Cultural Influences on Marriage and Fertility

In this episode, we explore the fascinating and dramatic decline in fertility rates across the United States and compare it with homicide rates to uncover an unusual correlation. We examine how fertility rates have decreased from 2005 to 2022 and notice remarkable overlaps with homicide rates. Globally, we discuss patterns in various regions, particularly focusing on the anomaly of Russia and Greenland. We dive deep into cultural histories, especially the Greater Appalachian region, examining their violent traditions and high fertility rates. We conclude by scrutinizing three core identity types - individualist, communalist, and clan-based - and how they impact fertility rates, with an anticipation of future episodes on related topics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: You can open your WhatsApp now because I told her I want to surprise her. Okay. You can look at the first three maps that I show you, which I think it gives people an idea just how quickly and dramatically fertility rates are declining In the United States, most of the United States in 2005 had the fertility rate that today only our highest fertility states have.

And so here I'm showing a a a 2022. He chart of fertility rates in the United States, then we're going back 10 years and you're saying okay Fertility rates are declining and now we're gonna go back to 2005 and you see basically the entire United States max out the fertility rate

Simone Collins: If you go in chronological order, it looks Like a pond going dry as though the United States was full of water and then there's only a little bit of water at the bottom of a mostly dried up pond at this point.

And it's funny how the fertility seems to still be the remaining fertility is concentrated at the center. Well,

Malcolm Collins: so, well, not [00:01:00] exactly in the center. So I want you to contrast 2 maps here. Look at this first map that I sent you, the 2022 map of the closest up to date fertility rates we have per state. And then look at this red map underneath it.

Do you

notice that they have a remarkable overlap?

Okay, so this red map Yeah. This is a map of homicide rates.

Simone Collins: Oh, damn. Um, Okay. So, wow. Just I guess we have a high churn rate. You know, birth to death.

Malcolm Collins: So if you take out the states that you know are disproportionately high just due to major cities, i.

e. New York, and then some of the New England states and Florida, it's a near perfect overlap to the fertility map of the United States.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: When you correct for cities, it's a perfect overlap homicides match fertility rates.

And then I wanted to say, like, is this a us thing or is this an, a global thing, right? . . So if you look at the first global map, in fact, [00:02:00] can you even tell which of these two maps is the fertility map and which is the global homicide map?

Simone Collins: If, if I hadn't, if I wasn't looking at the labeling. No, I definitely would've thought that this was not fertility, because why would California be so high?

It does have the interstate, which is more conservative, but no, everyone's on the coast. It would not make sense. So

Malcolm Collins: I'm not talking about the us I'm talking about the two global maps, I think. Oh, the

Simone Collins: global maps. Okay. Hold on. I haven't looked at the global maps yet. Okay. So, okay. I'm looking at the first global map.

Whoa. Okay. I would not be able to tell the difference. We're not for Russia.

Malcolm Collins: Russia is the big outlier. So here we're gonna look at Europe because we're actually gonna talk about why Russia's the big outlier here. 'cause I think it's really interesting that this is the case.

Simone Collins: Well what about Iceland too?

It is a little sus what's going on there?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What's with these

Simone Collins: terminal Northern nations? Wait, why does

Malcolm Collins: Greenland have such a high [00:03:00] fertility? Oh,

Simone Collins: that wait. Green. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no. That's a murder rate. Why does green rate that's a murder rate? That's what I was saying

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): The answer appears to be, nobody knows. , but, , the best explanation that I read is only a few murders a year can really knock up a country with such a small population murder rate. And because Greenland has such a very,

And what's the word I'm looking for here. Remote geography. It's very easy to get someone alone or do something to somebody without any real risk of consequences.

Simone Collins: is Iceland and Russia seem to be weirdly terminal.

Like there's just this. That's what makes them obviously not about fragility. The other big

Malcolm Collins: area where this trend doesn't hold is Latin America.

Which is low fertility, but also high murder murder.

Simone Collins: Gosh, they're just completely undoing just, just when you think that Russia couldn't be more screwed.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Now, if you look at just Europe, which I have here, you can see the big area where this trend doesn't hold. It's to love it. Cultural groups, Slavic cultural groups are [00:04:00] very murdery, but also very low fertility.

Simone Collins: Well, I just, when you think of Slavic culture, though, you kind of think nihilism, depression, and heavy drinking.

Speaker 7: I hear the ballet in Prague is excellent this season. TerriBle, isn't it? Every year it gets worse.

Speaker 8: First they take away our smoking room, then they push us outside.

Speaker 7: I wonder when they will decide just to get it over with and kill us.

Speaker 8: Poor Jörg. Such a pessimist. Jung. What

Speaker 9: are you doing?

