Cultural Identity and Fertility Rates

In this episode, we delve into the phenomenon of the post-World War II baby boom, examining the various factors that contributed to it. The discussion includes an analysis of child mortality rates, economic conditions, and differences among countries. By comparing nations with significant booms to those without, the hosts argue that national identity, propaganda, and a sense of existential threat greatly influenced fertility rates. They also explore how future-oriented nationalism, rather than nostalgia, can drive modern fertility strategies.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the post World War II Baby boom. We have done an episode of this in the past, and the thesis that we came to in that episode was that the post World War II baby boom was predominantly about.

It, it, it decreased child mortality. And this is true, a lot of it can be just pinned on the head of, if you think about that period. If you go to the beginning of it, it was something like half of babies died. Then at the end of it, it was something like like 2% of babies died. That's

Simone Collins: pretty big,

Malcolm Collins: a very big jump.

It was like, you know, you're doubling the number of babies out of nowhere. But that can't really explain everything because. It didn't happen the same amount in every country. And if it had just been medical technology, then it would've been based on how developed a particular country was at the time, and that's what would've led to the baby boom.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And you get a little bit of that, but not a lot of [00:01:00] that.

And the baby boom is incredibly important to study because if you look at this graph here, when we're talking about fertility collapse, it really started in the US around 1835, and the only persistent reversal you get of it from that time period is the baby boom. And it is a significant reversal of it.

Malcolm Collins: It, it appears to, when we go through and we're gonna go through now the country that happened in the country, that didn't happen in,

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: When you go through that list, you can begin to try to build a thesis on what caused this, right?

So, in Italy you had no boom or a very small boom, okay? Okay. In Greece you had no boom. In Portugal you had no boom in Spain, you had no boom. All right. In Poland, you had no boom in Bulgaria. You had no boom throughout most of the Soviet Union. You had no boom [00:02:00] Estonia, no boom Lithuania, no boom.

Brazil and Latin America. No. Boom. Argentina, no. Boom. Uruguay, no. Boom. India, no. Boom.

Simone Collins: So is this a lack of economic thriving in these countries? That's my first intuition. Most people commenting are gonna be like, well that's 'cause they were struggling economically.

Malcolm Collins: So what's the Yeah. But all of Europe was struggling economically post World War ii.

A lot of places were struggling economically post World War ii without having the boom. Okay, so now let's go. Okay, where, where, where do we get a boom? All right?

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm. You get a boom

Malcolm Collins: in the United States, all right? You get a boom in Canada, you get a boom in the United Kingdom, okay?

You get a boom in France. You get a, a very large boom in Australia.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm. You actually get

Malcolm Collins: an even larger boom. The largest of the baby booms happened in New Zealand. You get a very big boom in Norway. You get a moderate boom in Sweden, but it began [00:03:00] before the war started.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: In Denmark you have a, a weak boom in Finland.

You had a significant boom in Iceland. You had a very significant boom in the Netherlands. You had a weak boom. In Belgium, you had a weak boom. In Switzerland, you had a weak boom. In Austria, you had the strongest in Europe. Whoa, Austria. Okay. In West Germany you had a boom, but in East Germany you didn't have a boom.

And in Ireland you didn't have a boom. You also didn't have booms in oh, interesting. You had a, a, a very short one in Japan, but then it disappeared. So, you had a, a non-Western boom in Morocco to again, keep in mind like economic developments and stuff like this. And you had a boom in Mongolia, you had a boom in Turkey.

Not a big one. [00:04:00] These, these non-Western ones, but you had them?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. So trying to build a pattern here. Initial part of the pattern, really easy to see. Anyone who's under Soviet communist rule did not have a boom. However oh, I didn't mention this one.

You did get a big boom in China, but Chinese Communist rule, you get a big boom. Okay? Mm-hmm. So first note here, second. If you were part of the Allies you get a very big boo. Okay. So it helps

Simone Collins: if you're a, a winner.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Well, I mean, some people like technically won by not having the war ravaged their countries, but were not part of the allies.

So a good example of this would be Ireland. Ireland didn't have a boom and refused to join the allies.

Speaker 2: Irish b*****d. What? What? What's that? McCarran, that's an Irish name.

Save the blarney for the Killen's patty. What? Archer, what are you? He's the target. What I just remembered from the Doss.

You know what, Patty?

Hang

Speaker 4: on. Let's shut [00:05:00] up.

Speaker 5: God.

Speaker 4: So where did you get access power?

Speaker 5: Ireland

Speaker 4: and Ireland was not an Axis power.

