Politics and Happiness: A Social Divide

In this episode, the hosts revisit a previously discussed topic with a focus on the happiness disparity between progressives and conservatives. Based on a post by Mike Pesca and Nate Silver, they examine new graphs showing demographic breakdowns of this happiness gap. Conservative happiness levels are consistently higher across various groups, with demographics like young women and particularly bisexual individuals showing stark differences. The discussion touches on influences such as urban monoculture, political engagement, education, income, and religion. They also explore personal anecdotes, societal norms, and mental health perceptions within these political spectrums.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be revisiting a topic that we have talked about before, but with a different question and with some new evidence which is why are progressives so unhappy? Wind contrasted with conservatives, and this is something that's been very persistent since Pews started recording polling on progressives and Democrats.

Progressives have been unhappy, but it's gotten sharper recently. And you also see many more mental health problems among progressives. You can go to our previous episode on this if you want us to just shower you with data on this.

Simone Collins: We gotta help them.

Malcolm Collins: If we

Simone Collins: find out what makes them so miserable, maybe we can save them.

We can pull them out of the dark hole.

Energy to fight the bug. We must understand the bug. We can. Ill afford another clinda. Would you like to know more? What mysteries will the brain bug reveal? Federal scientists are [00:01:00] working around the clock to trope its secrets. Once we understand the vote, we will defeat it.

Malcolm Collins: . Oh my God.

Simone Collins: I,

Malcolm Collins: Get, they're bugman Simone. They defend it. They. They say this themselves, they have videos on YouTube with like hundreds of thousands of millions of views saying that the bugs were in the right that the federation was evil, that this was a false flag attack that, that the federation deserves to be destroyed.

And by the way, we know it's not a false flag attack because we saw the asteroid. Hit the Tai Rega, the, the big spaceship outside our solar system, meaning that it had to come from quite far away. And because it knocked out their you know what? You should watch our Sara Strip troopers episode.

If you care about how we know it's not a false flag attack. Take his word for it, people. No, don't take my word for it. Go watch that episode. We need the watch time, Simone. And it's a good episode.

Simone Collins: Go watch the episode.

Malcolm Collins: But in this [00:02:00] episode we're gonna be going over a post from Mike Pesca and Nate Silver titled what Explains the Liberal Conservative Happiness Gap.

And this is in the, the Silver Bulletin. And he goes over a few graphs, is that I hadn't seen before. Oh. And what these graphs do is they look at demographically where the gap is biggest. And from that and, and just so people know, these people's like political, like. Nate Silver is a, is a very mainstream Centris pollster.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Of 5

Simone Collins: 38 fame. 5 38. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He, he, he, he's, he is been pretty sane from what I've seen. And so I'd be very interested to see his views on this as somebody who's not gonna have the, you know, charged conservatives perspective that we're gonna have.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Although he, he has been attacked by the left for one of the reasons being that he called Trump 20 20, 20 16 when everyone else, how dare

Malcolm Collins: Impossible that he could win.

No, he didn't even call it. He just said it's really possible and we need to stop saying it's only a one or 2% chance. [00:03:00] And they said that he was like a Trump agent. Trump won of course. But they never went back on saying he needed to be de platformed. Yeah. But they

Simone Collins: defund istre him for saying that it was a very real possibility.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay.

And this is, this is one of the areas where my, my you know, believing the left really began to broke. And I began to move where I was just like, wait, so you are all lying? We not care about that.

And when I think that this is also really different you know, like the left. Yeah, everyone was lying and everyone was just like, okay, this is all over under the bus right now.

With the Epstein files, we've even gone over why Trump is probably actually keeping 'em quiet in an episode and his own side is just like, Nope. Like at a Trump rally recently, like one of his supporters held up a picture of Trump and Epstein together. You know, and they're like, Nope, you actually gotta explain this.

You got some explaining to do here, buddy. Yeah. Why didn't you release those files that everyone said existed? But anyway. Oh boy. Young people in general [00:04:00] report fairly miserable mental health with rates of anxiety and depression, but this is particularly true for young women and assumptions Democrats make about how to attract younger voters may not appeal to men.

Still arguably the SBSQ.

Buried the most interesting finding, which is that conservatives have a much higher level of self-reported mental health than liberals. It's a wide gap according to the 2020 comparative election study, CESA, very large samples of 60,000 respondents that provides the opportunity for highly detailed demographic analysis among people who report, quote, unquote excellent mental health conservatives, outnumbered liberals, 51 to 20.

Literally have over double the rate. Wow. Yeah. Like, yeah, well, well over double the rate of liberals at the, that category. 51 to 20. Even, even if you've doubled the number of liberals in that category, it'd only be 40 to 51. So this is shocking. Just liberals do not have excellent mental [00:05:00] health.

But liberals outnumber conservatives 45 to 19 among voters who say they have poor mental health. So keep in mind how extreme that is. That means even if you doubled the conservative number there you know, you would still be at 38 to 45 with liberals having way poorer mental health. So is this

Simone Collins: a product of, I, I remember for example, when pharmaceutical companies tried to introduce.

Antidepressants to Japan. They also had to introduce the concept of depression because it just wasn't a thing. Is this more a product of conservatives just not believing in poor mental health the same way that the left does?

Malcolm Collins: Progressives are going to say this, but the reality is, is that if you look at the studies around this, if you do not believe in mental health problems, you typically are not susceptible to those mental health problems.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's kinda my point. Is it like. They, they don't believe in the demons, so the demons cannot possess them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What a progressive would [00:06:00] say is well, they're reporting their mental health as excellent, even though they have depression. Oh. Like,

Simone Collins: you're just, you just don't realize that you're dealing with unrealized trauma.

