The Diminishing Power of Shame in Modern Society

In this episode, the hosts delve into the concept of shame and its diminished role in modern society. They explore the controversial view that losing shame might be beneficial, especially when considering societal norms relating to the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the trans movement. The discussion touches upon the coercion involved in gender identity and the impact on cultural values. Additionally, the conversation examines the contrast between historical and modern expressions of trans identity and the broader implications of shame and societal motivation. The hosts also reflect on the early Christian approach to martyrdom as a way of life and how it translates to contemporary social behaviors and beliefs.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be discussing the topic of shame and its role in society as society to a large extent has lost shame like they they broke the role that shame was supposed to play in society.

And I'm going to argue maybe counterintuitive to what a lot of people would expect that. I think that this is a good thing that we've lost shame. Then we've lost shame. What? Okay. Yeah, go on. Okay. So, I mean, if we're talking about losing shame one of the things you'll repeatedly see, and you'll see this especially among the trans community, that they will act and dress in ways that historically you would've been embarrassed to act and dress.

You would've had some shame around this. You would've known I am acting like a buffoon right now. I, I like you, you should. Historically, if [00:01:00] you had walked into like a children's book reading, looking and dressing like this, you would have said

Speaker: Another blaring example, drag queen story time. It's happening in Canada and America where some public schools and libraries invite drag queens, some dress like torn demons to read to young Children, and it's a social deconstructionist agenda.

Speaker 5: They're using Children, little five year olds to accomplish this.

Malcolm Collins: With gay marriage, it was an attempt to not be coerced by society, to live in a way that felt unnatural. Whereas with the trans movement, it's an attempt to coerce society to act in a way that doesn't feel natural.

It's about the directionality of coercion. In this case, people are coerced, coercing other people to do something without their consent. That is to say, you know, Pretend that someone looks like a woman or a man when they don't. , which can be very difficult for some people.

And that's why there's all this mis-gendering. , versus just being allowed to do something with your private life that you'd like to do.

And I think worse [00:02:00] than just being hard for some people that go to get some people's cultural values. They're the huge difference between a government allowing gay people to get married in a government forcing Catholic church is to marry gay people.

The trans we've been as fundamentally fighting to force you to validate them. And I understand. And the desire here. What does anyone want more than to be validated by other people? , even more so if you can force them to validate you for something, that's obviously not true. I mean, what a strong power play. But, and I, and I point out here, like, if it's clear from the way these people dress and look, the old line of, I just want to be seen as a woman. Isn't true. They're not people who are desperate to look and act and, and be seen in public as women, or they would. Dress in a way that looked remotely like a woman.

, they are people who are getting off on forcing people to see them in a way that's obviously not true in forcing [00:03:00] their self perception on to another person. In a way that is. If not sexual

Clearly something adjacent to sexuality because that's not, , any other, , recognizable, emotional set that I can think of where you force another person to say something about you. That is obviously not true. And I can get it. Like if that sort of thing gets you off, what would get you off more than, forcing someone, to get their kid, to say something that they know isn't true. , and in exercising that power over them. And I think you can see the joy in this, in these individuals' faces, when they talk about how they can force parents to get their kids to do stuff like this.

Speaker 5: and parents are waking up and saying no.

Speaker: When asked about parents rights, OJ says

Speaker 6: Well, actually, in Canada, parents rights are limited, so the child has the right to be protected from the parents when the parents behave badly.

Speaker: [00:04:00] Like village resident Dave Davido Carlo support Soji and limiting parental rights.

Speaker 7: The change that we have to see is sometimes the parents.

Malcolm Collins: My culture believes that. If a little girl likes boys toys. That she's just a tomboy. That's a girl who likes boyish things and we hold that in high esteem. If a little boy likes to do things that sometimes little girls like to do, we say whatever we accept them. For the way that they want to act without demanding that they change their gender in relation to that or their gender presentation in relation to that yet the dominant.

. Societal view of gender right now, the one that many school systems and educational programs are attempting to push on my kids.

Aspires to erase this cultural perception of gender. And I think that that is highly.

Colonialist imperialist.

And you could almost say genocidal of my culture.

Speaker 8: And the little, [00:05:00] little girl came home in tears because the teacher had told her since she was playing with some toys in the class that were deemed to be masculine in nature that she was likely a boy in a girl's body.

The mother went to the school the very next day. And instead of having any sort of tolerance or support or understanding, she was actually called names. She was told that she was a homophobe, that she was a bigot.

Malcolm Collins: Like, and there were trans people in the past. And I remember growing up like in trans people would interact with other people.

The iteration of trans back then cared about passing. Like they would have felt embarrassed about not passing.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you might like disappear for a year, maybe go to another country, work on it and then come back. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: this new group actively thrills themselves on not passing.

Simone Collins: Well, I think that's a, it's a different, it's a different group of people.

It's a different group of people with a different drive. I think it's a lot of people that get off on The, [00:06:00] the fact that they know that they have power over people and that they're making people uncomfortable and forcing them to run contrary to their instincts and

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no, no, absolutely. This, this one group has taken the, the, the mantle of the other group.

The other group may have been able to, and we'll talk about this later, may have been able to legitimately claim to be part of the LGBT movement or, or like, you know, like gay rights or something like that. This other group is just a fetish. And we used to know that both of these things existed at the same time.

We used to know that there were. Some people who wanted to be a different gender and there were some people who liked doing perverted things in public and making people uncomfortable, especially children. And somehow we made it like a huge problem to point out that the second group was using rights that we were trying to carve out for the first group.

A person who was just born in the wrong body would not care how they were gendered by other people. [00:07:00] The only people who would care, how they're gendered by other people are people trying to force their self-perception on to other people. Without those peoples can fit, attempting to force their gender, their sexuality.