Speaker 5: Are you sure

Speaker 4: they were neutral? Oh,

Speaker 2: oh, that's right.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: yeah. Whereas France got pled. It was not pretty,

Malcolm Collins: but. Right. And it's not just the countries that were personally like, like, hit by the effects of the war because the North America and Canada and New Zealand and Australia where you saw booms many times bigger than the European booms they were not actually, like, they didn't.

See all the devastation. So we've talked about if you have a tsunami in an area, you'll have a higher fertility rate after the tsunami than in surrounding areas. Mm-hmm. So like mass to death can cause fertility growth. Maybe it triggered something in these men's heads that they were at war and they saw all this.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe, maybe. So we'll get to that. But then you've got other countries that maybe make less sits. Okay.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I also think that things like if I remember [00:06:00] like Morocco, can you check this on AI was weekly, allied was the allies in World War ii. So that could explain their boom. But not all allies have a boom.

India doesn't have a boom. Okay. So, so we've had a look. Okay. What, what does India have in common with the Soviet Union? And yeah, so

Simone Collins: Morocco was under French colonial rule and part of the French protector itself.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. That could explain a weak boom. Then you, you have a weak boom in Switzerland as well, so, so in Europe didn't participate, right.

But. You could say, well what about the Axis powers? You had a big boom in a few of them. You had a very big boom in Austria, which was an Axis power. And you had a very big boom in Western Germany, but not Eastern Germany. So check something for me. Austria was not under communist rule, right?

Also it was Turkey under communist rule. Can you ask an AI this? Because I, I, I don't remember these ones. But like, why is Turkey seeing a boom? [00:07:00] Also ask, was Turkey an access or allied power? I don't remember that one. In World War I, Turkey was Axis because they were under the ottman. We're

Simone Collins: asking about Post World War, world War II though, aren't we?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so ask in World War ii, which side was Turkey on?

And did Austria see direct fighting in its territory? Because I don't remember much.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I thought Austria was just sort of taken by.

Germany,

Malcolm Collins: it, it willingly joined if I remember,

Turkey remained officially neutral for most of World War ii. And it had diplomatic and economic relations with both access and Allied partners. But in February, 1945, Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan as a symbolic gesture to secure a seat in the United Nations, but it did not engage in any significant military action.

So. It was, it was looking out for number one. No,

I remember Austria being quite enthusiastic about joining Germany. I said Turkey. Yeah. And I said, and you earlier you said Austria and [00:08:00] Austria did

Simone Collins: not experience significant fighting on its soil during World War ii. After the Anschluss in 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and became part of the Third Reich.

Malcolm Collins: Can you ask how enthusiastic, because Hitler was Austrian, right? So, I don't know if I would be that upset being Austrian and joining the, the, like, I wouldn't have seen it as a wound to national Pride.

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe I've watched the sound of music too many times. So. I am, I'm, I'm too affiliated with just like one family's approach to it.

A notable portion of Austria welcomed the Anulus. Many saw it as fulfillment of a pan. German nationalism, uniting German speaking people. Yeah, so it was mixed. But and enthusiasm appears to have been a little varied. So there, there was some coercion, there was some pragmatism, but there were some people who were stoked about it.

It seems.

Malcolm Collins: And [00:09:00] so if we, if we go through these countries and we're trying to, to fill this out I can, I can draw another, I'm actually gonna see, do, do you note the other big thing that seems to cause fertility booms or that seems to be the differentiator between the countries that had it in the countries that didn't?

It's, I, I'll just give it to you. Yeah. A, a distinct sense of national identity. So, and not just national identity, but with us versus them propaganda. So if, if you look at west Germany, a little bit of xenophobia, are you saying like, even

Simone Collins: that far.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. If you look at West Germany versus East Germany, okay.

Very famously the United States was constantly dropping propaganda flyers into West Germany. But keep in mind, west Germany wasn't like under the United States or something like that. And the way East Germany was under rush the Communist Empire. That's fair. It, it felt like those propaganda posters are saying, isn't it so great to be West German and have this West German [00:10:00] identity and be free as a West German?

If you look at the allied countries like throughout this entire area. All of them were subject to lots and lots of propaganda about how great it was to be a member of their national identity. If you were an American at this time period, you would've constantly be told, not only is being America the best and the American way of life, the best and the greatest and that everybody wants to be America because America's the greatest.

But you're getting this in New Zealand as well, you know, I check out, you're, you're getting New Zealand Best and the greatest. Right. Interesting. Okay. But in. And what, which of the allies, like, which part of the allies wouldn't have gotten this India? Because India is under British rule at this time and, and wanting to escape a British rule at this time.

So Britain is not going to attempt to foster pan Indian nationalism while they are under British rule. So this basically explains it and, and this I think is a huge. It, it also explains why Austria had such a [00:11:00] fertility bomb, because when they were under the Nazis, they saw a pan German identity, which they were a part of.