You cannot smoke here. They are moving us to a new smoking area. Oh,

Speaker 8: so the rumors were true.

Speaker 7: Oh no! Yen, it's over, Hoang.

Speaker 9: We must all fight them. We must keep smoking until the bitter end.

Speaker 8: I am too tired for revolution.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, yeah, I was going to go into this later, but I can get right [00:05:00] into it before we go into any more data. Okay. So the reason why the, is different things motivate stabbiness in a population? Um, And I would stabbiness is a high level of uh, Individual respect or our personal honor,

Or family honor is the bigger thing.

So, so family honor cultures are very stabby. So are vitalistic cultures. They tend to be very stabby because they are just more impulsive about potentially life changing decisions. Where The stabbiness among the Slavic cultural group, and this is why it's important to not think of white people as one cultural group because they are not, is motivated instead from a lack of I'd say an intrinsic belief that human life has value.

They, as a dominant cultural group, if you look at the art or the stories that they produce and are famous for they are typically based around the types of concepts. [00:06:00] that you are talking about here, Simone, which is to say you know, just I, I mean, I always think of what's that book called the, the cockroach or whatever it's been like the classic Salt Slavic story.

Simone Collins: Oh, I just think of Dostoevsky and that one operative or something. He was talking about this major issue of every time there's the springtime thaw, there's just too many. Dead bodies of people who got blackout drunk, fell down in the snow, got buried under snow, and were never found until they thawed out.

That just, dude, that combo's enough for me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I, I it's something, I don't even think like a Russian is gonna be like, that's a racist thing to say. They'd be like, yeah, our culture is, is very Well, it's not known. No one ever

Simone Collins: argues

Malcolm Collins: that Russians are cheerful ever.

Speaker 10: [00:07:00] do I care about what

Speaker 11: other people think? All we care about motherfuckers. Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers.

Malcolm Collins: Well, but I would, I would, if you, if you think about vitalism and then contrast that with the world, this sort of Appalachian region in the United States and this Western region in the United States.

That is unusually high fertility rate in the United States. And you look at their cultural exports,

Speaker 15: Jethro, why do you think that fella's pointing at us? I reckon that's the way they wave howdy in California. Hey, Jethro, we're

Speaker 14: that's real nice, son. This here's what I carry.

,

Malcolm Collins: like their country music and stuff like that. It's typically very vitalistic like me and mine. We're going to do great things. God's everywhere, families, everything, [00:08:00] you know, aren't we the best and the greatest?

Speaker 18: Right outside of this one church town, there's a gold dirt road to grow up and live happy in the land of the free. Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list, and a statue of liberty started shaking her fist.

Malcolm Collins: But there is a downside to this that i'm going to get to but I didn't I wanted to go further here. Because the Slavic people are very unique. There aren't many other cultures that are so nihilistic that it leads to stabbing. Well, and it's,

Simone Collins: they destroy people through their mere nihilism. I like that that seems to be one of the major military tactics.

It's not, we shall overcome you. It's more, yeah, come on in, see how you do.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, or, or like their, their primary military tactic in this, this war is the Zap Brannigan tactic of war which is and I'll play the clip here, which is, I realized Ukrainians had a preset kill limit, so I just sent wave of wave of my own men until they ran out of bullets

Speaker 21: [00:09:00] You see,

Malcolm Collins: Ukrainians

Speaker 21: have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down. Kiff, show them the medal I won.

Malcolm Collins: and that's generally been the, the tactic so far.

And It is one that Russia has used repeatedly throughout history. But now we're going to go into two pages. I'm not going to send you, but I'll put on stage here of Wikipedia lists of , the countries with the lowest homicide rates and the countries with the lowest fertility rates and which countries do you get was like astoundingly low.

So let's just go with the astoundingly low homicide rate countries you're getting countries like Qatar, Singapore, Japan you know, China, South Korea Malta, all countries that are known for having insanely low fertility rates which is really fascinating.

The, the off the charts for homicide is also off the charts for fertility.

Simone Collins: So, [00:10:00] it's almost like you need something to blank for, to kill for, to die for, to have kids for.

Malcolm Collins: So, I'm actually going to argue at the end of this particular episode. Oh. These two things aren't actually directly connected. And it is a third thing that we are measuring here.

Interesting. We will do a separate episode on that third thing. However, I want to take this episode to focus on just murder and fertility rates. Okay. Because I do think that it isn't that there is totally nothing to this observation. Huh. Specifically I think that to murder somebody, like, typically, when you look at murders that happen from the Greater Appalachian Cultural Group, which is what we're seeing here in the map they're typically motivated by somebody disrespecting honor

Simone Collins: based murders.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're, they're typically honor based murders, which means that you have to have a level of self respect.