Yeah, you need to see a therapist.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, they there, they're, they just need to go see a psychiatrist and then they'd have it all fixed up for them. Oh, you know

Simone Collins: what? Back when there were still progressives on X, they used to say things like that all the time. Like talk about like the unaddressed mental issues that we.

Undoubtedly have. Yeah. They

Malcolm Collins: say, they say it's not that conservatives have way lower mental health issues. They'd say it's, they just do not acknowledge the issues that they do have.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And I do not think that the data suggests that when you look at things like happiness rates, which we'll get to oh yeah.

Conservatives clearly understand the concept of being unhappy. Yeah. So. You know, do they,

Simone Collins: Malcolm,

Malcolm Collins: do they, well, I mean, I think it's also just like, obviously true when you think of the people you know, and, and like we have a high performing friends on, on both sides of the aisle. And most of the high performing friends that we have who are [00:07:00] progressives have what I would consider is self-imposed major mental health issues.

Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the ones we have that are conservatives have almost none.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because it's just not normative. Like why indulge in that so much of this is another episode. We won't get into this now. But I'm gonna put the chart on the screen here so you can get an idea of just like how extreme the differences are between these two groups in terms of, of mental health rates.

Hmm. And then they go on to say, here. Could this reflection reflect a spurious correlation? In other words, that voters with characteristics associated with low happiness tend to be attracted to liberalism, but that political attitudes themselves don't tell you much on their own. In short, no. Or at least probably not.

The difference between liberals and conservatives is remarkably persistent. Even once you control for these factors. I'm going to show you a very long chart where I translated the five choices that the CES provided. To a hundred point scale, zero for poor mental health, 25 for fair, [00:08:00] 50 for good, and 75 for for very good and 100 for excellent.

The average American self reports at 60 on this scale. In other words, somewhere between good and very good mental health. But liberals average at 53 and conservatives at 68, huh? I'm just going to ignore moderates for the rest of this post because they're predictably somewhere in the middle. Averaging at 58.

Okay. Taking

advantage of the large sample size in the CES, let's see how this difference holds up across a wide array of demographic and political characteristics. The data is just taken directly from the CES. There's no fancy modeling of any kind. And note here that I guess this is why I hadn't seen it, because he is translating the data in a different way.

And I'm gonna send you some pictures of this so you can also try to find interesting things like that.

All right, so the reason I wanted to do this is because I wanted to go over where some of these are bigger and smaller. Mm-hmm. Because this way we can understand susceptibility. This is, this is looking at happiness here, by the way. Not, not mental health. So we're trying to [00:09:00] understand what is it specifically, like what demographics seem to be most exposed to this gap when you differentiate out their conservative versus liberal voters. And I would note here was in literally no demographic is this trend opposite. And so this actually really matters. 'cause somebody might say something like.

Well, I mean, clearly if you are gay and you're around all gay people and you want gay lovers, you're gonna be less happy with your life if you're a conservative gay person, right? Because, you know, presumably your friends are gonna be less approving of you, you're not gonna be satisfied with yourself. And we see that this is actually not true.

We're not even close. The, the, the gays on the progressive side, were at a 49. And the conservatives who, who were gay were at a 60. So, so not even close to the same level of happiness. So even if you were part of one of these dis [00:10:00] quote unquote discriminated groups you, you see that this helps you a ton.

That's crazy

right here. Like, consider you're black, right? Yeah. 60 if you're a progressive. 68 if you're a conservative. Yeah. So we'll start by looking at men versus women. Okay. What's what's interesting here women seem to benefit more from men happiness wise by being conservative. Yeah. Small thing, one

Simone Collins: point for

Malcolm Collins: tra wives.

If you're looking at race who is it that benefits the most by being conservative? It turns out, equally

Simone Collins: well, no, no, no. White people benefit the most from being conservative. No white people

Malcolm Collins: benefit about as much as Hispanic or Asian because look, their top happiness is a little bit lower. So white people, Hispanics and Asians all benefit about the same, whereas other are mixed benefits by far the most and black benefits the least by about half, which is really interesting.

Why do you suppose that is? Why would black

Simone Collins: the least I, I think that. Of, [00:11:00] of progressives, black progressives are the most distinctive from the urban monoculture. Like they're more likely to maintain their views around like unique sense of culture. Being gay is

Malcolm Collins: bad and like,

Simone Collins: yeah, you're right. So I think it's just resistance to the urban monoculture that we're seeing.

Hold on.

Malcolm Collins: What you're showing here is what's causing this? Oh, it's the urban monoculture. The more seeped in the urban, this is the hypothesis we're going as right now, the more seeped in the urban monoculture. This is the, the culture of the urban elites. The, the, the more affected a group is going to be by going from left to right, the less.

Affected by the urban monoculture, the more it's a sign that they are exiting the urban monoculture to identify as a rightist, the more positively they will be affected by this. Yeah. That is a going hypothesis right now. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So who's affected the least by this age wise? It is the older generations, like the silent [00:12:00] generation.

Hmm. Who's affected the most by this Gen Z? That would work was the urban monocultural theory.

Yeah.

Because Gen Z is gonna be more exposed to the urban monoculture than the silent generation or than Gen X.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, they're functionally not even, I mean, the, the most the liberals of silent generation, that, that was born after 1964, or sorry, before 1964.

Is, is it the same position basically as the most conservative of Gen X, which was born from 1965 to 1980?

Malcolm Collins: It's actually wild. The, the conservative Gen Zs are less happy than the progressive silent generation.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Okay educational attainment. I'm you, you see the lowest amount of impact.