And after the Nazis, you would've continued to check again. Austria. Was Austria taken by the communists. No Austria. No

Haha. Simone was wrong here. Austria was divided just like Germany was divided. And just like in Germany, further strengthening our point, , the side under communist rule did not have as much of a baby boom as the side under, , capitalist rule.

Malcolm Collins: Austria. Okay. So after the war, you then had o of course, given how close they were to the communists, we would've been showering them with propaganda about how great it is to be Austrian and not be a part of the communists.

Now, many people note that the baby boom. Started before the war, and it did start before the war in large part because of medical technology. We've already talked about this. Mm-hmm. But the big boom that happened after the war, I'm gonna argue, is directly downstream of nationalism.

Simone Collins: [00:12:00] But didn't nationalism peak before and during the war as they're trying to win it, not after when they were like.

Okay, let's get back to normal life.

Malcolm Collins: No, because after the war, we immediately went into the Cold War. I'm here arguing that the early stages of the Cold War, before it became, you know, like long Vietnam, drawn out national pride, the uses rebelling, blah, blah, blah. Everyone was fairly on board with the idea, right?

Like, we're the good guys there, the bad guys, and better than that. For most people, they had just had it validated. In their minds it's like, look, there really are bad guys. We really can go out and oppose them. Like let's work to do that. And what doesn't work is globalism. For fertility rates. Oh, you could see communism in Russia and as it was practiced in Russia versus how it was practiced in China.

Mm-hmm. As proto globalism. Be proud to be a human. Don't, don't be proud to be an Estonian. You know, don't be proud to be you know, [00:13:00] so I think that. In a big way, what's causing our current fertility collapse could be downstream of what caused their fertility collapse during or, or, or, or, I mean, caused the communist fertility to not go up in the way that the other countries did. Interesting. Because they didn't have this degree of national identity to pair be because they were getting just as much propaganda as everyone else. I know, but I'm just

Simone Collins: thinking about communist propaganda and it's all about being so proud to be contributing to your country.

You don't think that that counts? I mean, I, no. Get this sense as an outsider looking in that there was this really strong sense of here's who we are and you will be, you'll pay the price if you don't identify that way, by the way. Well, is be

Malcolm Collins: proud to be a member of our collection of countries, which again, the point that I'm making here is for this sort of nationalist propaganda to work, it needs

Simone Collins: to be a little more granular.

There has to be like, [00:14:00] it's just, you can't, there's no Borg. You can't be the Borg. You have to be like, mm-hmm. A Kardashian, you have to be a clinging on.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you have to be one in a Kardashian. Did did you mean Kardashian? Sorry? Kardashian.

Simone Collins: Listen, why did, why, but yes, I mean, K Kardashians also have high fertility and a lot of pride, so.

Malcolm Collins: I guess other way

Simone Collins: works,

Malcolm Collins: but pride in a distinct identity. And so I think you could see this like have lots of kids to serve the collective better, doesn't work and it's what the EU is still trying to push, right? Yeah. Or it started trying to push in terms of how they're handling this and I think it's only gonna make the problem worse for everyone involved.

Simone Collins: Hmm. I disagree with you.

Malcolm Collins: So I think, and this is why I promote with a lot of the ideas at the end of this we talk about the speech that we're putting together. And in a, [00:15:00] one of the things that I talk about and why I want to work to do this is put together some sort of like Japanese prenatal list event so that we can.

Do it as like a joint, like we are doing this for self defense what's the word? Like, national defense reasons, right?

Simone Collins: National security.

Malcolm Collins: And the reason I really wanna do that is to freak out the media because if you host a US Japan National Security Conference you could invite some other countries, New Zealand, Australia.

What you're really doing is, is why are those countries getting together to talk about fertility rates? Well, the, the core national security threat to all of them is China. And China is gonna immediately realize this. But what it's also gonna immediately frame is how strong all of our countries are vis-a-vis China.

For people who don't know, China's fertility rates are like around one now. New Zealand is like 1.5 to 1.8. Aus Australia's at like 1.5. The United States is like 1.6. Japan's at like 1.3, one of the strongest for an economically developed country in the region. Yeah. So China's gonna freak out. [00:16:00] A bunch of media's gonna freak out 'cause they're gonna be like, Hey, why are you doing this country?

And I'm gonna be like, well, you know, we've gotta figure out what we're gonna do with China when there's no Chinese people left. What we're, what we're gonna do is Korea when they're all gone. You know, just things that'll really freak people out and get them angry. And then the media does a, a whole thing on this.

And we can use that to get in front of people. One, a very vitalistic message like us versus them. But then two, frame it in a non racialized context because, you know, this is, we're, we're looking here at the Pacific Theater, right? And then three, I can combine a lot of the profit, the, the, the, the.