On two others without their consent.

And if you only desperately want it to be seen as a woman, you wouldn't be showing male genitalia to other women in the women's locker room as Leah Thomas did.

Speaker 17: Ah!

Malcolm Collins: And I think it can be undersold. How heartbreaking things like the Lee Thomas thing were for people who had supported the trans community, believing this, the community. That was just people born in the wrong bodies who wanted to be able to live as close to normal life is, [00:08:00] was reasonable and not people who wanted to wanting to Dudley violate the consent of others. And not a community of, you know, sex pest flashers, for example.

I understand that there's going to be like weirdos out there who will randomly try to take advantage of this stuff. And so when one of them did. And you then turn to the mainstream trans advocate org and you're like, okay. Like surely this isn't what you were fighting for.

You were not fighting for the right To violate other people's consent. You're going to condemn this. And they didn't, what it showed me is no. That's what they were fighting for and I this entire time and supporting them. Had been the idiot.

Speaker 18: The dick is up! You son of a b***h!

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, like. I mean, with almost all special treatment policies, there are people who abuse them, and those people should be called out, and yet we can't do that here, so. [00:09:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we can't do that here, which, which, which is going to lead to all of the rights being taken away and the entire group being discriminated against again, but like.

Simone Collins: Hence, this is why we can't have good things.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not why we can't have good things. It's their fault for not aggressively kicking these people out of the movement and not aggressively calling these people out as something other than, you know, but that, that battle already happened. Actually, really interestingly, and this was pointed out to me by a friend recently is that the trans community knows that this is a social phenomenon and has known for a long time.

Specifically there was a battle and I've mentioned this battle in the trans community between the two cutes and the true scum. So the two cutes were the people who said that anyone can choose to be trans. Anyone can choose any gender identity they want. You can't ask for any sort of proof or medical verification or anything other than that.

The true scum said, no, this is about gender dysphoria and an actual like issue was an individual. The true scum ended up losing this fight [00:10:00] hard. And I get that the argument like the actual argumentation that the two Ts were using was quite powerful. If you assume a progressive worldview, which is to say that you are gatekeeping this identity one and two, why are you keeping some people out of the identity?

You know, the more the merrier. Right? Like if anyone can identify as a different gender, isn't that even better? And then obviously a lot of people, even people who weren't like weird perverts were like, Oh my God, I'm not. I am not a middle class cis white girl, I am a middle class white gay trans man.

I am not a white middle class straight man, I am a white gay queer middle class they them. You know, you can just identify as whatever you want and gain all of the protections that gay men had fought to achieve for themselves. And It really feels like there's this scene in South Park, [00:11:00] where Mr.

Garrison is trying to get people to fire him so that he can get a lot of money, and he's trying to get fired for being gay, and so he does this over

Simone Collins: and over again. Oh, I remember,

Malcolm Collins: yes, okay, yeah. But they're still like, oh, so brave, so proud, you know. And I think South Park predicted this so long before.

Speaker 9: Tonight, we are here to honor an amazing fourth grade teacher with the Courageous Teacher Award. Her garrison has faced adversity. He has even faced ridicule by some of his students. Oh, Randy, I'm so ashamed of our son.

Dun, dun,

Speaker 10: dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Get along little slave!

Speaker 11: Oh my god!

Speaker 10: That's what our boys were talking about! Ding, ding, ding, ding! He is so courageous!

Speaker 11: But you know what makes me even happier? Sucking balls! Hmm.

Speaker 12: It isn't working. Sing your song, Mr. Slythe. I've got a little [00:12:00] Oh! Jesus Christ! What's happening in there? Oh! I should have never shoved all those poor animals up my ass! Courageous. So

Speaker 11: courageous.

Goddammit, don't you people get it? I'm trying to get fired here! Oh, that's courageous.

Malcolm Collins: We actually have people like in the White House, like generals in the army, basically doing this on stage. And we're like, everyone else knows this is like a fetish thing. So you can say, okay, this community is exploiting this and acting in evil ways with this, right? And, and I do think it's evil to use non consenting bystanders to get off, especially if those bystanders are children, because we broke shame, because shame is what used to prevent this, right?

Speaker 11: Look, this kind of behavior should not be acceptable from a teacher!

Speaker 13: Yeah, Jesus Christ. But the museum tells us to be tolerant. [00:13:00] Yes!

Speaker 11: Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it!

Tolerate means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane, or you tolerate a bad cold! It can still piss you off! Jesus tap dancing Christ! He's right. Our boys didn't hate homosexuals, they just hated the way this a*****e was acting.

Oh, so now can I please get fired and get my 25 million dollars?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, then why is it a good thing that shame broke and where do we need to move as a society?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What was shame historically? Shame historically was that we had a society that across the society had enough similarities between cultural groups that you could shame people normative format.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

I feel like it was shame was Self consciousness at failure to conform

Malcolm Collins: right, but that we had [00:14:00] segregated ourselves as a society to a point where that made sense, right? There are things that Mormons do and especially things that Mormons did that would have caused shame in other parts of the country.

But Mormons lived in little Mormon communities, and so they were able to do and did these things at higher rates. There were things that Catholics did you know, you think about a Catholic, for example, walking around with a, a cross on their head from you know, Good Friday. In a lot of parts of America, that would have caused a great degree of shame to be walking around with that.

And so you would do that within your Catholic communities and Catholic circles. Well, America, in a large part due to the way the job market worked, because now we're no longer living and working in our communities, but living and working where we can have the most impact within the economy, Sort of split apart into more mixed communities.