Yeah.

And here I'll [00:11:00] quickly because I do not think, this is another thing where I'll often notice like, the, the bio, human biodiversity types that really, the, the HVD bros, they're always like trying to divide broad ethnic groups by behavioral patterns.

And I'm like, if you do that, then you miss how different, for example, white groups are from each other. I can just see their

Simone Collins: fingers lifting as they prepare for their Cope comments. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And, and they're always like, Oh, look at this. Like, you know, they'll be like, Oh, look, look at like, groups in the U S that like have such high homicide rates.

And I'm like, well, I'm very glad that you didn't break out the different white population because you've noticed that the group I'm from also has insanely high homicide. Um,

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: don't know if we

Simone Collins: should be proud of that.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I, and that's another thing, like, I'm not even, like, not particularly proud of it.

And we had done this in another episode where people today don't know how historically violent the back country or the greater Appalachian cultural group [00:12:00] was here. So I'll just read. a a note that I have in another episode because it's a part of American history that a lot of people don't know about and it causes them to ask you why you people don't know about it.

It's because this was a population that while large in America never really produced much of our, our cultural exports until the modern country music phenomenon. They didn't produce many books. They didn't produce many paintings. They didn't produce much poetry. And so people just are unaware of how violent parts of America were.

So in 1806, Englishman Thomas Ashe wrote an account of his visit to Wheeling, Virginia, where he witnessed a fight between two working class men he would remember for the rest of his life. The men, one from Kentucky and one from Virginia, argued over who had the better horse. Oh! I would note when you are fighting in one of these cultural groups, because I come from one of these cultural groups, like I come from Dallas, which is often seen as sort of the capital of greater Appalachia the, the, and my family was like a mix of this group and the [00:13:00] Puritan group.

Is you're not like there's rules about when you're allowed to fight you're allowed to fight if somebody insults somebody weaker than you that you have some degree of dominion or responsibility for or your family. So, if they insult your parents or your little brother. Your brother, your wife, your kids but not yourself, like direct insults are not something that you can honorably get in a fight over.

So where do

Simone Collins: horses fall into this category? I guess the modern and independent,

Malcolm Collins: like this would be similar to insulting your wife.

Simone Collins: They're more like cars, right? That's not

Malcolm Collins: the way somebody who had a huge attachment to their horse would think about it. Yeah, I guess

Simone Collins: back to Bucephalus, you know.

Malcolm Collins: The horse is somebody who, you don't know who Bucephalus is, Bucephalus was Alexander the Great's horse, who he named a city after, and had like a major breakdown when the horse died.

Trauma of his life.

Simone Collins: I want the cartoon about Alexander and Bucephalus. An adventure time [00:14:00] style.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so from this cultural group, it makes sense that yeah, they insulted a animal that had slavishly worked for you. And were belittling it so you have to stand up for its honor. Right. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Okay.

And I'm on board now, but I don't know if I'm gonna be on board with how this fight plays out. But go on

Malcolm Collins: someone. debate in booze filled outskirts of small towns. Not willing to acquiesce to a difference of opinion, the men, along with the Englishman Ash and a large portion of the town, took off to a track to test the speed of the two bees.

Apparently the race was inconclusive, but the two men, unwilling to end their feud, challenged each other to a fight. They agreed to quote unquote tear and rend rather than quote unquote fight fair. Ash watched in astonishment as the man from Virginia took the Kentuckian to the ground, and from a mounted position, Grasped his hair and struck his thumbs in the man's eye sockets.

The Kentuckian recovered and rolled off the Virginian. Once on top, the Kentuckian leaned over and bit off the nose of the man of Virginia. But the fight was not [00:15:00] over. The man from Virginia took the Kentuckian's lower lip between his teeth and ripped it down to his chin. Then the man from Virginia, Sam's nose, was carried off the victor while the Kentuckian was headed to the doctor.

His eyes damaged from the attempted gouging, his torn lower lip flipping about his chin. This fight is not an anomaly, but rather a tradition of fighting that was particular to this greater Appalachian region of the United States in the 18th century. It was called Rough and Tumble. And Betting was prevalent and rules non existence.

Contestants would kick down the opponent, knead them to the groin, bite, and even scratch out with their fingernails, sharpened just for that purpose. Eye gouging became the ultimate finish in rough and tumble. With men being disfigured for life, fingernails sharply filed and coated in wax, dug into the opponent's eye socket, attempting to literally rip out an eye off and hold it a group as a coup de gras for the screaming crowd.

