Exploring Transformation, Masculinity, and Identity Optimization

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the world of male influencer Hamza and the growing trend of optimizing one's life around an aesthetic ideal of masculinity. They explore the similarities between this movement and the trans community, both of which prioritize gender identity as a central focus. The hosts also examine the cultural differences in gender roles and expectations, particularly between traditional American and Muslim or Eastern European backgrounds. They argue that defining one's moral system around an aesthetic can lead to despair and that true fulfillment comes from pursuing goals with intrinsic value. The discussion touches on the importance of finding a life partner who complements one's own values and the dangers of maintaining a false "frame" in relationships.

[00:00:00] basically I'm starting the fatherhood chapter of my life. We're not pregnant just yet, but we've moved to the Scottish Highlands,

The reason why me and my ex split up is I told her to sit down and to write down like her goals and I wrote, you know what, I want to move to like a big city.

 You will not find this kind of woman who will fit with this lifestyle in a big major city why?

The women who are in the big cities are glorified Instagram prostitution.

I actually want to have a few like, Sleepless nights.

I want to have a few likes like sleep deprived nights where I stay up late bro for the last few years I've been to sleep at 7 8 p. m I've you couldn't imagine the amount of like parties and social events and dinners that I've missed

I know what goes on in these parties And the issue was that the girls that I was meeting from these places, just like I, I was as well, um, We're all low quality.

It's a low quality place to be.

. I wanted to be super social. I wanted to have some late nights where we stay up and we're social and there's a party that we go to and everything.

 But she saw it, and I'm not gonna lie, like, I could see how, like, offended she was. Where she was quite, like, [00:01:00] pressuring, she was like, Wait, you wanna do this? Oh, you wanna do that? You wanna stay up late? But that's unhealthy.

 Those party girls, like the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of girls.

They are attracted to the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of guys. Fine, like trash can stay with trash.

Because for hers, she wrote that she wanted to do more of the things that we were currently doing. , it's wholesome as f**k, and you know that she's an awesome girl for that, she doesn't want to be around like, You know, like party girls and whatever I just realized like we're actually going into two separate seasons right now

 Fine, like trash can stay with trash. This is going to sound weird, you need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently.

Malcolm Collins: but the problem is that when you Define your moral system around an aesthetic.

It needs to be witnessed to have value. And when he got to the countryside, there was no one to witness affirmation from the social community

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! [00:02:00] Recently I fell down a rabbit hole trying to learn about this Influencer named Hamza, .

The men of this country in general, unless they follow me, are f*****g weak. The only strong men in this entire f*****g country, in the entire west, are just the ones who are part of my cult, who have followed my advice and become strong from that.

Every f*****g other guy here is basically just a f*****g pussy. They're all just weak as f**k.

if you put some of your money into a company like Apple, or you put it into like, you know, the big like index funds like Apple and like 500 different companies, you're giving them money to help them with their business.

And you're hoping that since they think that you're a good boy, they'll give you a little bit more money in return. I think your, your PP size has to be very small for that, because if you understand this concept of investing, why would you invest in someone else's business instead of your own?

Malcolm Collins: He is a London based influencer that is seen as like a new big figure in the, I guess I'd call male aesthetic movement.

Simone Collins: Like Lux [00:03:00] Maxxing?

Malcolm Collins: Not exactly Lux Maxxing. It's the movement that, I would say that an individual like

Simone Collins: Rye Nationalist?

Malcolm Collins: No, Andrew Tate would be a leading figure.

Ah,

Simone Collins: okay. Performative masculinity. Performative

Malcolm Collins: masculinity for the sake of performative masculinity. And I think it's really shown in a lot of his videos because Whitney, he asks himself and you'll actually see this in the Hamza video. So just so people know he became very famous. He's got like 2. 3 million subscribers on YouTube.

And. Regularly in his videos, he will ask

himself should I do X or Y? And the metric he uses when deciding X or Y is what fulfills my potential as a man? What is the more masculine thing to do, or the thing that is more like a man to do?

Mediocre man would get the vision that I did and he'd start training a few hours a week.

The superior man would go and live in a fight camp. The superior man, the man who's [00:04:00] really like on this, would literally go and live amongst the fighters and the warriors and Live amongst them, eat amongst them, and be revolving around this lifestyle as much as possible. And four months later, he uploads Why I Never Became a Fighter. Well, at least he did give it a whole four months. At the end of the day, the first day of being in this fight camp, I go and sit down and journal in my room.

And I just ask myself a question, is this authentic? So you're telling me he quit this newfound metamorphosis after one day,

This is going to sound weird, you need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently.

Simone Collins: In the pragmatist guide to life where you talk about, just like people's objective functions and what they should maximize their existence around.

You give thought experiments going over any possible thing, be it hedonism or serving God or negative utilitarianism, like you're all over the place, right? The one thing, because you're very unbiased in that book, the one thing that [00:05:00] you s**t all over is people whose objective function revolves around an identity or an aesthetic, which is exactly what you're describing here.

So hopefully this gets really salty really fast.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah I, Oh I'm excited to get salty. And the last time, because we regularly talk about how the problem with gender dysphoria and a gender fixation is not just a problem on the left, on the left, this was in the trans movement where people make their entire identity, their gender, but Is not Andrew Tate's a huge chunk of his identity, his gender, and the people who follow him following him because they're trying to be more like a perfect man.