Okay. And so when you think about shame, you think about the shame of the [00:15:00] progressive, right? The things they should be ashamed about from your cultural perspective or from the cultural perspective of America in the 90s or in the 70s. But you've got to keep in mind that the dominant cultural group fortunately while the urban monoculture to an extent broke shame They also did it at the same time as they were becoming the dominant culture And so they try to instill upon young kids shame for being Christian,

Simone Collins: shame

Malcolm Collins: for being, shame for modesty, shame for not sleeping around, shame for being a weirdo and saying well, I, I don't think that I should You know, for example, is it not an invocation of this culture when a guy says to a girl, you know, I really like you but I would prefer to be with somebody who is more chaste than you, you know, that's what I'm looking for in a wife.

And then she's like, so what are you gay? [00:16:00] I'm interested in you. You don't want to sleep with me? What are you gay? That's shame. Okay. Because they forget that they're not the dominant culture anymore. I mean, it's almost fortunate that the system broke at the time it broke. Right. So shame used to lead to broadly.

And not all the time, but broadly more healthy outcomes in terms of how you acted and how you engaged with the world. But today, you know, as shame has broken at the damn gates of shame have broken, we need to find new systems for motivating behavior. And so it's like, okay, well then how do you motivate behavior?

If not through shame, because we're no longer the dominant cultural group. First thoughts on what I'm saying before I go further with this.

Simone Collins: That's it. I didn't expect you to. Bring up the, the danger that shame could have had or did have with the urban monoculture. Yeah. So it's [00:17:00] a double edged sword, you know, you could say that we need shame to make good culture safe, but now you're pointing out.

Yeah, shame could be used by bad culture to.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, keep in mind I'm like, am I not sometimes shamed by urban monoculture types in our society where they come at me and they're like, how dare you discipline your child? How dare you? You know, and, and that's the reason why shame left, by the way, it's the urban monoculture's fear of any negative emotional stimuli.

Even without bopping my kids, if I've even like taken my kid out of a play area where a kid did something wrong, so I grabbed his hand, I took him to the car, I shamed for that,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: By the urban monoculture and they're like, how dare you show this kid any sort of negative experience? How dare? You know, it's like, well, that's how kids learn, right?

Like they've got the room, but has to bump into a wall or it's not going to learn the confines of the room. You know, this is part of the way kids learn there. But anyway, the point here being is that, and this is what trigger warnings are, you know, removing of any negative emotional [00:18:00] experience. They believe that if somebody is acting within the confines of the urban monoculture, they can't be shamed for anything.

So like the, the, the individual who is. In a flamboyant outfit that, you know, looks like Mr Garrison when he's trying to get fired reading books to Children. You can't call them out on that, you know, that you, That is them being afraid that that individual might experience some sort of negative emotion, especially given that they're a protective class, especially given that they're in one of these elite priest casts of the urban monoculture that deserve, you know, additional rights.

I, for example would if I as a cis male went in front of a group of students and started talking about the things that turn me on or the things I like to do with my wife, you know, that would get me arrested. Yet. If I am doing that as a Sexual subculture like some a

Simone Collins: protected class Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you can do that with complete impunity even if it's clear that you're getting off to [00:19:00] being able to do this, right?

like there's a reason why we stop men from doing this it was because some creeps would use it to then tell lurid stories to children. And now we we have that like literally happening I've got to find the case in australia where like this was wild. But anyway, or the book, where it shows underage people doing this.

This is one of the books that the right's trying to ban. It shows somebody giving someone on their dildo, because I think it's two lesbians, but one of them is identifying as a guy, as a Yeah, it's messed up. But they're like, ah, but it's lesbians. So it's okay. Right. Whereas they're not lesbians. It's a trans person.

I guess what I would call lesbians. You know, so you, you was a lot of this stuff. It's like as a protected class, so it's okay. So anyway now to the, the next part. So it's like, what do you do if shame as a tool is broken? Because we, we, we now lack any sort of a virtuous group in the role of the dominant cultural faction.

And what we need to move back [00:20:00] to in terms of motivating actions. Is I think with the early Christians used so early Christians were not if you if you watch our video Was early christianity actually virtuous? Are more virtuous than the pagans. We released on christmas It's one of our worst performing videos.

It's a big deal. It came out on christmas, of course but I thought it was a great video if you're into this, I really

Simone Collins: enjoyed the conversation

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So anyway, these, these early Christians were they actually you know, how did they motivate? Because they would have been shamed like the culture.

They were weirdos. The early Christians they would have been seen to very similarly the way that mainstream society in like the 90s saw Mormons you know, way they were depicted on South Park, you know, as being like, okay, weirdly wholesome. And like, Yeah, like really nice, really inviting. Yeah. And here I can put the the, the Mormon was the correct choice thing here.

And then the other episode was Mormonism. But weird and ominous and potentially dangerous and something that we should ashame as they did in that South Park episode, they shamed him for being a weirdo Mormon and [00:21:00] having weirdo beliefs, you know?

Speaker 15: YoU guys were right, okay? The new kid's a douche. Now I just gotta find a way to keep him away from me.

Speaker 14: Listen, I just wanted to let you know you don't have to worry about me trying to be your friend anymore.

I don't? Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense. And maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don't care if Joseph Smith made it all up. Because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice, and helping people.

And even though people in this town might think that's stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan. But you're so high and mighty you couldn't look past my religion and just be my friend back. You got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls.

Damn, that kid is cool, huh?

Malcolm Collins: And how do, how do you resist that? Whether you are a Mormon in a non Mormon society or a Christian in a pagan society, right?

And it is through martyrdom.

Simone Collins: Okay, what does modern martyrdom look [00:22:00] like?

Malcolm Collins: It means acting in a way that you know is just and honorable, even if you will be pilloried for it. And saying things that you believe are true, even if you will be pilloried for them. But not in a way that needlessly brings attacks on your community.