Art and promotional material with the event, with his anime.

Simone Collins (2): And have

Malcolm Collins: that be very germane to the setting that we're in. Right? And the, so the media will pick up this over the top. Very anime inspired, very sort of like man's world inspired art style. As the sort of prenatal art style, and people will see that and see the, the vitalism that is inside of it and want to replicate that.

It's a very easy [00:17:00] way, like if, if you want people to, like, I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna get the government to put prenatal posters in every classroom in the United States.

Simone Collins: No. That's not happening.

Malcolm Collins: But what can I do? Oh, actually we should add to the speech. The thing about the baby toys.

Simone Collins: You, you have, you have that in there?

It's in there.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, it is? That if the people had the baby to the, the, I mean, I can put

Simone Collins: in the actual stats, but I'm gonna put that just in the report and we can just talk about it. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: no. I'm talking about when people were given babies by the government. I'm, yeah.

Simone Collins: And I'm saying I can put the actual stats in the PDF report, like the extent to which they.

Affected fertility in the treatment versus control groups.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. 'Cause when people were given those little babies to take care of, they ended up having more kids. And so maybe that's something. Malcolm's

Simone Collins: referring to a baby simulation program that was tried in Australia, in which adolescents were given actual baby dolls.

This was done to dissuade them. From teen pregnancy, but it actually increased incidence of teen [00:18:00] pregnancy and having kids quite young, so well.

Malcolm Collins: But I think all of this is upstream of a very simple framing, right? The way you actually achieve prenatal list outcomes, the way you actually get people to choose to have children is to.

Have a cultural identity, like have believe they are a something

Simone Collins (2): mm-hmm. And

Malcolm Collins: want more of that, something to exist in the future because they think the future is gonna be bright.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, the way you put it really well is convincing people to have kids isn't about convincing people that kids are great.

It's about convincing people that they themselves are great, which is. The perfect way to put it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you, what a lot of groups attempted you to do this is to say, and we are great because we were great in the past, which super backfires we're always noting like very low Catholic fertility rates.

Mm-hmm. And I think that one of the reasons why Catholic C and Catholic countries have such low fertility [00:19:00] is because their intuition immediately around fertility. Like whenever I talk with a conservative Catholic, at least. Is restrictions. We need to restrict lewd images. We need to restrict gay marriages.

We need to restrict masturbation. We need to restrict like just restriction, restriction, restriction, restrict abortion, restrict this and they're basically chaining like a person's humanity. And expecting that person to flourish, I think. And I think what we're seeing is, is. Attempting to increase fertility rate by adding restrictions does the exact opposite of the intent.

One of the jokes I always make and I went to AI to, to double check that this is true, and it was true up until 2023. Okay. Where, you know, somebody's like, well, you know, we could get fertility but rates up if we basically banned immigration and we banned gay marriage and we banned a portion and we made pornography illegal.

And I was like, great. All of those things were true in Sas Korea up until 2023. And the only one that I think is now not true, [00:20:00] it's abortion. 2021

Simone Collins: I think was when abortion was, oh, 2021. Somewhat legalized in South Korea. That doesn't change the fact that it's still quite difficult to get an abortion in South Korea.

Ffy. I,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. And the point here being is that. The countries with these incredibly strict restrictions have incredibly big problems with fertility rates. Mm-hmm. I mean, the countries with incredibly loose restrictions and even the cultural groups with loose restrictions have much higher fertility rates.

Mm-hmm. Or at least when the restrictions are expected to be self-imposed. So consider something like the Jews. Jews, Orthodox Jews have tons of restrictions. They're just like restrict Romania in terms of all their rules, but. The Israel, Israeli state dec decide being a, you know, a soft theocracy literally enforces none of them.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That's,

Simone Collins: that's, yeah. The rules have to be endogenous, not exogenous. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: [00:21:00] And I, I think that this is something that like, people just, actually I should mention that as a, as a contrast with Korea. 'cause I think that that's really good.

Simone Collins: Oh, Israel versus Korea. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I, I think that that. That's what we need to get back to. And that's what every family should be promoting with their kids. And at the national level get back to, and I think it's a conservative party. Like we're already in a place where we're really close to being able to do this. Because if you went to the conservatives at the nineties, they wouldn't have been able to do this.

They had no vitalism to the party. Right. Like they were. Romania as well. Back then they were like, let's just go back to the past, create a bunch of restrictions, et cetera. Now the, well,

Simone Collins: the idea also among the conservative party was to impose morality on people because they couldn't be trusted or be seen as capable of imposing it on themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And we've talked about this before, the core reason why the conservative party stopped. Doing that was because they used to be the party of the dominant cultural group.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Which was

Malcolm Collins: [00:22:00] sort of the Judeo-Christian Alliance. And so they, they could attempt to impose their morality on the population, but now because they're in the minority and the urban monoculture is a majority within this cult country.