And in the comments to that video, one of the commenters said I feel so much better and more fulfilled since I started optimizing around, my masculinity or man like things, and I was like you sound like a trans person would tell me the same thing. Like I feel so much more fulfilled since I started optimizing my life around my gender.

It's not that this isn't able to create a feedback cycle that can make you [00:06:00] feel as if you are living a fulfilling life, but like Objectively, peel it back for five seconds, you must realize that none of that matters objectively, just because you can feel good by gambling all day, or by exercising 24 7, and I'm not saying that's what these individuals do, I'm, what I'm doing is I'm creating an event.

Comparison here. That doesn't mean that you exercising 24 seven is a thing of value. That doesn't mean when you die, people will be like, wow, he really lived a life of value. And this is where I will add some nuance to this before I go further with any of this, which is to say individuals like this, like aesthetic aspirations, like masculinity can be.

The lifeline or the life like safety preserver for somebody who is drowning in thoughts about not unaliving themselves [00:07:00] and thoughts about just like desperation and depression and a sense of, Worselessness was in society, which a lot of young men feel these days. And if you try to engage them with a more complex concept whether that concept is a theological concept or a philosophical concept or some like deeper actually good reason for living and a good thing to dedicate your life to, they, that can't get through to them in that state.

Simone Collins: And so it's like when you're in too much pain, you can't really think about anything complicated. You need a painkiller and there's nothing mentally effective. Like a painkiller that's really highly intellectual. You need a mini game that you can easily win.

And anything that's aesthetically based is fairly easy to win because you look in the mirror. Do you look like that person you saw on Instagram? Yes or no. Okay, fantastic. And you know where you're going, where you are, there's no nuance because frankly, you're in too much mental pain and anguish or depression to feel that nuance.

Is that where you're saying really?

Malcolm Collins: That's absolutely what I'm saying. Yeah. And I'd also point out [00:08:00] here that we have to be aware of given that we think that a large part of IQ is heritable, and the old saying, how smart the average person is. Half of them are dumber than that.

The problem is that a lot of people may simply lack the. Mental ability to conceptualize anything more complicated than just be man on Gabunga. And yeah,

Simone Collins: you're saying this isn't just a people hurting or depressed people thing. It is, but it can also just be an IQ thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it can also just be an IQ thing. So I'm saying that I don't hate that these memes are spreading more broadly. Like I do not think Hamza, for example, is a bad guy or what he is doing is making society net worse. And I actually feel the same about Andrew Tate. I do not think what he's doing is making society net worse.

I do not think he is a bad guy. I do think so so 1 thing I do need to note about both of these individuals, and we mentioned this in our Tom girl episode, which is really interesting or tomboy episode, which is a sort of apocalypse of [00:09:00] tomboys that they are disappearing. And they're being villainized by both the right and the left where the 1 really negative thing that does come out of these individuals is These individuals often come from, Eastern European or Muslim countries with Muslim backgrounds which means that they uh, stall idealized women from a Muslim cultural perspective, which is very different than what the idealized woman is within classical Americana perspective which is a woman who is, much more do it herself, can fix a car, can tough it out with the boys much more.

And if you want to see our big arguments around that, and all of the citations around that, you can just go to that episode.

I love it. When people in response to that other video where like, no. Andrew Tate. Isn't. Uh, stalling, a Muslim view of femininity and gender relationships. And then few days later, he puts out this tweet, which we've actually done a full video on that'll go live soon, where he is saying the [00:10:00] solution to demographic collapse is polygyny.

That men need to take multiple wives. If you are so brainwashed that you don't understand that his entire view of gender is just a Muslim view of gender. Uh, I don't, I don't know what to say to you. You, you you're, you're brainwashed step. Um, there's nothing wrong with this view of gender, but it is not an American view of gender and it is not a Christian view of gender.

 Also side note here. Can we appreciate how awesome the new X is with this community note here under this being fertility rates have been falling in all parts of the world and among all races, their fertility of non-whites has fallen more than that of whites, which is one of those statistics that I always have to put out there to people who say we're racist for talking about falling fertility rates. This is both true, but between countries and within countries, I eat within the United States.

Fertility rates are falling faster among other races and outside of the United States, fertility rates are falling faster among non-whites. So also don't give me this. I'm being [00:11:00] racist for assuming that Hamza was raised Muslim. He was, and he says, so And there's nothing wrong with that, but it does create problems when you can bind ideas that you don't realize are about Muslim gender roles with the picture of the Western idealized family structure And unfortunately, many of the ideas about women or idealized femininity or the woman's role in society that have become normalized within the red pill movement are Muslim cultural conceptions of that. And therefore do not work when you try to mesh them with.. Everything else being a Western framework. When I was younger, I was raised to be a Muslim by my parents. I'm teaching you things that religion has been teaching us for thousands of years. Everything that the red pill has taught us about male and female sexuality, Islam has been enforcing.

And I really like this video. This is a multi millionaire Christian kickboxer who's speaking about Islam. If you have a problem with feminism, Islam will fix [00:12:00] it.

Malcolm Collins: It's really clear if you look at history books around what was considered idealized in an American woman, or if you just look at what people like in country songs.