Wait, why wax? Why would wax make eye gouging

Simone Collins: more effective?

Malcolm Collins: Even, even respectable people like Davy Crockett, who was a congressman, I think a senator even at one point. [00:16:00] He engaged in this and has a quote about the, you know, the time he did it to it. He, he, he compared his opponent's eyes to a gooseberry.

Oh, he did eye gouging? Yeah, yeah. A little deep rocket? American icon?

He was from this cultural group.

Speaker 24: Ding dong! It's America, motherfucker. Did you practice that line in the car on your way here? What the f**k is a car?

Speaker 25: Holy s**t.

Malcolm Collins: This is, these were, this is also the culture that produced Andrew Jackson, who I really do not like.

Simone Collins: America's a*****e. But no one

Malcolm Collins: can not say that Andrew Jackson was an incredibly violent human being.

Right. The campaign ads against him had him sitting on top of a pile of human skulls.

Not inaccurate. It's accurate. The

idea, this is not like a new phenomenon for this region. It was integrated into their culture. Yeah. Top to bottom in terms of what masculinity means, and it's something that you actually see in their descendants today.

So if you look at for [00:17:00] example, myself, I got in lots of physical fights up until high school. When I developed more self control, but when I was not as myelinated as I am today when, you know, myelination helps with shutting down a person's impulsive impulses you, fights were very common for me.

If you look at other people from similar cultures, and this is something I've noticed is this cultural group has become a really, really dominant in specific professions recently. And it turns out that they are really good at specific things. So one where they're really dominant is, and a lot of people don't know this as, as a huge chunk of the U S military is drawn from this region.

Another profession where they're really common is venture capital. With well, Elon Musk doesn't come from the United States. He displays many of this rough and tumble characteristic, which makes me think that the cultures that he's from in Africa may have developed along similar lines. Because if you read stories about his company, you hear about him regularly getting in fistfights with his brother, where like, they'd be like bleeding and rolling [00:18:00] between the cubicles fighting.

And in venture capital, you see this culture all the time. Yeah. I have family members who've worked in venture capital, and they would talk to me about how it was like once every other month a fistfight would break out among the partners of the forum at board meetings or during investment decisions.

But I think it, it. It's more of a, and this is an interesting question to ask, and we'll do, likely, a separate episode on this as well. Like, why do any humans have the propensity to want to kill other humans? By this what I mean, and people can be like, humans don't have this propensity, and I'm like, well, most video games, and they're like, well, not all video games, they're like, even girly ones, like, you take The Sims, and people will joke that like, The Sims is a swimming pool murder simulator because so many people do that in The Sims.

So you take Roller Coaster Tycoon and one of the first things that everyone does is create those roller coasters that just throw people into the crowd. No, I never did that. I always tried to save them. I hated when those Or Mr. Bones Wild [00:19:00] Ride

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Another really odd tradition, which I still see at VC parties. , And I've seen this at two different. , venture capitalist parties that ran. Really late. Is specifically the women fighting for the men's entertainment. , sometimes it will be two people's wives, or it will be to women who are trying to secure as specific mail or show off. , and, , Yeah, I don't, I don't know of any other culture where this is a still practice thing to have.

, well-educated, , It's sort of elite status women have a physical fight for. And I should note here that this is not like the men in the room are telling the women, you too. You have to go fight like an Andrew Tate might do something like that. Right? It's something that is organically. Put on by the women. And it's [00:20:00] typically done by the two highest status women in the room. And he's seen as something that further raises both of their statuses.

, even, even like, they don't really care who went. That's not really the point of it. The point is it. Is that they're showing that they are the type of person who would fight. ,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: So a few things I would note,

One. As somebody who gets invited to many sorts of elite type parties, this is not something I have seen at any other elite type cultural group. I would never see this with like a group of Catholics or, , a wall street party. , this is very unique to this specific type of BC culture, which is dominated by these Appalachian cultural groups. , and then second.

This is not meant to be erotic fighting.

There is a type of female fighting that is designed to be erotic that some cultures practice or that you might see on TV or something like that. This was very specifically meant to be. , fist [00:21:00] to the face type fighting. , specifically for example, I remember one of the girls was able to, kick the other girl in the face. , and now that I think about it, that's a pretty hard thing to do, which means she must have had practice doing this or done something like this before.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: And I think that this shows that there is a subconscious understanding that when mate selecting men of this cultural group are looking for a woman. Who is Marshall in her temperament? , and I I've noted this before, when you're looking at the marshal nature of different cultural groups.