The Urban Monoculture attempts to use the progressives to project moral authority through restrictions on individuals or on threats to companies and a broad alliance including like gamer bros and Tech Bros. And, and the conservative Christians are all like, no, stop restricting, you know, my, my ability to have a culture that's different from your culture.

But what that means is that a big part of the cultural framing has become ultra vitalistic.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And you see this in a lot of the art. If you look at our episode on like the aesthetics of the new right. You see this with, you know, mixing in. You know, anime themes.

One, one of the things I think is incredibly vitalistic that we see in conservative art that you don't see in as much progressive art is the competent and lauded use of ai.

Is boast in terms of video creation to create like [00:23:00] shorts and in terms of art or like. Thumbnails or like, whereas in progressives, you get your head bitten off for using that much AI art. Mm-hmm. I mean, like art videos just use constant AI art in terms of like the videos, we do AI songs and a lot of videos.

We, you know, very, very lean into ai. And this is because we don't allow, like they, they, they using their position of cultural dominance want to restrict what we are allowed to think looks good. Mm-hmm. What we are allowed to, and you, you actually know this of the anti AI community because there's that famous study done that when people didn't know.

That art was AI art. Even if they said they didn't like AI art, they preferred AI art. So it means that the, the stated preference of, I don't like AI art is downstream of knowing that it's created with ai, meaning that these people actually do have a preference for this art. They're just forcing themselves to engage with it through disgust.

And, and as such, there is a, a level of beauty that is like vulgar to them that we can celebrate, right? What you're looking for and I think that this, this is how you really capture vitalism [00:24:00] the most, is you look for things that are considered vulgar within the elite society of our age, but not for actual vulgarity.

IE not because they actually, like damage an individual. But because there is some other interest at play, like status signaling or something like that, that, a great example here is anime. I mean, this is why you see anime and anime related stuff so much in sort of new right art and memes and everything like that is because there's this hard lean into, so that's why you see a lot of memes in, in mainstream new right art, you know, very, very low culture considered vulgar by mainstream society.

The government literally created a department named after ame. Doge, right? Like,

Simone Collins: but was the post World War II nationalism driven element of the baby boom also driven by generally vulgar cultural amenities? Because I, yes, I didn't, yes. Okay. How [00:25:00] so?

Malcolm Collins: So. It was driven by the, the nationalism of the 1950s and post 1950s when you have this boom period, right?

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Was absolutely driven by, was what was at the time considered low culture and disgusting. IE what dominated pop media at the time? Comic culture penny Mag culture. Hmm. The early science fiction. Retro futurism culture. I mean, today we call it retro futurism. All of this stuff to your,

you know, opera goers at the time to your people.

Oh, oh yeah. That's fair. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Sci-fi books and comic books. Yeah. We're seen. So highbrow is

Malcolm Collins: very low culture, right? Yeah. And people were taught to. You know, admire their ancestors through what the Western, right? Like the western, which was popular during these time periods. Who said, you know, America great.

Awesome. We, we, we, we certainly didn't do anything wrong. I mean, there were Indians here. We had to us first them cowboy first Indian. You as a kid, you'd run around and play this game, you [00:26:00] know? But you, you, you, you can't do that anymore.

Like you couldn't, you know, take pride in the Cowboys today. Like what everybody would, would freak out. Right?

Speaker 10: Sean, why is there a giant hole in my front yard? .

Speaker 11: The hole is my grave. ? Gus made me jig my own grave, then shot me and stole my boots.

Speaker 10: Oh, so you uh, you were playing cowboys and Indians, huh?

Speaker 11: Just cowboys playing Indians is offensive.

And

Speaker 12: then the buzzards Adrian trails. That's awful.

Speaker 11: Yeah, it's a tragic end to our adventure, but it's surrealism that makes it fun.

Malcolm Collins: But you couldn't, I guess the

Simone Collins: last big Cowboy film week. No, we've had a actually there's, there's been a decent number of films, romanticizing, Cowboys,

Malcolm Collins: which ones just didn't,

Simone Collins: not, not, versus Indians though.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not versus Indians there, but the, the point here being is that in the 1950s, the culture that was lauded, think back to, to the 1950s cultural [00:27:00] boom. And what do you think of if you are imagining like what people are doing or where they're gathering? Right? It's at a diner, a very low culture restaurant.

Hmm. Or. At a soda shop.

Simone Collins: Oh, which

Malcolm Collins: is very soda fountain

Simone Collins: or soda parlor. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not imagining, you know, big glamorous restaurants or anything like that, right?