 I can't swig that sweet champagne, I'd rather drink beer all night, Hey, I'm a redneck woman, I ain't no high class broad. I'm just a product of my race, and I say, hey, y'all, and yee haw. Look at that. I think every fish I've caught this year has been mean. Look at that.

Malcolm Collins: It's beginning to estole a very non American aspiration in terms of what women should aspire to and what young men should look for,

I don't know if this didn't occur to me when I was recording this originally, but. I realize now that a lot of people, when they imagine what your stereotypical ideal Muslim woman looks like, they are picturing the current radical extremist Muslim populations were women [00:13:00] were had jobs and stuff like that instead of the way, Muslim women historically dressed, which was. Absolutely dripping in jewelry in very scantily clad outfits. Thank your classic belly dancers and stuff like that. Or. Historic Persian women. But if you're watching this on audio basically think Jasmine from Aladdin. And contrast this with the idealized women in the American frontier. And I've also posted some pictures here that were very homely. And very plain and we're almost no jewelry. And people would be like, what? Those can't be the idealized frontier woman. They're not hot. And it's like, well, because in the traditional American value system, when you are choosing a wife, you are not optimizing around how hot she is. You are optimizing around other things like her moral character and how tough she is, which is something that these [00:14:00] women are showing. Every one of these women was photographed with a gun. This woman posing with a gun. Is not just a thing of modern, sexy, conservative women. This is something American women have been doing for a very long time.

Malcolm Collins: One of the things that really got me when I listened to these influencers which was really interesting, is I was listening to Hamza talk about what an ideal wife was for him. And he's out there, he's exercising every day obviously he puts a lot of effort into exercising, he puts a lot of effort in, in uh, Stoll's mental discipline.

This is a big thing for him like, don't play video games, it's a lot of sacrifice he's making and the end goal of this sacrifice, even from his own perspective, is a wife and a family. And so he talks about what he wants in a wife. And he says I want a wife that is submissive cheerful these, I appreciate cheerful and I do appreciate at least to me submissive.

That's something I'm into, but but also that doesn't have any male friends and that's where I'm starting to be like Whoa. [00:15:00]

Simone Collins: There's some insecurity in there, some massive insecurity.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then he goes on he needs her to be pretty, either not have a job or have a job that's more like a, a hobby and

Simone Collins: sells knitted goods on Etsy job.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That fits like a feminine aesthetic. And I hear this and I'm like, I would hate being married to that woman. It seems like people who do this, like if you follow the full Andrew Tate thing, or you follow the full Hamza thing, and you become. Giga Chad, right? The fish that is catching you, the woman that is catching you, the family life that is catching you, seems to me astronomically less than the value system that we will raise our children with and that we try to portray on our channel.

He couldn't get a woman like you. With that sort of attitude, like someone who's intellectually engaged and engages in these intellectual conversations and like [00:16:00] jokes with me and knows, all of these cultural, low cultural concepts that I find pretty engaging.

Simone Collins: I think there are two elements

Malcolm Collins: of

Simone Collins: that here, and I'm curious to hear what you think.

One element I think is insecurity that they. Wouldn't want a wife like that because they, I think either fear that a wife like that would get too big for their britches and then start making lots of demands and ultimately leave them or make their life really complicated and divorce, rape them and all of that.

I think the other part of it is they, given the nature of who they are, per what you're saying about lures and like the kind of fish they're catching, they haven't met these women. They just don't know they exist. And I don't think they. Believe that they exist if that's yeah, because

Malcolm Collins: they wouldn't like you wouldn't engage as one of these guys like the nerdy.

Yeah, I've not met Anyone like this before and you wouldn't be I was interesting So I showed Simone some of his videos and she goes isn't it interesting that so many of the men [00:17:00] who go for this ultra masculine? identity To you came off as preening and a feat. So for people who don't know what a feat is, that means they come off as effeminate and very obsessed when she says preening, like very obsessed with their looks and stuff like that.

Preening is typically a

Simone Collins: word that people learn when they look at male birds grooming themselves. fluffed out the right way, that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And when you said that, what I realized. Is this Americana idealization of a partner that a lot of our society has lost because a lot of the leaders and like the masculine identity movement come from Muslim and Eastern European backgrounds they don't come from traditional Americana backgrounds anymore.

At least the ones that are reaching the youth. We have forgotten this, that it wasn't just that the women were expected to be rough and tumble in terms of their aspiration.

But the men also were expected to exude a form of masculinity, which [00:18:00] is very difficult to describe in today's society. Where to you. When you looked at individuals like that, they came off as effeminate to you. Like Andrew Tate came off as effeminate to you. Hamza came off as effeminate to you.

Because they,

Simone Collins: what is effeminate, but investing in your appearance and obsessing over your appearance and what other people think of you. That is an inherently feminine thing. And it is also very clearly an obsession of these people. They do invest a lot in their appearance and also in what other people think of them.

What's more feminine than that?

I just want to be clear that it's not bad that these trades are feminine and it's not bad to be feminine. I'm just saying it's ironic because these men frame themselves as being hyper masculine, whereas really the height of masculinity lies in inherent confidence.

And a lack of interest in how other people see you, a giving zero f***s kind of thing. Which Andrew Tate invests heavily in, in projecting, but [00:19:00] it's obvious that he really cares about it.

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to disagree with you here. I just think it's different cultural ideals here.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: So for example, right?