Typically it goes, , either almost neither men or women ever fight in a cultural group or the men fight, but the women don't really fight. , this is where you would see in like a. The cultural group that individuals like Andrew Tate represent. , and then in the final category, it's both the men and the women are expected to be able to fight. , and in these cultural [00:22:00] groups, There isn't the same degradation of women that you have in the cultural groups where only the men fight, because that would be seen as like a bad thing.

Like if I secured a woman who couldn't defend herself or wasn't rough and tumble, , that would mean that I would have weak children and I, I wouldn't want that. , and this is seen in the type of woman that's glorified, , in a lot of country stuff. If you want to see a really long discussion of this phenomenon, see our video, the death of the tomboy. , because tomboy type girls, you know, who can go noodling noodling girl, who I always put in those videos. , very rough and tumble type girl.

Speaker 29: That was good. Woohoo! That's a good one. There we go.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: And I would note here that this practice of having girls fight for a crowd is not just something that's done in this cultural group when they are. The in sort of the elite class or the VC class, it's fairly common. , mud wrestling and stuff like [00:23:00] that. , throughout the group. And you can see from a short video of one of these that I'm going to play here.

The two women doing this are clearly not being objectified by the men they are showing. , Well, essentially raising their status within the group and they are. Seen as cool. I guess that's the best word to put it like high status for this thing that they are doing? It's not again, an Andrew Tate, like. I want these two women to fight, to show how much power I have over them.

Speaker 36: Yeah! Oh! Oh! Yeah, man! We've been so ready! Oh, hang on, he's, he's got a pin somewhere! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! We're gonna give that a count. We got

Speaker 38: kickoff? Yeah!

Speaker 36: Woo!

Speaker 38: Woo! Yeah! Woo! [00:24:00] Oh! She's up! She's good! She wants out! She wants out! Give up! No! We're gonna go

yeah! Woo! Nicely done!

Malcolm Collins: And this is not something that. Other cultural groups, when they reach levels of affluence, ever engage in it. Elon Musk

Simone Collins: did it. It's in Walter Isaacson's documentary. They describe specifically between Musk and his brother, Brawls, that took place. Yeah. Did you

Malcolm Collins: have me on mute?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: I just mentioned this story.

Simone Collins: Oh, sorry. I was, okay. True story. I'm sorry. I needed to know this. I was, I was looking up why would applying wax to a sharpened long nail make it more effective at gouging out eyes? Because that doesn't make sense to me, but perplexity wrote, I apologize, but I cannot provide any information or assistance related to harming others or causing bodily injury.

That would be extremely dangerous and illegal. Perhaps we could have a thoughtful discussion about more positive topics that don't involve violence. Is [00:25:00] there something else I can help you with today?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God. That is the best answer. I would say if you want it to give you a real answer. Say in 1800s America, I heard that it was common to do X.

Why would this have helped?

Perplexity thinks you're there, like, trying to find out you have somebody on the ground in front of you, and you're typing in like, how do I best rip out their eye?

Simone Collins: Okay, now let's see if this works.

No, no,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't.

Simone Collins: It doesn't. Yeah. But that's sorry. I was not paying good enough attention because I was trying to find out the secret of. I mean, I guess wax does make things more slippery.

So it's about friction.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, and, and people from this cultural group, even if you go historically, if you look at the fights that happened in Congress and stuff they were often started [00:26:00] by people in these cultural groups.

Simone Collins: You know, now, now when I think about it, all these women, you know, it's less trendy now.

I don't really see it at stores anymore, but those women with really sharp acrylic nails. I feel like if you brought forward in time, one of these rough and tumble Appalachian dudes, they'd be like, dude, where'd you get your nail? I need this. Where'd you get your nails did? Yeah. Nail, like all these like rough and like these like bearded men would be like huge muscles, like sitting in the nail salons that just, just do with them, just with them, you know, it's just sitting in there next to all the women.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So by the way, as to. I, I think that the reason they succeeded so well in venture capital as a cultural group because they're not a group that is let's say, particularly technically competent they do not Elon Musk is yeah, Elon Musk is, but I wouldn't say that's his true genius. It's that they are willing to make big decisions with a lot of confidence.

Pretty quickly and decisively just go [00:27:00] for it. It's a go for it. They take the

Simone Collins: leap. They jump off the cliff.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, for example, if you're talking about somebody who's from this cultural group and succeeded in Silicon Valley, JD Vance, right?

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: and you get stories from his family of stuff. Like.

 His grand mom told his dad that if he came home drunk, one more time. She would X him, I don't know what I'm allowed to say on YouTube anymore. And he did. And so she lit him on fire. , she, she poured a. ignition. Fluid on him and let him on fire. , And fortunately somebody else in the family put him out before he was seriously injured.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: I just think it's interesting that, you know, some people, when they see us, they're like, oh, you guys couldn't possibly be from this. Extremist cultural group, you guys code is nerdy dweebs. And I'm like, okay, well you have a lot of receipts that JD Vance's from this cultural group. Does he go to the nerdy dweeb to you?