So again, we're going with the urban monocultural hypothesis, less exposure to the urban elite ideology, the urban monocultural ideology. So you would expect okay. No high school or just high school? Yes, they're the least affected by [00:13:00] far. Where you know, some college, four year degree postgrad are all about the same in terms of how affected they are.

What's also notable here is the more education you get, the happier you are. In this graph, if you've No noted that, like with both groups with, with a high school degree only conservatives with a high school degree only are only slightly more happy than progressives with a PhD.

Simone Collins: Oh. All

Malcolm Collins: the good at death you to be more happy. But I'm just, I'm just pointing out here. Okay. Okay. Explain

Simone Collins: opportunities here. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The household income. I guess this

Simone Collins: is helpful in that if you want to stay a progressive, you can look at least at factors that correlate with less depression on the progressive end and yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But let, let's go to the, the household income here, which I also find really interesting. Yeah. Those with the least outcome household income and the most household income appear to be least affected by this. This also aligns with me because you can have the power to resist the urban elite mindset more when you have [00:14:00] a high amount of income and you can just ignore it if you have a low amount of income.

What's really interesting about this as well is that happiness goes up pretty much lock in step was income. But note the top income level here is a hundred K. Now what I find interesting is while it happiness goes up, luck step was income. Having the, the gap in happiness is so high that your average family.

With less than 30 k household income is ex, that is conservative, is exactly as happy as your average family with over a hundred K income. Who is progressive?

Simone Collins: I kind feel like also progressives are way more likely to be urban. And if you're living, let's say you ha you make a hundred K, but you live in Manhattan, you, you're, you're struggling.

Okay, okay. You're struggling.

Malcolm Collins: I'll buy this. Carve out Simone. It's

Simone Collins: very stressful. Whereas if you are conservative and you live in lollipop. Rural Idaho. It's our children that are obsessed with lollipops. [00:15:00] Titan last night insisting that an apple was a lollipop. When? Sh when? When can she just chew?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Our daughter likes to eat like apples and bread.

Like she eats lollipops, which is just,

Simone Collins: she makes no prop. You don't, it won't be consumed that you can't lick an apple and get anything or bread. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: okay. And I'll tell her it's not a lollipop, and she'll go, no, it's a lollipop. It's a lo and pop because she knows way better than we do. She knows way better than we do.

But it, it's

Simone Collins: telling when you look at the religion section that just being religious means you're gonna be happier than if you're not religious. Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: religion's way happier, right? Yeah. And, and also it's, you're happier if you're a Protestant or a Catholic than other named religion, IE, Muslim or Jew.

Yeah. But what's interesting here about religion is that, the, the religious categories are affected by this very little like

Simone Collins: yeah, very small gaps between conservative

Malcolm Collins: have a very small gap between the progressives and the conservatives in terms very interesting. Whereas you see a [00:16:00] much larger gap on the atheist and agnostic category.

Yeah.

Also fun to note here that if you are an atheist. And you are conservative. You have the, around the same happiness level as a Protestant or Catholic, who is progressive

Simone Collins: whatever. I mean, also this, this explains why birth rates are so low among, well, another reason why they're still low among progressives because marriage and children, if, if you are, if you're married.

You're conservative, you're, you're pretty freaking happy.

Malcolm Collins: Married. Oh wow. Happiness rates. This is, this is really interesting. So married or in a domestic partnership in your conservative, your happiness rate is 71. That is really high.

Yeah.

That means that conservatives who are married are like nearly ecstatic.

Which is, which is, which is wild to me actually to see how high that is. 'cause I hadn't seen that broken out before. Now the unmarried or separated seem to have a wider divide between them, but [00:17:00] I don't know if that's like more exposure to urban monoculture. Yeah. I dunno.

Simone Collins: I don't know. What's interesting though is, is if you're conservative and you have children who are grown like you're an empty nester, you are significantly more happy than if you are conservative and you have children under 18 in the household.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: that, that, I think there's just like, they're actually, it's, it's a pretty close rate, 56 versus 65. With 65 being conservatives, 56 progressives. The, I think there, there is stress of raising kids and I think that's reflected in these numbers, which is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what's interesting here to me is that the never had children category progressives who never have children, are like so unhappy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Gosh, this really goes to show like being a dink is probably not gonna predict a lot of happiness for you. Yikes. That's one of the lowest rates. I mean, if you look at this, engineer's, one of the lowest

Malcolm Collins: total rates. Does anyone less happy? The only thing

Simone Collins: that could make you more miserable is to be bisexual, but you're probably,

Malcolm Collins: hold on, hold on, hold on.

What can make you more miserable? Is to be [00:18:00] a Gen Z progressive. That's, that's, that's slightly more miserable. Uhhuh we'll get to the bisexual one in a bit because that number is staggering. Yeah. But the yeah, but aren't

Simone Collins: like so many Gen Zs, childless, bisexual, non-religious. No wonder they're miserable.

I'm just

Malcolm Collins: saying here that the, the two number one ways to be unhappy is to be a progressive who's never had kids or a Gen Z progressive. And then, wait, how do you top the conservative on this chart? The top conservatives on this chart are conservatives earning 70 a hundred KA year, who have a postgraduate degree are in the silent generation of, or with, with grown children.

Yes. Or have children or are just married. Yeah, that is wild. But now we're gonna go to sexual orientation. I think this is the most telling, right? So you can say like, okay, if you are like, like which group between its progressive faction and its conservative faction, is this most likely to be a sign of exposure to the urban monoculture, right?

