:52:17.640clashing and colliding of these different meme plexes coming together and the malaise of a culture
00:52:24.300that's quite isolated um from the the rest of the world and the kind of media ecology that we're
00:52:32.420living in that isolates and and maybe even liberalism like if liberalism were a you know
00:52:40.540fundamental i ideal you know in the american 20th century it's it's kind of devolved into mere
00:52:47.900safetyism yes you know like we're and and this is where i am you know i've changed and evolved in a
00:52:57.560lot of ways but i i will always be a nietzschean and it's like danger is more important than safety
00:53:06.160and the fact that liberalism we're not again we're not even like there's no we've evaporated
00:53:14.800any sort of idealism about liberalism even the george w bush era kind of like um every human
00:53:21.960heart quest for freedom or something look that's kind of dumb but yeah it's something it's it's some
00:53:28.120sort of message or mission and now liberalism is reduced to just mere safetyism so it's like
00:53:35.040you need to be safe in your transgender experimentation you need to be safe as a jewish
00:53:45.680zionist on campus like you can't hear those mean old words and you you can't get into a shouting
00:53:51.980match with someone oh my that's just the you know the worst you know you need to have job security even
00:53:58.360you need to have all it's like we're we're we're constantly questing towards that and that's fake
00:54:07.120because the ultimate safety is death you are really safe in your grave or in your urn no one is going to
00:54:16.020harm you and there's there's we should be promoting danger you know they have to be balanced obviously i i'm
00:54:26.560not going to go out and not wear a seat belt and just slam on i'm thinking of that seat for fight
00:54:33.440club of like just pressing the accelerator and seeing what happens i'm not going to do that obviously
00:54:38.940it's a metaphor but like we need to be thinking about ways of increasing danger as opposed to
00:54:47.640increasing safety and you know i've i've used this i've said this uh i maybe a few times in this um
00:54:53.940broadcast and i i've i've said it with with friends like think about the gay movement and its trajectory
00:55:01.260at one point being homosexual was in fact dangerous you were an outsider and as an outsider you might
00:55:14.760actually be able to offer some sort of deeper insight into society or you might be able to
00:55:21.400do something that the insiders to the world can't do there there's a certain privilege to being
00:55:31.260oppressed or being marginalized or being taboo there's a certain privilege in that and i think
00:55:39.680society needs that energy to move forward but as homosexuality and here i would just say any sort of
00:55:49.200non-normative sexuality becomes safety eyes it it it's it's it's a way a form of nihilism like at one
00:55:59.960point like oscar wilde's suffering um certainly you know in some ways self-inflicted suffering we have to
00:56:08.880remember he brought the lawsuit that sent him to jail but anyway his suffering was meaningful
00:56:14.620and compare that to 115 years later and like gary who works at a corporation and has a good health
00:56:29.420plan and wants to go to the gay pride festival you know it's like oh hey guys i got my you know rainbow
00:56:38.600cake together and let's all go out and celebrate homosexuality i think the mayor is going to be
00:56:44.160there maybe a senator it's it's it's lame it's it's no longer dangerous it's no longer critiquing
00:56:52.280society it's no longer contradicting society in any way shape or form and so you're safe to be gay but
00:57:00.140all that means is that gayness has no like it's evaporated of any sort of like meaning that that
00:57:09.960it in some ways it had you're just now another corporate drone who has a particular sexual
00:57:17.160preference um as opposed to jim who works in the other cubicle or sally who works in the other cubicle
00:57:25.480it's it's just it's evaporated of all meaning by liberalism and the kind of bourgeois ethic now you
00:57:33.420can become a kind of heterosexual and that that's ultimately going to end homosexuality it's this
00:57:40.420weird contradiction or paradox but that's where it goes so it's like in this quest for safety
00:57:46.360we're we're ultimately kind of neutralizing and destroying any sort of identity or way of thinking
00:57:55.340that might actually have meaning like wasn't it kind of cool to go and see like in in a repressed
00:58:03.640society wasn't it sort of cool to like go on a late night not tell you know your your boss or or
00:58:12.820your family or maybe your wife where you're going and go to see like a erotic striptease act
00:58:20.380there was something you know you're kind it's subversive it's titillating it's dangerous
00:58:25.020it's it's contradicting the norm but when that is embraced by the system and when that's when
00:58:35.360that's become normal it's now evaporated you know there's there's nothing dangerous about
00:58:43.240pornography it's in fact boring in in fact you you can't you don't get any it if you understand
00:58:51.560what it's like it's it's constricting the libido if anything it's not like offering and an exciting