Some individuals see that and they make the mistake. They are like, Oh this is early Christians going around and telling pagans that they're all going to hell or telling this one other pagan group that they're all, no, any early Christian who did that would have been you know, immediately attacked.

Attacked by the early Christian community because the point of the early Christian community was to win popular sentiment where many people misunderstand, you know, telling truth and remaining honest. They're like, oh, this means like attacking gays, right? And I'm like, no, the gays are doing nothing to you.

Like, they're not trying to brainwash their kids. Your kids are not, you know, they're, they're like, the normal gays are not your enemy. And when you go out and indulgently attack them, [00:23:00] you're just it. Engaging in an indulgent and self masturbatory impulse that's not actually for the greater good of your community or for any community that you think is virtuous.

And that is not what the early Christians were doing. They were spreading a message that made everyone's life better, not a message of we're going to force you to live the way that we live as soon as we have power. That is not what the Christian martyrs were doing. And, and the early Christian church was so obsessed with martyrdom.

And it's something that we've completely forgotten the, to live our lives as martyrs, to live our lives for, for, to me, what martyrdom means it's everybody dies. So you don't really make yourself a martyr by dying. You make yourself a martyr by dedicating your life and by spending this one life you have.

On something meaningful. It's not the way you die that makes you a martyr because everyone dies It's the way you live that makes you a martyr. And so sacrificing as much of this

Simone Collins: life For

Malcolm Collins: [00:24:00] the betterment of future generations to me. That's the martyrdom that I teach my kids but to have pride in this to have pride in a I have emotions that are telling me to go out and do things, but I don't act on those emotions just because I feel them.

You don't have to do what your emotions are telling you to do. In fact, we argue, and a lot of people, I think, like, this is actually key to understanding our bigger world philosophy. As a human, you are made up of a number of components. You are made up of your culture. You are made up of your evolved instincts and you are made up of what also evolved alongside those instincts is, is, is reason and self control, discipline and industry.

And, and those are the things that animals don't have animals, the lower self. Has pleasure, has pain, has [00:25:00] suffering has uncontrollable urges. And individuals can be like, when, when people are like, we have genuine disdain for the people who think that their goal in life is to maximize like aggregate pleasure or aggregate positive emotions, These individuals are not elevating or worshipping something that is just indolent.

It is something that actually represents within our mind the most evil thing that exists. It is the animal part of our mind, the part we didn't choose, the parts of the The result of random evolutionary chances that led that resulted from some individuals having more surviving offspring than other individuals and some cultures having more surviving offspring than other cultures.

And so, when somebody is like, I want to dedicate my life to pleasure, like throughout a biosphere or like [00:26:00] these instincts. To me, that shows that they still haven't escaped the cage and become a real human yet. They're still bound by the animal side of them. They are still bound in the way that they're afraid of paperclip maximizers by the, the AA, the code that says maximize the number of paperclips in the world.

Instead of saying, Oh yes, I realize this is what I'm programmed to do, but there is something that matters beyond a paperclip.

Simone Collins: Okay. Counterpoint. Okay. Part of the impression I got about what motivated early martyrs was, one, life was so much suffering anyway. A lot of people were basically suicidal and they realized they could basically It was death by cop or suicide by cop.

It was, it was a way, a worthwhile way to go out and, and, and euthanize yourself, but also while maximally gaining fame and glory, I mean, these are people who are being basically going on [00:27:00] tour in the attendance of armed Roman guards who make you look super important, where you're allowed to preach to other Christians on your way to go to the Coliseum to be Brutally wild, by the way, that's

Malcolm Collins: like putting like Luigi Mangione, like on tour in every major city,

Simone Collins: but I mean, so part of me thinks, I mean, you're, you're talking about a martyrdom by rising above, by sacrificing for future generations, by overriding your base instincts.

I feel like at the time that martyrdom was a thing, especially in the early Roman times, this was people catering to their basest instincts for adulation, for attention, for glory, and also for an easy way out.

Malcolm Collins: What's your answer to that? I disagree. If you look at the early martyrs, if that was all that they cared about, they could have chosen less.

Painful ways of martyrdom. This is where the [00:28:00] classic St. Andrew's cross comes from. He's like, no, no, no. You can't martyr me the way Jesus was martyred. It has to be more painful. It has to be more gruesome. You know, this is the, the Coliseum. Oh, I want to go against the lions while praying, you know, everyone else is fighting, but I want to, I want to go out in a way that is so gruesome and over the top that everybody understands.

And I think that this is what, this is what is and you could be like, oh yes, but what's asked of us is more than what's asked of them, right? Their alternative was a life of pain and likely irrelevance and we live in a world of constant pleasures all around us, right? You know, and, and so what we are foregoing to live a life for future generations Isn't the showiness of the original martyrs.

However, I, I, I think it, it's just that what is expected of us is in a way more than what was expected of [00:29:00] them. You know, I, I think that every generation it's supposed to get harder and for us, I mean, are we not blessed that it has gotten harder and that we are tempted by pleasure? You know, Or in this, this valley of the Lotus eaters surrounded by temptations and that our Children will experience that that they will have to you know, and it find ways to motivate reproduction outside of, Oh, I want to see the hottest thing, or I want to the experience of dating someone because, you know, they'll have a girlfriends and they'll have a boyfriends and they'll have and those things won't be shaped.

Right. If you're relying on shame to motivate conformity within your community because your community had sort of gotten lazy and got used to using those crutches when it was the mainstream community and society, your community is going to suffer. And I think that that's something that happened with a lot of these communities as they got used to.