I'll explain what I mean by this, right? So to you, when you look like a woman was this Americana cultural subset, when she looks at men like this, I suspect that they appear to you the same way that when I look at two women, and one of the women is. Is very a country girl, right?

Overalls, dirty, everything like that. And the other one is all done up with like lip injections and tons of makeup and tons of long nails. And I'm just like, ew, to that one. I don't know if a feminine masculine distinction is really necessary there. It is a value system distinction that we can associate with femininity and masculinity.

And that is from your perspective to me I, I don't know if it's and I think that within this movement and to men like this, they hear words like feminine [00:20:00] and they hear it when used to talk about something a male is doing is having an intrinsically negative context,

Baby: which I don't

Malcolm Collins: mean here.

You mean, it just not culturally align with what you were raised to believe a good partner. looked and acted like and valued which was specifically when your culture talked about what is a man to you? What is masculine?

Both: It

Malcolm Collins: was confidence leadership and not caring what other people think of them.

Okay.

Simone Collins: And I agree that there's a cultural aspect to that, but also when you look at what hormonally distinguishes men and women on average and behaviorally distinguishes men and women on average, women are the ones who hormonally and behaviorally care more about what other people think are more concerned with, social signaling and status and all the sort of bureaucratic, how do people see me?

How do I see them? What's everyone thinking right now thing. And men are the go big or go home, testosterone, I'm going to go out and make my fortune or die a virgin and no one's going to [00:21:00] care about me and I'll die in war and I'm disposable. That is masculinity versus femininity from a biological perspective.

So yes, maybe I culturally hold that view, but I also think it's a biological truth.

Malcolm Collins: I appreciate that. I also want to talk more about the Hansa story here because it wasn't really interesting to me what happened to him. And I think that it shows the danger of the masculinity as a moral system, like an aesthetic as a moral system mindset is he actually want he got a girl.

Who seemed like a really fantastic girl from what I've seen went to go live in a rural area with her, living the lifestyle that he had told everyone that he saw as aspiration.

Simone Collins: Like the ranch and everything,

I moved into the, the, and the rural mountains of Scotland with my woman.

And soon we're going to buy a home and we're going to have children. I'm going to move up my family here. I'm going to move up like families that I love. [00:22:00] And I'm going to create this dream into a reality. But basically I'm starting the fatherhood chapter of my life. We're not pregnant just yet, but we've moved to the Scottish Highlands, like the mountains of Scotland. And this is just an Airbnb that we're currently staying in, but we're going to view houses and we're going to get a home somewhere around this region.

And we start this like chapter of our lives of having children

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But then he wanted to go back to the city. Go back to all of the temptations that he pretended like he wasn't tempted by.

With the wife?

Simone Collins: Did they sell their house in the countryside?

Malcolm Collins: No, the wife didn't. I think they were renting something in the countryside. And he broke up with her. This person he was planning to marry.

Simone Collins: You left

Malcolm Collins: her? Over this.

Simone Collins: Over, why? Because, on what grounds did he leave her?

Malcolm Collins: He wanted to be more social and she wanted to focus more on just like the family, right?

Simone Collins: Oh, she was smothering him.

Malcolm Collins: Not smothering him. I think what it was is she believed what he had been saying. She believed [00:23:00] that was his true aspiration. I want a dedicated wife. I want to live in the countryside. And I want to focus on personal self improvement.

No, if you are listening in audio, and this section sounds disjointed, that is because I am interspersing clips of him explaining why he broke up with his girlfriend was clips of things he has said in the past about high quality partners and how to find an ideal girlfriend. The reason why me and my ex split up is because we did this little exercise together where I told her to sit down and to write down like her goals and the season of life that she wanted to get into.

 For the next few months, what kind of life do we wanna live? And so I wrote it really authentically and honestly, and I think she did as well. And I wrote, you know what, I want to move to like a big city. I want to be around like businessmen. I want to really make friends.

Let's talk about where you won't find her. You will not find this kind of woman who will fit with this lifestyle in a big major city like London, Dubai, Miami. Why?

Because the women who are in big cities, imagine you move to a big city. There's certainly [00:24:00] more women there, but quantity does not equal quality. The women who are in the big cities are there for one major reason. They are grinding. As like, as, as glorified Instagram prostitution.

I actually want to have a few like, Sleepless nights.

I want to have a few likes like sleep deprived nights where I stay up late bro for the last few years I've been to sleep at 7 8 p. m I've you couldn't imagine the amount of like parties and social events and dinners that I've missed

So the girls that I have dated previously have always just been these sort of like party hookup girls.

they were just like in parties, just like sucking dick because I know what goes, bro, I'm the guy who's getting his dick sucked in the party. I know what goes on in these parties And the issue was that the girls that I was meeting from these places, just like I, I was as well, um, We're all low quality.

It's a low quality place to be. I know that's probably not what you've wanted to hear because you got so excited when I just started saying it. You know, I used to f k these girls. But the truth is, like, the casual sex lifestyle brings instant gratification, Jeffries, to it. Like, people who you don't actually want to be around.

. I wanted to be super social. I [00:25:00] wanted to have some late nights where we stay up and we're social and there's a party that we go to and everything.