00:59:00.720and dangerous if new world even if it's one that you ultimately reject it's no longer doing that so
00:59:07.100it's like we've just in our bourgeois liberal quest for safety we have destroyed even subversion
00:59:16.260i mean i i think this is again why i just i can never be a liberal because it's it's like there
00:59:23.800there needs to be that that like contrast there there needs to be some sort of battle between
00:59:31.220normativity and the dionysian you could say the the the um the the the excessive the dangerous the
00:59:41.400the weird there has to be that battle and liberalism is so all-encompassing that it encompasses even that
00:59:47.840and thus ruins it and turns everything into some bourgeois preference
00:59:52.860yeah i mean absolutely the way that we talk about this and in my intellectual communities is the need
01:00:01.280for the tantric and the sutric divide so this comes out of adriana buddhism this idea of the sutra is you
01:00:10.060know you live by your set of rules you live by a set of dogmas you show up with a certain personality
01:00:16.040in public and in society and those are that's the law of the land and the tantric spaces are tight
01:00:26.000containers that are only there for the initiated and they're only there for the people who actually
01:00:31.640have the balls to go and seek them out and that's where you engage in transgressive activity that's
01:00:38.560where you engage with other people who can actually handle those types of environments and that's when
01:00:45.720you go into sex drugs you know dark elements of the kind of human animal and learn how to be in
01:00:55.480relationship to those powerful sources of energy and of course those membranes have been broken as
01:01:02.600you're speaking to that and the the kind of tantric containers of sex and even of drug use right this
01:01:12.740kind of psychedelic renaissance in a way is also taking drug use which has been contained and
01:01:19.260suppressed in the sutric aspects of society and making it a therapy yeah making that everybody
01:01:26.060doesn't elon even elon must like promotes drug use as it makes you more productive something or like
01:01:32.980it may like you have all these anxieties and you can take this drug and it will kind of like
01:01:38.420even things out and you can be a good corporate drone so even like transsexuality or transvestitism or
01:01:48.060whatever that's existed for a very long time and it it's exist i mean i i'm sounding kind of like a
01:01:54.480liberal here but i'm not like it's existed for a very long time it's existed within a religious context
01:02:00.040to some degree it's it's been able to kind of capture or express certain types of energies and
01:02:07.960even drug use and transvestitism we've ruined we've turned that into like oh good now you're a woman now
01:02:16.720okay get back to work you know or like drug use oh yeah drugs can really help you get back to work
01:02:23.620we've learned this you know as opposed to like taking a crazy acid trip and going to another
01:02:29.300universe which i don't recommend but it's still sort of cool you know like we we've evaporated
01:02:38.420everything um and i i just i don't know it just it kind of there's something there's a there's a
01:02:48.000certain type of i guess nietzsche would say it's like a passive nihilism at the heart of the bourgeoisie
01:02:54.540and at the heart of the middle class and as the bourgeoisie dominate western europe and america and
01:03:01.820australia and increasingly dominating the world they're going to really destroy everything they
01:03:07.980there is nothing that the bourgeois spirit can't absorb and ruin
01:03:13.700yeah it's interesting though it's when you look at um where fertility is dropping it's in this class
01:03:21.440you know the very very rich and the very very poor are still reproducing so i think that this this
01:03:28.440mentality will lead itself to its ultimate end which is death uh it's just a matter of patience i guess
01:03:38.280um because these people who want safety and security in their lives above everything else
01:03:45.440want everyone to be included don't want to have any friction they just want to be given things
01:03:51.240guaranteed and have their identities reinforced and never have to change these are not the people
01:03:57.140who can even risk the idea of of pregnancy or relationship or having a family even that is too
01:04:05.080stressful to cope with um yeah so it it's uh yeah these these people are not moving on um into the future
01:04:15.120and 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
01:04:23.500i think it's it's a pronatalism is for people who already want to have children and need to be encouraged
01:04:30.260to have more children and to fortify their family cultures so that their children can be strong in
01:04:38.920the face of all of these mimetic contagions around them and and that's the kind of thing that if this
01:04:46.340is the spirit that you're called to you can foster that type of family culture and community around you
01:04:51.920um and yeah it's just it's the the ascent of the middle class has just been a byproduct of of
01:05:01.740prosperity um and of of capitalism and markets functioning and an industrial model you know the