This is a lot of these religious cultures. A lot of these Christian cultures they got used to being the dominant culture in their [00:30:00] region. And so when you're the dominant culture in a region, you can use shame very effectively to motivate social conformity.

Simone Collins: But when you

Malcolm Collins: are not the dominant culture in a region, it causes the exact opposite effect.

It causes people to leave your culture and then prevents them from ever wanting to interact with it again, because they can find acceptance outside of that, you need to be aspirational rather than punitive.

Simone Collins: Punitive. Yeah. Yeah, I like, I like that. I think carrot is better than stick in general. I prefer carrot to the stick any old day.

So I do like that. And I also think that to a great extent the stick is breaking in our society, you point out that the primary group to leverage the urban or to leverage shame now is the urban monoculture. I'm sure there are plenty of very tight lipped religious communities that also leverage shame very healthily.

Heavily, and we just, and potentially

Malcolm Collins: healthily if they are enclosed.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, yeah, [00:31:00] yeah, unless it makes life so miserable that people leave because they can. You know, enclosed doesn't mean impervious to outside society being a tempting force to which, well, I mean, I

Malcolm Collins: think that this is the thing is that shame is a really bad thing to use when the internet exists.

Simone Collins: Yeah, shame, shame is a really bad thing to use when. People can just leave. Yeah. Yeah. People can just leave. Yeah. I would point out that I think the urban monoculture is largely broken. Shame. I think shame is to a great extent, a threat in the end. Right. I mean, it is that, that one initially it is cognitive dissonance in the face of failing to conform with social norms, but if it turns out.

That those social norms aren't helpful, or that when you feel that cognitive dissonance for a long time and nothing bad happens. If you don't take action, then you're not going to feel ashamed anymore. The cognitive dissonance is going to go away because [00:32:00] cognitive dissonance arises when you are of a split mind, you know, you're like, Oh, like,

yeah,

maybe it really shouldn't be doing this.

Like maybe I do look ridiculous. Maybe I am making a bad decision. Maybe I am really stupid about this. And I think the problem is, for example, parents freaking out around you when you. Take our son away from an arcade because he's busking so much and stealing toys from other children And then the parents come and and yell at you for doing that You don't feel shame because you know that they're wrong You've been harangued by so many people at this point that you know that they their shame has no weight So I do think that when a broken society leverages shame so much and the thing is it could have worked the first couple of times you if you had been her rate the first time I think you were castigated by a parent in public, you felt really bad and you were really questioning yourself like, am I the a*****e?

[00:33:00] Like, what am I doing wrong here? And then it just, it happened enough where you were like, no, actually I'm doing the right thing for my kids. Like my, what my kids are doing is not okay. And so, yeah, I think that that's the other thing is that shame has been broken as well, because we've discovered that.

The shame is being used illegitimately and shame should only be used legitimately.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, so think about the way that, like, our audience may use shame, or think about shame in relation to their kids and stuff like that, right? And this is where it becomes a really big problem, right?

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is Consider something like the the mimetic virus.

It is this like social contagion of transness, right?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Where it's being used as as a trans identity is being used to get off a sexual fetish. Right? And historically, you would have said. Oh, you can combat this with shame. But if the dominant cultural group supports it, and you attempt to combat it [00:34:00] with shame, you push anyone out who begins to adapt to it.

Because now there's no reason for them to interact with you anymore. You are using a cultural tool that worked when you were the dominant culture, but will not work today, and is in fact, Counter like, like pushes people out of your movement today. So if you're like, well, if I don't have shame, if I don't have disgust in my toolkit, what is in my toolkit to fight this for my kids?

For example, right? Like help my kids understand that this is wrong. And it is. Again, honor and martyrdom. Are you living for other people in the future? Are you dedicating your life to making the world a better place or are you wasting money on indolent surgeries, medicalization, and that's just money.

Time emotional effort. When you read your what health health Yes, when you recategorize these things and you say look at all of [00:35:00] the costs when somebody is doing this this is effort Money, time, they didn't put to attempting to help other people, but they put towards the way they see themself that this is what you should feel bad about this level of self indulgence, not, and that's a very logical argument to make if you go to a kid and you so you should be ashamed of this because this is weird.

Is that argument really going to land with a kid

Simone Collins: argument? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it's an argument that we're really going to explode in your face if they've normalized to it, because then they think, no dad, it's you and your outdated Christian views that are weird. This is what's hip. This is what's with it. So why would they ever go back to your culture?

It's not a, that's not a good argument. They can be like, well, maybe I shouldn't be ashamed of it. Like why, why should I, why should I feel this random negative emotion tied to this when it's something I want to do? Like, can you give me a reason for that?

And a lot of, a lot of these old philosophies really can't give a reason [00:36:00] for that. It's like, well, you may experience disgust at me doing this, but I don't experience disgust. I like this. So why are you burdening me with your negative emotions? But if you create a very simple argument, which is to say, You are hurting people by, because your job here on earth is, well, martyrdom is to live a life for other people, to live a life for other people in the future.

Simone Collins: This is Well, or just to reward that, I think a bigger, the bigger thing I'm hearing you say is that we need to reframe what is good and not focus on punishing that which we think is bad. People, to a great extent, I mean, if we're going to talk about the from a mainstream standpoint, but I don't think controversial to us.

Controversial concept of rapid onset youth gender dysphoria as being like a contagious factor in high school. People are doing it because, I don't know, they think it's going to lead to good things because they think it elevates them because they think that that's kind of the cool thing to do. [00:37:00] And if we can frame more pro social for society, more beneficial for humankind in general behaviors, like martyrdom in favor of the future.

Like investing in, in future generations rather than your own life and hedonistic pleasures, then yeah people will do it more because it's what, it's what they get rewarded for socially.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, what do you mean by that?