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which is, if I go back and I try to imagine, you know, other periods like say the 1920s, I am imagining that I am imagining, yeah.

Well, on

Simone Collins: today, what is considered aspirational are these. Jet set lifestyles such that people are literally buying, renting time on a private jet set just to fake it to people that they're on a private jet. Yeah.

That they're, that what is now aspirational is unsustainable. Whereas during these times of nationalism, you're right, low culture is framed as more celebrated.

Hmm, I know

Malcolm Collins: what she's talking about here. What she means. 'cause this is actually crazy to me that this is a thing, is you can [00:28:00] rent private jets. You don't take off, you don't fly anywhere in them. They're set up so that you can take lots of self feeds in them. It's, I don't,

Simone Collins: I don't even know if it's a real private jet.

There's this one in LA that you can spot as soon as you see what it looks like on like the rental site. And then as soon as you see it, you can tell which social media people are renting like an hour on it.

Malcolm Collins: That's wild.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, so it's, well people, I don't know if

Simone Collins: other, other evidence of this, just in case you find this amusing people literally buy things like Hermes bags on eBay so they can look like they've purchased a bunch of things from.

Designer shops. And there's also this really huge issue of people. What do you mean? Do

Malcolm Collins: they then like, go to the designer store and take pictures, like walking out with it?

Simone Collins: No. They typically just show the pictures in their apartment, but it makes it seem like they went shopping and they're like, oh, this is, you know.

Just so busy. And then people also buy and return clothes. So much so that retail stores are suffering and they're needing to change their policies [00:29:00] because so many people are just buying and immediately returning outfits to make it seem like they. Having these huge clothing halls that they ultimately can't afford.

Malcolm Collins: And in the 1950s you didn't have this. No.

Simone Collins: 1950s what

Malcolm Collins: was No. People valued

Simone Collins: aspirational thrift and it, yeah. What was aspirational was more that you had the perfect wife and the perfect family. And the perfect kids, and that you entertained well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you had your barbecue. Mm-hmm. You have the neighborhood, you could make a

Simone Collins: good burger, you could make a good jello dessert that you had your car in the garage, but it wasn't that you went on fabulous vacations or bought a ton of stuff.

I mean, it, there were, consumerism was big, but it was consumerism on a slightly more sustainable level. And it was like, do you have the top of the line? Kitchen. No, it

Malcolm Collins: wasn't that there wasn't a wealthy elite culture of the time period. Hmm. It was, it was that there was outside of that, a mainstream cultural perception of an ideal to strive for that was not that culture.

Yeah. And, and if [00:30:00] anything, the highest form of culture you could ascribe to was the. Not elite culture version. And if you look at, I mean, we try to do this within the way we, we, we promote things like I, people notice, I wear Amazon Essentials in every episode. Simone, you got her dress on Etsy, you know, like we're, we're not.

Coming at this, like trying to show, oh, there's this glamorous life. We, we talk about being mor all the time. Like we never leave our house. We don't bother in entertaining people. We don't do, you know, birthdays for our kids. We don't do, you know, big Christmases or anything. And, and we, we brag. About this because it sets a norm, which is the norm that you need, which is a patriotism in whatever you are, and how that's different from other people, which obviously we have a lot of pride in.

And in sort of wholesomeness, I think as, as well, like the, the. The culture that was sold was wholesome. But then as I also mentioned, very important there was, it was a forwards looking [00:31:00] culture. It was not a culture trying to recapture a past. So what's really ironic is the people who, you know, do the cargo coat of the 1950s and, and do the trad wife dress up and everything like that, but they're missing the spirit of it, right?

The spirit of the 1950s, which was retro, futuristic. Which was, yeah. Which,

Simone Collins: which is progress, which is look at how great it's gonna be in just a few years.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, we split the atom, we're in the atomic age now. It was so, you know, retro, futuristic that everything was called like atomic at the era.

Like, like the, the, the entire art style that you associate was like 1950s ads. It's called the atomic art style.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like. That might actually be really cool to make that like slaying in our family, like atomic. But to mean like, cool. But yeah, like every, everything was about the atom. You know.

And when you'd go buy toys they'd, they'd be like, what do we, what do we call our wagon? Well, what's like cutting edge? Radios and flying. Okay. The radio flyer that was sort of a bit earlier era, but it was still an era that looked [00:32:00] ahead and now. So much of conservative culture are parts of it really?

I'd say the, the, probably the, the, the backseat part of it. Like the part of it that's sort of, I think right now filtering out of the party after sort of the maga coup. Mm-hmm. Wants to pearl clutch and go back to an earlier way rather than embrace vitalism and look to the future. And it's well.