And. I'm not gonna lie, like, I don't wanna say a bad word about my girl, I really can't, about my ex. But she saw it, and I'm not gonna lie, like, I could see how, like, offended she was. Where she was quite, like, pressuring, she was like, Wait, you wanna do this? Oh, you wanna do that? You wanna stay up late? But that's unhealthy.

This pursuit has actually made me less attractive to those party girls, like the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of girls.

They are attracted to the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of guys. Fine, like trash can stay with trash.

Because for hers, she wrote that she wanted to do more of the things that we were currently doing. She wanted to get more into the sort of wild, detached away from people. Whilst that sounds, it's wholesome as f**k, and you know that she's an awesome girl for that, she doesn't want to be around like, You know, like party girls and whatever I just realized like we're actually going into two separate seasons right now

 Fine, like trash can stay with trash. This is going to sound weird, you need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you [00:26:00] need to be hit in the face consistently.

Malcolm Collins: but the problem is that when you Define your moral system around an aesthetic.

It needs to be witnessed to have value. And when he got to the countryside, there was no one to witness affirmation from the social community and everything like that. Why didn't

Simone Collins: he just post his life? Like ballerina farms and everyone else who goes out.

Malcolm Collins: He is he did do that to an extent, but I guess it wasn't enough for him.

Like I'm actually confused as to why he left her or why the city called to him that much. But I will say that people with different cultural values, many of them actually struggle to live in rural environments. Because rural environments offer a completely different set of reward mechanisms for an individual.

Think about you and me as an example here, right? You thought you would hate living in a rural environment when I was first like we should do it for cost reasons. And then you got out here and you were like, Oh my God. Like [00:27:00] recently you were telling me, I was like, what can I do for you?

I wanted to do something nice. I was like, can I upgrade your mattress? Can I fix a part of the house? Can I do something outside or buy you something because, she just had a kid and I was like you deserve some sort of a push present. I go, do you want more jewelry? And you go, I have all the jewelry I want.

You're like, she had a set number of jewelry that she wanted. Like at the beginning of our marriage, he just went and got it all. And she doesn't want any more jewelry. She's I don't want any more jewelry. I don't want any more clothing. And I was like then what do you want? And you go, the only thing that I want is in everything that I think about, like luxury for me is not having to worry about losing the lifestyle we have today.

Not having to worry about losing the house, not having to worry about losing the and we've paid off all the debt on our house and everything like that, which isn't even a sound financial decision. We just did it because, made you feel comfortable. Made

Simone Collins: me safer. You did it to humor me.

Because it makes me feel safer.

Malcolm Collins: And so we don't, and we had a super low interest loan from like during Covid and everything like that, but she's no, I know. So I did [00:28:00] that. People

Simone Collins: are gonna hate me for this.

Malcolm Collins: But still now it's about getting income streams that we don't need to leave the house to to go get.

But it was interesting to me that this is your heaven, this rural environment. You didn't even know. You created my

Simone Collins: ideal life and I never would have expected it.

Baby: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: sorry. Which is interesting for me is that I think that what might've happened with him is someone that may have been culturally and genetically optimized for a Urban environment put themselves in a rural environment and realized that while it may have fit certain like trans cultural narratives about masculinity, it didn't his narratives about masculinity.

Simone Collins: Here's another potentiality, though, is perhaps his primary. And what made him feel validated and what made him feel like he was bringing something to the table. Was this more in person socializing being witness thing and taking a life in the countryside [00:29:00] removed his ability to feel like he was something special and something high status.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe another thing that's very interesting about him. When I think about cultural differences and The Eastern European Muslim cultural background versus the Americana cultural background is this idea of fighting to prove one's masculinity. Which is, he did this thing where he stopped creating YouTube videos.

Like he created these high quality YouTube videos every day for a while. And then he stopped creating those so that he could go fight, be like a. A fighter, like I like, I guess Andrew Tate, like he took some inspiration from them.

Simone Collins: I think this Oh, he's fighting in front of an audience Professionally.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: MMA style fighting stuff. Like fighting in front of an audience, like other men. Yeah. Yeah. And what is interesting is this is really popular within that segment of this movement. So much that I saw this convergence here, and yet within traditional Americana. It's typically not considered a masculine thing to go out and fight other men.

And I suspect that the [00:30:00] reason is, if you were going to ask me why, is because in traditional Americana environments what would be seen as masculine is like hunting, fishing, things that allow you to survive. But in a survival frontier environment, Picking fights is going to get you and your family dead.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it actively detracts from your survival and productivity.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's a very dangerous thing to do, but when you're in a structured city or military environment, picking fights can be a useful sort of theatrical thing that you can do.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it's a, it's an environmentally based means of attaining status.

If you are in. A densely populated environment where you are not capable of gaining independence in a, from a resource perspective, fighting within those bureaucracies or within those small dense cities probably enables you to access better resources, better women, better. I also think that grading probably

Malcolm Collins: Is elevated within [00:31:00] tribal environments where you have tribal groups and they are basically testing males as active where you're at war with different tribal groups, which is not something you had in Americana frontier environments.

You, you did not have the frontiersman did not, they didn't function like that. As tribal groups like that, you would have people try to defend their family, but it was usually with weapons. Sorry, when I say weapons, firearms, right? You wouldn't

Simone Collins: have arms.