Like Yeah, yeah. Like agreeing with urban monocultural [00:19:00] norms. And I'd say sexual orientation, and this is where you see by far. The largest line in the entire chart in terms of distribution of happiness, and that is. Around bisexual or other progressive, it is only 35, whereas conservatives it's 59. So even on like the, the medium, high end of this, this chart whereas progressives, it's the lowest number on the chart by about 10 points.

Like that is absolutely wild. And, and people can be like, what do I mean by this? If you are a progressive. Other or, or bisexual identified individual, you are almost certainly pure urban, monoculture brain. Yeah. Like everyone I see just 'cause it's an opt-in identity for them. If you are a conservative and you have one of these identities, it likely means that like you are just actually bisexual, but like you do not want to engage with the rest of this nonsense, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you are gonna be uniquely steeled against the [00:20:00] rest of this nonsense, or you are a based traditionalist conservative. So I've heard a lot of like Christian women be like, yeah, I'm attracted to women, like I'm bisexual. I'm just not gonna do that. 'cause like the Bible,

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I wonder if bisexual is, is more a way of, okay.

Like I am actually gay or lesbian, but I'm also gonna get married so I better call myself bisexual. Yeah. Like do you think a lesbian woman or gay man. Who chooses to enter a heterosexual marriage would just call themselves bisexual instead. 'cause maybe that's what's going on.

Malcolm Collins: No they wouldn't and they don't often they often just say, I'm gay, but I, I wanna do this.

Yeah. This would be more like, okay. Suppose like Grimes, who's talked about wanting to convert to Catholicism occasionally or like various forms of Christian, and then she did that and she became a conservative. She'd still call herself bisexual. Like she's not gonna ignore, you know, her arousal patterns or her past or something.

So I think that that's what we're seeing here. Interestingly don't see like that huge of a boost if you're gay or lesbian. [00:21:00] But I assume that's just from being in those communities. And, and here I'd also note that. These, these groups who, you know, your progressive would say, you know, you are trans or you are gay, or you are bisexual person who is in conservatives and in conservative sexual circles and sees themselves through a conservative eye is going to like themselves less, and we can be like, that's objectively not true.

Yeah.

By, by like a huge statistical number. So this is what I mean when I say at the end of the day, the conservative party really is the party of the normal gay

normal gay

as as what's his face? This was coined by JD Vance in that speech at the,

Simone Collins: he, he coined normal gaze.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This was at the, what was it called again?

You know, they have the, the, the mid thing during the campaign cycle where everyone gets together and they do all the important speeches and he, he,

Simone Collins: oh, the. Republican.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he's like the normal gay support us. He is like the normal, I bet even the [00:22:00] majority of normal gays support Republicans these days or something along that.

Well

Simone Collins: I will say like the conservative gays that we know are pretty freaking happy people. They have a lot of fun. Yeah. And when I, I follow a bunch of progressive gays online and you know, they talk about how they have to not look at any commentary about them online 'cause. It would be too, it would be too.

It's self-harm. And yeah, it just, it's, it's, it's just hard. It's hard being anything and also being urban monoculture because everything's about trauma and pain and suffering here. So of course they're need to list

Malcolm Collins: one that might surprise people. You know, some people are like, I just, I just don't engage with the news because it's toxic.

Like I just, oh, politics. I'm above that. Well, it turns out the more you engage with politics. Whether you are progressive or conservative, the happier you are.

Simone Collins: That's so interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Because I,

Simone Collins: I would've, this surprises me. I would have expected the opposite.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it has to do with a person's [00:23:00] level of ancientness and vitality for life.

Like do they Oh, yeah. I guess

Simone Collins: being excited about the world, right? Yeah. Because there was, I, I told you about the, when, when the one conversation I had at dialogue where. One of the people at the table was trying to make an argument as to how not engaging with the news meant you were more in touch with reality, and he pulled everyone on like, okay, you know, has crime gone up or down?

Like, what are the rates of this in the world? That, in the world and the people?

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: what,

Malcolm Collins: oh, continue.

Simone Collins: The people who reported watching the news were way more off on all of the assessments of actual reality. Like how much crime is taking place, what's going on than the people who didn't actually consume news.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, and I think that this, what he was asking was mainstream news. But this asks is high interest in news or political interest. I would use that. Oh yeah. So, yeah, because

Simone Collins: there's a really big difference between passive consumption and active seeking. And I think active seeking is a sign of vitality and [00:24:00] interest in, not depression, the opposite of depression.

But

Malcolm Collins: hear news, when he said news, he meant like CNN, Fox, et cetera. Yeah. Uhhuh, it was. Question is worded means like nno and asma gold and us and leaflets. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: doing research on Wikipedia and trying to learn about something, right? Yeah. Okay. Which is

Malcolm Collins: very different than Okay, than thinking you're in foreign because you read the New York Times.

Okay, that's fair. So, so what we're seeing here is even if you're a democrat, if you think that, you know, you can change the future of the world, right? You, you're gonna have a more internal locus of control. Mm-hmm. I think a person's level of political engagement is in part. A level of their age ancientness and their belief in their ability to influence the future and their level of internal or external locus of control.

Do they believe the world is happening to them or are they happening to the world?

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Which is really interesting. Also, it's really interesting that the, if you have a high news and political interest and you are conservative, that is one of the highest happiness categories on the entire chart.

[00:25:00] That's 73. Higher than conservatives with kids.

Isn't that crazy?

That is actually kind of crazy, right? Like being a highly politically engaged conservative is going to make you very, very happy. I mean, I know this is very similar to

Simone Collins: the research that you covered on the extent to which people were really negatively affected by social media and online.