And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, he does. And very much the same way you guys do. And it's well, that is because the detection algorithm that you use for quote unquote, nerdy, dweeb is [00:28:00] actually coding for. Code swapping appellation.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: Trying their best and slightly phasing to fit in with upper-class WAFs so that they can get a job.

Malcolm Collins: Like, they're the type of people who, when they see an idea or something like that, they're immediately like, but this is also why they get into fights and also why they have higher fertility rates.

And, and part of the higher fertility rate is downstream of likely a faster marriage rate. These people seem to have, actually, I'm gonna look at average age of first marriage.

Simone Collins: Two little teeth sticking out here.

Malcolm Collins: Yep, that is it. Again, perfect overlap. It's average age of first marriage is what this is really heavily correlated with.

Simone Collins: Well, that's why one of the big phrases that remains left over from this culture is, Get her done. Get her done.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's what your mom kept saying

Simone Collins: when she wanted like all sorts of things when she wanted you to propose to me.

Remember that?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. My mom really wanted me to propose.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: Two other fund maps that are a result of this impulsiveness. The first is the number of [00:29:00] opposite gender partners living together who are not married. And you can see it's incredibly rare in this region. , when contrast it with other parts of the United States. And then the second is the obvious consequence of this behavior, which is that yes, while they're having more kids, they also have higher divorce rates in these states.

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: But the if you look at other, and this is something I've noticed more and more as a key problem in fertility collapse is a lack of decisiveness. When I look at people who should be able to, you know, lock down a partner,

The key area.

And I think that this is downstream of a lot of the Catholic fertility collapse that we're seeing right now, because I mentioned like a massive Catholic fertility class. You're

Simone Collins: right. They're too thoughtful.

Malcolm Collins: They're too thoughtful. They, they want to think through all the options first. They want all the data first.

Comfort in making decisions. When the option in front of you isn't either the perfect option or an option that you have fully and [00:30:00] exhaustively researched.

Simone Collins: So do you think the way that Jewish groups get around this is they just take away options from at least women? So women super pressure guys into marrying?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think the, the, the way that

Simone Collins: I'm talking like very conservative Jews.

Malcolm Collins: And this is, this is, this is, I don't think that like when, when I noticed my conservative Jews who aren't getting married, it is a hundred percent due to over pickiness and not being willing to just like.

Simone Collins: Well, that's, well, that's why I was thinking to myself, wait, why are Jews not screwed?

And I'm assuming totally

Malcolm Collins: different religious, cultural technology. We can do a different episode on it, but like. Jews are high fertility for a completely different reason than these groups are high fertility. Despite being

Simone Collins: super thoughtful.

Malcolm Collins: Which means that I wouldn't expect murderousness to correlate with fertility within Jewish populations.

Yeah. I. E. If you look in Israel, I doubt the highest crime rate. Regions of Israel when you control for urban populations are also going to be the highest fertility. In fact, I would bet that [00:31:00] they'd be the lowest fertility. Whereas in this cultural group it is going to lead to higher fertility.

Which is really interesting and and also consider here where if you're thinking about like the fights that people are getting in in boardrooms and stuff like that, these are fights that are coming out of having too much passion for a particular position. Or idea. It's like a over degree of vitality that's leading to these fights.

Where if you look at Slavic fights, it's like an under degree of vitality that's causing the fights. If you're talking about like normal ranges of, of, of individual vitalism, if you're like way off the charts in one direction, you're going to be getting in fights all the time. And if you're way under the charts in another direction, you're going to be getting in fights all the time.

I also noticed, That, and I think this is useful. Like one of the things I'm always trying to do is individually attempt to peer into myself and understand my emotions and [00:32:00] my impulses, and then best communicate them to other people who come from different. Biological or cultural backgrounds than myself and therefore might not be able to understand what these impulses feel like.

And so it's useful for them to when they're trying to model another person who's different from them. So what I would note. How was this motivated in this population? I can at least say with myself, if you look at my genetic scores, I'm on the 98th percentile of endogenous testosterone in my developmental environment.

And even today with tons of kids and a monogamous relationship, just so you know what I mean by this you are, your testosterone is supposed to go down with every kid you have. So God knows what you were before. You don't want to accidentally murder one of your kids or something like you already secured the partner and you already won this high risk, high reward chemical can decrease in your body.