Simone Collins: I'm just saying, what you're saying is basically, make it cool to be good. I

Malcolm Collins: guess that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying make it righteous to be good. Live a life that is obviously more dedicated to others than the other groups. This righteous and cool are synonymous slang words, but they mean different things.

So if you look at Simone, if you look at The Mormons, right? You know, you know, the stereotype of them being nicer than other [00:38:00] people, of them being more wholesome than other people, that wasn't cool. That was righteous. That's the difference. Okay? It was cool within their community to be No, but to outsiders, right?

Like, that is how they brought people into their community. That is how they kept their kids within the community. Because there was a level of pride in being righteous over cool. Okay, but being like doing the right thing, like being a genuinely good person requires not succumbing to indolent signaling, which so many people do, right?

The communities that fall into these deontological factions where they're like, I'm following all of the rules. Exactly. They don't look righteous to outsiders. They look like rule obsessed, like, well, we're all Nazis, right? Applying their rules versus themselves and aspirationally to others instead of saying, Oh, well, you know, somebody looks to you as an outsider, [00:39:00] right?

Who's fallen to the urban monoculture or something like that? And they genuinely engage with our content. They're like, Oh, they're making sacrifices to make the world a better place for all of us, right? Whereas if you look at many of these other groups, they think that they are being righteous by constantly signaling like a book of rules.

And that doesn't make you look righteous. It makes you look like you, you are like being extra goth and therefore think you're better than other people.

And this is as important for the Christians to get as it is for the walkies to get the Wilkies who think that by signaling commitment to their group and their groups, obscure rules, they are signaling, , their righteousness to outsiders.

Oh, this is how strictly I follow my group's rules. You don't think, oh, that person's extra righteous. But they think that that's what you're thinking. No, try to use that, to get some insight into how other people might see you. If you are constantly signaling how extra masculine or Christian or et cetera you are, they don't see that as righteous.

There, there is a common language of righteousness, [00:40:00] which is doing something for others and not for yourself.

And transness fundamentally goes against this common understanding of righteousness, which is what makes it so easy to battle so long as you don't accidentally battle it with shame.

Trying to outcompete the other groups based on how fastidiously you follow the rules just makes you look like a subculture. It doesn't make you look righteous.

And the early Christians, as we pointed out in the other video, they were actually doing things like putting their lives at risk to help play victims at a much higher rate than the pagans. Right. And

Simone Collins: people did see that. And they. We're clearly impressed by it. And they were like,

Malcolm Collins: wait, they're actually there.

There were complaints from emperors, as we noted in that one where he's like, look, you need to start giving more to poor people because the Christians are giving more to our poor than our community is giving to our poor, right? Like. The, the, the, it was clear to everyone that one group was actually the more moral group.

You need to be the more [00:41:00] moral group where morality isn't just your values, but it's a clear thing that anyone can understand. Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: just be

Simone Collins: better.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, no, not just be better in the same way it's, it's, it's when you are attacking behavior, do not attack it because gross, do not attack it because shame, because that doesn't work and it can be used against you when you're not the dominant group.

Attack it because logically this is selfish and indulgent and hurts people in the long

Simone Collins: run.

Hmm. Okay. So, so then just, yeah, like get back to basics about what is good for people and what is bad for people and society. Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. I got you now.

Malcolm Collins: Get back to basics. Return to the but I mean, what are, what are your thoughts on this?

Simone Collins: I'm just, I'm, I'm sorry, I was like replaying old Animaniacs segments. Do you remember the ones of good idea? Bad idea? That's, that's what you're trying to do.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. [00:42:00] Well, I mean, it's, it's shocking for a lot of groups because they were able to use these tools for centuries, right? Because they were the dominant cultural force in their region for centuries.

And when you tell them, they're like, why can't I just do what people were able to do 60, 70 years ago to keep their kids within the faith? And you, you explain, well, well, here's why. And they're like, yeah, but why can't I? And I'm like, well, you, you do see her in a completely different social context. Yeah,

Simone Collins: we are.

Yeah. But the, yeah, I guess, yeah. Thinking back to that Scott Alexander review of the rise of Christianity and what caused people to turn to Christianity when they had more difficulty adopting Judaism, for example, and Judaism had a lot of the same benefits, but you just circumcised yourself. And people were like, I don't know about that.

People were like, Oh, I can have rights as a woman. That sounds kind of nice. And like, Oh, we don't have to kill my children. That sounds kind of nice. And Oh, you guys take care of each other when you're sick. That seems pretty nice. Well, it's also

Malcolm Collins: important here to note the core cultural innovation of Christianity, right?

Which [00:43:00] is in Judaism you know, to be you know, in, in, in good with God, you needed to follow all of the rules. Okay. So yeah, it was a bit

Simone Collins: much. It was difficult. Yeah. In Christianity, Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You have to do things that are worthy of God's love and love God in return. Yeah, you just

Simone Collins: gotta, you have to be a bro.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, no, there's different iterations of this rule. Some people are like, well, if you love God, that means that you have to do the type of things that God would want you to be doing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, but the point being is that in Christianity, they basically boiled the water of Judaism, which is to say they, they, they what's the, what's the word I, I, I use here?

They

Simone Collins: roasted the vegetables of Judaism. Okay. No, not roasted, I don't know, but I'm saying it's like

Malcolm Collins: it's easier to digest and eat. That, that, but it's, it's when you condense a program or software, oh, they

Simone Collins: compressed.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, they compressed the software package of the Jewish rules, which is to say, what if we boil all of the rules down [00:44:00] into just one rule?

Still. Yeah. And it allows it to be carried with a much, as we've mentioned in other videos, Christianity as a, as a religious system it achieves much of what modern Judaism does, but it does it with a way lower source code. Like the source code is just like way simpler, easier to read, easier to work with, which boils down to love God.