Engagement only if they were progressives and if they were conservatives, it didn't really matter. Like it wasn't toxic. It wasn't terrible. Yeah. They were fine. And here we go. And then indicates the

Malcolm Collins: urban monoculture is the point of this. But I'd also point out for people if they're like, well, you know, at least if I'm a progressive and I'm really politically engaged, I'm gonna be happier.

And it's like. Technically than other progressives, but you still come in well below the happiness of low political engagement or medium political engagement conservatives. Yeah. You're clocking in a, which makes sense

Simone Collins: because it's such a negative narrative. Like of the world that is painted by most progressive news coverage, everything's horrible, terrible things are happening to [00:26:00] people.

Crime is worse.

Malcolm Collins: You're clicking it at a 57 versus there. 64 or 60.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which, you know, I, I completely, I mean, I understand that they, they try to, but conservatives are all like, look at the terrible things. Look at the, the elitist, you know, PDA file networks. Look at all the corruption in government.

Look at all these incompetent politicians. You know, like, that sounds

Simone Collins: like tittering gossip to me. That's euphoric. Malcolm, that's not dysphoric.

Malcolm Collins: I think both sides get a lot of negatives. It's just conservatives think, okay, well then let's fix it.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that that also differentiate age agentic versus

Simone Collins: communal.

Again,

Malcolm Collins: political engagement groups.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Then if, if, if we go to social media activity, I found this pretty easily. So audience, if you were to predict who is happier. Recently posted on social media or no recent social media posts. [00:27:00] Recently posted on social media is happier, both conservative and progressive.

Which is pretty interesting to me. With recently posted on social media progressives at 55 and conservatives at 69. So really high. Like if you're recently posted on social media conservatives, you're a very happy person. But you're not like that differentiated from those recent post conservatives that's 50 as progressives versus 65 as conservatives.

I found that really interesting. Attended a political protest in the past year. Now this one is really interesting because this is also one of the longest lines on this graph. And I think it also is a high level of predictivity of whether or not you're in the urban monoculture or not. Mm-hmm.

And this is yes, you have attended a political protest in the last year and was progressive. You're very unhappy, 51. And with conservatives, you're fairly happy, 68. But what's interesting here is that conservatives if you did not attend a political event, you're at the exact same level, 68.

Whereas if you're progressive, you're slightly happier, [00:28:00] 53. And what this indicates to me is I think you're pretty much equally likely if you haven't or have attended an event, if you're a conservative that you are outside the urban monoculture. But for progressives, if you haven't, you're slightly more likely to be outside the urban monoculture.

Yeah.

So all of these things taken together, the, the black thing, the bisexual thing, this the age thing. It says to me that this is all downstream of urban monocultural norms. It is the urban monoculture itself, which is destroying people's both mental health and happiness level. Mm-hmm. And we have pointed out this conjecture in the past, but I think that this evidence for me, really confirms my preexisting hypothesis.

And if, if people are like, why, why does the urban monoculture create this mental damage? It's because it's so highly externalizing. And nothing is ever really your fault. Everything is always somebody else's fault.

Yeah. Everything

is always the fault of society, and there's nothing that you can really do about anything but [00:29:00] screech at people.

And then when you go to your friends for support or you try to interact with your own community, they all screech at you because it's this crazy social dominance fight. And worse, you've been coddled and coddled and coddled because they told you the only thing that mattered is feeling good and self affirmation.

And, and feeling comfortable with yourself. And so you've lived this life where you just constantly sought this, whatever pronouns you wanted to use that day, whatever way you wanted to see yourself that day, everyone had to affirm you, which gave you very poor mental robustness and allowed you to quickly mentally de degrade mm-hmm.

When exposed to anything that was, you know, potentially negative or disconfirming.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, so. Yeah, I guess there's not a lot tactically you can do, aside from just abandon mainstream progressive culture if you really wanna feel better, which is hard possible, [00:30:00] I don't know. What would you advise to someone who, what is your

Malcolm Collins: takeaway from this information or thoughts?

Simone Collins: My big takeaways being bisexual is apparently terrible for you. I figured it was like the more chill sexual orientation because you know, it wasn't particularly tied to any controversy, aside from people saying that there's no such thing as bisexuals, and I didn't realize just how. Apparently terrible it is for you.

And I, I still don't,

Malcolm Collins: it's not that bad if you're conservative, but it, it's still not good. Like you're, you're the, the, the conservative bisexuals are less happy than the conservative gays.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Do think, I think pick a aside, progressive bisexuals are, are extra miserable because they're, they're seen as.

Not going all the way with a sexual identity that they really should be identifying as. No, the

Malcolm Collins: category here isn't bisexual. It's bisexual or other. And that [00:31:00] includes all of the made up sexualities and transsexuality,

Simone Collins: everything. Oh, like attack helicopter, but serious.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean that's like 50% of trans people you know.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: well, come on. We, we joke, we had to, I think

Simone Collins: people who identified as attack helicopters would be happy in trans. When I

Malcolm Collins: say attack helicopter, what I mean is somebody who obviously is, is not trans by any definition. Like we always. Like if, if you watch our Fun day Friday episode, I'm like, they keep calling themselves a queer couple, but like clearly neither of them is trans.

Yeah. And they

look like a heterosexual couple to me. Yeah. So what it means is that that one of them decided to identify as a different gender or as gender queer. And now the other one has to identify as bisexual because they're dating a gender queer person. Yeah. And now they're both stuck in the bisexual bubble because, well, at one point I was straight, but now.