It's not working. It's, it's not working for them. And in fact, most of the, the influencers as I know of this persuasion, don't have a family and kids. I mean, I think it's because it's just not fun to tie your life to somebody like that, right? Like that, that could be a big part of it. Like, why, why, why, why does nobody, you know, want to marry Nick Fuentes, right?

Like, if, if you have this, let's go back to this earlier era and then maintain it in, in stagnation forever who wants to. Who wants to sign on for that. Right. But if you're like, look at this bright future, look at the future. That's ha look, the, the talking, the future of talking machines that we have now, right?

Like this is amazing, right? Yeah. And, and yet so much of society, [00:33:00] interestingly, not as much the conservatives, much more the progressives. Have a shoot it. They're like, Ew, I hate ai. It's so gross. It's so icky. It's so terrible. I only can see how it's, it's bad. And then you have the, the much more common on the conservative side, which I think surprised a lot of people that the conservatives became the party pushing for, like regulation against regulating ai.

And the progressives were pushing for the regulation of ai. But it's because they, they, they maintain. Norms through this pearl clutching. And so everybody who wanted to pearl clutch, aboutis naturally found allies among the progressives.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It didn't occur to me until you mentioned it, just how pessimistic about the future the progressive party is, and also the urban monoculture in general, that that enthusiasm and excitement for the future is totally gone, and it does seem to be playing a major role in.

The depression and lack of vitalism in younger generations. They're like, why should I bother? I'll never [00:34:00] have the same level of wealth as my parents. I'll never have this or that. It's really frustrating.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think that, that, you know, I, my kids talk like that. I'll be like, bro, you're growing up with talking machines.

Like, do you understand how cool what you can do is you can go to one of these ais and just type in a question and it will give you an answer. And that you can chat and have interactive worlds with them like we're building with our fab AI to make better that you can like just the future to me looks so infinite, tely bright compared to previous generations.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If, if we do this right, but that was also true in the 1950s. I mean, this was the era where. It was very much a, the future might be bright if you put everything in to make it awesome, but also, hey, stick your head in a locker in case the atomic bomb explodes and kills everyone. You know,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, it was yeah, I guess so what you're saying is the right mood for a baby boom is one [00:35:00] in which you are very proud of your group and you think the future is bright, but there is an existential threat.

And victory is not guaranteed.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think, yeah, I think feeling like you've already won or that you're with this, well, what Israel

Malcolm Collins: has right now. All of those things you just mentioned, Israel. That's a

Simone Collins: really good point. Yeah. Okay, so that's.

Malcolm Collins: I actually think that this is part of why Muslims have struggled so much with their fertility rate is they force other Muslims into a panus ity over pride in their own group.

Whereas Jews have much more pride in their own sect of Judaism often than they have over their pan Jewish identity.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This is something else I hadn't really thought about 'cause I was just assuming, for example, that Soviet Russia or the USSR more specifically. Would just have this, that there would be no difference between pride in the USSR versus pride in like [00:36:00] your specific Orthodox Jewish sect.

Yeah. But what you're saying is you really do need much more localized communities to feel excited about their own identity and, and they can be loosely allied. So it doesn't have to be that you are, as an autonomous country, a small thing that's proud of your small group. You can be part of a big country.

You do need to also be part of a small group and really proud of it, meaning that the diversity or variety of the United States is helpful and important in so far as we're allowed to celebrate it and let it be distinct, right? And we'd probably be worse off without it, because something that happens a lot in the comments as people are like, no, diversity's terrible, and it just doesn't seem intuitively right to me.

Malcolm Collins: Help you see your own group as more different, right. There's a ton of diversity within Israel, for example. Right? Yeah. Huge Muslim population, huge Christian population. Whereas

Simone Collins: Curtis Ervin suggested we, we use instead of diversity's [00:37:00] variety, which I think is, is a pretty good way to put it. 'cause D diversity has been somewhat ruined as a term.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, that's, that's my new take on what we need to be leaning into more.

Simone Collins: I like it. I like it. Variety, pride. A feeling of existential threat, but a feeling like beyond that existential threat is a feature so bright and exciting that you are so stoked to fight for it. Exactly. Beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: All right, I love you Simone. Alexander is actually religious. He identifies as Jewish. And then I remember, I think such when I went to their house, one of the times that they were doing a Jewish celebration. One of those meals I wanna say I don't remember which

Simone Collins: it was Shabbat, was it a Shabbat dinner?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You might have been a Shabbat.

Yeah. But I didn't contextualize it as religious in my head because there were so many, obviously, non-Jewish people there. But of course, how, how is

Simone Collins: someone obviously not Jewish.

Malcolm Collins: Because [00:38:00] their affiliation was clearly rationalist above all else. Or, or not rationalist, but you know, the wider, like EA community.