And if anything, you benefited from, with anyone with whom you could communicate, you benefited more through trade and mutual. understanding than you did from trying to fight or compete.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. Another thing that he elevates that I found very interesting, especially in regards to the quote unquote reward that he is, after when he talks about his ideal woman was you need to be in frame 24 seven.

Like this is something that he often instills as a concept. Sorry, people who may not know red pearl jargon. Being in frame means that if you are [00:32:00] married to someone, you basically can't joke around with them. You can't show them who you really are. You can't be silly. You can't show them vulnerability.

Feminine women are only attracted to men who are like stoic, cold f***s, even though they don't want to admit this.

Because if you break that down, you're no longer the guy that she actually fell for, and she loves you, so obviously, you know, she'll stay and she still really likes you and everything. But here's the brutal part. There's another guy out there. Who's still speaking to her like james bond She walks past the guy who's still been getting like his haircuts every week or every two weeks And she can't help but to feel that sting that shock of attraction that she used to have with you But now in another guy and you're like the good old faithful beta male

I'm just this f*****g goofy guy who's making high pitched, like, noises and, you know, like, laughing next to her the same way that I would with my male friends? We need to make this clear to each other and I hope you can learn from my lesson.

Don't. Act in front of your girl like you would with your boys when you're with your boys You you probably can relax fully and speak however you want. You're not trying to sexually attract them So [00:33:00] you don't need to have like a low deep like presence voice You can just speak and goof around laugh really loudly and everything But when you're with your girl, you should see it as that Always like a moment of attraction even when you know, you've got her never think that your woman is like 100 Yours

And here is what he was saying before. Sucking at the teat of Andrew Tate style content. But when it comes to the dating tactics, which say, okay, act like this, don't talk so much. That's when it can get A little bit tricky.

Like we said today, it makes you act like the stereotypical Chad who's cold and avoidance. And when you do that, and it's not the authentic version of you, which if you've watched this much of the video, that's not who you are.

This is going to sound weird, you need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently.

Simone Collins: It's basically like being in character as an actor 24 seven. So if you, if your role in the relationship is to be the hyper masculine dominant partner, you do not get to at [00:34:00] any point break that character. Meaning you cannot be vulnerable. You cannot be relaxed because that would ruin the. The underlying framework of that relationship.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I found that really fascinating because I can't imagine do they think that actually would work? Like that you could be in married and be like that 24, seven, and that would be. Like something to fight for?

Simone Collins: Part of me wonders if it's, if frame is really more a misunderstanding of genetics and culture.

Some men see that there are relationships in which men are proto abusive, highly dominant, always angry, always very heightened in terms of their aggression. And they assume that is just the way you're supposed to act when in actuality, there is a subset of men from different cultures and of different genetic makeups that are just naturally that way.

So really there shouldn't be no such thing as maintaining frame. There should be. optimizing around your hormonal and [00:35:00] genetic propensities. But it's just a misread. What do you think?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I think that you're right about that.

Simone Collins: So I see this for example, in, in female spheres where there's memes that come out here and there about like super healthy, like clean girls and that girl and like fitness girl and all these things where. There are influencers who demonstrate it, who just are it, they just have the good skin, they just like to eat healthy and exercise and whatnot.

Or they just like to be whatever it is, this type of trope is. And then there are the people who try to become that because they believe it is something you can become. And it's an adoptable lifestyle and they, in their attempts to maintain frame completely fall apart. There's one YouTuber, for example, who detailed her process of glowing up where she like tried to become one of these like healthy, aesthetic, beautiful.

influencers. And she just filmed herself working out and [00:36:00] eating well and doing all this stuff. And she completely fell apart and broke down because it's just, it's not her. It's not what she could ever be. And I think that happens a lot with this masculine ideal of maintaining frame. They're looking at this totally different culture that they're not well suited to.

And if you have to maintain frame in anything, It's not ever really going to happen for you. It's going to cause problems. It's

Malcolm Collins: not going to happen. It's not worth it.

Simone Collins: If

Malcolm Collins: what you are after is a, happy wife who you enjoy being around and a happy family, like if that's the goal that you need to be in frame to get.

If you are only able to maintain that goal while living a life in frame, then the goal probably isn't worth it. Especially if you're attempting it for any sort of a, self fulfillment reason. Because you can't really I think, meaningfully improve the core of who you are if you know your end state is just going to be an act.

It's not a desirable thing that they're fighting for. [00:37:00] Here's

Simone Collins: something where I want to distinguish this,

Malcolm Collins: though.

Simone Collins: How can we distinguish between A choice to behave a certain way to lean into a certain tendency and a choice to maintain frame. For example, I do think that there's a meaningful difference.

I just don't know exactly where to draw the line. You and I decide to be happy about life, to be grateful, to see things as funny instead of frustrating. Whenever we have the ability to go that way, we go that way. And that could be seen by some as maintaining frame, that we choose to be happy go lucky, that we choose to do harder things or see mishaps as funny.

How is that different from someone who always tries to lean in the form of male dominance and aggression?

Malcolm Collins: That, that is interesting. Yeah. I am. And I think. Yeah, we do have some level of frame, which is to choose to be happy because it is unproductive to not be happy. And genetically

Simone Collins: speaking, my mother suffered from pretty severe [00:38:00] depression, your mother suffered from depression.

It's not as though we don't have pro the mental problems, genetically speaking, either.