01:05:08.340the wealthy needed workers but we're moving into an era where that will not be the case they will not
01:05:14.360need large bureaucracies of people shuffling papers around and hr managing you know microaggressions
01:05:22.980between people because all of that mundane work is going to be automated and those people no longer
01:05:29.260be useful uh and and at the end of the day i don't think the hyper rich are going to be all that
01:05:34.520sympathetic to the interests of these people once they are no longer useful uh for for labor um
01:05:42.600so it's an interesting time that we're moving through because these ideas are really being
01:05:48.340pushed to their behavioral extremes and i think the internet is also accelerating that process and
01:05:57.160sterilizing the capacity for these people to actually bring their gene plex into the future
01:06:05.120which will yeah i mean it will filter them out it will um where do you think we're going with all
01:06:12.000this because you know there's um there's a famous book by um eric hoffman uh called the religious
01:06:19.260shall inherit the earth and he he mentions that you know within a society the more it's not even
01:06:27.740necessarily more religious it's just more kind of fundamentalist are out reading the less fundamentalist
01:06:35.620so evangelical christians have three kids and episcopalians have 1.2 kids and so they will
01:06:45.480ultimately win it might take a few generations but it's it's happening between societies it's also
01:06:52.400happening so religious fundamentalist or like primitive cultures are are are out reading um more secular
01:07:01.620cultures um there's um there's there's also some bad things about this like um you know in many ways
01:07:08.800we're breeding for um uh unhealth like we're breeding for heart disease we're breeding for criminality
01:07:17.880like there there are a lot of bad things that happen there but um i don't know even those people who
01:07:25.060are kind of psychotic and dumb at at least are in touch with the libido which is something
01:07:33.840yeah it's something it's some sort of life force energy um yeah there's nothing more libidinal than
01:07:42.480committing a crime yeah it's true i mean it's interesting how the mind you know mind fits into
01:07:48.700this right if you have enough mind to kind of repress your instincts um and you know conscientiousness
01:07:56.620to integrate into the virtual kind of aspects of our of our society then you can effectively sterilize
01:08:04.780yourself um and if you're very intelligent especially if you are disagreeable um you can really
01:08:12.600you can use your libido you can harness your animal and channel it into a form of competition
01:08:20.420that allows for you to have tremendous amount of asymmetrical success right but these people in the
01:08:26.940middle who have just enough mind to inhibit themselves uh and to distance themselves from the animal
01:08:32.760end up kind of the most fucked because um they they have cut off their relationship to
01:08:40.880to the body and to this kind of aggressive and primitive force of nature that just wants you to
01:08:48.440fuck and to kill or you know to to be this ape that we are um and yeah it's a domesticated class
01:08:57.980a very domesticated class of people um and within the context of an industrialized factory-based kind of
01:09:06.480uh architecture right this is you can even be seen in the way that the spaces are designed and built
01:09:13.740that this was the form that was domesticating people but there is still a streak of wildness
01:09:21.560in in like you're saying these kind of these these criminal ghetto populations and also the populations
01:09:30.160of people who are competing at very very high levels um these people also have a lot of the lot of
01:09:38.000libido you know um and they do fuck a lot a lot of them do um these very successful men uh in in bed as
01:09:49.800well so yeah i don't know it's uh i i really think about this as like a waiting game you know sometimes
01:09:59.160i think about what's it going to look like when the joe bidens of the world are gone what's it going
01:10:03.160to look like even when my when my parents are gone right um the world will have a very different
01:10:09.080landscape who will be young what would those people be like and who who would be the parents of those
01:10:15.200children um and obviously there's still going to be a lot of this population that we're talking about
01:10:23.780still around for a while especially with life extension technologies um and biotech right uh there's
01:10:32.200going to be this attempt to prolong the existence um i think about it as kind of using technology to prop up
01:10:40.920the corpse of of our civilization and in the meantime there just needs to be at least this is where i've
01:10:50.160come i don't know you don't have to agree with my position here but it's about maintaining some vitalist
01:10:56.940in-group culture that can get past this time and come out the other side and potentially you know be the
01:11:08.520grounds of a new era of civilization a new paradigm possibly uh there's lots of other contingent
01:11:15.940factors but this is once again one of these things where it's not about a guarantee it's just about an