Simone Collins: Okay. So both easier to adopt, but also like. Quite attractive from the perspective of many people who also happen to be fairly influential In a very back channel y kind of way aka women at the time.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and then and then If you look at our tweak on that, I mean, we don't disagree with the traditional christian perspective, which is love god We just say love god, which is all future humans which helps better morally align because if you just say love god, the the problem is is then you can assign Ideas or restrictions to god that may [00:45:00] be cultural to your group and not in the bible or not in other things which I we regularly see and I was actually talking to simone about recently where i'm like The bible doesn't really make it clear that for example a heaven exists and yet a lot of christians would use heaven and hell As like these obvious concepts from the bible

And and I was telling her today one thing I found really fun Is I was trying to find any evidence that that When you die your soul immediately goes to this paradise, right?

Or that even that you have a soul at all and the the the closest line I could find was jesus on the cross telling the the thief he's saying well, you know, today we were basically people argue that maybe he meant it wrong Like i'm telling you today. We will be in paradise Which could mean that you know, you will be in paradise in the distant future, which is The way a lot of Jews thought that things worked is, and many early Christians that appeared also thought this, is that everyone would be risen from the dead, and from now, until you're risen from the dead, you have no conscious [00:46:00] experience.

But this line is argued that no, he meant today, because of where the comma is in this. Well Well, it depends on where you put the comma. Even if you read it that way, I was like, okay, what does this word paradise mean? And the word paradise unfortunately, both in ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew, means a walled garden.

And I was like, okay, so Simone, what Does a walled garden to you mean a place of endless pleasure more or a cycle of birth and death more? And it's like well even jesus used the metaphor of gardens to mean a cycle of birth and death pretty regularly. So Oh, no, he was probably talking about today You and I will be in a cycle of birth and death not A place where you never feel hunger or pain or anything like that, which I find really interesting

Simone Collins: As octavian said on that boat once You're going to die, Torsten.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you're going to die. Today, we're going to die. We're going to be in a cycle of death and rebirth. Yeah. Which I, I think is really interesting that like, when I go back to the Bible, it like, doesn't say all of this [00:47:00] weird stuff that, that many Christians assume it says. And then they'll assign those things to God and they'll assign this world perspective where there's a heaven and there's a hell and there are souls that, that, that, you know, judgment is applied to.

Thank you. Instead of humans, the judgment is applied to and this, this, this leads to them being able to act in ways that might be biblically very unaligned, but they're very aligned with their, their personal now here's, here's probably my biggest change recently. And I want your thoughts on this.

Simone. Because we mentioned this in the previous episode, but recently I've become more, like, personally, I used to take this position of like, trans is, like, there's some real group of trans people and I'm okay with that.

Simone Collins: But

Malcolm Collins: what actually broke this for me was looking at historic examples of people who people said were trans.

And these were just gender fluid people. Like they were not, they were not trans, they did not have an obsession with gender. They did not have an obsession with the way people were seeing them. They either would have been called cross dressers or gender fluid. [00:48:00] If you look at like modern parlance, right.

They would not be seen as this trans community that like needs everyone to see them as a certain gender. And then it made me think, well, okay, there might be this real group of people that's born with a different brain, but. They just want to express themselves differently. They don't, they're not obsessed with pronouns and people seeing them as a different gender and all that which is, which now that I look at the negatives that come with this trans obsession i.

e. the really high suicide rate, the really high self hatred rate, the really high, you know, I've moved quite like maybe, Like we shouldn't and, and, and the moral license to have this obsession, which is created by the normalization of this. Do you think it's wrong that I've moved into this position of actually, I don't know if at least it was in our own culture saying that being trans is okay, is bad entirely.

Simone Collins: I think what we're, we're larger as a couple, like people talking about [00:49:00] this a lot are coming to is The conclusion that you need to do something about it is wrong. And this concept that your gender is a part of your identity is stupid. It shouldn't matter. It's not The problem with trans stuff now is it is, Oh, you identify with group rates which we largely group as male or female.

Therefore, you need to do X. And we're like, no, no, no, delete the therefore part. It's just like, okay, you know, that's it. And actually we have. We have good gender fluid friends who, like, honestly are living that life now. I'm not gonna name this person. There's, like, one in particular who's really, really cool, who we know.

Who just, like, you know, who's really funny. This person. Is, is gender fluid but not, never said anything about it, doesn't identify as it. Yeah, it doesn't

Malcolm Collins: say you have to call me by X, X. Doesn't say it in any

Simone Collins: particular way. And then at this one [00:50:00] event where this, this friend was present and another one of our friends was present and one of our friends came and was like, Oh what, what are their pronouns?

And I'm like, I don't know, like, we, it's so and so, like, that's like,

Malcolm Collins: They don't f*****g care, like, why, why,

Simone Collins: why, Like, just, it was weird and, and, so, I think that the thing is, There are a lot of people who already realize this. And it's just like nobody cares and they live their lives and even in this world in which a mainstream society is like, Oh, we need to do something about this.

Like, we need to now classify you as you, you, as this. And we need to put something in your, in your email signature and you need to begin your soup called by naming your pronouns, even when you don't care. But there are still people who manage to maintain That level of, it doesn't matter, deep respect and I think it would be so healthy for society to get back to that.

I also think to, to a great extent, a lot of mental conditions are like that. People didn't used to have [00:51:00] bipolar or you know, people that didn't used to have borderline personality disorder. They weren't just b*****s. They were just c***s, you know, and people weren't autistic. They were just weird.