Malcolm Collins: So this is I suppose what it is this frame that we are maintaining, is just a more productive and enjoyable frame, which makes it more sustainable. If the frame is I am happy to be alive and I love my wife and kids, right?

One, there's a level of truth to it, but things happen, every day. They can make a day bad or something like that. Like right now, Simone is under an intense amount of pain. She is she has incredible pain thresholds. She was handling sales calls while having contractions with one of our kids, for example, right?

Like she can undergo an intense amount of pain. And so when she says that she's in a lot of pain to me, or she starts crying because of the amount of pain she's in, I know she's in an insane amount of pain. And but she puts on a smile and she worked through it because she's like, how does it help us as a family for me to indulge in [00:39:00] that?

I think the problem was this form of aesthetic of, it's like this sort of masculine dominance. The question isn't how does it help us as a family for me to be open with my wife or for me to, share different sides of myself with my wife, or for me to joke around with my wife.

It The question is, how do I optimize myself as a man? And once the person realizes that's what they're doing, that they're just optimizing an aesthetic vision of masculinity, I think it becomes transparently clear that they are living a life of no value because value to just aesthetic optimization.

Simone Collins: And this comes back to the pragmatist guide to life and objective functions, right? Our objective function. Is not to be happy or choose, things that are funny, right? That is very different. Our objective functions are, have deep philosophical underpinnings. They're nuanced, they're complicated.

And when we choose to maintain frame, it's because that helps us maintain the identity, most likely to optimize our objective functions. So there's a philosophical underpinning behind our maintaining a frame. When we choose to do that, [00:40:00] when we look at Someone instead, who's a maintaining frame just to pursue an identity, perhaps it's the hollowness of that objective function that there's no deep why behind their work that maybe leads to that contentment and satisfaction that Pays for the price or the mental load of maintaining frame.

Do you think that's what's at play here?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I would say that it was everything we're saying here. I am as much criticizing the far right and far left on this. Like I see them as completely overlapping movements, this male optimization movement and the trans movement.

Simone Collins: So whether you're a trans man or woman trying to get people to view you as your gender versus a cis man or woman trying to get society to recognize your gender.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Optimization of your life and your identity is a, an aesthetic gender optimization. Um, it only ends in despair, but what we're also discussing here is something different, which is different cultural conceptions around [00:41:00] gender optimization. And while we stole our own cultural conception, I want to say that I.

Do not know, if a person, especially genetically has been within one cultural conception for a really long time, that it makes sense to attempt to live out a different cultural conception of masculinity. So if I was talking from somebody it was deep Muslim heritage, for example, about this, I would say that if they tried to live with and marry a woman like the Americana ideal of a woman, they would have a.

Terrible time. Same with a Japanese man. If a Japanese man from long standing Japanese cultural background now there may be cultural outliers here, where they're like, actually, that's my thing, that's what I'm into and I'm, an outlier was in my cultural subset then go for it, right?

You can live a really good life. But if you have any underlying attachment to the traditional gender roles of your culture, which there's going to be some genetic selection events around, right? You [00:42:00] may fundamentally have a big problem with people from other cultural backgrounds. And to understand why you get this bifurcation it really is and we've done episodes around this that, that talk more to this, like the, why don't Jews own guns episode, because historically speaking, the Muslim groups that you see the most in cities today come from urban ultra urban based cultural backgrounds and ultra urban backgrounds typically prefer more feminine made up women because those women didn't need to fight historically.

If you're coming from a. To your culture. Of course, you don't want a weak wife. That's one of the people you need with a gun defending your house when, raiders or bandits come along, right? But if you live in a highly structured society women become a status symbol to you. That's their core value to you.

Is how they augment your position in these complicated social hierarchies that exist within crowded cities the crowded cities [00:43:00] of antiquity. And that actually more augments your family safety and wealth, your own status. On a frontier, status really doesn't matter that much. You don't care that much about what other people think of you.

Functionally, can

Simone Collins: you care if you're alive still?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah we should be clear. It's not that these things don't matter in the urban environment. Your status that the male status within a family in a patriarchal urban environment played a huge role in how many of their kids survive.

Both: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In environments where, kids died often from diseases and stuff like that.

And this is why within these urban environments, you often get, a lot of negative views toward things like dogs, for example, which is why you have such negative dogs within traditional Muslim cultures. Because they're just not, they, they are disease vectors basically, if you're in a large urban setting, but if you're from a rural culture, like dogs are a necessity.

To survive often. Yeah. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: They're not around [00:44:00] corrupt sewage systems and gross human density that would make them disease vectors. So don't worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And and you're not going to get you would get in urban environments in a culture that had been in urban environments for a long time.

We don't think about this in modern times, but rogue dog packs were actually a major problem.

Simone Collins: In cities?

Malcolm Collins: Kill people, kill kids, oh yeah, feral dogs,

Simone Collins: we don't have

Malcolm Collins: feral dog problems anymore in our society because, modern technology and everything like that. But feral dogs were a huge problem in Antiquity.

They were not a problem in Frontier context though, because they'd be killed by wild animals. A bear was much more dangerous than a dog. Which is, I think, really interesting in terms of how you get these different cultural perceptions as to, like, why they like the done up women with all the jewelry, whereas people from this culture don't done up women with lots of jewelry.