You know, you identify as, sure. So all of a sudden, I have to say that I am been actually queer this whole time because I had no idea, you know, I [00:32:00] was dating somebody who wasn't the gender I thought they were, and I found them attractive this entire time. But they saw themselves as a Sure. So now I'm bisexual.

No, this happens so often to progressives in relationships. They're dating somebody, dating somebody, dating somebody, think they're in a heterosexual or gay relationship, and then their partner comes to 'em and is like, actually. I'm gender queer. Now they can say, well, actually I'm still gay. And then the person's like, well, you're not gay because you found me attractive.

So now they're bisexual Oh. Or other in the, in the, in the phylogeny of the progressive left. So this is just pulling people in the more, in the urban monoculture they are, instead of just like regular bisexual They are.

Okay.

I also found the, the political involvement one very interesting, that you're better off being more politically involved.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that runs counter to a lot of the common sense that spreads. So this was useful. Yeah, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: In the end though, I, I think just generally not believing in it, let's just not believe in [00:33:00] it. I don't believe in mental health.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I've thought a lot about it, Simone, and I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable with my gender.

Well then we can

Simone Collins: both, can we both identify as a tech helicopter? Because I think that's the best gender slash sexual orientation.

Malcolm Collins: What's so funny is, you know, we'll go viral on a platform and somebody will be like, oh, look at the way he looks. Look, look at that. Like he's, I, I've seen people like this before and they're just waiting to come out, right?

Like they're just and what they're really just noting there, and I think they're actually noting the you know, in a, in a recent episode we talked about like social class and conservative versus progressive, and we noted that. Progressives often try to code as upper middle class and conservatives try often try to code as lower middle class or lower class.

Mm-hmm.

And because we code as upper middle class people are very, sometimes very confused about like where we stand on things.

Simone Collins: You're uncomfortable, very threatened.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And what they're really saying is, oh no, you look like you've been heavily brainwashed by the urban monoculture. Therefore it's only a few years [00:34:00] before you come out as an attack helicopter.

Or what really happens. And I think that, you know. Hyperbolizing this under underlays. How common this really is among progressives is one day I come to you and I go, well, Simone, I'm gonna be honest. Sometimes I have thoughts that aren't entirely masculine, and so I think that I have a feminine side to me as well, and that I think that I need to identify as something other than just he, which means, and I know you didn't know this.

But you've been sleeping with a whatever this whole time and because he's, oh God, yeah. That would make me,

yeah. That

means you are either a bisexual or pansexual now, or you have to divorce me.

Simone Collins: That is a, yeah, that would, I've heard a lot of people, it's lot of disruption. That's very scary. Just happens.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because it's like the other person is now basically taken ownership of your sexuality in like a really weird and delusional and [00:35:00] aggressive way.

Simone Collins: Without your consent, your sexuality suddenly needs to change or your life falls apart.

You choose.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well not even that there, they're even like your sexuality needs to change, or if you leave me. I haven't really changed on the inside. So clearly you always found somebody who is really a woman attractive. And this is like a huge deal for like gay people, right? Where the partner's, like, actually I know we've been in a gay relationship our entire life, and you've identified as gay your entire life, but now you're bisexual because I decide and the person will be like, well, no, I'm not.

And they're gonna be like, well, I've always been this way and you've always been attracted to me. So clearly you were, or you're just transphobic.

Simone Collins: Oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's it. It's weird how like coercive and gross parts of the trans movement are.

Simone Collins: It's rough. Yeah. It's, and I mean, I, there, when I was a kid, there would be people where my mom was like, oh yeah, so and so's partner.

'cause I, I lived in the San Francisco Bay area, so stuff like this happened all the [00:36:00] time. Like they now identify as a woman. And so now. I guess she's a lesbian. And it, and also like, I think the problem too is that did you

Malcolm Collins: ever think about the, the other partner there where they're like, now she's a lesbian or like bisexual.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That there's, I, well, there's also this requirement that now you have to like, identify with this community because,

Malcolm Collins: well, your kids to have two parents, bisexual or else

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's, it's something. Yeah. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's, it's effed up. It's really effed up. The, the whole thing is just so coercive and gross.

I'm like the, when I say gross, I don't mean gross because of who they are. I mean gross because of the way they force themselves on other people. And, and, and this is like a big deal of like you're a gold star lesbian and now somebody saying, no, you're actually not. You didn't know it. And I didn't know it yet, but actually I was a man.

Simone Collins: Well, and [00:37:00] the, I think the other trouble of it is this wouldn't matter. If we didn't make gender such a big deal. And yet since the seventies, gender has been made this its own separate thing and it really was made a

Malcolm Collins: big deal by the alphabet soup crowd. Like,

Simone Collins: exactly. And like if it, if it didn't matter so much, it'd be like, oh, whatever.

Like I just, I so remember that like, I love the end of the scene. Some like it hot or he's just, he's just like, listen, I'm awo. I, I'm, I'm really a man. And he's like,

Malcolm Collins: we can

Simone Collins: make it

Malcolm Collins: work.

Simone Collins: And I think, yeah, nobody's perfect. Yeah. Like that's,

Malcolm Collins: that should be

Simone Collins: how it

Malcolm Collins: is. The modern the way that the gender movement like went we have our episode on the debauched fifties or whatever.

Like essentially like 20% of like young men engaged in like mutual masturbation with other young men like. It just was not a thing back then. You might have had like the odd you know, like murder of like a gay person or something like that. I'm not saying that this didn't happen and it wasn't horrible but there are multiple directions the, this movement could have gone and the direction [00:38:00] of gay and trans identity as a special class versus we need to just stop caring about this stuff.