So I thought of it as like an EA meetup in my head more than a Shabbat dinner. But I was like, oh, of course. Yes. They're, they're raising their kids. Religious, so, yes. Any how the, the comments on today's episode were very mean When I checked them

Simone Collins: oh, I, I didn't check them. I was so busy trying to get the slide deck and started and

Malcolm Collins: yeah, we're going to the to speak.

I don't know if

Simone Collins: we're able to say that.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, we're not.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, don't screw it up. Just don't mention anything about it until,

Simone Collins (2): until it's done

Simone Collins: well, or, yeah, or, or maybe we won't like that. We could be invited back if we keep our mouths shut. So, you know, there, there's one of these. Oh, let me get my ethernet cord one second.

This is one of these things where I want you to keep your mouth shut until we know it's okay.

Don't make them regret inviting us when we could. [00:39:00] I mean, you're trying to pitch a conference, you're trying to pitch all these other things. Yeah. You're not gonna get them. You read the new

Malcolm Collins: you, you read the new write up.

Simone Collins: I did. Yeah. I'm, I'm, you're not making this easy to set up. You're not like, like, I'm just gonna write a book and that's gonna be easy and I'll just memorize the book and like, no, no.

You should have just made a simple outline. But you are incapable of doing that. And so I. Somehow on top of everything else that I have to do this week, I need to. So it's just gonna take longer. 'cause you've decided to make this impossibly difficult and of course not ordered. And I get that you're like ordering it from a like narratively rich standpoint, but you like keep jumping around from like.

Causes to significance to solutions in a way that doesn't work well with slide decks or outlines unless you're doing like a TED Talk and I get that you're trying to keep it narratively engaging. So like I'm trying to accommodate [00:40:00] that while also like giving materials that are professional and usable after we leave

Malcolm Collins: the burden I place on you.

The, that's my job. In case you can't tell because it, it does have a structure to it, is to start with why is this important then to transition to all of the things. What are the causes? What are

Simone Collins: not the causes? Yeah. And what are solutions? I know, I get it. And that, that's i's good. You just jump around a lot.

I do not. I do not. And you're not exactly like thorough and you just jump to like the solutions that are the most self-promotional and. Like n not evidence-based, but fun.

Malcolm Collins: So that's the real solution as we'll learn in today's episode. Uhhuh. Okay. Well, the real solution to fertility collapse is promotional sort of nationalism futuristic nationalism, I guess I call it.

And you, you know, a lot of people when they come to this, they want to do it from the perspective of, you know, cash handouts or [00:41:00] regulation or. And all of that stuff seems to make things worse. In the, in the slide deck I put together, if you look for example, at Europe, and you look at the, the amount of contraception laws that are in a country, and you look at the fertility rates, there's strong correlation to more contraception laws leading to lower fertility rates.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so like I, I get, I, I I don't know, I just I. I don't, the self-promotional ones are the ones that work. You need to create promotion. You need to create pizazz. You need the public talking about it. That's the one thing that nobody has really tried yet. Oh,

Simone Collins: wouldn't you say hungry and Turkey?

I've tried it pretty.

Malcolm Collins: No. No, they, they so if you, if you look at what they did, they made like a, a number of politicians went around and talked it up and everything like that, but they didn't create like a branded movement. They didn't create like a oh, and you can identify as one of these things and dedicate your life to this.

And this can be like an [00:42:00] active choice that you make. They didn't do that. It was just like, go back. To sort of an older Hungarian identity, which is what you see a lot of traditionalist conservatives innately wanting to do. And the point that I'm trying to make here is don't do that. It makes things worse.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm. So

Malcolm Collins: if your intuition is, we should look to the past to make this like, like. Be more like we were in the 1950s or something like that. Hmm. Instead of become this new amazing, what it is to be American thing, because in the 1950s, how did they contextualize themselves? Well, you know, because you can just read like the, the comic books of that time period.

It was retro futurism, right. It was all like, we're gonna go to space and we're gonna conquer the universe and we're gonna, which is ironic that people be like, go back to the 1950s when in the 1950s everything was futurism.

Or, or like over the top, bigger than thou, sort of like s heroism and stuff like that. [00:43:00] Not, you know, broody superheroes like we have today. But like, we're great kind. So I'm, I'm promoting this stuff because I think genuinely it is the stuff that works not, not that it doesn't also help us, but you think it's too self emotional.

Simone Collins: I am going to like adjust things a little bit just to add professional polish. But I, I think it's, I think it's great overall. Okay.

Speaker 6: Nobody survives. Everybody. Everybody. Oh no. He's got a shield.

Speaker 7: Ah.[00:44:00]

Speaker 6: You saved toasty.

Speaker 8: But now, who saved you?

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