01:11:20.940orienting force um a telos you know it's about moving towards something uh and also having an
01:11:30.580intergenerational approach because demographics when you look at demographics and you really think through
01:11:35.580it even past your own life the world really starts to look very different and then you can think about
01:11:44.000okay what were my what were my grandchildren be looking at if demographics is is the main factor
01:11:49.980and all else being equal who are they going to be competing with what kinds of cultures will there be
01:11:54.920who is going to be technophilic who's going to actually know how to leverage the
01:12:00.200instruments that have been left behind by by the previous generations right the people who have that
01:12:08.620capacity are going to have a lot of potential power in the world um so it's like preserving things to
01:12:15.700the point where they can be utilized in the future by a technophilic vitalist elite yeah
01:12:24.540um this is all this is a fascinating disgusting yeah walter you you raised your hand would you like
01:12:32.220to yeah this is well bismarck guys hey i had a question for raven um i i was uh so what if the
01:12:39.240average iq is just too high you know we're all familiar with the flint effect we're all familiar with
01:12:43.900uh you know how how consistently executing every year like the one percent you know most dangerous
01:12:49.820and most violent uh you know contingent of our population has uh radically decreased violent crime
01:12:55.860rates throughout the years what if we've sort of created a type of person who is just so
01:13:00.760kind of sheltered and is so focused on optimizing uh i mean like there's just kind of like the
01:13:08.160optimization impulse in and of itself like like like what if what if eugenics is actually bad what if
01:13:14.040you sort of need a population that has an average iq of 88 or 90 just to uh not destroy itself in
01:13:19.760a way because in a sense when you when you get that sort of middle class culture that's always
01:13:23.320optimizing and that that will promote republicanism and will you know promote like a constant increase
01:13:28.860of wealth at a certain point uh nobody's gonna vote to make things more difficult for themselves or to
01:13:35.920to get into a conflict i mean i i like maybe we need to look at things like democratic peace theory from
01:13:41.760the other perspective like maybe maybe you actually want to sort of warlike and violent and and
01:13:47.120uh i guess sort of savage savage species because that's just going to you know prevent people from
01:13:54.500making these really dysgenic long-term decisions where they're just kind of like dying out and and
01:13:58.960um 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
01:14:04.880nrx talking points about you know just optimizing for eugenics at the expense of everything else and i'm
01:14:09.800almost wondering if we're looking at it from completely the wrong direction because maybe
01:14:12.680when you you go down that path as a civilization you just inevitably end up optimizing everything
01:14:19.740for pleasure and optimizing for i guess creating like vr pods where you know the entire species will
01:14:25.780just die out in a in a simulation to their specifications right i mean that's in a lot of
01:14:29.540science fiction a lot of people say that's you know why certain um uh uh you know like why we never
01:14:34.920encountered like another alien species before because it's not even that they'll wipe each other out in a
01:14:39.380nuclear war it's that any any alien species would just invent virtual reality right and sort of escape
01:14:44.000into that as a put like like that's much more easy than colonizing the universe or whatever so i i don't
01:14:48.520know like maybe you can still have a much higher iq population that uh you know they can still achieve
01:14:54.760great things great art great literature great you know uh accomplishments but maybe you need just the
01:14:59.820average man to be kind of a grug to be kind of an idiot because i mean if you look at the roman empire
01:15:04.080you look at any of you know the great civilizations in our past uh i mean it seems if you look at the
01:15:09.640flint effect and if you look at other factors i mean the average roman was probably quite brutish it
01:15:15.060probably looked like you know the average resident of detroit today in terms of it you know just the
01:15:19.560abstract reasoning ability in terms of violent crime rate i mean it was probably you know a pretty
01:15:23.920miserable existence whether to be a common person there but you know you still have the caesars you
01:15:27.700still have the ciceros i mean you have that aristocratic class that could do something different but
01:15:32.080maybe you just need that certain level of stupidity in the common man uh maybe that's actually a good
01:15:37.040thing so i just wanted to submit that because like you know we're talking about vitalism we're talking
01:15:40.100about how do you how do you stop people from just optimizing away like basically turning themselves
01:15:44.000into elves right like if you look at like war of the worlds i think um h.g wills kind of predicted
01:15:47.980this you know he sees humanity diverging into eloi and morlocks i see this as kind of becoming