Mm-hmm. It led to a lot of negative externalities.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's sad 'cause it came from a good place. I mean, I think it, it came from a place of wanting good things and, and assuming this would be good for people people didn't come out. This wasn't the, some cackling like, ha ha, this is how I make everyone miserable. It's all like some sailor moon, I'm gonna harvest all their happiness and it take it from my energy sphere or whatever it is they did.

I never really got what they were trying to do. The evil people in Sailor Moon. I, I didn't get it. I, I couldn't pay attention to the show, and so I was always, I actually have no

Malcolm Collins: idea what they were trying to do either.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So it's not just me, just like, what, what is, anyway, fine. Go off. But.

Yeah, it just, well-meaning people causing such sad, that's what makes it the worst, is that this was people really trying to make themselves and the world happier and better. Then, even though [00:39:00] we don't really care about happiness like they really do. You know, it's like, so someone really just trying to make a chocolate cake and then like just producing a giant turd even though like all they wanted, nobody, here's this thing.

Malcolm Collins: Some of them and, and many of the OGs. Of like the, the gender movement we've talked about in other episodes of like the electric turning on the trans movement. Hmm. They've come out and they've been like, I'm sorry, I, I thought I was good at making cake, but clearly I wasn't supposed to take a dump in it.

I'm not gonna make you eat that. That was like, horrible. Let's try to find another solution here. And then there's another group. Like, eat it, eat it, or it means you want me dead, eat it. Or it means you wanna kill every one of me. Well, eat it.

Simone Collins: Eat it, and, and if you don't look happy, well you eat it. If you don't smile and slurp down every last bite with a s**t eating grin.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Sorry, I'm not on this, but some people are actually doing that. They're, they're eating it. Like, and the person's like, he and the rest of us are like, bro, that's buddy do. They're like, [00:40:00] don't, no,

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I, well,

Malcolm Collins: all right. Love you to DeSimone. You are the perfect wife. You are my I on this chart.

I'd be a hundred. They'd say, what's your happy? I'm a hundred. I'm a hundred, and it's all because of Simone and my kids. Mostly, totally,

Simone Collins: man. Not now. It's, it's mostly the kids and we both know it. Come on. They're so funny. They're so great.

Malcolm Collins: They're, they're, they're good. I mean, they're certainly not bringing my happiness down.

We'll, we'll wait till they get into more trouble, but I'm looking forward to that. I think they'll get into fun trouble.

Simone Collins: They're gonna get in so much. I can't even imagine. Yeah. Every time we give them a roll. Oh. So it's a boundary for me to cross. Thank you. Thank you for presenting me with this new opportunity.

Yeah. Oh, we're so screwed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. Very excited for dinner tonight because you haven't made Bologne in a year or whatever at least

Simone Collins: a long time. And you want me to tell you, you're just super antis [00:41:00] spaghetti. It has to be. Spirals of bow ties. Any literally

Malcolm Collins: anything else? Bow ties, circles. I'll see what I have.

Circles. What are we making? SpaghettiOs,

Simone Collins: little cylinders. So there's macaroni, there's macaroni works. Macaronis a, a curve circle. And I don't know what we have. I think I might have used our last, I'll, I'll check. I'm pretty sure we have stuff now. If we have choice. Do you prefer macaroon? No little ridges on it.

Do you prefer bow ties or you do you prefer? I think it's called far like the screws. Toasty. Calls 'em screws. He loves the screws.

Malcolm Collins: Screws. I love shells. I love, I also love bow ties. I love all, all the things. The, what I'd ask you to do is make sure you're, you're running from a recipe today. With, with gotcha junk.

It would be like if I was gonna add gotchu to like this, go from like an AI recipe or something like that. Don't just wing it based on like, bologna. Bologna, because your bologna in the past has not been very good. Like whatever you think, a good bologna recipe, what you used to think was one, was not a good recipe.

So I'm just asking you to, to base this [00:42:00] on something other than whatever you're cooking, what kind of recipe

Simone Collins: should I ask for then? Because I was just gonna saute onions and garlic and then add meat and then add gochujang maybe after like. Dissolving it in water a little bit to get it so it doesn't clump and then add marinara.

What would you do differently?

Malcolm Collins: Maybe at some stage, try like coconut milk or like, no cream, more cream, no work. Well, or like ask an AI.

I'll ask an

Simone Collins: ai.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you. We're, we're ending early today. You have time to

Simone Collins: ask an ai Hardly no. Ending on time is ending at giving me an actual interval to take care of Indie.

Go downstairs. Start preparation. So, no, but also like I'm addicted to talking with you, so I can't,

Malcolm Collins: I'm your AI chat addict. This is, this is your.

Simone Collins: I mean obviously because the, the only thing that actually got me engaged on AI chat [00:43:00] platforms was the, the prospect of potentially making an AI chat Malcolm, that I could chat with when you, you know, narcoleptic fall asleep sometimes because you need rest 'cause you refuse to sleep anymore.

You used to take naps after waking up at 2:00 AM now you're just even musk it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Make time because you're not allowed to die. Alright,

Malcolm Collins: I'll try not to die. To never die. Love you to DeSimone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm. I'm looking up a recipe now.

Now we're all a little bit shiny 'cause of the fricking heat, the worst want the darkness. I wonder how many of our viewers also have reverse seasonal affective disorder, where when there's more light, you get more sad, and when there's more darkness you get more.