But I think what it reminds us of is when you define something like masculinity as a thing of intrinsic value, or femininity as a thing of intrinsic value, what you forget is [00:45:00] that there isn't a uniform masculine definition or idealization, there are different iterations of what it means to be the ideal feminine or the ideal masculine, depending on what your culture was optimizing for in a historical context.

And it's not like rural good, urban bad. They're just different optimizations and the best I can say if you're trying to define good and bad is what works best for what you are attempting to optimize with your life which ideally is something more than just an aesthetic if you're talking about like base level humans, you're looking at something like very base level like humans just barely surviving, it's feed your family, right?

That's what you're optimizing for is basic safety. Then I think you get a level above that. And it's

Simone Collins: What I think you're missing is before someone can even think about taking care of their family, they're thinking about taking care of themselves, like putting your own oxygen mask. And when you turn to self care online as a [00:46:00] man or a woman, it often dovetails really heavily with femininity.

So I think part of this is a trap as people try to get their basic oxygen mask on mentally, if that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: No, I agree with you. And I think that builds on what I was saying, which is to say, if you're talking about, because there's various different models for What does it look like on a person's path towards like mental health or as you move up civilizationally or individually in terms of a building oneself journey.

And there's various models for this. Some of them are very stupid. I might do an episode on them, but I think that it is true that if you're talking at a base level, what people optimize for is just feeding themselves. Then there's aesthetic optimization. And I think when you get above aesthetic optimization, You have people optimizing around cultural systems and cultural value systems, which I think is an order above aesthetic optimization.

And then I think at the highest level it is people who are optimizing around [00:47:00] a thing that they believe has intrinsic value in the world. Something of True good that they have defined for themselves. And this is the core question of the pragmatist guide to life is like, how do you think about that question?

How can you explore these various systems? And we try to do an unbiased question as manner as possible, very different from this podcast. And it's 1 if you want to check it out on Amazon and it has an audio book if you want to check it out. So I do recommend it. If this is something that you have ever personally thought about is I don't have a thing that I live for.

You probably should because it helps. Sort of everything downstream people who know what they live for and what they want from life are always going to in terms of mental health and often in terms of career success outcompete individuals who have an aesthetic optimization or just a purely cultural optimization.

And each 1 of these systems typically outcompetes the 1 below it in terms of efficacy. But anyway, I absolutely love you Simone and I love our new daughter and you are spectacular.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm. And so does Indy. [00:48:00] All right. I'll go feed her. I love you. Thank you. Those were fun conversations.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I thought these were great. Yeah. I always like it when they're good and you're fantastic. So entertaining.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I have a more nuanced view too. I really do think though, that self care in terms of just getting off the ground in terms of you can't even think about your objective function until you have, a basic mental level of functioning, in terms of depression or anxiety or other problems.

And I do think that when you go to self care and let's just get my life in order. Let's just make sure I'm not like super fat, super sick, whatever it might be, super depressed. You end up in these masculinization, feminization identity, optimizing pipelines, because that's what you're going to find on social media, because obviously someone who's going to be selling fitness or health, mental health, physical health, whatever it might be, is probably also selling an aesthetic.

And so you just get trapped into that whole, whoever has a life coach suddenly decides they want to be a life coach problem.

Malcolm Collins: So that's what's

Simone Collins: happening in my opinion. [00:49:00] But

Malcolm Collins: And I, it's actually very interesting when somebody is deep in this, because I saw I read some videos of like people who are critical of Hamza.

And they basically in their worldview, they saw two optimization functions. Either you were optimizing around an aesthetic ideal, like masculinity, or you were optimizing around pure hedonism. And they, That there could be different moral systems than just those two, which I think shows how mentally degraded the population has become.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Yeah. No kidding. I guess that's what happens when you let go of religion, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah but keep in mind, I think there's systems that are higher order than religion. I think religion is a cultural optimization. When I say higher order, I don't mean that they can't exist alongside religion.

So for example, a person can optimize themselves to be the perfect Cultural Catholic, or they can study the Bible and say, this is a thing of true value that I believe God wants for me. And I will do that, which often doesn't align with because the ideal of the perfect Catholic has changed over time [00:50:00] with current cultural conception of the perfect Catholic.

When I say there's higher order things in religion, what I'm talking about is what the religion says. God actually wants of you instead of what the religion says it wants of you which are often different things.

Baby: Interesting. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: A great example of we're talking about Muslims here is like the Shia Sunni split.

Within most Muslim conceptual frameworks, there isn't actually a Shia Sunni split. This is a a human thing, right? It's a

Simone Collins: bureaucratic conflict and not a theocratic conflict.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, a bureaucratic and not a theocratic conflict. And so some Muslims optimize themselves around being, Sunni or Shia instead of optimizing around what Allah wants of them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Big mistake.

Malcolm Collins: Big mistake there. Yeah. Love you to death.

Simone Collins: Love you too. All right. Have fun talking with your dad.

You want a girl who's obsessed with you?

I'm gonna teach you some f*****g truthful, like, somewhat dark s**t, but you want a girl who's obsessed with you, bro? Make her feel all the emotions possible. Make her cry. Make her [00:51:00] happy. Excite her. Scare her. Make her feel any emotion possible. Disgust her. Make her angry. Make her so happy. Make her, like, so happy she cries.

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