01:15:52.160eloi we're sort of living longer you know these days the sensibility among a lot of zoomers is that
01:15:56.880you're not an adult until you're 25 um you know like we're certainly just much softer i mean if you just
01:16:01.800look at people's faces if you look at a 30 year old today compared to like 50 years ago it's just
01:16:06.020night and day um we're just like softening ourselves to a level i i wonder if if that just
01:16:12.600precludes any any sort of ability for uh like like having that vitality so i just wanted to submit that
01:16:17.960to both raven and to richard spencer and see see what you guys think about that
01:16:21.080yeah raven you can go first well i i really love the flip there that's it's fantastic and i guess
01:16:30.780it's in a way kind of what we're describing if we think you know two three generations if we continue
01:16:36.420to have high fertility in the upper classes and high fertility in the lower classes and the middle
01:16:41.340class basically breed themselves out of the population um where we will end up with this kind
01:16:47.820uh this difference especially uh because you know the the upper classes are not they're not as large
01:16:55.300as the lower classes to begin with and then they also don't have as many children so we kind of will
01:17:00.920end up with the stratified culture um and it's an interesting thought experiment to consider whether
01:17:09.780or not that is better for vitalism you know increasing the the vitalism of the world and in a way i think
01:17:17.000i definitely can imagine a future where that is in some sense better for human vitality because
01:17:23.700the humans that don't have the capacity to interact with the high highly abstract environment of the elite
01:17:31.340um they will live a much more primitive life a much more embodied life life
01:17:38.920of of of our ancestors in a kind of tangible tactile world uh and i mean hopefully that would
01:17:46.320help men have higher testosterone levels and actually just engage in kind of the processes of
01:17:52.920the animal human and maybe that will cause more territoriality and violence you know at the at the
01:17:59.960edges of different tribes and maybe that will mean different kind of mating dynamics that
01:18:06.080you know liberals wouldn't like very much or whatever but in terms of living a vital human life
01:18:15.340um i think it's possible that that that would actually be the case and then the elites would i mean
01:18:22.260they're just going to live in their city states anyways so i don't think they're going to be very much
01:18:27.540they're going to be bothered very much by the human animal um just kind of existing in their own
01:18:33.100little enclaves because the kind of asymmetrical power that will exist in that world will be so
01:18:38.820dramatic that you know the human animal would be no threat to you know a highly speciated um elite
01:18:46.220group that's been using you know genetic modification and all sorts of other forms of technology to
01:18:51.120enhance their own capabilities um and i don't know space faring or maybe it's the gnostic thing like
01:18:57.980maybe it is about traveling to new realms maybe that's what we will select for uh i'm not sure
01:19:04.240there's there's different ideas about what it actually means to ascend uh as a population into
01:19:11.880the new a new realm um but yeah i i'm definitely going to think about that more because it's a very
01:19:18.240interesting idea well in in archaeofuturism guillaume fey suggested a a sort of bifurcated society
01:19:28.320where you would you would have a enforced primitivism in a way so we we we give up on
01:19:41.020the kind of middle class dream and we move towards we're going to make sure that you're able to have
01:19:50.960like a village and an organic farm and a temple in the center of it and lots of room to run and play and
01:20:01.600you know have fun and explore and hunt and all that kind of stuff and that can be enveloped by
01:20:10.320an elite class that is pursuing you know higher levels of existence maybe in a in a gnostic in a
01:20:19.660knowing gnostic sense um or you know even in a in a sense of genetic modification or something like
01:20:28.580that i i i'll just admit my own sort of reactionary conservative that a lot of that i'm a lot of that
01:20:40.040some of that stuff kind of does rub me the wrong way to be honest but uh nevertheless uh if it could
01:20:47.480be done at least consciously and seriously it it could have beneficial effects um and but maybe this
01:20:55.760is where we need to go and in that bifurcated society would kind of eliminate the bourgeoisie which
01:21:03.020is the fundamental problem and yeah i mean i i think walt bismarck's you know criticisms of of wn and and so
01:21:14.860on is is uh they're appreciated in the sense that it's not so much like white nationalism or like the
01:21:24.660neo-nazis or or whatever those types of people who you know wave flags and are are really kind of gross
01:21:32.260it's it's it's more of a of a kind of refined white nationalism where it is a sort of safetyism in itself
01:21:41.240it is you know whites are good because we don't commit crimes and whites are good because we're you know