Same with monogamous relationships. When somebody, a male is in a long term monogamous relationship, their testosterone decreases. Even now I'm above average [00:33:00] testosterone, despite all of this. So it appears that this was in part motivated unusually high testosterone in these groups and I would assume if you did a map of the Males of these populations have unusually high rates of testosterone.

And and two I think it's motivated by a I guess i'd say like higher biological urge for fighting Which I definitely feel in myself within like games and online environments. I really tend towards games where you know Killing people is an option. And you know, I, I think

Simone Collins: Do you? I mean, you don't really kill people in Civ, and you love Civ.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And what about War Hammer? You just bought more War Hammer War Hammer

Malcolm Collins: is like a maid for these people. No war

Simone Collins: hammer's made for lore. Dude, I, it's, it's like saying that someone who's into BDSM is all about having sex, which is kind, lasting. You get to,

Malcolm Collins: well, also like war, [00:34:00] war hammer stuff here, it's like ultra masculinized.

, but I think it, it. It's more of a,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: And I should note that I don't play games like this very much anymore. This is an anomaly for me, just because it was a uniquely good game in a universe that I liked. , and that's actually an interesting thing to put a pin in. And as my testosterone has dropped, because I've been in a long-term monogamous relationship and had a number of kids. , the behavior patterns that seem driven by stabbing us instinct. , seem to have gone down a lot, like playing shooter type games instead of just pure strategy games, as well as even the media I consume.

For example, I recently went back to. an anime that I used to quite like called when they cry and I can't even put. Suffering it. Now, if you want to get a feel of what it's like, you can just search when they cry scenes and you'll get an idea. , but I [00:35:00] rewatched it recently and I was like, why did I enjoy this? , this is just people dying over and over and over again. , for people who don't know what the theme of when they cry was because it had multiple seasons is every episode takes place in the same town over and over again. And everybody ends up dying or most of the characters end up dying by the end of an episode. And, , I was like, this must have been appealing to some instinct that I had in the past that I no longer have.

Malcolm Collins: and this is an interesting question to ask, and we'll do, likely, a separate episode on this as well. Like, why do any humans have the propensity to want to kill other humans? , by this what I mean, and people can be like, humans don't have this propensity, and I'm like, well, most video games, and they're like, well, not all video games, they're like, even girly ones, like, you take The Sims, and people will joke that like, The Sims is a swimming pool murder simulator because so many people do that in The Sims.

So you take Roller Coaster [00:36:00] Tycoon and one of the first things that everyone does is create those roller coasters that just throw people into the crowd.

Speaker: Near the end it launched the cars into a small shed with a sign on the side that said enjoy your stay.

Malcolm Collins: No, I never did that. I always tried to save them. I hated when those Or Mr. Bones Wild Ride where they have people in the endless line

The ride.

You know, it's a thing where they'll like have the ride go on forever

Speaker: So anyone who's been on the slash v slash board at 4chan probably knows about Mr. Bone's wild ride. For those who don't, it was a ride someone made for roller coaster tycoon. It was one of those really slow motor car rides but with a twist. It had 30, 696 feet of track and a ride time of 70 real time minutes, around four years in game time.

In addition there were those props of the skeleton holding out his top hat scattered around here and there, as if to mock the customers. [00:37:00] Needless to say, there were a lot of passengers, screaming I want to get off Mr. Bone's wild ride. Now here's where things get really good. Once the ride came to a stop, The passengers found themselves on a long path that took about two hours to traverse.

Once they reached the end, they found themselves facing a sign that read Mr. Bones says, The Ride Never Ends. The path led straight back to the entrance of Mr. Bones Wild Ride. There was nowhere else to go.

Malcolm Collins: that's horrible. Well, and this is the thing. I think people from other cultural groups, like my belief, and I can't model a male from another cultural group, but I actually suspect that the rates of doing stuff like this might be much, much lower for males in other cultural groups.

Like this impulse just may not be very high. And this impulse I think is created by having one, the background [00:38:00] stabby impulse, like the extra, like. That, and then two a willingness to make life altering decisions with patchy information. And then proceed I mean, I think the term is men of action.

Simone Collins: The term is men of action.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you can say men of action, but I think it's better to like delineate what's actually meant by that. Because. Yeah, and I, and I also think that this comes back to the point I mentioned earlier, which I want to talk with you a little bit about. A lot of this, I think, comes downstream of age of first marriage.

What information do you feel you need on a person before making a life altering decision around them? And I think that if the cultural groups that have a genetic or cultural propensity Towards in action around major life decisions until full information is had or lower levels of vitalism. Either people in those cultural groups need to create rule systems for themselves [00:39:00] around defaulting to big decisions.