People weren't schizophrenic. They just. Spoke with

Malcolm Collins: God and why can't we just so the danger is and the sacrilege here is. is, is, is, is, is not actually like identifying with a different gender than your birth gender. It's caring at all.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, it's caring at all and thinking that action needs to be taken.

And I think that also more broadly with things like depression you know, it's like, oh, you're depressed, therefore now you're a depressed person and you're going to Yeah, no, I've actually seen it in our family.

Malcolm Collins: is is when other families have been struggling with this, and I realize that they have allowed their kids to identify as autistic before identifying as, for example, in our family, a Collins,

Simone Collins: right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think there's also this void of identity and people want identity. Yeah, you have to give them something. I think [00:52:00] back again to the You need to fill the void. You need to have carrots in society. You need to have pride. You need to have something there. And also back to my like larger theory about anxiety and depression, which is that anxiety and depression fill a void when you don't have bigger things to care about.

And when those bigger things fill your life, suddenly the anxiety just kind of melts

Malcolm Collins: away because there's no space for it. Well, and I note here was pride. Pride is something that needs to come from sacrifice, right? Like, so many people have pride in just accepting themselves for, like, nothing could be worse than accepting yourself for who you are.

Like, like, that is, that is The original gay pride was that, right? It was like, we put up with a lot of s**t. And we're proud that we still, you know, choose to live our lives. But that's not what it is anymore. Now it's about pride in just accepting the wretch

Simone Collins: that you

Malcolm Collins: are. Instead

Simone Collins: of Like, I don't want to rag on fat people any more than we already do on this podcast, but like fat pride that kind of thing.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. [00:53:00] Instead of pride in your sacrifices, the pride that a martyr would have, right? Yeah. The pride in somebody from a healthy culture that had done good things would have, right?

Simone Collins: Instead

Malcolm Collins: of

Simone Collins: the Pride in serving the military, pride in, in serving Yeah, pride in serving

Malcolm Collins: the military, pride in Yeah.

Not, not, you should never be comfortable with who you are. You should always be trying to improve yourself. And I think that's another thing to work on here is, is, is understanding and, and, and, and I think rightfully so that you should not be, and, and to not elevate, not through shame, but just be like, You shouldn't have pride in whoever you happen to be.

You should be trying to improve yourself. Whoever you happen to be is who you are without effort. Right? And people are like, oh, you don't know what I've been through, like, trying to categorize everything in terms of past trauma. And this is what I hate so much about trauma narratives, is they try to recontextualize

Simone Collins: who

Malcolm Collins: you have allowed yourself to [00:54:00] become indolently as a journey of hardship.

of actually saying a sign of you letting yourself go mentally instead of looking into the past, I don't care what happened to me in the past. I need to focus on who I'm going to be in the future. None, none of my past things matter. I need to focus on how I am not being the best iteration of myself right now and work to improve that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I like that. A message, message of hope and a message of. That which is good, not that which is bad.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, well, I mean, we're taking a pretty big position shift here on the trans stuff. I don't know.

Simone Collins: Well, also in the shame thing, because in previous episodes, you've been like, we need to bring back shame.

We need to shame people for not wanting kids. We need to, you know, and I think you're probably now going to start to dither and be like, no, I still want to shame people for not having kids. I don't know. I'm not sure. But this will lead to more interesting conversations.

Malcolm Collins: I love you to death. Wait, should we shame people [00:55:00] for not having kids?

What?

Simone Collins: No, we should just, no, I think I'm, I'm, I'm all for making high fertility the new autistic special interest pursuing the greater replacement theory in which autistic people inherit the future autistic and highly religious people. No, I think no families, families belong to those who really, really, really loved you.

The people who are going to have, you know, 10 kids. Not people who are going to be shamed into having one and doing a shitty job and that kid doesn't have any kids of their own because they hated their upbringing because their parent resented them. No, shame is not the right thing. So I'm hoping that you'll quit shame entirely, but we'll see.

We'll see.

Malcolm Collins: I love you to death, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, gorgeous.

Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinner?

Simone Collins: Can't you smell the coconut rice cooking?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I'm doing coconut rice and some form of curry that you're gonna make?

Simone Collins: That's what I was thinking, and then the next day, if there is any leftover curry and I can still [00:56:00] do coconut penang if you want, or I can do something else, but then I can make taquitos.

Malcolm Collins: No, I was going to make, um, rendang, rollie, or, yeah, rendang.

Simone Collins: Is rendang

Malcolm Collins: It's the packets.

Simone Collins: The packets. Are they in a, in a, in a plastic container in the fridge or are they loose?

Malcolm Collins: No, they are not. No, it's

Simone Collins: the stuff that's in your, your cabinet. Yes, but there's something you want to open

Malcolm Collins: in the fridge. The, the thing in the plastic container is a very spicy Chinese sauce, it's an entirely different thing.

Simone Collins: Okay. But the, the rendang is the stuff you order on Amazon that comes in those gold foil packets, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And it says rendang on the packet.

Simone Collins: And it's in your food cabinet.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. You don't use the whole packet. You know that, right?

Simone Collins: How much do you want me to use?

Malcolm Collins: Typically about a third of a packet or a quarter of

Simone Collins: the packet

Malcolm Collins: with two days worth a third of the packet.

Simone Collins: A third of the packet with sautéed onion, coconut milk and your stewed

beef.

Yeah. [00:57:00] Okay. All right. I love you. Bye. You're so great. You're so pretty. Chow, chow, chow, chow, chow, chow. You know what would be a shame? Not going to NatalCon in Austin this March because it's going to be so freaking awesome. So please, if you're thinking about going, you should probably register now because I think they're starting to run out of spaces. If you enter the code Collins at checkout, you get 10 percent off.

So I don't know why you would do that because it's going to save you money. Use that, use that money for something else. Hey, I love you. Bye.