01:21:49.960happy little consumer consumers basically and that's our justification we want a world more like that
01:21:58.200and i i have certain sympathies towards that but i i don't know i i do fundamentally reject that and
01:22:06.220we need to think about this stuff in it in a different way
01:22:09.320walt do you have any response yeah i mean i i fully agree and i would just say you know if you
01:22:19.340were to take an average classical roman and drop them in the you know middle of kansas or something
01:22:24.680i think uh i think that they would be disgusted by where we've gone they would think that we are
01:22:30.800way too soft we're way too conflict averse and uh i think that a lot of modern day wns would probably
01:22:36.920look at them and they'd see like a dindu basically you know um and i i think that we've lost sort of
01:22:43.140just i mean the desire for conquest and the the i i guess willingness to to sort of go there
01:22:49.340you know without even thinking about it too hard i mean i think a big problem is we think too much
01:22:53.460these days uh we're sort of trapped in our i mean this is something you talk about with embodiment
01:22:57.300i mean uh i think that just that sort of like visceral impact like when somebody insults you to
01:23:01.680just like put your fist in in his face i mean like that's that's just something we've sort of lost and
01:23:05.960that's uh there isn't i mean there's an extent to which you still sort of have that vitality in our
01:23:11.640underclass um but we don't really appreciate them and i'm not necessarily suggesting that we should but
01:23:16.700it's it's more um it's more like you want that impulse in just like the sort of common
01:23:22.080middle-class man and i think maybe we need like an average iq of 90 uh in order to get that back
01:23:27.820so i mean maybe you know in in that vein brazilification isn't the worst thing in the world
01:23:31.860or i mean like uh you know like i not to be too uh i guess controversial here but i mean i i think that
01:23:39.960we just need to look at a lot of the assumptions that we've all sort of developed collectively
01:23:43.680you know thinking about eugenics and thinking about the path forward as a civilization and just think
01:23:48.600what is really the biggest threat to us and i think that's i mean basically everybody just
01:23:53.560losing their vitality because they're sitting around jerking off all day or they're they just
01:23:56.780don't want to go outside because entertainment is too good and i don't think that people will ever
01:24:01.260vote that way i don't think that people will ever voluntaristically i mean like it takes an
01:24:06.060extraordinary amount of willpower even for a very agentic person to you know like quit these
01:24:11.100addictive dopamine traps to get out of these skinner boxes right it's extraordinarily difficult
01:24:15.440and uh for like a midwit who has just been raised in this incentive structure i mean like imagine
01:24:20.960zoomers and especially gen alpha i mean you know they grow up especially with covid and everything i
01:24:25.900mean like they're just inside all the time surrounded by hardcore porn at their fingertips surrounded by
01:24:30.220you know uh immersive like virtual reality adjacent experiences at this point um it's it's tremendously
01:24:36.520worrying and i feel like this is actually our biggest sort of challenge as a civilization right
01:24:42.880now is figuring out how to get rid of those dopamine traps and how to get young men especially
01:24:47.960because young women are a bit more obedient they'll always sort of you know i guess kind of follow the
01:24:52.980social script whereas young men really require a firm incentive structure to kick them in the ass and
01:24:57.260get them out and you know accomplishing things in the world and uh i just don't think anybody is
01:25:02.280posing anything close to a realistic solution that's actually going to get especially gen alpha
01:25:07.280guys i mean zoomers you know they're already kind of making their way into the world but uh you know
01:25:11.380like 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
01:25:17.020get a job how am i going to tell him to go to school when he has like sydney sweeney simulator
01:25:20.960you know at at his fingertips at all times when he has you know he can go have any sort of
01:25:27.160experience he wants in in vr with with uh you know uh algorithmically generated ai experiences
01:25:34.680like virtually limitless i mean it's just it's tremendously scary and um that's what i'm
01:25:40.220concerned about and i think that intelligence and especially just the tendency to be in your head too
01:25:45.540much that's really what we have to avoid and and really eugenics if you look at at what the
01:25:51.160practical effect of what eugenics did over the years and we definitely practiced eugenics pretty heavily
01:25:55.380in europe just in terms of you know executing violent stupid people for many generations we had
01:26:00.900a lot of downward social mobility right a lot of the the second sons of the nobility would become
01:26:04.980merchants and then you know their sons would become peasants and what have you um it made the average
01:26:08.980person much more intelligent but i think that creating this midwit class that just constituted like
01:26:15.020the the great bulk of humanity that that was tremendously dangerous and yeah of course it leads to the
01:26:19.440industrial revolution it leads to all these great things but unless you can sort of get to escape
01:26:23.820velocity and then make the average iq like 120 or 125 you get this really dangerous middle area where
01:26:29.800there's not enough agency and not enough sort of forward thinking to be able to break out of the
01:26:33.200dopamine traps escape the skinner box but they're also just over optimized and they're too they're
01:26:38.380too agentic to not just be a stupid grug and you know go impregnate their high school girlfriend and
01:26:42.840you know just just get into fights all the time and because of that you can get this really
01:26:47.380stultifying malaise where you just can't move forward as a civilization and i'd really be interested in both of
01:26:51.740your thoughts as to how we can deal with those dopamine traps and how we can provide i mean even
01:26:56.660for our own children even if you have a kid who's 135 140 iq who's very smart i mean how are you going
01:27:01.500to make a compelling case for hey go get a job go date girls as opposed to go you know have this this
01:27:07.520like maximally stimulating fantasy experience well yeah you you just do it i mean you just take the
01:27:16.740phone away and don't give them a phone in the first place you ban tiktok in your home and heart
01:27:22.940what was paul say circumcise of the heart like ban whatever congress does you should ban tiktok in
01:27:29.800your 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
01:27:38.860society a societal level it's kind of big too big for us to really figure out i mean i you know i
01:27:46.700none of us sadly are just going to become king of the world or something so i i think we have to
01:27:52.340look at like where these massive social trends are going and what are the ultimate consequences of
01:27:58.860these and how to survive them and um also what are what are some of like the silver linings
01:28:05.120you know what what what is the the right wing is so like up in arms about the lack of middle class
01:28:13.640fertility you know they want a mandatory monogamous society they want every you know every man gets
01:28:20.100a gf and we'll all be happy and that's not going to happen and so maybe what are some of the benefits
01:28:30.320of the decline of this population that wants that kind of stuff that's you know reading red pill content
01:28:41.920and listening to jordan peterson and and all and complaining about women all day like what is the
01:28:49.600the the social consequence and maybe even benefit of their reduced fertility
01:28:55.380yeah you can already start to see this in the trends in south korea where the men's movement
01:29:02.940is quite strong and and it's surprising what they're i think from a western perspective what they want
01:29:08.860they want the same kinds of privileges and as women you know they want to be served things
01:29:15.480um and it's yeah it's it's it's it's a bit it's embarrassing um what these men are asking for
01:29:26.240to be they want to be catered to and given things by i don't know who a big daddy a big mommy
01:29:32.640consider this is a society where they have a draft right so like everyone always proposes oh you know
01:29:38.220in the west we need to just send our boys into the military go find well you know they have that
01:29:40.980in korea and they have a constant threat of being obliterated by kim jong-un and yet they seem to
01:29:45.260turn into the biggest pussies so i mean clearly that's not like a straightforward answer right
01:29:49.460well they have a draft they don't have a war um maybe a real conflict would uh man them up a bit
01:29:56.000well technically it's an armistice right i mean technically it's still i mean like they'd like
01:29:59.820i think it's very much drilled into their heads like at any time if they could i mean
01:30:02.520practically speaking it won't but it's it's uh they're a very heavily militarized society right
01:30:06.900but definitely real possibility i would say you know unlike being being in an isolated america
01:30:12.900where we've got to worry about canada and mexico i mean you you know it's a serious thing but yeah i
01:30:19.640i agree with your point though i was i was you know just jumping on the the technicalities but
01:30:24.720uh yeah i mean maybe the world really does need a big catastrophe and um i don't know i've i've always
01:30:34.120been a little bit ambivalent about this world war three prospect gosh we're getting extremely dark
01:30:42.100here usually on tuesdays um it's usually lighter and more kind of scattered and then thursday night
01:30:49.480when we do the same thing that's when i'm you know might have had a um a glass of wine or two and
01:30:56.220you know we go into dark territory but i don't know i i sometimes like i just kind of roll my eyes when
01:31:04.080conservatives are like you know we don't want world war three or you know uh we need to prevent that or
01:31:09.760like the greatest thing about trump was no new wars or war is good
01:31:16.460and it's the mother of all great things and war tests you and maybe precisely what we need is world