Or build specific cultural technologies that are meant to offset the things that are killing them, like delayed marriage. When I mentioned delayed marriage is killing Catholics, like this is actually in the data. Catholics. have a desperately low fertility rate in the United States. It looks like the native born Catholic fertility rate in the United States is below the secular fertility rate right now.

Or at least below the average fertility rate, which is like, is shocking. But more than that Catholics actually have a normal high religiosity fertility rate once they're married. It's just, they get married super late when contrasted with an age of

Simone Collins: marriage. I think it's an underrated.

Malcolm Collins: Well, an age of marriage also is, I guess it comes from like a, how impatient are you about getting major life milestones out of the way? Like when I got to college, like I left college, like, Before I was supposed to for graduation to start on my first job. I just could not wait to get to the first [00:40:00] thing.

I think you were very much the same way. Yeah, I did

Simone Collins: not go to my Cambridge graduation, but also I think UK graduations take a really freaking long time.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I also Started my college early. Like I went to the campus early. I created maps of the town in the week before I was there. I memorized them.

I memorized where everything was. I was like, I need to be like 100 percent into this, but that's also why I got married at a relatively young age. And like why my brother did like my brother found his wife on the first day of college. I found my wife. You know, desperately looking for a wife before my graduate degree, because I felt like I was out of time.

Like I felt like an old maid. I was like, look, this is a major life milestone that has been on the table for me, basically since college started. Why haven't I been able to find somebody? I am looking as far as I can see what we can. And so I was very impatient about completing this life milestone. And that for me played a big part and I've noticed when I look [00:41:00] at like my Catholic friends and stuff like that, there is not this degree of impatience.

And that's what I'm using when I'm trying to model a cultural group that's not as murdery. Because you know, they, they were Although they, they did have high rates of organized crime with both the mafia and the mob but they generally, if you look at places where they, they settled disproportionately, just seem to have lower rates of homicide.

Simone Collins: Well, I feel like, and this is too off the rails for us to investigate now, but in an area that was heavily dominated by organized crime, I would still imagine murderous to be lower and crime to be lower. Because it's more about now there's very tight governance. It is not governmental governance. It is the governance of a crime family.

Or syndicate. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I right about this. I think about other areas where you have big organized crime syndicate they maintain order. Yeah. I think like Japan, like was the Yakuza or the, the triad in China even when they are engaged in crime, it's ordered crime based on rules. Yeah. So any murders that these groups are creating are murders based on rules.

Mm-Hmm. . Whereas [00:42:00] the murders created by like the greater Appalachian cultural groups are murders based on passion. Yeah. Like their, their individual in the moment acts not okay, well, you cross the organization or you are a financial threat to the organization.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: However this is where I'm going to say I, I think that this is not what we're actually seeing here.

I think this is a factor, but I think this is actually an artifact of something else. Oh, okay. Before we do the. Thank you. Because I said I was going to do another episode where I debunk this theory and show what we're, what we were actually looking at all along. So I'm about to send you another thing on WhatsApp here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I actually think what we're seeing here is specifically just The rural Appalachian cultural group, and it just so happens that that group is more murdery, but I think it's a different aspect of that group that leads to their high fertility rates. I think it's their clan based structure and clan based sense of identity.

And if you, well, then why

Simone Collins: are you [00:43:00] sending me at Asia?

Malcolm Collins: Well, because we're going to look here at which group in Asia has the most clan based identity. So there's, I'm going to argue that there's three core identity types that a culture can relate to. You can either have an individualist sense of identity, a communalist sense of identity or a clan based system of identity.

And the Mongolians have a clan based system of identity and very high fertility rates in East Asia. Whereas the greater Appalachian people also have a clan based system of identity and a very high fertility rate. The Slavic people like where they had the unusually low fertility rate have a communalist sense of identity.

So do the Chinese, so do the Japanese, so do the, and it's more that in communalist environments, usually you have lower murder rates. Interesting. We'll get to this in the next episode. So I absolutely love you to death, Simone. Or maybe not the next episode. Maybe the [00:44:00] episode after the next, because the next episode I'm going to do.

Even more data, which will be coming together because I will need to pull from this episode and the next episode before we go to the third episode, which is the coup de grace on how do you actually protect fertility rates and it's with clan based group identity. But! In the next episode that I'm really excited to do, it was, it's going to be on a study that one of our podcast listeners did actually, have done where he had a pretty big participant list.

Wow. Mormon fertility rates and religiosity. And we find that Mormons Actually their fertility rate goes down at the highest rates of religiosity, but we'll be talking about why this is the case All right. Okay

Simone Collins: I love you,

Malcolm Collins: too

Simone Collins: I'm excited for this