Malcolm Collins: So we gotta tell an amazing story about our kid yesterday.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins: So our kid comes home from school. With a Pokemon card. And we didn't [00:44:00] give him a Pokemon card, so we asked him, where'd you get this Pokemon card from? And he goes, well, this other kid, he ripped his piece of art, ripped his piece of art. And so, he told the other kid. That if, if he didn't well, that there were

Simone Collins: consequences for, for damaging his property.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There's consequences. And then he, he, he, he said that he would tell the teacher if they didn't give him their Pokemon card and this worked, apparently he strong armed some other kid into giving him his Pokemon card.

Simone Collins: He blackmailed this other kid. He blackmailed a child.

Malcolm Collins: Which is, I just love where I'm, I'm like, Octavian, what?

And he's like, there has to be consequences.

Simone Collins: Well, and that's I, I like maybe a little bit too much. Hammer this home. I'm like, you did this, you pay the price. Like that's a consequence. Like you lose the toy, you [00:45:00] don't just get a replacement. Now you don't have the toy anymore. You, you have to understand 'cause that's how life works.

I know. You just wanna get them. He, he's

Malcolm Collins: running a protection rack in school now, you know. Well,

Simone Collins: but I also just, he, he sees things through such a commercial and mercantile lens. Like he's like a Kardashian from Star Trek. Although

Malcolm Collins: every single. Person he talks to. It is always like it was his brother and stuff like that.

His brother's like, can I have a a, a toy? And he is like, well, can I have some money? And then, and then what he will do is to, will be like, well, I don't have any money. And so he goes, go tell dad you need money.

Simone Collins: And then sometimes they trade things, which is great. And more like, they also very often just gift things to each other and, and, and they give things away to kids at school all the time.

But when I talk with him about. His friends at school, Octavian Octavian will be like, oh yeah you know, if I hang out with so and so, maybe he will give me. His red gemstone and I will give him a green Army man. And like he just thinks about like, ah, this [00:46:00] trade partner would be advantageous for the following reasons.

I should, I should engage more with them. Which is just hilarious. And I don't know, I don't know to make of it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it, it's a, it's a positive, you know, a evolutionary trait to, to like, or are we hammering

Simone Collins: it? Home too much at home like, 'cause I'm always like, well, what are you gonna do for me?

You'll get it if you do X. Like I'm very, I am also very mercenary about things. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: I've always

Simone Collins: looked at things that way. I don't, I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't think culturally speaking that I have any problem with this. Okay. If you wanna hammer this home, hammer at home.

Simone Collins: Okay. Thank you. So our only point of parental conflict still is, is with junk food.

You're like, shovel it in. And I'm like, oh, highly processed food. This is horrible. Can't they just eat whole foods? And, but they. Candy. I want candy except Titan demands candy all the time and then like doesn't eat it. She thinks that everything is to be licked, but [00:47:00] she can't even finish a lollipop. Like we had her on one lollipop for three days and she didn't even get close to finishing it.

Like you could still see it's full structure, like the ridges on the outside. It was like, and she does that with bread. I'll give her a roll and she'd be like, eh, like that's sweetie. No, it's never going to be eaten that way. It's a Hmm. Oh. Just like they drive me so nuts. She just wants to have it. So these days I just, I, I get very quick to dissolve candy and I put it straight into her mouth and so there's nothing she can like, hold on.

Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Cotton candy. We gotta do it this weekend, I guess.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We should do more cotton candy. I'm all for it.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and by the way, you have to find the batteries for the boat. 'cause I checked all around the basement. Like a, I have

Simone Collins: looked all around the basement too, I guess. Is there a chance you, you used to charge it in the kitchen?

Of

Malcolm Collins: the Like that? Yeah. Could it be somewhere? I'll check some other closets.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, clearly we moved it somewhere

Simone Collins: to keep it safe. Yeah. And also 'cause we have to be really careful with the kids, you know, and they'll take [00:48:00] anything. They're little thieves.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they might have broken one of the batteries.

Simone Collins: You think?

Malcolm Collins: Well, because they took the thing that I had to clamp the piece onto off of it. Oh, of course. Because it's unscrewed and the, the shiny golden looking screw. Oh,

Simone Collins: a nut. Okay, well we can find that part at least. Oh yes. The gold nut. Yes. I saw the toasty walking around with that for the longest time.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know where it is?

Simone Collins: No. Of course, these things just disappear. I now, I do have a bag full of all of the loose parts that Torsten has stolen over time because our furniture is basically falling apart. He just takes off all the screws and I try to keep them in one place. And then I have this delusional vision that someday I'll go around the house and screw everything back in.

It hasn't happened yet, so not just we have rickety furniture, but like I, I don't throw it away. I keep it 'cause I know it goes to stuff. And that tourist is just slowly disassembling our entire household.

Malcolm Collins: And our older kid, Octavian, has learned to scare people, which I did as a kid that he thinks is so funny.

He will wait behind corners, go [00:49:00] boo. And now he'll like try to ask like a, like a ghost or something and make ghost noises when I'm using the restroom or something outside to try to try to scare me. So I've gotta act all spooked. The great thing

Simone Collins: is that he, he can't stop laughing when he tries to hide or be sneaky.

Yeah. So,

Malcolm Collins: oh no, he's got me a few times.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. That's great. He's got a lot of patience. That's the thing. He only laughs at first. All right. Get started, Simone.

Simone Collins: All right. Pulling up the outline. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

Speaker 4: Neck sooner. It's okay. Next one. Maybe I'll get it. Get okay. I'll get it and then I'll play. Alright. The bikes are. Dirt. The invisible bugs are still in there, right? Pretty sure. Yeah. The bugs live on the leaves.[00:50:00]

Speaker 5: What do you think? Torsten? Mommy, did you see birds back there? All right, let's keep going. I see a little white spots.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe